Anti-piracy groups are often quick to label file-sharing sites as criminal organizations, but these outfits also have some rotten apples among their own.

There is a lot of money to be made protecting copyright holders, and it appears that people are willing to break the law to increase their profits.

This week, Indian police arrested two engineers of the Indian anti-piracy company MarkScan. The two allegedly impersonated local competitor Aiplex to hijack their clients.

According to local reports, MarkScan CEO Abhishek Dhoreliya is the brains behind the scam. He allegedly hired the two engineers, one of whom worked at Aiplex until very recently.

The pair, Ami Vivek and Sushant Mohindru, stand accused of operating a fake Aiplex website at aiplex.us, complete with a fake email address of the company’s owner. They used this to inform clients that Aiplex was shutting down, encouraging them to switch to Markscan.

This strategy paid off as several rightsholders including MTV, Colors, Fox Star, Eros International, and Bollywoodlife fell for the trick.

Perplexed by the sudden exodus, Aiplex’s founder reached out to his former clients to find out what had happened. After he learned that someone had impersonated his company, he filed a complaint with the police, who traced the site back to the MarkScan employees.

“Markscan, which saw Aiplex as a bigger rival, decided to hijack its clients,” a senior police officer said, commenting on the investigation.

“During the investigation, we were able to get the IP address and traced it to Delhi. We caught Vivek and Sushant who said they were acting at the behest of Dhoreliya,” the officer noted.

Thus far police have only apprehended the two engineers. However, the investigation is ongoing and more arrest may follow in the near future.

Regular TorrentFreak readers may recognize MarkScan from its dubious takedown notices. The company has sent preemptive takedown warnings to torrent sites, tried to have BBC iPlayer removed from Google, and regularly targeted sites over non-existing torrent files.

MarkScan CEO Abhishek Dhoreliya previously denied that they’ve sent some or these erreneous notices. Interestingly, he accused others of running an imposter website of his company, sending bogus takedown noitices on their behalf.

“We got to know from OVH that they have been receiving several fake notices where the sender has created a replica website of MarkScan with the name of markscan.co,” Dhoreliya told us earlier this year.

At the time of writing, MarkScan appears to be operating as usual. The website is still online, listing several prominent rightsholders including HBO, Nokia, and the BBC as recent clients, and MPAA India as one of its partners.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

With up to 22m users of Kodi Addons, it’s certainly becoming a force in pirate distribution of content – some would say a new superpower. The latest episode of STEAL THIS SHOW brings us an anonymous interview with ‘Eleazar,’ one of the people behind the fantastically popular platform.

After a news roundup (notes on the Trump Election | TED using DMCA to censor critics | KickassTorrents trial) the episode explores how Kodi and Kodi Addons works.

We discuss why the pirate community hates Kodi Addons and their struggle to eliminate commercial piracy on the platform, what the most popular plugins for Kodi are, and why it’s not (at all) like Popcorn Time.

We also hear about how British pirates are selling their satellite and cable TV streams online and the similarities with the Cable Wallahs of India. Eleazar also has some hot tips for the best Kodi hardware out there!

—

Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary, and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Eleazar

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

When it comes to shutting down pirate sites, few groups have a longer history than the Motion Picture Association of America. The Hollywood organization has dozens of pirate scalps under its belt and today is able to claim another.

Serving more than a million users every day, FS.to was one of Ukraine’s largest pirate sites. Ranked the country’s 21st most popular site overall, the movie-focused platform attracted the attention of the MPAA and local rights holders alike. That has resulted in one of the biggest raids ever seen in the country.

According to the cyber crime division of Ukraine’s national police, an operation shut down the platform Monday following a complaint from Hollywood. The authorities say that 19 people suspected of running the site via a network of local and offshore companies were arrested.

The operation to shut the site appears to have been significant. Raids took place at the offices and homes of the suspects, plus datacenters where equipment running the site was installed. Thus far around 60 servers have been seized from a range of local ISPs but the operation is still ongoing so the tally could increase.

Servers at FS.to, according to police at least

“The site had an audience of millions of users. Criminal proceedings were launched following the violation of copyright and related rights,” police said in a statement.

Local sources indicate that the authorities have linked local Internet company Ferazko Holding Inc. with FS since it owns several of the site’s domains including FS.to, BRB.to and FS.ua.

Whether this action will be the end of FS.to remains to be seen. Authorities seem to believe that not only are some of the site’s operators on the run, but mirrors of the site have been set up in Vladivostok, Russia, and could reappear at any time.

If the site did come back online, it wouldn’t be the first time. FS.to was taken down in October 2013 following a complaint from the Ukrainian Anti-Piracy Association (UAA) but later reappeared.

However, there appears to be a new determination in Ukraine to deal with the piracy issue. According to local sources, file-hosting giant Ex.ua is also on the radar of law enforcement and could be the next target.

Finally (and somewhat bizarrely), police released a video purporting to be FS.to’s server setup and control center. However, people are pointing out that this footage was actually ripped from a video published by the Home Data Center Project on YouTube back in 2012. The police later re-edited their press release video to excluded the suspect footage and the original is no longer available.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Last December a Virginia federal jury ruled that Internet provider Cox Communications was responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers.

The ISP was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered to pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million in damages.

Last week Cox filed its appeal arguing that the district court made several errors that may ultimately restrict the public’s access to Internet services.

This week it became apparent that the Internet provider is not alone in this assessment. Today, several industry associations, academic institutions, libraries and digital rights groups submitted amicus briefs to the court of appeals, voicing their concerns.

The submissions total roughly 200 pages, and the overall theme is that if the current verdict stands, many Internet providers and services will unjustly face similar liability claims based on an incorrect interpretation of the law.

The CCIA, which represents global tech firms including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, submitted a brief together with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). According to both groups, the district court ignored Supreme Court rulings which limit contributory infringement for service providers.

“An Internet service provider does not infringe copyrights merely by providing households access to the Internet,” the CCIA and CTA write (pdf).

“Yet the district court allowed such a case to go to the jury, and asked the jury only whether Cox ‘materially contributed’ to infringement in any of the millions of households to which Cox offered Internet access,” they add.

As expected, several stakeholders from the telco industries have also chimed in to support Cox’s appeal.

The U.S. Telecom Association, for example, urges the appeals court to reverse the verdict as it would require other ISPs to disconnect subscribers based on one-sided piracy accusations.

“The decision […] forces ISPs like Cox and USTelecom’s member companies to restrict consumers’ access to the internet based on nothing more than unproven allegations of copyright infringement in the form of invalid DMCA notices.

“It upsets the careful balance of the interests of copyright holders, internet users, and ISPs that Congress struck in the DMCA,” the Telco association adds (pdf).

Similar arguments were submitted in separate briefs by the American Cable Association and the Internet Commerce Coalition, with the latter highlighting the dubious nature of the millions of standardized copyright infringement claims some copyright holders send.

“If the decision […] is not reversed, conduit ISPs, when they receive unverified, machine-generated infringement claims from profit-seeking agents of copyright holders, will be strongly incentivized to cut off vital Internet service to users, rather than face costly damages suits.

“This is not the system Congress intended when it enacted the DMCA, and it should not be one imposed through a misinterpretation of Congress’s plain words,” the Internet Commerce Coalition adds (pdf).

The Amicus Briefs submitted today

In their submissions, digital rights groups the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge highlight the risk the verdict poses for Internet users at large.

“Just as a tenant’s water should not ordinarily be cut off when a landlord alleges nonpayment of rent, a subscriber’s connection to the Internet should not be terminated in response to alleged copyright infringement except in the most extenuating circumstances,” the groups note (pdf).

The district court’s interpretation of ISP obligations under the DMCA was too strict, they argue, and should be reversed. Not doing so could ultimately violate the fundamental right of people to have Internet access.

“Termination impedes the subscriber’s ability to exercise one of our most cherished liberties, the right of free expression. And termination potentially imposes those far-reaching effects on an entire household sharing the subscriber’s Internet connection.”

Finally, there is a detailed brief from several academic groups and institutions, including several library organizations. The American Council on Education and the American Library Association, among others, fear that educational access to the Internet may become restricted if the verdict stands.

“It could force educational institutions to restrict student access to the Internet unreasonably. Similarly, it could require libraries to limit broadband availability to people who have no other way of accessing information they need,” they write (pdf).

“The DMCA does not mandate a uniform repeat infringer policy, and such uniformity would conflict with the flexibility afforded under the Higher Education Opportunity Act,” the groups add.

The barrage of submissions clearly shows the importance of this case, and it’s likely that many more will follow. It is now up to the appeals court to decide if and how these opinions should be factored in.

With the stakes being this high, it would be no surprise if this case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, to clearly define ISPs’ obligations when it comes to processing DMCA notices and dealing with repeat infringers.

Interestingly, no amicus briefs have been submitted in support of copyright holder BMG thus far.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

On November 15, 2006, a new torrent site was unveiled to the public.

At a time when sites such as TorrentSpy and Mininova were dominating the landscape, ExtraTorrent was determined to grow an audience of its own.

Today, exactly ten years later, most of the former torrent giants have fallen. However, ExtraTorrent is still around and with millions of pageviews per day it’s one of the largest torrent sites around.

The rise of ExtraTorrent is in part the result of a very active community. This includes the many users who casually chat in the forums, as well as a dedicated team of moderators and staff who keep the site clean of fake files and spam.

What’s truly unique, however, is that ExtraTorrent is much more than just an index of torrent sites. The site is also the home of several distribution groups that carry the site’s name.

ETRG, ETTV, and ETHD are familiar names for many passionate torrent users. The groups release the latest movies and TV-shows on various torrent sites, and are among the largest of its kind.

The TV-group ETTV alone has uploaded over 35,000 torrents to the site already, adding dozens more every day.

Some of ETTV’s recent torrents

TorrentFreak had the chance to speak with SaM, one of the operators of the site. SaM says that the site now has a million unique visitors per day who generate 12 million pageviews.

To serve this kind of traffic, the torrent site uses 20 servers scattered all over the world. As a comparison, five years ago it was using just nine servers to handle its userbase.

Looking back, SaM is proud that ET has become a home, not just to torrent users, but also to many prominent uploader and encoder groups.

“One of my best memories is that we became the home site of many known torrenting teams and encoders such as FXG, FXM, 3Li, DDR, and many other talents,” SaM says.

“And we still are the place to look for quality content, such as the releases of ETRG, ETTV, ETHD among many others,” the ExtraTorrent operator adds.

One of the site’s strengths, he believes, is having dedicated and experienced staff to verify torrents as well as a loyal user base. To keep the latter happy, ET continues to improve the site.

“We have just added a new chat platform to ET and continue to add user-friendly features for faster and better searching and browsing, to make it easier to use the site,” SaM says.

In addition, they just announced a new contest where people can win a MacBook Pro, iPhone 7 or VPN accounts if they guess the most downloaded movies on the site correctly.

While ExtraTorrent has something to celebrate today, it has thus far been quite a grim year for torrent sites, with both KickassTorrent and Torrentz.eu disappearing a few months ago.

ExtraTorrent has thus far been spared on any serious legal trouble and believes that, while there might be some change along the way, there’s certainly a future for torrents.

“The online torrent world will change, but torrents will always be there,” SaM concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.