Aurous Dev Fires Back at “Fearmongering, Babbling” Rightscorp

aurous-logoEarlier this month, news of an upcoming piece of music software began to cause waves.

Centered around a media player supporting a wide array of audio formats, Aurous will leverage content on the BitTorrent network and other web sources to bring a Spotify-like experience to users.

With its clean and tidy interface, it’s no wonder that Aurous has already been likened to a “Popcorn Time for music”, a branding that could yet prove to be both blessing and curse in equal amounts, depending on one’s perspective.

The software, which TF tested in pre-alpha, is not yet available to the public but that hasn’t stopped anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp jumping into the fray with both feet. Last Friday the troubled company issued a press release, claiming to have a solution to the threat supposedly posed by Aurous.

Highlighting the decentralized approach taken by developer Andrew Sampson, Rightscorp warned potential customers that Aurous could not be dealt with by regular means. Monetizing piracy will be their only chance, the company argued.

“Aurous’ technology will be unaffected by take-down notices, site blocking and will not use Pirate Bay or any domain names that can be blocked,” the company warned.

“It will distribute the music search metadata via the peer-to-peer networks, allowing the ability to stream large amounts of free music illegally and providing a very easy-to-use interface to the BitTorrent network.”

Aurous

Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec added that there is a “lot of concern” over the impending Aurous launch but noted that his company can provide a solution.

“The Aurous app allows for access to a large amount of free music, acting like a Spotify, however, offering zero payments to the rightsholder,” Sabec said.

“Rightscorp’s ability to get individual seeders to stop seeding will be the only scalable way to stop this next explosion of free music,” he added.

TorrentFreak asked Sampson to comment on Rightscorp’s announcement and the somewhat irritated developer responded.

“Rightscorp has no idea how our technology works, nor our plans at protecting right holders from copyright infringement and giving copyright holders the tools for managing their content, monetizing and/or protecting work their work,” he told TF.

“We announced earlier through Twitter [well before the Rightscorp announcement] that we will be creating a content-id system and DMCA portal so we can ensure Aurous does not infringe on anyone’s copyrights. Because this system is still so premature in its development, we can’t give more details, however, we can assure you Rightscorp is wrong.”

Sampson insists that first and foremost Aurous is a music player, albeit one with search engines that leverage existing APIs from “completely legal and licensed services” backed up by the power of P2P.

“The P2P portion of Aurous is nothing more than a comprehensive and cached list of these searches so results can be delivered faster to users as spoken about in our tech blog. While you can search across P2P, it is not a default option, our P2P search option is there for hard to find copy-left content, but in that regard, is still a search engine.”

Sampson feels that by announcing an anti-piracy solution for a product that hasn’t even been released yet Rightscorp has jumped the gun somewhat. However, the likelihood that this is almost certainly an attempt to grab publicity isn’t lost on the developer.

“The fear mongering by Rightscorp is nothing more than babble and attempts to garner clients to ‘protect’ them from our application which hasn’t even been released,” Sampson says.

“Maybe Rightscorp should read this piece. A French economist predicted the current state of music 40 years ago. The music industry is killing itself. We live in a world were licensed material can be streamed close to 200,000,000 times from Spotify and the writer for that song receives a pitiful $5,600.

“But according to many studies, sells are still at an all time high. Aurous is here to change the music industry for the better,” Sampson concludes.

This isn’t the first time that Rightscorp has attempted to ride on the tails of a ‘new’ sharing phenomenon. Late August the company launch its Popcorn Time ‘mitigation service’ but in reality its offering was the same old model with a new coat of promotional paint.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Pirate Bay Founder Finally Free After Three Years

gottfridGottfrid Svartholm, also known as Anakata, was a founding member of The Pirate Bay and played a key role during the site’s early years.

He has spent the last three years in prisons in Sweden and Denmark, for a variety of offenses. Last month his prison time in Denmark ended and after serving a final month in Sweden he is now a free man.

At this time Gottfrid and his family prefer not to make any public statements, which is understandable considering all that’s happened, but his mother just confirmed the good news.

His release marks the end of a tough time with several consecutive setbacks.

It all started in 2011 when Gottfrid received a one-year prison sentence for his involvement with the notorious site, which he initially avoided.

gottfridfree

September 2012 he was arrested by Cambodian police in Phnom Penh, the city where he had been living for several years. A few days later he was transferred to Sweden to serve his sentence, but that was only the start.

Soon after his release the Pirate Bay founder was accused of several hacking and fraud offenses.

The case went to trial in 2013 and Gottfrid was subsequently found guilty of hacking, aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, which resulted in a two-year prison sentence. The Pirate Bay founder always maintained his innocence and went on to appeal the verdict.

The Appeal Court agreed in part and cleared Gottfrid of hacking the Nordea bank. The court still found him guilty of hacking IT company Logica but decided to reduce his sentence from two years to one.

While he was serving the Swedish hacking sentence Denmark also went after Gottfrid. Despite public protests and an appeal to the Supreme Court in Sweden, he was extradited during the fall of 2013 and held in solitary confinement for weeks on end.

In Denmark the Pirate Bay founder stood accused of hacking into the mainframe computers of IT company CSC. Gottfrid denied these allegations and during trial he pointed out that Sweden previously acquitted him of a similar offense.

Despite the “not guilty” plea and expert witness testimonies in his favor, Gottfrid was sentenced to another 3.5 years in prison, which was affirmed following an appeal to the High Court.

freeanakata

As in many other countries, well-behaved convicts only have to serve part of their sentence in Denmark so Gottfrid was released last month.

That’s also when the latest setback was announced. Shortly after his release he was arrested again to serve one remaining month of his hacking sentence in Sweden.

Today Gottfrid is truly a free man again. While prison wasn’t easy for him and his family, the future is finally looking a bit brighter.

Over the past years Gottfrid has received a lot of support from the public, but first and foremost from his mother Kristina, who stood beside him every step of the way and always was kind enough to answer questions and have her son’s voice heard outside of prison.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Megaupload Paid Prolific Pirates Thousands in Rewards, U.S. Says

megaupload-logoAs the extradition hearing of Kim Dotcom and his former Megaupload colleagues enters a second week, a lawyer acting for the United States government has continued to make the case against the Internet entrepreneur and co-defendants Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk.

With Dotcom and friends due to have their right of reply later in proceedings, thus far media attention has been focused on a totally one-sided version of events. Today that pattern continued, with Christine Gordon QC focusing on the rewards scheme operated by Megaupload between 2006 and 2011.

Just like YouTube does today, Megaupload rewarded users whose videos were downloaded thousands of times. However, the U.S. suggests that Dotcom and his colleagues were well aware that the users that brought the most traffic to the site – and earned the most in rewards – did so by uploading infringing content.

A user known only as “TH” is reported to have been paid more than $50,000 in rewards between 2006 and 2011, despite his sharing being in the spotlight of copyright holders.

“So far TH has provided us 18 million download pageviews [and] US$112,257 premium sales to users who have downloaded at least 15 of his files,” Mathias Ortmann wrote to Kim Dotcom in 2007.

However, the company also received a significant number of copyright complaints against “TH” – 1,200 in all – which were processed by Bram van der Kolk. According to the lawyer, Megaupload failed to terminate the user’s account, instead offering him additional server space. In a 2008, another conversation centered around whether infringers should continue to get paid.

“Growth is mainly based on infringement anyway,” Van der Kolk said via Skype.

“What if we modulate our tolerance according to sales triggered?” Ortmann responded.

According to NZHerald, 77% of Megaupload’s members had received at least one takedown notice against their accounts, with 56% receiving 10 or more. Even today, however, single strikes against user accounts are tolerated by YouTube, for example, while users of some of the main ISPs in the United States have amassed dozens of infringement notices without being terminated.

During the summer of 2011, Megaupload discontinued its rewards program, a move that proved unpopular with the site’s uploaders. According to U.S., Dotcom then took the opportunity to contact PayPal with complaints about his competitors who continued to “illegally” pay such bonuses to their users.

“They pay everyone no matter if the files are pirated or not and they have NO repeat infringer policy, and they are using Paypal to pay infringers,” Dotcom wrote.

In court today, Christine Gordon pointed out that Megaupload had run a similar program for more than half a decade.

“They describe the payments as illegal but Megaupload had done that for six years,” she said.

While Dotcom and associates will eventually enjoy a full right to reply, lawyer Ron Mansfield raised objections against the U.S. citing evidence from users such as “TH” who have allegedly provided evidence against Dotcom while being allowed to remain anonymous.

“I’m just inquiring whether the US is prepared to identify the users so we are at least in the position of knowing who the users are and making some inquiry in relation to these conversations,” he said.

“In my submission it’s unfair that the identities of relevant parties are being withheld.”

Today’s evidence comes on the heels of revelations during last Friday’s session in which conversations between Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk suggested that the pair knew the company might get into trouble over rewards.

“That’s the big flaw in the rewards program: we are making profit off more than 90 per cent infringing files,” Van der Kolk said.

The hearing is expected to continue for another three weeks.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 09/28/15

tomorrowlandThis week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Tomorrowland is the most downloaded movie.

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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking (last week) Movie IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1 (10) Tomorrowland 6.6 / trailer
2 (…) Terminator Genisys 6.8 / trailer
3 (…) San Andreas 6.2 / trailer
4 (1) Avengers: Age of Ultron 7.8 / trailer
5 (2) Minions (Webrip) 6.7 / trailer
6 (…) Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (HDRip) 7.7 / trailer
7 (3) Mad Max: Fury Road 8.4 / trailer
8 (4) Vacation (Subbed WEBRip) 6.3 / trailer
9 (…) Magic Mike XXL 5.9 / trailer
10 (7) Fantastic Four (Subbed HDrip) 4.0 / trailer

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Piracy Isn’t Worth The Risk of Prison, Freed Cammer Says

cammer1On May 23, 2013, five unmarked cars containing 10 police officers and representatives from the Federation Against Copyright Theft tracked down UK-based Philip Danks.

From Walsall in the West Midlands, then 24-year-old Danks had cammed Fast and Furious 6 at a local Showcase cinema before uploading it to the Internet. A year later the computer programmer was handed an unprecedented 33 months in prison.

Following a successful appeal to the Ministry of Justice, Danks is now on home detention after serving one year and 18 days of his sentence. Earlier this week he read a TF piece which covered FACT’s warning to potential cammers of the upcoming Bond film ‘Spectre’. We suggested that releasing the movie in the UK almost two weeks before the U.S. launch was a recipe for piracy. Danks agrees.

“The movie industry do staggered releases to build up suspense with a movie but I for one know this does not work. As you know movies are (usually) released in the company they are created in, hence James Bond and Fast 6 being released here in the UK first,” Danks told TF.

“However, this just creates an unnecessary window for pirates to grab the film before anyone else. It gives them the opportunity to obtain maximum results from being the first group or person to leak the movies online because people who cannot watch it at the cinema will be wanting a pirate copy to give them their movie fix.”

That escalated quickly

That urge to be first was what put Danks on the radars of FACT and then the police. After his arrest and subsequent conviction Danks was initially sent to HMP Hewell, a Category B prison in Worcestershire, later being transferred to the low-to-medium risk HMP Oakwood. But despite committing only white-collar crime, Danks was placed alongside those with a thirst for violence.

“I was locked up with all sorts of people, including murderers, bank robbers etc. I remember one guy who I worked with in the kitchens who had been sentenced to 18 years for killing someone. He got out and within six hours was arrested again for killing his victim’s friend,” Danks explains.

Easy prison life…..for a celebrity

Given comments made last week by Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde who said that he’d been asked to sign autographs in prison, it’s interesting that Danks enjoyed a similar reception.

“To be honest I was somewhat of a celebrity in prison, amongst both prisoners and staff alike. Not one person (including my offender manager) thought the punishment fit the crime,” he reveals.

Overall, however, Danks says that prison itself wasn’t that bad.

“Personally I believe locking people up will not work, prison is easier now than ever. I had (which everyone gets) a 22in Sharp TV with 135 channels, a phone in my cell, a kettle, and my own shower and bathroom facilities.

“In all honesty prison was comfortable, I was never scared or even worried about the people around me. So no, prison does not work. Prison isn’t a deterrent for the most heinous acts of crime, let alone ‘copyright theft’.”

Worth it then? Absolutely not…

Despite having an easy life in prison, Danks told TF that the whole punishment package amounts to something a lot more than just being denied freedom for a while. The personal costs outside the prison walls were considerable.

“Prison has affected my life dramatically. I lost my home due to not being able to keep up with rent, I lost my car, job, and everywhere I go I’m not recognized as someone who does good things, I’m just ‘that guy who’s been in prison’,” he explains.

“I applied for a job at a sports shop last week, where I have worked before and known the manager for 13 years. His response was ‘we do not employ ex-cons’. So it’s even difficult to gain employment.”

Family strain

Having no way to make real money, Danks said that his family were always under pressure to send cash for things like phone credit – and then found themselves worrying when he didn’t manage to call them.

“Life was more of a strain on my family then on me,” he notes. Tragically, his family became significantly smaller during his time in prison.

“Whilst I was in prison I sadly lost two of my uncles and my grandad, all of whom I never got to say goodbye to because I was refused leave to go to funerals. I am not a religious man but was forced to pray at the chapel because it was the only way to say goodbye.”

Just not worth it

Overall, it’s clear that Danks is still upset about what happened to him. He admits that he’s done wrong but blames FACT for an aggressive prosecution and a court system ill-equipped to deal with cases like his.

“Crown Courts are meant for criminals, those who hurt people or are a danger to the public, not for civil cases brought to a criminal trial because the government are in the back pocket of the movie industry. They have their priorities all wrong and favor corporations over consumers,” he says.

Not even Danks’ lawyer escapes criticism.

“My solicitor never actually defended me. He simply sat back and let the prosecution bludgeon me to the point of no return,” he explains.

Thinking of camming? Think again

“People really need to think twice. Going to prison is an extremely tough strain not on yourself, but on your family. You will lose respect from loved ones, friends and work colleagues. Prison never has a happy ending, it will always hang over you wherever you go.”

“Simply put, prison isn’t worth the kudos you get from being the first to leak a movie, stay away from it all and be happy with your family!”

One last thing

The work of movie cammers is often talked about in the media but how they operate is often shrouded in secrecy. Join us next week for an A to Z reveal of Danks’ activities, from selecting movies, locations and equipment, to staying undetected in the cinema and making a clean getaway.

To get a year’s worth of things of his chest, Danks has taken to YouTube. His rant is embedded below.

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


Source: TorrentFreak