For citizens of the UK, web blocking is becoming a hot topic. Aside from the large and growing list of torrent, streaming and other downloading sites currently blocked by ISPs, netizens are now facing the specter of government enforced porn barriers.

That’s according to Prime Minister David Cameron, who this week fired off a broadside against adult content providers who he says are failing to control what other people’s children are viewing online.

“Our one nation government is working hard to make the internet a safer place for children, the next step in this campaign is to curb access to harmful pornographic content which is currently far too widely available,” the Prime Minister said. “I want to see age restrictions put into place or these websites will face being shut down.”

According to the government the UK’s top 10 adult sites account for over half (52%) of all site views so this is no trivial matter. The site’s aren’t mentioned by name so TF decided to look them up.

The most popular within the UK’s top 200 most-visited sites according to Alexa are Pornhub (#41), XHamster (#44), Xvideos (#47), RedTube (#92), TubeCup (#105) and YouPorn (#122). To give an idea of scale, PornHub is more popular than Netflix and YouPorn is more visited than Vimeo.

However, while compiling this list we stumbled across something else that’s both surprising on one hand and utterly predictable on the other. Occupying the position of the UK’s 192nd most-visited site is Unblocked.pw, a service entirely dedicated to unblocking blocked websites.

Breaking the top 200 is no mean feat for any site, especially when one considers the competition at that level. Nevertheless, after existing for much less than a year, Unblocked.pw is already more popular in the UK than both Spotify (#194) and Skype (#195).

While the skill of the site’s operator is no doubt a factor in its success, the huge popularity of Unblocked.pw is almost entirely down to restrictions being put in place by UK Internet service providers. Every time a blockade is put in place, Unblocked.pw provides a solution to the problem. It currently unblocks most major torrent and streaming sites plus the specialist ebook archives targeted in May.

“Fighting censorship has been the primary motivation behind running Unblocked,” the site’s operator informs TorrentFreak.

“It’s to show that whatever regulators do to censor things online, there will always be a way around it. The initial motivation came from when The Pirate Bay was blocked in the Netherlands. We set up Proxybay.co to maintain a list of Pirate Bay proxy sites and show people how to create their own.”

In respect of porn sites, Cameron’s office suggests that users could be required to validate their ages with a credit card, but the operators of overseas ‘tube’ sites will be extremely reluctant to introduce such measures since they will mess with their business models by reducing traffic and ad revenue.

That will leave web-blocking as Cameron’s only other option but as highlighted by the Open Rights Group, that won’t work.

“While the government can shut down UK-based sites, these are few in number and represent a tiny proportion of the global porn industry. Cameron needs to clarify how he wishes to achieve his goals, given that most porn sites are hosted abroad,” says ORG’s Jim Killock.

“To block them, the government would have to introduce a national firewall, which would censor sites for everyone, and would likely be widely circumvented.”

While there are currently no dedicated adult sites in Unblocked.pw’s repertoire (since none are currently blocked in the UK), there can be little doubt that if the UK government decides to order blockades, Unblocked and similar sites will quickly offer wordarounds.

If that does indeed transpire, expect a successful service to break the top 50 most-visited sites in the country while jockeying for rankings with the likes of Apple and WordPress. It’s a battle the government simply can’t win, but that won’t stop them from trying.

In the meantime the Internet continues to interpret censorship as damage, and routes around it.

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

Piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has made several headlines recently, often because of its aggressive attempts to obtain settlements from allegedly pirating Internet users.

The publicly traded company ask U.S. ISPs to forward DMCA notices to subscribers, with a settlement offer tagged on to the end.

On behalf of Warner Bros, BMG and other copyright holders Rightscorp asks subscribers to pay $30 per pirated file, or risk a potential $150,000 ‘fine’ in court.

Increasingly, these practices have resulted in a backlash. Rightscorp was sued for fraud, harassment and abuse late last year and just last month Internet provider Cox Communications described its settlement emails as “improper extortion threats”

Today we can add another setback to this list. For the past few days prominent anti-virus vendor Bitdefender has been blocking the company’s website after categorizing it as malware.

People who receive a notice from Rightcorp are welcomed with the following popover when they try to access the settlement page. The notice is limited to the settlement pages and doesn’t appear on the regular website.

Bitdefender’s malware warning

It’s unclear why Bitdefender has listed Rightcorp’s website as malware but it’s certainly plausible that the huge amount of settlement emails linked to a payment request raised a red flag.

In any case, Bitdefender users are less likely to pay up if their anti-virus software warns them not to visit the page, which can only further hurt Rightcorp’s already meager revenues.

Despite sending out millions of notices Rightscorp has yet to turn a profit. The company continues to trade at a loss and recently increased its settlement amount by 50 percent, hoping to get out of the red.

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

While the diminishing revenues of the major recording labels have been a hot topic for many years, it’s only relatively recently that the debate over artists’ earnings has found itself almost constantly in the news.

A decade-and-a-half of disruptive technology has certainly played its part, but without that turmoil the music industry might still be playing catch up today. At any rate, the rise of online piracy arguably provided a much needed wake-up call and prompted the rise of dozens of legitimate music services.

However, according to IFPI chief executive Frances Moore, some of them aren’t playing by the rules since they fail to properly compensate creators.

“It is true that artists and record producers are not being paid fairly for the use of their music. This is because user upload platforms, such as SoundCloud and YouTube, are taking advantage of exemptions from copyright laws that simply should not apply to them,” Moore said this week.

The problem lies with the nature of these platforms. While services such as Spotify obtain expensive licenses from the record labels for the use of their content, Moore says that sites including YouTube are in effect gaming copyright law when they monetize content uploaded by their users without first obtaining the appropriate licenses.

“Laws that were designed to exempt passive intermediaries from liability in the early days of the internet – so-called ‘safe harbours’ – should never be allowed to exempt active digital music services from having to fairly negotiate licenses with rights holders,” Moore explains.

“There should be clarification of the application of ‘safe harbors’ to make it explicit that services that distribute and monetize music do not benefit from them.”

In order to combat the problem, IFPI says it is determined to work towards a fair licensing environment in which all services offering organized access to music are first required to obtain similar licenses from the labels.

“We want to ensure that services that make our content available, including by curating and monetizing it, are licensed on the same basis,” IFPI informs TorrentFreak.

“Services such as Spotify and Deezer negotiated licenses with right holders on fair market terms prior to their launch. By contrast, user-upload services such as YouTube and SoundCloud did not seek a license at the outset but rather built a business off the back of unlicensed content, relying on the ‘safe harbour’ exemptions to EU copyright law.”

Interestingly, IFPI isn’t stating that user-generated content sites (UGC) such as YouTube and Soundcloud are unlicensed. Instead, the music group says that the terms of those licenses were negotiated under duress, after services got big first and then sought to work with the labels later.

“Although some user-upload services are now licensed by rights holders, those licenses were not negotiated in a fair environment because rights holders’ content was already available on the services on a mass scale and the measures available to prevent this – i.e. notice and take down and Content ID – are easily circumvented and ineffective in preventing all content being available,” IFPI explains.

“As a result rights holders were left with no realistic option but to allow the content and take the license terms on offer.”

In order to level the playing field moving forward, IFPI says it will seek legislative clarification (and presumably change, if necessary) to ensure that “safe harbor” provisions in the EU are restricted to passive intermediaries, thus forcing UGC sites like YouTube to obtain appropriate licenses.

“User upload services that curate and monetize content are not passive intermediaries so should license on fair market terms in the same way that services such as Deezer and Spotify do,” IFPI says.

“There have been conflicting court decisions in different countries in Europe regarding the responsibility of user-uploaded content services. Therefore we are seeking clarification in the EU legislative framework to ensure that services that are active in distributing content are required to take a license from right holders and cannot rely on the ‘safe harbours’,” the music group concludes.

While the labels clearly think they are owed additional revenue from the likes of YouTube and have a duty to level the playing field for licensed services such as Spotify, it’s unlikely that the video giant will sit back while established legal safe harbors are eroded in Europe. Much bigger problems lie ahead if that transpires.

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

Hoping to revolutionize live broadcasting on the Internet, Bram Cohen started working on a new protocol for live streaming video more than half a decade ago.

At the time BitTorrent was believed to be responsible for a third of all Internet traffic. However, streaming services were quickly gaining momentum.

The problem with streaming, live streaming in particular, are high latencies. It can sometimes take up to a minute before a “live” stream reaches the audience.

Cohen solved this problem with a new BitTorrent Live protocol that has a much lower latency while sharing the bandwidth costs among users. This allows anyone to stream to an audience of millions at minimal cost.

This week Bram Cohen’s patent for the live streaming patent was awarded (pdf). According to BitTorrent’s inventor, who still works at the company, his technology can shape the future of live broadcasts.

Two years ago BitTorrent Inc. first demoed the technology in a web-based player, but this project was later discontinued. The company is now working on a new release that will come in the form of a mobile application.

“We’re working on using the technology for a new application, focusing on mobile,” Cohen tells TF.

Mobile live streaming has taken off this year with the release of Periscope and Meerkat. Both apps allow users to start live streams instantly and Cohen says they could make good partners for BitTorrent Live.

“Periscope and Meerkat are applications which use live, where what we have is underlying technology. We may work with them in the future,” he notes.

That said, the true strength of BitTorrent Live becomes apparent when there is a huge audience, not just a few viewers. This means that it will excel at streaming major events such as sports games and breaking news.

“The amount of utility of BitTorrent Live is based on how many people are watching something simultaneously. Big events where everybody is watching the same thing at the same time, like sports, are the best applications,” Cohen tells us.

Since BitTorrent Live shares the distribution costs among viewers, the bandwidth investment for these streams will be minimal compared to current solutions. In addition, latency will also be much lower making these broadcasts ‘more live.’

“Ironically in addition to being much better on bandwidth costs BitTorrent Live also has much lower latency, five seconds instead of 30-60 seconds, which is bordering on tape delayed instead of live,” Cohen says.

Previously BitTorrent Inc. suggested that it could help Netflix to increase its performance. Not with BitTorrent Live, but with the standard BitTorrent streaming technology which will allow Netflix to offer higher quality streams for a fraction of the current costs.

It appears that Netflix realizes the power of BitTorrent-like streaming, as the company is currently working on its own P2P streaming technology.

Eventually Cohen believes that all streaming will go over the Internet, both live and pre-recorded. It is much cheaper than the cable approach, especially with BitTorrent under the hood.

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

There can be little doubt that one of the most-favored anti-piracy mechanisms of the past several years is that of site-blocking. Rather than tackling sites head on with expensive legal action, rightsholders have domains blocked at the ISP level with the aim of diminishing ease of access and reducing direct traffic.

The strategy is mainly employed around Europe, with the UK standing out as the clear front-runner. Hundreds of domains are now blocked there by local ISPs after several High Court injunctions. Now Portugal has joined the club with a new system that not only aims to speed up the blocking process, but one that could put the UK quickly in the shade.

This week the Ministry of Culture announced the signing of a memorandum between its own General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), the Portuguese Association of Telecommunication Operators (APRITEL), various rightsholder groups, the body responsible for administering Portugal’s .PT domain and representatives from the advertising industry.

The memorandum lays out a new mechanism for blocking so-called ‘pirate’ sites. In common with similar frameworks elsewhere, the process is initiated by a complaint from a rightsholder association. Local anti-piracy group MAPINET then collates evidence that a site is engaged in the unlawful distribution of copyright works and has failed to cease its activities.

MAPINET subsequently forwards its complaints to the Ministry of Culture where the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC) conducts an assessment and notifies local Internet service providers of the sites being targeted.

According to reports in local media, the system will target sites with more than 500 allegedly infringing links and those whose indexes contain more than 66% infringing content.

Only two complaints can be filed against pirate sites each month. However, each complaint can contain 50 websites, meaning that 100 sites could become blocked every month. Visitors to those sites will receive a notice in their browser advising them that the site has been blocked.

The memorandum is expected to come into force during the next two weeks so sites could be blocked as early as September.

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