TorrentFreak Email Update

Virgin Media Blocks File-Sharing Site After Receiving Court Order
I Know What You Downloaded On BitTorrent This Summer
MPAA / RIAA Want U.S. to Help Quash The Pirate Bay

Virgin Media Blocks File-Sharing Site After Receiving Court Order

Posted: 14 Aug 2012 12:45 AM PDT

In what would become a pioneering battle to have a file-sharing site blocked at the ISP level in the UK, last year ISP BT found itself taking on the might of the major Hollywood studios.

The Motion Picture Association were seeking a High Court injunction ordering BT to block subscriber access to Newzbin2, a site they say causes the industry significant losses by helping people to locate movies and TV shows on the Usenet binaries system. The MPA won.

"In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the Studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes," said Justice Arnold in the High Court last July.

In October 2011 the parties returned to court and BT was given just 14 days to use its Cleanfeed censorship system to block subscriber access to Newzbin2.

However, unlike this year’s blockade of The Pirate Bay, only BT were affected by the High Court order. The MPA had asked other ISPs to voluntarily block Newzbin2 following the ruling but they refused. In December 2011, ISP SKY confirmed that they had received an order to block Newzbin2 and in early January 2012 an order was issued for TalkTalk to block access.

All this time Virgin Media, a company that has a monopoly on cable Internet access in the UK, had continued to provide access to Newzbin2. That will soon change.

“We’ve received an order from the courts requiring us to prevent access to Newzbin in order to help protect against copyright infringement,” the company announced yesterday.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to us, but we strongly believe that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”

At the time of writing, Newzbin2 remains accessible through Virgin Media and the ISP has not indicated how long it has been given to comply with the court order. Spokesman for Newzbin2 Mr.White said that he believes the block will kick in today.

When The Pirate Bay was blocked earlier this year, dozens of proxy sites popped up that gave UK Internet subscribers plenty of options to continue getting access to the torrent resource. Newzbin2, probably due to its lower profile, did not receive the same level of support, although the operators did release their own encryption software to allow users to circumvent bans. It received its latest update last week.

Source: Virgin Media Blocks File-Sharing Site After Receiving Court Order

I Know What You Downloaded On BitTorrent This Summer

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 02:09 PM PDT

Unless BitTorrent users are taking steps to hide their identities through the use of a VPN, proxy, or seedbox, their sharing activities are available for almost anyone to snoop on.

By their very nature BitTorrent networks are very happy to spill the locations of any user in the swarm. After all, there’s data to be shared, and without knowing where to send it that can’t happen.

Despite this fairly common knowledge, even some experienced BitTorrent users can be a little surprised to learn that someone has been monitoring their activities. This was highlighted perfectly when a site called YouHaveDownloaded appeared in 2011 claiming to have gathered data on more than 51 million BitTorrent users sharing more than 103,000 torrents.

Although it generated considerable interest, YouHaveDownloaded stopped collecting data last year and is currently offline. However, we’ve now been made aware of another site offering a service that is just as scary.

ScanEye is a product of Polish company called Kalasoft Sp. z o.o. The company told TorrentFreak that it pulls torrents from two indexes – TorrentReactor and adult site NuTorrent – but where the .torrent files come from is largely irrelevant since they are available from many other sites too.

The main ScanEye system has been operating out of a Polish datacenter since November 2011. To date its operators say they have collected 430,000 torrents, that’s 400% more than the haul at YouHaveDownloaded. This figure is reportedly increasing by 1000 torrents every day.

In an attempt to blend in, the peers ScanEye uses masquerade as various torrent clients and are operated behind dynamic IP addresses in the three separate countries – Poland, Sweden and Romania. Despite these measures at least one peer was easy to spot – we were alerted to ScanEye by a reader who noticed some unusual activity in a BitTorrent swarm.

But while YouHaveDownloaded said their aim was to draw attention to the lack of anonymity on BitTorrent networks, the operators of ScanEye have a very different agenda. They are a piracy intelligence company gathering information on behalf of their customers.

For privacy reasons regular visitors can only see information on their own IP-address. Full addresses are only shared with parties who either own the content that was allegedly downloaded, or the IP-addresses that were “caught”.

“Copyright holders can view IP addresses of specific countries for very specific copyrighted content. For example, BMW AG can check who has downloaded ‘BMW DVD Navigation 2012′, but they can not see what else the IP has downloaded,” the company told TorrentFreak. “Network owners, for example Al Jouf University, Saudi Arabia, can view all shared content for its own network.”

But it is the public-facing service, the IP check, that is the same kind of product previously offered by YouHaveDownloaded. By visiting this page your current IP address will be matched against the databases held by ScanEye and a list of your downloads from the past few months should appear.

TorrentFreak carried out a few tests and as can be seen from the screenshot below, we got busted for downloading a VODO torrent.

Of course, users with dynamic IP addresses might find they get ‘busted’ for someone else’s downloads, or find that ScanEye reports they’ve never downloaded anything at all. Users who share an Internet connection with other file-sharers may very well get ‘busted’ for their behavior. Nothing much can be done about that, such is the nature of IP address evidence.

Source: I Know What You Downloaded On BitTorrent This Summer

MPAA / RIAA Want U.S. to Help Quash The Pirate Bay

Posted: 13 Aug 2012 06:39 AM PDT

tpb The U.S. Government is constantly evaluating and updating its copyright enforcement policies. To this end, Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel recently asked “the public” to come up with recommendations for the future strategy.

The call resulted in dozens of submissions from individuals, entrepreneurs, digital rights groups and copyright holders. The RIAA and MPAA did not miss out on the opportunity either – they filed a joint recommendation last Friday.

More has to be done to combat online piracy according to the two groups, and the U.S. Government should play an active role in these efforts.

The Problem

After emphasizing that the public has a wealth of legal media at their fingertips, the MPAA and RIAA identify the biggest threats to the entertainment industry, starting with cyberlockers. They describe these file-hosting sites as “hubs for unauthorized distribution” and the “business model of choice for copyright thieves.”

“Operators encourage users to post infringing material or offer incentives to users whose uploaded content is frequently downloaded by others. In other words, unlike legitimate cloud storage services, these sites are focused, not on ‘storing’ files, but instead on illegitimately distributing professionally produced entertainment products,” they write.

The MPAA and RIAA haven’t shied away from naming several of these “rogue” sites which they equate to the now defunct MegaUpload.

“The efforts by the U.S. government to shut down Megaupload have had an immediate and positive impact on the marketplace. However, significant distribution of illegal content continues through similar websites, such as Rapidgator, Turbobit, DepositFiles, and PutLocker.”

The cyberlockers are immediately followed by P2P sites, of which The Pirate Bay is the prime example. The entertainment industry groups are quick to point out that this “criminal operation” continues to operate despite the fact that the previous owners were convicted.

“While its operators have been criminally adjudicated, The Pirate Bay (TPB) continues to be one of the top sites in the world providing access to unlicensed content. TPB and many other similar operators of p2p networks still enable users to illegally download complete copies of illegally copied movie, television and music content for free, while profiting from advertising, subscriptions or donations.”

In addition to these top threats the MPAA and RIAA also name linking websites (such as TVShack) and Usenet as facilitators of copyright infringement. They further point out that search engines and server farms are not doing enough to stop the above threats from continuing to operate.

The Solution

The MPAA and RIAA argue that the U.S. Government has an important role to play in countering the threats outlined above. One of the key solutions they list is the creation of “best practices” in industries that play a key role in the piracy problem.

The groups suggest that the Government should play a role in convincing advertising companies and search engines to work with copyright holders to decrease online piracy. In the most ideal scenario, advertisers should ban websites that facilitate copyright infringement while search engines should make it harder to find pirated content, or delist rogue sites altogether.

The Government should also encourage domain registrars to cooperate with copyright holders. The MPAA and RIAA want to eliminate fake Whois entries and are arguing for the implementation of strict identification guidelines so new top-level domains will not be used for piracy.

“The proliferation of new generic Top Level Domain registries risks offering new opportunities for pirates to evade detection and to escape the reach of U.S. courts and law enforcement; a strong set of anti-infringement best practices among the major registries and registrars could help to reduce this risk,” they write.

Despite the failed SOPA and PIPA bills the MPAA and RIAA also want the Government to continue their efforts to introduce stronger copyright legislation. Despite public protests, streaming copyrighted movies and music should become a felony, and harsher sentences should be introduced to deter piracy.

“For example, increasing sentencing guidelines for intellectual property offenses committed by organized criminals and repeat intellectual property offenders would help deter gangs and other criminals from incorporating infringement into their portfolios.”

“In addition, it remains important for Congress to clarify that, in appropriate circumstances, infringement by internet streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony,” they write.

Laws aside, the U.S. should continue to work with other countries to crack down on piracy. If the entertainment industries have their way the actions against MegaUpload earlier this year will become the standard.

Judging from previous consultations, the recommendations of the MPAA and RIAA will not go unheard by Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, but whether the proposed solutions will be good enough to quash The Pirate Bay remains to be seen.

Source: MPAA / RIAA Want U.S. to Help Quash The Pirate Bay

The Pirate's Press

Tuesday, 14 August 2012