There are dozens of celebrity cats on the Internet, but Grumpy Cat tops them all.

The cat’s owners have made millions thanks to their pet’s unique facial expression. Part of this revenue comes from successful merchandise lines, including the Grumpy Cat “Grumppuccino” iced coffee beverage.

The coffee is sold by the California company Grenade Beverage, who also operate the domain name grumpycat.com. The company licensed the copyright and trademarks to sell the iced coffee, but are otherwise not affiliated with the cat and its owners.

Up until recently the partnership didn’t cause any problems, but that changed when Grenade announced a new line of Grumpy Cat merchandise. In addition to the iced coffee, they now sell Grumpy coffee beans as well.

This expansion violated the license agreement, according to Grumpy Cat’s owners, who just filed a lawsuit at a California federal court to set the record straight.

“Ironically, while the world-famous feline Grumpy Cat and her valuable brand are most often invoked in a tongue-and-cheek fashion, Defendants’ despicable misconduct here has actually given Grumpy Cat and her owners something to be grumpy about,” the complaint starts.

The cat’s owners explain that they hold the copyrights and trademarks associated with their pet, and argue that the new line of roasted coffee ground products requires separate approval under the license agreement.

Grumpy Cat’s copyrights

“In late 2015, Plaintiff learned of Defendants’ intent to create and exploit a line of ‘Grumpy Cat’ branded roasted coffee ground products, which would be separate and apart from the ‘Grumpy Cat Grumppuccino’ product line contemplated by the License Agreement,” the complaint reads.

Grumpy’s owners informed Grenada on several occasions that they did not agree to the new product line, but the beverage maker went ahead and launched the product anyway.

“Defendants were repeatedly told by Plaintiff (both in writing and verbally) that the Licensed Properties could not be used in connection with a roasted coffee ground product,” they write.

Pirate coffee?

The roasted beans are up for sale at grumpycat.com and are being widely advertised to tens of thousands of followers on various social media accounts. The cat’s owners are asking the court to stop these sales and hold Grenada responsible for various copyright and trademark infringements.

The potential statutory damages run into the hundreds of thousands and in addition Grumpy Cat’s owners also want to take over the grumpycat.com domain name, claiming that it was registered in bad faith. Previous requests to sign over the domain name all failed.

Whether Grumpy Cat will win this case depends on the exact language of the license agreement and how this will be interpreted by the court. However, Grenade Beverage should be warned, as cats have a tendency to win the Internet.

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

Following a series of High Court orders obtained since 2012, six of the UK’s major ISPs are required to block access to dozens of the world’s most popular ‘pirate’ sites.

It started off simply enough, with rightsholders targeting the main domains used by sites such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent and other major players.

Soon video streaming portals and MP3 download sites were also added to the equation and the list of blocked domains began to expand at a rapid rate. However,
what happened next is perhaps best illustrated by the now popular image shown below.

In an effort to circumvent blocks, dozens of proxies, mirrors and clones of all the popular sites began to appear. While not having the credibility of the sites’ main domains, for most casual pirates these provided a simple way to keep using The Pirate Bay and many other sites.

As a result, entertainment companies in the UK are now engaged in the largest whac-a-mole game ever seen online. Having blocked pretty much every site’s main domain, they’re now attempting to block every ‘circumvention’ site. The task is not only enormous but never ending.

In October alone dozens of new domains were added to the UK’s rapidly expanding blocklist. In November, Hollywood and the labels were back again, taking down another 170 domains. And with December only half done, yet another wave has just hit the UK’s shores.

Implemented by BT, Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, O2 and EE, more than 85 domains are in the latest batch. Detailed in full below, it reads like Groundhog Day for the entertainment industries.

The vast majority represent yet more attempts to stop people accessing The Pirate Bay and one has to wonder who is winning this war and whether it will ever end. No soon as copyright holders add dozens of Pirate Bay-connected domains to its blocklists, dozens more appear.

Making matters worse is that they are both easy and cheap to buy, making domains a temporary and ‘throwaway’ item. Furthermore, since these days all major ‘pirate’ players eventually become demoted in Google’s search results, fresh and relatively unknown proxies make it to the top with greater ease than ever before.

The same is true for sites facilitating access to other large torrent sites. The latest batch directly and indirectly targets KickassTorrents, ExtraTorrent, BitSnoop, LimeTorrents, Torrents.net, Monova, Torlock, TorrentCrazy, TorrentFunk, TorrentHound, TorrentReactor, to name a few.

Directly or via their clones, imitators, proxies or mirrors, this month various key MP3 sites are also in the firing line. They include emp3world, mp3clan, mp3raid, mp3skull, stafaband and newalbumreleases. All of these sites have been targeted several times before and each time new ways of accessing them have appeared.

But while on a top-line level blocking seems almost futile, it will be having an effect. The constant hunt for new domains has the potential to frustrate users of ‘pirate’ sites and as highlighted before, blocking efforts are almost certainly diluting the brand value of major sites.

The big question that remains unanswered, however, is if any of this is actually translating into additional sales. If it is, thus far entertainment industry companies have kept well away from making the connection. One might exist, of course, but asking for more aggressive options from government and the courts is almost certainly the preferred strategy.

The latest batch of blocked domains

1337x.unblocked.pe
accessbay.link
arrr.xyz
bay-proxy.com
beemp3.unblocked.pe
bitsnoop.unblocked.pe
btdigg.unblocked.pe
btstor.cc
clubpiratebay.com
emp3world.biz
emp3world.unblocked.pe 14th Dec 2015
emtorrent.com
ettorrent.com
extratorrent.works
fastpiratebay.co.uk
kickass.cr
limetor.co
limetorrenturlhd.com
magnetsearch.net
magnetsearch.org
mirrorpirate.com
monova.unblocked.pe
mp3clan.club
mp3raid.unblocked.pe
mp3skull.la
mp3skull.unblocked.pe
my-pirate-bay.com
mymirrorbay.com
newalbumreleases.unblocked.pe
oldbayproxy.eu
pbproxy.com
pirate-bay-proxy.com
pirate-proxy.org
piratebay.host
piratebay.to
piratebaygurus.com
piratebayhunter.com
piratebaymirror.net
piratebays.co
piratebays.co.uk
piratehole.com
pirateproxies.net
pirateproxy.pl
pirateproxy.tf
pirateproxy.wiki
pirateproxybay.com
pirateproxyhk.qc.to
piratewiki.info
proxypirate.eu
proxypirate.pw
seedpeer.unblocked.pe
simplepiratebay.com
smartpiratebay.com
the-pirate-bay-proxy.com
the-pirate-bay.net
the-proxy-bay.com
thebay.tv
thefastbay.com
thepiratebay.casa
thepiratebay.cool
thepiratebay.cd
thepiratebay.eu.com
thepiratebay.expert
thepiratebay.link
thepiratebay.mk
thepiratebay.uk.net
thepirateproxy.co
thepirateweb.com
theproxypirate.pw
torlock.unblocked.pe
torrentbit.ee
torrentbit.unblocked.pe
torrentbush.com
torrentcrazy.unblocked.pe
torrentfunk.unblocked.pe
torrenthound.ee
torrenthounds.com
torrenthound.unblocked.pe
torrentreactor.unblocked.pe
torrentz.ee
tpb.dashitz.com
tpb.proxyduck.org
tpbay.co
tpbproxy.co
unblockbay.com
urbanproxy.eu
urbantorrent.com

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

This week we have five newcomers in our chart.

Pan 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	(…)	Pan	6.0 / trailer
2	(…)	The Martian (Subbed HDRip)	8.2 / trailer
3	(…)	The Intern (Webrip)	7.4 / trailer
4	(1)	Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials	6.8 / trailer
5	(2)	Goosebumps (Webrip)	6.8 / trailer
6	(3)	Hate Story 3 (DVDscr)	5.0 / trailer
7	(…)	Crimson Peak (Web-DL)	6.9 / trailer
8	(…)	The Ridiculous 6 (Webrip)	5.2 / trailer
9	(5)	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	7.5 / trailer
10	(9)	Inside Out	8.4 / trailer

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

When BitTorrent was first launched in 2002 it was a breakthrough technology.

At the time it was virtually impossible to share large files with millions of people over the Internet, something BitTorrent can do very effectively.

Today, the standard BitTorrent clients have lost most of their shine. While it’s still one of the best ways to transfer data from A to B, they became somewhat old-fashioned with the rise of video streaming sites and services.

But what if there was a technology that could combine the two? Smooth and instant streaming in the browser powered by BitTorrent’s core technology. That’s in short what WebTorrent does.

WebTorrent is a project launched by Feross Aboukhadijeh, a Stanford University graduate who has already booked quite a few successes in his career. After graduating he founded PeerCDN, a P2P-assisted content delivery network, which was sold to Yahoo at the end of 2013.

Feross then focused on WebTorrent, convinced that it could revolutionize how the web works today.

“I felt that the idea of ‘people-powered websites’ – websites that are hosted by the visitors who use them – was too revolutionary to keep locked up as proprietary software, and I wanted to do more to push the idea forward,” he tells TF.

“Imagine a video site like YouTube, where visitors help to host the site’s content. The more people that use a WebTorrent-powered website, the faster and more resilient it becomes.”

Simply put, WebTorrent is a BitTorrent client for the web. Instead of using standalone applications it allows people to share files directly from their browser, without having to configure or install anything.

WebTorrent

This opens up BitTorrent technology to virtually any website that deals with a lot of data, and expands the userbase by hundreds of millions of people who already have compatible browsers such as Chrome or Firefox installed.

“WebTorrent is the first torrent client built for the web. It’s written completely in JavaScript – the language of the web – and uses WebRTC for true peer-to-peer transport. No browser plugin, extension, or installation is required,” Feross tells TF.

Over the past two years WebTorrent has matured into a project that’s slowly starting to win over several major tech companies.

Netflix, for example, contacted Feross to discuss his technology which they may use to stream their videos. A few months ago Netflix specifically mentioned WebTorrent in a job application, which shows that the video giant is serious about P2P-assisted delivery.

Feross believes that companies such as Netflix could benefit greatly from WebTorrent. Currently, streaming performance goes down during peak hours but with WebTorrent this shouldn’t be a problem.

“If Netflix uses WebTorrent, customers would see higher video quality during peak hours. WebTorrent would allow customers with the same ISP to share video pieces with each other without leaving the ISP’s network,” Feross says.

“This ensures the best quality, even during peak Netflix usage hours when the network link between the ISP and Netflix is fully saturated,” he adds.

Netflix aside, there are already various noteworthy implementations of WebTorrent. The project’s homepage, for example, shows how easily it can stream video and βTorrent offers a fully functioning torrent client UI.

Other examples include File.pizza, which uses WebTorrent to share files in the browser. The same technology is used for server-less websites by PeerCloud and Webtorrentapp, while GitTorrent uses it to decentralize source control.

In addition to the examples above, the Internet Archive is also looking into the technology for its video distribution, and another major tech company is considering adding WebTorrent support to their web browser.

It’s not all roses though and there are still several challenges to overcome. Not all browsers support WebRTC yet, most notably, Internet Explorer. In addition, WebTorrent can’t talk to traditional torrent clients which use UDP and TCP instead of WebRTC.

BitTorrent – WebTorrent

There are several hybrid clients such as Playback, but ideally WebTorrent should be more tightly integrated into the standard BitTorrent protocol, which is something Feross is currently working on.

It’s clear that WebTorrent has a lot of potential and it will be interesting to see how it develops over the years to come. If it’s up to Feross, it will play a major role in the future of the web.

“I like to think of WebTorrent as core Internet infrastructure. It’s an efficient way to transfer files between users on a website, and I expect we’ll continue to see many more creative uses for the protocol,” he says.

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

On February 1 2013, the UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft revealed they had joined police officers from the Economic Crime Unit to carry out raids at several addresses in central England.

As Hollywood’s enforcement arm in the UK, FACT were searching for five individuals believed to be behind several prolific and interrelated movie release groups. After a three year investigation, they finally had their men.

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, were all arrested and questioned at length.

By January 2015 all had broadly pleaded guilty to charges of Conspiracy to Defraud. However, the extent of the infringement claimed by FACT in their private criminal prosecution was far in excess of that accepted by the accused.

As a result a so-called ‘Newton hearing’ will take place in a West Midlands court tomorrow, during which both sides will present their evidence to a judge who will try to work out which side is more credible. Information obtained by TorrentFreak reveals that the stakes could hardly be higher.

The numbers behind the prosecution

In order to come to a figure on losses, FACT appear to be relying on data presented publicly by ExtraTorrent, one of the world’s leading torrent sites. According to FACT the defendants were jointly responsible for around 4.2 million illegal downloads on ExtraTorrent alone.

The anti-piracy group will then take the average price of attending a cinema in the UK or buying a DVD or Blu-ray disc. Arriving at a figure convenient for all options, FACT will presume that the defendants’ actions “put at risk” at least £52,000,000 in studio revenues on ExtraTorrent alone.

However, taking into consideration that not every download is a lost sale, FACT is expected to disregard infringement carried out on all other torrent sites and settle on an overall “actual loss” of £4,200,000. Let’s see how this affects each defendant.

Graeme Reid

FACT will allege that Reid was the founder and leader of ‘RemixHD’, a release group that specialized in DVD and Blu-ray rips. The anti-piracy group will also state that Reid had connections with another famous group known as ‘UNiQUE’.

FACT will accuse Reid of causing more than 1.1 million illegal downloads, although the anti-piracy group insists this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Value of property “put at risk” – £11m
Actual loss claimed – £1.1m

Reece Baker

FACT will allege that Baker used several online identities and was initially a member of a release group known as DTRG. Baker left DTRG to found a new group called HOPE which was later named to RESISTANCE. FACT claim that Baker also operated DEYA and was involved in sourcing, encoding and uploading movies.

It is understood that Baker will be accused of causing more than 226,000 illegal downloads on ExtraTorrent but was also involved in distributing other content alleged to be worth £15m.

Value of property “put at risk” – £17m
Actual loss claimed – £1.7m

Sahil Rafiq

According to FACT, Rafiq was also a member of DTRG who went on to become the brains behind release group 26K. He stands accused of collaborating with the other defendants in sourcing, encoding and uploading movies to torrent sites.

Our information suggests that Rafiq is being accused of infringement to the tune of 1.5 million illegal downloads.

Value of property “put at risk” – £15m
Actual loss claimed – £1.5m

Ben Cooper

It is believed that FACT will allege that Cooper founded two release groups known as ANALOG and TCM. It’s also claimed that he participated in HOPE alongside Reece Baker.

FACT will allege that Cooper is to blame for more than 150,500 illegal downloads.

Value of property “put at risk” – £1.5m
Actual loss claimed – £150,000

Scott Hemming

TorrentFreak has been unable to ascertain which groups Hemming belonged to. However, he is being accused of torrenting around 800 movies which together were downloaded a minimum of 2.6 million times.

Value of property “put at risk” – £26m
Actual loss claimed – £2.6m

The implications

As the figures above suggest, the stakes are extremely high for these five men. To find out just how high we have to turn to the sentencing guidelines for Conspiracy to Defraud which detail the sentences that can be applied given the amount defrauded.

– Less than £17,500 – up to 21 months imprisonment
– £17,500 to £100,000 – 2-3 years imprisonment
– £100,000 to £250,000 – 3-4 years imprisonment
– £250,000 to £1 million – 5-9 years imprisonment
– £1 million or more – 10 years + imprisonment

If the court accepts FACT’s version of events, all but one could be looking at a sentence of more than 10 years. To put that into perspective, firearm offenses, poisoning and cruelty to children carry the same maximum punishment.

That being said, the defendants are believed to have entered early guilty pleas which normally have the potential to reduce their sentences. However, TorrentFreak understands that since some defendants have taken their case to the Newton hearing (where evidence is disputed), it may mean that ‘credits’ for an early guilty plea may not be fully applied.

To view the defendants’ predicament from another angle, what they did online could easily be categorized as copyright infringement. However, punishment for online copyright infringement maxes out at just two years in the UK, which is why FACT rejected infringement charges in favor of Conspiracy to Defraud.

Only making matters worse is that FACT is expected to admit that none of the defendants made a penny from their actions.

It is not yet clear when the court will be in a position to carry out sentencing but the early indications suggest that after one of the most aggressive private prosecutions FACT has ever carried out, there’s a real possibility of the toughest punishments Internet pirates have ever seen.

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