In 2012, Microsoft first released its operating system Windows 8, Apple came out with the iPhone 5, and Google’s Sergey Brin showed off a Google Glass prototype in the wild.
It was also the year when armed police officers swarmed Kim Dotcom’s mansion in a military-style-raid while his hosting service Megaupload was being taken down.
It was the beginning of the largest copyright infringement case the U.S. Government had ever launched and one that was far from straightforward.
While the earlier mentioned technology continued to progress, the Megaupload case has barely moved. In New Zealand, lawyers have been very busy with the extradition proceedings against Dotcom, but it could be years before that battle ends. This means that the criminal case against Megaupload and several former employees is in limbo.
The same is true for the civil cases the RIAA and MPAA filed back in 2014. Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and last week they requested another extension.
In line with other recent requests, the RIAA and MPAA didn’t object to the request. As a result, the court swiftly agreed to issue yet another extension, putting the cases on hold until the spring of next year. However, it would be no surprise if more delays followed in the future.
Earlier this year Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom predicted that he will lose his extradition battle at the Supreme Court. That’s not going to be the end of the line though. Using all legal options available, it might take more than five years before the extradition saga ends.
Meanwhile, copies of Megaupload’s servers, containing vast amounts of data from millions of users, remain locked up as evidence. Initially, there were some attempts to reunite former users with their personal files, but these appeared to have died off.
Interestingly, the most recent mention of any Megaupload ‘data’ came from Kim Dotcom himself. “Still waiting to get access to your Megaupload files?” he wrote, adding that he will email 30 million former US Megaupload users a video link in 2020 explaining how Joe Biden destroyed the site.
Apparently, Dotcom still has access to email and IP-addresses of Megaupload users, which he might put to use.
In recent weeks, the New Zealand entrepreneur shifted his focus to a service that was once billed as Megaupload 2. This project, now known as K.im, will, in fact, be quite different from its predecessor. While Dotcom is the founder, he no longer has an official position, but acts as its evangelist, helping to raise money through a token sale.
When we last covered the project its expected release date was around 2018, but there have been some delays here as well. The latest roadmap indicates that the platform will launch in the third quarter of 2020. By then, we expect that the RIAA and MPAA lawsuits will still be pending.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/kim2-featured.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-21 02:07:342019-10-21 02:07:34MPAA and RIAA’s Megaupload Lawsuits Remain on Hold, Perhaps For Years
For those old enough to remember, the early days of what would become mainstream Internet piracy were an enlightening time to be around.
With few, if any, legal alternatives available, sharing music and later movies online offered an early and exciting glimpse into the future of media consumption.
The entertainment industries hated all kinds of piracy back then and they still hate it now, that’s not up for debate. But today, almost 20 years after peer-to-peer burst onto the scene, there’s mixed opinion even among pirates as to whether things have changed for the better.
TorrentFreak recently caught up with the former operator of a BitTorrent tracker that launched to the public in 2005. The site itself shut down before 2010, ostensibly after its operators decided family life was more important. Its founder tells us that was only part of the story – money was the real issue.
“When we got into this we started a quiet private club where people could share (and I do mean SHARE) stuff with each other,” he explains.
“The staff and members were squirrels gathering up nuts and whatnot and sharing them on the tracker. All of us could snatch what we wanted and didn’t even feel obliged to return the favor but we all did because we knew each other already and it just worked. Guess giving felt good as getting.”
With a few thousand members at its peak, the site was intentionally never big. Hosted on a free shared server with two other sites thanks to a friendly website designer, the limitations were in place right from the start. Unfortunately, the site’s users became restless. Other trackers were bigger, faster, easier to seed on, but more crucially had a wider range of content.
“Can’t tell you when precisely (a few years later) but we started to tear ourselves apart. Some of the best uploaders found other sites and drifted off which had a big effect on the rest of the site. We managed to find a couple of people who were willing to upload but they wanted new stuff in return and we didn’t have it.
“Someone with access to a pay dump offered to help but they wanted paying as well and I noped right out of paying for warez. Most of our rivals did and it hurt us.”
Even when the site got fresh content, that didn’t really help things either, the former admin says. Users with access to other sites uploaded the content on those immediately and some members didn’t like it and wanted it stopped. That didn’t sit right with the admin because behind the scenes his people were doing exactly the same. What they really needed was money to improve the site to get more people in, who would hopefully bring content with them.
“We stuck out for years not asking for donations but at the end of the day we were in limbo. You build this thing and you’re watching it die. There’s still no question in my mind that we should’ve let it die gracefully in its sleep but hindsight and all that.”
The donations helped for a while but the former admin says that things were never the same. He says that most of the time the amount coming in exceeded the running costs of the site which then made it “morally hard” to keep asking for money. However, he said donations were still requested regularly because when people got out of the habit of giving, they were hard to get back, especially when other sites were offering bang for their buck.
“Pay to leech. That was the beginning of the end for me and I still get emotional about it now. To keep up with [site names redacted] we had to boost [sharing] ratios. It was wrong. We’d gone from a family affair to barely more than a pay site. The older members felt they didn’t know us anymore but the newer ones seemed to want it and cultures clashed and I got the blame.”
So-called ‘pay-to-leech’ is a term most often used to explain how a torrent site can raise revenue by manipulating sharing ratios. If a site has enough seeders and excess upload bandwidth, users can pay to be exempted from strict sharing rules. While rules on various sites differ, in general terms it means that members can download content with relative impunity without giving back, i.e not sharing.
The former admin didn’t want to go into detail about what happened in the wake of the decision to start accepting donations but things didn’t go well. What he did reveal is that it changed the mood on the site. In exchange for their money, people flat-out demanded better service and became more and more vocal when they didn’t get it. They felt they’d paid for a service.
“We had angry posts in the forums with people pasting details of their donations and even private conversations about them with the moderators. I had my wee baby crying downstairs, a pissed-off girlfriend who I never saw and man babies crying on the site over a pittance. I took it and took it and took it and then one day a five minute chat on IRC later with another admin and i’d gone. ‘Here’s the keys to the frontdoor.’ Best thing i’d ever done.”
The striking thing about our discussion with the former admin is that he says that while arguments are commonplace on the Internet these days, they were the exception when his site was first launched. He says there was a sense of belonging to something special and people didn’t want to spoil it because they were not only part of it, they’d helped to create and maintain it too. These days, he complains, things are different because ‘sharing and caring’ have been forgotten.
“Is there a file-sharing family anymore because if there is I don’t know where to find them. People still share alright but it’s pictures of them or their food on Facebook and Instagram. You can’t find people sharing files for fun as we did back in the day because the cat’s out of the bag and it’s an earner and you can’t turn back the clock. Why do you think all the kids dumped torrents for upload sites unless it was about the payback?
“I don’t know if it’s me that’s stuck in the past and this had to happen for piracy to exist as it does now but it’s a shame because all I see now is greed. You tell me, but is sharing out of kindness almost dead?” he asked.
With an entirely different experience, millions of users and uploaders to The Pirate Bay and similar sites would probably beg to differ.
After more than 15 years online, people are still uploading content as they did in the early days, each with their own reason for doing so. The site is still widely accessible and people can take whatever they like for free. The site obviously makes money though, using ads and a crypto-miner, so money remains part of the loop.
More elitist and/or discerning users will always point to professionally organized private trackers as being more community-based, more reliable, much better organized, and with greater emphasis placed on quality control. Old-style sharing can still be found on many but they are certainly not immune to change and the pressures of commerce.
Invites, when they become available, are sometimes handed out for free but in an increasing number of cases, sites charge for the privilege. One can’t make sweeping statements about all of them because there are many and they’re secretive. However, there can be no doubt that a significant number have developed into money-making machines, both for their operators and in some cases their uploaders too.
That raises the question: is there any way to turn back the clock? Is there a way to remove money or other financial incentives out of the equation? With streaming, the most popular form of piracy currently, apparently not.
“You are not realistic,” the operator of a streaming site told TF.
“You write it every day that someone is arrested or blocked or PayPal closed. I can do this for nothing then. Nobody is doing this for nothing. Servers are free so show me where I can buy?”
The owner of a smaller public torrent site (who has operated several other piracy-focused sites in the past) was more talkative.
“My motivation is purely money related. I would not run any piracy related sites if they didn’t earn anything. Just too much risk involved,” he explained.
“Personal issues left me to rely on income from the sites to support my family. I would simply not run the sites if they didn’t make anything. Making money from piracy is so easy so that’s why I think people do it. Rarely you’ll see a site not using any ads. When I was younger things felt a lot different to what they do now. They don’t do it for the love now. But for the money.”
We posed similar questions to a long-standing major site operator – what motivates people to run torrent, hosting and streaming sites these days? He told us that the latter pair make “lots of money” but in respect of torrent sites, he believes there’s no point in running one anymore. The only exception would be for small sites that might still operate for ‘fun’ or on a break-even basis.
“[Some people might run] some small ones [for no profit] – sure – but the user base will be small because the time spent on development will be low,” he said.
For anyone running a bigger site, making nothing or even breaking even isn’t a realistic option, he added. Costs increase every month and if you don’t keep balancing the books, “it won’t work out.”
Ultimately, the operator insisted that going completely back to old-style “sharing is caring” won’t be possible. There’s a new type of demanding consumer out there that is very difficult and increasingly expensive to keep happy.
“That’s never going to happen. The Netflix generation is used to content ready to use, they don’t think about what’s involved in the process of reaching them.”
Tim Kuik of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN says that he hasn’t seen platforms that aren’t in it for the money for a long time.
“Even if there are uploaders or subtitlers who do it for the kudos, the platforms they post on are making money out of it. We see illegal link aggregators that are supported by platforms that make money off downloaders or streamers by selling them higher download speed,” he says.
But for anti-piracy groups like BREIN, motivation probably doesn’t make much difference to the end result. Piracy is piracy and whatever drives it, it still means illegal content ends up online for free.
“Even if it were for a hobby, would that make it alright to cause damage with it?” Kuik asks.
But ultimately, in the final reckoning, do today’s consumers of pirated content even care what goes on behind the scenes financially, as long as they get it free or at least on the cheap?
One can’t put words into the mouths of millions of individuals but given the popularity of online piracy, especially the astronomic growth of premium IPTV, the suggestion is that largely, people don’t. In fact, for newer entrants to the piracy scene, the fact that people make money is probably the accepted standard.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/love-piracy.jpg2451200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-20 16:06:352019-10-20 16:06:35‘Sharing is Caring’ Once Described Piracy But Things Have Probably Changed
‘Pirate’ IPTV services make the news every week, mostly in connection with streaming movies, TV shows, and sports without obtaining permission from rightsholders.
Enforcement actions against these entities are certainly on the increase and in most instances it’s easy to see why copyright holders have a problem with them. However, it’s clear that some companies either don’t understand what they’re dealing with or simply don’t care.
Case in point, the popular Android app Perfect Player. This software is effectively a network-capable media player that enables users to enter a playlist from an IPTV provider and watch video, no matter what the source. In common with Windows Media Player, it doesn’t involve itself with end-user conduct and can be used to watch legitimate streams.
This week, however, the software – which has in excess of a million downloads from Google Play – was removed by Google because of a copyright complaint. It was filed by a major pay-TV provider, the name of which we’ve agreed not to publish while the complaint is ongoing.
It states that the software allows users to watch channels from unauthorized sources and is therefore illegal. However, there appears to be a considerable flaw in the pay-TV company’s arguments.
In common with the developers behind various torrent clients, Perfect Player’s developer doesn’t dictate how the software is used because no control can be exercised over that. Just like Windows Media Player, uTorrent, or even VLC (which has similar capabilities), it can be used for entirely legal purposes – or not, depending on the choice of the user.
To support its complaint, we understand that the pay-TV provider supplied screenshots showing Perfect Player playing content to which the company holds the rights. This is particularly odd because any content being played is actioned by and is the responsibility of the user.
To have received the content in the first place, the company (or whoever they obtained the app from) must’ve actively configured Perfect Player to infringe by loading it with the playlist from an illicit IPTV provider. Perfect Player contains no playlists when supplied directly from Google Play, it’s content-neutral.
To strike an analogy, you can’t put a bullet in a gun, shoot someone in the head, and then blame the gun manufacturer. Likewise, if you don’t want illicit streams turning up in a software player, don’t have someone load it with infringing playlists from third-parties and then blame a software developer.
“These guys told me that they own ‘Premier’ channels and we should stop transmitting these channels. I answered that the app doesn’t contain any content or channels,” Perfect Player’s developer informs TorrentFreak.
“They then sent another email with a screenshot, showing that they are able to watch their channels in the app.”
TorrentFreak contacted the TV company’s anti-piracy team asking why they chose to target Perfect Player while gently pointing out the playlist issue detailed above. Unfortunately, at the time of publication, the company had not responded to our request for comment.
Giving the TV company the benefit of the doubt for a moment, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it acquired a ready-configured copy of Perfect Player from a third-party that already contained a URL for a ‘pirate’ service. That could give the impression it’s a dedicated pirate app.
That being said, downloading a copy from Google Play would’ve highlighted the important differences between a non-configured player and one set up for piracy. That’s impossible now, of course, because Google has taken Perfect Player down.
With the help of a lawyer, the developer is now filing a DMCA counter-notice with Google Play which will require the pay-TV company to either double down or back off. Unless Google chooses to restore Perfect Player in the meantime, of course.
Earlier this month, Google also took down the IPTV Smarters app from its Play Store following a “false complaint”, according to its developer. The company’s lawyers are reportedly working to have the software restored but at the time of writing, it remains unavailable on copyright grounds.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/facepalm-featured.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-20 06:05:342019-10-20 06:05:34Google Play Removes Perfect Player After “Bogus” Copyright Complaint
Over the past three decades, Guns N’ Roses has been one of the best-known bands in the world.
When it started in the mid-eighties most music was still sold on cassettes, while the World Wide Web has yet to be invented.
Today the web is the major driver of revenue when it comes to recorded music. However, it also poses quite a few challenges, especially when it comes to copyright.
Guns N’ Roses’ entourage appears to be particularly concerned with these rights, up to a point where it has started to annoy fans. Over the past several months, many people have had their bootleg concert recordings removed from YouTube, Instagram and elsewhere.
“My YouTube account I’ve had for 15 years was terminated on Thursday of last week. Roughly 20 GNR videos I’ve filmed from 2011-2016 were flagged and removed,” one fan wrote a few weeks ago.
These copyright takedowns don’t just affect full-length recordings. Smaller clips were apparently removed as well. Interestingly, even Meegan Hodges, the girlfriend of guitarist Slash, had some of her clips removed.
“I’m just putting this up to see if my video is taken down. Noticed that some are just gone. Hello Instagram I took this video. #iamwiththeband no seriously what’s up?” she wrote a few days ago
The band is of course completely within its right to remove unauthorized recordings. Even from Slash’s girlfriend, if she didn’t obtain explicit permission. That said, going after short clips can do more harm than good as it usually only upsets and annoys the fanbase.
In response to the removals, a subgroup of fans appears to have revolted. Some continued to publish concert footage on alternative outlets, such as Pornhub, for example.
While there will always be workarounds, the whole episode clearly signaled that fans shouldn’t post any Guns N’ Roses footage online. Those who do, risk strikes and bans from YouTube, Instagram, or even Twitter.
Just when this idea started to sink in, Guns N’ Roses posted a rather surprising request this week, as highlighted by Guns N’ Roses Central. On Twitter, the band asked fans to share concert footage, which may then be included in the official tour video.
“Tag us in your videos from this tour to be part of the #NotInThisLifetime 2019 final tour video,” the band tweeted.
Needless to say, this request came as a surprise to many fans. First, they were actively hunted down for sharing concert video, and now the band wants them to share footage online?
As a result, fans were quite reserved with their responses. Some indeed posted short clips but many others suggested that this could be some kind of trap. At the very least, it’s not a well thought out plan.
“Yes, this will make it easier for you to demand that your fans remove their videos of you from the internet. Is your assistant getting tired of searching for copyright violations?” Claire replied.
“Is this ‘let s see how stupid our fans are’ contest? We re not making music we’re deleting our fans accounts, we’re @gunsnroses,” Jaro notes.
“So you can block them?? Sort yourselves out and do something for the fans for once,” Jan adds.
While the takedown requests are not being issued by the band directly, it’s clear that some fans are not happy with the request. While it’s most likely not an intentional trap, it could be an inadvertent one when followers get flagged by automated bots or overactive takedown outfits.
Considering the takedown outrage among many dedicated fans over the past few months, this week’s request to share footage certainly wasn’t well thought out.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/roses.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-19 20:04:332019-10-19 20:04:33Guns N’ Roses Fans ‘Fear’ That the Band is Setting a Piracy Trap
Nvidia Shield TV pro and Shield TV Dongle 2020 model
We all heard rumours, we all saw some leaks but this time is official. We have the first official leaks of the two Nvidia Shield TV 2020 models that were pubblished by mistake on Amazon. And as a matter of fact we will have two different models. The first almost identical to the previous models as far as aesthetics are concerned and the second it is Nvidia’s response to the Amazon Firestick.
Nvidia Shield TV PRO 2020
Starting at $199 the brand new NVIDIA Shield TV Pro 2020 is powered by the Nvidia’s proprietary CPU, the Tegra X1+ processor. NVIDIA claims that it makes the SHIELD TV Pro 25 percent faster than its predecessor. The Tegra X1+ is now paired with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage as well.
On the back of the New Shield TV Pro 2020 we find 2 X USB 3.0, an HDMI 2.0, a Gigabit Ethernet port and the same power in socket.
In addition to the new Tegra X1+ SoC, the SHIELD TV Pro expands the HDR support of the SHIELD TV with the inclusion of Dolby Vision HDR support along with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital Plus. Another interesting feature is the HD to 4K upscaling using Artificial Intelligence. That is something that personally can’t wait to try since it looks very promising and this is Nvidia we are talking about.
Nvidia Shield TV Dongle
And here comes at $179 also the NVIDIA Shield TV Dongle. In a very compact device Nvidia brings the same CPU and same capabilities of the Nvidia Shield TV Pro, a part from the 2 X USB 3.0 and adds also a micro SD. Other than the AC WiFi as the bigger brother, the dongle will also have in the sam super-compact device a built-in power supply so essentialy you just need to attach the power cable to the device. Of course being a powerful device that it is, it will not be powered just by a USB cable as the Amazon Firestick. The perfomance gap is immense amaong the two devices as it is also the price.
New Remote Control
Both devices share the same remote control. I was a huge fan of the first remote control. The device and build quality was top notch (especially the model with the re-chargable battery) and it was only lacking in the volume department. That touch control was cool but in all honesty not so practical. In a bold move, Nvidia decided to rebuild the remote and the design feels strange in some extent. Instead of building on top of the very loved remote they decided to play it safe while adding a lot of buttons and dedicating a button to Netflix too. This time the remote comes with AAA batteries and also supports backlight. Great the addition of a remote finder so you will never lose your remote again. I will not share more on my feelings on the remote until I use it because knowing Nvidia I believe it is better than it looks.
Nvidia Shield TV 2020 Price and Availablity
As metioned before, the two models come at a very interesting price. The Nvidia Shield TV pro sales for $199 which is the same price as the Nvidia Shield TV when it first launched 4 years ago. The Nvidia Shield TV Dongle will beat the price of the predecessor for $179 which is the price that the “old” model costs right now on Amazon. Both devices will launch on October 28th and I can’t wait to test them both. The devices were both list on Amazon but now the listing has been removed.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/nvidia_shield_tv_pro_4.jpg544708Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-19 11:24:272019-10-19 11:24:31Here Is The New Nvidia Shield TV Pro and the Nvidia Shield TV Dongle!
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.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/threater-feat.png2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-19 10:03:372019-10-19 10:03:37Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 10/14/19
Earlier this month several copyright holder groups sent their annual “Notorious Markets” complaints to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
The recommendations are meant to call out well-known piracy sites, apps, and services, but Cloudflare is frequently mentioned as well.
The American CDN provider can’t be officially listed since it’s not a foreign company. However, rightsholders have seizes the opportunity to point out that the CDN service helps pirate sites with their infringing activities.
The MPA and RIAA, for example, wrote that Cloudflare frustrates enforcement efforts by helping pirate sites to “hide” their hosting locations. In addition, the Hollywood-affiliated Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) pointed out that the company helps pirate sites to deliver malware.
This week Cloudflare responded to these allegations. In a rebuttal, sent to the USTR’s Director for Innovation and Intellectual Property, General Counsel Doug Kramer writes that these reports are not an accurate representation of how the company operates.
“My colleagues and I were frustrated to find continued misrepresentations of our business and efforts to malign our services,” Kramer writes.
“We again feel called on to clarify that Cloudflare does not host the referenced websites, cannot block websites, and is not in the business of hiding companies that host illegal content–all facts well known to the industry groups based on our ongoing work with them.”
Kramer points out that the copyright holder groups “rehash” previous complaints, which Cloudflare previously rebutted. In fact, some parts of the CDN provider’s own reply are rehashed too, but there are several new highlights as well.
For example, the USTR’s latest review specifically focuses on malware issues. According to Cloudflare, its services are specifically aimed at mitigating such threats.
“Our system uses the collective intelligence from all the properties on our network to support and immediately update our web application firewall, which can block malware at the edge and prevent it from reaching a site’s origin server. This protects the many content creators who use our services for their websites as well as the users of their websites, from malware,” Kramer writes.
The DCA’s submission, which included a 2016 report from the group, is out of date and inaccurate, Cloudflare says. Several of the mentioned domains are no longer Cloudflare customers, for example. In addition, the DCA never sent any malware complaints to the CDN service.
Cloudflare did previously reach out to the DCA following its malware report, but this effort proved fruitless, the company writes.
“Despite our repeated attempts to get additional information by either phone or email, DCA cancelled at least three scheduled calls and declined to provide any specific information that would have allowed us to verify the existence of the malware and protect users from malicious activity online,” Kramer notes.
Malware aside, the allegations that Cloudflare helps pirate sites to ‘hide’ their hosting locations are not entirely true either.
Kramer points out that the company has a “Trusted Reporter” program which complainants, including the RIAA, use frequently. This program helps rightsholders to easily obtain the actual hosting locations of Cloudflare customers that engage in widespread copyright infringement.
Although Cloudflare admits that it can’t stop all bad actors online, it will continue to work with the RIAA, MPA, and others to provide them with all the information they need for their enforcement efforts.
None of this is new though. Year after year the same complaints come in and Cloudflare suggests that copyright holders are actually looking for something else. They would like the company to terminate accounts of suspected pirate sites. However, the CDN provider has no intention to do so.
“Their submissions to the Notorious Markets process seem intended to pressure Cloudflare to take over efforts to identify and close down infringing websites for them, but that is something that we are not obligated to do,” Kramer says.
While it would be technically possible, it would require the company to allocate considerable resources to the task. These resources are currently needed to pursue its primary goal, which is to keep the Internet secure and protect users from malware and other risks.
It’s clear that Cloudflare doesn’t want to take any action against customers without a court order. While it has occasionally deviated from this stance by kicking out Daily Stormer and 8Chan, pirate sites are on a different level.
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A copy of the letter Cloudflare’s General Counsel Doug Kramer sent to the USTR’s Director for Innovation and Intellectual Property, Jacob Ewerdt, is available here (pdf).
The inevitable situation facing any site that hosts user-uploaded files is that some users will attempt to store copyright-infringing content.
The bigger the site, the bigger the problem, as YouTube’s copyright department knows only too well. But while few rightsholders would attempt to take on YouTube by filing for an ISP blocking order, plenty of other sites are considered fair game, Mega for example.
After a standing start in 2013, Mega is now a major player in the file-hosting market. Due to its early connections with Kim Dotcom, the site was under huge scrutiny from the very beginning and as such, has always insisted that it is fully compliant when it comes to copyright issues.
Nevertheless, earlier this month it was discovered that users in Brazil could no longer access the service. ISPs in the country had begun blocking the site following a copyright complaint initiated by the Brazilian Association of Subscription Television (ABTA).
Following a September decision, the São Paulo Court of Justice ordered four Internet service providers – Claro Brasil, Vivo-Telefonica, Oi and Algar Telecom – to prevent their subscribers from accessing several domains on copyright grounds, Mega.nz included.
“With respect to the block in Brazil, we respectfully believe that the order is wrong and that the Court has been misled. MEGA has excellent compliance. We are working on a solution,” the company told its customers.
The nature of that solution wasn’t specified at the time but Mega Executive Chairman Stephen Hall says that the company mounted a legal challenge to a process that had actually begun months earlier and didn’t initially include Mega.
“The case started in January 2019 with various sites but not Mega,” Hall informs TorrentFreak.
“The case has been held in secret, apparently because the ABTA submitted that various sites included could change settings in order to evade the block.”
Hall says that Mega was added to the case in September 2019 based on the allegation that a single URL on the site led to infringing content. However, that URL had never been reported to the company as posing a problem.
“We submitted to the Appeal Court details of our rigorous compliance activity such as fast response to copyright takedown requests, suspension of accounts with repeat allegations of copyright infringement etc, as reported in our Transparency Report,” Hall says.
Mega’s Executive Chairman notes that Brazilian law only allows courts to suspend access to a service if it fails to respond to legal requests so Mega eventually came out on top.
“The Appeal Court ordered the block of Mega.nz to be reversed. I believe the lower Court will now reconsider its inclusion of Mega. We are confident that access won’t be blocked again,” Hall concludes.
Reports posted by Mega users to Twitter suggest that at least some previously-blocked users are now able to access the site once again but the company is urging that any still experiencing difficulties should contact their providers.
“Contact your ISP if you still cannot access https://mega.nz,” the company says.
According to SimilarWeb stats, there are more visitors to Mega from Brazil than any other country, together making up almost 10% of Mega’s traffic and making it the country’s 108th most popular site.
A report by Mega in January revealed the massive scale of its global operations since its launch six years ago.
“To date, more than 130 million registered MEGA users have uploaded over 53 billion files, utilizing the user-controlled end-to-end encryption we provide,” the company said.
A group of movie companies, operating under the parent company Millennium Funding, has broadened its anti-piracy efforts over the past year.
Where the makers of films such as Hellboy, Hitman’s Bodyguard, and Mechanic: Resurrection, previously focused on individual pirates, they’re now targeting site owners as well.
Through various copyright infringement lawsuits and DMCA subpoenas, the companies targeted prominent players in the piracy ecosystem, ranging from Popcorn Time through YTS, to Showbox and MKVCage.
The case against MKVCage, filed last month, seemed to have had some effect. Not long after the complaint was submitted to a Hawaii District Court, MKVCage became unreachable. At the same time, the uploader stopped pushing torrents to other sites as well.
As is often the case when sites disappear, it didn’t take long for clones and scammers to jump in. Several unofficial MKVCage sites profited from the disappearance and fake MKVCage torrents were circulated as well, often bundled with malware.
However, more recently a site popped up that seemed more legitimate, MKVCage.nl.
MVKCage.nl
This .nl domain has identical posts of older MKVCage releases. On top of that, it publishes new movies and TV-shows, which also appear on the MKVCage uploader accounts at other torrent sites such as ETTV and 1337x.
What has changed is the formatting of the release notes, which no longer mention the old domain name MKVCage.com. This makes sense, as that’s no longer operational, but the new domain isn’t promoted either.
While we can’t be 100% sure that the new site is operated by the same person(s), most signs point in that direction. Many MKVCage followers are also convinced that it’s the official resurrection. This includes the aforementioned filmmakers who are going after the operator.
In a new filing submitted at the Hawaii District Court this week, HB Productions (Hellboy) informs the Court about the disappearance of MKVCage.com and the apparent resurrection at MKVCage.nl.
The movie company believes that MKVCage is operated by a person named Muhammad Faizan, who allegedly took the .com domain offline and removed his Gmail address after being informed about the legal action.
“Defendant Faizan took down his website Mkvcage.com upon being notified of the present litigation. He further deleted the email address ‘[email protected]’ that he used when registering mkvcage.com and various other domains with the domain register Namecheap and to communicate with Plaintiff’s counsel,” the movie company’s attorney writes.
The movie company also noticed the domain change and believes that the MKVCage.nl site is being operated by the same person.
“Defendant Faizan has since begun operating a new website ‘mkvcage.nl’ where he promotes and distributes torrent files of motion pictures such as Hitman’s Bodyguard and Mechanic: Resurrection that are owned by Plaintiff’s parent company Millennium Funding, Inc. or affiliates thereof with the same misleading language.”
As the legal action continues, HB Productions continues to look further into the personal details of the alleged operator. In the latest filing, it points out that Faizan is employed at a Pakistani mobile phone repair shop, which apparently helps customers to access HD movies.
“Plaintiff has further discovered that Muhammad Faizan’s employer ‘HMA Mobiles & Computers’ provides a service of downloading and installing HD movies to the devices of individuals,” the company’s attorney writes (pdf), without saying anything about the legality of this activity.
TorrentFreak reached out to the MKVCage account at a popular torrent site to find out more about the new site and the allegations made by HB Productions, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.
It’s clear, however, that while the MKVCage site is back, the legal troubles are not over yet.
Share-Online.biz was popular in many regions as a platform where users could upload all kinds of media. It was particularly popular in Germany, with around 72% of its users coming from the country, according to SimilarWeb stats.
Unregistered users could upload files up to a gigabyte but those paying for a premium account were given double the allocation. Yesterday, however, the site suddenly disappeared from the web, leading to the usual speculation about potential legal troubles.
This morning those fears were confirmed. According to local anti-piracy outfit GVU, at 14:00 Wednesday afternoon, the platform was raided and shut down following a joint investigation with the prosecutor’s office in Cologne and police 38 miles away in the city of Aachen.
“This unprecedented procedure was initiated by the GVU, whose employees filed a criminal complaint against the service providers in 2017 and have been supporting the authorities ever since,” GVU explains.
“Where previously all criminal and civil law approaches by various actors seemed to be going nowhere, the GVU was now able to achieve a groundbreaking success for its members and the creative industries as a whole.”
In Germany, both residential and business properties were raided in several regions. In France and the Netherlands, officers targeted data centers connected to the file-hosting platform. Precisely how many servers were seized isn’t clear but Share-Online.biz was a considerable operation, with GVU stating that it served up to 10 million visitors a month with millions of files stored across “hundreds” of servers.
Three individuals aged 40, 48, and 54 are currently under investigation for copyright infringement offenses.
According to GVU, just one of its anti-piracy partners sent in excess of eight million takedown notices to Share-Online in 2017 but the allegedly-infringing content reappeared shortly after it was apparently “deleted” by the platform.
This prompted GVU to file a complaint with the prosecutor’s office. Government investigators subsequently supported GVU’s investigation by carrying out their own analysis along with documented test downloads to substantiate claims that the site’s operators “aided and abetted” copyright infringement.
GVU says that infringing files stored on Share-Online were accessed via links posted to various file sharing forums which to a greater or lesser extent, collaborated with the platform.
“For the first time, file-hoster operators are the focus of a criminal copyright procedure because they use portal pages and forums such as DDL-Warez, Boerse, Movie-Blog and MyGully, supported by affiliate programs and commission payments,” says Evelyn Ruttke, Managing Director of GVU.
At the time of writing, Share-Online.biz is completely down, as is DDL-Warez. Two other sites cited by GVU as prominent users of Share-Online – Serienjunkies.org and Canna.to – remain operational.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/arrest-feat.jpg00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-17 17:59:362019-10-17 17:59:36Police Raids Shut Down Share-Online.biz, Germany’s Largest File-Hoster
This week we have three newcomers in our chart.
