Dotcom Wins Privacy Breach Case Against New Zealand Government

Following the Megaupload shutdown and the raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion, many hours have been spent on the case in courts around the world.

While Dotcom and several of his former colleagues were targeted for alleged copyright crimes, thus far the major battles have been focused on other legal aspects of the case.

In a complaint filed at the Human Rights Tribunal, Dotcom accused the New Zealand Government of improperly withholding information. In 2015 Dotcom asked 28 ministers and several government departments to disclose information they held on him, without result.

The requests were labeled as “urgent” due to Dotcom’s pending legal case, but then-Attorney General Chris Finlayson denied them as being vexatious and without sufficient grounds.

Today the Human Rights Tribunal ruled that, by denying the requests, “…the Crown to be in clear breach of its obligations under the Privacy Act,” awarding the Megaupload founder $90,000 in damages for “loss of dignity or injury to feelings.”

While the financial windfall must be welcome, Dotcom also sees this ruling as a big victory in the grander scheme of things. According to the New Zealand entrepreneur, it means that the U.S. extradition bid is dead in the water.

“What does the Human Rights Tribunal Judgement mean for my Extradition case? It is OVER!” Dotcom just tweeted

“By unlawfully withholding information that could have helped my case the former Attorney General of New Zealand has perverted the course of Justice,” he adds.

It’s over…?

In addition to awarding damages, the ruling also requires the ministers and Government to comply with the original requests, as Newshub writes.

The Tribunal’s decision is a clear win for Dotcom. While it doesn’t automatically end the extradition case, going forward it certainly doesn’t hurt the position of Megaupload’s founder.

Who it could hurt, according to Dotcom, is New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner John Edwards.

“I call for the immediate resignation of the Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand for his complicity with the former Attorney General and Crown Law in unlawfully withholding information that New Zealanders were legally entitled to,” Dotcom tweets.

The Privacy Commissioner retweeted Dotcom’s request without commenting on it, which elicited another blow from Dotcom.

“I appreciate the acknowledgment. The Human Rights Tribunal judgment makes you look utterly incompetent at best or co-conspiratorial at worst. Which is it? Either way, you’re done,” Dotcom added.

—

A copy of the Human Rights Tribunal ruling is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2DViZ6W
via IFTTT

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 03/26/18

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

The Greatest Showman is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(7)	The Greatest Showman	7.9 / trailer
2	(1)	Star Wars: The Last Jedi	7.4 / trailer
3	(…)	I Kill Giants	6.7 / trailer
4	(2)	Annihilation	7.2 / trailer
5	(3)	Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	7.7 / trailer
6	(6)	Black Panther (HDTS)	7.9 / trailer
7	(…)	Insidious: The Last Key	5.7 / trailer
8	(4)	The Shape of Water	8.0 / trailer
9	(5)	Maze Runner: The Death Cure (HDTC)	6.8 / trailer
10	(…)	All The Money in The World	7.0 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2I44pMO
via IFTTT

Rapidgator Plans to Launch Blockchain Powered File-Storage Platform

For several years, Rapidgator has been one of the leading file-sharing sites on the Internet.

While Rapidgator’s functionality hasn’t drastically changed in recent years, the site’s CEO has been working on an ambitious new project. This month, he’s introducing their blockchain powered file-sharing and distribution platform Market.space to the world.

Generally speaking, we’re not too eager to cover ICOs and new cryptocurrencies but with a major file-sharing player getting involved, we decided to take a closer look.

Simply speaking, the new platform will act as a hosting aggregator. Professional hosting services can offer their unused capacity, creating a market where consumers can pick the option that’s best for them, with bulletproof anonymity.

Decentralized file-storage services are not new by any means. Platforms such as Filecoin and Storj.io have been around for a while, so how does Market.space differentiate itself?

According to Rapidgator’s operator and CEO, Alex Rakhmanov, Market.space will focus on partnerships with large professional hosting companies. This as opposed to storing content on computers of the public.

“Market.space will be booking.com for storage where the customer can select the best location for his storage and the lowest price,” Rakhmanov says.

On the demand side, the audience can be quite diverse, ranging from companies who need a file-storage solution to artists or scientists who want to share their data.

The technical details and fine print of the plan are spelled out in the whitepaper, although it’s hard to judge a project without being able to try a working version. The most interesting part to us, at this point, is the link to Rapidgator, which is publicly promoted.

The Market.space website highlights the CEO and mentions Rapidgator as an established file-sharing platform with a storage capacity of more than 20 Petabytes and 40 million visitors per month.

Although that’s a testament to its file-sharing expertise, critics are likely to point out the piracy label copyright holders have applied to the site over the years.

Market.space’s Background

While the site can be used to share any type of file, it has often been criticized as a piracy haven. Earlier this year, the site was also featured on the US Trade Representative’s list of notorious markets.

These characterizations are not new, but Rapidgator’s CEO categorically refutes the claims.

“Rapidgator is a highly acclaimed file-sharing website, with an established technology behind it. We comply with the DMCA and remove files when they are reported,” Rakhmanov tells TorrentFreak.

He stresses that Rapidgator currently works with major industry players such as IFPI, who have direct access to their takedown tools. Market.space will also comply with DMCA takedown notices, although this isn’t expected to be a major issue.

“As for market.space it is more a business to business model. I don’t think there will be any copyright issues,” Rakhmanov says.

“Still, we’ll have to register the new project for DMCA purposes and remove files if they are reported. If a report is false, the user can send a counternotice and restore it,” he adds.

Market.space’s token sale, which will various tokens including SIA and Storj, starts on April 16. The ICO has a hard cap of $50 million, and a minimum of $15 million is required to get the project off the ground.

Market.space

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2G55BDf
via IFTTT

Russia Blocked 8,000 Pirate Sites in 2017, “Visits to Cinemas Up 11%”

Blocking sites is one of the most popular anti-piracy mechanisms of recent times. The practice is now commonplace in the UK, Europe, and Australia and, if entertainment industry groups get their way, it’ll soon be installed in Canada too.

While most regions with blocking legislation carry out their work with enthusiasm, perhaps surprisingly it’s Russia setting the standards. With almost constant amendments to copyright law, the country is able to block pirate sites, mirrors, and proxies in a very short timeframe indeed. And it has been doing so, in huge numbers.

According to data shared with Izvestia by local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor, in 2017 Russia blocked a staggering 8,000 pirate sites, more than any other country on the planet. In a clear sign of the way things are going, that figure represents a four-fold increase over the 2,000 sites that were blocked on copyright grounds in 2016.

While blocks can be authorized for infringement of copyright on everything from music to software and from books to TV shows, it is the movie industry leading the way in volume terms. In 65% of cases of site-blocking in 2017, the requests came from companies involved in the production and distribution of films.

Sheer volume aside, there’s nothing really surprising about the site-blocking movement in Russia. However, it differs from most other regions when it comes to assessing its usefulness.

Groups in many other countries have claimed that site-blocking is effective in reducing visits to pirate sites and even reducing piracy itself, but the majority steer clear of claiming that it actually does anything to increase sales. Not so Russia.

According to data from Russia’s Cinema Foundation cited by Rozcomnadzor alongside site-blocking statistics, last year “the aggregate box office of the national film distribution” grew by 10.9% amounting to 53.6 billion rubles [US$927.3m], up from 48.4 billion rubles [US$837.3m] in 2016.

In addition, the telecoms regulator said that cinema attendance across the country had increased by 11.4% over the previous year.

A court process is required to block infringing sites that fail to cooperate when rightsholders ask for content to be taken down. Those that push the boundaries by refusing to remove content on multiple occasions can find themselves blocked on a permanent basis.

In 2017, a total of 530 sites were added to Russia’s permanent blacklist, up from ‘just’ 107 sites in 2017. In addition, 459 pirate site “mirrors” were blocked by ISPs with no hope of reprieve. Following changes to the law last October, permanently blocked sites are also removed from search engine results.

But while the current system presents no significant obstacles to having many thousands of sites blocked during the course of a year, Russian authorities want more anti-piracy tools in their arsenal. New proposals would see pirate sites blocked without the need for any court process at all.

It’s already possible to have mirror sites blocked without a separate process but if the Ministry of Culture has its way, copyright complaints issued to hosting services and sites that go completely unanswered without deletion of content could suffer the same fate.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2pFeZ5v
via IFTTT

Demonoid Surpasses 10 Million User Registrations

As one of the oldest torrent communities online, the Demonoid tracker has gone though many ups and downs.

The site has disappeared for months, more than once, but always reappeared. That by itself is already quite an accomplishment, but this month the semi-private tracker also reached a numerical milestone.

After 14 years, the 10 millionth user signed up a few days ago. To put this into perspective; That’s the entire population of Sweden, and then some.

Of course, the majority of these users are not active anymore. Some have moved on to other torrent sites, stopped using torrents completely, or kicked the piracy habit for good.

TorrentFreak reached out to Demonoid founder Deimos, who mentioned another caveat. While 10 million people have indeed signed up over the years, roughly two million have been banned or disabled since.

Still, it remains a fascinating statistic.

The main goal of Demonoid was never to get 10 million registered users. Instead, the site would have preferred a smaller but more active community, which is how it all started.

But a lot has changed since 2004. There have been some internal struggles in recent years and aside from a few oldies who stuck around, the site is made up of different people now.

“The main difference is the people, the group is completely different from what it was,” Deimos tells us.

The old forum is no longer active either. Instead, the link on the site now directs users to the official Demonoid community on Reddit. Another sign of the times.

Going forward, Demonoid is hoping to regain the community and vibe it had over a decade ago. Not an easy task with much more pressure and tension surrounding torrent sites, but that’s the ultimate goal.

“I think we are getting back to basics, what the Demon community was at the beginning, which was the coolest aspect of the site IMHO. We might not be there yet but we are closer now,” Deimos concludes.

At the time of writing, Demonoid’s registration is open to the public, but that changes frequently.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2G8UeGe
via IFTTT

Repeat Infringer Policy Doesn’t Have to Be Spelled Out, Appeals Court Rules

The “repeat infringer” issue is a hot topic in US Courts, leading to much uncertainty among various Internet services.

Under the DMCA, companies are required to implement a reasonable policy to deal with frequent offenders.

This not only applies to commercial Internet providers, as Cox found out the hard way, but also to websites that host user-uploaded content, such as video and image hosting services.

Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order that provides some further clarification on how a repeat infringer policy should be documented.

The case in question was filed by adult content producer Ventura Content, which accused the adult-themed site Motherless of copyright infringement. While Motherless relies on user-uploaded content, the adult producer argued that it is liable for pirated content on its site.

In a majority ruling, the Court found that Motherless did not know about the alleged infringements before the lawsuit was filed and removed them within a day of being properly alerted.

This means that the site is entitled to safe harbor protection if it implemented a reasonable repeat infringer policy, which brings us to the crux of the case.

The operator of the site, Joshua Lange, is the sole employee who single-handedly deals with all takedown requests. The site also has a page informing users that there is a repeat infringer policy, without providing specific details.

The adult content producer argued that the site had failed to reasonably implement such a policy, but the Court disagreed, noting that the DMCA doesn’t prescribe a written policy.

“The details of the termination policy are not written down. However, the statute does not say that the policy details must be written, just that the site must inform subscribers of ‘a policy’ of terminating repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances,” the Court states.

In this case, the details of the policy were in the mind of the operator, who made his decisions based on a case-by-case evaluation.

“Lange uses his judgment, not a mechanical test, to terminate infringers based on the volume, history, severity, and intentions behind a user’s infringing content uploads.”

The fact that the details of the policy were not spelled out doesn’t mean that Motherless has no safe harbor protection, although this may be different for large companies.

“A company might need a written policy to tell its employees or independent contractors what to do if there were a significant number of them, but Motherless is not such a firm.

“So the lack of a detailed written policy is not by itself fatal to safe harbor eligibility. Neither is the fact that Motherless did not publicize its internal criteria,” the Court adds.

Surprisingly, the site’s operator didn’t keep any written logs of repeat infringers either. He simply kept track of them in his head and terminated more than a thousand accounts this way. This didn’t work flawlessly, as a few repeat infringers slipped through, but the Court believes it was good enough.

“It is tempting, perhaps, to say that a policy is not ‘reasonably’ implemented if it does not include both a database of users whose uploads have generated DMCA notices and some automated means of catching them if they do it again. But the statute does not require that,” the order reads.

Overall, the Court sides with Motherless and its operator and affirmed the summary judgment in its favor.

This case is unique in many ways. Among other things, it shows that written details or logs are not always required for a “reasonable” repeat infringer policy. While this could be different for large companies, it is likely to be referenced frequently in related cases.

This week, hosting provider Steadfast was quick to use the ruling to argue that it sufficiently adopted and informed users of its repeat infringer policy.

—-

A copy of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2IRSumE
via IFTTT

Japan Becomes Latest Country to Consider Pirate Site Blocking

When attempting to deal with the flood of pirate content on the Internet, companies have many options at their disposal.

One of the most controversial is site-blocking, but despite its unpopularity with consumers, dozens of countries around the world are now involved in the practice. Quite regularly new countries consider getting involved, Canada for example. The latest new addition is Japan.

Speaking at a news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the Japanese government is considering taking measures to prohibit access to pirate sites, largely to protect the country’s manga and anime industries.

“The damage is getting worse. We are considering the possibilities of all measures including site blocking,” he said.

“Manga and anime are important types of content that represent the ‘Cool Japan’ initiative. I would like to take countermeasures as soon as possible under the cooperation of the relevant ministries and agencies.”

Cool Japan is a campaign to promote Japan, its culture, products and businesses both at home and overseas, in order to generate interest in the country while boosting investment and tourism.

Outline of the Cool Japan initiative

According to a lawyer cited by the Sankei news outlet, piracy in Japan is largely facilitated by roughly two kinds of sites – hosting and linking.

While the former can be anywhere but can be dealt with locally, Japan has an estimated 200 sites that link to pirated content. Their legal status doesn’t appear to be as clear as many would like.

“In the conventional theory the link itself is not illegal,” the lawyer notes. “There is no legal basis to declare the act of facilitating piracy of other sites as ‘illegal’. Without a [linking] site, many users can not reach pirated versions, [so the government] needs to define malicious [linking] sites properly and regulate them.”

It appears that like many nations, Japan doesn’t view piracy as a predominantly domestic issue, at least on the supply front. In common with the UK, Australia and many other ‘blocking’ nations, it sees the problem as being fueled by overseas actors over which it has limited control. Site-blocking locally, therefore, could stop the problem at the borders.

Whether any plan will be any more effective than the programs elsewhere will remain to be seen but since the Japanese hold both anime and manga close to their hearts, the debate is bound to get emotional.

“As long as the normal business model of content is undermined, the number of people trying to become new professional creators will decrease, and if you are an animator, know-how such as drawing, editing and reviewing may be lost. There is a danger that you will be unable to read interesting cartoons in future, as the biggest victim of piracy is actually the reader himself,” the lawyer concludes.

This past week saw perhaps the single wildest display of copyright infringement ever directed at Japanese culture by those in authority. Local governments across South America defied the Japanese government by airing the latest episode of Dragon Ball Super in public places to tens of thousands of people, all without obtaining the necessary licensing.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

from TorrentFreak https://ift.tt/2HZQQxN
via IFTTT