Blizzard Targets Fan-Created ‘World of Warcraft’ Legacy Server


Over the years video game developer Blizzard Entertainment has published many popular game titles, including World of Warcraft (WoW).

First released in 2004, the multiplayer online role-playing game has been a massive success. It holds the record for the most popular MMORPG in history, with over 100 million subscribers.

While the current game looks entirely different from its first release, there are many nostalgic gamers who still enjoy the earlier editions. Unfortunately, however, they can’t play them. At least not legally.

The only option WoW fans have is to go to unauthorized fan projects which recreate the early gaming experience, such as Light’s Hope.

“We are what’s known as a ‘Legacy Server’ project for World of Warcraft, which seeks to emulate the experience of playing the game in its earliest iterations, including advancing through early expansions,” the project explains.

“If you’ve ever wanted to see what World of Warcraft was like back in 2004 then this is the place to be. Our goal is to maintain the same feel and structure as the realms back then while maintaining an open platform for development and operation.”

In recent years the project has captured the hearts of tens of thousands of die-hard WoW fans. At the time of writing, the most popular realm has more than 6,000 people playing from all over the world. Blizzard, however, is less excited.

The company has asked the developer platform GitHub to remove the code repository published by Light’s Hope. Blizzard’s notice targets several SQL databases stating that the layout and structure is nearly identical to the early WoW databases.

“The LightsHope spell table has identical layout and typically identical field names as the table from early WoW. We use database tables to represent game data, like spells, in WoW,” Blizzard writes.

“In our code, we use .sql files to represent the data layout of each table […]. MaNGOS, the platform off of which Light’s Hope appears to be built, uses a similar structure. The LightsHope spell_template table matches almost exactly the layout and field names of early WoW client database tables.”

This takedown notice had some effect, as people now see a “repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown” message when they access it in their browser.

While this may slow down development temporarily, it appears that the server itself is still running just fine. There were some downtime reports earlier this week, but it’s unknown whether that was related.

In addition to the GitHub repository, the official Twitter account was also suspended recently.

TorrentFreak contacted both Blizzard and Light’s Hope earlier this week for a comment on the situation. At the time of publication, we haven’t heard back.

Blizzard’s takedown notice comes just weeks after several organizations and gaming fans asked the US Copyright Office to make a DMCA circumvention exemption for “abandoned” games, including older versions of popular MMORPGs.

While it’s possible that such an exemption is granted in the future, it’s unlikely to apply to the public at large. The more likely scenario is that it would permit libraries, researchers, and museums to operate servers for these abandoned games.

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FOSDEM 3 & 4 February 2018 – Brussels


FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.

Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels.

No registration necessary.

 

FOSDEM 2018 – Presentations

Below are the three presentations listed that our three Team Mebers will be holding on Saturday 3 February. Should you whish to attent better make sure you  are on time to have a seat. Full is full!

 

3 February 2018: Wayland client basics – How to natively speak Wayland in your application, from the bottom up

Wayland, the next-generation display server protocol, is slowly but surely taking over the Linux desktop. Preexisting and new applications will have to adapt to this new environment that is fundamentally different from how things used to work on X11 for a long time. This talk gives you the basics of programming native Wayland clients in 2018: the Wayland architecture and protocol world including recent developments, what you can and cannot do, the steps to get something visible on the screen, and why you might not want to do a native application after all.

The presentation is intended to give a conceptual overview of things that any Wayland client programmer will have to look at. The architecture and design of Wayland will be shown and compared to X11. However, rather than porting applications from X11 to Wayland, the focus here will be on building native Wayland programs from the ground up. The Wayland ecosystem and relevant compositors will be described and suggestions for testing will be given. Furthermore, the process of getting a surface to the compositor for drawing it on the screen will be explained and all basic protocols needed for this such as the global registry, shared memory, surfaces, and shell surfaces including xdgwmbase will be introduced.

The talk will not go too deeply into programming specifics and the libwayland C API, but some common pitfalls and best practices will be mentioned.

Speaker: Philipp Kerling
Location: K.4.401
Time: 10:30 – 10:55
Event link: click

 

3 February 2018: Kodi v18 features and improvements – What we’ve been busy with

A short walk through of what we have been doing past year since v17 release and what we are still planning to do.

During the time we worked towards the final release of v17 some of our developers already took a head start for v18. During past year developers in and outside of the Kodi Team have been steadily refactoring and working on new features that will be included in the upcoming V18. Various parts have already been published in articles on our website though we will also sum up some parts that are in the pipe line. In total will try to do a brief rundown on what we hope will be included.

Speaker: Martijn Kaijser
Location: H.1309
Time: 12:30 – 12:55
Event link: click

 

3 Februrary 2018: Kodi and Embedded Linux – Moving Towards Common Windowing and Video Acceleration

In a world where a new single board computer (SBC) comes out every month it has become impossible to maintain all the proprietary methods that are used with the boards. A movement towards a unified windowing method and unified decoding methods has started. For Kodi version 18 a Direct Rendering Manager / Kernel Mode Setting (DRM/KMS) windowing method has been implemented. This allows any device that has a Linux kernel DRM driver to run kodi. The next step is video decoding, where each SBC has it’s own specific decoder and software to run it. The Linux kernel implements a Video4Linux2 (V4L2) subsystem where drivers can register a decoder to be used under a common API. Kodi needs to be able to use a zero-copy path in order to display these decoded frames on the screen. For this to happen we need to use DRM-PRIME buffer sharing and specific EGL extensions such as EGLEXTimagedmabuf_import to present the frames. All this together will allow Kodi 18 to run on a vast variety of SBCs that have DRM driver and a V4L2 driver available.

In order for Kodi to present decoded frames along with the GUI multiple planes have to be used. To use multiple planes an atomic DRM system has to be used. Atomic DRM allows control over each page flip and what is presented by each plane within one atomic commit. In Kodi this allows showing the Kodi GUI in the overlay plane and the decoded video frames in the primary plane. The decoded video frames exit the decoder in a semi-planar YUV format called NV12 (other formats may be possible as well). These NV12 frames can be presented directly in the primary plane and the DRM subsystem handles things like scaling and rotation.

Presenting directly to a DRM plane has some downsides that need to be addressed. Depending on the DRM driver things like scaling and deinterlacing may not be supported. In these cases a separate rendering method has to be used. This other rendering method is entirely done in OpenGLES using the EGL extension EGLEXTimagedmabuf_import. This method allows directly importing the NV12 video frame into OpenGLES and manipulation can be done from there via GLSL shaders. Kodi already implements shaders that do the YUV to RGB conversion needed to output the image to the display. These shaders also implement scaling via various methods (lanczos, spline36, etc) and deinterlacing via bobbing.

All this together will allow SBCs such as NXP i.MX6, Allwinner H3, Rockchip 3288 and 3328, Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c, and many more to work with Kodi without implementing any new methods. This work is underway is largely merged into Kodi master already.

Speaker: Lukas Rusak
Location: K.4.401
Time: 16:00 – 16:50
Event link: click

 

 





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Appeals Court Throws Out $25 Million Piracy Verdict Against Cox, Doesn’t Reinstate “Safe Harbor”


December 2015, a Virginia federal jury ruled that Internet provider Cox Communications was responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers.

The ISP was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered to pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million in damages.

Cox swiftly filed its appeal arguing that the District Court made several errors in the jury instructions. In addition, it asked for a clarification of the term “repeat infringer” in its favor.

Today the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled on the matter in a mixed decision which could have great consequences.

The Court ruled that the District Court indeed made a mistake in its jury instruction. Specifically, it 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.

When this is the case the appeals court can call for a new trial, and that is exactly what it did. This means that the $25 million verdict is off the table, and the same is true for the millions in attorney’s fees and costs BMG was previously granted.

It’s not all good news for Cox though. The most crucial matter in the case is whether Cox has safe harbor protection under the DMCA. In order to qualify, the company is required to terminate accounts of repeat infringers, when appropriate.

Cox argued that subscribers can only be seen as repeat infringers if they’ve been previously adjudicated in court, not if they merely received several takedown notices. This was still an open question, as the term repeat infringer is not clearly defined in the DMCA.

Today, however, the appeals court is pretty clear on the matter. According to Judge Motz’s opinion, shared by HWR, the language of the DMCA suggests that the term “infringer” is not limited to adjudicated infringers.

This is supported by legislative history as the House Commerce and Senate Judiciary Committee Reports both explained that “those who repeatedly or flagrantly abuse their access to the Internet through disrespect for the intellectual property rights of others should know that there is a realistic threat of losing that access.”

“The passage does not suggest that they should risk losing Internet access only once they have been sued in court and found liable for multiple instances of infringement,” Judge Motz writes in her opinion.

Losing Internet access would hardly be a “realistic threat” that would stop someone from pirating if he or she has already been punished several times in court, the argument goes.

This leads the Court of Appeals to conclude that the District Court was right: Cox is not entitled to safe harbor protection because it failed to implement a meaningful repeat infringer policy.

“Cox failed to qualify for the DMCA safe harbor because it failed to implement its policy in any consistent or meaningful way — leaving it essentially with no policy,” Judge Motz writes.

This means that, while Cox gets a new trial, it is still at a severe disadvantage. Not only that, the Court of Appeals interpretation of the repeat infringer question is also a clear signal to other Internet service providers to disconnect pirates based on repeated copyright holder complaints.

—

Judge Motz’s full opinion is available here (pdf).





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Court Orders Tickbox to Keep Pirate Streaming Addons Out


Kodi-powered set-top boxes are a great way to to stream video content to a TV, but sellers who ship these devices with unauthorized add-ons give them a bad reputation.

According to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy partnership comprised of Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, Tickbox TV is one of these bad actors.

Last year, ACE filed a lawsuit against the Georgia-based company, which sells Kodi-powered set-top boxes that stream a variety of popular media.

According to ACE, these devices are nothing more than pirate tools, allowing buyers to stream copyright-infringing content and being advertised as such. The coalition, therefore, asked the court for an injunction to prevent Tickbox from facilitating copyright infringement by removing all pirate add-ons from previously sold devices.

This week US District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald issued a preliminary injunction, which largely sides with the movie companies. According to the Judge, there is sufficient reason to believe that Tickbox can be held liable for inducing copyright infringement.

One of the claims is that Tickbox promoted its service for piracy purposes, and according to the Judge the movie companies provided enough evidence to make this likely. This includes various advertising messages the box seller used.

“There is ample evidence that, at least prior to Plaintiffs’commencement of this action, TickBox explicitly advertised the Device as a means to accessing unauthorized versions of copyrighted audiovisual content,” Judge Fitzgerald writes.

In its defense, Tickbox argued that it merely offered a computer which users can then configure to their liking. However, the Judge points out that the company went further, as it actively directed its users to install certain themes (builds) to watch movies, TV and sports.

“Thus, the fact that the Device is just a ‘computer’ that can be used for infringing and noninfringing purposes does not insulate TickBox from liability if [..] the Device is actually used for infringing purposes and TickBox encourages such use.”

Taking these and several other factors into account, the Court ruled that a preliminary injunction is warranted at this stage. After the lawsuit was filed, Tickbox already voluntarily removed much of the inducing advertisements and addons, and this will remain so.

The preliminary injunction compels TickBox to the current version of the user interface, without easy access to pirate add-ons. The devices should no longer contain links to any of the themes and addons that the movie companies have flagged as copyright infringing.

Tickbox had argued that a broad injunction could shut down its business, but the court counters this. Customers will still be able to use the box for legitimate purposes. If they are no longer interested it suggests that piracy was the main draw.

“[A]n injunction of this scope will not ‘shut down Defendant’s business’ as TickBox contends. In the event that such an injunction does shut TickBox down, that will be indicative not of an unjustifiably burdensome injunction, but of a nonviable business model,” Judge Fitzgerald writes.

The preliminary injunction is not final yet as there are several questions still unanswered.

It’s unclear, for example, if and how Tickbox should remove addons from previously sold devices. The Court, therefore, instructs both parties to attempt to reach agreement on these outstanding issues, to include them in an updated injunction.

The above findings are preliminary and apply specifically to the injunction request and the case itself will continue. However, the Court’s early opinion suggests that Tickbox has plenty of work ahead to prove its innocence.

—

A copy of the preliminary injunction is available here (pdf), and Judge Fitzgerald’s findings can be found here (pdf).

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Huge Rightsholder Coalition Calls on New EU Presidency to Remove Safe Harbors


While piracy of all kinds is often viewed as a threat to the creative industries, a new type of unauthorized content distribution has been gaining prominence over the past few years.

Sites like YouTube, that allow their users to upload all kinds of material – some of it infringing – are now seen as undermining a broad range of industries that rely on both video and audio to generate revenue.

The cries against such User Uploaded Content (UUC) sites are often led by the music industry, which complains that the safe harbor provisions of copyright law are being abused while UUC sites generate review from infringing content. In tandem, while that free content is made available, UUC sites have little or no incentive to pay for official content licenses, and certainly not at a rate considered fair by the industry.

This mismatch, between the price that content industries would like to achieve for licenses and what they actually achieve, is now known as the ‘Value Gap’.

Today, in advance of an EU meeting on the draft Copyright Directive, a huge coalition of rightsholder groups is calling on the new EU Presidency not to pass up an “unmissable opportunity” to find a solution to their problems.

In a letter addressed to the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which Bulgaria officially took over January 1, 2018, an army of rightsholders lay out their demands.

“We represent musical, audio-visual, literary, visual authors; performers; book, press, musical, scientific, technical and medical publishers; recorded music, film and TV producers; football leagues; broadcasters; distributors and photo agencies. These are at the very heart of Europe’s creative sector,” the groups write.

“We have formed an alliance to campaign for a solution to a major problem which is holding back our sector and jeopardizing future sustainability – the Transfer of Value, otherwise known as the Value Gap.

“User uploaded content services have become vast distributors of our creative works e.g. film, music, photos, broadcasts, text and sport content – all while refusing to negotiate fair or any copyright licences with us as right holders.”

Value Gap Coalition

Featuring groups representing many thousands of rightsholders, the coalition is the broadest yet to call for action against the ‘Value Gap’. Or, to put it another way, to demand a change in the law to prevent sites like YouTube, Facebook and other hosting platforms from “hiding” behind provisions designed to protect them from the infringing activities of others.

“This problem is caused by a lack of clarity surrounding the application of copyright to certain online services and the abuse of European copyright ‘safe harbor’ rules in the e-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) by those services,” the coalition writes.

Referencing the EU Copyright Directive proposal tabled by the European Commission in September 2016, the coalition says that UUC services communicating content to the public should be compelled to obtain licenses for that content. If they play an “active role” through promotion or optimization of content, UUC platforms should be denied ‘safe harbors’ under copyright law, they argue.

Noting that there is “no solution” to the problem without the above fixes, the coalition cites last year’s ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union which found that The Pirate Bay knowingly provide users with a platform to share copyright-infringing links.

“It is important to recall that the underlying policy objective of this legislation is to address the current unfairness in the online market due to the misapplication of copyright liability rules by UUC services. We would therefore like to stress that the focus should remain on finding effective solutions to tackle this issue.

“As an alliance, we look forward to working with your Presidency to achieve an effective solution to the Value Gap problem for the benefit of Europe,” the coalition concludes.

The letter, addressed to Prime Minister Borissov, Minister Pavlova and Minister Banov, arrives in the wake of an alert sounded by several Members of the European Parliament.

Earlier this month they warned that the EU’s proposed mandatory upload filters – which could see UUC sites pre-screen user-uploaded content for infringement – amount to “censorship machines” that will do more harm than good.

The full letter can be found here (pdf)

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T-Mobile Blocks Pirate Sites Then Reports Itself For Possible Net Neutrality Violation


For the past eight years, Austria has been struggling with the thorny issue of pirate site blocking. Local ISPs have put up quite a fight but site blocking is now a reality, albeit with a certain amount of confusion.

After a dizzying route through the legal system, last November the Supreme Court finally ruled that The Pirate Bay and other “structurally-infringing” sites including 1337x.to and isohunt.to can be blocked, if rightsholders have exhausted all other options.

The Court based its decision on the now-familiar BREIN v Filmspeler and BREIN v Ziggo and XS4All cases that received European Court of Justice rulings last year. However, there is now an additional complication, this time on the net neutrality front.

After being passed in October 2015 and coming into force in April 2016, the Telecom Single Market (TSM) Regulation established the principle of non-discriminatory traffic management in the EU. The regulation still allows for the blocking of copyright-infringing websites but only where supported by a clear administrative or judicial decision. This is where T-Mobile sees a problem.

In addition to blocking sites named specifically by the court, copyright holders also expect the ISP to block related platforms, such as clones and mirrors, that aren’t specified in the same manner.

So, last week, after blocking several obscure Pirate Bay clones such as proxydl.cf, the ISP reported itself to the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR) for a potential net neutrality breach.

“It sounds paradoxical, but this should finally bring legal certainty in a long-standing dispute over pirate sites. T-Mobile Austria has filed with regulatory authority RTR a kind of self-report, after blocking several sites on the basis of a warning by rights holders,” T-Mobile said in a statement.

“The background to the communication to the RTR, through which T-Mobile intends to obtain an assessment by the regulator, is a very unsatisfactory legal situation in which operators have no opportunity to behave in conformity with the law.

“The service provider is forced upon notification by the copyright owner to even judge about possible copyright infringements. At the same time, the provider is violating the principle of net neutrality by setting up a ban.”

T-Mobile says the problem is complicated by rightsholders who, after obtaining a blocking order forcing named ISPs to block named pirate sites (as required under EU law), send similar demands to other ISPs that were not party to court proceedings. The rightsholders also send blocking demands when blocked sites disappear and reappear under a new name, despite those new names not being part of the original order.

According to industry body Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA), there is a real need for clarification. It’s hoped that T-Mobile reporting itself for a potential net neutrality breach will have the desired effect.

“For more than two years, we have been trying to find a solution with the involved interest groups and the responsible ministry, which on the one hand protects the rights of the artists and on the other hand does not force the providers into the role of a judge,” complains Maximilian Schubert, Secretary General of the ISPA.

“The willingness of the rights holders to compromise had remained within manageable limits. Now they are massively increasing the pressure and demanding costly measures, which the service providers see as punishment for them providing legal security for their customers for many years.”

ISPA hopes that the telecoms regulator will now help to clear up this uncertainty.

“We now hope that the regulator will give a clear answer here. Because from our point of view, the assessment of legality cannot and should not be outsourced to companies,” Schubert concludes.

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New Anti-Piracy Coalition Calls For Canadian Website Blocking


In recent years pirate sites have been blocked around the world, from Europe, through Asia, and even Down Under.

While many of the large corporations backing these blockades have their roots in North America, blocking efforts have been noticeably absent there. This should change, according to a new anti-piracy coalition that was launched in Canada this week.

Fairplay Canada, which consists of a broad range of organizations with ties to the entertainment industry, calls on the local telecom regulator CRTC to institute a national website blocking program.

The coalition’s members include Bell, Cineplex, Directors Guild of Canada, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Movie Theatre Association of Canada, and Rogers Media, which all share the goal of addressing the country’s rampant piracy problem.

The Canadian blocklist should be maintained by a yet to be established non-profit organization called “Independent Piracy Review Agency” (IPRA) and both IPRA and the CRTC would be overseen by the Federal Court of Appeal, the organizations propose.

“What we are proposing has been effective in countries like the UK, France, and Australia,” says Dr. Shan Chandrasekar, President and CEO of Asian Television Network International Limited (ATN), who is filing Fairplay Canada’s application.

“We are ardent supporters of this incredible coalition that has been formed to propose a new tool to empower the CRTC to address online piracy in Canada. We have great faith in Canadian regulators to modernize the tools available to help creators protect the content they make for Canadians’ enjoyment.”

The proposal is unique in the sense that it’s the first of its kind in North America and also has support from major players in the Telco industry. Since most large ISPs also have ties to media companies of their own, the latter is less surprising as it may seem at first glance.

Bell, for example, is not only the largest Internet provider in Canada but also owns the television broadcasting and production company Bell Media, which applauds the new plan.

“Bell is pleased to work with our partners across the industry and the CRTC on this important step in ensuring the long-term viability of the Canadian creative sector,” says Randy Lennox, President of Bell Media.

“Digital rights holders need up-to-date tools to combat piracy where it’s happening, on the Internet, and the process proposed by the coalition will provide just that, fairly, openly and effectively,” he adds.

Thus far the Government’s response to the plan has been rather reserved. When an early version of the plans leaked last month, Canadaland quoted a spokesperson who said that the Government is committed to opening doors instead of building walls.

Digital rights group OpenMedia goes a step further and brands the proposal a censorship plan which will violate net neutrality and limit people’s right to freedom of expression.

“Everybody agrees that content creators deserved to be paid for their work. But the proposal from this censorship coalition goes too far,” Executive Director Laura Tribe says.

“FairPlay Canada’s proposal is like using a machine gun to kill a mosquito. It will undoubtedly lead to legitimate content and speech being censored online violating our right to free expression and the principles of net neutrality, which the federal government has consistently pledged support for.”

While CTRC is reviewing FairPlay Canada’s plans, OpenMedia has launched a petition to stop the effort in its tracks, which has been signed by more than 45,000 Canadians to date.

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Udemy Targets ‘Pirate’ Site Giving Away its Paid Courses For Free


While there’s no shortage of people who advocate free sharing of movies and music, passions are often raised when it comes to the availability of educational information.

Significant numbers of people believe that learning should be open to all and that texts and associated materials shouldn’t be locked away by copyright holders trying to monetize knowledge. Of course, people who make a living creating learning materials see the position rather differently.

A clash of these ideals is brewing in the United States where online learning platform Udemy has been trying to have some of its courses taken down from FreeTutorials.us, a site that makes available premium tutorials and other learning materials for free.

Early December 2017, counsel acting for Udemy and a number of its individual and corporate instructors (Maximilian Schwarzmüller, Academind GmbH, Peter Dalmaris, Futureshock Enterprises, Jose Marcial Portilla, and Pierian Data) wrote to FreeTutorials.us with DMCA takedown notice.

“Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’), this communication serves as a notice of infringement and request for removal of certain web content available on freetutorials.us,” the letter reads.

“I hereby request that you remove or disable access to the material listed in Exhibit A in as expedient a fashion as possible. This communication does not constitute a waiver of any right to recover damages incurred by virtue of any such unauthorized activities, and such rights as well as claims for other relief are expressly retained.”

A small sample of Exhibit A

On January 10, 2018, the same law firm wrote to Cloudflare, which provides services to FreeTutorials. The DMCA notice asked Cloudflare to disable access to the same set of infringing content listed above.

It seems likely that whatever happened next wasn’t to Udemy’s satisfaction. On January 16, an attorney from the same law firm filed a DMCA subpoena at a district court in California. A DMCA subpoena can enable a copyright holder to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer without having to file a lawsuit and without needing a signature from a judge.

The subpoena was directed at Cloudflare, which provides services to FreeTutorials. The company was ordered to hand over “all identifying information identifying the owner, operator and/or contact person(s) associated with the domain www.freetutorials.us, including but not limited to name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), Internet protocol connection records, administrative records and billing records from the time the account was established to the present.”

On January 26, the date by which Cloudflare was ordered to hand over the information, Cloudflare wrote to FreeTutorials with a somewhat late-in-the-day notification.

“We received the attached subpoena regarding freetutorials.us, a domain managed through your Cloudflare account. The subpoena requires us to provide information in our systems related to this website,” the company wrote.

“We have determined that this is a valid subpoena, and we are required to provide the requested information. In accordance with our Privacy Policy, we are informing you before we provide any of the requested subscriber information. We plan to turn over documents in response to the subpoena on January 26th, 2018, unless you intervene in the case.”

With that deadline passing last Friday, it’s safe to say that Cloudflare has complied with the subpoena as the law requires. However, TorrentFreak spoke with FreeTutorials who told us that the company doesn’t hold anything useful on them.

“No, they have nothing,” the team explained.

Noting that they’ll soon dispense with the services of Cloudflare, the team confirmed that they had received emails from Udemy and its instructors but hadn’t done a lot in response.

“How about a ‘NO’? was our answer to all the DMCA takedown requests from Udemy and its Instructors,” they added.

FreeTutorials (FTU) are affiliated with FreeCoursesOnline (FCO) and seem passionate about what they do. In common with others who distribute learning materials online, they express a belief in free education for all, irrespective of financial resources.

“We, FTU and FCO, are a group of seven members assorted as a team from different countries and cities. We are JN, SRZ aka SunRiseZone, Letap, Lihua Google Drive, Kaya, Zinnia, Faiz MeemBazooka,” a spokesperson revealed.

“We’re all members and colleagues and we also have our own daily work and business stuff to do. We have been through that phase of life when we didn’t have enough money to buy books and get tuition or even apply for a good course that we always wanted to have, so FTU & FCO are just our vision to provide Free Education For Everyone.

“We would love to change our priorities towards our current and future projects, only if we manage to get some faithful FTU’ers to join in and help us to grow together and make FTU a place it should be.”

TorrentFreak requested comment from Udemy but at the time of publication, we were yet to hear back. However, we did manage to get in touch with Jonathan Levi, an Udemy instructor who sent this takedown notice to the site in October 2017:

“I’m writing to you on behalf of SuperHuman Enterprises, LLC. You are in violation of our copyright, using our images, and linking to pirated copies of our courses. Remove them IMMEDIATELY or face severe legal action….You have 48 hours to comply,” he wrote, adding:

“And in case you’re going to say I don’t have evidence that I own the files, it’s my fucking face in the videos.”

Levi says that the site had been non-responsive so now things are being taken to the next level.

“They don’t reply to takedowns, so we’ve joined a class action lawsuit against FTU lead by Udemy and a law firm specializing in this type of thing,” Levi concludes.

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Piracy Can Help Music Sales of Many Artists, Research Shows


The debate over whether online piracy helps or hurts music sales has been dragging on for several decades now.

The issue has been researched extensively with both positive and negative effects being reported, often varying based on the type of artist, music genre and media, among other variables.

One of the more extensive studies was published this month in the peer-reviewed Information Economics and Policy journal, by Queen’s University economics researcher Jonathan Lee.

In a paper titled ‘Purchase, pirate, publicize: Private-network music sharing and market album sales’ he examined the effect of BitTorrent-based piracy on both digital and physical music sales.

We covered an earlier version of the study two years ago when it was still a work in progress. With updates to the research methods and a data sample, the results are now more clear.

The file-sharing data was obtained from an unnamed private BitTorrent tracker and covers a data set of 250,000 albums and more than five million downloads. These were matched to US sales data for thousands of albums provided by Nielsen SoundScan.

By refining the estimation approach and updating the matching technique, the final version of the paper shows some interesting results.

Based on the torrent tracker data, Lee finds that piracy can boost sales of mid-tier artists, both for physical CDs and digital downloads. For the most popular artists, this effect is reversed. In both cases, the impact is the largest for digital sales.

“I now find that top artists are harmed and mid-tier artists may be helped in both markets, but that these effects are larger for digital sales,” Lee tells TorrentFreak. “This is consistent with the idea that people are more willing to switch between digital piracy and digital sales than between digital piracy and physical CDs.”

The findings lead to the conclusion that there is no ideal ‘one-size-fits-all’ response to piracy. In fact, some unauthorized sharing may be a good thing.

This is in line with observations from musicians themselves over the past years. Several top artists have admitted the positive effects of piracy, including Ed Sheeran, who recently said that he owes his career to it.

“I know that’s a bad thing to say, because I’m part of a music industry that doesn’t like illegal file sharing,” Sheeran said in an interview with CBS. “Illegal file sharing was what made me. It was students in England going to university, sharing my songs with each other.”

Sheeran sharing on TPB

Today, Sheeran is in a totally different position of course. As one of the top artists, he would now be hurt by piracy. However, the new stars of tomorrow may still reap the benefits.

According to the researcher, the music industry should realize that shutting down pirate sites may not always be the best option. On the contrary, file-sharing sites may be useful as promotional platforms in some cases.

“Following above, a policy of total shutdown of private file sharing networks seems excessively costly (compared with their relatively small impact on sales) and unwise (as a one-size-fits-all policy). It would be better to make legal consumption more convenient, reducing the demand for piracy as an alternative to purchasing,” Lee tells us.

“It would also be smart to experiment with releasing music onto piracy networks themselves, especially for up-and-coming artists, similar to the free promotion afforded by commercial radio.”

The researcher makes another interesting extrapolation from the findings. In recent years, some labels and artists have signed exclusive deals with some streaming platforms. This means that content is not available everywhere, and this fragmentation may make piracy look more appealing.

“Here you can view piracy as a non-fragmented alternative platform to Spotify et al. Thus consumers will have a strong incentive to use a single non-fragmented platform (piracy) over having multiple subscriptions to fragmented platforms,” Lee says.

It would be better for the labels to publish their music on all platforms, and to make these more appealing and convenient than the pirate alternative.

The data used for the research was collected several years ago before the big streaming boom, so it might be that the results are different today. However, it is clear that the effect of piracy on sales is not as uniform as the music industry often portrays it.

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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Arrr: Top Tips to Spot The Differences Between Pirate and Legal Sites


There’s a persistent theory that people exist who are using pirate sites but don’t realize that they’re unauthorized and/or illegal. While that seems likely, it’s hard to believe the volumes are particularly significant.

Nevertheless, numerous campaigns have attempted to enlighten consumers as to what is and isn’t legal and this week the Federation Against Copyright Theft raised the issue once again.

Tagging onto UK anti-fraud awareness campaign Take Five, the anti-piracy outfit asked people to take five minutes to consider the legality of the site or service they’re currently consuming.

<Take Five….

FACT’s advice above is basically sound. They ask people to do their research on the sites FindAnyFilm and GetItRight, both of which should give consumers an idea of where content can be obtained legally. Trouble is, neither resource is comprehensive, so five minutes of research could turn into ten or fifteen, by which time people could get bored of trying to do the right thing.

So, with this in mind, here are a few light-hearted tips to help people spot whether the site they’re using is authorized by the movie industry or a product of a swashbuckling mind.

Does the site want your name, address and life history?

If the site you’re accessing looks really polished, has a positive Wikipedia page, but won’t give you anything more than a trailer without handing over your full identity and credit card details, this is probably a legal platform.

Since they have to license movies from Hollywood and other filmmakers, sites like these cost a lot of money to run. As a result, they want your money to pay the bills and they like to make sure you can pay up front.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. No money, no access – capiche?

Does the site look polished but doesn’t ask for a dime?

If the site you’re looking at seems like the one mentioned above but doesn’t seem to care who you are, this is starting to look like a pirate site. If it then offers up thousands of movies and TV shows without accessing your wallet or dental records, you’re definitely on the high seas.

While this position is pleasurable for people with a penchant for piracy, there are plenty of points to ponder.

Is the site already starting to get on your nerves a bit?

You’re browsing a site, looking at all the beautiful movies and TV shows on offer, then one takes your fancy. You click it with both anticipation and excitement but instead of the video appearing, a new tab or popup appears in your browser.

If this unexpected visitor offers a penis extension, a night out with a girl in your area, or a get-rich-quick scheme you feel you need but don’t understand, this is probably a pirate site.

These stupid offers are the price you pay for not paying. This is how it works.

While movies and TV shows cost money to create and require financial support from the consumer, pirate sites use various techniques to obtain that content for free. Then, with a wave of a magic wand, they cover the costs of delivering it to pirates using advertising.

However, due to pressures put on them by the content industries, pirate sites generally have to serve up poor quality ads. Crappy ads everywhere = almost definitely a pirate site.

The movie site i’m using is really confusing, is it legal?

After obtaining your banking details, mother’s maiden name, and blood type, legal sites are generally very straightforward. Pleasurably content and feature-rich, services like Netflix and Spotify are simplicity itself to use. Their interfaces are clean, tidy, and don’t do anything unexpected. These are just some of the key features you get in return for handing over your money to a legal service.

On the other hand, however, if you’re on a site that has six different download buttons and none of them seem to actually download anything, this is probably a pirate site, and a low grade one at that.

Back away quickly, regroup, and never go back – unless you have an ad-blocker turned all the way up to 11, of course.

Wow! This site has all the latest movies! Is it legal?

Some of Hollywood’s greatest assets are its just-released movies. It holds these tightly, like a protective mother, restricting viewing only to those who pay large amounts of money for the privilege.

As a general rule, if you’re watching them for free on the Internet, chances are it’s not only unauthorized but probably illegal too. That being said, most people don’t give a damn due to all the excitement, free content, and tiny chances of being caught.

Note: If a movie came out today, last week, or even last month, and you’ve spent a large sum of money to watch it alongside hundreds of noisy others in a big room while eating over-priced taste-free snacks, CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve found the only way to watch the latest movies legally.

I really love this site, it has everything I want in one place. Is that legal?

STOP. This is definitely an illegal site. While it is the movie and TV industries’ job to entertain the masses, it also has a side mission to ensure that you will never – EVER – find all the content you want in one place.

Remember: to stay legal and have access to the broadest range of video content, you need to subscribe to several official services while handing over handfuls of cash every month.

If you find that after parting with large sums of cash you still can’t find all the content you want, then you can be sure you’re doing this by the book and entirely legally. Only people using pirate services find all the stuff they need in one or two places.

A service is offering me every TV channel for £10/$10/€10 per month. Legal?

If your local TV cable or satellite provider demands a pile of cash an inch thick to access every channel they have for a month, please be informed they have worked very hard to achieve that monopoly position.

There is no way on planet earth that another legal supplier will be able to undercut them by 90%. Yes, that includes fully-loaded Fire TV Sticks bought off Pete down the pub.

As a rule of thumb, if you’re delighted with the ‘special’ TV service you bought off Facebook yet still have enough money to take the family out for a meal at a half decent restaurant, alarm bells should be ringing.

Legal buyers can generally afford to gorge on either TV or food. If you’re full to bursting due to excessive consumption of both, you’re either using a pirate service or have enough money not to need one.

These tips are not exhaustive – feel free to add your own in the comments

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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