At the end of the year movie industry insiders traditionally receive their screener copies, which they use to vote on the Oscars and other awards.

As is tradition, quite a few of these advance screeners will leak on various pirate sites. In recent years one group has drawn quite a bit of attention, due to both the timing and volume of their releases.

Hive-CM8 appear to have good sources and often manage to get their hands on many prominent screeners, which are gradually released to the public.

This year it started with “I Love You, Daddy,” which was dropped by the distributor after Louis C.K. was accused of sexual misconduct. Following two weeks of silence, the second release followed on Christmas Eve when “Last Flag Flying,” an American comedy-drama film, appeared online.

The timing is once again carefully chosen. Hive-CM8 specifically notes that it prefers to avoid releasing on Christmas Day, but it nonetheless used the opportunity to wish people a Merry Christmas.

“We decided to make one [release] before Christmas, not on Christmas we are the nice ones. In this spirit, Merry Christmas and stay tuned,” the release notes read.

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The ‘stay tuned’ part suggested that more were coming, and this was indeed the case. Just a few hours ago three additional screeners were posted online, and quickly made their way to public pirate sites.

Screener copies of “I, Tonya,” “Lady Bird,” and “Call Me By Your Name” are now widely available online. Interestingly, it was still Christmas in parts of the world when they came out, but apparently not where Hive-CM8 are.

The group again wishes its ‘followers’ a Merry Christmas but also adds that people should see these movies on the big screen to support the filmmakers. The screener releases are mostly for those who are not in the position to do so, they add.

“What a nice release after Christmas. Merry Christmas to everyone, from me and TiTAN. Don´t forget watching a Screener is not like the real thing, you should still all go to the cinema and support the Producers,” the release notes read.

“We are especially sharing this for the people who cant visit the cinema due to illness, or because it is a limited release that doesn’t make it to their country. So those people also can experience some award nominated movies..Enjoy.”

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If previous years are any indication, the leaks won’t stop at five screeners this year. And indeed, Hive-CM8 suggests that they have many more screeners in their possession. There are still a few missing though, including Downsizing, Hostiles and Phantom Thread.

“We are still missing Downsizing, Hostiles, and Phantom Thread. Anyone want to share them for the collection? Yes we want to have them all if possible, we are collectors, we don’t want to release them all,” they write.

While not all screeners will come out, more are likely to follow during the weeks to come. Thus far Hive-CM8 has only given one guarantee: they’re not going to upload “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

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Ask someone to name a search engine and it’s likely that 95 out of 100 will say ‘Google’. There are plenty of others, of course, but its sheer dominance means that even giants like Bing have to wait around for a mention.

However, if people are looking for something special, such as video and music files, for example, there’s an interesting search engine that’s largely flying under the radar. FilePursuit, accessible via the web or directly from its dedicated Android apps, is somewhat of a revelation.

What FilePursuit does is trawl the Internet looking for web servers that are not only packed with content but are readily accessible to the outside world. This means that a search on the site invariably turns up treasure troves of material, all of it for immediate and direct HTTP download.

TorrentFreak caught up with the operator of the site who himself is a very interesting character.

“I’m a 21-year-old undergrad student from New Delhi, India, currently studying engineering. I started this file search engine project all by myself to learn web development and this is my first project,” he informs TF.

“I picked this project because I was surprised to find that there are lots of ‘open directory’ websites and no one is maintaining any type of record or database on them. There are thousands of ‘open directory’ websites containing a lot of amazing stuff not discovered yet, so I made them discoverable.”

Plenty of files from almost any search

FilePursuit began its life around September 2016 and since then has been receiving website submission requests (sites to be indexed by FilePursuit) from people all over the world. As such the platform is somewhat of a community effort but in respect of running the operation, it’s all done by one man.

“FilePursuit saves time in two ways: by eliminating the need to find file manually, and by performing searches at high speeds efficiently. Without this, you would have to look at sites one by one and pore over the contents of each carefully – a tedious prospect,” he explains.

“FilePursuit automatically compares your criteria to billions of webpages and gives you results in a fraction of a second. You can perform hundreds of searches in the course of a few minutes, altering the criteria as you narrow down results.”

So if Google dominates the search space, why doesn’t it do a better job of finding files than the relatively low-key FilePursuit? Its operator says it’s all about functionality.

“FilePursuit is a file search engine, it generates file links as results while other search engines give out webpages as results. However, it’s possible to search for file links directly from Google too but it’s limited to documents only. On FilePursuit you can search for almost any filetype just by selecting ‘custom’ and typing filetype in search results.”

Of course, it would be impossible for FilePursuit to find any files if webmasters and server operators didn’t leave them open to the public. Considering it’s simplicity itself to find all the latest movies and TV shows widely accessible, is this a question of stupidity, kindness, carelessness, or something else?

“In my opinion, most people are unaware that they have created an open directory and on the other hand some people want to share interesting files from their servers, which is very generous of them,” FilePursuit’s creator says.

When carrying out searches it really is amazing what FilePursuit can turn up. Files lead to directory results and some can contain many thousands of files, from every music artist one can think of through to otherwise private text files that people really should take more care over. Other things are really quite odd.

“When I look for ‘open directory’ websites, sometimes I find really amazing stuff and sometimes even bizarre stuff too. This one time, I found a collection of funeral recordings,” FilePursuit’s owner says.

While even funeral recordings can have a copyright owner somewhere, it’s the more regular mainstream content that’s most easily found with the service. The site doesn’t carry any copyrighted content at all but that doesn’t mean it’s unresponsive to takedown demands.

“I have more than three million file links indexed in my database so it can be a bit hard for me to check for copyrighted content. Although whenever I receive a mail from copyright holders or someone representing copyright holders, I always uphold their request of deleting the file link from my database and also explain to them that the file link they requested me to delete, that particular file may still exist.”

In recent months, FilePursuit has enjoyed a significant upsurge in traffic but it’s still a relatively small player in the search engine space with around 7,000 to 10,000 hits per day. However, this clever site is able to deal with five times that traffic and upgrading servers to cope with surges can be carried out in two to three minutes, “at most.”

So the big question remains – What will you find under the tree today?

FilePursuit website here, Android apps (free, pro)

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Over the past couple of decades, piracy of live TV has broadly taken two forms. That which relies on breaking broadcaster encryption (such as card sharing and hacked set-top boxes), and the more recent developments of P2P and IPTV-style transmission.

With the former under pressure and P2P systems such as Sopcast and AceTorrent moving along in the background, streaming from servers is now the next big thing, whether that’s for free via third-party Kodi plugins or for a small fee from premium IPTV providers.

Of course, copyright holders don’t like any of this usage but with their for-profit strategy, commercial IPTV providers have a big target on their backs. More evidence of this was revealed recently when UK-based IPTV service ACE TV announced they were taking action to avoid problems in the country.

In a message to prospective and existing customers, ACE TV said that potential legal issues were behind its decision to accept no new customers while locking down its service.

“It saddens me to announce this, but due to pressure from the authorities in the UK, we are no longer selling new subscriptions. This obviously includes trials,” the announcement reads.

Noting that it would take new order for just 24 hours more, ACE TV insisted that it wasn’t shutting down but would lock down the service while closing Facebook.

TF sources and unconfirmed rumors online suggest that the Federation Against Copyright Theft and partners the Premier League are involved. However, ACE TV didn’t respond to TorrentFreak’s request for comment so we’re unable to confirm or deny the allegations.

That being said, even if the threats came directly from the police, it’s likely that the approach would’ve been initially prompted by companies connected to FACT, since the anti-piracy outfit often puts forward names of services for investigation on behalf of its partners.

Perhaps surprisingly, ACE TV is legally incorporated in the UK as Ace Hosting Limited, a fact it makes clear on its website. While easy to find, the company’s registered address is shared by dozens of other companies, indicating a mail forwarding operation rather than a place servers or staff can be found.

This proxy location may well be the reason the company feels emboldened to carry on some level of service rather than shutting down completely, but its legal basis for doing so is interesting at best, precarious at worst.

“This website, any content contained herein and any contract brought into being as a result of usage of this website are governed by and construed in accordance with English Law,” ACE TV’s website reads.

“The parties to any such contract agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. All contracts are concluded in English.”

It seems likely that ACE TV has been threatened under UK law, since that’s where it’s incorporated. That would seem to explain why its concerned about UK authorities and their potential effect on the business. On the other hand, however, the service claims to operate entirely legally, but under the laws of the United States. It even has a repeat infringer policy.

“Ace Hosting operates as an intermediary to cache and deliver content hosted by others at the instruction of our subscribers. We cannot remove content hosted by others,” the company says.

“As an intermediary, we are entitled to rely upon (among other things) the DMCA safe harbor available to system caching service providers and we maintain policies and procedures to terminate subscribers that would be considered repeat infringers under the DMCA.”

Whether the notices on the site have been advised by a legal professional or are there to present an air of authenticity is unclear but it’s precarious for a service of this nature to rely solely on conduit status in order to avoid liability.

Marketing, prior conduct, and overall intent play a major role in such cases and when all of that is aired in the cold light of day, the situation can look very different to a judge, particularly in the UK, where no similar cases have been successfully defended to date.

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Like most countries, France is struggling to find ways to stop online piracy running rampant. A number of options have been tested thus far, with varying results.

One of the more interesting cases has been running since 2015, when music industry group SNEP took Google and Microsoft to court demanding automated filtering of ‘pirate’ search results featuring three local artists.

Before the High Court of Paris, SNEP argued that searches for the artists’ names plus the word “torrent” returned mainly infringing results on Google and Bing. Filtering out results with both sets of terms would reduce the impact of people finding pirate content through search, they said.

While SNEP claimed that its request was in line with Article L336-2 of France’s intellectual property code, which allows for “all appropriate measures” to prevent infringement, both Google and Microsoft fought back, arguing that such filtering would be disproportionate and could restrict freedom of expression.

The Court eventually sided with the search engines, noting that torrent is a common noun that refers to a neutral communication protocol.

“The requested measures are thus tantamount to general monitoring and may block access to lawful websites,” the High Court said.

Despite being told that its demands were too broad, SNEP decided to appeal. The case was heard in November where concerns were expressed over potential false positives.

Since SNEP even wants sites with “torrent” in their URL filtered out via a “fully automated procedures that do not require human intervention”, this very site – TorrentFreak.com – could be sucked in. To counter that eventuality, SNEP proposed some kind of whitelist, NextInpact reports.

With no real consensus on how to move forward, the parties were advised to enter discussions on how to get closer to the aim of reducing piracy but without causing collateral damage. Last week the parties agreed to enter negotiations so the details will now have to be hammered out between their respective law firms. Failing that, they will face a ruling from the court.

If this last scenario plays out, the situation appears to favor the search engines, who have a High Court ruling in their favor and already offer comprehensive takedown tools for copyright holders to combat the exploitation of their content online.

Meanwhile, other elements of the French recording industry have booked a notable success against several pirate sites.

SCPP, which represents Warner, Universal, Sony and thousands of others, went to court in February this year demanding that local ISPs Bouygues, Free, Orange, SFR and Numéricable prevent their subscribers from accessing ExtraTorrent, isoHunt, Torrent9 and Cpasbien.

Like SNEP in the filtering case, SCPP also cited Article L336-2 of France’s intellectual property code, demanding that the sites plus their variants, mirrors and proxies should be blocked by the ISPs so that their subscribers can no longer gain access.

This week the Paris Court of First Instance sided with the industry group, ordering the ISPs to block the sites. The service providers were also told to pick up the bill for costs.

These latest cases are yet more examples of France’s determination to crack down on piracy.

Early December it was revealed that since its inception, nine million piracy warnings have been sent to citizens via the Hadopi anti-piracy agency. Since the launch of its graduated response regime in 2010, more than 2,000 cases have been referred to prosecutors, resulting in 189 criminal convictions.

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