“Go Unlimited” Taunts Hollywood With DMCA-Ignore Video Hosting


Video streaming is more popular than ever. This is true for the YouTubes and Netflixes of this world, but also for pirate sites.

The influx of dedicated pirate streaming sites has triggered a cat and mouse game. Pirate sites are constantly trying to find stable hosting platforms, while rightsholders, Hollywood included, work hard to take videos down. 

These takedowns can be fairly effective. Most hosting platforms, even those frequently used by shady sites, accept takedown DMCA requests. As a result, the streaming portals often have to replace their videos, which can be quite a frustrating experience. 

This is also what Bader, the operator of the popular streaming portal Fushaar.com, noticed. The Kuwaiti entrepreneur operates several streaming sites which are predominantly popular in Arabic speaking countries. Fushaar, for example, is the 38th most visited website in Saudi Arabia.

Faced with a lack of stable ‘takedown resistant’ hosting providers to stream videos from, Bader decided to start one of his own, GO Unlimited.

“When I launched GO Unlimited in January 2016, I planned to host videos from my own websites, so it was a private video host. At the time my own websites were more than enough to bring in a lot of income for GO Unlimited,” Bader tells TorrentFreak. 

When this went well for a few months, Go Unlimited opened up to others. That started late 2016 when the now-defunct GoMovies.to joined. A major addition, as that was the most popular pirate streaming site on the web at the time. 

This also brought the video hosting platform to the attention of major copyright holders, which started to complain.

“When GoMovies.to joined, the journey started. The DMCA requests became more aggressive and more serious, so we started to use our own techniques to hide the original source of the video, so rightsholders didn’t have any resources to report,” Bader says. 

While the operator of Go Unlimited doesn’t go into detail, the site effectively hides where the videos are hosted. Because they are not residing on the website’s own domain name, the site ignores DMCA takedowns and similar notices. 

That didn’t stop rightsholders from submitting requests via escalating emails with titles such as URGENTLY, LAST WARNING, and LEGAL ACTIONS AHEAD, which kept pouring in. From then on, these were ignored though.

“Thanks to our techniques, by hiding the original source of the videos and misleading the networks providers, we were able to ignore the DMCA takedown requests for GoMovies,” Bader says. 

While rightsholders, including Hollywood’s MPAA, will disagree, the site’s operator believes that he’s not doing anything wrong here.

“We’re a licensed company in Kuwait and we’re a 100% legal service since we host nothing illegal at our main domain, nor do transfer copyrighted materials through our public services,” Bader says. 

For the same reason, the operator also believes that the domain name is safe. None of the hosted videos are directly hosted on the Gounlimited.to domain, so there’s nothing to complain about, the argument goes.

Upon closer inspection, it appears that Go Unlimited does disable videos for public viewing on its site on some occasions. However, third-party embeds of the same videos still work. This means that the uploaders can still use them on their own sites.

Streaming from Go Unlimited

Whether the actual videos are stored on or viewed from the official domain or not, rightsholders will point out that under most copyright laws, the site has an obligation to remove them.

Bader disagrees, however, and is not worried about any legal pressure or consequences. While he has had to make some adjustments along the way to keep network providers happy, he hasn’t run into any trouble personally.

“I am not afraid of any pressure, I use my personal credit cards to buy the resources and I’ve provided the network providers with my legal documents many times,” Bader says. 

One of the most significant setbacks has been Cloudflare’s recent decision to terminate the site’s account. The US-based CDN provider took this decision following a violation of its terms.

This is similar to what happened with other hosting platforms, such as Rapidvideo, which was thrown out for caching a disproportionate amount of non-HTML files. Neither Rapidvideo nor Go Unlimited used Cloudflare to cache video, however.

While Cloudflare didn’t mention copyright as the reason in this case either, Go Unlimited’s operator believes that it certainly played a role. 

“Our usage graph at CloudFlare shows less usage than websites with the same size who haven’t faced any problems so far and we didn’t host any media at their platform or violated their terms in any way,” Bader says.

“If it was a matter of resources, why didn’t they contact me first? Or asked me to upgrade my plan?”

While Go Unlimited suffered a few hours of downtime due to the suspension, the site swiftly returned, and since then it’s been business as usual.

Thus far the DMCA-ignore policy is working well for Go Unlimited. The site is not open to all uploaders but works with “trusted members” instead. There are a few hundreds of these now, which have all gone through a thorough vetting process. 
 
The number of actual visitors is impressive though. Bader estimates that Go Unlimited has roughly 150 million visitors per month, which are good for some rather decent ad revenue for the hosting providers as well as the uploaders. 

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Pirates: So You Want to Join ‘The Scene’?


Anyone involved in the piracy ecosystem could stake claim to being ‘in the scene’ but for those with a discerning interest in pirate matters, terminology is all important.

After decades of existence, The Scene has attained mythical status among pirates. It’s not a site, a place, a person, or a group. ‘The Scene’ is all of these things, combined in a virtual world to which few people ever gain access.

In basic terms, The Scene is a collection of both loose and tight-knit individuals and groups, using Internet networks as meeting places and storage vessels, in order to quickly leak as much pirated content as possible. From movies, TV shows and music, to software, eBooks and beyond. Almost anything digital is fair game for piracy at the most elite level.

These people – “Sceners” – are as protective of ‘their’ content as they are meticulous of their privacy but that doesn’t stop huge volumes of ‘their’ material leaking out onto the wider Internet. And occasionally – very occasionally – one of their members breaking ranks to tell people about it.

TorrentFreak recently made contact with one such individual who indicated a willingness to pull back the veil. However, verifying that ‘Sceners’ are who they say they are is inherently difficult. In part, we tackled this problem by agreeing for a pre-determined character string to be planted inside a Scene release.

With a fairly quick turnaround and as promised, the agreed characters appeared in a specific release. That the release had been made was confirmed by the standard accompanying text-based NFO file, which collectively are both widely and publicly available.

In respect of the group’s identity, we were asked to say that it has been active since 2018, but nothing more. We can confirm, however, that it already has dozens of releases thus far in 2019.

Our contact, who we will call “Source”, also claims to work with groups involved with so-called WEB releases, such as video content obtained and decrypted using sources including Netflix and Prime Video.

For security reasons, he wasn’t prepared to prove membership of that niche in the same fashion. However, the information he provided on those activities (to be covered in an upcoming part 2 of this article) is very interesting indeed. But first, an introduction to the basics, for those unfamiliar with how The Scene operates.

Basics of ‘The Scene’ – “Source’s” summary (in his own words)

  • Topsites: Top-secret, highly protected FTP servers storing up to hundreds or thousands of terabytes of copyrighted material. Users have to be authorized to the topsite by pre-existing members, and the users can only connect from specific IP-ranges.
  • Topsites usually always have an IRC channel where they announce the releases made on the specific topsite, alongside other things such as newly traded releases, requests and chat. These IRC chatrooms are encrypted using encryption tools on top of SSL.
  • Topsites can either be home hosted or rented. Rented sites are avoided by members of The Scene who are higher up in the food chain, since those are generally riskier due to being located at hosting companies’ datacenters. Users of a topsite are usually one of the following:
    • Traders / Racers
    • Release Groups (Affiliates)
    • Site Operator: User who owns or administrates a topsite
  • Release Groups (Affiliates): A single or group of users, who work together to download/rip, prepare, pack and pre a release. These groups usually compete against each other to get a release out as fast as possible, beating other groups.
  • Traders / Racers: A user who moves releases between topsites. For example: As soon as the group -XYZ releases an MP3 album on topsite -ASD, multiple traders instantly grab the new release and transfer it to their other topsites. When the release lands on the other topsites, traders there start sharing it further and further until every single topsite has the release. In some cases it only takes minutes for every single topsite to have the release in question.

Becoming a member of The Scene

Despite “Source’s” own group being relatively new, he says his history with The Scene dates back three years. Intrigued at the possibility of becoming a member but with no prior experience, he contacted a Scene group using an email address inside an NFO, offering his coding skills.

“I was able to convince the group to slowly adopt me into The Scene by providing them scripts and tools to make their job easier and faster, alongside other programming related tasks. The thing with Scene groups is that they don’t trust outsiders,” he explains.

Given that not granting access to the wrong people is fundamental to the security of The Scene, we asked how this “vetting” took place. “Source” explained that it was conducted over a period of time (around four months), with a particular Scene group carrying out its own investigations to ensure he wasn’t lying about himself or his abilities.

“The groups who vet new members also often try their best to dox the recruit, to make sure that the user is secure. If you’re able to be doxed (based on the info you give, your IP-addresses, anything really) you will lose your chances to join. The group won’t actually do anything with your personal info,” he adds, somewhat reassuringly.

Once the group was satisfied with his credentials, “Source” gained access to his very first topsite, which he describes as small and tight-knit. Topsites often use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for communications so from there it was a matter of being patient while simultaneously attempting to gain the trust of others in the channel.

“Most Sceners are very cautious of new users, even after being vetted in, due to the risk of a user still being insecure, an undercover officer or generally unwanted in terms of behavior. Once you’ve been idling in the chats and such for months, you slowly start gaining some basic recognition and trust,” he says.

Branching out

Once he’d gained access via the first topsite, “Source” says he decided to branch out on his own by creating his own Scene group and gathering content to release. From there he communicated with other users on the topsite in an effort to gain access to additional topsites as an affiliate.

As mentioned earlier, his own releases via his own group (the name of which we aren’t disclosing here) number in the dozens over the past several months alone. They are listed on publicly available ‘pre-databases‘ which archive information and NFO files which provide information related to Scene releases.

However, his own group isn’t the only string to the Source bow. Of particular interest is his involvement with so-called WEB releases, i.e pirate releases of originally protected video content obtained from platforms like Netflix and Prime Video.

“Content for WEB releases are obtained by downloading the source content. Whenever you stream a video online, you are downloading chunks of a video file to your computer. Sceners simply save that content and attempt to decrypt it for non-DRM playback later,” Source explains.

“Streams from these sites are protected by DRM. The most common, and hard to crack DRM is called Widevine. The way the Scene handles WEB-releases is by using specialized tools coded by The Scene, for The Scene.”

This is a particularly sensitive area, not least since Source says he’s acted as a programmer for multiple Scene groups making these releases. He’s understandably cautious so until next week (when we’ll continue with more detail specifically about WEB content) he leaves an early cautionary note for anyone considering joining The Scene.

“You can become Sceners with friends, but not friends with Sceners,” he concludes.

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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BMG Sues Hilton Hotels Over ‘Infringing’ YouTube & Facebook Promo Videos


BMG Production Music, Inc. describes itself as a “production music house” engaged in the creation, marketing and delivery of custom music for use in media, including online adverts and promotional material.

Its US catalog currently lists close to 247,000 tracks “spanning all musical genres” for customers to license for use in their own audio/visual productions. A lawsuit filed in the United States yesterday claims that at least one major company isn’t playing by the rules.

The complaint, filed in a New York federal court, targets Hilton Worldwide Holdings (Hilton), the company behind the globally-famous hotel chain. BMG says that Hilton exploited several of BMG’s musical works without obtaining appropriate licensing and continued to infringe BMG’s copyrights even after being warned by the music company.

At issue are several of the company’s promotional videos posted to Hilton’s YouTube channels and Facebook pages, which allegedly used BMG’s copyrighted works as background music.

The music outfit claims that the track “Start Moving” was exploited in nine videos posted to YouTube and six posted to Facebook. The track “I’m On It” allegedly featured in one YouTube video. The track “Collar Popper Holiday Mix” is said to have appeared in seven videos on YouTube, with “Cookie Duster” appearing in one video on the same site. In total, more than 20 allegedly-infringing videos were posted to various URLs.

The content and allegedly-infringing video URLs

An aggravating factor, BMG says, is that Hilton failed to act despite being warned of the infringements. BMG agent TuneSat, LLC contacted Hilton to warn that its music was being used and asked the company to prove it had appropriate licensing or to resolve the matter.

According to the complaint, that bore no fruit. The videos remained online and the copyright infringement continued.

“Despite being notified that they were using BMG’s Copyrighted Music and/or Unregistered Music without authorization or license, and despite months of exchanges of correspondence with TuneSat, the Defendants ultimately began willfully and intentionally ignoring TuneSat’s correspondence and continued to use the Copyrighted Music and Unregistered Music without authorization or license from BMG,” the complaint reads.

While BMG says Hilton continued to infringe, checking each of the URLs listed in the complaint reveals that all of the content in question has now been taken down from both YouTube and Facebook. Nevertheless, BMG is demanding an injunction restraining Hilton Worldwide and all acting in concert with it from engaging in further acts of infringement.

The music company is also seeking compensation for direct copyright infringement from Hilton Worldwide via actual damages (it estimates in excess of $600,000) or in the alternative, $150,000 in damages for each infringed work due to Hilton’s “willful copyright infringement.”

However, BMG owns the copyright in the sound recording and composition for each infringed track so the company claims that Hilton is actually liable for $300,000 in damages for each song used without a license.

BMG repeats the same direct infringement claim against Hilton Domestic Operating Company, Inc and an as-yet-unnamed Hilton business entity, going to also claim damages from all defendants for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

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





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Google Flags Hundreds of Pirate Sites for ‘Abusive Experiences’


Online advertising can be quite a nuisance. Flashy and noisy banners, or intrusive pop-ups, are a thorn in the side of many Internet users.

These type of ads are particularly popular on pirate sites. Many users tackle this by installing an ad-blocker. People who don’t, often have to navigate through a maze of fake download buttons and other misleading ads.

Increasingly, Google is trying to hide such ads from the public. Not just on pirate sites, but everywhere they pop up. The company, which derives most of its income from adverts, is generally not a fan of ad-blocking. However, it does employ various blocking initiatives that target third-party advertisers.

Two years ago the company announced that its Chrome browser would start to automatically block ads that don’t adhere to the  Better Ads Standards, for example. This was implemented early last year in several locations, including the US and Europe.

In a separate effort, Google has also started to banish abusive experiences. In Chrome its begun warning users about various deceptive practices, such as fake download and play buttons, while blocking unwanted redirects which are prevalent on some pirate streaming sites.

This wasn’t enough though. Last December, Google upped the ante when it decided to block all ads on a curated selection of sites with persistent abusive experiences. This includes the aforementioned fake download buttons, but also ads that promote or link to unwanted software.

This is a big step, as sites that have all ads blocked will certainly notice a significant dip in revenue. Thus far, however, little was known about what sites are targeted by Google, or how many there are. That changed recently. 

The latest release of the Vivaldi browser, which is based on Chrome, also implemented this blocklist. This was announced in a blog post by its CEO  Jon von Tetzchner.

“We’ve improved security by blocking advertisements on sites with abusive ad practices,” he writes. “We want you to be safe while on the web, and worry less about who’s abusing you with dangerous ads.”

Google’s list of abusive sites is available through an API, but not accessible to the public. However, Vivaldi has access to it and maintains a copy on its servers, as highlighted by Techdows which highlighted it in a recent report.

We should stress that this list of “abusive” sites is separate from the list of sites that violate the “better ads” standard, which Chrome’s built-in ad-blocker uses.

A quick review of the list reveals that it’s dominated by pirate and porn sites. At the time of writing, there are a total of 7,059 sites on the list including hundreds of pirate sites such as thepiratebay.rocks, eztvtorrent.net, filmytorrents.com, gostream.nu, songsmp3.org, and watchonlinemovies.net.

The targeted pirate sites are mostly smaller proxy sites or copycats, often designed to generate revenue. Interestingly, there are also several Blogspot sites on the list, such as the pirate release blog 4howcracked.blogspot.com.  Blogspot is, of course, a blogging platform maintained by Google.

In addition, we noticed that many domains are no longer operational, such as tehmoviez.download, and various others redirect to new URLs, as 0123movies.io does. 

When we first saw the list the relatively popular torrent site TorrentDownloads.me was listed as an ‘abusive’ site as well. The operator confirmed this and told TorrentFreak that he noticed a decline in revenue when that happened.

“Revenue dropped a few months ago when they put us on the abusive list. That’s why we are thinking to move our domain to new TLDs. I will also send a request for Google to review the site again and hope they will unblock it now,” the operator said. 

Apparently, this worked, as the site was unlisted a few hours later. No surprise perhaps, as the site doesn’t display any ads at the moment, so we must wait and see if this holds when the ads are put back.

Another site owner, who prefers to remain anonymous, informed TorrentFreak that his site was listed previously, but that the issue was resolved after he removed what Google flagged as ‘abusive’ code.

With billions of sites on the Internet and just a few thousand on this list of abusive sites, the impact of this measure is relatively minimal. And even on sites that are listed, some ads are still coming through, such as on the adult site 007zeed.com and pirate site Stream-Island.su. 

While the measure may not be perfect, Google sees it as an attempt to keep the web safe. While that’s an honorable motive, there may be a self-serving element to it as well. 

As said before, Google doesn’t want people to install ad-blockers. So, if its own browser blocks flashy ads on sites by default and bans ads on abusive sites completely, fewer people may see the need for a separate ad-blocker.

As a result, Google’s revenues increase. 

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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Bilibili Uses DMCA to Obtain Identities of Source Code Leakers From Github


Credit: Bilibili

Little known in the West, Bilibili is a China-based video-sharing platform with a focus on anime, comics and games.

Users are able to upload videos to the NASDAQ-listed platform for others to add their own commentary and subtitles. According to data released by Bilibili in February, the service enjoys in excess of 92 million monthly users. Shortly after, however, the site suffered a setback.

A report in April indicated that someone had uploaded a large trove of data to Github, reportedly culled from Bilibili, including source code, user names and passwords. The company played down the leak, stating that the data was from an old version of the site and “defensive steps” had been taken to ensure user security wasn’t compromised.

However, Bilibili also promised to investigate the source of the leak and there are now clear signs that it is doing so in the United States, using copyright law.

Documents obtained by TorrentFreak show a China-based law firm writing to Github on April 23, 2019, a letter which appears to indicate the problem may be more serious than it first appeared.

“On April 22, 2019 (GMT-8), a Github user (user ID: “openbilibili”) published a post with the subject of “openbilibili/go-common” in the Github website, which contained the comprehensive and detailed information of Bilibili’s source code and other trade secrets/confidential information,” the letter reads.

At least one other Github user posted the same information shortly after, which resulted in additional users forking that data. Bilibili’s law firm said these infringing acts meant that the individuals responsible for them could be held accountable under both civil and criminal law.

The letter indicates that Github had already taken measures to disable access to some of the infringing content. However, Bilibili’s legal team wanted the platform to go further, by handing over “any and all personal information” it holds on the individuals in question, including IP and email addresses, telephone numbers, browsing history, plus upload and download records.

What happened next isn’t clear but it seems likely that Github refused to comply with Bilibili’s demands in the absence of a legal document compelling it to cooperate. That probably being the case, this week Bilibili requested a DMCA subpoena at a San Francisco federal court to unmask the Github users.

It is not yet clear whether Github has already handed over the personal details of the alleged infringers but Bilibili is talking tough. Earlier documentation suggests that the company was preparing a report so that police in Shangai could “stop, investigate and punish the suspected crime immediately.”

Given that the company has used the DMCA to obtain Github users’ identities, it will be interesting to see if it actually pursues a copyright claim in the US or whether the DMCA subpoena route is simply an easy way to get things started in other areas of law.

The documents referenced above can be found here 1,2,3,4 (pdf)

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‘Pirate’ IPTV Service Simply-TV Responds to DISH Lawsuit


In 2018, DISH Network and encryption partner NagraStar sued several individuals, companies and trusts collectively doing business as SETTV.

As part of its $20 per month IPTV package, SETTV offered numerous TV channels that had been obtained from DISH’s satellite service. These were subsequently retransmitted without authorization on the SETTV streaming service.

Last November, DISH’s lawsuit came to an end, with SETTV’s operators ordered by a Florida court to pay a settlement of $90 million in statutory damages. However, the fight against similar – if not identical services – was not over.

In March 2019, DISH and NagraStar filed another lawsuit in Florida, this time targeting several individuals and companies collectively doing business as Simply-TV, a $20 per month service which several users have described as having many similarities to SETTV.

“Defendants created a pirate streaming television service they have branded ‘Simply-TV’. Defendants sell Device Codes and Android TV Boxes designed to enable access to the Simply-TV pirate streaming service, which includes numerous television channels that were received without authorization from DISH’s satellite service and were subsequently retransmitted without authorization on the Simply-TV pirate streaming service,” the complaint reads.

DISH goes on to suggest that the business model cascades down, with Simply-TV’s operators working together with people who receive the company’s channels without permission and Simply-TV re-selling service to others. A so-called “Master Reseller Program” allowed resellers to resell the service, complete with their own branding and pricing structure.

DISH’s claims against those allegedly behind Simply-TV are made under the Federal Communications Act, specifically 47 U.S.C. § 605(a) and 47 U.S.C. § 605(e)(4) which relate to illegal reception/retransmission and selling devices which facilitate access to DISH’s satellite programming.

While Simply-TV disappeared earlier this year, DISH requested a permanent injunction against the service and the supply of infringing devices. In addition to considerable damages, DISH also asked permission to take possession of and destroy all “devices, subscriptions, applications, and device codes, as well as all streaming devices, technologies, tools, software, products, components, or parts thereof” related to the service.

On March 20, 2019, the court issued a temporary restraining order but following a no-show by the defendants at an April 4, 2019 hearing, the court converted that order to a comprehensive preliminary injunction which not only covered Simply-TV, but all those in “active concert or participation with them” including affiliates and resellers.

At the end of May the alleged operators of Simply-TV, named as Peter Liberatore and Brandon Wells, filed a response to the DISH complaint. The pair, who are representing themselves, admitted that subscriptions to Simply-TV were sold through various websites.

They also admitted that some of the content provided by Simply-TV originated from DISH and acknowledged that the service had not obtained “explicit authorization” from the broadcast provider.

It was further admitted that Droid Technology LLC, a company allegedly founded by “some or all” of the defendants according to DISH, provided tools for consuming Simply-TV on various devices. It was also accepted that Droid used the previously-mentioned affiliate programs to attract business to Simply-TV.

How the case will progress from here is open to interpretation but if the SETTV judgment is any barometer, things could start to get pretty expensive.

The complaint can be viewed here, preliminary injunction here, response here (pdf)

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Video Piracy Rates Drop Sharply, But For How Long?


For many people, on-demand streaming services have become the standard for watching movies and TV-shows.

In many countries, the idea of ‘on-demand’ video was popularized by piracy. This was often the only way for people to watch what they want, whenever they liked. 

Over the past decade, the legal options have gradually improved. More content is available and people have plenty of options to stream the latest hit-series or Hollywood blockbusters. 

According to new consumer research by Ampere Analysis, this is one of the reasons why video piracy rates are dropping in several countries, including the United States, France, Spain, and Germany. 

The bar chart below shows the percentage of people who used one or more video piracy services in the previous month. Without exception, video piracy rates declined during the three year period from 2016 to 2019 in all countries that were polled. 

The drop was most pronounced in France, the United States, and the Netherlands where the number of people using piracy services in the past month was decreased by more than half. Spain also saw a sharp decline, from 12% to 7%.

Richard Broughton, Director at Ampere Analysis, links the changes to the increased availability of on-demand services, such as Netflix, which directly compete with piracy.

“On average, in markets where either catch-up or SVoD online video viewing has risen the most, piracy has experienced the biggest drop. With the growth in all-you-can-eat legal services, users no longer need to turn to illegitimate sources to get their viewing fix,” Broughton notes.

This is backed up by data. In Spain, for example, the use of legal SVoD and catch-up services grew by 47% while the number of people that use piracy services and sites dropped by 45%.

While this is positive news for entertainment companies, there is also reason for concern. Increasingly, the legal video streaming landscape is becoming more fragmented or siloed. This means that people have to pay for more services to see what they want.

These new restrictions could push people in the direction of pirate sites again. 

“The on-demand market is moving into a period of ‘siloization’ where producer and distributor brands go direct to the consumer, at the same time restricting the amount of content they license to third party services,” Broughton says.

“If the mainstream OTT players have less of the content users want to watch, when they want to watch it, there’s a genuine risk that usage of these SVoD and catch-up services could begin to slump, something the pirate operators will be quick to capitalize on.”

This isn’t just a hypothetical threat either. Most households have a limited budget for online entertainment, so consumers eventually have to choose which services they want. This is a problem that keeps getting worse, especially now that more services have ‘exclusive’ titles.

Recent research by piracy research firm MUSO revealed that 80.4% of UK consumers already feel that they’re already paying too much for content streaming. More than half of these said they were likely or very likely to use unlicensed platforms to search for content that’s not available to them.

These people are all willing to pay. However, in order to get everything they want, they are happy to complement their legal viewing with the occasional pirate download or stream.

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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Kodi "Leia" 18.3 Release


Two months have passed since our last bugfix release and already we have a new one ready for consumption. Fancy a few more features? There aren’t any, with one teeny-tiny exception. Apparently DTS-HD audio only tracks are a thing and Kodi can now play them like any other music format. That’s it. No more features. Seriously.

However, since Kodi 18.3 is a bugfix release, we have a boatload of erm… fixes. In fact, too many to mention. Below is a non-exhaustive list of (mostly) usability fixes.

Estuary

  • Fixed favourites widget not scrolling properly on 16:10 displays
  • Fixed API button was not reachable with a mouse on Settings window
  • Fixed Skin Settings window scrollbar focus
  • Fixed order of TV Show title and Episode title in Video Info dialog
  • Added Search button to the side menu in the Video and Music windows
  • Fixed Wall and Infowall views scroll to bottom on certain aspect-ratios
  • Fixed broken side menu navigation in the Addon Browser window

PVR

  • Fixed a Group Manager crash when adding a new group
  • Fixed EPG UI corruption and/or EPG data not showing with newly added channels
  • Fixed PVR guide window channel data being overwritten

Music

  • Added support for DTS-HD audio tracks
  • Fixed wrong album or artist thumb art being picked from scraper results

The remaining fixes are under the hood and range from addressing nasty memory leaks to DVD playback from HTTPS sources, with a couple of crash and burn events in between. A special thanks to all the users that found a bug, took the time to report it and, in some cases, provided a fix.

The full v18.3 changelog can be found in our GitHub milestone. If you want to read back on what was actually changed in v18 itself, you can find the corresponding articles in the blog posts – Kodi 18, Kodi 18.1 and Kodi 18.2.

As usual, Kodi 18.3 availability on Google Play and Microsoft Store may take a few more days. Stay tuned.

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‘Copyright Troll’ Lawyer Appeals 14 Year Prison Sentence


Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release.

Hansmeier was a key player in the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent. 

Hansmeier and fellow attorney John Steele went a step further though. Among other things they lied to the courts, committed identity theft, and concocted a scheme to upload their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

Both attorneys pleaded guilty and Hansmeier was the first to be sentenced. However, he is not planning to let the matter go without a fight. This was already made clear in his plea agreement last year, where he reserved the right to appeal.

This week Hansmeier’s informed the court that he is indeed appealing to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The notice reveals that he is appealing both the sentence and conviction, challenging the reasonableness of the sentencing and the application of the sentencing guidelines.

From the appeal notice

Hansmeier initially hoped to be released pending his planned appeal. Before the sentencing, his attorney put in a request to make this happen, in an effort to keep him out of prison.

The U.S. prosecution objected and asked the court not to allow bail. Among other things, it argued that the Prenda attorney may be a flight risk, considering that he previously lied to courts, created sham entities in order to shield himself, and destroyed evidence when he was found out.

The court sided with the prosecution and denied the bail request. This means that Hansmeier will serve time while his appeal is ongoing. 

There was initially also some positive news for the Prenda attorney. Through his bankruptcy trustee, he was awarded a $75,000 settlement for restitution the lawyer previously paid against an accused file-sharer, while not being a named party. 

Hansmeier is not going to see any of that money though, as U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald swiftly put in a request to reserve the funds for the victims of the Prenda scheme.

“Hansmeier is set to receive a substantial amount of money and justice requires an order for its immediate payment towards the restitution he owes his victims,” MacDonald wrote.

The court agreed and this week ordered that the $75,000 should be reserved for potential victims. The court previously ordered that, in addition to the prison sentence, Hansmeier must pay his victims a total of $1.5 million in restitution.

For now, however, all eyes will be on the appeal. 

John Steele, the second defendant in the Prenda case, is scheduled to be sentenced in July. The U.S. prosecutor previously stated that Steele has been very cooperative following his arrest so has recommended an 8-10 year sentence.

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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The Pirate Bay Faces Massive ISP Blocks in Spain


While no longer the most visited ‘pirate’ site on the Internet, The Pirate Bay arguably remains the most recognizable brand. As a result, the platform has been at the center of dozens of legal processes around the world, each designed to make the platform less accessible to the public.

Aside from direct actions to take the site down, all of which have failed, the torrent index regularly finds itself listed in lawsuits and complaints which aim to force Internet service providers to block consumer access to the site.

Back in 2015, Spain was added to that expanding list when local ISP Vodafone admitted that following a government complaint, it had rendered the site’s main domain inaccessible.

According to the Ministry of Culture and Sport, procedures took place between June 2014 and November 2018 to block several associated domains, including those ending in .se, .org, .net, and .com. It now appears the government is attempting to finish the job.

Following a procedure initiated by rights holders represented by the Association of Intellectual Rights Management (AGEDI) and music group Promusicae (Productores de Música de España) and a subsequent request from the Commission of Intellectual Property (also known as the Anti-Piracy Commission) the central courts of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court have authorized additional blocking.

The Ministry of Culture and Sport hasn’t detailed the precise targets but describes them as more than 60 additional domains/sites that are allegedly linked to the notorious torrent site. The site itself isn’t believed to operate that many alternative domains so it’s likely they’re proxies, mirrors and clones that utilize The Pirate Bay’s familiar branding.

“This massive blocking of web pages that, under the brand ThePirateBay, were illegally using the rights of our artists and creators, has an exemplary value for us because it shows that even with the greatest pirates who try repeatedly to circumvent the mechanisms of defense of copyright, the system of the Anti-Piracy Commission works,” says Adriana Moscoso del Prado, general director of Cultural Industries and Cooperation at the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

The government department says the order requires local Internet service providers to block subscriber access to the domains within 72 hours of being notified of the court order. Notifications were sent out yesterday meaning that ISPs should have blockades in place well before the end of the week. It is not yet clear which ISPs have been notified.

The Ministry of Culture notes that the Anti-Piracy Commission has to date targeted 479 sites but the overwhelming majority (92.69%) have removed infringing content once they’ve been officially notified. The Pirate Bay never removes any infringing content so faced with that intransigence, the authorities targeted it with judicial blocking orders, including the one handed down yesterday.

Following a complaint by several Hollywood studios, a similar order was handed down just a few days ago targeting Spanish-language sites Exvagos1.com, Seriesdanko.to, Seriespapaya.com, Cinecalidad.to , Repelis.live, Pelispedia.tv, Cliver.tv, Descagasdd.com and Pepecine.me.

Earlier this year, a local court ordered the country’s largest Internet service providers to begin blocking seven torrent sites including 1337x and LimeTorrents.

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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