Month: September 2015

Taylor Swift Cracks Down on Pirating “Periscope” Fans

periscopeTwitter’s live streaming app Periscope is causing headaches among copyright holders.

Every week the company received hundreds of takedown notices, mostly from sports organizations including NFL, NBA, WWE and the Premier League, who don’t want the public to rebroadcast their events for free.

Musicians appear to be less concerned by Periscope, except for Taylor Swift. In recent weeks Twitter has received dozens of notices asking the company to stop and remove live streams of Swift’s concerts.

The videos, often shared by some of the most passionate fans, are seen as copyright infringement. Swift has surrounded herself with a dedicated enforcement team called TAS Rights Management who swiftly take them offline.

Below is an example of a takedown notice that was sent to Periscope earlier this week, but there are dozens of other examples targeting ‘periscoped’ footage of recent live concerts.

swift-periscope

As far as we know, Swift is the only artist with a dedicated takedown team. The first letters of TAS Rights Management stand for T(aylor)A(lison)S(wift) and aside from targeting Periscope the group is also enforcing other online infringements.

While the takedown requests are legitimate, one can seriously doubt whether they are needed.

Most Periscope videos have terrible video and sound quality and can hardly be considered a threat. They are often shared by fans who simply want to give the rest of the world a glimpse of their experience, and after 24 hours the videos are automatically deleted.

Meanwhile, many HD recordings of Taylor Swift concerts remain readily available on torrent sites and websites such as YouTube.

Taylor Swift is the only artist sending takedown notices to Periscope, from what we’ve seen.

The vast majority of other complaints are sent on behalf of sports organizations such as the NFL, NBA, WWE, Premier League, Die Liga and the Rugby World Cup, which sell subscriptions and access to their live events.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

Norway’s Pirate Bay Block Rendered Useless by ‘Mistake’

pirate bayEarlier this month Norway became the latest country to block access to The Pirate Bay.

A local court ordered Internet providers to block user access to several large ‘pirate’ websites in the hope of decreasing online copyright infringement.

The decision sparked a public debate and spurred the local Pirate Party to launch their own DNS-service to circumvent the blockade. However, it appears that this countermeasure isn’t needed after all.

Now that the Internet providers have implemented the blockade, it has become apparent that not all Pirate Bay domains are covered by the court order. Apparently, thepiratebay.mn is still available to everyone.

This is quite an oversight because the .mn domain has been in use for several months already. It’s one of the four gTLDs the Pirate Bay is currently rotating as a redirect from the main thepiratebay.se domain.

Willy Johansen of the local “Rights Alliance” group, which was the driving force behind the blockade, acknowledges the problem.

“We are aware of the problem and do not like it at all. We can get the domain blocked by going to the police, but The Pirate Bay loves to play into this by replacing the domain name in a heartbeat,” Johansen tells Dagebladet.

Local media is presenting the story as if The Pirate Bay switched to a new domain, but that clearly isn’t the case. This makes the mistake even more painful, especially because copyright holders spent tens of thousands of dollars on the legal proceedings.

Meanwhile, Johansen says that it is difficult to keep up with The Pirate Bay’s domain switcheroos and hopes Norwegians will use their moral compass to steer clear of the site.

“It will always be possible for people to commit abuses if they want to, and there’s not much we can do about it. That’s also the case for society in general. We just have to hope people follow the law,” he says.

For now, visiting the Pirate Bay is by no means illegal, although sharing copyrighted works is. But that’s no different than before the blockade of course.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

280 ‘Pirate’ Sites Have Been Restricted in Russia

stopstopFollowing intense pressure from both local and international rightsholders, just over two years ago Russia took important steps towards cracking down on Internet piracy.

August 1, 2013, saw the introduction of a brand new copyright law which provided rightsholders with a mechanism to have sites blocked by ISPs if they do not respond to takedown requests within 72 hours.

Reporting on the first two years of activity, local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor has now revealed the extent to which the legislation has been used by rightsholders and what action has been taken.

“Since August 1, 2013, Roskomnadzor has received 189 complaints from rights holders. It is worth noting that currently we are limiting access to 282 sites that violate copyright and related rights,” Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Zharov told RIA.

Unsurprisingly the list includes The Pirate Bay, which had restrictions imposed in June 2015 following a complaint from Mosfilm, one of the largest European movie studios.

Other sites currently blocked include popular movie streaming site Primewire. Ukraine-based file-hosting giant EX.ua is also affected, alongside library sites flibusta.net loveread.ws, which combined are good for more than 40 million visitors per month. Sports streaming portal Livetv.sx, which reportedly attracts 27 million visits, is also restricted.

While blockades in Russia can be full, partial or lifted if cooperation is forthcoming, earlier this year authorities made it clear that repeat offenders would not be tolerated. Amendments to copyright law introduced May 1 indicated what lay ahead.

“This development will mean that the systematic violation of intellectual property rights will result in sites providing access to stolen content being blocked forever,” the government announced.

It now appears that RUTracker, Russia’s most-visited torrent site, and popular music portal ProstoPleer, have tested that promise to breaking point.

“A few days ago an appeal was filed by an association of rightsholders that will require constant blocks on two of biggest pirate resources,” Roskomnadzor’s Zharov confirms.

Both RUTracker and Pleer were subjected to earlier copyright complaints but reportedly failed to deal with them as required under the law. The current action comes from the National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI), a group which counts Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI among its members.

“We plan to file a statement with the court on Monday or Tuesday,” says NFMI CEO Leonid Agronov.

The music industry group said it tried to negotiate with the sites regarding the removal of pirated content but those discussions failed to yield results. Countering, Pavel Rassudov from the local Pirate Party feels that blockades will prove ineffective.

“People learn how to bypass these blocks, and the increase in their number will only lead to more frequent use of CGI proxies and the Tor network,” Rassudov says.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak