Less than a month after it was launched the office has already seized more than 4 million pirated teaching materials. As a result a massive 182 printing companies were shut down as well as 100,000 stalls where the illegal teaching materials were sold.

“The situation of illegal publications is generally under control… However, pirate issue is still obvious. Those pirated teaching materials especially harm the healthy development of the country’s youth,” Li Baozhong, vice director of the National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office, said at a press conference earlier this week.

Baozhong did not elaborate on how knowledge and education will harm children’s health, but we assume that it has something to do with content that the Government may not approve of. How educational materials could hurt one’s health remains a mystery though.

China is of course known for its censorship and notoriously blocks websites that may ‘harm’ its citizens including Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook. Interestingly, BitTorrent sites have never been targeted and almost all of the are still accessible today.

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

In reality however, DRM simply amounts to an annoyance for legitimate customers, while those people who weren’t planning to buy but pirate, have plenty of ways to hack or crack the copy protection schemes. Luckily more content providers have started to realize this. But not all of them.

Meet Austin Meyer, the brain behind X-Plane flight simulator and CEO of the software company that develops the game. Meyer is someone who values input from the people who buy his products, and after he received several complaints about the DVD that had to be in the drive in order to play X-Plane, he came up with a brilliant solution.

For a measly $29 the company decided to sell optional USB-drives with a copy of the DVD that can be used instead of the DVD itself. “The keys are only $29, so I am making this affordable,” Meyer commented in a press-release.

We can of course dispute the cheapness of a $29 DRM-tool, but what’s even more interesting is how Meyer responded to some of the questions reporter Dave Duck posed when he tried to find out more about the companies motivations in charging its customers for DRM on a USB drive.

“The usb key is designed to STOP that annoyance by freeing up the drive, WITHOUT requiring anyone to lie, cheat, or steal,” Meyer wrote in one of his replies.

But he structurally ignored the biggest question asked by the reporter. “Given the wide availability of X-Plane torrents, doesn’t this sort of scheme just piss off loyal customers AND fail to stop pirates?”

Indeed, like any other program X-Plane has been pirated and the software is widely available on BitTorrent sites without any DRM. The new DRM on a drive does nothing to change this situation, and is just an extra charge for DRM that only affects legitimate customers.

Like many other software manufacturers Meyer fails to see the problem, and frankly he doesn’t even seem to care whether the DRM works or not. When the reporter asked him about the effectiveness of X-Plane’s copy protection he got the following reply:

“Holy shit you are an idiot where did I ever say, imply, or ever so much as HINT that ANYTHING actually WORKS????????????????????????????????????”

As a true gentleman the CEO refused to elaborate any further on how he turned a failed DRM scheme into something that will cost legitimate customers even more money. “I’m just filtering your email now you aren’t worth talking to,” Meyers wrote in his last reply.

We wonder whether if he treats all of his customers similarly?

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

“We’ve reviewed µMonitor and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store,” Apple wrote to the developer after a 4 month review process.

This is not the first time that Apple has excluded a BitTorrent-related product from its store. In May they also banned an application designed to remotely-control the Transmission BitTorrent client for the same reasons outlined above.

Interestingly Apple has no problem allowing Usenet related applications in their store. myNZB for example is an application that is available from the App Store although it’s similar in functionality to the BitTorrent apps that were rejected.

Despite Apple’s blockade, there is still a way to get µMonitor on your iPhone. Instead of throwing months of hard work overboard, µMonitor’s developer has recently decided to bypass the Apps Store and make the application available to ‘jailbroken’ iPhone users from the Cydia repository.

Thanks to Apple, uTorrent users who want to control their torrent via an iPhone application have no other option than to jailbreak their phone. Detailed instructions on how to get µMonitor working on your phone can be found on Claudio’s website.

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

“DRM serves all sorts of pro-consumer purposes,” he said at the time, without going into detail about the alleged benefits.

However, in the year that followed the numbers of consumers calling for DRM-free music increased and more labels and music services started to offer music without digital restrictions. Still, the RIAA was not convinced that there could be a future without it, and predicted a comeback for DRM last year.

Quite the opposite happened. Although DRM is still present in the majority of the legal music stores, most of the big players have decided to ditch it. Most importantly Apple announced in early 2009 that all music sold via the iTunes store would be free of DRM. This time even the RIAA doesn’t believe that it can be resurrected.

Jonathan Lamy, chief spokesperson for the RIAA declared DRM dead, when he was asked about the RIAA’s view on DRM for an upcoming SCMagazine article. “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Lamy said, referring to the DRM-less iTunes store and other online outfits that now offer music without restrictions.

Update July 20: Yes, it seemed to good to be true and it is. We just learned the the RIAA never used the word dead in its reply to the reporter. Lamy told TorrentFreak that he only said that there is almost no DRM on (downloaded) music anymore nowadays. In other (our) words: it’s an endangered species, not extinct.

When the most vocal forefighters of DRM say so, it must be for real. Although this is the first time that the RIAA have actually said on record that DRM is dead, other players in the music industry have seen the light before them. Most notable IFPI, who said earlier this year that stripping DRM would “significantly boost download sales.”

In this we have to agree with them. All DRM has ever done is annoy consumers who actually paid for their music. No single piece of DRM has ever stopped anyone from pirating music, it’s quite the opposite as the music industry now realizes.

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

Targets of the scam receive an unsolicited email purporting to come from notorious anti-piracy company MediaDefender. The email, which is simply addressed “Dear User!” claims the individual has been monitored on any of several torrent sites while engaging in anything from copyright infringement, through to simply browsing the sites.

Of course, citing MediaDefender is a nonsense, since that company doesn’t get involved in anti-piracy warning letters – its specialty was spoofing on BitTorrent networks.

Additionally, most of the sites listed don’t even operate a tracker, so committing any type of copyright infringements on them is almost impossible. Here is the body of the email;

Dear User!

Your recent internet activity was logged on the following sites:

* Btjunkie
* SumoTorrent
* isoHunt
* Btscene
* Mininova
* Fenopy
* Monova
* Yotoshi
* GetInvites
* Btmon

hxxp://XXXXX.net/report_78478XX.exe (XX added by TorrentFreak)

We have a report about the copyrighted movies, music, softwares you downloaded or searched on these webpages. We strongly advise you to stop any future activities regarding the downloading of illegal content or you can expect prosecution by 17 U.S.C.512,1201?1205,1301?1332; 28 U.S.C. 4001 laws.

Sincerely,

MediaDefender Inc.

So what is this scam all about? Attached to the email is a logfile which supposedly provides additional information about the user’s infringements, but of course this is a lie – the log is really a virus.

This type of scam is nothing new – the same type of thing has been tried before, probably by the same people. However, this time the virus is different. Here is the report, courtesy of ThreatExpert;

Threat characteristics of ZBot – a banking trojan that disables firewall, steals sensitive financial data (credit card numbers, online banking login details), makes screen snapshots, downloads additional components, and provides a hacker with the remote access to the compromised system. Creates a startup registry entry. Contains characteristics of an identified security risk.

Savvy Internet users will hopefully realize the email is a scam fairly quickly, but hardened file-sharers should smell a rat even earlier due to the omission of demands for money.

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

In July 2008, security researcher Laurent Gaffié found a bug in two of the latest versions of the official software – Soulseek 157 NS & 156. The problem was so serious he informed the Soulseek developer on 3rd September 2008. Unfortunately, Laurent heard nothing back so on 14 October 2008 he contacted the developer again. He appears to have been ignored. On 16 May 2009 Laurent tried again to contact the Soulseek team – yet again he had no response so decided to reveal his findings.

So what exactly is the problem? First of all it’s necessary to understand a little about how the Soulseek search works. When a user searches for an MP3 via their contact list or on a Soulseek IRC channel, their Soulseek client sends the query to the Soulseek server. The server then sends a distributed search query on the whole channel.

Laurent told TorrentFreak, “The P2P Soulseek bug is critical because of the nature of the bug. It appears when you send an overly long search request to the server, and it redirects it directly to everyone without checking the length of the request, then a memory corruption happens in every client that received this query.”

“By corrupting the Soulseek memory it becomes possible to control the program memory flow and redirect it anywhere you want,” Laurent explained. “In this case, you redirect the program to a shellcode you’ve placed in the memory and then code execution occurs. The problem with this type of “buffer overflow” is the nature of it, it’s a SEH overflow (Exception Handler) which will work on most Windows platforms.”

Laurent told TorrentFreak that there is no need to have any interaction with a targeted channel or user, it’s just possible to log on and send the distributed search. This makes the Soulseek vulnerability perfect for a very fast spreading worm scenario.

“I’ve released a very limited proof of concept, to avoid scripts-kiddies problem on the Soulseek network,” notes Laurent, “but this doesn’t avoid a worm scenario, because this binary protocol is not so hard to reverse.”

Apart from being a perfect scenario for a fast spreading worm or mass Soulseek client exploitation, Laurent told us this attack can be used to remotely control any machine connected to the Internet with a Soulseek client. Let’s hope the Soulseek team take notice and get this fixed.

In the meantime, worried Soulseek users can avoid this vulnerability by ditching the official client and using the Python Nicotine Plus client instead.

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

Quite common by now are the watermarking techniques used by the studios to track down the origin of cams. Through these watermarks the theaters where the movies are recorded can be identified, and every now and then an arrest is made. Recent technological advances even make it possible to get a fairly accurate estimation of the location of the camcorder equipment using audio watermarks. These audio watermarks have not been implemented yet since they require a lot of extra paperwork in order to work well.

In a recent blog post John August, the director of hit movie The Nines, discusses some of the anti-piracy tools the movie studios are using to decrease or deter camcording in theaters. August himself has a fairly balanced view on illegal downloading. In a previous interview with TorrentFreak he said that he wouldn’t think bad of people who downloaded his movie using BitTorrent. In talks with other studio insiders, however, he discovered something that made our jaws drop.

We’ve mentioned many times before that when a movie hits the theater, or a DVD or TV show debuts in one country before it does in another, this is a major incentive for people to turn to BitTorrent. People don’t like waiting for something that other people already have, especially if the solution to that is just a few clicks away. However, instead of putting time and effort into making their content premiere globally, the studios are purposely delaying movie releases in some countries because a lot of cam releases originate there.

So, instead of working towards solving the problem, the studios are actually encouraging piracy by restricting access to millions of potential customers. Like many others, August himself acknowledges that delayed premiere dates in some locations might actually encourage people to pirate movies and TV-shows.

Instead of adding restrictions and thereby alienating their customers, the movie and TV studios should focus on dropping the release windows for their content. It may have been possible to keep people and countries apart pre-Internet, but not any more. People worldwide are closer together today than ever before – and only getting closer.

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

The blacklist contains around 2,400 entries and presuming that the URLs are descriptive of the material they link to, the list appears to be dominated by pornography, with a couple of legal YouTube-like adult sites making the list. Of course there are also a worrying number of sites appearing to deal with images of child abuse and no-one could seriously complain about their inclusion – but that was never really an issue.

What bothers people more are the significant number of sites on the list that don’t seemed to be linked to this type of abuse. In addition to religious sites (both pro and anti), various Wikipedia pages, euthanasia sites and a travel agent, a dentist’s website even made the list.

Other inclusions include several poker sites and UK-based betting site, Betfair.com, which was banned in Western Australia during January 2007. The company appealed saying the ban was unconstitutional and in March 2008 it was overruled. However, Betfair.com remains on the list.

Speaking of the leak, Australia’s Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the list is not the official ACMA blacklist. He says that while the published list has around 2,400 blocked URLs, the official ACMA blacklist contains roughly 1,050.

“There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist,” he said. “However, ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and have never been included on the ACMA blacklist,” he said.

Censorship of any type can lead to claims of undemocratic behavior and as discussion over these blacklists grew during recent months, there were concerns that many torrent sites would end up being blocked as the ’system’ short-cutted ineffective copyright law, but it appears that this has not come about on a significant scale.

However, two BitTorrent sites – the now-defunct TorrentSpy.com and TorrentFive.com – both appear on the leaked list but it’s impossible right now to say if they appear on the ‘real’ ACMA list. There is no indication why these sites are marked to be blocked, but presumably at some point someone objected to some content indexed. Neither site operated a tracker so banning the sites’ URLs would not achieve much, since the content would be already available elsewhere – the sites in question offered an index, much like Google.

TorrentFreak itself is no stranger to being included on various blocklists, even though the site operates completely legally. We have no proof why companies, schools and other organizations would add us to their blocklists, but suspect that it’s purely because we have ‘torrent’ in our URL. And here lies the problem.

The worry remains that without overview and without those that maintain these blacklists being held to account, many other legal sites could have their domains blocked too. It’s just a shame that the only way people can find out if they are blocked is if individuals leak these lists for all to see – then of course the lists become a magnet for those drawn to illegal, sickening content. It really is a double-edged sword.

Hopefully no more torrent sites will be added to these blacklists – the censorship of criminal material they conduct themselves is more than sufficient and the torrent community is as keen as everyone else to keep their sites safe for all.

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

A Google search on the same pages returns, “This site may harm your computer.”

So what exactly is the problem? TorrentFreak spoke with Peter Sunde (brokep) who told us that right now they don’t have a clear idea of what is causing the problem although they are working hard on fixing it. Current thinking by some says that the problems are being caused by malicious ads from third parties which are embedded in the site.

Google has made its own analysis and is reporting that the /user sections of the TPB site were listed once for suspicious activity, yesterday 14th March 2009. Of 699 pages tested, it found that 2 pages resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. Google goes on to say that the malicious software includes 68 scripting exploits although they report that a successful infection resulted in zero new processes on the target machine.

The malicious software in question is said to be hosted on 3 domains; savelocity.com, seekerfeed.com, and xoads.com, with another 6 reported as distribution intermediaries including parkneed.com, yieldmanager.com and zxxds.net.

This type of problem is nothing new on torrent sites. Last year we reported how Google and Firefox blocked Empornium, the world’s largest porn tracker, when they suffered similar problems at the hands of outsiders. Just yesterday, the h33t.com torrent site suffered a similar problem, but that now appears to be fixed after we tipped off the staff there.

We will add to this post during the day to include the latest updates.

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.

To resolve the issue Mark contacted Nuance’s support. To his surprise however, they didn’t want to help him straight away, instead asking him to take pictures of the CD in order to prove that the company owned a legitimate copy.

“I couldn’t believe my ears,” Mark told TorrentFreak. “After arguing with support for a while on how ridiculous it was, I still had to have the license within the day. To make a long story short I finally got them to unlock 2 licenses after 2 days of repeated calls and sending the picture of the CD multiple times.”

Upset at how he was treated by customer support, Mark decided to send an email to Nuance’s CEO Paul Ricci to inform him that alienating customers like this is not going to help him sell more products. The picture of the CDs that Mark had to supply was also sent to Ricci.

Dear Mr Ricci,

Our company has been using your product for nearly a decade. We have estimated that it is safe to say we have spent $3000 over the years on your product. We are by far not the biggest customer but in today’s economy we think every customer counts. We recently bought several PaperPort 11 licenses which we have used. We have upgraded our computers and the procedure is to uninstall paper port (While online) in order to free a license for the new computer. Sadly this did not work. My efforts at consulting with your technical support department were very time consuming, confusing, and ultimately pointless. To my surprise, they wanted me to take a PICTURE of the CDs we have. As an IT professional, I found this archaic exercise in futility to be absolutely appalling. Not only do your anti-piracy methods completely fail (There is no known anti-piracy method that works to this day, anything can be downloaded) but they cost me; the legitimate customer time and frustration. Attached is the picture I had to send in. This is to let you know that we are completely disgusted with your company’s procedures, and are no longer going to do any business with Nuance.

Just to let you know, being a computer engineer, I can guarantee you these statistics:

Pirates Stopped = 0
Legitimate Customers totally alienated = Thousands.

You may want to take a look at your stock trends of late, Mr. Ricci. Perhaps this poor customer service MIGHT explain some of that.

Ricci received the email in good order, and passed it on to the chief marketeer at Nuance, who wrote back to Mark. “I appreciate your note and will use it as a flashpoint for us to reevaluate this processes that you have correctly pointed out as archaic,” was his reply, and he offered some free copies of PaperPort, PDF and OmniPage “as a gesture of goodwill.”

Nuance has clearly recognized that they made a mistake and although it’s probably too late for some customers, we hope they’ve learned from it. Mark said that in hindsight his email to Ricci might have been a little bit over the top. But, it did make them realize that they were making a mistake, asking people to take pictures of their CDs.

“I was very upset and under a lot of pressure. My job is to solve problems in the quickest amount of time.. and taking pictures of CD’s or sticking them in a copier isn’t something anyone should ever have to do with their software,” Mark said.

“It just doesn’t make sense.”

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

There were mixed opinions on the news. Some thought that it was great that there was an increased potential for a flood of cracked iPhone software, but a significant number of people expressed concerns that software developers would shy away from the format if they couldn’t guarantee a revenue stream.

Of course, the piracy/anti-piracy cat-and-mouse game was inevitable and today a new DRM system has been launched by Ripdev, promising to thwart those pesky iPhone pirates.

iPhone developer Ripdev says that its new ‘Kali Anti-Piracy’ system has been in development for some months now and today sees its official ‘beta’ launch. Ripdev acknowledges it has become trivial now for anyone to become a “cool hax0r” by cracking iPhone app DRM and distributing the results worldwide, but believes that with Kali, it has the answer.

According to Ripdev, the Kali system is a server-side service which can take any App Store application and place it inside another protection wrapper which, Ripdev claim, will prevent it from being pirated. Claimed to be fully compliant with the Apple iPhone SDK, Ripdev says that Kali-protected apps meet Apple’s approval process. The company adds that it has been protecting its own software (such as Kate, i2Reader Pro, iPref and Installer) with it for months and no-one has yet cracked any of them.

There is a one-off charge for developers to start using the system. If they sell their app for $9.99 or less it’s $100. Over $9.99 and it goes up to $300. Ripdev are also taking additional ‘royalties’ for each copy protected with Kali (in order to “keep the hackers on their toes”) of between 1% and 5% of the developer’s 70% cut.

Ripdev also has a message for would-be pirates;

“Expect more and more apps to be much, much harder to crack in the near future. ;)”

The trouble is that sounds awfully like a challenge. I’d put money on that being taken up. Quickly.

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

The DRM in question involves a certificate with a hardcoded date – January 28 2009 – as its time to expire. Now that this certificate has expired the game will not load, giving the following error message.

[installpath]\Gears of War\Binaries\wargame-g4wlive.exe: You cannot run the game with modified executable code. Please reinstall the game

Of course, reinstallation does nothing, as the certificate has still expired. Of greater interest is why there is a certificate with expiration date in the game at all, especially as it’s expired just 15 months after the games release.

After this was pointed out on Epic’s forums, joeGraf, a ’super moderator’ (and presumably staff member of Epic) stated that they are now aware of this, and “are working with Microsoft to get it resolved.” Just what form that resolution will take is also not clear; be it an updated certificate with later date, an open ended certificate, or removing such certificates. If a new dated certificate is issued, then it can only be expected that we will have the same problems again when it too expires.

This may also raise a question mark over other ‘Games for Windows’ titles released since Gears of War – which include Crysis and Grand Theft Auto IV – over their inclusion of such certificates, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, those of you that wish to play can do so by setting your system date back to January 27 or earlier. Also, in between playing, remember you can drop the FTC a line and tell them about this experience with DRM.

DRM only usually punishes legitimate purchasers, so this screw up with Gears of War is quite unique. We’ve just discovered that the pirated ‘razor1911′ release is also affected, meaning that it’s taken down every copy available. Great work. It must be well hidden if the usually alert crackers didn’t spot it, begging the question “how many more games have an expiration date?”

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

One business model in operation for some time now is the selling of otherwise free software to unsuspecting entrants to file-sharing and P2P. Unaware that everything they need can be legitimately acquired for free, they hand over payments for access to public sites such as Mininova or The Pirate Bay. Equally, they end up paying for uTorrent or other P2P clients via credit card or other methods.

Recently there has been an increase in sites offering these type of services, but utilizing premium rate SMS to collect revenue. One such site being complained about right now is Bittorrent-net.info. The site offers downloads of most of the popular P2P clients including uTorrent, Vuze/Azureus, LimeWire, eMule and Ares.

However, the downloads have a sting in the tail. Once downloaded and the installer is run, the software package requires the user to SMS a provided number via cellphone to get codes to ‘activate’ the software. The site has sections for users around the world, but for UK users this sequence of events ends up costing individuals around £9 in call charges. Spot the deliberately obscure gray-on-gray prices in the screenshot below, written in letters instead of numbers so they don’t attract the eye.

On closer inspection of the rarely viewed ‘Legal Terms‘ section of the site which is buried away in the usual legalese, it does indeed say that that the ’service’ will cost £9. Unfortunately for the site this just isn’t enough to give it legality under regulations just introduced in the UK.

Under new rules from premium-rate phone regulator PhonepayPlus, hiding away charges as BitTorrent-net.info has done is strictly disallowed. In effect now is this rule:

Clearer pricing – No matter where you see a mobile phone-paid service advertised (whether it’s in a magazine or newspaper, on TV, on the internet or somewhere else), the pricing of the service must be given just as much space and attention as the rest of the advert – the cost shouldn’t be hidden in small print. Also, providers must not say a service or download is ‘free’ unless there really are no other costs involved.

The number that people have to SMS to obtain ‘activation codes’ is 78881, which is currently operated by mBlox Ltd. Touting itself as “The world’s largest mobile transaction network” and the company behind delivering the ‘Crazy Frog’ ringtone, mBlox does not provide the content or schemes behind such SMS’s, merely the infrastructure.

In a response to rising complaints as outlined in this article, mBlox provides an online tool to find the companies behind these numbers. Unfortunately our searches using this method drew a blank, but two company names kept cropping up linked to these operations – Netlink Network Corp. and Panama-based Soletto Group SA.

TorrentFreak’s calls for comment from mBlox have so far gone unanswered but we did managed to discuss the situation with SMS regulator PhonepayPlus, who gave us this statement:

Following intervention from PhonepayPlus, as a result of public complaints and its own internal monitoring, this service has been suspended from operation. Readers [in the UK] affected by this service should contact PhonepayPlus on 0800 500 212 (Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm), or at www.phonepayplus.org.uk

We are unable to confirm at this stage if people affected will be able to get a refund, but it certainly looks like the chances of people getting scammed by this method in the future are diminishing.

On other sites using the same business model the software BitComet, BitSpirit, Frostwire and Kceasy feature, but unfortunately this scheme doesn’t stop at P2P clients. Messenger Plus! Live, WinAce, WinZip, 7Zip, DirectX, CDex, and Adobe Acrobat have all appeared with similar installers.

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

The story is the same everywhere; DRM has been a hindrance to those who encounter it on original product. However, it is not a hindrance to those that obtain their media via torrents and other peer-to-peer methods, since the files traded on the net don’t contain DRM. These versions are free from restrictions, and that is one of the reasons why Spore was pirated so often.

With DRM having gotten such bad press in general, and probably after receiving lots of complaints, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to learn more about it. It has announced a town hall meeting, to take place at the University of Washington Law School, in Seattle. The meeting, which will take place in late March, will also be webcast online.

More unusually, to those who have experienced government meetings on these sorts of topics, they’re adopting a very open policy. Not only are they accepting submissions for consideration, but the panelists are not set. In fact, they’re openly accepting requests from those wishing to be panelists, saying they’ll be selecting based on qualifications and the various perspectives. The deadline for responses on both of these is January 30th though, so TorrentFreak readers eager to get involved had better not hang around.

The FTC has discussed DRM before. In 2006, as part of a conference titled “Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade”, there was a panel discussion into DRM and its impact on consumers. Some argued it was good for consumers, allowing them to pay a reduced price for limited access – such as a book someone would only read once (clearly someone hadn’t heard about libraries). Others pointed to a study saying people would pay more for products without DRM, highlighting the fact that prior to DRM, they didn’t have to pay more. Quote of that event though, was Microsoft’s Andrew Moss, who said “What [DRM] is intended to do is give people choices”. Unfortunately, where DRM is concerned, that choice is usually centered around the decision to pirate rather than buy.

The agenda for the new meeting indicates that it will not be plain sailing for those touting DRM. It mentions the burdens on consumers, before it mentions any benefits. That alone should set warning bells ringing in the offices of DRM manufacturers up and down the country. It may be that 2009 will bring the technological change many have hoped for, with common sense finally triumphing over corruption, and giving consumers what they want, not the scraps that copyright owners want to toss them.

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

In a nutshell, a representative from VPN4Life claimed they were about to offer a fast, 128 bit encrypted, fully unlimited and anonymous PPTP service – all for just a one-off payment of $50.00. It seemed to good to be true and in our report we said as much, warning people away from the service.

Nevertheless, since the offer was so cheap, some people decided to take the chance. After handing their cash over via PayPal, customers did not receive a PPTP VPN service, but an executable file named ‘VPN 4 Life PC.exe’. Sadly, this was neither new nor original code, but a piece of software designed to protect people’s privacy when using public WiFi networks. The ad-supported software, called Hotspot Shield, is already available for free from AnchorFree.com. The scammers at VPN4Life simply renamed the file to make it look like their own work.

Confirmation that the two files are identical can be obtained by checking the MD5 checksum, which can be viewed as a type of digital fingerprint. The results for each file are identical.

4b34079841d43799e5d0849ac16feb61 HSS-1.10-install-anchorfree-76-conduit.exe
4b34079841d43799e5d0849ac16feb61 VPN 4 Life PC.exe

The VPN4Life site now has a note on it stating that if anyone is unhappy with the service, that’s too bad. “No refunds will be given if you are dissatisfied with our services,” says the site’s recently-added Terms and Conditions. However, according to reports from purchasers, a complaint to PayPal seems to do the trick.

Too good to be true? You bet.

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

According to a report, the Federal Opposition says it is “not surprised” that the government’s filtering scheme has been delayed. The latest update is that the trial will commence mid-January 2009, with the ISPs involved being announced at the same point.

iiNet, one of Australia’s largest ISPs, has been most vocal about the minimal chances of success for the filtering scheme, even going as far as to say that it was only participating in the trials to show that it will fail. iiNet chief Michael Malone even labeled the architect of the plan, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy, as “the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [Internet] industry has existed.”

An Australian Senate member since July 1993 and previously the Shadow Minister for Defense, Nick Minchin is the Shadow Minister for Broadband and he believes that the filtering system would drastically slow down the Internet.

He told ABC, “The laboratory trial that the Government conducted this year showed potential effect on speed of up to 87 per cent slowdown in the speed of the internet, he said, adding “And this is from the Government that wants to install a National Broadband Network so we can all have high speed broadband.”

“I think that’s a major flaw in the scheme but there are many, many others.”

So, three weeks from now the trial is supposed to start. It won’t take a fourth week to realize that it is doomed to fail.

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

However, up to now it was thought that the scheme would not be extended to other protocols and methods of online communication, such as those carried out via P2P. Today, however, that illusion is gone, as news surfaces BitTorrent will be targeted.

In a blog post entitled “Promoting a civil and confident society online”, Australian Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy responded to criticism from a user who posed this question: “Internet filtering won’t stop peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic—so why bother?”

The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a ’silver bullet’. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.

Technology is improving all the time. Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.

Stephen Conroy

The filtering scheme has many dissenters, including the chief of one of Australia’s largest ISPs, iiNet, who called it “ridiculous“, and branded Stephen Conroy “the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [Internet] industry has existed.”

Of course, no decent person wants minors exploited or to see evidence of such online, but as a user of BitTorrent for many years, I have never, ever, come across anything that remotely resembles such material. Although it would be naive to say that it does not exist, BitTorrent is probably one of the last ‘places’ online people would visit to gain such material and, as such, i’m hugely disappointed it is to be included in this filter.

However, filtering BitTorrent is not as easy as Mr Conroy might have us believe, as will quickly become apparent when the results of the live pilots come in.

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

This means that millions of people will receive warning emails from their Internet service provider, based on ‘evidence‘ gathered by a third party with a vested interest in the outcome. This will also mean, however, that thousands of individuals will receive emails in error, as the evidence gathering techniques are not as solid as the anti-piracy outfits say. There have been a lot of false accusations already, and this was recently confirmed in mainstream media by the BBC show Watchdog.

The move from individual lawsuits to controlling piracy at the ISP level seems to be the new trend this year. Many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet, often gently pushed by anti-piracy lobbyists. France was the first to present their “three-strikes” law earlier this year, which would allow anti-piracy outfits to police the Internet. The IFPI now plans to implement this worldwide, with or without legislation.

It wont stop there though, if the RIAA gets its way ISPs will also have to pro-actively check for copyrighted content on their network. In their list of suggestions for the controversial ACTA proposal, the RIAA wants ISPs to spy on the files that are transferred by their customers, and check them against a reference database of “copyrighted files”.

ISPs worldwide are not looking forward to policing their networks, but they might find themselves with no other option. Adding further pressure, the RIAA wants ISPs to be held liable for the copyright infringement that takes place on their network, as their proposal suggests “…in the absence of proof to the contrary, an Internet service provider shall be considered as knowing that the content it stores is infringing or illegal, and thus subject to liability for copyright infringement…”

So, while dropping the mass-lawsuits might be considered to be a step forward by some, the change in tactics might very well result in a virtual police state where consumers (and ISPs) are guilty until proven innocent. The RIAA has lost some major battles in court, but if they gain control over ISPs, the future might be even darker than the past.

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

Faced with technical issues surrounding the DRM on the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, developer Ubisoft made a ‘fix’ available. Unfortunately, it became clear that far from being their own code, the patch was actually a ‘No-CD crack‘ created by warez group, Reloaded.

Getting caught pirating in an attempt fix broken anti-piracy measures was probably a step too far for Ubisoft, so it has taken the radical step of removing the DRM from the PC retail version of its latest ‘Prince of Persia‘ game.

Posting on the company’s forum, Ubisoft community development manager Chris Easton announced the move.

“You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP [Prince of Persia] PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are.”

But does Chris really expect that dropping the DRM will be a success? How ‘truthful’ will people be when it comes to not pirating the title?

“Not very, I imagine,” he adds.

One user of the forum responds, “Did anyone here mention how devs blame piracy for everything these days? If the game sucks to begin with, they blame piracy. If they don’t have money or are just lazy to make a decent PC port…they blame piracy.” He finishes up with a common statement – If you make a good game, people will buy it.

“Well this time we’ve got a good game with no DRM so there really is no reason to pirate it, right? We should expect good sales because there’s no reason to not buy a copy,” notes Chris, although he doesn’t seem that confident overall.

“I’m fairly skeptical as it’s an easy answer given by a lot of people why they pirate games but if you’re going to buy this game instead of pirating purely because of no DRM in the store version, then if I ever meet you in real life I’ll happily shake your hand and buy you a drink.”

Just recently, developer 2D Boy released their ‘World of Goo’ without DRM. It was heavily pirated, but sales were high enough to make the project worthwhile. At the time, TorrentFreak spoke with Kyle Gabler from 2D Boy who told us that he believed that their customers realized that the company was trying to do “the right thing” which they hoped would translate into a certain amount of goodwill.

If the backlash linked to the terrible DRM included with Spore is anything to go by, Kyle might be on to something and time will tell if Ubisoft’s experiment pays off too. In the end, games always will be pirated, with or without DRM, and there is no reason to believe that piracy increases when there is no ‘protection’. In fact, it only annoys legitimate customers who bought the game.

TorrentFreak will count the downloads and report back in a little while…..

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