The company behind the movie Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) is known not only for making movies, but also by its ancillary business of chasing down alleged Internet pirates in order to force a cash settlement from them.

In several countries the company has been collecting hundreds to thousands of dollars from each of their ‘Joe Public’ targets but its efforts to do so in Australia have been beset with problems.

Through its legal representatives Dallas Buyers Club have now admitted that their battle to obtain the identities of more than 4,700 Aussie Internet subscribers is over.

Michael Bradley, the managing partner of DBC LLC law firm Marque Lawyers, told iTNews that tomorrow’s deadline for DBC to make a further application to the court would pass without a submission.

“It’s certainly a disappointing outcome for [Dallas Buyers Club]. It doesn’t do anything to mitigate the infringement that’s going on – it’s not a particularly satisfactory outcome from that point of view,” Bradley said.

But for those familiar with these cases, mitigating infringement is not the primary aim of DBC.

The company wanted to extract settlements from 4,726 Internet account holders but due to its activities elsewhere, Justice Perram was suspicious that the movie outfit would engage in so-called “speculative invoicing”.

To stop that from happening the Judge ordered the payment of a huge AUS$600,000 bond but the company decided not to pay. Ultimately, Dallas Buyers Club failed to convince the court that it would restrain its activities and keep promises not to demand high settlements from Internet account holders.

While the development is a huge blow to DBC and a significant win for Internet subscribers in Australia, it doesn’t necessarily restrain other companies from attempting to sue alleged pirates in the future.

“That might happen. But if the circumstances and the context of that are close to this one, then you’d expect the same outcome,” Bradley said.

Another element that significantly hampered DBC was the fact that it was based overseas, hence the large bond requirement set by the court. Bradley told iTNews that Australia-based rightsholders might face fewer obstacles.

“I suppose if a distributor who was local wanted to have a try, then they presumably wouldn’t face the same difficulty with security. You might get a different outcome,” he added.

Bradley also suggests that if rightsholders went after individual infringers one at a time then there probably wouldn’t be so much scrutiny by the courts. But of course, DBC is in the business of getting large settlements from large numbers of people, so that approach probably wouldn’t make much sense from a commercial standpoint.

And make no mistake. This was a purely commercial exercise and when the sums didn’t add up, DBC decided to throw in the towel. Whether they will continue their efforts elsewhere will remain to be seen but new territories have the potential to cause new problems, so sticking to what they know could be the most likely course of action.

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

In recent months Portuguese Internet providers have started to block hundreds of websites that allegedly link to copyright infringing content.

The voluntary blocking regime was formalized last summer through an agreement between several parties including the Ministry of Culture and the Association of Telecommunication Operators.

The agreement allows copyright holders to add new pirate sites without any intervention or oversight from a court, something which has now led to some unusual blocks in recent weeks.

Aside from barring sites on questionable grounds, it appears that a simple typo can also get a website blocked. A few days ago a local news site spotted that one of the blocked domains is Forummaximus.net, which didn’t even exist at the time it was added.

Copyright holders were probably trying to block Forum-maximus.net, with a hyphen, but somewhere in the process someone made a mistake.

Forummaximus.net Not registered (image via)

As a result, Portugal’s blocklist included a domain that wasn’t even registered at the time. After the news broke someone eventually registered the URL, but without any infringing purposes it seems.

Still, visitors who try to reach the newly registered domain get the following error message (translated):

“The site that you’re trying to reach was blocked due to an order from the Regulator Agency.”

At the time of writing the correct site has been blocked as well, but the ‘typo’ error has yet to be corrected.

In this case the collateral damage is limited. However, it’s worrying that the lack of oversight from a court or third party organization can result in non-existent domain names being blocked.

It’s a fine example of how slippery the blocking slope can get.

TorrentFreak has reached out to local anti-piracy group MAPINET, who investigate the sites that are reported, to find out more about what went wrong. Thus far we haven’t heard back.

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

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has just published its latest submission to the U.S. Government, providing an overview of countries it believes should better protect the interests of the copyright industry.

The IIPA, which includes a wide range of copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA and ESA, has listed its complaints against a whole host of countries. As in previous years, Canada was discussed in detail with the recommendation to put it on the 2016 Special 301 ‘watch list.’

Like previous years, the rightsholders’ group points out that many of the top pirate sites have connections to Canada, labeling it as a safe haven for online piracy.

“Canada still has far to go to rectify its reputation as a safe haven for Internet pirates. Indeed, a number of the world’s most popular Internet sources dedicated to online theft of copyright material retain connections to Canada,” IIPA writes.

The group highlights KickassTorrents as one of the prime offenders but also mentions other sites and services including Sumotorrent.sx, Seedpeer.eu, Zippyshare.com, Tuebl.com and Solarmovie.is.

“This includes the biggest BitTorrent site in the world in terms of visitors and popularity, Kat.cr, along with the various other incarnations that the so-called ‘Kick Ass Torrents’ operation has assumed in its domain-hopping peregrinations over the past eight years.”

In addition, the IIPA signals a relatively new group of infringing services with ties to Canada, including Popcorn Time, which run on people’s desktop computers but are also sold pre-loaded onto set-top boxes.

“A disturbing recent trend is the emergence of stand-alone BitTorrent applications that employ an attractive, user-friendly interface that enables users to illegally stream and download infringing movies and TV programs,” the report reads.

There is also some positive new to report. Two years ago Canada adopted the Copyright Modernization Act, and according to the IIPA a new provision (27, 2.3) helped to target the Canadian developers behind the popular PopornTime.io fork.

“In October 2015, a Canadian Federal Court issued a sweeping injunction against the Canadian developers of PopcornTime,” IIPA writes.

“The court relied, in part, on claims that the defendants had provided services primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of copyright infringement, in violation of the newly enacted provision,” the group adds.

Still, the new copyright act doesn’t go far enough according to the copyright holders, and new legislation is required to address ongoing problems.

“In other respects, however, the Copyright Modernization Act simply fails to respond adequately to the challenge of online piracy,” the IIPA notes.

Canada’s new “notice and notice” system, through which ISPs are obliged to warn pirating subscribers, is not very effective, they claim. Especially when there are no consequences for subscribers who continue to pirate.

In addition, they point out that Canadian law lacks a “notice-and-takedown” regime where hosting companies can be held liable if they fail to disable access to pirated material.

The IIPA believes that in the current legal environment online pirates, even those who fall into the criminal category, can roam free. The U.S. Government should therefore keep Canada on the “watch list,” encouraging it to change its laws.

“The consistent absence of any criminal enforcement in Canada against even the most blatant forms of online theft complete the picture of a system that is still not up to the challenge,” the IIPA writes.

“Canada should review the effectiveness of its current regime, and consider alternatives to remedy its shortcomings and the current lack of incentives to stimulate full inter-industry cooperation against online piracy,” they add.

The IIPA’s full 2016 Special 301 recommendation report is available here. This also includes assessments for more than a dozen other countries, including Brazil, China, India, Russia, Switzerland and Ukraine.

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

Last week saw the launch of Torrents-Time, software for Windows and Mac that allows people to view torrents embedded in a webpage and without need for an external torrent client.

Initially the technology was employed by Popcorntime-Online.io, a browser-based edition of Popcorn Time that for the first time used peer-to-peer transfers rather than resource hungry HTTP.

Then, just a couple of days later, The Pirate Bay became the first general torrent index to utilize the Torrents-Time software, meaning that users are now able to watch videos embedded in The Pirate Bay. Torrents-Time is appealing to torrent site operators because it enables them to generate extra revenue through an embedded VPN advertisement.

Today we can report that KickassTorrents has implemented the same feature, making it not only the world’s largest torrent site, but also the largest streaming portal too. However, while the process is pretty straightforward on Pirate Bay (users simply have to press a button marked ‘stream it’), things are a bit more confusing on KAT.

First of all, members of KAT who are actively logged into the site cannot see the feature. It’s only visible to non-members, something that usually only takes place with ads. And indeed, the KAT team confirmed to TorrentFreak that they are categorizing this as an advert.

Also, two sets of ‘streaming’ buttons exist on KAT. One relates to the Torrents-Time feature, the other does not.

The obvious ‘Stream Torrent’ button (next to the ‘Download Torrent’ button) is not the Torrents-Time feature and actually links to another service we have no official information on. It’s a big download in comparison and is almost certainly ad-related as well. For those interested in reading more, discussion here.

The Torrents-Time feature is actually the big black ‘play’ button situated under the ‘Main’ tab for each torrent. It functions in the same way as The Pirate Bay’s implementation, via a popup window carrying the same video controls.

“Kickass Torrents (Kat.cr), the biggest torrent site on Earth have embedded Torrents Time as of NOW,” the Torrents-Time (TT) team told TF in a statement.

“We launched last week and in a few days changed forever the way people use the treasures found through torrents sites, directly from their browser. It means that from today on, any user who is able to use Facebook can enjoy almost any movie or TV show that was created in this world.”

However, while the TT are optimistic, they also caution that problems lie on the horizon for this disruptive technology.

“Torrents Time is revolutionizing the world of torrents, here and now. Because it’s a revolution, you can expect a bloodshed, like the fate of all revolutions. We already managed to get a cease and desist letter from BREIN,” the team explain.

TF reported on the BREIN complaint earlier today.

“Because it’s the people’s revolution, a network of hundreds of millions of people who wish to consume Free Content, the people will prevail and the illegal harassment by the film and TV producers industry who claim that P2P ruins their business model will be defeated, by the people,” TT continue.

“It’s a false claim driven only by their sheer greed. P2P does not come instead of going to the cinema, watching cable or satellite, paying for VOD, buying a disk or a piece of merchandise. With P2P we make the world smaller, a people’s village where all the neighbors can watch together the staff they like.

“Torrents Time is not a pirate’s tool. It’s cool and it’s legal. We are certain it will improve the world,” they conclude.

Torrents-Time say that several other large torrent sites are also considering coming on board but some who asked not to be named have informed TF that for now they’ll be sitting on the fence to see how things go. Not all are excited by the prospect of ‘bloodshed’, at least for now.

Update: 1337x.to informs TorrentFreak that they have added Torrents-Time as well.

“We always try to keep our users happy, streaming is another way to use torrents. At this moment we do show a VPN message that Torrents-Time has, however with or without revenue we would have implemented this since it is a great solution.”

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

Following an extradition hearing lasting several weeks, in December a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues can be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges.

As the former operators of now-defunct file-sharing site Megaupload, Dotcom and colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk are accused of crimes including copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering

Following Judge Dawson’s decision, Dotcom immediately announced an appeal.

While it probably suits Dotcom for the process to be as drawn out as possible, United States authorities would like to get their hands on the Megaupload founder sooner rather than later. To that end they appeared in the High Court in Auckland today asking for the appeal to be pushed through as a matter of urgency.

Justice Asher denied the request and scheduled the hearing for August 29. The appeal itself is expected to last several weeks, extending well into October 2016.

This, according to Asher, should allow him to render his decision before Christmas, but even that won’t mark the end of the road. In comments to TF in December, Dotcom explained the stages of the process.

“The appeal route is High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court. If I lose, it goes to a decision by Minister of Justice, then to a High Court judicial review of the Minister’s decision. Then it’s the end of the road,” he told TF.

The legal system moves slowly so it’s likely that Dotcom – whatever the outcome – will still be enjoying the beauty of New Zealand well into 2017.

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