After most U.S. theaters backed away from screening The Interview due to “terrorist’ threats, Sony Pictures decided to give the movie its premiere on the Internet via various streaming services.

By Sunday the movie had been sold two million times, which isn’t a bad result at all. However, in the dark corners of the Internet just as many copies were traded without permission.

Via torrent sites alone the movie was shared an estimated 2.5 million times and that number could double when illicit streaming sites and cyberlockers are added to the mix.

One question that remained unanswered until now is where all these pirates are coming from. To find out, TF gathered more than 7,000 IP-addresses of people who shared pirated copies via BitTorrent throughout the past 24-hours.

The data, presented in the table below, reveals that most of the pirates come from parts of the world where there’s no legal avenue to see the film. With 17.6% the United States is still leading the list, but this isn’t a big surprise considering the size of its population.

If we take a look at which countries have most pirates relative to their population size then the Netherlands (17 million) and Australia (23 million) come out on top.

In total Canada, Australia, the UK and the Netherlands are good for 30% of all downloads, but these countries have less than half of the U.S. population combined.

While this data gives some more insight into The Interview’s popularity worldwide it’s hard to draw any strong conclusions, as piracy rates depend on a multitude of factors.

Would there have been less pirated downloads if the movie was sold everywhere? Most likely, but the high percentage of U.S. downloads shows that there’s still plenty of piracy even where the film is available.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that there were no downloads from North Korea in our sample. This doesn’t come as a surprise of course, not least because Internet connectivity has been down recently.

Sony Pictures, meanwhile, is targeting torrent sites with DMCA takedown requests hoping to hinder the distribution of pirated copies. Whether that will have much of an effect has yet to be seen as there are still plenty of pirate copies around.

—-

Note: downloaders who use VPNs may appear to be in a different country.

sample N=7,231

#	Country	%	City	%
torrentfreak.com
1	United States	17.6%	London	3.5%
2	Canada	8.2%	Amsterdam	2.5%
3	Australia	7.8%	Melbourne	2.3%
4	United Kingdom	7.2%	Makati	1.5%
5	The Netherlands	6.8%	Manila	1.5%
6	Philippines	5.3%	Singapore	1.4%
7	India	3.0%	Athens	1.3%
8	Greece	2.1%	Sydney	1.2%
9	Brazil	2.0%	Toronto	1.2%
10	United Arab Emirates	1.5%	Dubai	1.2%

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

Every day hundreds of thousands of games are downloaded from various torrent sites. While it can be quite a challenge to get a pirated game working, most will play just fine.

The same is true for Croteam’s latest release The Talos Principle. A few days ago a pirated copy of the puzzle title surfaced online which initially appeared to work as a regular game.

However, the fun didn’t last long as the developers had previously embedded a feature that traps free-riding pirates in a virtual elevator.

“When I unlocked the 2nd floor on the tower, all the elevators have stopped working. Whenever I want to get somewhere, it just stops in the middle of the way and I can’t do anything,” J.K. wrote on the Steam forums.

The measure had many pirates puzzled, but in a thread on Neogaf the purpose of the “bug” soon came to light.

While bugs in “cracked” games are a regular occurrence, in this case it’s clearly an intentional anti-piracy measure. As can be seen below, the QR code visible in the elevator clearly references the scene release group SKIDROW, who are responsible for many pirated game copies.

Croteam acknowledged the feature on social media by retweeting a mention of the puzzled Steam user, which must have been good for a few laughs among the developers.

Even more so, it probably led to a few extra sales as well. Apparently some pirates were hooked enough to get a legit copy of the game on Steam, to continue playing without any hassles.

“I hit the bug where the elevators stopped working correctly, so I bought the game on Steam and was able to import my save,” an anonymous user wrote on a popular torrent site, adding that it’s been worth the money.

“I did lose some progress, possibly a side effect of the elevator bug, but I was able to get back to where I was pretty quickly. I just finished the game (one ending, at least) and it was totally worth the purchase price.”

So the developers managed to punish pirates and get paid. That’s a pretty good outcome to say the least.

As Kotaku mentions, this isn’t the first time that Croteam has come up with a rather creative form of DRM. Three years ago the developers added an invincible scorpion to Serious Sam, making it impossible for pirates to progress.

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

As 2014 draws to a close it is notable that despite dozens of sites being blocked around Europe and millions of infringement notices going out to US-based Internet users, piracy appears to be just as prolific as it ever was.

There appears to be very little copyright holders can do to stop their content appearing online and as a result countless millions of ‘infringing’ URLs become indexed by the world’s leading search engines.

Once this happens it’s largely too late to do anything really significant to turn back the clock on availability. Nevertheless, entertainment companies still want to make life as difficult as possible for online pirates. As a result they send out millions of takedown notices, not only to sites hosting content, but also to search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

These companies are remarkably quick to respond. Google, for example, processes most DMCA notices in a matter of hours, despite receiving one million requests per day and on one occasion 11.6 million takedowns in a week.

Every single one of these takedowns is logged in the company’s Transparency Report which has become a valuable source of insight into the company’s responses to copyright and the wider picture online.

Listed below are the top 10 domains for which Google received the most notices during the past year (Dec 28, 2013 to Dec 29, 2014).

File-hosting and MP3 search engines dominate the list, so it comes as little surprise that the major record labels (under the BPI umbrella) sent the most notices during the course of the year.

It’s also noteworthy that despite the high-profiles of sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, those sites were relegated to 18th and 29th places respectively in the takedown charts. In fact not a single torrent site made the top 10 this year, with the nearest torrent-related domains being torrentz.pro (#11), torrenthound (#12) and come.in (#13).

Top 10 Domains Subjected to Piracy Takedowns 2014

Rank	Name	URLs requested for takedown	Top reporters (all time)
torrentfreak.com / google.com
1	4shared.com	8,345,559	BPI labels
2	rapidgator.net	7,838,757	NBC Universal
3	uploaded.net	5,412,519	FOX
4	dilandau.eu (site dead)	4,913,298	BPI labels
5	GoSong.net	4,484,310	BPI labels
6	zippyshare.com	3,074,988	Topple Track
7	Muzofon.com	2,835,660	BPI labels
8	myfreemp3.cc	2,699,706	BPI labels
9	myfreemp3.eu	2,453,694	BPI labels
10	vmusice.net	2,303,615	BPI labels

Finally, it’s worth noting that there is a site for which Google receives millions of notices but isn’t listed in any of its reports. It’s possible we’ll never know the numbers involved, but YouTube itself is likely to be in the official top 10.

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

Google is slowly expanding its fiber to the home services in the United States. Most recently Austin, Texas, was added to the list and a few dozen other cities will follow soon.

Promising free Internet and blazing fast gigabit per second connections at a relatively low price, many consumers are happy with Google’s new product.

Hollywood on the other hand fears the worst. While great connectivity offers commercial opportunities for entertainment companies, some are overly worried about the negative consequences.

Earlier this week we received a leaked presentation covering the results of a Google Fiber survey conducted on behalf of Warner Bros and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The research was conducted in 2012 and aimed to get a baseline of the piracy levels, so changes can be measured after the rollout.

The survey respondents came from Kansas City, where Google Fiber first launched, with St. Louis residents as a control group. In total, more than 2,000 persons between 13 and 54 were asked about Google Fiber, their piracy habits and media consumption in general.

The results reveal that more than half of those surveyed were very interested in Google’s offer. This includes a large group of pirates, which make up 31% of the entire population.

About a third of these pirates said they would download or stream more with Google Fiber. Perhaps even more worrying for Hollywood, about a quarter of the non-pirates said they would start doing so if Google comes to town.

The most interesting part, however, is that the research tries to estimate the studio’s extra piracy losses that Google Fiber could create across the nation.

Drawing on an MPAA formula that counts all pirated views as losses the report notes that it may cost Hollywood over a billion dollars per year. That’s a rather impressive increase of 58% compared to current piracy levels.

The research also finds a link between piracy and broadband speeds, which is another reason for Hollywood not to like Google’s Internet service.

According to the report this is “another indication that piracy becomes more attractive with Google Fiber.”

We will refrain from analyzing the methods and the definition of piracy losses, which deserve an article of their own. What’s most striking from the above approach is the way the studios frame Google Fiber as a piracy threat, instead of looking at the opportunities it offers.

For example, the same report also concludes that 39% of the respondents would use paid streaming subscription services more, while 34% would rent and purchase more online video. Yet, there is no mention of the potential extra revenue that will bring in.

Judging from all the piracy calculations, statistics and projections, it appears that Hollywood is mostly occupied with threats. But of course there’s nothing new there.

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

Following the revelations of systems administrator Edward Snowden, millions of eyes were opened to our online vulnerability. Total privacy, something presumed by many to be as simple as securing a password, was shown to be an easily shattered illusion.

As the need for heightened security filtered down to the masses, companies stepped into the frame offering products and services to help people maintain their privacy online. VPN companies are still riding this wave of popularity and are now going to even greater lengths to assure customers of their commitment to security.

Another company exploiting the security niche is Mega, the cloud-storage service founded by Kim Dotcom. While the flamboyant German reportedly has little to do with the company on a day to day basis, his family still owns shares in the operation. And for a company with a zero dollar marketing spend, Dotcom remains a valuable promotional asset.

In one of his regular updates, this morning the Megaupload founder announced that Mega is preparing to launch a new product into the communications market.

“Mega will soon release a fully encrypted and browser based video call & chat service including high-speed file transfers. Bye bye Skype,” Dotcom teased.

Although no official announcement has been made, it’s believed that the product will be called “MegaChat”, a naming convention that would certainly fit with previous Dotcom projects.

The service will offer end-to-end encryption and, reading between the lines of Dotcom’s statements, won’t be based in the backyard of his arch-rivals.

“No US based online service provider can be trusted with your data. Skype has no choice. They must provide the US Government with backdoors,” Dotcom says.

While clearly ambitious, Mega is already somewhat behind with plans for expansion outside of its core business of encrypted file-storage. It was previously reported that Mega’s chat/video product would be released to the public in the second quarter of 2014. Its encrypted email service is also yet to see the light.

That being said, an early 2015 release for “MegaChat” would be a welcome development for the company. After first announcing plans to go public in March 2014, Mega now has eyes on an early 2015 NZX listing.

The listing is planned via a reverse takeover of NZ-based TRS Investments but that too has not run entirely smoothly. A shareholders’ vote at the company has been pushed back several times and is not expected to arrive sooner than the end of January.

For investors, potential is there. Mega currently has in excess of 15 million users and while the majority take advantage of the company’s free product, upgrades become more likely as users warm to the service. The advent of additional services will also boost its appeal but the hope is they will also improve the company’s bottom line.

Earlier this month Mega chief executive Graham Gaylard told Stuff that the company is not yet making money and is instead focusing on growth. However, there is profit to be made in this sector and it seems likely that the company will secure and develop its position during 2015.

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