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Italian Police Carry Out Largest Ever ‘Pirate’ Domain Crackdown
“Pirates Are The Movie Industry’s Most Valuable Customers”
“12 Years A Slave” Piracy Surges After Oscar Win

Italian Police Carry Out Largest Ever ‘Pirate’ Domain Crackdown

Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:45 AM PST

For many years Italian authorities have targeted torrent and other file-sharing sites. Complaints from the music and movie industries have sometimes led to raids, but in recent times site blocking has been in vogue.

Sharing giants such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, isoHunt, 1337x and waves of file-hosting sites have been blocked in previous actions, with 27 targeted in a single sweep during April 2013, the largest ever of its type.

Now authorities are back with a fresh action on a previously unseen scale. The initiative, which targets 46 torrent, streaming and other file-sharing portals, was ordered by the Public Prosecutor of Rome.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners law firm specializing in Internet and copyright disputes, says the operation is the largest ever seen in Italy and will see dozens of sites blocked at the ISP level.

“The domains of sites linking to torrent files, in order to download illegal copies of music and movie, have been seized today as ordered by Preliminary investigation Judge of Rome, at the request of the public prosecutor,” Sarzana explains.

“Both the DNS addresses of the sites and their domain name have been made inaccessible to Italian users by all Italian ISPs, in such a way to deprive users of the possibility to access their files hosted in the sites.”

The blocking will be carried out on the orders of the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), a department under Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance tasked with dealing with financial crime, and will cover sites including mondotorrent, dopinatorrent, truepirates, filmxtutti, casacinema, watchfreemovies.ch and universfilms.

Interestingly, Sarzana adds that the case could have a novel twist, in that the police carried out the action on their own initiative.

“At present it seems that the action wasn’t carried out at the request of copyright owners associations,” the lawyer explains.

TF spoke with Enzo Mazzo of music industry group FIMI who confirmed that while there is yet no public announcement on the action, it was indeed carried out by the Fiscal Police from Rome with an order from the Public Prosecutor.

“We obviously appreciate the action carried out by the Fiscal Police following the blocking strategy,” Mazzo said.

This huge sweep is of particular interest when one considers that a controversial new process to more easily block allegedly infringing sites is not yet in force. Dubbed Italy’s ‘SOPA’, the framework – set for April introduction – will see the domains of sites blocked at the ISP level if they fail to remove infringing content in a timely fashion.

Meanwhile, across Europe in Spain, three of the country’s largest sites have bowed to rightsholder pressure and agreed to stop linking to infringing content. According to THR, SeriesYonkis, Peliculas Yonkis and VideoYonkis stopped linking over the weekend as part of negotiations in their legal dispute with Spain’s Anti-Piracy Federation (FAP).

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

“Pirates Are The Movie Industry’s Most Valuable Customers”

Posted: 04 Mar 2014 10:15 AM PST

“Piracy, it’s a crime” and “You can click but you can’t hide” are slogans from two familiar anti-piracy campaigns launched by the movie industry in the 2000s.

Despite these efforts, unauthorized copying grew in popularity over the past decade, spurred on by better broadband connections and cheaper bandwidth. Perhaps of even greater interest, there was also a counterproductive element to this negative messaging which the movie industry overlooked.

Pirates are actually the industry’s most valuable customers.

In recent years several studies have shown that those who share movies illegally tend to spend more on legal entertainment. This finding is now recognized by the Industry Trust For IP Awareness, which includes all major Hollywood studios among its members.

“We know that the people that infringe content are the most valuable audience group,” Liz Bales, Director of the Industry Trust says.

“They go to the cinema more than the national average, they are buying more Blu-rays than anyone else. They are more likely to have a Sky subscription and they are massively in love with Lovefilm and Netflix,” Bales told TechRadar.

With the above in mind, the movie industry has been rolling out a new series of anti-piracy PSAs. Instead of criminalizing their own audience, the campaigns gently suggest that their customers should pirate a little less.

“It’s saying that we know you love movies and value that you are spending money on movies but we just want you to do a bit more of the right things and less of the infringement,” Bales explains.

In other words, the messaging has become more positive, pointing out that there are plenty of legal options to choose from. The latest video in this series focuses on the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man 2 release.

Using the slogan “moments worth paying for” the video points out that people can also pay for their movies, hoping it will encourage pirates to pay more often.

Whether these positive campaigns will prove successful remains to be seen, but it’s a refreshing approach for sure.

It’s worth paying for

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

“12 Years A Slave” Piracy Surges After Oscar Win

Posted: 04 Mar 2014 06:45 AM PST

With 7 Oscars Gravity was the big winner at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening. However, the Oscar for the best motion picture went to 12 years a Slave.

While the makers of both films couldn’t be happier, there’s also a dark side to this success.

Soon after the Hollywood festivities ended, the number of downloads for both films gradually increased.

For example, the number of 12 Years a Slave pirates downloading the film via BitTorrent tripled, resulting in more than 100,000 extra downloads on Monday.

The interest in 7-time Oscar winner Gravity increased as well, as the number of active downloaders on the most popular torrent more than doubled.

The temporary boost in piracy is a recurring phenomenon for Oscar winners. The same happened to The Hurt Locker, which prompted movie studio Voltage Pictures to sue tens of thousands of downloaders.

Whether the makers of Gravity and 12 Years a Slave have similar plans has yet to be seen.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.