Last week Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder 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.

The Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government. In the indictment, the 30-year-old Ukrainian is charged with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering.

These charges are similar to those lodged against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom. With this in mind, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Vaulin has decided to retain the same lawyer.

Ira Rothken confirmed to TorrentFreak that he will lead Vaulin’s defense working in collaboration with local counsel. Besides his familiarity with criminal copyright charges, Rothken also knows the ins and outs of torrent sites, as he previously represented isoHunt in a civil case.

While it’s still early days, Rothken believes that they have strong arguments to have the criminal complaint dismissed.

“We believe the US criminal complaint lacks merit. Torrent sites and trackers are devoid of any content files. If any infringement occurs it happens offsite and leaves Kickasstorrents behind,” Rothken informs TorrentFreak.

“This type of copyright theory is known as secondary copyright infringement and there is no United States criminal statute for secondary copyright infringement – that type of theory is at most a civil liability issue.”

The same arguments are also being raised in the Megaupload case, which is still pending after nearly half a decade.

Rothken and Kim Dotcom (credit)

Last December a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Dotcom and his former Megaupload colleagues can be extradited to the United States. This decision was immediately appealed and a new series of hearings is scheduled to take place in a few weeks.

As noted by ARS, who first reported the news, Vaulin remains in a Warsaw jail pending his extradition request. However, Rothken hopes that the alleged owner of KickassTorrents will be able to fight his extradition outside of jail.

“We are working with local Polish counsel to try to get Artem out of the Warsaw jail so he can assist with his defense,” Rothken tells us.

The KickassTorrents website, meanwhile, is still offline. Although there are numerous mirrors available, it is unlikely that it will come back in the near future.

The KAT “community,” however, has been revived and remains active.

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

Seattle-based Getty Images is an American agency controlling an archive of dozens of millions of stock images. After paying the company an appropriate fee, customers are given the right to use Getty’s images in their own publications.

Like many copyright holders, Getty is extremely aggressive in protecting its rights. The company scans the web in search of instances where people have used its images without obtaining an appropriate license and pursues the alleged infringer for money.

What follows is a typical copyright-troll operation. Those supposedly using content without permission receive a scary letter from Getty agents warning that all kinds of terrible things might happen if Getty decides to take the case to court. All this can be avoided, however, if the supposed image pirate pays a cash settlement.

One such letter was received in December 2015 by the This is America! Foundation, a non-profit set up by Carol Highsmith, a long-established US-based photographer.

Penned by a company calling itself License Compliance Services (LCS) on behalf of Getty-affiliated Alamy, the letter got straight to the point.

“We have seen that an image or image(s) represented by Alamy has been used for online use by your company. According to Alamy’s records your company doesn’t have a valid license for use of the image(s),” the letter began.

The allegedly infringing image

“Although this infringement might have been unintentional, use of an image without a valid license is considered copyright infringement in violation of the Copyright Act, Title 17, United States Code. This copyright law entitles Alamy to seek compensation for any license infringement.”

The company demanded $120 to settle the dispute, which admittedly isn’t a huge amount. However, the case contained a series of devastating flaws, not least that the photograph in question was taken by Carol Highsmith herself. But it gets worse.

During a near half-hour telephone conversation with LCS, Highsmith began by explaining that she is the author of the image. However, she also revealed that she had donated this and thousands of other images to the Library of Congress and makes them available to the public to reproduce and display for free.

In the dying days of December 2015, Highsmith received confirmation from LCS that the case against her had been dropped. However, Getty and Alamy clearly hadn’t got the message. Amazingly, the companies were also making available more than 18,000 of Highsmith’s other photographs on their websites.

In a lawsuit filed July 25 in a New York District Court, Highsmith’s lawyers make their position clear.

“Nowhere on its website does Getty identify Ms. Highsmith as the sole author of the Highsmith Photos. Likewise, nowhere on its website does Getty identify Ms. Highsmith as the copyright owner of the work,” they write.

“Instead, Getty misrepresents the terms and conditions of using the Highsmith Photos by falsely claiming a user must buy a copyright license from Getty in order to have the right to use the Highsmith Photos.”

In some cases Getty was demanding $575 for use of just one of Highsmith’s images, despite the photographer making the content freely available to the public. Worse still, the company has also been sending out settlement demands to people who used the images legally on their websites.

“The Defendants have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people,” the lawsuit reads.

“The Defendants are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees to people and organizations who were already authorized to reproduce and display the donated photographs for free, but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner and threatening individuals and companies with copyright infringement lawsuits that the Defendants could not actually lawfully pursue.”

As a result, the tables are now turned, with Getty on the receiving end of a settlement demand. For using her images without permission, Highsmith says that Getty is liable for statutory damages of up to $468,875,000.

However, since Getty lost another copyright case (Morel v. Getty) within the last three years, Highsmith believes that the court has the power to treble the statutory damages. In this case up to a cool $1 billion.

Considering Getty’s holier-than-thou position when it comes to infringement, thousands will be cheering Highsmith on to victory. In the meantime, check out her work, it’s something really special.

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

A decade ago online video streaming was still a relatively new phenomenon. YouTube had just celebrated its first anniversary and Netflix hadn’t even rolled out its streaming service.

The piracy landscape also looked quite different at the time. Streaming sites were pretty much non-existent and the vast majority of all movie and TV-show piracy was torrent related.

This has drastically changed in recent years. According to a new report published by piracy tracking outfit MUSO, streaming sites have taken over as the prime source of video piracy.

New figures released publicly this week are part of the company’s annual report, which shows that nearly three quarters of all movie and TV-show traffic now goes to streaming sites.

The data from MUSO covers visits to 14,000 of the largest global piracy websites from 226 countries. In total, the company recorded 141 billion visits to pirate sites last year.

More than half of these visits relate to video piracy, which includes movies and TV-shows. The vast majority of these, 57.84 billion (74%), are visits to pirate streaming sites.

According to MUSO, there is a clear transition away from P2P sites and services to streaming. This can in part be explained by improved Internet connectivity across the globe.

Despite the availability of legal services, the United States tops the list of video pirates, representing 12% of total traffic, which is good for nearly 10 billion visits.

Torrent site traffic is slowly declining, for video content at least. Roughly 17% of the traffic went to torrent sites, and MUSO reported a clear downward trend during 2015. Direct download sites account for 8% of video piracy visits, which is relatively stable.

The data further reveals that both streaming pirates and torrent users predominantly use desktop machines to visit these sites, 72 and 77 percent respectively. This means that mobile piracy remains relatively small.

Visits to streaming sites by device (Muso.com)

The movie and TV-show figures are in line with the overall trend MUSO revealed earlier, where pirates move away from torrent sites to other distribution platforms.

“Piracy audiences are becoming better connected, more tech savvy, and know what they want, which is why so many of them have chosen to stream infringing content, rather than download it illegally,” MUSO’s CCO Christopher Elkins says.

Overall, MUSO’s report concludes that the piracy ecosystem is rapidly changing. It will be interesting to see how the reported traffic trends develop during the years to come.

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

With blockbusters including Avatar, Titanic, Terminator (1&2) and Aliens under his belt, James Cameron is without doubt one of the most successful and respected filmmakers of modern times.

While promoting the 30th anniversary of “Aliens” at Comic-Con last week, Cameron and his wife Gale Anne Hurd (who produced the movie) spoke to Variety on a number of movie industry issues.

Among them were the potentially intertwined topics of Napster co-founder Sean Parker’s Screening Room project and, of course, the thorny debate over Internet piracy.

While Screening Room sounds exciting to some, Cameron does not share the sentiment. He believes that having first-run movies in the home will stop people heading off to the cinema, the place where filmmakers can really showcase their art and take the fight to piracy.

“The biggest hedge against piracy is still the sanctity of the viewing experience in a movie theater — when it comes to movies,” he says.

“With ‘The Walking Dead’ or something like that, that’s not what you’re selling, but if we’re talking about movies and theatrical exhibition, keeping it great, making it a special experience, is still the biggest hedge against [piracy].”

Interestingly, Cameron also says that even if piracy somehow became legal and download speeds were drastically improved, viewing content outside the theatrical setting would still come up short.

“You’re still watching [movies] on a small platform, and it’s not that social experience,” he explains.

The notion that innovation is the key to dealing with piracy is a belief that Cameron has held for a number of years.

Back in 2010 the filmmaker was basking in the glory of Avatar making more than $2.6 billion at the box office, despite pirate copies being available online. The sci-fi movie later went on to become the most pirated movie of all time, and the most successful too.

But without offering something different, something unique, the movie industry could face the same threat as the music industry did, Cameron warns.

“Just collectively the industry needs to know if we fail at creating a premium immersive experience in the theater, then the Napster-like downloading phenomenon will destroy the industry,” Cameron says.

“You won’t be able to afford to make a movie like ‘Avatar’ or ‘Transformers’ or ‘Captain America’ or any of these big films. The economics will no longer make sense. And you simply won’t have them in any format or platform.”

But while Cameron talks innovation, his producer wife Gale Anne Hurd cautions that those sharing content online might be doing so with rose-tinted glasses.

“‘File Sharing’ sounds like a good thing. It’s file stealing,” she told Variety.

“I’ve just seen the figures — there’s money to be made in it and that’s not what people are thinking about. If they go to a torrent site or whatever, [the site’s operators] are making money through advertising.”

While that isn’t anything new to most file-sharers, Hurd also attacks the driving force behind many sharing platforms – the community’s idea that by uploading content to peers they’re spreading the enjoyment.

“So it’s not like, ‘Oh, your friend is helping you out’,” she says.

“There’s billions that people are making. The more that’s siphoned away because people are like, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait and I’ll stream it and I don’t even have to pay to stream it from a legitimate source,’ that is making it so much tougher on the exhibitors,” Hurd concludes.

Only time will tell whether projects such as Screening Room will be able to co-exist with the theatrical experience. If done well, however, both should be able to chip away at piracy – if the forecasts of Cameron and Fanning are to be believed.

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

Last week the alleged owner of KickassTorrents (KAT) was arrested in Poland, where he faces an extradition request from the United States.

The news came as a shock to many of the site’s users and also had a profound impact on the torrent ecosystem at large, particularly in the short term.

TorrentFreak discusses the events and repercussions with several experts on a special episode of Steal This Show. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is one of the guests, and he finds it quite odd that the long arm of the United States can reach deep into Europe.

“For me, it’s weird that Poland is arresting someone on the orders of the United States where the person has not been,” Sunde says.

“I have an issue with a country having that much power. I don’t care if it’s the United States, Russia or whatever, but one country shouldn’t be able to just grab people from anywhere in the world just because they do something on the Internet. That’s insanity.”

Sunde and the other Pirate Bay founders had their own criminal prosecution in Sweden several years ago, for which they all served jail time. Their case was also spurred on by U.S. influence, he believes, but it was prosecuted on their home turf instead.

Legalities aside, Peter Sunde believes that the shutdown of KAT shows how vulnerable the torrent ecosystem is. The majority of users rely on a very small group of torrent sites, which are all major targets for law enforcement.

A more distributed system would be much better, according to Pirate Bay’s founder.

“I think maybe people now understand that we shouldn’t just have a few sites. Because everything depends on these sites. That’s the thing I always wanted, a large hybrid of lots of smaller sites instead of one big target like KickassTorrents or Pirate Bay.”

Just setting up basic mirrors isn’t going to cut it in this case. At the moment there are still dozens of KAT copies online, but since they don’t have access to the backend of the original site, uploaders can’t use their accounts.

Also, many smaller torrent sites were relying on KAT’s database of torrents, and these have been faced with a similar problem since last week. A lack of new content.

“If one of the big sites goes down a lot of smaller sites are hit as well because they are just a copy of the original database. We need lots of sites that federate all the data instead of having to depend on the higher-ups,” Sunde notes.

So what’s the alternative? According to Pirate Bay’s founder, more innovation and decentralization is required.

There are already plenty of new technologies that could make torrent sites more decentralized. Zeronet and IPFS, for example. However, according to Sunde the large torrent sites such as TPB don’t really have the urge to innovate.

“IPFS is really good and if everyone started using that instead it would be great. It would be working perfectly with less centralization. The problem is that the big sites like TPB and KAT are not really good at using new technology.”

Without a userbase these new technologies don’t catch on, so that keeps the current status quo intact. The only way to change this is by bringing in something fresh, Sunde says.

“If you look at the big sites, name one of them that has an up-to-date user experience or uses new technology at all. It’s the same shit that’s been around for 10, 15 years. There is no innovation whatsoever that’s visible on these sites.

“We need new voices, new people, new activists and new ideologies in the piracy scene,” Sunde adds.

Millions of people now rely on TPB and KAT to just be there for them. However, that makes the ecosystem very vulnerable without any incentive to innovate. This is why Sunde and others who were involved early, wanted to shut down the site on its 10th anniversary. To make room for something better.

“I’ve been saying for years that I want The Pirate Bay to shut down, and now with KickassTorrents being shut down I hope this will actually inspire people to do something fresh, innovative and something new.”

“To be honest, it’s not really hard to run a torrent site, or set one up,” Sunde says.

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You can hear more from Peter Sunde in the latest episode of Steal This Show (not all comments cited here appear in the episode), which was published earlier today. The episode also features isoHunt founder Gary Fung and U.S. Pirate Party founder Andrew Norton.

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