In the days before Christmas, pirates around the globe received their gifts early when DVD screener copies of some of the hottest movies began leaking to the Internet.

One of those was the Quentin Tarantino movie The Hateful Eight, which appeared online several days before its theatrical debut. There can be little doubt that Tarantino and his associates went into meltdown behind the scenes but its taken until now for a key member of the team to speak publicly on the topic.

In a guest piece published in THR, Richard Gladstein, president and founder of FilmColony and producer of The Hateful Eight, addresses the issue of online piracy.

Noting that his movie has now been illegally downloaded more than 1.3 million times since Christmas Day, Gladstein smoothly ignores CM8, the group that placed his content online. Instead the producer finds a much broader scapegoat – Google.

“Google and YouTube have the ability to create a vaccine that could eradicate the disease of content theft. But to the millions of us who watch as our works are stolen over and over and over and over again, millions and millions of times, Google is at best offering us an aspirin, and at worst, ignoring the disease,” Gladstein writes.

For someone on the sharp end of one of the most controversial leaks of recent years, Gladstein speaks calmly. However, his criticism of Google is not new among filmmakers yet still manages to feel misplaced.

Gladstein paints a picture of a giant corporation determined (if only through neglect) to ignore the plight of creators everywhere, while throwing up roadblocks to deter them from protecting their work from piracy. How? By throwing up a ‘fair use’ smokescreen.

“‘Fair Use’ is an important exemption and distinction to copyright law. It permits non-copyright owners to engage in analysis, criticism, and parody of copyrighted material,” the producer concedes.

“However, the ‘Fair Use’ provision and debate has also proven to be an extremely useful tool for those looking to distract from or ignore the real copyright infringement issue: piracy.”

Gladstein says the distraction created by Google centers around the recent announcement that it will offer legal protection to four videos which all utilize copyrighted works but in classic fair use scenarios.

If you’re struggling to see the link between supporting fair use and ignoring piracy you’re probably not alone, but Gladstein feels he’s onto something.

“There is no way that the uploading of entire programs and movies to YouTube and other video hosting sites falls under ‘Fair Use.’ What Google and other search engines are doing when they direct a user to those files is aiding and abetting criminal activity,” he explains.

“[Google’s] incessant attempts to argue that there is a ‘Fair Use’ problem is meant to deliberately obscure the real and massive problem of tens of millions of illegal downloads of entire songs, albums, movies, and TV shows.”

If that is indeed Google’s intention, it could be argued the company is failing miserably. The issue of online piracy is persistently and widely documented and is rarely out of the headlines. However, Gladstein’s criticism of the search giant arrives at an important juncture in the piracy debate.

On the last day of 2015, the U.S. Government launched a public consultation to evaluate the effectiveness of the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions. Among other things, the consultation will address the key points raised by Gladstein in his attack on Google.

On one side, Gladstein and other like-minded individuals will argue that the takedown provisions of the DMCA are cumbersome and outdated, and that companies like Google hide behind the law in order to take as little responsibility for piracy as possible.

On the other, service providers and advocacy groups will raise concerns over DMCA notice abuses that can stifle free speech and restrain fair use.

In the meantime, however, Gladstein simply calls on Google to act with respect.

“All I ask of Google is that they show respect for all creatives and copyright owners and not infringe on the gift of what we already own – the legal right to share our work with the public in the way we choose, at the time we choose, and allow all crews and financiers to receive the financial benefits they rightfully deserve,” Gladstein.

Since the day of its leak, Google has been removing thousands of links to the movie The Hateful Eight from its search results. Some might argue, what more can it do? Hollywood has that answer – stay tuned.

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

The Pirate Bay has gone through a lot of domain changes over the past year.

When the operators found out that Swedish authorities might confiscate their .se domain as the result of a legal battle, the torrent site added six new alternatives last Spring.

In the months that followed this “hydra” was carefully destroyed as registrars and registries suspended the domain names in question. This most likely happened in response to copyright holder complaints.

Ironically, this meant that TPB was back to square one relying on the older .se and .org domains. However, starting this week the torrent site has added a new domain option.

The notorious torrent site is now also accessible from the Montserratian .MS TLD. Both the .SE and .ORG domains pointed to the new domain earlier, but this redirect has been turned off at the time of writing.

With the latest addition TPB now has three generic TLDs, as well as the .onion version which is exclusively available through the Tor network. Pirate Bay’s official forum has also added ThePirateBay.ms to the list of official domains.

Pirate Bay’s active domains

The TPB team registered the .MS extension several years ago but it hasn’t been used as a primary domain until now. Strangely enough the domain name is linked to the same registrar who previously suspended the other domains.

While TPB remains widely accessible some related issues remain. TPB’s Pirate Browser domains piratebrowser.com, piratebrowser.net and piratebrowser.org remain suspended due to an ICANN verification issue, for example.

There’s currently no known alternative domain for The Pirate Browser but the application can still be downloaded by visiting the site’s direct IP-address. Adding a new domain would be relatively easy but it appears that the TPB-crew has other priorities at the moment.

Time will tell how long the new .MS domain lasts. It’s expected that TPB’s operators will register additional domain names in the future to make sure that the site doesn’t run out of options.

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

After being founded in 2006, authorities in Sweden branded private torrent site SwePiracy as one of the most important locations for the illegal distribution of local and international films.

Following a torrent site crackdown in the wake of the “guilty” verdict in the Pirate Bay trial during April 2009, SwePiracy disappeared for a few weeks, but reappeared less than a month later.

Anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån (now Rights Alliance) said that in response to warnings for the site to close down, the operators of the tracker had taken measures to protect themselves instead.

Several years later during February 2012, authorities ran out of patience, with police in Sweden and the Netherlands taking coordinated action to shut down the site.

While Swedish police targeted the operators of the site, their Dutch counterparts took down SwePiracy’s servers in their jurisdiction. However, as is so often the case, overall downtime was relatively brief and SwePiracy laer reappeared via a new host in Canada.

Today, almost three years later, the alleged operator of the site will appear in court in Sweden. The now 24-year-old man is the alleged founder of the site and the person responsible for its resurrection after the raid.

According to District Prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson the man faces charges of violating copyright law due to unlawfully making available copyrighted movies online or assisting users to do the same. Rasmusson says that a lengthy custodial sentence is possible.

“Under the criminal scale he risks punishment ranging from fines to several years in prison,” Rasmusson says.

In addition to charges that he ran a site servicing tens of thousands of members, the prosecution claim that the man also collected around $100,000 in donations to keep the site running. However, it appears that the main motivation was not to make money, but to have fun.

“In this case, it is my assumption before the trial that the aim [for the accused] was to test the [torrent] technology and to share and make available video because it was entertaining and an interest he had,” Rasmusson notes.

But despite the absence of a financial motive, Swedish authorities have pursued this case for more than three years and the site itself for much longer, which suggests they don’t intend to go lightly on the 24-year-old.

At the time of the raid, Antipiratbyrån (Rights Alliance) said it also intended to seek damages from the site “according to The Pirate Bay model.” The case now centers around a sample 73 movies with the man being sued for more than $2.9m by local companies and international giants including Disney.

The trial is expected to run until Friday.

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

For more than two decades online piracy has been a hot topic in the music industry.

The problem has motivated people to sue downloaders or target them with DMCA takedown requests, which are sometimes bundled with settlement demands.

Muzit is a new startup which also tracks millions of BitTorrent pirates. However, instead of punishing downloaders they take a more gentle approach. Muzit uses DMCA notices as a means to connect artists and fans.

Muzit’s TRACE platform keeps track of where illegal downloads occur across the world and the company shares these insights with artists. They can then choose to alert the alleged pirates through DMCA notices and include a marketing message in these emails.

“Muzit was created for copyright owners who want to reach out and build a positive relationship with their fans. As long as it’s friendly, artists can send any type of message they want,” Muzit CEO Tommy Funderburk tells TF.

Funderburk is a music industry veteran with a keen interest in file-sharing. He used the same BitTorrent tracking technology in a previous startup called PayArtists where a similar system was used to demand settlement payments from alleged file-sharers.

This punishment approach has now been swapped for a system that embraces P2P distribution, hoping to connect artists and fans. As part of this positive attitude the company also dropped the use of the term “pirate.”

“At Muzit we have eliminated the word ‘pirate’ from our vocabulary. We choose to regard individuals who use P2P as fans and potential customers.‘Fans not Foes’ as we like to say,” Funderburk says.

Muzit’s artist dashboard

Muzit is currently working with several copyright holders including The Mavericks and the estates of James Brown and Isaac Hayes. Typical “offers” they send to downloaders include exclusive music downloads, merchandise and unique artist memorabilia.

“Recently The Mavericks used Muzit TRACE to encourage people to sign up for their fan club by offering a free giveaway of an autographed guitar. In this campaign, they were able to reach out to around 200,000 new fans,” Funderburk tells TF.

The Mavericks are happy with the results of their campaigns so far and see them as an ideal tool to reach an audience which they haven’t been able to connect with in the past.

“We were blown away. We had no idea we had this whole other world of fans sharing our music on P2P. It works and it sure beats the hell out of an email sign up sheet at the door,” Raul Malo, leader of The Mavericks, says.

Thus far Muzit’s database includes 8.6 million file-sharers but they will continue to expand. The company also makes it clear that artists can only connect to the people who have shared their work.

The company certainly takes an interesting approach, but it’s also an odd way to use the DMCA notification system. DMCA notices are generally not intended to include all sorts of additional messages. While some downloaders may appreciate hearing from artists, others may see it as a form of spam.

Still, that beats the settlement demands companies such as Rightscorp send out.

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

Piracy can never be stopped. Piracy will always be around. Where there’s a will to break copy protection, there’s a way. These are all comments regularly heard in piracy circles and to date, they’ve largely been proven accurate.

But while trying to protect movies and music using technological measures is by now almost a lost cause, the same cannot be said about video games. While copying a title was a trivial process several years ago, in many cases more and more roadblocks are now being put in pirates’ way.

In the past most games would be playable for free before their official debut but increasingly pirates are being made to wait for big titles to have their protection defeated, or ‘cracked’ as it’s more commonly known. In fact, aside from many dozens of dedicated piracy forums, there’s even an entire sub-Reddit community dedicated to providing the status of cracks.

One of the hottest topics involves the Avalanche Studios/Square Enix title Just Cause 3. Released on December 1, 2015 and despite massive demand, the game has still not been cracked. The problem appears to lie with the robustness of the technology protecting the game.

Just Cause 3 uses the latest iteration of Denuvo, an anti-tamper technology developed by Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH. While its secrets are best known to its creators, Denuvo is a secondary encryption system which protects existing and underlying DRM products.

In 2014 the product made the headlines after successfully protecting Dragon Age: Inquisition for almost a month, a very respectable time in cracking circles.

In the end it was Chinese cracking group 3DM that brought down that instance of Denuvo but the Germany-based company continued to tweak and achieved increasing protection periods on recent games in the FIFA series. FIFA 16 is currently Denuvo protected and that game still hasn’t been cracked, despite being released in September.

But Just Cause 3 is the current hot potato and despite having released an endless supply of cracks for other titles (and having had success against Denuvo in the past), the cracks (excuse the pun) are beginning to show at 3DM.

In a posting on her blog, 3DM forum founder ‘Bird Sister’ (also known as Phoenix) has revealed the frustrations being experienced with Just Cause 3.

“Recently, many people have asked about cracks for ‘Just Cause 3′, so here is a centralized answer to this question. The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up, but last Wednesday I encouraged him to continue,” Bird Sister explains.

While games pirates everywhere will be willing Jun on to complete what 3DM ultimately believe will be an achievable task, Bird Sister isn’t optimistic about the future. In fact, she paints somewhat of a doomsday scenario.

“I still believe that this game can be compromised. But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,” she adds.

While Denuvo is no doubt proving a difficult nut to crack, two years is an awful long time in technology and things are always prone to change. Furthermore, Denuvo is only used on a limited number of gaming titles, reportedly due to its relative expense.

But what is difficult to deny here is the window of opportunity provided by the Denuvo system. Hardcore gamers are notoriously impatient which almost certainly means that one, two or three months of waiting for a crack is coming up for a quarter of a year late to the game. Another three months after that and many gamers will be looking forward to FIFA 17 and Just Cause 4, leaving pirates in their wake.

Nevertheless, the seemingly uncrackable always seem to fall, eventually. During the past few days it was revealed that the PS4 has been compromised to run Linux. While not to the level of playing full-blown pirate games yet, that might lie around the corner. Exactly when, no one seems to know, but most gamers won’t have the patience to wait.

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