At TorrentFreak, we keep a close eye on copyright debates and discussions. This includes the opinion pieces of musician and industry activist David Lowery at The Trichordist

While we don’t agree with his general style, which doesn’t shun rather outrageous personal attacks, everybody has the right to voice an opinion.

In Lowery’s case, this often comes in the form of discrediting people who, in his view, are a threat to the pro-copyright agenda. These people hurt the interests of artists and keep piracy alive, his message goes.

When Canadian law professor Michael Geist opposed efforts to block websites in his country, Lowery responded in his typical fashion, making it personal.

“So Canada’s most ‘internet famous’ copyright law professor Michael ‘Neville Chamberlain’ Geist is simply selling out Canadian artists for no apparent reason?!?” he wrote.

“And the beneficiaries of his tortured interpretation of facts and data is predictably the US Silicon Valley monopolies that indirectly benefit from the massively infringing pirate website operations?”

We won’t repeat the entire article here, which is best read in context, but there’s a sweet bit of irony in it all. We don’t make a habit of calling people out, but given the circumstances, we’ll make an exception.

To illustrate his opinion piece Lowery decided to use a photo of US tanks. Not massing at the Canadian border, as his title suggests, but other than that the imagery fits well.

What caught our eye, however, was the fact that the photographer wasn’t mentioned. Initially, we assumed that it might be a royalty free stock photo, but that’s not the case.

The blog post (© added by TF)

The photo in question was taken by photographer David Mdzinarishvili, who makes a living this way. We contacted Mdzinarishvili about the lack of credit, who told us that the copyright belongs to his employer Reuters.

So how did it end up on The Trichordist?

In theory, it’s possible that Lowery licensed the photo from Reuters, but even then, the news organization requires its users to credit both Reuters and the photographer.

“You agree that you will provide a clearly visible written credit to Reuters and to any Photographer credited in the caption of a Photograph which you publish..,” Reuters’ terms of use reads.

This is exactly what RT did when it published the same photo last year.

What Lowery did here is hotlink to the image on RT’s servers, without mentioning the copyright holder or the photographer. Without a proper license, some would equate that to “stealing” RT’s bandwidth as well as Reuters’ intellectual property.

Now, would The Trichordist license a 2016 premium news photo from Reuters and use it in an unrelated article without attribution and hotlink it from another unrelated site? No, it turns out that it was embedded without permission.

It’s hard not to see the irony…

Michael Geist, while being accused of “selling out” artists in the same article, does things differently. He has made a habit of using Creative Commons licensed images in his articles, with permission, and with a credit to the photographer.

We hope someone’s taking notes…

We reached out to David Lowery shortly before publication to ask for an explanation. He thought the photo came from a US Defense Department press release, but confirmed that it was hotlinked from RT instead.

Lowery initially said that us that Reuters or the photographer can contact the Trichordist, and that they will “gladly unlink the photo” if needed, but he decided to take it offline later.

At the time of publication the original article is still visible in Google’s cache.

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





Source link


The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has submitted its latest submission for the U.S. Government’s 2018 Special 301 Review, pinpointing countries it believes should better protect the interests of the copyright industry.

The IIPA, which includes a wide range of copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, and ESA, has listed its complaints against a whole host of countries.

Canada is prominently discussed, of course, as are Argentina, China, India, Mexico, Switzerland and many others. The allegations are broad, ranging from border protection problems to pirate site hosting and everything in between.

What caught our eye, however, was a mention of ThePirateBay.cr. This domain name which, unlike the name suggests, sports a KickassTorrents logo, uses the Costa Rican Top Level Domain .cr.

While it’s a relatively small player in the torrent site ecosystem, it appears to be of great concern in diplomatic circles.

ThePirateBay.cr

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

In the IIPA’s recent submission to the USTR, the domain is also brought into play. The copyright holders argue that Costa Rica is not living up to its obligations under the CAFTA-DR trade agreement.

“One of the key DR-CAFTA obligations that has not been implemented is introducing clear rules on copyright, liability, as well as providing meaningful legal incentives for inter-industry cooperation to deal with online infringements,” the IIPA writes.

“Instead, Costa Rica’s law offers largely unconditional liability exceptions to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and others, even allowing identified infringing activity to remain on their systems for as long as 45 days.”

Next, it puts a spotlight on the local domain registry, which it described as a safe haven for sites including ThePirateBay.cr.

“There are still many instances where the Costa Rican Top Level Domain (ccTLD) registry has provided a safe haven to notorious online enterprises dedicated to copyright infringement,” IIPA writes.

“For example, thepiratebay.cr domain is still online despite actions against it from ICANN and the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica. Costa Rica’s failure to deal effectively with its obligations regarding online infringement, more than six years after these came into force under DR-CAFTA, is a serious concern.”

The latter is worth highlighting. It claims that ICANN, the main oversight body for the Internet’s global domain name system, also “took action” against the notorious domain name.

While it is true that ICANN was made aware of the tense situation between the US Embassy and the Costa Rican domain registry through a letter, we were not aware of any action it took.

Interestingly, ICANN itself also appears to be unaware of this, when we asked the organization whether it took any action in response to the domain or letter.

“The Governmental Advisory Committee and ICANN Org took note of the letter but did not provide a response as it was not warranted. While the letter was addressed to the GAC Chair, it did not contain any specific question or request for action,” an ICANN spokesperson responded.

Whether ICANN got involved or not is irrelevant in the larger scheme though. The IIPA wants the US Government to use ThePirateBay.cr domain to spur Costa Rica into action. After all, no country would like a local domain registry to serve a Pirate Bay proxy.

Meanwhile, the official Pirate Bay domain remains operational from ThePirateBay.org, which happens to be using the US-based PIR registry. But let’s not bring that up…

IIPA’s full submission is available here (pdf).

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





Source link


Continuing Russia’s continued pressure on the restriction of banned websites for copyright infringement and other offenses, President Vladimir Putin signed a brand new bill into law July 2017.

The legislation aimed to prevent citizens from circumventing ISP blockades with the use of services such as VPNs, proxies, Tor, and other anonymizing services. The theory was that if VPNs were found to be facilitating access to banned sites, they too would find themselves on Russia’s national Internet blacklist.

The list is maintained by local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor and currently contains many tens of thousands of restricted domains. In respect of VPNs, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs is tasked with monitoring ‘unblocking’ offenses, which they are then expected to refer to the telecoms watchdog for action.

The legislation caused significant uproar both locally and overseas and was widely predicted to signal a whole new level of censorship in Russia. However, things haven’t played out that way since, far from it. Since being introduced November 1, 2017, not a single VPN has been cautioned over its activities, much less advised to block or cease and desist.

The revelation comes via Russian news outlet RBC, which received an official confirmation from Rozcomnadzor itself that no VPN or anonymization service had been asked to take action to prevent access to blocked sites. Given the attention to detail when passing the law, the reasons seem extraordinary.

While Rozcomnadzor is empowered to put VPN providers on the blacklist, it must first be instructed to do so by the FSB, after that organization has carried out an investigation. Once the FSB gives the go-ahead, Rozcomnadzor can then order the provider to connect itself to the federal state information system, known locally as FGIS.

FGIS is the system that contains the details of nationally blocked sites and if a VPN provider does not interface with it within 30 days of being ordered to do so, it too will be added to the blocklist by Rozcomnadzor. Trouble is, Rozcomnadzor hasn’t received any requests to contact VPNs from higher up the chain, so they can’t do anything.

“As of today, there have been no requests from the members of the RDD [operational and investigative activities] and state security regarding anonymizers and VPN services,” a Roskomnadzor spokesperson said.

However, the problems don’t end there. RBC quotes Karen Ghazaryan, an analyst at the Russian Electronic Communications Association (RAEC), who says that even if it had received instructions, Rozcomnadzor wouldn’t be able to block the VPN services in question for both technical and legal reasons.

“Roskomnadzor does not have leverage over most VPN services, and they can not block them for failing to comply with the law, because Roskomnadzor does not have ready technical solutions for this, and the law does not yet have relevant by-laws,” the expert said.

“Copying the Chinese model of fighting VPNs in Russia will not be possible because of its high cost and the radically different topology of the Russian segment of the Internet,” Ghazaryan adds.

This apparent inability to act is surprising, not least since millions of Russian Internet users are now using VPNs, anonymizers, and similar services on a regular basis. Ghazaryan puts the figure as high as 25% of all Russian Internet users.

However, there is also a third element to Russia’s VPN dilemma – how to differentiate between VPNs used by the public and those used in a commercial environment. China is trying to solve this problem by forcing VPN providers to register and align themselves with the state. Russia hasn’t tried that, yet.

“The [blocking] law says that it does not apply to corporate VPN networks, but there is no way to distinguish them from services used for personal needs,” concludes Sarkis Darbinian from the anti-censorship project, Roskomvoboda.

This week, Russia’s Ministry of Culture unveiled yet more new proposals for dealing with copyright infringement via a bill that would allow websites to be blocked without a court order. It’s envisioned that if pirate material is found on a site and its operator either fails to respond to a complaint or leaves the content online for more than 24 hours, ISPs will be told to block the entire site.

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





Source link


While dozens of millions of people use uTorrent as their default BitTorrent client, the software has seen few feature updates in recent years.

That doesn’t mean that the development team has been sitting still. Instead of drastically expanding the current software, they have started a new ambitious project: uTorrent Web.

This new piece of software, which launched rather quietly, allows users to download and stream torrents directly in their default web browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox.

The way it works is pretty straightforward. After installing the client, which is Windows-only at the moment, torrent and magnet links are automatically opened by uTorrent Web in a browser window.

People can use their regular torrent sites to find torrents or use the app’s search box, which redirects them to Google.

Let’s start…

TorrentFreak took the application for a spin and it works quite well. Videos may take a short while to load, depending on the download speed, but then they play just fine. As in most modern video players, subtitles are also supported, if they’re included.

The streaming functionality supports both audio and video, with the option to choose a specific file, if a torrent contains more than one.

Applications and other files can also be downloaded, but these are obviously not streamed.

uTorrent Web in action

The current Beta release comes with several basic preferences settings and users can change things such as the download location and upload speed. It’s likely that more options will follow as development matures, however.

While the quiet release comes as a surprise, BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen previously told us that the browser version was coming. In the long run, this version could even replace the “original” client, he seemed to suggest.

“We’re very, very sensitive. We know people have been using uTorrent for a very long time and love it. So we’re very, very sensitive to that and gonna be sure to make sure that people feel that it’s an upgrade that’s happening. Not that we’ve just destroyed the experience,” Bram said.

“We’re going to roll it out and get feedback and make sure that people are happy with it before we roll it out to everybody.”

For now, however, it appears that BitTorrent is offering both products side-by-side.

It’s been a turbulent week for BitTorrent Inc., thus far. The company had to deal with a serious vulnerability in its flagship software uTorrent. This same issue also affected uTorrent Web, but the most recent version is fully patched, we were told, as is the stable release.

We reached out to BitTorrent Inc. to find out more about this release, but we haven’t heard back for several days. Perhaps we’ll get an opportunity to find out more in the near future.

Until then, people are free to take uTorrent Web for a spin here.

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





Source link


Following complaints from Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner, a court in Spain recently ordered local ISPs to block HDFull.tv and Repelis.tv, a pair of popular pirate sites.

Citing changes in local law which helped facilitate the action, the MPA welcomed the blockades as necessary to prevent further damage to the creative industries. Now, just a week later, it seems that Spain really has the bit between its teeth.

An announcement from the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), the oldest law enforcement agency in the country, reveals that almost two dozen websites have just been blocked for infringing intellectual property rights.

“The Civil Guard, within the framework of the ‘Operation CASCADA’, has initiated a campaign to block websites that allow people to download content protected by copyright and disseminate them through links in P2P networks, that is, networks of computers that work without fixed servers,” the Civil Guard said in a statement.

“In this first phase, a total of 23 web domains have been blocked from which direct download links of all kinds of protected audiovisual material such as movies, series, music and video games were accessed, many of them of recent creation and without being released yet in our country.

“High-quality versions of films available on the cinema billboards of our country were offered, although they had not yet been sold in physical or digital format and dubbed with audio in several languages.”

A full list of websites and domains hasn’t yet been provided by the authorities but familiar names including divxtotal.com and gamestorrents.com are confirmed to be included in the first wave.

The Civil Guard, which is organized as a military force under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defense, said that the administrators of the sites operate their platforms from abroad, generating advertising revenue from Spanish visitors who are said to make up 80% of the sites’ traffic.

In common with similar sites, the authorities accuse their owners of taking evasive action to avoid being shut down, including hiding the true location of their servers while moving them from country to country and masking domain registration data.

“Cases have been detected in which previously judicially blocked domains were reactivated in a matter of hours, with practically identical domain names or even changing only the extension thereof. In this way, and even if several successive blocks were made, they were able to ‘resurrect’ the web pages again in a very short space of time,” the Civil Guard reports.

“For all these reasons, components of the Department of Telematic Crimes of the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard, responsible for the investigation, were forced to implement a series of measures tending to cause a total blockade of them that would be effective and definitive, being currently inaccessible web pages or lacking download links.”

According to the authorities, the sites are now being continuously monitored, with replacement domains being blocked in less than three hours. That doesn’t appear to have been the case yesterday, however.

It’s claimed that the blocked sites were created by “a person of Spanish origin” who subsequently sold them to a company in Argentina. On Thursday, Argentina-based site Dixv.com.ar fired back against the blockade with a new site called Yadivx.com, which is reportedly serving all of the former’s content to users in Spain.

The sites’ owners continue to administer the rogue sites from Argentina, Spanish authorities believe. Only time will tell who will emerge victorious but at least for now, the sites are remaining defiant.

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





Source link


Last month, a coalition of Canadian companies called on the local telecom regulator CRTC to establish a local pirate site blocking program, which would be the first of its kind in North America.

The Canadian deal is supported by Fairplay Canada, a coalition of both copyright holders and major players in the Telco industry, such as Bell and Rogers, which also have media companies of their own.

Thus far, there’s been a fair amount of opposition to the proposal. While CTRC is reviewing FairPlay Canada’s plans, OpenMedia has launched a petition to stop the effort in its tracks, which has already been signed by tens of thousands of Canadians.

However, there are also people who are backing the blocking efforts. In some cases, with a gentle push from their employer.

Canadian law Professor Micheal Geist, who’s one of the most vocal opponents of the blocking plans, recently tweeted a note Bell sent to its employees. Through an internal message, the ISP asks its workers to “help stop online piracy and protect content creators.”

Bell’s internal message

The company clearly hopes that its employees will back the site-blocking agenda, but according to Geist, this may not be the best way to do it.

Geist points out that the internal message doesn’t encourage employees to disclose their affiliation with Bell. This raises eyebrows, in particular, because Bell agreed to a $1.25 million settlement in 2015 after it encouraged some employees to write positive reviews and ratings on Bell apps.

In this case, the message has nothing to with app ratings, but it’s clear that the company is encouraging its employees to support a regulatory effort that serves Bell’s interests.

“All Canadians can provide their views on the website blocking proposal, but corporate encouragement to employees to participate in regulatory processes on the company’s behalf may raise the kinds of concerns regarding misleading impressions that sparked the Commissioner of Competition to intervene in 2015,” Geist’s writes in a blog post.

Even if Bell’s request is ‘fair play’ and within the boundaries of what’s allowed, it may do more harm than good.

Geist’s observation was picked up by local media with iPhoneinCanada describing Bell’s effort as “disingenuous,” which might lead to even more opposition in response.

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





Source link


Australian copyright holders and lawmakers have been struggling to find an adequate response to online piracy for several years.

Progress has been slow, but with pirate site blockades now in effect, there appears to be some movement.

New research published by INCOPRO this week shows that traffic to blocked pirate sites has decreased 53.4% since the first measures were implemented a year ago. In total, usage of the top 250 pirate sites dropped a significant 25.4% in Australia.

In summary, the research confirms that direct traffic to blocked sites has decreased dramatically. Or put differently, the site blocking efforts actually block pirate sites, which by itself should hardly come as a surprise.

In fact, one might wonder how effective the blockades really are when nearly half of all direct traffic to the blocked sites in Australia remains intact and dozens of the country’s ISPs are involved.

On top, it’s also worth mentioning that the research doesn’t take VPN usage into account. Australian interest in VPNs surged after the blockades were announced, so many people are likely to be circumvented the blockades using foreign VPNs.

While VPNs were not factored in, the current research did look at proxy site traffic and concludes that this only substitutes a small portion of the traffic that went to pirate sites before the blockades.

While it’s undoubtedly true that direct traffic to blocked sites has dropped, the research also includes some odd results. For example, it attributes a recent drop in Isohunt.to traffic to the blocking measures, when in reality the site actually shut down.

“ISOHunt usage has been on a downward trend since December 2016, and is now at its lowest on record having reduced by 96.4% since blocking began,” the report reads, drawing on data from Alexa.

But perhaps we’re nitpicking.

Creative Content Australia (CCA) is happy with these results and states that the fight against piracy has claimed a significant victory. However, the anti-piracy group also stressed that more can be done.

“The reduction in piracy is exciting news but that 53% could be 90%,” CCA Chairman Graham Burke says, using the opportunity to take another stab at Google.

“The government has shut the front door, but Google is leading people to the back door, showing no respect for Australian law or courts let alone any regard for the Australian economy and cultural way of life,” Burke adds.

INCOPRO’s research will undoubtedly be used to convince lawmakers that the current site blocking efforts should remain in place.

With this in mind, the release of the report comes at an interesting time. The previously unpublished results were drawn up last December, but were only made public this week, a few days after the Australian Government announced a review of the site blocking measures.

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





Source link


Way back in 2011, Streamiz was reported to be the second most popular pirate streaming site in France with around 250,000 visitors per day. The site didn’t host its own content but linked to movies elsewhere.

This prominent status soon attracted the attention of various entertainment companies including the National Federation of Film Distributors (FNDF) which filed a complaint against the site back in 2009.

Investigators eventually traced the presumed operator of the site to a location in the Hauts-de-Seine region of France. In October 2011 he was arrested leaving his Montrouge home in the southern Parisian suburbs. His backpack reportedly contained socks stuffed with almost 30,000 euros in cash.

The man was ordered to appear before the investigating judge but did not attend. He also failed to appear during his sentencing this Monday, which may or may not have been a good thing, depending on one’s perspective.

In his absence, the now 41-year-old was found guilty of copyright infringement offenses and handed one of the toughest sentences ever in a case of its type.

According to an AFP report, when the authorities can catch up with him the man must not only serve two years in prison but also pay a staggering 83.6 million euros in damages to Disney, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and SACEM, the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers.

Streamiz is now closed but at its peak offered around 40,000 movies to millions of users per month. In total, the site stood accused of around 500,000,000 infringements, earning its operator an estimated 150,000 euros in advertising revenue over a two year period.

“This is a clear case of commercial counterfeiting” based on a “very structured” system, David El Sayegh, Secretary General of SACEM, told AFP. His sentence “sends a very clear message: there will be no impunity for pirates,” he added.

With an arrest warrant still outstanding, the former Streamiz admin is now on the run with very few options available to him. Certainly, the 83.6 million euro fine won’t ever be paid but the prison sentence is something he might need to get behind him.

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





Source link


With dozens of millions of active users a day, uTorrent has long been the most used torrent client.

The software has been around for well over a decade and it’s still used to shift petabytes of data day after day. While there haven’t been many feature updates recently, parent company BitTorrent Inc. was alerted to a serious security vulnerability recently.

The security flaw in question was reported by Google vulnerability researcher Tavis Ormandy, who first reached out to BitTorrent in November last year. Google’s Project Zero allows developers a 90-day window to address security flaws but with this deadline creeping up, BitTorrent had remained quiet.

Late last month Ormandy again reached out to BitTorrent Inc’s Bram Cohen, fearing that the company might not fix the vulnerability in time.

“I don’t think bittorrent are going to make a 90 day disclosure deadline, do you have any direct contacts who could help? I’m not convinced they understand the severity or urgency,” Ormandy wrote on Twitter.

Nudge

While Google’s security researcher might have expected a more swift response, the issue wasn’t ignored.

BitTorrent Inc has yet to fix the problem in the stable release, but a patch was deployed in the Beta version last week. BitTorrent’s Vice President of Engineering David Rees informed us that this will be promoted to the regular release this week, if all goes well.

While no specific details about the vulnerability have yet to be released, it is likely to be a remote execution flaw. Ormandy previously exposed a similar vulnerability in Transmission, which he said was the “first of a few remote code execution flaws in various popular torrent clients.”

BitTorrent Inc. told us that they have shared their patch with Ormandy, who confirmed that this fixes the security issues.

uTorrent Beta release notes

“We have also sent the build to Tavis and he has confirmed that it addresses all the security issues he reported,” Rees told us. “Since we have not promoted this build to stable, I will reserve reporting on the details of the security issue and its fix for now.”

BitTorrent Inc. plans to release more details about the issue when all clients are patched. Then it will also recommend users to upgrade their clients, so they are no longer at risk, and further information will also be available on Google’s Project Zero site.

Of course, people who are concerned about the issue can already upgrade to the latest uTorrent Beta release right away. Or, assuming that it’s related to the client’s remote control functionality, disable that for now.

Note: uTorrent’s Beta changelog states that the fixes were applied on January 15, but we believe that this should read February 15 instead.

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





Source link


ISP blocking has become a prime measure for the entertainment industry to target pirate sites on the Internet.

In recent years sites have been blocked throughout Europe, in Asia, and even Down Under.

Last month, a coalition of Canadian companies called on the local telecom regulator CRTC to establish a local pirate site blocking program, which would be the first of its kind in North America.

The Canadian deal is backed by both copyright holders and major players in the Telco industry, such as Bell and Rogers, which also have media companies of their own. Instead of court-ordered blockades, they call for a mutually agreed deal where ISPs will block pirate sites.

The plan has triggered a fair amount of opposition. Tens of thousands of people have protested against the proposal and several experts are warning against the negative consequences it may have.

One of the most vocal opponents is University of Ottawa law professor Micheal Geist. In a series of articles, processor Geist highlighted several problems, including potential overblocking.

The Fairplay Canada coalition downplays overblocking, according to Geist. They say the measures will only affect sites that are blatantly, overwhelmingly or structurally engaged in piracy, which appears to be a high standard.

However, the same coalition uses a report from MUSO as its primary evidence. This report draws on a list of 23,000 pirate sites, which may not all be blatant enough to meet the blocking standard.

For example, professor Geist notes that it includes a site dedicated to user-generated subtitles as well as sites that offer stream ripping tools which can be used for legal purposes.

“Stream ripping is a concern for the music industry, but these technologies (which are also found in readily available software programs from a local BestBuy) also have considerable non-infringing uses, such as for downloading Creative Commons licensed videos also found on video sites,” Geist writes.

If the coalition tried to have all these sites blocked the scope would be much larger than currently portrayed. Conversely, if only a few of the sites would be blocked, then the evidence that was used to put these blocks in place would have been exaggerated.

“In other words, either the scope of block list coverage is far broader than the coalition admits or its piracy evidence is inflated by including sites that do not meet its piracy standard,” Geist notes.

Perhaps most concerning is the slippery slope that the blocking efforts can turn into. Professor Geist fears that after the standard piracy sites are dealt with, related targets may be next.

This includes VPN services. While this may sound far-fetched to some, several members of the coalition, such as Bell and Rogers, have already criticized VPNs in the past since these allow people to watch geo-blocked content.

“Once the list of piracy sites (whatever the standard) is addressed, it is very likely that the Bell coalition will turn its attention to other sites and services such as virtual private networks (VPNs).

“This is not mere speculation. Rather, it is taking Bell and its allies at their word on how they believe certain services and sites constitute theft,” Geist adds.

The issue may even be more relevant in this case, since the same VPNs can also be used to circumvent pirate sites blockades.

“Further, since the response to site blocking from some Internet users will surely involve increased use of VPNs to evade the blocks, the attempt to characterize VPNs as services engaged in piracy will only increase,” Geist adds.

Potential overblocking is just one of the many issues with the current proposal, according to the law professor. Geist previously highlighted that current copyright law already provides sufficient remedies to deal with piracy and that piracy isn’t that much of a problem in Canada in the first place.

The CRTC has yet to issue its review of the proposal but now that the cat is out of the bag, rightsholders and ISPs are likely to keep pushing for blockades, one way or the other.

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





Source link