In July 2013 a new anti-censorship service arrived on the scene. Targeted at users who found VPNs too expensive and Tor too slow, Immunicity provided free access to a wide range of blocked websites.

A year later and with support from Hollywood, City of London Police arrested Immunicity’s then 20-year-old operator. He’s still on police bail facing an uncertain future.

For many months the Immunicity website remained online but with a very much changed appearance. Gone was the advice on how to unblock sites such as The Pirate Bay to be replaced by a City of London Police banner explaining that the site was under criminal investigation.

Police previously admitted that they’d been logging traffic to that site (and many other seized sites for that matter) but recent developments indicate that they could’ve had access to more than straightforward visits to the Immunicity website. Here’s how.

Central to the Immunicity system was providing its users with access to a Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) file. Browsers are easily configured to use PAC files and in just a couple of minutes Immunicity users were able to download a custom PAC and begin opening blocked sites via the Immunicity.org domain.

However, police took effective control of that domain when they arrested its owner last year and while former users might have been disappointed that the service no longer worked as advertised, thousands left their browsers configured to continue using it. How do we know that? Well, the UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit no longer has control of the domain.

At the end of August activists from Brass Horn Communications, a non-profit entity which operates Tor exits and other anti-censorship systems such as Packetflagon, managed to obtain the Immunicity domain. Until three days ago it displayed a modified version of the famous police seizure notice.

Speaking with TorrentFreak the operator of Brass Horn Communications says that since taking over the Immunicity domain it has become apparent that tens of thousands of former Immunicity users failed to remove the service’s PAC file from their browsers. This means that even after the police took control of Immunicity.org they continued to direct their traffic to the seized domain.

“More than a year [after the police raid] there were over 33k unique addresses still surrendering control of their operating systems / browsers (plus Steam, OS updates, OCSP / CRL requests etc) over to the Immunicity Proxy Auto-Config file,” he reveals.

“The Police (or another malicious actor had they acquired the domain) could have done a lot of damage.”

We asked Brass Horn’s spokesperson about the best and worst case scenarios for the users whose browsers continued to access the Immunicity PAC file. The best case is that nothing happened, the worst is more complicated.

“We know that the Police were monitoring the access logs of the seized domains so in theory they could simply have monitored everyone who requested the PAC file and recorded that,” he explains.

“But they could have also published a PAC file that sent *all* traffic through a proxy under their control and gathered metadata. They would have been able to alter HTTP content in flight and monitor which IPs were going to which websites, even if they were over SSL. Granted they couldn’t see which URL was being visited but that’s besides the point.”

Brass Horn’s operator says people should be aware that while routing their traffic through third parties has the ability to decrease censorship efforts, there are always security considerations to keep in mind.

“People need to be aware of the risks of PAC proxies, VPNs etc (e.g. all their traffic is at the whim of the VPN / Proxy operator). With that said, Brass Horn Communications won’t surrender any domains and will be publishing DNSSEC records, TLSA DNS records and long lived HSTS headers to hopefully break any seizures from having an effect.”

For now, however, Immunicity is in safe hands. Nevertheless, its new operator is advising former users to immediately delve into their browser settings to disable access to the old PAC file.

Full instructions on how to create and install a new PAC file are provided at Immunicity.org, which is now a fully operational PacketFlagon site-unblocking shard.

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

Following a series of High Court orders, six of the UK’s major ISPs are required to block access to dozens of the world’s largest torrent sites and streaming portals.

It all began in April 2012, when member labels of the BPI moved to have the notorious Pirate Bay blocked by the country’s leading providers. Shortly after in July the same year, the MPA successfully argued that Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 should share an identical fate.

Some six months later, popular sites including Kickass, H33T and Fenopy were blocked too, with others such as Movie2K and EZTV joining them shortly after. And in July 2013 the Premier League joined the blockers, with a High Court order against First Row Sports.

Ever since, the MPA, BPI, Premier League, book publishers and even watchmakers have been obtaining blocking orders covering hundreds of URLs, in the hope that somehow this will prevent or at least reduce infringement of their rights.

Whether they actually achieve those aims is something rarely discussed but that’s not the only thing being kept quiet. On a regular basis the rightsholders listed above add new domains and new URLs to existing court orders which ISPs are obliged to comply with. No public announcements are made to advise the public, aside from the ‘page blocked’ messages supplied by their ISPs.

Nevertheless, TorrentFreak has learned that October has been a particularly busy month on the web blocking front, with rightsholders adding dozens of domains to existing orders covering almost 90 URLs. They cover official sites, clones, fakes, proxies (general and dedicated) plus assorted mirrors.

On the torrent site front, Demonoid.ws (plus three Demonoid proxies operated by proxyunblocker.org), 7torrents.info, seventorrents.org, seventorrents.pro, soupbit.me, torrentalter.org and ez-torrents.com are now present on the list.

After their main sites were blocked in an earlier court order, several TorrentDay and TorrentButler proxies have also been targeted.

Unsurprisingly, Popcorn Time related domains also make an appearance including getpopcornti.me, popcorntime.is, popcorntime.party and popcorntime.re.

Targeting isoHunt, its clones, proxies and Popcorn Time-style software isoPlex, new URLs to be blocked include izohant.com, izohant.net, izohant.org, isohunters.com and several unblockers operated by unblockme and torrentunblock.com

Action has also been broad on the streaming front. Several PrimeWire related domains (primeseries.to, primewire.fr, primewire.is, primewire.org, primewire.sg, gxiso.com) are the main targets along with several Viooz and Vodly-related domains at viooz.ph, vodly.at, vodly.be and viooz.ac.wwwunblocker.com.

Other streaming related URLs added to the blocklist cover a range of main domains and proxies for letmewatchthis (.at and .link), several LosMovies proxies operated by TorrentProx.com, plus 10 movie25, movie2k and movie4k proxies hosted at ProxyKings.com.

The grouping of the domains and URLs above shows that copyright holders are continuing with their strategy of targeting not only main domains, but also any others that could facilitate access by another route. This ensures that copyright holder blocking measures deter not only casual pirates but also those a bit more determined to find an easy way around blockades.

In total around 90 URLs are covered by the latest action, all of which should be blocked by ISPs including Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and O2 during the coming days.

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

With millions of users Popcorntime.io is arguably the most-used Popcorn Time fork around.

The application is the top result when searching for Popcorn Time online, and two months ago the original developers gave it their blessing.

Behind the scenes, however, there have been serious disagreements over how the project should be managed. This weekend internal disputes reached a new high causing several key players to leave the team.

TF heard opinions from developers on both sides, who have a different take on how things unfolded, but the recent trouble began when rumors of a Hollywood lawsuit surfaced.

While there is no concrete evidence, several developers feared that Popcorn Time’s connection to the VPN.ht service posed a substantial risk.

VPN.ht was founded by Popcorn Time developers ‘Wally’ and ‘phnz’ who integrated it into Popcorn Time. This added a significant revenue stream, which legally speaking, could make the software a bigger target.

Responding to this threat a small group of developers, including ‘KsaRedFx,’ suggested cutting all ties with the VPN and starting over.

“There was rumor of a lawsuit coming down the chain to Popcorn Time, specifically because of money made off of VPN.ht and its ties to us. It made us vulnerable. Some of the team opted to speak in private about either closing the project or cutting away from VPN.ht,” KsaRedFx tells TF.

The idea was to release a new Popcorn Time fork without any links to the commercial VPN. Starting over would also allow these developers to gain more power, as they had no control over the domain name and keys of the current project.

The plan was discussed among a small group of developers, but it didn’t take long before it leaked. When Wally and others learned about the planned fork they saw it as am aggressive takeover instead.

“KsaRedFx tried to take over the project without prior agreement. When he was not able to, he just wiped the mirrors,” Wally tells TF.

“All this started from an assumption that a lawsuit is near against phnz, but at the same time they wanted to release a fork and have the Popcorntime.io website announce that.”

As a result of the disagreement KsaRedFx’s access to Popcorn Time’s Slack and GitHub accounts was disabled. The same happened to developers who sided with him, while others left voluntarily. This means the team will now continue without a handful of its main contributors.

At the same time phnz, one of the VPN.ht founders, stepped out as well. He publicly announced his departure early yesterday.

It appears that power, control and money play a central role in the breakup. KsaRedFx and other developers were not happy with the commercial angle the VPN introduced to the project but they say their critique wasn’t heard.

“I’ve always been quite verbose internally about my distaste for it. However they did not care,” KsaRedFx says, noting that he was never paid a penny for his work on Popcorn Time.

Wally disagrees and says that several developers received money indirectly, by working for the VPN. According to him, KsaRedFx was paid too.

Other than compensating developers for work on the VPN, some of the revenue was donated to Popcorn Time so it could be used to pay the server bills.

“Our goal was never to make money,” Wally says, adding that Popcorn Time remains free and that the VPN was launched to provide a service to those users who are interested in more privacy.

Sammuel86, who left as well, also cites the commercialization and possible legal implications as the main reason to walk out. However, there have been other disagreements in the past.

“Deep rifts had already been formed by this point in regards to how the servers were being handled and the metaphorical choke-hold a few of the members had on the project,” he says.

So where will PopcornTime.io go from here?

The remaining team plans to continue developing the application, even though some core developers have stepped away. This means that on the surface not much will change for its users.

The new fork which the disgruntled developers planned to release has been canceled however. Instead, the departing developers will move on to other projects, ending their Popcorn Time involvement.

We haven’t been able to find any concrete leads on the rumored Hollywood lawsuit, so only time will tell if something’s brewing in the background.

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

This week we have just one newcomer in our chart.

Dope 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	(7)	Dope	7.5 / trailer
2	(1)	Southpaw	7.6 / trailer
3	(4)	Pixels	5.6 / trailer
4	(8)	Knock Knock	5.5 / trailer
5	(2)	Jurassic World	7.2 / trailer
6	(6)	Tomorrowland	6.6 / trailer
7	(3)	Terminator Genisys	6.8 / trailer
8	(…)	Momentum (HDrip)	5.6 / trailer
9	(5)	Paper Towns	6.6 / trailer
10	(9)	San Andreas	6.2 / trailer

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

We’ve discussed industrial protectionism and content vs container before. To wrap up the theme, I’d like to look at the more subtle points of lobbyist language, which are just as devious – if you copy them, you’re working against your own liberties.

The copyright industry doesn’t just choose positive phrases to describe their specific “innovations”. They also try to establish sayings, phrases, and other combinations of words to make them uttered so often they become colloquilalisms, and yet, have very strong values embedded into them. This is very subtle, but just as important to understanding proper usage of the copyright monopoly, industrial protectionism, and digital restriction measures. It may not be those words that win the mindset, but the words in between – small words like left, right, black, and white.

For example, let’s talk about the public domain. What happens when a piece of art falls into the public domain, as many do on January 1 every year?

Let’s stop right there. Did you react to that sentence? Did you recognize it as obviously biased pro-copyright-industry lobbyist language? Odds are you didn’t, and yet it’s carefully crafted to describe the public domain as something starkly negative. This is how successful the copyright industry has been, and that’s how much of their language we need to change in reframing the debate.

Karl Fogel of Question Copyright tweeted about this a while back, referencing Noel Taylor and pointing out something that’s obvious only when you see it. To understand how “a work falls into the public domain” paints the copyright monopoly as something good and essential, compare that common phrase with the following sentence, which is a much better way of putting it:

What happens when a piece of art is elevated to the public domain, as many are on January 1 every year?

Did you see the difference? It’s not in the key words, but rather in between them. It’s about the direction described for the public domain. Our language metaphors attach really strong value to whether an item loses height or climbs on a ladder – whether it goes up or down. The difference between “falls into” the public domain and “is elevated to” the public domain is essentially the difference between whether the public domain is figurative hell or heaven, respectively. (There’s another example right there: hell is assumed to be down, heaven assumed to be up, even though it’s not mentioned anywhere. Very very cultural.)

An even worse way of wording the event, which the copyright industry has sometimes used, is how a work “lapses into” the public domain. This may be technically correct, but when you observe it instead in terms of language value, the expression “lapsing into” is functionally equivalent to “being neglected into” the public domain. It sends a strong signal of worthlessness, when we know the opposite to be true: when a work is in the public domain, it can be built upon freely to create new art of the highest order. (See there? “Highest order”, again.)

This can also be used when describing Creative Commons licenses – and when listing them. We are conditioned to see the item listed as the top as the most coveted and covetable, no matter the context. Merely by listing the maximalist restrictions at the bottom, and then gradually ascending toward CC-Zero (public domain), iterating through gradually higher licenses (see?) until you reach CC-BY, and then the highest license, CC-Zero, at the very top. Just that mere illustration establishes a mindset, one that industry lobbyists have long mastered, and which we must too.

The copyright industry is really skilled at using language to stack the debate against the net and against liberties. When we copy their language, we lose our liberties.

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