Posted: 01 Nov 2014 02:02 AM PDT

Anyone typing the simple phrase “free movies” into eBay will be overloaded with many thousands of results. A large proportion offer hardware that has been customized to receive unauthorized online video.

The software these devices run is very often XBMC, or Kodi as its now known. The software in its basic form is an entirely legal media player, around since the days of the original Xbox (XBox Media Center).

However, XBMC/Kodi is compatible with third-party addons that can turn the player into a piracy powerhouse providing free access to movies, TV shows and live sports. With the advent of XBMC/Kodi for Android, eBay is now flooded with ready-built and configured ‘pirate’ boxes that anyone can operate.

A typical ‘pirate’ XBMC Android Box Listing

ad-listing

This week TF received information that eBay has been taking down listings for these devices, apparently at the behest of the XBMC Foundation, the organization behind the XBMC/Kodi software.

“The rights owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the rights owner, XBMC Foundation, notified eBay that this listing violates intellectual property rights. When eBay receives a report of this type of violation, we remove the listing to comply with the law,” eBay told a disappointed seller.

When emailed about the takedown, XBMC Foundation responded: “Your listing was removed because it violates our brand policy by altering the XBMC(tm) / Kodi ™ installation by including extra add-ons which are against our general brand policy or piracy general piracy policy.”

To discover more about these developments, TorrentFreak spoke with Kodi Project Manager Nathan Betzen.

“First, let me say that we have no copyright claims or interests in addons developed by third parties. The form provided by eBay is unfortunately over broad and says quite a bit more than we want it to say, but we work with the tools we’re given,” Betzen told TF.

“The requested takedowns are based entirely on trademark issues. All of the listings targeted so far have explicitly connected XBMC/Kodi with addons that enable piracy, resulting in eBay listings with phrases like, ‘XBMC lets you watch all the free movies you want!’”

Betzen informs TF that the Foundation not only controls the XBMC trademark in the US (and wherever else common law trademarks are recognized), but is also in the process of registering the name ‘Kodi’ with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Once obtained, that trademark will be extended internationally using the Madrid Trademark Protocol.

“We believe that these [eBay] sales are causing confusion for our users about what XBMC/Kodi does as a vanilla program. The clearest evidence of this may be found among several of the sellers themselves who are surprised and unaware of the fact that XBMC has absolutely nothing to do with the development of the piracy-related addons included in their sales pitch,” Betzen says.

“Upon being contacted by the sellers, we only request that they not associate the XBMC/Kodi name with the act of piracy described in their listings. This is possible by rebranding the software, which is permissible under the GPL.”

Betzen notes that simply refraining from mentioning piracy features is also enough to avoid an eBay takedown.

“Either way, they are welcome to post the sale again the moment they follow either of these paths or otherwise creatively solve the issue of associating the name XBMC/Kodi with piracy,” Betzen says.

Despite the takedowns, the XBMC Foundation told TF it takes no stance on piracy. Users are free to use their software how they like within the constraints of the GPL v2. However, that freedom ends when people indicate to the public that the Foundation is taking sides in the piracy debate when its goal is to remain out of the argument entirely.

“To put it simply: We are happy to remain software developers. And we are happy to let other groups stand for and against piracy,” Betzen concludes.

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

Joker Goes Offline After Pressure From Copyright Holders

Posted: 31 Oct 2014 01:37 PM PDT

While most people use standalone torrent clients to download files, there are also several services that allow people to stream videos in a web-browser via the popular file-sharing protocol.

One of the best implementations of BitTorrent ‘powered’ streaming is Joker.org. Although the actual streaming is not fully peer-to-peer, as the transfers first go through central servers, its ease of use is certainly appealing.

This week hundreds of news sites wrote about the service which became overloaded with new users as a result. A success story, but one with a downside, as copyright holders were immediately on high alert.

Just a few days after the service first gathered serious online momentum, it is already gone. The Joker.org website currently shows a placeholder mentioning that it’s looking for a new home.

TorrentFreak contacted the Joker team who explained to us that the service was shut down by hosting company Redstation following “pressure” from various copyright holder representatives.

One of the notices Redstation received was sent by Entura International on behalf of Sony Pictures Entertainment. This notice alleged that Joker facilitates copyright infringement at 3 levels.

1. The initial download of content via BitTorrent without permission. At no point has Rights Holder authorized transmission of its content via this medium.
2. The storage and/or caching of BitTorrent chunks of the content.
3. The conversion and re-transmission of stored/cached content in streaming video format to users via web browser.

Entura International asked the hosting provider to stop the alleged unlawful activities by suspending Joker’s account or null-routing the associated IP-address. Redstation chose the latter option and the Joker service has been unavailable since.

Joker is disappointed at being labeled a “pirate site”. The developers believe they offer a neutral and useful service that is piracy agnostic. Potential infringing data is stored only temporarily, without their knowledge.

“Which is the worst? Google, where you can find thousands of torrents with a single “X .torrent” search, torrent sites, where you can get access to millions of .torrent files, or joker.org?” the Joker team asks.

“Using torrents is not illegal, we are just a service that converts video torrent files to streamable mp4s. We don’t link or enable search for any content,” they add.

Despite the current problems Joker doesn’t intend to throw in the towel. They are currently looking for a new hosting solution for their service and will return.

“Hell yeah we will come back,” the Joker team concludes.

Before they return Joker intends to improve their services and address potential issues, to prevent the risk of another shutdown.

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

Disney Patents a Piracy Free Search Engine

Posted: 31 Oct 2014 07:59 AM PDT

Disney and other rightsholders are not happy with today’s search engines after repeatedly asking Google and Co. to promote legal content and remove pirate sites from search results.

While Google implemented several changes to satisfy these requests, Disney has also taken matters into its own hands.

A new patent awarded to Disney Enterprises this week describes a search engine through which pirated content is hard to find.

Titled "Online content ranking system based on authenticity metric values for web elements," one of the patent's main goals is to prevent pirated movies and other illicit content from ranking well in the search results.

According to Disney their patent makes it possible to “enable the filtering of undesirable search results, such as results referencing piracy websites.”

Disney believes that current search engines are using the wrong approach as they rely on a website’s “popularity.” This allows site owners to game the system in order to rank higher.

“For example, a manipulated page for unauthorized sales of drugs, movies, etc. might be able to obtain a high popularity rating, but what the typical user will want to see is a more authentic page,” they explain.

While this is a rather simplified description of the complex algorithms most search engines use, Disney believes it can do a better job.

In their patent they describe a system that re-ranks search results based on an “authenticity index”. This works twofold, by promoting sites that are more “authoritative” and filtering out undesirable content.

“In particular, embodiments enable more authoritative search results … to be ranked higher and be more visible to a user. Embodiments furthermore enable the filtering of undesirable search results, such as results referencing piracy websites, child pornography websites, and/or the like,” Disney writes.

While Disney’s idea of a search engine may sound appealing to some, deciding what counts as “authoritative” is still rather subjective. Google, for example, uses PageRank which is in part based on the number of quality links to websites.

Disney, however, suggests giving “official” sites priority when certain terms relate to a property of a company. These “authority” weights can include trademarks, copyrighted material, and domain name information.

This doesn’t only affect pirated content, Disney explains, it also means that a Wikipedia entry or IMDb listing for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” will rank lower than the official Disney page of the film.

“The Disney.go.com web page may be associated with an authenticity weight that is greater than the authenticity weight associated with the encyclopedia web page because Disney.go.com is the official domain for The Walt Disney Company. As such, with respect to the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs™ film, the Disney.go.com web page may be considered more authoritative (and thus more authentic) than the encyclopedia web page,” Disney writes.

In other words, official sites should be the top result for “brand” related searches, even if people are looking for background info or more balanced (re)views. For pirate sites there’s no place at all in the top results, even though Disney’s definition of a pirate site may also be rather subjective.

It’s unclear whether Disney has any plans to implement the patent in the wild. The company currently has a search engine but this only includes links to its own properties.

Disney search

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

PirateBay

Torrentfreak: “XBMC/Kodi Targets Piracy-Promoting eBay Sellers” plus 2 more

Torrentfreak: “XBMC/Kodi Targets Piracy-Promoting eBay Sellers” plus 2 more

A typical ‘pirate’ XBMC Android Box Listing