Police Launch Investigation into Huge Pirate Manga Site Mangamura


Back in March, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the government was considering measures to prohibit access to pirate sites.

While protecting all content is the overall aim, it became clear that the government was determined to protect Japan’s successful manga and anime industries.

It didn’t take long for a reaction. On Friday April 13, the government introduced emergency website blocking measures, seeking cooperation from the country’s ISPs.

NTT Communications Corp., NTT Docomo Inc. and NTT Plala Inc., quickly announced they would block three leading pirate sites – Mangamura, AniTube! and MioMio which have a huge following in Japan. However, after taking the country by storm during the past two years, Mangamura had already called it quits.

On April 17, in the wake of the government announcement, Mangamura disappeared. It’s unclear whether its vanishing act was directly connected to recent developments but a program on national public broadcasting organization NHK, which claimed to have traced the site’s administrators back to the United States, Ukraine, and other regions, can’t have helped.

Further details released this morning reveal the intense pressure Mangamura was under. With 100 million visits a month it was bound to attract attention and according to Mainichi, several publishing giants ran out of patience last year and reported the platform to the authorities.

Kodansha, Japan’s largest publisher, and three other companies filed criminal complaints with Fukuoka Prefectural Police, Oita Prefectural Police, and other law enforcement departments, claiming the site violated their rights.

“The complaints, which were lodged against an unknown suspect or suspects, were filed on behalf of manga artists who are copyright holders to the pirated works, including Hajime Isayama and Eiichiro Oda, known for their wildly popular ‘Shingeki no Kyojin’ (‘Attack on Titan,’ published by Kodansha) and ‘One Piece’ (Shueisha Inc.), respectively,” the publication reports.

Mangamura launch in January 2016 and became a huge hit in Japan. Anti-piracy group Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), which counts publishing giant Kodansha among its members, reports that between September 2017 and February 2018, the site was accessed 620 million times.

Based on a “one visit, one manga title read” formula, CODA estimates that the site caused damages to the manga industry of 319.2 billion yen – around US$2.91 billion.

As a result, police are now stepping up their efforts to identify Mangamura’s operators. Whether that will prove fruitful will remain to be seen but in the meantime, Japan’s site-blocking efforts continue to cause controversy.

As reported last month, lawyer and NTT customer Yuichi Nakazawa launched legal action against NTT, demanding that the corporation immediately end its site-blocking operations.

“NTT’s decision was made arbitrarily on the site without any legal basis. No matter how legitimate the objective of copyright infringement is, it is very dangerous,” Nakazawa told TorrentFreak.

“I felt that ‘freedom,’ which is an important value of the Internet, was threatened. Actually, when the interruption of communications had begun, the company thought it would be impossible to reverse the situation, so I filed a lawsuit at this stage.”

Japan’s Constitution and its Telecommunications Business Act both have “no censorship” clauses, meaning that site-blocking has the potential to be ruled illegal. It’s also illegal in Japan to invade the privacy of Internet users’ communications, which some observers have argued is necessary if users are to be prevented from accessing pirate sites.

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





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The Pirating Elephant in Uncle Sam’s Room


It’s not a secret that, in sheer numbers, America is the country that harbors most online pirates.

Perhaps no surprise, since it has a large and well-connected population, but it’s important to note considering what we’re about to write today.

Over the past decade, online piracy has presented itself as a massive problem for the US and its entertainment industries. It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but Hollywood and the major record labels are doing what they can.

Two of the key strategies they’ve employed in recent years are website blocking and domain seizures. US companies have traveled to courts all over the world to have ISP blockades put in place, with quite a bit of success.

At the same time, US rightsholders also push foreign domain registrars and registries to suspend or seize domains. The US Government is even jumping in, applying pressure against pirate domains as well.

Previously, the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica threatened to have the country’s domain name registry shut down, unless it suspended ThePirateBay.cr. This hasn’t happened, yet, but it was a clear signal.

What’s odd, though, is that ThePirateBay.cr is a relatively meaningless proxy site. The real Pirate Bay operates from an .org domain name, which happens to be managed by the US-based Public Interest Registry (PIR).

So, if the US authorities threaten to shut down Costa Rica’s domain registry over a proxy, why is the US-based PIR registry still in action? After all, it’s the registry that ‘manages’ the domain name of the largest pirate site on the entire web, and has done for nearly 15 years.

Also of note is that the entertainment industries previously launched an overseas lawsuit to seize The Pirate Bay’s .se and .is domains, but never attempted to do the same with the US-based .org domain.

There are more of these strange observations. Let’s move back to website blocking, for example.

In a detailed overview, the Motion Picture Association recently reported that ISP blocking measures, which are in place in more than two dozen countries, help to reduce piracy significantly. This is further backed up by industry-supported reports and independent academic research.

In an ideal world, the US entertainment industries would like ISPs in every country to block pirate sites. While this is all fine and understandable from the perspective of these companies, there’s also an elephant in the room.

Over the past decade, US companies have worked hard to spread their blocking message around the world, while they yet have to attempt the same on their home turf. And this happens to be the country with the most pirates of all, which could make a massive impact.

Sure, it was a major success when a court in Iceland ordered local ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. But with roughly 130,000 Internet subscriptions in the entire country, that’s peanuts compared to the US.

So why is the US, the largest “pirate nation,” ignored?

From what we’ve heard, the entertainment industries are not pushing for ISP blockades in US courts because they fear a SOPA-like backlash. This likely applies to domain suspensions as well, which aren’t all that hard to accomplish in the US.

Instead, the major entertainment companies are focusing their efforts elsewhere.

While these entertainment companies are well within their rights to lobby for these measures, there’s an elephant in the room that is hard to ignore. Personally, I can’t help but cringe every time Hollywood pushes the blocking agenda to a new country or demands domain seizures abroad.

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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BitTorrent Inc. Changed Its Name to Rainberry


Founded by BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen, BitTorrent Inc. is best known for its torrent client uTorrent, from which it made millions over the years.

Unlike most file-sharing startups the company was well funded from the start. Venture capital firm Accel was one of the early investors, in a fund that also included Facebook and Dropbox.

However, over the past decade, BitTorrent Inc. didn’t transform into a multi-billion dollar business. The company tried various new products, services, and business models, but none surpassed the early success it had with uTorrent.

In recent years things got even worse. The company was nearly destroyed due to questionable management practices, according to Cohen. However, it appears that the waters have calmed down now under new leadership.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, the company vowed to refocus its efforts on what has proven to work, uTorrent. A new browser-based version of the popular client was released recently, and that appears to be one of the main focuses going forward.

There is something fresh though – BitTorrent Inc. has a new name. While it hasn’t been published anywhere, the company formerly known as BitTorrent Inc. is now Rainberry Inc.

“Rainberry Inc is the official name of the company; it was changed right around the start of 2017,” Rainberry’s Chief Product Officer Jordy Berson informs TorrentFreak. He stresses that it’s purely a corporate decision and that none of the existing product brands will change.

“The best way to probably think of it is that it’s not unlike how Alphabet Inc is the official name of the company most people know as Google,” Berson adds.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to change their name, but it remains a bit of a mystery what the motivation was here. There must be a good reason why Rainberry is preferred over BitTorrent, especially since the latter is a brand that millions of people know.

While BitTorrent Rainberry Inc. doesn’t owe the public a full explanation, it’s notable how the name change was kept under the radar.

Rainberry has no corporate website and is not mentioned on the official BitTorrent.com or uTorrent.com websites, for example. In addition, all Rainberry employees still list BitTorrent Inc. as their employer while Rainberry doesn’t appear to even exist on Linkedin.

The Rainberry name is pretty unique as well. A quick Google search only brings up a few mentions. This includes a job listing for “Rainberry Inc f/k/a BitTorrent Inc” but also a company named “Rainberry Acquisition” that was formed two months ago, coincidentally in San Francisco as well…

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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‘Anonymous’ Hackers Deface Russian Govt. Site to Protest Web-Blocking (NSFW)


Last month, Russian authorities demonstrated that when an entity breaks local Internet rules, no stone will be left unturned to make them pay, whatever the cost.

The disaster waiting to happen began when encrypted messaging service Telegram refused to hand over its encryption keys to the state. In response, the Federal Security Service filed a lawsuit, which it won, compelling it Telegram do so. With no response, Roscomnadzor obtained a court order to have Telegram blocked.

In a massive response, Russian ISPs – at Roscomnadzor’s behest – began mass-blocking IP addresses on a massive scale. Millions of IP addresses belong to Amazon, Google and other innocent parties were rendered inaccessible in Russia, causing chaos online.

Even VPN providers were targeted for facilitating access to Telegram but while the service strained under the pressure, it never went down and continues to function today.

In the wake of the operation there has been some attempt at a cleanup job, with Roscomnadzor announcing this week that it had unblocked millions of IP addresses belonging to Google.

“As part of a package of the measures to enforce the court’s decision on Telegram, Roskomnadzor has removed six Google subnets (more than 3.7 million IP-addresses) from the blocklist,” the telecoms watchdog said in a statement.

“In this case, the IP addresses of Telegram, which are part of these subnets, are fully installed and blocked. Subnets are unblocked in order to ensure the correct operation of third-party Internet resources.”

But while Roscomnadzor attempts to calm the seas, those angered by Russia’s carpet-bombing of the Internet were determined to make their voices heard. Hackers attacked the website of the Federal Agency for International Cooperation this week, defacing it with scathing criticism combined with NSFW suggestions and imagery.

“Greetings, Roskomnadzor,” the message began.

“Your recent destructive actions towards the Russian internet sector have led us to believe that you are nothing but a bunch of incompetent mindless worms. You shall not be able to continue this pointless vandalism any further.”

Signing off with advice to consider the defacement as a “final warning”, the hackers disappeared into the night after leaving a simple signature.

“Yours, Anonymous,” they wrote.

But the hackers weren’t done yet. In a NSFW cartoon strip that probably explains itself, ‘Anonymous’ suggested that Roscomnadzor should perhaps consider blocking itself, with the implement depicted in the final frame.

“Anus, block yourself Roscomnadzor”

But while Russia’s attack on Telegram raises eyebrows worldwide, the actions of those in authority continue to baffle.

Last week, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s press secretary, Natalia Timakova, publicly advised a colleague to circumvent the Telegram blockade using a VPN, effectively undermining the massive efforts of the authorities. This week the head of Roscomnadzor only added to the confusion.

Effectively quashing rumors that he’d resigned due to the Telegram fiasco, Alexander Zharov had a conversation with the editor-in-chief of radio station ‘Says Moscow’.

During the liason, which took place during the Victory Parade in Red Square, Zharov was asked how he could be contacted. When Telegram was presented as a potential method, Zharov confirmed that he could be reached via the platform.

Finally, in a move that’s hoped could bring an end to the attack on the platform and others like it, Telegram filed an appeal this week challenging a decision by the Supreme Court of Russia which allows the Federal Security Service to demand access to encryption keys.

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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Bing Deleted a Quarter Billion Pirate Research Results Last Year


While search engines are extremely helpful for the average Internet user, copyright holders also see a massive downside.

For years entertainment industry groups have been frustrated by the fact that “infringing sites” show up in search results. In fact, they see engines as a potential breeding ground for new pirates.

With Google the dominant player, a lot of reporting on the topic has focused on the company whose name has become synonymous with search. Rightfully so, perhaps, as the sheer number of takedown requests it receives surpasses that of all competitors. However, Bing is not that far behind.

When we first queried Microsoft on the issue five years ago, the company didn’t publish its numbers yet. Instead, we were informed that Bing was asked to delete hundreds of thousands of URLs per month.

Today, this number has increased significantly. Microsoft recently published its latest DMCA takedown figures which allow us to take a look at the total number of links the company removed in 2017, adding up to nearly a quarter billion.

In the first half of the year, 16.2 million notices came in, asking Bing to remove over 121 million links. Nearly all of these requests were honored.

Copyright Removal Requests, January-June 2017

In the second half, the number of notices grew to 19.1 million, and the reported URLs slightly increased to 127 million. Again, more than 99 percent of all reported links were removed.

Copyright Removal Requests, July-December 2017

Interestingly, Microsoft itself actively uses DMCA takedown requests to remove links to infringing content. The company previously informed us that it sends notices to its own search engine as well.

In the latest transparency report, Microsoft stresses that, as a copyright holder, it respects copyrights. However, it adds that its users’ freedom of expression is kept in mind as well.

“As an intellectual property company itself, Microsoft encourages respect for intellectual property, including copyrights. We also are committed to freedom of expression and the rights of users to engage in uses that may be permissible under applicable copyright laws.”

The 248 million-plus links Bing receives is significant, but Google easily tops this figure. Last year the leading search engine removed roughly a billion URLs, suggesting that it’s a higher priority for copyright holders.

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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Court Orders Pirate IPTV Linker to Shut Down or Face Penalties Up to €1.25m


There are few things guaranteed in life. Death, taxes, and lawsuits filed regularly by Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

One of its most recent targets was Netherlands-based company Leaper Beheer BV, which also traded under the names Flickstore, Dump Die Deal and Live TV Store. BREIN filed a complaint at the Limburg District Court in Maastricht, claiming that Leaper provides access to unlicensed live TV streams and on-demand movies.

The anti-piracy outfit claimed that around 4,000 live channels were on offer, including Fox Sports, movie channels, commercial and public channels. These could be accessed after the customer made a payment which granted access to a unique activation code which could be entered into a set-top box.

BREIN told the court that the code returned an .M3U playlist, which was effectively a hyperlink to IPTV channels and more than 1,000 movies being made available without permission from their respective copyright holders. As such, this amounted to a communication to the public in contravention of the EU Copyright Directive, BREIN argued.

In its defense, Leaper said that it effectively provided a convenient link-shortening service for content that could already be found online in other ways. The company argued that it is not a distributor of content itself and did not make available anything that wasn’t already public. The company added that it was completely down to the consumer whether illegal content was viewed or not.

The key question for the Court was whether Leaper did indeed make a new “communication to the public” under the EU Copyright Directive, a standard the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) says should be interpreted in a manner that provides a high level of protection for rightsholders.

The Court took a three-point approach in arriving at its decision.

  • Did Leaper act in a deliberate manner when providing access to copyright content, especially when its intervention provided access to consumers who would not ordinarily have access to that content?
  • Did Leaper communicate the works via a new method to a new audience?
  • Did Leaper have a profit motive when it communicated works to the public?

    • The Court found that Leaper did communicate works to the public and intervened “with full knowledge of the consequences of its conduct” when it gave its customers access to protected works.

    “Access to [the content] in a different way would be difficult for those customers, if Leaper were not to provide its services in question,” the Court’s decision reads.

    “Leaper reaches an indeterminate number of potential recipients who can take cognizance of the protected works and form a new audience. The purchasers who register with Leaper are to be regarded as recipients who were not taken into account by the rightful claimants when they gave permission for the original communication of their work to the public.”

    With that, the Court ordered Leaper to cease-and-desist facilitating access to unlicensed streams within 48 hours of the judgment, with non-compliance penalties of 5,000 euros per IPTV subscription sold, link offered, or days exceeded, to a maximum of one million euros.

    But the Court didn’t stop there.

    “Leaper must submit a statement audited by an accountant, supported by (clear, readable copies of) all relevant documents, within 12 days of notification of this judgment of all the relevant (contact) details of the (person or legal persons) with whom the company has had contact regarding the provision of IPTV subscriptions and/or the provision of hyperlinks to sources where films and (live) broadcasts are evidently offered without the permission of the entitled parties,” the Court ruled.

    Failure to comply with this aspect of the ruling will lead to more penalties of 5,000 euros per day up to a maximum of 250,000 euros. Leaper was also ordered to pay BREIN’s costs of 20,700 euros.

    Describing the people behind Leaper as “crooks” who previously sold media boxes with infringing addons (as previously determined to be illegal in the Filmspeler case), BREIN chief Tim Kuik says that a switch of strategy didn’t help them evade the law.

    “[Leaper] sold a link to consumers that gave access to unauthorized content, i.e. pay-TV channels as well as video-on-demand films and series,” BREIN chief Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak.

    “They did it for profit and should have checked whether the content was authorized. They did not and in fact were aware the content was unauthorized. Which means they are clearly infringing copyright.

    “This is evident from the CJEU case law in GS Media as well as Filmspeler and The Pirate Bay, aka the Dutch trilogy because the three cases came from the Netherlands, but these rulings are applicable throughout the EU.

    “They just keep at it knowing they’re cheating and we’ll take them to the cleaners,” Kuik concludes.

    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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    ABS-CBN Targets ‘Pirate’ Streaming Box Vendor in Canada


    ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, is continuing its legal campaign against piracy.

    Over the past several years, the company has singled out dozens of streaming sites that offer access to ‘Pinoy’ content without permission, both in the US and abroad.

    This week it filed a new case in Canada, that’s different from the ones we’ve seen before. Instead of going after site operators, ABS-CBN is suing a ‘bricks-and-mortar’ store located at the Kennedy Square Mall in Brampton, Ontario.

    The company announced that it has filed a lawsuit at the Canadian Federal Court seeking CAD$2.5 million in damages for alleged copyright and infringement, and another CAD$2.5 million for trademark infringement.

    The vendor, incorporated as Dazcon Inc, reportedly sold streaming boxes that allowed users to access movies and TV-shows. The devices in question are BuzzTV boxes pre-configured with a pirate add-on.

    Dazcon appears to be a small vendor, also known as “Manila Center,” that offers a variety of products and services oriented at Philipino customers in Ontario. It’s also an agent for LBC Express, for example, which offers money and mail services to the Philipines.

    Manila Center

    A copy of the complaint, obtained by TorrentFreak, shows that the vendor is accused of selling devices pre-loaded with copyrighted works. In addition, it also offered devices that were able to circumvent ABS-CBN’s technical protection measures.

    “In furtherance of this scheme, the Defendants, individually and/or collectively, sold set-top boxes for the primary purpose of circumventing the Plaintiffs’ TPMS and permitting unauthorized access to the ABS-CBN Copyrighted Works,” the complaint reads.

    “As a consequence of the actions of the Defendants, the public is enabled to receive the ABS-CBN Copyrighted Works via circumvention of the Plaintiffs’ encryption, all without the authority, license or permission of any of the Plaintiffs,” it adds.

    ABS-CBN alleges that Dazcon manually installed an add-on to the set-top boxes which made the infringements possible. The name of this offending add-on is not mentioned in the complaint.

    From the complaint

    In addition to the CAD$5 million in damages, the media company also requests an injunction preventing the vendor from engaging in any copyright infringement of its works in the future, as well as an order granting it custody of the set-top boxes.

    Interestingly, the vendor in question was outed by ABS-CBN’s own customers, the company reports while warning others to remain vigilant.

    “Beware of these operations that are not licensed or affiliated in any way with ABS-CBN,” says Elisha Lawrence the company’s Head of Global Anti-Piracy.

    “If you have any suspicions of other boxes being sold that are not affiliated with ABS-CBN, please call the ABS-CBN office in the U.S. or Canada to verify. We will continue to protect customers by shutting these operations down.”

    While the requested amount of damages may appear quite high, history has shown that this is not unusual for the media giant.

    In the US, the company won $1 million judgments against 19 pirate sites last years, and earlier it won a $10 million judgment against the operator of another small streaming site. Whether any of these damages were actually paid is unknown.

    —

    A copy of ABS-CBN’s complaint against Dazcon Inc is available here (pdf).

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    GEARBEST SPRING CLEARANCE SALES

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    New Mexico AG Wants uTorrent to Report ‘Child-Exploiting’ Users


    In recent years BitTorrent has been regularly linked to online piracy.

    BitTorrent Inc., founded by the protocol’s inventor Bram Cohen, has tried to shake this image, pointing out the many legal implementations and uses of the protocol.

    However, it’s hard to ignore that its flagship software uTorrent is regularly used as a pirate tool.

    This has previously prompted copyright holders to demand action from BitTorrent Inc., without result, but this week more serious concerns about BitTorrent usage have been brought to the forefront.

    New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas has launched an investigation into the links between BitTorrent usage and child exploitation. As part of this effort he’s demanding cooperation from BitTorrent Inc., which is made clear in a letter to CEO Ro Choy.

    “Protecting New Mexico’s children from horrific sexual violence and exploitation is the number one priority of our Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and I am fully expecting BitTorrent’s cooperation with our investigation,” Attorney General Hector Balderas announced.

    The AG points out that uTorrent and some of its users are associated with illegal activity, including piracy and child exploitation. The letter also includes a list of search terms, which isn’t published, so the company can track down this content and see for themselves.

    “As you may be aware, users of your client software, uTorrent, are known to use your services and software for illegal purposes, including sharing copyright protected material and child pornography and other material that contribute to the exploitation of children and adults in New Mexico,” the letter reads.

    In addition to singling out uTorrent, Balderas is also concerned about the CyberGhost VPN, which uTorrent sells in a bundle with the Pro subscription. In particular, because users with criminal intentions can use this to hide their IP-addresses.

    “We are also concerned that the ‘Cyber Ghost VPN: be anonymous online’ service offered by uTorrent may pose a high risk of abuse by users seeking to engage in the trade, manufacture, and distribution of child exploitation imagery,” the AG writes.

    The letter continues by asking a list of questions through which it hopes to find out more about uTorrent’s users, giving June 8 as a deadline.

    Among other things, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) wants to know how many subscriptions with a VPN uTorrent has sold, what means are used to monitor misuse, and how frequently users are terminated for a violation of uTorrents Terms of Service and End User License agreement.

    AG’s questions

    As far as we are aware, BitTorrent Inc. does not monitor users’ download activities, nor have they terminated any subscribers. However, the AG would like to see this happening. The letter specifically asks the company to report users who engage in child abuse.

    “Further, the OAG demands that uTorrent immediately report any individuals engaging in the illegal trade of contraband images of child exploitation to the OAG and the NCMEC and provide a list of IP addresses regardless of the status of the user’s subscription status,” concludes the letter.

    The AG further urges BitTorrent Inc. to take steps to monitor and prevent illegal use of its software.

    As Engadget points out, the letter mentions that other online services use hash filtering tools to prevent the distribution of illegal content, suggesting that uTorrent could do the same.

    This brings us back to the copyright complaints we mentioned earlier. Three years ago the RIAA also asked BitTorrent Inc. to block infringing content using hash filtering. While that hasn’t happened, the Attorney General’s investigation makes it a hot topic once again.

    BitTorrent Inc informed TorrentFreak that they are currently looking into the matter, reviewing their options.

    “We are reviewing recently received correspondence. We cooperate with law enforcement agencies to the full extent of the law,” the company 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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    Developer Accidentally Makes Available 390,000 ‘Pirated’ eBooks


    Considering the effort it takes to set one up, pirate sites are clearly always intentional. One doesn’t make available hundreds of thousands of potentially infringing works accidentally.

    Unless you’re developer Nick Janetakis, that is.

    “About 2 years ago I was recording a video course that dealt with setting up HTTPS on a domain name. In all of my courses, I make sure to ‘really’ do it on video so that you can see the entire process from end to end,” Nick wrote this week.

    “Back then I used nickjanetakis.com for all of my courses, so I didn’t have a dedicated domain name for the course I was working on.”

    So instead, Nick set up an A record to point ssl.nickjanetakis.com to a DigitalOcean droplet (a cloud server) so anyone accessing the sub-domain could access the droplet (and his content) via his sub-domain.

    That was all very straightforward and all Nick needed to do was delete the A record after he was done to ensure that he wasn’t pointing to someone else’s IP address when the droplet was eventually allocated to someone else. But he forgot, with some interesting side effects that didn’t come to light until years later.

    “I have Google Alerts set up so I get emailed when people link to my site. A few months ago I started to receive an absurd amount of notifications, but I ignored them. I chalked it up to ‘Google is probably on drugs’,” Nick explains.

    However, the developer paid more attention when he received an email from a subscriber to his courses who warned that Nick’s site might have been compromised. A Google search revealed a worrying amount of apparently unauthorized eBook content being made available via Nick’s domain.

    350,000 items? Whoops! (credit: Nick Janetakis)

    Of course, Nick wasn’t distributing any content himself, but as far as Google was concerned, his domain was completely responsible. For confirmation, TorrentFreak looked up Nick’s domain on Google’s Transparency report and found at least nine copyright holders and two reporting organizations complaining of copyright infringement.

    “No one from Google contacted me and none of the copyright infringement people reached out to me. I wish they would have,” Nick told us.

    The earliest complaint was filed with Google on April 22, 2018, suggesting that the IP address/domain name collision causing the supposed infringement took place fairly recently. From there came a steady flow of reports, but not the tidal wave one might have expected given the volume of results.

    Complaints courtesy of LumenDatabase.org

    A little puzzled, TorrentFreak asked Nick if he’d managed to find out from DigitalOcean which pirates had been inadvertently using his domain. He said he’d asked, but the company wouldn’t assist.

    “I asked DigitalOcean to get the email contact of the person who owned the IP address but they denied me. I just wanted to know for my own sanity,” he says.

    With results now dropping off Google very quickly, TF carried out some tests using Google’s cache. None of the tests led us to any recognizable pirate site but something was definitely amiss.

    The ‘pirate’ links (which can be found using a ‘site:ssl.nickjanetakis.com’ search in Google) open documents (sample) which contain links to the domain BookFreeNow.com, which looks very much like a pirate site but suggests it will only hand over PDF files after the user joins up, ostensibly for free.

    However, experience with this kind of platform tells us that eventually, there would probably be some kind of cost involved, if indirect.



    So, after clicking the registration link (or automatically, if you wait a few seconds) we weren’t entirely shocked when we were redirected briefly to an affiliate site that pays generously. From there we were sent to an advert server which caused a MalwareBytes alert, which was enough for us to back right out of there.

    While something amazing might have sat behind the doors of BookFreeNow, we suspect that rather than being a regular pirate site, it’s actually set up to give the impression of being one, in order to generate business in other ways.

    Certainly, copyright holders are suspicious of it, and have sent numerous complaints to Google.

    In any event, Nick Janetakis should be very grateful that his domain is no longer connected to the platform since a basic pirate site, while troublesome, would be much more straightforward to explain. In the meantime, Nick has some helpful tips on how to avoid such a situation in the future.

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





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