Just one week ago a new piece of software hit the file-sharing scene. Utilizing BitTorrent under the hood, Torrents-Time aims to bring embedded streaming functionality to any torrent index.

The first project to utilize the software was Popcorn-Time.io, a browser-based version of Popcorn Time employing peer-to-peer transfers.

Just days later and The Pirate Bay had jumped on board, placing links to Torrents-Time on all of its video torrents and effectively transforming the notorious site into the world’s largest streaming portal overnight.

The development attracted a lot of attention so it will come as no surprise that Torrents-Time is already on Hollywood’s radar. That manifested itself in direct attention from Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, who have now issued Torrents-Time with its first legal threat.

“BREIN issued a cease and desist letter to us on the grounds that it’s a known fact that Torrents Time is facilitating the distribution of infringing content,” the Torrents-Time team informs TorrentFreak.

In its letter to the group behind TT, BREIN is certainly forceful in its assertion that the software is illegal.

“By offering Torrents Time, which is primarily engaged in the facilitating, enabling and participating in the making available of infringing files, according to the law and jurisprudence of The Netherlands you are acting unlawful and infringe the copyrights and neighboring rights of others, including the rights holders whose interests are represented by BREIN,” lawyer Pieter Haringsma writes.

“This causes extensive damage to rights holders for which you – and all others involved with the management of the site – are liable. In the interest of and on behalf of the rights holders represented by BREIN, we request that you cease and desist the distribution of Torrents Time immediately.”

BREIN’s involvement indicates that Torrents-Time (TT) has connections to the Netherlands, a situation confirmed by its developers.

“The Dutch connection is due to our website being hosted on a server residing in the Netherlands,” TT informs TF.

Indeed, Torrents-Time is currently hosted at LeaseWeb, a major Dutch-based service provider that has been embroiled in many file-sharing related legal battles in the past. And, according to BREIN, if TT refuse to comply LeaseWeb will be sucked into this complaint too.

“If you do not comply in full with our demands set out in the above, we will contact your Hosting Internet Service Provider and request again for the immediate removal of the website from the Internet and for your name and address details. Under the law of The Netherlands your provider is obliged to comply with these demands,” Haringsma continues.

“We will of course hold you liable for all (further) incurred costs including legal fees. These costs can be substantial. Given the circumstances at hand, the courts of The Netherlands have jurisdiction over this matter.”

This style of approach to Torrents-Time is pretty standard for BREIN which routinely issues threats to local service providers who generally comply by shutting torrent sites down. However, this situation is perhaps not as straightforward as it first appears.

While there is an argument to be had over the way Torrents-Time is being promoted on sites like The Pirate Bay, at its core it is simply a software client and it is for the software’s users to decide whether they use it for legal or illegal purposes. None of this is lost on the Torrents-Time legal team who have responded extremely aggressively to BREIN’s claims and even question the anti-piracy group’s validity.

“From the outset, please be informed that my clients deny all the suppositions and assumptions in your letter, including the fact that BREIN represents right holders and that you are qualified to take action on behalf of an un-named un-identified entities,” TT begins.

“In your letter, you take the liberty of accusing my Clients of distributing an ‘illegal application’. We deny that allegation, as being un-substantiated, false and illegal in itself, under the laws of the Netherlands.

“No court has ever ruled that Torrents Time breaches any right of any sort, including copyrights and neighboring rights, for two main reasons: One: It was published less than 3 days ago, and two: It was carefully crafted not to do anything whatsoever so as to breach copyright or neighboring rights.

“In accordance with the technical details referred to me by my Clients’ engineers and software specialist, I am confident that the outcome of a court proceeding against my Clients’ Torrent Time will end with a ruling against anyone who challenges the legality of Torrents Time,” TT’s legal team adds.

And then the tone of the response to BREIN changes, from stating facts to Torrents-Time making threats of their own.

“You are therefore advised to seriously re-think you cease and desist demand and advise my Clients that you withdraw your demands. You are also hereby warned not to attempt to take action against any third party who utilizes Torrents Time or hosts it or co-operates therewith in any other manner,” the response warns.

“Failing to comply with my demands herein will prove itself as enormously costly to your organization and its members and could lead to criminal proceedings against yourself, on the grounds of illegal threats and extortion, the consequences of which I’m sure you are very well aware of.”

It is extremely unlikely that BREIN will heed the advice offered by Torrents-Time so an approach to LeaseWeb to take their site down will happen soon, if it hasn’t already. TorrentFreak asked BREIN how Torrents-Time differs from any other torrent client but we are yet to receive a response. Maybe that will be an argument they’ll continue with LeaseWeb during the days to come.

“As we believe that the complaint is an illegal act of blackmail, we will resist and fight back. We have taken legal advice and will take whatever steps are best for us,” the Torrents-Time team concludes.

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

Lawsuits against file-sharers are commonplace in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people have been accused in recent years, most after using standard BitTorrent clients.

The cases barely make the news anymore but for copyright holders and law firms they are still big business, with many cases ending in out of court settlements.

As is the case in any legal dispute, lawyers from both sides can profit. The ones representing the copyright holders usually get rewarded with attorney fees and a piece of the settlement award, and those on the other side get paid for the defense.

To many, the attorneys representing the alleged pirates are seen as “the good guys.” However, several insiders believe that not all attorneys have the best interests of their clients at heart.

TorrentFreak spoke with defense lawyer Robert Cashman, who has represented many accused pirates over the past five years. He recently sounded the alarm bell warning people about attorneys whose main motivation is earning a few bucks.

Cashman is one of the attorneys who comes recommended by the EFF. While many defense attorneys are indeed a great help, there are also several who run a “settlement factory” by settling cases on a routine basis, with minimal investment.

“The ‘settlement factory’ attorney problem began years ago, even when there were only 20 of us on the EFF’s subpoena defense list,” Cashman says.

While Cashman confronted several colleagues with his observations, the problem still exists and got worse over time.

“They run a volume-based business where in a number of cases, they have hired multiple attorneys to take calls for their firm as a result to some Google AdWords or online marketing program they just spent who knows how much to attract these ‘leads’.”

“The attorneys they hire are tasked with convincing a person who filled out their online web form to settle the claims against them, even when settling is not in the best interests of the client,” Cashman adds.

In addition to active advertising campaigns, these attorneys also approach defendants who have already retained counsel elsewhere, encouraging them to go for them as a cheaper option.

According to Cashman the “settlement factory” attorneys are able to offer their services cheaply, because they spend minimal time on the cases and run a volume-based business. While this may result in lower legal fees, it might not help an eventual settlement.

Cashman previously confronted a colleague he was mentoring for selling his services short and received a telling reply.

“He explained to me that he actually only spent a few MINUTES on each case because he already prearranged with the plaintiff attorney to settle claims for a certain amount using their boilerplate contract, and thus $300 for him was a windfall.”

The main problem is that instead of looking at the unique aspects of every case, settlement factories often agree to higher settlement amounts, driving up the ‘price’ for everyone.

“The result is that because these attorneys are willing to pay higher prices when settling cases, they “drive up” the prices for all of us other attorneys who are trying to negotiate for a significantly lower amount,” Cashman notes.

Instead of actually looking for ways to negotiate a lower settlement, exploring viable defenses, or considering other individual characteristics, they go for a quick solution.

“The client is getting served on a golden platter to the copyright trolls who are extorting money from them, and it is the very attorneys in whom they are placing their trust who are allowing them to be cheated,” Cashman says.

At the end of the day the defendant is poorly represented, must pay a higher settlement, while driving up the settlement amounts for other defendants in the process.

In part, Cashman’s plea is in his own interest. He runs a business as well and needs to make a profit. So when colleagues get all the work at a cheaper rate, that hurts business.

However, he believes that every attorney should still serve the client to the best of his ability, and the settlement factory attorneys only seem to make matters worse.

“The goal of the defense attorney should not simply be profit off of the problem, but to take steps to make the lawsuits go away in the first place,” Cashman concludes

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

In a ‘pirate’ world consumed by web-streaming, BitTorrent and software such as Popcorn Time, there’s no doubt that desktop users are spoiled for choice.

However, for users of the Android system there is a seriously powerful beast that’s been gaining traction for some time now, one that not only downloads from both BitTorrent networks and direct sources but also presents the results in a tidy Netflix-style interface.

Showbox – tablet edition

While Showbox hasn’t been endlessly reported in the media in the way that Popcorn Time has, the software is already in use on hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of tablet and cellphone devices. And, since it also runs on Windows emulators such as Bluestacks, it’s likely that thousands of desktop installations exist too.

But more recently Showbox has become a much-installed package on countless set-top devices, including but not limited to Amazon’s Fire Stick, bringing all the latest movies and TV shows into the home with a minimum of fuss. Since Showbox can stream from non-P2P sources too (it defaults to that, in fact), it offers a decent level of anonymity too. All that has led to a boost in popularity on a similar curve to that enjoyed by Popcorn Time.

With all the latest movies and TV shows at hand to either stream or download (with a choice of qualities and subtitles thrown in for good measure) Showbox is definitely on the radars of the Hollywood studios. But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, little appears to have been done about the software. Certainly, there has been no Popcorn Time legal response to speak of.

Whether that has played a part in the software’s latest development is unclear but during the past few days Showbox added a controversial new feature that’s likely to infuriate not only Hollywood but also the world’s major record labels. The latest version (v4.51) now has the ability to stream and download music.

Present for now only when run on a cellphone device, Showbox’s music menu is illustrated on the left of the image below. A small sample of its popular music section appears on the right.

Without a detailed network analysis (we’ll leave that to others) it’s unclear where Showbox is pulling content from. However, it’s certainly possible that Russian social network vKontakte is playing a part as it has previously with movies and TV shows.

Either way, the catalog of content appears to be pretty deep, featuring both fresh content and plenty of classics from the archives. Its built-in media player is an obvious inclusion and users will be pleased by the addition of a playlist creator and a means to share content with friends.

While Showbox is certainly not available from Google Play or Amazon (it must be sideloaded by the user) the eagle-eyed will have noticed the advert for Amazon in one of the images above. In fact, advertising for mainstream products and services appears regularly when viewing Showbox, often as pre-run videos when running the tablet version, for example.

In fact this morning when carrying out tests it appears that the South African government was dropping a few coins in the collection box, with adverts for tourists to come and enjoy a holiday in the country. Shortly after the British government was contributing too, with a 30 second video slot recruiting for the armed services.

Showbox is certainly a powerhouse when it comes to streaming video content and now that it’s entered the music field too, there are few (if any) applications that can compete with it. The music section is lacking the finesse of Spotify though, but the developers reiterate the service is only in beta so there could be more to come.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Ride Along 2 is the most downloaded movie.

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	(3)	Ride Along 2	5.8 / trailer
2	(1)	The Big Short (DVDscr)	8.1 / trailer
3	(2)	Spectre	7.9 / trailer
4	(4)	The Revenant (DVDscr)	?.? / trailer
5	(…)	Kung Fu Panda 3 (Telesync)	8.0 / trailer
6	(5)	The Martian	8.2 / trailer
7	(7)	Creed (DVDscr)	8.0 / trailer
8	(…)	Steve Jobs	7.4 / trailer
9	(6)	The Intern	7.4 / trailer
10	(…)	The Good Dinosaur	6.9 / trailer

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

The copyright industry has long repeated the claim to politicians that the copyright monopoly is necessary for any culture to be created at all, to the point where politicians actually believe this nonsense. Actually, their ‘lie’ is divided into two parts:

The first falsehood is that authors, makers, and inventors must be paid for anything to be created at all. This lie is actually rather obscene coming from an industry which has deliberately created structures that make sure 99.99% of musicians never see a single cent in royalties: 99% of good musicians are never signed by a label, and of those who are, 99% never see a cent in royalties. So it’s quite obscene arguing that culture must be paid for, when this very industry makes sure that less than one artist in ten thousand get any money for their art.

The second lie is that the only way for artists to make any money is to give the copyright industry an absolute private governmentally-sanctioned distribution monopoly, the copyright monopoly, that takes precedence over any kind of innovation, technology, and civil liberties. This is an equally obscene lie: all research shows that artists make more money than ever since the advent of file sharing, but the sales-per-copy is down the drain. The fact that the parasitic middlemen are hurting is the best news ever for artists, who get a much larger piece of the pie. Of course, the copyright industry – the parasitic middlemen in question – insist on pretending their interests are aligned with those of the artist, which they never were.

Therefore, in believing these two lies combined, politicians grant this private governmentally-sanctioned monopoly – the copyright monopoly – in the belief that such a harmful monopoly is necessary for culture to exist in society. (Just to illustrate what kind of blatant nonsense this is, all archeological digs have been rich in various expressions of culture. We create as a species because we can’t exist in a society and not express culture – it’s because of our fundamental wiring: not because of a harmful monopoly.)

So what could act as conclusive proof that these lies are, well, lies?

Creative Commons.

In the construct of Creative Commons, you have placed the power over this monopoly with the authors and makers themselves, rather with the parasitic middlemen. And the interesting observation is, that once you do, millions of creators renounce their already-awarded harmful monopolies for a number of reasons – because they make more money that way, because they prefer to create culture that way, or because it’s the moral thing to do.

Once you point out that the actual people who create are renouncing their already-awarded monopolies, and are doing so by the millions – actually, more than an estimated one billion works of art according to the Creative Commons organization – the entire web of lies falls apart.

The copyright monopoly isn’t necessary for culture to exist. It was always tailored to benefit the parasitic middlemen. And these middlemen have tried their damndest to prevent actual artists from seeing any of the money.

Now, you could argue that specific expressions of culture couldn’t exist. You’d be easily disproven – for example, most multimillion-dollar blockbusters make their investment back on opening weekend, far before any digital copy exists as a torrent. Besides, why would you prop up and lock in a specific form of culture with a harmful monopoly, when forms of culture have always evolved with humanity?

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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