Nintendo Switch Piracy is “Unstoppable” – Until People Go Online


For as long as games consoles have existed, security to prevent people from playing pirated games has been under attack.

In the early days, the existence of a hardware cartridge was initially enough to prevent clones, but with ever more determined hackers on the job, few protections have survived the tests of time.

More recently, however, the mighty Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have proven exponentially more difficult to crack. Locked down hardware and continuously updated firmware pose unprecedented challenges to today’s hackers, with few making the progress they did in years gone by. Last December, however, some exciting news appeared on the horizon.

Hacking veterans Team-Xecutor revealed that they’d developed a kernel hack for the Nintendo Switch. That led to further revelations in January that they’d developed a hardware solution that exploits a fundamental flaw in the Switch system, one that Nintendo would be unable to stop.

“This solution will work on ANY Nintendo Switch console regardless of the currently installed firmware, and will be completely future proof,” the team explained.

With the prospect of “unstoppable” mass piracy just around the corner, a new buzz appeared around the Switch platform. Whenever consoles get cracked their popularity tends to increase, but for those thinking of jumping aboard the platform for a new swashbuckling adventure, there are some interesting caveats to consider.

In a detailed posting to Reddit titled ‘How Application Authorization works on the Nintendo Switch’, hacker SciresM single-handedly pours enormous buckets of cold water on the prospect of rampant Switch piracy – at least in the way that some consumers are envisioning it.

“After doing some research earlier today into how the Switch gains authorization to play a given game online, I learned that Nintendo has implemented some very strong anti-piracy measures in this regard — they can actually perfectly detect whether a digital copy of a game has been legitimately purchased,” SciresM explains.

Although highly technical in practice, the manner in which this verification takes place can be explained in simple terms.

When people attempt to go online with a game, their Switch first checks whether it can connect to the Internet by checking ctest.cdn.nintendo.net. Once that is established in the positive, the console checks whether it can get a device authorization token from Nintendo which allows it to go online.

If Nintendo issues a token the console can sign in, once it has authorized the Nintendo account being signed into. The console can then obtain an application authorization token for the specific title being played and the fun can begin. However, if Nintendo doesn’t like what it sees (such as pirate activity), it can prevent a console from going online, a disaster for those hoping to play with friends.

The way Nintendo detects such activity is explained in ScriesM’s technical overview but the basis of its protection centers on a unique encrypted client certificate found in the TrustZone, “an isolated security-focused CPU core” which is burned into every Switch console at the factory.

“Note that unlike the 3DS, this means that Nintendo can tell what console makes a given request. This means Nintendo can block misbehaving user’s certificates, leaving them permanently unable to use any of Nintendo’s network,” ScriesM notes.

Because all requests to Nintendo require a client certificate, Nintendo can associate blocked accounts with a console. But the Japanese gaming company has another trick up its sleeve.

“Your console obtains an application authorization token for the specific [game] title being played. This is the really interesting component — and it’s where Nintendo’s strongest security measure lies,” ScriesM reveals.

“In the gamecard case, Nintendo can detect whether or not the user connecting has data from a Nintendo-authorized gamecard for the correct title. This solves the 3DS-era issue of gamecard header data being shared between games. Sharing of certificates should be fairly detectable, for Nintendo.”

When it comes to digital games, Nintendo has an even stronger hand. An encrypted ticket inside the title holds essential information such as the console’s unique device ID and the Nintendo account used to purchase it and log in. When combined, Nintendo has all the details it needs to determine if the user is playing by the book.

“Users who pirate games definitionally cannot have well-signed tickets for their consoles, and thus cannot connect online without getting an immediate ban — this is exactly how I would have implemented authorization for digital games, if I were them,” ScriesM concludes.

The bottom line here is that people pirating games on Switch will have their consoles banned, a massive deal-breaker for many. While there will be some who will be satisfied with offline play, being banished to the single-player wilderness is effectively a punishment in today’s connected world and is unlikely to regain the popularity it once enjoyed.

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SET TV Tells Netflix, Amazon & Hollywood That it’s “No Longer Available”


Back in April, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy partnership forged between Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, sued Florida-based Set Broadcast, LLC.

The entertainment industry companies accused Set Broadcast of running SET TV, an unauthorized IPTV service offering otherwise subscription TV channels and media without appropriate licensing.

“Defendants market and sell subscriptions to ‘Setvnow,’ a software application that Defendants urge their customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted motion pictures and television shows,” the complaint reads.

Despite the legal pressure, SET TV had remained online but that all changed last week when it suddenly disappeared. In response to customer complaints, SET TV implied that technical issues might be to blame and it would eventually return.

However, a filing with a California District court this week reveals that the SET TV ride appears to be over.

“Setvnow is no longer available. It is no longer marketed and subscriptions are no longer sold,” lawyers for Set Broadcast, LLC reveal in their filing.

What follows is a point-by-point addressing of each issue raised in the ACE complaint, with three features catching the eye: acceptance that they offered a content service, claims that they lack knowledge and information on a large number of points, plus repeated use of the word ‘deny’ whenever infringement is mentioned.

Set TV begins by admitting that it sold subscriptions to its service and acknowledging that marketing material detailed in the ACE lawsuit looks familiar. It also concedes that it encouraged users to download and install the Setvnow software on various devices. The company also agrees that it sold a hardware box that was, at least in part, designed to work with the Setvnow service.

However, in response to claims of marketing efforts informing “customers who want more of a cable box experience” that for just $89, they can “simply turn it on and watch TV” without having to do anything more than “PLUG AND PLAY,” the defendants claim to lack knowledge or information.

From here, at least as far as a technical rebuttal to ACE claims go, the responses are relatively blunt and often repetitive to read.

First up, ACE claimed that defendants sold illegal access to their copyright works, but that’s something Set Broadcast flatly denies.

ACE also noted that while the service provided “hallmarks of using authorized streaming services” such as a friendly interface, customers only paid money to Set Broadcast, not the copyright owners. Set Broadcast says it has no knowledge of how customers perceived the service but admits to not paying any money to ACE “for the Setvnow service.”

To the next dozen points, Set Broadcast claims to have “no knowledge or information”, mostly in response to basic statements of fact such as who the plaintiffs are and where their offices are located.

In response to the claim that defendant Jason Labossiere is the owner and operator of Set Broadcast, LLC, Set Broadcast issues a flat denial but offers no additional information. Further details concerning Nelson Johnson, a manager at Set Broadcast, are also picked over, with questions raised over his employment status and place of residence.

From here, Set Broadcast addresses a number of statements made by ACE members regarding who the plaintiffs are, what they do, and what content they own. On each count, Set Broadcast claims to have no knowledge or information, which makes for fairly bland and unconvincing reading.

That being said, Set Broadcast doesn’t shy away from responding on a number of crucial issues. The company acknowledges that promotional material produced by the plaintiffs, showing that the SET TV service offered 500 channels and “thousands” of “on demand” options for $20, is theirs.

It also admits to selling subscriptions and concedes that the SET TV software facilitated streaming of “captured content”, including live content, and delivered it to Setvnow users. The company also admits to using third-party sources for on-demand content.

But despite admitting to many of ACE’s claims over the marketing and provision of the service, whenever the plaintiffs used the word “infringing” to describe the nature of the content delivered to users, Set Broadcast has a one-word response.

“Defendants’ customers use Setvnow for intended and unquestionably infringing purposes, most notably to obtain immediate, unrestricted, and unauthorized access to unauthorized streams of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works,” ACE wrote.

“Deny,” came the response.

“Defendants promote the use of Setvnow for overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, infringing purposes, and that is how their customers use Setvnow,” ACE added.

“Deny,” Set Broadcast repeats.

With a distinct pattern emerging, there’s no need to detail the one-word response to each of ACE’s allegations including that the defendants willfully and intentionally induced and contributed to the infringement of their rights and that ACE members are entitled to damages and Defendants’ profits in amounts to be proven at trial.

The claim that ACE members are entitled to attorneys’ fees plus preliminary and permanent injunctions are also given the same two-syllable treatment. However, at the end of the filing, Set Broadcast springs into life, detailing three affirmative defenses against all of ACE’s charges.

First up, Set Broadcast claims that ACE failed to mitigate damages. Second, the company states that “Plaintiffs’ claims are barred to the extent Plaintiffs have forfeited or abandoned copyright or failed to comply with necessary formalities.” Finally, Set Broadcast suggests it could be an “innocent infringer”.

“Damages are limited under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2) because Defendants ‘were not aware and had no reason to believe that [their] acts constituted an infringement of copyright’,” Set concludes.

Since SET TV is now apparently a thing of the past, it will be interesting to see how this case develops. While Set Broadcast flatly denies any infringement of ACE members’ rights, it doesn’t deny that it’s been running a pay service which facilitates the delivery of third-party content to its customers.

The big questions now are whether the case will ever head to a full trial and if the defenses cited by SET TV provide more than a sliver of hope for the company.

—

A copy of Set Broadcast’s response to ACE’s complaint is available here (pdf)

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EU Parliament Committee Adopts Piracy ‘Upload Filter’ Proposal


Through a series of new proposals, the European Commission is working hard to modernize EU copyright law.

These plans have not been without controversy. In particular, Article 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive has been widely criticized as it would pressure online services to monitor and filter uploaded content.

The article states that online services are liable for any uploaded content unless they take “effective and proportionate” action to prevent copyright infringements, as identified by copyright holders.

That also includes preventing allegedly infringing files from being reuploaded, which implies some form of hash filtering and continuous monitoring of all user uploads.

Today, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliament (JURI) voted on the issue. With a 15 to 10 majority, the Article 13 proposal of Rapporteur Voss was adopted. This means that the plans move ahead in their current form, despite massive public outcry.

Over the past year, we have repeatedly covered the widespread opposition. Legal scholars, digital activists, politicians, all worried that the upload restrictions would violate the rights of regular Internet users.

In recent weeks, the wave of protests swelled. More prominent figures sounded the alarm bell, including Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle, and Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia.

The campaign was picked up by the public as well. Roughly 320,000 people have signed petitions urging lawmakers to reject the plans and over the last week more than 50,000 tweets went up mentioning the #SaveYourInternet hashtag.

In addition to Article 13, there was also considerable pushback against Article 11, which is regularly referred to as the “link tax.” This proposal was accepted as well, with a 13 to 12 majority.

Now that the proposal has passed the Committee the plans will move to plenary before progressing towards the final vote on copyright reform next spring.

It also means that they are now much harder to stop or change. That has been done before, such as with ACTA, but achieving that type of momentum will be a tough challenge.

Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda, who suggested alternatives to the controversial proposals, is disappointed with the outcome. However, she’s not giving up yet.

“These measures will break the internet. People will run into trouble doing everyday things like discussing the news and expressing themselves online. Locking down our freedom to participate to serve the special interests of large media companies is unacceptable,” Reda says.

“I will challenge this outcome and request a vote in the European Parliament next month. We can still overturn this result and preserve the free internet.”

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Think Tank: Congress Should Make Streaming Piracy a Felony


Soon after the turn of the century, P2P consumption of unlicensed media quickly dominated the file-sharing landscape.

The BitTorrent protocol emerged as the unchallenged kind of peer-to-peer transfers and for many years no rival could get anywhere near its level of market saturation.

Then, soon after the turn of the decade, the tide began to turn. With cheaper, faster bandwidth becoming increasingly available to a broader user base, opportunities to stream content directly from websites gathered unprecedented momentum. What began several years earlier as a relatively niche activity, soon turned into a content monster.

This critical shift in consumption habits was interesting on several fronts, not least since it made piracy accessible to relative novices via the growing Internet-enabled set-top box market.

As a result, illegal streaming is now considered one of the major threats, but various pro-copyright groups are concerned that current legislation doesn’t go far enough to tackle those involved in supply.

The problem was summed up in April 2015 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by then-Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante.

“Currently, criminals who engage in unlawful internet streaming can only be charged with a misdemeanor, even though those who unlawfully reproduce and distribute copyrighted material can be charged with a felony,” Pallante said.

“This distinction makes no sense. As streaming becomes a dominant method of obtaining content online, unlawful streaming has no less of an adverse impact on the rights of copyright owners than unlawful distribution.”

In a new paper published by the Free State Foundation (FSF), a think tank founded in 2006 which receives regular donations from the MPAA, streaming is again described as a misdemeanor offense and one that should be taken more seriously to protect copyright holders.

In its report ‘Modernizing Criminal Copyright Law to Combat Online Piracy’, FSF notes that copyright holders face difficulties prosecuting mass-scale willful infringement via civil lawsuits. So, to give them the assistance they require, Congress should upgrade piracy via streaming to a felony offense.

“Congress should update criminal copyright law to better address growing copyright piracy taking place through online streaming sites and enabled by illicit streaming devices,” FSF writes.

“Currently, willful copyright infringement via online streaming is only a misdemeanor, whereas willful infringement via digital downloading is a felony when statutory minimums are satisfied.

“This disparate treatment of streaming and downloading has no principled basis. Consumers increasingly access copyrighted video and music through streaming.”

FSF states that punishments for misdemeanor copyright infringement (willful infringements of exclusive rights other than reproduction and distribution) include up to a year of prison and a fine of up to $100,000, or both.

Punishments for felony copyright infringement usually include up to five years in prison or a $250,000 fine, or both. Due to its scope, the latter option for serious offenses is viewed by FSF as a more significant deterrent that can better protect copyright holders.

“By making willful infringement of multiple or high value copyrighted works via online streaming a felony, Congress would empower law enforcement to better combat black market online traffickers in copyrighted content,” FSF adds.

In addition to the more severe sentencing of those who stream to the public, FSF would like to see law enforcement given more tools to catch them in the act in the first instance. In some quarters, its suggestions are likely to be viewed as extremely controversial.

“Additionally, Congress should consider providing federal law enforcement with more tools, including the authority to seek wiretaps to obtain evidence of suspected criminal copyright activities, to combat online piracy. Similar wiretap authority already exists in the case of theft of trade secrets and economic espionage,” FSF writes.

The report isn’t specific as to which players should be disrupted via such legislation, but repeated references to piracy-enabled set-top boxes, addon-enabled software, hosting services and others in the streaming ecosystem indicates a tendency towards plugging loopholes across the board in a largely untested and still-developing market.

What also seems clear is a desire to shift enforcement costs onto the state, rather than them being carried entirely by copyright holders who would otherwise have to engage in difficult and expensive civil litigation.

“Despite suffering substantial harm on account of online piracy, copyright owners are often ill-equipped and financially unable to combat such piracy through civil lawsuits,” FSF reports.

“Pirates of copyrighted content are not often amenable to service of process and to civil litigation. Unsurprisingly, many technically sophisticated online piracy operations are designed to avoid accountability to copyright holders and to the civil justice system.

“Thus, circumstances clearly exist in which the civil justice system is inadequate or unable to address or combat online piracy operations.”

While the terminology used in the FSF report can at times suggest a tightening of the law against those who stream to the public and those who consume streaming content, it eventually makes clear that such legislation should be directed “to online traffickers in copyrighted content, not individual Internet users.”

It also states that “reasonable safe harbor provisions” should exist for online service providers to receive immunity from criminal and civil liability, providing they remove or disable access to infringing content when advised by a rightsholder.

Considering the donations FSF receives from the MPAA, it’s probably safe to assume that the report’s recommendations are broadly aligned with those of the Hollywood group. In that respect, it’s interesting that the studios feel that current law exposes them in some way.

Thus far, tools to tackle administrators of pirate streaming sites in the US don’t appear to have been lacking but perhaps there is currently a little too much room for maneuver.

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf)

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Foxtel Pirate Site Blocking Application Could Be Granted in Record Time


Back in April, pay TV company Foxtel filed the latest in a series of blocking applications, this time targeting more than two dozen domain names facilitating access to 15 torrent and streaming services.

To save on time and costs, Foxtel envisioned things going a little bit differently this time around. The company didn’t want to have expert witnesses present in court and asked whether live demonstrations of websites could be replaced by videos and screenshots instead.

Foxtel also said that if the ISPs expected to block the domains agree, it wouldn’t serve its evidence on them as it had done previously.

The company then asked Justice Nicholas to deal with the entire injunction application “on paper.” He declined, instead scheduling a hearing to take place today.

As hoped by Foxtel, events were indeed more streamlined. According to a ZDNet report, the hearing lasted for just an hour, with no live website demonstrations and the requested videos being allowed.

The application targeted 15 torrent site domains and ten streaming sites located overseas (a requirement for blocking under Australian law), each of which “unashamedly and flagrantly” infringes copyright.

ComputerWorld lists the torrent sites as ETTV, MagnetDL, Torrent Download (possibly TorrentDownloads.me), Torrent Room (TorrentRoom.com), and Torrents.me. A domain facilitating access to the previously-blocked Pirate Bay was also included in the application.

Also demonstrated in Court was a search bar that can be used to access content on torrent sites including 1337x and The Pirate Bay. No further details on the bar have been made available, but as a standalone item, blocking seems unlikely.

The streaming services targeted by Foxtel include HDO, HDEuropix, 123Hulu, Watch32, Sockshare, NewEpisodes, 1Movies, 5Movies, WatchFreeMovies and SeriesTop. They represent just a handful of the hundreds of similar domains offering streaming today.

Both the torrent and streaming sites stand accused of facilitating access to a range of popular TV shows including Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy and Fear the Walking Dead plus movies including Jason Bourne, Pacific Rim, and Red Sparrow.

Under Section 115a of the Copyright Act, Foxtel wants the usual ISPs – Optus, Vocus, Telstra, TPG plus their subsidiaries – to render the sites inaccessible by the usual means.

None were present in Court today, and none turned up at the case management hearing on Friday either. It’s a pattern that’s likely to continue moving forward.

Due to no special systems or technology being deployed by any of the websites in question, the application is expected to run smoothly. Indeed, reports suggest that Justice Nicholas could hand down a decision as soon as 21 June.

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YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Videos, and More


To protect copyright holders, YouTube uses an advanced piracy recognition system that flags and disables videos which are used without permission.

This system, known as Content ID, works well most of the time, but it is far from perfect.

It’s not well equipped to determine whether content deployment is protected under ‘fair use’, and in some cases it even views white noise or birds chirping as piracy.

Over the past several days, an even more worrying trend has appeared. Several popular YouTube accounts including those belonging to ‘MIT OpenCourseWare‘ and the ‘Blender Foundation,’ have suddenly had all their videos blocked.

People who try to watch one of the freely available MIT courses on YouTube get the following message, which typically appears if an uploader doesn’t have the rights to show content locally.

“This video contains content from MIT. It is not available in your country.”

The message appears in all locations that we were able to check, suggesting that it may very well apply worldwide. In any case, on social media there’s no shortage of people mentioning that they can no longer access the courses.

Blocked courseware…

The issue hasn’t gone unnoticed by MIT’s OpenCourseWare team which is investigating the matter, without pointing fingers.

“You may have noticed that we are having some trouble with our videos! Please stand by. The elves are working around the clock to fix the issue,” they write, referring people to non-video content in the meantime.

Interestingly, the MIT case doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. Another organization that was hit by the same mysterious blocking efforts is the Blender Foundation.

The nonprofit organization, which is leading the development of the open source 3D content-creation application Blender, has also had its videos blocked.

Ton Roosendaal, Chairman of the Blender Foundation, noticed the issue on Saturday and contacted YouTube. “This is most probably an error from their side,” Roosendaal said.

At the time of writing, the issue still hasn’t been resolved.

What the heck…

Both organizations have verified YouTube accounts and many subscribers, which makes them high profile targets. However, two days have passed and it’s still unclear what’s going on.

The blocking message is part of YouTube’s piracy filter system, but why it was triggered is unknown. As the original publishers, both certainly have the right to publish the videos in question.

Looking even further, we were able to spot dozens of accounts which show similar “blocking” messages. They include verified ones, such as India’s Press Information Bureau, soccer club Sparta Praha, and England Rugby.

TorrentFreak reached out to YouTube to ask why the videos of these accounts have been blocked but at the time of publication, we had yet to hear back. Something appears to be awfully wrong though.

The timing of the incident is interesting, to say the least. This week there’s an important vote scheduled in the European Parliament, which will determine the course of EU copyright law.

One of the most contested changes is the so-called “upload filter,” which is detailed in Article 13 of the copyright reform proposal. According to opponents, such YouTube-like piracy filters are a threat to free speech.

These apparent “mistakes” show that there is a point to that.

Ironically, even French politicians, who were expected to vote in favor of the upload filters, may now reconsider their stance after YouTube temporarily disabled their account following three copyright strikes.

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Torrents Turn Rambo-Prequel Novel into a Success


In this day and age, aspiring artists have access to a wide variety of tools they can use to create a decent product.

Creating something is easy, but the real challenge is to escape obscurity and get noticed by the public.

Traditionally, this task has been fulfilled by major publishers and other media distributors, but there are also alternative routes.

The stories of YouTube sensations who turned into their own media empires come to mind. But in darker corners of the web, which are mostly associated with piracy, there are success stories too.

This week we spoke to Italian author Wallace Lee, whose unofficial Rambo-prequel “Rambo Year One” received great reviews after relying on torrents as a main distribution channel.

Lee’s story starts several years ago, when he began publishing short Rambo stories on a personal blog hosted by WordPress. It was fan-fiction in its purest form, but the author soon realized that not everyone was happy with his work.

“Two years before free-sharing my first novel, I had a blog where I used to post my Rambo prequel short tales for free. And yet, a few months later, my site was shut down because the laws in the US allow copyright owners to stop fanfiction too, and even if it’s just for free.”

It turned out that a rightsholder objected to his use of the Rambo character. While Lee doesn’t recall the sender of the notice, it meant that he could no longer publish his work as he pleased.

Caught in a copyright stranglehold, the author felt limited in his creative expression. Ironically, he saw torrents as his way out. If he published his works on The Pirate Bay, copyright holders couldn’t touch him, he thought.

It was a defiant thought, which may have worked, but luckily for him, it didn’t get that far. Instead of becoming a ‘pirate writer,’ Lee received permission from David Morrell, author of the novel “First Blood” on which the Rambo empire was built.

“Frankly, I feel very lucky things ended up this way because I did not want to be at war with the same guys who owned Rambo in the first place,” Lee tells TorrentFreak.

With permission to freely share his book, the unofficial Rambo-prequel was finally released. While Lee no longer had to turn to piracy, he was still committed to using torrent sites to get exposure and escape obscurity.

That worked to a certain degree. The book was picked up here and there, but without a major publisher, it was hard to be taken seriously by literary critics.

“The prejudice was extremely harsh and lasted for a very long time. For one whole year at least, I was just ‘the crazy guy who was writing a Rambo-prequel saga for nothing’,” Lee says.

That changed when the author started to point people toward the historical accuracy of the book, which has the Vietnam war as the backdrop, and using that as one of the main selling points.

“Everyone was astonished by the idea that a Rambo prequel aspired to be a good historical novel too, and that was when important people decided to finally give me a chance. And when they did, they were pleased.”

This eventually led to more and more positive reviews, including a reading recommendation from the Calvino literary awards in Italy.

Recognition

Looking back, Lee doesn’t think he would have come this far without torrents. They helped, not only to keep distribution costs low, but also to make his work visible to an audience of millions.

“Torrents helped a lot, and they’re still doing so in terms of distribution. Distribution is the most important part of the success of ANY artwork: books, music, films, everything,” Lee tells us.

“Torrents solved the problem by making my work worldwide both visible and available at the same time. Without the torrents, thousands of people in the world would have never found my websites and novels on the internet.”

Now, a few years later, the book has been translated by fans into two more languages, German and Spanish. They are all available for free in Epub, Mobi, and Pdf format, and the author uploaded new torrents on several sites just last week.

Rambo Year One

In addition to public sites such as The Pirate Bay, 1337X and Ettv, Lee also uploaded the release to the Italian private tracker TNT Village, which helped him a lot over the years.

Looking back, the whole experience has been a great success. In addition to getting recognized internationally as an Italian author, he is now in talks with several publishing companies to publish his non-Rambo novels.

Lee currently accepts donations on his site, where people can also find his other novels, for free. He never made a penny from the Rambo-prequel though, and never intended to. What he got instead was worth much more than that.

“Receiving words of appreciation from actual US veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for your Rambo-prequel novels, has no price,” Lee says.

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U.S. Drops Indictment Against Alleged Operator of Pirate App Store


applanetAssisted by police in France and the Netherlands, the FBI took down the “pirate” Android stores Appbucket, Applanet, and SnappzMarket during the summer of 2012.

During the years that followed several people connected to the Android app sites were arrested and indicted, resulting in prison sentences for some.

SnappzMarket’s Scott Walton was handed a 46-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, and his colleague Joshua Taylor was sentenced to a 16-month term.

While some defendants pleaded guilty in order to get a reduced sentence, not all did. David Lee, a California man linked to Applanet, decided to fight the case instead, and not without success.

The US Government had charged Lee with aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement (pdf). In addition, he was charged with conspiring to infringe copyrights and violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

As the case progressed, it became clear that the U.S. Government’s evidence wasn’t as strong as initially thought. Before the trial even started, the prosecution voluntarily dropped the criminal copyright infringement charge.

What remained was the conspiracy charge, but after hearing evidence and testimony from both sides of the case, the jury was unable to issue a unanimous decision. As a result, the case ended in a mistrial two years ago.

The Department of Justice did not let the case go though. Soon after the mistrial, it informed the court that it would re-try Lee. This second trial was delayed a few times but never took place.

Instead, the US Government asked the court to dismiss the indictment against the alleged pirate app store operator, without providing any context. This request was granted earlier this week, which means that Lee is relieved of all charges.

It is not clear what moved the US to dismiss the case. TorrentFreak contacted both Lee’s lawyers and the US Department of Justice for comment, but at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.

However, with the indictment dismissed, Lee can close this chapter of his life after nearly six years.

Indictment dismissed

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Yandex and Google Put on Notice Over ‘Pirate’ Search Results


With the online piracy wars about to enter their third decade, there’s an increasing emphasis on pressurizing influential third-parties to tackle the problem.

As a result, much blame is laid at the feet of companies like Google, who are regularly blamed for not doing more to tackle infringements carried out by individuals and entities outside of their control.

Search results are a particularly sticky subject. Google, Bing, and Yahoo, for example, wish to provide the most comprehensive indexes possible. On the flip side, entertainment industry companies insist that those indexes shouldn’t help people find pirated content. If they do, it’s argued that these companies act as piracy facilitators.

This familiar battle is now underway in Russia, where Yandex is in receipt of a strongly-worded letter which accuses the search giant of being a big part of the piracy problem.

According to local publication Vedomosti, the letter is signed by Leonid Agronov, general director of the National Federation of the Music Industry, Alexei Byrdin, general director of the Internet Video Association, Sergei Selyanov, director of the Association of Film and Television Producers, and Pavel Stepanov, president of the Media Communication Union.

The entertainment giants explain that due to ‘pirate’ search results appearing in its indexes, Yandex is contributing to the growth of online piracy. They want the company to show responsibility by adopting measures to both find and remove infringing links from search and related products.

“We urge Yandex to use all available methods to detect illegal content and eliminate it both from search results and from the applications and services of Yandex,” the letter reads.

It’s suggested that Yandex should take a similar path to that taken by search companies in the UK, via the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which declares common interests in fighting piracy.

Yandex won’t be alone, however.

A spokesman for the Media and Communications Union, which is one of the groups behind the letter, told Vedomosti that a similar letter would be sent to Google in the near future. Needless to say, Google is no stranger to these kinds of allegations, whether in Europe or the United States.

In the letter, search engines like Yandex are accused of promoting illegal resources over legal content, resulting in revenue being siphoned away from legitimate players and into the hands of criminals. The search engine is also accused of taking down material in response to demands under the DMCA, but not doing enough in Russia.

“Yandex actively cooperates with copyright holders and is working to improve the culture of legal content consumption,” the company said in a statement, adding that it actually stands to benefit from ads promoting sales of non-infringing content.

“Yandex stands for an honest Internet, in which quality legal content is available to the user and rightsholders earn from that legitimate consumption,” the company said.

Unlike in the United States under the DMCA, content isn’t as readily taken down in Russia. Yandex also opposes filtering search results, warning that the system is easily abused by rightsholders and others looking to stifle competition.

That being said, Yandex says that rightsholders are welcome to take advantage of the local site-blocking mechanism which tackles both source sites and their mirrors. With these inaccessible, ‘pirate’ search results become useless.

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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PayPal Bans Soulseek Over Piracy Concerns, Again


Founded around the turn of the last century, Soulseek is a small dinosaur in the file-sharing world.

Created by former Napster programmer Nir Arbel, the application swiftly turned into a tight community of music fans, which is still active today.

Over the years Soulseek operators Nir and Roz Arbel have seen other file-sharing tools come and go, but all this time they remained dedicated to their principles. Despite its name, Soulseek had long found its purpose.

While it kept a relatively low profile, Soulseek is not immune to the “stigma” that comes with being a file-sharing tool. In 2015, PayPal cut off its ability to collect donations, claiming that sharing tools required pre-approval, even though that policy didn’t exist when it signed up.

Soulseek is not a profit-oriented platform but donations are welcomed. Without PayPal, this became a challenge, but luckily for the developers, the Electonic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was able to intervene.

February 2016 everything returned to normal when the PayPal account was restored, for a while at least. Earlier his year, PayPal apparently changed its mind and booted the application once again.

Soulseek operator Roz Arbel was told that the application violated the payment service’s acceptable use policy and that ‘pre-approval’ was required for ‘file-sharing’ tools. It was pretty much the same recycled argument from years before.

Faced with this deja-vu, Soulseek turned to EFF for help once again, but this time PayPal wouldn’t budge.

“PayPal made it clear that they’re not willing to offer Soulseek financial services any longer. The company did give the Arbels access to their funds and tax documentation, after a request from EFF,” the digital rights group writes.

EFF asked whether PayPal’s latest ban was linked to a concrete copyright complaint, but the payment processor didn’t provide any further information. It just confirmed that Soulseek was banned, apparently for good.

This stance doesn’t come as a complete surprise. PayPal is widely known for its aggressive stance towards BitTorrent sites, Usenet providers and file-hosting services after all.

While some cases may be clearer than others, EFF sees the Soulseek example as a clear illustration of financial censorship.

“What the Arbels are experiencing is a form of financial censorship that has, unfortunately, become increasingly widespread. Following the law isn’t enough—PayPal apparently expects a small message board service with a file-sharing function to do far more than the law requires.”

“PayPal explained to us that they will cut off sites that ‘allow for the transfer or download of copyrighted material.’ Taken literally, that’s a staggeringly broad claim,” EFF writes.

EFF points out that pretty much all content on the Internet is automatically copyrighted. Still, there are thousands of online services that allow people to share it. Downloading copyrighted material is also possible on Dropbox and Google Drive, for example.

In PayPal’s policy, the company suggests that merchants must have a procedure to both “monitor” the files on their service and “remove or otherwise prevent access” to copyright-infringing work. Perhaps that’s where Soulseek goes wrong, but that wouldn’t be fair according to EFF.

“If payment processors were to cut off Internet services simply because they could be used for copyright infringement, a huge swath of the web would lose the ability to accept payments,” EFF writes.

“As a matter of policy, Soulseek respects its users’ privacy by not surveilling their conversations or file exchanges. Violating users’ privacy shouldn’t be the price of entry for using a payment processor.”

It’s clear that Soulseek and PayPal have parted ways. While EFF may not be able to change that, it encourages PayPal and other Internet companies to be more transparent about when and how often they terminate accounts due to complaints from governments or copyright holders.

PayPal’s file-sharing service policy

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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