Pirate Groups Fear Release Delays After AnyDVD Shutdown

anydvdlogoAfter having fought pressure from Hollywood for over a decade, SlySoft threw in the towel earlier this week.

The company shut down its main website at Slysoft.com and ceased to provide new updates to its popular Blu-Ray ripping tool AnyDVD. An announcement posted in the forums suggests that the decision is part of a deal.

“We were not allowed to respond to any request nor to post any statement, but now it is official: SlySoft has been shut down after almost 13 years,” SlySoft’s Tom announced.

“I am really sorry for that, but this is final. SlySoft is gone..,” he adds

To most laypeople the news may be easily discarded as ‘just’ another company falling victim to Hollywood’s copyright enforcement. However, insiders warn that it may have a massive impact on millions of movie pirates.

For many years AnyDVD (HD) has been the go-to tool to crack Blu-Ray encryption, pretty much without competition.

In recent days TorrentFreak has spoken to several prominent release group insiders who fear that future Blu-Ray releases will take much longer to appear because their copy protection will be harder to circumvent.

“This will delay things for new releases that have updated AACS protection or completely kill AACS decryption from SlySoft,” the operator of a popular P2P group informed TF.

“Alternatives usually delay updates two to three months. If they don’t pick up the slack Hollywood have just won a huge victory, because future releases that have updated AACS protection will be delayed,” he adds.

Another insider confirms the concerns, noting that SlySoft has often gone to great lengths to ensure that new copy protections are cracked as soon as possible.

“Over the past decade SlySoft has been the main ripping tool for Scene groups, P2P groups and just about everyone,” our second source says.

While it’s currently unclear what will happen during the weeks and months to come, a feeling of uncertainty appears to dominate among many pirate movie release and distribution groups.

“The loss of SlySoft is being rapidly discussed among all movie pirate groups and there is no consensus yet for what is to come next, just concern,” our source says.

As for the future, there are a few things that may happen.

It’s possible for competitors such as DVDFab to pick up the slack and release their copy protection cracks in a timely fashion. However, the latter has already announced that it won’t break the copy protection of Ultra HD Blu-Ray discs, so there’s not much faith in this option.

It’s also possible that AnyDVD will make a comeback in some shape or form. Or perhaps defiant members of the old team will re-brand it and continue their work from another jurisdiction. Alternatively, they could continue to offer their services in the background, without a public facing website.

The third option is a more grim scenario for pirates, one in which copy protection becomes more effective, possibly delaying pirate Blu-Ray releases by weeks or months.

This is the scenario AACS and Hollywood are hoping for.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Tens of Thousands Protest Netflix’s Expanding VPN-Blockade

netflix-logoLast month Netflix announced that it would increase its efforts to block customers who circumvent geo-blockades.

As a result it has become harder to use VPN services and proxies to access Netflix content from other countries, something various movie studios have repeatedly called for.

With the application of commercial blacklist data, Netflix already blocks IP-addresses that are linked to such services, something which also affects well-intentioned customers who merely use a VPN to protect their privacy.

Instead of providing access to the latest video entertainment, Netflix then serves the following error message to these blocked users.

<img src="http://torrentfreak.com/images/netflix-block.jpg" alt="netflix-block" width="631" height="242" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-118247"

In recent weeks TorrentFreak has kept a close eye on the expanding blockade and its aftermath. We’ve learned that servers belonging to many popular commercial VPN services have been added to the blocklist, including ExpressVPN, Mullvad, Private Internet Access and StrongVPN.

While the blocks are being rolled out in phases, it’s already clear that some VPN users can’t access Netflix, even if the VPN server is located in the same country as they are. This means that Americans can no longer use a U.S. VPN server to protect their privacy.

Ironically, Netflix is even restricting access to its own original series, despite being the primary rightsholder.

This approach is meeting fierce resistance from many sides. To coordinate the protest Digital rights organization OpenMedia has started an OpenMedia petition urging Netflix to rethink its approach, which has already been signed by more than 33,000 people.

“Privacy is a huge priority for us as a digital rights organization, and that VPNs are probably the simplest, most user-friendly way for everyday Internet users to safeguard their online activities,” OpenMedia spokesperson David Christopher informs TorrentFreak.

“Given that a huge percentage of the population uses Netflix, if they were all forced to stop using VPNs, that would represent a major setback for privacy,” he adds.

OpenMedia itself has been affected by the new measures as well, as some of their staff members can no longer watch Netflix without having to turn off their VPN.

The group is concerned that Internet users are being forced to give up their privacy when they are not even trying to circumvent any geo-blockades. A better way would be to restrict content based on people’s credit card addresses, which doesn’t require any VPN blocking.

“We’re cooking up plans to take this message directly to Netflix and hope that if enough people speak up, Netflix will listen to their customers and find a better way,” Christopher says.

Meanwhile, the complaints keep pouring in on social media. There are even reports from users who are blocked without even using a VPN. In addition, several people claim to have ended their Netflix subscriptions due to the restrictive policies, and some hint at going back to their old pirate ways.

Despite the public outrage, Netflix said that it’s not worried about a subscriber exodus. “I don’t think we will see any impact,” CEO Reed Hastings said in a shareholders’ interview last month.

In the long-term the company hopes to make the entire geo-blocking discussion obsolete by offering movies and TV-shows worldwide. But given Hollywood’s reluctance to adapt, it may take a few years before this will be realized.


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


Source: TorrentFreak

Pirates Spend Much More Money on Music, Study Shows

cassetteOver the past several years numerous studies have looked at the effects of piracy on the music industry.

One very consistent result seems to be that pirates are not by definition cheapskates. On the contrary, they tend to spend more money on merchandise, theater visits and concerts.

This week a new study conducted by the entertainment industry research firm MusicWatch confirmed this trend.

First off, the results of the survey debunk a popular belief that the number of music pirates is falling. While P2P sharing appears to be down, the use of popular alternatives including mobile apps and direct download sites has increased.

Overall, the study estimates that 57 million Americans between the ages of 13 and 50 admit to acquiring music through unauthorized sources. That’s a very significant number which will undoubtedly cause concern among music industry executives.

In part people turn to piracy because they don’t want to pay. However, there’s also a large group of legal music consumers who pirate tracks in addition to buying CDs or paying for legal downloads.

More than one-third of all music buyers (35%) pirate tracks on the side. Interestingly, this group appears to consist of the music industry’s most valuable customers.

The results show that average Americans (pirates included) spend $19 on CDs and music downloads per year, a number that goes up to $33 among pirates alone.

Similarly, the study finds that the average music buyer (pirates included) spend an average of $45 per year, compared to $61 for the subgroup of pirating music buyers. Extra data which MusicWatch kindly shared shows that non-pirates spent just $36 on average.

In addition, the results also show that pirates are more likely to use paid streaming services.

Money ($) spent on CDs and paid downloads

musicspending

The findings clearly show that pirates spend more money on legal music than those who only consume music through authorized sites and services. So how can this be?

The most logical explanation for this finding is that “pirates” are more engaged than those who don’t share, and that they complement their legal purchases with unauthorized downloads.

Of course, none of the above says anything about the effect of piracy on legal consumption. The people who are now classified as pirates may pay even more if piracy disappeared overnight, or less because they can’t sample any music.

What it does show is that half of all music pirates are paying customers and these people are bringing in a lot of money. If anything, the music industry should be cautious to brand these pirates as thieves, because they are their most valuable consumers.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

DVDFab Says No Crack For Next-Gen Blu-ray Discs

dvdfSlySoft was a company that gained a reputation for producing software designed to circumvent copyright protection mechanisms. Among them was AnyDVD, a device driver for Windows which allowed users to decrypt DVDs and Blu-ray discs on the fly.

Under pressure from AACS LA, a decryption licensing outfit founded by a group of powerful Hollywood movie studios and various technology partners, SlySoft first went dark and then announced its closure this week.

And now, in the space of just a couple of days, another DVD/Blu-ray copying software company also appears to be feeling the heat.

Like SlySoft, China-based Fengtao Software has also been involved in a dispute with AACS LA and in 2014 was the subject of a preliminary injunction after a court found that DVDFab violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause. In 2015 a federal court in New York extended the injunction, further pressuring the company.

Then yesterday, just a day after the closure of SlySoft, Fengtao dropped a bombshell of its own. In a press release sent to Myce the company announced that DVDFab will not be updated to crack the Advanced Access Content System encryption that will be present in the next generation of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs.

“The next version of AACS Copy Protection accompanying those newly released Ultra HD Blu-ray titles is the version 2.0 of Advanced Access Content System. According to a document called AACS 2.0 Draft, the new copy protection requires the Ultra HD Blu-ray players to support two AACS 2.0 functionalities, one named ‘basic’ and the other referred as ‘enhanced’,” the company said in a statement.

“Fengtao Software Inc. makes it clear that the company will not decrypt or circumvent AACS 2.0 in the days to come. This is in accordance with AACS-LA, (which has not made public the specifications for AACS 2.0), the BDA and the movie studios.”

Noting that the debate over copying commercial movie discs for home use has “raged on for decades”, Fengtao says that the practice of decrypting copy protection technology has done so too and is not likely to stop in the foreseeable future. Even the fact that AACS 2.0 requires an Internet connection for Ultra HD Blu-ray discs to be played back for the first time is unlikely to stop the problem.

“Now here comes the question: will there be a solution to crack AACS 2.0? Likely, there will be, publicly or secretly,” the company says. Nevertheless, Fengtao insists that it won’t be behind the effort.

The company won’t be shutting down though. Fengtao says that it will concentrate its development efforts on DVDFab and its support for editing 4K/UHD content.

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


Source: TorrentFreak