As one of the most iconic gaming manufacturers in the world, Nintendo has been fighting piracy for many years.

The company has an in-house anti-piracy division that signals the latest threats to steer enforcement actions in the right direction.

This has resulted in high-profile lawsuits against ROM sites as well as site blocking efforts. For example, earlier this year the company obtained an injunction from the UK High Court which ordered local ISPs to block sites that enable Nintendo Switch piracy.

This included the homes of the infamous Team-Xecutor, as well as sites that sell R4i flashcard adaptors which allow Switch owners to load custom firmware.

The problem for Nintendo is that this blockade is limited to the UK. However, in recent months the company has used another strategy to limit the availability of these sites worldwide, with minimal effort. Instead of going to court, it went to Google.

The gaming company has sent hundreds of takedown notices to the search engine, targeting thousands of URLs. These requests are not standard copyright takedowns. Instead, Nintendo flags the sites for violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

This includes many pages from Team-Xecuter’s site, which offers software to jailbreak the Switch console and bypass other protection measures.

“Nintendo’s technological protection measures (‘TPMs’) ensure that only official copies of its game software can be played on Nintendo’s video game systems,” Nintendo writes.

“The circumvention devices, products or components offered at the reported links bypass Nintendo’s TPMs so that users can play unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s game files that are offered unlawfully via the Internet,” the notice adds.

Nintendo notes that some of the URLs offer circumvention devices and tools directly, but it also highlights pages that “promote and direct” visitors to resellers of the circumvention components.

While Team-Xecuter is one of the main targets, Nintendo is also going after legitimate stores that offer R4i and R4S dongles. This includes Newegg, a well-known electronics retailer based in California.

At the time of writing, Newegg no longer lists any R4i dongles on its .com site but the Canadian version still has some, including the one below. Nintendo also asked Google to remove this page, but for now, it’s still listed in the search results.

The same isn’t true for many other pages. Most well-ranked Team-Xecuter URLs, including the homepage, have been removed from Google. The same is true for other sites such as usachipss.com, mod-switch.com, mlgames.net, and funnyplaying.com.

Whether the site operators agree with the takedowns or not, they are generally irreversible. Google says that unlike regular DMCA copyright takedowns, there is no counternotice process. The DMCA doesn’t prescribe a takedown and counter-notification scheme for DRM circumvention.

While Google has voluntarily chosen to take the URLs offline, it is not required to offer a counter-notice option. This puts targeted sites at a severe disadvantage.

This means that for rightsholders this takedown route can be quite effective. Just a few weeks ago we showed that the RIAA uses the same grounds to remove the URLs of YouTube download platforms, and even scammers have previously used the anti-circumvention route as well.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Private Internet Access, commonly known as PIA, is one of the largest VPN providers in the world.

In recent years it’s become a well-established brand that has had its no-logging policy tested in court, with success.

This week the company announced that some changes are afoot. PIA’s parent organization LTMI Holdings is in the process of a merger acquisition by the publicly traded Kape Technologies, which also owns the Cyberghost and Zenmate VPN services.

As part of the planned deal, Kape will pay $95.5 million. Part of this will be paid in cash, Vox reports, and Kape is also planning to pay the $32.1 million in existing debt PIA has on the books.

With the planned merger acquisition Kape hopes to become a dominant force in the VPN industry.

“In one acquisition, I believe we have positioned Kape to fast become one of the leading digital privacy service providers in the world, empowering consumers to manage their own data and digital security,” Kape’s CEO Ido Erlichman comments.

PIA’s CEO Ted Kim is also pleased with the deal and notes that it will help to improve the digital privacy and security of PIA’s subscribers worldwide.

There are no changes planned in the short term. The Private Internet Access name will remain in use for now, just as Cyberghost and Zenmate are still using their original brands. However, the acquisition has raised questions among some users.

Some have pointed at Kape’s history. The company had previously operated under the name Crossrider and was active in the advertising space. Among other things, it installed toolbars with ‘potentially unwanted software.’ While the company has since switched to a focus on cybersecurity, this past has made some people suspicious.

In an article addressing some of the questions, PIA assured its subscribers that its course is not going to change. According to Chief Communications Officer, Christel Dahlskjaer, privacy and security remain the top priority.

“From day one, we have been clear that your privacy is our policy and that the Private Internet Access VPN and our other privacy products exist to bring power to the people.

“The people are our stakeholders, and it is to you all, collectively, that we must remain accountable,” Dahlskjaer adds. She points out that PIA worked with Kape’s to establish a shared mission and guiding principles, which reflects the core values.

It’s inevitable that any corporate deal in the VPN industry will be watched closely and that’s a good thing. VPN providers rely on trust and should be judged by their actions. The company that protects its customers the best way it can, will ultimately be the most successful.

PIA believes that, by teaming up with Kape, it has the best shot at achieving this goal and asks users to give it the time to prove itself.

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Disclaimer: PIA is one of our sponsors. This article was written independently, as all of our articles are. We generally don’t report on VPN business news but felt that it was good to mention this development.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

When New Zealand, alleged movie piracy, cash seizures, and a US-based investigation feature in the same sentence, what follows is usually information pertaining to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom.

It transpires, however, that there are other pretty big players on the radars of authorities in both countries.

Back in June, software programmer Jaron David McIvor received an unwelcome visit from police in New Zealand who were investigating a movie piracy case in the United States. It took at least two visits but Ivor ultimately ended up handing over $1.1 million in cash and the keys to his cryptocurrency accounts containing almost $6.7 million.

The case, which has just been made public by NZHerald, centers around alleged money laundering. According to Detective Senior Sergeant Keith Kay, the head of the Asset Recovery Unit in Waikato, McIvor helped to create a movie piracy site in the United States from which he received an estimated $2m.

It’s reported that the money was deposited into various bank accounts from wire transfers, Stripe, and PayPal. It was the latter who identified “suspicious activity” on an account linked to McIvor and subsequently reported the matter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States.

Since the funds were allegedly generated from crimes that took place in the United States, moving the funds into New Zealand was sufficient to trigger a money-laundering investigation and the seizure of the funds earlier this year.

The name of the pirate platform allegedly co-founded by McIvor has not been named. However, police have confirmed that other individuals are under investigation in the United States, Canada, and Vietnam.

The seizures that began in June in New Zealand came just a month after news broke in the United States that authorities had seized around $4 million worth of cash and cryptocurrency there as part of an investigation into alleged movie piracy.

The two cases are not currently being linked by authorities but they share some similarities. Both involve an alleged pirate movie site in the US, both received a PayPal referral for suspicious activity, and both resulted in the seizure of large volumes of cash and cryptocurrency.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

In recent years CreativeFuture has been one of the most vocal anti-piracy groups.

The coalition is made up of more than 550 organizations as well as hundreds of thousands of individual creators.

The group lobbies lawmakers and leads the charge when it comes to many anti-piracy discussions. Its message is loud and clear: piracy is terrible and Google is enemy number one.

In recent years CreativeFuture has repeatedly pitted itself against major technology companies which it believes don’t do enough to curb piracy. In this often hostile ecosystem, it found one sole tech giant at its side, Microsoft.

“In an era of creative decimation perpetrated by the world’s biggest technology companies, one of their very biggest made a point of joining us to stand up for copyright,” CreativeFuture noted in a recent mailing.  

While that sounds positive, the reason for the email isn’t good. The anti-piracy coalition explains that Microsoft is the first member to ever leave the group. While the company hasn’t publicly explained its motives, CreativeFuture knows why.

According to the mailing, Microsoft wasn’t happy with an article the group wrote about Pamela Samuelson, the new Board Chair at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

CreativeFuture and EFF often find themselves at odds and the former has repeatedly criticized the digital rights group. In its most recent article, CreativeFuture highlights what it calls Samuelson’s “miserable copyright record.”

This apparently went a step too far for Microsoft. While the company probably hoped to keep its disagreement out of public view, CreativeFuture decided otherwise, going on the attack.

“Confused and hurt, we did some digging, and discovered that Samuelson and Microsoft have a long history together, going at least as far back as 2005, when Microsoft gifted a whopping $1 million to the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley,” CreativeFuture writes.

In addition, the coalition points out that Samuelson published a paper defending Microsoft in a lawsuit against AT&T, while the tech company continued to support the Samuelson Clinic.

CreativeFuture says that it “gets it” and that Samuelson may be a “lovely person with a kind and tender heart.” However, it notes that by backing her, the company is turning its back “on the core copyright industries,” including many software developers.

“As one of the world’s most innovative companies, Microsoft, you should know better than anyone that copyright is the fuel of innovation in this country, the assurance that innovators will be compensated for doing their important work.

“From this perspective, your relationship with Pamela Samuelson is ultimately a kind of self-sabotage, an attack on the very values that have helped your company thrive,” CreativeFuture adds.

CreativeFuture says it’s sad to see Microsoft go. It will continue its anti-piracy quest and hopes that the tech giant will one day rejoin. However, considering its scathing letter, that’s very unlikely.

We don’t know Microsoft’s exact reasons for leaving. Perhaps the arguments against Samuelson weren’t the problem as much as the fact that it was made personal. Personal attacks can be quite effective and fuel most of the online discourse today, but they may not fit Microsoft’s image.

That said, it may also be that Microsoft no longer sees fit to support CreativeFuture, as it has interests and allies on the other side as well. That’s certainly not uncommon and happens on both sides of the copyright/technology divide.

For example, when we researched an unrelated article, we noticed that Netflix has left the Internet Association, which is critical of stringent copyright legislation. While no reason was mentioned, Netflix’s departure took place late last year, just a few weeks before it joined the Motion Picture Association.

Whatever Microsoft’s precise motives are, the company can be assured that CreativeFuture will keep a close eye on its copyright track record going forward.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Broadly speaking, torrent clients come in two flavors; closed source (such as uTorrent or BitTorrent Mainline) or open-source, such as qBittorrent or BiglyBT, for example.

Many experienced torrent users often favor the latter, since the code of open-source clients is not only open to scrutiny but can give others the ability to learn about or further develop software. So of course, it’s never great when something bad happens to an open-source project.

Yaroslav Pronin, a student and Russia-based developer of Android torrent client LibreTorrent, is an advocate of Free Software. He informs TF that he began work on his tool in 2016 because he believed there wasn’t a “complete freedom” torrent client available for the platform.

Pronin says that he was also motivated by the fact that BitTorrent has been under pressure, with sites blocked both in Russia and overseas due to copyright issues.

“A Free Software torrent client is an important step in supporting BitTorrent technology for the free (as in Freedom) exchange of information between people,” he explains.

As a result, Pronin went down the open-source route (GNU GPLv3) for LibreTorrent and gathered a decent-sized following. But despite all his good intentions, he still found his software deleted from Google Play recently for a somewhat unusual reason.

What happened behind the scenes here is something of a mystery. Pronin says that he first became aware of an issue in early October when Google advised him that his software had been marked as ‘spam’, which indicates the client is considered “non-original” content.

“It was the morning of October 8, 2019, when I read the e-mail from Google that LibreTorrent was deleted. They wrote the reason: ‘Violation of Spam policy’,” Pronin explains.

“I was shocked, because I didn’t violate anything of the kind. Therefore, I turned to Google with the first appeal, so that they could clarify the situation, and also figure out that I didn’t violate the spam policy.”

It turned out that Google wasn’t interested in reconsidering its position.

Status of app LibreTorrent (org.proninyaroslav.libretorrent): Suspended from Google Play due to policy violation.

I’ve reviewed your appeal request and found that your app still violates Google Play Policy. During review, we found that your app violates the policy for Spam. We don’t allow apps that spam users or Google Play, such as apps that are duplicative and low-quality.

“As I can think, this was due to the fact that there were many LibreTorrent clones on Google Play and Google just uninstalled all the apps without understanding the essence of what was happening,” he says, commenting on the app’s deletion from Google Play.

Pronin informs TorrentFreak that thus far, Google has only responded to him once, informing him of the reason for deletion. He says he sent information confirming him as the developer of the original LibreTorrent but that achieved nothing.

“I filed an appeal, but in response I was told that they can not help in any way and the only option is to rename the application and lay it out again,” he explains.

Completely renaming an app and losing an established brand seems a draconian measure to force on a developer. Sadly, it may be that other developers who took LibreTorrent’s source and decided to abuse it may be to blame.

“Since 2016, a lot of LibreTorrent clones have appeared on Google Play. I understand that LibreTorrent is open source, but those who published these clones on Google Play didn’t modify the source code,” he says.

“They only added ads and changed the name of the application. Yes, there were authoring developments based on LibreTorrent, but there are much fewer of them than clones with advertising. Most of the clones were removed last year at my request, but they appear again and again.

“Google just decided that LibreTorrent is an application with non-original content, as many LibreTorrent clones are located on Google Play. It’s also possible that the author of one of the clones filed a complaint for the removal of the original LibreTorrent. We can only guess about it.”

Pronin is understandably upset and disappointed with Google. He says that the company has made no effort to understand the situation yet, meanwhile, leaves up actually malicious software for download until someone complains.

More importantly for him, however, is that with the removal of LibreTorrent, fewer people overall will learn about Free Software. He acknowledges that Google services are both non-free and have privacy problems but getting the Free Software message out to as many people as possible was one of his key goals.

It’s also a shame since after a year in development, LibreTorrent 2.0 is almost ready for launch. The source code has been rewritten to increase stability and there are around 20 new features, including an updated UI.

Whether Google will eventually relent remains to be seen but in the meantime, anyone wanting to download LibreTorrent can do so here and here.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.