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Torrent tracker bans Windows 10 over 'terrible privacy policy'
Windows 10 is facing some fierce resistance from a few of the most dedicated torrenting communities. As TorrentFreak reports, the private torrent tracker iTS has banned its members from using the operating system over what it considers to be "terrible" new anti-privacy policies. These stem largely from a new Microsoft services agreement which covers select Windows 10 apps and services such as Cortana, Skype and Xbox Live: "We may automatically check your version of the software and download software updates or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorized hardware peripheral devices."
UK police smug after 'major success' blocking pirate site ads
The UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is patting itself on the back today, claiming a small victory in its ongoing war against online piracy. The specialist division announced that its plan to target the coffers of copyright-infringing websites has resulted in a 73 percent decrease in advertising on these illicit portals from the UK's biggest digital ad spenders. "Operation Creative" was launched by the PIPCU back in 2013 with the specific goal of disrupting online piracy. When the best-case scenario of pressuring a copyright-infringing site to turn legit fails, as we imagine all attempts do, the fuzz turn to other "tactical options." These include shutting the site down with the help (or else) of the domain registrar, or starving the pirate captains' bank accounts by putting a dent in their advertising revenues.
Piracy app Popcorn Time vulnerable to hack attack
Get ready for a shock, but Popcorn Time, the illegal-as-hell streaming app for pirated movies, may not exactly be secure. Researcher Antonios Chariton told Torrent Freak that he found a vulnerability that could let attackers take complete control of your computer. The bad guy would have to be a "man in the middle," between you and Popcorn Time's Cloudflare infrastructure, ie, a local attacker, network admin or ISP. If so, he could intercept requests that are sent via insecure HTTP channels, and send a malicious "XSS" code response by exploiting another problem, the lack of input checks.
HBO is selling 'Game of Thrones' S5 downloads earlier than usual
In another sign that HBO is trying to convert some of the numerous Game of Thrones pirates into paying customers, the network announced that season five will be the first one available for downloaders to own before it hits DVD and Blu-ray. It's actually going on sale via download way before the discs, with a digital release of season five due August 31st, just two months after the finale aired. The Blu-ray version is still on deck for next March as usual, but you can pre-order the digital season pass (including extras, listed after the break) from outlets like Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Google Play for $39 (HD) -- unless of course you live in another country like Australia, where season five has been on sale since it finished airing, or are already subscribing to HBO Now. Of course, you don't really need to hurry, as HBO announced during yesterday's TCA panel that it expects the series to last about eight seasons.
Almost a fifth of online Brits are enjoying content illegally
The UK government is increasing its efforts to clamp down on online piracy, and now we know the reason why: illegal downloads and streaming are on the rise. Research commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) shows that the number of people accessing content illegally has risen from 17 to 18 percent since 2013. (That equates to roughly 7.8 million Brits pirating at least one item over a three-month period.) Nine percent of internet users aged 12 and above admitted to downloading or streaming music illegally at least once between March and May 2015. Six percent confessed to pirating a movie and seven percent revealed they had watched TV shows illegally. These figures are mostly consistent with the last batch of research conducted by Kantar Media two years ago -- only TV programming has shown change, rising by one percentage point.
Grooveshark's playlists return on a 'legit' streaming site
Grooveshark's dodgy music service might be gone, but that doesn't mean that your carefully curated playlists have disappeared forever. Newcomer music site StreamSquid claims that it has resurrected about 90 percent of Grooveshark's playlists using a "legit" business model that plays clips from SoundCloud and YouTube. Unlike other pretenders, this isn't an attempt to directly profit from Grooveshark's name -- it's a part-time project, and you don't even need to register. StreamSquid says its immediate goal is to recover your songs, and commercial success would merely be a nice long-term bonus.
UK considers punishing online pirates with 10-year jail sentences
As police forces up and down the country turn the screw on sellers of illegal streaming boxes, the government is now considering whether pirates in general should receive tougher sentences. Currently, infringers face up to two years in prison, but an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act could increase that punishment to 10 years. Government ministers have launched a consultation and are calling for feedback on tougher penalties. They argue that the "vast majority" of copyright offenders, focusing more on those who control the distribution of illegal content in the first place, have links to "further criminality" and tougher punishments could "have a deterrent effect" on criminals seeking to make money from file-sharing.
How a file format brought an industry to its knees
MP3. It's the format that revolutionized the way music's been consumed since the late '90s. When Karlheinz Brandenburg, a German acoustics engineer, discovered that an audio file could be compressed down to one-twelfth of its original size without distortion, he created the file-shrinking technology. Stephen Witt's debut book, How Music Got Free, traces all digital music piracy back to the invention of that format, which inadvertently made it possible for people to download and share music illegally. The book details the science and struggle behind the widely used audio technology. And his investigation uncovers the politics and the manipulative men who kept MP3 files from seeing the light of computer screens for years.
'Game of Thrones' piracy is rampant, but UK TV smashes records too
Whether they're tuning in as it airs or grabbing a copy via their favourite file-sharing site, people just can't get enough of Game of Thrones. The fifth season has only just drawn to a close, but during its run, the HBO fantasy series managed to smash its own piracy records and break a few broadcast milestones too. In fact, the season finale became the most popular "entertainment programme ever" on Sky, reaching a record 3.1 million homes on June 15th.
Australia passes controversial law to block 'pirate' sites
Australia's senate has passed a controversial bill allowing sites hosted overseas that distribute pirated material to be blocked at the ISP level. But which sites to block is not up to the service providers to choose, instead movie and music studios and other rights holders can go to a federal court and demand sites whose "primary purpose" is the illegal sharing of copyrighted material be blocked by the country's ISPs. For obvious reasons, the providers are not particularly happy with the result of the vote. Especially since it's not clear who will be footing the bill for any costs associated with blocking the sites. But those internet companies had plenty of allies in the battle against the bill, including the country's green party. But the coalition wasn't enough to fight off the entertainment industry.
There's now a Popcorn Time clone for porn
Using Bittorrent to pirate brand-new movies and TV is nothing new, but Popcorn Time's genius was to wrap the activity in an easy-to-use, Netflix-esque bundle. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before someone used the system's freely available technology to build the exact same system, but, you know, for porn. The unimaginatively named Porn Time does exactly what you think it does, letting you pull down high-resolution grot and push them to your TV via a Chromecast or Airplay device. We would test it, but a) this is an AOL-owned computer and we don't want to be fired, and b) the creators should have, surely, called it PopPorn Time. Right? [Image Credit: Getty]
Guess who's (kinda) keeping 'Rock Band 4' from PCs
Rock Band 4 arrives on the PC-like Xbox One and PS4, so it made sense for Eurogamer to ask if the game would ever make its way onto the real thing. Unfortunately, PC gamers won't be getting a version of their own, and it looks as if the music labels' heavy-handed demands for anti-piracy measures are to blame. In an interview, Harmonix project director Daniel Sussman explained that the two consoles have various secure tools that make it hard for users to get at the assets inside each game. PCs, in his words, are more of an "open platform," which would put the onus on Harmonix to protect the "licensed music" that's featured in the title. Squint hard enough and those lines roughly translate to: we could, but labels want us to lock their music up so tight that it'd be impossible to achieve on the PC.
UK ISPs ordered to block e-book piracy sites
In a major victory for book publishers, the UK's High Court has ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to block several sites offering pirated e-books. The decision means that BT, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and EE now have 10 days to comply and ensure their customers can't access the following link depositories: AvaxHome, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwap, Libgen, Bookfi and Bookre. The Publishers Association (PA), which sought the blocks under the UK's Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988, claims the sites collectively hold around 10 million e-books, and that at least 80 percent of them are infringing copyright. It's been described as the "first action of its kind brought by UK book publishers," following similar ISP blocks levied against sites hosting music, movies and TV shows.
Popcorn Time-like pirate movie streaming comes to the web (update: poof)
Popcorn Time's less-than-legit movie streaming has been available on lots of devices, but the web? Not so much. However, some enterprising developers have seen fit to make that happen in an unofficial capacity. Meet Popcorn in Your Browser, a simple torrent-based video service you can use in any web browser. As with above-board subscription services like Netflix, all you do is search for the title you want and start watching.
'Game of Thrones' pirated 3.5 million times despite HBO Now
HBO seemed certain that offering customers the option to watch without a cable subscription through its $15/month "HBO Now" app would help curb the rampant piracy afflicting its most popular shows. Nope! Variety reports that the latest episode of HBO's megahit "Game of Thrones" has been illegally downloaded 3.5 million times, in a single 24-hour period. That's a new record. Per Danish piracy tracking site Excipio, this season's episode six edged out last week's record-setting 3.22 million downloads. And given that Excipio only really covers P2P piracy, not direct download websites, those numbers are probably a little light. This, of course, comes after the first four episodes of the season were leaked online a full day before the HBO premiere in April. It's enough to make one to just up and start murdering popular lead characters. [Image Credit: Getty]
The internet's biggest TV pirate calls it quits after scam
If you enjoy getting the latest TV shows from EZTV, you may want to stop that now, and not just because it's illegal. It's also more risky, because the hugely popular torrent site is now in the hands of potentially bad actors, according to TorrentFreak. Former staffers said that EZTV's founder "NovaKing" was the victim of a hostile takeover by a for-profit group, following a series of wacky (and ironic) events. The problems started when Italy's .IT registry suspended the original site's domain name, and what followed was something out of a high-tech Kafka novel.
Pirated Windows 10 installations will rock a desktop watermark
You dirty Windows pirates will have to live with a constant reminder of your crimes come Windows 10. Pirated versions of the new operating system will be stuck with a desktop watermark reminding users of their non-genuine status, Microsoft EVP of operating systems Terry Myerson said in a blog post today. The announcement comes after Myerson confused the tech world a few months ago by declaring that pirated versions of Windows could partake in Microsoft's free upgrade offer for Windows 10. It turns out that's not exactly true: The company later said that non-genuine installations would have to go through the Windows Store to upgrade to Windows 10, which was a strong hint that it would make pirates pay. Myerson notes today that Microsoft and its partners will offer "very attractive" genuine upgrade options for pirates.
Shutting down piracy sites is like playing Whac-A-Mole, says EU
The European Commission (EC) has finally confirmed what we've all known for years: if you shut down one online piracy site, another will simply take its place. A report published by the EC's Joint Research Center found that the closure of Kino.to, a popular unlicensed streaming site in Germany, had little impact on national online piracy. The team analysed the web activity of 5,000 German citizens, and found that while there was a sharp decline in June 2011, when the site was pulled offline by officials, average piracy levels quickly returned to normal. In addition, researchers concluded that Kino.to's demise did little to encourage licensed alternatives. Instead, a group of new illegal streaming sites rose to prominence -- kinox.to, mega-stream.to, video2k.tv and streams.to, among others.
Movie producers call for an end to the 'Six Strikes' rule
It may sound like the fictional government department that Patricia Arquette works for in CSI: Cyber, but that's not what the Internet Security Task Force is for. In fact, the ITSF is a group of independent film companies that have banded together to call for immediate reform on how internet piracy is handled. In a statement, entitled "Six Strikes and You're (Not Even Close To) Out," this gang of "small business owners" express dismay at America's Copyright Alert System.
Mysterious group relaunches Grooveshark (Update: not really)
Quasi-legal music streaming service Grooveshark shutdown earlier this month as part of a settlement agreement with major labels. But the internet wouldn't let it die. A mysterious team has resurrected the service. One of the team, an individual who calls himself Shark, told BGR, "well, I started backing up all the content on the website when I started suspecting that Grooveshark's demise is close and my suspicion was confirmed a few days later when they closed." The relaunched music-stealing site is a shadow of its former self, but Shark's team hopes to recreate the defunct site's entire UI experience including playlists and favorites. It's unclear if the team is affiliated in any way with the former Grooveshark. Whoever they are, the team behind this zombie version of the site should expect the same type of copyright lawsuits from record labels. Update: As pointed out by commenters, this "resurrected" Grooveshark site is nothing more than a re-skin of music piracy site MP3juices. The privacy policy, copyright and search results are identical on both sites. So someone stole Grooveshark's identity sort like its users were stealing music.
