TorrentFreak Email Update

Rapidgator Wiped From Google’s Search Results, Again
Cricfree Bounces Back After UK Police Domain Seizure
‘Unbeatable’ Cinavia Anti-Piracy Technology Cracked by DVD-Ranger

Rapidgator Wiped From Google’s Search Results, Again

Posted: 25 May 2014 12:13 AM PDT

Every week Google processes millions of DMCA takedown requests, submitted by copyright holders from all over the world.

In most cases the requests are legitimate, but every now and then they also target pages that don’t link to pirated content. As a result some websites have their URLs removed from Google in error, which in turn leads to a decrease in visitors.

This has now happened to Rapidgator.net, one of the largest file-hostings sites on the Internet. For the past few weeks the site has had nearly all its URLs de-listed, including its homepage.

The request responsible for this overbroad censorship was issued by the Publishers Association, a UK-based trade group. Aside from the Rapidgator URLs, the takedown notice in question lists several other pages that have nothing to do with their copyrighted works.

Hoping to get its URLs restored Rapidgator submitted a counter-notification to Google, but several weeks have passed since and the problem remains. TorrentFreak spoke with Rapidgator operator Mike, who is concerned about the lack of response and the ease at which sites can be removed from Google.

“With the procedure Google has in place now any website can be de-listed by anybody,” Mike says.

“When Google receives a DMCA notice they remove URLs within a day, but if you want to have them restored it can take weeks or months. We think that they should restore URLs in the same timeframe as the original removals,” he adds.

Rapidgator’s operator understand that Google can’t process every URL manually due to the massive amount of DMCA notices. However, he believes that they could at least flag requests to remove the homepages of websites so these can be manually verified.

This isn’t the first time that Rapidgator has lost nearly all its listings in Google. The same thing happened late last year and on that occasion it also took several weeks before Google took action, leading to a dip in search traffic for the site.

TorrentFreak asked Google for a comment on the counter-notification process but the company couldn’t say anything about the number of requests it receives, or what the average response time is.

For Rapidgator there’s no other option than to wait until Google responds to its inquiry. In the meantime, only five Rapidgator pages remain indexed by Google.

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

Cricfree Bounces Back After UK Police Domain Seizure

Posted: 24 May 2014 01:22 PM PDT

A few hours ago we reported that City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) managed to shutter FileCrop, a popular file-hosting search engine.

FileCrop wasn’t the only site that disappeared. The same happened to the sports streaming portal Cricfree.tv, which is a fairly popular site with millions of visitors a month.

However, Cricfree didn’t stay down for long. The owner of the site quickly put up a new domain, Cricfree.eu, and after a few hours the site was up and running again.

TorrentFreak talked to the Cricfree owner who told us that the police nor his registrar reached out to him about the issue.

“They never alerted me that they were going to suspend the domain. I only received a few emails from the anti-piracy outfit FACT, but I didn’t think these were serious,” he says.

It remains unclear how the police was able to seize the domain. Previously they’ve contacted several registrars with a request to suspend several piracy related domain names, and it is likely that this happened here as well.

Cricfree’s domain name registrar is Internet.bs and the owner is hoping to get the domain name back, since the domain name was “seized” without a proper court order.

For now, however, the site will continue to operate on cricfree.eu and skysport.tv, where traffic is picking up again according to the owner.

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

‘Unbeatable’ Cinavia Anti-Piracy Technology Cracked by DVD-Ranger

Posted: 24 May 2014 12:43 PM PDT

Cinavia’s anti-piracy technology relies on a unique type of watermarking that allows it to remain present in pirated movies despite re-recording, transcoding, compression, or other type of transfer.

This means that camcordings of Cinavia-protected first-run movies, Blu-ray and DVDrips can be easily detected.

Support for the technology has been mandatory for all hardware and software Blu-ray players since 2012, which causes headaches for many pirates every day. Pirated movies protected by Cinavia work at first, but after a few minutes playback is halted and a warning notice appears on the screen instead.

"Audio outputs temporarily muted. Do not adjust the playback volume. The content being played is protected by Cinavia™ and is not authorized for playback on this device,” one of the notices reads.

Cinavia has been hailed as an unbeatable anti-piracy technology and up until today it was impossible to crack through a simple software solution. However, after several years DVD-Ranger has now solved the puzzle.

The company informs TorrentFreak that their Cinavia removing solution is now able to remove the play restrictions from pirated downloads in various video formats, something that was previously impossible.

“We have improved DVD-Ranger for use with torrent files. Now DVD-Ranger CinEx HD can remove Cinavia from downloaded torrent video files such as avi, mkv, mp4, mov and others,” DVD-Ranger’s Ingo Förster explains.

“The new module first scans the audio and then removes the Cinavia protection on the first pass. The contained video and subtitles will be handled pass-through, meaning that only the selected audio track will be re-encoded,” he adds.

On their website the software specifically targets BitTorrent pirates, many of whom have run into Cinavia protection in recent years. With DVD-Ranger’s “CinEx HD Advanced” software this is no longer a problem, although freedom doesn’t come cheap at $69.99 per license.

Förster and his colleague at DVD-Ranger have been working in the DVD-copying business for over a decade. For them, it was mostly the challenge that made them decide to break the Cinavia technology.

“Me and my partner are working both in science jobs and we were in contact with digital watermarks many years before Cinavia was born, so we know many things about digital watermarking. After we saw how many problems the major players such as DVDFab and Slysoft had with Cinavia, we started our own development,” Förster says.

Technically, Cinavia is not copy protection so the German based developer doesn’t believe they are breaking any laws. The files can be copied with and without a watermark, and their software only removes these “play” restrictions.

“In our country it is only forbidden to develop and sell software that circumvents copy protection. The law doesn’t mention digital watermarks. So is it legal? Definitely,” Förster notes.

In any case, DVD-Ranger’s breakthrough is likely to cause concern at Verance, the company where Cinavia is developed. Perhaps it’s the start of a new watermarking arms race?

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