Strike 3 Holdings is one of the most active copyright trolls in the United States, filing more than 1,800 copyright infringement cases in the past 13 months.
Its modus operandi is familiar – harvest allegedly infringing IP addresses from BitTorrent swarms, obtain the identities of the people behind the ISP accounts, then chase them down for a cash settlement.
While it’s unknown how many people have settled with the company for hundreds to thousands of dollars, the alleged ‘John Doe’ infringer featuring in a case filed in the District of Columbia seems destined not to join their ranks.
In common with similar cases, Strike 3 Holdings asked the Court to help unmask the identity of an alleged pirate of the company’s porn, who used a Comcast connection to do the dirty deed. However, a scathing and entertaining memorandum opinion from Judge Royce C. Lamberth explains why that is not going to happen.
The Judge begins by speaking of Strike 3 in disparaging terms, noting that the company’s geolocation technology is “famously flawed”, adding that it simply cannot identify an alleged infringer.
“Simply put, inferring the person who pays the cable bill illegally downloaded a specific file is even less trustworthy than inferring they watched a specific TV show,” Judge Lamberth writes.
The Judge notes that ISPs have been forced to unmask alleged infringers in the past but says this can make the currently innocent defendant visible in a Google search, associated with the websites “Vixen, Blacked, Tushy, and Blacked Raw” through which Strike 3’s DVDs are distributed.
“The first two [website titles] are awkward enough, but the latter two cater to even more singular tastes,” he says.
“Imagine having your name and reputation publicly – and permanently – connected to websites like Tusky and Blacked Raw. (Google them at your own risk). How would an improperly accused defendant’s spouse react? His (or her) boss? The head of the local neighborhood watch?
“The risk of a false accusation are real; the consequences are hard to overstate and even harder to undo. And Strike 3’s flawed identification method cannot bear such great weight.”
Going on to criticize Strike 3 for filing 1,849 cases in the past thirteen months, including 40 in his district, Judge Lamberth says that such serial litigants prey on low-hanging fruit then run away at the first sign of resistance.
“They don’t seem to care about whether defendant actually did the infringing, or about developing the law. If a Billy Goat Gruff moves to confront a copyright troll in court, the troll cuts and runs back under its bridge,” he writes.
“Perhaps the trolls fear a court disrupting their rinse-wash-and-repeat approach: file a deluge of complaints, ask the court to compel disclosure of the account holders; settle as many claims as possible; abandon the rest.”
Unfortunately for Strike 3, Judge Lamberth doesn’t intend to play ball. He explains that Strike 3’s call for discovery does not outweigh the potentially non-infringing defendant’s right to be anonymous, while denying Strike 3’s ex parte motion to subpoena Comcast for the defendant’s identity and dismissing the case without prejudice.
According to the Judge, Strike 3 has little chance of identifying a defendant who can be sued without resorting to aggressive discovery, including examinations of all computers, phones, and tablets belonging to the owner of the home and anyone who used its Internet connection.
In further detailing why he denied Strike 3’s request, the Judge notes that of the forty cases filed in his district, none have reached the Court of Appeals. A total of 22 were voluntarily dismissed, with all but one following the same formula.
“Strike 3 files a complaint (identical in every case except for the infringing IP address). A few weeks later, Strike 3 files a motion to subpoena the anonymous defendant’s ISP,” the Judge writes.
“Satisfied by Strike 3’s showing of likely personal jurisdiction, the court grants the motion, usually providing at least twenty days for the defendant to move to quash the subpoena and sometimes providing for the defendant’s continued anonymity. Nothing happens for a few weeks, and then Strike 3 voluntarily dismisses the suit.”
In the one case that bucked the trend, a defendant was allowed by the court to proceed anonymously – but then Strike 3 dropped the case.
In his conclusion, Judge Lamberth takes one final swipe at Strike 3, describing the troll outfit in some of the most explicit terms ever used in court and leaving little to the imagination.
“Armed with hundreds of cut-and-pasted complaints and boilerplate discovery motions, Strike 3 floods this courthouse (and others around the country) with lawsuits smacking of extortion. It treats this Court not as a citadel of justice, but as an ATM.
“Its feigned desire for legal process masks what it really seeks: for the Court to oversee this high-tech shakedown. This Court declines,” the Judge concludes.
The full memorandum opinion can be found here (pdf)
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/featroll.jpg00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-11-23 23:11:532018-11-23 23:11:53US Judge Slams Copyright Troll For Using His Court “Like an ATM”
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After two years of hard work by all volunteers, either part of the team or of our great community we can finally say the last steps towards Kodi v18 are being made. In past years many things have changed, either visually or code wise and to be honest i can’t even recall most. We as team would certainly like to thank every developer and user who spent time helping us get this far.
To this point the current v18 version has been proven to be quite solid to use as a daily driver for those who were brave enough to try it out. Of course you should still keep in mind it’s not a final release yet and that on any upgrade a small glitch could happen as we are still doing rework. Once you decide to give it a try it is highly recommended that you create a backup first.
Currently included
To this point in time we’ve done
More than 9386 commits (code chunks changed)
More than 3000 pull-requests (collection of commits that were included in one go)
More than 8638 changed files
More than 503.000 code lines removed
More than 427.000 code lines added
Over 36 opensource developers
A lot of free time developing and testing these changes
Quite likely several cases of beer or wine
A full changelog is nearly impossible to create looking back. As such this release article will only cover the biggest changes. For a more extensive list you can visit our wiki page v18 (Leia) changelog which will be update along the way. From now on all v18 releases will not contain any big new features as we are focussed on bug fixing or improvements only.
Make sure to also go through our news sections which contain all past announcements regarding the Leia release and some highlights of what it will contain.
Current available skins
Due to changes in how Kodi works, all skins need to be updated for each release. As of this moment the following skins have been update by their developers and are readily available from our repository.
More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.
Kodi’s GitHub codebase new face and better documentation
Starting with Kodi v18 Leia, our build guides are kept up-to-date against the current code base. Hopefully, up-to-date against a single pull request or code commit. This might seem of little importance but consider this: if, in two years time, you decide that you want to compile Kodi Leia for whatever reason, you won’t need to dig through the Wiki, forum guides, old HOW-TOs, etc, to achieve what should be a simple task. The correct build instructions are right there, alongside the code. Of course, there are things we can’t control and in two years a lot can change. Your shiny new OS or hardware might not be compatible with an older Kodi version. That’s not our fault, by the way. ;)
One of the best sources of information next to our forum for asking question and finding answers is the Kodi wiki pages. With each release certain aspects of the software change and this of course needs to be reflected on the official wiki pages. Several team members and regular users spend quite some time updating and tweaking these pages to become a helpfull one stop place for all information.
DRM (Digital Rights Management)
With the work above being done in the video player a possibility came up to also allow something that opens Kodi up for using it in combination with DRM protected content. These days it’s quite common for content owners and providers to protect their content with encryption. With v18 we added the ability to also play this content as it was actually intended by the DRM system. Depending on the used hardware and included license you can now playback this content which usually also comes with a subscription service. Instead of the sometimes clunky apps a possibility would be to just use the trusted Kodi environment to watch what they have to offer. There are already several add-ons available from our repository that already use this capability and we certainly hope more will follow and that content providers will make their service available as official add-on.
Throughout the user interface we have added tiny changes and improvements. Some might not be noticeable however it should improve the general usability. Additionally the settings section underwent some modification as well. We would like to advise to go through all the setting sections and adjust them to your liking. At the bottom of the interface there’s a small extended description on what each setting does.
Music library
Music section also gained lots of improvement for those who cares a lot about having a clean music library. Going through the code and scanning options a better understanding was gained on the past intentions and redone in a more structured way. The same accounts in a smaller part for video library although that was in a better maintained state. What is new however in v18 is that similar to music we can now also use the embedded tags and fill the library based on that instead of using file names. For now this has been disabled by default as there’s simply a lack of really well defined standard and proper easy to use video tagging software. We hope with Kodi now gaining this ability a gained interest will make these available.
Live TV
Next part is the great feature of Kodi to use it as your Live TV and recording front-end. It’s one of the less well known features as it requires certain knowledge and thinkering to set this up however once it works you’ll love it. To be able to use this you’ll need some extra hardware like a USB tuner or a network tuner like HDHomerun to get the cable or ether signal converted to a video stream. This in combination with one of the PVR server software options like VNSI or TVHeadend (more options are available) you instantly gain a very pleasant TV experience. What has been done over time is improving the usability and stability of this component and trying to make it a great replacement for your normal cable/ether set top box. A starting guide can be found here: Live TV and PVR/DVR Setup Guide
Python 2 & 3 compatibility will be enforced
Currently, Kodi includes the Python 2.7 interpreter to run add-ons written in Python programming language. However, Python 3 was released almost 10 years ago and the matter of implementing the Python 3 interpreter in Kodi has been brought up on the Kodi forum several times. Now, thanks to a successful GSOC 2017 project, we have a working Python 3.6 interpreter for Kodi, and on the latest DevCon 2017 in Prague Team Kodi decided that it’s time to move on and migrate Python add-on subsystem to Python 3. There are several reasons for that:
Python 3 is mature enough and more and more Python libraries either convert their codebase to Python 3-compatible or drop Python 2 support completely (Django is the most notable example).
Most current Python books, tutorials and courses are focused on Python 3.
Python 2 is not actively developed. It receives only security patches while Python 3 gets all the cool new features with every minor version.
However, Python 3 is not backward-compatible with the 2nd version so some transition process is required. Currently the plan is the following:
Kodi 19 (M*) will be released with Python 3 interpreter for running Python-based add-ons.
After the release of Kodi 18 (Leia) only add-ons that are compatible with both Python 2 and 3 will be accepted to the official add-on repository. Also, Python 3-only add-ons will be accepted to the repositories for Kodi 19 (M*) and above.
Add-on developers are highly encouraged to convert their add-ons to Python 2/3-compatible so that after the release of Kodi 19 (M*) we will have enough add-ons that work with the new version.
Test builds based on Kodi 18 with the Python 3 interpreter will be provided continuously so add-on developers can test their add-ons for compatibility with Python 3. Test builds for Windows are already available for downloading from here and test builds for Ubuntu can be obtained from this PPA.
One the v18 version has been branched off for final release the nightlies will become Python 3 only while the release builds will still be Python 2.
Writing Python code that is compatible with both 2 and 3 versions is totally possible and the “big” Python world has been doing it for years since the release of Python 3.0. There are a number of tools and best practices developed to simplify this process. Please read this Kodi Wiki article for more information and technical details about the migration process. Also a special Wiki section has been created that will be updated with new information. You can post questions about converting your add-on code to Python 3-compatible or share your experience in “Python 3 migration” subforum on the official Kodi forum.
Binary repository
We can now finally say binary repostory has been finalised for Android, OSX and Windows and are happy to say we can finally split off the binary add-ons from our main Kodi installer which reduces it to half the normal size. For users this means that as already mentioned the installer is much smaller and the Kodi version they get is just enough to get started. Once they decide to get extra functionality like a using PVR they simply go to the repository and only instal what they need unlike now where we preinstall them all. Next is the fact that for example a PVR add-on received some fixes you don’t have to wait till we release a new Kodi version. Just like Python and Skin add-ons you will just received the updated PVR add-on and can enjoy the improvement straight away.
Android, Android TV Leanback suggestions, search and voice typing
Regarding Android we just continued to do what we started some years ago and that was stripping all custom written code and simply following the official Android standards. When XBMC back then became available for Android a lot of specific code was written to get it running on those low powered devices and we had more capabilities than any other application back then. Over time stock Android improved a lot and basically all what we had custom made was becoming readily available to be used. At that point we started dropping old stuff and just applied the standards which reduced support burden for the developers. Now all that was done we could start looking at new features and from that we gained the Leanback search integration on Android TV that shows Kodi content on Android TV itself. We now also include Google Assistant out of the box so theoretically you don’t have to pick up the remote anymore. To be honest it’s still uncomfortable and weird talking to your TV giving it commands. For Android TV Oreo there’s a whole new interface which includes the option to fill so called Channels that shows specific content from your app. We can proudly say that Kodi is actually one of the first applications that actually has this integrated. With the great hidden Kodi feature called Smartplaylists you can now populate the Android TV screen with content you want. For the touch enabled devices we can also say this has improved quite a lot as well make it feel more natural.
Linux gained some great things as well which might not mean a lot for regular users though. For our Google Summer of Code we had a project integrating Wayland display server protocol (again) to our code base which is meant to be the successor of X11 Window System. Since Linux is also quite divided on display drivers we had quite a lot of code implementations getting Kodi running on the variety of devices out there. To reduce the maintenance burden of this code a general path was chosen and for GBM (Generic Buffer Manager) and V4L2 (Video for Linux). With this only a small part of the initial code is needed to get devices running and from this newer devices would just run out-of-the-box once the Linux kernel supports these.
Retroplayer and input manager
Retroplayer together with input manager makes controlling Kodi using various remotes or controllers much better and a plug and play experience. Not having to thinker to get the correct configurations is something that we all would like and hopefully this achieves this. Kodi’s history is rooted in video games. When we were known as XBMC on the original Xbox, games were a first-class medium. They could be browsed within XBMC, and launching a game was as easy as playing a movie. In particular, retro games held a magic appeal for me. Because they were so accessible, they were able to bring together many diverse people in my life. Gaming history fascinates me, and through XBMC I was able to explore and learn about games I would otherwise never be able to experience.
Today I’m excited to announce that Kodi is bringing the ability of playing retro games to Kodi users. I believe there exists a “technical divide”, where those who haven’t been exposed to emulation can’t use it. My vision is to bridge this divide by hiding emulation entirely, truly democratizing access to gaming history. Any why stop at accessibility? I call the project “RetroPlayer” — being able to play a game using movie paradigms. Live gameplay can be paused. Leaving and returning later will persist where you left off. Fast-forwarding requires some zany reflexes. And my favorite: gameplay can be rewound in real time. Initially, we’re including two simple, recognizable games. I purposefully left some manual configuration and rough edges in our Beta 3 release to reduce the immense scope of the project. With the help of the awesome emulation community, I’m sure we can tackle the hard problems left between us and zero-configuration bliss. Accessible emulation is a monumental effort that could never be done without the dedication of our team and the countless testers we’ve had over the last 6 years. Our project is built on libretro, an API from the RetroArch team. We owe this milestone in emulation to their hard work porting over 100 emulators and games. Thank you!
After years of work we can finally announce that Kodi v18 will be available as full 64-bit Windows application. This means we run 64-bit on all capable platforms which is quite the achievement. We recommend every user to upgrade to this 64-bit version if you also run 64-bit Windows. You can find this under system information in Windows itself.
For Windows specific several big things happened. First of all we got added as 32-bit Bridge application to Windows store which makes it easier for new users to instal Kodi and receive updates. A simultaneous action was converting Kodi to a full 64-bit application which took quite some effort. A more detailed story can be read here: Windows 64-bit is here
Now that was out of the way a long lived dream of quite a few became an option again. Getting Kodi running back on a XBOX like where it all started more than 15 years ago. Since 27 December 2017 we released Kodi once again for the XBOX (One) and is available from the Store.
Important note: For the moment the UWP/XBOX version will remain in Beta stage until several issues are resolved.
Development on Kodi also includes making sure it keeps working on all current and older operating systems. However at some point we also have to say goodbye and end support. In the past we already had to say goodbye to the first XBOX, Windows XP, Apple TV2, Ubuntu 12.04, anything lower than OSX 10.8 and all versions lower than Android 5 (Lollipop).
Inspired by the galaxy far, far away theme, our resident artist Sam went above and beyond and designed perhaps the coolest Kodi announce video of all time.
We loved his work so much that we’re modeling the Kodi 18 shirt after it along with more art to come. Here it is, our newest, coolest shirt: K-18L (Available in several shirt colours and not just black or white)
Release time
Since we now started the RC cycle a final release will be on the near horizon. When the final release will actually be is yet unknown as it all depends on the stability now more people will start using the v18 builds.
That’s about it for now and we’ll go back at improving this upcoming v18 release. Should you wish to give it a try a new version is readily available each day as well as nightly version. We can certainly recommend trying it out however take in mind that it’s not fully production and living room ready yet (take a backup). So far a guestimate of several tens of thousands users already use it so it can’t be that bad can it. You can get it from the download page clicking on the platform of choice and hitting the “pre release” tab. For Android and Windows we have an easy to use download add-on which you can find in our repository.
Go to the Official download page and choose the platform of choice and you will find these builds under the pre release tab.
Donations or getting involved
Getting involved is quite easy. Simply take the plunge and start using v18.0 Leia. If you use this version, we encourage you to report problems with these builds on our forum first and after that, if asked and the bug is confirmed, submit the issue on Github (following this guide: How to submit a bug report). Do note that we need detailed information so we can investigate the issue. We also appreciate providing support in our Forums where you can. You can of course also follow or help promote Kodi on all available social networks. Read more on the get involved page. If you do appreciate our work feel free to give a small donation so we can continue our effort. Just find the big “Donate” button at the top of the website. All donations go towards the XBMC foundation and are typically used for travel to attend conferences, any necessary paperwork and legal fees, purchase necessary hardware and licenses for developers and hopefully the yearly XBMC Foundation Developers Conference.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Kodi-v18-Leia-RC1-A-new-hope.jpg6001800Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-11-23 08:10:542018-11-23 08:10:54Kodi v18 Leia RC1 – A new hope
By offering acces to high quality movies and TV-shows, steaming site Flixtor has steadily grown its userbase in recent years.
The site, not to be confused with the defunct torrent streaming app Flixtor, has been operating with minimal downtime. This week that changed.
On Tuesday morning the site moved away from CDN provider Cloudflare. Flixtor’s domain nameservers were changed from to those of its registrar Njalla, and the A records were removed.
As a result, anyone who tried to access the site would see an error message in their browser. After a few hours, the site added an A record, setting it to localhost (127.0.0.1), which means that it’s still unusable.
Since the trouble started there have been no updates from the operators.
While the trouble may be due to a technical or hosting issue, it’s worth noting that Flixtor’s backup domains, including Flixtor.is and Flixtor.se, are also suffering the same problem.
Flixtor
TorrentFreak reached out to Flixtor’s domain registrar Njalla who noted that the domain name is technically working just fine, as it resolves to the listed IP-address. In this case, that’s an unusable address, but it suggests that any changes were made by a person in control of the domain names.
Whatever the reason may be, Flixtor’s users will have to miss their favorite streaming site, for now.
That’s especially painful for the users that paid for VIP access, which started at $14.95 per month. Some hope to get a refund, but it’s uncertain if that will ever happen.
“Refund would be great, I paid for 2 years just a few weeks ago, but I wouldn’t count on it, I guess just a learning for me to never pay anything like this anymore,” one user commented on Reddit.
While the downtime has lasted for more than three days, the site may eventually reappear. TorrentFreak has reached out to a contact address associated with Flixtor, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.
As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe.
This includes thousands of “copyright-infringing” sites, including the likes of The Pirate Bay, which rely on the U.S.-based company to keep server loads down and their location unknown.
This is a thorn in the side of many copyright holders who have repeatedly complained about Cloudflare’s role. While the major entertainment giants generally take a diplomatic approach, others are taking their grievance to court.
In 2016 Cloudflare was sued for contributory copyright infringement by adult publisher ALS Scan. This case ended in a confidential settlement this summer, but now there’s more trouble on the horizon for the company.
The new threat doesn’t come from any of the major entertainment industry players, but from two manufacturers and wholesalers of wedding dresses. Not a typical “piracy” lawsuit, but it’s a copyright case that could have broad effects.
In a complaint filed at a federal court in California, Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs argue that Cloudflare fails to terminate sites of counterfeit vendors after multiple warnings. This makes Cloudflare liable for the associated copyright infringements, they add.
“Plaintiffs have filed hundreds of ‘takedown notices’ with CloudFlare, consistent with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), but CloudFlare has failed and/or refused to respond to those notices by terminating its services to infringers,” the complaint reads.
“As such, CloudFlare is liable for the infringements committed by its customers.”
The counterfeit websites selling fake goods are not a new problem. In recent years the American Bridal & Prom Industry Association has filed lawsuits against hundreds of counterfeit sites, resulting in the shutdown of over 1,500 domain names.
What is new, however, is that the wedding dress manufacturers are now trying to hold a third-party intermediary liable. The complaint also targets the unnamed ‘does’ behind the allegedly infringing sites, but the CDN provider is the main focus.
Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero state that Cloudflare “shields pirate sites and their hosts from legal recourse by copyright owners” and that it’s “unable or unwilling to remove any infringing content.”
The allegations are similar to those made in the ALS lawsuit. At the time the CDN provider countered that it was merely caching files and that the infringing content would still be there if Cloudflare was taken out of the equation.
The Court disagreed with this assessment, noting that Cloudflare’s cache can be seen as a substantial infringement by itself, which is something the company has control over. That said, it wasn’t determined whether the company itself can be held liable.
In the present lawsuit, the two wedding dress manufacturers clearly believe that can be possible. They used the company’s “Counterfeit Technology” to send thousands of DMCA takedown notices, and even though terminating repeat infringers is an option under Cloudflare’s terms, nothing happened.
Part of one of the thousands of notices.
“Cloudflare has persisted in offering CDN and related services to pirate websites, notwithstanding these numerous notifications of infringement on such sites,” the complaint reads.
“In this fashion, Cloudflare has induced, contributed to, profited from, and aided and abetted multiple infringements of Plaintiffs’ copyrights, failing and refusing all along to implement or enforce a repeat infringer policy, and is thus liable for the infringements alleged herein.”
In closing, Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero demand damages for the losses they’ve suffered as well preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to stop all infringing activity.
While the case has nothing to do with traditional pirate sites, a ruling could spill over, which means that the entertainment industries will watch this case closely.
—
A copy of the complaint filed by Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs is available here (pdf).
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/fea-dark-clouds.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-11-22 02:08:532018-11-22 02:08:53Cloudflare Sued for Failing to Terminate Repeat Infringers
Founded less than three years ago, Torrent9 swiftly became one of the most popular torrent indexes around.
The site is most popular in French-speaking countries, which is the target audience. This includes France, but also Cameroon and Gabon, where it’s among the ten most-visited websites locally.
With millions of weekly visitors, the site was doing rather well. However, for reasons that remain unexplained, Torrent9 disabled the option to download torrent files a few days ago.
“Torrent9 will no longer offer downloads,” a message posted on the torrent site reads instead.
Right above that, there’s a prominent banner encouraging visitors to use a VPN. Specifically, a “Torrent9” VPN which can help to prevent outsiders from monitoring their downloads.
Use a VPN (translated from French)
Update: After finishing the article the “Torrent9 will no longer offer downloads” message changed to a “maintenance” notice. The VPN advertisement was also removed. We adjusted the article to reflect this.
This VPN recommendation caused some confusion, as many visitors assume that the download links will reappear when they connect through the VPN. However, that is not the case, TorrentFreak confirmed.
The advertisement no longer listed people’s IP-address when they were connected to the VPN, showing “hidden” instead, but the download option remained unavailable. It’s just an ad really.
This is also corroborated by French news site Numerama, which quotes several users who experienced the same issue.
The advertised VPN is Trust.Zone which, unlike Torrent9 suggests, has nothing to do with the torrent site. In fact, Trust.zone is not happy with the unwanted promotion, labeling it as misleading.
“We got major damage from this action because users now think that Trust.Zone is connected to Torrent9, which is definitely NOT TRUE,” a Trust.Zone representative informed us.
“The actions of Torrent9 are misleading. We have already sent a request via their contact form to remove the Trust.Zone warning message immediately,” the company adds.
Over the past few days, Trust.Zone received a lot of complaints and requests for refunds. The company informs us that it had to hire additional personnel to deal with the sudden surge.
Initially, the company couldn’t figure out what was going on. The VPN doesn’t use any tracking tools, so it was hard to identify the source of the traffic.
The company eventually figured out that Torrent9 is a member of its affiliate program at trustaffs.com, among 120,000 others. Trust.Zone hoped that the situation will soon be resolved, and considering the recent removal of the ad today, this may indeed be the case.
TorrentFreak also reached out to the operator of Torrent9 to hear his side of the story, but we have yet to receive a response.
For now, it remains unclear why the download links initially disappeared and if they will come back now the message changed to “maintenance”. In theory, it’s possible that Torrent9 was hacked or otherwise compromised, or perhaps there was a legal threat that motivated the site’s owner to take this action.
If the world’s leading record labels are to be believed, YouTube is the world’s largest repository of infringing content, content which makes YouTube lots of money.
YouTube counters with arguments that it always abides by the law (it does) by taking down infringing content as the DMCA required, when advised by rightsholders. It licenses content from the labels too, paying them billions in the process. However, the labels say that YouTube doesn’t pay them a fair rate.
To solve this problem, the labels are desperate to remove the safe harbor protections that YouTube currently enjoys. They want YouTube to become liable for infringing content on its platform while paying them rates similar to those paid by Spotify, for example. This position has proven impossible to achieve through negotiations so rightsholders headed to EU lawmakers instead.
Article 13, which needs little introduction, is currently winding its way through the EU’s corridors of power, hoping to solve all of these problems in one fell swoop. However, with giant companies pulling in opposite directions, negotiations have been drawn out, to say the least.
The latest proposals dated November 9 have now been published online and they give a pretty good indication of where things are going.
“Member States shall provide that an online content sharing service provider performs an act of communication to the public or an act of making available to the public when it gives the public access to copyright protected works or other protected subject matter uploaded by its users,” the proposal begins.
“An online content sharing service provider shall obtain an authorization [from rightsholders] in order to communicate or make available to the public works or other subject matter.”
Now, here’s the bit that’s scaring YouTube.
“When an online content sharing service provider performs an act of communication to the public or an act of making available to the public, it shall not be eligible for the exemption of liability provided for in Article 14 of Directive 2000/31/EC for unauthorized acts of communication to the public and making available to the public..[..].”
YouTube can currently avoid liability for infringing content being made available to the public as long as it removes that content once it’s made aware of its existence. Under the statements above, YouTube would have no protection. This massive liability was referenced recently by YouTube’s CEO, who warned of dire consequences.
The latest proposals detail two options – Option 1 and Option 2 – that set out requirements for cooperation between rightsholders and the consequences of not doing so.
Option 1
In the absence of the authorization [from rightsholders, referenced above], Member States shall provide that online content sharing service providers and rightsholders have to cooperate with each other according to professional diligence to ensure that there are no unauthorized acts of communication to the public or making available to the public within the meaning of this Article of specific works or other subject matter identified by rightsholders for which the rightsholders have provided the service with relevant and necessary information….
In other words, “here’s a list of all our content and do not make it make it available to the public without obtaining an appropriate license first – or else.”
The “or else” is laid out in the subsequent paragraph of ‘Option 1’, along with potential exceptions.
Member States shall provide that an online sharing service provider is liable for unauthorized acts of communication to the public or making available to the public within the meaning of this Article of specific works or other subject matter identified by the rightsholders and for which the rightsholders have provided the service with relevant and necessary information unless it shows it has taken effective and proportionate steps to ensure that those works or other subject matter are not available on its service…..
Option 2
In the absence of the authorization [from rightsholders, referenced above], Member States shall provide that an online content sharing service provider is liable for unauthorized acts of communication to the public or making available to the public within the meaning of this Article unless it cooperates with rightsholders according to professional diligence by taking effective and proportionate steps to avoid the availability on its service of specific unauthorized works or other subject matter identified by rightsholders and for which the rightsholders have provided the service with relevant and necessary information…
Both Option 1 and Option 2 add potential exemptions for small platforms, consideration for the amount and type of work uploaded by users, the availability of “suitable and effective technologies” (filtering such as YouTube’s Content ID), the financial burden on a platform, and the number of copyright infringement notices received.
In any event, both options require online sharing providers to “act expeditiously to remove or disable to access to works or other subject matter” when unauthorized content is made available and both require that providers. They must then make “best efforts to prevent their future uploads in cooperation with rightsholders.” Phrased differently, it’s a take down and stay down regime.
Given the above, it’s easier to understand YouTube’s current stance in favor of upload filtering via its own established Content ID system. With this technology, the company seems in a position to deal with the key issues Article 13 presents. Whether this will force it to pay the labels a “fair price” for their content (in order to close the so-called ‘Value Gap’) will remain to be seen.
Further analysis from Julia Reda MEP here and the latest proposal document here(pdf) via Politico Europe.
Many podcasts use music to spice up their recordings.
This is fine when a track is properly licensed, or if it is podsafe, but using substantial portions of tracks without permission can become problematic.
This is what iBus Media, the company behind PokerNews – the self-proclaimed “largest poker website in the world” – just discovered. Last Friday the company was sued for willful copyright infringement in a California federal court.
The complaint was filed by a group of record labels and music publishers including UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Universal Music, and PolyGram. They accuse PokerNews of distributing podcasts through its site and app, using significant portions of their tracks.
“Among the content made available by iBus Media on PokerNews, and through other forums, are hundreds of podcasts that intentionally incorporate significant portions of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted musical works,” the complaint reads.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, according to the music companies, who explain that PokerNews’ parent company was already notified of the issue several years ago.
“iBus Media was notified that it was infringing Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works nearly three years ago. Nevertheless, iBus Media continues to infringe. iBus Media’s infringement is therefore willful and deliberate,” they write.
Some allegedly infringing podcasts
The complaint lists hundreds of podcasts where infringing tracks allegedly appear. This has resulted in “substantial” and “irreparable harm,” the labels say, adding that PokerNews profits from this unauthorized use.
“In each of the Infringing Podcasts, Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works are prominently featured and undoubtedly used with the intention of making the podcasts more appealing to listeners,” the complaint reads.
PokerNews said it has taken steps to remove certain infringing content, but according to the music companies, the problem persists. They, therefore, demand $150,000 in statutory damages per infringed work.
With 46 copyrighted songs listed in the complaint, the maximum statutory damages go well beyond $6 million, but it’s possible that even more titles could be added when the case proceeds.
In addition, the music companies also request a preliminary and permanent injunction preventing PokerNews and any other iBus Media properties from infringing its copyrights going forward.
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A copy of the complaint, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf).
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Mission: Impossible – Fallout 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.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/threater-feat.png2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-11-19 14:05:162018-11-19 14:05:16Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 11/19/18
Strike 3 Holdings is one of the most active copyright trolls in the United States, filing more than 1,800 copyright infringement cases in the past 13 months.
There are several reasons for that:
Regarding Android we just continued to do what we started some years ago and that was stripping all custom written code and simply following the official Android standards. When XBMC back then became available for Android a lot of specific code was written to get it running on those low powered devices and we had more capabilities than any other application back then. Over time stock Android improved a lot and basically all what we had custom made was becoming readily available to be used. At that point we started dropping old stuff and just applied the standards which reduced support burden for the developers. Now all that was done we could start looking at new features and from that we gained the 
For Windows specific several big things happened. First of all we got added as 32-bit Bridge application to Windows store which makes it easier for new users to instal Kodi and receive updates. A simultaneous action was converting Kodi to a full 64-bit application which took quite some effort. A more detailed story can be read here: 
By offering acces to high quality movies and TV-shows, steaming site 
As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe.
Founded less than three years ago, 
Many podcasts use music to spice up their recordings. 
This week we have three newcomers in our chart.
