With millions of visitors per month, Uploaded is one of the largest file-hosting services on the Internet.

Like many of its ‘cloud hosting’ competitors, the service is also used to share copyright infringing material, which is a thorn in the side of various copyright holder groups.

In Germany this prompted music rights group GEMA, which represents roughly 70,000 artists, to address the matter in court.

This week the Regional Court of Munich ruled that Uploaded must take a more proactive stance when it comes to online piracy. In its current form the site can be held liable for the infringements of its users, which means that it faces damages.

According to the court order, Uploaded is not only obliged to remove infringing files when they are reported. It must also take additional measures, such as preventing the same files from being uploaded again.

This is similar to the “take-down and stay-down” principle copyright holder worldwide are lobbying for.

Overall, the court found that Uploaded’s business model is “risk-inducing” and “dangerous for copyright owners,” highlighting the anonymity of users and the referral program as factors that increase the service’s liability.

Like other file-hosting services, Uploaded allows users to generate revenue by referring new customers to the site.

Uploaded referral program

GEMA CEO Dr. Harald Heker is happy with the outcome and calls for a regulatory framework where site operators are held responsible for the piracy that occurs though their services.

“File-hosting services earn a lot of money though the exploitation of creative content. Copyright infringements are willingly accepted. This imbalance hurts our members and is something we can’t accept,” he says.

Uploaded’s parent company Cyando AG has yet to comment on the ruling.

This is not the first case Uploaded has lost in Germany, Rasch lawyer Mirko Brüß informs TorrentFreak. In April the company lost a similar case against the Association of American Publishers, which dealt with pirated e-books.

“What the judgments have in common is that, according to the court, Uploaded is not only obliged to take down content when they are notified of an infringement. They also have to take proactive measures to prevent the same work from being re-uploaded and made available for download again.”

While Uploaded can be held liable for damages, the court order is not yet legally binding and is likely to be appealed. In any case, a follow-up case is required to establish an exact damages amount.

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

With an active community and millions of regular visitors, KickassTorrents (KAT) was much more than a site to leech the latest torrents from.

Many considered it to be their virtual home where they gathered with friends on a daily basis.

This ended abruptly last month. When the site’s alleged operator was arrested following a criminal investigation of the U.S. Government, the official site went down with him.

While it’s unlikely that the original site will return anytime soon, a group of KAT-crew members have been working hard to keep the community together.

Within a few days a new forum was launched at Katcr.to, supported by several high ranking moderators of the original site. In the weeks that followed thousands of members returned to the community, which now has plans to expand.

The site started a fundraising campaign asking for money to repair and rebuild the “authentic KAT site code.” The team is accepting donations through PayPal and a Gofundme campaign, hoping to collect several thousands dollars.

“This site we now inhabit is costing money: Money that a few individuals put up to ensure the survival of this Community. This is still not the Kat we all remember but on a daily basis it is getting closer,” Johnno23 says.

Katcr.to fundraiser

The big question is whether this means that the torrent download and upload functionality will be returned to its former glory. For the time being, this appears to be one of the long-term goals.

To find out more TorrentFreak spoke with Mr.Gooner aka the President, a long time KAT-crew member and one of the top admins at the original site.

Mr. Gooner explains that many of the original site staffers have returned to the community, but that funds are needed to develop and maintain it during the months to come.

While the initial focus will be on the community element, torrents are expected to return as well in the future.

“At this stage, it very much depends on pending legal action and rulings in regards to the legality of torrents in the US. However the community can be reassured that in one way or another, KAT will return to its former glory,” Mr. Gooner says.

That said, fully restoring the old site with the original database is not an option at this moment.

The site administrators and crew, all regular users at one point, were clearly separated from the people who technically and financially ran the site. This means that the people in charge of Katcr.to don’t have access to the original code and data.

“It is our understanding that the databases have been secured in such a way that the information inside would become useless if an unauthorised attempt was made to access them,” Mr. Gooner says.

So, if torrent sharing is added to the current community site, it has to be coded by new people. This will take time and money, obviously, and the current crew is not certain if that will happen anytime soon.

Fundraisers are always welcomed with a healthy dose of scepticism, which is no different this time around.

From the information we have gathered so far, it’s safe to say that people shouldn’t expect the original KAT functionality to be restored fully in the near future.

In that regard, Mr. Gooner and others still encourage people to continue uploading in the meantime, even when that’s on other torrent sites.

“Run those seedboxes and torrent clients 24/7 where possible. Just because uploading stopped at KAT we are all still pirates and we will always encourage uploading,” he says.

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

Last month saw the shutdown of KickassTorrents and the arrest of its alleged founder, a development which sent shockwaves through the file-sharing community.

That was followed by the surprise shutdown of Torrentz, the world’s largest torrent meta-search engine. It’s not known why the site chose to close its doors but its departure from the scene was somewhat more orderly than that of KAT.

Meanwhile, and as revealed in our earlier report, streaming continues to prove increasingly popular with Internet users, a fact the authorities are well aware of.

With that in mind, the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Unit (PIPCU) has just carried out a new operation against individuals it believes are involved in streaming content online and distributing set-top boxes modified to receive it.

Following a series of dawn raids carried out yesterday morning in Lancashire, PIPCU arrested three men aged 36, 40 and 58, on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering offences.

PIPCU say that the operation received assistance from local police and a forensic investigator from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

While previous operations against streaming pirates have usually resulted in the seizure of Kodi-enabled Android set-top boxes, this operation appears to have gone a step up the chain.

Photographs provided by PIPCU show what appears to be a somewhat sophisticated operation, beginning with satellite TV reception.

The PIPCU operation spanned three residential addresses and an as-yet-unnamed business premises. It seems likely that the photograph of the server room shown below was taken in the latter location. Thus far, PIPCU say they have seized approximately 30 servers.

In addition, PIPCU say they also recovered set-top boxes which had been modified so that users could access hundreds of premium subscription-only channels.

“Some of the channels available on the devices include pay-per-view sports, the latest movies and UK broadcast television only available to UK licence fee payers. Officers have also identified 15 satellites,” PIPCU report.

Neither the police nor FACT have provided any information which allows us to easily identify those arrested or their operation. However, there are a number of clues which point us in a particular direction.

Firstly, PIPCU claims that the devices were being sold as legitimate products that could provide content to users anywhere in the world for an annual fee of around £400. Second, the unit also identified a small town with a population of just 41,000.

So, given the location of the raids and the specific nature and size of the business, TorrentFreak sources familiar with IPTV operators in the UK told us that one company in particular stands out as the most likely candidate.

The outfit has not yet responded to our requests for comment so naturally we won’t name them, but we do know that they offer IPTV packages to the expat market and those abroad for just a few pounds less than the £400 mentioned by PIPCU.

The packages (and indeed the hardware) are also marketed and sold as entirely legitimate. We’re also aware that a staff member at the company was previously involved in another business dealing in satellite communications.

At the time of writing their website is still up and running and registered to a business premises in Chorley, Lancashire, the town mentioned by PIPCU. Furthermore, a posting discovered online by TF indicates that the IPTV operation had been established for a number of years and was recently running 30 servers.

In a statement, head of PIPCU, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Ratcliffe, described the outfit as “a significant and highly resourced operation to distribute pirated television on an industrial scale” to tens of thousands of people across the globe.

“Operations like this remain an integral part of protecting livelihoods supported by the entertainment industry and the law abiding public who pay for their channels with their hard earned cash,” he said.

Director General of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Kieron Sharp, said his organization will continue to pursue those engaged in this growing area of piracy.

“Illegally modified set-top boxes, along with infringing apps and add-ons, have created new opportunities for criminality and piracy. Tackling these threats and the people behind them is one of our highest priorities and therefore today’s multi-agency action is another great result for law enforcement and the creative industries,” Sharp said.

“We will continue to work with our members and partners, such as the City of London Police, to crack down on those involved in the illegal supply of these boxes so that both the content and its creators are protected.”

When TF has solid information concerning the identity of the company involved we will post an update.

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

After losing two of the largest torrent sites, KickassTorrents and Torrentz.eu, there’s a lot of uncertainty and doubt in the torrent community.

Many people are looking for alternatives to their favorite sites and a natural response is to look for mirrors.

KAT.am was one of the first sites to present itself as a replacement. While it misleadingly claimed to have a copy of KAT’s database, a flurry of news reports helped the site to gain traction.

This ended abruptly last week. The mirror’s domain name was suspended after a complaint from the Motion Picture Association, forcing the operators to move elsewhere.

However, for the past few days KAT.am has been back in action. At first glance it appears to be a fully working mirror, but people who try to download something will be prompted to register a ‘free’ account.

“Free Account Required. You must create a Free Account to access KickassTorrents,” the popup notification reads.

The signup page redirects to a scammy portal, and requires people to enter their credit card details if they want a free trial.

Needless to say, this has nothing to do with the original KickassTorrents site, and has all the signs of a classic pay to download scam, which usually ends in disappointment for those who sign up.

So how can it be that scammers managed to get hold of the popular domain?

Well, as it turns out the .AM domain registry simply made the domain available for registration again after it was suspended. This allowed the scammers to pick it up, and link it to their KickassTorrents ripoff.

The “register to download” mirror scam isn’t anything new. Several other “mirrors” employ the same tactics and have been doing so for years. However, with the current confusion created by KickassTorrents’ demise, they can do a lot more damage now.

For this reason, we can probably expect many more scammy sites to appear during the days and weeks to come.

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

Despite a reputation for not doing enough to thwart online piracy, Russian authorities have become unusually keen to make amends in recent years.

Site-blocking, for example, is now a common occurrence, with sites that infringe multiple times now being subjected to a permanent lifetime injunction, actioned by local ISPs.

But while users continue to flock to torrent sites and streaming portals, copyright holders and local authorities are concerned that social networking platforms are a potentially more serious threat.

In many cases, users are allowed to upload content at will, thereby creating huge libraries of infringing material, a serious headache for copyright holders.

To tackle this problem, authorities and entertainment industry groups are now in the process of drafting fresh legislation aimed at those social media platforms that allow users to upload content.

According to Izvestia, the Ministry of Culture and groups including the National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI) and the Association of Producers of Cinema and Television (APKIT), believe that a change in the law will make it harder for social platforms to evade liability.

Under Article 1253.1 of the Civil Code, social media sites are considered “information brokers”, meaning that sites like vKontakte (Russia’s Facebook) can avoid being held liable for infringing content uploaded by their users.

Rightsholders would like that legislation to be removed or rewritten in a way that would provide them with more useful options to enforce their intellectual property rights.

Also under consideration are changes to the law that would further punish sites that have already been ordered to be blocked by the Moscow City Court. Currently, local ISPs currently put Internet blockades in place but rightsholders foresee a situation where the finances of infringing sites are put under pressure too.

On the table are proposals to ban those sites from carrying advertising. In the West, advertisers are working on voluntary schemes that aim to keep their funding away from ‘pirate’ sites but it appears that Russia is considering enshrining those principles into law.

Additionally, rightsholders are asking for sites that run on a subscription basis to be forbidden from accepting payments from their users. Again, voluntary agreements with companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal are already in place in the United States and Europe, but legislation could compel Russian companies to comply.

Also continuing its path through the system is another bill designed to tackle the rise of so-called mirrors, sites that crop up after a site is blocked in order to facilitate access to the same content.

The draft bill, which also proposes an obligation to have search engines strip content from results and measures to tackle VPNs and proxies, has already been sent to the Ministry of Communications.

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