A dramatic situation is developing around billion dollar Internet company Yandex and several major Russian broadcasters.

Gazprom-Media and others claim that Yandex isn’t doing enough to keep ‘pirate’ content out of its search results. After reaching a brick wall with the search company, the broadcasters filed a copyright infringement complaint with the Moscow City Court, the entity responsible for handling ISP blocking requests.

Late last week, the Court handed down a decision compelling Yandex to remove links to pirated TV shows belonging to Gazprom-Media outlets including TNT, TV-3, 2×2, and Super. The Court gave Yandex until the end of today to remove the content or find itself blocked throughout Russia. It’s now clear that Yandex will not comply.

According to a statement from the company, Yandex believes that the law is being misinterpreted. While under current legislation pirate content must be removed from sites hosting it, the removal of links to such content on search engines falls outside its scope.

“In accordance with the Federal Law On Information, Information Technologies, and Information Protection, the mechanics are as follows: pirated content should be blocked by site owners and on the so-called mirrors of these sites,” Yandex says.

“We consider the claims against us to be unreasonable and not in accordance with the law and we will appeal the decision of the Moscow City Court.”

A Yandex spokesperson told Interfax that the company works in “full compliance” with the law and is open to finding a cooperative solution.

“We will work with market participants to find a solution within the existing legal framework,” Yandex said.

In the midst of this serious situation, Yandex insists that it stands for an “honest Internet” in which legal content is made available and rightsholders earn their rightful share from it. Now, however, the action by the TV companies and the Court has undermined that.

“In response to the TV channels’ complaint, the Moscow City Court has passed rulings that are fundamentally contrary to its own previous practice on this issue. Worse still, they do not solve the problem of unauthorized content, since resources with such content will be available in other search systems, social networks and so on,” Yandex says.

But despite Yandex filing an appeal against the Court’s decision, there appears to be no escape from it being wiped from the Russian Internet in a matter of hours. Telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor says that it is obliged to act on the instructions of the Court and will instruct ISPs around the country to disabled access to Yandex.

“Roskomnadzor is required to comply with the court’s decision, which introduced preliminary provisional [blocking] measures against Yandex’s resource, regardless of the company’s appeal against this decision,” a spokesperson said.

But while executing a potentially devastating block on the one hand, Roscomnadzor is also offering to help mediate a peaceful solution to this growing dispute.

“We are ready to assist in finding points of interaction between companies,” Deputy Head of Roskomnadzor Vadim Subbotin told Interfax.

“I hope that in the pre-trial procedure, Yandex will take steps to resolve this conflict before the blockade, I very much hope that this will be done in cooperation with the rights holders,” he said.

Absent some last-minute miracle, it seems Yandex is doomed to preliminary blocking measures sometime today. While these usually last for an initial 15 days, the big question is how they will be carried out.

It’s unclear if a precise element of the service can or will be targeted (i.e Yandex.ru/video/ and/or Yandex.video) or whether Roscomnadzor will go down the Telegram route and block everything.

Ominously, Rosomnadzor is already warning that it doesn’t know what effect the blocks will have on Yandex’s other services.

Update: Fearing a complete block of its entire service, Yandex has complied with the order of the Moscow City Court. The company’s statement can be found below (translated from Russian)

Today, August 30, 2018, the deadline for the execution of instructions, which Roscomnadzor sent to Yandex on the basis of the Moscow City Court’s rulings, expires. In the instructions we are required to remove from yandex.ru “illegally posted information” – TV shows, the rights to which belong to the TV channels of the group “Gazprom-Media”.

A good solution to the piracy problem must satisfy two principles: transparency and balance. We ourselves are copyright holders and we will work with other rights holders, regulators and other industry players to create a system in which both these principles will be observed.

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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The DMCA is a particularly useful tool for copyright holders who want to make sure that infringing copies of their work are not widely distributed.

Whether it’s a copy of a pirated song, an ebook, or a photo, the DMCA covers it all.

The majority of the takedown requests filed on an average day are fairly mundane. However, there are those that raise eyebrows, which includes the recent efforts of Columbia Pictures.

The movie studio is planning to distribute the upcoming ‘Holmes and Watson‘ movie, a highly anticipated release among Sherlock fans. So, when the first promotional poster appeared online a few days ago, they jumped all over it.

The poster, featuring Will Ferrell and John Reilly as Holmes and Watson, shows both men signaling their initials. On top of that is a large red title that reads “Holmies,” as shown in this Reddit post.

Following a series of news articles, the poster was shared on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. This isn’t something out of the ordinary, as the same happens with other prominent movies. What’s unusual, however, is that the posters have begun to ‘disappear.’

Several news sites that reported on and linked to the poster have removed the image and Slashfilm even took the entire article down. Around the same time, several copies shared on Twitter disappeared too.

Gone

As it turns out, Twitter removed the promotional posters following a DMCA notice. TorrentFreak received a copy of a takedown request which anti-piracy company Entura sent to Twitter on behalf of Columbia Pictures.

Some of the reported uploads

The unusual takedowns haven’t gone unnoticed. Twitter user Sloth Mom has been particularly vocal after one of her tweets was targeted.

“Apparently Columbia Pictures didn’t like me tweeting the poster of the upcoming Holmes and Watson movie with the comment ‘I’m here for it’ for… Reasons? Good going Columbia, now anyone seeing that tweet won’t know what I’m here for,” she Tweeted.

This sparked a lively debate with people condemning Columbia Pictures. But, while it’s clear that Columbia Pictures doesn’t want the poster to be promoted, the question that remains is why?

TorrentFreak reached out to Entura for more details on the matter. At the time of writing we have yet to hear back, leaving us with little more than speculation.

There are of course many possible explanations. The most likely option we’ve seen thus far refers to the “Holmies” title that’s on the original poster. Apparently, that term is also used for ‘groupies‘ of the Aurora shooter James Holmes.

“Err, ‘Holmies’ also means ‘fans of the kid who shot up that DARK KNIGHT theater’ so they might be freaking out and try to scrub the poster from existence,” Twitter user Standing Leaf writes.

Holmies…

If that’s the case, Paramount Pictures is using the DMCA requests with an ulterior motive. Understandable, perhaps, but the affected recipients who risk losing their account over too many strikes won’t like that.

“Even if that’s true, it’s a disgusting overreach to threaten people’s social media accounts over sharing a promotional poster,” Sloth Mom puts it.

Again, without an official explanation, this all remains guesswork. Perhaps a good detective can get to the bottom of it though.

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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We hereby present you the first Beta build of Kodi v18 as we are heading towards the final release. Since we are now in Beta stage our focus will be on solving bugs and possible usability problems. So far it 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

A full changelog is nearly impossible to create and in this release article we will only cover the basics. 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 bugfixing 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.

Stability and usability is key

In general the whole stability has been improved quite a lot. The times you still get glitches or occasional crashes haven been reduced due to just ripping out not so well coded parts and replaced with a more structured design and standard. Not that the old code was bad however over time new insights were gained and having newer code standards just make it better. Untangling all parts or components and make them behave better next to each other has been one of the biggest efforts done so far.

Current available skins

Due to changes in how Kodi works skins need to be updated for each release. As of this moment we have the following ones have been update by their developers and are readily available from our repository.

Adnoic, Aeon Nox 5, Andromeda, Black Glass Nova, Chroma, Confluence, fTV, Grid, Mimic, Nebula, Omni, Rapier, Sio2, Xperience1080

More will follow at a later point in time when we approach final release.

The wiki pages

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.

The V18 Leia t-shirt

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)

The story continues

Although we don’t really have a clear future plan or clear cut goals (except making a great media center) we would welcome any developer who wants to spend time on getting Kodi better in every way. Either improving the core code to newer standards, fixing bugs or implementing a new feature we haven’t thought of. Compared to years ago the code has become better to understand and follow for newcomers to get started. Once we get something written down of certain to reach goals we will certainly share them.

A great improvement has been made on the documentation that explains how to compile and work on the core code for Kodi. We highly recommend to read the article Kodi’s GitHub codebase new face and better documentation.

Release time

Since we now started the Beta 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.

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.

May the force be with you…..

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Last year, American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network targeted TVAddons, the largest repository of third-party Kodi add-ons.

In a complaint filed in a federal court in Texas, TVAddons and its Canadian founder Adam Lackman were accused of copyright infringement, facing millions of dollars in potential damages.

The site was briefly taken down but returned after a few weeks, albeit without some of the more troubling add-ons. TVAddons and Lackman were planning to put up a fight and maintained that the site had always adhered to the DMCA.

Over the past several months both Dish and TVAddons were getting ready to take the matter to trial, but this weekend it became apparent that this is no longer needed.

The parties have signed a confidential settlement agreement and, as a result, Dish decided to drop the case. While the exact terms of the agreement remain private, a TVAddons representative informs TorrentFreak that they’re happy with the outcome.

“Sometimes a settlement can be considered a win for both sides. From an economic perspective, it was the ideal conclusion since the Canadian lawsuit has already destroyed our financial resources.

“It also respected our morals and promise to protect our users and developers at all cost, since no data nor user/developer information was exchanged as part of the settlement,” the TVAddons spokesperson adds.

The upside for TVAddons is quite obvious, as the site and its founder had a lot to lose financially. Dish’s motivations are less obvious. It’s not clear whether TVAddons agreed to pay damages, but that could be a factor.

TVAddons also agreed to process Dish’s future copyright claims more swiftly, if any issues arise.

“As far as our site goes, we maintain that we have always complied with copyright law. We have however agreed to an expedited DMCA process for any complaints DISH Network may have in the future,” TVAddons tells us.

The settlement agreement was signed by TVAddons founder Adam Lackman and Dish. This is interesting, as Lackman announced just a few weeks ago that he had “resigned” from all administrative roles at the site to ensure its future.

This suggests that someone else is in charge. However, a representative of the site informs TorrentFreak that there are agreements in place to ensure that the expedited DMCA agreement between Dish and Lackman will be honored.

The settlement does not include Shani, the developer of ZemTV, who was sued in the same case. The UK resident previously chose not to defend himself in court, as he lacked the funds to put up a proper defense.

TVAddons and Lackman are not out of trouble either. The Canadian lawsuit filed by an army of Canadian telecoms giants, including Bell Canada and Rogers Communications, is still on.

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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Over the years in their neverending fight against piracy, content owners have tried numerous strategies to limit the amount of infringing content reaching the eyes of consumers.

For almost two decades, that has involved targeting ‘pirate’ sites themselves but increasingly that tactic is taking a back seat. In vogue today is the move to force intermediaries and platforms to join the battle, hoping these Internet giants will use their influence to disappear unlawful content.

Over in Russia, legislation is already in place to force cooperation. When sites are deemed to be infringers and unresponsive to targeted takedowns, they can find themselves on a national blacklist and blocked by ISPs. Furthermore, sites that persistently refuse to cooperate can be permanently blocked, with additional consequences.

Sites in this category now face the prospect of being removed from search engines altogether. That has been happening in volume, as telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor reported this week.

“Since the beginning of the year, search engines Yandex, Mail.ru, Rambler, Sputnik and Google that have been operating in Russia have blocked access to 2,600 pirated Internet resources that were previously blocked on an ongoing basis,” the government body reported.

“Decisions on restricting access to pirated Internet resources on an ongoing basis are taken by the Moscow City Court and the Ministry of Communications.”

Since the search engine exclusion law came into force October 1, 2017, close to 4,000 sites have been permanently excluded from search results. However, this still isn’t enough for rightsholders who insist that companies like Yandex and Google need to do more.

In a sign of how fractious this battle has become, major broadcasters recently took action against Yandex due to the existence of ‘pirate’ resources in search results. In protest, Gazprom-Media, National Media Group (NMG), and others removed their TV channels from Yandex’s ‘TV Online’ service.

According to comments obtained by Russia’s Kommersant, the media companies will only allow their content to appear again if Yandex “purges the pirated versions” from its search results.

“This is the only way we can influence them to remove pirated content,” the source said.

Yandex began displaying the content of TV channels on its main pages back in March 2017 and agreements inked since then have allowed it to expand the feature. Now, however, the initiative has been set back, with media companies complaining that the revenue generated pales into insignificance when compared to the losses from piracy.

“The situation in which broadcasters promote Yandex media services, provide content, but have piracy ignored in search results, is destructive for the media industry,” a representative from NMG told Kommersant.

“[The revenues] are insignificant compared to the hundreds of millions of rubles of annual losses associated with the distribution of pirated content from broadcasters.”

Gazprom Media told the publication that for as long as piracy is a problem, the company won’t be offering its content via the search engine.

“Prior to resolving the issue of pirated content on Yandex services, we will not license our content in Yandex,” a spokesperson said.

With some media players describing Yandex as “the main pirate site in the country” it’s clear that bridges need to be built if progress is to be made. However, the rhetoric is strong right now with no solution in sight.

“[Yandex] interferes with the work of all and refuses to discuss this topic under far-fetched pretexts, so there will only be more [piracy]. They imagine themselves as an information intermediary, but it’s not true – they make money on content, interfere in content, and develop their own sites,” says producer Alexander Akopov.

Considering the general consensus that access to legal content is the best way to defeat piracy, the decision to remove legal content from Yandex is a little puzzling. The punitive measures used to starve pirate sites of their visitors – removal from search engine results – is now being deployed by rightsholders against themselves. Only time will tell how that will turn out.

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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