Month: January 2016

Netflix Exempts U.S. Military Bases From Copyright Geo-Blocks

us-united-america-flagEarlier this month Netflix announced that it would increase its efforts to block subscribers who circumvent geo-blockades.

This means that it will be harder to use VPN services and proxies to access Netflix content from other countries, as movie studios have requested.

With the application of commercial blacklist data Netflix blocks IP-addresses that are linked to such services. The announcement caused concern among many people who live and work abroad, including U.S. military personnel.

Many soldiers stationed in the Middle East and elsewhere use Netflix in combination with a VPN, to feel ‘at home.’ Soon, this may no longer be possible, at least not for those who live off-base.

While Netflix is determined to take stronger action against VPN-pirates, the company also says that all U.S. military bases are exempt from blockades, Stars and Stripes reports

“Netflix always exempts U.S. military bases around the world. They will still be able to access the U.S. catalog,” Netflix spokesperson Anne Marie Squeo said.

This is an interesting decision, since most military bases abroad are not considered U.S. soil. Also, we are not aware of a similar treatment for other overseas workers or military bases of non-U.S. countries.

Still, for most soldiers this gesture is not enough, as they live off-base.

Jesse Fowler, a hospital corpsman stationed in Bahrain, says he’s not disappointed with the local offering of Netflix but relies on a VPN to access some shows that are not available.

“…I’m mad if I can’t change where my Internet is so I can’t watch my own shows,” Fowler says.

This sentiment is shared by the Bahrain-stationed Navy counselor Eric Cutright. “My VPN hasn’t been blocked. But if it does, I will be pissed. Netflix Bahrain is trash,” he said.

TorrentFreak has kept a close eye on the recent developments and Netflix has indeed started to block more VPN providers. However, blocking all of them appears to be a difficult task, especially because several providers continue to add new IP-addresses.

Ironically, many soldiers may switch to piracy again when Netflix is no longer an option, turning the clock back half a decade.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

South American Pirates Transfer 789 Petabytes Per Year

cassetteCommissioned by the copyright TV industry group Alianza, research firm NetNames has just released a comprehensive report on the scope of online piracy in South America.

The study is a follow-up on the global “Sizing the Piracy Universe” report released two years ago. It combines data from various sources to estimate the local piracy landscape.

Analyzing data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, the report concludes that nearly half of the population has visited pirate sites or services in the period of a month.

“Of the approximately 222.3 million Internet users in South America, nearly 50%, or 110 million, accessed a site that distributed pirated audiovisual content by means of either a cyberlocker, peer-to-peer network or illegal IPTV streaming site,” the report reads.

Contrary to the worldwide picture, direct download sites receive more visitors and generate more bandwidth than peer-to-peer sharing such as BitTorrent. This may in part be due to lower Internet speeds, which are not optimal for P2P transfers.

Per year cyberlocker traffic accounts for more than half of all piracy traffic, 442 petabytes, compared to 265 petabytes of peer-to-peer traffic. NetNames also includes data for pirated live IPTV broadcasts, which adds another 82 petabytes.

In total the South American piracy landscape generates 789 petabytes per year. Or put differently, a whopping 2.3 million gigabytes per day.


sapiracy

While these bandwidth numbers may look impressive they pale in comparison to other regions. For example, NetNames previously found that piracy accounted for roughly 20,000 petabytes of bandwidth per year in North America, and a massive 26,000 petabytes in Europe.

NetNames notes that it is nonetheless a considerable proportion, since the local Internet infrastructure is underdeveloped, and warns that copyright holders may face even higher levels of piracy if Internet penetration and speeds increase.

The report is expected to serve as an important lobbying tool to convince local lawmakers to take steps to prevent copyright infringement. Michael Hartman, Senior Vice President of DIRECTV Latin America, believes it is key to raise awareness.

“Online piracy represents a significant threat to the protection of intellectual property rights,” Hartman says.

“This is the first step necessary to raise awareness of the problem. It will enable Alianza members to educate others about the problem and develop strategies to combat this form of piracy.”

The full NetNames report is available on the Alianza website.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Russia’s RuTracker Blockade Has Just Seriously Backfired

In common with many countries around Europe, Russia believes that the way to bring Internet piracy to its knees is to block pirate sites at the ISP level. The theory is that Internet users will get tired of trying to circumvent blockades and will begin to spend money on movies and music instead.

In addition to targeting individual URLs indexing specific content, Russia is now engaged in so-called “eternal blockades”, the blocking of allegedly infringing websites at the ISP level on a permanent basis. Last week telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor announced the blocking of 13 sites (listed below), including the popular RuTor.org tracker.

But yesterday came the big one, with authorities confirming the permanent blockade of torrent site giant RuTracker. The huge site has experienced problems with rightsholders for many years, but during the past few months things have been slowly coming to a head.

Last October, with a permanent ban looming on the horizon, the site mulled the deletion of several hundred thousand torrents to pacify rightsholders. However, after polling its members the site decided to leave the torrents in place and accept the blockade.

Following separate action from book publishers and music labels including a subsidiary of Warner, a Moscow City Court order to permanently block the site came into force on January 12 and was carried out yesterday. But rather than the effect rightsholders had hoped for, the action signals the start of a new era for the site.

While undoubtedly a huge index of infringing content, RuTracker has long-standing agreements in place with many copyright holders to keep certain content off the site. This kept the content creators happy while easing some of the legal pressure from the tracker. However, RuTracker says that since they are now being completely blocked, the gloves are coming off.

“For many years our tracker has worked with rightsholders, in this respect many of their representatives were present on the site. They were free to cover all distribution protected under copyright law. In this regard, many releases were either banned or not recommended for distribution,” a staff member explained yesterday.

“But today we put an end to these agreements, as users of the Russian Federation are now blocked from accessing our tracker. Therefore rights holders did not want to continue their cooperation, which allows us to do more and not adhere to it.”

As a result, special accounts given to rightsholders to enable them to swiftly remove content have been downgraded to standard user status and members are now being informed to share whatever they like.

In the past this would’ve meant that only Russians would have greater access to content, but RuTracker has also opened up its previously members-only site to the general public. While English speakers still need Google translate to navigate the site, ominously it is also testing an English language version.

Only making matters worse is that RuTracker has removed the so-called ‘private flag’ from its torrents. This means that the site’s hundreds of thousands of active torrents should now be accessible via BitTorrent’s Distributed Hash Table (DHT), which opens up the content to a worldwide audience.

Of course, all of this is of limited use if people can’t access the site. As expected, however, people are already working hard to circumvent the blockades. While VPNs and proxies do the trick, a new site called Dostup-rutracker.org now provides free plugins for all major browsers which transparently bypass the ISP bans.

And so far things are looking promising for the site. According to the owner of the site’s former domain, who says that he’s now just a regular user on RuTracker, as of yesterday more than half of the site’s users had already circumvented the blocks.

Only time will tell whether RuTracker will grow into an international giant, but it’s fair to say that thus far the ISP blockade has had very little success, quite the opposite in fact.

Sites permanently blocked during the past week

http://www.rutracker.org
http://www.bobfilm.net
http://www.dream-film.net
http://www.kinokubik.com
http://www.kinozal.tv
http://www.kinobolt.ru
http://www.rutor.org
http://www.seedoff.net
http://www.torrentor.net
http://www.tushkan.net
http://www.tvserial-online.net
http://www.wood-film.ru
http://www.kinovo.tv
http://bigcinema.tv

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


Source: TorrentFreak