Torrentfreak: “BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Search for in 2014” plus 2 more

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• BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Search for in 2014
• Here’s Where “The Interview” Pirates Are Coming From
• Talos Principle Traps Pirating Gamers in An Elevator

BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Search for in 2014 Posted: 31 Dec 2014 01:32 AM PST During December, all self-respecting search engines produce an overview of the most popular search terms of the past year. These lists give insight into recent trends, and in 2014 Robin Williams, World Cup and Ebola were the top trending searches on Google. But what about torrent search engines? With billions of searches every year it's worth taking a look at the most-entered keywords on the dominant file-sharing network. A few years ago we started the BitTorrent zeitgeist tradition with help from one of the largest torrent sites around. Based on a sample of hundreds of millions of searches, this list should give a decent overview of what people are looking for. 2014’s number one query is the same as last year’s. YIFY is the name of a popular movie release group that many people follow to see what new pirated titles are available. The term 2014, often used to find recent movies, comes in second place, followed by 1080p in third. Last year “1080p” was in 42nd place suggesting that people were increasingly looking for high definition video. The sixth and eight place for newcomers YIFY 720p and YIFY 1080p confirm this trend. In fourth place we find NeZu, another popular movie release group that is listed in the top 50 for the first time this year. The first content related search query is Guardians of The Galaxy in ninth place. Other popular movie searches are Lucy and Dawn of The Planet of The Apes taking the 23rd and 24th spots respectively. TV content is also popular with Game of Thrones in 12th and The Walking Dead in 16th place. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no searches related to music titles in the top 50. The only music related term is Discography in 11th place. Finally, a game release group made it into the top 50 this year. The query Nosteam, referring to the ^^nosTEAM^^ group, is one of the highest newcomers and is listed in 15th place. Below is the full list of the 50 most-entered search queries on one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet. — 1. yify 2. 2014 3. 1080p 4. nezu 5. hindi 6. yify 720p 7. french 8. yify 1080p 9. guardians of the galaxy 10. 3d 11. discography 12. game of thrones 13. movies 14. tamil 15. nosteam 16. the walking dead 17. ita 18. dvdrip 19. telugu 20. android 21. malayalam 22. hindi 2014 23. lucy 24. dawn of the planet of the apes 25. nl 26. apk 27. ps3 28. lynda 29. 720p 30. 2013 31. need for speed 32. arrow 33. +18 34. batman 35. hercules 36. x art 37. pc games 38. how to train your dragon 2 39. 22 jump street 40. divergent 41. teenage mutant ninja turtles 42. edge of tomorrow 43. The fault in our stars 44. godzilla 45. mac 46. wwe 47. the equalizer 48. walking dead 49. maleficent 50. the flash Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Here’s Where “The Interview” Pirates Are Coming From Posted: 30 Dec 2014 02:40 PM PST After most U.S. theaters backed away from screening The Interview due to “terrorist’ threats, Sony Pictures decided to give the movie its premiere on the Internet via various streaming services. By Sunday the movie had been sold two million times, which isn’t a bad result at all. However, in the dark corners of the Internet just as many copies were traded without permission. Via torrent sites alone the movie was shared an estimated 2.5 million times and that number could double when illicit streaming sites and cyberlockers are added to the mix. One question that remained unanswered until now is where all these pirates are coming from. To find out, TF gathered more than 7,000 IP-addresses of people who shared pirated copies via BitTorrent throughout the past 24-hours. The data, presented in the table below, reveals that most of the pirates come from parts of the world where there’s no legal avenue to see the film. With 17.6% the United States is still leading the list, but this isn’t a big surprise considering the size of its population. If we take a look at which countries have most pirates relative to their population size then the Netherlands (17 million) and Australia (23 million) come out on top. In total Canada, Australia, the UK and the Netherlands are good for 30% of all downloads, but these countries have less than half of the U.S. population combined. While this data gives some more insight into The Interview’s popularity worldwide it’s hard to draw any strong conclusions, as piracy rates depend on a multitude of factors. Would there have been less pirated downloads if the movie was sold everywhere? Most likely, but the high percentage of U.S. downloads shows that there’s still plenty of piracy even where the film is available. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that there were no downloads from North Korea in our sample. This doesn’t come as a surprise of course, not least because Internet connectivity has been down recently. Sony Pictures, meanwhile, is targeting torrent sites with DMCA takedown requests hoping to hinder the distribution of pirated copies. Whether that will have much of an effect has yet to be seen as there are still plenty of pirate copies around. —- Note: downloaders who use VPNs may appear to be in a different country. sample N=7,231 # Country % City % torrentfreak.com 1 United States 17.6% London 3.5% 2 Canada 8.2% Amsterdam 2.5% 3 Australia 7.8% Melbourne 2.3% 4 United Kingdom 7.2% Makati 1.5% 5 The Netherlands 6.8% Manila 1.5% 6 Philippines 5.3% Singapore 1.4% 7 India 3.0% Athens 1.3% 8 Greece 2.1% Sydney 1.2% 9 Brazil 2.0% Toronto 1.2% 10 United Arab Emirates 1.5% Dubai 1.2% Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Talos Principle Traps Pirating Gamers in An Elevator Posted: 30 Dec 2014 06:45 AM PST Every day hundreds of thousands of games are downloaded from various torrent sites. While it can be quite a challenge to get a pirated game working, most will play just fine. The same is true for Croteam’s latest release The Talos Principle. A few days ago a pirated copy of the puzzle title surfaced online which initially appeared to work as a regular game. However, the fun didn’t last long as the developers had previously embedded a feature that traps free-riding pirates in a virtual elevator. “When I unlocked the 2nd floor on the tower, all the elevators have stopped working. Whenever I want to get somewhere, it just stops in the middle of the way and I can’t do anything,” J.K. wrote on the Steam forums. The measure had many pirates puzzled, but in a thread on Neogaf the purpose of the “bug” soon came to light. While bugs in “cracked” games are a regular occurrence, in this case it’s clearly an intentional anti-piracy measure. As can be seen below, the QR code visible in the elevator clearly references the scene release group SKIDROW, who are responsible for many pirated game copies. Croteam acknowledged the feature on social media by retweeting a mention of the puzzled Steam user, which must have been good for a few laughs among the developers. Even more so, it probably led to a few extra sales as well. Apparently some pirates were hooked enough to get a legit copy of the game on Steam, to continue playing without any hassles. “I hit the bug where the elevators stopped working correctly, so I bought the game on Steam and was able to import my save,” an anonymous user wrote on a popular torrent site, adding that it’s been worth the money. “I did lose some progress, possibly a side effect of the elevator bug, but I was able to get back to where I was pretty quickly. I just finished the game (one ending, at least) and it was totally worth the purchase price.” So the developers managed to punish pirates and get paid. That’s a pretty good outcome to say the least. As Kotaku mentions, this isn’t the first time that Croteam has come up with a rather creative form of DRM. Three years ago the developers added an invincible scorpion to Serious Sam, making it impossible for pirates to progress. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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Torrentfreak: “Top 10 Domains Hit By Google Piracy Takedowns 2014” plus 1 more

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Top 10 Domains Hit By Google Piracy Takedowns 2014 Posted: 30 Dec 2014 01:40 AM PST As 2014 draws to a close it is notable that despite dozens of sites being blocked around Europe and millions of infringement notices going out to US-based Internet users, piracy appears to be just as prolific as it ever was. There appears to be very little copyright holders can do to stop their content appearing online and as a result countless millions of ‘infringing’ URLs become indexed by the world’s leading search engines. Once this happens it’s largely too late to do anything really significant to turn back the clock on availability. Nevertheless, entertainment companies still want to make life as difficult as possible for online pirates. As a result they send out millions of takedown notices, not only to sites hosting content, but also to search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. These companies are remarkably quick to respond. Google, for example, processes most DMCA notices in a matter of hours, despite receiving one million requests per day and on one occasion 11.6 million takedowns in a week. Every single one of these takedowns is logged in the company’s Transparency Report which has become a valuable source of insight into the company’s responses to copyright and the wider picture online. Listed below are the top 10 domains for which Google received the most notices during the past year (Dec 28, 2013 to Dec 29, 2014). File-hosting and MP3 search engines dominate the list, so it comes as little surprise that the major record labels (under the BPI umbrella) sent the most notices during the course of the year. It’s also noteworthy that despite the high-profiles of sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, those sites were relegated to 18th and 29th places respectively in the takedown charts. In fact not a single torrent site made the top 10 this year, with the nearest torrent-related domains being torrentz.pro (#11), torrenthound (#12) and come.in (#13). Top 10 Domains Subjected to Piracy Takedowns 2014 Rank Name URLs requested for takedown Top reporters (all time) torrentfreak.com / google.com 1 4shared.com 8,345,559 BPI labels 2 rapidgator.net 7,838,757 NBC Universal 3 uploaded.net 5,412,519 FOX 4 dilandau.eu (site dead) 4,913,298 BPI labels 5 GoSong.net 4,484,310 BPI labels 6 zippyshare.com 3,074,988 Topple Track 7 Muzofon.com 2,835,660 BPI labels 8 myfreemp3.cc 2,699,706 BPI labels 9 myfreemp3.eu 2,453,694 BPI labels 10 vmusice.net 2,303,615 BPI labels Finally, it’s worth noting that there is a site for which Google receives millions of notices but isn’t listed in any of its reports. It’s possible we’ll never know the numbers involved, but YouTube itself is likely to be in the official top 10. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Movie Studios Fear a Google Fiber Piracy Surge Posted: 29 Dec 2014 10:08 AM PST Google is slowly expanding its fiber to the home services in the United States. Most recently Austin, Texas, was added to the list and a few dozen other cities will follow soon. Promising free Internet and blazing fast gigabit per second connections at a relatively low price, many consumers are happy with Google’s new product. Hollywood on the other hand fears the worst. While great connectivity offers commercial opportunities for entertainment companies, some are overly worried about the negative consequences. Earlier this week we received a leaked presentation covering the results of a Google Fiber survey conducted on behalf of Warner Bros and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The research was conducted in 2012 and aimed to get a baseline of the piracy levels, so changes can be measured after the rollout. The survey respondents came from Kansas City, where Google Fiber first launched, with St. Louis residents as a control group. In total, more than 2,000 persons between 13 and 54 were asked about Google Fiber, their piracy habits and media consumption in general. The results reveal that more than half of those surveyed were very interested in Google’s offer. This includes a large group of pirates, which make up 31% of the entire population. About a third of these pirates said they would download or stream more with Google Fiber. Perhaps even more worrying for Hollywood, about a quarter of the non-pirates said they would start doing so if Google comes to town. The most interesting part, however, is that the research tries to estimate the studio’s extra piracy losses that Google Fiber could create across the nation. Drawing on an MPAA formula that counts all pirated views as losses the report notes that it may cost Hollywood over a billion dollars per year. That’s a rather impressive increase of 58% compared to current piracy levels. The research also finds a link between piracy and broadband speeds, which is another reason for Hollywood not to like Google’s Internet service. According to the report this is “another indication that piracy becomes more attractive with Google Fiber.” We will refrain from analyzing the methods and the definition of piracy losses, which deserve an article of their own. What’s most striking from the above approach is the way the studios frame Google Fiber as a piracy threat, instead of looking at the opportunities it offers. For example, the same report also concludes that 39% of the respondents would use paid streaming subscription services more, while 34% would rent and purchase more online video. Yet, there is no mention of the potential extra revenue that will bring in. Judging from all the piracy calculations, statistics and projections, it appears that Hollywood is mostly occupied with threats. But of course there’s nothing new there. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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Torrentfreak: “Dotcom: Encrypted MegaChat is “Coming Soon”” plus 2 more

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• Dotcom: Encrypted MegaChat is “Coming Soon”
• Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 12/29/14
• MPAA Considered Pulling Out of UK Pirate Notice Program

Dotcom: Encrypted MegaChat is “Coming Soon” Posted: 29 Dec 2014 01:52 AM PST Following the revelations of systems administrator Edward Snowden, millions of eyes were opened to our online vulnerability. Total privacy, something presumed by many to be as simple as securing a password, was shown to be an easily shattered illusion. As the need for heightened security filtered down to the masses, companies stepped into the frame offering products and services to help people maintain their privacy online. VPN companies are still riding this wave of popularity and are now going to even greater lengths to assure customers of their commitment to security. Another company exploiting the security niche is Mega, the cloud-storage service founded by Kim Dotcom. While the flamboyant German reportedly has little to do with the company on a day to day basis, his family still owns shares in the operation. And for a company with a zero dollar marketing spend, Dotcom remains a valuable promotional asset. In one of his regular updates, this morning the Megaupload founder announced that Mega is preparing to launch a new product into the communications market. “Mega will soon release a fully encrypted and browser based video call & chat service including high-speed file transfers. Bye bye Skype,” Dotcom teased. Although no official announcement has been made, it’s believed that the product will be called “MegaChat”, a naming convention that would certainly fit with previous Dotcom projects. The service will offer end-to-end encryption and, reading between the lines of Dotcom’s statements, won’t be based in the backyard of his arch-rivals. “No US based online service provider can be trusted with your data. Skype has no choice. They must provide the US Government with backdoors,” Dotcom says. While clearly ambitious, Mega is already somewhat behind with plans for expansion outside of its core business of encrypted file-storage. It was previously reported that Mega’s chat/video product would be released to the public in the second quarter of 2014. Its encrypted email service is also yet to see the light. That being said, an early 2015 release for “MegaChat” would be a welcome development for the company. After first announcing plans to go public in March 2014, Mega now has eyes on an early 2015 NZX listing. The listing is planned via a reverse takeover of NZ-based TRS Investments but that too has not run entirely smoothly. A shareholders’ vote at the company has been pushed back several times and is not expected to arrive sooner than the end of January. For investors, potential is there. Mega currently has in excess of 15 million users and while the majority take advantage of the company’s free product, upgrades become more likely as users warm to the service. The advent of additional services will also boost its appeal but the hope is they will also improve the company’s bottom line. Earlier this month Mega chief executive Graham Gaylard told Stuff that the company is not yet making money and is instead focusing on growth. However, there is profit to be made in this sector and it seems likely that the company will secure and develop its position during 2015. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 12/29/14 Posted: 28 Dec 2014 11:47 PM PST This week we have four newcomers in our chart. The Interview is the most downloaded movie. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated 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. Ranking (last week) Movie IMDb Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (…) The Interview 7.8 / trailer 2 (3) Gone Girl 8.4 / trailer 3 (2) Horrible Bosses 2 6.9 / trailer 4 (4) Outcast 5.0 / trailer 5 (1) The Equalizer 7.4 / trailer 6 (…) Penguins of Madagascar 5.0 / trailer 7 (…) Dumb And Dumber To 6.4 / trailer 8 (5) The Maze Runner 7.1 / trailer 9 (6) Guardians of the Galaxy 8.5 / trailer 10 (…) PK 8.8 / trailer Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

MPAA Considered Pulling Out of UK Pirate Notice Program Posted: 28 Dec 2014 07:49 AM PST One of the cornerstones of modern online piracy schemes are so-called ‘copyright alert’ programs. The idea is simple – rightsholders monitor online file-sharing networks, capture IP addresses of alleged pirates and have ISPs send warnings to subscribers. Several countries in the world currently operate these systems. France was one of the pioneers but the largest project is handled with the cooperation of the largest ISPs in the United States. In the summer a new deal was reached between the music and movie industries and the government to bring notices to the UK. However, TorrentFreak has learned that just three months earlier Hollywood was getting cold feet over the scheme. Leaked emails reveal that the MPAA was giving consideration to the consequences of pulling out of VCAP (or delaying it by 18 months) due to the group not having enough information on the effectiveness of notice-only, no punishment schemes. Since consequences could include political fallout due to UK government involvement in VCAP, the MPAA decided to send former Senator Chris Dodd to the UK. Dodd met Ed Vaizey, the UK Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, and Tim Luke, Prime Minister David Cameron’s Senior Policy Advisor, in the first week of March 2014. Dodd returned with plenty of praise for Vaizey whose apparent efforts in paving the way for site blocking and attacking the finances of pirate sites were showing results. Nevertheless, there were sticking points. It appears that a notice-only warning system, one in which subscribers aren’t punished for their actions, was not something the MPAA aspired to. This left the MPAA wondering whether launching VCAP quickly would be a favorable thing to do. Interestingly, Dodd also made it clear to Vaizey that the MPAA was seriously considering the political implications of when VCAP should begin, a point not lost on the politicians. Both Vaizey and Luke felt that if notices only started going out in the months preceding the May 2015 general election that would be an unwelcome development. A delay on notice-sending until the fall of 2015 was preferred all round. Whatever happened in the interim period, in May news leaked that an agreement had been reached and by June the MPAA were confirming internally that a Memorandum of Understanding had indeed been signed. Despite public comments welcoming the VCAP agreement it seems clear that the MPAA would prefer a system with account suspensions and disconnections. For now, however, that is not on the agenda. At this point it appears Hollywood will give VCAP time to work, but could pull out at a later point if the public simply isn’t getting the message. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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Torrentfreak: “isoHunt Founder: Piracy is A Convenience and Access Problem.” plus 1 more

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isoHunt Founder: Piracy is A Convenience and Access Problem. Posted: 28 Dec 2014 02:33 AM PST November last year isoHunt’s founder shut down the site after he signed a $110 million settlement agreement with Hollywood. After being one of the lead figures in the BitTorrent community for over a decade, Fung is now about to close his first year as an outsider. Has this new perspective changed his outlook on piracy? What lessons has he learned, and what should the major entertainment industry companies do to address the piracy challenge? Today Fung shares some of his thoughts from the past year. On Piracy and The Future of Media Distribution By Gary Fung I’ve often said before, in court and elsewhere, that isoHunt’s shutdown means nothing against what and how much people share. isoHunt was a tool and its stats a reflection of what people wanted to share. I was right, nothing of substance has changed in file-sharing on BitTorrent. Neither has the recent downtime of The Pirate Bay it seems. For now, piracy is being maintained by the inability of media giants to serve their customers well. I like movies. I’ve always gone to theaters to see good movies, with friends. isoHunt’s shutdown hasn’t changed that. Recently, there was a movie I wanted to see: The Imitation Games. After weeks of it being premiered in the US, I still couldn’t see it here in BC, Canada. Only a few days ago did it start showing in just one local theater. “Piracy” is not a money problem, it’s a convenience and access problem. Money is merely a part of the access problem. What are studios supposed to expect people to do when they want to see a movie but they can’t pay because it’s not playing locally? So how can the entertainment industry stop piracy? Innovation. Not being involved in file-sharing gives me the freedom to say that streaming services are the future of movies and TV. Technically, streaming and superior recommendations are the things that can effectively compete with piracy, which is not as convenient, not as legal and not as high quality. Continue to hamstring collective streaming services with licensing limitations and territorial barriers and expect piracy to endure. The War on Internet cannot be won with lawyers. I wanted isoHunt to evolve into a service of frictionless content discovery. I realize now that without cooperation with the content owners, this isn’t possible. Technologically, I envision studios and other media companies creating open APIs and platforms so new innovative streaming services can be developed on top. That would solve the studio’s fear of single players like Netflix dominating media distribution and eventually dictating terms in the industry. New streaming services could find a hybrid approach by using BitTorrent P2P streaming to lower cost and Bitcoin for pay per view micro-transactions. Imagine when everyone can watch and listen to anything, anytime, anywhere, with mere cents, automatically and continuously deducted from your Bitcoin wallet. No, you won’t own your media, but that was never the case to begin with. Our entertainment will be completely in the cloud, searchable and discoverable with recommendations. Not yours, physically or otherwise, but available and priced low enough that you don’t think much about the charge. I believe that the frictionless micro-transactions that enable this will be ideal for bridging the digital divide between creators and consumers. Taylor Swift doesn’t want to be on Spotify? She can create her own platform using a streaming API, a clearinghouse for rights, and bitcoin purchase details made available by her label. The same would be true for any TV show and movie producer. And here’s my tip to industry associations like the MPAA and RIAA for continued relevance in this Internet age, possibly for everyone’s benefits. Become standards bodies for programmatic APIs over media rights, metadata and micro-transaction details. Record labels and movie/tv studios can use these standards to make their own works available for streaming and to accept payments from third parties. With open APIs, new streaming services can freely innovate. With increased competition and choice, consumers can get better pricing and collectively access everything, just as the Internet eventually makes everything available. And with competing streaming services, the labels and studios don’t have to fear streaming giants such as Netflix, YouTube and Spotify consolidating too much power over distribution. Streaming services will become the new channels, available on any connected TV, sound system and mobile device. Micro-transactions that are frictionless in access is the hardest part from a technical point of view, but has the potential to end download stores, subscription streaming and piracy of today. Free and cheaper tiers of access through the APIs are possible when supplemented with advertising naturally and new forms of product placements and endorsements, already pioneered by Youtube channels now (although ethics in continued melding of content and advertising will have to be questioned). The piracy and ownership debates I believe will be largely academic when access to content in reality will be that easy. Media companies that hound their future customers and technology partners with lawsuits will be laughed at, like we can now laugh at horse carriages suing automobiles for going too fast That would be a sight to see. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Hundreds of Pirate Bay Copies Emerge, Is The Hydra Alive? Posted: 27 Dec 2014 11:07 AM PST More than two weeks have passed since The Pirate Bay's servers were pulled offline and it remains doubtful if the site will ever return in its full glory. A few days ago The Pirate Bay showed signs of life again when the domain name started waving a pirate flag. While this created plenty of mystery, there are still no torrents to be found on the site. For now, it’s Pirate Bay supporters carrying the Kopimi spirit and keeping the “Hydra” seemingly alive and kicking. Chop one head off and new ones will grow back, making the beast stronger and stronger. This week, most of the Pirate Bay copies have been growing from Isohunt.to’s OpenBay project. Thus far nearly 400 Pirate Bay clones have launched and the people behind the initiative say that OpenBay is currently the most popular project on developer platform GitHub. “Since it’s launch The Open Bay has drawn a lot of attention. As a result it’s placed as #1 on GitHub. During recent weeks 372 Open Bays have been created,” the Isohunt.to team inform us. “Our current goal is to not only make it open source, but eventually provide a fully decentralized torrent database for the community,” they add. Although Isohunt told us that they’re not in contact with TPB, the Pirate Bay crew appears to appreciate the efforts. After all, the pirate flag that’s waving on the official Pirate Bay domain comes from OpenBay. Isohunt.to is happy with this support and is now calling on developers to improve and expand the code, to support bigger and better torrent sites. “We’re glad that the original ThePirateBay founders are supporting us waving the pirate flag and the hash tag #CodeOpenBay. We hope that the community will step in and the new era will begin,” Isohunt.to tells us. The Pirate Bay homepage The question is, however, whether or not copies are going to be good enough. When Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde talked about the Hydra concept 7.5 years ago he wasn’t referring to copies, but entirely new sites with their own communities. “Start up your own torrent sites, make the Internet the hydra it is and needs to be. If there's hundreds of sites, they can't all be shut down,” he said, pointing out that the torrent community was relying too heavily on TPB. Seen through this lens, the hundreds of TPB copies that sprang up in recent days are pretty much useless. That is, until they become thriving communities of their own. Simply having a copy of the torrent listings isn’t going to be good enough. Sticking with the Hydra mythology, if Pirate Bay copies are new heads then they’re on top of a dead beast for now. In this flawed analogy the Pirate Bay raid didn’t just cut off a head, it killed the beast itself. The Pirate Bay’s real value were the uploaders and moderators, and these can’t simply be copied. The real Hydra is something much broader. It is the entire BitTorrent ecosystem where The Pirate Bay was just one of the many heads, living alongside other popular torrent sites. Only time can tell whether this Hydra is indeed alive and kicking. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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Torrentfreak: “Sony About to Get Sued For Pirating Music in The Interview” plus 2 more

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• Sony About to Get Sued For Pirating Music in The Interview
• Sony Accidentally Funded “Rogue” Piracy Sites
• Kim “Santa” Dotcom Stops Xbox and Playstation Attacks

Sony About to Get Sued For Pirating Music in The Interview Posted: 27 Dec 2014 02:21 AM PST The way things are panning out, the Sony movie The Interview is on course to become one of the most controversial movies of all time. The comedy, which depicts the violent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, made headlines worldwide when the so-called Guardians of Peace hacking group threatened Sony if it was released. Facing what amounted to a "terrorist" threat, theaters all around the U.S. backed away from showing The Interview in the week leading up to Christmas. After pulling the movie completely, Sony had a change of heart and on Christmas Eve released the music online via YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Live. Predictably the movie was quickly gobbled up by pirates, with the latest figures suggesting that in just two days the movie has been downloaded 1.5 million times. But while Sony deals with rampant piracy issues at one end, it’s now facing copyright infringement allegations of its own. According to new claims, Sony used copyrighted music in The Interview without permission and without compensating an artist. Yoon Mi-rae (real name Natasha Shanta Reid) is a US-born hip hop and R&B singer who currently releases music on the Feel Ghood Music label. In January 2013 as part of MFBTY (My Fans Better Than Yours), the 33-year-old hit the number 1 spot in the Korean Music Charts and in September reached the same heights on Billboard’s Kpop Hot 100 list with her song ‘Touch Love’. But while these recognitions were achieved by fans buying her music, she’s now in the spotlight for not getting paid for her work. It appears that Yoon Mi-rae was in negotiations with Sony to have her track ‘Pay Day’ appear in The Interview. Even though no agreement was reached, Sony used the music anyway. "There were initial discussions for using 'Pay Day' in the movie, but at some point, the discussions ceased and we assumed that it would not follow through,” Feel Ghood Music says. “However, after the movie was released, we learned that the track had been used without permission, legal procedure, or contracts." Sony, who are already facing a world of pain following the hacking and near destruction of their IT systems in recent weeks, will now face a copyright infringement lawsuit over the unauthorized use of the ironically named ‘Pay Day’. "We will be taking legal action against Sony Pictures as well as DFSB, the agency that had been carrying out the discussion regarding the use of the track," the label says. It seems unlikely that this lawsuit will result in a messy legal battle. The huge publicity the movie has enjoyed in the past few weeks will virtually guarantee decent sales for Sony, even without lucrative box office revenues. Yoon Mi-rae should not only be able to secure a piece of that but also raise her profile in a way that would not have been possible had Sony paid her in the first instance. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sony Accidentally Funded “Rogue” Piracy Sites Posted: 26 Dec 2014 09:54 AM PST In recent years the mainstream entertainment industries have largely come to the realization that chasing down individual file-sharers is unlikely to yield significant anti-piracy results. With this in mind new strategies have been adopted, one of the most important being the attacking of ‘pirate’ site revenue streams. The theory under consideration is that such sites would cease to exist if a profit could not be made from their operations. One of the key ways sites generate revenue is via advertising so pressure has been mounting on agencies and the companies placing the ads to do everything possible to stop their promotions appearing on pirate sites. On occasion, groups such as the Digital Citizens Alliance publish information aimed at naming and shaming big brands who’ve let their ads appear in the wrong places. "Good Money Gone Bad: Digital Thieves and the Hijacking of the Online Ad Business” was a DCA report from February 2014 which estimated that the top “pirate sites” generate $227 million in annual ad revenue. The report also called out big companies including Amazon, American Express, Dell, Ford, Lego and McDonalds for allowing their ads to appear on pirate domains. What it failed to do was point the finger at companies a little closer to home. TorrentFreak has learned that during its monitoring of “pirate” sites in early 2014, the MPAA discovered that ads commissioned by entertainment companies close to the ones it represents were appearing on those very same sites. In a five month analysis (Jan to May 2014) the MPAA found that Sony companies including Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Entertainment Network, Sony Corporation, and Sony Mobile Communications, were placing ads on ‘rogue’ sites. This wasn’t a few here and a few there either. In the first five months of the year Sony company ads appeared on “pirate” sites almost two million times, with the lion’s share placed by SCE and its partners. Internal correspondence reveals that Sony Pictures were keen to eliminate this embarrassment, with the company’s content protection department writing to other divisions requesting that ads are kept aware from pirate networks in future. Sony said its goals were threefold: – “Starving pirate sites of any additional ad revenue generated by viewers clicking through on those internet ads” – “Eliminating any semblance of legitimacy that ads for well­ known brands might lend these rogue sites” – “Protecting the reputation of our brand, since these sites often include malware and ads for questionable and/or illegal content.” Noting that the information had been provided by the MPAA, Sony asked its sister companies to assist them in the fight against piracy. It’s unclear whether Sony has achieved its aims but in any event, don’t expect an MPAA partner company to be called out for supporting piracy anytime soon. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Kim “Santa” Dotcom Stops Xbox and Playstation Attacks Posted: 26 Dec 2014 01:18 AM PST When Xbox and Playstation players wanted to test their Christmas gifts a few hours ago, they were welcomed by an unpleasant surprise. Lizard Squad, who repeatedly DDoSed the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live’s servers in recent months, were back with a Christmas gift nobody asked for. Another DDoS attack resulting in yet more downtime. One of the affected players was Kim Dotcom, who’s an avid Xbox player himself. But instead of cursing Lizard Squad to high heaven he decided to make them an offer. Although the general belief may be that it’s best not to negotiate with “terrorists,” Dotcom decided to give it a try. “Hi @LizardMafia, I want to play #Destiny on XBOX Live. I’ll give your entire crew Mega lifetime premium vouchers if you let us play. Cool?” he tweeted. Lizard Squad is apparently easy to please as they were willing to stop the attacks in return for 3,000 free cloud hosting vouchers. After getting approval from Mega’s management, Dotcom and Lizard Squad eventually came to terms through Twitter’s back-channel. Once the vouchers were in Lizard Squad’s possession, the attacks did indeed slow down and Christmas was saved. While some still experienced some outages due to the earlier attacks, many players were able to join their favorite games again. “Thanks @KimDotcom for the vouchers–you’re the reason we stopped the attacks. @MegaPrivacy is an awesome service,” Lizard Squad tweeted, confirming the successful intervention. Dotcom, meanwhile, is happy that he can play Destiny but wishes that his other troubles could be resolved this easily too. Whether the U.S. Department of Justice will accept Mega vouchers is doubtful though. “Obviously, diplomacy works. I recommend that the U.S. Government gives it a try. #MakeLoveNotWar #UseMegaVouchers,” Kim noted. Of course there’s no guarantee that Lizard Squad will keep their promise during the days to come, but Dotcom said he will render the vouchers useless if attacks resume. Merry Christmas everyone… Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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