With millions of views per month, DanishBits (DB) was one of the most popular private torrent trackers on the web.

As its name suggests, the site operated from Denmark and it mostly served visitors from the Scandinavian country, where it was more popular than public torrent sites.

A few days ago this reign came to an end. All of a sudden the site became unreachable and, according to several people close to the fire, this is the result of an investigation into the site’s operators.

Owner Arrested?

One staff member informed TorrentFreak that one of the owners was arrested earlier this month. While this has yet to be confirmed by the authorities, a message posted on Pastebin, confirms the trouble.

“Dear users, with pain in our heart we must inform you that DB as you all know it, and which you all have loved, unfortunately seems to have reached the end of the road,” the note reads, translated from Danish

“We have been informed that important people behind DB have unfortunately been caught by the long arm of the law. These people were in charge of running the site and the current downtime is simply due to the fact that they are not present to solve them.”

The statement leaves some wiggle room, as there is no official confirmation of any arrest. We have reached out to a source close to law enforcement who confirmed that something is indeed going on, but no information can be shared at this moment.

Servers Were Encrypted

The DanishBits staffer informed us that the privacy of users was secured. No data was leaked as the servers are still online and encrypted. However, the man who was supposedly arrested was the only person with full access and the rest of the staff can’t control the servers.

This statement is backed up by the note that was posted in public which mentions that “all servers run full encryption and it’s practically impossible to access data, even if the servers behind the page should be seized.”

Technically, the site’s owner could still access the server and hand over information voluntarily, but that’s all speculation at this point.

For now, it seems unlikely that DanishBits will return. Without access to the database, the site will have to start from scratch which is a monumental task. While some staffers still have a glimmer of “hope,” that may mostly be wishful thinking.

Other Trackers Take Over

The message they shared in public reads like a farewell note too. The staffers thank all people who have supported the site over the years and apologize for initially remaining quiet during the downtime. Several comeback options were considered, but none were viable.

“We wanted to exhaust all our options before we announced this out, it is of course not our wish that the site should go this way,” they write, encouraging competing trackers to open their doors to new users.

“All staffers would also like to send a request to the remaining Danish trackers (ShareUniversity and Asgrd) to open up signup so that users on DB can find a new place and download their daily content.”

This message was heard, it seems, as both trackers are open for registration at the time of writing.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

France has been fighting on the anti-piracy enforcement frontline for more than a decade now.

The country was the first to introduce a graduated response system , Hadopi, where Internet subscribers risked losing their Internet connections if they were caught sharing torrents repeatedly.

This elaborate anti-piracy scheme provided a great opportunity for researchers to study the effects on legal consumption. Over the years, many papers have been published, documenting both positive and negative effects.

Recently, a new study was added to the mix that looks at the effect of the three-strikes law on movie theater visits. The researchers specifically examine the effects of Hadopi’s early period. That’s years ago now, but the academic papermill moves slowly.

The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Information Systems Research, shows that the anti-piracy law didn’t increase box office revenue overall. However, it did have an effect on the type of movies people were picking.

Hadopi Boosted Market Share of US Films

“We show that, following the introduction of the Hadopi law, the market share for US films increased by 9% at the expense of other movies,” says Christophe Bellégo, Assistant Professor in Economics at ENSAE and lead author of the paper.

This market share increase comes at the expense of other films, including French ones, as the overall expenditure on box office tickets remains relatively stable. The researchers expect that this increase in U.S. movies can be explained by the belief that these are riskier to pirate.

“Without an anti-piracy law, some people illegally consume American movies online and legally watch domestic movies in theaters because illegal copies of American movies are easily available on the Internet during their theatrical exhibition. This is much less the case for other movies,” Bellégo tells us.

While one might think that overall movie theater visits would increase, that’s not the case. According to the researchers, this can be explained by the fact that people have limited time and money.

No Overall Revenue Increase

The findings are not very uplifting for the French movie industry. Instead of boosting revenue, attendance of French films dropped. However, the researchers don’t want to conclude that the three-strikes measures failed. They simply changed consumption habits.

“[The effects are] clearly not in line with the French cultural policy aimed at supporting the production of domestic films and cultural diversity. However, depending on what the ultimate goal of the government is, supporting fair competition or supporting domestic cultural production, the policy is more or less efficient.”

Put differently, Hadopi corrected legal consumption patterns in favor of the US movie industry, which more accurately reflects people’s true demand. At least, when it comes to movie theater visits.

Limitations

There are some limitations to the study of course. The research period is limited to the period between 2008 and 2011 when Hadopi was getting started. It’s likely that these effects wore off over time. Similarly, the researchers only looked at the theatrical market. Other revenue streams, such as DVDs and Blu-ray sales, were not considered.

That said, it’s clear that anti-piracy measures affect various types of content in different ways. For some it’s positive, and for others, it clearly isn’t.

“As in many other areas, the effects of policies are complex. They often lead to redistributive effects where there are winners and losers. It’s a bit like sitting on a waterbed. Your weight displaces some water elsewhere, but the total volume is the same,” Bellégo tells us.

“Understanding the asymmetric effects has important implications for firms whose profits may be affected by legislation fighting piracy as well as for governments for the design of their policy,” he adds.

—

The paper by Christophe Bellégo and Romain De Nijs, titled “The Unintended Consequences of Antipiracy Laws on Markets with Asymmetric Piracy: The Case of the French Movie Industry,” is available here (paywall) . A free pre-print can be found on SSRN .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Blocking of regular piracy websites has been a feature of anti-piracy enforcement in Europe for almost 15 years.

The way these blocks are achieved is broadly similar, with entertainment industry companies filing “no-fault” injunctions against Internet service providers who stand before the courts accused of facilitating the copyright-infringing activities of their subscribers.

Once this infringement has been identified and the ISPs put on notice by the courts, they are required to block access to the sites in question, using basic DNS techniques or in the UK, for example, more sophisticated methods that require a VPN or similar tool to tunnel through.

IPTV Blocking – A More Sophisticated Beast

In recent years, live sports groups such as the Premier League and UEFA have obtained similar injunctions that are more complex. These ‘dynamic’ blocking efforts require intricate work by the organizations’ anti-piracy partners, who identify the IP addresses of specific ‘pirate’ servers, including those that can be changed at short notice, in order for ISPs to block them at match times.

While unpopular, there is nothing particularly surprising about these efforts. Content companies have obtained the necessary legal permissions and have a right to protect their businesses. And for the ISPs, it should be a simple case of them ‘firewalling’ the IP addresses in question so that subscribers cannot access them directly to watch live matches. However, it seems pretty clear that something else is going on too.

ISPs’ Vested Interest in Stopping Pirates

Now that they are both broadcasters and ISPs, companies including Sky have a vested interest in stopping piracy. This means that while blocking injunctions against ISPs used to be fiercely contested, that’s no longer the case. In fact, in a recent blocking case brought by UEFA in Ireland , it was revealed in court documents that Sky actually supported the action, despite being a defendant.

While that’s the company’s prerogative, something more worrying was mentioned in the same case. It appears that in this matter, Sky or others acting on its behalf, have been monitoring the traffic of Sky subscribers who accessed the servers of pirate IPTV providers.

Perhaps Not the ‘Dumb Pipe’ ISPs Are Usually Portrayed As

In the order obtained by UEFA in the High Court of Ireland in September, comments made by Justice David Barniville revealed that the activities of Sky subscribers were used to support the application by UEFA to have pirate services blocked.

“I am satisfied that the [blocking] Order is necessary for the purpose of protecting the Plaintiff’s copyright against infringement. I note from the evidence, and accept, that there has been a significant shift away from the use of websites in more recent years in favor of devices and apps, in particular, set top boxes that can be watched on televisions in people’s living rooms,” Justice Barniville wrote.

“The affidavit of Jiajun Chen provides a confidential traffic analysis which evidences the use of the Sky network by Irish viewers to watch online illegal UEFA content.”

That the traffic analysis itself is “confidential” feels just a little ironic, given that it apparently reports on communications that should have been confidential too.

In this case, Mr. Chen appears to have obtained access to at least part of the Internet habits of some Sky subscribers. Any requests made from customers’ connections usually go straight from their devices via the ISP to the ‘pirate’ servers in question, meaning that only Sky should be in the middle. Reading between the lines, Sky appears to have monitored, logged, and made available information related to these communications to support the application of the plaintiff.

Worryingly, this monitoring of customers’ traffic has been going on for some time , since it was briefly covered in previous blocking injunctions obtained by the Premier League. Precisely what information is being held is unclear but if it relates to attempts to access ‘infringing servers’, any and all data (if only metadata) is available to ISPs.

No Expectation of Communications Privacy?

Putting aside the issue of copyright infringement for a moment, this type of monitoring behavior is unlikely to sit well with the customers of ISPs who either demand or at least expect privacy. Neither does it sit well with Ed Geraghty , a Senior Technologist at UK-based charity Privacy International.

“Censorship and monitoring of the Internet, generally, leads to chilling effects and violates our human right against arbitrary interference to our privacy, home, and correspondence. This is just another example that despite cries to the contrary from industries and governments alike, the Internet is a heavily surveilled and highly regulated space, where tracking is rampant,” Geraghty informs TorrentFreak.

“In recent years there have been great strides in the roll out of end-to-end encryption and the safety and privacy it can offer the content of our communications whilst in transit, but fundamentally there’s still – necessarily – huge amounts of metadata attached to our every interaction online.”

What Can Be Done to Prevent ISP Monitoring?

While some will argue that privacy shouldn’t apply when subscribers are reportedly breaking the law, the big question relates to the slippery slope. If subscribers’ activities are apparently being monitored for one type of traffic today, how long before other types of traffic are considered fair game too? Preventing this, privacy experts insist, is not just possible but also necessary to prevent Internet surveillance from getting out of hand.

“Depending on which point the ISPs are monitoring, there are various ways you can attempt to obscure your traffic – for instance, using third-party DNS over HTTPS, or a VPN – but be aware that this is merely shifting who can see your traffic away from your ISP to someone else,” Geraghty adds.

Given their simplicity and wide availability, the use of VPNs to prevent monitoring is a natural choice and something that has been gaining traction in recent times. David Wibergh from OVPN says he believes that Sky is proposing the “black holing” of IP addresses instead of blocking DNS queries, which is problematic in itself.

“As IP addresses are typically in temporary use and could be used by several sites simultaneously, it can lead to unexpected and obtrusive blocking of content that has nothing to do with piracy,” Wibergh says.

“By using a VPN provider you remove the internet providers’ capabilities of performing blocking, surveillance and traffic analysis, as the only traffic originating from you is towards the VPN provider’s server. It’s crucial to choose a VPN provider that is trustworthy as VPN providers are able to perform the same form of traffic shaping as the ISP. But even if there is a risk that VPN providers log; it’s a guarantee that your ISP logs. ”

Daniel Markuson, Digital Privacy Expert at NordVPN , says that perceived privacy intrusions like these will only will lead to more uptake.

“Blocks of services and the subsequent discoveries of traffic monitoring and trade will lead to an increased demand for VPNs,” Markuson says.

“Whenever a government announces an increase in surveillance, internet restrictions, or other types of constraints, people turn to privacy tools. We saw similar spikes in different regions: for example, when the US repealed net neutrality, or the UK passed the law dubbed ‘ The Snoopers’ Charter ‘.”

Finally, a simple, obvious, but nevertheless important comment from Harold Li, Vice President of ExpressVPN , that applies to all Internet users concerned about the privacy of their communications.

“The onus is still on consumers to take action and protect themselves,” he concludes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In recent months we have reported in detail how users of the popular torrent site YTS were sued in US courts .

In several of these cases, information shared by the site’s operator was brought in as evidence. The user info was obtained by anti-piracy lawyer Kerry Culpepper, as part of an undisclosed settlement agreement.

This week the same attorney is back in court representing ‘Eve Nevada LLC,’ the company behind the film Ava , which is shared widely on various pirate sites. Again, YTS is prominently mentioned, but this time things are different.

The complaint, filed at a Hawaii federal court, lists 19 ‘John Doe’ defendants who are only known by their IP-addresses. These addresses were caught sharing the film via public torrent trackers. Specifically, the complaint mentions a file titled “ Ava (2020) [1080p] [WEBRip] [5.1] [YTS.MX] .”

This title leads the filmmakers to the conclusion that the defendant must have been users of the YTS site. Or as the complaint puts it:

“Upon information and belief, each of the Defendants registered for an account on the YTS website using an email address or installed a BitTorrent Client application on their device that retrieved torrent files from the YTS website.”

This same conclusion, in addition to the fact that defendants downloaded the same file, is also used as an argument to join the 19 defendants in one case. However, based on the information presented, it’s far from clear that at all of these people were indeed YTS users.

Unlike in the other cases, the copyright holder didn’t present any information from the YTS user base, likely because it doesn’t have any. The data-sharing was a one-time arrangement several months ago, long before YTS released the movie Ava.

While it’s possible that the defendants indeed used YTS, they could have easily downloaded the .torrent file from other sites where the same file was made available. Although several torrent sites banned YTS torrents , many haven’t, including the illustrious Pirate Bay.

Whether the defendants are actually YTS users or not may not make much of a difference. At least not for the copyright infringement allegations.

In addition to direct and contributory copyright infringement, the complaint also accuses the defendant of violating the DMCA by altering copyright management information (CMI). In this case, that means distributing the movie Ava with an edited title, which references YTS.

“Particularly, the Defendants distributed the file names that included CMI that had been altered to include the wording ‘YTS’. Defendants knew that the wording “YTS” originated from the notorious movie piracy website for which each had registered accounts and/or actively used,” the complaint reads.

It’s doubtful that any of these cases will be fought on the merits. When the defendant’s personal information is exposed it’s likely that they will receive a settlement request, which is usually around $1,000. Those who refuse to settle can argue their case in court, but that’s going to cost as well. They can eventually win the case, but not without investing in a legal defense first.

As far as we know this is the first time people have been sued for downloading the film Ava. The company Eve Nevada is a new name as well, but one with familiar connections. It’s connected to the broader Voltage Pictures family, which has sued tens of thousands of people over the years.

—

A copy of the complaint filed at the US District Court of Hawaii is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

While most pirates in 2020 use torrent, streaming and download portals for their general piracy needs, many are still obtaining the latest content from Usenet, one of the oldest file-sharing systems around.

With masses of storage space and blisteringly quick download speeds available (not to mention archives dating back years), Usenet is still a significant source of pirated movies, music, games and just about every other type of content available. But finding that content isn’t always so easy.

Finding Content on Usenet

Since Usenet isn’t web-based, methods have been created over the years to enable people to download more easily from the newsgroups. The NZB file, for example, can be described as a kind of .torrent file for Usenet, one that is quickly downloaded and contains ‘directions’ so that clients can access content.

Sites for downloading NZB files still exist but aren’t as prevalent as they once were, so finding the whereabouts of content on Usenet is still something pirates have to achieve. In 2001, almost two decades ago, Netherlands-based Usenet community FTD launched with a goal of helping people do just that.

After Legal Action, FTD Shuts Down

After around eight years in operation, the FTD community had grown to 500,000 members and with the assistance of its own software, was enabling users to find (‘spot’) the location of material they found on Usenet and share that information with others. This community effort enabled huge numbers of people to find and download all the content they wanted but with much of it infringing, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN became involved.

Ultimately, a court found that FTD acted outside the law and in 2011 it was ordered to remove all ‘spots’ of copyrighted files within a month. At the time BREIN said that people weren’t allowed to structurally make use of illegal files, and that applied to Usenet as well as the wider Internet.

“BREIN will also hold liable any other websites and services that do the same regardless of the technical protocol they use for their illegal business model,” BREIN chief Tim Kuik said at the time.

As it turns out, nine years after the takedown of FTD, BREIN says it is still doing just that.

Spotweb – A Web Client/Interface for the Spotnet Protocol

Following the demise of FTD, a protocol known as Spotnet gained an unexpected boost. Operating on top of Usenet, Spotnet provides an alternative to Usenet indexing sites, making ‘spots’ less vulnerable to the anti-piracy actions of groups like BREIN. In order to see content ‘spots’ a Spotnet client is required. However, people can also make use of Spotweb, a piece of software that as its name suggests, brings ‘spots’ directly to the web.

“Spotweb is open source software that allows you to locate illegal copies of entertainment content in newsgroups on usenet. You can set up Spotweb so that it is visible to everyone. It then acts as a website,” Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN said in an announcement this week.

While BREIN is interested in all types of piracy related to Usenet, Spotweb’s ability to make content extremely easy to find via the web is clearly an issue, as the screenshot of a Spotweb instance below shows.

Spotweb is available on Github and can be installed on Unix-based systems and even NAS devices from companies such as Synology and QNAP. As such the barrier to running a public repository of infringing content links is quite low, something that BREIN is keen to discourage.

BREIN Says it is Taking Action Against Those Running Spotweb

“People who do this offer illegal spots (nzb links or references) to unauthorized content. BREIN writes to such providers and urges them to stop doing so, to sign a declaration of abstention with a penalty of 500 euros and to pay 150 euros in costs,” BREIN said this week.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, BREIN chief Tim Kuik said that Spotnet/Spotweb has become one of the main means to search for and download pirated content from Usenet and those running it for infringing purposes face a situation as precarious as that faced by FTD all those years ago.

“The legal position is the same as for FTD and other link sites. Linking to illegal content is illegal and has been standing case law [in the Netherlands] for well over a decade. It started out being a tort and in the meantime, under EU case law, it is now a communication to the public,” he explained.

As is common with ongoing actions for shutdown and settlement, Kuik didn’t provide specifics on who had been approached to shut down, who had shut down, or how many people had agreed to pay settlements. However, he confirmed that during the past few weeks, “a handful” of people operating Spotweb sites had been approached by the anti-piracy group with orders to close.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

CDN company Cloudflare has grown to become one of the most useful and important companies on the Internet, serving millions of websites that in turn serve countless millions of users of their own.

One of Cloudflare’s key aims is to be viewed as a neutral intermediary but that status is being chipped away by elements of the entertainment industries. The problem is that some of Cloudflare’s customers are pirate sites but as a service provider, Cloudflare insists that passing on complaints should be enough.

The music and movie industries, on the other hand, would like Cloudflare to either stop doing business with ‘bad players’ or take more responsibility for their actions.

Cloudflare Won’t Compromise So Legal Action Followed

Cloudflare is tied up in several lawsuits around the world, not for its own actions per se, but for the actions of some of its customers. In Germany there has just been a very interesting development, one that could have far-reaching consequences for how Cloudflare does business there.

Back in February , Germany-based visitors to pirate music site and Cloudflare customer DDL-Music.to were served with a rare ‘Error 451’ by Cloudflare, meaning that the site had been made inaccessible for legal reasons. At the time, no other information had been made public but as the days passed, a clearer picture emerged.

Complaint Filed By Universal Music GmbH

Early June 2019, Universal Music GmbH (Germany) sent a copyright infringement complaint to Cloudflare after finding links on DDL-Music to tracks by German singer Sarah Connor. The files themselves were not hosted by DDL-Music but could be found on a third-party hosting site. Universal asked Cloudflare make the tracks inaccessible within 24 hours but Cloudflare didn’t immediately comply.

In a subsequent response to Universal, Cloudflare denied being responsible for the activities of DDL-Music. It suggested that the label should confront DDL-Music directly, handing over an email address and details of the site’s hosting provider for contact purposes.

What happened in the interim isn’t clear but in December 2019 a hearing took place at the Cologne District Court, during which the court found that Cloudflare could be held liable for the copyright infringements of DDL-Music, if the CDN company failed to take action.

On January 30, 2020, the Cologne District Court went on to hand down a preliminary injunction against Cloudflare, advising that should it continue to facilitate access to the Universal content in question, it could be ordered to pay a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($270,000) or, in the alternative, the managing director of Cloudflare could serve up to six months in prison.

Preliminary Injunction Made Permanent

According to a statement issued late Thursday by German music industry group BVMI, the Cologne Higher Regional Court has now confirmed the judgment of the Cologne District Court. This means that Cloudflare must block access to the pirated music being offered on the website of DDL-Music. While Cloudflare will not be able to comply with that specific order (DDL-Music moved on a while ago) the principle stands. In Germany at least, Cloudflare can be held liable for the infringements of its users.

“Cloudflare offers a so-called CDN (Content Delivery Network), which is misused by structurally copyright-infringing websites in order to evade legal prosecution through anonymization. The Cologne Higher Regional Court has now put a stop to this: It has obliged Cloudflare to block customer content that has been reported to it by rights holders, or otherwise block the customer’s entire website,” BVMI’s statement reads.

Decision Welcomed By the Music Industry as a Tool to Fight Piracy

According to BVMI, the decision of the court is particularly noteworthy since it’s the first time that a higher regional court has confirmed an injunction against “an anonymization service” that conceals the identities of the servers operated by pirate sites. This decision will make that more difficult in future, the group says.

“The decision of the Cologne Higher Regional Court strengthens the position of rights holders in an important field and is a clear signal: A service that helps others to evade legal prosecution through anonymization is also illegal,” comments BVMI CEO, Dr. Florian Drücke.

“The decision is a further success for our industry against offers on the Internet that cause considerable damage to creatives and their partners and whose business models are based on generating considerable income with third-party content without acquiring licenses for this content.”

René Houareau, Managing Director of Law & Politics at the BVMI says the importance of the decision cannot be underestimated.

“Little by little we are getting closer to the modern understanding of the responsibility of all players on the Internet – especially through ambitious court decisions like this one,” Houareau says.

“An anonymization service may not allow third-parties to distribute illegal offers while disguising the identity of the servers of structurally infringing websites. In other words, excuses no longer apply in such cases. The services have to recognize more and more that some smoke screens no longer work.”

The developments in Germany arrive on the heels of a similar court ruling in Italy , which also went against Cloudflare. Following a complaint from TV platform Sky Italy and Italy’s top football league Serie A, Cloudflare is now required to block the domain names and IP-addresses of a pirate IPTV service. In that matter, Cloudflare argued that it merely passes on traffic, but the court wasn’t convinced.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

With millions of views per month, Go Unlimited is one of the most popular hosting services for pirate streaming sites.

Most video hosting services try to avoid a pirate stigma whenever they can, but that’s not the case for this one.

DMCA Ignored Hosting

The hosting service, which was founded by a Kuwaiti entrepreneur named Bader , launched in 2016 with the aim of being a ‘takedown resistant’ platform. The operator runs several video streaming sites including Fushaar.com and launched Go Unlimited due to a lack of stable video hosts.

As other sites were plagued by takedown requests from copyright holders he created his own to bypass this problem.

“Thanks to our techniques, by hiding the original source of the videos and misleading the networks providers, we were able to ignore the DMCA takedown requests,” Bader previously informed us.

Go Unlimited Was Hacked

At the time of writing, Go Unlimited has a much bigger problem than copyright holders. Yesterday afternoon the site went down and soon after several sources said that the site had been hacked.

We are generally very reserved in reporting on hacking claims, especially after the alleged hacker reached out directly. However, due to the size of the site and the seriousness of the information we received, this one was hard to ignore.

TorrentFreak spoke to the hacker who explained that Go Unlimited was targeted because Bader allegedly DDoSed a friend, who operates a competing site. To help out this friend the hacker decided to retaliate, starting with a massive DDoS attack yesterday.

This attack took out Go Unlimited for several hours. However, it was supposedly just a distraction for something bigger. While Go Unlimited was busy mitigating the DDoS attacks, the site’s servers were reportedly compromised and later wiped.

Usernames and Plaintext Passwords

The attacker shared several screenshots of the information he obtained, including a recent database copy. This includes usernames, plaintext passwords, emails, as well as payout details, including amounts.

All information appears to be legitimate. We ran some tests to confirm that the database screenshots indeed came from Go Unlimited, which passed. For example, when we shared the unique ID of a Go Unlimited file, the hacker could find the associated info within seconds.

Needless to say, Go Unlimited users should immediately change their passwords to prevent their accounts from being compromised. The hacker informs us that he doesn’t have any plans to share the user data in public, but that’s no guarantee.

All signs suggest that the goal of this attack is much more personal. It comes down to a feud between competitors that got out of hand. The hacker wasn’t willing to share the name of his friend’s site, but his demands to Bader are clear.

1 Bitcoin…

After the servers were compromised, the attacker copied all data and wiped the servers. Some data was later restored, presumably with dated backups. However, the hacker says he is willing to return all recent data, including 444 Terabytes of videos, in exchange for 1 Bitcoin.

The question remains whether paying up is the best option. After all, how do you know that you can trust that this will really resolve the problem?

Rootkits?

After the servers were initially restored yesterday evening they were later wiped again. According to the information we received the attacker installed rootkits, which means that the servers could still be compromised at the time of writing.

Most of this information comes from a single source, which makes it a little one-sided. However, given the gravity of the allegations and the fact that others are picking them up too , we felt that it is our duty to share what information we have.

We also reached out to Go Unlimited which confirms that they were “attacked very aggressively.” Bader danies that the database was compromised, however, and suggests that the hacker is sharing fake information from the competitor’s database.

The information we have seen suggests that the hack appears to be legitimate, but if more information becomes available we will update this article accordingly.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Following court orders and site blocking regimes worldwide, The Pirate Bay is blocked in dozens of countries.

This is also the case in the Netherlands where the legal process took more than a decade to conclude.

In 2010, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN first went to court demanding that local ISP Ziggo should block The Pirate Bay. The ISP, which was later joined by XS4ALL, fought tooth and nail and used all options at its disposal to prevent a blocking requirement.

After multiple rulings, appeals, and detours through the Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice, the Amsterdam Court issued its final verdict this June. The outcome was clear – the ISPs must block subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay .

While many people assumed that this would end the legal battle once and for all, it didn’t. Soon after the verdict was made public, Ziggo, KPN and XS4All unblocked all Pirate Bay proxies .

These proxies had been blocked for years as part of a preliminary ruling that also required the providers to block The Pirate Bay. However, the final verdict superseded that ruling and, unlike the preliminary injunction, didn’t cover proxies and mirrors.

BREIN initially hoped that the companies would call an end to the fight by simply blocking these additional domains voluntarily. Especially since a separate court order already requires other Dutch ISPs to do the same. However, Ziggo, KPN and XS4All dug their heels in.

The ISPs decided to unblock all Pirate Bay mirrors and proxies and argued that BREIN had to go to court again if they wanted these to be re-blocked. This is exactly what the anti-piracy group – who described the ISPs’ actions as “downright silly” – did a few weeks ago.

In an interim proceeding, the ISPs argued that instead of going after them, BREIN should target the operators directly. Or alternatively, it could go after their domain registries or Cloudflare, which provides services to many of the sites in question.

In a new verdict announced last week, the court doesn’t deny that these intermediaries play a role, but it notes that the same arguments were already considered in a previous case and haven’t changed. As such, it doesn’t have an impact on the request directed at the ISPs.

The court concluded that the proxies and mirrors are directly copying The Pirate Bay. They communicate copyright infringing works to the public and a blockade is therefore warranted.

The ISPs also argued that blocking proxies and mirrors is ineffective. People can easily bypass the blockades with VPNs, for example. In addition, pirate streaming sites have outgrown torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay in recent years, which means that the effect of a blockade will be limited.

Again, the court doesn’t see how that changes things here. Torrent sites still remain widely used. And while site blocking may not be perfect, it has some effect.

“Although it can be assumed that streaming has increased and that the blocks can be avoided using VPNs, this does not mean that it should be assumed, in these interim relief proceedings, that the proposed blockades are ineffective or not effective enough,” the court notes.

“For the normal internet user it can be assumed that a blockade of mirror and proxy sites results in these sites no longer being accessible, or at least harder to access, which makes copyright infringement more difficult. This type of blocking is considered to be effective.”

The court kept European jurisprudence in mind, which holds that blockades have to make it harder to block pirated material but shouldn’t needlessly block legitimate content. While The Pirate Bay does have legitimate content, this is believed to be minimal.

Ziggo also brought up that the high costs of the blocking efforts, which were €62,280 between September 2017 and October 2018, outweigh the potential benefits, especially when these can rise even higher with future blocks. Again, the court disagreed.

All in all, the Lelystad Court ruled that Ziggo, KPN, and XS4ALl must block the TPB proxy and mirror sites. It granted a so-called dynamic blockade, which means that BREIN can frequently request updates to add new domain names if they become available.

The ISPs must implement the blocking measures within 10 days and risk a €10,000 fine for every violation of the order, to a maximum of €100,000. In addition, the companies also have to pay the costs of the proceeding, which are put at €15,000 for each provider.

—

A copy of the court order, courtesy of IE-forum , is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Late August, many of the world’s top-tier piracy groups collectively known as The Scene were thrown into chaos when law enforcement operations were carried out around Europe.

The main targets were members of the movie and TV show piracy groups known as SPARKS, GECKOS, DRONES, ROVERS and SPRINTER, whose members were indicted in the US for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to release thousands of titles online. However, the action was much more widespread, targeting other groups around Europe and as Scene members went back underground, a historic drop in releases was observed.

Scene Releases of New Videogames Fell Almost to Zero

As the image below shows, releases of new games by The Scene flatlined just after the end-August raids leaving many pirates wondering when things would recover – or even if.

Since then, small releases and repacks of older titles have been appearing online but nothing particularly obvious to suggest that a significant recovery of The Scene was coming anytime soon. That changed in a matter of hours yesterday with a flurry of releases from veteran games cracking group CPY, all of which featured games with the formidable Denuvo anti-piracy protection defeated.

CPY (aka Conspiracy) Breaks The Deadlock

Established back in 1999, CPY is one of the best-known games cracking groups. Following their release of the Denuvo-protected Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown back in February 2019, the veterans went on a short release run before returning for the last time 325 days ago with Heavy Rain.

However, over the course of just a few hours yesterday, CPY placed itself back on the map by releasing four new titles within minutes of each other, all of which were previously protected by the effective (but much hated) Denuvo anti-tamper technology.

The Releases – All Previously Protected by Denuvo

Judging by the reception on pirate sites and various discussion forums, action game ‘Death Stranding’ is probably the highlight of the batch released by Denuvo a few hours ago. As is tradition with such releases, the game came with an NFO (information) file, partially shown below:

Interestingly, the NFO file also comes with what appears to be some kind of puzzle or clue. The jury is out on what it means exactly but we include it here for the curious: “A little gift to our 1803 friends: 0x141627D3D JMP around!”

In popularity terms (at least among pirates) next up is the action-adventure game Mafia: Definitive Edition. This 2020 release is a remake of the 2002 game Mafia and was again protected by Denuvo. No secret messages or clues in this NFO but nevertheless this cracked version has been anticipated by pirates after the original title was released just last month by developer Hangar 13.

Catering to football fans, the third most popular release thus far is eFootball PES 2021. Released last month, the title was also protected by Denuvo but after CPY’s work, is now available without restrictions or, indeed, a price tag.

Rounding up the quartet is A Total War Saga: Troy, which is perhaps a curious choice when considering that the game was picked up by millions of players for free following its launch in the summer. Nevertheless, it soon reverted to its regular pricing structure, with Denuvo included for good measure.

Given that CPY is clearly on a roll, there were probably few problems releasing it along with the others.

Despite Excitement Among Fans, Denuvo is Still Doing Its Job

This quartet of releases has game-starved pirates pretty excited, especially since all four feature the defeat of Denuvo’s anti-piracy technology. However, if we take Denuvo’s position, that it aims to protect games during the first few days and weeks of their official releases, the technology is still doing its job.

Death Stranding was released officially on July 14, 2020 and cracked/released on October 14, 2020, giving the title three whole months worth of protection. Mafia: Definitive Edition and A Total War Saga: Troy faired identically slightly worse, having been released on August 13, 2020 and their protections removed/bypassed two months later.

eFootball PES 2021, on the other hand, was released on September 15, 2020, so with a cracked release landing during the past few hours, it only ‘survived’ piracy-free for just short of a month.

The big question now is whether other groups will return with the same vigor as CPY in the days and weeks to come.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.