February last year the MPAA, RIAA and five major Internet providers in the United States launched their “six strikes” anti-piracy plan.

The main goal of this Copyright Alert System is to educate the public. Through various notifications subscribers are informed if their connections are being used to share copyrighted material without permission, and told where they can find legal alternatives.

Thus far the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which oversees the program, has only released details of the number of warnings that were sent out during the first 10 months. During this period 1.3 million anti-piracy alerts were sent out.

This year the number of notices are expected to double, but no exact details have yet been released. However, based on information received last week we can now report that Comcast sent out its one millionth warning recently.

A million warnings translates to a little under 2,000 notices per day, a similar rate to the one we reported earlier this year. The ISPs and copyright holders previously agreed to cap the Copyright Alert volume, which may hover around this number.

TorrentFreak asked Comcast to verify our findings, but the Internet provider would neither confirm nor deny that it has sent out 1,000,000 alerts.

“We have no official data to disclose at this time,” a Comcast spokesperson wrote in a brief emailed reply.

Part of Comcast’s initial Copyright Alert

So what’s in store for those who receive an alert? ISPs and copyright holders have stressed that the focus of the Copyright Alerts lie in education, but repeat infringers face a temporary disconnection from the Internet or other mitigation measures.

For example, Comcast has chosen a browser “hijack” which makes it impossible for customers to browse the Internet, but without interrupting VOIP and other essential services.

“If a consumer fails to respond to several Copyright Alerts, Comcast will place a persistent alert in any web browser under that account until the account holder contacts Comcast’s Customer Security Assurance professionals to discuss and help resolve the matter,” Comcast writes.

How quickly customers will be able to resolve the matter and what they will have to do is unknown, but Comcast stresses that no accounts will be terminated under the Copyright Alert program.

“We will never use account termination as a mitigation measure under the CAS. We have designed the pop-up browser alerts not to interfere with any essential services obtained over the Internet.”

Thus far there’s no evidence that Copyright Alerts have had a significant impact on piracy rates. However, the voluntary agreement model is being widely embraced and similar schemes are in the making in both the UK and Australia.

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

For years the world’s largest entertainment industry companies have been putting Google under intense pressure to do something about the prominence of ‘infringing’ listings in its search results.

Periodically the search giant has announced a tweak here and there, but in mid October Google said it was about to implement the most important change yet.

The effects were quickly noticeable. Within days the world’s largest torrent sites took an immediate hit in search engine traffic. So was this the holy grail the studios and record labels had been looking for?

Each week TF publishes a list of the top 10 pirate movie downloads and in our latest edition Dawn of the Planet of the Apes topped the charts. So, with the big sites mainly disappeared from the first pages of results, would the movie still be easy to find using “dawn of the planet of the apes torrent” as a search?

Simple answer – yes. Not only that, sites the majority of people have never heard of are now reaping the rewards of Google’s downgrades.

Rags to riches

The first result in Google comes from the suspicious sounding “yify-movies-official.com” which is definitely not an official YIFY site. However, not only does it comes up with the goods as promised, check out the effect Google’s downranking has had on its popularity according to Alexa. It’s a new site that started quickly, but the short growth plateau in mid October was soon overcome.

The next result pointed to TorrentsMovies.net, a site that boosted 20,000 places from nowhere following Google’s mid October tweaks. However, the site’s progress is dwarfed by that of the largely unknown KickassTorrents.link site.

But it’s not all fun and games

While torrents can still be easily found for this movie after the October downranking, there are some big negatives for anyone who relied on Google to provide them with the best possible results.

First of all, since Google is essentially gaming the system, it’s no longer possible to rely on the search engine to produce the best links on the most popular sites. It doesn’t matter if Pirate Bay or KickassTorrents links are the most trafficked torrents, sites with unusual names that few people know are now at the top of results. This has undermined a valuable commodity….

Trust

While the sites mentioned above are offering torrents and clearly benefiting traffic-wise, we have deliberately left out several sites from our report. Thanks to their lack of DMCA breaches some sites are much closer to the top than they should be when Google is presented with movie + torrent searches. Sadly these sites have something evil in mind – malware.

Hollywood might publicly warn that some file-sharing sites are havens for viruses and spyware, but Google’s actions have dredged up the real filth from the bottom and that will mean a lot of people paying the price. Having these sites downranked is not on the agenda.

Overall

All things considered, Google’s efforts have given its search results a very unfamiliar look which is bound to undermine trust and confidence. The big question is whether it has made unauthorized content harder to find. The answer thus far is a definite ‘yes’ although better results are obtainable by tailoring searches.

However, a much easier option is to switch over to Bing, which not only automatically and conveniently adds “torrent” to the end of a search for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but also presents the world’s biggest torrent sites on the first page.

When that fails users can simply visit the sites themselves, which the majority have been doing anyway.

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

In recent years anti-piracy vendors have shown a keen interest in file-sharing and online piracy issues.

Symantec, for example, has developed a technology that allows it to spot fake torrents and malware before they’re downloaded.

On the other hand, rival McAfee have taken an anti-piracy approach by inventing a system that can detect and block pirated material from any website and present users with authorized and legal alternatives instead.

This week we learned that AVG, another major player in the anti-virus business, is keeping an eye on BitTorrent traffic as well. Not to detect intruders or stop piracy, but to give users some friendly advice.

BitTorrent traffic can chew up a lot of bandwidth and cripple one’s local network, especially with badly configured clients. This can slow down web browsing to a crawl, something AVG is alerting its users to.

The following alert pops up for some BitTorrent users. In this case related to traffic generated by uTorrent, but it may appear for other clients as well.

Hey torrenter…

While not everyone may like the fact that their anti-virus software has begun commenting on their torrenting habits, the advice may be useful to some. As far as we know AVG is not looking at what people download, just the network load generated by the application.

Those who want to get rid of the notifications can tick the ‘AVG Advisor Notification’ box in the software settings.

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

Most people know that they are not allowed to share copies of their favorite band or film without permission. However, in some areas even your own creations may be illegal to share.

In several countries architectural structures are protected by copyright. That means you have to ask permission from the copyright holder to use your own picture in public.

This is also true for the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The famous landmark was built in 1889 which means that it falls within the public domain. However, the light show was added later and this is still protected by copyright.

It may sound absurd, but taking a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night and sharing that online may be copyright infringement. The stance is confirmed by the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, who note the following on their website.

“Daytime views from the Eiffel Tower are rights-free. However, its various illuminations are subject to author’s rights as well as brand rights. Usage of these images is subject to prior request from the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel.”

The issue above was brought to the forefront by the EU Observer, who note that taking pictures of public buildings may lead to copyright violations in France, Belgium and Italy.

Dimitar Dimitrov, policy expert for Wikipedia’s European Wikimedia chapters in Brussels, told the EU Observer that nightly pictures of the Eiffel Tower may indeed be infringing.

“The lightshow is protected by copyright,” Dimitrov notes.

Similar legislation also prevents the public from using photographs of some famous landmarks in Belgium, including the Atomium. This is also why the Atomium’s Wikipedia entry has censored versions or models of the building on its website, instead of the real deal.

Censored Wikipedia entry (Norwegian)

In most other countries in Europe there is no ban on photos of architectural projects, thanks to a clause in the EU’s Information Society Directive. However, in Belgium, France and Italy this hasn’t been transposed into law.

According to Dimitrov this effectively means that people are not allowed to publicly use photos of the Atomium, Eiffel Tower at night, or any other copyrighted architecture. Not even on social media.

“If you take an image of the Atomium and put it on Facebook, that is copyright infringement,” Dimitrov says.

Good luck enforcing that…

^{Photo credit}

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

Every adult knows. Give a child a treat and before you know it all others in the vicinity are queuing up crying for the same. And if you don’t play fair with the goodies, feet are stamped until you do.

Google has been handing out treats too lately, and like parents everywhere it’s now realizing that when you do something for one and not another, you get accused of discrimination.

As usual the problems center around piracy. During October and after years of applying metaphorical Band Aids, Google flicked its algorithmic wrist, pirate sites were demoted, legal content was promoted, and the creative industries rejoiced. Well some did at least.

Less than a month has passed and now Google is suffering fresh wailing in its other ear, this time from the porn industry. Entirely predictably the skin-flick pushers say they too want a piece of the piracy put-down pie.

According to the BBC, “prominent figures” in the porn industry are now demanding that Google does for them what the search engine just did for the audio-visual sector.

“Our whole industry has been turned upside down due to the stealing of adult content,” studio owner and actress Tasha Reign told the corporation.

But if Google’s movie and TV show issues are complex, that’s nothing when compared to getting friendly with the porn industry. Firstly, Google has begun placing ads at the top of search results when people search for TV shows such as Game of Thrones. Friendly links therein direct users to legal sources.

That is not going to happen with porn – Google forbids it. In fact, AdWords doesn’t even allow promotions for dating or international bride services. Good luck with Gangbangs of New York and Saturday Night Beaver.

Secondly, the porn industry is virtually impossible to navigate. While the MPAA and IFPI might have the luxury of speaking for the major studios and 90%+ of the recorded music sector, no such coordination exists in the porn industry. Reaching consensus on what precisely should be done could prove impossible.

Then comes the issue of demoting sites. The ‘pirate’ enemy cited most often by the adult industry are so-called tube sites but that raises even more complex issues, not least since some of the biggest companies in porn own several of the largest tube sites.

Throw in the fact that many tube sites carry both licensed and unlicensed content and any demotion could hit legitimate creators’ distribution strategies of using thousands of adult movie clips to drive traffic to external sites.

But whatever the complexities are, they are all completely moot. When approached by the BBC on the topic, Google declined to comment – period. The search engine wouldn’t be drawn “on any aspect” of the discussion, a sign that in this case the porn industry isn’t going to get what it wants.

“By working with adult companies, Google could ensure the content that is seen contains age restrictions, unlike pirated content,” protests Tasha Reign.

Tumbleweed, stage left…..

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