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| Six Android Piracy Group Members Charged, Two Arrested Posted: 22 Jul 2014 02:07 AM PDT
For two years the United States Department of Justice has released information on the case and last evening came news of more charges and more arrests. Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department's Criminal Division announced the unsealing of three federal indictments in the Northern District of Georgia charging six members of Appbucket, Applanet and SnappzMarket for their roles in the unauthorized distribution of Android apps. SnappzMarket
An indictment returned on June 17 charges Gary Edwin Sharp II, 26, of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, along with Taylor and Walton, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Sharp is also charged with two counts of criminal copyright infringement. It’s alleged that the three men were members of SnappzMarket between May 2011 through August 2012 along with Kody Jon Peterson, 22, of Clermont, Florida. In April, Peterson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. As part of his guilty plea he agreed to work undercover for the government. Appbucket
A former member of Appbucket, Blocker is alleged to have conspired with Thomas Allen Dye, 21, of Jacksonville, Florida; Nicholas Anthony Narbone, 26, of Orlando, Florida, and Thomas Pace, 38, of Oregon City, Oregon to distribute Android apps with a value of $700,000. During March and April 2014, Dye, Narbone and Pace all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Applanet
Lee is additionally charged with one count of aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement and Buckley with one count of criminal copyright infringement. All three identified themselves as former members of Applanet. The USDOJ claims that along with other members they are responsible for the illegal distribution of four million Android apps with a value of $17m. Buckley previously launched a fund-raiser in an effort to fight off the United States government. "As a result of their criminal efforts to make money by ripping off the hard work and creativity of high-tech innovators, the defendants are charged with illegally distributing copyrighted apps," said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. "The Criminal Division is determined to protect the labor and ingenuity of copyright owners and to keep pace with criminals in the modern, technological marketplace." A statement from the FBI's Atlanta Field Office indicates that the FBI will pursue more piracy groups in future. “The FBI will continue to provide significant investigative resources toward such groups engaged in such wholesale pirating or copyright violations as seen here,” Special Agent in Charge J. Britt Johnson said. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| Google Targets ‘Pirate’ Searches to Promote Legal Content Posted: 21 Jul 2014 11:12 AM PDT
One of the most often heard complaints is that pirated content sometimes ranks better than legal alternatives. Copyright holders want Google to remedy this situation by promoting legal content through higher placement in search results. “Search engines should address the distortive search practices that result in listings and rankings that favor substantially infringing sites,” the MPAA complained earlier. While it seemed that Google had rejected the boosting of legal offerings in results, it appears that the company is now taking measures to address copyright holder concerns. Google has quietly rolled out an update that places banner ads for Google Play and other content platforms above the regular search results if people search for piracy related terms. The banners in question show up on searches for a title of a movie or TV-show in combination with keywords such as “torrent,” “BitTorrent,” or “DVDrip.” As shown below, the first organic result is still a “pirate” site, but the legal options are now clearly visible through the inserted banner.  Initially these new ads were displayed in most of the US and UK. The availability was limited after TorrentFreak reached out to Google before the weekend, but they are still visible to us from a California IP-address. It’s unknown how Google picks the keywords but the banner is also shown when searching for the video format “avi” and even “putlocker,” a popular file-hosting service. The ads do not appear when searching for the movie or TV-show titles alone. They are specifically triggered by the extra ‘piracy’ keyword. For example, the banner shows up when searching for “Noah DVDrip” but not for “Noah DVD,” “Noah rent“, “Noah buy” or Noah paired with a random word.  In addition to piracy related keywords the ads also appear for more generic searches where pirate sites traditionally rank very high. These include words such as “download,” “watch,” “online” and “view” which often have unauthorized sites in the top results. The “Noah watch” search below is a good example where a banner is placed above the first result, which in this case links to infringing material.  TorrentFreak contacted Google but the company couldn’t say why the ads are displayed for these piracy related keywords. A spokesman did confirm that the ads appear for “various searches” and that they are the same format as the Knowledge Graph ads that were rolled out late last year. “These ads will appear after various searches that include specific movie, TV, and music titles,” a Google spokesman told us. Since the availability of the banners was limited overnight the company may still be experimenting with the setup. Unfortunately, Google couldn’t comment further on our findings. Promoting legal content through ads would make sense for Google, as that would satisfy some of the copyright holders’ demands without changing the actual search results. On top of that, it can be quite useful to users as well. Whether the banners will be able to steer people away from pirate sites has yet to be seen though. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
Joshua Ryan Taylor, 24, of Kentwood, Michigan, and Scott Walton, 28, of Cleveland, Ohio, two alleged members of SnappzMarket, were both arrested yesterday. They are due to appear before magistrates in Michigan and Ohio respectively.
Another indictment returned June 17 in Georgia charges James Blocker, 36, of Rowlett, Texas, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.
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