Faced with ISP blockades all over the world, The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet. The PirateBrowser software allows people to bypass these restrictions, using the Tor network to obfuscate people’s locations.

Unlike the Tor browser, PirateBrowser does not provide full anonymity. It’s only meant to unblock The Pirate Bay in regions where it’s censored, which is good enough for most users of the site. Downloads of the tool are going through the roof.

The Pirate Bay team informs TorrentFreak that the PirateBrowser notched up its 500,000th download earlier this week. At the time of publication it has surpassed 550,000 with no signs of a decline in interest.

Aside from the impressive download figures, the browser was also repeatedly linked to another news event this week.

Around the same time the PirateBrowser was launched, the number of users on the Tor network started to grow rapidly. Tor project leader Roger Dingledine mentioned the spike on the Tor email list, hinting that PirateBrowser may have something to do with it.

As can be seen in the graph below, in little over a week the number of Tor users jumped from a stable average of 550,000 to well over 1,400,000.

Daily Tor users worldwide

While it is a coincidence that PirateBrowser was launched around the same time the growth started, it seems unlikely that the two events are related.

First of all, the number of daily Tor users increased by more than 800,000, which is far more than the total number of downloads of PirateBrowser thus far. In addition, looking more closely at the increase in Tor users we see that the spike started August 19, more than a week after PirateBrowser launched.

Finally, the country specific Tor usage shows that the increase is most pronounced in South America. In Argentina and Brazil for example, where The Pirate Bay isn’t censored, Tor usage increased by more than 1000%. In the UK and the Netherlands, where blocks are in place, we only see a “modest” doubling in Tor users.

Daily Tor users Brazil

From the above it is safe to conclude that given that there was no significant Tor related news on the 19th, the most likely explanation is that the growth is unnatural. Perhaps a Botnet might explain it?

While PirateBrowser may not be responsible for the increase in Tor users, the half million download milestone is no less impressive. The Pirate Bay team informs TorrentFreak that they will continue developing the browser and Mac and Linux versions will be out later this year.

At the same time The Pirate Bay continues development on another anti-censorship tool, one that is destined to have an even bigger impact. They are working on a special BitTorrent-powered application, which lets users store and distribute The Pirate Bay and other websites on their own computers, making it impossible for third parties to block them.

This new tool should be able to keep The Pirate Bay operational, even if the site itself is pulled offline.

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

As usual, a series of hopeful entrepreneurs pitched their business ideas to five venture capitalists with the aim of securing a cash injection. One of them, SendMyBag founder and CEO Adam Ewart, hoped to persuade the Dragons to part with a £100k investment in return for 5% equity of his door-to-door luggage delivery service.

It didn’t go well.

Despite a decent pitch and having a profitable business already operating, the Dragons’ trashed Ewart’s idea as “ridiculous, ludicrous, stupid and insane,” with one of the Dragons bemoaning the fact that SendMyBag’s business model could be easily copied by a competitor.

Interestingly, and as revealed by a series of DMCA takedown notices sent by SendMyBag to Google, what can also be easily copied by SendMyBag’s competitors is the company’s intellectual property.

SendMyBag’s complaints are against a company called UniBaggage. The Dragons’ Den hopeful told the search giant on numerous occasions that UniBaggage had infringed their copyrights.

SendMyBag say that UniBaggage are using their company logo without permission. Each time Google complied with the takedown requests and de-indexed not only the image but entire webpages, meaning that UniBaggage’s website became less visible to potential customers trying to find the site using the search engine.

As can be seen from the screenshot above, UniBaggage did indeed use SendMyBag’s logo for price comparison purposes. In the US so-called ‘comparative advertising’ is perfectly acceptable but it took until 2008 and a directive from the European Commission to establish comparative advertising as a means for improving competition and fostering consumer choice in Europe.

“The directive provided that ‘it may… be indispensable, in order to make comparative advertising effective, to identify the goods and services of a competitor, making reference to a trademark or trade name of which the latter is proprietor… Such use… does not breach [the trademark owner’s rights]’,” explains Richard Taylor of DLA Piper.

However, advice from the lawfirm Chadwick Lawrence suggests that to avoid accusations of “unlawful comparative advertising” and complications with infringement claims, companies should “avoid reproduction of competitor’s logos.”

And this is exactly what is happening here. SendMyBag are complaining to Google about copyright infringement and may even have a claim, but considering the way the company has gone about it one has to wonder if their main aim is to put right a possible wrong, or to hinder a competitor in its quest for business.

TorrentFreak contacted both companies for comment but only UniBaggage responded. They told us that SendMyBag didn’t contact the company with any infringement complaints before filing complaints with Google.

“This company has done this to us a few times,” Managing Director Paul Stewart explained. “Each time [we complain] Google reverses [the takedowns] but we still lose say 10 days each time they do this. Considering we are a very seasonal business it does affect us.”

Stewart appears grateful that Google eventually reinstates his webpages but says his company will be taking legal advice if the problem isn’t sorted “within the next week.”

While we leave SendMyBag and UniBaggage to fight out their dispute, again we have to come back to the almost impossible task faced by the middleman – Google.

Instead of a simple email to their competitor (who may or may not have a case), SendMyBag have chosen to take their punitive action through a proxy, one that can’t reasonably expected to be judge and jury in a complex copyright dispute that is potentially affected by fair-use issues provided for in secondary legislation.

So next time you search Google and don’t find what you’re looking for, are you going to presume as you have done for the last few years that the reason for that is because the content or product you want doesn’t exist? Or are you going to wonder if a copyright holder has censored your search?

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

Last September it was revealed, much to the delight of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, that a version of VLC would now be available on Apple devices through the company’s App Store. Developed in the open source spirit and offered for free by mobile company Applidium, the app was given the blessing of VideoLAN. The reach of the mighty VLC had been extended and users far and wide rejoiced, but not for long.

One of the original developers of VLC, Rémi Denis-Courmont, angrily pointed out that incompatibilities exist between Apple’s DRM policies and the terms of the GNU General Public License under which VLC is offered. While the GNU license allows Apple to offer an iOS version of VLC, the layer of DRM it puts over the top of the application was a no-no.

“Today, a formal notification of copyright infringement was sent to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch,” wrote Denis-Courmont on October 26th 2010, adding that the likely outcome would be that Apple would be forced to pull the free app from the App Store.

And yesterday, that’s exactly what happened.

In a post titled “There’s no app for that (anymore),” Denis-Courmont celebrates his victory.

“At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store,” he wrote. “Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. I am not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.”

While disclosing that i’m the fairly happy user of three iOS devices, i’m going to take the stance of the layman here and risk incurring the wrath of the hardcore supporters of the GNU public license. For the man in the street this decision sucks and this statement from Denis-Courmont is insensitive to say the least.

Look, I loathe Apple’s restrictive practices and DRM with a passion too but the vast majority of Apple users – the vast majority of regular computer users, period – couldn’t give a rat’s ass about this kind of dispute. And why should the layman care? DRM? Open source what? GNU? Isn’t that some kind of cattle?

The net result is that a perfectly good product, a free product wrapped in DRM that serves no practical use in this case, is no longer available to the masses. And understandably the man in the street won’t give a damn about the great philosophy of freedom behind the GNU license nor the evils of DRM. He will care only that VLC is not available any more and he can’t play his videos.

The great irony here is that it’s these kind of disputes, between the interests of one company and those of another, that causes all sorts of complex licensing issues in the music and movie industries. Those issues cause distribution problems and an inability to fulfil demand. The result is gaps in the market which cannot be served because of legal issues.

And what fills that void every time? Piracy.

It’s no surprise then that the free, open source VLC for iDevices is only easily available from the likes of Installous. What has the world come to?

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

The Pirate Parties International is the umbrella organization for Pirate Parties worldwide, which are active in nearly 50 countries at the moment. On their mailing list, interesting ideas, links and documents are shared, and a few days ago the idea for an extraterrestrial file-sharing site was born.

Although it is no secret that Sci-Fi fans are well represented in the pirate community, the idea is taken somewhat seriously, both by PPI members and outsiders. Forbes already took notice of the plans and in the PPI members are carefully weighing the pros and cons of their options.

So what are these Pirates up to?

The idea is to get away from current ‘restricted’ hosting facilities where the law of the land applies. Initially, a balloon was opted for as the ideal vessel, but others quickly suggested that an actual satellite would be a more durable solution. To fund the project, crowd-sourcing platforms like Kickstarter were mentioned.

As the discussion moved on the more down-to-earth members mentioned that it might be a good idea to start at sea. This would be a nice fit with the Pirate theme and also slightly more affordable. A remote-controlled sail-boat could easily carry the hosting platform and be shipped outside of territorial waters.

Although there is no consensus yet, boat, balloon then satellite seems to be a logical order of approach.

But will this work?

We would be the last to temper the hopes and dreams of any Pirate, but there are some hurdles to overcome. Money issues aside, it’s not going to be easy to launch a website in space without being bound to the laws of a country or company down below. After all, one needs connectivity, a domain name and an IP-address.

It would be a real shame to have a torrent site up and running in space, but have it disconnected because the bandwidth provider receives a take-down notice. Not to mention the logistics that will be involved with replacing a failing harddisk.

To use a famous Sci-Fi quote: “Anything is possible, but the odds are astronomically against it.”

So what’s next?

Encouraged by the recognition from Forbes and the enthusiasm from PPI members, the discussion on what the ideal plan would be continues. And as The Pirate Bay has proven with their Buy Sealand project, raising thousands of dollars is a piece of cake. Time will tell if it’s going to be a homemade balloon, a pirate ship, a satellite, or nothing.

TorrentFreak readers with suggestions are encouraged to post a comment. The previous discussions can be read on the online mailing list, and everyone can join the conversation by signing up.

We contacted the PPI with some questions and a request for comment, but haven’t heard back from them at the time of publishing.

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

Unfortunately not everybody knows every movie listed, so you probably want to check some extra info on IMDB. To make your life a little easier, skender wrote a script to list all the movies on publicdomaintorrents by their IMDB rating.

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