The Pirate Bay’s parent company Reservella Ltd. has started the registration process for a new gTLD with a .PIRATE extension.

Responding to increased pressure from the MPAA and RIAA on the domain name industry, the torrent site hopes to break away from the rules and regulations which forced it to move to several new domains in recent years.

“We can no longer trust third party services and registries, who are under immense pressure from the copyright lobby. So we decided to apply for our very own gTLD and be a true Pirate registry,” TPB’s Winston informs TF.

The new registration is currently being processed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the main oversight body for the Internet’s global domain name system which accepts new gTLD proposals.

.PIRATE applicationIf the new TLD is finalized the Pirate Bay team plans to open registrations to the public. While it has to agree to some oversight formalities and ICANN agreements, the .PIRATE domains are expected to be less prone to censorship.

“The ultimate goal is to create a true PIRATE hydra. This means that we will allow other sites to register .PIRATE domain names too. Staying true to our pirate roots the domains can be registered anonymously without charge,” Winston tells us.

The Pirate Bay crew has prepared the application in secret, setting the wheels in motion nearly a year ago. Ideally, the process would have been finished by late January but a police raid and persistent hosting problems caused some delay.

“Things are looking good so far, but we’re not there yet. Fingers crossed. Let’s hope nothing foolish happens,” Winston concludes.

For the time being, however, The Pirate Bay will continue operating from the Swedish based .SE domain name. A transition to the .PIRATE domain is expected to take place this summer, at the earliest.

The MPAA and RIAA couldn’t be reached for a comment on today’s news, but it’s expected that they will do everything within their power to block Pirate Bay’s deviant plans.

UPDATE: [April 2] As many guessed, this article was an April Fools joke.

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

Over the past year the rise to fame of Popcorn Time has become one of the video entertainment industry’s hottest topics, with various iterations of the project becoming huge successes in their own right.

Of course, this fame has put the Popcorn Time brand on a collision course with content creators and distributors, with numerous threats of legal action regularly making the headlines. However, behind the scenes a different end game has been in the planning for some time.

Popcorn Time has become almost universally known as the ‘Netflix for Pirates’, a moniker that eventually led the California-based streaming service to refer to Popcorn Time as a competitor earlier this year. The admission was the first time that the company had noted synergies with its pirate counterpart and one that signaled the arrival of today’s announcement.

TorrentFreak can now reveal that Netflix has struck a surprise deal with the people behind PopcornTime.io, one of the leading Popcorn Time forks. It marks the end of litigation threats and a move towards cooperative development.

While the price tag is relatively modest at just $11.5m, Netflix has big plans for Popcorn Time that have already been tried and tested in the music industry.

Noting that Spotify now has 60 million users operating on its free tier and more and more choosing to upgrade every month, Netflix intends to leverage the ‘cool’ reputation enjoyed by Popcorn Time to attract paying users to its premium service.

“Today we’re here to announce that Popcorn Time has been acquired by Netflix for $11.5 million. While to many of you that may come as a surprise, and worry that Popcorn Time will change because of this, you don’t need to worry,” the Popcorn Time team said in a statement.

“Popcorn Time itself won’t change to the users, it will still be the same app you’ve all come to love over the last year. However, working with Netflix means we can develop updates and fixes faster and bring you new features more regularly.”

While its understood that Netflix designers and engineers will have both creative and technical input into the development of Popcorn Time moving forward, the current team will continue to work on the project to ensure users’ needs are met.

“The current team will continue to work on Popcorn Time as always. Our goal has always been about bringing you the latest content at home as quickly as possible with all the great features you’ve come to love,” the team say.

While the deal appears to have been sealed in the past few days, TF sources say that the whole thing was close to collapse only last month.

In an eleventh hour move, Netflix negotiators demanded that the open source PopcornTime.io project become closed source in all future releases. An outraged team reportedly threatened to pull out, rejecting the $50m offer that had originally been on the table.

Eventually a compromise was reached but it resulted in a near $40m reduction in Netflix’s offer, “a price worth paying” according to the team who insist that open source principles come first. All money received from Netflix will be returned to the project over the next several years.

Various new names have been tabled for the project including current front-runner Popflix, but it’s understood that Popcorn Time will be maintained as a separate brand for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE: [April 2] As many guessed, this article was an April Fools joke.

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

Mike Weatherley, a Conservative MP and Intellectual Property Adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has pushed various copyright related topics onto the political agenda since early last year.

Previously Weatherley suggested that search engines should blacklist pirate sites, kids should be educated on copyright ethics, and that persistent file-sharers should be thrown in jail.

In his latest proposal the UK MP targets information society service providers (ISSPs) including ISPs, who he believes could do more to fight piracy. The just-released 18-page report stresses that these companies have a moral obligation to tackle copyright infringement and can’t stand idly by.

The report (pdf) draws on input from various pro-copyright groups including the MPAA, BPI, and the Music Publishers Association. It offers various recommendations for the UK Government and the EU Commission to strengthen their anti-piracy policies.

One of the key points is to motivate Internet services and providers to filter content proactively. According to the report it’s feasible to “filter out infringing content” and to detect online piracy before it spreads.

The UK Government should review these systems and see what it can do to facilitate cooperation between copyright holders and Internet service providers.

“There should be an urgent review, by the UK Government, of the various applications and processes that could deliver a robust automated checking process regarding illegal activity being transmitted,” Weatherley advises.

In a related effort, Weatherley notes that Internet services should not just remove the content they’re asked to, but also police their systems to ensure that similar files are removed, permanently.

“ISSPs to be more proactive in taking down multiple copies of infringing works, not just the specific case they are notified of,” he recommends.

“This would mean ISSPs actively taking down multiple copies of the same work which are hosted on its services, not just the individual copy which is subject to the complaint. The MPA believe this principle could be extended further still to ensure that all copies of the infringing work are not just taken down…,” Weatherley explains.

This type of filtering is already used by YouTube, which takes down content based on fingerprint matches. However, the report suggests that regular broadband providers could also filter infringing content.

Concluding, Weatherley admits that it’s all too easy to simply demand that ISPs take the role of policemen, but at the same time he stresses that they have a “moral responsibility” to do more.

The UK MP presents an analogy of a landlord whose property is used for illegal activities. The landlord cannot be held liable for these activities, but he may have to take action if a third-party reports it.

“If the landlord is told that the garage is being used for illegal activity, and that this information is from a totally reliable source, then does the landlord have a moral obligation to report it?”

“I would argue that it is the duty of every citizen or company to do what they can to stop illegal activity and therefore the answer is, yes, the landlord should report the activity,” Weatherley notes.

Weatherley also believes that protecting the rights of copyright holders has priority over a “no monitoring” principle that would ensure users’ privacy. That is, if the monitoring is done right.

“There is also the question as to whether society will want to have their private activities monitored (even if automatically and entirely confidentially) and whether the trade off to a safer, fairer internet is a price worth paying to clamp down on internet illegal activity. My ‘vote’ would be “yes” if via an independent body …”

Overall, the recommendations will be welcomed by the industry groups who provided input. The report is not expected to translate directly into legislation, but they will be carefully weighed by the UK Government and the EU Commission when taking future decisions.

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

While 3D games had been around for a couple of decades prior to its release, the launch of Super Mario 64 alongside Nintendo’s then flagship console N64 in 1996 was a gaming moment to behold.

Coupled with its revolutionary controller, the N64’s hardware placed flesh on Mario’s traditional 2D bones, bringing the iconic character into the 3D world in a way no other game had previously managed.

Little wonder then that the gaming media was filled with delight late last week when news broke that the game’s most iconic level had been recreated by developer Roystan Ross.

Not only had Bob-Omb Battlefield been brought back to life in full HD, but also via the Unity Engine meaning that players were given the first ever chance to play the game via a web browser – a black magic achievement by 1996 standards.

But just as dozens of stories were heralding the return of the king, Nintendo has gatecrashed the party and shut down the fun.

In a complaint sent by Nintendo of America via attorneys at the Miller Nash Graham & Dunn LLP lawfirm, the game company has ordered CDN outfit Cloudflare to disable access to the site hosting the popular browser version of the game.

“The copyrighted work at issue is Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 video game (U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000788138), including but not limited to the audiovisual work, computer program, music, and fictional character depictions,” the company told Cloudflare.

“The web site at http://mario64-erik.u85.net/Web.html displays, and allows users to play, an electronic game that makes unauthorized use of copyright-protected features of Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 video game. Nintendo requests that CloudFlare, Inc. immediately disable public access to http://mario64-erik.u85.net/Web.html.”

In an email to the person operating the server (not Ross himself), Cloudflare said that it had revealed the name of the actual host to Nintendo’s lawyers and forwarded the complaint to the host itself.

“We have provided the name of your hosting provider to the reporter. Additionally, we have forwarded this complaint to your hosting provider as well,” Cloudflare advised.

The complaint from Nintendo was enough to take the browser version immediately offline.

“Thank you for forwarding the request to me. I was hosting this work for a good friend who is an avid fan, and built the project from scratch as a tech demo. As mentioned on the original blog post, and noted in various big name media press, there is no intention to monetize this, ever,” the hoster told Cloudflare.

“All back-end properties hosting the original files have been updated and files removed. I trust that the issue is fully rectified.”

But while the browser edition is now well and truly offline following Cloudflare’s intervention, the desktop versions remain available hosted by Mediafire and with mirrors provided by Microsoft.

Whether they’re next on the takedown list remains to be seen but Nintendo’s actions thus far will be viewed as a real loss by gaming fans around the world. The release of a browser version of a single level of this iconic game was a real achievement and consigning it to history a crying shame.

That being said, it seems more than likely that replacements won’t be far away.

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

After suing hundreds of alleged downloaders in the United States, the makers of Dallas Buyers Club expanded their legal campaign to Europe late last year.

The first cases were brought in Denmark, with anti-piracy lawfirm Maqs demanding fines of roughly 250 euros per infringement.

After collecting several successful payments the scheme is now getting traction locally, especially following reports that Popcorn Time has become more popular than Netflix.

“You could say that the ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ letters have been a success in the number of inquiries that have come in,” Maqs’ lawyer Jeppe Brogaard Clausen told DR, noting that new letters are still being sent out for Dallas Buyers Club.

One of the filmmakers interested in the “speculative invoicing” scheme is Danish producer Ronnie Fridthjof. Together with other industry players he’s determined to go after Popcorn Time users.

“I had hoped that politicians and the police would take care of such matters, but unfortunately that hasn’t happened. When my business is threatened, I am more or less forced to do something,” Fridthjof tells TV2.

While Popcorn Time is specifically mentioned as a target, the action will affect regular BitTorrent users as well. After all, Popcorn Time streams films by connecting to regular torrent swarms.

The new fines are expected to be sent out this summer. The first ones will be around 1,000 to 2,000 Danish krone ($150 to $300), and will increase if recipients fail to respond. As a last resort the filmmakers are considering whether to take alleged pirates to court.

According to some users streaming films via Popcorn Time is seen as something in a legal gray area. Fridthjof, however, has no doubt that it’s against the law.

“It is absolutely crazy that people believe it is legal. It is in no way! It is comparable buying and selling counterfeit goods right next to an official store,” he says.

Similarly, the filmmaker doesn’t buy the excuse that people use Popcorn Time because the legal services don’t have the latest films. That doesn’t justify grabbing something for free, he says.

“We must be able to choose which business model we want, and it must not be guided by unlawful acts. We will not make a business model that competes with free content,” he says.

Legal threats against Popcorn Time users are not new. In the U.S. lawsuits against BitTorrent pirates are quite common, and in Germany Popcorn Time related ‘fines’ have also been issued.

Responding to these developments, various Popcorn Time variants have warned their users over possible legal repercussions and have started offering anonymizing options. Both popcorntime.io and popcorn-time.se now have built-in VPN support.

For now there are still many people using Popcorn Time without anonymizing services, so there will still be plenty of people to fine.

Update: The same scheme may be coming to Sweden as well.

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