As efforts to hinder file-sharing sites gather pace around the world, in Europe in particular, criminal actions in the U.S. remain relatively rare.

Home to the very Hollywood studios and major recording labels pressing for tough measures elsewhere, the United States has taken somewhat of a backseat, with only sporadic criminal actions to report in the past few years.

This past Friday, however, U.S. authorities say they took action against a pair of sites involved in music piracy. According to the RIAA, ShareBeast.com and AlbumJams.com were responsible for the distribution of “a massive library” of popular albums and tracks. Notably, the sites are blamed for offering “thousands of songs” that hadn’t yet enjoyed their official release.

On Friday, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) seizure notices appeared on both sites, suggesting that the authorities concluded that immediate domain seizures were required to bring ongoing copyright infringement to an end.

According to the RIAA, ShareBeast was the largest illegal file-sharing site operating in the United States and recent IP addresses do suggest that at some point the file-hosting site was hosted in Illinois.

However, when compared to other household file-sharing names the site’s traffic stats were pretty modest. In fact, as can be seen from the chart below, the site had been on a serious decline for some months already.

Nevertheless, the RIAA says that it reported more than 100,000 infringing files to the service for takedown. That sounds like a reasonable assessment since the music industry group filed a similar number of complaints (118,000) with Google over the past couple of years. When all rightsholders are taken into consideration, complaints about ShareBeast averaged around 36,000 URLs per week.

In traffic terms, alleged sister site AlbumJams has never been significant. It reached the dizzy heights of 45,000th most popular site in January but almost completely dropped off the radar in May. According to Alexa it is now the 8,545,925th most popular site in the world.

“This is a huge win for the music community and legitimate music services. Sharebeast operated with flagrant disregard for the rights of artists and labels while undermining the legal marketplace,” commented RIAA Chairman & CEO Cary Sherman.

“Millions of users accessed songs from Sharebeast each month without one penny of compensation going to countless artists, songwriters, labels and others who created the music.”

The RIAA thanked the FBI and Department of Justice for its “strong stand” against Sharebeast but stopped short of commenting on what has happened to the site’s alleged operator. There has been no official statement concerning any arrests or any indication that the site was run from within the United States.

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

Next Monday, Kim Dotcom and his fellow co-accused are scheduled to appear before the courts in New Zealand to face their extradition battle with the U.S. government.

Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato are wanted in the U.S. to face multiple charges relating to their Megaupload website, including copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering.

The hearing has already been rescheduled 10 times but that didn’t stop Dotcom and his former business partners seeking a further delay. Last week in a claim to the Court of Appeal, Dotcom et al asked for more time in order to seek funding for expert witnesses outside New Zealand.

“Today we’ll find out if I get a fair extradition hearing or if the New Zealand judiciary will transform itself into a US owned dancing bear,” Dotcom said on Twitter earlier today.

In a judgment handed down shortly after, the Court of Appeal outlined the arguments of both parties.

On the one hand, lawyers for Dotcom had argued that there must be a prima facie case that an extradition offense has been committed. The Megaupload defendants are charged with conspiracy to breach copyright – does that come under the umbrella of conspiracy to defraud as contained in the Extradition Treaty?

Furthermore, if United States law is an issue (Dotcom’s lawyers argue it is since it is referenced in the prosecutor’s affidavit filed in support of the extradition), then “natural justice requires that the appellants be able to call
evidence from an American expert to challenge the prosecutor’s evidence.”

Unsurprisingly, U.S. authorities see things rather differently. They argue that if Dotcom wants to argue those points he can do so during the extradition hearing. But in any event, the U.S. argues that they only need to show a prima facie case
that the defendants have committed an offense under New Zealand law or the Extradition Treaty, not United States law.

Faced with what it previously described as an “impossible task” given the need for a swift response to around 177 pages of submissions, the Court of Appeal explained its dilemma.

“The Court cannot resolve this argument with the speed it aims to accord fast
track matters, let alone in a judgment that, in the circumstances of this case, must be given urgently,” this morning’s judgment reads.

“That implies no criticism of the parties. It is simply that this Court does not have the resources urgently to resolve a dispute which is not straightforward and involves fundamental disagreement between the parties.”

In dismissing the appeal and ordering the extradition hearing to go ahead next week as scheduled, the Court of Appeal said that it was satisfied that Dotcom and his associates would receive a fair hearing.

“If [Judge Dawson] decides the actions of the United States have deprived the appellants of American expertise they need properly to defend the extradition application, then inevitably he will have to adjourn the extradition hearing,” the Court of Appeals writes.

“If the Judge decides such expertise is not needed, and holds the appellants are
eligible for extradition, then the combination of judicial review and the right of
appeal in the Extradition Act will provide the appellants with ample remedies
should they not accept the outcome.”

After ordering Dotcom and his associates to pay the costs of the U.S. authorities, the Court of Appeal ordered next Monday’s extradition hearing to go ahead as planned.

“As expected… Dancing bear.” a disappointed Dotcom commented on the ruling.

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

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Avengers: Age of Ultron 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	(4)	Avengers: Age of Ultron	7.8 / trailer
2	(1)	Minions (HDRip)	6.7 / trailer
3	(9)	Entourage	7.0 / trailer
4	(…)	Fantastic Four (Subbed HDrip)	4.0 / trailer
5	(2)	Mad Max: Fury Road	8.4 / trailer
6	(3)	Self/less	6.5 / trailer
7	(6)	Straight Outta Compton (Subbed HDRip)	8.3 / trailer
8	(7)	Southpaw (HDrip)	7.8 / trailer
9	(…)	Poltergeist	5.0 / trailer
10	(5)	San Andreas (Web-DL)	6.4 / trailer

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

One mistake that geeks and techies often make, but PR professionals and lobbyists never make, is the observation that words don’t just have a precise meaning – they also have a positive or negative chime to them. Therefore, lobbyists try very hard to establish a language where everything they want is described in words with a positive chime.

This is far more important than most techies realize. Language nuances, not objective descriptions, more often than not determine what becomes law and what doesn’t.

When you’re calling the copyright monopoly any kind of “property”, or using property-related words such as “own” or “have” in relation to this monopoly, you’re reinforcing that positivity around the concept.

I saw a comment on Reddit about my last article describing why “Intellectual Property” was a never-touch-never-use enemy’s term; the commenter just blankly stated that it was accurate and descriptive and thought that was it. No, it’s not, it’s absolutely not; the enemy would like you to think it is descriptive of the copyright monopoly, in a complete effort to misdirect and delude – for such misdirection would let them keep the privilege.

The copyright monopoly is an exclusive right.

More precisely, it is a governmentally-granted private monopoly that interferes with property rights.

It’s noteworthy that the copyright industry doesn’t even use the property moniker internally. If you listen to their lawyers, they all say “we hold the exclusive rights”. That is precise language, as opposed to “own” or “property”. The only people in the copyright industry who use the property moniker – everywhere and all the time – are, you guessed it, PR people and lobbyists.

There’s something to learn here: When you manage to get your wishlist described in words that suggest it’s a natural right or positive to development, your wishlist will become law. The opposite is also true.

One particularly enlightening example was the abolishment of the estate tax in the United States in April this year. The estate tax – sometimes called an inheritance tax – is a tax paid on a deceased person’s estate before the rest is inherited by their heirs. “Estate tax” sounds kind of academic and theoretical, when it’s not a levy on somebody who has no use for their money anymore anyway, or a tax on people with large estates (“rich folks who can afford it anyway”).

So a couple of bright people reworded it as “death tax”, and talked about it in those terms everywhere. The new term caught on, and the concept stood no chance of survival once it was called a “death tax” instead.

This is extremely important to understand: whether a political concept survives or not, whether it is enforced with violence or not, depends entirely on whether it is referred to mostly in positively- or negatively-associated words.

This is why I insist on calling governmentally-granted private monopolies that interfere with property rights “industrial protectionism”, a term abbreviating to IP, for protectionism is exactly what those monopolies are, and any legislator shudders in disgust at the word “protectionism”. This is also why I insist on saying “the copyright monopoly”, for right in itself is a very positive word that any legislator will vote in favor of. But when you tack on “monopoly” at the end, and if this becomes predominant, the concept would it be voted down in a heartbeat – for all of a sudden, it describes the governmentally-granted private monopoly, instead of suggesting a natural right (which it absolutely isn’t).

To further illustrate this, the liberal party group ALDE in the European Parliament is largely divided down the middle whether this protectionism is good or bad. But that’s because half of them haven’t questioned the lobbyists’ use of the “property” moniker, and assumed that “because it is property, it must be good, so we will fight for it”; the other half has seen the man behind the curtain and oppose monopolies under any name. A party group like ALDE that would be very in favor of the free market, against corporatism, and which would positively abhor any governmentally-granted private monopoly that interferes with property rights will still vote for this kind of protectionist crap, on the sole reason that they think it is “property” and never has had any reason to think otherwise.

Yes, language is that powerful.

That’s why you should never use the language of the enemy. It’s not the entertainment industry or the music industry; it’s the copyright industry, plain and simple. And they don’t safeguard their rights or their copyright; they safeguard their monopolies, clarified as their copyright monopoly. This is part of a larger arbitrary umbrella concept, Industrial Protectionism.

If we win the language, we win the framing. If we win the framing, we win back our liberties. If we don’t, we won’t. It really boils down to that. Lobbyists understand this. We must too.

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.

Branded a “Netflix for Pirates,” the Popcorn Time phenomenon took the Internet by storm over the past year.

There are several versions of the application in active development and the most popular ones all have millions of users.

Besides the users, software developers have also shown a keen interest in the tool. While most forks have a small group of code developers there are many more chiming in with new code, fixes and improvements.

TF spoke to the team behind the popular Popcorn Time .io fork who recently made a visual presentation of how a ‘swarm’ of developers contributed over time.

The data is based on statistics from the development platform at a time when around 250 people had contributed. This number has increased to 283 today and will likely hit 300 during the weeks to come.

PopcornTime.io development

The motion in the video is meaningless, but the above shows that the application itself was built by a swarm of developers, just like all videos are streamed by a BitTorrent swarm.

It also shows that a lot of people don’t mind being publicly associated with the project. While some use only their nickname, it’s not hard to identify some of the key developers.

Most contributors, however, don’t believe that they are crossing a line. While Hollywood characterizes the software as illegal and one of the greatest threats it faces, most developers just want to code.

The core Popcorn Time team doesn’t believe its doing anything wrong either, but admit that users may run into trouble, something we’ve seen happening recently.

“So far, no jurisdiction has yet clearly said that Popcorn Time, the application, was illegal. The use of that application, however, is indeed illegal in most countries when downloading copyrighted content,” they tell TF.

While Popcorn Time does rely on APIs which almost exclusively link to pirated files, the code itself is legal and open source.

“Popcorn Time is nothing more than the combination of a web-browser, a torrent client and a video player. The content, copyrighted or in public domain, isn’t distributed by us,” the Popcorn Time team says.

“Popcorn Time is Open Source, so you can look at each line of code and notice that none of these lines are illegal or contain links to copyrighted content,” they add.

This is a position pretty much all of the 283 developers agree with.

People who are interested in more information on how the swarm video of the development process was made can find more details here. Perhaps the Popcorn Time team will consider publishing an update when another year passes.

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