TorrentFreak Email Update

How Kim Dotcom’s $5m Whistleblower Bounty Will Work

Posted: 07 Jun 2014 02:37 AM PDT

Whichever way you look at it, Kim Dotcom has a series of huge battles in front of him. Up soon is his fight to avoid extradition to the United States where he is wanted in the biggest copyright infringement case ever.

Running in parallel to that criminal case are a pair of civil actions brought by the MPAA and RIAA, with both entities currently attempting to put a lock on his currently frozen assets, should the entrepreneur get his hands on them again.

As those battles continue in the background, Dotcom is preparing his next steps, and he’s calling on supporters to help him.

On the table today sits a cool $5 million bounty payable to anyone who provides substantial information that will allow the Megaupload founder to win his case. It’s a large amount by any standards but of course Dotcom rarely does anything in half measures.

So what exactly is Dotcom looking for and how will the project play out?

“Let me be clear, we are asking for information that proves unlawful or corrupt conduct by the US government, the New Zealand government, spy agencies, law enforcement and Hollywood,” Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

“It is the opinion of my legal team that disclosure of such information would be lawful. I would also guarantee that any whistleblower coming forward would have the best legal representation at zero cost.”

Dotcom goes on to reiterate a long-standing claim, that the action against him and Megaupload was a “corrupt contract prosecution” carried out by the White House in order to get Hollywood’s support for Obama’s re-election campaign. He’s interested in evidence that supports that assertion.

“Former Senator and now MPAA chairman Chris Dodd and Vice President Joe Biden in particular have abused their political power to make the pre-trial destruction of Megaupload possible,” he explains.

“Joe Biden’s personal counsel (while Biden was still a Senator) Neil MacBride was promoted to a top position at the DOJ and oversaw the Megaupload destruction. We have already exposed a whole range of unlawful government conduct in the Megaupload case, backed by court rulings.”

So presuming people have information, what should they do with it? Dotcom suggests going to a well-known newspaper with a proven track-record in handling leaks.

“I have been in touch with the Guardian editor and he has kindly retweeted my offer and told me that he hopes that someone will reply to that offer,” Dotcom says.

Dotcom notes that potential leakers can utilize the new whistleblower tool released by The Guardian this week. But for those who really need to cover their backs, more drastic additional steps could be taken.

“In order to be completely safe I would advise any Whistleblower not to use this tool from home or work. Go to an Internet cafe with a memory stick. Don’t use your own computer or phone. You can also buy a cheap laptop or netbook just for the purpose of leaking and destroy it after you’re done.”

The big attraction of course is the $5 million Dotcom has put on the table. What assurances can Dotcom provide concerning the cash?

“I’m currently in talks with my legal team about how to formalize the bounty. We will probably setup a trust account to deposit the bounty and provide terms and conditions for anyone who will provide information. I will not just offer a bounty for the piece of ‘case winning’ information but for anything useful,” he explains.

“We know that there are people out there with information. I’m willing to pay for that information. I’m determined to fight a grave injustice that has been done to a legitimate cloud storage business, its 220 employees and over 100 million users. This struggle has just begun and it will take time. But in the end we shall be victorious and we shall expose those who have abused their power,” he concludes.

There’s little doubt that $5 million is potentially a life-changing sum for the right person.. Will someone step forward into that new life? Time will tell.

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

WatchSeries-Online.eu Domain “Hijacked” – Or Was It?

Posted: 06 Jun 2014 12:31 PM PDT

During the past few years alongside the advent of cheap online storage, sites linking to streaming video lockers have appeared in their dozens. These sites index links to popular movies and TV shows and present them in a professional looking manner.

Due to their simplicity they have become incredibly popular but for some reason security is sometimes their Achilles’ heel. For reasons that aren’t clear, these sites are more vulnerable than most to hostile takeover from rivals intent on taking their business away.

Just how easy is it to take over a site with many millions of visitors every month? As previously reported, it’s pretty easy, and today another site can add its woes to the long list. This episode, just like many before it, is about to get stupidly complicated.

WatchSeries-Online.eu has been steadily growing in popularity for a couple of years now, providing in-browser access to a wide range of TV episode content. Yesterday, however, the site appeared to lose control of its own domain, at least that’s what a person claiming to be its owner told TorrentFreak.

Currently the WatchSeries-Online.eu domain diverts to a new domain, WatchSeriesHD.eu. That domain was registered yesterday and then modified just minutes after the alleged “hijacking”.

Most visitors to WatchSeriesHD.eu probably won’t notice anything different since it looks pretty much identical to WatchSeries-Online.eu. However, there are some differences behind the scenes.

The site that previously operated from WatchSeries-Online.eu now appears to be operating from a brand new domain – WatchSeries-Online.ch. Another early sign that this might be the real deal is the amount of traffic being logged to it by Alexa, despite losing its original domain.

In summary, WatchSeries-Online.ch is claiming to be a) real and b) the victim of a hijacking. They also warn that WatchSeriesHD.eu is a fake. But that’s not where this story ends, not by a long way.

TorrentFreak contacted WatchSeries-Online.ch (the claimed victim) who told us that they’d been hijacked and asked us to tell people not to use WatchSeriesHD.eu. That was pretty much it.

We also contacted the owner of WatchSeriesHD.eu (the alleged fake site) and interestingly he had a much more detailed explanation of what has been going on this past 24 hours. In fact, what that guy told us turns the story completely on its head.

The operator of WatchSeriesHD.eu says that the person currently in control of WatchSeries-Online.ch is a former employee of his company, Ernst & Clarke LLP.

“[The former employee] was dealing with domain and hosting management and all this technical stuff, because my knowledge is limited in this field,” he told TF.

According to the boss of Ernst & Clarke, when his employee left the company he took the WatchSeries-Online.eu domain with him having registered it for Ernst & Clarke but using his own domain registrar account. However, since that domain was company property, it is now back in Ernst & Clarke’s hands having been reclaimed from the registrar, its owner says.

“I have just claimed the domain name since it belongs to my company,” TF was informed.

Reportedly the former employee was also in control of hosting, so he effectively took control of the real site’s code and database too, even though he subsequently lost control of the WatchSeries-Online.eu domain. However, Ernst & Clarke had a site backup.

“Unfortunately I do not have access to the hosting anymore so I had to restore the contents from a backup I had. Also, I have registered a new domain name [WatchSeriesHD.eu], to secure the domain and prevent hijack attempts.”

In the meantime, WatchSeries-Online.ch (the site reportedly operated by the former employee) is trying to regain control of the WatchSeries-Online.eu domain.

“We’re working on it and we are confident that we will regain full control of the domain very soon,” the site said in a statement. TF requests for comment on the allegations of Ernst & Clarke went unanswered.

History shows us that these takeovers and disputes often cascade into confusion so great that in a few weeks, days, minutes – or even right now – few will know which is the real site and which is the fake. Stories don’t get much more complicated than this and picking through the debris only makes it worse.

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