In an effort to make piracy less visible, copyright holders send dozens of millions of takedown notices to Google every month.

Unfortunately not all of these requests are as accurate as they should be.

Due to the high volume of often automated notices and the fact that copyright holders don’t check the validity of all requests, there are many questionable requests are made.

This week we spotted a dubious takedown notice from Universal Pictures, targeting several perfectly legitimate URLs. The movie studio’s tracking company apparently failed to properly screen the request as it lists the official IMDb page of the blockbuster Furious 7.

The Internet Movie Database is widely regarded as one of the top sources to find information on movies and having the page de-listed from Google certainly doesn’t help to prevent piracy.

Universal Pictures takedown request

Aside from Furious 7, the same notice targets “copyright infringing” links to the movie Hacker. Here, the movie studio also made an unfortunate mistake asking Google to remove a news article from Techdirt, covering the Hacking Team leak.

And while we’re on the topic of self censorship, it’s worth noting that Universal Pictures also asked Google, in a separate notice, to remove http://127.0.0.1 from the search results.

The mistakes were made by the French branch of the movie studio, which only recently began sending takedown notices to Google. The company has reported less than 200 URLs thus far including the mistakes above.

While Universal is the rightsholder, it’s worth noting the notices are sent by Trident Media Guard (TMG), the private company which also carried out file-sharing network monitoring for the French Government’s Hadopi scheme.

The good news is that Google hasn’t removed any of the inaccurately reported URLs just yet. The search engine is still validating the validity of the claims and will probably reject the requests.

In the meantime, Universal Pictures and TMG should reconsider their takedown campaign, or at least improve their monitoring tools.

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

As Australia continues to grapple with its online piracy problem, a new report commissioned by the office of Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has revealed both the scale of the problem and an interesting twist.

Carried out in conjunction with the UK government and executed by TNS Global, the survey of 2630 people found that 26% of the population aged 12 years and up – 5.2 million people – had consumed illegal content online during the first three months of 2015.

That doesn’t mean that one in four Aussies never put their money in their pockets though. The survey found that just 7% of the population are hardcore pirates who never pay for anything and only consume illegal content. Other pirates buy legitimate content to some extent.

When drilling down further, however, the figures appear to worsen. Of all Internet users over 12 who also consumed media content in the first quarter of 2015, 43% said they had done so illegally. Movies proved the most popular among pirates, with 48% saying they had obtained them online without permission. Music came in second place with 37%, while TV shows (33%) and video games (22%) took up the third and fourth slots.

In terms of piracy volumes, the survey found that music was the most-download content with an estimated 254 million tracks obtained in the first quarter of 2015. Around 95 million movies, 82 million TV shows and 9 million video games add to the total.

On average, Aussie pirates downloaded or streamed around 16 items of content each in the first three months of the year, with music proving the most popular by file volume followed by TV, movies and video games.

When looking at overall consumption of digital content, around 66% of movies were obtained illegally versus 36% of TV shows. Music tracks and video games were neck-and-neck with 30% and 29% respectively.

When it comes to methods for obtaining unauthorized content the survey results present a slightly confused picture.

“Infringers were far more likely than non-infringers to use peer-to-peer methods,
in the form of BitTorrent software (26%), uTorrent (28%) and Pirate Bay (19%),
whereas 5% or less of non-infringers said they had used these services,” the survey notes.

Of course, uTorrent is BitTorrent software and the Pirate Bay requires the use of BitTorrent software in order to function. But in any event, it appears that BitTorrent methods are more popular with those who obtain content illegally than those who do not.

But perhaps the biggest question is what motivates these individuals to pirate.

Among all pirates, 55% said they consume content illegally because it’s free and a sizable 51% cited ease of access and convenience as a primary motivator. Speed was a factor among 45% of respondents, with 21% noting that they did not wish to wait for content to become available locally.

Interestingly, among pirates who said they never buy any content, 27% said they download illegally in order to “try before they buy”. Among those who consume legal and illegal content, that figure jumps to 38%.

So what might cause pirates to change their ways?

Perhaps unsurprisingly almost four out of ten infringers said cheaper prices on legal services would help. However, the next most popular responses were all about availability. If all content was made available legally that would help 38% of infringers to change their ways while 36% said that timely availability of content when compared to the rest of the world would be a good motivator.

Yet another sign that better legal services are the key to reducing infringement came with pirates’ assessment of various measures the government and rightsholders have lined up to tackle infringement.

Nearly a quarter of infringers said that the thought of being sued might help them change their ways while just 17% felt that a letter from their ISP could deter them from further piracy. Although not currently on the agenda, 21% said that Internet suspensions might prove effective.

Interestingly, when asked if anything at all could stop them pirating, just 5% of all infringers said nothing could, rising to 10% among hardcore “buy nothing” pirates.

Finally, the survey provides yet another timely reminder that branding all pirates as enemies of the entertainment industries is a very bad idea. When looking at four content types – movies, TV shows, music and video games – the survey found that those who consumed a mix of legal and illegal content SPENT MORE on legal content than those who only consume content illegally.

The full survey can be downloaded here (pdf)

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

With millions of new downloads per month uTorrent is without doubt the most used BitTorrent client around.

The software is the main source of revenue for the San Francisco based company BitTorrent Inc. and generates income through advertisements and bundled software.

The latter now appears to be causing trouble as several anti-virus vendors have begun listing uTorrent as a security risk. The scanning result below from VirusTotal shows that at least six anti-virus applications, including ESET and Symantec, have flagged the software as problematic.

The anti-virus scans associate the uTorrent.exe file with Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT and the controversial OpenCandy bundling software. While this isn’t the first time that uTorrent has been flagged in this manner, we haven’t seen it being reported by this many independent tests before.

uTorrent’s Virustotal results

In addition to action by the anti-virus companies, uTorrent is also being blocked by Google in several ways. When attempting to download the latest stable release of the torrent client, Chrome flags the software as malicious and blocks the download, although this only appears to happen sporadically.

Google is also actively blocking several pages that link to uTorrent and other BitTorrent Inc. software. According to Google, parts of the uTorrent website contain “harmful programs.”

uTorrent.com warning in Chrome

The same “harmful software” warning from Google also prevented millions of people from accessing popular torrent sites earlier this month.

A Google spokesperson informed us that this was the result of the company’s increased efforts to block programs that make “unexpected changes” to people’s computers.

“Google Safe Browsing’s ability to detect deceptive software has steadily improved,” the company explained in a recent blog post.

“In the coming weeks, these detection improvements will become more noticeable in Chrome: users will see more warnings about unwanted software than ever before,” Google adds.

These and the other uTorrent threat reports all seem to be triggered by bundled third-party software bundled. There is no indication or evidence that the BitTorrent client itself is harmful.

We asked BitTorrent Inc. for a comment on the recent reports but the company has yet to respond.

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

Josh Greenberg, the co-founder of the recently shuttered Grooveshark music streaming service, has been found dead in his Florida home.

The 28-year-old was discovered in his bed Sunday evening by his girlfriend in the house they shared.

“Josh Greenberg, co-founder of #Grooveshark was found dead in his Gainesville home Sunday evening. No evidence of foul play or suicide,” local police reported on Twitter.

Lori Greenberg, Josh’s mother, told Gainsville.com that her son had “never been sick a day in his life” and police had informed her that there was no evidence of any injuries or involvement with drugs.

“They are as baffled as I am,” she said. “It looked like he was sleeping.”

The popular entrepreneur’s mother briefly mentioned the closure of Grooveshark earlier this year after a prolonged legal battle with the major recording labels of the United States. She said that her son had been “more relieved than depressed” that the matter had been brought to an end.

“He was excited about potential new things that he was going to start,” she said.

Josh Greenberg and Sam Tarantino founded Grooveshark as 19-year-old freshmen at the University of Florida in March 2006. The company grew to become a major player in the streaming market with close to 150 employees but was continuously dogged by licensing and related copyright issues.

After spending increasing amounts of time and money on its legal defense, Grooveshark eventually threw in the towel at the end of April this year. Parent company Escape Media entered into a consent judgment with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group which saw the operation shut down for good.

Friend Ben Erez, who describes Josh as his mentor, heaped praise on the entrepreneur.

“There are people whose names I hear over and over again who end up disappointing when I finally meet them. When I met Josh for the first time, I felt the opposite. Here was a guy who deserved every word of praise I had heard,” he wrote.

“I’m sad and shocked but I can’t stop imagining what Josh would say. Probably something very zen like ‘appreciate me for who I was, mourn my loss, and get back to enjoying life. It’s too short to not’.”

Comments from Josh’s girlfriend Abby Mayer cited in a police department report note that her spouse was not known to be sick or on any prescribed medication.

Toxicology results will take two or three months.

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

While site-blocking currently grabs most of the headlines as a key anti-piracy strategy of the entertainment industries, the so-called “graduated response” is still considered a valuable tool for reducing infringing activity online.

Also known as “three strikes”, these schemes are promoted as educational in nature, with alleged pirates receiving escalating warnings designed to discourage further infringing behavior.

In the fall of 2010, France became one of the pioneers of the warning system and now almost five years later a report from the country’s ‘Hadopi’ anti-piracy agency has revealed the extent of its operations.

Between September 2010 and June 2015, a total of 4,897,883 initial warning notices were sent to French Internet account holders. In the same period 482,667 individuals received a second notice while just 2,221 reached the third stage.

Referrals to the public prosecutor (for those still not getting the message) reached 169 in the first six months of 2015, up from 46 in the same period in 2014.

When it comes to overall notices sent, June 2015 was the most active month in the history of the program thus far. In total 231,000 account holders received a first strike, 21,400 received a second and 104 reached the third stage.

However, according to figures published by NextInpact, the volume of notices being sent out to Internet users represents just a fraction of the total number of complaints filed by rightsholders.

To date it’s estimated that more than 37 million complaints (alleged instances of infringement) have been filed with the Hadopi agency although many millions have been discarded. According to Hadopi, however, the processing rate is being improved, with around 50% of the 70,000 complaints currently filed by rightsholders each day being actioned.

The Hadopi report can be found here (French, pdf)

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