Earlier this month, Kim Dotcom experienced a setback when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his efforts to regain control over millions of dollars in assets seized by the US Government.

Branding the Megaupload founder a fugitive, the Court effectively denied Dotcom the ability to properly defend himself, should he be extradited to the United States from New Zealand.

Together with his former Megaupload colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato, Dotcom was found eligible for extradition to the United States last December. His appeal will take place at the High Court in Auckland this month and Dotcom wants the whole world to see.

Because of global interest in my case we have asked the High Court to allow live-streaming of my 6 weeks of copyright extradition hearings.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 23, 2016

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While many jurisdictions internationally will not grant permission for a live video or audio feed to be transmitted from a courtroom, in New Zealand the proposition is not out of the question.

All courts nationwide allow cameras and the recording of proceedings, as long as there are no serious privacy breaches, compromising of witnesses, or risks to the right to a fair trial.

Just recently the Chief Justice requested a report from a panel of judges on guidelines relating to recording in court. The report (pdf) found that 93% of District and High Court Judges had not experienced an instance where recording in court had resulted in a fair trial issue arising.

While the panel’s recommendations were accepted by the Chief Justice, live-streaming of court proceedings did not receive widespread support among submissions from judges. However, upon successful application and in important cases such as Dotcom’s, such transmissions can go ahead.

“Live-streaming may be an available option, particularly if there are fixed cameras in court.Live streaming will remain an option in certain major cases, and would be considered if an application is made,” the Judges’ recommendations read.

While it’s possible that Dotcom’s application will be accepted, no feed coming out of the High Court would be truly live. All transmissions would be subjected to a 10-minute delay to protect all parties involved in proceedings.

“A meaningful check on actual publication gives Judges and counsel the opportunity to consider evidence as it is adduced, and decide on whether suppression is appropriate in a measured way,” the Judges note.

“We are aware of numerous instances when that delay has been critical
to give a Judge time to stop an otherwise potentially disastrous publication. A short delay is a small price to pay for in-court coverage.”

But while Dotcom and his legal team are clearly in favor of having the six-week hearing transmitted (almost) live, the U.S. Government is reportedly pulling in the opposite direction. Dotcom reports that his application has already received objections from lawyers in the United States.

The U.S. Government has asked the New Zealand High Court not to allow live-streaming of my global interest copyright hearing. Worried? :-)

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 24, 2016

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At the time of publication, Dotcom hadn’t responded to our request for comment so the grounds for the US Government’s objection aren’t yet clear. However, the media circuses surrounding the televised trials of both O.J Simpson and Michael Jackson are still within recent memory and under huge scrutiny neither went well for the prosecution.

Whether live-streaming is granted or not, Dotcom won’t be giving up the fight, even if his extradition appeal fails. The entrepreneur has already stated that he’ll take his case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

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

Last month, Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, who’s been held in a local prison since.

Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government which contained several damning allegations.

This week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) followed up the complaint with a full grand jury indictment, which presents several new allegations.

In addition to Vaulin, it charges two other defendants, Ievgen Kutsenko and Oleksandr Radostin. The three men, all from Ukraine, are charged with several counts of copyright infringement and money laundering.

“Kickass Torrents, or ‘KAT,’ was a commercial website that facilitated and promoted the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content over the Internet without authorization of the copyright owners,” the DoJ writes.

KAT’s seizure banner

According to the indictment, the ‘KAT conspiracy’ involved a variety of piracy-related websites. It mentions that the torrent storage service Torcache.net, which went offline together with KAT, was operated by the same people.

In addition, the defendants were involved in a variety of direct download sites where users could download or stream copyright-infringing content, sometimes in exchange for payments.

These sites include the popular streaming portal Solarmovie, which disappeared last month, as well as the defunct torrent leeching service Leechmonster.

“Leechmonster.com, rolly.com, solarmovie.com, solarmovie.ph, iwatchfilm.com, movie2b.com, hippomovies.com, bino.tv, and moviepro.net were commercial websites that enabled registered users to download or stream copyrighted movies and other media directly from the website,” the indictment reads.

According to the U.S. Government, the three men used the sites to generate millions of dollars in revenue.

“…defendants […] and others designed, developed, and operated KAT, torcache.net, and the direct download websites in order to encourage, induce, facilitate, engage in, and generate millions of dollars from the unlawful reproduction and distribution of copyright-protected media,” the indictment states.

The authorities describe KickassTorrents as a site that was developed purposefully to facilitate copyright infringements. Among other things, this included the sorting of torrents by genre, so they would be easier to find.

In addition, the defendants are also accused of developing a BitTorrent client to facilitate piracy, and of operating the subtitle repository Subtitlesource.com.

On the money laundering side, the indictment includes various examples of advertising payments that were made to bank accounts that were operated by the defendants. This includes a payment from an undercover IRS investigator, who posed as an advertiser.

The Department of Justice has yet to comment on the indictment and it’s currently unknown where the two additional defendants reside and if they have been arrested. The court record shows that two warrants were submitted yesterday, but these remain sealed for now.

Meanwhile, Artem Vaulin is still being held in a Polish prison, awaiting his extradition process.

His lawyer previously asked the Department of Justice to release his client. The defense argued that Vaulin can’t be held responsible for the potentially infringing actions of the KAT’s users, since criminal secondary or indirect copyright infringement does not exist under U.S. law.

—

A copy of the full indictment obtained by TorrentFreak is available here.

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

Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull last year.

With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time, frustrating many music industry insiders.

Although the site was facing a claim of millions of dollars in damages, the owners failed to respond in court. This prompted the RIAA to file for a default judgment, with success.

Earlier this year a Florida federal court awarded the labels more than $22 million in damages. In addition, it issued a permanent injunction which allowed the RIAA to take over the site’s domain names.

However, despite the million dollar verdict, MP3Skull still continues to operate today. The site actually never stopped and simply added several new domain names to its arsenal, with mp3skull.vg as the most recent.

MP3Skull’s most recent home

The RIAA is not happy with MP3Skull’s contempt of court and has asked Cloudflare to help out. As a CDN provider, Cloudflare relays traffic of millions of websites through its network, including many pirate sites.

According to the RIAA, Cloudflare should stop offering its services to any MP3Skull websites, but the CDN provider has thus far refused to do so without a proper court order.

To resolve this difference of opinion, the RIAA has asked the Florida federal court for a “clarification” of the existing injunction, so it applies to Cloudflare as well.

In practice, this would mean that Cloudflare has to block all currently active domains, as well as any future domains with the keyword “MP3Skull,” which are tied to the site’s known IP-addresses.

“Cloudflare should be required to cease its provision of services to any of the Active MP3Skull Domains, as well as any website at either 89.46.100.104 or 151.80.100.107 that includes ‘MP3Skull’ in its name,” RIAA argued.

RIAA’s request

However, Cloudflare believes that this goes too far. While the company doesn’t object to disconnecting existing accounts if ordered to by a court, adding a requirement to block sites based on a keyword and IP-address goes too far.

The proposed injunction goes well beyond the scope of the DMCA, the CDN provider informs the court in an opposition brief this week (pdf).

“…Plaintiffs’ proposed injunction would force Cloudflare —which provides services to millions of websites— to investigate open-ended domain letter-string and IP address combinations to comply with the injunction.

“Cloudflare believes that this Court should hold the Plaintiffs accountable for following clear rules of the road,” Cloudflare adds.

The company suggests that the court could require it to terminate specific accounts that are found to be infringing, but doesn’t want to become the RIAA’s copyright cop.

“What Cloudflare cannot do, and which the Court should not require, is to serve as a deputy for the Plaintiffs and their RIAA trade association in investigating and identifying further targets of an injunction.”

To outsiders the difference between RIAA’s request and what Cloudflare suggests may seem small, but the company draws a clear line to prevent having to scan for pirate sites, proactively. This could turn into a slippery censorship slope, they feel.

This isn’t the first time that the RIAA has requested a keyword ban. In a similar case last year Cloudflare was ordered to terminate any accounts with the term “grooveshark” in them. However, in this case the RIAA owned the trademark, which makes it substantially different as it doesn’t involve the DMCA.

The EFF applauds Cloudflare’s actions and hopes the court will properly limit the scope of these and other blocking efforts.

“The limits on court orders against intermediaries are vital safeguards against censorship, especially where the censorship is done on behalf of a well-financed party,” EFF’s Mitch Stoltz writes.

“That’s why it’s important for courts to uphold those limits even in cases where copyright or trademark infringement seems obvious,” he adds.

The Florida court is expected to rule on the RIAA’s injunction demands during the days to come, a decision that will significantly impact future blocking requests.

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

Dozens of anti-piracy techniques have been tested over the years on formats ranging from cassette tapes to digital downloads, but for pirates the lure of free content is both intoxicating and enduring.

In recent years, games developers have come to accept that piracy cannot be eradicated entirely, but it can be slowed down. The main aim in the modern era is to stop games leaking in the days, weeks and early months following their launch. This allows titles, especially those with high production costs, to make the best of those crucial early days.

In no insignificant terms that breathing room has been provided by Austrian anti-piracy outfit Denuvo. Its anti-tamper technology is quite possibly the best there is and as a result, many so-called AAA titles have remained piracy free since their launch. Just recently, however, significant cracks (excuse the pun) have appeared in its armor.

Early this month, a ‘Scene’ group called CONSPIR4CY properly cracked an iteration of Denuvo that had been protecting Rise of the Tomb Raider (ROTTR). The news had many pirates extremely excited.

While undoubtedly a momentous occasion, ROTTR had been released in January, meaning that in theory CONSPIR4CY might have worked on the crack for six or seven months, a lifetime for most pirates. Furthermore, half a year’s head start is huge for the title’s developers in terms of sales, so without doubt Denuvo had done its job.

Yesterday, however, there was a new development which might represent a more worrying chink in Denuvo’s defenses.

With a lack of fanfare usually associated with some of the Scene’s more mature groups, CONSPIR4CY (a reported collaboration between the CPY and CODEX groups) released a fully cracked version of puzzle-platformer ‘Inside‘

The importance here is that while ROTTR enjoyed six months without having to compete with free, Inside was released for Windows on July 7, 2016. No one but CONSPIR4CY knows precisely when they began chipping away at the game’s protection but even if they started on day one, it has taken only six weeks to defeat it.

There is some speculation that Inside took less time to crack because in storage terms it’s a smaller sized game that ROTTR. That being said, it will be of little consolation to Danish developer Playdead who will have paid Denuvo handsomely for their protection.

With CONSPIR4CY all but impossible to find, let alone obtain a comment from, TorrentFreak asked game cracker Royalgamer06, a colleague of Voksi who found a Denuvo workaround earlier this month, for his thoughts on the new release.

“It’s quite obvious that CONSPIR4CY is beating Denuvo. At least the current Denuvo protection,” Royalgamer06 told TF.

“Inside’s Denuvo protection is quite recent and therefore we could expect all sorts of Denuvo (Steam) games coming from [CONSPIR4CY].”

Royalgamer06 believes that it may have only taken CONSPIR4CY two weeks to crack Inside and that another big game’s debut (also Denuvo protected) might have influenced the pirate release yesterday.

“It took [CONSPIR4CY] two weeks. They either waited to release it (just before the new Deus Ex game is nice timing) or it’s all the time it took them to patch all in-game triggers and polish the crack,” he explains.

So all eyes now turn to the brand new release of Deus Ex Mankind Divided. If that game is quickly cracked by CONSPIR4CY, Denuvo could be coming out in a cold sweat. In the meantime, others are also attempting to dismantle their empire.

“Voksi is also up to something,” Royalgamer06 concludes.

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

As one of the leading providers of DDoS protection and an easy to use CDN service, Cloudflare is used by millions of sites across the globe.

This includes many “pirate” sites who rely on the U.S. based company to keep server loads down.

The Pirate Bay is one of the best-known customers, but there are literally are thousands of other ‘pirate’ sites that use services from the San Francisco company.

As a result, copyright holders are not happy with CloudFlare’s actions. Just recently, the Hollywood-affiliated group Digital Citizens Alliance called the company out for helping pirate sites to stay online.

Adult entertainment outfit ALS Scan agrees and has now become the first dissenter to take CloudFlare to court. In a complaint filed at a California federal court, ALS describes piracy as the greatest threat to its business.

The rise of online piracy has significantly hurt the company’s profits, they argue, noting that “pirate” sites are not the only problem.

“The problems faced by ALS are not limited to the growing presence of sites featuring infringing content, or ‘pirate’ sites. A growing number of service providers are helping pirate sites thrive by supporting and engaging in commerce with these sites,” ALS writes (pdf).

These service providers include hosting companies, CDN providers, but also advertising brokers. The lawsuit at hand zooms in on two of them, CloudFlare and the advertising provider Juicy Ads.

According to the complaint, both companies have failed to cut their ties with alleged pirate sites, even though they received multiple takedown notices.

CloudFlare and Juicy Ads’ terms state that they terminate accounts of repeat infringers. However, according to ALS both prefer to keep these sites on as customers, so they can continue to profit from them.

“Even though the law requires parties to terminate business with repeat infringers, and even though both Juicy Ads and Cloudflare’s own terms
state that they will terminate business with repeat infringers, neither Juicy Ads nor Cloudflare has terminated its business accounts with these chronic direct infringers.

“On information and belief, this is because Juicy Ads and Cloudflare make money by continuing to do commerce with sites that draw traffic through the lure of free infringing content,” the company writes.

The complaint lists Imgchili.net, Slimpics.com, Cumonmy.com, Bestofsexpics.com and Stooorage.com and CloudFlare customers that host copyright infringing material from ALS, and as of today these sites are still using the CDN provider’s services.

Juicy Ads reportedly terminated the accounts of several infringing sites after they learned about the lawsuit, but that doesn’t mean that it can escape liability for its earlier actions.

ALS holds both companies responsible for various counts of copyright and trademark infringement, for which it demands actual and statutory damages. With hundreds of works at stake, theoretical damages can run to dozens of millions of dollars.

Both CloudFlare and Juicy Ads have yet to file a formal response to the allegations.

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