BitTorrent Crackdown Center Prepares to Punish Pirates
“In a few months millions of BitTorrent users in the United States will be actively monitored as part of an agreement between the MPAA, RIAA and all the major ISPs. Those caught sharing copyright works will receive several warning messages and will be punished if they continue to infringe. Today the center responsible for administering the scheme announced its Executive Board, which surprisingly enough doesn’t include any neutral executives…
After six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, which includes slowing down the offender’s connection and temporary disconnections. The new plan was announced under the name ‘Copyright Alerts‘ last year and will be implemented by all parties by July 12, 2012.” Read more: TorrentFreak
Meanwhile in The Netherlands Dutch Pirates Go To Battle..
”With the might of a whole generation behind them, today the Dutch Pirate Party goes to war for a free internet. By dragging BREIN to court, the Pirate Party finally has the chance to put forward arguments to strike the court injunction that was unilaterally imposed on it last Friday by Dutch entertainment industry organisation BREIN….
The Dutch Pirate Party calls upon all pirates and freedom-loving landlubbers to stand up and support our fight against censorship. Because as Martin Luther King might have said it, were he alive today, “freedom on the internet is indivisible, a threat to freedom of the internet anywhere is a threat to freedom on the internet everywhere.”
Arrr!”~ Read More: Press Release
US Government Targets The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Others #piracy #TPB Via @torrentfreak
“The US Government has classified some of the largest websites on the Internet as examples of sites which sustain global piracy. The list released by the United States Trade Representative draws exclusively on input from rightsholders. It includes popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, file-hosting service Megaupload and Russia’s leading social network VKontakte.
In its second “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets”, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has listed more than a dozen websites and physical markets which are reportedly involved in piracy and counterfeiting.
The list is based solely on input from lobby groups including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago. While the USTR admits that the list is not meant to reflect legal violations, the websites mentioned in the report “merit further investigation” for their alleged infringing behavior.
“These are marketplaces that have been the subject of enforcement action or that may merit further investigation for possible intellectual property rights infringements. The scale and popularity of these markets can cause economic harm to U.S. and other IP right holders,” the report reads.”~Read More: TorrentFreak
#SOPA RIAA and ʎʇıɹnɔǝs puɐןǝɯoɥ Caught Downloading Torrents Via @TorrentFreak
“If there’s one organization known for its crusade against online piracy, it’s the RIAA. Nevertheless, even in the RIAA’s headquarters several people use BitTorrent to download pirated music, movies, TV-shows and software. And they are in good company. The Department of ʎʇıɹnɔǝs puɐןǝɯoɥ – known for seizing pirate domain names – also harbors hundreds of BitTorrent pirates.
Last week we wrote about a new website that exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded using BitTorrent. The Russian-based founders of the site gathered this data from public BitTorrent trackers, much like anti-piracy outfits do when they track down copyright infringers.
In response to the article many readers commented that they indeed saw a few familiar downloads, and they are not alone.
YouHaveDownloaded currently lists information on more than 50 million users. Although this is only a fraction of all public BitTorrent downloads, it shows that in pretty much every major organization people are pirating content.
Earlier this week we already showed that there are BitTorrent pirates at Sony, Universal and Fox. A few days later it was revealed that torrents are being downloaded in the palace of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and today we can add the RIAA and the Department of ʎʇıɹnɔǝs puɐןǝɯoɥ to the list.
After carefully checking all the IP-addresses of the RIAA we found 6 unique addresses from where copyrighted material was shared. Aside from recent music albums from Jay-Z and Kanye West – which may have been downloaded for research purposes – RIAA staff also pirated the first five seasons of Dexter, an episode of Law and Order SVU, and a pirated audio converter and MP3 tagger.
RIAA staff have a taste for crime dramas.
And of course some handy audio tools.
All in all, quite an astonishing revelation for an outfit that wants to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet.
Another prominent organization that has been in the news for their tough actions against online piracy is the Department of ʎʇıɹnɔǝs puɐןǝɯoɥ. In recent months they have seized domain names of hundreds of sites accused of facilitating counterfeiting and piracy, including the torrent search engine Torrent-Finder.
By now it probably comes as no surprise that staff at the Department of ʎʇıɹnɔǝs puɐןǝɯoɥ are also using BitTorrent. In fact, we found more than 900 unique IP-addresses at the Government organization through which copyrighted files were downloaded.
Since ʎʇıɹnɔǝs puɐןǝɯoɥ employs more than 200,000 people the finding is hardly a surprise. However, this and the other revelations show that BitTorrent is being used everywhere, from government agencies to even the most outspoken anti-piracy outfits.
For now at least, since the RIAA has lobbied hard for a nationwide piracy monitoring system much like YouHaveDownloaded.
In a few months millions of online ‘pirates’ will be monitored as part of an agreement between the MPAA, RIAA and all major U.S. Internet providers. Alleged infringers will be notified about their misbehavior, and repeat offenders will eventually be punished.
But will the RIAA be punished too?”~TorrentFreak
RT @torrentfreak ‘The Pirate Bay Dancing’ Add-On Killls DNS and IP Blockades #SOPA #TPB #internetcensorship
(Photo: TorrentFreak)
“Efforts to censor the Internet are increasing in the Western world. In the US lawmakers are currently discussing legislation (SOPA/PIPA) that could take out The Pirate Bay, or disable access to it. In several other countries such as Italy, Finland and Belgium, courts have already ordered Internet Providers to block their users’ access to the site. Demonstrating the futility of these efforts, a small group of developers today releases a browser add-on called “The Pirate Bay Dancing.”
When Homeland Security’s ICE unit started seizing domain names last year, a group called “MAFIAAFire” decided to code a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains.
The release went viral and by now more than 200,000 people have installed the add-on. ICE wasn’t happy with this and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. However, Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.
Today MAFIAAFire delivers a new release that aims to thwart the increasing censorship efforts in countries worldwide. Named “The Pirate Bay Dancing,” the Firefox add-on undoes local DNS and IP blocks by routing users through a series of randomly picked proxies.
The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that the development of the plugin was partly motivated by SOPA and PIPA, the pending anti-piracy bills in the US.
“DNS and IP blocking is probably the most dangerous part of SOPA/PIPA in terms of ‘breaking the Internet,’ so we tackled that first. We will be going after the other parts of SOPA in later releases but probably not in ‘our usual plugin form’ – the other parts require different solutions that we have already started work on,” we were told.
Although the add-on carries The Pirate Bay in its name it also works with other sites such as Newsbin2 and BTJunkie which are blocked in the UK and Italy respectively. In a broader sense it can also be used to bypass national “firewalls” such as in China, and soon perhaps the US.
Putting the add-on to work only requires two clicks and is completely free.
After the add-on is installed users can specify the websites for which they want it to work, and these sites then trigger a response from the plugin. If someone from Italy for example chooses to unblock The Pirate Bay, the add-on will save this preference and load the site through a proxy on the next visit.
MAFIAAFire is using thousands of proxies which will be rotated constantly, hence the (dirty) dancing. The current version is fully working but TorrentFreak was told that the functionality will be expanded in future releases.”~Read More: TorrentFreak
@TorrentFreak Italian #Anti-Piracy Blockade Takes Legit Sites Offline #Italy
“Last week we reported that the Italian cybercrime police shut down several file-sharing websites.
The sites, which were connected by ownership, offered links to torrents and files hosted on cyberlockers.
However, the actions were not without collateral damage.
According to reports from the Italian media two perfectly legal sites were taken out by the DNS blockade also.
The sites in question, italianstylewebsite.net and freeplayclub.org, were apparently taken down by mistake.
Italianstyle is a discussion forum and freeplayclub a site dedicated to games.
The owner of freeplayclub explains that he was never notified by the government and that he initially thought their was a problem with their DNS.
If and when the issues will be resolved is unknown at this point, but the sites remain accessible via a proxy site.”~TorrentFreak
Happy Birthday Pirate Bay, You’ve Just Turned 8 Years Old Today
Happy Birthday Pirate Bay!!!! <3
“It’s one of the longest existences in the entire file-sharing space and bar none it has been the most eventful. We’re talking about the life of The Pirate Bay, the world’s most resilient BitTorrent site. Today the site celebrates its 8th birthday, a massive achievement which may not ever be bettered in terms of longevity, sheer volume of members and material distributed.
By now the story of The Pirate Bay (TPB) and its humble Swedish-only beginnings is a well worn tale. The site’s roots can be traced back to Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy), a pro-piracy organization founded in August 2003”~More from TorrentFreak
