Month: July 2015

Massive Piracy Case Ends in Disappointment for Hollywood

warezAfter tracking down hundreds of Internet pirates over the years, a case that came to a head at the turn of the decade was shaping up to be one of the most important for anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån (now Rights Alliance).

More often focused on lower-hanging fruit, Antipiratbyrån had their eyes on the “warez scene”, the people and infrastructure at the very top of the so-called “piracy pyramid” from where content trickles down to the masses.

In 2010 and following a lengthy investigation by Antipiratbyrån, police raided a topsite known as ‘Devil’. Topsites are top-secret, high-speed servers used by piracy release groups and their affiliates for storing and distributing unauthorized copyrighted content. When Devil went down dozens of servers were seized, together containing an estimated 250 terabytes of pirate content.

One man was also arrested but it took until 2014 for him to be charged with unlawfully making content available “intentionally or by gross negligence.”

According to police the 50-something year old man from Väsby, Sweden, acted “in consultation or in concert with other persons, supplied, installed, programmed, maintained, funded and otherwise administered and managed” the Devil file-sharing network. Before its shutdown, Devil was reported to service around 200 elite members.

Considering Antipiratbyrån’s links with the movie industry it came as no surprise that the charges included the unlawful making available of 2,250 mainly Hollywood movies. According to the prosecutor, those numbers made the case a record breaker.

“We have not prosecuted for this many movies in the past. There are many movies and large data set,” prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad commented earlier. “It is also the largest analysis of computers ever made in an individual case.”

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Given the scale of the case it was expected that punishments would be equally harsh but things did not play out that way.

Despite admitting that he operated servers at his home and in central Stockholm and the court acknowledging that rightsholders had suffered great damage, the man has just been sentenced to probation and 160 hours of community service.

According to Mitti.se, two key elements appear to have kept the man’s punishment down. Firstly, he cooperated with police in the investigation. Secondly – and this is a feature in many file-sharing prosecutions – the case simply dragged on for too long.

“It is worrying that the bottleneck at the police has affected the sentence,” says Sara Lindbäck of Rights Alliance.

Defense lawyer Henrik Olsson Lilja says that he’s pleased his client has avoided jail but adds that no decision has yet been made on any appeal. That being said, an end to the criminal case doesn’t necessarily mean the matter is completely over.

Last year Rights Alliance indicated that the six main studios behind the prosecution might initiate a civil action against the man and demand between $673,400 and $2.69m per title infringed, albeit on a smaller sample-sized selection of the 2,250 movies involved in the case.

No announcement has been made on that front and Rights Alliance did not respond to our requests for comment.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Pirate Bay Led Hollywood The Way, Co-Founder Says

pirate bayFredrik Neij, one of The Pirate Bay’s co-founders, was released early May after serving a 10-month prison sentence for his involvement with the site.

He has since returned to his home in Laos, where he’s picking up his life again. Speaking with TF, Fredrik says that he didn’t miss computers or the Internet as much as he’d expected.

What Fredrik missed the most about being ‘disconnected’ was instant access to news, information and entertainment. Instead of having access to the latest movies and TV-series without interruptions, he was forced to watch broadcast TV.

“Watching broadcast TV again for the first time in roughly 12 years was gruesome. I don’t know how people stand the commercial breaks without going insane,” Fredrik tells TorrentFreak.

However, the Pirate Bay co-founder also admits that quite a bit of progress has been made in recent years. In part, Hollywood and the video entertainment industry made these changes to give consumers something they would otherwise get on sites such as The Pirate Bay.

“I saw a lot of things that probably would not have existed without The Pirate Bay, like every channel having their own streaming services, and the short time between US premiere and it being aired on networks worldwide, usually just a few days or a week,” Fredrik says.

Netflix is a prime example of a video streaming service that has become a great success. But from a Pirate Bay user perspective there is still plenty of room for improvement.

For example, people should be able to get all their video entertainment at one service, instead of having to use a dozen or so. Similarly, blocking access to potential customers based on their location is an outdated business model that has to go.

“While I think all the new streaming services are great, if they want to take on piracy for real, they need to combine all services behind a common pay-wall so you don’t need several accounts to follow your favorite shows,” Fredrik notes.

“They also really need to address the geo-blocking problems and provide global availability of the all content at the same price. Until big media makes it as easy or easier to get all your media in one place no matter where you live, there will be a need for sites like TPB.”

Of course, The Pirate Bay doesn’t use any geo-blocking tools and the site also has a content library that beats any legal service. Because of this, TPB’s co-founder believes that the site will remain popular for a while.

Now that Fredrik’s back home he can catch up on Doctor Who and Archer again. He’s also closely following Pirate Bay related developments, last year’s raid in particular.

“Back when I ran things it only took three days to get back up from a raid. The new team took a good 6 weeks, but they have been doing a good job on TPB these last few years, and eventually restored the site to its former glory,” Fredrik says.

And even if the police managed to take the site down again, new Pirate Bays will take over as long as the demand is there.

“Even if TPB is permanently shutdown, the December raid shows that there will always be sites ready to fill the void. One again showing that meeting consumer demand is far more effective than trying to enforce lobby-bought laws with no support among the general public,” Fredrik concludes.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Project Free TV Streaming Site Shuts Down

pftv-logoWhile BitTorrent remains the most used peer-to-peer method of obtaining video content online, for the past several years the availability of cheap bandwidth has provided users with additional options.

Closely associated with sites such as YouTube, streaming is now one of the most popular ways of viewing content. Thanks to a player embedded in a webpage no special skills are required. As a result, streaming sites have popped up all over the web, with a sizable proportion dedicated to copyrighted content.

However, to be really useful all of this content needs to be findable and that’s where sites such as Project Free TV (PFTV) stepped in. Indexing popular content from all around the web, PFTV presented TV and movie content to the masses in an easily navigated interface with hit shows such as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead just a click away.

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As a result of its attention to detail, comprehensive database and a loyal following, PFTV grew to become one of the most popular sites of its kind. Its popularity attracted the attention of copyright holders too, with Hollywood having the site blocked in the UK during November 2013.

Last evening, however, it all came to an end. Instead of its familiar yellow, orange and purple homepage, PFTV now displays a single word: “Goodbye”

Since Project Free TV had become the go-to place for millions of TV fans, the site’s users were quick to react, with dozens taking to Twitter to express their disappointment.

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But for many it is the site’s content discovery features that will be most missed.

“What I loved about Project Free TV was the aggregating feature of their daily TV show list,” a former user explains.

“While not a complete representation by far it had most of the shows I was interested in and introduced me to many excellent British and Australian shows I did not know of as well as plenty of new shows from the US I wasn’t aware of due to practically not ever seeing commercials for them on broadcast or cable.”

While most people enjoyed the site via its web presence, Project Free TV was also a massive hit with users of Kodi/XBMC. Thanks to a third party plugin located at TVaddons.ag, PFTV’s library could be enjoyed from within the software. Users now experience errors instead.

“It’s sad to see them go, our community is definitely in shock. However, it’s good to see that they closed while still on the top of their game, on their own terms,” a senior developer at TVAddons told TorrentFreak.

“There are a lot of other sites offering similar services and I’m confident that users who were dedicated supporters of Project Free TV will likely find a new home elsewhere in the coming days.”

Users searching for PFTV using Google will already find plenty of sites using the Project Free TV name but most are clones with reduced functionality. At best, those claiming to be the real deal aren’t being straight while others appear to be more interested in serving up malicious advertising than providing a decent service.

Project Free TV’s operator did not respond to our requests for comment.

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


Source: TorrentFreak