Over the past several years hundreds of domain names have been blocked in the UK for facilitating copyright infringement, and this list is getting longer and longer.

The blocks are somewhat effective, at least in preventing subscribers from accessing the domains directly. However, many site operators and supporters launch alternative domains to bypass the restrictions.

This is also true for several sports streaming sites that were blocked by the High Court following complaints from the Football Association and Premier League Limited, including Firstrow, Rojadirecta, LiveTV and Drakulastream.

The football organizations recently submitted an extensive list of new domains and subdomains which were added to existing ISP filters, including 3pmstream.com, ifirstrowuk.eu and rojadirecta.es (full list below).

With the new blockades they hope to make it harder for UK citizens to stream unauthorized sports broadcasts. However, FirstRow’s operator previously told TorrentFreak that domain blocking is not going to be very effective as the streaming sources remain available.

“Our site uses third-party players, so blocking FirstRow will not stop the streams, as these will still be accessible online. They are saying that FirstRow is illegal, but our site is indexing streams that are available on the web, which is free information,” FirstRow’s owner told us.

“FirstRow will remain accessible for all other countries, and UK users can use proxies or the thousands of other websites like ours that remain open,” he added.

The site’s owner has a point. Interestingly, FirstRow’s most popular site in the UK appears to be Firstrows.eu. This site is not listed among the newly blocked URLs, so the game of Whack-A-Mole will is bound to continue.

The UK is not the only country where sports streaming sites are being targeted, the same is happening in Italy and Spain.

A few months ago a La Coruna court forbid Rojadirecta from linking to unauthorized streams of sports games. The streaming site, which is based in Spain, complied with the order and now blocks visitors from Spanish IP-addresses as well as various VPNs and proxies.

However, even with the site itself complying with orders from the court, success is not guaranteed. In recent weeks various Rojadirecta knockoffs have appeared online, providing unrestricted access to sports streams in Spain.

And so the game continues.

—

The list of newly blocked domains in the UK (including their original domain names) is as follows:

3pmstream.com
firstrowuk.eu
firstrowsports.eu
webfirstrow.eu
firstrowus.eu
firstrow1.eu
firstrowuk1.eu
firstrownow.eu
firstrowus1.eu
gofirstrow.eu
gofirstrowuk.eu
gofirstrowus.eu
ifirstrow.eu
ifirstrowuk.eu
sportsfeed365.eu
p2p4u.se
firstrowit.eu
firstrownow.se
gofirstrow.se
webmaster.firstrownow.eu
thefirstrow.se
ifirstrowus.eu
firstrowne.eu
firstrowau.eu
firstrowas.eu
firstrowfr.eu
firstrowpt.eu
firstrowir.eu
firstrowca.eu
firstrowes.eu
firstrowge.eu
firstrowgr.eu
ifirstrowpt.eu
ifirstrowit.eu
firstrow.is
webmaster.webfirstrow.eu
cssfiles.thefirstrow.eu
web.thefirstrow.eu
drakulastream.eu
realstreamunited.com
live.realstreamunited.com
rojadirectaes.me
rojadirecta.me
rojadirecta.eu
it.rojadirecta.eu
rojadirecta.org
it.rojadirecta.org
ita.rojadirecta.org
rojadirecta.com
rojadirecta.es
rojadirecta.cat

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

While the actions of BREIN in the Netherlands and PIPCU and FACT in the UK have made it clear that neither country are safe havens for pirates, other regions around Europe are more permissive.

Although there are exceptions, the further south and east one travels the less likely it is that either site operators or consumers sharing copyrighted content will fall foul of entertainment industry action. Nevertheless, problems can occur.

In 2014, popular torrent site, streaming portal and warez link site SWZ (SpeedWarezZ / SWZ Torrent) was raided by authorities in Hungary following action from a local content distributor and national tax authorities. The site had been in operation since 2011 offering a wide of content but it was movies that attracted the most attention.

Now, more than a year later, four men said to be the key individuals behind the site face an aggressive prosecution almost unheard of in the country. According to an announcement from the district prosecutor’s office in Cegléd, the men face numerous charges relating to the unlawful distribution of copyright works.

It’s alleged that between September 2011 to October 2014 at least 1,900 movies were made available without permission via SWZ. It has not been made clear precisely how the content was distributed but in addition to offering links from elsewhere, SWZ certainly operated its own tracker.

Aside from their interest in file-sharing, the accused are a disparate group. According to local media, one man is retired, another a student, while a third is currently unemployed. The fourth is the technical director of a German-Hungarian IT company.

While the men never met up in person they coordinated online, with the site’s social pages acting as a platform for promoting content and dealing with user issues.

As is common with most similar sites, users of SWZ raced in order to be the first to upload the most popular content. That material was then curated by the site and its operators in order to maximize traffic.

The prosecution claims that the site generated revenue from advertising while receiving payments/donations from users via PayPal and SMS, a popular mechanism for transferring cash in the region.

The upshot is that the men now face serious charges of distributing copyrighted content for which they held no licenses while profiting from the same. In addition to rightsholders claiming almost $1.2m in damages, the men also face up to eight years in jail, a harsh punishment compared to almost anywhere in Europe.

Whether this prosecution is an indication of things to come remains to be seen but it should perhaps be of interest to at least one of the world’s largest torrent sites which currently operates servers in Hungary.

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

In this episode we’re joined by Devon Read and Ryan Taylor, co-founders of peer-to-peer startup The Distributed Library Of Alexandria.

This week we discuss the blockbuster hack of Amazon’s Fire TV stick, the increasing power of pirate movie release groups, and doomy announcements from China’s 3DM cracking group about the future for cracked games.

We also take a deep dive into the Alexandria project, which sees its mission as providing an censorship-proof safe haven for indie creators and “truth speech” alike – although, as we discover, pirates may well be able to hitch a ride.

—

Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the big innovators and minds, one-on-one.

Host: Jamie King

Guests: Devon Read and Ryan Taylor.

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Eric Bouthiller
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

The Big Short 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	(2)	The Big Short (DVDscr)	8.1 / trailer
2	(3)	The Revenant (DVDscr)	?.? / trailer
3	(1)	The Martian	8.2 / trailer
4	(9)	The Intern	7.4 / trailer
5	(…)	Solace	6.4 / trailer
6	(8)	Burnt	6.7 / trailer
7	(4)	Spectre (DVDscr)	7.1 / trailer
8	(6)	Bridge of Spies (DVDscr)	7.9 / trailer
9	(…)	Sisters (Webrip)	6.5 / trailer
10	(…)	Goosebumps (WEB-DL)	6.5 / trailer

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

The parroted question-and-assertion from the copyright industry continues to be “authors must be paid” and “how will the authors get paid?”

This question-and-assertion isn’t just irrelevant, it’s also a sickening existential defense from an industry that makes sure that 99.99% of music authors never see a single cent in royalty. (A more proper question would be how a music author or composer can possibly earn a living with the copyright industry still in existence.)

Nevertheless, the question and assertion assume that the copyright monopoly exists with the purpose of making sure somebody gets paid. That’s not why it exists. More importantly, the question and assertion also assume that no culture, knowledge, or technology would get created without the copyright monopoly (or outside of the copyright industry).

The purpose of the copyright monopoly is clear: it’s worded quite explicitly in the United States Constitution, article 8. Its purpose is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts”. The purpose is not for anybody to get rich, or make a living, or paid at all. The purpose is and was always to benefit the public. To generate progress, with the implicit meaning of making that progress available to everyone (or it wouldn’t be progress in any meaningful sense of the word).

Now, it has been assumed – as asserted by the copyright industry – that the only way to achieve this effect, across all fields and disciplines, is to lock the authorship up in a time-limited* monopoly. Various government officials have accepted this narrative.

The copyright industry therefore has two customers: first, it sells the idea of its unique capability of producing culture and knowledge to the government, in exchange for a monopoly when it does so. Second, it sells monopolized copies of that culture and knowledge to people in exchange for money. It’s important to realize that the copyright industry has two different sets of customers, and the first set has every reason to revisit the dishonest deal and get a new supplier.

Linux and Wikipedia (as well as other, less known achievements) show unambiguously that the idea of requiring any kind of payment for great tools, culture, or knowledge to come into being is an utter falsehood. It may be true in some cases. But the cases where it hasn’t been true have all shown that the basic premise, that the copyright monopoly is any kind of necessary, is the purest oxen fecalia.

And these projects, free in all aspects as they are, now underpin the Android operating system which powers three billion smartphones and well over half of the world’s servers in various incarnations of the GNU/Linux operating system. They support every lower- and higher-level education on the planet.

According to the copyright industry, these projects do not and cannot exist, as the authors weren’t paid.

According to reality, the copyright industry is wrong.

Let’s be clear here: the most common operating kernel for servers and mobile smartphones, which underpin the entire IT industry today, was written completely outside the copyright monopoly context with no need for anyone to get paid. The richest source of knowledge available, which underpin all college educations even if unofficially, was written completely outside the copyright monopoly context with no need for anyone to get paid.

This doesn’t mean that nobody should be allowed to sell anything. Quite to the contrary! But it can be conclusively deduced that government officials have been completely in the wrong when accepting the copyright industry’s assertion that nothing will ever get produced without a strong copyright monopoly. It can also be conclusively deduced that the business models that are based on free tools, culture, and knowledge are worth enormously much more to the economy than a manufacturing industry still trying to sell round pieces of silly data-carrying plastic when their competition ship the medialess information across the world in seconds.

Government officials should just stop buying the idea from the copyright industry that a monopoly is required for progress to take place. They should get a new deal from another supplier, and as is the case when this happens, the supplier being ditched – the copyright industry – has no say whatsoever about the new supplier or the new deal. More specifically, it’s more beneficial to a government to not hand out any kind of copyright monopoly at all, as more culture and knowledge – more progress – is created without it.

The copyright monopoly has demonstrated that it’s not just unnecessary, but downright harmful to progress, to the economy, and to civil liberties. The copyright industry should not be allowed to get away with its further Norwegian Blue parroting of “how should the authors get paid”. The question is not relevant.

Any honest business model is built without a legal monopoly in any case. Make money, good for you. But you don’t get to do so with a monopoly that cuts down on my rights, especially not with blatant lying.

*eternal

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.

Book Falkvinge as speaker?

Follow @Falkvinge

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