Month: December 2015

BREIN Does a Deal With Kickass and Pirate Bay Uploader

brein-newIn August 2015, BREIN announced that it had reached a private agreement with members of ‘Dutch Release Team’ (DRT), a group that had uploaded movies to torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.

The deal entailed them deleting their files from Kickass, paying a cash settlement, and informing on remaining members of the group.

Now BREIN has announced a new development which should herald the final nail in the coffin for another release group. According to the anti-piracy outfit it first identified and then settled with the last active member of DMT (Dutch Movie Theater).

According to BREIN the man uploaded mostly movies and eBooks on an almost daily basis to sites including KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay. Revealing his alias as ‘ipod020′, BREIN says that overall around 5,000 torrents were uploaded.

On Kickass, where the man used to have an active account, all torrents have been deleted. In their place sits a warning message (Dutch, translated by TF) to other would-be releasers.

“Illegal uploading and downloading costs a lot of money to the film industry, but also to me. Do not do it. I had to settle with BREIN for thousands of euros,” the message reads.

ipod-warning

Although BREIN hasn’t publicly made any connection, in November it announced that an injunction had been obtained following an ex-parte case against a 20-year-old student, who uploaded over 750 torrents to KickassTorrents.

He appears to have been connected to the same group and also reached a compensation agreement with BREIN. His KickassTorrents account displays a message too.

Kickass

“We deal with increasingly prolific uploaders,” says BREIN chief Tim Kuik commenting on this week’s case.

“Some uploaders pretend it is a harmless hobby, while they’re causing extensive damage and illegal sites are profiting handsomely. If you run into trouble, it is an expensive hobby for sure.”

In closing, the anti-piracy boss warns of an active 2016 in which BREIN will continue to track down content uploaders.

“There are more investigations in the pipeline, and next year we’ll launch an even more comprehensive approach where we will use software to trace uploaders,” Kuik concludes.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Feds Drop Case Against Torrent Site, ‘Return’ Domain After 5 Years

dojThis week the FBI announced that it had helped take down 37,479 websites, most of which sold counterfeit goods.

The enforcement action was a continuation of operation “In Our Sites” which began in 2010. At the time, several piracy related websites were among the prime targets including torrent search engine Torrent-Finder.com.

The torrent site, which didn’t host or link to any infringing content, had its domain name seized for allegedly infringing copyrights and the authorities announced that an investigation was ongoing.

Torrent-Finder’s owner Waleed Gadelkareem was genuinely surprised by the actions of the US authorities and became determined to fight the seizure. He had never run into copyright issues before and maintained that his Egypt-based business was perfectly legal.

With help from U.S. lawyer David Snead, TorrentFinder decided to appeal the seizure. TorrentFinder’s operator opted to do this outside of court, through an administrative enforcement process.

This process lasted nearly half a decade and a few days ago the authorities informed TorrentFinder that they would no longer pursue the case. The DoJ accepted the torrent site’s “offer in compromise,” which among other things states that it will comply with takedown requests.

The seizure banner

ICE-seized

The Torrent-Finder.com domain was officially released late November and is now in the hands of the original owner again, who is redirecting it to the torrent section of his new search engine AIO.

While the authorities don’t officially endorse the site, it’s clear that their case against it wasn’t strong enough to follow-up with a prosecution.

Despite the positive outcome, Torrent-Finder’s former lawyer David Snead says that it’s disappointing that it took the authorities half a decade to reach their final decision. Avoiding a court battle actually slowed down the process.

“The procedure we used was presented to us as an alternative to litigation, and possibly speedier,” Snead told TF this week.

“The length of time that it took for this matter to be resolved is very troubling. It indicates that the domain name seizure process does not have built into it respect for due process that is the hallmark of the U.S. legal system.”

Due process is important as Torrent-Finder’s traffic was hit hard by the seizure, a drop many other websites may not have survived. The torrent search engine didn’t give up though, and it’s successor is still around today.

We spoke to Torrent-Finder’s operator who told us that he’s happy to have his domain back. Still, he’s not pleased with how the U.S. Government handled the case.

According to Gadelkareem the entire case was based on inaccuracies and mistakes. A lot of the evidence was factually incorrect, something he could only highlight after his domain was taken away.

“A child would have made a stronger case. I think they did not expect any response from my side. That is how they came up with the most hilarious evidence you could imagine,” Gadelkareem says.

The evidence summed up in the affidavit (pdf) was indeed weak. For example, Homeland Security’s Special Agent Reynolds cited several articles from Torrent-Finder’s news section as proof of criminal copyright infringement.

“I was able to view posts by the user ‘Torrent Finder,’ including ‘Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent,’ ‘Piracy in The Music Industry,’ ‘The First Episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ Leaks to BitTorrent,’ and ‘Piracy domain seizure bill gains support,’ he wrote.

Torrent-Finder allegations

torrentfinderaff

The cited articles were actually copies of TorrentFreak news. These were automatically pulled from our RSS feed and of course did not link to any copyright infringing material.

While Torrent-Finder.com is now in the hands of its original owner once again, it was almost scooped up strangers. The DoJ remained sloppy until the end and simply let the domain expire instead of transferring it as promised.

“I kind of expected this to happen, so I created a backup account to catch the domain if it expired, and that is where the domain ended up,” Gadelkareem says.

“If I didn’t create that backorder then I would not have the domain name back right now.”

TorrentFinder’s operator is still frustrated about the trouble he’s had to go to but is glad that he can now put the matter behind him. Defeating copyright infringement claims from the U.S. Government is quite an achievement and seeing the feds run into problems of their own helped to ease the pain.

“Seeing scandals such as the NSA spying program brought me some peace in the end,” he concludes.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Dutch Court Won’t Ban ‘Pirate’ Streaming Boxes – Yet

streamingWhile downloading content for later playback has been the mainstay of BitTorrent aficionados for well over a decade, streaming of content continues to gain popularity with many users.

More recently, torrent users have been getting in on the act too, with the streaming abilities of the popular Popcorn Time application. However, this software uploads too, meaning that users can be exposed to claims of copyright infringement. Streaming directly from a single source (often a website) rarely carries such risks.

As a result a whole new market as flourished, one which has seen highly modified versions of software such as Kodi installed on set-top boxes, offering free and almost risk-free streaming of movies and TV shows to the masses.

This availability hasn’t gone unnoticed by Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, who have been taking action on several fronts against this unofficial market. As part of those efforts the group filed a copyright case against Moviestreamer.nl, a site that sells hardware for the purposes detailed above. BREIN asked for an injunction against the site, claiming that its actions constitute infringement.

However, in a decision published this week, BREIN was informed by the Midden-Nederland court that it would not be handing down a ban on the sale of devices offered by Moviestreamer. The problem (and indeed the answer) lies in a separate case BREIN has pending against Filmspeler.nl, another vendor of similar devices.

Filmspeler.nl sold media-players bundled with XBMC and pre-installed addons which provided hyperlinks to unlicensed sites offering movies, TV shows, live sports and music. Filmspeler was clear on the purpose of its devices, marketing them with slogans such as “Never go to the cinema again”, “Netflix is the past” and “Never pay again.”

Another claim made by Filmspieler is that its devices are legal. “Downloading (from illegal source) is illegal but streaming is not,” the site said. This appears to be a reference to a decision by the Dutch government last year which banned the downloading of content from illegal sources but did not specifically mention streaming.

BREIN disagreed and asked the court to rule that the trader infringes copyright by linking to illegal content and that the streaming of that content also constitutes infringement. Seeking clarification, the court referred several questions to the EU Court of Justice, including whether the legal requirement of ‘lawful use’ is met if a temporary reproduction is made during the streaming of unauthorized content.

Since the case against Moviestreamer is very similar to that against Filmspieler, this week the Midden-Nederland court found that as long as there is uncertainty over the legality of streaming from illegal sources, there would be no injunction against Moviestreamer.

The fact that questions are already with the EU Court of Justice shows that there is indeed “reasonable doubt” but that will necessarily change with a ruling. Indeed, the court said that if it is established that streaming from illegal sources constitutes copyright infringement, it is plausible that facilitating access to the same would also be unlawful.

Simply put, as long as streaming from illegal sources is not officially illegal, selling devices that offer that ability are not yet illegal either. While BREIN may prevail longer term after a potentially positive EU ruling, in the meantime the group intends to appeal.

“BREIN will appeal this verdict because it considers this facilitation to be very harmful, not only because it facilitates streaming from illegal sources but also because it facilitates the illegal offering itself and is therefore clearly unlawful,” the group said.

It is not yet clear when the EU Court will hand down its decision.

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


Source: TorrentFreak