Yesterday the caucus became the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus, a change of name shunning the term ‘piracy’ in favor of an artist-focused theme that furthers the notion that infringement is the same as stealing.

The Watch List

As usual there are international winners and losers in the caucus report. On the up are Italy and the Philippines, with the former taking especially drastic steps to combat online file-sharing, including the blocking of ‘pirate’ sites by an administrative body, no court process required.

“In light of the reforms undertaken and a greater commitment to enforcing the law, both nations were removed from the Special 301 Report for the first time in its 25 year history. The caucus applauds Italy and the Philippines for undertaking reforms that recognize the importance of fostering creativity,” the report reads.

But in terms of improvements, the praise stopped there. In the file-sharing space, Switzerland came under attack after a momentous court decision four years ago

The Swiss file-sharing privacy safe haven

The controversy surrounds the so-called ‘Logistep Decision‘. The Logistep anti-piracy outfit became infamous in the latter half of the last decade for their work providing tracking services for copyright trolls in Europe and the UK.

In 2010 following several years of legal wrangling and controversy, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court ordered the anti-piracy outfit to stop harvesting the IP addresses of file-sharers. Underlining the notion that IP addresses are private data, the court’s decision effectively outlawed the tracking of file-sharers in Switzerland with the aim of later filing a lawsuit.

In its report the caucus says that Switzerland’s timeline (18 months minimum) for bringing the country “back up to international standards for protection of copyright” is unacceptable so the country will remain on the Watch List. That position is unlikely to change anytime soon considering the long Swiss tradition of respecting privacy.

Russia

Unsurprisingly the main site mentioned in respect of Russia is local Facebook variant vKontakte. The site has come under sustained attacks from both the RIAA and MPAA and the caucus is happy to keep up the pressure in 2014, despite Russia’s efforts to really tighten up local copyright law.

“The Caucus urges the Russian Government to take prompt action against websites that actively facilitate the theft of copyrighted materials, in particular vKontakte which was again named as a Notorious Market while remaining one of the most highly trafficked websites in Russia. Given the scale of online piracy emanating from Russia, it is crucial the Russia take serious and large scale action to enforce the law against rogue actors and end their status as a haven for digital piracy,” the report reads.

China and India

As expected, China is yet again subjected to criticism, despite clear signs that the country is changing its attitudes towards IP enforcement.

“Though the climate for intellectual property has improved, driven in part by a growing domestic creative sector within China, the scale of piracy remains massive, inflicting substantial harm to American and Chinese creators,” the caucus says.

And despite playing host to a large local creative industry, the caucus says that India is not doing enough to protect IP either, with high rates of camcorder movie piracy and a lack of effective notice-and-takedown procedures both aggravating factors.

Follow-the-money

Given the current collaborations between governments and the private sector with their “follow-the-money” approach to dealing with infringement, it’s no surprise that the caucus has focused a section of its report on this initiative.

Current momentum sees strong international efforts to eliminate the appearance of major brands’ advertising on ‘rogue’ sites and the caucus reports further progress on that front. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have all reported taking “concrete steps” towards evaluating “digital ad assurance” technologies to keep revenue away from pirate sites.

In a response, RIAA Executive Vice President Neil Turkewitz praised the caucus for its efforts.

“Their work on advertising has already led to various improvements, and we hope that soon the lure of generating money from advertising will no longer be viable for sites serving as distribution hubs for infringing content,” Turkewitz said.

Echoing the words of Italian Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero, who had been invited to the report’s unveiling in recognition of his country’s anti-piracy achievements, the MPAA reiterated that the protection of copyright on the Internet is essential to the development of business.

“At the MPAA, we couldn’t agree more, and deeply appreciate the steps being taken by the caucus to help protect the creative industries and the millions of workers they employ – both here in the United States and abroad,” the MPAA conclude.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Instead of legislating against piracy, the Italian government gave the watchdog the power to deal with infringement, up to and including the removal of infringing content and even the blocking of allegedly copyright-infringing domains.

In May and following complaints from the entertainment industry, AGCOM ordered the blocking of four torrent sites – LimeTorrents, TorrentDownload.ws, Torrentz.pro and TorrentDownloads.me. Just over a month later and yet more sites have fallen victim to its blocking regime.

This time around it’s the turn of Torrent.cd, Torrentvia and TorrentRoom to land on the AGCOM blacklist. None of the sites are large, quite the opposite in fact, but a dig down into their traffic stats reveals why Italy is interested in them.

The largest of the trio, Torrent.cd, has the greatest proportion of its visitors arrive from India, closely followed by the United States. Just a fraction of a percent behind are Italian visitors, making Torrent.cd fairly popular with locals.

In mid 2012, TorrentRoom.com was among the top 5000 sites in the world, but traffic to the site diminished to a near all time low in mid 2013. A recovery in the early part of 2014 reversed the trend for a while, but traffic is currently the worst it has ever been. However, stats from Alexa show that Italian visitors to the site are only outnumbered by those from the United States, again making the site relatively popular with locals.

TorrentVia.com is a very small site indeed with a global Alexa rank of 178,400. Traffic is so low in fact that it’s difficult to obtain stats. That said, Google.it is the site’s second most-popular referrer, something which again reflects local interest.

For now it seems that AGCOM are going after sites that are enjoyed more locally, but that could very well change once the regulator runs out of targets.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Canada remains a magnet for sites whose well-understood raison d’être is to facilitate and enable massive unauthorized downloading of pirated versions of feature films, TV shows, recorded music, entertainment software, and other copyright materials,” the IIPA wrote.

These claims are actually the tip of a very large iceberg. It’s indeed true that some large public torrent sites are at least partly hosted on Canadian soil but mildly under the radar are also dozens of private tracker communities, many of which have happily operated from Canada for many, many years.

The overall impression is that Canada is one of the safest countries in which to put a file-sharing site, but developments yesterday cast a shadow over that notion.

With 10,000 members, Sparvar.org (Sparrows) was a reasonably sized private site. Aimed largely at a Swedish audience, Sparvar had enjoyed Canadian hosting on an IP address belonging to Montreal-based Netelligent Hosting Services, a company that has welcomed many similar sites in the past. Sometime in the past 24 hours, however, Sparvar disappeared from the Internet.

Soon after a rumor began circulating that Sparvar had been raided by the police. That version of events has now been confirmed by Scandinavian anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance.

Update: Netelligent confirm action against Sparvar’s server, but deny any raid took place. See update below.

“Police in Canada have seized a server belonging to the illegal file-sharing service sparvar.org. Sparrows was a secret service with some 10 000 registered members. The server was located in Canada, but the activity was directed mainly against Sweden,” the anti-piracy group says.

“Behind the complaint stands Rights Alliance which has long been monitoring and documenting this business. The investigation is continuing with a focus on identifying the perpetrators. The seized server will be analyzed.”

The action against Sparvar shows that Rights Alliance have long memories. More than two years ago following their action against private site Swepiracy, Rights Alliance warned of further action to come, specifically naming Sparvar as a target.

That the group can conduct its work across borders, especially into Canada where it was believed there was a more torrent friendly environment, will come as a surprise to the many other sites hosted there under similar circumstances.

Canada has been paying more attention to IP issues in recent years, enacting the Copyright Modernization Act in 2012 and subsequently introducing a bill designed to strengthen IP enforcement. Following these efforts the United States shifted Canada from the Priority Watch List to the standard Watch List in this year’s Special 301 Report. How much further Canada is prepared to go remains to be seen.

Update: TorrentFreak has been informed by Netelligent president Mohamed Salamé that the police action against Sparvar was carried out in an orderly cooperative fashion with authorities and was not the product of a raid.

“The fact of the matter is we are a datacenter hosting all sorts of customers downstream from us. And as long as there are no violations of our AUP, we take no actions against torrent sites which are still legal in Canada,” Salamé explains.

“We also don’t get ‘raids’ as we have a very professional relationship with all agencies on the federal and provincial level to address the issues. And by professional relationship I mean that we do not just give out information or hardware just because they are law agencies. We make sure their requests are legitimate and that they have subpoenas, court orders, or warrants before complying with any of their demands.”

A separate source familiar with the case informs TorrentFreak that contrary to claims by Rights Alliance, no hardware was seized. It appears that a server was indeed cloned but that was in response to an official order to preserve data following a request by Swedish and Canadian authorities.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Viewing local laws and attitudes as some of the best around, each year the USTR produces its Special 301 Report in which it criticizes trading partners for letting standards drop. This year there were just two Middle Eastern countries on the list – Lebanon and Kuwait – but according to a report in a Saudi Arabian newspaper, the U.S. isn’t afraid to flex its muscles against citizens of other allies in the region.

In an article published in the Makkah Daily Newspaper (Arabic), it’s being claimed that after illegal software was found on their laptops, 34 Saudi students studying in the United States were disallowed from completing their studies.

Citing Rafiq bin Ibrahim Aqeeli, Director General of the General Administration of Copyright at the Ministry of Culture and Information, the newspaper says those same students were subsequently expelled from the United States, forcing them to complete their studies in another country.

And the claims don’t stop there. Citing the same government source, Makkah Daily reports that the U.S. also intercepted 40 Saudi tourists at the border with illegal software on their laptops, denied them entry, and sent them home. Australia had also deported three Saudi university students for the same reasons, Aqeeli said.

But despite the clear claims from the Saudi government, ejecting students from the country on copyright grounds seems like a hugely draconian response, even by U.S. standards. However, looking into Saudi Arabia’s recent responses to copyright infringement one can see a country sometimes taking harsher measures than those usually seen in the United States.

Three weeks ago the Saudi government reported on its anti-piracy activities for 2013. Rafiq bin Ibrahim Aqeeli said his inspectors had carried out 2,500 inspections at stores, service providers, plus businesses and corporate headquarters

More than 7,590 “violations” were identified, 667 of which were related to copyright. As a result several businesses were penalized with enforced temporary shutdowns ranging from 14 to 60 days, to a total of 3,562 days overall.

“Last year the offences varied between copies of books and intellectual works, audio-visual materials and computer programs, while other infringements included the use by corporate facilities of computer software without permits, receiving satellite feed via individual subscriptions, and violations by newspapers using images without the consent of the copyright owners,” Aqeeli said.

The Ministry of Culture and Information says it will collaborate with the Business Software Alliance (BSA) to crack down on software piracy in line with its stance on reducing the effect software piracy has on the local economy. Violators can look forward to imprisonment, heavy fines and being “defamed” by having their names published in local newspapers.

In April, the Saudi government confirmed it had blocked 22 domains, including The Pirate Bay, on copyright grounds.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“Italy’s removal from the Special 301 List reflects the significant steps the Government of Italy has taken to address the problem of online piracy, and the continued U.S. commitment to meaningful and sustained engagement with our critical partner Italy,” the USTR said in a special announcement earlier this month.

What Italy had done to deserve these compliments was fairly extraordinary. Instead of legislating to make a piracy crackdown easier or more effective, the government handed AGCOM, the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority, the power to deal with infringement.

Without need for costly and drawn out legal cases and court-ordered injunctions, from March 31, 2014, AGCOM had the power to order the removal of infringing content or the blocking of allegedly copyright-infringing domains. Remember, these are regulations calling the shots – not legislation.

Now, a little over two months since the start of the new system, AGCOM has been flexing its muscles against what many people believed to be the framework’s primary targets – torrent sites.

In four decisions made public this week by AGCOM, LimeTorrents, TorrentDownload.ws, Torrentz.pro and TorrentDownloads.me were all deemed to be infringing and as a result will end up blocked by the country’s ISPs. The decisions, published on AGCOM.it, also reveal who made the complaints and when.

The LimeTorrents case was reported to AGCOM by local anti-piracy group FPM representing Sony Music, Warner Music and Universal Music. In their evidence the labels provided links to torrents that linked to their works. After a review AGCOM agreed that the labels’ complaints were genuine. Attempts to contact LimeTorrents’ owners failed so they were disallowed from involvement in the process.

In conclusion, and “in compliance with the principles of proportionality”, on May 5 Italian ISPs were given just two days to block subscriber access to LimeTorrents. In general terms the complaints against the other sites were similar and featured both music and video focused anti-piracy groups working on behalf of several movie studios. Those sites will also be blocked.

Notable is the streamlined nature of the process. All complaints were filed mid-April and today, less than three weeks later, the blocks should already be in place. Little wonder the USTR is pleased.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In several Special 301 Reports published by the United States Trade Representative, Russia’s Facebook equivalent has been criticized for the huge quantities of unauthorized media it hosts. As a result it is currently labeled a “notorious market”, a term usually reserved for piracy’s apparent worst-of-the-worst.

In common with many user-generated sites, VK allows its millions of users to upload anything from movies and TV shows to their entire music collections. Unlike Facebook and other major players, Russia’s social network has been very slow to adopt anti-piracy measures.

Three major record labels – Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music – have now taken their concerns to the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court. The labels accuse VK of running a service that facilitates large-scale copyright infringement and are demanding countermeasures and compensation.

The record labels have asked for an order requiring VK to implement fingerprinting technology to delete copyrighted works and prevent them from being re-uploaded. In addition, Sony, Warner and Universal are demanding 50 million rubles ($1.4 million) from the social networking site to compensate for losses suffered.

“VK’s music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large-scale,” IFPI’s Frances Moore says in a comment.

“We have repeatedly highlighted this problem over a long period of time. We have encouraged VK to cease its infringements and negotiate with record companies to become a licensed service. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem, so today legal proceedings are being commenced,” Moore adds.

VK has yet to respond to the accusations. Russia’s telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor previously said that VK was trying very hard to better their anti-piracy practices, but these efforts apparently came too late.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

VKontakte (In Touch), is Russia’s Facebook. It’s a huge operation with tens of millions of users, each of whom has the ability to upload music, movies and TV shows to share with their friends. And with their friends’ friends. And with their friends’ friends’ friends.

Needless to say, entertainment companies aren’t pleased that this social networking giant is facilitating piracy on a grand scale, especially when that content – music in particular – goes on to fuel countless free MP3 download portals all around the Internet. If you’ve ever downloaded MP3s from the free web, chances are some of that music has come from VK.

For some time VK has been keen to update its image by making steps towards becoming more rightsholder-friendly. That said, it’s never really been enough for the U.S. and as a result Russia has again found itself on the latest Special 301 Report. But there signs that things could be getting more serious.

VK Executive Director Dmitry Sergeyev told ITAR-TASS yesterday that consultations between his company and rightsholders were underway, with a view to the signing of an anti-piracy memorandum with telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor.

As the government outfit at the center of Russia’s web-blocking mechanism, Roskomnadzor has significant power. Its anti-piracy memo deals with the pre-trial settlement of disputes between sites and copyright holders and requires signatories to implement content fingerprinting and identification systems in order to filter and block unauthorized material.

“VKontakte will introduce content identification, which will be used to monitor and promptly delete published content protected by copyright,” a source close to the company said.

“This will be the first step towards eliminating the social network from of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Special 301 Report, which is currently limiting the company’s ability to raise funds abroad and sign agreements with foreign rightsholders.”

Anti-piracy memorandum signatory the Russian Anti-Piracy Organization (RAPO) will be the messenger of progress. The group says it will monitor VK for pirate content in the months to come and if there is significant improvement, the MPAA will be informed.

“During this year, the industry will be observing what is happening to the sites, including VK.com,” RAPO chief Konstantin Zemchenkov said.

“If pirate content disappears from the social network, we’ll report to the MPAA, which in turn will report that fact to the IIPA [International Intellectual Property Alliance], which will inform the US authorities.”

Since the Special 301 Report is based on the previous years’ data, even in the event of progress VK won’t be able to get off the list until 2015. The site has been included since 2011, so removal isn’t going to come easy. Other local sites, such as RUtracker.org and Rapidgator, remain on the list as thorns in the side of the U.S.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The company adopted one of the most restrictive sharing policies of all cloud providers. This resulted in an exodus of users, which cost 75% of RapidShare’s employees their jobs.

After the U.S. Government labeled the site as a “notorious” piracy-facilitating market a few years in a row, the company decided that it had to change the negative perceptions in Washington. To do so, RapidShare retained the lobbying firm Dutko.

“We decided to increase our efforts to explain what RapidShare really stands for and how we are spearheading the industry’s efforts to combat copyright infringements,” RapidShare attorney Daniel Raimer told TF at the time.

These efforts soon paid off, as RapidShare was no longer listed in the Government’s Special 301 Report of notorious markets during the years that followed. This change could be directly linked to its presence in Washington, the company believed.

“The fact that we were not included in the 2011 list is a result of these educational efforts,” Raimer told us.

After joining the Washington lobby for nearly four years, RapidShare and Dutko recently decided to part ways. After spending well over a million dollars, paired with the drastic anti-piracy measures RapidShare had taken, both agreed that RapidShare’s image had significantly improved.

RapidShare lobbying budget

Indeed, any neutral follower of the cloud hosting industry would agree that RapidShare is no longer a piracy magnet. It therefore came as a total surprise that the U.S. Government reinstated RapidShare as a notorious market in this month’s Special 301 Report.

“Although RapidShare.com’s popularity has diminished since its 2012 listing, it remains one of the most active sites worldwide as well as in the Czech Republic, where it is best known as Share-rapid.cz,” the Government wrote.

While it may be a total coincidence that RapidShare was put back on the list after it pulled its lobbying efforts from Washington, there is something uncanny about the development. And that’s not just because the site is no longer an appealing site for those who are out to share copyrighted material.

The United States Trade Representative (USTR), who compiles the list of notorious sites, does so based on public comments from copyright holders and other interested parties. However, none of the rightsholders who submitted their input for the most recent list mentioned RapidShare, or the seemingly unrelated Share-rapid.cz. All other file-hosting sites on the other hand, were mentioned.

Of course USTR does have the right to add websites based on other sources, but it’s definitely not common, especially not when it concerns a service that has taken such a strong stance against piracy in recent years.

It’s safe to conclude that someone has been pulling some strings behind the scenes to get RapidShare back on the list, but who, will probably remain a mystery.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The review is published annually and highlights countries that in the eyes of the U.S. are not doing enough to deter copyright infringement. Nintendo is one of the companies to submit recommendations on how other countries should tackle these issues.

The gaming company states that piracy is a chronic problem that results in “huge losses,” in part due to the inactivity of foreign countries who do very little to curb copyright infringement.

“In the past few years, the scope of online piracy for Nintendo has grown dramatically. Every month tens of thousands of illegal Nintendo game files are detected on the Internet. The legal environment to limit the flow of these files remains extremely challenging,” the company explains in its letter.

Like last year, Nintendo’s letter focuses on four countries – Brazil, China, Mexico and Spain – where these challenges remain unaddressed. For each of the countries the game company offers a set of recommendations on how the legal climate can be improved, hoping the United States Government will push for change.

According to statistics presented in the letter, no less than 16% of all online piracy of Nintendo products traces back to Spain. With 1.2 million downloads this is the second largest piracy market, just behind Italy with 1.4 million downloads.

Nintendo Piracy across the globe

While the volume of piracy has deceased somewhat compared to previous years, Nintendo wants Spain to take drastic action. Specifically, it points out that the local Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) should block pirate sites wherever possible.

“Since so many illegal video games are downloaded in Spain from foreign-based cyberlockers, and accessed through cyberlinkers or P2P linking sites hosted outside Spain, the IPC must address this issue by authorizing the blocking of linking sites,” Nintendo writes.

The irony of this suggestion is that Nintendo has made no efforts in the United States to have any of the major torrent or linking sites blocked. This is especially painful because their own research shows that many of the larger Spanish linking sites are hosted in America, and registered though U.S. companies.

In addition to blocking websites, the game company wants the U.S. Government to educate and train the Spanish on how to deal with copyright infringers effectively.

“The Spanish Government should work with the U.S. Government and rights holders to provide necessary IP training to Spanish prosecutors, judges and IPC officials, particularly focusing on Internet piracy and effective online investigation, prosecution, and adjudication of criminal copyright infringement on the Internet.”

Similar recommendations are made for Mexico, Brazil and China. In these countries Nintendo also wants ISPs to be held liable for their role in continuing high levels of Internet piracy. The gaming company says that this can be achieved by introducing notice and takedown procedures as well as stiffer penalties for companies that fail to take responsibility.

“Hold Internet Service Providers responsible for facilitating piracy under certain circumstances, including a requirement that ISPs expeditiously remove infringing content when notified by a rights holder representative,” Nintendo advises for Brazil.

Companies and individuals who continue to facilitate copyright infringement have to be prosecuted, Nintendo says, and to boost deterrence maximum penalties should be increased.

“Bring criminal prosecutions against major infringers, including those facilitating piracy on the Internet. The courts must impose stronger penalties against IP crimes, both traditional forms of piracy and online piracy, to raise awareness and foster deterrence,” Nintendo adds.

It is clear that Nintendo wants the U.S. to put more pressure on foreign countries, but whether these efforts will be successful has yet to be seen. In a few weeks the U.S. Trade Representative is expected to release its full Special 301 report.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In several Special 301 Reports published by the United States Trade Representative, Russia’s Facebook equivalent has been criticized for the huge quantities of unauthorized media it hosts and labeled a “notorious market”, a term usually reserved for piracy’s apparent worst-of-the-worst.

The problem stems from the fact that vKontakte allows its tens of millions of users to upload anything from movies and TV shows to their entire music collections. This content then becomes available for anyone to enjoy, from members of the site to complete outsiders. Many of the big, free MP3 download sites on the web are powered by MP3s pulled from vKontakte, so this is not just a Russian issue.

In response to the complaints, earlier this year the company confirmed it had deployed fingerprinting technology, similar to YouTube’s Content ID. Whether this would be enough to appease rightsholders would remain to be seen, but in a statement this week the head of Russia’s telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor said the site’s actions should be enough to remove it from the USTR’s list.

“VKontakte is now in active dialog with all the rights owners,” Alexander Zharov said. “It is my hope that, given the progress in their relations with the owners, VKontakte will be excluded from the 301 list.”

So good news for vKontakte then? Well, not so fast. Let’s not forget that it’s the Hollywood studios and major recording labels that provide the fuel for the Special 301 Report and if they aren’t happy, the USTR isn’t going to be happy either. And all the signs suggest that they are far from content.

In fact, according to reports in Russian media this morning, the major labels are getting ready to take vKontakte on in the traditional way – via lawsuit.

National Federation of the Music Industry chief Leonid Agronov says that Sony, Universal, EMI, Warner and other rights owners have run out of patience and will sue the social network after the holiday period is over.

“This year, we have tried all the civilized ways of influencing the state, society and the Internet industry. Next year we will be much more aggressive and brazen. We have spent four years trying to normalize the situation to somehow move piracy beyond the law,” he said.

NFMI members are said to be preparing to sue in the St. Petersburg Court of Arbitration in an attempt to have at least six thousand pieces of music removed from vKontakte, including works from Beyonce, 50 Cent, Eminem, Jay-Z, Madonna, Skrillex, Linkin Park, Metallica and Pink Floyd.

Agronov said that the labels have tried to negotiate with the site in order for it to begin paying for the music it hosts with a suggestion it shifts those costs to its users, but apparently vKontakte is interested in neither. It nevertheless profits from advertising while its users listen to unauthorized music, he added.

According to Izvestia, the legal action could take up to a couple of months or even a couple of years, depending on the determination of each side.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.