Posted: 25 Nov 2014 01:56 AM PST

Earlier this year the movie The Expendables 3 leaked in extremely high-quality several weeks before its theatrical debut, causing a huge Hollywood controversy.

A fully finished so-called DVD Screener copy of the action movie featuring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on July 25 and had already been downloaded millions of times before its official release August 15.

In the U.S., movie distributor LionsGate has been working hard on the legal front, chasing down alleged downloaders and even suing file-sharing sites and domain registrars. News in just a few moments ago reveals that the hunt has traveled across the Atlantic.

According to the Intellectual Property Crime Unit of City of London Police (PIPCU), two people were taken into custody this morning under suspicion of leaking The Expendables 3 online.

Detectives from PIPCU traveled to Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where they arrested a 33-year-old man. PIPCU detectives also arrested a 36-year-old man at his home in Upton, Wirral.

PIPCU informs TorrentFreak that the men are believed to have “stolen the film from a cloud based system” before uploading it to the Internet. The statement raises important questions though. Were the men involved in obtaining the original leaked copy and, crucially, were they the first to leak it online?

“The two suspects are believed to be involved in the leaking of the movie and are currently being questioned by PIPCU detectives,” is all PIPCU would tell TF, adding that the pair are being held at local police stations.

Earlier this year Lionsgate collaborated with the owner of file-hosting site Swankshare in an effort to identify who leaked the movie. That site subsequently shut down but it’s possible that logs were handed over in the meantime. Whether this is the “cloud based system” referred to by PIPCU remains a mystery for now.

"Today's operation shows you the significant impact intellectual property crime has on our creative industries, with millions of pounds being lost as a result of criminal actions,” Head of PIPCU, Detective Chief Inspector Danny Medlycott said in a statement.

"The public need to be aware that piracy is not a victimless crime. By downloading illegal music, film, TV and books, not only are you exposing your own computer to the risk of viruses and malware, but you are also putting hardworking people's livelihoods at risk as piracy threatens the security of thousands of jobs in the UK's creative industries."

It’s of some interest that the first suspects to be arrested in this super high-profile case are based in the UK. There have been no reports of arrests in the United States where the movie was made and being prepared for distribution.

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

Google Asked to Censor Three Million Pirate Bay URLs

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 01:13 AM PST

Despite the criminal prosecution of The Pirate Bay four, the notorious torrent site remains available to the public at large.

TPB is setup to make it especially difficult for law enforcement to take it down, so copyright holders have to turn to third parties to address the threat.

One of the main strategies is to ask Google and other search engines to remove infringing Pirate Bay URLs from their search results.

Google in particular is heavily targeted and this week the number of thepiratebay.se URLs submitted to Google reached the three million mark. Nearly all of these links have indeed been removed and can no longer be accessed through search results.

The chart below shows the number of links that have been submitted per week. There is a sharp decline towards the end of 2013 when The Pirate Bay used another domain name. The requests increased again in December when the torrent site switched back.

3 Million Pirate Bay URLs reported

While most of the reported links do indeed point to copyrighted material, some none-infringing pages have been removed as well.

Paramount Pictures, for example, asked to remove this blog post where a comment mentions “the beast of hercules,” not the Hercules movie. Similarly, TPB’s Doodles page is gone because an adult entertainment company confused it with Kelly Madison’s “Yankee Doodle Dame”

In total, the three million URLs were submitted in 135,486 separate takedown notices, averaging more than 22 links per takedown request. A staggering number, but one that pales in comparison to other sites.

Looking at the list of domains for which Google received the most URLs removal requests, The Pirate Bay is currently listed in 23rd place. The top spot goes to rapidgator.net with close to 13 million URLs, followed by 4shared.com, filestube.com, dilandau.eu and zippyshare.com. Torrentz.eu, the first torrent site in the list, comes in 8th with 5.4 million URLs.

For The Pirate Bay the reduced availability in Google is not much of a problem. Previously the Pirate Bay team informed TorrentFreak that they stopped relying on search engines as a traffic source a long time ago.

And indeed, despite the censored pages The Pirate Bay’s traffic has continued to grow. Even today the site remains among the 100 most visited websites on the Internet.

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

Pirate Bay Founder Preps Appeal, Puts the Press Straight

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 09:32 AM PST

After being arrested in Cambodia during September 2012 it soon became clear that two Scandinavian countries wanted to get their hands on Gottfrid Svartholm.

Sweden had a long-standing interest in their countryman for his infamous work on The Pirate Bay, but once that was out-of-the-way a pair of hacking cases had to be dealt with.

The first, in Sweden, resulted in partial successes for both sides. While Gottfrid was found guilty of hacking into IT company Logica, following testimony from Jacob Appelbaum he was later cleared by the Appeal Court (Svea Hovrätt) of hacking into Nordea Bank.

But despite this significant result and a repeat appearance from Appelbaum, the trial that concluded in Denmark last month went all one way, with Gottfrid picking up a three-and-a-half year sentence.

With his mother Kristina acting as go-between, TorrentFreak recently fired off some questions to Gottfrid to find out how he’s been bearing up following October’s verdict and to discover his plans for the future.

Firstly, TF asked about his opinion on the decision. Gottfrid declined to answer directly but indicated we should look to the fact that he has already filed an appeal against the verdict. That should be enough of an answer, he said.

As it stands and considering time served, Gottfrid could be released as early as August 2015, but that clearly isn’t deterring him from the possibility of leaving sooner. Gottfrid has always shown that he’s both stubborn and a fighter, so sitting out his sentence in silence was probably never an option.

Moving on, TF pressed Gottfrid on what he feels were the points of failure during the court process and how these will play out alongside his appeal.

“Can’t discuss defense strategy at this point,” he responded. Fair enough.

Even considering the preparations for an appeal, there are a lot of hours in the coming months that will prove hard to fill. However, Gottfrid’s comments suggest that his access to books has improved since his days in solitary confinement and he’s putting that to use.

“I study neurobiology and related subjects to pass the time,” he says, with mother Kristina noting that this education is self-motivated.

“The ‘arrest house’ can of course not provide him with opportunities for higher studies,” she says.

Although he’s been thrust into the public eye on many occasions, Gottfrid’s appearances at court in Sweden (documented in TPB AFK) and later in his Danish trial reveal a man with an eye for detail and accuracy. It perhaps comes as little surprise then that he also took the opportunity to put the record straight on something he knows a lot about – the history of The Pirate Bay.

If one searches for “founders of The Pirate Bay” using Google, it’s very clear from many thousands of reports that they are Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. According to Gottfrid, however, that simply isn’t true.

“TPB was founded by me and two people who haven’t been involved since 2004,” Gottfrid says. “Fredrik came into the picture when the site moved from Mexico to Sweden, probably early 2004.”

While acknowledging Fredrik’s work as important for the growth of the site, Gottfrid noted that Peter’s arrival came sometime later. He didn’t specify who the other two founders were but it’s likely they’re to be found among the early members of Piratbyrån as detailed here.

With Peter Sunde already released from his sentence and Fredrik Neij close to beginning his, it’s possible that the ~~founders~~ trio could all be free men by the end of 2015. So does Gottfrid have anything exciting up his sleeve for then?

“Yes, I have plans, but I’m not sharing them,” he concludes.

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

PirateBay

Torrentfreak: “Piracy Police Arrest Two for The Expendables 3 Movie Leak” plus 2 more

Torrentfreak: “Piracy Police Arrest Two for The Expendables 3 Movie Leak” plus 2 more