New PS4 Jailbreak Hits Firmware 4.55, Excites the Masses


Largely since the advent of the third generation of games consoles in the early to mid 80s, adventurous users have been interested in making their machines do things they’re not supposed to.

In common with the 8bit games-capable computers that preceded them, much emphasis was placed on piracy, with people seeking to cut console games costs with copies of what would otherwise be expensive investments. Alongside, however, was a rapidly developing “homebrew” scene in which often amateur coders sought to utilize their purchased hardware for non-conventional means.

These days the process of digitally cracking open a device is much more complex and has given birth to the term ‘jailbreaking’. It can be applied to devices as diverse as iPhones and PlayStations but it all means the same thing – the removal of restrictions put in place by manufacturers in order to control what can be done with a device.

These restrictions mostly relate to the running of software, with the big manufacturers wanting people to not only use ‘app stores’ that they control but also to pay for the privilege. The jailbreaking scene often aims to undermine the former but despite many good intentions, it often gets dragged into piracy as a result.

Yesterday there was cause for both homebrew coders and pirates-in-waiting to celebrate with the announcement that developer ‘Qwertyoruiop’ had released the full code for his PS4 firmware 4.55 kernel exploit.

While the release caused much excitement, the kernel exploit still needs a usermode entry point. As reported by Wololo, that could come via the Webkit exploit previously released by Qwertyoruiop for PS4 firmware 4.07 a while back.

So, to put things into basic terms, while the new exploit works up to v4.55, the user exploit only works up to those with PS4s running v4.07, at least until another usermode exploit for later firmwares is released.

But with anticipation in the air, a few hours later yet more exciting news appeared on the horizon. Taking Qwertyoruiop’s v4.55 kernel exploit and running with it, developer SpecterDev announced on Twitter that he’d published a full implementation of the exploit on Github.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In other words, SpecterDev has released a fully-functional jailbreak of PS4 firmware 4.55, which opens up a whole world of opportunities for the homebrew scene – and beyond. That being said, he’s careful to note on Github that others will have to step up to fill in the gaps from here.

“[The implementation] will allow you to run arbitrary code as kernel, to allow jailbreaking and kernel-level modifications to the system. This release however, does not contain any code related to defeating anti-piracy mechanisms or running homebrew,” he explained.

Nevertheless, SpecterDev’s code has an inbuilt ‘ear’ that can take instructions (a so-called ‘payload’) and do something useful with them.

“This exploit does include a loader that listens for payloads on port 9020 and will execute them upon receival,” he explains.

Rumors suggest that there’s already some kind of payload being shared privately. We haven’t been able to confirm what it does yet but people seem excited by it.

Update: Confirmation of what it does from Wololo: “When run in combination with the recently released exploit for PS4 4.55, Holy Grail lets users install and run unsigned packages. In practice, this will let 4.55 owners install and run homebrews as well as, yes, pirated PS4 games.”

A video showing the jailbreak in action has been uploaded to YouTube and can be seen below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZuNWUoMIuU&w=560&h=315]

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Switzerland Hopes New Law Will Keep it Off U.S. ‘Pirate Watchlist’


In a few weeks, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) will publish its yearly Special 301 Report, highlighting countries that fail to live up to U.S copyright protection standards.

In recent years Switzerland was among countries that were placed on the ‘Watch List.’ In 2017, the US reported that the Swiss had made some progress, but not enough. Its policies towards online piracy were not up to par, according to U.S. standards.

“Switzerland remains on the Watch List this year due to U.S. concerns regarding specific difficulties in Switzerland’s system of online copyright protection and enforcement,” USTR wrote in its Special 301 Report.

One of the key issues the United States identified is the lack of enforcement against hosting companies that do business with pirate sites. Branding these as a “safe haven” for pirates, the US called for suitable countermeasures.

A second problem that was highlighted is the so-called ‘Logistep Decision.‘ In 2010 the Swiss Federal Supreme Court barred anti-piracy outfit Logistep from harvesting the IP addresses of file-sharers. The Court ruled that IP addresses amount to private data, and outlawed the tracking of file-sharers in Switzerland.

According to the USTR, this ruling prevents copyright holders from enforcing their rights, and they called on the Swiss Government to address this concern as well.

Today nearly a year has passed and it looks like the recommendations were not ignored. In a letter to the USTR, the Swiss Government writes that the two main complaints are dealt with in their new copyright law, which was introduced late last year.

“The draft bill, adopted by the Federal Council at its meeting on November 22, 2017, addresses both of those concerns. It aims at further modernizing Swiss copyright law for the purposes of the digital environment and steps up the fight against Internet piracy,” the Swiss write.

The new copyright law addresses the hosting problem by introducing a “take-down-and-stay-down” policy. Internet services will be required to remove infringing content from their platforms and prevent that same content from reappearing. Failure to comply will result in prosecution.

“The ‘stay down’ will prevent rogue websites from being hosted in Switzerland and will make the fight against Internet piracy more effective and sustainable. That should put an end to criticism directed against Switzerland as a host country for infringing sites,” Switzerland informs the U.S.

Similarly, the Logistep ruling will no longer be an issue either if the country’s new copyright law is implemented.

“[T]he draft bill clarifies that the processing of data for the purposes of prosecuting copyright infringement is permissible. With that, it puts an end to the debate that followed the Logistep decision about the extent to which the recording of IP addresses for prosecution purposes is admissible.”

Many copyright holder groups have also asked for ISP blocking of pirate sites, but Switzerland notes that this idea is off the table for now. There is not enough support in Parliament for an Internet blocking provision which may jeopardize acceptance of the entire draft bill, their letter explains.

While not mentioned in the letter, downloading and streaming copyright infringing content for personal use also remains unpunished, video games and software excepted. Uploading and other types of distribution of infringing content are not permitted, however.

Still, the Swiss hope that the newly proposed changes to its copyright law will be enough to have it removed from the Special 301 Watch List.

“Switzerland is confident that the revision of the Swiss Copyright Act will more effectively address the challenges posed by the Internet,” the Swiss Government writes, adding that it “looks forward to continuing to work with the U.S. to further clarify any issue relating to online piracy.”

—

Switzerland’s letter to the United States Trade Representative is available here (pdf).

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MPAA Wants Filmmakers to Pay Licenses, Not Rip Blu-rays


Technically speaking it’s not hard to rip a DVD or Blu-ray disc nowadays, and the same is true for ripping content from Netflix or YouTube.

However, in the US people can break the law when they do this. The DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions specifically forbid it.

There are some exemptions, such as educational and other types of fair use, but the line between legal and illegal is not always clear, some argue.

Filmmakers, for example, are allowed to use small pieces of other copyrighted films under some conditions. However, this only applies to the documentary genre.

This is confusing and creates uncertainty, according to the International Documentary Association, Kartemquin Films, Independent Filmmaker Project, University of Film and Video Association, and several other organizations.

Late last year they penned a submission to the Copyright Office, which is currently considering updates to the exemptions, where they argued that all filmmakers should be allowed by break DRM and rip Blu-rays. The documentary exemptions have been in place for years now and haven’t harmed rightsholders in any way, they said.

“There is no reason this would change if the ‘documentary’ limitation were removed. All filmmakers regularly need access to footage on DVDs and without an exemption to DVDs, many non-infringing uses simply cannot be made,” the groups noted.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment though. A group of “joint creators and copyright owners” which includes Hollywood’s MPAA, the RIAA, and ESA informs the Copyright Office that such an exemption is too broad and a threat to the interests of the major movie studios.

The MPAA and the other groups point out that the exemption could be used by filmmakers to avoid paying licensing fees, which can be quite expensive.

“Many of the filmmakers who have participated in the rulemaking assert that license fees are often higher than they are willing to pay,” the Joint Creators and Copyright Owners write.

“While unfortunate, the fact that a copyright owner has chosen to make works available on terms that are not palatable to a particular user does not make that user’s proposed use fair or justify granting an exemption.”

If the filmmakers don’t have enough budget to license a video, they should look for alternatives. Simply taking it without paying would hurt the bottom line of movie studios, the filing suggests.

“Many filmmakers work licensing fees into their budgets. There is clearly a market for licensing footage from motion pictures, and it is clear that unlicensed uses harm that market.

“MPAA members actively exploit the market for licensing film clips for these types of uses. Each year, MPAA member companies license, collectively, thousands of clips for use in a variety of works,” the group writes.

The Copyright Office has limited the exemption to the documentary genre for a good reason, the creators argue, since non-documentaries are less likely to warrant a finding of fair use.

In addition, they also refute the claim that the documentary category is “vague.” They note that the International Documentary Association, which argued this, has an award ceremony for the same category, for example.

Finally, the MPAA and other creators respond to calls to extend the current exemptions to 4K content, such as AACS2 protected Ultra HD discs. They see no need for this, as the filmmakers and other groups haven’t shown that they suffer negative consequences in the current situation.

They have alternatives, such as regular Blu-ray discs, while allowing AACS2 circumvention could severely impact the Ultra HD ecosystem, they argue.

“No one has released a universal hack to all Ultra HD films protected by AACS2. The integrity of the AACS2 and Ultra HD technology is an especially important component of the ecosystem that is resulting in the increased availability of motion pictures.

“The Register and the Librarian should not undermine this integrity by authorizing widespread hacking, which could negatively impact ‘the market for or value of’ some of the industry’s most exciting products,” the Joint Creators add.

The Copyright Office will take all arguments into consideration before it makes a final decision later this year.

—

A copy of the Joint Creators reply is available here.

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BMG Wants Appeals Court to Rehear Cox Piracy Liability Case


Earlier this month, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned the $25 million piracy liability verdict against Internet provider Cox.

The panel of three judges concluded that the district court made an error in its jury instruction and ordered a new trial.

The erroneous instruction said that the ISP could be found liable for contributory infringement if it “knew or should have known of such infringing activity.” The Court of Appeals agrees that based on the law, the “should have known” standard is too low.

As a result of the ruling, music publisher BMG Rights Management and Cox would have to go head to head again in a new trial. However, according to BMG, the Court of Appeals itself made a mistake.

A few days ago the copyright holder petitioned the court for a rehearing en banc, asking for a do-over before all the judges of a court.

The music publisher argues that the appeals court judges mistakenly reached their decision based on a legal principle that applies to “inducement” of liability, while BMG was pursuing a claim of “material contribution.”

“The panel’s unprecedented application of a heightened knowledge standard creates a conflict with decisions and pattern jury instructions from other circuits as well as with the common-law rules underlying contributory infringement.

“All of those recognize that BMG’s material-contribution theory requires only constructive knowledge,” BMG’s brief adds.

Even if the appeals court persists with its assertion that the liability standard is “willful blindness” rather than “should have known,” a new trial would not be warranted, according to the music publisher.

They point out that plenty of evidence was presented which proved that Cox was wilfully blind to the copyright infringements and describe the erroneous instruction as a “harmless error of the most benign kind.”

The music publisher’s request for a rehearing is supported by the RIAA, which filed an amicus curiae brief together with the National Music Publishers Association.

Both music industry groups back BMG’s arguments and ask the appeals court to consider a rehearing, stating that it would be in the best interests of artists, songwriters, and other rightsholders.

“The level of copyright infringement that takes place over the Internet is ‘staggering,’ and it is vital that copyright owners have effective mechanisms to address it. It is also critical that copyright owners can adequately address infringement that occurs in other contexts.

“If the panel’s decision is not corrected, it would threaten the very incentives of artists, songwriters, and others to create valuable works and distribute them to the public,” the RIAA and NMPA add.

For the RIAA the case is particularly important since it filed a similar lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications last year.

Given what’s at stake, we can assume that Cox will protest the request for a rehearing. And it wouldn’t be a big surprise if other telecommunications companies take the same position.

—

BMG’s petition is available here (pdf) and a copy of the RIAA/NMPA motion can be found here (pdf).

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Pirate Site Operators’ Jail Sentences Overturned By Court of Appeal


With The Pirate Bay proving to be somewhat of an elusive and irritating target, in 2014 police took on a site capturing an increasing portion of the Swedish pirate market.

Unlike The Pirate Bay which uses torrents, Dreamfilm was a portal for streaming content and it quickly grew alongside the now-defunct Swefilmer to dominate the local illicit in-browser viewing sector. But after impressive growth, things came to a sudden halt.

In January 2015, Dreamfilm announced that the site would be shut down after one of its administrators was detained by the authorities and interrogated. A month later, several more Sweden-based sites went down including the country’s second largest torrent site Tankefetast, torrent site PirateHub, and streaming portal Tankefetast Play (TFPlay).

Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance described the four-site networks as one of “Europe’s leading players for illegal file sharing and streaming.”

Image published by Dreamfilm after the raiddreamfilm

After admitting they’d been involved in the sites but insisting they’d committed no crimes, last year four men aged between 21 and 31-years-old appeared in court charged with copyright infringement. It didn’t go well.

The Linköping District Court found them guilty and decided they should all go to prison, with the then 23-year-old founder receiving the harshest sentence of 10 months, a member of the Pirate Party who reportedly handled advertising receiving 8 months, and two others getting six months each. On top, they were ordered to pay damages of SEK 1,000,000 ($122,330) to film industry plaintiffs.

Like many similar cases in Sweden, the case went to appeal and late last week the court handed down its decision which amends the earlier decision in several ways.

Firstly, the Hovrätten (Court of Appeals) agreed that with the District Court’s ruling that the defendants had used dreamfilm.se, tfplay.org, tankafetast.com and piratehub.net as platforms to deliver movies stored on Russian servers to the public.

One defendant owned the domains, another worked as a site supervisor, while the other pair worked as a programmer and in server acquisition, the Court said.

Dagens Juridik reports that the defendants argued that the websites were not a prerequisite for people to access the films, and therefore they had not been made available to a new market.

However, the Court of Appeal agreed with the District Court’s assessment that the links meant that the movies had been made available to a “new audience”, which under EU law means that a copyright infringement had been committed. As far as the samples presented in the case would allow, the men were found to have committed between 45 and 118 breaches of copyright law.

The Court also found that the website operation had a clear financial motive, delivering movies to the public for free while earning money from advertising.

While agreeing with the District Court on most points, the Court of Appeals decided to boost the damages award from SEK 1,000,000 ($122,330) to SEK 4,250,000 ($519,902). However, there was much better news in respect of the prison sentences.

Taking into consideration the young age of the men (who before this case had no criminal records) and the unlikely event that they would offend again, the Court decided that none would have to go to prison as previously determined.

Instead, all of the men were handed conditional sentences with two ordered to pay daily fines, which are penalties based on the offender’s daily personal income.

Last week it was reported that Sweden is preparing to take a tougher line with large-scale online copyright infringers. Proposals currently with the government foresee a new crime of “gross infringement” under both copyright and trademark law, which could lead to sentences of up to six years in prison.

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When a Pro-Copyright Rant Goes Wrong….


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.

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Copyright Holders Call Out Costa Rica Over ThePirateBay.cr


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).

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Russia VPN Blocking Law Failing? No Provider Told To Block Any Site


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.

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New uTorrent Web Streams and Downloads Torrents in Your Browser


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.

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Spanish Authorities Launch New Campaign to Block Pirate Websites


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





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