Under development at Github, SportsDevil’s aim is to present its tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of users with links to external video sources via a convenient interface, covering everything from live NFL, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey and motorsports, combat sports such as UFC and boxing, plus football and soccer from both sides of the Atlantic.

This week, however, SportsDevil’s reign on Github was brought to an end following action from UK-based anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft. While FACT is closely affiliated with Hollywood studios, it also represents the rights of major sports broadcasters and rightsholders including The Premier League, British Sky Broadcasting Ltd and BT Sport.

In its takedown notice, FACT explains what SportsDevil does and why it should be taken down.

“The files found at the following locations facilitate linking to sites known to provide access to streams of infringing content. The sites are subsequently scraped for links to various broadcasts including those whose copyrights belong to FACT members,” the group explains.

In addition to the ZIP files for the project, FACT targeted 47 configuration files enabling SportsDevil to pull links to content from sites such as FirstRowSports, Wiziwig.tv and Cricfree, a site that was targeted by PIPCU earlier this year.

TorrentFreak contacted FACT about the takedown and asked if this was the first piece of software to be taken down by the group.

“This is not the first time and with development of technology, we don’t anticipate it will be the last,” FACT told TF.

We also put it to FACT that although it’s pretty clear what SportDevil is designed to do, the tool itself is often far removed from actual infringing content and could be several steps down the linking chain. Does that present issues?

“That’s the point of what we’re doing. The tool is creating alternative ways of accessing content, and we view that as a likely offense,” FACT said.

Also of interest is the formatting of FACT’s takedown notice, which references neither UK law where its members are based nor US law where Github is located.

“Our takedown notices are modeled on DMCA notices. In this particular case, they were adapted to comply with Github DMCA policy,” FACT confirmed.

It’s worth noting that Github recently updated its takedown processes to give projects more time to ‘fix’ any issues following a DMCA complaint but it appears SportsDevil’s creators didn’t take up that opportunity.

TF spoke with an expert on this type of software who told us that while its removal from Github will be a setback, it won’t mean the end of the tool.

“If an addon’s repository is removed from GitHub, the addon author loses the ability to push further updates to the addon, so unless users install the author’s new repository (which they would have to do manually) further automated updates won’t take place,” he explained.

Finally, we asked FACT if it intends to target more software tools in future.

“Where we see a threat to our members’ content, we’ll continue to seek appropriate ways of dealing with it,” FACT conclude.

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

However, the idea of presenting content in a pretty interface is not new. XBMC, now officially known as the Kodi Entertainment Center, has been a popular choice amongst movie and TV show fans for many years. While the app itself provides little direct access to content, a myriad of third-party plugins streamlines the process massively.

That being said, in terms of simplicity Popcorn Time has the market sewn up. The straightforward install and configuration process is a snap for almost anyone and while a fully-loaded XBMC/Kodi setup beats it in many respects, getting that setup right is not easy for beginners.

With that in mind the people at TVAddons think they have a solution. Currently only available on Android, TVMC is XBMC/Kodi but in a convenient and almost ready-to-go package. Once the software is installed the user is guided through a no-fail setup process to activate the main plugins that provide access to a wide range of movies, TV shows and sports.

Despite the smooth setup, it’s still not quite Popcorn Time in terms of simplicity of interface, but content-wise it appears to hold all the cards with direct access to PrimeWire, Project Free TV, IceFilms, USTVnow and Veetle, among others. Legal content is available from all of these sites, but the decision of what to view will be down to the user.

While Popcorn Time is BitTorrent-based, TVMC pulls content from streaming sites. This, its creators say, means their system is more secure for users.

“Unlike the popular app Popcorn Time which gives you access to similar
content, through torrent technology instead of streaming links, TVMC does
not turn the end-user’s device into a server, it simply streams content
directly from file hosts such as GorillaVid, NovaMov, Billion Uploads,” TVAddons say.

The other slight advantage TVMC has over Popcorn Time is availability. Unlike its rival, TVMC is currently sitting on Google Play’s store ready for download. At $0.88 its affordable, but definitely not as cheap as the current free version of Android Popcorn Time. However, for those prepared to do a manual install, TVMC is available for free via the TVAddons site.

Overall, TVMC is really XBMC for beginners but the big question now is how long the software will remain accessible on Google Play. History tells us that if it’s still downloadable this time next week, that will be a major achievement.

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

In the file-sharing space the phenomenon is very common indeed as these entities, torrent and ‘cyberlockers’ in particular, often face unique challenges. These special issues can often lead to unexpected downtime, although with the advent of social media many sites have improved their communications with users.

That being said, tens of thousands of Firedrive users currently have no idea what has happened to their site.

Firedrive, which was previously known as Putlocker before a rebranding exercise earlier this year, started behaving strangely last week. User reports to TorrentFreak initially complained that the site was simply down, but a couple of days later, with no official announcement forthcoming, things took a turn for the strange.

It’s well known that Firedrive is used by some to host unauthorized copies of movies. It’s unclear just how many but thousands of sites around the world carry links to Firedrive that allow the viewing of mainstream movies with nothing more than a web browser. However, users trying to access those links are currently facing disappointment.

Since before the weekend, many (perhaps all) video files on Firedrive have been replaced with 13-15 second intros used by the major movie studios. TF tested a few random links we found using Google and found intros from Sony, Warner, Universal and Dreamworks, instead of the movies that claimed to be there.

TVAddons, the XBMC-focused community previously known as XBMCHub, told TorrentFreak that the issues at Firedrive and sister-site Sockshare (which is also currently non-functional) have broken some of their XBMC/Kodi addons. However, even greater concern lies with those who use Firedrive as a personal storage site.

In recent months following the Putlocker transition, Firedrive has been debuting tools and features which give the site an appeal to users looking for Dropbox-style functionality. And this is where things get even more strange. After a short beta period, on October 1 Firedrive issued a press release heralding the official debut of their iOS and Android syncing apps.

“We are looking forward to our users exploring the new applications and finding value in sharing and backing up their rich media using Firedrive,” said Joseph Turner, CEO of Firedrive.

However, users searching for the apps on either the App Store or Google Play are now met with silence. ITunes reports that the app is only available in Canada yet switching to that location reveals that it has been removed. Searches on Google Play for the Android versions yields nil results.

Ever since their press release Firedrive simply hasn’t been working and the only posts on Firedrive’s Facebook page are from angry users complaining about everything from lost files to hackers having taken over the site.

“All I can say is thank god I didn’t pay for this bullshit and to think was just about to go pro and pay,” wrote one. “Never happening now even if it does come back with my files intact, which I doubt will happen! Anyone into a class action suit, I have 100s of hours of work lost could only imagine what paying customers might have lost!”

TorrentFreak reached out to the site for comment but we have yet to receive any response. If anyone has any additional information, feel free to contact us.

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

In some countries, coding is now the most common profession. All growth sectors are heavily technology-dependent, which always means that the net is at underpinning all of it. All celebrated entrepreneurs have built super-scaling businesses enabled by the net. We also shop for food online, we date online, we build things together online.

It stands clear that the net is by far the most critical piece of infrastructure existing today. Not only does it build all future jobs, growth, economy, and entrepreneurship; we also exercise all our civil liberties, civic duties, and spend a lot of our social activities on this infrastructure. It’s more important than any other piece of infrastructure in society. We can do without the phone network, without cable TV, even without paved roads when we have the net.

So why are we letting this infrastructure get regulated by a cartoon industry?

This is not just figurative: we quite literally are. The Walt Disney Corporation has been instrumental in lobbying for limiting the utility of the net, taking leadership within the copyright industry at large. It’s no random chance that the latest copyright monopoly extension in the United States was called “The Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act”.

The notion that the copyright industry’s distribution monopoly is somehow more important to society than the super-infrastructure we call the Internet is not just laughable; it’s absurd and bizarre. And yet, the latter is being limited to appease and safeguard the former, instead of the other way around.

Of course, it’s easy to speak of the copyright industry as a cartoon industry in the figurative sense, too. It’s hard to find an industry that’s exaggerating its own importance more while failing at its core business more at the same time.

Policymakers have completely failed in realizing what the growth engine in society is today, and are letting a completely irrelevant industry negate it from the sidelines. This is not just baffling but limits growth, jobs, and future entrepreneurship.

The industries inhibited by the copyright monopoly are contributing more to the economy by almost a factor of twelve-to-one compared to the copyright industry. In other words, for every job lost in the copyright industry, twelve more are created. (Even formal studies agree that more than one job in technology is created for every job lost in the copyright industry.)

For a tangible example of this, observe how Linux- and Unix-based computers now have a market share of over 50% both on the client and server sides. In other words, over half of our service offerings and the consumption of them – across all categories – are now dependent on technology which was written in defiance of the copyright monopoly, and which states outright that the copyright monopoly is a problem at best and absurd at worst.

It’s more than time we saw the cartoon industry for the cartoon industry they are, and kick them out of making policy for critical infrastructure.

Quite regardless of whether they like being kicked out or not, and especially regardless of what they think of the policies we need for the Internet instead of the ones they want.

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

The software amassed millions of users by offering BitTorrent-powered streaming in an easy-to-use Netflix-style interface.

When the original version shut down various forks continued the project, each releasing their own features. One of the most-used Popcorn Time versions comes from time4popcorn.eu, who remain very active on the development side.

After previously rolling out an Android version and Chromecast and Apple TV support, today the fork released the first Popcorn Time app for iOS. The first release requires a jailbreak and can be accessed through the Cydia platform.

TorrentFreak spoke with the developers who say they are working on a solution for non-jailbroken devices as well, but that will take some more time to complete. Nonetheless, they are happy with the progress they’ve made thus far.

“After only 5.5 months, Popcorn Time is available on all major platforms! And this is only the beginning. Our future plans are huge,” the time4popcorn.eu team notes.

The iOS app is currently missing some features that are available in the desktop version. Chromecast and Apple TV support are still works in progress, likewise the built-in VPN.

The standard functionality appears to work just fine, provided that there’s enough bandwidth available to stream the video files via BitTorrent.

The developers have released the iOS source code under a GPL V3 license, which allows others to extend and improve it. The team itself will also continue to work on improving the code, and they promise to release more “exiting details” on the application’s future in a week or two.

Popcorn Time’s appeal to pirates hasn’t gone unnoticed by Hollywood. Two months ago the MPAA pushed back and managed to get two popular forks removed from Github claiming that the apps are hurting the major movie studios.

While this was a setback, it doesn’t seem to have hindered development much. Both Popcorn Time forks are still around and show no sign of throwing the towel voluntarily anytime soon.

Update: Time4Popcorn lost its domain name and switched to Popcorn-time.se

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

To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping.

Unfortunately, not all VPN services are as anonymous as they claim.

Following a high-profile case of an individual using an ‘anonymous’ VPN service that turned out to be not so private, TorrentFreak decided to ask a selection of VPN services some tough questions.

By popular demand we now present the third iteration of our VPN services “logging” review. In addition to questions about logging policies we also asked VPN providers about their stance towards file-sharing traffic, and what they believe the most secure VPN is.

Last update: October 7, 2014 (added partial Russian translation)

—

1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long?

2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?

3. What tools are used to monitor and mitigate abuse of your service?

4. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or European equivalent, how are these handled?

5. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service?

6. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed on all servers? If not, why?

7. Which payment systems do you use and how are these linked to individual user accounts?

8. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?

—

What follows is the list of responses from the VPN services, in their own words. Providers who didn’t answer our questions directly or failed by logging everything were excluded. Please note, however, that several VPN companies listed here do log to some extent. The order of the lists holds no value.

Private Internet Access

1. We absolutely do not log any traffic nor session data of any kind, period. We have worked hard to meticulously fork all daemons that we utilize in order to achieve this functionality. It is definitely not an easy task, and we are very proud of our development team for helping Private Internet Access to achieve this unique ability.

2. We operate out of the US which is one of the few, if only, countries without a mandatory data retention law. We explored several other jurisdictions with the help of our professional legal team, and the US is still ideal for privacy-based VPN services.

We severely scrutinize the validity of any and all legal information requests. That being said, since we do not hold any traffic nor session data, we are unable to provide any information to any third-party. Our commitment and mission to preserve privacy is second to none.

3. We do not monitor any traffic, period. We block IPs/ports as needed to mitigate abuse when we receive a valid abuse notification.

4. We do not host any content and are therefore unable to remove any of said content. Additionally, our mission is to preserve and restore privacy on the Internet and society. As such, since we do not log or monitor anything, we’re unable to identify any users of our service.

5. Once again, we do not log any traffic or session data. Additionally, unlike the EU and many other countries, our users are protected by legal definition. For this reason, we’re unable to identify any user of our service. Lastly, consumer protection laws exist in the US, unlike many other countries. We must abide by our advertised privacy policy.

6. We do not discriminate against any kind of traffic/protocol on any of our servers, period. We believe in a free, open, and uncensored internet.

7. Bitcoin, Ripple, PayPal, Google Play (Mobile), OKPay, CashU, Amazon and any major Gift Card. We support plenty of anonymous payment methods. For this reason, the highest risk users should definitely use Bitcoin, Ripple or a major gift card with an anonymous e-mail account when subscribing to our privacy service.

8. We’re the only provider to date that provides a plethora of encryption cipher options. We recommend, mostly, using AES-128, SHA1 and RSA2048.

Private Internet Access website

TorGuard

1. TorGuard does not store any IP address or time stamps on any VPN and proxy servers, not even for a second. Further, we do not store any logs or time stamps on user authentication servers connected to the VPN. In this way it is not even possible to match an external time stamp to a user that was simultaneously logged in. Because the VPN servers utilize a shared IP configuration, there can be hundreds of users sharing the same IP at any given moment further obfuscating the ability to single out any specific user on the network.

2. TorGuard is a privately owned company with parent ownership based in Nevis and our headquarters currently located in the US. Our legal representation at the moment is comfortable with the current corporate structuring however we wouldn’t hesitate to move all operations internationally should the ground shift beneath our feet. We now offer VPN access in 23+ countries worldwide and maintain all customer billing servers well outside US borders.

We would only be forced to communicate with a third-party in the event that our legal team received a court ordered subpoena to do so. This has yet to happen, however if it did we would proceed with complete transparency and further explain the nature of TorGuard’s shared VPN configuration. We have no logs to investigate, and thus no information to share.

3. Our network team uses commercial monitoring software with custom scripts to keep an eye on individual server load and service status/uptime so we can identify problems as fast as possible. If abuse reports are received from an upstream provider, we block it by employing various levels of filtering and global firewall rules to large clusters of servers. Instead of back tracing abuse by logging, our team mitigates things in real-time. We have a responsibility to provide fast, abuse-free VPN services for our clients and have perfected these methods over time.

4. In the event of receiving a DMCA notice, the request is immediately processed by our abuse team. Because it is impossible for us to locate which user on the server is actually responsible for the violation, we temporarily block the infringing server and apply global rules depending on the nature of the content and the server responsible. The system we use for filtering certain content is similar to keyword blocking but with much more accuracy. This ensures the content in question to no longer pass through the server and satisfies requirements from our bandwidth providers.

5. Due to the nature of shared VPN services and how our network is configured, it is not technically possible to effectively identity or single out one active user from a single IP address. If our legal department received a valid subpoena, we would proceed with complete transparency from day one. Our team is prepared to defend our client’s right to privacy to the fullest extent of the law.

6. BitTorrent is only allowed on select server locations. TorGuard now offers a variety of protocols like http/socks proxies, OpenVPN, SSH Tunnels, SSTP VPN and Stealth VPN (DPI Bypass), with each connection method serving a very specific purpose for usage. Since BitTorrent is largely bandwidth intensive, we do not encourage torrent usage on all servers. Locations that are optimized for torrent traffic include endpoints in: Canada, Netherlands, Iceland, Sweden, Romania, Russia and select servers in Hong Kong. This is a wide range of locations that works efficiently regardless of the continent you are trying to torrent from.

7. We currently accept payments through all forms of credit or debit card, PayPal, OKPAY, and Bitcoin. During checkout we may ask the user to verify a billing phone and address but this is simply to prevent credit card fraud, spammers, and keep the network running fast and clean. After payment it is possible to change this to something generic that offers more privacy. No VPN or Proxy usage can be linked back to a billing account due to the fact we hold absolutely no levels of logging on any one of our servers, not even timestamps!

8. For best security we advise clients to choose OpenVPN connections only, and if higher encryption is called for use AES256 bit. This option is available on many locations and offers excellent security without degrading performance. For those that are looking to defeat Deep Packet Inspection firewalls (DPI) like what is encountered in countries such as China or Iran, TorGuard offers “Stealth” VPN connections in the Netherlands, UK and Canada. Stealth connections feature OpenVPN obfuscation technology that causes VPN traffic to appear as regular connections, allowing VPN access even behind the most strict corporate wifi networks or government regulated ISPs.

TorGuard website

IPVanish

1. IPVanish has a no-log policy. We keep no traffic logs.

2. IPVanish is headquartered in the US and thus operates under US law.

3. IPVanish has no monitoring in place. To elaborate, IPVanish does not sniff or monitor any user’s traffic or activity for any reason.

4. IPVanish keeps no logs of any user’s activity and responds accordingly.

5. IPVanish, like every other company, has to follow the law in order to remain in business. Only US law applies.

6. P2P is permitted. IPVanish in fact does not block or throttle any ports, protocols, servers or any type of traffic whatsoever.

7. PayPal and all major credit cards are accepted. Payments and product use are in no way linked. User authentication and billing info are help on completely different and independent platforms.

8. OpenVPN generally provides the strongest encryption algorithm, so that is the recommended encryption protocol. IPVanish also allows a choice between TCP and UDP, and UDP is generally recommended for better speed.

IPVanish website

BTGuard

1. We do not keep any logs whatsoever.

2. The jurisdiction is Canada. Since we do not have log files, we have no information to share. We do not communicate with any third parties. The only event in which we would even communicate with a third-party is if we received a court order. We would then be forced to notify them we have no information. This has not happened yet.

3. If serious abuse is reported we enable tcpdump to confirm the abuse and locate the user. These dumps are immediately removed. If the user is abusing our service they will be terminated permanently but we have never shared user information with a 3rd party.

4. We do not have any open incoming ports, so it’s not possible for us to “takedown” any broadcasting content.

5. We take every step within the law to fight such an order.

6. Yes, all types of traffic our allowed with our services.

7. We accept PayPal and Bitcoin. All payments are linked to users accounts because they have to be for disputes and refunds.

8. 256-bit AES is the most secure. However 128-bit blowfish is plenty good. If you’re concerned about surveillance agencies such as the NSA, their capabilities are shrouded in secrecy and claiming to be able to protect you is offering you nothing but speculation. As far as what’s publicly available for deciphering encryption, both of the encryptions I mentioned are more than sufficient.

BTGuard website

Privacy.io

1. We do not log any information on our VPN servers. The only scenario is if a technical issue arises, but we request permission from the user first, and we only do it for the duration of the job, and then it is removed.

2. We are in the process of moving jurisdictions away from Australia at present as we are unsure what our current government plans to do in regards to our privacy. We have not decided where yet.

3. Only SMTP port 25 is filtered to mitigate spam, but we are working on some tools to make it easier for users to send mail.

4. Any DMCA request is ignored, as we have no logs to do anything about them.

5. Same as above, as we do not log, so we are unable to provide any information. If the law attempts to make us do such things, we will move our business to a location where that cannot occur, and if that fails we will close up shop before we provide any information.

6. All protocols are allowed with our service, with the only exception of SMTP port 25 currently being filtered.

7. At present we only accept PayPal and CC (processed by PayPal), but we are looking into alternative types of payments. We go out of our way to make sure that PayPal transactions are not linked to the users, we generate a unique key per transaction to verify payment for the account is made, and then nuke that unique key. Bitcoin and Litecoin are also on the agenda.

8. At present we offer 128 bit for PPTP and 256 bit for OpenVPN, We plan to offer stronger encryption for the security conscious.

Privacy.io website

VikingVPN

1. No. We run a zero knowledge network and are unable to tie a user to an IP address.

2. United States, they don’t have data retention laws, despite their draconian surveillance programs. The only information we share with anyone is billing information to our payment gateway. This can be anonymized by using a pre-paid anonymous card. If asked to share specific data about our users and their habits, we would be unable to do so, because we don’t have any logs of that data.

3. That is mostly confidential information. However, we can assure our users that we do not use logging to achieve this goal.

4. In the event of a DMCA notice, we send out the DMCA policy published on our website. We haven’t yet received a VALID DMCA notice.

5. We exhaust all legal options to protect our users. Failing that, we would provide all of our logs, which do not actually exist. If required to wiretap a user under a National Security Letter, we have a passively triggered Warrant Canary. We would also likely choose to shut down our service and put it up elsewhere.

6. Yes. Those ports are all open, and we have no data caps.

7. We currently only take credit cards. Our payment provider is far more restrictive than we ever imagined they would be. We’re still trying to change payment providers. Fortunately, by using a pre-paid credit card, you can still have totally anonymous service from us.

8. A strong handshake (either RSA-4096+ or a non-standard elliptic curve as the NIST curves are suspect). A strong cipher such as AES-256-CBC or AES-256-GCM encryption (NOT EDE MODE). At least SHA1 for data integrity checks. SHA2 and the newly adopted SHA3 (Skein) hash functions are also fine, but slower and provide no real extra assurances of data integrity, and provide no further security beyond SHA1. The OpenVPN HMAC firewall option to harden the protocol against Man-in-the-Middle and Man-on-the-Side attacks.

VikingVPN website

IVPN

1. IVPN’s top priority is the privacy of its customers and therefor we do not store any connection logs or any other log that could be used to associate a connection to a customer.

2. IVPN is incorporated in Malta. We would ignore any request to share data unless it was served by a legal authority with jurisdiction in Malta in which case we would inform them that we don’t have the data to share. If we were served a subpoena which compelled us to log traffic we would find a way to inform our customers and relocate to a new jurisdiction.

3. We use a tool called PSAD to mitigate attacks originating from customers on our network. We also use rate-limiting in iptables to mitigate SPAM.

4. We ensure that our network providers understand the nature of our business and that we do not host any content. As a condition of the safe harbor provisions they are required to inform us of each infringement which includes the date, title of the content and the IP address of the gateway through which it was downloaded. We simply respond to each notice confirming that we do not host the content in question.

5. Assuming the court order is requesting an identity based on a timestamp and IP, our legal department would respond that we don’t have any record of the user’s identity nor are we legally compelled to do so.

6. We ‘allow’ BitTorrent on all servers except gateways based in the USA. Our USA network providers are required to inform us of each copyright infringement and are required to process our response putting undue strain on their support resources (hundreds per day). For this reason providers won’t host our servers in the USA unless we take measures to mitigate P2P activity.

7. We currently accept Bitcoin, Cash and PayPal. No information relating to a customers payment account is stored with the exception of automated PayPal subscriptions where we are required to store the subscription ID in order to assign it to an invoice (only for the duration of the subscription after which it is deleted). Of course PayPal will always maintain a record that you have sent funds to IVPN but that is all they have. If you need to be anonymous to IVPN and don’t wish to be identified as a customer then we recommend using Bitcoin or cash.

8. We recommend and offer OpenVPN using the strongest AES-256 cipher. For key exchange and authentication 4096-bit RSA keys are used.

IVPN website

PrivatVPN

1. We don’t keep ANY logs that allow us or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user our service. The only thing we log are e-mails and user names but it’s not possible to bind an activity on the Internet to a user.

2. We operate in Swedish jurisdiction. Since we do not log any IP addresses we have nothing to disclose. Circumstances doesn’t matter in this case, we have no information regarding our customers’ IP addresses and activity on the Internet. Therefore we have no information to share with any 3rd party.

3. If there’s abuse, we advise that service to block our IP in the first instance, and second, we can block traffic to the abused service.

4. This depends on the country in which we’re receiving a DMCA takedown. For example, we’ve received a DMCA takedown for UK and Finland and our response was to close P2P traffic in those countries.

5. If we get a court order to monitor a specific IP then we need to do it, and this applies to every VPN company out there.

6. Yes, we allow Torrent traffic.

7. PayPal, Payson and Plimus. Every payment has an order number, which is linked to a user. Otherwise we wouldn’t know who has made a payment. To be clear, you can’t link a payment to an IP address you get from us.

8. OpenVPN TUN with AES-256. On top is a 2048-bit DH key.

PrivatVPN website

PRQ

1. No. Wo do not log anything and we only require a working e-mail address to be a customer.

2. Swedish. We do not share information with anyone.

3. Not disclosed.

4. Put it in the trash where it belongs!

5. None, since we do not have any customer information and no logs.

6. We host anything as long as it’s not SPAM related or child porn.

7. Visa/Mastercard, Bitcoin, PayPal. No correlation between payment data and customer data.

8. We provide OpenVPN services (along with dedicated servers and other hosting services).

PRQ website

tigerVPN

1. Absolutely not! We built tigerVPN to purge all data once the transmission of a IP package was completed successfully. Its impossible to trace back any customer. On top of that we decided to use shared IPs in order to further randomize and anonymize our customers. The combination of having absolutely no logs at all and multiple customers per IP, wipes our customers digital footprint

2. We are a limited liability company in Slovakia. Slovakia does not have any data retention programs and furthermore encourage ISP’s to protect their customers privacy on the net. We are not required to share any information with 3rd party hence it would be illegal thanks to the law of telecom secrecy.

3. Since we don’t keep logs, we can’t monitor abusive behavior, which is the price for building a customer secure environment!

4. We can’t comply since we can’t identify customers, therefore it’s pointless to follow any requests. We have a specific folder for these eMails ;-)

5. Same as above. We seriously can’t tell which customer did what, when, where, at any given time.

6. It’s allowed on all servers although we gently ask our customers to use either Romania or Netherlands. Some infrastructure service providers do not want file sharing so it happened to us that we were asked to move our servers due to file sharing. We found some reliable partners in Romania and Netherlands which tolerate p2p so we kindly ask our customers to use these server parks.

7. Customers can pay with Visa, Mastercard and Debit. On top of that we also use PayPal. We use hash keys and tokens to identify a payment but it’s not logged or linked to the customer. We had to do this anyway hence we are a PCI Level 1 compliant merchant. Therefore we are not allowed to store any card or payment data with the records of our customers. These keys are pointless for anyone else so there is no chance to build a connection.

8. We offer PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN, while out of nature OpenVPN comes with the highest encryption and algorithm. L2TP and OpenVPN are 256bit SSL encrypted while PPTP comes with a solid 128bit. Although our customers are individual and have their own sense of why and what to use, we recommend L2TP as solid protocol. It’s less geeky and more secure than PPTP, but our customers can pick any of them in all the 47 network nodes around the globe.

tigerVPN website

Mullvad

1. No. This would make both us and our users more vulnerable so we
certainly don’t. To make it harder to watch the activities of an IP address from the outside we also have many users share each address, both for IPv4 and our upcoming IPv6 support.

2. Swedish jurisdiction. Under no circumstance we will share information with a third-party. First of all we take pains to not actually possess information that could be of interest to third parties, to the extent possible. In the end there is no practical way for the Swedish government to get information about our users from us.

3. We don’t monitor our users. In the rare cases of such egregious network abuse that we can’t help but notice (such as DoS attacks) we stop it using basic network tools.

4. There is no such Swedish law that is applicable to us.

5. We make sure not to store sensitive information that can be tied to publicly available information, so that we have nothing to give out. We believe it is not possible in Swedish law to construct a court order that would compel us to actually give out information about our
users. Not that we would anyway. We started this service for political reasons and would rather discontinue it than having it work against its purpose.

6. Yes.

7. Bitcoin (we were the first service to accept it), cash (in the mail), bank transfers, and PayPal / credit cards. Payments are tied to accounts but accounts are just random numbers with no personal information attached that users can create at will. With the anonymous payments possible with cash and Bitcoin it can be anonymous all the way.

8. We use OpenVPN. We also provide PPTP because some people want it but we strongly recommend against it. Encryption algorithms and key lengths are important but often get way too much attention at the expense of other important but harder to measure things such as leaks and computer security.

Mullvad website

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

While Google cited Terms of Service violations, ongoing copyright-related issues with the world’s largest recording labels were the number one suspect for the takedown. Generally, Grooveshark parent company Escape Media are not on good terms with the RIAA due to legal issues dating back several years.

Last month, however, there appeared to be something of a turnaround in relationships with Google when Grooveshark announced that it was about to debut Chromecast support via the Play Store.

The development was well received, with Hypebot wondering if Google welcoming Grooveshark back amounted to redemption for the US-based streaming company.

But now, less than a month later, it’s all over.

“After a jointly approved press release from Grooveshark, we were notified by Google [that] our app was suspended for Terms of Service of compliance,” Grooveshark announced today.

The development came as a surprise to Grooveshark, since the company believes it did enough to comply with Google’s Terms of Service this time around. However, it will come as no surprise that the root of the complaint lies with the major recording labels based in the United States.

According to a statement sent to TheNextWeb, the RIAA is behind the suspension after claiming that Grooveshark’s service infringes on their artists’ copyrights.

“We found this interesting as Google (YouTube) is also engaged in a lawsuit over the same points,” a Grooveshark spokesperson said.

While that is indeed true, YouTube’s relationships with the labels are considerably better than those currently enjoyed by Grooveshark. Even Google sympathizes with the labels, something which became evident last year when the search giant excluded the term Grooveshark from its Autocomplete and Instant services.

But despite the drawbacks, Grooveshark continues. Grooveshark for Android can still be downloaded from the company’s site. Chromecast functionality also remains.

“You may still access your full Grooveshark library on Chromecast via our main site (grooveshark.com) or html5 mobile site….using the ‘mirroring’ tool,” the company concludes.

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

The software became an instant hit by offering BitTorrent-powered streaming in an easy-to-use Netflix-style interface.

While the original app was shut down by the developers after a few weeks, the project was quickly picked up by others. This resulted in several popular forks that have gained a steady user-base in recent months.

Just how popular the application is remained a mystery, until now. TorrentFreak reached out to one of the most popular Popcorn Time forks at time4popcorn.eu to find out how many installs and active users there are in various parts of the world.

The Popcorn Time team was initially reluctant to share exact statistics on the app’s popularity across the globe, but they’re now ready to lift the veil.

Data shared with TorrentFreak shows that most users come from the United States where the application is installed on more than 1.4 million devices. There are currently over 100,000 active users in the U.S. and the number of new installs per day hovers around 15,000.

“At the beginning of August there were between 17-18K installations a day on all operating systems and last weekend there were somewhere between 13-15K a day,” the Popcorn Time teams informs us.

The application has a surprisingly large user base in the Netherlands too, as Android Planet found out. The country comes in second place with 1.3 million installs. That’s a huge number for a country with a population of less than 17 million people.

Brazil completes the top three at a respectful distance with 700,000 installed applications and around 56,000 active users.

The United Kingdom just missed a spot in the top three. The Popcorn Time fork has been installed on 500,000 devices there, with 30,000 active users and 4,500 new installs per day.

Australia, which generally has a very high piracy rate, is lagging behind a little with 93,000 installs thus far, and “only” 6,500 active users.

The statistics above only apply to the time4popcorn.eu application. While it’s probably the most used, other forks such as popcorntime.io also have a large following to add to the total Popcorn Time user base.

The team behind time4popcorn.eu, meanwhile, says that it will continue to add new features and support for more operating systems. They are currently finishing up the first iOS version which is expected to be released in a few days.

Aside from the technical challenges, the developers keep motivated by the large audience they’ve gathered in a relatively short period.

“We really love and appreciate all our devoted users from all over the world, and we want to emphasize to them once more that this is only the beginning of the beginning. We have so many awesome plans for the future,” they stress.

As long as there are no legal troubles down the road, this user base is expected to grow even further during the months to come.

Update: Time4Popcorn lost its domain name and switched to Popcorn-time.se

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

For two years the United States Department of Justice has released information on the case and last evening came news of more charges and more arrests.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division announced the unsealing of three federal indictments in the Northern District of Georgia charging six members of Appbucket, Applanet and SnappzMarket for their roles in the unauthorized distribution of Android apps.

SnappzMarket

Joshua Ryan Taylor, 24, of Kentwood, Michigan, and Scott Walton, 28, of Cleveland, Ohio, two alleged members of SnappzMarket, were both arrested yesterday. They are due to appear before magistrates in Michigan and Ohio respectively.

An indictment returned on June 17 charges Gary Edwin Sharp II, 26, of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, along with Taylor and Walton, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Sharp is also charged with two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

It’s alleged that the three men were members of SnappzMarket between May 2011 through August 2012 along with Kody Jon Peterson, 22, of Clermont, Florida. In April, Peterson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. As part of his guilty plea he agreed to work undercover for the government.

Appbucket

Another indictment returned June 17 in Georgia charges James Blocker, 36, of Rowlett, Texas, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

A former member of Appbucket, Blocker is alleged to have conspired with Thomas Allen Dye, 21, of Jacksonville, Florida; Nicholas Anthony Narbone, 26, of Orlando, Florida, and Thomas Pace, 38, of Oregon City, Oregon to distribute Android apps with a value of $700,000.

During March and April 2014, Dye, Narbone and Pace all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

Applanet

A further indictment June 17 in Georgia charges Aaron Blake Buckley, 20, of Moss Point, Mississippi; David Lee, 29, of Chino Hills, California; and Gary Edwin Sharp II (also of Appbucket) with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

Lee is additionally charged with one count of aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement and Buckley with one count of criminal copyright infringement.

All three identified themselves as former members of Applanet. The USDOJ claims that along with other members they are responsible for the illegal distribution of four million Android apps with a value of $17m. Buckley previously launched a fund-raiser in an effort to fight off the United States government.

“As a result of their criminal efforts to make money by ripping off the hard work and creativity of high-tech innovators, the defendants are charged with illegally distributing copyrighted apps,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.

“The Criminal Division is determined to protect the labor and ingenuity of copyright owners and to keep pace with criminals in the modern, technological marketplace.”

A statement from the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office indicates that the FBI will pursue more piracy groups in future.

“The FBI will continue to provide significant investigative resources toward such groups engaged in such wholesale pirating or copyright violations as seen here,” Special Agent in Charge J. Britt Johnson said.

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

Overwhelmed by the response and the legal pressure that came with it the original team quickly retired. However, since the code is open source, many competing forks quickly adopted the project, each taking it in a different direction.

The storm calmed down somewhat after a few months, but it appears that the “Netflix for pirates” idea is here to stay. TorrentFreak reached out to one of the most popular Popcorn Time forks at time4popcorn.eu to find out how they are faring.

While the developers are hesitant to reveal any hard data about their software’s popularity, they note that they have acquired millions of users over the past several months. On an average day tens of thousands of people download the application, with Sunday being the most popular day by far.

The developers further reveal that roughly half of all Popcorn Time downloads are for the Windows platform. The Mac version is in second place with 25%, followed by Android and Linux with 20% and 5% respectively.

For the developers this popularity is one of the main reasons to continue innovating through new features. For example, last month they integrated a free VPN so users can hide their IP-address from the rest of the world.

“The million of users are the wind in our sails. We tell this to them all the time – they are the reason we’re putting in all the hard we’ve been putting in for the past 3.5 months,” the Time4Popcorn team tells TorrentFreak.

“In none of our previous projects did we experience this kind of ‘madness’. This is really what keeps us working around the clock on this project,” they add.

This week the Popcorn Time variant released another highly anticipated feature in their latest Alpha release, support for Chromecast. This means that users can now stream films directly to Chromecast with just a simple click.

Chromecast support was one of the most requested Popcorn Time features, the developers told us. It’s also directly in line with one of the main goals of the software, which is creating an optimal viewing experience.

“The first goal for Popcorn Time is to make the best viewing experience for all our users, and the other is to make the safest watching experience so all our users can fulfill the first goal without getting in trouble,” the Time4Popcorn team says.

While Chromecast support is a milestone, the developers mention that there is more exiting news ahead in the not too distant future.

“This week’s Alpha release with Chromecast support is nothing compared to what we have coming,” we were told.

Stay tuned…

Update: Time4Popcorn lost its domain name and switched to Popcorn-time.se

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