In recent years the Popcorn Time application has gained popularity worldwide, mostly thanks to its ability to stream torrent files in a Netflix-style interface.

This development raised concern among many movie industry companies, who have been working hard to contain the threat by going after several forks and their developers.

Most recently, Norwegian rightholders reported a local Popcorn Time site to the local economic crime police. Responding to this referral, the authorities seized the Popcorn-Time.no domain name.

Unlike the name suggests, the site didn’t host the application itself but instead posted news articles, as well as links to sites that offered the application.

Many were surprised by the action and legal experts including Professor Olav Torvund of the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law openly voiced their concerns.

Not only is the legality of the site debated, but also the use of a far-reaching measure without a proper judicial review.

Responding to these concerns, two digital rights groups have now filed a lawsuit against the authorities. Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN) and the Norwegian Unix User Group (NUUG) want the court to decide whether the domain seizure was appropriate.

“We feel that this is an important case that addresses the limits of free speech,” EFN’s managing director Tom Fredrik Blenning tells TorrentFreak.

“If this procedure is found to be legal, domain name seizures will make it possible for the police to shut down a forum based on mere suspicion that a site discusses potential illegal actions.”

As far as the digital rights groups are concerned the Popcorn-Time information site was operating legally.

But even if there are legitimate legal concerns, they believe that domain name seizures should only be applied in extreme cases where lives are at stake. This was certainly not the case here.

“The decision to seize the domain name was made by a low-ranking lawyer employed by the police,” Blenning says.

“Our position is that this decision may very well be wrong, but even if it is a correct decision, it is one that should be made by a judge in a court of law.”

Through the lawsuit the groups hope to answer two main questions. Firstly, was Popcorn-Time.no violating the law even though it only offered links to and information about the application.

Secondly, is a domain name seizure proportionate when it’s not obvious whether a website is actually breaking the law?

According to the two digital rights groups, the authorities clearly went too far. They hope that the court will agree and that similar broad enforcement measures can be prevented in the future.

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

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Deadpool is the most downloaded movie again.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(4)	Deadpool (HDrip subbed)	8.6 / trailer
2	(…)	Ride Along 2	5.9 / trailer
3	(4)	The Revenant	8.2 / trailer
4	(2)	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	8.3 / trailer
5	(…)	The Witch (Webrip)	7.2 / trailer
6	(8)	Mr. Right (Web-DL)	6.4 / trailer
7	(5)	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Cam/TS)	7.5 / trailer
8	(9)	The Jungle Book (Hindi Cam)	8.3 / trailer
9	(3)	Hail Caesar! (Webrip)	6.8 / trailer
10	(6)	Kung Fu Panda 3 (Web-DL)	8.0 / trailer

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

Well over four years have passed since Megaupload was shutdown, and as time passes people’s memories of the former Internet giant are fading away.

Interestingly, several copyright holders are keeping Megaupload’s spirit alive. Even though the site hasn’t been online for nearly half a decade, many continue to send out takedown requests targeting the former file-hosting service.

Take Paramount Pictures for example. Earlier this year the Hollywood movie studio asked Google to remove a Megaupload URL claiming that it hosted a copy of the The Big Short, a film that was released in 2015.

Impossible of course, since the movie didn’t even exist when the site was online, but apparently Paramount’s anti-piracy partner IP-Echelon thinks otherwise.

Paramount’s takedown notice

Ironically, the screenshot above also lists a Hotfile URL, another site that hasn’t been online for years. Just as bad, several of the other links point to content that’s unrelated to The Big Short including Nokia N97 firmware and a porn video.

Another takedown request targeting Megaupload comes from HBO. With help from its anti-piracy partner MarkMonitor, the company asked Google to remove a Megaupload link because it allegedly hosts a nude scene from Marisa Vitali in Bored To Death.

This video did indeed exist five years ago, but the URL hasn’t been active since the Megaupload raid, nor did Google index it recently.

It’s not just Hollywood outfits that make these mistakes. The prominent publisher Taylor & Francis is also frequently targeting the defunct file-hosting service. Most recently, its anti-piracy partner Link-Busters claimed that the site was carrying a copy of the book “Principles and Practice of Head and Neck Surgery and Oncology.”

So, while Megaupload has been offline for more than four years, copyright holders continue to target it. In fact, Google received more takedown notices targeting Megaupload after it was shut down than while it was still up and running.

This is strange, also since Google is no longer indexing any Megaupload URLs. At the time of writing a search for the site only returns four results.

Yes, rightholders are asking Google to remove links that were not even in Google’s index to begin with…

These mistakes are made by automated keyword filters that scour link sites and forums for links to hosting services. These bots don’t bother to check whether Google actually indexes the content, nor do they remove dead sites from their system.

This is not the first time this sloppiness has been brought to the forefront. A few weeks ago researchers from Columbia University’s American Assembly and Berkeley revealed that more than 28% of the takedown requests received by Google are “questionable.”

While the mistakes detailed above haven’t resulted in any serious harm, it’s easy to see how the same broad filtering techniques can also target content or sites that are perfectly legitimate and have a lot more to lose.

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.

TorrentFreak reached out to the TPB team and we were informed that there appears to be a technical issue with the servers which should be resolved soon.

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

In addition to the main thepiratebay.se domain name, various proxy sites are also offline.

The Pirate Bay has had quite a few stints of downtime in recent weeks. The popular torrent site usually returns after several hours, but this time it’s taking a bit longer.

With the raid of 2014 still fresh in people’s minds, some are quick to spread panic, but these concerns are unwarranted.

In fact, the site is still accessible via the Tor network (through their .oinio address), including the popular Pirate Browser. The Tor traffic goes through a separate server and works just fine.

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

Last month it was revealed that an individual in the “entertainment business” had prevented a UK tabloid newspaper from printing details of his extramarital affairs.

Referred to in court papers by the initials PJS (not his real initials), the reportedly “well known” individual is said to had some kind of “three-way sexual encounter” with another couple more than four years ago. This, while being married to his partner, YMA, also in the entertainment business.

The third-party couple (referred to as AB and CD) approached the UK’s Sun on Sunday newspaper in January this year and revealed details of their encounter with PJS. The paper then contacted PJS’s lawyer, at which point a legal battle ensued.

On January 18, lawyers for PJS and YMA applied for an order against Sun on Sunday preventing it from printing the story. The High Court rejected the demand but did hand down an interim order blocking publication while the pair filed an appeal (pdf)

The Court of Appeal subsequently ruled that the Sun on Sunday cannot publish the story because the entertainer had an expectation that his sexual encounters should remain a private matter. Inevitably, however, there are plenty of people who believe it should not.

The Sun on Sunday is determined to publish the story whenever it can but in the meantime the celebrity couple have been named countless times on social media and in dozens of press articles, including in Scotland, Europe, the United States and Canada.

So what, if anything, can be done about that? According to a BBC report citing Desmond Browne QC, the lawyer for PJS, “remarkable efforts” are taking place to remove the story from Twitter and Google. That can now be confirmed, at least in respect of the latter.

Usually dealing with the business of having copyright-infringing content taken down from the Internet, UK-based copyright takedown outfit Web Sheriff is well known in file-sharing circles. However, the company has also branched out to offer a number of additional services, including “Privacy Protection – reputation management.”

These activities rarely come into the public eye but it appears that Web Sheriff has recently been negotiating with Google to have sensitive content removed from its indexes. The matter in question can be found in the search giant’s Transparency Report where it’s listed under a fairly obvious heading.

As can be seen from the image above, Web Sheriff targeted 174 URLs in two batches, one on April 4 and the other on April 11. In total the anti-piracy outfit sent seven notices to Google but interestingly the search giant has taken no action on the overwhelming majority.

Why Google has taken no action is unclear but it’s possible that as an overseas company Google may not feel bound to remove the links. It’s also possible that the complaint was filed with Google as a copyright request and therefore does not meet the criteria for removal.

In any event, most links are now reaching “content not found” pages on various news resources, so there’s probably very little for Google to remove. This raises another topical point.

While Google is often portrayed as being able to do a lot to stop infringing (or in this case sensitive) content being made available via its search engine, it’s a lot more effective to have content taken down at the source. It seems likely that Web Sheriff has being doing just that and on the whole appears to have done a pretty good job.

But of course the big question is whether it was all worth it.

While news outlets are now waiting for a judgment set to be handed down Monday which could allow them to name the couple, their names are already all over the Internet. What started off as a story that would probably have been forgotten in a few days, has now transformed into a battle of international interest that has already failed in its key aim.

In the meantime, those who have ignored the injunction have been feeling the heat. A blogger who named the pair online says he’s been threatened by the entertainer’s legal team but doesn’t really care.

“It’s a massive Streisand effect. Now I am fielding calls from European tabloids,” he said.

“I told [PJS’s legal team] to take it where the sun doesn’t shine. There’s no bricks and mortar in the UK, there’s no printing press in the UK, there’s no server in the UK.”

The all-important hearing will be heard in open court on Monday after Lord Justice Jackson ruled that the case addresses matters of public interest.

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