The report is produced by the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office and provides an overview of recent achievements and current challenges in the fight against piracy and counterfeiting. Increasingly, these threats are coming from the Internet.

“One of the key features in this year’s report is the continuing trend that the Internet is a major facilitator of IP crime,” the Crime Group writes.

The report notes that as in previous years, Hollywood-funded industry group FACT remains one of the key drivers of anti-piracy efforts in the UK. Over the past year they’ve targeted alleged pirate sites though various channels, including their hosting providers.

Not all hosts are receptive to FACT’s complaints though, and convincing companies that operate abroad is often a challenge. This includes the United States where the majority of the investigated sites are hosted.

“Only 14% of websites investigated by FACT are hosted in the UK. While it is possible to contact the hosts of these websites, there still remains a considerable number of copyright infringing websites that are hosted offshore and not within the jurisdiction of the UK.”

“Analysis has shown that the three key countries in which content is hosted are the UK, the USA and Canada. However, Investigating servers located offshore can cause specific problems for FACT’s law enforcement partners,” the report notes.

The figure above comes as a bit of a surprise, as one would expect that United States authorities and industry groups would have been keeping their own houses in order.

Just a few months ago the US-based IIPA, which includes MPAA and RIAA as members, called out Canada because local hosting providers are “a magnet” for pirate sites. However, it now appears they have still plenty of work to do inside U.S. borders.

But even when hosting companies are responsive to complaints from rightsholders the problem doesn’t always go away. The report mentions that most sites simply move on to another host, and continue business as usual there.

“In 2013, FACT closed a website after approaching the hosting provider on 63 occasions. Although this can be a very effective strategy, in most instances the website is swiftly transferred onto servers owned by another ISP, often located outside the UK.”

While downtime may indeed be relatively brief the report claims that it may still hurt the site, as visitors may move on to other legitimate or illegitimate sources.

“The [moving] process usually involves a disruptive period of time whereby the website is offline, during which users will often find an alternative service, thus negatively affecting the website’s popularity.”

While hosting companies remain a main target, tackling the online piracy problem requires a multi-layered approach according to the UK Crime Group.

With the help of local law enforcement groups such as City of London’s PIPCU, copyright holders have rolled out a variety of anti-piracy measures in recent months. This includes domain name suspensions, cutting off payment processors and ad revenue, website blocking by ISPs and criminal prosecutions.

These and other efforts are expected to continue during the years to come. Whether that will be enough to put a real dent in piracy rates has yet to be seen.

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

These notices are traditionally nothing more than a warning, hoping to scare file-sharers into giving up their habit. However, anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp has been very active in trying to make the consequences more serious.

The company monitors BitTorrent networks for people who download titles owned by the copyright holders they work for, and then approaches these alleged pirates via their Internet providers. The ISPs are asked to forward Rightscorp’s settlement demands to the alleged infringer, which is usually around $20 per shared file.

The settlement approach is a bigger stick than the standard warnings and according to Rightscorp it’s superior to the six-strikes scheme. And there’s more. The company also wants Internet providers to disconnect subscribers whose accounts are repeatedly found sharing copyrighted works.

Christopher Sabec, CEO of Rightscorp, says that they have been in talks with various Internet providers urging them to step up their game. Thus far a total of 140 ISPs are indeed following this disconnection principle.

“We push ISPs to suspend accounts of repeat copyright infringers and we currently have over 140 ISPs that are participating in our program, including suspending the accounts of repeat infringers,” Sabec says.

During a presentation at the Anti-Piracy Summit in Los Angeles Rightscorp recently pitched this disconnection angle to several interested parties.

By introducing disconnections Rightcorp hopes to claim more settlements to increase the company’s revenue stream. They offer participating ISPs a tool to keep track of the number of warnings each customer receives, and the providers are encouraged to reconnect the subscribers if the outstanding bills have been paid.

“All US ISPs have a free Rightscorp website dashboard that identifies these repeat infringers and notifies the ISPs when they have settled their cases with our clients. We encourage the ISPs to restore service once the matter has been settled and there is no longer an outstanding legal liability,” Sabec told TorrentFreak.

Cutting off repeat infringers is also in the best interests of ISPs according to Rightscorp, who note that it is a requirement for all providers if they are to maintain their DMCA safe harbor.

Rightscorp is indeed correct in stating that Internet providers have to act against repeat infringers. The DMCA requires ISPs to “… adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers.”

However, legal experts and Internet providers interpret the term “repeat infringer” differently.

For example, AT&T previously said that it would never terminate accounts of customers without a court order, arguing that only a court can decide what constitutes a repeat infringement. Comcast on the other hand, previously told us that they are disconnecting repeat infringers, although it’s not clear after how many warnings that is.

Nevertheless, Rightscorp claims that their approach has been a great success and proudly reports that 140 ISPs are actively disconnecting subscribers. So does this mean that all U.S. Internet subscribers are at risk of receiving a settlement request or losing their Internet access?

Well, not really.

Most of the larger Internet providers appear to ignore Rightscorp’s settlement notices. Comcast, for example, does forward the notice but takes out the settlement offer. Verizon, AT&T and other major ISPs appear to do the same. Thus far, Charter seems to be the only major provider that forwards Rightscorp’s requests in full.

The 140 ISPs Rightscorp is referring to are mostly smaller, often local ISPs, who together hold a tiny market share. Not insignificant perhaps, but it’s a nuance worth adding.

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

Hollywood and the record labels set out to achieve their aims not be force, but by cooperation. Deals, such as the six-strikes scheme and efforts at strangling the advertising finances of ‘pirate’ sites, have proven relatively easy to reach and are even gaining approval from former SOPA rivals.

Online gaming giant Zynga, the outfit behind games including Farmville, ZyngaPoker and Mafia Wars, came out in 2012 as a SOPA opponent due to concerns that it could “freeze innovation” and damage the Internet. But now the company is joining its former pro-SOPA adversaries in championing voluntary anti-piracy initiatives.

Working together is easier than dealing with Congress

In an interview preceding his appearance at the Anti-Piracy & Content Protection Summit this June, Ted Hasse, Corporate Counsel IP at Zynga, has underlined the importance of a cooperative approach to dealing with piracy.

“[Cooperation] seems to be the best avenue for the greatest results on the largest
scale in the near term. In the last year, voluntary agreements for best practices have been hot with major activity among all industry-leading ISPs, payment processors, and ad networks,” Hasse explains.

“Legislation is slow. Voluntary agreements happen much faster.”

As an example of how stakeholders can work together, Hasse cites work by the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force on how best to handle the millions of DMCA notices being issued everyday. With legislation off the table, working both cooperatively and voluntarily is the sole solution.

“The only path for DMCA reform in 2014 is through a process like this since nothing could make it through Congress,” he notes.

Hitting torrent and file-hosting sites, no laws required

Hasse says that while torrent and file-hosting sites still represent today’s biggest anti-piracy challenge, voluntary agreements are beginning to make their mark.

“Legitimate ad networks and payment processors are cutting off the money streams for pirate sites through voluntary commitment to the IAB’s best practices for combating piracy and the IACC Payment Processor Initiative, and it didn’t take a new laws, law enforcement or litigation,” the counsel says.

However, while “legitimate” advertisers can indeed be leaned on, less scrupulous companies are willing to take up the slack. These can generate decent revenues too, as Zynga knows only too well – in 2009 the company admitted making millions from scammy advertising, something pirate sites are being accused of today.

Turning a blind eye to infringement has its consequences

Citing the 2013 cases against both isoHunt and Hotfile, Hasse says that while turning a blind eye to infringement might lead to sites enjoying good growth, there comes a time when they have to account for their behavior.

“When a platform is willing to accommodate the infringing activity they get big and it eventually becomes too hard to avoid having to defend their practices in the
light of day,” Hasse says.

“And when that happens these platforms are not coming out on top, their practices have to change or their entire services are being disrupted, and I’m not convinced it’s that easy for would-be infringers to just move on to the next place to find pirated content.”

Getting harder to find infringing content

It’s a controversial assertion, but Hasse believes that it’s actually getting harder for people to find pirated content online.

“While years ago I think many or most people could easily find pirated content on the Internet, today I suspect many users don’t know where to find exactly what they want conveniently, so when a major site shutters or changes its practices to disallow infringing activity, many users are actually downloading less pirated content or stop altogether rather than finding a new channel,” he concludes.

Old rivals finding common ground

Two years ago rivals on both side of the SOPA debate could not have been further apart, yet now there appears to be growing consensus between stakeholders on how to achieve the same kinds of goals without causing anywhere near as much offense. As a result, also absent are many of the outrageous headlines that accompanied the often hyper-aggressive actions of Hollywood and the record labels.

Doing anti-piracy work this way, quietly, means there is far less opposition and much less controversy. And by having voluntary agreements in place that don’t involve breaking the Internet, the public (and potential dissent) is effectively taken out of the equation.

Photo: Flazingo Photos

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

In fact, many of these buttons link to advertisements of some sort, ranging from relatively harmless download managers to dubious services that ask for one’s credit card details.

A new report backed by the UK entertainment industry has looked into the prevalence of these threats. The study, carried out by the anti-piracy analysts of Intelligent Content Protection (Incopro), found that only 1 of the 30 most-visited pirate sites didn’t link to unwanted software or credit card scams.

According to a press release released this morning, the research found that of the 30 top pirate sites, “90% contained malware and other ‘Potentially Unwanted Programmes’ designed to deceive or defraud unwitting viewers.”

The “Potentially Unwanted Programmes” category is rather broad, and includes popups and ads that link to download managers. In addition, the report links one-third of the sites to credit card fraud.

“The rogue sites are also rife with credit card scams, with over two-thirds (67%) of the 30 sites containing credit card fraud,” the press release states.

While it’s true that many pirate sites link to malware and other dubious products, the sites themselves don’t host any of the material. For example, none of the top pirate sites TorrentFreak tested were flagged by Google’s Safebrowsing tool.

This nuance is left out of the official announcement, but the executive summary of the report does make this distinction.

“We did not encounter the automatic injection of any malicious program on the sites that we scanned. In all instances, the user must be tricked into opening a downloaded executable file or in the case of credit card fraud, the user needs to actively enter credit card details,” Incopro writes.

Most of the malware and “potentially” unwanted software ends up on users’ computers after they click on the wrong “download” button and then install the presented software. In many cases these are installers that may contain relatively harmless adware. However, the researchers also found links to rootkits and ransomware.

The allegation of “credit card fraud” also requires some clarification. Incopro told TorrentFreak that most of these cases involve links to services where users have to pay for access.

“There were 17 separate credit card schemes that were detected through our scanning, with many appearing to be similar or possibly related. Five of the sites had instances of two credit card fraud/scam sites, with the remaining 15 containing one credit card fraud/scam site,” Incopro told us.

“An example is someone visits one of the pirate sites and clicks a ‘Download’ or ‘Play now’ button, which is actually an advert appearing on the page, which then asks for payment details to access the content.”

This is characterized as “fraud” because these “premium” streaming or download services can result in recurring credit card charges of up to $50 per month, without an option to cancel.

The report, which isn’t available to the public, was commissioned by the UK film service FindAnyFilm and backed by several industry groups. Commenting on the findings, FACT’s Kieron Sharp noted that those who fall for these scams are inadvertently funding organized crime.

“Not only are you putting your personal security at risk, by using pirate websites you could be helping fund the organised criminal gangs who run these sites as a front for other cyber scams,” Sharp says.

It is clear that the research is used for scaremongering. Regular users of these sites know all too well what buttons not to click, so they are not affected by any of the threats.

However, there’s no denying that some pirate sites deliberately place these “ads” to confuse novice and unsuspecting visitors. Those visitors may indeed end up with adware, malware or run into scam services.

This isn’t in any way a new phenomenon though, it has been going on for more than a decade already. Ironically, the same anti-piracy groups who now warn of these threats are making them worse by cutting pirate sites off from legitimate advertisers.

—

Photo: Michael Theis

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

“Megaupload was built on an incentive system that rewarded users for uploading the most popular content to the site, which was almost always stolen movies, TV shows and other commercial entertainment content,” Fabrizio commented when the MPAA filed its suit.

However, data from Megaupload’s database shared with TorrentFreak shows that employees of MPAA and RIAA member companies had hundreds of accounts at the file-storage site. This includes people working at Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Warner Music.

In total, there were 490 Megaupload accounts that were connected to MPAA and RIAA members, who sent 181 premium payments in total. Together, these users uploaded 16,455 files which are good for more than 2,097 gigabytes in storage.

Remember, those are only from addresses that could be easily identified as belonging to a major movie studio or record label, so the real numbers should be much higher.

But there’s more. The same companies that are now asking for millions of dollars in damages due to massive copyright infringement were previously eager to work with Megaupload and Megavideo.

As we noted previously, Disney, Warner Brothers, Fox and others contacted Kim Dotcom’s companies to discuss advertising and distribution deals.

For example, Shelina Sayani, Digital Marketing Coordinator for Warner Bros, offered a deal to syndicate “exciting” Warner content to Megaupload’s Megavideo site.

Subject: Warner Bros. – Looking for Content Manager
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:55:50 -0800
From: Sayani, Shelina
To: demand@megavideo.com

Dear Megavideo,

I’m writing from Warner Bros., offering opportunities to syndicate our exciting entertainment content (e.g. Dark Knight, Harry Potter, Sex and the City clips and trailer) for your users. Could you please pass on my information to the appropriate content manager or forward me to them? Thanks so much for your time.

Shelina Sayani
WB Advanced Digital Services
3300 W Olive Ave, Bldg 168 Room 4-023
Burbank, CA 91505
818.977.4668

Similarly, Disney attorney Gregg Pendola reached out to Megaupload, not to threaten or sue the company, but to set up a deal to have Disney content posted on the Megavideo site.

Subject: Posting on Megavideo.com
From: “Pendola, Gregg”
Date: 8/13/2008 10:06 AM
To: love@megavideo.com

My name is Gregg Pendola. I am Executive Counsel for The Walt Disney Company. Certain properties of The Walt Disney Company have content that they would like to post on your site.

However, we are uncomfortable with a couple of the provisions of your Terms of Use that we feel may jeopardize our rights in our content. We were hoping that you would be amenable to reviewing a 1-page agreement we have drafted that we would like to use in place of your Terms of Use.

Is there someone I can contact to discuss this? Or someone I can email the Agreement to for review?

Thanks. Gregg

Gregg Pendola
Executive Counsel
The Walt Disney Company

For Fox, the interest in Megaupload wasn’t necessarily aimed at spreading studio content, but to utilize Megaupload’s considerable reach by setting up an advertising deal. In this email former Senior Director Matt Barash touts FAN, the Fox Audience Network.

Subject: Fox Ad Partnership
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:09:14 -0800
From: Matt Barash
To: sales@megaupload.com

I’m reaching out to see if you have a few minutes to discuss the recently launched Fox Audience Network.

FAN is now up and running and fully operational, utilizing best of breed optimization technology to bring cutting edge relevancy to the ad network landscape.
We are scaling rapidly and seeking the right 3rd party publishers to add as partners to our portfolio.

Please let me know if you have some time to chat this week about how we can work together to better monetize your inventory.

Best,
Matt

Matt Barash
Director, Publisher Development
Fox Audience Network

The above are just a few examples of major industry players who wanted to team up with Kim Dotcom. Now, several years later, the same companies accuse the site of being one of the largest piracy vehicles the Internet has ever seen.

If the MPAA and RIAA cases proceed, Megaupload’s defense will probably present some of these examples to highlight the apparent double standard. That will be an interesting narrative to follow, for sure.

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

The unit, which has already claimed the scalps of several smaller domains, including the forced shutdown last week of a handful of sports-stream related sites, has been active on various fronts. In addition to putting registrars under pressure to close domains, the unit is also working with advertisers in an attempt to cut off advertising revenue.

PIPCU is good news for rightsholders in several ways, not least since the anti-piracy battles of groups such as the BPI and FACT are now being partly financed by the UK taxpayer. PIPCU is currently funded by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills’ Intellectual Property Office, to the tune of £2.56m over two years.

The funding, which was allocated on a temporary basis, will expire in 2015 if the government doesn’t allocate additional finances. It could fall back into private hands, but that would mean a significant loss of ‘clout’ for the companies relying on PIPCU’s authority. However, if the UK Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Adviser has anything to do with it, that won’t happen.

In a letter to David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May, Mike Weatherley MP praised the “excellent work” of PIPCU and urged the funding of the unit on a permanent basis.

“I appreciate that funding for this new unit is not permanent. However, I would like to put on record my support for committing future funding to fighting IP crime and boosting the current level of financial support that is available for PIPCU,” Weatherley wrote. “As I am sure that you are aware, the creative industries add over £70 billion to our economy each year and so it really is in our national interest to protect that revenue.”

As previously reported, PIPCU is currently focusing on cutting off ad revenue to ‘pirate’ sites. Speaking to fellow Conservatives, Weatherley said if that could be done the effects would be dramatic.

“If we stop advertisers from shoveling money into illegal sites, we can stop a lot of the content. Possibly as much as 95 per cent according to the newly formed national Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU),” Weatherley said.

“If you value the NHS [National Health Service], you should also value IP and our creative industries, as together they help pay for the services in this country that we all cherish. If we take the wrong approach, national services that we take for granted will have a huge budget shortfall.”

There are currently no formal indications that PIPCU will get the permanent funding it needs to continue its work but considering the backing it has among the music and movie industries (not to mention the Prime Minister’s top IP advisor) it seems unthinkable that a couple of million a year won’t be found from somewhere.

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

By cutting off revenue through deals with payment providers and advertising agencies, they hope to make it less profitable to operate these sites.

This is not an easy task, as there are many advertising companies who are still eager to team up with “rogue” torrent sites and streaming portals. Likewise, site owners often implement tricks to hide the site where the ads are displayed.

As a result, several major brands see their ads showing up on sites they don’t want to be associated with. A few weeks ago a report from the Digital Citizens Alliance revealed that companies such as Amazon, American Express, Dell, Ford, Lego, McDonalds, Xfinity are contributing to the problem.

These problematic ad placements were also highlighted by a publication of the Australian media and entertainment group mUmBRELLA, which focused on ads appearing on streaming portals such as watchseries.lt and videoweed.es. The report shows that American Express and other brands had their ads on display, and that the companies were asked for comment.

As expected, none of the major brands said it willingly promoted its products through these pirate sites. However, the explanations that were given varied, and the response from American Express was the most intriguing of all.

The payment processor’s media agency Mindshare says that the ads in question weren’t real ads at all. Instead, American Express accuses the pirate sites of “photoshopping” their banners into their designs, to increase site credibility.

Timothy Whitfield, general operations director at the responsible advertising placement outfit Xaxis, confirms this suspicion.

“Now when we dug into it what happened is that in some cases they were using basic photoshopping skills to take an old creative from Amex and building it into the homepage and into the video leads and on the homepage of the website,” Whitfield said

“It wasn’t a real creative it was just someone who had photoshopped it into the site. Now the reason that we think they were doing that is that they were working very hard to make themselves look like a reputable website,” he ads.

While this type of banner ‘theft’ is certainly an option, TorrentFreak was unable to replicate the finding from a wide variety of locations. It is also unclear why the sites in question would give up valuable advertising placements. There is hardly any positive effect on the site’s reputation when it’s not done structurally.

The insurance company Allianz was also caught advertising on pirate sites, but here the explanation was a more common one. According to Whitfield, Xaxis didn’t place the ad directly, but instead it loaded through several iframes thereby disguising the website where it appeared.

Through this “nesting” technique pirate sites can trick advertising agencies and have higher paid ads.

“Every man and his dog blocks these websites – Watchseries.it, Videoweed etc. – but because you’re seven layers deep you don’t know if it is one you have blocked or not,” Whitfield said in a comment.

Finally, HotelsCombined came up with yet another reason why their banners appeared on infringing websites. Again, without their explicit knowledge.

Kristen McKenzie, global PR and content manager of HotelsCombined, explained that it may have been the result of ad-retargeting. HotelsCombined tracks people who visit their website, and their advertising provider then displays ads on some of the sites these people visit afterwards.

“Our retargeting provider does not disclose their extensive list of networks, and with millions of different sites being accessed simultaneously in real-time, it is ultimately impossible for us to police where retargeting may occur,” McKenzie said.

The above shows that getting rid of banners on rogue sites is proving to be more difficult than simply compiling a blacklist. It’s a cat and mouse game, much like the efforts to go after hosting companies and payment providers. And if pirates are starting to use Photoshop to promote brands for free, it’s never-ending.

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

Last week we reported on Torboox, an ebook site providing millions of unauthorized ebooks to the public. The site made the news after German reporters were subjected to a criminal complaint by publishers who didn’t want the site named. While that complaint has now been withdrawn, Torboox say that not only will they continue, but they have a serious plan to shake up the ebook market by targeting Amazon. Here’s how.

In Germany books are subjected to fixed pricing by law, which means that books can only be offered for sale to the public at a price determined by the publisher. This effectively means that there is no competition between rival sellers on the issue of price, value placed on books is not linked to the cost of making them, and supply and demand variables are a thing of the past.

“German publishers can set the prices that Amazon sells ebooks for,” Spiegelbest, the admin of Toorboox, told TorrentFreak. “That’s why Amazon is trying to become a publisher itself by offering authors much better conditions than the publishers can.”

Spiegelbest says that there are currently two players of significance in the German ebook market – Amazon and Torboox – and they have things in common.

Torboox and Amazon are just the same, only the price is different.

“If you look at it, they are very similar. Amazon is nothing but a hoster for the authors. No wonder they can offer 70% provision,” he says.

“Amazon does nothing to ‘produce’ books. Thus they are very similar to Torboox. Both of us – legal and illegal – are book hosters, not traditional book publishers. The ebook market is shared between two book hosters.”

According to Spiegelbest, publishers entering the German ebook market face many risks and a fierce competitor in Amazon, a company that has already prepared for a market without paper books.

“From the start Amazon saw themselves as a mere publisher of ebooks. Why let the publishers come into a market Amazon created and dominates already? So they do business with the authors willing to publish digitally,” he explains.

With the way that the market is arranged at the moment and as the paper market slows down, Spiegelbest says that German publishers are trapped. Amazon dominates the ebook market and is defending its market share. On the other hand is Torboox, a site offering ebooks much, much cheaper than anyone else in the market, Amazon included.

“We ourselves are not the born enemy of the publishers,” Spiegelbest explains. “We slash the prices okay, we steal their content if you want, but we see publishers as co-producers of books like the authors.

“For us it is not just hosting a book. That’s not enough. There is a lot more to it. It sounds strange but we love books. We are in it for the books not for the business. Amazon is our enemy – not life or death – but for the sake of the quality of future books.”

We asked how Torboox hopes to battle such a huge company, change the market and come out on top. The response is pretty controversial. According to Spiegelbest, piracy currently controls around 50% of the market, with Amazon on 40% and others holding the rest.

Send Amazon business – and then take them down.

“If you look at it you get a funny picture. At the moment we are doing a good job for Amazon. We are offering the best-sellers of the publishers for nothing. Thus the publishers make less money, can pay their authors less and will eventually lose them to Amazon. Very nice construction this is. As Amazon itself is already cutting prices with their titles you have a double effect of strangling the publishers,” Spiegelbest explains.

“At the moment you have high quality content of the publishers trying to enter the ebook market. But the prices are high and the conditions for the customers (DRM etc) are unacceptable. The publishers have no concept. You cannot sell ebooks like paper books.”

The solution, the Torboox admin believes, is offering a flat-rate, all you can eat service. He says he already has plenty of users willing to become customers.

“Our users could easily become customers of publishers with a sound concept. But publishers have to listen – not to us but to their would-be customers. They have superior content but have no answer to Amazons’s challenge,” he says.

The business model

“In the end the publishers have to talk to us. They have to find a way to make us legal. It is their job not ours. A flatrate will be 10 euros a month – no limit. Licensing will again be the job of the publishers. If a publisher isn’t wise enough to participate – no problem,” Spiegelbest says.

“The author gets the same as Amazon pays. If Amazon pays 80% we pay 80%. They get paid according to what the users read. Every read page is paid.”

Figures shared with TorrentFreak suggest that Torboox users are indeed consuming a lot of books which could conceivably translate into revenue if the userbase warms to the flatrate idea. Currently the site’s users are downloading around 2 million books per month, increasing to a predicted five million in the run up to Christmas.

At the moment the site operates on a donation model but as things grow the users will be expected to pay their way. It’s the publishers’ choice whether they get a look at that money, Spiegelbest says, while noting that the site continues to grow.

“If our server is grounded by traffic we will have our own cloud. We have plenty of time. Again if the publishers don’t want to talk to us it is okay. But one day without talking to us there will be a Christmas business without German book publishers that’s for sure. In a way it’s the Grooveshark thing. You want money for your files, you get it. You don’t want money for your files, we have them downloaded anyway. Be a wise man.”

In the end Spiegelbest believes that the publishers will have little choice but to come to him.

“We have the concept. The publishers have the content. Together we can indeed battle Amazon. And Amazon is not monopolizing films, games or music – why ebooks? For me the biggest problem is this: Will the publishers understand before they vanish? That’s 50-50, no more,” he concludes.

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

This was in the middle of the copyright industry’s “mass disconnection” strategy, where they saw it fit to legislate mass disconnections to protect their obsolete industry.

Fortunately for everybody else, an election interrupted the otherwise-prepared legislative process, and a new European Parliament got to finalize the bills that would have made such disconnections possible throughout Europe. It was obvious that the bill was intended to pass without discussion.

Unfortunately for the copyright industry, the Pirate Party got a seat on the final negotiating committee in the European Parliament, and we were able to – with the help of brilliant activists like Monica Horten – educate everybody else on the parliamentary committee as to what was actually happening. It stopped being a matter of having Parliament steamrolled into just passing the bill without question, and escalated into a matter of Parliament’s dignity. “We’re the Parliament, not a doormat”, as some legislators made very clear.

That derailed the intended process of enabling “Three Strikes” disconnections across Europe. The very opposite became law, in no small part thanks to the footwork of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament and that negotiation committee.

The civil rights violations that the French Hadopi agency intended to carry out – disenfranchising people from most of their civil liberties – was specifically targeted when writing the language for the Telecoms Package bills. The language of the bills was not good enough until it made super clear that disconnecting anybody from the net without a prior fair and full adversarial court proceeding – exactly the thing the copyright industry had intended to bypass and cut citizens off en masse – was completely illegal across all of the European Union, and by extension, through the European Economic Area.

The text in the Telecoms Package bill had to pass the “Hadopi Test”, as it was actually called in the European Parliament – making it absolutely clear that what Hadopi intended to do was to be made completely illegal.

For today, we exercise all our fundamental liberties – freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of expression – through the net. Therefore, the net has itself become just as fundamental a liberty as all the other fundamental liberties we exercise through it.

It shouldn’t even be a matter of discussion that you can’t cut anybody off from the net, not any more than you can order them to not read newspapers, not meet anybody, or not speak.

But alas, the copyright industry is infamous for ignoring the law completely when they don’t like what it says, and throwing loud tantrums when anybody else doesn’t do what they demand (sometimes regardless of law). They seem to be stuck in the “mine, mine, mine, waaaaaah” mindset of a three-year-old, and what’s worse, they’re completely oblivious to the concept of equality before the law.

The Hadopi bureaucrats who made the decision of cutting somebody off from the net and their fundamental rights this week deserve to go to jail for a considerable time, so they can contemplate the concept of being equal before the law; how the law isn’t intended to protect the copyright industry against the people but never the other way around. Unfortunately, that will not happen under French law, but the Hadopi can and should still be sued for ridiculously punitive amounts in European courts for this deed. There is no way they can claim ignorance of the law in this matter, and even if they are arguably ignorant, that’s still not a defense.

As a final note, it seems copyright monopoly lobbyists think they can get this disconnection scheme in Britain now, too. I would encourage anybody in the affected countries – France and Britain – to sue the shirt off their backs. What they’re attempting to do is illegal. Not “maybe illegal”, not “possibly in a grey area”, but “deliberately targeted behavior written into law as specifically illegal”.

Update: In response to the opinion above some commenters rightfully point out that the disconnection order comes from a judge. These and other issues are discussed below, feel free to add yours.

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

“These box office receipt numbers grew because admissions jumped by 6%,” Dodd explained.

“Yes, 2012 was a truly great year at the movies! And I believe the summer blockbusters being previewed this week will contribute to a highly successful 2013.”

Then, in a recurring theme underlining the movie industry’s recent overtures to the tech sector, Dodd said that Hollywood and and Silicon Valley have a lot more in common than most people realize.

“Not only do we work closely with tech companies to create and promote our films; we are ourselves tech companies,” Dodd said. “We celebrate innovation through the world’s most cutting-edge content, and we embrace technology as critical to the success of the creators in our community.”

But despite the success of 2012 and the beauty of technology, Dodd went on to paint a darker and more cautious picture than last year’s optimistic results appear to support.

“Of course, technology can be abused especially by cybercriminals,” he said.

“Stopping content theft must be a top priority to all of us. Especially when you consider that in some instances blockbuster films have been downloaded illegally hundreds of thousands of times, harming not only the producers, but you, the exhibitors as well,” Dodd cautioned.

“The good news is that we are making progress, building inroads with tech companies, and working closely with ISPs, ad bureaus, payment processors and Internet hosting providers. And thanks to NATO and your vigilance, the incidence of illegal camcording in theaters is down 50% since 2007.”

Then, in an attack on those who associate free access to online content with right to free speech, Dodd offered the following.

“Too many people still coat the pill of content theft in chocolate. Free speech, they say, gives them the right to consume and enjoy our content for free, that creative artists and ordinary working people spent years developing, producing and exhibiting.

“This fallacy must be aggressively challenged and countered by everyone in our industry. If we allow for two centuries of copyright law and respect for intellectual property to be undermined and unenforced, the consequences on innovation in this country — not just for Hollywood, film makers, studios and cinemas, but for our entire economy, will be devastating,” he warned.

“We, and you, must underscore the message that business, government, and ordinary citizens must work together to ensure that the Internet works for everyone, and that intellectual property is respected and protected.”

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