While money may very well be the root of most evil, it’s still a commodity most people want to get their hands on. Trouble is, most financial systems rely on expensive middle-men who are always keen to retain a piece of the pie in return for their transactional skills.

For users of Bitcoin, however, things are somewhat different. The system relies on a peer-to-peer architecture which allows users to transact directly without needing an intermediary. And, of great value to privacy lovers, the system is somewhat less intrusive, unless users provide information about themselves as part of a purchase, for example.

These aspects have generated interest among those in the ‘pirate’ community, with some torrent sites now accepting donations via Bitcoin donations instead of through the troublesome PayPal. However, a service currently being promoted by a technology company will see Bitcoin used in the fight against piracy instead.

The solution comes from South Africa-based Custos Media Technologies who say that for a fee they can embed a “digital alarm” into movies and music that can alert content owners when their material is uploaded to torrent sites or other file-sharing platforms.

Developed by researchers at Stellenbosch University, the CustosTech system aims to discourage leaks and reward those who find them while exploiting the publicly accessible information associated with Bitcoin.

The concept is fairly straightforward. Content creators are given the opportunity to embed a unique identifying watermark into a movie, music track or other digital content before they sell or loan it to a customer or client. One suggested use that may catch the industry’s eye is when so-called ‘screeners’ are handed out to Academy members and critics.

However, instead of having a “For Your Consideration” watermark in the middle of the screen, protected movies in this scenario have a trick up their sleeve.

“Custos embeds watermarks into the analog and/or digital content of media items, which are imperceptible but difficult to remove. Each watermark contains a Bitcoin wallet, with a reward for anyone who anonymously claims it once the media has passed out of the control of the original recipient,” Custos explain.

“Media downloaders who want to search for such rewards (‘bounty hunters’) can do so anonymously, from anywhere in the world. The moment a bounty is claimed – and by the nature of cryptocurrencies, this can only happen once – the transaction reflects on the blockchain, and Custos notifies the media provider of the incident, and to which recipient the content was originally licensed.”

In other words, when content appears on a site somewhere, the first person to download it, view the code, and report it via a special Custos tool, wins the Bitcoin bounty. It’s essentially a people-powered leak reporting system that could lead to a number of possibilities for the content provider.

“[The person to whom the content was originally given] could then be subject to financial or legal penalties, or to reduced access to future content,” Custos explain.

“In this manner, authorised media users are strongly discouraged from actively sharing files or carelessly leaking them, while at the same time, they need not be inconvenienced by cumbersome security measures.”

The company is marketing CustosTech as a system that “turns the downloaders against the uploaders” and in some ways it’s difficult to argue with the assertion. Whether the system will prove popular enough with ‘snitches’ will remain to be seen – that will probably rely on the size of the ‘bounties’ up for grabs.

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

A new ICANN proposal currently under review suggests various changes to how WHOIS protection services should operate.

The plans have raised concerns among registrars and consumer organizations who warn that it may put an end to private domain name registrations for some websites.

Copyright holders, on the other hand, have welcomed the proposed changes as they would help them to track down operators of pirate sites. Yesterday the MPAA submitted its comments to ICANN reiterating this stance.

In particular, the MPAA wants privacy protection services to hand over the registration information if a website owner is unresponsive to abuse complaints. These services should be required hand over the details without a court order or subpoena.

“In situations where clear and verifiable cases of abuse are found and direct communication with the customer of a privacy protection service is not possible, an effective and predictable framework to obtain contact details of the customer is required,” the MPAA’s Alex Deacon writes.

The Hollywood group stresses that it isn’t calling for an outright ban on WHOIS privacy protection for all commercial websites. However, the group does support ongoing discussions on the issue.

Many opponents of the proposed changes warn that privacy limitations may make it easier for criminals to harass website owners. The MPAA turns the tables instead, arguing that consumers have the right to know who runs a commercial website.

“MPAA believes it is equally important to consider the privacy interests and rights of Internet users who interact with web sites, many using privacy protection services, on a daily basis. Users right to know the identity of commercial entities with whom they are transacting, is a foundational principle in consumer protection law,” Deacon notes.

In a separate blog post on the issue the MPAA complains that its stance on the domain name privacy issued has been mischaracterized.

“Unfortunately, in recent weeks there have been a growing number of assertions that have sought to mischaracterize the MPAA’s position on privacy and proxy services,” Deacon writes.

In a blog post the MPAA notes that it doesn’t object to legitimate use of privacy protection services at all, even for commercial services. In addition, it stresses that privacy protection services should not reveal any private information without solid evidence.

However, they add that the new rules must “strike a balance” to ensure that individuals who use domain names for “illegal and abusive activity” can be easily exposed.

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

Late last week file-sharing fans in Portugal received the worst possible news. WarezTuga, the country’s most popular ‘pirate’ movie and TV show site, announced it was closing down with immediate effect.

“It is an extremely difficult decision for all of us, more than most can even imagine, but our work reached heights of popularity so high, it became absolutely impossible to continue to fight and to manage a project of such scale,” its operators announced.

While less well-known overseas, WarezTuga was a significant operation. In February it was one of the top 20 most popular sites in all of Portugal, jostling for position with giants including Twitter and Yahoo. Even today, with traffic plummeting due to the shutdown, WarezTuga is still the country’s 25th most trafficked domain. But that success didn’t come easily.

“Four years of struggle, sweat, dedication and sacrifice have now come to an end, but also years of pleasure, satisfaction and pride for what we have achieved together. We leave with a clear conscience, because we have achieved what we always dreamed about: to be an example, a reference, a statue of what can be achieved when the will power is infinite,” its operators said.

“In the end, we are proud to say that today we close wareztuga.tv willingly and we were those who resisted longer, despite all the external pressures.”

Now, however, more details are emerging which make it clear that while the shutdown might ultimately have been voluntary, the site had been under massive pressure from the movie industry both locally and in the United States.

Local anti-piracy group FEVIP (Portuguese Association of Audiovisual Works Defense) has now revealed it was behind the shutdown. Complaints were filed against WarezTuga in May 2014 by FEVIP and now-defunct anti-piracy outfit ACAPOR who were acting on behalf of companies in the United States.

However, there was a problem to overcome. As is becoming increasingly common with similar sites, WarezTuga used U.S.-based Cloudflare, a service which can shield the true location of a site’s servers. But as other sites are discovering, that protection is easily unlocked by filing a complaint with the CDN service.

With the site’s location known, FEVIP headed off to Romania where WarezTuga operated its servers. There a webhost known as Alistar-Security received threats from “representatives of a U.S. copyright group”. Unconfirmed, but almost certainly the MPAA and its affiliates.

What happened next is unclear but whatever it was seems to have seriously spooked the operators of WarezTuga. After operating under pressure since 2011, the operators took the decision to close down the site. FEVIP welcomed the move.

“It was the pirate site most used in Portugal; even if others arise, at least this site has been taken down,” FEVIP chief Paulo Santos told Exame Informática.

The shutdown of the site was bitter-sweet for Nuno Pereira, the former head of now-defunct anti-piracy group ACAPOR. The copyright group became one of WarezTuga’s most aggressive opponents but was shut down after the interests they represented – video rental outlets – became a thing of the past.

“It was the most important pirate site and the one we wanted to close down quickly, but it turned out it took more time to close,” Pereira said.

But while video rentals disappear into the Portuguese sunset, a new dawn of video consumption is appearing on the country’s horizon. After a long wait, Netflix will finally land on local shores in October and not a minute too soon for FEVIP’s Santos.

“Of course it would be desirable that the service had come much earlier, before everyone who uses the Internet modernly have sought alternatives. But it is likely to be a success, something seen immediately by the amount of attention that the Portugal arrival announcement has generated,” Santos says.

But even as Netflix tries to take hold in a market free of WarezTuga, Santos says that the pirate vacuum might be filled sooner rather than later.

“Generally, for every hundred sites that close, there are 60 returning. These are averages that we know in the industry,” the FEVIP chief concludes.

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

Earlier this year the U.S. Government won its civil forfeiture case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom.

As a result, the U.S. now owns Kim Dotcom’s bank accounts, cars, art and other property worth dozens of millions of dollars.

Last week Megaupload’s legal team filed its appeal brief, hoping to undo the District Court’s decision, pointing out that the court denied the defendants’ basic rights and violated due process

According to the defense team the court was wrong to label Dotcom and his colleagues as fugitives, a claim which is now supported by several legal experts.

A few hours ago the Cato Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Institute for Justice submitted an independent brief in support of Megaupload.

“… the federal government’s aggressive use of forfeiture poses a grave threat to property rights and can cause irreparable injury when property is forfeited without any hearing,” the groups write (pdf).

The legal experts sum up a variety of reasons why the Megaupload defendants should not be branded fugitives and note that the District Court’s decision is dangerous and unconstitutional.

“Stripping the claimants of their due process rights isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s dangerous. There’s a growing literature on the abuse of civil forfeiture and those abuses are directly tied to the protections given to the claimants here, as well as the ability of government officials to directly benefit from forfeitures,” they write.

Continuing their brief, the legal experts suggest the Department of Justice was not happy with how the case was proceeding, and that they went after the assets to turn the case in their favor.

“Not content to hold the best hand in this card game a U.S. Attorney’s office with extensive resources and privileges the government has decided that the other side should be forced to relinquish its chips before the game even begins.”

“This Court should not countenance such a gross violation of due process,” they add, asking the court to overturn the District Court decision.

Kim Dotcom is glad to see the support of the legal experts and is confident that his team will win the appeal.

“I’m grateful for the support from these respected organizations. It is good to see that there are groups of legal experts in the United States that hold the Government to account and combat the abuse of power and prosecutorial overreach,” Dotcom tells TF.

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

Rather than taking operators to court, copyright holders are increasingly relying on Internet providers to block ‘pirate’ domains.

Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to various pirate sites, and in Italy this process is formalized through telecoms regulator AGCOM.

The idea behind these blockades is that they help to decrease online piracy. However, research increasingly suggests that this aim is not being fulfilled. In fact, a new study shows that blocking attempts may actually be counterproductive.

To find out whether blocking efforts are effective, University of Padua professor Giorgio Clemente decided to run a comprehensive analysis, comparing traffic data before and after the measures were implemented.

The research uses the same methodology as an earlier MPAA-commissioned study by Incopro which examined UK blockades. However, instead of merely looking at the blocked domains, Professor Clemente also took domain name changes into account because site operators commonly switch domains to bypass censorship efforts.

The results are quite revealing and show that Government-sanctioned blockades actually increase traffic to the targeted sites.

“The most important conclusion is that blocking access to websites increases their popularity,” Professor Clemente tells TF. “In particular, AGCOM helps to advertise pirated works, creating the classic and well-known Streisand effect.”

The data clearly shows that Italian search engine traffic to most of the targeted sites gets a boost, creating a consequent increase in piracy rather than a decline.

In many cases the websites simply switched to a new domain name to evade the blocking efforts. Cineblog01.net, for example, moved to a .li domain name and as a result of the attention the site received from the blocking efforts, search engine traffic spiked more than 1000%.

“AGCOM’s blocking measures have actually increased the site’s popularity, which went from 106,000 Italian search engine visitors in March 201 to 2,294,000 users a year later,” the report reads, adding that this caused a spike in piracy activity.

The same pattern was observed for other sites. Limetorrents, for example, saw Italian search engine traffic increase from 9,000 to 162,000 a few months later after, as shown below.

Limetorrents traffic increase

The measures also helped to promote previously unknown sites. TorrentDownloads had no Italian visits before the blocking measures but started to see traffic coming in after AGCOM put the site on its blocklist.

The full report lists a total of 27 sites which nearly all increased their visitor numbers. This leads to the overall conclusion that the time and money invested in the measures is wasted.

“The resources and energy which Internet providers put into the blocking efforts are completely unjustified, and so are the copyright protection activities of AGCOM, given the obvious ineffectiveness of the measures,” the report reads.

Professor Clemente notes that his research confirms a recent study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, which reached a similar conclusion regarding the shutdown of the popular movie streaming portal Kino.to

Italian lawyer Fulvio Sarzana, who represented the owners of several blocked websites, says the report confirms what many people already expected.

“The research by the University of Padua shows what everyone already knows: administrative copyright enforcement by blocking access to websites is an unnecessary and harmful waste time,” he tells TF.

The controversial AGCOM measures are up for a review at the Italian Constitutional Court later this year which will look at whether they limit people’s right to free expression. If the court rules the measures unlawful, Sarzana says that the affected sites may be entitled to a substantial damage claim for being unfairly blocked.

However, taking the results of Professor Clemente into consideration there’s little damage to complain about.

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