When Windows 10 was launched last year, rumors spread that the operating system was equipped with a built-in piracy kill switch.

According to some reports, this would allow Microsoft to nuke all torrents downloaded from The Pirate Bay, and more. A scary outlook, but also a massive exaggeration, for now.

The controversy originated from a single line in Microsoft’s Service Agreement which allows the company to download software updates and configuration changes that may prevent people from “playing counterfeit games.”

Technically this allows Microsoft to block people from playing pirated games across Windows 10 and other services, but thus far there is no indication that this is happening.

However, this week the issue was highlighted again in a report published by Black Market Watch and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, which made several recommendations on how online piracy could be tackled in Sweden.

While most of the media attention focused on the role of ISPs, there is an even more controversial proposal that has been largely overlooked. According to the report, pirated content should be banned on the operating system level.

“Other players that possess the potential ability to limit piracy are the companies that own the major operating systems which control computers and mobile devices such as Apple, Google and Microsoft,” one of the main conclusions reads.

“The producers of operating systems should be encouraged, or regulated, for example, to block downloads of copyright infringing material,” the report adds.

The report references last year’s Windows 10 controversy, noting that these concerns were great enough for some torrent sites to block users with the new operating system.

While Sweden doesn’t have enough influence to make an impact on these global software manufacturers, applying pressure through the international community and trade groups may have some effect.

“Sweden’s ability to influence this as a single state is small, but it can take action through the EU and the international community. Copyright holders can also play a role in promoting this through international industry associations,” the report notes.

For now, it’s unlikely that the plan will become reality in the near future.

Yesterday, Swedish ISP Bahnhof responded to the report by saying that it doesn’t want to act as piracy police, and Apple, Google and Microsoft are not going to be happy with this role either.

However, it’s clear that anti-piracy proposals are getting more extreme year after year.

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

Music gets uploaded to the Internet every minute of every day, much to the irritation of recording labels. Largely these uploads are dealt with via takedown notices but occasionally there is a desire to track down the individual behind the unauthorized distribution.

One such case currently before the Supreme Court of the State of New York sees Atlantic Recording Corporation trying to obtain the identity of a person who uploaded some of their copyrighted content to the Internet in June.

The complaint concerns the track ‘Heathens’ by the platinum-certified band Twenty One Pilots.

“Prior to June 15, 2016, Atlantic had provided access to a digital copy of Heathens only to an extremely limited number of individuals,” the complaint reads.

“These individuals included members of 21 Pilots, their manager, Atlantic and [record label] Fueled by Ramen executives and members of Atlantic’s radio field staff. In each such case, the individual was barred from distributing the recording until the scheduled release date of June 24, 2016.”

Atlantic says that 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. However, things didn’t go to plan.

On or around June 15, someone with early access to the track posted it to a file-hosting service called Dropfile.to. Following that upload it’s alleged that the poster then advertised the track for download on Reddit.

“The Poster posted a link to the file he or she uploaded to Dropfile.to to the Twenty One Pilots subreddit (a publicly accessible message board, hosted by Reddit Inc.), with the title “[Leak] New Song – ‘Heathens”,” the complaint reads.

As illustrated in the image above, the Reddit thread was indeed started on June 15 and can still be found today. It was posted by a user calling him/herself “twentyoneheathens.”

That user account is still on Reddit but its solitary purpose appears to have been the advertise the availability of the track on Dropfile. No other actions are registered against the account, a hindrance to anyone trying to find out who is behind it.

After becoming aware of the leak, Atlantic says it tried to stop distribution but had minimal success.

“Upon becoming aware of the Posting, Atlantic attempted to have the illegally distributed copies of Heathens removed from the Internet. Despite expending significant effort and funds in this attempt, the removal efforts were ultimately unsuccessful in curtailing further widespread distribution,” the label says.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm a fairly broad takedown campaign which began with RIAA action on June 16. From there, the UK’s BPI appears to have taken over, sending hundreds of takedowns to Google referencing dozens of sites.

Fighting a losing battle, Atlantic took the decision to release the track on June 16, the day after its leak online and well ahead of its planned August 5 album debut. The track had been scheduled to appear on “Suicide Squad: The Album” this week to coincide with the release of the movie of the same name.

Atlantic says this early release frustrated its marketing efforts, something which directly hit sales.

“Following the June 16, 2016, release, sales of the Heathens single, which were unsupported by Atlantic’s carefully-planned marketing strategy, failed to reach predicted levels, causing substantial harm to Atlantic in the form of lost single and album sales revenue,” the complaint reads.

So now, as expected, Atlantic is on the warpath. In its complaint the company asks the Court to force Reddit to hand over the information, IP addresses included, it holds on the person who uploaded the link to the track.

Suspecting that Atlantic would also try to get information from Dropfile, TorrentFreak contacted the site’s operator for comment. He informs us that the label hasn’t made contact with him.

“[This news] comes as a surprise to me, we have not heard from anyone about it prior to this,” he says.

“I guess that Atlantic Records figured out it will be easier to get the poster’s data from Reddit or they will use official authorities to contact us in that matter (which might take months).”

Further complicating any retrieval of data from Dropfile are the site’s logging policies.

“Dropfile is a simple service for anonymous sharing of files that need to be placed online only temporarily,” the site explains.

“We keep no logs on our side whatsoever. We don’t use cookies, any kind of traffic tracking (Google Analytics), social media buttons that could track you (Facebook, Twitter) and have no ads that could track you.”

Furthermore, Dropfile is located in Slovakia where there is no mandatory requirement to log visitor data.

From Atlantic’s complaint, it seems clear the label is expecting the culprit to be close to home.

“If the Poster is not an Atlantic employee, then he or she likely obtained the Recording from an Atlantic employee, who would have breached his or her contract and/or fiduciary duties to Atlantic by providing the Poster access to the Recording. Atlantic is unaware of the true identity of the Poster and is unable to ascertain that information from any source other than Reddit,” the label adds.

It seems likely that Reddit will comply with the subpoena but only time will tell whether it will lead to the leaker. The original track uploaded to Dropfile has now expired.

“Files are physically removed from servers after 24 hours from their upload or when reported. After that, we have no clue what the file was. And we never knew who uploaded it,” Dropfile concludes.

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

Two weeks ago Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents.

The arrest resulted in the shutdown of the site, which came as a shock to millions of KAT users and the torrent community at large.

Out of nowhere, the largest torrent index disappeared and there are no signs that it’s coming back anytime soon. The same is true for the torrent hosting platform Torcache.net, which KAT actively used.

While there are no official links between the two sites, it seems likely that Torcache was taken down following KAT’s troubles. This means that it will probably remain offline for the time being.

This has caused trouble for several other torrent sites which also relied on Torcache, such as 1337x.to and Monova.

As is often the case, however, when one service disappears several others are ready to take its place. The situation is no different here, as iTorrents.org is already advertising itself as a Torcache replacement.

Mimicking the same layout, which was first pioneered by Torrage, another defunct service, iTorrents offers a dedicated torrent storage platform.

iTorrents.org

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of iTorrents.org, who also manages LimeTorrents.cc and TorrentDownloads.me. He says that 1337x.to has come on board already and he invites other torrent sites to join as well.

“Currently 1337x and our own sites are using itorrents.org. I hope more webmasters start using it soon,” he says.

In addition to 1337x, several KAT mirrors have also switched to iTorrents to replace the non-functional Torcache links.

iTorrents was officially launched earlier this year when the operator found out that Torcache was blocked in several countries. He is now planning to upgrade the server, so the service can cope with the increase in traffic.

There are some other smaller torrent caches available as well, such as thetorrent.org, but iTorrents appears to be the leading one for now.

While iTorrents may be able to replace Torcache, the aftermath of the KAT shutdown is still being felt by many of its former users.

For many people, KickassTorrents was a community above all else, and a harddrive full of torrents isn’t going to replace that.

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

Forcing Internet service providers to block access to ‘pirate’ content is one of the preferred methods of copyright holders dealing with online infringement.

How that should be carried out in practice is a matter for debate. In most cases thus far, sites that carry or index a large proportion of infringing content have been targeted by legal action, with rights holders arguing that whole domains should be blocked by ISPs.

In other cases, arguments have been made for pinpoint action against specific URLs, although this clearly has its problems. URLs are easily removed or replaced, and entertainment companies would much rather take out a whole domain for good instead of playing a game of cat and mouse.

Over in India, this debate has been playing out in a case involving Star India Pvt Ltd, an entertainment company owned by 21st Century Fox. Back in 2014, Star filed a complaint against more than 70 websites that were preparing to stream copyrighted sports broadcasts without permission.

The Delhi High Court considered the merits of the case and sided with Star, ordering local Internet service providers to block 73 websites which contained the specific URLs listed in the complaint.

However, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEIT) filed an appeal early 2015, opposing the positioning of the government in the middle of a private copyright dispute and arguing that whole sites should not remain blocked once the events in question had concluded. The public should not be denied access to content that does not infringe Star’s rights, lawyers for the government added.

In March 2016, the Delhi High Court sided with the government, ruling that in the interests of free access to information only specific URLs carrying or linking to infringing content should be blocked. Star immediately filed another appeal, with success.

In a decision handed down last Friday, the High Court found that blocking entire sites engaged in large volumes of infringement is a justified course of action for copyright holders.

“In relation to websites which have hardly any lawful business and which are in entirety or to a large extent indulging in piracy, merely blocking a URL where the infringing content is located not an effective solution,” the Court ruled.

The Court found that dozens of sites carried up to 2,000 infringing URLs, each linking to cricket matches to which Star owned the rights. Blocking each one individually would prove an arduous task.

“It would be a gargantuan task for [Star] to keep on identifying each offending URL and especially keeping in view that as and when the respondent identifies the URL and it is blocked by the ISP, the rogue website, within seconds can change the URL thereby frustrating the very act of blocking the URL,” the Court’s added.

However, in instances where sites contain infringing URLs but are not “entirely or to a large extent indulging in piracy”, requests can be made to block only the URLs in question.

In respect of the assertion by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology that government departments shouldn’t become involved in private copyright disputes, the Court found that it is the “duty of the government” to “assist in the enforcement of court orders.”

Star India welcomed the decision.

“We believe that this landmark judgment will have a positive impact as it creates a fair balance between rights owners and public interest allowing for rights owners to more efficiently protect their rights against outright rogue or pirate websites that blatantly infringe copyright and contain large extent of infringing content,” the company’s legal team said.

Whether this ruling will prompt a new wave of blocking requests remains to be seen but that seems the most likely outcome.

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

Around the world copyright holder groups are lobbying for increased efforts to combat online piracy.

The situation is no different in Sweden, where the Black Market Watch group just published a report calling for increased cooperation from stakeholders such as advertisers and ISPs.

In an opinion piece for DN, Internet providers are accused of handsomely profiting from their inaction, generating an estimated 2.5 billion Swedish krona ($230 million) from piracy.

“According to our calculations, revenue for Swedish Internet providers potentially exceeds two-and-a-half billion kronor a year, much more than the pirate sites earn,” Black Market Watch co-founder Karl Lallerstedt writes, together with the report’s co-author Waldemar Ingdahl.

They argue that Internet providers are in a unique position to prevent copyright infringement, as they can see what their users do online and have the means to block websites.

Speaking with IDG, Jon Karlung, CEO of Internet provider Bahnhof, refutes these calls and discredits the profit claims as lobbyist nonsense.

“It is pure nonsense, there is no truth in it. This is the work of their business lobbyists who want to put more responsibility on us. Our task is to ensure an internet with free movement, not playing cops,” he says.

Ideally, rightholders would like to see a series of measures being introduced to combat copyright infringement. This includes easier domain name seizures, increased anti-piracy efforts from law enforcement and ISPs, plus better education about the risks of piracy.

According to Karlung, Bahnhof already does enough to alert subscribers about unsafe sites. It is also happy to assist law enforcement but the company doesn’t see itself proactively policing its network to catch pirates.

“We inform users about unsafe sites today, and we will continue to do so without copyright holders instructing us what to do,” Karlung says.

“If there is merit to the Swedish legislation, we will help the police if they can show in a documented manner that the servers are being used for illegal activities. But it is not our job to act, they themselves must identify the type of activities.”

The copyright holder requests go directly against one of the core goals of the company – protecting the privacy of its subscribers. In recent years the Internet provider has fought hard to guarantee this right.

Bahnhof has been a major opponent of extensive data retention requirements, launched a free VPN to its users, and recently vowed to protect subscribers from a looming copyright troll invasion.

Given the above, it’s unlikely that rightsholders can expect much voluntary cooperation from Bahnhof.

This stance doesn’t come as a surprise, and the report suggests that rightsholders should demand new legislation from Swedish lawmakers to force ISPs and other stakeholders into action.

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