February 1 2013, was a miserable day for five of the UK’s most prolific online movie pirates.

Following an investigation by the UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft, police raided Graeme Reid, 40, from Chesterfield, Scott Hemming, 25, and Reece Baker, 22, both from Birmingham, Sahil Rafiq, 24, of Wolverhampton and Ben Cooper, 33, of Willenhall.

The investigation into the activities of these men had been running for three years as FACT attempted to identify and track the individuals behind several interrelated movie release groups including RemixHD, 26K, UNiQUE, DTRG and HOPE/RESISTANCE.

The five men were arrested and by January 2015 all had pleaded guilty to charges of Conspiracy to Defraud.

The extent of the infringement claimed by FACT was huge. The anti-piracy group said that between March 1, 2010 and January 1, 2014, the groups had together released more than 9,000 movies onto the Internet resulting in around five million unauthorized views.

FACT claimed that around £52m of Hollywood revenues had been “put at risk” – an amount that was detailed in our report last weekend.

Following a so-called Newton hearing that began in Wolverhampton Crown Court on Monday, the men finally admitted causing the industry more than £5 million in losses, around £1 million each.

Yesterday afternoon in Wolverhampton Crown Court Judge Nicolas Webb carried out sentencing and it’s a dismal result for the men.

Sahil Rafiq, accused of uploading more than 880 movies and causing 1.5 million illegal downloads as founder of 26K, was jailed for 4 years and 6 months.

Reece Baker, a member of DTRG and the founder of HOPE/RESISTANCE, was jailed for 4 years and 2 months after being accused of causing more than 226,000 illegal downloads. Baker aggravated his circumstances by continuing to release movies online even while he was on bail.

Graeme Reid, the founder of ‘RemixHD’ and with connections to ‘UNiQUE’, was accused of causing 1.1 million illegal downloads and was jailed for 3 years and 6 months.

Ben Cooper, a member of HOPE and the founder of release groups ANALOG and TCM, was jailed for 3 years and 6 months after being blamed for more than 150,000 illegal downloads.

Scott Hemming, who is said to have released around 800 movies online which together were downloaded a minimum of 2.6 million times, received a 2 year suspended sentence.

Following their most aggressive private prosecution to date, the Federation Against Copyright Theft is celebrating success.

“Today’s sentencing is a great success for FACT as it marks the first time a release group has been criminally prosecuted. Rafiq, Baker, Reid, Cooper and Hemming were all aware that they were engaging in criminal activity. Their actions have now cost them their liberty,” says FACT Director General, Kieron Sharp.

“The result of this case sends out a serious message to anyone engaging in online piracy to think twice or face getting caught, prosecuted and sent to prison.

A source very close to the case informs TorrentFreak that the sentences would’ve been greater had the men not pleaded guilty early. However, there was still a penalty for those who did not immediately accept FACT’s version of events in the group’s private prosecution.

Immediately before yesterday’s hearing, TF was informed that those who did not dispute anything would receive a third knocked off their sentence. Those that did dispute FACT’s evidence would receive only a quarter.

However, while the sentences are no doubt extremely aggressive, there could be light at the end of the tunnel. TF is informed that two of the men already had criminal records but the others could eventually, if not quickly, be moved to a low security prison. Yesterday morning, at least one was hoping for decent conditions.

“We will all be in an open prison so will probably only do a few months inside then be allowed home for visits. We will then probably be placed on tag [outside prison but monitored] due to the fact three out of the five had no prior convictions at all,” TF was told.

The inside track to this case is intriguing and will be detailed in a future TF report.

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

Today marks the end of a crucial case that will define how U.S. Internet providers deal with online piracy in the future.

Following a two-week trial a Virginia federal jury reached a verdict earlier today, ruling that Cox is guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement.

The case was initiated by BMG Rights Management, which held the ISP responsible for tens of thousands of copyright infringements that were committed by its subscribers.

During the trial hearings BMG revealed that the tracking company Rightscorp downloaded more than 150,000 copies of their copyrighted works directly from Cox subscribers.

It also became apparent that Cox had received numerous copyright infringement warnings from Rightscorp which it willingly decided not to act on.

The case was restricted to 1,397 copyrighted works and a six-person jury awarded #25 million in damages. The award is lower than the statutory maximum, which would have been over $200 million.

A week before the trial started Judge O’Grady issued an order declaring that Cox was not entitled to DMCA safe-harbor protections, as the company failed to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

BMG also argued that the ISP willingly profited from pirating subscribers, but the jury found that there was not enough evidence to back this up.

The verdict is bound to cause grave concern among various other U.S. Internet providers. At the moment it’s rare for ISPs to disconnect pirating users and this case is likely to change that position.

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Breaking news, more information will follow.

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

Millions of people use BitTorrent networks every day to obtain and share all kinds of media, from the latest movies and TV shows to music and even research papers. The majority do so from the comfort of their own home but that’s not always the case.

People who spend a lot of time at work, whether that’s in a regular office, factory, warehouse or even shopping environment, often get access to the Internet. And, if rules don’t explicitly or technically prohibit it, some will use that access to share files online.

This kind of activity isn’t always welcomed by employers, with concerns ranging from the productivity of staff to the security of networks, both from technical and legal standpoints.

This morning IT security rating company BitSight Technologies brought these issues into focus with a new report titled “Peer to Peer Peril: How BitTorrent File Sharing Impacts Benchmarking and Vendor Risk.”

According to the report, out of more than 30,700 companies and organizations rated by BitSight for security performance, 23% demonstrated some online activity using the BitTorrent protocol.

“Many organizations explicitly ban this activity, yet there is evidence that in some industries over a quarter of companies are currently sharing files over the BitTorrent protocol. While some of these files are likely legitimate, many of them are labeled as movies, games and other copyrighted material,” the company explains.

To identify trends in each sector, BitSight has broken down industries into various categories including Media/Entertainment, Education, Government, Retail, Energy/Utilities etc. The rates of sharing are shown in the image below.

Unsurprisingly, educational establishments come out on top (or bottom, depending on perspective) when it comes to BitTorrent usage with around 58% of organizations demonstrating some level of participation. It’s worth noting that only one instance of sharing in the past six month is enough to appear in BitSight’s report.

That being said, BitSight reports that around 32% of government entities demonstrate some level of file-sharing with close to 28% on BitTorrent. The media and entertainment sector is also an eye-opener, with around 23% of companies showing BitTorrent activity. Whether that’s due to employees sharing content or spying on others while doing so is impossible to say.

The BitSight report goes into some detail when it speaks of the risks of file-sharing in the corporate space, not least the dangers of employees downloading copyrighted and potentially malware-infested content. The company carried out its own tests and concluded that “43% of applications and 39% of games were carrying malicious code.”

The big question, however, is BitSight’s motivation to produce this kind of report. Obviously threat analysis is its business but information accompanying the report provides a more immediate answer – BitSight has a new product to sell within its Security Ratings platform.

According to the company the module allows customers to “monitor and assess” BitTorrent activity on their own and third party vendor networks. In fact, the module goes a whole lot further than providing a basic outline of employee activity.

“An overview of observed file sharing activity including applications, books, games, movies, music, TV and other files is now available to all customers using the BitSight platform,” the company explains.

“Users can also subscribe to additional forensic information, allowing them to identify torrent names, event dates, peer IP information and other details.”

It seems likely that when employees know that they are being subjected to this level of scrutiny, many will seriously consider changing their behavior. That being said, BitSight still have to convince companies to install their software in the first instance.

The report (pdf), which also attempts to associate BitTorrent usage with botnet prevalence, might yet achieve that.

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

Last year German police carried out raids looking for the operators of Kinox.to, the country’s most used movie streaming portal.

The police actions were part of a large investigation into the local piracy scene which includes a variety of streaming portals and file-sharing services.

As one of the largest European piracy streaming sites and one of the 50 most visited websites in Germany, Kinox.to was the biggest fish. However, despite the massive police response the two main operators are still on the run today while the site remains online.

The authorities did apprehend a third Kinox.to operator, the now 29-year-old Arvit O (aka “Pedro”) who handled things from the technical side. The Kazakh born admin has been detained since last October and this week he was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his involvement in the site.

The trial against Pedro was originally scheduled to continue until the end of January but the prosecution and defense reached an agreement to end the matter early.

The former operator of kinox.to, who made a partial confession, was found guilty by the District Court of Leipzig for infringing the copyrights of 2,889 works. In addition, the court found that he “hacked” computers of two competitors in order to improve Kinox’s market share.

In addition to the prison sentence Pedro must pay 20,420 euros due to the profits he made. During the hearing the former operator informed the court that he was not interested in Kinox for the money, but for the technical challenge.

The public defenders who represented Pedro were very critical about the involvement of the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU), who assisted the authorities in their investigative work.

The attorney’s described GVU as a “Trojan Horse” in the justice system, claiming that they influenced the prosecution.

The anti-piracy group is not phased by the accusation. GVU chief Matthias Leonardy applauds the authorities for the success and says that his organization is committed to helping with similar efforts in the future.

“The successful completion of this criminal process shows once again that […] sound investigative work against copyright cybercriminals is amply rewarded,” Leonardy says.

“The investigating authorities have once again done excellent work here, and they are supported by the GVU and other rightsholders wherever possible,” he adds.

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

Last month the MPAA took credit for shutting down the main Popcorn Time fork, which operated from the PopcornTime.io domain name.

The Hollywood group had filed a lawsuit against several of the developers in Canada which caused other key developers to back out.

While the MPAA’s actions had a profound impact, it didn’t stop others from continuing with their own Popcorn Time spin-offs. The popular Popcorn-time.se fork was unharmed and most recently a new group of developers launched a Popcorn Time Community Edition (PTCE).

The people behind PTCE began their work with a fully operational fix for the .io fork which was circulated on Reddit. Later they also added their own fork and a dedicated website at Popcorntime.ml.

“Popcorn Time will probably never go away, despite the efforts made by organizations such as BREIN, the MPAA and others. Instead of fighting this great software they should embrace it,” the PTCE team told TF at the time.

The new fork was welcomed by many estranged Popcorn Time users and quickly gained a healthy userbase. However, two days ago the project’s official website and GitHub repository went dark.

At first it was unclear what had happened but an insider informs TF that several people involved with the PTCE project are “getting bugged” by the MPAA.

“The people behind the official CE sites have been contacted by MPAA for some time now,” says Luretrix2k, who’s a moderator at the Popcorn Time subreddit.

“They decided to take everything down and start all over again with a new strategy/game plan for the official site and GitHub repository to avoid this problem in the future,” he adds.

The PTCE team doesn’t want anyone to get in trouble with the law and are figuring out what steps they can take to avoid this. They hope to get the site back up again in the future and will continue to work on the application behind the scenes.

The MPAA pressure shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the lawsuit against the developers of the popular .io fork. Also, two PTCE developers had to quit the project last month after they were targeted by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN.

Even if the Community Edition doesn’t come back, others may jump in to take its place. Rinse and repeat.

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