Like everyone reading this piece I have often seen pirated content on YouTube. The site is littered with hundreds maybe thousands of movies and TV shows, none of them uploaded by copyright holders.

Equally, if one wants to listen to just about any rare song, no matter how old, a YouTube search will uncover it. In most cases those songs haven’t been uploaded by their owners but when looking for any kind of desirable content, you have to have massive self-control to immediately click off.

Well this week, I did. And I was pretty infuriated while doing so.

While browsing one evening I noticed what I believed to be a new video from the Hydraulic Press Channel (HPC). For those who aren’t familiar with HPC it’s a channel, on YouTube, dedicated to crushing things in a hydraulic press. It’s almost as simple as that. It’s basic. It’s fun. And in a few months it has amassed a huge following.

What I clicked on was a video compilation of the top 10 things crushed by the channel, but something was wrong. The massively entertaining voice of channel host and resident crusher Lauri Vuohensilta was entirely missing. His wife wasn’t giggling in the background as she usually is either.

In fact, all I was witnessing was items getting crushed, one after the other and it left me cold. Then it dawned on me. I looked at the uploader name expecting the worst. I didn’t recognize it. Yep, this was an imposter. A freebooter.

This was definitely not the Hydraulic Press Channel and a quick look at the video notes confirmed it.

“A compilation of everything hydraulic press channel has crushed yet. None of it is mine, all belongs to hydraulic press channel.”

So why take it then? It’s already available for free on the official channel, I found myself shouting.

Worse still, this “stolen” video had amassed more than 400,000 views and i’d contributed to that not just once but twice when I went back for the screenshot. Somehow I felt disproportionately annoyed that this stupid compilation was taking revenue away from the hugely funny Lauri and his giggling wife.

And in that i’m not alone. At the time of writing a third of the video’s votes are in the downward direction versus around one in 35 on the original channel. Furthermore, the comment section is littered with people angry that RandomStuff98 “stole” the content from Hydraulic Press Channel (HPC).

And here’s another interesting twist. I chatted with a couple of uploaders on a popular torrent site and although one didn’t express an opinion either way, the other said that he didn’t agree with people “stealing” YouTuber’s videos. This is coming from someone who uploads at least two dozen torrents a day.

With that in mind, one has to question how many of the outraged commenters on YouTube would also have concerns over the ethics of grabbing the latest leaked DVD screener from The Pirate Bay. My estimate is not very many of them.

I wasn’t sure why people “stealing” HPC’s content was so irritating but I presumed that it was partially down to the fact that the guy running the channel feels like “one of us”. He seems like an ordinary guy that you could go out and have a beer and a laugh with. That in itself makes it more personal, I suppose.

To get a bit more of an insight I shared my thoughts with musician and YouTube star Dan Bull who has tens of millions of hits under his belt. Did he have any idea why myself, a prolific torrent uploader, and plenty of YouTuber’s feel protective of more ‘amateur’ content?

“I think I can give you an explanation as to why mirroring a YouTube video is ethically different to sharing a Hollywood movie despite them being the same legally,” Dan told me.

“It’s a difficult topic as the same rationale that can be used for file-sharing, or abolition of copright, can be used to say that this kind of behavior is fine.
However, if you look a bit more closely, it’s really much more of a dick move than hosting a torrent file,” he continued.

“When you share a movie, you’re making something accessible to people who perhaps otherwise wouldn’t be able to see it. In contrast, when you simply mirror someone else’s YouTube video on your own channel, it’s not making the media any more accessible, it’s just redirecting traffic from the original uploader, who in most cases on YouTube is a small-time independent content creator.”

Dan notes that the DMCA and Content ID on YouTube allow original creators to takedown or monetize mirrored content, but he prefers not to use them.

“I am not a fan of either of those practices in any case as I don’t believe in the validity of intellectual property. But I do think that when uploading someone else’s content, you should always take a moment to consider whether it’s a dick move or not,” he concludes.

Of course, infringement is infringement, whether it’s ripping off the work of Hydraulic Press Channel or sharing the movies made by the studio members of the MPAA. Yet somehow it feels quite different. Few (if any) YouTube users complain about people uploading infringing blockbuster movies to the site yet HPC “pirates” get it with both barrels from commenters with no obvious respect for copyright law, only a sense of what is “right”.

If there was a way to bottle that kind of reaction and apply it to mainstream content, Hollywood might crack the piracy problem. But what aspect of this strange situation can they harness, what’s the secret recipe, and how can it be utilized? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

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

Tomorrow night the third episode of the latest Game of Thrones season will appear online, both through official and unauthorized channels.

With millions of people all around the world eager to see how Jon Snow is doing, the interest on various pirate sites will be massive once again.

While HBO generally seems quite cavalier when the piracy topic comes up, the company is actively trying to contain the fallout behind the scenes.

Since the start of the new season the company’s anti-piracy partner IP Echelon has sent thousands of warnings to ISPs, urging them to take action against alleged pirates.

The warning mails in question include the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who were caught sharing recent episodes of Game of Thrones, and the notifications HBO asks the ISPs to alert the associated subscribers to prevent further infringements.

“As the owner of the IP address, HBO requests that [ISP] immediately contact the subscriber who was assigned the IP address at the date and time below with the details of this notice, and take the proper steps to prevent further downloading or sharing of unauthorized content and additional infringement notices.”

HBO warning

While these notices are pretty common, HBO now also encourages ISPs to point subscribers toward legal options, something we haven’t seen in the past.

“We also encourage you to inform the subscriber that HBO programming can easily be watched and streamed on many devices legally by adding HBO to the subscriber’s television package,” the notification adds.

Legally, ISPs are not obligated to forward these emails, which are sent as a DMCA notification, but many do. In any case, HBO doesn’t know the identity of the alleged pirates, so there are no legal strings attached for the subscribers in question.

Aside from targeting alleged pirates, HBO has another strategy to deter people from pirating Game of Thrones.

Since the start of the sixth season the company has aggressively targeted torrent sites with takedown requests. While some sites simply ignore these, popular indexes and search engines such as KickassTorrents and Torrentz have removed links to hundreds of torrents.

Torrent removed

In some cases, the most popular torrents are removed a few minutes after they appear online. This is much quicker than average, suggesting that HBO’s anti-piracy partners are monitoring the situation in real time and on a broad scale.

A search on KickassTorrents shows that the most popular torrent releases for the first two episodes have been removed. Similarly, a search for Game of Thrones on Torrentz notes that links to the 100 torrents with the most peers are all gone.

It’s clear that HBO is doing all it can to limit the distribution of pirated Game of Thrones episodes. However, the question remains as to whether it will be enough to really deter a significant number of downloaders from finding copies on other sites, where they are still readily available.

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

There are very few Internet service providers around the world who could be described as file-sharer friendly. Most will steadfastly do their bare minimum when aggressive copyright holders come calling, with the majority happy to throw their customers to the wolves, guilty or not.

The same cannot be said about Swedish ISP Bahnhof. CEO Jon Karlung has been at the forefront of several arguments over file-sharers for many years, particularly when their activities intersect with a right to privacy.

In 2009, Karlung threw a wrench in the works of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) by refusing to log the IP addresses of his customers. This meant that if a court came calling for the data, none would be available.

In 2011, Karlung was pleasing the masses again, this time by hosting Wikileaks and promising to route all customer traffic through an encrypted VPN service. And in April this year the Bahnhof CEO vowed to protect his customers from copyright trolls.

Now Karlung has turned his attentions to the Swedish government following an open hearing at the end of last month on the subject of piracy in the digital marketplace.

The published purpose of the hearing was to “share knowledge and gain a greater insight into how piracy and other infringements of intellectual property affects both businesses and consumers and society in general” but it appears Karlung was not impressed.

Servers at Bahnhof

Writing in Sweden’s SVT, Karlung said that the meeting was attended by representatives from the film and music industries who sat alongside police and politicians. He says that the atmosphere was good, with everyone in agreement.

“For several hours they repeated, with rising fighting spirit, the same message again and again: ‘We need to block illegal sites! We must strengthen penalties!’,” the Bahnhof CEO reports.

Eventually Sweden’s Minister for Justice took the floor and told those assembled that “theft is theft!” while championing tougher penalties for infringers. He also noted that his first meetings after he took over as attorney general had been with the film industry. This appears to have riled Karlung.

“It is symptomatic that no Internet service provider was invited to the meeting – or anyone else with a broader understanding of digital conditions,” he explains.

The Bahnhof CEO says the exchange reminded him of 2008 when he attended a meeting in Sweden’s Parliament on the topic of file-sharing. Back then too, a politician stood up, declared that “theft is theft”, and left without discussing the issue with the ISP. For Karlung, history is repeating itself.

“In 2016, Sweden wants to criminalize hundreds of thousands of citizens for file-sharing. Now?! When large parts of the film and music industry have already adapted to the digital landscape with services such as Spotify and Netflix?” he questions.

“Consumers are apparently willing to pay. How about adding resources to develop the right services instead of taking a large sledgehammer to the free Internet?”

Karlung says that Sweden used to be at the forefront in that respect, but things have changed.

“Now we are internationally renowned as a place where courts prohibit public art from being shared online,” he explains.

Whether Karlung’s words will have any effect on government policy will remain to be seen but in any event it is extremely rare for the CEO of an ISP to make his voice heard in the way Karlung has for the past several years. Certainly, privacy conscious customers could do worse than check out this ISP.

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

There’s a slight panic breaking out among Pirate Bay users, who are having a hard time accessing the site.

Over the past few hours Chrome and Firefox and Safari have started to block access to Thepiratebay.se due to reported security issues.

Instead of a page displaying the iconic pirate ship, visitors are presented with an ominous red warning banner.

“Deceptive site ahead: Attackers on Thepiratebay.se may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information,” the Chrome warning reads.

Firefox users may encounter a similar banner, branding The Pirate Bay as a “web forgery” which may trick users into sharing personal information. This may lead to identity theft or other fraud.

“Web forgeries are designed to trick you into revealing personal or financial information by imitating sources you may trust. Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or other fraud,” the browser warns.

Google’s safebrowsing page for TPB currently lists the site as dangerous. It is likely that the current problems are related to issues caused by third-party advertisers. Just last week Malwarebytes reported that some ads were dropping ransomware through the site.

The issue appears to be limited to the desktop versions of most browsers, and not everyone is seeing the error pages yet.

This is not the first time browsers have flagged The Pirate Bay. The same issue has come up before supposedly due to malicious advertisers.

The Pirate Bay team is aware of the issues and will probably resolve it sooner than later. Impatient or adventurous users who want to bypass the warning can do so by disabling their browser’s security warnings altogether in the settings, at their own risk of course.

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

Late last year the first pirated copies of 4K videos leaked from both Netflix and Amazon. These leaks were unusual as online 4k streams were always well protected against pirates.

Initially it was unclear how the HDCP content protection had been circumvented, but several sources suggested that one of LegendSky’s latest HDFury devices may have been involved.

This suspicion was later corroborated by a well-known Scene group, which openly thanked HDFury in their release notes.

However, not everyone was pleased with the new “pirate tool.” In fact, Warner Bros. and Intel daughter company Digital Content Protection (DCP) sued the HDFury manufacturer over its ability to “strip” the latest HDCP encryption.

The Chinese hardware manufacturer fiercely rejected these piracy claims and countersued Warner and Intel subsidiary for defamation.

In its reply, LegendSky explained that their devices do not “strip” any HDCP copy protection. Instead, the contested HDFury device merely downgrades the higher HDCP protection to a lower version, which is permitted as an exception under the DMCA.

The company further added that several HDCP licensees including Netflix, Disney, NBC and CBS have bought their devices for legitimate purposes.

It’s possible that DCP also appreciated the strength of this argument as this week the company dropped its copyright infringement claims against LegendSky. This means that the 4K integral remains for sale, despite the earlier piracy claims.

Court documents reveal nothing other than a statement signed by both parties, stating that the claims and counterclaims have been dismissed. However, LegendSky did inform its customers a few days ago referring to a settlement being reached.

“We just have been informed by our legal counsel that we must pull all of the below products immediately due to a pending confidential settlement we are reaching,” the email in question reads.

LegendSky’s email

Interestingly, the products that were pulled have nothing to do with the 4K splitter that started the lawsuit. Instead, they are digital to analog converters.

In the U.S. these type of products have previously been classed as “infringing” and DCP informed the court about several of these so-called “analog hole” verdicts in an earlier filing. It therefore makes sense that puling these older products is part of the settlement.

This allows Warner Bros. and the Intel daughter company to save face, but it’s only a minor conciliation. With the 4K integral still up for sale, the Chinese hardware manufacturer has without doubt booked a moral victory in this lawsuit.

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