Without a doubt, Github is a huge player in the world of coding. The platform is the largest of its type in the world with the company currently reporting 15 million users collaborating across 38 million repositories.

As the development platform used by file-sharing projects including the infamous Popcorn Time, Github appears a few times a year here on TF. Those appearances are often due to various types of copyright disputes, from allegedly infringing projects to allegedly stolen code.

When it comes to Github copyright complaints, those reported here are the tip of a vast iceberg but thanks to the transparency report just published by the company, we now have a much clearer idea of the numbers involved.

“In 2015, we received significantly more takedown notices, and took down significantly more content, than we did in 2014,” Github reports.

Last year the company received just 258 DMCA notices, with 17 of those responded to with a counter-notice or retraction. In 2015, that number jumped to 505 takedown notices, with just 62 the subject of counters or withdrawals.

But while tracking and reporting the numbers of DMCA notices is useful, the numbers shown above obscure a more serious situation. Copyright holders are not limited to reporting one URL or location per DMCA notice. In fact, each notice filed can target tens, hundreds, or even thousands of allegedly infringing locations.

“Often, a single takedown notice can encompass more than one project. We wanted to look at the total number of projects, such as repositories, Gists, and Pages sites, that we had taken down due to DMCA takedown requests in 2015,” Github writes.

When processed, a much bigger picture was revealed.

By any measure, September 2015 was a particularly active month and this naturally raised alarm bells at Github. Upon investigation, it became clear that the company had received DMCA notices that targeted many repositories all at once.

“Usually, the DMCA reports we receive are from people or organizations reporting a single potentially infringing repository. However, every now and then we receive a single notice asking us to take down many repositories,” Github explains.

“We classified ‘Mass Removals’ as any takedown notice asking us to remove content from more than one hundred repositories, counting each fork separately, in a single takedown notice.”

When these type of notices are withdrawn from the report, Github says that DMCA notice frequency normalizes across the year, but nevertheless they still represent a significant proportion of the notices received. (A ‘Frequent Noticer’ is someone who sends more than four notices in a year)

“While 83% of our 505 DMCA takedown notices came in from individuals and organizations sending requests to take down small numbers of repositories, the remaining 17% of notices accounted for the overwhelming majority of the content we actually removed,” Github says.

“In all, fewer than twenty individual notice senders requested removal of over 90% of the content GitHub took down in 2015.”

Finally, Github provides detail on important issues surrounding user privacy, which mainly affects those who maintain projects that are likely to attract legal attention.

In 2014, Github received a total of 10 subpoenas relating to projects it hosts. Last year that grew to 12 and in total the company handed over information in 83% of cases.

However, due to gagging orders, affected users were only given notice in just 30% of cases. Github received seven gag orders in 2015, up from four in 2014.

Finally, Github touches on the issue of National Security Orders.

“We are not allowed to say much about this last category of legal disclosure requests, including national security letters from law enforcement and orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” the company writes.

“If one of these requests comes with a gag order — and they usually do — that not only prevents us from talking about the specifics of the request but even the existence of the request itself.”

To that end, Github ‘reveals’ that it received somewhere between zero and 249 National Security Orders in 2015. The full report is available here.

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

For several decades owners of home computers have been aware of a simple fact. If legitimate software is available, it can be copied for use by someone who hasn’t paid for it.

For years this was as simple as audio-recording a cassette tape or cloning disks of various kinds, but more recently things have become decidedly more challenging. Digital Rights Management, or DRM as it’s more often known, is now a serious thorn in the side of software pirates.

The situation is being felt most acutely in the gaming world, where various protection methods are beginning to take their toll on those who prefer not to pay for the biggest games around.

In particular, the infamous Denuvo DRM anti-tamper system is responsible for keeping games such as Just Cause 3, Doom, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and a raft of other titles out of the hands of pirates. However, partially confirmed rumors emanating from Russia suggest that the cracks (excuse the pun) might be appearing in Denuvo.

Just to be clear, until such time that a working crack appears in the wild, most rumors (and there have been plenty of them recently) should be taken with a generous pinch of salt. However, during the past 24 hours, there have been unusual levels of excitement to suggest a crack might actually be close to surfacing.

The game at the forefront of discussion is the critically-acclaimed Rise of the Tomb Raider (ROTTR) from Square Enix. Like many Denuvo protected titles, ROTTR has thus far proven uncrackable but according to sources on Russian sites MKDev and Exelab, serious progress is being made.

What is causing the most excitement is a video which claims to show a crack of ROTTR in action. With most notation in Russian it’s difficult to follow in precise detail, but from the images alone it seems very likely that the game has been compromised, at least up to a point. (Watch here (low frame rate))

So who is taking credit for this amazing feat? Well officially, no one yet, but various clues suggest that the crack is the product of a collaboration between a Russian hacker known online as Bronco and Scene group RELOADED (RLD).

While RLD is predictably saying nothing, yesterday Bronco gave a shout out to RLD on Exelab’s forums in a posting which included the words “special thanks RLD and v00doo.”

Furthermore, MKDEV (who is also working on Denuvo and was responsible for cracking Football Manager 2016) is indicating on his site (in broken English) that RLD might soon be delivering a crack for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

“SOON THEY ARE COMING … 1 BY 1 NOT BY OUR HAND BUT…RLD…ROTTR…,” his message reads.

Additionally, a hi-res image from the ‘crack’ video appears to show ‘RLD!’ in the near right-hand corner, perhaps more evidence that RLD played a major role in what is currently happening.

In the absence of any ‘official’ announcement some analysis has been provided by an individual known online as RengarSenpai. He has also been working on Denuvo and appears to have gained access to some of MKDEV’s research in the past.

“The truth is that Denuvo is fully cracked for that specific game [Rise of the Tomb Raider], not emulated or worked around,” he writes.

But of course, the proof of the pudding is always in the eating and short of the all-important crack appearing in public, many will doubt it even exists.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the breathless celebrations starting early, especially from those prepared to download mysterious .exe files labeled up as Rise of the Tomb Raider cracks.

Rest assured, they’re all fakes….at least for now.

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

In this episode Brian Newman, CEO of SubGenre, discusses entertainment artists against the DMCA, British Lords against copyright trolls, and Dutch film producers suing ISPs.

Brian brings fresh perspective on the question of whether piracy’s really hurting indie film producers – and argues that piracy may not be a failure of morality, but of business.

He further explains how for him, P2P and sharing represents a real chance for filmmakers to develop audiences as the depth of choice available on services like Netflix is shrinking, Brian argues that piracy can be an important means of discovery for these companies.

—

Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Brian Newman

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

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

For several years politicians have debated on how Europe should approach net neutrality.

Late last year the results of these negotiations were included in the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) regulation.

While the rules offer improvements for some individual members states, various activist groups and experts warn that they don’t offer real network neutrality.

The current language would allow ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic permanently if that would optimize overall “transmission quality.” This is not a far-fetched argument, since torrent traffic can be quite demanding on a network.

To address this issue a coalition of activist groups have launched a campaign, hoping to change the current plans. They urge Europeans to have their voice heard in a public consultation that was launched by Europe’s regulatory body BEREC.

“We need to deliver thousands of comments to regulators, explaining to them why they should pass strong net neutrality guidelines that ban ISPs from doing class-based throttling, or zero-rating,” Holmes Wilson of Fight for the Future (FFTF) says.

FFTF is one of the driving forces behind the Save Net Neutrality campaign. According to Wilson, BitTorrent users should be particularly concerned as the current rules do next to nothing to prevent throttling.

“Europe’s new net-neutrality rules should ban throttling BitTorrent, but they don’t. They leave ISPs a loophole,” Wilson tells TorrentFreak.

“ISPs can say they’re doing it for ‘traffic management’ purposes—even when their networks aren’t clogged, because the rules say they can throttle to ‘prevent impending network congestion’,” he adds.

In addition to file-sharing traffic, the proposed rules also allow Internet providers to interfere with encrypted traffic including VPN connections. Since encrypted traffic can’t be classified through deep packet inspection, ISPs may choose to de-prioritize it altogether.

In theory, ISPs may choose to throttle any type of traffic they want, as long as they frame it as a network congestion risk.

“So if your ISP is lazy, or wants to cut corners and save money, they can throttle BitTorrent, or VPNs, or Bitcoin, or Tor, or any class of traffic they can identify,” Wilson says.

The “EU Slowdown” campaign that was launched today encourages the public to have their say on the matter, hoping to improve the current rules. Thus far 7,000 sites are participating already, with many displaying a “Slow Loading” icon.

Wilson hopes that more sites will join in. Torrent sites in particular may want to urge their users to participate.

“We think the torrent community has a lot at stake here, so we hope that torrent sites and the makers of torrent clients can join in, starting today, or through the July 18th deadline for comments,” Wilson says.

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

For more than half a decade so-called “copyright trolling” cases have been keeping the U.S. judicial system busy.

While new cases are still filed every week, there are signs that some judges are growing tired of the practice, and are increasingly skeptical about the claims made by copyright holders.

In the Oregon District Court, Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman recently recommended dismissal of a complaint filed by the makers of the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler.

According to the Judge both claims of direct and indirect infringement were not sufficient for the case to continue. What’s unique in this case, is that the direct infringement claims were dismissed sua sponte, which hasn’t happened before.

To prove direct infringement copyright holders merely have to make it “plausible” that a defendant, Thomas Gonzales in this case, is indeed the copyright infringer.

This is traditionally done by pointing out that the IP-address is directly linked to the defendant’s Internet connection, for example. However, according to Judge Beckerman this is not enough.

“The only facts Plaintiff pleads in support of its allegation that Gonzales is the infringer, is that he is the subscriber of the IP address used to download or distribute the movie, and that he was sent notices of infringing activity to which he did not respond. That is not enough,” she writes in her recommendation.

“Plaintiff has not alleged any specific facts tying Gonzales to the infringing conduct. While it is possible that the subscriber is also the person who downloaded the movie, it is also possible that a family member, a resident of the household, or an unknown person engaged in the infringing conduct.”

That an outsider could be the pirate is not unlikely. The defendant operates an adult foster care home where several people had access to the Internet. The filmmakers were aware of this and during a hearing their counsel admitted that any guest could have downloaded the film.

To gather more information, the filmmakers were allowed to depose Gonzales, but this didn’t result in any additional evidence. Nevertheless, they amended the complaint to name Gonzales as the defendant, which is not correct according to Judge Beckerman.

“Based on the facts alleged in the First Amended Complaint, Gonzales is but one of many possible infringers, and Plaintiff’s allegation that Gonzales is the infringer is just a guess.”

“’Plausible’ does not mean certain, but it does mean ‘likely,’ and Plaintiff has not pled sufficient facts to support its allegation that Gonzales is the likely infringer here. Accordingly, the district judge should dismiss Plaintiff’s claim for copyright infringement.”

The filmmakers also tried to hold Gonzales accountable for the infringements of others through his connection, but the Judge concluded that a claim of indirect copyright infringement doesn’t hold up here either.

In March, Beckerman recommended dismissing the claims for both direct and indirect copyright infringement, a conclusion District Court Judge Anna Brown adopted earlier this month.

“This Court agrees with the Magistrate Judge that Plaintiff has failed to allege sufficient facts to state a plausible claim “tending to exclude the possibility that an alternative explanation is true”,” she concludes.

While not all judges across the country may come to the same conclusion, the ruling offers hope for defendants who are in a similar position. Suing alleged BitTorrent pirates is still an option but increasingly judges demand additional proof.

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