With nearly 60 million subscribers globally, Netflix is a giant in the world of online video entertainment.

In terms of providing access to popular TV-shows and movies the company’s biggest competitor is piracy. Just a few weeks ago Netflix described the BitTorrent-powered Popcorn Time as a major threat.

Interestingly, piracy also offers critical business intelligence to the company. For example, it uses local piracy statistics to determine what content it should offer in various regions.

That’s not all though. During this week’s earnings interview Nexflix’s Chief Financial Officer David Wells said that a country’s piracy rate is a main factor in determining the service’s local price.

“Piracy is a governor in terms of our price in high piracy markets outside the US,” Wells explained.

“We wouldn’t want to come out with a high price because there’s a lot of piracy, so we have to compete with that,” Wells added.

Another recurring issue is Netflix policies against VPN usage. While the terms of use have prohibited this for a long time already, the big crackdown on VPN users has yet to begin.

According to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, VPNs are used by paying customers, which isn’t such a big problem as piracy.

“It’s certainly less bad than piracy,” Hastings said, quickly adding that it’s not something the company encourages.

Ted Sarandos, head of content at Netflix, noted that the company continues to work with the studios to address the VPN issue but that it’s “kind of a whack a mole.”

Instead, Sarandos prefers to focus on the positive battle against piracy, which he believes Netflix is winning.

“The real great news is that in the piracy capitals of the world Netflix is winning. We’re pushing down piracy in those markets by getting access.” Sarandos noted.

With the right pricing Netflix has indeed converted many pirates. The next step is to make VPNs obsolete, by offering content globally without any geographical restrictions.

“The best way to make the VPN issue a complete non issue is through global licensing that we’re continuing to pursue with our partners,” Sarandos said.

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

He’s one of the most famous people in the online space and the founder of the site at the heart of the world’s largest ever copyright infringement lawsuit, yet a relatively minor indiscretion has the potential to derail Kim Dotcom in a matter of weeks.

It all stems back to September 10, 2009 when a police radar gun logged speed-loving Dotcom doing 149km/h (92mph) in a 50km/h (30mph) zone. According to the authorities police gave chase, eventually catching up with Dotcom’s 3.6-liter AMG Mercedes 1.7km (1 mile) later close to his Coatesville mansion.

Explaining his three times over-the-limit endeavor as a “stupid mistake”, Dotcom later pleaded guilty by letter four days later. During the hearing the court heard that the entrepreneur had been “testing” a new car.

“When spoken to by police the defendant stated he had seen an 80km/h sign. He further stated that he stepped on the gas for 3-4 seconds and then braked and reduced his speed to the speed limit. He also stated he wanted to test the acceleration of the vehicle,” the records state.

Despite Dotcom expressing regret for his actions, the judge fined him $500 plus $130 costs and banned him from driving for six months. Now, almost five years later, the case is coming back to haunt Dotcom after he failed to declare the motoring conviction on his New Zealand residency application eight months after the offense.

In the (blurred) image below released under the Official Information Act, item three shows a ‘No’ response to the question “Have you or any of your family members included in your application, ever been: Convicted of an offense including traffic offenses committed within the last five years, involving dangerous driving [or] driving having consumed excessive alcohol.

The same immigration records reveal that Dotcom disclosed both his 1994 hacking conviction and a 2001 suspended sentence for insider trading, but both were disregarded having been dealt with under Germany’s “clean slate” legislation.

Nevertheless, it now appears that Dotcom’s position as a New Zealand resident is under threat due to his dangerous driving conviction and subsequent non-disclosure. According to NZHerald, Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse could decide within the month whether Dotcom will be allowed to remain in New Zealand or be kicked out of the country.

Dotcom insists that the omission was the result of a misunderstanding with his advisors but the discovery was considered serious enough to prompt a high-level deportation inquiry.

“In the interests of fairness and natural justice, Mr Dotcom and his advisers have been asked to make submissions on the matter by 4 May,” Immigration NZ said in a statement.

“Once that process is complete a decision will then be made by the Minister of Immigration on whether Mr Dotcom is liable for deportation.”

The potential for deportation (albeit to either Finland or Germany, not the United States) only adds to Dotcom’s woes.

Last month the United States seized dozens of millions of dollars worth of the Megaupload founder’s assets and in June he’ll face an extradition hearing having had a request for postponement denied.

Whether Dotcom will be able to deflect ejection from New Zealand on either or both counts remains to be seen, but the tycoon certainly sees himself being backed into a corner.

“Dear Mr. Dotcom,” he wrote this morning on Twitter.

“Here are your options: Extradition or Deportation. Regards, The New Zealand Government.”

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

EZTV, the go-to place for many torrenting TV fans, has suffered its fair share of troubles in recent months.

It started early December when the group’s site was knocked offline as collateral damage in the Pirate Bay raid. A month later the group lost its .it domain name, which was then taken over by impostors in March.

To get back online and stay there, EZTV has had to move things around quite a bit.

In response to these recent issues the EZTV team has decided to go on a small hiatus, so the current setup can be carefully inspected. This means that in the short term no new releases will go up on the site.

“We are not releasing any new content at the moment due to a security audit of all our servers,” EZTV’s Novaking informs TF.

“We just want to put things on hold to see where everything is at and make sure everything is running optimally,” he adds.

The latest torrents were released on Monday and there is no ETA yet for when new ones will appear. The group is taking its time to carry out a proper audit and will do some code cleanup at the same time.

As part of the security audit registered users have also received a request for a password reset. Initially this resulted in some issues where users were unable to login but Novaking notes that people who experienced this problem can get in touch via IRC.

If all goes well EZTV may also reopen registrations again, which is something people have requested for a long time.

Fueled by the lack of new content and the recent domain troubles, some users were suspicious when they saw a link to the Bitx video player in the torrent list. However, this is a new streaming player the group is testing and nothing to worry about.

In a few days EZTV hopes to start releasing new content again. Until then, the group advises TV fans to turn to the ‘competition’ for their daily fix.

“There are several other distribution groups people can use while we’re doing the audit,” Novaking says.

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

After years of controversy over illegal downloads of Game of Thrones, the premiere of the new season this past weekend was never likely to come and go without a few piracy headlines.

What no one expected was for the first four episodes to leak in their entirety Saturday evening, triggering a pre-release piracy frenzy and a binge viewing bonanza on a never-seen-before scale .

But despite what some believed might be pending doom following millions of unauthorized downloads, HBO’s response was relatively calm, with the company saying it was “actively assessing” how the breach had occurred. However, an event from another unexpected quarter elicited a much more strongly worded response.

On Monday, Aussie news outlet Mumbrella reported that in the wake of gazillions of weekend BitTorrent downloads, literally “dozens” of people live-streamed the first episode of Game of Thrones to their friends as it aired in Australia.

Their weapon of choice was Twitter-owned Periscope, an app that allows anyone to point a smartphone at anything and stream that content live to the world. As expected, Twitter was quick to respond, saying Periscope would terminate the user accounts of anyone “determined to be a repeat infringer.”

Considering the extremely low number of reportedly poor quality streams and the unstoppable piracy extravaganza already underway elsewhere, it seemed unlikely the story would gain much traction. But for reasons best known to HBO, the company has now issued a more strongly worded statement on the Periscope streams than it did for the torrent leak on Saturday.

“We are aware of Periscope and have sent takedown notices,” an HBO spokeswoman confirmed in a statement. But then the twist.

“In general, we feel developers should have tools which proactively prevent mass copyright infringement from occurring on their apps and not be solely reliant upon notifications,” HBO added.

When targeted at a live streaming app like Periscope with a relatively tiny userbase, this is a head-scratching statement.

While a couple of handful of users were admittedly streaming the same content to their followers, Periscope would’ve needed to be advised in advance of what content to look out for in order to censor any streams. Even then it would’ve been tricky to pick out a particular TV show from what were presumably pretty wobbly smartphone streams.

But even if streams went ahead, would they even prove a crowd pleaser with those looking to view leaked shows? Periscope co-founder Kayvon Beykpour doesn’t believe so.

“I just don’t think that Periscope, as much as I love it, is a compelling way to watch a theatrical premiere of a movie, a Game of Thrones release, a soccer match, an NBA match,” Beykpour says.

“Of course someone is going to open up their phone and stream this stuff, but that’s not a compelling way for people to engage.”

What makes this situation even more curious is why HBO would pick on Periscope at all when there are much bigger targets? Within minutes of Game of Thrones appearing online Saturday evening HBO would’ve known the hash values of the episodes. Why then aren’t they calling on BitTorrent Inc, for example, to implement a hash filtering system in its uTorrent client?

It’s hard to know what’s going through the media giant’s collective mind, but neither BitTorrent nor Periscope appear to have hurt the Game of Thrones premiere. Despite four episodes already being widely available online, Sunday’s opener proved to be a series-best in the United States with 7.99 million viewers.

However, it is certainly possible that HBO has something else on its mind.

Sure, Periscope’s Beykpour feels that his app isn’t “compelling” for streaming sports, but will HBO feel the same way come May 2 when people start flooding into the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for Mayweather vs Pacquiao?

HBO and rare partner Showtime will be charging a whopping $89.95 for a PPV pass, 40% more than the previous record set for a Mayweather fight in 2013. Plus, there won’t be a way to torrent the event until the final bell has long gone.

Expect a lot more than “dozens” to point their periscopes and meerkats screenwards for the biggest fight in boxing history in just two weeks’ time. Proactively taking down those streams will be game of whac-a-mole that not even the men in the main event will be quick enough to keep up with.

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

In February 2004 large portions of Microsoft’s Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 source code leaked onto the Internet.

In a statement issued at the time, Microsoft said the breach didn’t come from inside. The company worked closely with the FBI to track down the source but these efforts were fruitless.

Hoping to keep the leak under control, Microsoft also started issuing takedown notices to sites and P2P file-sharers, urging them to stop offering the code.

However, like anything that leaks onto the Internet it’s pretty much impossible to remove something for good. Even today, several NT 4.0 copies are still floating around in the dark corners of the web.

Up until a few days ago there was even a copy hosted on the popular developer platform GitHub. Posted by “njdragonfly” the leaked source code has been available there since 2011.

Microsoft initially didn’t spot the infringing copy but it recently took action by sending GitHub a DMCA takedown notice.

Microsoft’s takedown notice

“We have received information that the domain listed above, which appears to be on servers under your control, is offering unlicensed copies of, or is engaged in other unauthorized activities relating to, copyrighted works published by Microsoft Corporation,” the company writes

The notice proved to be successful. A few hours after its arrival the repository was made inaccessible. Those who try to access it now are redirected to GitHub’s standard takedown page.

While it’s understandable that Microsoft doesn’t want its source code out in the open, it’s not as much as a security threat as it was a decade ago. Today, more than 10 years after it was first published, pretty much all exploits have been patched.

That said, it’s worth nothing that after all these years Microsoft is trying to contain the leak. But perhaps that’s just for sentimental value.

Windows NT 4.0

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