With dozens of millions of viewers around the world The Walking Dead is one of the most popular TV-series around. The series just ended its fifth season and is scheduled to return next fall.

In common with most popular shows, The Walking Dead has a dedicated group of followers who’re constantly on the lookout for spoilers and possible directions the series may take.

One of the sources that has done well on this front is “The Spoiling Dead Fans.” The people behind the site have posted inside information and many spoiler videos in recent weeks, helped by unnamed sources.

“There is no amount of ‘thanks’ that we could ever give to our sources for everything they have done. We truly appreciate every bit of info they have shared with us throughout the seasons,” the group wrote on Facebook this week.

While the fan community does generate plenty of buzz for The Walking Dead, AMC is not happy with all material they publish.

In February the spoiler group published a 32 second sneak peek of the episode “From A Friend,” which was uploaded to Vimeo. As it contained video that had yet to air on TV it was quickly pulled offline by AMC.

“AMC diligently enforces its rights in and to The Walking Dead in all forms of media and rightfully takes its responsibility for the protection of The Walking Dead very seriously,” the company informed Vimeo.

And AMC didn’t stop at a takedown notice. A few days later it went to court demanding a subpoena to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringer from Vimeo, which was granted (pdf).

When presented with the subpoena, Vimeo has few other options than to hand over all the information they have on the account holder. This includes the associated email and IP-addresses.

Whether the information will be sufficient to pinpoint an actual person is unknown. AMC states that it wants to protect its rights, but whether that will be achieved via legal action remains to be seen. AMC is probably most interested in finding out who the sources for the actual leaked footage and spoilers are.

For now, The Spoiling Dead Fans remain active through their own website and social media accounts, spoiling their way to the next season.

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

Last week Microsoft announced the existence of Halo Online. The all-new game will provide a free-to-play online multiplayer experience on PC.

“Halo Online is powered by a highly modified version of the Halo 3 engine and optimized for smooth performance on lower-end PCs,” the company said.

While the announcement was welcomed by PC gamers everywhere, not all had reason to celebrate. Due to launch later in the spring, Halo Online is destined to be restricted to players in Russia only, at least for the foreseeable future.

“Right now our focus is on learning as much as we can from the closed beta period in Russia. Theoretically, any expansion outside of Russia would have to go through region-specific changes to address player expectations,” the company said.

Of course, ‘player expectations’ can take many forms but predictably not having to wait patiently in line while geo-restrictions are lifted is one of them. The first signs of cracks appearing came when a YouTuber called ‘Noble‘ uploaded footage after modders Gamecheat13 and Lord Zedd reportedly obtained a build of the title.

Since then other modders have been dissecting Halo Online to unlock features, with one team creating a game launcher titled ‘ElDorito’ (a play on the ‘Eldorado’ main executable for Halo:Online) to ease the process.

“We’re really working on building a framework for the game to be playable, as well as a custom console with a plethora of features we believe are necessary to the game,” team member Pyong told Se7ensins.

With the launcher undergoing development via Github, things were progressing smoothly. Until yesterday that is, when Microsoft rolled out the big guns and stopped the project in its tracks.

“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,” the company wrote in a DMCA notice to Github.

While that statement is almost certainly accurate, the notice from Microsoft is somewhat confusing in that it refers to ElDorito being the company’s property.

“The above copyright work(s) [ElDorito] is being made available for copying, through downloading, at the above location without authorization from the copyright owner or exclusive licensee,” the company adds.

But whatever the ins-and-outs, Microsoft still feels it has a valid complaint and has ordered Github to disable access to ElDorito to “prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this copyrighted work(s) via your company’s services.”

As can be seen from the image below, Github has already complied.

While Microsoft were quick to hit the ElDorito project on Github, strangely there appears to have been less effort to take down the actual game files. The project’s wiki doesn’t host the leaked content, but it does offer a valuable pointer.

“Since we can’t actually post the link to the Halo Online download, you’ll have to look for it elsewhere,” the wiki explains.

The word ‘elsewhere’ helpfully links to a Pastebin page which in turn displays a link to Mega.co.nz where someone has uploaded the 2.1GB zip file. It probably won’t be there for long.

But for those hoping that the ElDorito project will continue, that seems unlikely, at least in the short-term. The team is reportedly a bit spooked by Microsoft’s intervention and are waiting for things to cool down before making any decisions.

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

In many countries there are exceptions to copyright law that allow those in education to use copyrighted material to further their studies.

Those exceptions often have limits but copying for research, comment and reporting purposes are generally allowed while teachers are able to make multiple copies of content to hand out to their students.

Following the tabling of a new intellectual property law in Spain, last December the Department of Education sent out a circular reminding schools that the showing of audiovisual content outside strict “fair use” parameters is completely banned.

While airing short clips should be ok, the government had become concerned that schools stepping over the mark could be forced to obtain prior authorization to show content or might even find themselves being sued. That resulted in the decision-making body in the autonomous region of Galicia striking a private licensing deal with rightsholders from the movie industry.

According to Praza.gal the existence of the deal was revealed in a letter (pdf) sent to schools this week by the local CEO of the worldwide Motion Picture Licensing Corporation.

The letter revealed that MPLC was willing to license each student for the price of 1.25 euros per year. While that doesn’t sound much in isolation, there are 260,000 students in the region making a grand total of 325,000 euros ($350,000) to be sent to MPLC’s movie and TV show company members.

The CIG-Ensino union has reacted furiously to the news and is now calling for local authorities to prohibit the collection of any monies and ensure that audiovisual resources for use as teaching and learning aids remain free.

“[Schools and teachers] should not to pay any tax for doing their job and should be able to continue using all kinds of tools that are needed to do their jobs as effectively as possible,” the union said.

“It is incomprehensible to try to limit the task of educating exclusively to the use of the textbooks and reducing the use of resources such as film, music, documentaries in classrooms.”

MPLC has not yet commented on the news.

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

After the Pirate Bay was raided last December hundreds of clones appeared online.

Many of these sites used the open source “Open Bay” project, which allows people to set up their own clone in just a few clicks.

Now, several months later one of the clones has gone rogue. As reported by Malwarebytes, several compromised WordPress blogs are being injected with an iframe that loads thepiratebay.in.ua.

At first sight this seems odd, since the site looks just like any other Open Bay clone. However, this one is being used to offload a rather dangerous exploit kit.

“We found the real reason behind this pretty quickly. The Pirate Bay clone is actively pushing the Nuclear exploit kit with an iframe and will infect vulnerable visitors via drive-by download attacks,” Malwarebytes senior security researcher Jérôme Segura writes.

The malicious content is passed on to users’ computers via a known Flash exploit. The payload being pushed by the Pirate Bay clone is linked to a banking trojan.

Interestingly, most other sites relying on the Open Bay project are experiencing issues as well. The main oldpiratebay.org site is currently down, and other clones don’t have any content.

TF asked the people behind the Open Bay project for a comment and we will update this article if we hear back. For now, we haven’t heard any reports indicating that more Pirate Bay clones are pushing exploit kits.

At the time of writing it’s still unclear how the iframe is being injected into the WordPress sites. A likely explanation appears to be outdated WordPress code or an old plugin.

People are advised to avoid the compromised Pirate Bay clone directly and WordPress users should make sure that they’re running the latest version of the blogging platform.

“To avoid getting their sites hacked, WordPress users need to check that they are running the latest WP install and that all their plugins are up to date,” Jérôme Segura notes.

“Other proper hygiene tips such as strong passwords and avoiding public wifi when logging into your site should also be applied,” he adds.

More technical details and analyses can be found at the Malwarebytes blog.

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^{Photo: Michael Theis}

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

After being blocked by ISPs in more than a dozen European territories, The Pirate Bay has now been rendered inaccessible in Spain following orders from a local court.

On Friday, Madrid’s Central Administrative Litigation Court No. 5 gave local service providers just 72 hours to stop providing access to the infamous site, with several responding much more quickly.

It soon became evident that the ‘ban’ was easily circumvented by Internet users savvy enough to change their DNS settings, but access to ‘pirate’ content isn’t only available through The Pirate Bay.

As a result ‘Pirate Bay Alternatives’ articles began appearing in local media, much as they have done in other countries subjected to ISP blocks. But while these popular lists are usually met with industry silence, in Spain they appear to have touched a nerve.

Founded in 1903, daily newspaper ABC published an online article titled “Other Options After Closing The Pirate Bay”. It drew an immediate response from Jaume Ripoll Vaquer, co-founder of legal video streaming site Filmin.com

“I see @ abc_es also continues the fashion of publicizing [sites that send traffic] to unauthorized content. Congratulations guys,” he wrote on Twitter.

While that criticism seems to have done the trick (ABC withdrew the article, Google cache here), others weren’t so easily deterred.

Published by El Confidencial, “Alternatives to The Pirate Bay: Where You Can Download Torrents in Spanish” provoked direct criticism from Paramount Pictures.

In comments to ElDiario, Paramount Pictures’ promotions manager Laura Ruiz Andrino said that financially supporting publications that direct their readers to places where illegal content can be obtained is not something that should be entertained.

And in a message to media managers at Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures, Andrino suggested that if sites like El Confidencial and ABC choose to support “illegal downloading”, perhaps companies opposed to that stance should consider an advertising boycott. Another Filmin co-founder agreed.

“When buying advertising one should also look at ethics, not only the audience,” he wrote.

Fighting back, Alfredo Pascual, chief editor of the technology section of El Confidencial told HojaDeRouter that the withdrawal of advertising could be viewed as an attack on the media’s right to inform.

“They end up attacking freedom of expression,” Pascual said. “My intention with this article is simply to show that the closure of sites is not a way to solve the problem. For every website that is closed there will be other ten, and this will be the never ending story until there is [a legal] offer that can meet the demand.”

Noting that threats had been made to withdraw press passes from his publication’s culture section, Pascual remains defiant.

“With each closing [of a website] I intend to publish another list [of alternative sites],” the editor concludes.

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