In recent years copyright holders have overloaded Google with DMCA takedown notices, targeting links to pirated content.

These requests have increased dramatically over the years. In 2008, the search engine received only a few dozen takedown notices during the entire year, but today it processes two million per day on average.

Data gathered by TorrentFreak from Google’s Transparency Report shows that the number of links reported in DMCA notices has more than doubled compared to last year, and quadrupled in comparison to the year before.

March 2014 Google was asked to remove roughly six million links per week, growing to eight million in 2015 and a whopping 19 million last week.

As an illustration of the sheer volume, this means that Google is now being asked to remove well over 100,000 links to alleged copyright infringing material every hour.

The number of notices continues to increase at a rapid pace and at the current rate the search engine will have to process a billion reported links this year alone. This same milestone previously took well over a decade to reach.

The graph below illustrates this sharp rise in takedown notices.

While not all takedown requests are accurate, the majority of the reported links are. As a result many popular pirate sites are now less visible in Google’s search results, since Google downranks sites for which it receives a high number of takedown requests.

In a submission to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator a few months ago Google stated that the continued removal surge doesn’t influence its takedown speeds.

“We process more takedown notices, and faster, than any other search engine,” the search giant commented.

“We receive notices for a tiny fraction of everything we host and index, which nonetheless amounts to millions of copyright removal requests per week that are processed, on average, in under six hours.”

The company rejects broader actions, such as the removal of entire domain names, as this would prove counterproductive and lead to overbroad censorship.

Copyright holders, however, don’t share these concerns. Over the years groups such as the MPAA and RIAA have repeatedly argued that clearly infringing sites should be barred from Google’s index. In addition, they want Google to promote legal services.

While Google believes that the billion reported URLs are a sign that the DMCA takedown process is working properly, rightsholders see it as a signal of an unbeatable game of whack-a-mole.

As this stalemate continues, we can expect the number of reported pages to continue to rise in the future, adding millions of new URLs on a daily basis.

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

Last month Kanye West released his latest album The Life of Pablo exclusively on Tidal, triggering a piracy feast.

Millions of fans have grabbed a pirated copy from unauthorized sites and services, including The Pirate Bay. Angered by mass-piracy Kanye West considered taking legal action against the notorious torrent site, but thus far nothing has happened.

Instead, Kanye was caught browsing a Pirate Bay related website earlier this week and from the looks of it he was pirating a prominent piece of music software himself.

In a response, The Pirate Bay team offered their support, in case he ran into technical issues. In addition, they catered to his narcissistic tendencies by promoting the ego-boosting “Kanye Bay” proxy.

“Should Mr. West experience any issues accessing the official domains of the galaxy’s most resilient torrent site, I’d suggest he try this nifty little proxy,” TPB staffer Spud17 tells us.

Kanye Bay….

Aside from the aesthetic improvements, some words of wisdom and a direct link to pirated versions of Kanye’s music, the site acts as a regular Pirate Bay proxy.

TorrentFreak reached out to the operator of the unusual proxy who explained in detail how he came up with the idea.

“The other day, I came up with an equation that explains the way visionaries think as opposed to very calculated people,” Kanye Bay’s operator informs TF.

“If someone asked you, ‘What is 2 and 3?’ most people would say 5. If you put 2 and 3 in front of me, I’m gonna say, ‘Well, 2 plus 3 is 5. 2 times 3 is 6. 2 divided by 3 is this. 3 divided by 2 is that.’ And then come up with an average of all those things..,” he adds.

This visionary thinking eventually led to the creation of The Kanye Bay, which excels at serving torrents, compared to all other Pirate Bay proxies that ever existed.

“That is the thing people marvel at like, ‘That really was not what I was expecting’… Then I made KanyeBay.com and I was like, ‘Yeah. This sh*t is like 50 per cent more influential than any other proxy ever made’,” the operator says.

The Kanye Bay, like TPB, is all about sharing, not stealing. While Kanye West condemned The Pirate Bay earlier, he did not specifically object to people sharing his work.

This would also explain why Kanye West can threaten to sue The Pirate Bay while ‘using’ it at the same time. And rightly so, according to The Kanye Bay operator, who would rather not kill someone.

“I believe that being selfish is vulgar. It’s like cursing. I think the world can be saved through sharing, because what is the most selfish thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, piracy is like the opposite of that.”

“The Bible was copied like a million times and nobody ever got hurt.”

Amen. Even Yeezus would have to agree with that.

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

The Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (Marco Civil da Internet) is legislation that governs the use of the Internet in Brazil. Under development since 2009 the Marco Civil aims to protect online privacy rights, net neutrality principles and other key issues.

The law was passed in April 2014 after being fast-tracked in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Last year the legislation entered its second stage with the Ministry of Justice announcing a public consultation process allowing stakeholders to contribute to the development of the law.

Of course, where legislation is available to be shaped Hollywood is rarely far behind and as a result the Motion Picture Association and its studio members quickly got involved. They believe that the Marco Civil’s net neutrality provisions present problems for rightsholders who need to be able to protect their content against online infringement.

Last year the MPA told Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo that the legislation’s wording was too tight and exceptions were needed to allow for anti-piracy enforcement. This week the public consultation came to a close and it’s now clear that the stance of the MPA is shared by many other rightsholders in the audiovisual sector.

In a proposal submitted by the MPA, the Brazilian Association of Intellectual Property (ABPI), Brazilian Association of Independent Television Producers (ABPI-TV) and Brazilian Association of Audiovisual Works Production (APRO) and others, demands for site-blocking are front and center.

In common with other regions where site-blocking measures have been introduced, the MPA wants Brazil to order its Internet service providers to block ‘pirate’ sites located outside the country, beyond Brazil’s jurisdiction. It’s expected that the existing legal system will deal with those hosted domestically.

“Although foreign [pirate site] hosts can not be forced to delete the illegal content from their servers, access to these can be hampered by technical measures implemented by Brazilian Internet service providers,” the proposal reads.

According to local media this is the first time that cinema associations, large Brazilian producers and Hollywood studios have joined together under one banner.

“We can not accept that the Internet is a free area for lawlessness,” said Edson Vismona, president of the umbrella group National Forum Against Piracy and Illegality (FNCP).

“Our mission is to set some milestones to show that illegality will not prosper. We have to respect all the principles of freedom of expression, but not actions that violate citizens’ basic rights.”

The group says that if Brazil implements the required measures it will be in good company since countries including Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, the UK, Portugal and Spain already engaged in site blocking.

Of course, the great irony here is that while the MPA demands site blocking of Brazil, there is no site blocking taking place in the United States. Nevertheless, the MPA and its colleagues want a “clear provision for site blocking techniques” and exceptions written into the Marco Civil.

Only time will tell if they will get their way.

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

As copyright holders try to slow the spread of copyrighted content, torrent and streaming sites are being blocked by ISPs across Europe and Russia at an alarming rate.

On the one hand this is an annoyance to site operators, who are having to adapt their operations in order to mitigate the effects of blockades. On the other, music and movie companies feel justified in taking any measures they can to protect their rights.

Somewhere in the middle lies the ordinary users who, in an effort to circumvent blockades, are ending up on copycat, clone and just plain scammy sites that are cynically cashing in on all the confusion. One site attempting to do something about this problem is Russian torrent giant RuTracker.org.

Blocked by local ISPs following escalating disputes with copyright holders, the site says that its users are falling foul to clone sites carrying out phishing and extortion-like attacks. RuTracker believes that if it obtained a recognizable URL ending in .RU, local users would be more reassured that they’re visiting the correct site.

To that end RuTracker.org has been trying to obtain RuTracker.ru, a domain currently owned by a rival torrent site.

“Blocks are not much for us to care about. Much more important for us is that users can accidentally fall on phishing sites that steal passwords,” an RuTracker representative told Izvestia.

Unlike its much larger namesake, RuTracker.ru is not currently blocked by court order and since RuTracker.org really wants an .RU domain, RuTracker.ru is the natural choice. However, the site also has aspirations of keeping the price realistic and that appears to be a stumbling block.

Izvestia managed to track down RuTracker.ru owner Oleg Volkov who told the publication he isn’t happy with the price being offered.

“From 100,000 rubles, you can start a conversation. But I’m not eager to sell it,” he said.

Indeed, less than $1,400 seems like a giveaway price, especially for a site with as many visitors as RuTracker.org. However, another issue has the potential to further complicate matters.

RuTracker.org is owned by a company called DreamTorrent Corp. and in 2012 the outfit applied for two trademarks – RuTracker and RuTrackerorg. A year later the site acquired the rights to the names.

So, in theory at least, DreamTorrent could use its grip on its trademarks to attempt to gain control of RuTracker.ru by force. However, the site has said that it does not wish to go down that route and would prefer to negotiate a fair price instead.

But while the details are being thrashed out it seems that RuTracker.org has been experiencing yet more blocking problems, this time from an unexpected direction.

According to a post by an administrator on the site’s forum, RuTracker recently began receiving reports that the site was no longer accessible to users from outside Russia from countries including Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Israel.

It transpired that RuTracker had engaged the services of an anti-DDoS company based in Russia, who had begun passing foreign traffic destined for the site through the Russian Federation. Since RuTracker is blocked by Russian ISPs, this foreign traffic also became blocked.

The problem was eventually solved but it does show how blockades can overreach and cause unintended consequences, in this case a locally-focused block extending internationally.

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

One of the upsides of drive-in cinemas is that people are free to chat inside their cars and enjoy a movie privately.

Pirates have a big plus as well, as drive-ins make it much easier to record high quality audio. For this reason, camcorded films are often a combination of indoor video and drive-in audio.

Generally speaking it is very hard to spot someone recording an audio stream in his or her car, but a drive-in near Pittsburgh managed to track one down with help from Hollywood.

The man, Brian Ridley, allegedly recorded audio of the movies “Sex Tape,” “Planes: Fire and Rescue,” and “The Purge” during the summer of 2014.

The 38-year-old man was caught after a tip from the MPAA who asked the theater owner to look out for his license plate, and call the local police if he did.

Following a careful investigation Ridley has recently been indicted (pdf), with the Government describing him as part of a larger conspiracy to release pirated movies on the Internet.

From the indictment

According to the indictment “the audio and video files would be sent over the Internet to a conspirator who would sync the audio and video files together,” after which, “the completed audio/video copies would be placed on the Internet for others to download.”

The other members of the conspiracy are not known, but it is likely that they are part of an established release group.

While Ridley supposedly recorded audio for multiple movies, he is only charged with unauthorized copying of the Cameron Diaz movie “Sex Tape.”

“Sex Tape” was not yet released at the time the audio was allegedly recorded. However, a pirated copy eventually appeared online at the end of July, after Ridley was caught.

During the arrest the authorities seized three SanDisk “Sansa” MP3 Recorders. These devices are typically connected to the drive-in’s audio feed, and presumably contained portions of the pirated audio.

According to court records Ridley has been released on bail and will be arraigned later this month. If found guilty, he faces a maximum prison sentence of three years for copyright infringement and five years for the conspiracy charge.

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