Google Gets a Slap on the Wrist For Site-Blocking Failures


Last year, Russian introduced new legislation that can see search engines fined for offering links to VPNs and other anonymizers that have been banned in the country. Fines can also be issued to search engines that fail to connect to a resource offering up-to-date information on what domains should be rendered inaccessible.

This database (known as FGIS), should have been utilized by Google, but for reasons that remain unclear, the US-based search giant didn’t want to play ball.

Several weeks ago, local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor contacted Google with a demand that it should immediately connect to the FGIS blacklist. Google still did not comply, placing the company in breach of federal law.

That left Google exposed to a potential administrative fine of between 500,000 and 700,000 rubles (US$7,545 to US$10,563). A further demand insisted that it should connect to the FGIS database by today.

Despite a meeting between Deputy Head of Roscomnadzor Vadim Subbotin and Doron Avni, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations for Europe, Middle East & Africa Emerging Markets, which took place in Moscow last month, today’s deadline wasn’t met.

Roscomnadzor announced this morning that as a result of the continued breach, it had considered the merits of an administrative violation against Google. Since the company had not responded as required, despite having the rules “repeatedly explained”, a fine had been imposed.

“Failure to comply with these requirements constitutes an administrative offense (Part 1 of Article 13.40 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation). The sanction of this article provides for a legal fine in the amount of from 500 to 700 thousand rubles,” a Roscomnadzor statement reads.

While fines are never welcome, the watchdog fined Google just 500,000 rubles (US$7,545). This is the lowest amount that can be handed down under existing laws.

While the dispute was ongoing, Google said that it was in constant contact with Roscomnadzor and was ready for discussion and negotiation, including action to ensure it complies with Russian legal requirements moving forward. Why connecting to Russia’s FGIS database didn’t happen as required remains unclear.

Early November, major rightsholders and tech companies in Russia signed a memorandum of cooperation to deal with the issue of online piracy. Google was not a signatory although there are some suggestions that it could join at some point in the future.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.





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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 12/10/18


This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Venom is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (1) Venom 7.0 / trailer
2 (7) Smallfoot 6.7 / trailer
3 (2) The Predator 5.6 / trailer
4 (…) Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle 6.8 / trailer
5 (4) The Nun 5.5 / trailer
6 (3) The House with a Clock in Its Walls 6.1 / trailer
7 (5) Mission: Impossible – Fallout 8.0 / trailer
8 (6) Peppermint 6.5 / trailer
9 (8) The Equalizer 2 6.9 / trailer
10 (…) 2.0 7.5 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.





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UK Govt. Backs Anti-Piracy Campaign With £2 Million in Funding


Four years ago, copyright indistry groups and Internet providers teamed up to fight online piracy in the UK.

Backed by the Government, they launched several educational campaigns under the “Get it Right” banner.

Under the program, ISPs send out piracy warnings to subscribers whose accounts are used to share copyright-infringing material. This started early last year and has been ongoing since.

There haven’t been any official updates in a while, nor is it known how many alerts are going out on a monthly basis. However, it appears that copyright holders and the UK Government are happy with the progress thus far.

Late last week the Government announced that it will continue its support for the ‘Get it Right’ campaign. It will allocate £2 million in funding as part of a £20 million boost to the UK’s creative industries.

“This package will take the sector from strength to strength by arming the next generation of creatives with the necessary skills and giving businesses in the sector the support they need to succeed,” says Margot James, Minister for the Creative Industries.

It’s unclear what the future plans are. The official ‘Get It Right’ page hasn’t changed much in recent years. However, it’s expected that the email warning program, targeted at alleged pirates, will continue.

We are not aware of any public reports on the effectiveness of the campaign. However, Ian Moss, Public Affairs director at the music industry group BPI, suggests that there is data suggesting that it works.

“The research into the campaign has shown it really makes a difference and that a positive campaign that is relevant to fans can help change the way people think about accessing content online,” Moss says.

“The Government’s continuing commitment to the successful campaign is warmly welcomed.”

This isn’t the first time that the UK Government has financially supported the ‘Get it Right’ campaign. It also contributed £3.5 million to the program at the start.

While it’s hard to measure a direct return on investment, the Government previously justified the spending with an expected increase in sales tax. This would be achieved by converting pirates into legitimate customers.

—

The Governments official announcement is available here. Via gamesindustry.

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Scammers Use Facebook and Google to Spread Malicious ‘Pirate’ Files


Last weekend we reported how scammers were sending DMCA notices to downrank game piracy sites.

Presumably, this was done to give their malware-infested pirate sites a better ranking in search results.

While our previous article focused on the abuse of takedown notices, the problem is much broader. In addition to removing content, scammers are also spamming many sites with messages that link people to their dubious pirate sites.

We spoke to a source who has followed this activity for quite a while and actively reported spam he found on medium.com, change.org, wattpad.com, github.com, bitly.com, deviantart.com, zendesk.com, soundcloud.com, ghost.org, hashnode.com, and elsewhere.

Most of these sites were very cooperative and cleaned up the mess soon after they were alerted.

“The list is really long, but what was great is that all these services immediately responded to my reports. Some of them implemented spam filters and medium.com even sent a t-shirt to thank me,” says our source, who prefers to remain anonymous.

Zendesk’s response

With any type of spam, it’s impossible to eliminate the problem completely. However, our source says that some platforms are more receptive to reports than others. At Facebook and Google, this didn’t go so easily.

For months, scammers have used Facebook events to promote their malware or trojan links out in the open, through numerous accounts. In some cases, these events have been online for months, such as with this Fix Problem account.

This account lists many hundreds of events, which presumably link to pirated software, games, and other content. There are no events of course, but these listings help to increase SEO and give the associated sites a boost in traffic as well.

Fix problem?

The problem is rather persistent. Our source says that he reported the issue in detail to Facebook, but that there’s been little improvement. Many of the reported events are still online today, and new ones keep appearing too.

A targeted search for “Just Cause” Facebook events created over the past week, shows dozens of results.

Targeted Google search

Initially, the Facebook posts linked directly to the sites where the malware-content could be downloaded, but more recently they switched to Google groups. Perhaps because these links are harder to detect automatically.

People who follow these links don’t get a copy of free software, games, or movies. Instead, they’re downloading malware-infested files, although the landing page suggests otherwise.

A Just Cause landing page

Facebook events appears to be one of the favorite spamming tools, but Google groups are also frequently used. This issue was brought to Google’s attention weeks ago, in a rather detailed post in the webmaster help forum.

For weeks, many of the reported groups remained online and some still are at the time of writing. New ones are still appearing too, as shown below.

Just Cause?

More recently, Google has flagged several postings but instead of removing them entirely, Google added a warning message.

TorrentFreak followed a few of the links that were provided in these spam posts and these indeed point to suspicious malware files, or worse. While this type of spamming activity is not new, Google, Facebook and others may want to take a closer look at how this can be dealt with properly.

Our source has made it somewhat of a personal crusade to go after the scammers. As he runs a pirate site of his own, he a has stake in the matter. Previousy his own links were taken down from Google and, as reported last week, he believes that this was a targeted action by the scammers.

A very detailed accounting of evidence and other information, shared with us, suggests that’s indeed the case, at least in some instances. It could of course be that there are more rogue actors.

In the background, this takedown issue has added fuel to a rivalry between ‘real’ pirate sites. Accusations were made back and forth, which resulted in one site shutting down and much more drama on top.

It’s impossible to verify any of the claims or accusations and there may be more things going on at once. What we can say, however, is that our source directly linked the takedown efforts to the type of scamming activity on Google, Facebook, and other sites.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.





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LibreELEC (Leia) v8.90.009 ALPHA



The LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha cycle has continued and releases for Amlogic and Slice hardware have been added additionally to the test cycle. We officially support now Khadas VIM (AML S905X) and the LePotato (AML S905X) too. Since the 8.90.006 release we support a wide range of Rockchip devices. There are no plans to release LibreELEC 9.0 images for NXP/iMX6 hardware as support was removed from Kodi some months ago. Support will be reinstated in a future LibreELEC, we wrote an dedicated article about the future of LibreELEC.

Alpha releases are important to the team because we cannot test every scenario and sometimes sidestep issues without realising. The project needs a body of regular testers to go find the problems we miss. Testing will be particularly important for LibreELEC 9.0 as Kodi v18 includes substantial internal changes to VideoPlayer and introduces new retro-gaming capabilities.

** ROCKCHIP **

We added several Rockchip devices at this release. Please consider it as alpha quality and not yet as perfect. All kind of flavors of HDR, 4k and audio are supported already. These images are rather new and it is likely that you hit an problem sooner or later. Please report them at our issue tracker or at the dedicated Rockchip forum so that they can get fixed. Within the LE9 release cycle we are likely not able to finish the Rockchip devices to reach a perfect stable state – they stay in alpha status as long it is needed.

TEST NOTES

Our current focus is the OS core and we are more interested in hardware and driver bugs than Kodi problems. Please report the issues you find by starting a thread in the forums or use our bug tracker. Raspberry Pi users are reminded that dtoverlay=lirc-rpi has now been deprecated. Please read the infrared remotes wiki page  before updating.

** CAUTION **

Alpha builds exist for hands-on testing not a hands-off experience. If you run Alpha builds you must be willing to report issues and engage the LibreELEC and Kodi developers in hunting bugs. If you have no idea what a debug log is, or “wife acceptance factor” is critical, these builds are not for you. If you want to run Alpha builds please make a backup and store it somewhere off-box first. Your failure to make a backup is not our problem.

Updates since v8.90.008 ALPHA:

– updated to Kodi 18 RC2
– fixed shutdown at WeTek Play 1 and WeTek Core
– added AV1 decoder to Kodi
– a lot more updates and fixes, have a look at the full changelog

LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha 009 (Kodi 18 RC2)

To update an existing installation from within the Kodi GUI select manual update in the LibreELEC settings add-on and then check for updates; select the LibreELEC 9.0 channel and then the 8.90.009 release. To create new install media please use our simple USB/SD Creator App. The following .img.gz files can also be used to create install media or update the old fashioned way:

RPi 2/3 LibreELEC-RPi2.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

RPi 0/1 LibreELEC-RPi.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

Generic LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

Odroid_C2 LibreELEC-Odroid_C2.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

KVIM LibreELEC-KVIM.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

LePotato LibreELEC-LePotato.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Core LibreELEC-WeTek_Core.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Hub LibreELEC-WeTek_Hub.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Play LibreELEC-WeTek_Play.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Play_2 LibreELEC-WeTek_Play_2.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)


RK3328

Firefly ROC-RK3328-CC LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-roc-cc.img.gz (info)

Generic Rockchip Box LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-box.img.gz (info)

PINE64 ROCK64 / Popcorn Hour Transformer LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-rock64.img.gz (info)

Popcorn Hour RockBox LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-rockbox.img.gz (info)

MVR9 LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-box-trn9.img.gz (info)

Z28 LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-box-z28.img.gz (info)

RK3399

96rocks ROCK960 LibreELEC-RK3399.arm-8.90.009-rock960.img.gz (info)

PINE64 RockPro64 LibreELEC-RK3399.arm-8.90.009-rockpro64.img.gz (info)

Rockchip Sapphire Board LibreELEC-RK3399.arm-8.90.009-sapphire.img.gz (info)


RK3288

ASUS Tinker Board LibreELEC-TinkerBoard.arm-8.90.009-rk3288.img.gz (info)

mqmaker MiQi LibreELEC-MiQi.arm-8.90.009-rk3288.img.gz (info)



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Showbox: Is it ‘Back’ and More Importantly, is it ‘Safe’?


As first reported here on TorrentFreak, popular streaming application Showbox hit turbulent times recently.

In May we revealed that a group of independent movie studios (Dallas Buyers Club, Cobbler Nevada, Bodyguard Productions, and others) were targeting sites and individuals said to be behind or offering Showbox.

Back in September, a DMCA subpoena filed by the same companies ordered Cloudflare to expose the people linked to various sites offering the application.

It is important to know that the companies behind this request are known serial litigants and have been involved in many “copyright trolling” cases against BitTorrent users in the US and elsewhere.

Last month we reported that two websites connected to Showbox had settled their legal dispute with the companies previously mentioned. The terms of the settlement were not made public and the sites in question now display an ominous warning.

Showbox warning

While some will undoubtedly view these messages as scaremongering, it’s surprising that former Showbox users want anything to do with the application moving forward, given recent history. Nevertheless, dozens of threads online feature users asking whether new versions of Showbox popping up here and there are ‘safe’ to use.

It is a difficult – if not impossible – question for anyone to answer conclusively.

First of all, many of the individuals who previously used the app don’t even seem to know where they downloaded it from. This means they could’ve been using the original version or a modified variant from an unknown developer, with both options raising security issues but for different reasons.

It appears that the original app is in trouble and as for the clones, who knows what their motivations are? And, with known copyright trolls heavily in the mix here, alarm bells of all kinds should be going off. That said, people clearly want their movies and TV shows for free and are happy to carry on doing that as long as someone says “yeah, this version is safe.”

At this point, it might interest readers to learn that several times in the past few months we’ve been asked by random emailers to ‘update’ our old Showbox (and indeed TerrariumTV) articles with new links to what they claimed to be the original apps.

There seems little doubt that this was an attempt to misdirect, so unlike some other news outlets who did change their links, we ignored the requests. We don’t know whether this was simply an attempt to drive more traffic to ‘safe’ clones, websites offering the original, or whether something more sinister was at play. It is something to think about, however.

There are so many variables at play here (including what happens to data gathered from Showbox users’ machines, plus IP addresses etc) that to recommend a certain variant of Showbox as ‘safe’ would be pretty irresponsible. There’s also the fact that Showbox not only uses file-hosting links but also torrents, which are inherently ‘unsafe’ unless people use a VPN.

Admittedly, certain versions and updates of Showbox may be completely benign but short of having a detailed analysis done on each app, plus having access to what happens behind the scenes, it’s a potential minefield that users will have to walk through at their own risk.

Some seem very happy to do that, others are less keen. Only time will tell who made the ‘safe’ decision.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.





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GTA V’s Take-Two Wants $150,000 in Damages From Cheat Maker


Over the past year there has been a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters or cheat makers.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the company behind ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (GTA V), is one of the major players involved. The company has filed several lawsuits in the US and abroad, targeting alleged cheaters.

In August the company filed a case against Florida resident Jhonny Perez, accusing him of copyright infringement by creating and distributing a cheating tool. The software, known as “Elusive,” could be used to cheat and grief, interfering with the gameplay of others.

“In essence, Defendant is free riding on TakeTwo’s intellectual property to sell a commercial product that interferes with the carefully orchestrated and balanced gameplay that Take-Two created for its players,” Take-Two notes in the court filing this week.

The defendant has a clear profit motive, according to the company, which notes that “Elusive” was sold at prices ranging from $10 to $30, depending on the package. Buyers could pay through PayPal, but Steam and Amazon gift cards were also accepted.

How much money was made in the process remains unknown. Prior to filing the lawsuit, Take-Two requested detailed financial records from Perez in an attempt to reach a settlement. However, the defendant didn’t hand over the requested information and eventually stopped responding.

This lack of response continued after the lawsuit was filed, which prompted Take-Two to move for a default judgment. According to the company, it’s clear that the cheat maker is guilty of both direct and contributory copyright infringement.

Take-Two submitted its proposed default judgment to a New York federal court this week, asking for the maximum statutory damages amount of $150,000.

Among other things, Take-Two says this is warranted because the cheating activity resulted in severe losses. According to an estimate provided by the company, the harm is at least $500,000. In addition, the maximum in damages should also act as a deterrent against other cheat developers.

“A maximum award would deter Defendant and other infringers from creating similar cheating tools that modify and alter GTAV,” the company argues.

“Indeed, Defendant is not alone in his effort to create, distribute, and maintain a program that alters and modifies Take Two’s game, which is then sold to users for profit. Take-Two already has been forced to bring several lawsuits in the United States and around the world against other infringers.”

On top of the $150,000 in damages, Take-Two also requests $69,686 in attorney’s fees, as well a permanent injunction prohibiting the defendant from continuing infringing activities moving forward.

Take-Two’s conclusion

As far as we know, Elusive hasn’t been available since earlier this year when the developer informed the public that activities were being discontinued.

“After discussions with Take-Two Interactive, we are immediately ceasing all maintenance, development, and distribution of our cheat menu services,” a public announcement read at the time.

“We will also be donating our proceeds to a charity designated by Take-Two. We apologize for any and all problems our software has caused to the Grand Theft Auto Online community,” it added.

That said, Take-Two has experience with developers who say one thing and do another, so the company would like to see details cemented in a court order. Given that the defendant has not responded in court, it is likely that the court will side with the gaming company.

—

Here are copies of Take-Two’s memorandum (pdf) and the proposed order (pdf), obtained by TorrentFreak.

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Huge Torrent Tracker Calls it Quits After 12 Years, Citing Article 13


Torrent sites come in all shapes and sizes. Most are known for being indexes of .torrent files or magnet links which facilitate access to various types of media. When these sites specialize in indexing copyrighted content, the law in most developed regions (particularly the EU) renders them illegal.

However, some torrent platforms operate almost completely in the shadows, not necessarily by design, but because of the important services they provide exist almost exclusively behind the scenes.

Most people who regularly load a torrent file or a magnet link into a torrent client will see information related to the content they’re downloading and sharing. Things such as peer counts (the number of seeders and leechers) probably attract the most attention but in every client one is also able to see which torrent ‘trackers’ are helping with their transfers.

These ‘trackers’ are servers that are able to put torrent clients sharing the same content in touch with each other. The IP addresses of other seeders and leechers are delivered to everyone in a torrent ‘swarm’ so that sharing of media can take place. The same goal can be achieved via DHT and PEX but trackers are more immediate and much appreciated by file-sharers.

Unlike regular torrent indexes that can be monetized through web-based advertising, standalone trackers that aren’t connected to a particular torrent site are mostly run as non-profits. Indeed, many notable trackers over the years never generated a penny and were run as hobbyist projects. As such, their existence relies upon the operator’s desire to keep the thing going, which isn’t always easy.

One of the longest-standing trackers was Leechers Paradise, words that have appeared in hundreds of millions of torrent clients over the years. However, an announcement from its operator means that the tacker will shut down for good due to fear over upcoming legislation in the EU.

“Sadly after 12 years I am calling it quits. Article 13 of the new EU copyright law requires that all uploads are screened. This is impossible which would make this site illegal,” operator ‘Eddie’ writes.

“This coupled with my ISP kindly asking to move my site out of there [sic] datacenter. Means no more: leechers-paradise.”

While Article 13 certainly has sites like YouTube concerned, they actually host, curate, and promote content. Leechers Paradise, which simply acted as a networking tool, did not. There’s a big difference.

It remains unclear whether the finalized Article 13 text will be applicable to the activities of a content-agnostic tracker like Leechers Paradise, but after 12 years ‘Eddie’ probably has plenty of other reasons not to continue with his project, so that’s to be respected.

Leechers Paradise – gone but not forgotten

As the image above shows, at the end of July the tracker was servicing 132.3 million peers, a figure that provides a small indication of how important the tracker was to torrent users around the world.

Figures published in August indicated that the tracker was serving just over six million torrents using IPV4 and just over 54,000 using IPV6.

Traffic stats: August 31, 2018

As an indicator of how Leechers Paradise has grown over the years, one can compare stats from June 2013 with those of today. Back then the site was assisting transfers on ‘just’ 17,152 torrents which together had 95,817 peers and 56,505 seeders.

While other important standalone trackers look set to continue, the loss of Leechers Lair should come as a disappointment to millions of torrent users worldwide. Perhaps the greatest irony is that most won’t have any idea of the scale of the role it played.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.





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Just Cause 4 Cracked a Day After Release – But it Gets Worse


After being acquired by anti-piracy company Irdeto earlier this year, it was expected that anti-tamper technology company Denuvo would go on to even bigger things.

Instead, the anti-tamper protection is being subjected to a barrage of cracking activity.

With a recent announcement detailing the importance of protecting AAA titles if only for a couple of weeks, the company appeared to be lowering expectations of a longer piracy-free period. Now, however, even those aspirations have been shattered following the release of Just Cause 4.

This long-anticipated AAA action-adventure title is the follow-up to Just Cause 3, which was also protected by Denuvo. That game was released in December 2015 but wasn’t cracked until the end of February 2017.

Compare that with Just Cause 4. The game was released on December 4, 2018 then cracked and leaked online December 5, 2018. Just Cause 3 and Just Cause 4 were both defeated by cracking group CPY, who are clearly getting very familiar with Denuvo’s technology.

Just Cause 4: Day Two Crack

While having the game appear online the day after release is bad enough, another problem is raising its head. According to numerous reviewers on Steam, the game is only worthy of a ‘thumbs down’ based on complaints about graphics, gameplay, and numerous other issues.

While these things are often handled via early patches from developers, the negative reviews mean that the average score on Steam is currently just 5/10. That, combined with the availability of a pirated version online, seems like a possible recipe for disaster and something that could raise its head later should sales fail to impress.

That being said, dedicated Steam users can be particularly critical. Metacritic scores show an improved picture, with a Metascore of 75 out of a possible 100. Not great, but still slightly higher than the 73 achieved by Just Cause 3.

These are undoubtedly tough times for Denuvo but it would be premature to count out the technology just yet. There can be little doubt that its high-profile has presented a challenge that’s being relished by cracking groups, who seem prepared to invest significant resources into undermining its work.

A turnaround is still possible but protecting a title for just a day just isn’t enough, even by the company’s shortening expectations. Certainly, having a game cracked before its official launch, as happened with Hitman 2 last month, is almost as bad as it gets.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.





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Three Sentenced For Placing Advertising on Pirate Sites


While there are several business models that are able to keep pirate sites up and running, advertising is one of the most popular.

With huge amounts of traffic landing on both torrent and streaming platforms, even with low-quality adverts it’s possible for both site owners and advertising companies to generate decent profits.

Until now, pirate site operators have been the main targets for law enforcement agencies but a recently concluded case in Germany shows that the authorities are prepared to extend their reach when required.

According to Germany-based anti-piracy group GVU, the Leipzig District Court has now sentenced three employees of an Internet advertising agency to prison terms for aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

The investigation was led by the Integrated Investigation Unit Saxony (INES) at the Saxon Attorney General’s Office and supported by the GVU with analysis and insights.

“The defendants had brokered advertising space on well-known piracy portals such as kino.to or iload.to and displayed lucrative banner ads on a large scale,” GVU reveals.

“In this way, they achieved profits of more than 350,000 euros. They were aware that they were involved with structurally infringing sites, which apparently offered almost exclusively copyrighted files for download and streaming.”

The sentences for the trio were considerable, despite not being directly involved in the running of the sites. The manager of the agency received a sentence of one year and eight months, with two programmers each receiving one year and four months in prison. However, since the defendants confessed, all sentences were suspended.

“The verdict sets a significant precedent because up to now no advertising agency in Germany has ever been prosecuted for its support of illegal portal sites,” GVU concludes.

While they attracted significant volumes of traffic in their prime, both Kino.to and iLoad.to are long gone from the piracy ecosystem.

Kino.to was once the king of all Germany-based streaming sites. It was raided in 2011 as part of a huge multi-national anti-piracy operation but various clones have since tried to keep the pirate flag flying in its honor.

Finally, Tarnkappe reports that GVU is about to lose its funding from the MPA. The organization told the publication that Germany is still important but a new and more integrated approach is required.

“The MPA continues to promote a vibrant and diverse creative industries in Germany and throughout the European Union – and to defend the rights of authors to be compensated for their work,” an MPA spokesperson said.

“However, as film and television piracy continues to develop rapidly, become increasingly online and international, we need to develop our overall approach to be more integrated and coherent. This requires a more flexible local presence and direct cooperation with local and regional law enforcement agencies. Germany is a strategically important market for the MPA and we are determined to continue playing a key role.”

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