Earlier this month, blogger Aldor Nini (who also works for anti-piracy solutions company Easycom) wrote an independent article that was published on BuildBlog.de.

The post titled “UseNeXT: Legitimate downloading of pirated movies” gave a highly detailed account of UseNeXT’s operations, along with information on how the service operates in respect of pirated movie content. For anyone interested in the company or Usenet in general (and can take the anti-piracy objective and language with a pinch of salt), it is a must-read – but not without controversy.

As many people who have written potentially negative pieces or forum posts about UseNeXT will confirm, the company is very quick to notice such items, and in this case the reaction was no different.

Within two days the author and publisher of the post received “pre-litigation” letters from UseNeXT’s lawyers, ordering it to censor certain claims made in the article. UseNeXT says that they received information that the article had been sent to an employee at Warner Bros and are insisting that claims made within are erroneous and will negatively affect UseNeXT’s public image.

Article author Aldor Nini gave TorrentFreak a list of claims made in the article which he says are being disputed by UseNeXT’s lawyers;

The article claims that:

Undeterred, Nini says that he stands by his claims. “The comments are correct and true,” he told TorrentFreak, “and we’re looking forward to proving that!”

Nini also points out a section about free-speech on UseNeXT’s website, translated from German below;

“Everyone has the right to gain knowledge as well as to make public and disseminate, in written and spoken, his word by using the UseNeXT service. Nobody should be afraid to be discriminated due to his religious or political position by using the Usenet.”

Nini says that he believes that this is a great statement that should apply to everyone. Therefore his article will stand uncensored on both Usenet and the web.

TorrentFreak will monitor the situation closely and report on further developments and (possible) threats against ourselves.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

But of course, being hacked isn’t the sole preserve of these organizations, it can happen to file-sharing sites too. In November 2008 a hacker tried to gain control of Torrentz.com and at the beginning of June NowTorrents had its own problems.

Today we bring news of another sizable hack, this time affecting Italy’s most prominent BitTorrent site, TNT Village. A hacker targeted the 50,000 member site and made off with the site’s database.

The admin of TNT Village explains: “A son of a bitch was able to discover my password. With it in recent days he has removed the TNT database. I then proceeded to change my password but in the meantime he/they had taken some sensitive data to users, and yesterday they were made public.”

Indeed, a torrent of the stolen data has appeared on various BitTorrent indexes. The data contained within is largely in Italian but a source with an interest in security breaches told TorrentFreak that the archive contains very sensitive information.

The site’s database schema, the actual database with around 50,000 usernames, passwords and emails, a list of site donors and private messages have all been leaked.

The site has taken steps to limit the damage but concerned users should change their passwords immediately, at the very least.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Aside from punishing actual file-sharers, the bill allows the courts to take measures against people who have done no sharing, but are accused simply because they are the one paying the ISP bill. If the court decides that an account holder is guilty of “negligence” – by somehow allowing others to file-share on their connection – it is within a judge’s power to issue a fine up to 1,500 euros along with a 4 week disconnection.

Now, according to Le Monde, some French hackers have come together to throw confusion into the mix, so that punishing these individuals is not a straightforward or guaranteed accurate procedure.

A hacker known only as ‘N’ says he has developed some software known as ‘Hadopi Router’, a term first penned by bloggers who devised the concept. ‘N’, who is said to have previously worked manufacturing routers, says he and a few friends wrote ‘Hadopi Router’ in order to prove that the evidence gathered by the Hadopi agency is unreliable.

“It locates Wi-Fi networks in the neighborhood, then begins to crack all their passwords,” says ‘N’. “Once we have the keys, we can create a virtual access point,” which in basic terms means using the Internet connection without the account holder’s knowledge.

‘N’ says that if an ‘owned’ router has its password changed, the system automatically switches to another Wi-Fi signal in the neighborhood and starts to attack the new password.

Additionally, ‘N’ claims that with Hadopi Router it is possible to monitor activity on the cracked networks but one of his accomplices called ‘V’ says they have no bad intentions.

“We just want to release our software and allow everyone to understand that the technical data used by the Hadopi agency to accuse people will not be reliable. Because of us, the judges will not be able to say that they weren’t aware of that.”

‘N’ says he is already imagining a more ambitious strategy to distribute many dozens of modified routers to a community in order to create a “mini-network”, superimposed over existing ones.

Of course, many wireless routers already have either a complete lack of security or weak WEP encryption enabled, making them sitting ducks for drive-by infringements or less casual ones conducted by neighbors within range.

An IP address does not necessarily identify an individual, in fact one could argue that in many instances these days it doesn’t even identify a computer but merely a gateway to a sub network, behind which could be any number of individuals not linked in any way to a bill payer.

Time will tell how French judges will rule in these “negligence” cases, especially when they have just 5 minutes to do so.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

BREIN says that FTD operates illegally but the Usenet community and its specialist IT lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet of Ictrecht law firm vigorously deny this and are now taking legal action the Dutch anti-piracy outfit. The background to the case can be found in our earlier article, and a more detailed report on the action against BREIN here.

Yesterday, while BREIN’s site was still supposedly out of action following an alleged (or Hoaxed) DDoS attack from Pirate Bay fans, it published a further report about FTD, which was hidden on its site away from easy public viewing. Strangely the same page at the time of writing is password protected and the report unavailable, but we have a copy and translation.

Entitled ‘BREIN Demands Closure of FTD’, the anti-piracy outfit went on to say that if FTD does not close it will require a penalty of 50,000 euros ($70,000) per day against the service, in addition to compensation and full reimbursement of costs. BREIN said that FTD “organizes and promotes” Usenet content, most of which is illegal.

BREIN then refers to earlier discussions it had with FTD, noting that it asked FTD to cease its “structural use of illegal content” in early 2009. The two sides had entered discussions to see if they could iron out their difficulties. Following on, FTD pro-actively modified how they operate to ensure that there could be no doubt as to their legality.

“After we made the changes, we got complete radio silence from BREIN. No confirmation, no rejection, nothing,” Arnoud explained. “Only after several days we found out what BREIN thought – but only by reading the online news. That was a huge disappointment.”

The news saw BREIN declare that FTD was a criminal operation in an article titled “You do not pay for it, it’s unlawful” and this led to FTD taking legal action against BREIN to try to clear their name by having their operation declared legal by a court. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD.

Tim Kuik from BREIN now says that it is clear that FTD “continued their abuses unabated” and that the modifications they made were only made to hide the “true nature” of the site.

“It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Kuik. “FTD earn money with a system that exists by virtue of the huge supply of illegal content to Usenet.” Mirroring the disappointment felt at FTD, Kuik added: “It is disappointing but illustrates that BREIN’s outstretched hand has been cut off.”

So what exactly does this claim for 50,000 euros per day mean for FTD? Lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet told TorrentFreak that BREIN did not ask the court for damages. Legally they are barred from asking for damages – article 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code says that an organization that represents the interests of a certain group can never ask for damages. They asked instead for a penal sum of 50k euros if FTD were ordered by the court to shut down but it refused.

“The idea is that a court can order you to shut down but you can ignore the court,” said Arnoud. “With the penal sum, you risk that the court will then sell your house or seize other assets. In principle that’s legal, but the amount is of course ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous also sums up my view of the BREIN counterclaim. Instead of addressing any of the points we raised, they simply repeat their standard rhetoric. Nowhere is the distinction made between uploading works and telling people that someone has uploaded a work for (legal) download. And downloading illegal uploads is legal in the Netherlands,” notes Arnoud.

“BREIN is not known for its careful handling of the truth,” he added. “They are a propaganda organization after all.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In November 2008, someone used a forged CA driver’s license to take over Torrentz.com, and put some of his own ads on the site. Luckily, the hijack took less than a day to bring to an end and things were back to normal before most users even noticed that something was wrong. But Torrentz is not the only torrent site to interest hackers.

NowTorrents, a torrent meta-search engine that recently acquired a spot among the 10 most visited torrent sites on the Internet, is facing a similar problem. This morning, the admin of the site noticed that he was no longer in control of the domain name as it was transferred to a new registrar, GoDaddy.

Coincidentally, the admin also had two of his email accounts hacked, which could very well be the cause of the domain troubles. He told TorrentFreak that he is doing all he can to resolve the issues. Google has reinstated one of his email accounts after some emails back and forth.

GoDaddy, where the domain was transferred after it was hijacked, is currently looking into the case. It can usually take up to a week before the domain gets transferred back to the rightful owner, the admin said. However, by putting in some calls to a supervisor at GoDaddy he hoped to speed up this process a little.

How the ‘hacker’ gained access to the domains remains a mystery for now. The email password was secure and not really guessable, and all signs currently point to a keylogger. It wouldn’t be the first time that this has happened to an admin of a torrent site.

Nevertheless, the admin of NowTorrents is confident that he will soon regain access to his site. Meanwhile its users will have to be patient and look for alternatives until the site comes back.

Update: the site is coming back slowly, waiting for the DNS to propagate.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Yesterday things took a turn for the sinister. At around 12:00 noon and after a sleepless night, Juan heard a knock at his door and upon answering it he saw five people standing there who gave no other explanation who they were, other than they were from the court. They gave Juan documentation that he didn’t fully comprehend and gave him the impression that they had a warrant to enter his home and make an inspection of his computers and hard drives.

It appears they came looking for the stats from Elitemula and Etmusica which reflect the downloads of music made via links on those sites between September and December 2007.

Juan explains, “They entered my house and I called them to show them where the computers were in the house. I showed them my personal laptop, but they insisted on seeing them all, including my brother’s.”

This wasn’t enough for the unexpected visitors who proceeded to enter every room in the house and even opened up some cardboard boxes in Juan’s bedroom which merely contained personal family belongings.

“A man who identified himself as a ‘computer expert’ reviewed the contents of my personal computers and then tried to access my brother’s computer,” Juan explained. However, since the laptop was password protected the ‘expert’ prompted Juan to provide the password, which he couldn’t since he didn’t know it. After a telephone call to Juan’s brother which understandably worried him, he handed over the password which allowed the ‘expert’ to make a detailed investigation of the laptop. They went on to examine several other hard drives.

After the five individuals had been inside for two hours, Juan finally managed to get lawyer David Bravo on the telephone who, along with Javier de la Cueva, recently defended P2P developer Pablo Soto. David asked Juan to read out the order which supposedly allowed these individuals to enter his home and search it.

Over the telephone, David Bravo confirmed that the text of the order did not authorize entry to Juan’s house or examination of hardware held there. Understandably concerned, Juan asked David to demand that the five people in his home identify themselves.

The first man was a lawyer for Spanish music rights/anti-piracy group SGAE, the second a SGAE computer expert, another a clerk and others unidentified.

At this point David Bravo told Juan to order the individuals out of his home and demanded that they leave all of his property intact. After a long conversation where the SGAE lawyer tried to convince that seizure of hard drives was allowed, David Bravo urged him to leave Juan’s home immediately.

David Bravo gave Juan instructions on how to proceed and offered to appear before the courts as a witness to what had happened. Javier de la Cueva, David’s partner, told TorrentFreak that he will be representing Juan.

In the end the five left Juan’s house and left the hard drives behind, although Juan voluntarily allowed them to take a laptop.

As soon as we have more on this story we will publish an update.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, the closure of FMT didn’t go unnoticed. Over in Spain the admin of Karmorra – an ex-FMT user – became very disappointed that the site was forced to close and decided to do something about filling the hole FMT left behind.

He told TorrentFreak, “I was a FeedMyTorrents user (I loved the service!) and I didn’t like the fact they closed because of legal threats. So, with the help of some friends, I released a service that does the same thing that they did.”

And so showRSS was born.

The site is minimal right now, but very functional. Users are required to register a username and password so that feeds can be customized easily. Once logged in, this is achieved by clicking the ‘my tv shows’ button and choosing the show required and clicking ‘Add to My List’ – this can be repeated any number of times to add multiple shows to a personalized RSS feed.

That’s pretty much it as far as input goes. From the TV shows chosen, showRSS generates a single RSS feed to all your favorite shows. By configuring an RSS-compatible client like uTorrent with the feed, all shows will downloaded automatically when they become available.

All the feeds will only list one torrent per episode, meaning that no duplicates will appear in the RSS feeds. Currently only standard definition torrents are supported, however, showRSS is working on adding high definition feeds as well. There is no doubt that TV-torrent addicts will appreciate the new service, but what if the entertainment industry lawyers come calling?

The admin of showRSS told TorrentFreak that he isn’t worried by legal threats – they’ve even opened a Pirate Bay-style ‘Legal Threats‘ section on the site to showcase anyone foolish enough to send them any. But why the cavalier attitude? It’s quite simple. Since the admin is in Spain and torrent sites have been ruled legal there if no revenue is generated directly from an infringement.

“I won’t get any benefits or put any kind of ads on the website, I’m paying the server with my own money,” he told TorrentFreak.

“In Spain that’s 100% legal.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

According to the release info the documents were released by the ‘Keyzer Defender’ and were obtained from Keyzer’s girlfriend’s Hotmail account. “These attachments are taken from mails in the Hotmail account belonging to Jim Keyzer’s girlfriend. Also included are login credentials and some of Jim’s passwords,” it reads.

Keyzer has contacted the Pirate Bay team and said that he found it unfortunate that his girlfriend was hacked because of his involvement with The Pirate Bay case. He did not ask for the torrent to be removed, which shows that he learned at least one thing during the investigation.

Keyzer became the subject of some controversy when he started working for Warner Bros. before the Pirate Bay investigation was closed. After a short stay at the movie company Keyzer terminated his leave of absence, and returned to the IT Crime Unit in Stockholm.

The Pirate Bay crew were not amused by Keyzer’s dual role, and filed a complaint with the police. The police looked into the case briefly but decided not to investigate it because there was “no reason to believe that a crime has been committed by anyone employed by the police.”

During the Pirate Bay trial Keyzer inexplicably disappeared but now weeks later, his girlfriend appears to have been dragged into the dispute. The Pirate Bay certainly provokes a certain passion in their fanbase, and some are clearly prepared to go to extreme lengths to show that their beloved site is not to be messed with.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Uploading fakes to a BitTorrent network is relatively easy, but keeping the torrents active is a much more difficult task. The moderation teams on private trackers remove fakes as soon as they appear – if people are stupid enough to even try to upload them. Other directories such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova, however, are more difficult to police due to their open nature but these sites continually battle fakes too.

There are several forces driving this phenomenon. Of course, the likes of the MPAA and their partners like to upload fakes in order to waste downloader’s time and to monitor their activities. That said, there are others who are uploading fakes in order to make themselves money, with many of the fakes simply encouraging the use of malware such as Domplayer, or sending the user ostensibly to get passwords to view the video, but in reality directing them to spammy sites.

Unless you’ve been on Mars for a few years, you will be aware that aXXo is one of the strongest BitTorrent-related brands and as such, the aXXo name is ripe to be exploited with fake torrents and the schemes behind them. This morning, Mininova was bombarded with hundreds of fake aXXo torrents linking to various malware and spam schemes. Luckily the moderation staff at Mininova are very much on the ball, and their skills and experience allowed them to remove them very quickly. Indeed, the thousands of users at Mininova also help by informing the site that a torrent is not what it should be, but it’s an on-going battle.

When a fake is removed from the site, the IP address of the uploader is also banned, meaning that unless the uploader gets himself a new IP, he won’t be able to upload any more. However, the problem is a lot deeper than just the odd person here and there uploading a fake. Just recently malware and spam peddlers have been advertising online for people to work for them on a freelance basis, uploading fakes to torrent sites and getting paid for each one. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have taken them up on their offers, getting paid around 20 cents for each successful upload. The scammers mitigate the effects of their worker’s IPs being banned by torrent sites by advertising for people with dynamically assigned IP addresses, while encouraging them to use proxies.

We spoke with Moe1210 at Mininova who told us that for them, although time consuming, the aXXo fakes are easiest to spot, and they are often removed from the site in a matter of minutes. However, due to these teams of hired individuals doing the uploading, the sheer number of fake torrents is significant. Even though the mod team are checking the site every 5 minutes, sometimes in that period 50 fakes could’ve been uploaded. On a regular day, the amount of fakes uploaded can reach 2,500.

In the ongoing battle the scammers are getting a little smarter, adjusting the way they operate as the challenge is met by Mininova. They became aware that at certain times of the day the fakes stayed on Mininova for longer periods before being removed, which was down to fluctuating staffing levels due to people having to sleep, rest and venture back into real-life every now and again. To counter this, Mininova now have a worldwide team which cover the major time zones.

Speaking of fake aXXo torrents, Moe1210 told TorrentFreak, “It’s a pretty pointless task uploading a torrent with aXXo in the title trying to trick people [on Mininova]. I’d say that 75% – 80% of our members know that if the torrent is not from aXXo’s account, its fake – meaning, if they check the ‘general’ tab and aXXo’s name is not in red letters, it’s fake! They [the scammers] have no way of spoofing this.”

Many fake torrents are using a tracker located at http://bt9.c7q.fast1010.info, which is hosted with Ecatel in The Netherlands. In order to trick users into believing the torrents it tracks are real, the tracker is faking the download statistics, as can be seen with this fake on TorrentPortal, which at the time of writing is reporting 76278 seeders and 82380 leechers.

The torrent contains an unusable video and a password.html file which claims to reveal a password to play the file, but instead leads the user into a quagmire of spammy sites.

Users looking to avoid these fakes should read our previous article entitled Stop Downloading Fakes and Junk From BitTorrent. In the meantime be aware that the same people behind the aXXo fakes are behind file names such as ‘Race to Witch Mountain 2009 DVDRIP XviD BangeR’, and ‘Watchmen 2009 DVDRIP SeedeRz’.

As a final thought, TorrentFreak asked Ecatel if they intend to do anything about the fakes tracker. They told us, “Ecatel does not allow any spam and malware in its network.” And then it became clear. The tracker hosted at Ecatel doesn’t host the content, the users do – like all trackers. Sometimes the law’s such an ass.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The paper, which claims to “provide an as objective as possible assessment of the countermeasures for P2P” initially left us skeptical. But, with one or two exceptions, it does what it claims to do. Other companies and politicians should take note of this. Below we look at the conclusions of the report – some we were actually moved to applaud, while others were slightly cringe worthy.

The Good

DNS Blocking

“Blocking of IP addresses could be an additional measure in a combination of different measures, but is not the salvation of the problem itself.“

Ipoque comes to the right conclusion here. Indeed, DNS blocking is not very effective. As has been proven by The Pirate Bay in their dispute in Denmark, these methods really don’t work.

URL Filters

“URL filters are widely available. Centrally hosted services such as Piratebay and even BitTorrent trackers could be blocked. An up-to-date list of URLs is a necessary prerequisite to make this measure effective. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to keep the URL database current. Affected sites could rapidly change URLs and propagate these changes. Ultimately, this would result in a never-ending cat and mouse game.“

Again the report is spot on. The Internet Watch Foundation in the UK showed that blocklists don’t work well when applied to known sites and content. On a sidenote, file-sharers who use blocklists like PeerGuardian to filter peers of uncertain identity, face the same problem.

Swarm Poisoning

“[The injection of counterfeits] have driven file sharers to the BitTorrent network, that is nearly immune against injection of fake files, mainly because content distribution is organized through web based torrent directories such as thepiratebay.org. Conclusion: The injection of counterfeits is no effective countermeasure anymore.”

They are right, it doesn’t. Not on well moderated torrent sites at least.

Fingerprint systems

“Due to its computational complexity, fingerprinting does not work in real-time for high-speed networks. Also, even though ever more file and compression formats are supported, fingerprinting is blind to encrypted archive files (e.g. password-protected ZIP files), and these are becoming more and more popular. Largescale deployment of fingerprinting technology would push the popularity of all kinds of encryption and render the whole technology useless as a countermeasure.”

This ties in with what we said last year about such systems and BitTorrent. These methods are highly ineffective.

DRM

“In the past, any DRM mechanism was hacked or otherwise circumvented. This is highly likely to happen to new systems as well.”

DRM doesn’t work, and has not worked. One person breaching it is all it takes, thanks to the Internet. Spore is a great example of how DRM only affects legitimate purchasers, and not the people it attempts to target.

The Summary

“First, and most importantly, content providers need to provide other high-quality, well priced and easily accessible online content. New business models are inevitable. In the long run, this will make illegitimate sharing of copyright-protected material through the Internet a lot less interesting.”

This is the crux. It’s why rights owners are burying their heads in the sand, in the hope it will go away. It’s not surprising, however, that rights owners do not wish to move to a model that gives a smaller return-per-unit.

The Bad

URL Whitelisting

“An example is Ipoque’s BitTorrent tracker whitelisting, that allows access to guaranteed legal BitTorrent content, while blocking access to all other P2P content. This approach works because nearly all legal P2P content is distributed over BitTorrent using dedicated and controlled BitTorrent trackers.”

Simply banning a huge number of BitTorrent trackers because they are open to all users doesn’t seem to be a good idea. One of the most eye-opening things about P2P is the sheer wealth of data it gives access to. Some may be in violation of civil or criminal law, but a lot isn’t. The same applications that can be used to share a game, can be used to promote a band, or distribute political protest by groups large and small.

Automatic detection tools

“Such systems can detect infringements nationally and internationally. The location is not important. Especially automatic detection systems work highly efficiently and produce court-proof evidence data. This measure is very difficult to circumvent”

Yes, the only problem is that these tools are not very accurate. They target dead people, printers, those that have never shared, and everyone else falsely accused. Strangely, they point this out themselves 2 paragraphs earlier:

“Active monitoring has garnered a bad reputation because content providers have in the past often tried to criminalize copyright infringers and imposed ridiculous penalties as a deterrent. In addition, there have been flawed lawsuits with verdicts about persons with no Internet access. Careful investigation along with adequate penalties are necessary to improve the reputation of this measure”

The Ugly

Using Exploits

“As for any computer system, attacks are possible, and there are commercial providers offering this as a service. An attack on eDonkey, for instance, may have the effect that the downloaded file is larger than the original, and the download never finishes. There are similar attacks for BitTorrent.”

Using exploits in file-sharing networks and clients is of course insane. Moreover, depending on the vulnerabilities exploited, this could be a violation of criminal law. At best, as with the Sony Rootkits, exploiting software systems like this is at least reputation-damaging. Of course, there’s also…

The Great!

Encrypted communication

“Encrypted communication and private file sharing networks can only be controlled by criminalistic methods involving a high effort.”

Again we applaud Ipoque for reaching the right conclusion. Not much we can say about this, except it’s the truth, and can’t be repeated often enough.

Is it a paper that is objective? Well, its the most objective one yet, but then that’s not saying much.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The site goes even further though. For every video file, Vertor takes several screenshots so users can verify that it is actually the film the title says it is. Similarly, for music torrents users can preview 20 seconds of the tracks, to avoid downloading the wrong files, wasting precious bandwidth.

Alex, the founder of Vertor explained to TorrentFreak: “If there is a video we extract screenshots, if there is a text file we save it on our server, if there is music we extract 20 second samples and if there is archive we open it and extract the list of files. Then we manually remove video files protected with DRM.” On an average day, 6000 torrents are downloaded, and between 2000 and 2500 torrents are verified and get published.

There is a downside to verifying all the torrents though. Since it takes some time to process, it can take one or two days before a fresh torrent appears on the site, which might be a problem for those who want to catch up with a TV-episode that aired yesterday. On the server side, the drawback is that these processes require some additional hardware. Alex told us that they use 6 Dual Xeons with 4 GB ram and 500GB of hard disk space.

It is therefore no surprise that it took a few weeks of verifying torrents before the Vertor project could go live. Currently there are 138439 torrents verified, and more than 5000 were removed because they contained a virus or a passworded archive. In addition, the site’s moderators blocked another 14445 torrents. Alex told us that they started to use new anti-virus software this week, which should be resulted in higher percentage of virus recognition.

Aside from the verification part, Vertor has another user friendly feature, as it allows users to download torrents in their browser with Bitlet, by clicking the “download from the web” button on the torrent detail page. For now, the site is completely ad-free, and Alex told us that he will try to keep it like that for as long as possible.

In summary, we think that Vertor has a lot of potential, especially for those people who are not familiar enough with BitTorrent to spot the bad stuff themselves.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Compared to the next largest eD2k site ‘Filenexus’, ShareReactor was twice the size, with millions of pageviews pushed through its servers before The Pirate Bay and Suprnova had even registered their domains.

On March 10th 2004, the site was shut down by Swiss police, who seized the servers and detained the site owner, Christian Riesen, aka Simon Moon, for a day for questioning. Almost immediately the ShareReactor forum reappeared but without the popular eD2k links, and it took until September 2006 for the site to make a full return under new management. However, it wasn’t to last, and within a month the site was closed again.

Of course, there are few things that the file-sharing community love more than a big comeback, and today they aren’t going to be disappointed. ShareReactor, one of the original file-sharing giants, is to return, this time with completely new management team and some serious backing in the form of The Pirate Bay, who will assist with hosting and PR.

Episode 19, in a network far, far away a lone technician plugs in the final cable into an almost forgotten big machine complex, identified by a faded green label as ‘ShareReactor’. Everything hums and comes alive. The first input from the technician is ‘But what does it all mean?’, to which the machines in unison reply: 42!

For eDonkey fans – particularly those who used the site back in 2004 – the site will immediately provide some nostalgia. Although the site has been redesigned, the team has decided to keep the original spirit of 2004 alive with a familiar theme and graphics. Additionally, all of the eD2k links the site had in its database will return, making a truly impressive library, and these are being complemented with fresh links across the whole content spectrum.

Some will argue that BitTorrent is a crucial requirement for a successful P2P site in 2008, and this fact hasn’t eluded the new ShareReactor team. The site will now index both eD2k and .torrent links, offering the very best that the world’s major networks have to offer. Indeed, some 500 new releases have been added already, with some releases on the site offered in dual format – both BitTorrent and eD2k.

‘Utopat’, who leads the four man admin team consisting of ‘chaykin’, ‘DCJoeDog’ and ‘O-MEGA, told TorrentFreak that the site will be keeping up to date with the latest TV series, with links to these being posted promptly to the site. Furthermore, each release – no matter if it relates to a TV show, movie, software or game – will not have multiple versions.

“If it’s not a private torrent site, you see the same TV show episode 20 times, the same game 50 times and with applications you might see hundreds of copies of the same thing,” he told TorrentFreak. On ShareReactor there will be just one .torrent and eD2k link for each release and these will be moderated, ensuring an easy choice for the user and guaranteeing quality.

“There are so many viruses, fake torrents or simply not-working torrents, it’s hard for many users to find what they want. Sure, the seasoned users know how to spot the bad apples, but let’s face it, that’s not the majority,” Utopat told us. These problems won’t be appearing on ShareReactor.

The core of many file-sharing sites lies in the strength of its forum community, and ShareReactor will be no different. The site will have a dedicated standalone forum and for ex-members looking for immediate membership, all they have to do is enter their previous username and password, since they have all been retained. Anyone with a shorter memory or simply new to the site can create a new login with ease.

For those looking to make a few friends and maybe meet up with some faces from the past, ShareReactor has an IRC channel – #ShareReactor on EFNet.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

If you have received a letter from lawyers Davenport Lyons (or indeed any other law-firm operating the same business model) accusing you of illegally sharing games, videos or music, this article will provide serious food for thought and give you the tools and knowledge to make your voice heard at a government level. It is unacceptable that people are being wrongfully accused. We believe that your names and addresses should not have been handed over to these lawyers in the first place, and that you should not have received a threatening letter.

This is a guest post from Michael Coyle of Lawdit Solicitors who is currently defending many of those accused in the Dream Pinball, Colin McRae Dirt, Call of Juarez and more recently, the various porn titles cases brought by DigiProtect in the UK. (Intros, links, editing and letter template added by TorrentFreak/Penumbra)

Alleged File-Sharers: Why the Information Commissioner Has Let You Down

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is a non-departmental public body reporting directly to Parliament. It is the office dealing with the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 in England and Wales.

UK ISPs were ordered earlier this year [and in 2007] by the High Court to disclose information relating to its customer’s data, based on information provided to them by amongst others, video games companies. The information sought was based on the customer’s IP address. Pursuant to CPR 31.18, lawyers applied for an order that the ISPs disclose the full name, postal address and telephone number of the subscriber of each of the IP addresses supplied.

The game plan was to match each IP address with an individual and write to them with a hefty threatening letter and a request for £500-600. If this sum was not paid, court action was threatened, costing tens of thousands of pounds. It all seemed fairly conclusive. The ISPs complied and the Lawyers [Davenport Lyons] commenced the enormous task of writing to over (so we understand) 25,000 potential infringers.

However it was only when responses started to flood in – many in their hundreds to Lawdit Solicitors – did it become clear that while IP addresses could reveal a name and real-life address, it did not reveal the culprit. It proved very little. It certainly did not prove that any copyright infringement had taken place, far from it. Only by inspecting the hard drive of the customer’s computer could you do this. If there were any other evidence to sit alongside the IP address, for example a user name or password of the file sharing software you could sympathize with the rights holder.

But to rely on the IP address alone is wholly disproportionate and has resulted in untold misery to many thousands of individuals. This whole affair sums up in my view how little the Information Commissioner (IC) is really concerned with an individual’s data. I am not aware of any publicly quoted concerns from the IC about this issue and he has remained silent as the forums and bulletin boards crackle with the indignation and invasion of individual’s data. You cannot blame the ISPs. As a Court Order was in place, why would an ISP go out on a limb for a few thousand customers?

But the IC ought to have been keeping a watchful eye out and at the very least issue a press release to offer individuals some comfort. The silence is even more deafening in that on 29 January 2008, the ECJ held that Community law does not require member states to oblige ISPs to disclose details of suspected file-sharers to enable a copyright owner to bring civil proceedings.

Personal data is protected generally in the EU by virtue of the EC Directive on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (95/46/EC) (Data Protection Directive). Member states may provide exemptions to protection in order to conduct criminal investigations or safeguard national or public security or to protect the rights and freedom of others (Article 13(1), Data Protection Directive).

In the UK such an exception can be found under section 35 (1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 which provides that ‘Personal data are exempt from the non-disclosure provisions where the disclosure is required by or under any enactment, by any rule of law or by the order of a court.’ This exemption does not contain any further considerations for a Data Controller before making a disclosure in these circumstances.

The EC Directive on the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (2002/58/EC) (E-Privacy Directive) provides that national authorities may only lift the protection of data privacy in order to safeguard national or public security or to conduct investigations into criminal offences or the unauthorised use of an electronic communications system, where this is a “necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure” (Article 15(1), E-Privacy Directive).

The ECJ reached its conclusion(.pdf) following a Spanish case concerning Telefonica. The Juzgado de lo Mercantil No 5 de Madrid decided to stay the proceedings and referred the following question to the Court for a preliminary ruling:

Does Community law, specifically Articles 15(2) and 18 of Directive [2000/31], Article 8(1) and (2) of Directive [2001/29], Article 8 of Directive [2004/48] and Articles 17(2) and 47 of the Charter permit Member States to limit to the context of a criminal investigation or to safeguard public security and national defence, thus excluding civil proceedings, the duty of operators of electronic communications networks and services, providers of access to telecommunications networks and providers of data storage services to retain and make available connection and traffic data generated by the communications established during the supply of an information society service?

The ECJ, responded that the answer must be that Directives 2000/31, 2001/29, 2004/48 and 2002/58 do not oblige Member States to ensure effective protection of copyright in the context of civil proceedings to communicate personal data. A fair balance needs to be struck between the various fundamental rights and in particular the principle of proportionality. In Advocate General Kokott’s opinion she considered that it was compatible with Community law for member states to exclude operators of electronic communications networks and services from having to make available personal data relating to connection and traffic information in the context of a civil, as distinct from criminal, action.

While the decision is not binding on the ECJ it will generally follow the Advocate General’s opinion. For the vast majority if not all of the 25,000 recipients, this decision ought to have been interpreted as a request for information relating to a non criminal offence (i.e. any copying/file-sharing was non-commercial) and the request for the personal data ought to have been refused.

If you have received a letter accusing you of illicit file-sharing and you are innocent then please write to the Information Commissioner with your story and complain that the release of your personal data was a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998, while urging them to carry out a review of all subsequent releases.

The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

For your convenience, a TorrentFreak reader Penumbra has created this template in order to streamline the complaints procedure: (Link)

Update: You may petition the government online by following this link.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

There was one problem though, since the iPhone doesn’t allow users to copy and paste text, adding new torrents proved to be quite a hassle. That’s where the uTorrent webAPP comes in, as it allows you to search for torrents on your iPhone, and directly add them to the download queue.

The iPhone web application uses isoHunt’s JSON interface to find the latest torrents, and is optimized to fit on a small screen. In order to browse through your torrents on the iPhone, you need to have the uTorrent WebUI installed on your local PC, with the iPhone GUI addon.

When you have everything setup, you can browse to louish.com/iphone, enter your IP and port, and you’re set. The IP and port will be saved on your iPhone, so you don’t have to enter it the next time you search for a torrent.

In the search results you will see a blue icon next to every torrent. A single click on this icon is all that’s needed to add the torrent file to the download queue. If you have secured your WebUI with a password, you will have to enter that before it’s added. For those people who are worried about security, the password, username and your IP-address are all stored on your iPhone and will not be sent to any external server.

We have tested the WebAPP, and it works like a charm. Adding torrents is achieved with a single click, and afterwards you can keep an eye on the download progress, or pause, stop or remove torrents via the iPhone WebUI. Worth a try.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

When it comes to upgrading their OS, however, most users still rely on Ubuntu’s central servers. Because of this, the servers are overloaded with upgrade requests every time a big update is released, which often causes them to crash. The next Ubuntu update, version 8.10 aka Intrepid Ibex is scheduled to be released this week, and since the OS is more popular than ever, updating might be troublesome.

There is an easy solution to this problem though. One that not only prevents the Ubuntu servers from crashing, but also speeds up the update progress, because it uses BitTorrent. A bunch of TorrentFreak readers were kind enough to write a basic tutorial to guide you through the upgrade process, which we have posted below.

Update to Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’ using BitTorrent

Step 1: Setting sources.list to a close-local mirror

First off, it’s definitely recommended to reset to a local mirror. This way, you will download any needed files from a closer and supposedly faster source.

Either do an auto-check: System -> Administration -> Software Sources -> Download From: -> Other -> Select Best Server (It’ll run a couple hundred tests (takes less than five minutes) and select the best mirror for you. Make sure to remember which mirror it is, because you will need that later.)

Or select your local mirror yourself according to your country.

Step 2: Disable 3rd Parties repositories

It is also very much recommended to disable 3rd party repositories! If you don’t know exactly what you are doing, go to the 3rd Parties tab and deselect all of the entries there.

Step 3: Install apt-p2p

Next you need to install “apt-p2p”. Version 0.2.5 is needed because of a major bug in older versions. This is beta software, so it might not be stable for everybody. If it can’t download the file via BitTorrent, however, it will revert to http download.

As apt-p2p is not in the hardy repos yet, we have to fetch it from a server directly. Below I have have two scripts for 32-bit and 64-bit. Use the one that matches your OS.

For 32bit versions use this script, and for 64bit versions use this script.

Save the script file as “apt-p2p.sh” on your desktop. Then open a terminal (Applications > System > Terminal) and issue these commands (you’ll be prompted for your user password):

The scripts will create a apt-p2p folder in the /temp folder, enter that folder and download apt-p2p from the intrepid repositories (they work fine on hardy), including all dependencies. Finally, it will install everything in the required order.

Step 4: Prepare the sources.list

Once installed type the following:

Now you are looking at the sources.list file for Ubuntu; this specifies which servers to contact for updates and new programs. You should see a bunch of lines that look similar to this:

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner
deb http://*mirror-address*/ubuntu/ hardy main universe restricted multiverse
deb-src http://*mirror-address*/ubuntu/ hardy main universe restricted multiverse

where **mirror-address** is the address of the mirror you chose earlier.

Don’t worry, you may not have all of these, and you may have more. However, you only want to change ones that are similar to these. You want to change these to look like this:

deb http://localhost:9977/archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner
deb-src http://localhost:9977/archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner
deb http://localhost:9977/*mirror-address*/ubuntu/ hardy main universe restricted multiverse
deb-src http://localhost:9977/*mirror-address*/ubuntu/ hardy main universe restricted multiverse

So basically just insert “localhost:9977″ after the “http://”. Now close the program and save the file. Note: If you messed anything up, go back to the terminal and run this command:

This WILL overwrite your sources.list file with your backup and we are almost done!

Step 5: Update the packages & upgrade to Intrepid

Back at the terminal, type the following command:

This will update the list of software, as well as fully integrate apt-p2p. If you get any errors, run the following commands (Warning: If not done carefully, these commands could destroy your system):

Once everything looks okay, you’ll want to forward the ports for apt-p2p to your system (if you have a router, see http://portforward.com, port for apt-p2p is 9977 TCP and UDP). At this point, you’re all set to receive regular updates via BitTorrent. If you want to upgrade to Intrepid ahead of time you may type one of the following commands in the terminal:

Click on the “upgrade” button on the top right of that window and follow the wizard. When asked, that no valid mirror was found and whether it shall replace hardy with intrepid, then select “Yes”.

or use

Note: When issuing a “dist-upgrade” in the terminal you will first need to manually alter the entries in the sources.list from “hardy” to “intrepid”.

Now you’re all set, and by using BitTorrent to update Ubuntu you will be updated much faster, and help relieve the strain on the update servers on launch day. As always, tips and suggestions are welcome in the comments.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

EA has downplayed this, naturally. In comments to video game developer site Gamasutra, EA’s Mariam Sughayer said “Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale. We’ve talked to people that made several unsuccessful attempts to download the game and ended up with incomplete, slow, buggy or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus. To say that every download represents a successful copy of the game –- or that there’s been more than 500K copies downloaded — that’s just not true.”

Of course, it should be pointed out that when TorrentFreak computed the download figures previously, the basis was only a few torrents, all known to be working and virus free, and similarly with figure earlier. TorrentFreak is not new at this, and we know how to tell the difference between an incomplete, a virused, buggy, or even encrypted with a password, and one that would work if downloaded. To attempt to spin it otherwise is rude and condescending, and shows how hard EA is attempting to salvage the reputation of itself, and Spore.

When we suggested a few weeks ago that the DRM was the cause of the high rate of downloads, we said it only hurt legitimate purchasers (and those that steal it) and we are not alone. A class action lawsuit was filed in northern California on September 22nd, targeting EA for the use of SecuROM. The lawsuit asks for damages based on the secret installation of a program, which can adversely affect your system, without telling you. It’s basically the Sony Rootkit debate again.

The lawyer that filed this case, Alan Himmelfarb, told TorrentFreak “People have an absolute right to control what does and what does not get put onto their computers. When companies resort to secret, undisclosed installations – for whatever purpose – they cross a line. Our lawsuit is the result in this case. First there was Sony with its Rootkit. Then there was Ubisoft with Starforce. Now we have EA with SecuROM. In each case, corporate executives failed to see anything wrong with installing a secret, uninstallable, administrative level program directly into the heart of the command center of the computer, so that they could control how you use your computer. So that they could decide what programs you could run, and what hardware you could have installed. All without asking. All without any attempt to obtain your consent. It is simply wrong, and we will continue to bring similar actions against any company that acts as if they obtain ownership rights to a consumer’s computer simply because someone plays their game or listens to their music.”

Thanks to DRM, Spore may well be the most downloaded game of all time, if not now, then in the next month. However, EA sees the facts a bit differently. On their support page dealing with DRM and Spore, they describe why they went with SecuROM

Q: Why are Maxis and EA implementing this new authentication process?
A: This solution serves to protect our software from piracy.

Yeah, it’s worked REALLY well.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

As stated previously, for your money you get a box that you plug into your network as close as possible to the Internet connection. Here it monitors all the traffic it can see, looking for data that matches the fingerprints stored in it. If it detects a transfer matching a fingerprint, it terminates the connection, in the same way Sandvine does , by sending RST packets to both ends of the connection, spoofed to look like the other sent it.

Although it seems like a fairer system than the Sandvine box Comcast used, it still has some significant flaws. Perhaps of greatest interest, is that it can be configured to act just like Sandvine, but more so. Literature for the system claims it “automatically filters copyright infringements, operating in a manner similar to a virus filter, without disrupting legitimate file trades.” But does it live up to the hype?

Audible Magic’s support site contains the answers to the basic questions most of us have about CopySense.

Q: What P2P protocols/programs are recognized?
A: The CopySense Appliance recognizes signatures from over 150 popular P2P applications and their derivatives. As new P2P applications are introduced, additional recognition capabilities are provided as software updates under your maintenance agreement
Q: How does it block traffic?
A: The appliance can be instructed to block all P2P traffic or to block only copyrighted content from P2P applications. The CopySense Appliance uses a patented packet-resetting process, and it sends a packet reset to both the requesting and sending IP addresses each time they attempt a P2P transfer that is to be blocked. The P2P application is thus forced to time out with an unsuccessful transfer.
Q: How does it recognize copyrighted content?
A: The CopySense technology examines the perceptual characteristics of a media file and compares that signature with those contained in a database of protected works. Publishers of media content register their works in Audible Magic’s database. The database is regularly updated in the CopySense Appliance as part of a content update subscription.

As the name of the site is TorrentFreak, and the main protocol in use is BitTorrent, let’s start there. Torrents are non-sequential downloads (illustration), that take ‘random’ (generally rarest first of what’s available) pieces from peers on the torrent, in 16KiB chunks. Also, although chunks might be sequential, pieces rarely are. A data stream may consist of 5 chunks from the start, then 2 from the back, and 1 from the middle. From just that 128KiB of data, Audible Magic claim they can identify a copyrighted work, and then terminate the connection.

If it sounds implausible, that’s because it is. It may work with systems like DC++, or possibly eD2k (as well as SoulSeek and KaZaA), but there is no way it can be accurate or effective with BitTorrent. Such methods would work better with HTTP (like Rapidshare) or FTP transfers, but aside from CopySense saying they don’t interfere with anything non-P2P, there is another problem.

As highlighted in the recent case involving the baby dancing to a Prince soundtrack, fair use is a perfectly adequate defence. This system makes no allocation for fair use at all. In the case, the judge ruled that before copyright enforcement can take place, the copyright owner is required to consider if the usage is fair use. An automated system is incapable of that. There have also been doubts surrounding the effectiveness of the streaming content version, which is based on the same technology.

So, in essence, CopySense does not (and can not) work to inhibit the most popular p2p protocol out there. If it could, then we would simply see a resurgence in passworded RAR files being torrented, with the passwords posted either on the torrent site, or even in the comment field of the torrent. CopySense also fails to check if a copyrighted file that it might identify (if you’re using a protocol that it can actually detect) is being used in a way consistent with fair use, or is licensed for use (although extremely improbable, the possibility exists, especially if copyrighted recording is right at the start).

In part two, we will look at claims that have been made from those who have used CopySense, and how that affects copyright infringement cases already in progress, and just how you get your content protected.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The hacker, a high-school student using the pseudonym Ethan still lived with his parents when he first accessed they company’s servers by exploiting a weakness in their firewall. This was at the end of 2006, at a time when business was still good for MediaDefender, with its revenue standing at nearly $16m.

Soon after that, Ethan got access to the company’s email, its networked resources and even its telephone system. Logging in a handful of times each month through the summer of 2007, he started to get bored with “Monkey Defenders” – his pet name for the anti-piracy outfit. Deciding to go out with a bang, he and the Media Defender-Defenders gathered thousands of the company’s internal emails and published them on web.

The rest is history. On September 15, 2007 the database containing thousands of emails was uploaded to several BitTorrent sites. In the release note Ethan and friends wrote: “By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails contain information about the various tactics and technical solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services,” and “A special thanks to Jay Mairs, for circumventing their entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account.”

The emails contained a wide range of information including server passwords, social security numbers, spoofing strategies and vacation pictures. And it didn’t end there. In the days after the email leak, Ethan and friends released a private telephone conversation between MediaDefender and the New York attorney general’s office, a P2P tracking database, which was followed up a few days later by all of Media Defender’s anti-piracy tools. The effect on the company and its operations was dramatic.

In a SEC filing, the financial damage started to become clear. As a result of the hacking, by November 2007 MediaDefender had lost nearly $1,000,000, which affected the stock price of parent company ArtistDirect significantly. Before the email leak, stock was around the $2.25 mark. Three months later stock plummeted to $0.63. Now, a year after the leak the stock price has hit rock bottom, at less than $0.01 per share.

Meanwhile, BitTorrent sites witnessed a decrease in MediaDefender activity following the leak. The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, who sued some key players in the entertainment business for using MediaDefender, told TorrentFreak that there has been a significant decrease in activity from BitTorrent spoofers and decoyers. “It’s strange that no one has given much regard to the fact that the way MediaDefender works is probably illegal in most countries. Even in the US. I might even say, especially in the US,” Sunde added.

Decrease in activity or not, this spring the company still managed to make the tech headlines by sabotaging the BitTorrent tracker of the popular Internet TV network Revision3. Revision3 lost thousands of dollar in revenue because of the DDoS attack, but decided not to take any legal action. Meanwhile, the stock price on MediaDefender’s parent company continued its freefall.

So what does the future hold for MediaDefender? Currently, they have decreased their anti-piracy efforts, and started to explore options to use filesharing networks for marketing purposes. Eric Pulier and Teymour Boutros-Ghali, two former members of ArtistDirect’s board of directors who resigned last month announced that they were interested in buying MediaDefender, but it’s not clear what path they intend to take.

Perhaps a more realistic option, is for the company to file for bankruptcy, as The Pirate Bay predicted they would, long before the emails leaked.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Copysense works by listening in on ALL network traffic, and looking for data patterns that match signatures, or ‘fingerprints’ loaded on it. If it detects data packets matching one of its signatures, it terminates the connection by sending forged RST packets to both sides of the connection (Comcast anyone?).

Piracy detection services like Copysense are not cheap. Ohio University paid around $60,000 in 2007 for the system, and an additional $15,500 a year for updates and support. For this, they got a network monitoring box, and some questionable results that prompt more questions than answers, but we will discuss these another time.

There are more issues though, a system working in promiscuous mode is also a big security risk. Passwords, and user names, if transmitted unencrypted, are observable, as is any other traffic sent in the clear. When J. Brice Bible, the CIO at Ohio University, took up his post, it was in the wake of data security breaches. Now he has paid tens of thousands of dollars for a box that can potentially cause a similar breach. Of course, potentially any network client can do this, but only on their local network, not the entire university network.

Ohio University seems to be happy with the entertainment industry’s favorite anti-piracy system. Of course, the less skeptical amongst us would think that outgoing head of the WIPO being an alumni is pure coincidence, as is the CEO of Fox News. People with a strong pro-copyright agenda having contact with an early adopter of a technology pushed heavily by the MPAA and RIAA, is something that rose some eyebrows at the TorrentFreak office though.

Regardless, Ohio University claims the program has been a success. Speaking in the student newspaper, Bible said, “It works very well for today, (but) I don’t know if it will work well tomorrow or the next day or the year after. I want to hear from students … I think students should be engaged in this discussion—and faculty, too.”

If you’re a student at Ohio University, or one of the other universities that use Copysense, why not let him know, and get involved.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It seems the music industry’s desire to paint OiNK as a criminal network focused on the ruination of the music business, has so far led them to direct the police into arresting users who allegedly pre-released albums, i.e shared albums before their stated retail release date. As mentioned in our previous article, there are no laws in the UK which give extra gravity to pre-release cases, but the music industry seems keen to portray this type of copyright infringement as being much more serious. It has been their theme since the day of the original raid and shutdown of OiNK.

Many observers have been questioning for some time now why the police are involved in this case when it’s believed users of the site committed only civilly actionable offenses at best. It’s clear that simple copyright infringement isn’t what the music industry has in mind.

Those accused were visited by detectives involved with ‘Operation Ark Royal’, sometimes accompanied by local police. After identification, they were arrested under suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, told that they were not alone and that police would be arresting and interviewing more people in connection with the case. Suspects were then taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprinting.

During their interview the suspects were asked all about OiNK, their understanding of the purpose of the site and what they did as a user there. The police were also keen to discover if these alleged pre-releasers personally knew OiNK admin, Alan Ellis, which of course – like the majority of OiNK members – they didn’t.

The police have been asking the suspects for their account details on OiNK. The police are in possession of user account names and email addresses registered on the site, but were keen for the suspects to provide their passwords, adding weight to the belief that user’s passwords were successfully encrypted with a salted MD5 hash.

Suspects were then released on bail while the police went to make further enquiries. It is believed that those arrested will have to appear at a designated police station on the same day that Alan Ellis is to answer his bail, July 1st 2008. So far, Cleveland Police haven’t responded to our request for information.

A really nice gesture has been made by the team of solicitors working on behalf of OiNK administrator Alan Ellis. They have offered free legal support to certain arrested individuals.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.