Many Internet traffic reports have been published over the years, documenting how traffic patterns change over time.

One of the trends that emerged in recent years, is that BitTorrent’s share of total Internet traffic decreased.

With the growth of services such as YouTube and Netflix, streaming started to generate massive amounts of bandwidth. As a result, BitTorrent lost a significant chunk of its ‘market share.’

This trend gradually increased, until recently. In some parts of the world file-sharing traffic, BitTorrent in particular, is growing.

That’s what’s suggested by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine, which has kept a close eye on these developments for over a decade. The company will release its latest Global Internet Phenomena report next month but gave us an exclusive sneak peek.

Globally, across both mobile and fixed access networks file-sharing accounts for 3% of downstream and 22% of upstream traffic. More than 97% of this upstream is BitTorrent, which makes it the dominant P2P force.

In the EMEA region, which covers Europe, the Middle East, and Africa there’s a clear upward trend. BitTorrent traffic now accounts for 32% of all upstream traffic. This means that roughly a third of all uploads are torrent-related.

Keep in mind that overall bandwidth usage per household also increased during this period, which means that the volume of BitTorrent traffic grew even more aggressively.

BitTorrent traffic also remains the top upstream source in the Asia Pacific region with 19% of total traffic. Percentage-wise this is down compared to two years ago, but in volume, it’s relatively stable according to Sandvine.

Other popular file-sharing upload sources in the Asia Pacific region are the Korean P2P app “K grid” (7%) and “Afreeca TV” (2%).

In the Americas, BitTorrent is the second largest source of upstream traffic. It has a market share of little over 9% and is most popular in Latin America. BitTorrent is only a fraction behind MPEG-TS, which is used for backhauling data from video cameras and security systems.

BitTorrent dead?

TorrentFreak spoke to Sandvine’s Vice President of Solutions Marketing Cam Cullen, who notes that more details will be released in the upcoming report. However, it’s clear that BitTorrent is not dead yet.

The next question is why BitTorrent traffic is on the rise again? According to Cullen, increased fragmentation in the streaming service market may play an important role.

“More sources than ever are producing ‘exclusive’ content available on a single streaming or broadcast service – think Game of Thrones for HBO, House of Cards for Netflix, The Handmaid’s Tale for Hulu, or Jack Ryan for Amazon. To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest.

“Since these numbers were taken in June for this edition, there were no Game of Thrones episodes coming out, so consider these numbers depressed from peak!” Cullen notes.

And we haven’t even mentioned non-filesharing traffic sources such as cyberlockers and streaming sites, which are even more popular than BitTorrent…

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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Since the opensource commity is open as the name implies we as Team Kodi at times also attend other conferences. One of those is VDD which is hosted by the Videolan team which you might know from the VLC player. During the conference many developers related to their software projects are invited to attend and join in on presentation and techincal discussions. The Kodi project is in that regards related we are also in the multimedia “business” and share a similar vision. Next to that we use the same undelying opensource projects like FFMpeg and code libraries made by Vidolan which you use for DVD and Bluray.

For us it started on Thursday 20 September 2018 when we arrrived in Paris where their 10th conference took place. During the day we walked a bit throuw Paris and in the evening we enjoyed some beers and prepared for the next day which was the community bonding day.

So during Friday we gathered in the morning to be given the assignement to from small groups and start a sort of scavenger hunt throughout Paris. The goal was to find the answer which would form an URL and in the mean time you would encouraged to make awesome pictures using the VLC hats and in the end the best team received some nice price. Although it was quite an exhausting day it was for sure great fun and a good way to see Paris. Saturday there were several very interesting talks on a variety of topics.

and after that we went to have a boat tour on the Seine to have some more drinks and food and the winners of the scavenger hunt were announced. Sadly our groups didn’t win :( 

`

Sunday was day of short lightning talks in the morning and in the afternoon you were free to meet up and have small discussion on whatever topic.Although this is just a very short summary of the past days it had quite a lot of content and was great to meet up with other developers. We would to thank the Videolan organisation for making this possible.

Next up is our own Kodi Devcon in the city Sofia (Bulgaria).





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Earlier this year Hollywood’s Motion Picture Distributors’ Association stated that site-blocking was the only option left to beat online piracy.

While it’s impossible to completely eradicate the phenomenon, rightsholders generally see ISP blockades as one of the most effective tools at their disposal.

This is also true for Sky TV New Zealand. Last year the company took its first steps in this direction, and it is now pushing on. Newsroom reports that Sky hopes to file a lawsuit targeting The Pirate Bay and an unnamed sports streaming site before the end of the year.

The company just released the results of an extensive piracy survey which shows that 29% of all New Zealanders have pirated sport and entertainment during the last month. The majority of pirates prefer streaming, but downloading and pirate boxes are popular too.

“We’ve known that piracy is a problem for a while, but the scale is even bigger than we thought,” SKY spokesperson Sophie Moloney says.

“If piracy remains unchecked, it risks really hurting the sports and entertainment industry in New Zealand, and our ability to create great content,” she adds.

The lacking availability of legal viewing options is the main reason why people pirate, the research reveals. Legal content is either not available or it’s significantly delayed. Interestingly, non-pirates believe that people mainly turn to unauthorized offerings to avoid paying.

Sky TV, however, believes that there are plenty of legal option and will push its blocking plans through.

“Other countries are taking steps to stop piracy and encourage people not to steal content, and we want to do the same here in New Zealand, including by way of blocking pirate websites,” Sky TV’s Moloney says.

Surprisingly, there is even support for this effort among self-proclaimed pirates.

Just over half of all pirates agreed that they “would be happy for my ISP to block access to a piracy website if it was required by a court to do so.” This is also preferred over other options, such as tighter regulation or lawsuits against individual pirates.

“Site-blocking is used in 42 countries around the world, including Australia and the UK. It’s good to see that many New Zealanders would prefer that these dodgy sites are blocked from view using this approach,” Moloney notes.

Whether Internet providers feel the same way has yet to be seen. When Sky TV first announced its blocking intentions last year, local ISPs responded critically.

“SKY’s call that sites be blacklisted on their say so is dinosaur behavior, something you would expect in North Korea, not in New Zealand. It isn’t our job to police the Internet and it sure as hell isn’t SKY’s either, all sites should be equal and open,” said Taryn Hamilton of local IPS Vocus at the time.

ISPs instead pointed out that rightsholders should focus on improving the legal options. And with Sky TV’s research revealing ‘limited legal options’ as the main motivation to pirate, they are likely to stick with this.

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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Every day, countless thousands of pieces of infringing content are uploaded to the Internet including most movies, TV shows, games, and commercial software.

Rightsholders everywhere are struggling to the contain the influx, often having to resort to filing millions of takedown notices with Internet companies, the bulk of which target the world’s major search engines.

While this doesn’t take down the actual content itself, there is a theory that citizens often turn to search engines to find their fix. These sites, in turn, direct users to sites hosting infringing content. To combat this facilitation, copyright holders want search companies to remove these results from their indexes.

Takedowns like this are common in the West, with Google removing billions of links upon request. In Russia, however, search engine Yandex found itself in hot water recently after refusing to remove links on the basis that the law does not require it to do so. This prompted the authorities to suggest that a compromise agreement needs to be made, backed up by possible changes in the law.

It now appears that this event, which could’ve led to Yandex being blocked by ISPs, has prompted both Internet companies and copyright holders to consider a voluntary agreement. Discussions currently underway suggest a unique and potentially ground-breaking plan.

The initial meeting between telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor, Internet companies Yandex, Google, and Mail.ru, plus representatives of the Association of Producers of Cinema and Television (APKiT), the National Media Group, and Gazprom Media Holdings, took place September 19.

According to news outlet RBC, the topic of discussion was the creation of a special database holding the details of known infringing copies of content including movies, games, software and other pirated content.

The proposals envision that once details of content are placed in the database, search engines and video hosting sites that sign up to a memorandum of understanding with rightsholders will automatically query the database every five minutes for updates.

Once the details are fed back, search companies will remove links to pirate resources from their search results within six hours, without any need for a court process. This will run alongside the current database currently maintained by Roscomnadzor and utilized by ISPs, which contains links to sites that are blocked due to having multiple complaints filed against them at the Moscow City Court.

If adopted, this new extrajudicial process will go some way to clearing up the problems caused by the current legal gray area, which led to Yandex removing links to content from its video portal to avoid a potential ISP blockade, even though the company believes that the law does not require it to do so.

It’s suggested that the infringing resource database, should it go ahead, could be maintained by the Internet Video Association (IVA), which represents intellectual property rights holders. Alternatively, RBC notes, an alternative coalition of entertainment companies including legal streaming platforms could be put in charge of the project.

Talks appear to be fairly advanced, with agreements on the framework for the database potentially being reached by the middle of this week. If that’s the case, a lawsuit recently filed by Gazprom Media against Yandex could be settled amicably. It’s understood that Yandex wants all major Internet players to become involved, including social networks.

With the carrot comes the possibility of the stick, of course. Gazprom Media indicates that if a voluntary agreement cannot be reached, it will seek amendments to copyright law that will achieve the same end results.

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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It’s impossible to say how many lawyers have been deployed to shut down piracy-related projects over the years. Dozens would be a conservative estimate but just one beating down the door can be an intimidating experience.

In the early 2000s and for at least the next decade and beyond, many efforts to shut down pirate sites and services were accompanied by triumphant press releases. Arrests, court appearances, and usually negative verdicts against pirates became a rallying point for the content industries, with the head-on-a-pike deterrent proving a valuable tool in the propaganda wars.

Last year, however, a new tactic appeared to gain momentum. In addition to strategic publicized cases against larger-scale infringers, a steady undercurrent of threats became evident in the Kodi addon and pirate application community. Rather than breaking down doors, content owners approached developers quietly, warning that shutting down is the only real way to avoid punishing legal action.

Most of the approaches were made by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the global anti-piracy coalition made up of 30 of the world’s most powerful entertainment companies. This fact has been made public by a number of developers, with some publishing correspondence on the web.

Many others, however, simply announced their retirement and disappeared, often around the same time that other developers took the same course of action. When approached for comment most refused to offer details but it’s clear that decisions weren’t being made freely. It won’t come as a surprise to learn that many, in exchange for not having their lives ruined, agreed to take a vow of silence.

After collating information from a number of sources, we can now reveal some of the tactics being used against developers involved in ‘pirate’ projects.

While the details vary from case to case, most approaches begin with a detailed overview of the project the developer is involved in and various laws that ACE believe are being broken. This is followed up with details of a multi-point settlement deal which can potentially see the developer exit with a minimum of costs.

As previously reported, some of the terms are fairly unpalatable, including an agreement to report on associates and colleagues involved in the project and associated projects. We have no idea whether anyone targeted has done so but we know the settlement agreement contains such clauses. However, aside from ending all infringing activities, the number one insistence is that recipients keep their mouths firmly shut.

In order to protect those who have disclosed information to TF, we aren’t publishing direct quotes from the settlement agreements. However, we can disclose that those entering settlements are forbidden from speaking to anyone (apart from their legal advisors) about the contents of the agreement, but it goes further than that.

Those targeted are expressly forbidden from telling anyone that they have even been contacted or that discussions are taking place, something that really isolates people seeking to receive external help and advice.

Furthermore, if the recipient’s case is discussed with ACE at all, no information – whether spoken or in written form – can be revealed to any third-party (outside legal counsel). As far as we can see from the documents available, this means they aren’t even allowed to discuss the terms with a close friend or family member.

However, in return for their full cooperation, it appears that ACE will keep their identities a secret. If announcements to the press are made (which thus far hasn’t been the coalition’s modus operandi), ACE has told those who sign agreements that they won’t be named or identified in other ways.

With this background, it’s not difficult to see why developers are choosing to shut down their projects and disappear quietly. While some will find the terms of ACE’s settlement agreement difficult, it’s undoubtedly better than the alternative. With billions of dollars up their collective sleeves, ACE members have unlimited access to legal weaponry and could drain the average person’s finances in a matter of months in legal fees alone.

Quite why ACE has chosen to act against developers so quietly isn’t clear but given that most of their targets thus far have been bedroom-based Joe Publics, it’s possible that the “30 Goliaths versus David” imagery is something some its members would prefer not to be associated with.

Finally, users worried by a potential hand over of information to authorities as highlighted by the Terrarium TV case this week (note: we have no confirmation that ACE was involved) shouldn’t be surprised when developers act to save their own skin. Privacy and security is the user’s own responsibility and in the Wild West of piracy, anything can happen.

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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Piracy is very much a worldwide phenomenon, but there are some noteworthy differences between various regions.

Earlier this year we reported that there’s a notable decrease in camcording piracy globally. However, in Russia, this trend is going in the opposite direction.

This finding was corroborated this week by the international cybersecurity outfit Group-IB. The company’s Anti-Piracy department reported that there has been a clear increase in locally camcorded movies.

In 2016 there were ‘only’ 33 Russian cinema leaks. This increased more than 500% to 211 a year later and, during the first eight months of 2018, the counter has already reached 280 leaked recordings.

“Almost every film released in 2018 has been pirated and leaked to the web. In 2017, the country’s cinemas showed 477 movies, and 211 of them were pirated, which is 6 times more than a year earlier,” Group-IB notes.

TorrentFreak reached out to Andrey Busargin, Director of Brand Protection at Group-IB, who informed us that there is an organized group of “camcording” pirates which has been very active.

“This group is financed by online-casinos, which support online-pirates as well. Online-casinos integrate their ads in the pirated copies and TV-shows in the form of logos, captioning or even as audio tracks,” Busargin says.

These pirated copies than spread across the web. As an example, Group-IB provided screenshots of ads for “Azino 777” before and during pirated movies, as well as a branded watermark, seen below.

“This scheme allows online casinos to generate leads, wherever a user watches a pirated copy and whatever ads are displayed on a website with pirated copies,” Busargin adds.

Destination Wedding, with Azino 77 watermark

According to Group-IB, pirate sites are also profiting handsomely from the availability of infringing content.

“On average pirates earn $3 per 1000 views. Therefore, an average monthly income of pirated websites owners can reach $10,000. It would cost roughly $240 to create a pirated website, which allows owners to quickly recoup their ‘business’.”

That sounds profitable indeed. However, an operator of a large torrent site told us, on the condition of anonymity, that it’s a rather optimistic estimate. While popups in countries such as Japan can indeed earn up to $3 per 1000 impressions, in Russia this figure is closer to $0.3-0.5, he said.

Also, these popups are often restricted to one impression per unique visitor per day, not all website views. And then there are the ad-blockers, which take out roughly 40% of all traffic.

This means that one million Russian pageviews, from 100,000 unique users, would bring in ‘only’ $20 per popup ad. This is, effectively, $0.02 per 1000 pageviews.

Sites can run multiple ads at once, of course, but Group-IB’s figure appears to be optimistic. Even BitTorrent Inc, which is a legitimate company, doesn’t charge more than a few cents per 1000 views for its banners.

The cybersecurity company further estimates that there were a massive 10 billion search queries for “free” movies and TV-shows in Russia in a year. The company directly translates this to 110 pirate movies views for all 90 million Internet users, but that may be a bit much as well.

When we asked the company about this estimate, they told us that 110 movies per year shouldn’t be taken too literally and that it’s meant as a “snapshot” of the number of films people “intended” to watch.

All in all Group-IB’s data is quite intriguing, especially the rapid increase in cammed movies and the allegation that casinos facilitate this activity.

On that note, it’s worth mentioning that the aforementioned “Azino 777” casino was mentioned earlier this year as one of the top online advertisers in Russia. Despite a site blocking ban by Roskomnadzor, it beats the likes of Yandex, Coca-Cola, and Tele2.

Group-IB infographic

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Great news for all the OnePlus 6 owners: Android 9 P (Pie) has been officially released by the OxygenOs team and OnePlus with the OnePlus 6 OxygenOS 9.0 OTA! Now this is a “staged” release meaning that only some users will get the update early and you might need to wait for the OTA release to be available for you too and install it but hey, who wants to wait? So if you are like me and can’t stand waiting, here is the guide on how to install the latest official OxygenOS 9.0 OTA on your OnePlus 6 device that brings the Official Android 9 P. Attention, this release and update procedure only works if you have an official stable version on your device. In this way you will not loose any data (photo, apps, app data, etc) since this is a dirty install.

If on the other hand you come from an Android 9 P beta version, then you need to go back to a stable Android 8 version and then reboot and update as below. On this downgrade you need to do a clean install (that means you will loose everything on your device so make a backup!)

The file size of the OxygenOS 9.0 update on OnePlus 6 is about 1521MB, although it may differ on certain units. Changelog of the update, as posted on OnePlus forums, includes an upgrade to Android Pie, a new Do Not Disturb (DND) mode that comes with certain adjustable settings, a new Gaming mode 3.0 with a text notification mode and notification for third party calls, and support for accent colour customisation.

Official Android 9 P On The OnePlus 6 OxygenOS 9.0 OTAFlashing Official Android 9 P On The OnePlus 6 OxygenOS 9.0 OTA Instructions:

  • First you need to download the new OTA ROM: Full Rom OOS 9.0 Android Pie Official | AFH | Mega (MD5: 729a80d88b973ded34c10f602554f01d) on your root folder of the OnePlus 6. If you download the ROM from your phone, after the download finishes, use File Manager to move the file in your root directory.
  • Now go into Settings
  • Select System
  • Then select System Updates
  • Tap on the upper right corner on the cog icon – Settings
  • Select Local Upgrade
  • And lastly choose the downloaded file.
  • Wait for the process to finish and the device to reboot.

The whole process should take up to 10 minutes so be patient! After a while, Boom Shakalaka Baby, you will be on Android 9 P with the Official OxygenOS 9.0 OTA release!

 

Changelog:

Updated system to Android™ 9.0 Pie™

Brand new UI for Android Pie

New adaptive battery support

New Android Pie gesture navigation

Updated Android security patch to 2018.9

Other new features and system improvements

Do Not Disturb mode New Do Not Disturb (DND) mode with adjustable settings

New Gaming mode 3.0 Added text notification mode

Added notification for 3rd party calls

Accent color

Supported accent color customization

 


Last year several major record labels, represented by the RIAA, filed a lawsuit against ISP Grande Communications accusing it of turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers.

According to the labels, the Internet provider knew that some of its subscribers were frequently distributing copyrighted material, but failed to take any meaningful action in response.

Grande refuted the accusations and filed a motion to dismiss the case. The ISP partially succeeded as the claims against its management company Patriot were dropped.

The same was true for the vicarious infringement allegations. The court saw no evidence that potential customers would specifically sign up with Grande because it did not police infringing conduct by its subscribers.

The labels disagreed, however, and were not ready to let any claims go. In May they submitted a motion for leave to file an amended complaint including new evidence obtained during discovery. Among other things, they argued that Grande willingly kept pirating subscribers aboard, to generate more revenue.

This week, US Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin issued his “report and recommendation” on the matter, which delivers a significant setback for the RIAA labels.

Judge Austin sees no new evidence which shows that ‘pirate’ subscribers were specifically drawn to Grande. The new evidence may indicate that Grande failed to terminate pirating subscribers for years, but that’s not enough.

“First, the original Complaint alleged essentially the same or similar facts,” the recommendation reads.

“Second, the new allegations still fail to say anything about the motivations of Grande’s subscribers when they sign up with Grande. That is, Plaintiffs still fail to plead facts showing Grande gained or lost customers because of its failure to terminate infringers.”

The alleged pirates used BitTorrent to share infringing works, which is something they could have done through any ISP, the Magistrate Judge adds.

The RIAA labels also argued that Grande’s management company Patriot Media Consulting, which is also listed as a defendant, should be held liable too.

However, the court previously ruled that, while Patriot employees were involved in policy making, they didn’t take any decisions or actions that led to the alleged infringements.

According to the order, the labels’ new evidence doesn’t change this.

“Though there is more detail in the proposed amendment, these allegations are “more of the same” when compared to the original complaint,” Magistrate Judge Austin writes.

In conclusion, Judge Austin recommends denying the RIAA labels’ motion to file an amended complaint. If this recommendation is adopted by the District Court Judge, the case against Grande will continue based on the contributory infringement claim alone.

Judge Austin’s full report and recommendations filing is available here (pdf).

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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Last year, Hong Kong-based broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) applied for a blocking injunction in Australia against several unauthorized IPTV services.

Under the Copyright Act, the broadcaster asked the Federal Court to order ISPs including Telstra, Optus, Vocus, and TPG plus their subsidiaries to block access to seven Android-based services named as A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5.

TVB’s application was unusual in that it not only required ISPs to block URLs, domains and IP addresses related to the technical operation of the services, but also hosting platforms akin to Google Play and Apple’s App Store that host the app.

Back in May, due to the relative complexity of the application, Justice Nicholas reserved his decision, telling TVB that his ruling could take a couple of months after receiving his “close attention.”

In a ruling handed down by the Federal Court yesterday, TVB discovered it had been worth the wait.

Justice Nicholas notes in his judgment that the primary purpose of the illicit streaming set-top boxes is to facilitate the infringement of copyright by making such material available in Australia without permission from copyright owners. He also notes, however, that many people using these devices did not know they are infringing copyright.

“Be that as it may, I regard as flagrant the copyright infringements of the persons who have made the TVB broadcasts available online, including those persons responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the target online locations that make it possible for users of the streaming devices to view the TVB broadcasts either in close to real time or at some later time using the VOD service,” the Judge writes.

In an earlier hearing, TVB was confronted with the fact that some of the content it broadcasts has uncertain copyright status in Australia. While Hong Kong is a member of the World Trade Organization, it is not a party to the 1961 Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations.

The Judge says that considering the low volume of that content, blocking would not be an issue.

“I accept that access to some of content that was originally broadcast (ie. which was not pre-recorded) in which copyright does not subsist may also be blocked, but my strong impression from the evidence is that this is likely to constitute a relatively small proportion of the total content the subject of TVB’s television broadcasts in Hong Kong,” he notes.

“This is not a case, in my view, where blocking orders, if made, will significantly curtail non-infringing use of the streaming devices.”

The Judge adds that other than blocking, TVB has no other practical remedies available to curtail infringement of its rights. This is due to the likelihood that the operators of the service are “almost certainly” based overseas and “impossible” to track down.

“Obtaining any form of effective injunctive relief against them in Australia is not a realistic option,” Justice Nicholas adds.

ISPs including Telstra, Optus, Vocus and TPG now have 15 days to block the “online locations” supplying content and services to the infringing set-top boxes in Australia. Meanwhile, TVB continues its battle against pirates.

“Actions are being taken by TVB in Singapore and other overseas markets to block piracy websites. We will keep in contact with the Hong Kong government to push similar site-blocking in Hong Kong,” a TVB spokesman said.

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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Earlier this year, several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, branding it a supplier of pirate streaming devices.

Under the flag of the newly formed anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Dragon of using the Kodi media player in combination with pirate addons. As such, the company facilitates mass copyright infringement, it was argued.

While the lawsuit remains ongoing, the legal pressure prompted Dragon Box to take a good look at its business. With ACE filing lawsuits against several ‘streaming boxes,’ the problem was not going away anytime soon.

“It’s been a tough 9 months for the company and the industry,” the company writes in a Facebook message picked up by Cord Cutters News.

However, Dragon Box is not throwing in the towel. The company will change its business model and promises to continue serving the latest entertainment, albeit at a cost.

“Instead of closing our doors and shutting down all boxes and riding off into the sunset we decided that it was in the best interest of you the customers and the company to change our business model..,” Dragon Box writes.

The company adds that it will continue to try and bring customers “the best legal content we can and add in as many services we can to make Dragon Box the box that beats any competitors out there.”

While the announcement isn’t very concrete, a company representative informs TorrentFreak that they plan to officially announce their “Blend TV” subscription service next week.

This service, which has a similar website design as the box seller, is operated by uMedialink LLC and works on various platforms and devices. However, it does come with a subscription, starting at $39.95 per month for access to 65+ US Channels, including live sports streaming.

Blend TV’s channels

While Blend TV is not exactly a household name, its FAQ section notes that it is perfectly legal.

“Absolutely! BlendTV has the required rights and permission’s for the distribution of all our channels and movies on demand,” Blend TV’s website reads.

Dragon Box has also put up their boxes up for sale again. However, these are completely different to the ones that were offered last year. They are configured for easy access to Blend TV, and no longer come with Kodi and infringing add-ons pre-installed.

TorrentFreak spoke to someone familiar with the situation, who explained that this move was inevitable. The company believes that this change is in their own best interests and the interests of their customers.

Dragon Box still believes that online streaming is the future. And they hope that, by partnering with Blend TV, they can continue doing business without legal trouble.

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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