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| Torrenting “Billboard 100″ Pirates Slapped With Automated Fines Posted: 27 Feb 2014 03:58 AM PST
In recent months, however, the music industry has shown renewed interest in extracting payments from pirates. In a scheme pioneered by the Santa Monica based firm Rightscorp, several major rightsholders are targeting alleged BitTorrent pirates. After the company went public last year, this number has been expanding steadily. Rightscorp now says it protects over 1,000,000 copyrights which includes 13 tracks from the most recent Billboard Hot 100. “We are pleased to announce that we are monitoring and protecting 13 songs on the current Billboard Hot 100,” Rightscorp says. In common with other works they are protecting, Rightscorp sends settlement requests to U.S. ISPs who are asked to forward them to subscribers. In addition to commercial ISPs, this also includes universities and all other companies that have IP-addresses registered in their name. “We can confirm that we send notices to every ISP with a registered block of IP-addresses. This includes universities and corporations,” Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec told TF. Thus far the company has received settlements from subscribers of more than 50 ISPs across the country. In the near future it hopes to add more copyright holders to its client base to increase this number. “We are in discussions with content creators and rights holders of additional copyrighted property including many other tracks in the Hot 100 as the entertainment industry places more value on our unique service,” Rightscorp notes. Internet users who are caught don’t face bankruptcy, as the settlement demands are usually around $20 per pirated file. The costs can increase quickly though, as an album of 14 tracks results in separate settlement offers for each song. Below is an example of a notice Charter forwarded to one of its subscribers. It lists John Mayer’s track “Wildfire” from the album “Paradise Valley,” and warns that the recipient may be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars, unless he or she settles. “Your ISP account has been used to download, upload or offer for upload copyrighted content in a manner that infringes on the rights of the copyright owner. Your ISP service could be suspended if this matter is not resolved. You could be liable for up to $150,000 per infringement in civil penalties,” the email warns.  Interestingly, John Mayer and his label are not involved in the matter in any way. Instead, the settlement request was sent on behalf of BMG, who bought Bug Music, which has one of the co-writers of Wildfire under contract, as Rightscorp explained to us. The above brings up an important issue regarding the settlements. Since most copyrighted works have several stakeholders, a settlement with one party doesn’t automatically mean that other interested parties are barred from also seeking settlement. In the example shown above, Sony Music or John Mayer could still sue for the infringement that was settled with BMG. While many ISPs kindly forward the settlement requests, not all do. Comcast for example, only appears to forward the infringement details and not the part about the settlement. This means Rightscorp’s scheme doesn’t work with the country’s largest ISP. However, that doesn’t stop Rightscorp from stepping up its efforts. According to the company their system is much more effective than the voluntary “copyright alerts” and with millions of dollars rolling in, they are not expected to change course anytime soon. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.    |
| World’s Largest BitTorrent Trackers Suffer Prolonged Downtime Posted: 26 Feb 2014 11:24 AM PST
The services, which were listed as number one and two in our latest list of most-used trackers, coordinate the downloads of 30 million people at any given point in time. This means that the trackers handle a staggering three billion connections per day – each. However, starting a few days ago the trackers stopped working entirely. While the trackers have had their fair share of downtime in the past, it’s not often that both of the top trackers are offline for more than a day. Needless to say, this caused concern among some of the most avid file-sharers.  To find out more TF contacted the owner of OpenBitTorrent, who told us that the current downtime is intentional. The tracker is replacing some hardware, a process that could take a week or more to complete. In any event, there is no doubt that the tracker will continue business as usual in the near future. We also reached out to PublicBitTorrent, whose owner confirmed they are also working on maintenance issues. There is currently no ETA for when the tracker will return, but the current downtime will continue for several days at least. The upside to all the bad news is that most people can still download torrents. In fact, the majority of BitTorrent users probably failed to notice the downtime to begin with. Instead of using a tracker, most downloads work fine when they rely solely on DHT and PEX, which allows downloaders to get info on other peers from each other, instead of a central tracker. This works just fine in most situations, especially for popular files. The downtime is most problematic for users of BitTorrent proxy services. These often advise users to disable DHT and PEX to prevent their real IP-addresses from leaking out, so unless a torrent has other working trackers, nothing can be downloaded for the time being. For users of proxy services there is no other option than to wait until the trackers return. Meanwhile, udp://tracker.istole.it:80/announce is the largest BitTorrent tracker that’s still online. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.   |
It’s been more than five years since the RIAA stopped its controversial legal campaign against individuals, an effort which resulted in thousands of private settlements with accused file-sharers. 
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