Archive for February, 2010
February 28th, 2010 | 
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On February 18, 2010, RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar and web-hosting provider, pulled the plug on the Torrents.ru domain name, suspending it with immediate effect and leaving 4 million users and 1 million torrents homeless.
A representative from RU-Center confirmed that the domain was blocked on the orders of the Investigative Division of the regional prosecutor’s office in Chertanovo district, Moscow, but at that time could not disclose the reasons.
Subsequently it was revealed that the seizing of the domain was due to violation of Article 146 of the Criminal Code – “Illegal use of objects of copyright or related rights, as well as acquisition, storage, transportation of counterfeit copies of works or phonograms for sale, committed on a large scale”.
Although Torrents.ru operated a ‘notice and take down’ procedure whereby copyright owners can have torrents removed “no questions asked”, the complaint specifically mentioned software developed by 1C and AutoDesk. Both companies have since denied initiating proceedings against the site but rumors persist that they were somehow involved.
After so easily losing their domain in the .RU zone, the operators of Torrents.ru weren’t about to take any chances by registering a new domain with the same authority. Within hours the site had relocated to a new domain at rutracker.org, apparently registered from the Bahamas.
Understandably the Torrents.ru domain seizure has caused quite a stir in Russia. Even though the law allows a month for a dispute to be rectified, RU-Center acted immediately and without being ordered to do so by a court, prompting theories of back-room deals under the influence of US interests. The operators of rutracker.org say that they are prepared to go to court over the case and will complain to ICANN.
“It was absolutely illegal,” said the owner of Torrents.ru in a recent interview. “We will appeal against it, but in this case it’s not the most important thing. The precedent is created. If you are an owner of domain name in .ru zone, you should know that it can be suspended at any moment by the order of an investigator.”
Following the domain closure a petition was set up addressed to President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, asking them to investigate the authorities who are said to have overstepped the limits of their powers. It currently has more than 15,300 signatures.
Other less conventional responses to the seizure have also been underway, with the Russian Pirate Party reporting that the websites of 1C and online cinema EKinoT have been subjected to DDoS attacks. In January, EKinoT said it would work with the Ministry of Culture to ‘blacklist’ sites which compete illegally with its business – Torrents.ru was one of the sites mentioned along with sharereactor.ru, intv.ru, binmovie.ru and epidem.ru.
Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
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Compared to a year ago the BitTorrent landscape has changed significantly. The Pirate Bay decided to shut down its tracker last fall and a few weeks later Mininova partly shut down its website. However, with the fall of Mininova many new torrent sites emerged, with KickassTorrents being the most successful one.
It almost seems like history is repeating itself. Early 2005, just a few weeks after that period’s leading torrent site, Suprnova.org, closed its doors, Mininova was founded. In the years that followed the site grew out to become the most visited torrent site. That growth was stunted in November 2009, when a negative verdict in a court battle against the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN forced the operators of the site to remove over a million torrents.
As expected Mininova’s decision resulted in a disastrous drop in traffic, as its users spread out over other torrent sites including some promising newcomers. Today, three months after Mininova’s downfall, the site is about to disappear from the top 10 list of most visited torrent sites. The Pirate Bay is currently leading the list closely followed by the meta-search engine Torrentz and isoHunt. KickassTorrents is currently in 9th place, which is a remarkable achievement consdering the site is only a few months old.
Below you’ll find a list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites as of today. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete, Alexa and SiteReport’s World Rank. The number of daily visitors and page views are estimates.
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#1 THEPIRATEBAY.ORG
- Daily Visitors: 4,600,136 |
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#2 TORRENTZ.COM
- Daily Visitors: 2,756,280 |
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#3 ISOHUNT.COM
- Daily Visitors: 2,285,811 |
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#4 BTJUNKIE.ORG
- Daily Visitors: 1,363,883 |
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#5 TORRENTREACTOR.NET
- Daily Visitors: 919,552 |
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#6 DEMONOID.COM
- Daily Visitors: 728,513 |
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#7 TORRENTDOWNLOADS.NET
- Daily Visitors: 686,219 |
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#8 MONOVA.ORG
- Daily Visitors: 670,536 |
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#9 KICKASSTORRENTS.COM
- Daily Visitors: 642,498 |
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#10 MININOVA.ORG
- Daily Visitors: 632,519 |
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Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
TorrentFreak TV covers some of the best, most interesting or remarkable stories from the wonderful world of file-sharing. An (ad-free) HD version of this episode is available on EZTV.
As always, we’re looking forward to your commentary. For questions or suggestions, feel free to contact the crew at tv@torrentfreak.com. We encourage contributions from viewers!
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Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
Max Manus, a World War II movie based on the real-life events of resistance fighter Max Manus was the most expensive Norwegian film production to date.
Inevitably, a version of the movie that had been recorded in an empty theater leaked onto the Internet. Producer John M. Jacobsen was furious, vowing to track down the leaker mercilessly.
An investigation controlled by notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel and the Simonsen law firm was launched. They later announced that they had tracked down the IP address from where the movie was first uploaded to the Internet.
After the police expressed disinterest, Simonsen went to the courts to force an ISP to reveal the identity of the individual behind the IP address. Much to the disappointment of transparency advocates in Norway, few people know the outcome of that case since it’s being kept a secret. All we know is that one party wasn’t happy with the verdict and the case is now off to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will have to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP-address, whether or not they committed the alleged offense.
And “whether or not” is a key phrase here. Not only does an IP address alone fail to identify an individual sat at a keyboard, TorrentFreak has been provided with information which indicates that the person the investigators claim to be the first uploader of the movie is actually no such thing.
As with much pre-released material, the content first makes its way on to the Internet via so-called ‘Scene’ groups. The Max Manus movie was first released by a group called KAMERA on a secure site on December 29th 2008 at 14:04:16.
A note the group included with the release reads: “We would recommend everyone to go and watch this movie in your local theater, and even buy the dvd/blu-ray when it hits the stores. This is a great movie, and it definitely deserves it!”
Instead of going after KAMERA, Simonsen are going after a much easier target – a secondary uploader who made his upload to a private BitTorrent tracker just under 3 hours later. Despite all the fuss, to date the movie has been downloaded just 2,800 times from the site it was released on.
Going through intermediaries, a source inside KAMERA confirmed to TorrentFreak they had nothing to do with the BitTorrent release but understandably declined to comment further. A source close to the group said they were disappointed that the movie had escaped onto the wider Internet due to all the publicity it’s received.
The tactic of going for easy targets is nothing new for anti-piracy groups, especially if it grabs some headlines. In 2005, a ‘workprint’ version of Star Wars Episode III leaked onto the Internet, put there by an previously unknown group called VISA. No member of this outfit was ever traced but the admins of EliteTorrents paid dearly for later making the movie available on BitTorrent.
In December 2009, following mountains of bad press and propaganda, Gilberto Sanchez, 47, was arrested at his home in the Bronx on charges of violating copyright law and now faces three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for supposedly being the infamous Wolverine ‘workprint’ leaker. “I’m a scapegoat for this,” he later told the New York Times. “I’m gonna get crucified.”
Few believe that Sanchez was the original uploader of Wolverine and now it appears the mystery person behind the IP address in the Max Manus investigation is not the original uploader either. Whether his or her identity will be made available to the anti-piracy lawyers is now up to the Supreme Court to decide.
While the actual first leakers of pre-release material continue to remain utterly elusive, those who dare to leak onto the wider Internet will continue to shoulder all of the blame, thanks to the inability of anti-piracy groups to investigate any further.
Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
Evanescence will be taking over 2010 with their highly anticipated third studio album due for late August/early September release date. Front woman, Amy Lee confirmed that Evanescence will be entering the studio this week to begin work on their third album with Grammy Award Winning producer Steve
Carly Simon spills the beans on “You’re So Vain.”
When the news got out that the lead investigator in the Pirate Bay case had been ‘rewarded‘ with a job for six months at Warner Bros., one of the plaintiffs in the trial, rumors of corruption and bribes were hard to hold back.
It later became clear that Keyzer had started working for the movie studio before the Pirate Bay investigation was closed, which obviously made things worse and fueled even more conspiracy theories.
Warner Bros. denied these allegations initially and stated that the investigator was not employed or paid by the movie studio while he was still working on the case.
Warner Bros. later retracted this statement and admitted that Jim Keyzer indeed started working for the movie studio before the Pirate Bay investigation was closed. This confession didn’t sit well with the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial who responded by filing several complaints with the police, including an allegation of bribery.
The police looked into the complaints but decided not to investigate the case. “[there is] no reason to believe that a crime has been committed by anyone employed by the police,” the prosecutor’s department stated.
That was the last we heard of Keyzer, who failed to show up at the Pirate Bay trial although he was listed as a witness. It was never a secret that after his six months at Warner Bros. he was welcomed back into the police force, but this week many were surprised to discover that he is now actually heading the IT Crime Unit.
One of the main tasks of Keyzer’s unit is to investigate file-sharing related cases. Obviously this once again fuels rumors that Keyzer is not the most objective officer to fulfill this position, to say the least.
Christian Engstrom, who represents the Pirate Party in the European Parliament, is also baffled by the news and finds it highly suspicious that the movie studios are “allowed to buy their own policemen.”
The appeal of the Pirate Bay trial for which Keyzer supplied evidence is expected to be scheduled this summer.
Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
Serj Tankian has a big smile on his face right now.
“Guys that make dark music are generally happy in their day-to-day lives; but the guys that do the happy music are really fucked up,” chuckles the System of a Down singer. “We’re generalizing, but still…[Laughs].”
Serj has everyone
Playing the devil and Jesus at the same time ain’t easy. Just ask LOST and Supernatural star Mark Pellegrino.
Currently, the actor steps into Satan’s shoes weekly on Supernatural, while in perpetual mind-screw, Lost, he is Jacob—the “seemingly” messianic character that everyone has been waiting
Both announce tour, Petty releases new music
Much like Google, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt are search engines that aim to index information posted on the Internet and make it findable to their users.
Google’s YouTube shows even more similarities to torrent sites as it allows users to submit content, with the only difference being that YouTube actually hosts the uploaded files whereas torrent sites only link to content indirectly through .torrent files.
In the last year, three of the largest torrent sites – The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt – were all taken to court by copyright holders for assisting in copyright infringement, and all three sites lost their cases to some degree. Strangely enough Google has never said a word about these cases other than to distance themselves from The Pirate Bay team after they were sentenced.
Despite this attempt at demarcation, three Google employees are now in a very similar position as the aforementioned torrent site operators. An Italian court just handed out suspended jail sentences to three Google employees for ‘allowing’ users to upload a video that invaded the privacy of a third person.
The three employees were not aware of the upload before they were notified by the police, but they made it possible, much like they make it possible to upload copyrighted content. The similarities with torrent search engines are striking.
It is needless to say that Google is not amused by the court ruling. While the company kept its mouth shut in response to the legal actions surrounding the torrent search engines, they now speak of an attack on “the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built.”
“Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming,” Google’s Matt Sucherman wrote in a blog post yesterday.
This response from Google does indeed seem logical, and we can easily apply the same reasoning to sites that index and host .torrent files. The operators of torrent sites and video sites can’t possibly verify and screen the content of all uploaded files. This is something the site’s users should be held accountable for.
This doesn’t mean of course that the site’s operators should ignore the law. The Pirate Bay for example has always been very responsive to requests from the police concerning illegal material linked to by the site. IsoHunt goes even further as it actively works together with copyright holders and Mininova even allowed copyright holders to prevent infringing torrents from being re-uploaded in the future.
According to Google such policies should be good enough to operate a site like YouTube without running into legal trouble.
“European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy,” Sucherman writes.
So here we have Google in a similar position as most torrent sites are in. Although the Italian verdict is outrageous the obvious upside is that unlike the torrent sites, Google has the financial power to successfully fight the verdict. According to former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, Google got what it deserved.
“It’s good that someone takes on Google for a change. Let them take the heat for once – and let them make sure that other sites that they’ve previously had no problem filtering, that basically do the same as them, don’t end up in this shit the next time,” Sunde told TorrentFreak.
“I think it’s good that time has finally caught up Google. Maybe now we have a level playing field here. They have to take the fight as well. Previously they only said nice things about how important the Internet was, and then ignored all of the things going on. Even supporting them – China for instance,” he added.
“A big player like Google has the financial muscles to fight this thing. And we all know that Italy is just full of rules made by Berlusconi, for Berlusconi,” Sunde said, adding, “That fascist needs to go.”
Google has indeed committed itself, and said it “will vigorously appeal this decision.” The whole case revolves around the question of whether or not the operators of media portals and search engines should be held accountable for the actions of their users.
In recent months Italian courts have clearly answered positively to this question. They have opened the door for a nationwide block of file-sharing sites and with yesterday’s decision file and video hosting sites are not safe any longer either. So the next question is, can Google secure a safe haven for torrent sites?
Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
Earlier this month it was celebrations all round for the operators of Aussie ISP iiNet, as they successfully defended a Hollywood movie studio legal onslaught directed by AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.
Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network took iiNet to court, claiming that the ISP did nothing to stop its customers from sharing copyright media via BitTorrent and was therefore liable for their infringements.
Judge Justice Dennis Cowdroy disagreed, and handed a huge victory to iiNet.
Today marked the deadline for AFACT to appeal the decision and as expected, they did just that.
In a statement the anti-piracy group said there were good grounds to appeal a judgment which it is dramatically claiming has left an “unworkable environment for content creators and content providers and represents a serious threat to Australia’s digital economy.”
AFACT boss Neil Gane said the judgment conflicted with established copyright law in Australia.
“The court found large scale copyright infringements, that iiNet knew they were
occurring, that iiNet had the contractual and technical capacity to stop them and iiNet did nothing about them,” he said. “In line with previous case law, this would have amounted to authorization of copyright infringement.”
Gane went on to state that the ruling rendered so-called ’safe harbor’ provisions of copyright ineffective. “If this decision stands, the ISPs have all the protection without any of the responsibility,” he said.
AFACT’s appeal, filed with the Fedral Court today, consists of 15 areas where they believe Justice Cowdroy got it wrong. An analysis of the appeal grounds can be found here.
Chief of iiNet, Michael Malone, said Justice Cowdroy’s judgment was unequivocal and the company is confident the Court will stand by its original ruling, noting that more legal proceedings will not provide a solution.
“It is more than disappointing and frustrating that the studios have chosen this unproductive path,” Mr Malone said in a statement. “This legal case has not stopped one illegal download and further legal appeals will not stop piracy.
“The studios themselves admitted during the court hearings that making content freely and cheaply available online was an effective way to combat piracy. People are crying out to access the studios materials, so much so some are prepared to steal it. A more effective approach would be for the studios to make their content more readily and cheaply available online,” notes Malone.
Upon losing the original trial, AFACT was ordered to pay iiNet’s legal costs, revealed to be $5.7 million ($5.08 million USD). Earlier this week AFACT said it will return to court in order to avoid paying some of the costs.
The appeal hearing for the original case is likely be held this year and according to iiNet’s Michael Malone, it should take up significantly fewer days than first time around.
Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.
Mary Mary are blessed.
Grammy-winning sisters Tina and Erica Campbell have voices that can soar to the heavens, while carrying undeniable soulful hooks. However, most importantly, they’ve got a benevolent goal with their version of gospel. Erica smiles, “If my answer can be someone else’s answer,