TorrentFreak Email Update

FACT Closes More Torrent and Usenet Sites, and Makes it Look Easy

Posted: 01 Mar 2014 01:42 AM PST

Every week TorrentFreak receives emails from individuals trying to find out the status of sites all over the world. Many disappear without warning and with no Facebook or Twitter updates, users naturally fear the worst.

Just lately a lot of torrent-related sites have been under DDoS attack so temporary disappearances have been nothing out of the ordinary, but when a site goes down and stays down for a few days or more, things begin to look more serious.

One site currently affected by prolonged downtime is XtremeTV.org but for users of this site there will be no happy ending. Along with related sites MazysMadhouse and ParadiseLane, XtremeTV has fallen victim to the long arm of Hollywood, reaching across the Atlantic via local anti-piracy group FACT.

“The domains listed [in your email] are part of our ongoing activity to disrupt pirate websites and to create an effective deterrent to operators of such sites,” FACT Director of Communications Eddy Leviten told TF.

Direct confirmation from FACT aside, signs that the anti-piracy group have shuttered a site are not too hard to find, if one knows how they operate.

In cases we’ve covered previously, FACT employees have turned up on the doorsteps of admins or staff demanding they close down sites. FACT has plenty of resources so obtaining an address to visit is not usually that difficult, if they set their mind to it.

However, for some unknown reason there are plenty of site operators who make it very easy for FACT. In several recent cases, queries on the affected sites’ WHOIS entries has revealed the site operators’ names and addresses, completely unprotected.

While revealing WHOIS reports can indicate that FACT might have been in town, there is another more obvious sign – FACT’s email addresses embedded into domain entries.

In previous cases as well as the one involving XtremeTV and MazysMadhouse, copyright@fact-org.uk is now listed as the site’s contact email. This is because FACT demands the sign over of the site’s domain as part of the settlement agreement. Once the domain is in FACT’s hands it is shut down, taking the site with it, if that hasn’t gone offline already.

“We continue to direct visitors to domains signed over to FACT to legitimate resources where they can enjoy films and TV programmes in the cinema, online and on disc,” FACT’s Eddy Leviten told us.

Finally, Usenet indexing site NZBRoyalty.com also fell to FACT pressure this month. It appears the closure didn’t require a home visit, just an email to the site’s operators.

“Investigators at FACT have been examining your site and have noted that it is predominantly infringing TV content that is being made available,” FACT Director of Investigations and Intelligence Peter O'Rourke told the site in an email. “FACT requests that you desist from this activity immediately. Failure to do so will result in further investigation which may result in criminal prosecution.”

The perfectly understandable response from the site was put personal lives first.

“We are no longer under the radar. And therefore we also need to dip out. Remember we have lives and families,” the site’s operator said in a statement. “Sorry folks. Hope you all understand that this is out of our hands.”

All of the sites listed in this article are now closed and signs suggest that FACT will continue to close more, as long as site operators can be identified or simply convinced that prosecution and/or imprisonment is a serious possibility.

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

Fileserve Ordered to Pay $869k to Compensate Movie Studio’s Piracy Losses

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 09:54 AM PST

With nearly 200 million pageviews a month, FileServe was listed as one of the top 10 most-visited file-sharing sites two years ago.

This put the site in the crosshairs of the entertainment industry, with Paramount Pictures branding it as one of the main sites to be targeted following the Megaupload shutdown.

While FileServe is still around, the site has undergone some drastic changes to its business model since its heyday. Immediately after the Megaupload raid the company changed its policy to only allow users to download files they have uploaded themselves.

As a result of this decision traffic to the site tanked, but not all of the site’s troubles went away. Last year the production company behind the independent movie American Cowslip filed a lawsuit at a federal court in California.

The movie studio filed a motion for summary judgment last month, after the Virgin Islands-based file-hosting service failed to respond to the allegations. In the motion, FileServe was accused of a wide variety of copyright related offenses, including selling pirated goods through subscriptions.

"FileServe is aware that its websites are being used as a vehicle to illegally copy and distribute large amounts of infringing materials. Because it charges membership fees for immediate access to the copyrighted materials stored on its servers, it is a distributor and seller of pirated materials," the complaint read.

Yesterday, District Court Judge Audrey Collins decided on the case and entered a judgment in favor of American Cowslip, holding FileServe liable for copyright infringements committed by its users.

The file-hosting service is now ordered to pay $869,500 to compensate the movie studio for the alleged piracy losses, and an additional $20,990 in attorney's fees

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The damages sum is entirely based on an estimate the movie studio came up with. Based on revenues of comparable movies the company ran a statistical forecast model which predicted that American Cowslip should have generated more than a million in revenues in North America, as opposed to the $68,000 it actually made.

While these calculations raise several questions, the judge had little other option than to accept it, since FileServe failed to weigh in.

Whether the movie company will ever see a penny has yet to be seen though. FileServe never responded to the complaint, and it would be a surprise if the Virgin Islands company changed its stance when the bill arrives.

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