Piracy settlement letters have become a serious threat in countries all round the world.

Until now, Dutch Internet users have been spared from this practice but local movie distributor Dutch Filmworks would like that to change.

Two years ago the company received permission from the Dutch Data Protection Authority to track the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who shared pirated movies.

However, that was only the first hurdle. The next step was to identify the subscribers behind the IP-addresses and Dutch Internet provider Ziggo didn’t want to share any customer data without a court order.

The case went to court, where the movie company requested the personal details of 377 account holders whose addresses were used to share a copy of “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”.

This didn’t go as planned for Dutch FilmWorks. In February, the Central Netherlands Court denied the company’s request for data and last month the Court of Appeal reached the same conclusion.

Both courts concluded that Dutch Filmworks’ plans lacked transparency and it’s not clear what the movie company plans to do with the personal data it obtains. Dutch Filmworks said that it could either warn subscribers or request damages, but the criteria remain a guess.

It also remains unclear how large the proposed settlements will be. An initial figure of €150 per infringement was mentioned in the past, but this number could also be significantly higher.

The movie company is unhappy with both verdicts and told the Dutch newspaper NRC that it will take the matter to the Supreme Court. This means that the 377 account holders from ISP Ziggo remain at risk.

In theory, it’s not impossible to obtain an order compelling Dutch Internet providers to hand over personal details of accused pirates. However, the previous verdicts make it clear that Dutch Filmworks has to come with a concrete plan.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court must find a balance between the privacy rights of subscribers and Dutch Filmworks’ intellectual property rights. When there’s too much uncertainty for accused subscribers, their rights tend to weigh stronger.

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





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At the end of the year, movie industry insiders traditionally receive the screener copies that are used to vote on the Oscars and other awards.

As is tradition, quite a few of these advance screeners will leak on various pirate sites. Last Christmas, the first screeners had yet to leak, but this year pirates got their presents early.

The first screener copy that leaked last week was ‘Uncut Gems,’ which was soon followed by ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire.’ This week ‘JoJo Rabbit’ followed, and just a few hours ago a copy of ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ appeared online.

The movies came out via release groups EVO and Hive-CM8, which both have a track record of getting their hands on these screeners.

Hive-CM8 has drawn considerable attention in the past due to the timing and volume of its releases. Four years ago high-quality copies of some of the hottest Hollywood productions appeared online, with some titles even beating their official theatrical releases.

This sparked outrage from Hollywood and an unprecedented apology from Hive-CM8. Going forward, the group promised not to release any movies too early. And indeed, in the three years that followed, leaks came later and in lower numbers.

However, that doesn’t mean that the group plans to stay away from blockbuster titles entirely. In the notes that come with today’s release of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Hive-CM8 specifically fishes for some top titles.

“We are looking for frozen/star wars/1917/knives out. Who wants to be the hero that can get that for us?” the group writes.

While that may sound appealing to some people, it also shows that the group doesn’t have access to these screeners yet. This means that it’s very possible that they won’t leak at all.

Last year, Hive-CM8 called upon the public to help them get Creed 2, Destroyer, Mortal Engines, Frontrunner, Vox Lux, and Marven. However, of these screeners only Destroyer made it onto pirate sites.

Needless to say, there is quite a bit of risk involved with these leaks. People who share them through BitTorrent are already at risk, but the sources of these leaks are prime candidates for criminal investigations.

Despite changing its release schedule to accommodate Hollywood, Hive-CM8 shows no intention of halting its activities. It apparently has its security in order and mentions that protecting sources is its main goal.

“We will remove all kind of watermarks and digital tracers. If its not possible or suspicous security they wont get out, there is no need to do every title if its not secure enough, we dont want to burn a source [sic],” the group writes.

That said, Hollywood and enforcement agencies are certainly keeping a close eye.

Last year, the number of screener releases reached an all-time low with ‘just’ eight making their way to pirate sites. Thus far the count is at four this year.

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





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As the most popular video hosting platform on the Internet, YouTube is awash with both legal and unlicensed content. However, since the company is responsive to copyright complaints, it is largely protected by the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

The system is far from perfect and is nowhere near comprehensive. False positives, abusive copyright claims and the sheer volume of uploads make it almost impossible to police the platform to a standard acceptable to everyone. The same can be said of the Internet has a whole but with automated and manual takedown tools, YouTube does what it can.

One copyright holder that isn’t happy with YouTube’s efforts is Russian publishing giant Eksmo and its anti-piracy partner AZAPI, the Association for the Protection of Copyright in the Internet. It says the YouTube system “does not always work” so has decided to step up its efforts to protects its clients’ rights.

As a result, Eksmo recently filed a court case against YouTube and the video platform of local search giant Yandex, claiming that the sites offer pirated audio copies of the sci-fi novel ‘The Three-Body Problem’ by the Chinese author Liu Cixin.

The December complaint was initially rejected due to lack of evidence but on appeal, the Moscow City Court has now ruled that YouTube and Yandex.video must remove the content or face having it blocked by local ISPs. According to a report by local news outlet Vedomosti, the content in question still exists on both platforms.

According to a statement from the Moscow City Court published by TASS on Monday, it has now taken preliminary measures against both sites.

“The court ordered Yandex.video and YouTube to remove the link to the Cixin audiobook. As a security measure, the court imposed a block on this material on both hosting sites,” the press service said.

The Court spokesperson had no comment on the potential for YouTube or Yandex.video to be permanently blocked in Russia but it appears that AZAPI has plans for just that.

“We are ready to go to court using other books. If the complaints are satisfied, we can insist on the eternal blocking of Yandex.Video and YouTube in Russia,” AZAPI chief Maxim Ryabyko informs Vedomosti.

AZAPI represents the interests of Russia’s biggest publishers so the possibility for additional complaints is substantial. What remains unclear is the standard to which YouTube is being held. If the site receives a valid copyright complaint against a specific URL, it usually removes the content in a timely manner. However, that doesn’t necessarily prevent the same content from being uploaded again. At least from AZAPI’s perspective, this appears to be a case of repeat infringement.

“There were situations even when, after making a court ruling, we continued to find controversial copies on this platform,” Ryabyko says.

From the limited comments available, AZAPI seems to be demanding a “takedown, staydown” arrangement in response to its complaints, something which goes beyond Google’s responsibilities under the DMCA.

Whether AZAPI’s threats are ultimately designed to bring YouTube to the negotiating table is unclear but having the site blocked in Russia seems like the nuclear option, particularly when YouTube offers a number of special tools that may help to prevent further infringement.

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





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With millions of views per day, ‘IndoXX1’ is of one the largest pirate sites on the Internet.

In the West, the site doesn’t ring a bell with most people. In Indonesia, however, it is among the top 25 most visited websites in the country, only beaten by Google, YouTube, and a few others.

The site’s popularity didn’t go unnoticed by Hollywood. Earlier this year the MPA listed the site in its yearly overview of notorious pirate sites submitted to the US Trade Representative.

“Indo 21” has emerged as the main brand for piracy in Bahasa throughout Indonesia and Malaysia. One of the related sites, indoxx1.center, has a local ranking of 40 in Indonesia according to SimilarWeb data with 23.85 million monthly visits in August 2019,” MPA wrote.

Today this information is already outdated. While IndoXX1 remains the most visited pirate brand in the country, it continuously relocates in order to evade local blocking efforts.

Most recently the portal was available through domains including idxx1.cam, indoxx1.art, and indoxx1.kim. However, a few days ago, Indonesia’s Information and Communications Ministry (Kominfo) stepped in to block these domains.

Kominfo’s actions coincide with the release of a new survey, commissioned by the Asia Video Industry Association’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP), which shows that streaming piracy is rampant in Indonesia.

According to the study, 63% of Indonesians have accessed streaming piracy websites or torrent sites. In addition, 29% of consumers use set-top boxes that can stream pirated video content, with indoXXI(Lite) being the most popular app by far.

This isn’t the first time Kominfo has taken action against IndoXX1. Other domains have been banned previously as part of a national anti-piracy effort. In fact, the Government organization has blocked more than 1,000 domain names since July.

Revealing the gravity of the situation, Kompas reports that these anti-piracy efforts can also count on the support of the national police.

While it’s clear that the authorities are taking the piracy problem seriously, it seems rather hard to curtail. On social media, many people are pointing out alternatives and, when we checked, indoXXI mirrors or copies were indeed available.

Many of the site’s users don’t really seem impressed by yet another blockade, and a meme illustrating the ineffectiveness of the measures has been viewed over a dozen million times in a few days.

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Since blocking isn’t 100% effective, to say the least, it may also be worth looking at other means to address the piracy problem. At the supply end, for example. That’s where help from the Government may also be welcome.

Local news site Coconuts reports that Indonesia’s largest Internet provider Telkomsel currently blocks its subscribers from accessing Netflix. The state-owned ISP officially bans Netflix on censorship grounds, but some believe there may be financial reasons as well, as the company has ties to a local streaming service.

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





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This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Joker is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (10) Joker 8.8 / trailer
2 (2) Ad Astra 6.9 / trailer
3 (…) JoJo Rabbit 8.1 / trailer
4 (1) 6 Underground 6.2 / trailer
5 (…) Zombieland Double Tap 7.1 / trailer
6 (3) Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood 7.9 / trailer
7 (…) The Lighthouse 8.2 / trailer
8 (5) Rambo: Last Blood 6.6 / trailer
9 (…) The Aeronauts 6.6 / trailer
10 (7) Gemini Man 5.7 / trailer

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





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Last week we reported that Strike 3 Holdings, the most active copyright litigant in the US, had stopped filing new lawsuits in federal courts.

A few days later we found out that the adult entertainment company hadn’t really halted its efforts. Instead, it had moved to a Florida state court where it targeted dozens of alleged copyright infringers at once.

This maneuver is controversial. Copyright cases are a matter of federal law and generally don’t belong in state courts. However, Strike 3 filed their cases as a complaint for “a pure bill discovery.”

This means that, instead of filing a copyright complaint, it asked the court to allow it to request subpoenas against ISPs to identify the alleged pirates. That information can then ‘possibly’ be used to file a federal case. Or it can be used to directly demand settlements from alleged infringers.

The advantage of the latter option is that Strike 3 can target dozens if not hundreds of alleged pirates in a single case. This saves tens of thousands of dollars in filing fees, as many federal courts only allow one defendant per case.

The move to state courts has prompted objections from various copyright attorneys. They argue that these cases don’t belong in state court and, as we highlighted a few days ago, the general belief is that Strike 3 is taking this route to save money.

The company itself sees things differently. Just days after we pointed out the lack of action in federal courts, the company filed a handful of new cases. However, these come with a twist.

The new cases we spotted specifically target IP-addresses that are associated with subscribers who objected to Strike 3’s state court shortcut. The timing, which coincides with our reporting, is interesting, and so are Strike 3’s arguments.

In the new complaints, the company states that it took its cases to state court to save “judicial resources” at the federal court. That the same move also saves tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs for the company itself isn’t mentioned.

“In an effort to conserve Federal judicial resources, Strike 3 originally moved to discover Defendant’s identity utilizing a state court procedure in Florida where Strike 3’s infringement detection servers are located,” Strike 3 writes (pdf).

“Defendant objected asserting that the action is more properly litigated in the federal court of his or her domicile. Because Plaintiff is amenable to litigating the matter in either forum, this suit was initiated,” the company adds.

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Strike 3’s suggestion that it merely wanted to help bring down the caseload at the federal court is something many skeptics will doubt. Whether it’s true or not, it does reveal that the company didn’t intend to file federal cases against all defendants.

After all, that would ultimately result in the same caseload for the federal court.

In other words, the plan was to reveal the identity of alleged pirates through the state court without filing a copyright case. The company could then use that information to extract settlements from these defendants, for a fraction of the time and costs at the federal court.

But apparently the costs reduction is just a by-product. The real goal here, according to Strike 3, was to conserve federal judicial resources.

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





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Two Los Angeles based programmers, Luis Villarino and Darryl Polo have been running alternative streaming sites named Jetflicks and iStreamItAll. These offer more movies and TV Shows than Amazon Prime and Netflix. The FBI investigators have raided the illegal streaming sites and shut them down.

Both plead guilty

Darryl and his co-defendant, Luis have pleaded guilty for running the illegal video streaming sites. iStreamItAll offered more content when compared to Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, and Netflix. The two US-based programmers, were smart to convince the customers in the US to forego the genuine streaming sites such as Netflix and instead choose its video streaming sites.

The US Justice Department commends FBI

FBI Shutdown Two Illegal Streaming Sites Bigger Than Netflix, Amazon & Hulu - iStreamItAll

The US Justice Department has commended the efforts of the FBI to nab the culprits. iStreamItAll and Jetflicks offer pirated content on various devices that include smart televisions, tablets, smartphones, digital media players, gaming consoles, a KODI addon and other computer systems besides offering to the subscribers over the Internet. The two programmers have urged the people to pay for their streaming services and get more. Prices for these services ranged anywhere from $19.99 per month to $179.99 per year and displayed content in an easy to use interface for members to stream.

The two computer programmers are now charged with copyright infringement. In total they offered 11,000 movies and 118,000 TV episodes through iStreamItAll. Which as mentioned before is bigger than Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix. Jetflicks and iStreamItAll had several hundred paid subscribers.

iStreamItAll earned over $1 million

Polo was engaged in downloading movies and TV Shows from torrent sites and Usenet NZB sites hosting pirated content. He then processed them and streamed illegally on iStreamItAll. Polo targeted potential customers through emails to subscribe to his services. Besides working as a programmer at Jetflicks, he also runs other piracy services that include SmackDownOnYou. His earnings from piracy are estimated at over $1 million.

iStreamItAll and Jetflicks have caused massive loss of several million dollars to the movie and TV copyright holders. Apart from copyright infringement, Polo is also charged with criminal distribution of copyrighted work. Luis also works as a programmer for Jetflicks,. There he uses automated software to reproduce and stream several copyrighted movies and TV shows to paid subscribers. He is also charged with copyright infringement.

In 2015, Reed Hastings, Chief Executive Officer of Netflix, said piracy is its biggest competitor. Piracy is a major concern for streaming companies.

What are your thoughts on the recent shutdown of these two streaming sites? Let us know in the comment section below!


This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

6 Underground is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1 (…) 6 Underground 6.2 / trailer
2 (1) Ad Astra 6.9 / trailer
3 (2) Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood 7.9 / trailer
4 (…) Code 8 6.4 / trailer
5 (3) Rambo: Last Blood 6.6 / trailer
6 (4) The Irishman 8.4 / trailer
7 (6) Gemini Man 5.7 / trailer
8 (7) Doctor Sleep 7.6 / trailer
9 (5) Abominable 7.0 / trailer
10 (9) Joker (Subbed HDRip) 8.8 / trailer

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





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Most reports of copyright-based legal action in the United States center on the unlicensed downloading, sharing, or distribution of movies, TV shows, music and software.

Albeit at a slower rate, other less mainstream materials are also detailed in infringement complaints, notably copyrighted scientific and research papers, often with pirate sites like Sci-Hub or Libgen somewhere in the equation. This week a relatively rare complaint was filed in a US court protesting the illegal sale of copyrighted petroleum industry documents.

The application for a DMCA subpoena, filed at a Delaware district court by powerful oil and gas industry association American Petroleum Institute (API), claims that its authored standards documents are being made available online without its permission.

“For decades, API has authored standards for the safety and quality of products in the petroleum and gas industry. As author, API owns the copyright in these standards and has registered the copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office,” counsel for API writes.

“The copyrighted standards constitute a very valuable asset to API. Indeed, sales of the API standards to petroleum and gas industry professionals create considerable income for API.”

According to API, others are also benefiting from the sale of its standards. The application lists several problematic domains (e-standard.org, e-stds.org, pdfstandards.org) all of which direct to one main site located at e-standardstore.org.

“This company is not an authorized distributor of API’s standards. Despite not being an authorized distributor, these links display images of API’s logos. This unauthorized use of API’s logos falsely suggests to consumers that this company is an authorized distributor of API standards,” API adds.

The E-Standards.org ‘pirate’ site

As the image above shows, API’s publications are easily discoverable on the infringing site. API says there are at least 1,700 standards for sale in PDF format, which is problematic in itself since the association only offers physical standards which means the downloads must be copies.

“Additionally, API does not permit sales of its standards in PDF format (or any other electronic format) by anyone. Therefore, the sale of downloadable or e-mailed copies of API’s standards are clearly sales of unauthorized copies or scans of API’s publications,” API adds.

API says that after investigating the ‘pirate’ site’s IP addresses, they were determined to be operated by Cloudflare. As a result, API wants the CDN company to immediately terminate its services utilized by E-Standards.org while handing over the personal details of whoever is behind the platform.

From the API subpoena to Cloudflare

The Delaware court quickly signed off on the API subpoena so some type of action by Cloudflare can be expected soon. That being said, this set of domains isn’t only a thorn in the side of API but also various other specialist organizations that author their own standards.

According to Google’s Transparency Report, all of the redirection domains have been the subject of DMCA notices, some of which date back to 2013. The main domain cited by API (E-Standards.org) is also at the center of most additional complaints including those filed by safety company Underwriters Laboratories, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the National Fire Protection Association, and American Water Works Association.

A copy of the DMCA subpoena to Cloudflare is available here (pdf)

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





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