Posted: 04 Sep 2014 03:35 AM PDT

Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks are a relatively common occurrence in the file-sharing community and something that many sites are subjected to throughout the course of a year. They disrupt service and can often cost money to mitigate.

Those carrying out the attacks have a variety of motives, from extortion and blackmail to “the lulz“, and a dozen reasons in between. Often the reasons are never discovered.

During the past few days several sites involved in the unauthorized sharing of anime have been targeted by DDoS-style attacks. Swaps24 reported that Haruhichan, Tokyo Toshokan and AnimeTake were under assault from assailants unknown, although all now appear to be back online.

A far more serious situation has played out at NYAA.se, however. The site is probably the largest public dedicated anime torrent index around and after being hit with an attack last weekend it remains offline today. The attack on NYAA had wider effects too.

NYAA and leading fan-subbing site HorribleSubs reportedly shared the same hosting infrastructure so the DDoS attack took down both sites. That’s significant, not least since at the end of August HorribleSubs reported that their titles had been downloaded half a billion times.

As the image above shows it now appears that HorribleSubs has recovered (and added torrent magnet links) but the same cannot be said about NYAA. The site’s extended downtime continues with no apparent end in sight. This has resulted in a backlash from the site’s fans and somewhat inevitably accusatory fingers are being pointed at potential DDoS suspects.

As far-fetched as it might sound, one of the early suspects was the Japanese government itself. The launch of a brand new anti-piracy campaign last month in partnership with 15 producers certainly provided a motive, but a nation carrying out this kind of assault seems unlikely in the extreme.

Quickly, however, an announcement from HorribleSubs turned attentions elsewhere.

“Chill down. It’s not just us. Every famous anime sites [are] getting DDoS attacks, but that doesn’t mean this is the end,” the site’s operator wrote on Facebook.

“We have located where DDoS are coming from. It’s from ‪#‎Crunchyroll‬ and ‪#‎Funimation‬ Employees.”

Funimation is an US television and film production company best known for its distribution of anime while Crunchyroll is a website and community focused on, among other things, Asian anime and manga. While both could at least have a motive to carry out a DDoS, no evidence has been produced to back up the HorribleSubs claims. That said, HorribleSubs admits that its key motivation is to annoy Crunchyroll.

“We do not translate our own shows because we rip from Crunchyroll, FUNimation, Hulu, The Anime Network, Niconico, and Daisuki,” the site’s about page reads, adding: “We aren't doing this ~~for e-penis~~ but for the sole reason of pissing off Crunchyroll.”

Shortly after, attention turned to anti-piracy outfit Remove Your Media (RYM). The company works with anime companies Funimation and Viz Media, which includes the sending of millions of DMCA notices to Google. The spark came when the company published a tweet (now removed) which threatened to send “thousands” of warning letters to NYAA users once the site was back online.

This doesn’t seem like an idle threat. A few weeks ago the company posted a screenshot on Twitter containing an unredacted list of Comcast, Charter and CenturyLink IP addresses said to have been monitored infringing copyright. Due to the NYAA downtime, RYM later indicated it had switched to warning users of Kickass.to.

This involvement with anime companies combined with the warning notice statement led to DDoS accusations being directed at RYM. TorrentFreak spoke to the company’s Eric Green and asked if they knew anything about the attacks.

“The short answer is No. In fact we were waiting for [NYAA] to go back
online to begin monitoring illegal transfers again. Sorry to disappoint but we
had no involvement,” Green told TF.

Just a couple of hours ago RYM made a new announcement on Twitter, stating that the original tweet had been removed due to false accusations.

“Nyaa post deleted due to all the Ddos libel directed at this account. Infringement notices continue to ISPs, for piracy, regardless of tracker,” they conclude.

Although it’s impossible to say who is behind the attacks, it does seem improbable that an anti-piracy company getting paid to send notices would do something that is a) seriously illegal and b) counter-productive to getting paid for sending notices.

That said, it seems likely that someone who doesn’t appreciate unofficial anime sites operating smoothly is behind the attack. Who that might be will remain a mystery, at least for now.

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

Record Labels Take Down Kim Dotcom’s Official Album… From Mega

Posted: 03 Sep 2014 11:35 AM PDT

Mega, the cloud hosting service founded by Kim Dotcom, has been growing steadily since its spectacular launch last year.

Considering the controversial reputation of its predecessor Megaupload, copyright holders have been keeping a close eye on the site. Thus far, however, the number of takedown requests received by the company has been relatively small.

Perhaps not completely unexpectedly, among the takedown requests that do come in are many that wrongfully request the takedown of perfectly legitimate files. This was illustrated earlier this week when Kim Dotcom’s official album Good Times was removed following a complaint.

The album was released by Dotcom earlier this year and he has been sharing it via his website ever since. The link in question points to Mega where people can download it for free, but a few days ago it suddenly disappeared.

To find out why the album was removed we contacted Mega for an explanation. The company informed us that music industry group IFPI requested the removal of Dotcom’s album through a takedown request sent on September 1.

Representing the major record labels, IFPI claimed that the link infringed on the copyrights of one of their artists. IFPI listed several musicians but Kim Dotcom was not one of them.

“It’s clearly an incorrect takedown request,” Mega’s Chief Compliance Officer Stephan Hall tells us.

TorrentFreak also contacted Kim Dotcom, who asked Mega to reinstate the album, which they did. All in all the album was unavailable for about a day.

While a mistake is easily made, this is not the first time that IFPI has tried to remove Dotcom’s album from Mega. A similar request was sent on August 18, this time claiming that it was a copyright infringement of Kimbra’s “The Golden Echo.”

IFPI’s actions have been sloppy, to say the least, and Mega’s Chief Compliance Officer has little faith in the accuracy of the music group’s other takedown requests.

“This is an indication that someone at the IFPI is not doing their homework and that their takedown notices in general cannot be trusted,” Hall tells TorrentFreak.

Unfortunately these kind of mistakes are not an isolated incident. For example, before Kim Dotcom's Megaupload was shutdown early 2012 the site received many erroneous takedown notices.

"During the Megaupload days over 20% of all takedown notices were bogus," Dotcom told us previously.

"We analyzed big samples of notices and most were automated keyword based takedowns that affected a lot of legitimate files. The abuse of the takedown system is so severe that no service provider can rely on takedown notices for a fair repeat infringer policy."

A policy to punish copyright holders who make repeated mistakes, on the other hand, might be worth considering.

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

Breaking Bad Piracy Surges After Emmy Win, Research Finds

Posted: 03 Sep 2014 08:11 AM PDT

People have many different motivations to pirate TV-shows and other media. Availability is a factor, for example, and price plays a role as well.

Another important driver of piracy is exposure or promotion through traditional media.

The latter is illustrated by new research from piracy monitoring firm CEG TEK, who found that the interest in pirated copies of Emmy nominated TV-shows surged after the award show aired on television.

The company measured the BitTorrent swarms of 50 Emmy-nominated TV-shows and found a big spike in overall piracy rates.

Breaking Bad, winner of the Emmy for best drama series and several individual awards, saw a 412% increase in peers after the award ceremony.

Pirate’s interest in True Detective, House of Cards, Homeland and The Newsroom also spiked at least 340% the day after the Emmys. These peaks are unusual according to CEG TEK, who note of the 47 of the 50 nominated shows they monitored saw an increase in sharing activity.

“Typically, piracy peaks on weekends, but of the 50 shows we monitored, 47 were pirated more as a result of the Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast,” CEG TEK CTO Jon Nicolini says.

"Clearly, the prestige of the Emmys is alive and well," he adds.

While an Emmy award is certainly a big win, some people in the TV industry believe that being the most pirated TV-show may do even more to boost a show’s profile.

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of HBO's parent company Time Warner, previously said that Game of Thrones piracy resulted in more subscriptions for his company and that receiving the title of “most pirated” show was “better than an Emmy.”

So that’s a double score for the Emmy winners then.

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

PirateBay

Torrentfreak: “Anti-Piracy Outfit Denies DDoS’ing Anime Sites” plus 2 more

Torrentfreak: “Anti-Piracy Outfit Denies DDoS’ing Anime Sites” plus 2 more