Private Internet Access, commonly known as PIA, is one of the largest VPN providers in the world.

In recent years it’s become a well-established brand that has had its no-logging policy tested in court, with success.

This week the company announced that some changes are afoot. PIA’s parent organization LTMI Holdings is in the process of a merger acquisition by the publicly traded Kape Technologies, which also owns the Cyberghost and Zenmate VPN services.

As part of the planned deal, Kape will pay $95.5 million. Part of this will be paid in cash, Vox reports, and Kape is also planning to pay the $32.1 million in existing debt PIA has on the books.

With the planned merger acquisition Kape hopes to become a dominant force in the VPN industry.

“In one acquisition, I believe we have positioned Kape to fast become one of the leading digital privacy service providers in the world, empowering consumers to manage their own data and digital security,” Kape’s CEO Ido Erlichman comments.

PIA’s CEO Ted Kim is also pleased with the deal and notes that it will help to improve the digital privacy and security of PIA’s subscribers worldwide.

There are no changes planned in the short term. The Private Internet Access name will remain in use for now, just as Cyberghost and Zenmate are still using their original brands. However, the acquisition has raised questions among some users.

Some have pointed at Kape’s history. The company had previously operated under the name Crossrider and was active in the advertising space. Among other things, it installed toolbars with ‘potentially unwanted software.’ While the company has since switched to a focus on cybersecurity, this past has made some people suspicious.

In an article addressing some of the questions, PIA assured its subscribers that its course is not going to change. According to Chief Communications Officer, Christel Dahlskjaer, privacy and security remain the top priority.

“From day one, we have been clear that your privacy is our policy and that the Private Internet Access VPN and our other privacy products exist to bring power to the people.

“The people are our stakeholders, and it is to you all, collectively, that we must remain accountable,” Dahlskjaer adds. She points out that PIA worked with Kape’s to establish a shared mission and guiding principles, which reflects the core values.

It’s inevitable that any corporate deal in the VPN industry will be watched closely and that’s a good thing. VPN providers rely on trust and should be judged by their actions. The company that protects its customers the best way it can, will ultimately be the most successful.

PIA believes that, by teaming up with Kape, it has the best shot at achieving this goal and asks users to give it the time to prove itself.

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Disclaimer: PIA is one of our sponsors. This article was written independently, as all of our articles are. We generally don’t report on VPN business news but felt that it was good to mention this development.

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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When New Zealand, alleged movie piracy, cash seizures, and a US-based investigation feature in the same sentence, what follows is usually information pertaining to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom.

It transpires, however, that there are other pretty big players on the radars of authorities in both countries.

Back in June, software programmer Jaron David McIvor received an unwelcome visit from police in New Zealand who were investigating a movie piracy case in the United States. It took at least two visits but Ivor ultimately ended up handing over $1.1 million in cash and the keys to his cryptocurrency accounts containing almost $6.7 million.

The case, which has just been made public by NZHerald, centers around alleged money laundering. According to Detective Senior Sergeant Keith Kay, the head of the Asset Recovery Unit in Waikato, McIvor helped to create a movie piracy site in the United States from which he received an estimated $2m.

It’s reported that the money was deposited into various bank accounts from wire transfers, Stripe, and PayPal. It was the latter who identified “suspicious activity” on an account linked to McIvor and subsequently reported the matter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States.

Since the funds were allegedly generated from crimes that took place in the United States, moving the funds into New Zealand was sufficient to trigger a money-laundering investigation and the seizure of the funds earlier this year.

The name of the pirate platform allegedly co-founded by McIvor has not been named. However, police have confirmed that other individuals are under investigation in the United States, Canada, and Vietnam.

The seizures that began in June in New Zealand came just a month after news broke in the United States that authorities had seized around $4 million worth of cash and cryptocurrency there as part of an investigation into alleged movie piracy.

The two cases are not currently being linked by authorities but they share some similarities. Both involve an alleged pirate movie site in the US, both received a PayPal referral for suspicious activity, and both resulted in the seizure of large volumes of cash and cryptocurrency.

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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Broadly speaking, torrent clients come in two flavors; closed source (such as uTorrent or BitTorrent Mainline) or open-source, such as qBittorrent or BiglyBT, for example.

Many experienced torrent users often favor the latter, since the code of open-source clients is not only open to scrutiny but can give others the ability to learn about or further develop software. So of course, it’s never great when something bad happens to an open-source project.

Yaroslav Pronin, a student and Russia-based developer of Android torrent client LibreTorrent, is an advocate of Free Software. He informs TF that he began work on his tool in 2016 because he believed there wasn’t a “complete freedom” torrent client available for the platform.

Pronin says that he was also motivated by the fact that BitTorrent has been under pressure, with sites blocked both in Russia and overseas due to copyright issues.

“A Free Software torrent client is an important step in supporting BitTorrent technology for the free (as in Freedom) exchange of information between people,” he explains.

As a result, Pronin went down the open-source route (GNU GPLv3) for LibreTorrent and gathered a decent-sized following. But despite all his good intentions, he still found his software deleted from Google Play recently for a somewhat unusual reason.

What happened behind the scenes here is something of a mystery. Pronin says that he first became aware of an issue in early October when Google advised him that his software had been marked as ‘spam’, which indicates the client is considered “non-original” content.

“It was the morning of October 8, 2019, when I read the e-mail from Google that LibreTorrent was deleted. They wrote the reason: ‘Violation of Spam policy’,” Pronin explains.

“I was shocked, because I didn’t violate anything of the kind. Therefore, I turned to Google with the first appeal, so that they could clarify the situation, and also figure out that I didn’t violate the spam policy.”

It turned out that Google wasn’t interested in reconsidering its position.

Status of app LibreTorrent (org.proninyaroslav.libretorrent): Suspended from Google Play due to policy violation.

I’ve reviewed your appeal request and found that your app still violates Google Play Policy. During review, we found that your app violates the policy for Spam. We don’t allow apps that spam users or Google Play, such as apps that are duplicative and low-quality.

“As I can think, this was due to the fact that there were many LibreTorrent clones on Google Play and Google just uninstalled all the apps without understanding the essence of what was happening,” he says, commenting on the app’s deletion from Google Play.

Pronin informs TorrentFreak that thus far, Google has only responded to him once, informing him of the reason for deletion. He says he sent information confirming him as the developer of the original LibreTorrent but that achieved nothing.

“I filed an appeal, but in response I was told that they can not help in any way and the only option is to rename the application and lay it out again,” he explains.

Completely renaming an app and losing an established brand seems a draconian measure to force on a developer. Sadly, it may be that other developers who took LibreTorrent’s source and decided to abuse it may be to blame.

“Since 2016, a lot of LibreTorrent clones have appeared on Google Play. I understand that LibreTorrent is open source, but those who published these clones on Google Play didn’t modify the source code,” he says.

“They only added ads and changed the name of the application. Yes, there were authoring developments based on LibreTorrent, but there are much fewer of them than clones with advertising. Most of the clones were removed last year at my request, but they appear again and again.

“Google just decided that LibreTorrent is an application with non-original content, as many LibreTorrent clones are located on Google Play. It’s also possible that the author of one of the clones filed a complaint for the removal of the original LibreTorrent. We can only guess about it.”

Pronin is understandably upset and disappointed with Google. He says that the company has made no effort to understand the situation yet, meanwhile, leaves up actually malicious software for download until someone complains.

More importantly for him, however, is that with the removal of LibreTorrent, fewer people overall will learn about Free Software. He acknowledges that Google services are both non-free and have privacy problems but getting the Free Software message out to as many people as possible was one of his key goals.

It’s also a shame since after a year in development, LibreTorrent 2.0 is almost ready for launch. The source code has been rewritten to increase stability and there are around 20 new features, including an updated UI.

Whether Google will eventually relent remains to be seen but in the meantime, anyone wanting to download LibreTorrent can do so here and here.

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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Pirate site-blocking has become a prime measure for the entertainment industries to target pirate sites on the Internet.

The practice has been around for over a decade and has gradually expanded to more than 30 countries around the world.

This is also true in France, where The Pirate Bay was one of the first targets five years ago, but not the last. Several site-blocking applications followed, mostly on behalf of the local anti-piracy group La Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques, or SCPP as it’s more commonly known.

The organization, which represents over 2,000 music companies, including Warner, Universal, and Sony, is also behind the most recent blocking efforts.

In three separate orders, a Paris court recently ordered Internet providers Bouygues, Free, Orange, SFR, and SFR Fibre, to prevent customers from accessing piracy-linked websites.

The first order is targeted at six relatively small file-hosting services: Nippyspace.com, Nippyshare.com, Yolobit.com, Nippybox.com, Nippyfile.com, and Nippydrive.com. The sites in question all share the same simple design.

The term file-hoster or cyberlocker can have a broad meaning. In this case, the sites also provided a search function, which makes pirated content easier to find. Also, Zippyshare is no stranger to the music industry, as the RIAA previously listed it as a ‘notorious’ pirate site.

While SCPP didn’t respond to our request for comment, the Finnish anti-piracy group TTVK notes that the ruling is unique, as it’s the first court order that requires ISPs to block a file-hosting service in Europe.

“The decision of the French court confirms the view that blocking orders should be available for all pirated content services, regardless of the technology,” TTVK Executive Director Jaana Pihkala says.

The other two orders, which were released on the same day, target the torrent sites Torlock.com, Toros.co, Bittorrent.am, Seedpeer.me, Yggserver.net and Yggtorrent.ch, as well as the linking site 2DDL.vg.

Interestingly, NextInpact notes that the court suggested that the use of the word “BitTorrent” assumes bad intent, as the file-sharing protocol is often associated with piracy. This is rather broad, as there are also many legitimate BitTorrent services.

The orders (1, 2, and 3) are valid for 18 months. The Internet providers will have to pay the blocking costs themselves but did not oppose the orders in court.

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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Pirate streaming services remain widely appealing to a broad audience. At a fraction of the cost of regular subscriptions, they open the door to all sorts of entertainment.

This practice is a thorn in the side of rights holders, who are increasingly cracking down on this business. In the UK, anti-piracy group FACT has been leading the charge.

The group’s referrals have resulted in several successful convictions, which often include prison sentences. This morning, Steven Underwood, another FACT target, faced justice before the Truro Magistrates Court.

FACT suspected the man of selling pirate subscriptions and in January, the Police Regional Organised Crime Unit entered his home with a search warrant. They seized his phone and laptop, among other things, which later confirmed his involvement.

A follow-up investigation revealed that Underwood sold roughly £400,000 worth of subscriptions. That’s a substantial amount, but the yearly profits are likely much lower. The service may have been running for years already and the man likely had to pay a supplier as well.

The subscriptions provided access to a wide variety of content, including that of  Sky, BT, and the Premier League.

While these types of cases can be drawn out, the seller admitted both copyright and fraud charges, FACT informs TorrentFreak. Following this guilty plea, the court’s main decision is to determine the appropriate conviction.

As is common with these announcements, details are scarce. The name of the streaming service or what it offered exactly is unknown. FACT CEO Kieron Sharp is, however, using the opportunity to warn other vendors.

“We are constantly working to remove sellers of illegal streaming subscriptions from the market and bring them to justice. The message is clear – if you are tempted to sell access to content that is not licensed or owned by you, you risk facing a criminal conviction,” Sharp says.

The sentencing of Underwood is scheduled to take place next month. He faces a maximum prison sentence of up to two years for the copyright offense, and ten years for fraud.

That said, history has shown that actual sentences depend on a variety of factors which can vary quite a bit.

This summer, FACT boasted that the mastermind behind the Dreambox service was sentenced to seven years and four months of jail time. A few weeks later, however, a seller of pirate streaming devices was handed a sentence of 300 hours unpaid community 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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