PirateBay

TorrentFreak Email Update

Italian Police Carry Out Largest Ever ‘Pirate’ Domain Crackdown
“Pirates Are The Movie Industry’s Most Valuable Customers”
“12 Years A Slave” Piracy Surges After Oscar Win

Italian Police Carry Out Largest Ever ‘Pirate’ Domain Crackdown

Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:45 AM PST

For many years Italian authorities have targeted torrent and other file-sharing sites. Complaints from the music and movie industries have sometimes led to raids, but in recent times site blocking has been in vogue.

Sharing giants such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, isoHunt, 1337x and waves of file-hosting sites have been blocked in previous actions, with 27 targeted in a single sweep during April 2013, the largest ever of its type.

Now authorities are back with a fresh action on a previously unseen scale. The initiative, which targets 46 torrent, streaming and other file-sharing portals, was ordered by the Public Prosecutor of Rome.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners law firm specializing in Internet and copyright disputes, says the operation is the largest ever seen in Italy and will see dozens of sites blocked at the ISP level.

“The domains of sites linking to torrent files, in order to download illegal copies of music and movie, have been seized today as ordered by Preliminary investigation Judge of Rome, at the request of the public prosecutor,” Sarzana explains.

“Both the DNS addresses of the sites and their domain name have been made inaccessible to Italian users by all Italian ISPs, in such a way to deprive users of the possibility to access their files hosted in the sites.”

The blocking will be carried out on the orders of the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), a department under Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance tasked with dealing with financial crime, and will cover sites including mondotorrent, dopinatorrent, truepirates, filmxtutti, casacinema, watchfreemovies.ch and universfilms.

Interestingly, Sarzana adds that the case could have a novel twist, in that the police carried out the action on their own initiative.

“At present it seems that the action wasn’t carried out at the request of copyright owners associations,” the lawyer explains.

TF spoke with Enzo Mazzo of music industry group FIMI who confirmed that while there is yet no public announcement on the action, it was indeed carried out by the Fiscal Police from Rome with an order from the Public Prosecutor.

“We obviously appreciate the action carried out by the Fiscal Police following the blocking strategy,” Mazzo said.

This huge sweep is of particular interest when one considers that a controversial new process to more easily block allegedly infringing sites is not yet in force. Dubbed Italy’s ‘SOPA’, the framework – set for April introduction – will see the domains of sites blocked at the ISP level if they fail to remove infringing content in a timely fashion.

Meanwhile, across Europe in Spain, three of the country’s largest sites have bowed to rightsholder pressure and agreed to stop linking to infringing content. According to THR, SeriesYonkis, Peliculas Yonkis and VideoYonkis stopped linking over the weekend as part of negotiations in their legal dispute with Spain’s Anti-Piracy Federation (FAP).

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

“Pirates Are The Movie Industry’s Most Valuable Customers”

Posted: 04 Mar 2014 10:15 AM PST

“Piracy, it’s a crime” and “You can click but you can’t hide” are slogans from two familiar anti-piracy campaigns launched by the movie industry in the 2000s.

Despite these efforts, unauthorized copying grew in popularity over the past decade, spurred on by better broadband connections and cheaper bandwidth. Perhaps of even greater interest, there was also a counterproductive element to this negative messaging which the movie industry overlooked.

Pirates are actually the industry’s most valuable customers.

In recent years several studies have shown that those who share movies illegally tend to spend more on legal entertainment. This finding is now recognized by the Industry Trust For IP Awareness, which includes all major Hollywood studios among its members.

“We know that the people that infringe content are the most valuable audience group,” Liz Bales, Director of the Industry Trust says.

“They go to the cinema more than the national average, they are buying more Blu-rays than anyone else. They are more likely to have a Sky subscription and they are massively in love with Lovefilm and Netflix,” Bales told TechRadar.

With the above in mind, the movie industry has been rolling out a new series of anti-piracy PSAs. Instead of criminalizing their own audience, the campaigns gently suggest that their customers should pirate a little less.

“It’s saying that we know you love movies and value that you are spending money on movies but we just want you to do a bit more of the right things and less of the infringement,” Bales explains.

In other words, the messaging has become more positive, pointing out that there are plenty of legal options to choose from. The latest video in this series focuses on the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man 2 release.

Using the slogan “moments worth paying for” the video points out that people can also pay for their movies, hoping it will encourage pirates to pay more often.

Whether these positive campaigns will prove successful remains to be seen, but it’s a refreshing approach for sure.

It’s worth paying for

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

“12 Years A Slave” Piracy Surges After Oscar Win

Posted: 04 Mar 2014 06:45 AM PST

With 7 Oscars Gravity was the big winner at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening. However, the Oscar for the best motion picture went to 12 years a Slave.

While the makers of both films couldn’t be happier, there’s also a dark side to this success.

Soon after the Hollywood festivities ended, the number of downloads for both films gradually increased.

For example, the number of 12 Years a Slave pirates downloading the film via BitTorrent tripled, resulting in more than 100,000 extra downloads on Monday.

The interest in 7-time Oscar winner Gravity increased as well, as the number of active downloaders on the most popular torrent more than doubled.

The temporary boost in piracy is a recurring phenomenon for Oscar winners. The same happened to The Hurt Locker, which prompted movie studio Voltage Pictures to sue tens of thousands of downloaders.

Whether the makers of Gravity and 12 Years a Slave have similar plans has yet to be seen.

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

TorrentFreak Email Update

Lawyers Sent 109,000 Piracy Threats in Germany During 2013

Posted: 04 Mar 2014 02:53 AM PST

The file-sharing settlement business has humble roots, but is now turning into big business. As revealed last week, Rightscorp is growing its operation in leaps and bounds, obtaining tens of thousands of settlements from US-based users on behalf of rightsholders.

While Rightscorp seeks small settlements of a few dollars per alleged offense, other companies really do earn their copyright troll label with demands for thousands of dollars/euros per infringed item. US citizens have parted with millions of dollars in recent years but spare a thought for the people of Germany, who were introduced to this model in the middle of the last decade.

Information supplied to TorrentFreak by Christian Solmecke of the Wilde Beuger Solmecke law firm, shows that plenty of well-known companies are involved in the German settlement market. Record companies EMI, Sony and Warner, US porn trolls Malibu Media, plus big movie companies including Universal and Twentieth Century Fox were all active last year.

New figures made available by IGGDAW, an interest group that works with targets of predatory rightsholders, reveal that the business has shown little sign of let up during the past 12 months.

During 2013, a total of 108,975 threat letters were sent out to Internet users, a modest decrease of 1.3% over the number sent in 2012. As can be seen in the chart below, the number is thankfully just a fraction of the huge numbers sent in 2009 and 2010.

While the number of threats sent is slightly down, rightsholders and law firms involved are both on the rise. A total of 446 rightsholders employed 72 law firms to send out letters in 2013, versus 422 and 65 respectively in 2012.

Content-wise, the greatest number of settlement requests were sent out for regular movies (‘spielfilm’) with 43.9% of the total. Adult movies (‘porno’) trailed quite a way behind in second place with 24.2%. Music tracks came a close third with 22.8% of the total.

For yet another year the all-important settlement numbers make for bleak reading. In 2012 the average amount demanded from letter recipients was 796.87 euros ($1,094), an amount that increased to 829.11 euros ($1,140)in 2013.

Multiply that by the number of threats sent (108,975) and we reach a figure in excess of 90.3 million euros, or around $124 million. How many people actually settle remains unclear but German law is geared up to put pressure on Internet users to pay up.

So where now for Germany?

It was hoped that new legislation (Improper Business Practices Act) introduced last October would assist by imposing transparency requirements on law firms sending out letters and capping the amounts they can claim. But according to Christian Solmecke, the law firms involved have adjusted accordingly.

"The new rules do not go far enough. The position in which internet users find themselves is hardly any better than that in which they were in before the legislation came into force,” he concludes.

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

Warner Bros. DMCA Abuse Records Should be Unsealed, EFF Tells Court

Posted: 03 Mar 2014 10:17 AM PST

In a retaliatory move, three years ago file-hosting service Hotfile sued Warner Bros., accusing the movie studio of repeatedly abusing the DMCA takedown process.

Hotfile alleged that after giving Warner access to its systems, the studio removed hundreds of files that weren’t theirs, including games demos and Open Source software.

In a response, Warner Bros. admitted the accusations. However, the movie studio argued that they were not to blame because a computer made the mistakes, not a person. As a result, the false takedown requests were not "deliberate lies."

Warner Bros. asked the court for summary judgment in its favor but Florida District Court Judge Kathleen Williams eventually decided to let the issue be heard before a jury, stating that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that Warner intentionally took down files it didn’t own.

With instances of automated abuse becoming more frequent in recent years the case promised to be crucial. But last November, a few weeks before the trial was due to begin, it was closed as part of a settlement between Hotfile and the MPAA.

The decision was a disappointment to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have now asked the court to unseal documents regarding Warner’s alleged abuse. According to the group, the public has the right to know what mistakes Warner made.

“Judge Williams’ decision was encouraging, but mysterious – we don't get to see evidence of how Warner’s system works and which of its improper DMCA takedown notices gave rise to liability. So we know that Warner may have crossed a line, but not how or why,” EFF notes.

EFF’s interest in the matter is heightened because Congress and the Patent and Trademark Office have asked the public for input on the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedure. Details about Warner’s alleged abuse can help to shape these discussions, the group explains.

“Without seeing the facts that went into Judge WIlliams’s decision, it doesn’t help people design takedown systems that comply with the law, and it doesn’t help anyone make informed arguments about the DMCA when Congress takes it up,” EFF says.

According to EFF, public interest trumps Warner’s motivations to keep the court documents under seal. In fact, EFF believes that one of Warner’s main reasons not to disclose the details is to avoid embarrassment.

“There are indications that Warner simply seeks to avoid embarrassment that might follow from public disclosure of abusive practices that the Court's summary judgment order strongly suggest were taking place. Avoiding embarrassment of a corporate litigant is not a legitimate reason for denying the public its right of access,” EFF tells Judge Williams.

The EFF is convinced that some copyright holders are abusing the DMCA to censor free speech. If this is the case with Warner, then lawmakers should know about it, so these violations can be stopped in the future.

“Lawmakers need to hear about how well the system is actually working, and whether it protects Internet users against having their speech curtailed by takedown-bots or overzealous and poorly trained reviewers.”

“Actual data about major DMCA users like Warner is vital,” EFF concludes.

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

TorrentFreak Email Update

VPN Users ‘Pirating’ Netflix Scare TV Networks
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 03/03/14
“Dallas Buyers Club” Makers Censor Comcast On Demand, By Mistake

VPN Users ‘Pirating’ Netflix Scare TV Networks

Posted: 03 Mar 2014 02:33 AM PST

While Netflix is without doubt a hit service credited for doing something positive in the battle against piracy, it needs to spread its wings even more widely. There is one region in particular that would love to see it arrive on its shores, but probably won’t for some time.

Australia is often criticized for its appetite for unauthorized downloading but it’s a country with a better ‘excuse’ than most for engaging in it. Not only is legal content much more expensive than in the US, the region is continually under-served, meaning that locals resort to file-sharing networks for shows such as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, turning Australia into a per-head piracy front-runner.

Netflix is blocked in Australia, partly because the big US studios have an exclusive deal with media giant News Corp to show content. On the Internet, however, news travels fast. Googling “netflix australia” turns up dozens of articles explaining how to circumvent the Netflix geo-blocking mechanism to (shock, horror) actually PAY to watch Netflix in Australia using VPN services and proxies.

Naturally there are no official figures on how many people watch Netflix this way but estimates range from 20,000 up to 200,000 subscribers. Highlighting how the TV networks view these people, an article this morning in News Corp-owned The Australian went as far as labeling subscribers as “pirates”, even though they are paying for the service.

“There is concern at local networks about the growing impact of the US company flouting international regulations by accepting payments from Australian credit cards, despite maintaining a geo-block that is easily bypassed by VPN manipulation or spoof IP addresses,” the paper said.

But do subscribers deserve to be called pirates when they are showing the clearest possible buying signals? In 2011, then Attorney-General Robert McClelland gave his opinion.

"In relation to the use of VPNs by Australians to access services such as Hulu and Netflix, on the limited information provided there does not appear to be an infringement of copyright law in Australia," McClelland told The Australian, the same News Corp-owned publication now calling Aussie Netflix subscribers “pirates”.

But with Netflix not having to go to the expense of setting up in Australia in order to service the region, rivals in the same market area are also feeling uneasy.

"The studios have licensed Netflix to distribute content on particular terms in the US and other larger markets, they haven't licensed Netflix for Australia,” said Quickflix chief executive Stephen Langsford this morning.

“I have no doubt that the studios are in discussions with Netflix about VPNs because it is blatantly in breach of terms and Netflix is essentially getting a free ride into Australia."

Quickflix currently has around 100,000 full subscribers so if the highest estimates are to be believed, the company has potentially half the 200,000 “unauthorized” subscribers Netflix already has in Australia.

The only real solution to the situation with Netflix, VPNs, piracy and the Australian content problem is to properly service the region with legal video in a timely fashion and at a reasonable price. By now it’s a stuck record, but anything else simply won’t work.

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

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 03/03/14

Posted: 02 Mar 2014 11:49 PM PST

frozen This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Frozen, which came available as Blu-ray rip a few days ago, is the most downloaded movie this week.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(3)	Frozen	8.1 / trailer
2	(…)	American Hustle	7.6 / trailer
3	(1)	12 Years A Slave	8.4 / trailer
4	(…)	I Frankenstein	5.5 / trailer
5	(2)	Thor: The Dark World	7.6 / trailer
6	(4)	Gravity	8.2 / trailer
7	(…)	Saving Mr. Banks	7.7 / trailer
8	(…)	The Book Thief	7.7 / trailer
9	(7)	Ride Along	6.5 / trailer
10	(9)	The Wolf Of Wall Street (DVDscr)	8.5 / trailer

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

“Dallas Buyers Club” Makers Censor Comcast On Demand, By Mistake

Posted: 02 Mar 2014 09:02 AM PST

In a few hours from now we will know which film has won the 2014 Oscar for Best Motion Picture.

One of the contenders is Dallas Buyers Club, which grossed over $30 million at the box office on a relatively small budget. Despite this success, the studio behind the movie fears that piracy may cannibalize future profits.

Last month we reported that its makers, Voltage Pictures, launched a series of lawsuits in the U.S. against dozens of people who downloaded an unauthorized copy of the film via BitTorrent. This is not the first time for the studio – it previously launched a similar campaign against downloaders of The Hurt Locker.

Voltage’s anti-piracy actions are not limited to the courts though. The company is also sending out DMCA takedown requests, one of which was directed at Google. While this isn’t something newsworthy per se, the takedown request does include some curious URLs which appear to be counterproductive.

The DMCA notice lists 388 URLs in total. As can be seen below, these links are not all pointing to copyright-infringing content. On the contrary, Voltage Pictures asks Google to censor a perfectly legal Dallas Buyers Club page on Comcast’s XFINITY on-demand service.

The notice also includes several other URLs which don’t link to pirated material, including an article on CNN and a page from Google’s own webmaster FAQ.

Dallas Buyers Club Takedown Notice

It appears that Google isn’t happy with the sloppy DMCA notice, as the search engine has decided to remove none of the links in the request. This means that the Pirate Bay links listed in the notice remain accessible through Google.

Also of note, is that this is the first and only DMCA request Voltage Pictures has ever sent to Google. This suggests that the company might not be too worried about appearing in search results. Instead, the takedown notice may have been a preemptive action related to the BitTorrent lawsuits we mentioned earlier.

With this DMCA notice Voltage can show the court that it took other anti-piracy efforts as well. Whether that is wise has yet to be seen though, since right now it mostly shows how weak the studio’s evidence gathering tools are.

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

TorrentFreak Email Update

Police Raid “Movie Cammer” and Family Twice – Then Drop All Charges

Posted: 02 Mar 2014 01:54 AM PST

During May 2013, police assisted by the Federation Against Copyright Theft carried out a surprisingly heavy-handed raid in the UK against a suspected movie cammer. Five unmarked police vehicles containing detectives and FACT employees were deployed to arrest a 24-year-old said to have recorded the movie Fast and Furious 6.

The man, who had lots of property seized, was arrested, detained and later questioned by police and FACT. Later released on police bail until September 2013 as the investigation continued, the man told TorrentFreak he had been banned from entering any cinema in England and Wales.

With the guy’s bail date just a few weeks away, the story took another twist. Police and FACT again turned up at the man's home in the West Midlands armed with a new search warrant. This time they said that along with his sister and her ex-boyfriend, the man was suspected of camming the movie “Epic”. All of their homes were raided. With a lot more equipment seized and yet more detainment and questioning, all involved were bailed until this month.

“I went to answer bail at a local police station around a week ago,” the alleged cammer now informs TF.

“When I arrived I was told that the officer in charge of the case wasn’t on duty. However, when he was called at his home he said he had completely forgotten about the bail date and said that F.A.C.T had not sent over any paperwork relating to the case, so he did not know what to do.”

At this point a decision was taken to re-bail the three people involved in the case until March 13, and a few days later the man’s sister received a call from FACT saying that they would soon return the property they seized from her. Wednesday this week the trio went to the local police station to collect it.

“We were greeted by Simon from F.A.C.T, the person who came and searched my property and interviewed me last year,” the man explains.

“When my sister returned to the car she had several evidence bags, three of which were for me which contained my phone, six laptops, a desktop computer, two tablets and around eleven hard drives plus an external hard drive. Her bags included hard drives, two Xbox 360 consoles, a mobile phone and other items. Another bag contained my brother’s property (a mobile phone, laptop and several USB memory sticks) and a further bag contained my friend’s property including a laptop, an old mobile phone and other things.”

However, it appears that that despite spending significant time and resources on the case, police have no further interest in the investigation or anyone’s prosecution.

“Speaking with the officer in charge of the case this week he informed me that when I do go to answer bail all criminal charges will be dropped, or NFA [no further action] as they call it,” the man informs TF.

But with the police backing off, does that mean an end to the matter? Possibly not.

The officer in charge of the case has told the man that FACT don’t appear to be giving up and are attempting to bring a private prosecution. That seems to be backed up BY FACT not returning all property – a mobile phone, three servers, plus a router and modem are all still in the anti-piracy group’s possession.

“The fact that there is no evidence for a criminal prosecution begs the question as to whether or not there is sufficient evidence for a private law suit. Surely if there was any evidence at all [the police] would not be dropping the criminal charges,” the man says.

“Also what can they possibly sue me for? I have no job, no savings and no means of paying any compensation regardless of the outcome. Is it simply going to be a waste of everyone’s time?” he concludes.

These questions can only be answered by FACT, although at the time of publication no answers to our questions had been received.

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

SeriesGuide Turns Chrome Browser Into a TV Torrent TiVo

Posted: 01 Mar 2014 12:18 PM PST

It’s no secret that many people catch up with their favorite TV-shows via BitTorrent. Popular shows such as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are downloaded millions of times by people from all over the world.

While downloading and/or sharing copyrighted material is against the law in many countries, there are plenty of tools around to help people’s TV-torrenting habits. The new Chrome extension ‘SeriesGuide’ falls into this category.

SeriesGuide keeps track of people’s favorite TV-shows, which are then displayed in a calendar format, so users know when to tune in. In addition, it offers Pirate Bay download links for each episode, ranked by the number of seeders and leechers.

SeriesGuide Overview

TF caught up with SeriesGuide’s developer who goes by the nickname SchizoDuckie. The developer says he coded the extension to fix a recurring problem he faced.

“I’m developing this mostly because it’s a solution to a problem I have myself. I’m following loads of series that air at separate intervals and you keep having to take the same steps manually: Figure out when something has aired, wait for a download to appear, go to The Pirate Bay, search for a torrent, sort it by most seeds, weed out the crap, and download.”

While he has a Netflix account, SchizoDuckie says most TV-shows take weeks or months to become available in Europe where he’s located.

“We don’t even have the final half of Breaking Bad yet. So then you resort back to piracy,” he says, adding that many other people are probably facing a similar problem.

Right now SeriesGuide is in beta stage, but SchizoDuckie says that many more features will be added in the near future. This will include automatic notifications when new episodes are released, automatic downloads, plus support for seedboxes and remote downloading.

SeriesGuide Downloads

SeriesGuide is free of charge and available in the Chrome Store. It currently comes in two flavors; one that opens the extension in the same tab, and one that launches it in a separate tab.

There’s very little doubt that the TV-companies wont be amused by SeriesGuide. However, SchizoDuckie believes that the extension is perfectly legal and there’s no lawsuit on the horizon.

“I’m not really worried. First off, I’m in Europe, I don’t have to worry about gazillions of dollars of lawyer fees if I cough in the wrong direction. Secondly, I’m not distributing anything illegal, I’m merely connecting pieces of data that are freely available on the web and presenting them in another interface,” he says.

“This is exactly what Google and The Pirate Bay does too, and this is exactly what a human does if he operates this same procedure manually. If there’s a law against that somehow, then I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

That said, Google is known to boot torrent related extensions from the Chrome Store over “piracy concerns“, so there is a chance that SeriesGuide will not be available there forever. According to SchizoDuckie, this isn’t really a major problem.

“If somehow the whole thing does get taken down, then the source code is still out there, since it’s an open source project. The genie is out of the bottle,” he concludes.

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

TorrentFreak Email Update

FACT Closes More Torrent and Usenet Sites, and Makes it Look Easy

Posted: 01 Mar 2014 01:42 AM PST

Every week TorrentFreak receives emails from individuals trying to find out the status of sites all over the world. Many disappear without warning and with no Facebook or Twitter updates, users naturally fear the worst.

Just lately a lot of torrent-related sites have been under DDoS attack so temporary disappearances have been nothing out of the ordinary, but when a site goes down and stays down for a few days or more, things begin to look more serious.

One site currently affected by prolonged downtime is XtremeTV.org but for users of this site there will be no happy ending. Along with related sites MazysMadhouse and ParadiseLane, XtremeTV has fallen victim to the long arm of Hollywood, reaching across the Atlantic via local anti-piracy group FACT.

“The domains listed [in your email] are part of our ongoing activity to disrupt pirate websites and to create an effective deterrent to operators of such sites,” FACT Director of Communications Eddy Leviten told TF.

Direct confirmation from FACT aside, signs that the anti-piracy group have shuttered a site are not too hard to find, if one knows how they operate.

In cases we’ve covered previously, FACT employees have turned up on the doorsteps of admins or staff demanding they close down sites. FACT has plenty of resources so obtaining an address to visit is not usually that difficult, if they set their mind to it.

However, for some unknown reason there are plenty of site operators who make it very easy for FACT. In several recent cases, queries on the affected sites’ WHOIS entries has revealed the site operators’ names and addresses, completely unprotected.

While revealing WHOIS reports can indicate that FACT might have been in town, there is another more obvious sign – FACT’s email addresses embedded into domain entries.

In previous cases as well as the one involving XtremeTV and MazysMadhouse, copyright@fact-org.uk is now listed as the site’s contact email. This is because FACT demands the sign over of the site’s domain as part of the settlement agreement. Once the domain is in FACT’s hands it is shut down, taking the site with it, if that hasn’t gone offline already.

“We continue to direct visitors to domains signed over to FACT to legitimate resources where they can enjoy films and TV programmes in the cinema, online and on disc,” FACT’s Eddy Leviten told us.

Finally, Usenet indexing site NZBRoyalty.com also fell to FACT pressure this month. It appears the closure didn’t require a home visit, just an email to the site’s operators.

“Investigators at FACT have been examining your site and have noted that it is predominantly infringing TV content that is being made available,” FACT Director of Investigations and Intelligence Peter O'Rourke told the site in an email. “FACT requests that you desist from this activity immediately. Failure to do so will result in further investigation which may result in criminal prosecution.”

The perfectly understandable response from the site was put personal lives first.

“We are no longer under the radar. And therefore we also need to dip out. Remember we have lives and families,” the site’s operator said in a statement. “Sorry folks. Hope you all understand that this is out of our hands.”

All of the sites listed in this article are now closed and signs suggest that FACT will continue to close more, as long as site operators can be identified or simply convinced that prosecution and/or imprisonment is a serious possibility.

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

Fileserve Ordered to Pay $869k to Compensate Movie Studio’s Piracy Losses

Posted: 28 Feb 2014 09:54 AM PST

With nearly 200 million pageviews a month, FileServe was listed as one of the top 10 most-visited file-sharing sites two years ago.

This put the site in the crosshairs of the entertainment industry, with Paramount Pictures branding it as one of the main sites to be targeted following the Megaupload shutdown.

While FileServe is still around, the site has undergone some drastic changes to its business model since its heyday. Immediately after the Megaupload raid the company changed its policy to only allow users to download files they have uploaded themselves.

As a result of this decision traffic to the site tanked, but not all of the site’s troubles went away. Last year the production company behind the independent movie American Cowslip filed a lawsuit at a federal court in California.

The movie studio filed a motion for summary judgment last month, after the Virgin Islands-based file-hosting service failed to respond to the allegations. In the motion, FileServe was accused of a wide variety of copyright related offenses, including selling pirated goods through subscriptions.

"FileServe is aware that its websites are being used as a vehicle to illegally copy and distribute large amounts of infringing materials. Because it charges membership fees for immediate access to the copyrighted materials stored on its servers, it is a distributor and seller of pirated materials," the complaint read.

Yesterday, District Court Judge Audrey Collins decided on the case and entered a judgment in favor of American Cowslip, holding FileServe liable for copyright infringements committed by its users.

The file-hosting service is now ordered to pay $869,500 to compensate the movie studio for the alleged piracy losses, and an additional $20,990 in attorney's fees

fileserve-default

The damages sum is entirely based on an estimate the movie studio came up with. Based on revenues of comparable movies the company ran a statistical forecast model which predicted that American Cowslip should have generated more than a million in revenues in North America, as opposed to the $68,000 it actually made.

While these calculations raise several questions, the judge had little other option than to accept it, since FileServe failed to weigh in.

Whether the movie company will ever see a penny has yet to be seen though. FileServe never responded to the complaint, and it would be a surprise if the Virgin Islands company changed its stance when the bill arrives.

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