This whole week has felt like a crazy rollercoaster of a dream foretelling an impossible future. Has the world’s most resilient torrent site really gone for good?

At this point in time it’s hard to say for sure, but optimism is pretty low. The Pirate Bay was hit hard on Tuesday by Swedish police and currently not a shred of evidence suggests that a recovery is on the cards.

The action against TPB, which took place in a cave-built datacenter in Nacka, Sweden, affected several other sites too including Zoink, Torrage, the Istole tracker, Suprbay.org, Bayimg.com and Pastebay.net. EZTV was also taken down, but is currently working its way back online.

However, according to one of the key figures behind the complaint and subsequent police raid of The Pirate Bay, the sites taken down this week are just the tip of a pretty large Swedish iceberg.

Henrik Pontén is a lawyer with Rights Alliance, the anti-piracy group previously known as Antipiratbyrån. He informs TorrentFreak that there are dozens of other ‘pirate’ sites operating in the very same datacenter that previously housed parts of The Pirate Bay.

“At the hosting provider that the police raided [this week] there are still around 40 illegal sites still up and running,” Pontén explains.

Quite why those sites didn’t go down too isn’t clear, but according to the lawyer some big ones remain operational including torrent site 1337x.to and streaming movie portal Solarmovie.is.

Perhaps even more of a surprise is Pontén’s allegation that movie release group SPARKS is operating a topsite there. TorrentFreak has no way of verifying the claim and the fact we were given the information is in itself curious, but the Rights Alliance lawyer seems pretty convinced.

The big question is whether the anti-piracy group intends to do anything about the sites. We weren’t told anything specific but received a general warning.

“Rights Alliance acts wherever a crime has been committed against our rightsholders. The guilty persons will be prosecuted and damages will be required,” Pontén said.

In the meantime and in the wake of the The Pirate Bay’s untimely disappearance there’s no shortage of sites stepping up to try and take its place. As previously mentioned certain impostors have directed people to malware and have even tried to charge for access.

Right now this misdirection only looks set to get worse – unless there’s a miraculous rebirth this Christmas.

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

The Sony Pictures leak has caused major damage to the Hollywood movie studio, but the fallout doesn’t end there.

Contained in one of the leaked data batches is a complete overview of the MPAA’s global anti-piracy strategy for the years to come.

In an email sent to top executives at the major Hollywood studios earlier this year, one of the MPAA’s top executives shared a complete overview of Hollywood’s anti-piracy priorities.

The email reveals key areas of focus for the coming years, divided into high, medium and low priority categories, as shown below.

The plan put forward by the MPAA is the ideal strategy. Which elements are to be carried out will mostly depend on the funds made available by the studios.

High priority

For cyberlockers and video streaming sites the MPAA plans to reach out to hosting providers, payment processing companies and advertising networks. These companies are urged not to work with so-called rogue sites.

Part of the plan is to create “legal precedent to shape and expand the law on cyberlockers and their hosting providers,” with planned lawsuits in the UK, Germany and Canada.

Cyberlocker strategy

Other top priorities are:

Apps: Making sure that pirate apps are taken down from various App stores. Google’s removal of various Pirate Bay apps may be part of this. In addition, the MPAA wants to make apps “unstable” by removing the pirated files they link to.

Payment processors: The MPAA wants to use government influence to put pressure on payment processors, urging them to ban pirate sites. In addition they will approach major players with “specific asks and proposed best practices” to deter piracy.

Site blocking: Expand site blocking efforts in the UK and other countries where it’s supported by law. In other countries, including the U.S., the MPAA will investigate whether blockades are an option through existing principles of law.

Domain seizures: The MPAA is slowly moving toward domain seizures of pirate sites. This strategy is being carefully tested against sites selling counterfeit products using trademark arguments.

Site scoring services: Developing a trustworthy site scoring system for pirate sites. This can be used by advertisers to ban rogue sites. In the future this can be expanded to payment processors, domain name registrars, hosting providers and search engines, possibly with help from the government.

Copyright Notices: The MPAA intends to proceed with the development of the UK Copyright Alert System, and double the number of notices for the U.S. version. In addition, the MPAA wants to evaluate whether the U.S. Copyright Alert System can expand to mobile carriers.

Mid and low priority

BitTorrent is categorized as a medium priority. The MPAA wants to emphasize the role of BitTorrent in piracy related apps, such as Popcorn Time. In addition, illegal torrent sites will be subject to site blocking and advertising bans.

BitTorrent strategy

Other medium and low priorities are:

Search: Keep putting pressure on search engines and continue periodic research into its role in facilitating piracy. In addition, the MPAA will support third-party lawsuits against search engines.

Hosting: The MPAA sees Cloudflare as a problem and is developing a strategy of how to deal with the popular hosting provider. Lawsuits against hosting providers are also in the agenda.

Link sites: Apart from potential civil lawsuits in Latin America, linking sites will only be targeted if they become “particularly problematic.”

In the email the MPAA’s top executive does not consider the above strategies to be “final” or “set in stone”. How much the MPAA will be able to carry out with its partners depends on funds being availble, which appears to be a subtle reminder that the studios should keep their payments coming.

“…the attached represents priorities and activities presuming online CP is adequately resourced. Your teams understand that, depending upon how the budget process plays out, we may need to lower priorities and activities for many sources of piracy and/or antipiracy initiatives,” the email reads.

The leaked strategy offers a unique insight into Hollywood’s strategy against various forms of online infringement.

It exposes several key priorities that were previously unknown. The MPAA’s strong focus on domain name seizures for example, or the plans to target cyberlockers with lawsuits in the UK, Germany and Canada.

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

The torrent community is still shaken up by the abrupt raid on the Pirate Bay this week.

With millions of visitors a day TPB was one of the largest websites on the Internet and despite the police action its users remain hungry for fresh content.

We previously reported that other large torrent sites have noticed a significant uptick in traffic in recent days. However, many of TPB’s users are eagerly waiting for the original site to return.

Thus far it’s still unclear whether the site will return in the near future, if at all. Our queries to find out more remain unanswered for now.

Meanwhile there’s a ‘worrying’ development that Pirate Bay “copies” are gaining a lot of momentum. While none of these sites are associated with The Pirate Bay they are happy to welcome the extra visitors.

First a word of caution. None of the sites below are related to the “official” site and visitors should beware of scams and malware.

In recent days we have received more than a hundred tips from readers who announced that TPB has returned on the thepiratebay.cr. While this site does look familiar, it’s by no means an official incarnation.

In fact, as we highlighted earlier, the .cr domain used to be one of the many Pirate Bay proxy/mirror sites. It has no upload functionality nor can visitors sign up to add torrents. Interestingly enough (and adding to the confusion) the site’s operators started to populate the site with new content themselves a few hours ago.

The .cr domain, which was incorrectly promoted by several news media sites as an official comeback, previously redirected to thepiratebay.ee, a site that used to charge people for access to torrents.

The .ee domain is another mirror site that’s getting a lot of new visitors. While the site removed its paygate shortly after the Pirate Bay raid, potential visitors should keep this history in mind.

As is true for most mirrors and copies, the .ee site mimics Pirate Bay’s appearance but doesn’t allow people to upload new files. Other mirror sites, some of which have added fresh content and convenient chat boxes, include thepiratebay.hk and thepiratebay.org.es.

These sites, like the ones above, are not connected to the original site. In fact, The Pirate Bay still has access to its .se domain name so there would be no reason to change that for a potential comeback.

Finally, there are also “copies” that make it clear that they’re not the new Pirate Bay. OldPirateBay.org, for example, was launched by the people behind Isohunt.to. The operators told TF that their main motivation is to keep the torrents accessible, not to cause confusion.

“We saw a lot of topics where people are looking for something like this. For sure it has some bugs and glitches but we are going to improve it. The tool is for the users’ convenience till TPB comes alive again,” we were told.

OldPirateBay.org doesn’t have much to do with TPB though. It appears to be little more than a copy of Isohunt.to with a Pirate Bay Theme, which is missing many original Pirate Bay torrents.

If The Pirate Bay does indeed come back we will be the first to report it here. Until then, caution is warranted.

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

Each week Google removes millions of ‘infringing’ links from search engine results at rightsholders’ request, 9.1m during the last documented week alone. In the main Google removes these links within hours of receiving a complaint, a record few other large sites can match.

But no matter what Google does, no matter how it tweaks its search algorithms, it’s never been enough for the MPAA. For years the movie group has been piling on the pressure and whenever Google announces a new change, the MPAA (and often RIAA) tell the press that more can be done.

By most standards, this October Google really pulled out the stops. Responding to years of criticism and endless complaints that it’s one of the world’s largest facilitators of pirate content, Google came up with the goods.

“We’ve now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites,” said Katherine Oyama, Google’s Copyright Policy Counsel.

“Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. This ranking change helps users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.”

Google’s claims were spot on. Within days it became clear that torrent sites had been hit hard. Was this the tweak the MPAA had been waiting for?

Google seemed confident, in fact so confident that according to an email made public due to the recent Sony hack attack, the company contacted MPAA chief Senator Chris Dodd the day before to give him the headsup.

But if Google was hoping for a congratulatory public statement, they would need to look elsewhere. Instead of a warm reception the MPAA chose to suggest that Google knew it have been involved in wrongdoing.

“Everyone shares a responsibility to help curb unlawful conduct online, and we are glad to see Google acknowledging its role in facilitating access to stolen content via search,” the MPAA’s press release began.

The leaked emails reveal that Google responded furiously to the perceived slur.

“At the highest levels [Google are] extremely unhappy with our statement,” an email from the MPAA to the studios reads.

“[Google] conveyed that they feel as if they went above and beyond what the law requires; that they bent over backwards to give us a heads up and in return we put out a ‘snarky’ statement that gave them no credit for the positive direction.”

In response to the snub, Google pressed the ‘ignore’ button. A top executive at Google’s policy department told the MPAA that his company would no longer “speak or do business” with the movie group.

In future Google would speak with the studios directly, since “at least three” had already informed the search engine that they “were very happy about the new features.”

While the MPAA and Google will probably patch things up in future, the emails also suggest reasons why the MPAA might have given Google a frosty reception.

First up, the MPAA had no time to assess the changes Google had put in place, so had no idea whether they would work. Welcoming changes that fail to perform in future is clearly something the MPAA would want to avoid.

But intriguingly the emails suggest that the MPAA were trying not to affect another external matter from progressing.

“We were also sensitive to the fact that Mississippi [Attorney General] Hood is expected to issue a [Civil Investigative Demand] to Google sometime this week; we did not want an unduly favorable statement by us to discourage AG Hood from moving forward,” the MPAA email reads.

In conclusion the MPAA felt that Google overreacted to their October press release and that the problems will eventually blow over. It’s certainly possible that relations have improved since the emails were written in October.

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

Site blocking has become one of the go-to anti-piracy techniques for the music and movie industries. Mechanisms to force ISPs to shut down subscriber access to “infringing” sites are becoming widespread in Europe but have not yet gained traction in the United States.

If the Stop Online Piracy Act had been introduced, U.S. blocking regimes might already be in place but the legislation was stamped down in 2012 following a furious public and technology sector revolt. Behind closed doors, however, blocking proponents were simply waiting for the storm to die down.

TorrentFreak has learned that during 2013 the MPAA and its major studio partners began to seriously consider their options for re-introducing the site blocking agenda to the United States. Throughout 2014 momentum has been building but with no real option to introduce new legislation, the MPAA has been looking at leveraging existing law to further its aims.

Today we can reveal that the MPAA has been examining four key areas.

DMCA

According to TF sources familiar with the plan, the MPAA began by exploring the possibility of obtaining a DMCA 512(j) blocking injunction without first having to establish that an ISP is also liable for copyright infringement.

To get a clearer idea the MPAA commissioned an expert report from a national lawfirm with offices in Chicago, Dallas, New York and Washington, DC. Returned in July, the opinion concluded that a U.S. court would “likely” require a copyright holder to establish an ISP as secondarily liable before granting any site-blocking injunction.

This option might be “difficult” and financially costly, the law firm noted.

Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

Rule 19 – ‘Required Joinder of Parties’ – is also under consideration by the MPAA as a way to obtain a blocking injunction against an ISP. In common with the DMCA option detailed above, the MPAA hopes that a blocking order might be obtained without having to find an ISP liable for any wrongdoing.

The MPAA is considering a situation in which they obtain a judgment finding a foreign “rogue” site guilty of infringement but one whose terms the target rogue site has failed to abide by. Rule 19 could then be used to join an ISP in the lawsuit against the rogue site without having to a) accuse the ISP of wrongdoing or b) issue any claims against it.

The same lawfirm again provided an expert opinion, concluding that the theory was “promising, but largely untested.”

Using the ITC to force ISPs to block ‘pirate’ sites

Among other things the United States International Trade Commission determines the impact of imports on U.S. industry. It also directs action on unfair trade practices including those involving patents, trademarks and copyright infringement.

The MPAA has been examining two scenarios. The first involves site-blocking orders against “transit” ISPs, i.e those that carry data (infringing content) across U.S. borders. The second envisions site-blocking orders against regular ISPs to stop them providing access to “rogue” sites.

Again, the same lawfirm was asked for its expert opinion. In summary its lawyers found that scenario one presented significant technical hurdles. Scenario two might be feasible, but first ISPs would have to be found in violation of Section 337.

“Section 337 declares the infringement of certain statutory intellectual property rights and other forms of unfair competition in import trade to be unlawful practices,” the section reads (pdf).

The lawfirm’s August report highlights several potential issues. One noted that an injunction against a domestic ISP would effectively stop outbound requests to “rogue” sites when it is in fact “rogue” sites’ inbound traffic that is infringing. Also at issue is sites that don’t “import” content themselves but merely offer links to such content (torrent sites, for example).

Nevertheless, the general conclusion is that if a clear relationship between the linking sites and the infringing content can be established, the ITC may take the view that the end result still amounts to “unfair competition” and “unfair acts” during importation of articles.

The Communications Act

Details on this final MPAA option involves the Communications Act and how it is perceived by the Federal Communications Commission and the Supreme Court.

The scenario balances on the MPAA’s stance that ISPs have taken the “public position” that they are not “telecommunications services”. When the position of the ISPs and opinions of the FCC and Supreme Court are combined, the MPAA wonders whether the ISPs could become vulnerable.

The scenario under discussion is one in which ISPs are not eligible for safe harbor as DMCA 512(a) “conduits” since the DMCA definition of a conduit is the same as the Communications Act’s definition of “telecommunications service” provider.

Major meeting two months ago

TorrentFreak sources reveal that a large meeting consisting of more than two dozen studio executives took place in October to discuss all aspects of site-blocking. A senior engineer from U.S. ISP Comcast was also invited.

On the agenda was a wide range of topics including bringing on board “respected” people in the technology sector to agree on technical facts and establish policy support for site blocking.

Other suggestions included encouraging academics to publish research papers with a narrative that site blocking elsewhere in the world has been effective, is not a threat to DNSSEC, and has not “broken the Internet”.

Conclusion

In June, MPAA chief and former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd praised pirate site blockades as one of the most important anti-piracy measures, and in August a leaked draft revealed MPAA research on the topic.

The big question now is whether the studios’ achievements in Europe will be mirrored in the United States – without a SOPA-like controversy alongside. While the scale is unlikely to be the same, opposition is likely to be vigorous.

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