TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Google Co-Founder Blasts Entertainment Industry On Piracy
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- US: Megaupload’s Hosting Company Might be Sued Next
- How To Make VPNs Even More Secure
| Google Co-Founder Blasts Entertainment Industry On Piracy Posted: 16 Apr 2012 02:24 AM PDT Instead of the entertainment industry beating up the little guys on the issue of piracy, in 2011 and early 2012 they went for the nuclear legislative option. The ensuing battle for the free flow of information online polarized the Internet. SOPA and PIPA became the acronyms on everyone’s lips and then, just when it seemed the netizens of the free world were about to be outgunned, something amazing happened. Tech giants such as Google and Wikipedia joined the protests, the balance of power tipped, and Hollywood and the music industry were forced into retreat. With SOPA dead but with the whispers on CISPA getting louder, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been voicing his concerns for the future of freedom on the Internet. In an interview with The Guardian, Brin spoke of “scary” developments which have seen powerful forces “line up against the open internet on all sides and around the world.” From repressive regimes such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia which seek to control access to the Internet and restrict the communications of their citizens, to companies like Apple and Facebook which tightly control their platforms making search engine indexing impossible, online threats are growing. So given the scale of the threats listed above, one might expect the issue of intellectual property enforcement to be less of a priority for Brin, but the opposite is true. As the protesters recently made clear, the introduction of PIPA or SOPA would have seen the United States follow Iran and China down a dangerous one-way street of increasing web censorship using the very same technologies the US has been critical of in the past. Brin says that by lobbying for legislation that has the potential to bring such censorship to the West, the entertainment industry is “shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot.” Following up on comments last week in which the RIAA finally admitted that innovation is the best tool for tackling piracy, Brin said that the piracy problem would continue as long as people found it easier than using legitimate offerings. “I haven’t tried it for many years but when you go on a pirate website, you choose what you like; it downloads to the device of your choice and it will just work,” Brin explained, adding that the restrictive mechanisms employed by authorized sites only represent artificial walls and “disincentives for people to buy.” The entertainment industries insist that Google doesn’t do enough to fight piracy (and might even get sued as a result), but it’s increasingly clear that through the haze of war, Google will object to anything that stops it going about its own legitimate business. An artificially limited web, with corporate controlled restrictions such as walled gardens or court-ordered censorship, are a direct threat to that. Accessibility is what Google needs to grow its business – maybe the entertainment industries do too. Source: Google Co-Founder Blasts Entertainment Industry On Piracy
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| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 16 Apr 2012 01:22 AM PDT
Contraband is the most downloaded movie this week. The data for our weekly download chart is collected 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.
Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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| US: Megaupload’s Hosting Company Might be Sued Next Posted: 15 Apr 2012 02:12 PM PDT
While the US Government won't mind if the servers are destroyed, Megaupload, the EFF and even the MPAA all argued that would be a bad idea because they contain critical evidence and irreplaceable user data. Hosting company Carpathia, on the other hand, said it can’t bear the costs of $9,000 a day indefinitely. So the company called for a meeting where they asked Judge O'Grady to come up with a solution. That hearing was held on Friday and proved to be quite interesting. While Carpathia hoped the hearing would bring relief, in the event the company was warned that it too might become a target for litigation. As reported by CNET, Judge O'Grady was sympathetic to the hosting company’s call for help, but the attorney representing the US Government wasn’t. The attorney stated that Carpathia made $35 million from Megaupload and insinuated that the company might not be as neutral as it claims to be. The lawyer further said that Megaupload’s host may be partly responsible for the copyright infringements that occurred through the cyberlocker, and added that the host itself could become the target of a civil lawsuit. The attorney didn’t substantiate the alleged wrongdoings of Carpathia and neither did he identify the potential source of a civil suit. One possible party that could go after the hosting company is the MPAA. The movie industry group previously said they want the data to be preserved for potential civil cases against Megaupload-affiliated entities. However, during the hearing on Friday they were no longer interested in keeping the data intact, so this seems unlikely. Neither of the parties involved was willing to comment on the claims made by the US attorney, but it’s clear that the US Government thinks Carpathia is not totally innocent. After hearing the various arguments, Judge O'Grady decided that the parties involved should get back together to find a suitable solution. This was one of the suggestions made by the Megaupload legal team, but with so many different interests at stake it will prove to be a challenging endeavor. Source: US: Megaupload’s Hosting Company Might be Sued Next
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| How To Make VPNs Even More Secure Posted: 15 Apr 2012 06:09 AM PDT
Securing your privacy when your VPN failsOk, so you’ve purchased your VPN subscription, enabled the service, and you’re enjoying your new found levels of privacy. Then – disaster strikes. While you were away from your machine somehow and for some unknown reason your VPN disconnected and now snoopers have a clear view of your IP address. Fortunately, there are solutions. “To protect against the event of VPN failure/disconnection, disable any internet access that does not tunnel through your VPN service provider,” Andrew from PrivateInternetAccess told TorrentFreak. “This can be achieved using specific Firewall rules (Ubuntu) or by changing TCP/IP routes. But of course, not everyone wants to spend time with these manual configurations that could potentially cause problems if they’re not done properly. So, TorrentFreak spoke with the creators of two free pieces of software that do the job more easily. VPNetMon“VPNetMon continuously watches the IP addresses of your PC. If the IP address of your VPN is not detected anymore, VPNetMon closes specified programs instantly. The program reacts so quickly that a new connection through your real IP will not be established by these applications,” creator Felix told TorrentFreak. VPNetMon (Windows) can be downloaded here. VPNCheck“VPNCheck helps you to feel safe if your VPN connection breaks, this is done by shutting down your main network connection or programs of your choice and showing a notification box,” Jonathan from Guavi.com told TorrentFreak. “Basically it constantly looks for a change in your VPN network adapter. You can connect to either PPTP or L2TP with VPNCheck.” VPNCheck (Windows/Linux) can be downloaded here. Stop DNS LeaksWhen using a VPN service one might expect that all of the user’s traffic will go through the privacy network, but on rare occasions a phenomenon known as “DNS leakage” might occur. This means that rather than using the DNS servers provided by the VPN operator, it’s possible that the user’s default DNS servers will be used instead or otherwise become visible. “A DNS leak may happen whenever a DNS query ‘bypasses’ the routing table and gateway pushed by the OpenVPN server. The trigger on Windows systems may be as simple as a slight delay in the answer from the VPN DNS, or the VPN DNS unable to resolve some name,” explains Paolo from AirVPN.  A tool for checking for leaks can be found at DNSLeakTest.com and a solution for fixing any problems can be found here. Alternatively, anyone using the pro version of VPNCheck will have this feature built in. Double up your security for extra sensitive data transfersWhat if you don’t have 100% trust in your VPN provider and worry that even they might snoop on your communications? Admittedly it’s a very unusual hypothetical situation, but one with an interesting solution. “If you don’t trust your VPN provider 100%, use two VPNs,” explains Felix from VPNetMon. “This way you are tunneling your already encrypted connection through another tunnel.”
Its also possible to VPN over TOR, but please please don’t use TOR for file-sharing traffic, it’s not designed for it. “VPN over TOR gives several security advantages, for a performance price, above all partition of trust,” explains Paolo from AirVPN. “In case of betrayal of trust by one party, the anonymity layer is not compromised in any way. A VPN over TOR tutorial can be found here, further discussion here. Fix the PPTP / IPv6 security flawAs revealed here on TorrentFreak in 2010, people using a PPTP VPN and IPv6 are vulnerable to a nasty security flaw which means that Windows and Ubuntu users could leak their real IP addresses. The following fix comes from Jonathan at VPNCheck. For Windows Vista and above: For Ubuntu 10+: Pay for your VPN with untrackable currency.
“For example, signup for an anonymous e-mail account using Tor and use a Bitcoin Mixer to send Bitcoins to a newly generated address in your local wallet. Alternatively, use the Bitcoin-OTC to purchase Bitcoins ‘over the counter’ from a person, rather than an exchange. “Then, use a patched Bitcoin client, such as coderrr’s anonymity patch to avoid linking the newly generated address to any of your pre-existing Bitcoin addresses.” Only use VPN providers that take your privacy seriouslyWe’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating. VPN providers who heavily log are useful if all you’re concerned about is securely communicating with the Internet through an open public WiFi connection, but not beyond that. For a run down of providers who do not log any data which would enable a 3rd party to identify a user, see our previous article here. Do you have a helpful security tip for VPN users? If so, feel free to add it to the comments below. Source: How To Make VPNs Even More Secure
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This week there are three newcomers in our chart. 
Nearly three months after the Megaupload raids and arrests, 1,103 servers hosted at 
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