The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT)is the most aggressive private anti-piracy group currently operating in the UK.

In recent years the organization has been responsible for investigating dozens of alleged pirates and has secured many convictions, largely on behalf of its movie and TV industry partners.

Now, however, FACT faces a somewhat uncertain future after the Motion Picture Association, the movie industry outfit that supplies FACT with half of its funding, decided to pull its support for the anti-piracy group.

The MPA, which represents the interests of Disney, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros, has recently advised FACT that it intends to terminate its 30-year long relationship by not renewing its membership when it expires in six months’ time.

Speaking with Screen Daily, MPA Europe president Stan McCoy explained that local funding for FACT had been withdrawn in favor of financing larger regional hubs with a wider remit.

The relevant regional office dealing with the UK is the MPA’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) in Brussels which aims to provide “a nimble local presence and a direct relationship with local law enforcement.”

McCoy acknowledged FACT’s efforts over the last three decades but said that the changing nature of piracy, including the shift away from physical to online infringement, requires “a more flexible approach” than the one currently in place.

“We live in a world now where a piracy website can have its nexus in Sweden one day, then move in a few months to Eastern Europe, then to Thailand, or it can operate in all three of those jurisdictions at once,” McCoy said.

For FACT the withdrawal of the MPA and by extension the major studios is a massive blow. The MPA currently provides FACT with around 50% of its funding, leaving the balance to made up a range of partners including the UK Cinema Association, the Film Distributors’ Association, the Premier League, and broadcasters including ITV.

FACT confirmed that its MPA funding is being withdrawn and is said to be considering its options. In the meantime, however, it’s unlikely that the UK will become a care-free piracy zone. The MPA says it intends to continue its work protecting copyright in the UK which will include the pursuit of more site-blocking injunctions and increased cooperation with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit.

That being said, it will be interesting to see how this situation plays out. FACT provided “boots on the ground” for the studios in the UK and undertook investigations against pirates that in some cases the police were reluctant to take on and in others carry through to a prosecution. Abandoning that local touch could be risky strategy for the MPA, but only time will tell.

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

The Pirate Bay has been unreachable for more than a day now.

The Pirate Bay currently displays a CloudFlare error message across all domain names, confirming that TPB’s servers are unresponsive.

In addition, some proxy sites are also offline, as well as TPB’s .onion address which displays a blank page.

TorrentFreak reached out to the TPB team who are aware of the issues. They explained that problem is of a technical nature and hope to have the site back online soonish.

In any case, there’s no reason to panic.

TPB down

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

For many years Australia has been labeled a hotbed of Internet piracy. Faced with high prices, a dearth of choice, and legal products arriving months after their debut elsewhere, millions of Aussies have turned unofficial sources.

As a result, Australia has found itself in the spotlight of both local and international rightsholders who claim that their industry is hemorrhaging millions due to people downloading via torrent, streaming and other file-sharing services.

While the latter mechanisms are more difficult to police, those obtaining media via torrents are relatively easy to track so with this in mind, rightsholders have been placing local Internet service providers under pressure to cooperate in a so-called three-strikes anti-piracy scheme.

In the early days cooperation was not forthcoming so in order to force compliance, movie companies decided to sue ISP iiNet. That action failed in 2012, leaving entertainment companies to re-build bridges and deal with matters on a friendly basis. Years of on/off negotiations ensued, more recently with government involvement.

Late last year it looked almost certain that a “three strikes” style scheme would be implemented, with pirates being monitored by copyright holders and notified of their behavior via escalating ISP warning notices, with legal action being the final step. But earlier this year it was revealed the whole project was in peril, entirely on the issue of costs.

Now it’s been officially confirmed that the project has been shelved. In a joint letter to the Australian Media and Communications Authority, the Communications Alliance and Foxtel (on behalf of rightsholders) state that it had “not proved possible to reach agreement on how to apportion all of the costs” for the scheme.

In all the years of intermittent discussion on “three strikes” costs have always been an issue. Agreement has been reached in other regions, the US for example, but Australia appears to have a unique set of problems.

According to a CNET report, Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton says that while agreement had been reached on who would foot the bill in the majority of areas, “the sticking point was processing costs.”

These costs are reportedly associated with preparing the notices, contacting alleged pirates and dealing with the inevitable flood of telephone calls from unhappy customers. These type of costs are entirely associated with actions the ISPs would be required to carry out themselves, which suggests that the providers have continued to stand their ground, much as they have for many years.

Earlier this year Village Roadshow co-chief Graham Burke bemoaned the manual warning system under discussion, complaining that the labor-intense mechanism would churn out notices at a cost of $16 to $20 each. “You might as well give people a DVD,” he said. But even with automation the ISPs are predicting extremely high costs.

“It is possible to largely automate it, but that’s quite an expensive undertaking,” says John Stanton. “We’ve had ISPs run a ruler over how much it would cost…and it was in the multiple millions.”

So what now for the Aussie downloading problem? Well, it appears that for at least a year not much will happen. With copyright trolls seemingly running for the hills it will be up to legal alternatives to try and persuade consumers they’re a more attractive proposition. They won’t have to go that alone, however.

“We are going to be mounting a massive campaign to reinforce the fact (to the public) that piracy is not a victimless crime and we have to continue to provide content in a timely way and at affordable prices,” Graham Burke said.

And of course the specter of site blocking is still on the horizon and possibly just months away. The music industry may have temporarily suspended its case against KickassTorrents but other cases involving The Pirate Bay are running full steam ahead and will almost certainly conclude before the end of the year. The Kickass case will conclude shortly after.

As for three-strikes, that will be subject to a review in April 2017 but given that agreement over costs hasn’t been reached in close to a decade, another year seems unlikely to make much of a difference.

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

Despite an enduring reputation for doing little to protect copyright online, in recent years the Russian government has passed tough legislation aimed at tackling so-called ‘pirate’ sites.

One of the most controversial additions was the introduction of a new law in 2013 which allowed entertainment industry companies to take cases to the Moscow City Court with a view to having non-compliant sites blocked at the ISP level. Sites that fail to respond to takedown demands are then given just 72 hours to do so, with a total (reversible) blockade the most aggressive outcome.

In 2015, Russia upped the pressure with the introduction of a new mechanism aimed at reducing instances of pirate site reoffending. Sites that have two cases brought against them and are found to be infringing now face a total lifetime block, a fate suffered by major torrent site RuTracker six months ago.

But like many other jurisdictions, Russia immediately discovered that after sites are blocked pirates remain determined to continue using them. As a result dozens of proxy and mirror sites have sprung up to facilitate access, reducing the efficacy of ISP blocks and frustrating copyright holders.

Earlier this year it was proposed that proxies and mirrors should be considered extensions of permanently blocked sites so that they can be quickly blocked and now there are hopes they can be rendered harder to find too.

In a draft bill just published by the Ministry of Communications these are described as “derivative sites” that feature a similar name and “completely or partially copy the information available on the original sites.” The bill tries to cover all angles by noting that “derivative sites” may also redirect users to blocked sites, provide services or information from blocked sites, or even translate blocked sites into other languages.

Furthermore, the bill also proposes that search engines including Google and Russian market leader Yandex will be required to remove links to sites that are setup to facilitate access to permanently blocked sites. Copyright holders will be given the opportunity to report such sites to search engines with an expectation that within three days they will cease providing links to those sites in their search results.

All services are covered, whether proxies or mirrors, but the bill also envisions going much further than just the sites themselves.

In an earlier case a web-blockade monitoring site was itself earmarked for blocking after providing tips on how to circumvent court-ordered blockades. With legislative amendments, Russia now intends to render the provision of circumvention advice a punishable offense.

If the bill is passed platforms offering circumvention advice directly will be subject to penalties ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 rubles ($45-$75) for “entrepreneurial individuals” operating outside a legal entity, up to 100,000 rubles ($1,492) for legal entities.

Furthermore, the draft proposes that any services offering circumvention advice should also be removed from Google and other providers’ search listings via the mechanism detailed above.

The bill is still at the draft stage which means it could be subject to change but it seems likely that pressure to reduce access to workarounds of all kinds will continue through its path to final approval.

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

Adobe products are traditionally among the most pirated pieces of software.

Cracked versions of Acrobat, Illustrator and Photoshop are installed on millions of computers, despite recent anti-piracy measures.

In an effort to educate people about the dangers of “non genuine” software the company is now actively warning users. To do so, Adobe is bundling its products with a Software Integrity Service that can scan for and detect pirated software.

“Adobe now runs validation tests and notifies people who are using non-genuine software. Our tests check for software tampering and invalid licenses,” Adobe explains.

“This is a new service, designed to inform and protect our customers from the risks of non-genuine and counterfeit software,” the company adds.

The warnings come in the form of a pop-up and are limited to Acrobat X users in the United States, for now. When a pirate copy of the software is detected the following message appears.

Adobe Validation Testing has found this copy of Acrobat not genuine

The notification is meant to inform users, and can be clicked away. It may reappear after a short while, but Adobe stresses that nobody will get in trouble for it.

Their goal is simply to inform users of the risks and point them toward legal alternatives.

“Adobe’s goal has always been to help customers avoid the dangers of non-genuine or counterfeit software. We have been working on this service for a while, taking our time to ensure it is delivered to customers in an easy to understand and actionable way,” they say.

After running a pilot last year, the service now appears to appears to be rolling out more widely. A new “genuine” website was launched recently and the pilot references have been removed.

Aside from a few recent complaints about the pop-up there hasn’t been much backlash, which could mean that the program is still gearing up, and not operating at full swing just yet.

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