Otherwise known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA would have enabled U.S. authorities to have allegedly infringing websites blocked at the DNS level, thereby rendering them inaccessible.

In 2012 the proposals were met with outrage, especially by those in the tech community who feared that meddling with the very systems that keep the Internet running would eventually end in disaster.

The legislation never passed but nonetheless over the past three years many hundreds of websites have been blocked around the world. In fact, in some recent cases in the United States entertainment industry companies have achieved some of the things they claimed to need SOPA for.

So did any of this “break the Internet”? According to a piece published in The Hill this week, absolutely not.

“[Policymakers] should not accept the falsehood that blocking a website or taking other actions to shut down infringing sites equates to an assault on the security and reliability of the Internet as a whole,” wrote Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“Instead, they should recognize that selective targeting of websites dedicated to infringement is an effective strategy to combat piracy, and encourage the recording industry, the film industry and online intermediaries to work in partnership to block, shut down and cut off revenue to these websites wherever possible.”

Mr Castro probably feels the Internet is unaffected by blocking since every website he accesses works just fine. However, new data on blocking activity elsewhere presents an altogether more worrying state of affairs.

In 2013, Russia activated a streamlined mechanism for having sites blocked at the ISP level. As a result many hundreds of sites have been rendered inaccessible to the public and some, such as torrent site RUTracker, are now facing the possibility of being blocked forever. But how has this affected the wider Internet?

Well, according to data obtained by web-blocking watchdog RUBlacklist, those doing the blocking in Russia are using their powers to the full while having little concern for collateral damage. As a result more than a third of all IP addresses on the country’s website blocking list belong not to illegal services, but to US-based CDN company Cloudflare.

RUBlacklist says the numbers are significant. As of October 5, 2015, a total of 8,284 IP addresses were on the national blocklist but a head-shaking 2,831 of them – more than 34% – have been registered to Cloudflare.

The problem is due to how CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) like Cloudflare are setup. Instead of a site’s own IP address facing the world, once Cloudflare is deployed it is the service’s IP addresses that are seen in public.

Sadly, when a complaint is filed at the Moscow City Court, no one really cares whether the IP addresses belong to a legitimate service or not, or whether they stay on the blacklist even after they fall out of use.

“Roskomnadzor simply fills and fills its database of banned IP-addresses, risking blocking dozens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent websites,” RUBlacklist explains.

Of course, the blocking of Cloudflare and its customers is nothing new. Earlier this year innocent websites were blocked in the UK by ISP Sky simply because a Pirate Bay proxy was hosted behind the same IP-address.

But while the Sky problems were probably down to human error, the current over-blocking situation in Russia could have been avoided if concerns had been considered in December 2013.

People knew Cloudflare was at risk then, yet no one appears to have taken the warnings seriously. In April 2014, Roskomnadzor admitted there was a problem but simply warned people not to use the service since Cloudflare didn’t respond to correspondence on the matter.

“CloudFlare representatives refused to cooperate and did not respond to the formal notices of Roskomnadzor,” the watchdog explained.

“In the absence of a reaction from CloudFlare many conscientious Internet resources using the CDN-service will be blocked by ISPs in Russia.”

But as the finger-pointing continues the people who really suffer are regular Internet users themselves. Fears that Joe Public would be caught in the copyright crossfire were just the kind of concerns that came to the forefront and fueled the SOPA protests.

Blocking might not have broken the Internet yet, but already parts of it need fixing. And, despite it all, the pirates continue their business largely as before.

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

Video streaming giant Netflix sees itself as one of the most prominent competitors to the many pirate sites and services that offer video content illegally.

In recent years the company revealed that it has seen a consistent piracy drop in many countries soon after launch.

This Netflix effect now also appears to have hit Australia. The video streaming service launched early last year and new statistics released by the IP Awareness Foundation show that online piracy has decreased since.

According to the most recent survey 25 percent of Australian adults aged 18-64 are self-confessed pirates, down from 29 percent in the previous year. This is the first decrease since the piracy boom started.

The drop is visible among both casual and persistent pirates, with the largest drop in the second group, as shown in the pie charts below.

Aussie piracy drop

It’s not all good news for copyright holders though. Among the remaining persistent pirates 40 percent say they are pirating more than last year.

In part the piracy decline can be attributed to Netflix. Without a direct causal relationship it’s tricky to draw strong conclusions, but the survey respondents who say they are pirating less cite legal alternatives as the main reason.

Moral considerations were also mentioned by the respondents, as well as legal ramifications. Overall, however, legal options have the biggest impact according to consumers.

IP Awareness Executive Director Lori Flekser is happy with the positive change but also tames some of the optimism. According to her a combination of positive and negative reinforcement is required to properly address the issue.

“Piracy has always needed a range of measures to tackle the problem as we all know there is no silver bullet,” Flesker says.

“This fall in piracy rates is definitely largely attributable to the combination of the government’s new legislation, plus the ongoing efforts of the creative industries to continue delivering great content at accessible prices to Australian consumers,” she adds.

Piracy has been a hot topic in Australia and there are plans to block websites and warn frequent infringers in the near future. Time will tell whether this help to continue the current downward piracy trend.

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

Last Saturday saw the first public release of Aurous, a music player that taps into a library of pirated music.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, founder Andrew Sampson previously likened the app to Popcorn Time. This attracted quite a bit of attention from the media, as well as copyright holders.

The major record labels are not happy with the new pirate tool and they have wasted no time trying to take it down.

Today the RIAA filed a lawsuit at a Florida district court on behalf of several major labels including UMG and Sony Music. In the complaint they accuse Aurous and its developer of several counts of copyright infringement.

“This service is a flagrant example of a business model powered by copyright theft on a massive scale,” the RIAA says.

“Like Grokster, Limewire or Grooveshark, it is neither licensed nor legal. We will not allow such a service to willfully trample the rights of music creators.”

The complaint (pdf) describes Aurous as an application that is mostly intended to pirate music. Instead of the planned BitTorrent integration, it uses the Russian pirate site Pleer as its main source.

“Pleer has been the subject of repeated copyright complaints by rights holders to the Russian government. Its home page brazenly offers free unauthorized downloads of major recording artists’ top tracks for the week, year, and all time,” the RIAA’s lawyers note.

Aurous

The RIAA also references several comments the developer made in the media before the official launch, confirming that Aurous will be used to pirate music. After the debut of the alpha release, Aurous allegedly provided technical assistance to pirate specific tracks.

In addition, the complaint also mentions Sampson’s torrent search engine Strike, which he released earlier this year.

“As a stand-alone search engine, Strike Search finds infringing content on BitTorrent but needs to be used with other software and services in order to download the content onto users’ computers,” the RIAA notes.

The complaint lists a total 20 popular tracks that are freely available through Aurous. This means that Sampson faces up to $3 million in statutory damages if the case goes to trial.

Finally, the RIAA requests a broad preliminary injunction which would prevent domain registrars, domain registries, hosting companies, advertisers and other third-party outfits from doing business with the site.

However, in comments posted to Twitter tonight, Sampson seems unfazed.

“Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere, empty lawsuits aren’t going to stop the innovation of the next best media player,” he said.

“Hey @RIAA @UMG and everyone else, we challenge every CEO to an arm wrestling competition, we win you drop your empty suit.”

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

Known as Torrents.ru before a controversial domain seizure in 2010, RUTracker.org is not only a very large torrent tracker but one of Russia’s most popular sites, period.

The site made the headlines last month when the National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI), a group which counts Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI among its members, said it had been trying to have links to infringing content removed from the site.

According to NFMI CEO Leonid Agronov, his group tried to negotiate with RuTracker but that proved fruitless leaving legal action as the only option. However, in a public response at the end of September, a spokesperson for RuTracker said that the site was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent infringement.

“If there are many links [that breach copyright] we can give the rightsholders their own special account, and they can remove links that violate their rights. Similar to [the system available] on YouTube, for example,” the spokesperson said.

Despite RuTracker’s offer it never seemed likely that the record labels would enter into any kind of partnership with the site, even with an offer of support from government telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor on the table.

That position was underlined last evening when NFMI confirmed it had filed a lawsuit against the site at the Moscow City Court.

“We have filed a lawsuit requesting a permanent blockade of RuTracker,” NFMI CEO Leonid Agronov confirmed.

The lawsuit demands a life-long ISP block of RuTracker, a request supported by amendments to copyright law passed earlier this year which allows for sites involved in “systematic infringement” to be blocked forever.

While the lawsuit is the first of its kind against a torrent site, NFMI filed a similar suit at the end of September against popular music streaming site Pleer.com.

Again, NFMI claims to have attempted negotiations with the portal but in common with the RuTracker situation, both cases are now before the court.

“We believe that the process will take one and a half to two months,” Agronova says.

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

In many countries across the world including the UK, Italy, Denmark and France, the leading torrent sites are no longer freely accessible.

Instead, the sites are blocked following court orders requested by the music, movie and publishing industries. These blockades have become widespread, but the same is true for tools to circumvent them.

One of the most popular ways to unblock a site is by using a reverse proxy. These proxies ‘mirror’ the original sites on a new domain name, making them accessible again.

In recent years these proxies have been popping up left and right, but a few days ago thousands suddenly disappeared. Instead of granting access to the blocked torrent sites the associated domain names are now listed for sale.

The list of vanished domains is long and includes the popular “piratelist.net” overview site, as well as proxies such as kickasstorrents.nu, yify.me, extratorrent.ch, 1337x.link, piratebay.onl and many others.

Kickasstorrents.nu for sale

Upon close inspection we found out that the affected sites are all connected to the same operation, which operated under the “ProxyHouse” and “ProxyAds” handles. Both of these sites are now listed for sale as well.

The total number of sites that have disappeared is huge. ProxyHouse could not be reached for comment but the operator previously informed TF that they manage proxies under thousands of different domains.

“At the moment, we are running over 17,000 proxy sites for KickassTorrents, ThePirateBay, YTS, ExtraTorrent and 1337x. By providing a lot of different domains, we are giving people the option to still access torrent sites,” ProxyHouse told us in August.

While the proxy sites have been useful to a lot of people, they also posed a risk. ProxyHouse added their own advertisements to the sites, which have been linked to malware.

It’s unclear why the ProxyHouse operation shut down all of a sudden. The sites were a thorn in the side of copyright holders, as it made their job of policing the Internet harder, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if legal pressure played a role.

Despite the loss of thousands of proxies, there are still enough available to bypass most common blockades. In fact, most torrent site operators are happy to see them gone, as they believe that these ‘unauthorized’ proxies were ‘stealing’ their revenue.

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