Most companies attempting to “turn piracy into profit” seek to scare ‘pirates’ by billing them for alleged downloads. These ‘fines’ can reach many thousands of dollars but companies like U.S. based Rightscorp took a decision to hit the bottom end of the market with demands of just $20 per shot.

While this has attracted giants such as Warner Bros. to the fold, Rightscorp can’t seem to make money. Year after year the company expands the amount of business it’s doing, but at no point has the company been able to turn a profit, quite the opposite in fact.

Just last month after the publication of its most recent financial results, TF noted that if Rightscorp is put under severe pressure it may have to increase its $20 fines to something more practical. We didn’t have to wait long.

In a new notice targeting an alleged sharer of the TV show ‘Arrow’ this week, Rightscorp delivers a message from its client Warner Bros. Noting that the company understands that the recipient is likely a fan of the show, the notice warns of serious consequences.

“Your ISP service could be suspended if this matter is not resolved. You could also be liable for substantial civil penalties for copyright infringement,” it reads.

In all previous notices seen by TF, Rightscorp asks for $20 to make a potential lawsuit disappear. However, they’re now asking for $30 for “legal release” and the opportunity to “receive future digital content offers from [Warner Bros], should you choose to receive them.”

At this stage it’s too early to assess whether this ‘pricing’ change will be applied across the board or if it will have any negative effect on the numbers of people choosing to settle. However, 50% more revenue would be welcome. During the past two years Rightscorp has reportedly closed 200,000 cases of infringement – at $30 rather than $20 each that’s a potential $2m extra in revenue.

That being said, an additional factor concerns how much money Rightscorp will hand back to companies like Warner Bros. Previously a $20 ‘fine’ was split 50/50, with the content holder getting $10 and Rightscorp desperately trying (and failing) to make a profit from the remaining $10. Keeping the full $10 increase would be better news for the anti-piracy company although at current rates that alone won’t be enough for it to turn its losses around. However, help is on the horizon.

Earlier this month Rightscorp announced the appointment of a new CFO. Cecil Bond Kyte will oversee capital raising and investor development with the goal of “maximizing shareholder value and strengthening the company’s balance sheet.”

Finally, there are signs that Rightscorp may be expanding its targets. The company already sends hundreds of thousands of notices to household ISPs such as Charter and Comcast, but this week TF has seen evidence that at least one server hosting company has also received a ‘fine’ to pass on to a customer.

“I am a web developer and recently my VPS was compromised by attackers who were using my VPS as a seedbox. Needless to say, I got a notice from my ISP [REDACTED] via a support ticket they opened,” a reader told TF.

In this case Rightscorp also asked for $30 to settle a case involving a TV show but the person targeted won’t be paying the fine. Instead he quickly informed his provider that his server had been hacked and immediately had it shut down to avoid any further issues.

“[Rightscorp] have no idea who I am, due to the fact that they were asking me to fill in my name, email, phone number and credit card info on their payment page!

“It’s almost like knowingly jumping in a well,” our source concludes.

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

While not often in the news, Nintendo has a dedicated anti-piracy division that cracks down on unauthorized use of the company’s properties.

The anti-piracy unit keeps a close eye on Internet piracy and the sale of hacked and counterfeit products which endanger the company’s revenues.

However, there’s also a threat of a whole different kind: baked goods. A few months ago Nintendo spotted a surge of copyright-infringing cookies which were illicitly manufactured in China.

Fearing that the ingredients posed a risk to the health of gaming fans, the company decided to take swift action.

“After receiving a report of cookies being manufactured in China featuring Nintendo’s copyrighted characters, Nintendo took steps to protect consumers,” Nintendo announces in its quarterly update.

The gaming company took its health concerns to the Chinese manufacturer and requested a halt to the baking process as soon as possible.

“Out of concern that unauthorized cookies could pose possible health and safety issues to consumers, Nintendo contacted the manufacturer to immediately cease manufacturing and distributing the unauthorized cookies,” the company explains.

This effort was successful and Nintendo reports that the manufacturer stopped producing the copyright infringing cookies, making the world a safer place for gaming fans.

In addition to crushing the pirated cookies, the company also seized more than a thousand counterfeit Super Mario products in Asia.

This includes the phone cover and backpack pictured on the right.

“Nintendo of Korea provided vital support in a seizure of more than 1,400 pieces of counterfeit Super Mario merchandise at Incheon Customs in [the first quarter of] 2015,” Nintendo reports.

It’s unclear whether the counterfeit goods were also health hazards, or if they were seized to protect Nintendo’s revenues instead.

TF contacted Nintendo for more details on the exact health threats the cookies posed, as well as other anti-piracy efforts, but the company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

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

When Kim Dotcom’s mansion was raided early 2012, the U.S. Government targeted various domain names that were linked to the “Mega conspiracy.”

While Megaupload and Megavideo were the most prominent targets, the indictment also listed megapix.com, megacar.com, megabackup.com and various other “Mega” domains.

All the above sites were pulled offline as a result of the raids, and Megaupload.com and Megavideo.com displayed a banner informing visitors that the sites were under investigation.

As reported previously, the banners vanished after the U.S. Department of Justice made a mistake, which also caused the seized Megaupload and Megavideo domains to run malicious ads.

After uncovering these problems with the Megaupload and Megavideo domains, we noticed something else strange. The domain name Megabackup.com was no longer listed as seized.

In fact, the domain is now in use by another company that offers backup solutions, similar to what Megaupload planned.

Baffled by this finding, we contacted the company behind the new backup service. They informed us that they are in no way affiliated with Kim Dotcom, Megaupload or its former employees.

“We are an independent software startup with no affiliation to MegaUpload whatsoever,” a company spokesperson said.

Instead, the new Megabackup simply bought the domain name through a broker after it had expired.

“We have acquired this domain name through a reseller platform called ‘Sedo’ about a year ago, simply because this name looked interesting and suitable for the backup software we make.”

Megabackup is not the only domain that expired. The same happened to megacar.com, megagogo.com and megapix.com. The latter is currently on sale for a cool $35,000.

HugeDomains, the company currently selling Megagogo.com, informed us that they scooped up the domain after it had expired.

“When the domain was not renewed by the owner after expiration, HugeDomains acquired the domain when it became publicly available on January 22, 2015,” the company informed us.

So has the U.S. Department of Justice made another mistake by letting these domains slip out of their hands? Well, not so fast.

While the domain names are all linked to Megaupload and mentioned in the indictment, those on sale were not officially seized unlike many others.

This means that anyone could have picked them up, which has also happened to Kim Dotcom’s kimpire.com domain.

Commenting on the situation Dotcom informs us that the domains were not supposed to expire. “This should not have happened,” he says, adding that someone else in his team handled the registrations.

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

While the majority of DMCA copyright complaints are sent to hinder the online distribution of music, movies and TV shows, the legislation can also be used to deal with code and software issues.

Just last week, Indian blogger Thejesh GN discovered that an ISP was injecting javascript into customers’ browsing sessions. This led to lawyers representing the script writers to send a DMCA notice to Github, where Thejesh GN had published the code.

Now Github finds itself in the spotlight again, this time over a serious matter involving one of its users and Viacom-owned TV giant Canal+.

The trail of the story began mid-week when Github published a DMCA notice received from the “Legal Manager” of the Industrial Protection Department of CANAL+ Group. The person, whose name was redacted, explained that he/she is in charge of anti-piracy at the company and was seeking the urgent assistance of the code repository.

“All the data and codes published and contained in this [now deleted] directory are confidential and could be used to steal personal data in our CRM [Customer Relationship Management system],” the complaint reads.

The Legal Manager added that the ‘codes’ are connected to a confidential CANAL+ project titled “Kiss deploy” and asked for their urgent removal.

“We request you to remove immediately all the data and files contained in this repository,” the notice adds.

With the repository removed (shown above), CANAL+ were probably happy with Github’s response. However, there were indications that this wasn’t the first correspondence that Github had received from CANAL+ on the matter. We did some digging, were proved right, and were surprised at what we found.

Earlier correspondence between CANAL+ and Github obtained by TorrentFreak reveals a much more serious situation at the TV company and criminal allegations being made against the Github user.

“The 22d of May 20015, we had a compromission [sic] on our AWS project with an access key in order to create bitcoin. The 26th of May 2015, we have found our access key on [the above mentioned] Github repository,” the same legal manager reveals.

“After analysis of this repository, we can state that all the code and the secrets contained in this repository are about Canal+ project.”

According to the complaint, CANAL+ asked Github on four separate occasions to remove “illicit content” published on the site by a user called “hooperp” who the TV company claims has committed serious crimes against them.

“As we have explained, ‘hooperp’ has hacked one of our servers and stole all the data and codes of our new CRM [Customer Relationship Management] software project: ‘Kiss deploy’,” CANAL+’s head of anti-piracy revealed.

“All the data and codes published and contained in his [now removed directory] are confidential and could be used to steal personal data in our CRM.”

Ouch.

With our efforts to track down ‘hooperp’ stalled, we contacted CANAL+ for an official statement. That wasn’t straightforward though, with the company requiring the press to first sign up for an account.

Nevertheless, we did so successfully and received the following email in response. Considering the hacking allegations above, it shines unwanted light on the company’s security procedures. In case anyone is wondering, the blocked-out area hides a plain-text password.

CANAL+ Group did not respond to TorrentFreak’s requests for a statement. Github declined to comment.

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

In recent years copyright holders have demanded stricter anti-piracy measures from ISPs, search engines and payment processors, with varying results.

Continuing this trend, various entertainment industry groups are now going after organizations that manage and offer domain name services.

The most influential organization in this industry is without a doubt ICANN, the main oversight body for the Internet’s global domain name system.

Among other things, ICANN develops policies for accredited registrars to prevent abuse and illegal use of domain names. Still, various copyright groups believe that the organization isn’t doing enough.

In recent months the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright industry groups have encouraged the organization to strengthen its anti-piracy policies.

However, ICANN is not eager to take on the role of piracy police. Earlier this week ICANN president Fadi Chehadé noted that “everybody” is asking the organization to police content, which is a trend they hope to change.

Speaking out on the issue for the first time, ICANN’s Chief Contract Compliance Officer Allen Grogan emphasizes that they are not going to police the Internet to protect copyright holders.

“ICANN has no role in policing content – it’s entirely out of our scope,” Grogan informs TF.

“Our mission is to coordinate, at the overall level, the global Internet’s systems of unique identifiers, and in particular, to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifiers,” he adds.

While various copyright lobby groups suggest that ICANN has the ability and authority to take action against pirate sites, the organization itself clearly disagrees.

“ICANN was never granted, nor was it ever intended that ICANN be granted, the authority to act as a regulator of Internet content,” Grogan says.

Instead of letting the domain name industry decide what is allowed and what is not, copyright holders should fight their battles in court. According to ICANN, there are sufficient means to take on infringing sites through other venues.

“It’s important people understand this and direct their content complaints to the institutions that are already in place to handle these issues, such as law enforcement, regulatory agencies and judicial systems,” Grogan notes.

ICANN’s comments will be a disappointment to the MPAA and RIAA, who would have preferred an easy way to target the domain names of pirate sites. For now, their best option is to go through the courts, something we’re seeing more and more often these days.

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