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
Earlier this month, several copyright holder groups sent their annual “notorious markets” submissions to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
The U.S. Government uses this input for its annual review of notorious piracy markets, an overview of threats to various copyright industries.
The recommendations, including those from the RIAA, MPA, and ESA, traditionally include well-known piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, but increasingly third-party technology providers are also being added to the mix.
For example, domain registrars and hosting services are regularly listed, and the same is true for advertising companies. Cloudflare has been frequently mentioned as well, although it’s not officially listed since the overview focuses on foreign entities.
The copyright holder groups who send these recommendations hope that the U.S. will include these companies in its final overview. That would put pressure on the sites and services as well at the countries from where they operate.
However, not everyone is pleased with this development. According to the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (I2Coalition), which counts Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, OVH, Steadfast and Tucows among its members, third-party intermediaries don’t belong in this list.
“Notorious markets should not be confused with neutral intermediaries such as Internet Infrastructure providers,” the I2Coalition writes in a letter to the USTR.
The coalition notes that some submissions, including those from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, have gone too far by suggesting copyright protection measures that would harm Internet infrastructure and therefore the Internet as a whole.
The group notes that Internet infrastructure providers, such as DNS providers, route users of the web to the right online locations. These services simply refer requests and don’t control the information at the locations where people are directed.
“The nature of these kinds of businesses is that they have limited access to content information. There are intermediaries between various segments of the Internet as a whole. They are not markets. Yet, these kinds of companies may be erroneously listed in the USTR notorious markets report,” the I2Coalition writes.
The Internet companies add that recent updates to the law have highlighted new enforcement options. However, it is not clear what must be enforced. This can become problematic when various stakeholders have different views on what the term ‘notorious market’ means.
“It is in this lack of clarity where many who submit to the notorious markets either by mistake or intentionally mischaracterize the concept of notorious markets for the purposes of identifying intellectual property infringement.”
The coalition calls on the USTR to deliver clarity as some of the current submissions vilify specific technologies, it says. Instead, the process should be limited to the ‘notorious’ sites and marketplaces themselves, not third-party intermediaries.
“We believe that the spirit and letter of the relevant IP laws are better upheld by going after true notorious markets, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater by going after Internet infrastructure providers,” the I2Coalition stresses.
The letter doesn’t mention specific companies or services the coalition believes were mistakenly called out. However, the coalition makes it clear that an effort to clear up what a ‘notorious market’ is should include a variety of stakeholders, not only those who represent the copyright industry.
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A copy of the letter the Internet Infrastructure Coalition sent to the US Trade Representative is available here (pdf).
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/worldfea.png2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-17 07:58:482019-10-17 07:58:48Key Internet Players Call For Clarification of ‘Notorious Piracy Market’ Term
In the summer of 2017, one of the most important anti-piracy initiatives of recent years was born.
After years of protecting their own content from unlicensed reproduction and distribution, 30 of the world’s most powerful media companies came together to form the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).
Led by the MPAA (now MPA), the companies declared a pooling of resources to tackle piracy more efficiently and on a global scale. Since then, ACE has added several new members to bolster the ranks and this week added two more, one of which is particularly notable.
“We are excited to have Comcast and Viacom join ACE – our leading global content protection organization,” says Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association.
“As the parent companies of two of our original members, they have been supporters of our efforts and numerous successes, but now as members, they will strengthen the legal and operational work we’re able to do to reduce the threat of piracy and support creators.”
Viacom is the parent company of Paramount Pictures, which in turn is a current member of both the MPA and ACE. It also owns UK-based Channel 5, which joined ACE in March 2019.
Comcast owns ACE members NBCUniversal, Sky, and Telemundo, all of which have been with the alliance from its inception. Comcast also operates telecoms giant Comcast Cable, which under the Xfinity brand is one of the largest telecoms companies in the United States.
The addition of Comcast to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is intriguing. Among almost three dozen other current members, it is the first Internet service provider to commit to the global anti-piracy initiative. How that will play out on the ground is currently unclear.
Given that three of its subsidiaries are already members, the addition of Comcast seems a logical move. ACE, however, seems to be placing emphasis on Comcast’s position as a major ISP which, with imagination, could have all kinds of implications when it comes to anti-piracy enforcement.
ACE plays its cards very close to its chest and we know it only publicizes a small percentage of its actions. As previously reported, many others are kept deliberately quiet. What we know thus far though, is that ACE tends to focus on the provision and distribution of infringing content, rather than targeting end-users – customers of ISPs for example.
Nevertheless, that Comcast and by extension Xfinity are now part of the world’s largest anti-piracy coalition should give pause for thought. If nothing else it shows clear intent by an ISP to positively participate in the global fight against movie and TV show piracy, in all its forms. ACE will no doubt consider this a major achievement.
The full list of members of the ACE anti-piracy coalition now reads as follows: Amazon, AMC Networks, BBC Worldwide, Bell Canada and Bell Media, Canal+ Group, CBS Corporation, Channel 5, Comcast, Constantin Film, Discovery, Foxtel, Grupo Globo, HBO, Hulu, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Millennium Media, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, SF Studios, Sky, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Star India, Studio Babelsberg, STX Entertainment, Telefe, Telemundo, Televisa, Univision Communications Inc., Viacom, Village Roadshow, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ace-feat.jpg2411200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-16 21:57:422019-10-16 21:57:42Comcast Becomes First ISP to Join ACE Global Anti-Piracy Coalition
YouTube’s copyright takedown policy poses one of the biggest threats to the streaming platform’s content creators.
YouTubers who receive three copyright infringement strikes can easily lose their channel, which for some equates to their livelihood.
This looming threat also provides an opportunity for scammers. As we reported a few months ago, YouTube’s copyright takedown process was being abused to extort YouTubers, including ‘ObbyRaidz’ and ‘Kenzo.’ Both repeatedly received ‘strikes’ against their channels.
The scammer in question pretended that he was the legitimate owner of the videos uploaded by the users and requested money to retract the false claims.
“We striked you. Our request is $150 PayPal, or $75 btc. You may send the money via goods/ services if you do not think we will cancel or hold up our end of the deal,” the scammer wrote.
This abuse didn’t go unnoticed by YouTube, which tracked down the alleged offender and took action.
Last month the video streaming service sued Nebraska-resident Christopher Brady, accusing him of violating the DMCA by falsely claiming the content of other YouTubers as his own.
According to YouTube, Brady repeatedly attempted to harass and extort money from content creators through his bogus copyright infringement claims.
The company believes Brady went as far as using the address of YouTube user Cxlvxn, which is shared with a rightsholder for the purpose of filing a lawsuit, in an attempt to dispatch a large number of police officers to his home.
In the complaint, YouTube demanded a jury trial but it didn’t get that far. A few hours ago they submitted an agreed judgment and permanent injunction to the Nebraska federal court, which settles the matter without any further bloodshed.
Under the proposed injunction (pdf), Brady is prevented from filing any bogus copyright claims going forward. In addition, he separately agreed to pay $25,000 for his misconduct, offering a public apology to all the people who were hurt by his actions.
“I, Christopher L. Brady, admit that I sent dozens of notices to YouTube falsely claiming that material uploaded by YouTube users infringed my copyrights,” reads the apology, which YouTube shared with The Verge.
“I apologize to the YouTube users that I directly impacted by my actions, to the YouTube community, and to YouTube itself,” Brady adds.
The proposed judgment and injunction have yet to be signed off by the court, but this is expected to happen later this week. It’s not clear whether any of the affected users will receive compensation, but YouTube says that it’s happy with this outcome.
“This settlement highlights the very real consequences for those that misuse our copyright system. We’ll continue our work to prevent abuse of our systems,” a YouTube spokesperson said.
One of the main tenets of both Kodi and open-source software in general is freedom of choice. By making the software freely and publicly available without charge, users are able to try the software with no financial outlay or risk. As the source code is also available for inspection, the risks of “hidden nasties” such as covert information gathering and other data mining can also be alleviated. Anyone can download, review and audit any part of the software that they wish, as well as submitting any updates, improvements and bug fixes that they may make.
This notion of user choice is also key to the operation and support offered by Team Kodi, both through GitHub and the web forum. One common question is why we don’t do more to combat piracy, especially given our zero tolerance policy towards support (or lack thereof, aside from attempts to completely remove from infected systems). The simple answer is that we believe in user choice, and that if the user makes the conscious and informed decision that they want to use Kodi for such purposes then that is up to them. Similarly, any resultant technical or legal problems which may arise are also down to them, and there’s no liability or responsibility on Team Kodi for what a user has chosen to do.
An Informed Choice
Key to that stance, though, is that the user has made an informed choice. This is the reason why third-party repositories are not usable by default in Kodi. The user has to make a specific action to enable their usage, complete with a warning pop-up message about the risks and liabilities involved. We take responsibility for our official repository and what we we allow into it, and content is reviewed and audited before it is included. Any fork of Kodi which seeks to override or remove this default setting would immediately be blacklisted by the team, and no support for it at all would be offered by any official Team Kodi outlet.
Similarly, this is why the team does not allow forks with pre-installed add-ons to be made without complete rebranding and disassociation from Kodi, and why no “builds” are supported. By “build”, here we use the term in the common user parlance (as can be found on many of the third-party YouTube videos and parasitic “fan” websites that we would rather did not exist) for collections of add-ons either grouped into an “all in one” installation, or even images of Kodi with such add-ons pre-installed. This obviously completely removes the user choice element, aside from the choice to install the build in the first place.
The main issues here are twofold. Firstly, whilst such builds tend to install popular piracy add-ons, they often also quietly install other code under the hood with little or no visibility to the user. This can range from scripts that try to maintain the installation (given the limited lifespan of such add-ons) to ones that aim to sabotage or remove those of rival suppliers – and, in the extreme, even to malicious malware scripts to form botnets, mine digital coinage or perform other nefarious actions behind the user’s back.
Secondly, such builds tend to be advertised on websites and in videos as being official, legal and legitimate. This is often deliberately done to confuse the naive user that they are getting something for nothing and a good deal. Of course, a moment’s thought and common sense should tell anyone that if media providers such as Sky, HBO and Disney charge people what they do for their officially-provided services, then offers of them for free cannot be above board. Similarly, sources or add-ons offering media that wouldn’t normally be available, such as movies that are still in cinema theatres, should also ring alarm bells in the head of any consumer.
Uncommon Sense, or Stating the Obvious?
Unfortunately in this day and age such common sense does not seem to apply to the internet. We often see this on the forum when new users request support for such installations and then apologise with “sorry, I didn’t know” or similar when we decline to assist. They completely miss the point that it was their choice and basic greed that led them there, and a moment’s thought should have given them pause. For some reason users seem to willingly accept the most obviously dodgy deals on the internet, ones that they wouldn’t touch if offered in a pub car park, car boot sale or other “real world” environment.
Our simple advice is to apply the same judgement to your Kodi installation as you would to anything else in life. If the deal you’re being offered seems too good to be true, it quite probably is and there will be a catch somewhere. The team works hard to provide the Kodi software and also to curate the official repository. Both of these can be safely used when obtained from our official site. However, beyond that, the principles of caveat emptor apply. We expect and enforce that users are responsible for their own actions and the repercussions from them.
So before using any third party repository or add-on, take a moment to consider what you know about the authors, their reputation and what they are offering. Don’t be fooled by false promises and dodgy deals – in the end the person responsible for your devices’ safety and security is you.
There was uproar in the media this past weekend after a violent video meme was reportedly shown at a pro-Trump conference.
The video, a doctored version of the famous church scene from the movie Kingsman, depicts Trump killing his critics, from both the media and politics.
The video was made by TheGeekzTeam, an entity that creates content for a website run by Carpe Donktum, a prolific pro-Trump supporter and meme-maker. During the fallout on Monday, Carpe Donktum’s Twitter account was suspended, an event which led various media outlets to connect the events of the weekend with the suspension.
A Twitter spokesperson effectively confirmed that the suspension was DMCA related, noting that it responds to “valid copyright complaints sent us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives.”
Twitter made no mention of which content had caused the suspension but the actual DMCA notice obtained by TorrentFreak confirms it had nothing to do with the ‘Kingsman’ meme published over the weekend.
The DMCA notice, served not only against Carpe Donktum’s Twitter account but also around two dozen others, was actually filed by Universal Music Group. The offending Twitter URL is highlighted below.
The Tweet in question dates back to February 5, 2018, and remains online, along with the text “In case you missed the T-Mobile Superbowl Commercial. Here it is!” However, the embedded video has been removed, indicating that this was the source of the DMCA complaint.
It’s pretty clear why Carpe Donktum’s video was taken down. While it contains other copyrighted music throughout not contained in the original video (a lullaby rendition of Nirvana’s ‘All Apologies’ according to Shazam), it’s the last 14 seconds of the 80-second video causing the problems.
With Trump wearing a ‘Thug Life’ hat, obligatory sunglasses and sporting a huge joint in his mouth, the track ‘Ultimate’ by Denzel Curry booms from the video. This isn’t what Universal Music wanted and judging by comments made by Curry in 2017, it probably isn’t what he wanted either.
“I felt like I was part of the problem honestly. Being disillusioned and thinking, ‘nah, that’s not gonna happen, this nigga ain’t gonna be president.’ Then this nigga became president. So what the fuck just happened? I don’t get all the choices I want, but I definitely didn’t want this nigga to be my president,” Curry said.
One copyright complaint isn’t usually enough for Twitter to suspend an account but Carpe Donktum now has at least three against his. In addition to the notice sent Monday, two others are on record, one sent in April and another in June. Only the one sent by Universal Music has a listed sender, the other two have their details redacted.
Carpe Donktum’s Twitter account has now been restored but for how long remains open to question and probably dictated by future conduct.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/fea-dark-clouds.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-10-15 15:54:362019-10-15 15:54:36Twitter Suspends Trump Meme Creator…But Not For the ‘Kingsman’ Bloodbath Video
This week we have three newcomers in our chart.
