In little more than a year Popcorn Time has become a household name on the Internet.

The software amassed millions of users by offering BitTorrent-powered streaming in an easy-to-use Netflix-style interface.

This attraction has drawn a lot of attention from the press, which makes the “Popcorn Time” brand an ideal tool for anti-piracy outfits to promote their work.

In recent months various movie studios have launched lawsuits against Popcorn Time users, for example. In practice these cases target the same BitTorrent swarms as the thousands of other lawsuits that have been filed in recent years, but a press release quoting “Popcorn Time” ensures mainstream coverage.

Struggling piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has the same idea. A few hours ago the company published a press release announcing their new “Popcorn Time Protection” service.

“The service includes 365x24x7 monitoring of the Popcorn Time network and associated data collection and reporting services,” the company announces.

While the name is new, the service does nothing more than what Rightscorp currently offers. After all, traditional BitTorrent pirates and Popcorn Time users are connected to the same swarms and are downloading the same files.

Rightscorp monitors these swarms and through Internet providers they send DMCA notices to the pirating IP-addresses, asking the account holders to pay $30 per copyright infringement. These IP-addresses can belong to both Popcorn Time and regular BitTorrent users.

The anti-piracy company nonetheless leverages the ‘brand’ to lure Hollywood studios into becoming customers. Warner Bros. is already on board and by focusing on Popcorn Time’s momentum they hope others will follow.

“Popcorn Time is a clear and present danger to Hollywood and directly threatens the right of the creators and owners of content to determine how their content is distributed,” CEO Christopher Sabec says.

The company cites Netflix’s warning against the application as well as other news items. In addition the CEO claims that the software is immune to some other anti-piracy measures.

“We believe our new Popcorn Time Protection service is the only scalable solution for this major threat to Hollywood. Popcorn Time is unaffected by domain blocking and by DMCA takedown notices,” Sabec notes.

This is where Rightscorp appears to misunderstand or at least bend the truth. Popcorn Time relies heavily on centralized third party services, such as the YTS torrent site, which accepts DMCA notices and can easily have its domain name seized or blocked.

In fact, Rightscorp published a blog post recently in which the company noted that Popcorn Time had stopped working for some people, an event triggered by a domain seizure.

This point is also brought up by the developers of the PopcornTime.io fork, who accuse Rightscorp of “using a popular name to surf the wave and impress the markets.”

“While there’s nothing new in what they offer, its name catched [sic] our attention,” the team says of the Rightscorp ‘product’.

Finally, the Popcorn Time team draws attention to VPNs, which render Rightscorp’s monitoring model useless. For some reason that’s a detail the anti-piracy company conveniently left out of its press release.

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

New York resident Elliot Alderson works as a security engineer at cyber-security company Allsafe. Through a window of mental issues, Alderson views the world with paranoia while using his undoubted technical skills to hack his targets.

After being recruited by an anarchist known as “Mr. Robot”, Alderson becomes part of a team known as “fsociety” with a mission to take down one of the largest corporations in the world.

The now-hit TV show Mr Robot enjoyed a somewhat unusual U.S. launch, with the pilot airing late May on a wide range of online platforms including the USANow app, YouTube, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, plus Xbox and Playstation, to name just a few.

Chris McCumber, president, USA Network, said that the strategy provided a “unique opportunity” to get noticed and drive word-of-mouth promotion. It’s the kind of effort piracy has been providing unofficially for many years via leaked pilots (1) (2).

After enjoying huge success in the United States, this Friday evening Mr Robot will finally get its Canadian premiere on Showcase. And, in line with the U.S. strategy, Canadian geeks have already been given the opportunity to have an advance sneak preview of the pilot episode on Showcase.ca and ETCanada.com.

However, those attempting to use Google to find the pilot won’t be able to do so directly. Quite unbelievably, NBCUniversal in the United States have reported Showcase to Google, claiming that the copy of the pilot on the broadcaster’s website is illegal.

With episodes carrying titles such as eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg and eps1.7_wh1ter0se.m4v (not to mention a quite fantastic website at whoismrrobot.com), there can be little doubt that Mr Robot’s creators are reaching out to those who spend their lives online. It’s therefore particularly disappointing that the same target audience will be only too aware of how ridiculous these kinds of careless takedowns are.

Also regrettable is that the bogus NBCUniversal takedown has somehow slipped past Google’s systems that often reject erroneous claims. As can be seen from the image below, the pilot episode page has been completely delisted from Google.

The first series of Mr Robot has enjoyed success and great reviews in the U.S. but only now have Canadians been let in on the fun. Those wishing to do so without relying on censored Google search results should follow this link.

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

During the summer of 2011 the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with five major Internet providers in the United States, announcing their a plan to “educate” BitTorrent pirates.

The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through which Internet account holders are warned if their connections are used to download pirated content. After five or six warnings ISPs take a variety of repressive measures, including bandwidth throttling and temporary disconnections.

Initially the first ISPs were expected to start sending out “Copyright Alerts” by the end of 2011, but due to several delaying factors it took until 2013 before the system went live.

A few weeks ago the original agreement (pdf) quietly expired, but that doesn’t mean that warnings are off the table. Behind the scenes, copyright holders and ISPs have agreed to extend the original agreement for four more months while they work on several changes and improvements.

According to a document seen by TF the parties opted for the short extension because more time is needed to reach a new agreement. The yearly volume of notices is likely to be one of the key issues up for discussion.

An insider informed TF that CCI is committed to keeping the flagship Copyright Alert program alive. In addition, the group is working on an expansion of its consumer education efforts in an effort to direct people to legal services.

While warnings are at the center of the Copyright Alert System, the ultimate goal of CCI is to “shift social norms and behavior.”

At the moment it remains unclear how effective the alerts have been thus far. Some initial statistics were released early 2014 but TF was told that no new figures will be made public before next year.

While CCI remains positive about the program, there has also been critique from copyright holders. A few months ago several independent movies studios called for an end to the “six strikes” scheme, describing it as an ineffective “sham”.

According to the movie studios the copyright alerts are highly ineffective because only a small fraction of the piracy notices are forwarded to the Internet providers.

Time will tell whether any of the upcoming changes will address these concerns.

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

While BitTorrent can be used to distribute files as small as a single image, the protocol is much better suited to shifting larger files, video in particular.

Nevertheless, millions of music tracks are shared every week across hundreds of torrent sites, mainly in full album form. Of course, due to its efficiency, entire discographies are easy to find too, as are weekly packs of the Billboard Top 100 and the UK’s Top 40.

However, following action by police in the UK today, those in the music industry will be hoping that these large packs will be harder to find.

According to news just in from the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) their officers were in action early this morning taking down what they believe to be a prolific music pirate.

Following a joint investigation with licensing outfit PRS for Music, officers from PIPCU and Merseyside police raided an address in Everton, Liverpool. Their target was a 38-year-old man believed to be involved in the unlawful distribution of music online.

In addition to uploading the UK’s Top 40 Singles to various torrent sites on a weekly basis, police say the man also ran his own website offering not only regular tracks but also acapella versions. Police claim there was a commercial motivation, with the man generating “significant” advertising revenue from his endeavors.

“Today’s operation in Liverpool demonstrates how PIPCU are prepared to travel nationwide in the pursuit of those suspected of being involved in the illegal distribution of content online,” said City of London Police Detective Inspector, Mick Dodge.

“This is a crime that is costing the UK creative industry hundreds of millions of pounds, money that not only supports the artists but the thousands of technical and support staff working in this sector, and PIPCU is committed to working with partners nationally and internationally to target those involved.”

Simon Bourn, Head of Litigation, Enforcement and Anti-Piracy at PRS for Music, said that music piracy continues to have an impact on those who contribute to the creative economy.

“We’re committed to partnering with PIPCU to enforce against illegal services that are not willing to work with us towards a legitimate licensed model, and which continue to exploit our members’ work without permission,” Bourn said.

At this stage police have not named the arrested individual but sources familiar with the situation have informed TF that the man is a regular uploader to KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay and has uploaded hundreds of torrents in the past five years.

Further investigation by TorrentFreak led us to a website offering acapella content as described by FACT, linked to a man in the Liverpool area.

It certainly doesn’t look like a huge operation but PIPCU claim the man’s actions “could be costing the music industry millions of pounds”.

The man is currently being questioned at a local police station. Several computers have been seized.

Breaking, more information as we have it

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

In common with many other online services, copyright holders regularly ask Twitter to remove tweets that link to pirated material.

If a user decides to post a link to a pirated blockbuster or music track there’s a good chance that it won’t be online for long. In addition, the Twitter user may have his or her account suspended.

The latter happened to the accounts of Spain’s largest torrent site EliteTorrent and the linking site Bajui recently, both following a copyright holder complaint. However, both accounts had refrained from linking to pirated material.

The takedown notices in which the accounts were targeted were sent by the Spanish company Golem Distribución, who own the distribution rights of the film “Cut Bank.” They both reference tweets where the title of the film was mentioned alongside the film poster.

In its copyright and DMCA policy Twitter explains that it takes action against “tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials,” but EliteTorrent and Bajui didn’t post any links, just text and a film poster.

The Elitetorrent tweet

Morphoide, the founder of the Elitewebs Network which includes both EliteTorrent and Bajui, initially thought that the tweets were flagged because of the image. However, the DMCA notice makes no mention of this.

Instead, Golem Distribución accuses the accounts in broken English of distributing the film on their respective websites, not Twitter.

“According to the protocol of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act): We have noted that the websites own, is offering free downloads and/or streaming of the work ‘CUT BANK’ belonging to GOLEM DISTRIBUCIÓN,” the notice reads.

The DMCA notice

Morphoide is disappointed with Twitter’s decision and informs us that he specifically chose not to include any links to avoid this kind of trouble.

“There were no links in the tweets. I stopped linking a long time ago because I didn’t want my account to be suspended for doing so,” Morphoide says.

Apparently even tweets without links can be flagged and both sites have had their accounts suspended as a result. This means that thousands of followers are gone, just like that.

The site’s founder says he has lost faith in Twitter and doesn’t intend to appeal the suspension.

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