Over the past few days a drama has been developing around the videogame The Sinking City .

Created by Ukrainian development team Frogwares, the company made the unusual step of taking to Twitter to warn consumers NOT to buy the version of its game that appeared on Steam.

In its tweet , Frogwares wrote that it had “not created the version of @thesinkingcity that is today on sale on @Steam. We do not recommend the purchase of this version. More news soon.”

Background: History of Legal Issues

After being released in 2019, The Sinking City was pulled from Steam and other platforms in 2020, with Frogwares stating that it had been forced to end its contract with French publisher Nacon. Frogwares cited breaches of its licensing agreement and according to various reports, Nacon was still collecting revenue from sales of The Sinking City, something which prompted Frogware to pull the plug.

The background is available in an open letter that was published on the Frogwares site in August last year. It stated that in return for a “financial contribution” to the development of the game, publisher Bigben/Nacon were given the rights to commercialize the game on Xbox One, PS4, Steam and Epic Games Store.

“The intellectual property would still belong to Frogwares, which has always been the only producer and owner of its games, including The Sinking City,” the developer wrote.

Frogwares launched legal action against Bigben/Nacon during August 2019 but in October 2020, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that Frogwares should not have pulled The Sinking City from sale, adding that no further action should be taken until the dispute between the parties had been resolved.

Game Appears on Steam, Disappears, Reappears

In January 2021, Frogwares released The Sinking City on Steam but it was soon pulled , only to be replaced by Nacon last week. That move was met with disappointment from fans, who complained that the version being offered by Nacon was old and incomplete , with “no DLC, no cloud saves, no achievements.”

This reappearance prompted Frogwares to deter fans from buying the version of the game uploaded by Nacon to Steam. Then, in an announcement made yesterday, Frogwares put some additional meat on the bones, stating in a blog post that Nacon had “Cracked and Pirated” The Sinking City.

Frogwares notes that the final decision on whether it is required to deliver a Steam version of The Sinking City is set to be decided by the court “in the next months or even years”. However, it alleges that after giving Frogwares an ultimatum in December to upload a “new Steam master”, Nacon bought a copy of The Sinking City from Gamesplanet and uploaded it to Steam.

Frogwares says it managed to stop this from being distributed but then last week, Nacon uploaded the game to Steam once again.

“So on February 26th 2021 to our great surprise, we found a new version of The Sinking City was uploaded to Steam and launched. But Frogwares didn’t deliver such a version,” the company writes.

“Nacon under the management of its president Alain Falc asked some of their employees, who we even identified, to crack, hack and pirate our game, change its content in order to commercialize it under their own name.”

Frogwares’ Explanation of How ‘Crack’ Took Place

“In order to make changes Nacon had only one way: to decompile or hack the game using a secret key created by Frogwares since the totality of the game’s content is archived with an Epic Unreal Engine encryption system,” the developer continues.

“To be clear this is hacking and when hacking has the purpose to steal a product and make money with it, it’s called piracy or counterfeiting. In order to achieve this goal, programmers with serious skills need to be involved. This is not DIY work by inexperienced people, this is done by programmers who know Unreal engine well.”

Nacon Obtained Encryption Key

Frogwares says that in order to ‘crack’ its game, Nacon needed to obtain the encryption key. The developer says it knows how that was achieved and will inform the French court dealing with the dispute. Frogwares says it carried out its own checks by downloading the version Nacon uploaded to Steam and testing its own key, which worked.

“The hackers didn’t even care to use a different encryption key than the one we created when recompiling,” the company says.

“We therefore opened the packages and we identified immediately in the config files the version that was stolen and hacked: it is a commercial version coming from the site Gamesplanet that was purchased by Nacon like any other player.”

Using information obtained from Steam, Frogwares argues that the ‘crack’ was carried out by someone at Belgian studio Neopica, which was acquired by Nacon in October 2020.

“There are long term damages we need to take care of, Nacon unpacked our data, stole our source code and used it. Nacon can create a new version of The Sinking City using our assets; they can resell, reuse, recycle our content and our tools etc,” Frogwares writes.

“We have to take the measure of what happened now and follow the best path on the legal side to prevent anything like this happening again. The owner of Nacon, Alain Falc will have to face the legal consequences of the decision of pirating and stealing Frogwares property,” the developer concludes.

In a statement, Nacon said it regrets that Frogwares “persists in disrupting the release of The Sinking City” but puts the blame at the developer’s door.

“It was Frogwares who came to Nacon to request financing for the development of the game, and to date, more than 10 million euros have been paid to Frogwares by Nacon. It was Frogwares that relied on our marketing and promotion teams, representing thousands of hours of work and several million euros worth of investment,” the statement reads.

“Now that the game has been fully developed, and published, largely thanks to Nacon’s money and work, Frogwares would like to revise the terms of the contract to their sole advantage. It’s easy to play the victim, but all we seek is that Frogwares respect its commitments both in the contract and as demanded by the courts.”

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

While pirate streaming operations around the United States and Europe attract the most headlines, unlicensed IPTV and similar platforms are now mainstream in most parts of the world.

Authorities in the West are tackling this problem using quiet ‘behind-the-scenes’ agreements through to civil litigation and criminal enforcement. The situation in Asia is similar and over the past couple of weeks a number of cases have been made public.

Police in Taiwan Arrest Nine

As reported by Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA , authorities in Taiwan carried out an operation through the latter part of January and early February targeting what is described as a “criminal organization” involved in the supply of illegal streams. With assistance from the prosecutor’s office, police, and detective agencies, officers arrested nine people.

Taiwan established a dedicated team in early 2020 to tackle the illegal streaming of TV shows to pirate devices and since then 18 locations have been searched, resulting in the seizure of hundreds of set-top devices and computer servers. After analysis, it was found that some of the devices provided illegal access to broadcasts from Taiwan and Japan.

“It is believed that the criminal organization deciphered the broadcast signals of each major TV station through network servers installed in domestic telecommunications equipment rooms and sent them to infringing set-top devices via the Internet,” CODA reports.

Thai Police Raid Five Premises Linked to Illegal Streaming

Over the past several years Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has carried out numerous actions against individuals involved in the supply of pirate IPTV and similar streaming services.

Two Brits and a local were arrested in 2017 under suspicion of violating the rights of the Premier League and in 2019, DSI shut down the country’s most popular pirate site, Movie2free.com, following a request from the Motion Picture Association.

Last weekend, the DSI unit was in action again, raiding five premises linked to the illegal movie streaming. According to Pol Lt Col Korawat, among the items seized were 100 receivers, decoders, satellite dishes, computers, notebooks, hard disks and mobile phones. It’s believed that the equipment was used to supply pirated movies and TV content to the website fwiptv.cc. That site is currently down.

According to the Bangkok Post , the main players behind the streaming operation were not discovered during the raids and the authorities were only able to arrest technicians hired to run the operation.

Fwiptv.cc was reportedly founded in 2012 and was Thailand’s largest broadcaster of pirated movies and sport, including content owned by the Premier League.

Prosecution in Malaysia

Over in Malaysia, a company director behind the operation to supply ‘Long TV’ pirate TV devices to the public pleaded guilty on Monday. According to local reports, the individual was charged with selling the devices and breaching intellectual property rights last September.

“The company, located at I-City, Persiaran Multimedia, Section 7, Shah Alam, Selangor has violated Section 41(1)(ha) of the Copyright Act 1987 for selling any technology or device for the purpose of bypassing any effective technological measures stated under subsection 36A(3) of the same Act,” a statement from the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs reads.

According to the Ministry, the yet-to-be-named individual faces a fine of up to RM40,000 (around US$9,900) and a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Educational Initiatives in Japan

Last August, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, a body of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, hired Hello Kitty to become its Copyright Ambassador. Since then, local anti-piracy group CODA has been releasing educational content featuring the famous character in an effort to keep people away from sources of pirated content.

Masaharu Ina, CODA’s Director of Overseas Copyright Protection, recently sent TorrentFreak a new video to promote compliance with Japan’s brand new anti-piracy law along with a Hello Kitty quiz designed to test people’s knowledge of copyright.

The video is embedded below and the quiz can be found here .

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

More than three years ago, Epic Games decided to take several Fortnite cheaters to court, accusing them of copyright infringement.

Pretty much all of these lawsuits have been settled but there is one that proved to be quite a challenge.

One of the alleged cheaters, who was also accused of advertising and distributing the cheat via his YouTube channel, turned out to be a minor. The game publisher wasn’t aware of this when it filed the lawsuit, but the kid’s mother let the company know in clear terms.

Mother Intervenes

“This company is in the process of attempting to sue a 14-year-old child,” the mother informed the court back in 2017.

The letter was widely publicized in the press but Epic Games didn’t back off. Due to his young age, the Carolina District Court ordered that the kid, who operated the “Sky Orbit” YouTube channel, should only be referred to by his initials C.R. The case itself continued, albeit slowly.

Since C.R. didn’t retain an attorney or otherwise respond in court, Epic filed a motion for default judgment. The court didn’t accept this right away, however, instead deciding that the mother’s letter should be treated as a motion to dismiss the case.

Among other defenses, the mother highlighted that the EULA, which the game publisher relies heavily upon in the complaint, isn’t legally binding. The EULA states that minors require permission from a parent or legal guardian, which was not the case here.

Default judgments Denied

The court reviewed these arguments but concluded that they were not sufficient to dismiss the case. After that ruling things went quiet. Neither C.R. nor his mom responded, which prompted Epic Games to file another motion for default judgment, which was also denied.

According to the court, it is not allowed to order default judgments against minors who haven’t been represented. That brought the case back to square one, and Epic Games saw no other option than to ask the court to appoint a guardian to represent C.R. This request was granted in the summer of 2019.

Settlement Agreement

This strategy eventually paid off and it brought all parties together again. After more than three years, Epic Games and C.R have agreed to settle the case.

The legal paperwork doesn’t reveal any details regarding the outcome. Epic Games specifically asked to keep the agreement out of the public eye, to protect C.R. who hasn’t turned 18 yet.

“In this case, the minor Defendant’s privacy interests outweigh the public interest to access,” Epic Games informed the court (pdf) .

“There is no proper purpose or public service that could be achieved by public disclosure of the private details of the settlement agreement – rather, the minor could be exposed to public scrutiny and unfairly disadvantaged as a result.”

Money Isn’t a Motive

Since C.R. previously continued promoting cheats on YouTube while the lawsuit was active, we assume that the settlement will strictly forbid this type of activity going forward.

A large settlement sum seems unlikely, as previous cases have shown that the games developer isn’t trying to financially ruin its targets. The company is mainly interested in preventing them from cheating in the future.

At the time of writing, the court has yet to officially approve the settlement publicly. The docket lists an order dated today, but that’s sealed and not available to outsiders.

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

Dealing with pirates raises all sorts of issues for content providers and entertainment companies. On the one hand these are people trying to get something for nothing but on the other, many pirates are potential and even current customers.

Converting pirates into paying customers is a puzzle that many companies have tried to crack. Many do so with free trials, hoping that after tasting the real thing people will like it enough to come back for more, wallets in hand. Some innovate, offering a product or service that cannot easily be emulated. Others prefer to intimidate.

Screaming At Pirates

As reported last week, UFC President Dana White enjoys tackling pirates with threats and profanity , treating them as a danger to be eradicated by any means. The jury is still out on whether consumers ever respond to this type of approach but if we think of consumers as regular people, few – if any – appreciate being shouted out and called names.

Judging by the number of insults leveled at White late weekend, it’s pretty safe to say that his actions rubbed many people up the wrong way. To be clear, White will not give a damn if this is the case but according to games developer Adam Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans , being hostile to pirates isn’t an approach he recommends.

No Open Hostility Towards Pirates

Writing in GamesIndustry.biz this week, Coster explains that the problem of piracy is emotionally charged but the overall goal should be to limit the harm, not only on the business itself, but also on the people creating the content.

“We don’t want to spend our time and resources fighting piracy — it’s exhausting, expensive and, frankly, doomed from the start. We want our time going into making games and building an amazing community,” Coster says.

“We certainly don’t condone or accept piracy, and we explicitly tell our players that when the topic arises. We also don’t allow players in our communities to advocate for or help others pirate games. But when we discover pirates in our midst we stay friendly .”

While big companies tend to be outwardly hostile to pirates, stating that “theft-is-theft” and there are no excuses for getting something for free, Coster doesn’t mind acknowledging that there can be reasons why people go down that route. People without financial resources, for example, or people seeking access to his games where they aren’t legitimately available.

Keeping Things Nice Has Benefits For The Developer

Despite his understanding, Coster doesn’t condone freeloading behavior but still prefers to keep things civil. There are benefits to that, he says, including keeping the environment around games consumption (and indeed, games creation) a nice place to be.

“Our non-hostile approach has helped foster a positive community, including a handful of converted pirates. But more importantly, it has been essential for our team’s mental health. Adversarial relationships take a terrible toll,” he concedes.

Keeping the pirating masses happy – or at least emotionally compliant – has some interesting benefits for Coster’s company. He believes that almost all of his potential players are pirates so it makes little sense to have an adversarial relationship with them – especially when a “jillion angry people” descend on community management and customer support teams to air their displeasure.

A Better Approach

Given that this is one of the likely outcomes of being hostile towards pirates (or if one prefers, potential customers, who may walk away after being threatened) Coster says that anti-piracy measures should not be about the pirates. The starting point, whether he likes it or not, should be an empathetic approach along with gentle encouragement to buy his games when they can.

“People will try to steal your game. Huge numbers of them. This is just the reality. Treat it as a design constraint,” he says.

“This is a business problem. Do your best to ignore how you feel about it. Yes, this is far easier said than done. Now get out there and make something worth stealing.”

The full piece, which is a must-read for developers, can be found here

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

Last year, the US Department of Justice booked one of its biggest successes in its battle against online piracy.

In August 2020, law enforcement upset the international piracy ecosystem by targeting several high-profile Scene members , which were the source for many pirated movies and TV-shows.

The criminal investigation focused on the SPARKS release group of which three alleged members were indicted. However, the crackdown, which resulted in raids in various countries, had a much broader impact.

Following the raids, several topsites went offline. Some of these had their infrastructure caught up in the enforcement, but many others decided to lay low as a precaution . Meanwhile, the rumor mill was in full swing, with some fearing that the action was just the start.

Historic Scene Release Drop

After a few days, it became apparent how broad the impact was. Not just in The Scene but also further down the piracy pyramid, where torrent and streaming sites noticed a lack of fresh content.

In a report published in early September, we showed that there were 1,944 new scene releases the Wednesday before the enforcement actions. A week later, a day after the first raids, this number had shrunk to 168 releases .

During the weeks that followed things slowly but steadily started to recover. With help from Predb.org we decided to take another look at the release volume at the start of the new year. Based on recent figures, we can conclude that the release volume ultimately recovered.

We compared the release numbers starting the week before the raids (Monday-Sunday), followed by the two weeks after, and finally data from last week. For a clean comparison this analysis doesn’t cover the week the raid took place, which included the largest dip.

Release Volume Recovers

The bar chart below shows the releases across all categories. This started at 12,776 before the raid, then dipped to 3,680 and 4,463 in the two weeks after. From there it gradually climbed back to 11,759 last week, which is pretty much back to normal.

Looking at individual categories, there are similar recoveries. The TV-X264 category initially dropped 90% from 5,254 to 572, but is now back at 4,913 . And Anime, Movies-X264, and XXX releases all bounced back too, as shown below.

Based on these data we can conclude that the US Government’s enforcement actions had a major impact, but not one that’s lasting. This doesn’t mean that all groups continued business as usual, but there are certainly plenty left.

Prosecutions Continue

While the dust appears to have settled a bit in the Scene, the legal troubles for the three indicted SPARKS members are far from over.

Thus far Jonatan Correa (aka ‘Raid’) is the only defendant to have appeared in court. He pleaded guilty earlier this month and will be sentenced this spring. Due to his cooperative stance, the prosecution agreed to a sentencing guideline of 12 to 18 months imprisonment, instead of the maximum of five years.

The two other defendants, George Bridi from Great Britain and Norway resident Umar Ahmad (aka ‘Artist’), have yet to appear in US court. According to the information we have available, Bridi has yet to be extradited from Cyprus where he was previously detained while Ahmad is still at large.

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

Many copyright holders portray pirates as thieves that must be hampered or stopped at any cost.

However, these same people are consumers too. In fact, research repeatedly shows that they are the most passionate fans .

UK-based piracy monitoring outfit MUSO realizes this potential. In addition to traditional takedown services, the company also leverages piracy analytics as business intelligence. After all, every pirate is a potential consumer. And there are quite a few.

MUSO keeps a close eye on the number of visits to pirate sites. While this is only a subset of the entire piracy ecosystem, since it doesn’t involve streaming devices, it provides some interesting insights.

130 Billion Pirate Site Visits

The piracy tracking firm reports that in 2020 there were over 130 billion visits to pirate sites around the world.

The bulk of these, 57 percent, went to streaming sites, followed by direct download portals (27%), torrent sites (12%), and stream rippers (4%). The market share of streaming sites has declined a bit when compared to last year, in favor of download and torrent sites.

If we look at the geographical distribution, the United States remains the top traffic source with nearly 12.5 billion visits. Russia is in second place with 8.3 billion, followed by China and India with 6.9 and 5.6 billion respectively.

Needless to say, the countries at the top of the list are also some of the largest population-wise. When we look at visits per Internet user, Barbados is on top followed by Andorra, Georgia, and Ukraine.

Profiling Pirates

These data are interesting but, in isolation, the numbers don’t say much. However, MUSO does more than just counting totals. It can also build profiles of the pirate audience for particular titles or categories, including various demographic variables.

This is where MUSO distinguishes itself from many other companies that operate in the ‘anti-piracy’ niche. Aside from sending DMCA takedown notices on behalf of clients, it also sees pirates as an opportunity. They are potential customers, after all.

Through its MUSO Connect service, the company uses data analytics to built profiles of pirates. These can then be used for marketing purposes.

For example, a copyright holder may be interested in finding out what the average “The Walking Dead” pirate looks like, or what the typical profile is of a pirate who watches pirated UFC fights. These data can be used to target ads to this group.

Identifying Superfans

“MUSO’s piracy data also reveals a highly engaged audience of avid consumers and superfans willing to go through a sometimes challenging process to illegally stream or download a title,” the company explained recently.

“This is a valuable audience for entertainment companies; high-intent customers consuming their content but not currently paying for it,” the company added.

The data-driven approach works, the company explains. It highlights a case study where it helped an international broadcaster to promote its new VOD platform. Based on data from pirate views of the broadcaster’s content, MUSO generated a detailed profile of this undiscovered audience.

More Clicks

This ‘profile’ was then used as input for an advertising campaign. Because this was targeted at a high-intent audience, the click-through rate for the ads was three times higher than average, with sign-ups exceeding expectations.

“The net result is the client is converting motivated pirates into paying subscribers,” MUSO notes.

As with most data analytics and analysis services, MUSO works based on measured data that’s extrapolated. They don’t know who every pirate on the planet is. However, given the vast amount of data it can classify people based on sex, household income, education profiles, and various interests.

TorrentFreak spoke to MUSO’s commercial director Peter Clothier, who ensures us that all data are handled in compliance with privacy laws, including the GDPR.

Converting Pirates

The company stresses that it doesn’t offer advertising services itself nor does it work with pirate sites. It simply uses the data it obtains from external sources to create profiles, based on whatever the client is interested in.

The overarching message is that pirates should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. And if big data can help to convert more pirates into paying customers, everybody wins.

“MUSO Connect reveals the commercial value of the piracy audience rather than writing that audience off as worthless,” Clothier concludes.

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

The idea to compress music into digital files started decades ago, but the birth of the MP3 was a breakthrough moment.

German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg and his colleagues first made the MP3 format public in 1993. This made it possible to reduce the size of music files without any significant loss of audible sound quality.

At the time, the music industry was breaking all-time sales records thanks to the CD, but that would soon change.

“System Shock”

Filmmaker Jed I. Rosenberg directed a documentary for Bloomberg called “ System Shock ” which provides an intriguing and insightful overview of how the “MP3” set in motion a series of events that completely disrupted the music industry.

While we recommend everyone to watch all three parts in full, we’ll highlight some quotes in the article below.

After Brandenburg published the MP3 format it didn’t take long before hobbyists started using it to rip CDs. Some people shared or traded these files with friends, which initially happened mostly offline. However, little by little these MP3s made their way onto the Internet.

Music Industry Saw MP3 as an Opportunity

These new developments didn’t go unnoticed by the music industry. The RIAA’s former CEO, Hilary Rosen, recalls that they mostly viewed compressed music as an opportunity.

“In the late ’90s, my staff started monitoring the online space and we really did see a significant amount of interest in MP3 all of a sudden because of its ability to compress a music file.

“I think there really wasn’t any sort of panic in the industry in the early days. My team did look at it and saw it as not really as much of a threat as an opportunity,” Rosen said.

The Celestial Jukebox

In the late 90s, before the file-sharing boom had started, music industry insiders had already toyed with the idea of a ‘celestial jukebox’ that could access all music in the world.

The RIAA realized that with compression, this jukebox idea would move nearer to reality, a position that was shared by others.

“The ‘celestial jukebox’ was a theoretical construct at the time,” Al Teller, a former executive at MCA Records and CBS records recalls. “Every song ever made was gonna be in what we call the cloud right now, and would be instantaneously available to anyone on the planet simply by pressing a button on your gizmo.”

While the music industry ‘thought’ about it, there was little need to innovate at that time. The surge in CD sales resulted in record-breaking revenues year after year, and computers were seen as spreadsheet and word-processing tools by most people.

The Napster Moment

This all changed when a young student named Shawn Fanning came up with Napster. At the time, Fanning and Sean Parker were already sharing MP3s on IRC channels, but Fanning envisioned something bigger. A central database that everyone in the world could access.

To realize this dream Fanning stopped going to school. He set everything aside for months and didn’t stop until the first version of Napster saw the light. That moment came in 1999. Soon after, it went viral.

The documentary shows how millions of people flocked to the new app. Some people, mostly teenagers, were completely consumed by it and downloaded thousands of MP3s just because they could.

The application soon reached the RIAA’s offices too. They were equally impressed.

“My head of anti-piracy, Frank Creighton, came into my office and said, ‘I’ve just found the most fascinating thing.’ It was Napster,” Former RIAA CEO Rosen recalls.

Rosen immediately tried Napster and put in a search for Madonna’s ‘Holiday’ that returned plenty of results.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty amazing.’ That’s like the celestial jukebox. We’ve been talking about this for years.”

After the initial excitement sunk in, Rosen realized that Napster was a treasure trove of pirated content. She reached out to Napster in an effort to have the infringing content removed, starting with the Billboard 200. Napster said it would try to help, but nothing really happened.

Music Titans Were Terrified

In the months that followed, the file-sharing revolution grew and grew. The music industry shifted to panic mode and in February 2000 all major label executives discussed the threat during an RIAA board meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.

“I will never forget this day. All of the heads of the labels, literally the titans of the music business, were in that room. I had somebody wheel in a PC and put some speakers up and I started doing a name that tune,” Rosen says.

The major music bosses started to name tracks, including some that weren’t even released yet, and time and again Napster would come up with results. Needless to say, the board was terrified.

“We used to have this line in the record business that there was sort of nothing a good hit couldn’t fix. There was no screw up a good hit couldn’t fix. There was no amount of money lost on a deal that a good hit couldn’t fix.

“I think that was the moment when people said, ‘Ooh, maybe a good hit can’t fix this one’,” Rosen added.

Napster Had Benefits Too

While the big music bosses were scared, others saw opportunities. Not just the pirates, but also artists who used Napster to deliver their music directly to the rest of the world. They included rapper Benefit , for whom Napster was a major breakthrough .

Benefit entered and won a contest organized by Public Enemy’s Chuck D , who himself was a major supporter of Napster. He was one of the first major musicians to argue that this could be good for artists.

“I look at Napster as being new radio and people are finding ways that now you’re going to have a million artists, and a million labels, now all in the record game,” Chuck D said at the time.

The major labels and the band Metalica clearly disagreed and famously sued Napster. This resulted in public outrage including massive protests, but eventually the court decided that Napster had to stop the copyright infringement. The company later shut down its servers, barely two years after the first launch.

Napster Was Soon Replaced

The problems for the music industry didn’t stop there. Soon, new and better file-sharing tools popped up, and these became increasingly decentralized. Fromm Kazaa, through Morpheus to LimeWire, music sharing was suddenly unstoppable.

The problem was that the music industry didn’t really have a good alternative. There was no digital equivalent of the music store yet, as Larry Kenswill, a former executive at Universal Music Group, explains:

“The huge, huge problem at the time is that it was very hard to tell people not to use peer-to-peer methods and they’ll say, well, what should we use? And the answer was, go to a record store and buy a CD. That’s not what they wanted to hear.”

Steve Jobs Has a Solution

The labels were desperately looking for a solution and just around that time Steve Jobs, who had just returned to Apple, entered the scene. Apple had their iPod and was secretly working on its own music store.

In late 2002 Jobs reached out to the major labels to share his plan. Several major executives were invited to Cupertino where Apple’s CEO personally gave an hour-long demo of the iTunes store.

“It worked better than anything we’d ever seen before. And it became obvious this, this was a good thing to go with,” Kenswill recalls. “The one thing of course about the iTunes music store, he wanted every song to be a buck.”

Unbundling the Album

With this demand, Steve Jobs arguably changed the music business more than pirates did. It meant that a song couldn’t cost more than a dollar and tracks would become unbundled from a full album.

While this sounds reasonable today, it was a revolution back then. For decades artists have sold full albums even though many people were only interested in a few tracks at most. This generated heaps of excess revenue. With iTunes, that model changed. And the money too.

“The unbundling of albums meant that the revenue that came in was significantly diminished,” Rosen says.

While much of the decline in music sales revenue has been blamed on piracy, it can be argued that the move to digital downloads and the unbundling that came with it had a much bigger impact. This is something we already argued over a decade ago .

While iTunes did well, there were still plenty of people pirating music. Apple’s store didn’t provide the ‘celestial jukebox’ experience pirate apps had, simply because most people could not afford to fill up their MP3 players legally.

RIAA vs. The Public

Faced with a rampant music piracy boom the RIAA decided to go to court again. This time they were not targeting the creators of file-sharing tools, but the people who downloaded tracks.

This idea was controversial, also within the RIAA, and CEO Hilary Rosen even resigned over the matter.

“I didn’t want us to go against individuals, even though they were the source of a huge amount of illegal activity, I felt like ultimately they were still music fans. But essentially I was kind of overruled.

“My last day at the RIAA was the day before the litigation against individuals started,” Rosen adds.

The lawsuits became a trainwreck, especially because thousands of people seemed to be randomly targeted. Some may have been prolific downloaders, but the RIAA also sued ‘dead people,’ grandmas, and other unlikely targets.

Lawsuits Made Things Worse

Meanwhile, piracy wasn’t stopping. Stephen Witt, author of the book “How Music Got Free,” argues that the lawsuits only made things worse. This is corroborated by musician Nick Koenig, who was one of the RIAA’s targets at the time.

“I ended up having to pay like, I think close to a thousand dollars to the RIAA. But in the end, I ended up recouping my losses by downloading overtime and doubling down,” Koenig says.

Around the mid-2000s the lawsuits had ended. It was the time when torrent sites started to dominate the piracy scene and these became even more popular when LimeWire shut down.

The Spotify Moment

A BitTorrent client named uTorrent became particularly popular, up to the point where its creator, Ludvig Strigeus, sold it. That money was then used for another startup that would shake up the music industry: Spotify.

When Spotify first went public in a few select countries in late 2008, we joined the ‘invite-only’ platform to see what it was all about. We were blown away .

Having all music tracks available for streaming was another Napster moment. Or perhaps it was better than Napster. It was the ‘celestial jukebox’ the music industry could only dream about a decade earlier.

Where’s The Money?

While Spotify and other platforms are great for users, not all artists are happy. Especially those who have to share a big chunk of their revenue with labels. But even for independent artists, the revenues are rather limited.

The documentary goes on to show how recorded music sales transformed from being the primary source of income to more of a promotional tool. Increasingly, musicians had to rely on other means such as concerts, merchandising, Bandcamp, or even Patreon to earn a decent living.

For older musicians, this isn’t easy. There’s an idea that music has lost its value. At the same time, unbundling and on-demand streaming are seen as desecrating the art of an album as a whole.

For labels, things have changed as well. Their monopolies are starting to crumble. While they still serve a purpose, artists are increasingly able to make it on their own. This is in part thanks to the many public outlets that are available today, where they can easily record, publish, and promote their work.

Those independent artists can keep more revenue for themselves. This is a topic we addressed in the past and in the documentary, rapper R.A. the Rugged Man brings this up too.

“It got to the point where I hated my label. So I said, Hey, I’m going to run and do this myself. And when I started doing independent records that’s when all my money started coming in. And that’s where all my success started coming in. And that’s where all of my fans started coming in.”

New Opportunities

At the same time, new technology also presents opportunities that, until recently, have never existed. For example, services such as Spotify can target concert promotions at a specific set of fans, be used to scout talent for festivals, and help users discover new content based on their musical taste.

New technologies also allow fans and musicians to get in direct contact. And without the middlemen, having 1000 passionate fans can already be enough to make a decent living, as DJ and music journalist Dani Deahl notes.

And who says that things will stop here? Streaming subscription platforms are the norm today, but these may be outdated again in the future. Looking back, it seems fair to conclude that piracy hasn’t destroyed the music industry, it mostly helped to get closer to the ‘celestial jukebox.’

The MP3 played a crucial role in this process. It was the catalyst that helped to shift the powers in the music business. This has hurt some companies and musicians, but also helped many others.

The “System Shock” documentary fittingly ends with a quote from the MP3’s co-inventor Karlheinz Brandenburg looking back, so we’ll do the same.

“I had the feeling, this is not good for the music industry. But in the end, I think it changed for the better,” Brandenburg says.

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

The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of troubles over the past year, but it remains the most-visited torrent site.

The main domain continues to draw millions of visitors per day and that’s not taking the numerous proxies and mirrors into consideration.

The yearly list of popular torrent sites is filled with well-known brands. This year there are two newcomers, TorrentGalaxy and Zooqle. These replace Torrentz2 and Tamilrockers, which have both disappeared.

If we have to signal a clear trend, we would point at an overall decrease in the number of popular English-language torrent sites. At the same time, foreign language sites appear to be growing their audience.

For example, sites such as Rutracker.org, Rutor.info, Yggtorrent.si, Etoland.co.kr, Nnnmclub.to, Dytt8.net, and Torrentdia.com are all more popular than the sites at the bottom of our top 10.

Below is the full list of the top ten most-visited (unique) torrent sites at the start of the new year. The list is based on various traffic reports. Please note that this list is created to keep track of the popularity of these sites over time. We do not recommend the use of any of these sites. Some are known to link to malicious ads, at least incidentally.

Top 10 Torrent Sites of 2021

1. The Pirate Bay

After more than 17 years, The Pirate Bay is still going strong. Despite more than a month of downtime in early 2020, the site has kept most of its audience.

The Pirate Bay continues to operate from its .org domain. The site’s registrations remain closed, however, and comments are still disabled.

2. YTS.mx

YTS.mx is the unofficial successor of the defunct YTS or YIFY group, which shut down a few years ago.

YTS has been the target of several lawsuits in the US over the past year, which led to quite a bit of controversy. The operator signed a consent judgment and agreed to hand over user data . As a result, several YTS users received settlement requests or were sued .

3. 1337x

1337x keeps its spot in the top three. Unlike some other sites, it has a loyal group of uploaders that provide fresh content on a daily basis.

1337x offers a wide variety of torrents and also has an official forum that launched last year. The site banned official YTS releases after the above-mentioned controversy.

4. NYAA.si

NYAA.si is a popular resurrection of the anime torrent site NYAA . While there is fierce competition from alternative pirate streaming sites, the torrent portal continues to do well, climbing one position compared to last year.

5. RARBG

RARBG has remained steady over the past year. The site operates from several popular domain names, but only the one with the most traffic is taken into account for this list. RARBG was founded in 2008 and specializes in high-quality video releases.

6. FitGirl Repacks

FitGirl Repacks is by no means a traditional torrent site. It is the home of a popular ‘girl’ who releases slimmed-down cracked versions of popular games, which keeps download times to a minimum.

FitGirl, who we interviewed a few months ago, publishes torrents on other sites too but also offers magnet links of their own, which is why we included the site here.

7. LimeTorrents

LimeTorrents has been around for well over a decade. Like many other entries in this list, it is blocked by ISPs in countries around the world, which seems to hurt overall traffic somewhat.

The site also disappeared from the top rankings of several search engines last year, a fate that’s shared by many other torrent sites in this list.

8. EZTV.re

EZTV.re is a controversial TV-torrent distribution group that hijacked the EZTV brand from the original group, which was forced to shut down soon after.

The group often copies releases from other TV-torrent groups, which occasionally leads to embarrassing situations . The site switched to a new domain a few months ago and currently operates from EZTV.re.

9. TorrentGalaxy

TorrentGalaxy is a relatively new torrent site, which launched little over two years ago. The site has a dedicated group of uploaders and an active community. In addition to torrents, TorrentGalaxy also makes some releases available for streaming.

10. Zooqle

Zooqle, which boasts more than five million verified torrents, returns to the top 10 after a year of absence. The site’s traffic still hasn’t returned to its old levels but it seems to have a dedicated userbase.

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Disclaimer: Proxies and clear copycats are excluded. We know that Alexa isn’t perfect, but it helps to compare sites that operate in a similar niche. We also use other traffic metrics to compile the top ten. Please keep in mind that many sites have mirrors or alternative domains, which are often not taken into account here. The yearly list is published as an informational / news resource.

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

Due to their nature, pirate IPTV service operators and resellers tend to operate in the shadows, cautiously guarding their own identities and those of their users.

Aside from the few cases where such entities find themselves targeted by legal action or even the police, exposure is a rare event. However, a couple of years ago a new threat emerged after several IPTV providers were targeted by a hacker.

High Profile Attacks Against Helix and PrimeStreams

Late 2019, we reported on a pair of attacks against two of the more recognizable IPTV brands on the market. Warning signs first appeared on the homepage of Helix Hosting, when the alleged hacker revealed that the provider had been given the option to pay a “small amount” in order to prevent all of his customers’ details from being leaked online.

On top, the hacker threatened to leak the personal details of at least one owner or staff member, along with their names, addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses. There was no question that this was a serious problem for Helix. But the hacker wasn’t happy with just a single target.

Just days later, PrimeStreams was under attack by the same person, who again demanded that a ransom be paid to prevent customer details from being leaked online. The amount was significant – $70k payable in bitcoin – but that was not the full extent of the attacks. Several other providers were targeted too, always with the same modus operandi but differing amounts.

TF previously received information on extortion demands down to around a single bitcoin, with the hacker appearing to tailor the amount based on the size of the provider or reseller’s customer base. What was clear, however, is that many attacks were going unreported in public, most probably due to the sensitive nature of the businesses being targeted.

New Warnings: More Hacks, More Extortion

With so many hacks appearing in a short space of time, those under attack began to suspect that a common vector was being exploited by the hacker. Very early on, at least one provider publicly suggested that billing software (provided by WHMCS Smarters and used by hundreds perhaps thousands of providers/sellers) could’ve been part of the problem.

A new announcement by a moderator of Reddit’s /r/IPTV community is now putting more meat on the bones that supports that theory while putting more worrying information into the public domain.

“Over the last couple years numerous IPTV providers were hacked by someone exploiting the WHMCS billing module. Some major providers paid up to $70k USD to the hacker and some of these exploits were covered on Torrent Freak. The hacker has probably hit at least 50 smaller IPTV providers, maybe more, that’s only the ones we know of, always asking for Bitcoin as a ransom,” the moderator reveals .

Also of interest is that the hacker reportedly caused damage to the sites in order to pile on more pressure to pay. But of course, those targeted didn’t have the luxury of seeking legal support or even protection from the police, so the extortion scheme continued and the pressure mounted for a while, before eventually tailing off.

Unfortunately, the hacker appears to have resumed his activities in recent months and members of the IPTV community are now pooling their resources to gather information on the individual and sound the alarm. The allegations coming out now are a concern, to say the least.

“He knows the IPTV business and has inside info that most wouldn’t,” the warning continues. “But here is the most important thing you should be aware of. He knows Smarters better than many. Ask yourself why.”

This theme, that the hacker could have some connection to Smarters, however obscure, continues with additional allegations that seem to suggest more than just a casual relationship.

“The [Reddit /r/iptv/] mod team has seen substantial evidence that points to this hacker being someone involved with Smarters, possibly on their staff, or related in some way to their operation. Seems to be a strong connection.”

“We are NOT accusing Smarters, but we urge you to use CAUTION if dealing with them especially if it involves server access. Don’t ever provide them passwords to your servers for any reason. He will know,” the warning adds.

WHMCS Smarters Responds to Allegations

Given the potential severity of the allegations, TorrentFreak contacted WHMCS Smarters for a response and a statement on whether the company would be prepared to carry out a security audit to check for any issues of concern.

Company owner Amanpreet Singh responded quickly, thanked us for bringing the matter to his attention, and assured us that he had discussed the matter with his team and had come up with several security recommendations.

– Always use a strong password and keep changing it after a few months
– Use the SSL (HTTPS): Always on HTTPS
– If you have WordPress installed at the front then ensure there are no unknown plugins
– Change your server Access Passwords once Smarters has finished the installation.
– File permissions should be accurate

In our initial contact, Singh told us that he wasn’t sure what more he could say, since he has no idea whether the allegations raised by the Reddit moderation team are true. In response, we again asked whether he would commit to carrying out a security audit within the company as part of an investigation.

“There is no chance of the hacker being involved with Smarters,” Singh informs TF.

“I have already discussed this with my team and there is nothing to be worried about at our end. My real brother and cousin brother and my one sister are working as team leaders and they are responsible for the installation and updating of billing panels.

“The second major thing is if we change the passwords then there is nothing to be worried about. I told my team to force the clients to change the password when the installation is done.”

Paying a Ransom Doesn’t Guarantee The Hacker Will Withdraw

Considering the very nature of blackmail, paying a ransom to a hacker may seem like a good idea at the time but when easily duplicated digital information is involved or attack vectors remain available, there’s no guarantee that a hacker will honor his or her side of the bargain. Indeed, according to the Reddit moderator (who has good connections in the IPTV community), paying up may not be the end of the story.

“Don’t pay the hacker if he hacks your site cuz it won’t do you any good. He has hit many people several times. Comes back for more, too. It’s no guarantee that he won’t leak your info if you pay him,” he adds.

“Don’t pay this asshole if he hits you. [By the way] he can hack the newest WHMCS version if you give Smarters any server passwords. You were warned.”

Finally, it’s claimed that members of the IPTV community have additional evidence up their collective sleeves but are holding back from publishing now, in order to protect sensitive information. However, they aren’t ruling out revealing that in the future, if the hacker persists.

In response to the report of additional information being available, Singh is offering his help, should IPTV providers need it.

“If they have particular evidence then I would ask [them] to share it with me then I can help [them] with it more,” he concludes.

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