The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is known to maintain a tight grip on its intellectual property rights.

Using an image of the Olympic rings or even just the world ‘Olympic’ can lead to legal trouble, especially in a commercial context.

Most valuable, however, are the broadcast rights. With literally billions of dollars at stake, the IOC is going all out to prevent people from streaming its events without permission.

In previous years we’ve seen a crackdown on torrents, with the IOC targeting The Pirate Bay. Nowadays, however, live streaming appears to be a bigger target, including homemade rebroadcasts using Twitter’s Periscope.

Over the past week the IOC has sent hundreds of takedown notices to Periscope, targeting live streams of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

While most Periscope streams are of a horrible quality, with only a few dozen viewers, they’re seen as a legitimate threat. As a result, the IOC has hired a dedicated team of investigators to track down and report these and other unauthorized streams.

At the time of writing, Periscope has received around 1,000 takedown requests from the IOC for infringing footage from Rio, and this number continues to rise.

Periscope Olympics

Periscope is the only live streaming service that publicly shares its takedown notices with the Lumen database but it’s safe to say that the IOC also targets other sites and services. These include dedicated sports streaming sites offering high-quality streams.

Besides the rebroadcasting of the official TV-signal, the IOC also explicitly forbids the use of Periscope and similar apps to broadcast footage at official Olympic venues. This means that visitors and accredited persons are not allowed to live-stream inside any of the stadiums.

“Broadcasting images via live-streaming applications (e.g. Periscope, Meerkat) is prohibited inside Olympic venues,” IOC’s digital media guidelines state (pdf).

Rules or no rules, it appears that thousands of Periscope users are happily streaming live events. And even if they all stopped, the anti-piracy efforts seem rather futile.

Besides homebrew live-streams there are numerous dedicated streaming sites that continue to offer high-quality footage of the Olympics.

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

Back in June, Atlantic Records were in the final stages of releasing the track ‘Heathens’ by the platinum-certified band Twenty One Pilots. Things didn’t go to plan.

The track, which was also set to appear on “Suicide Squad: The Album”, was leaked online, first appearing on an anonymous Slovakian file-hosting service called Dropfile.to.

From there it’s claimed that the alleged leaker advertised that file on Reddit, posting a link which enabled any viewer to download it for free. The posting, which was made on the ‘Twenty One Pilots’ subreddit by a user called ‘twentyoneheathens’, caught the eye of Atlantic Records.

Earlier this month in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Atlantic described how the leak had ruined its plans for the release and promotion of the track. Underlying these complaints was the belief that the leak originated close to home.

The label said it had provided an early release copy “to an extremely limited number of individuals”, including members of 21 Pilots, their manager, Atlantic and [record label] Fueled by Ramen executives, plus members of Atlantic’s radio field staff.

According to Atlantic, all of its employees who were aware of the impending release were “contractually obligated and/or under a fiduciary obligation” not to disclose its existence until June 24.

So, in order to find out who was responsible for the pre-release, Atlantic asked the Court to force Reddit to hand over the presumed leaker’s details, including his or her IP address. Reddit, however, doesn’t want to play ball.

In a response to the Court, Reddit’s legal team at Harris Beach PLLC say that Atlantic’s claims fail to reach the standards required for discovery.

“In order to obtain pre-action discovery, Atlantic must demonstrate now that it has meritorious claims against the Reddit user. However, Atlantic has failed to show that its claims are meritorious for two, simple reasons,” Reddit begins (pdf).

“First, it has failed to establish that it has a contractual relationship with the Reddit user. Second, it has failed to establish that it has a fiduciary relationship with the Reddit user. Because Atlantic has not demonstrated that it has meritorious causes of action against the unidentified Reddit user, its petition for pre-action discovery related to such user should be denied.”

The problem lies with Atlantic’s allegation that the person responsible for the leak and the link on Reddit is under contract with the company. Reddit’s lawyers point out that while the label is clear about what action it would take in that instance, it has made no statement detailing what it would do if the person who posted the link on Reddit is disconnected from the initial leak.

“Atlantic does not describe the claims it would bring against a non-employee Reddit user who discovered the link on Dropfile.to and posted it to Reddit.com without assistance from an Atlantic employee or an employee of Fueled by Ramen, the members of Twenty One Pilots, or their manager, each of whom had access to the song at the time of the leak,” Reddit writes.

Underlining its concerns, Reddit points out that Atlantic provides no proof to back up its claims that the “individual or individuals” who uploaded the file to Dropfile.to also posted the link to Reddit.

“[T]he Reddit user may have been a member of the general public, who, after discovering the Dropfile.to link on another publicly available website, decided to resubmit it to Reddit.com. A member of the public would not likely have a contractual relationship with Atlantic that was breached and Atlantic has not alleged as much.”

Furthermore, Reddit says Atlantic has not advised the Court of any efforts made to obtain the alleged poster’s details from Dropfile.to. While that might indeed be the case, the operator of Dropfile previously informed TorrentFreak that his site is completely anonymous and carries no logs, so identifying any user would be impossible.

In closing, Reddit describes Atlantic’s effort as an “impermissible fishing expedition” and asks for its petition for pre-action discovery to be denied. However, should the Court decide otherwise, Reddit has asked for a cap to be placed on the amount of data it must hand over.

“Presently, Atlantic’s subpoena requests not only information related to the user twentyoneheathens, but also for information related to ‘all and any other Reddit accounts which accessed [Reddit’s] service from the same IP address on or about June 15, 2016’,” Reddit notes.

“While such users may share an IP address, they otherwise have no relationship among them. For this reason, any order requiring pre-action discovery should be limited to information directly related to the user twentyoneheathens and not violate the privacy interests of any Reddit users sharing the IP address.”

While Reddit is digging in its heels now, it seems likely that at some point the Court will indeed order the alleged leaker’s IP address to be handed over. However, only time will tell what action Atlantic will publicly take. Leaks are potentially embarrassing, so making their findings widely known may not be a priority.

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

After nearly ten years of development, the fan-made RPG Pokémon Uranium was finally released last week.

In no time the game was downloaded over a million times, in part leveraging on the success of this summer’s Pokémon hype.

Unfortunately for the makers it wasn’t just fans that jumped on the release, Nintendo’s lawyers quickly sprang into action too. Claiming copyright infringement, they asked the game’s hosting provider(s) to stop distributing the game.

While the developers themselves were not contacted directly, they decided to pull the release offline to avoid legal problems.

“After receiving more than 1,500,000 downloads of our game, we have been notified of multiple takedown notices from lawyers representing Nintendo of America,” Pokémon Uranium’s makers write in a statement.

“While we have not personally been contacted, it’s clear what their wishes are, and we respect those wishes deeply. Therefore, we will no longer provide official download links for the game through our website.”

Within a matter of days, nearly a decade of hard work now appears to have been ‘for nothing.’ Those who look hard enough can still find unofficial download links scattered online, but it’s only a matter of time before Nintendo begins clearing these up as well.

While the game’s makers and players are disappointed, Nintendo’s actions don’t come as a surprise. The company is known to go after fan projects that use Nintendo trademarks or copyrights, including Game Boy emulators and Mario inspired browser games.

Just last week, Nintendo’s lawyers pressured the makers of a fan-made Metroid 2 remake to pull their game offline. As with Pokémon Uranium, several years of hard work will now stay hidden from the public if the game maker has its way.

Nintendo is of course allowed to protect their rights, and they do have a good case to prohibit these fan-made games from being distributed. However, considering the enthusiastic response from the public, Nintendo could also learn something from these fan projects.

Why shut down a great project and waste hundreds of hours of work if you can use it to your advantage? This sentiment is widely shared online.

“It’s their business, I can understand it, but what I want more than anything is that they learn from their ‘competition’ instead of just destroying it,” sw9876 writes on Reddit.

“Honestly, this may be my favorite Pokemon game ever. The story is great, and long. The Pokemon designs are sweet and were made to look distinct from already existing Pokemon without being dumb. At any rate, this game is great. I hope the talent, effort and creativity put into it doesn’t go to waste.”

In part, Nintendo may already be doing this. In 2013 Nintendo pulled down the popular fan-made game “Full Screen Mario” and a few months later the company announced its new “Mario Maker” which included many similar features.

According to developer Josh Goldberg, his game may have inspired the Nintendo release, without him being credited.

“I think it’s too much of a coincidence that in the fall they take down a fan site that was too popular for them, then in the spring and summer they release a trailer for this product,” he previously told The Washington Post in an interview.

In any case, it’s safe to say that developers who plan to release a game inspired by a Nintendo release should refrain from using any trademarked or copyrighted material. Or else it’s doomed to be shut down sooner or later.

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

When Megaupload was shuttered in 2012, authorities in the United States, New Zealand and Hong Kong seized millions of dollars in cash and other property.

The US government claimed these assets were the result of copyright infringement and money laundering offenses, and attempted to forfeit the bank accounts, cars and other property seized from the defendants in the so-called “Mega Conspiracy”.

After branding Dotcom and his co-defendants “fugitives”, last summer the US Government won its case. Shortly after, however, Megaupload’s legal team filed an appeal with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We asked the Fourth Circuit to rule in favor of fairness, natural justice, and due process by stopping US efforts to take Kim Dotcom’s global assets for doing nothing more than lawfully opposing extradition to the United States—a country he has never been to,” Dotcom lawyer Ira Rothken told TF at the time.

Last Friday, however, hopes for a positive outcome were dashed when a three-judge panel at the Fourth Circuit handed down a two to one decision against Dotcom.

Affirming the decision of a lower court, the Court of Appeal opinion dismissed the notion that the order against Dotcom’s assets had no jurisdiction. The Court also found that Dotcom could not recover his assets due to him being a fugitive from criminal charges in the United States.

The assets in question amount to some $67m across multiple bank accounts, several cars, jet skis, jewelry and other sundry luxury items. While they are now another step out of reach, Dotcom is far from ready to throw in the towel. In the wake of the ruling, the entrepreneur lashed out on Twitter.

“I’m a ‘fugitive’ coz I use my treaty rights to defend against extradition & they take my assets without trial? 1938?” he wrote.

Did they think they can separate me from my kids without a fight? I fight corrupt US empire clowns all day, every day. Not even tired. 🇺🇸🔜🚽

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 13, 2016

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Dotcom lawyer Ira Rothken said on Sunday that Dotcom would seek a review of the decision and if necessary file a petition at the Supreme Court.

“This opinion has the effect of eviscerating Kim Dotcom’s treaty rights by saying if you lawfully oppose extradition in New Zealand, the U.S. will still call you a fugitive and take all of your assets,” Rothken said.

“By basically saying ‘hey, we’re going to call that fugitive disentitlement, we’re going to take away your ability to have funds to defend yourself’, we think that’s too much. We think it’s American imperialism at its best, and we’re hoping the Supreme Court or the larger Court circuit will see it for what it is, and reverse it,” he added.

Meanwhile, Dotcom continues to fight extradition to the United States from New Zealand. This month his appeal will be heard at the High Court in Auckland.

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.

Even in the event the appeal fails, Dotcom won’t be stopping there. The entrepreneur has already made it clear that he’ll take his extradition case all the way to the Supreme Court in New Zealand – and he’s confident he’ll prevail.

Good that I'll never get extradited to the land of corrupt politicians & rigged courts. New Zealand Appeal Judges will apply the law. I win.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 11, 2016

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Independence Day: Resurgence is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(2)	Independence Day: Resurgence (Subbed HDRip)	5.6 / trailer
2	(1)	The Legend of Tarzan (Subbed HDRip)	6.6 / trailer
3	(4)	The Jungle Book	7.8 / trailer
4	(3)	Warcraft	7.7 / trailer
5	(6)	The Nice Guys	7.7 / trailer
6	(…)	Suicide Squad (HDTS)	6.9 / trailer
7	(5)	Jason Bourne (CAM/TS)	7.4 / trailer
8	(…)	Me Before You	7.6 / trailer
9	(7)	Batman: The Killing Joke	7.3 / trailer
10	(…)	Money Monster	6.7 / trailer

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