Last week these rightsholders were joined by luxury brand owner Richemont, which successfully obtained orders to block sites selling counterfeit products. The outcome of that particular case had delayed decisions in other blocking applications, including one put forward by the record labels. Today the High Court ended its hiatus by processing a new injunction.

The application was made by record labels 1967, Dramatico Entertainment, Infectious Music, Liberation Music, Simco Limited, Sony Music and Universal Music. The labels represented themselves plus the BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) and PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd) which together account for around 99% of all music legally available in the UK today.

Through their legal action the labels hoped to disrupt the activities of sites and services they believe to be enabling and facilitating the unlawful distribution of their copyright works. In this case the key targets were the 21 torrent sites listed below:

(1) bittorrent.am, (2) btdigg.org, (3) btloft.com, (4) bts.to, (5) limetorrents.com, (6) nowtorrents.com, (7) picktorrent.com, (8) seedpeer.me, (9) torlock.com, (10) torrentbit.net, (11) torrentdb.li, (12) torrentdownload.ws, (13) torrentexpress.net, (14) torrentfunk.com, (15) torrentproject.com, (16) torrentroom.com, (17) torrents.net, (18) torrentus.eu, (19) torrentz.cd, (20) torrentzap.com and (21) vitorrent.org.

As usual the UK’s leading Internet service providers – Sky, Virgin, TalkTalk, BT and EE – were named as defendants in the case. The ISPs neither consented to nor opposed the application but participated in order to negotiate the wording of any order granted.

In his ruling Justice Arnold noted that the sites listed in the application function in a broadly similar way to The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, sites that are already subjected to blocking orders. Perhaps surprisingly, efforts by some of the sites to cooperate with rightsholders meant little to the Court.

“All of [the sites] go to considerable lengths to facilitate and promote the downloading of torrent files, and hence infringing content, by their users,” Justice Arnold wrote.

“Although a few of the Target Websites pay lipservice to copyright protection, in reality they all flout it. Although a few of the Target Websites claim not to, they all have control over which torrent files they index.”

Also of interest is that Court didn’t differentiate between sites that allow users to upload torrents, those that store them, or those that simply harvest links to torrents hosted elsewhere.

“Thirteen of the Target Websites (bittorrent.am, btdigg.org, btloft.com, nowtorrents.com, picktorrent.com, torrentdb.li, torrentdownload.ws, torrentexpress.net, torrentproject.com, torrentroom.com, torrentus.eu, torrentz.cd and vitorrent.org) do not permit uploads of torrent files by users, but gather all their links to torrent files using ‘crawling’ technology. No torrent files are stored on these websites’ own servers,” Justice Arnold explained.

“Nevertheless, the way in which the torrent files (or rather the links thereto) are presented, and the underlying technology, is essentially the same as in the cases of the other Target Websites.”

The Judge also touched on the efficacy of website blockades, citing comScore data which suggests that, on average, the number of UK visitors to already blocked BitTorrent sites has declined by 87%.

“No doubt some of these users are using circumvention measures which are not reflected in the comScore data, but for the reasons given elsewhere it seems clear that not all users do this,” Justice Arnold wrote.

Speaking with TF the BPI said that the 21 sites had been selected for blocking on the basis that they are amongst the most infringing sites available in the UK today. BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said that having them rendered inaccessible would help both the music industry and consumers.

“Illegal sites dupe consumers and deny artists a fair reward for their work. The online black market stifles investment in new British music, holds back the growth of innovative legal services like Spotify and destroys jobs across Britain’s vital creative sector,” Taylor said.

“Sites such as these also commonly distribute viruses, malware and other unsafe or inappropriate content. These blocks will not only make the internet a safer place for music fans, they will help make sure there is more great British music in years to come.”

Finally, and mirroring a decision made in the Richemont case, Justice Arnold said that Internet subscribers affected by the block will be given the ability to apply to the High Court to discharge or vary the orders. Furthermore, when blocked site information pages are viewed by ISP subscribers in future, additional information will have to be displayed including details of the parties who obtained the block.

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

Their case involves former members of now-defunct file-sharing links forum Dancing Jesus. The site was taken down in 2011 following an investigation carried out by the BPI and IFPI, with assistance from the US Department of Homeland Security.

Two people were arrested by City of London Police, the owner of the site and the forum’s top uploader. Homeland Security assisted UK police by seizing a Dancing Jesus server hosted in the United States.

The trial, which began on October 6, took place at Newcastle Crown Court. One defendant, site owner and admin Kane Robinson of South Shields, had already pleaded guilty to illegally distributing music back in January 2014.

Richard Graham, the site’s alleged top uploader, went into the trial with a “not guilty” plea, but after evidence was presented in court earlier this week the Leicestershire man changed his plea to guilty.

“The guilty verdict confirms that posting illegal online links to music is a criminal offense which economically harms musicians and the labels that support them,” said David Wood, Director of BPI’s Copyright Protection Unit.

“Pre-release piracy, in particular, robs musicians of artistic control, leaving them with no say in when and how their music – which has taken blood, sweat and tears to produce – is released.

The case is significant in a number of ways, not least the scale of online infringement connected to the pair’s guilty plea. Add in the fact that Dancing Jesus was particularly well-known as a venue to obtain pre-release content and this becomes the most important UK music industry case since the failed 2010 prosecution of the infamous OiNK BitTorrent tracker.

Graham and Robinson will be sentenced under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Their fate will be determined by Judge Sherwin early next month.

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

Aside from the efforts of the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), one of the recurring themes is the decision by the Hollywood-backed Federation Against Copyright Theft to privately prosecute high-profile cases themselves.

The most notable case, that involving SurfTheChannel’s Anton Vickerman, resulted in a four-year jail sentence, one that’s cited in cease and desist notices regularly served on file-sharing site admins in the UK. More recently, FACT took the decision to initiate a private prosecution against Philip Danks, a West-Midlands based man known for camming and distributing Fast and Furious 6 while it was still in cinemas.

It now appears that following FACT’s lead, the BPI will also take a privately investigated and prosecuted case to criminal trial this month.

The case involves the now-defunct file-sharing forum known as Dancing Jesus. The site was taken down in 2011 following a investigation carried out by the BPI and IFPI, with assistance from the US Department of Homeland Security.

At the time two people were arrested by City of London Police – the site’s alleged administrator and an individual said to be one of the site’s top uploaders. Homeland Security assisted with the case by seizing Dancing Jesus’s server in the United States.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the BPI confirmed that the trial is going ahead in October.

“A trial is scheduled to take place at Newcastle Crown Court this month regarding the illegal distribution of music via an internet forum site called Dancing Jesus,” a spokesperson said.

“It is a private prosecution being brought by the BPI following an initial joint investigation by BPI and the IFPI, with assistance from the US Department of Homeland Security. One defendant in the case has already pleaded guilty to illegally distributing music and will be sentenced at the end of the trial.”

While the precise details of the case will come out at trial, Dancing Jesus was perhaps best known for providing links to pre-release music content. TorrentFreak contacted the site’s former admin for comment but at the time of publication we’ve yet to receive a response.

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

In an attempt to prevent these infringements, the BPI and other music industry groups send millions of takedown notices to Internet services every month. Most of these requests are directed at Google.

This week the UK music industry group BPI reached a new milestone after notifying Google of the 100 millionth allegedly infringing URL, up from 50 million just 10 months ago.

As can be seen below, the latest update shows that the 100 million links were spread out over 274,810 separate DMCA takedown notices.

With 100 million requests the BPI has broken a new milestone. Never before has a copyright holder representative reported so many allegedly infringing links to Google. Degban is currently second in this list with 99 million URLs, followed by the RIAA with 57 million.

For the BPI this record isn’t something to be proud of though. The music industry group tells us that it shows just how hard it is for copyright holders to have infringing content taken offline.

“This milestone makes two things very clear. First, that however much creators do, the system of ‘notice and takedown’ will never be enough on its own to protect them or consumers from the online black market, or to spur growth in the digital economy,” a BPI spokesperson says.

“Second, that despite its clear knowledge as to which sites are engines of piracy, Google continues to help build their illegal businesses, by giving them a prominent ranking in search results.”

The BPI stresses that Google should do more to lower the visibility of unauthorized content in its search results. Despite promises to do so, the music group still sees very little improvement on this front.

“To illustrate: Google’s records show it has been told more than 10 million times that content on 4shared.com is illegal – yet it’s still the very first result today when we search for ‘Calvin Harris mp3′ – ahead of Amazon and every other legal service,” BPI notes.

Addressing this issue is pretty straightforward, the BPI argues. Google should work with the entertainment industries to adjust its search algorithm, as the UK Government also highlighted recently.

“Google can simply fix this problem by amending its algorithm. We hope they will respond positively to the invitation from Government to negotiate voluntary measures to do so,” BPI says, closing with an iconic lyric.

“It’s time the media giant changed its tune – we need a little less conversation and a little more action please.”

Google has thus far been hesitant to fiddle with its search results.

The company has made several changes to address the complaints of copyright holders. However, it also stressed that the entertainment industries themselves should take responsibility, arguing that piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem.

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

The government-funded City of London Intellectual Property Crime Unit is definitely showing no signs of losing interest, carrying out yet another arrest yesterday morning on behalf of video rightsholders. In the afternoon during the BPI’s Annual General Meeting in London, the unit was being praised by both government officials and a music sector also keen to bring piracy under control.

“We’ve given £2.5 million to support the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, PIPCU,” Culture Secretary Sajid Javid told those in attendance.

“The first unit of its kind in the world, PIPCU is working with industry groups – including the BPI – on the Infringing Websites List. The list identifies sites that deliberately and consistently breach copyright, so brand owners can avoid advertising on them.”

Referencing rampant online piracy, Javid said that no industry or government could stand by and let “massive, industrial scale” levels of infringement continue.

“I know some people say the IP genie is out of the bottle and that no amount of wishing will force it back in. But I don’t agree with them,” he said.

“We don’t look at any other crimes and say ‘It’s such a big problem that it’s not worth bothering with.’ We wouldn’t stand idly by if paintings worth hundreds of millions of pounds were being stolen from the National Gallery.Copyright infringement is theft, pure and simple. And it’s vital we try to reduce it.”

Going on to detail the Creative Content initiative which the government is supporting to the tune of £3.5m, Javid said the system would deliver a “robust, fair and effective enforcement regime”.

But that, however, is only one part of the puzzle. Infringing sites need to be dealt with, directly and by other means, he added.

“Copyright crooks don’t love music. They love money, and they’ve been attracted to the industry solely by its potential to make them rich. Take away their profits and you take away their reason for being. Of course, it’s not just up to the government and music industry to deal with this issue,” he noted.

Putting search engines on notice, the MP said that they have an important role to play.

“They must step up and show willing. That’s why [Business Secretary] Vince Cable and I have written to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, asking them to work with [the music industry] to stop search results sending people to illegal sites,” Javid said.

“And let me be perfectly clear: if we don’t see real progress, we will be looking at a legislative approach. In the words of [Beggars Group chairman] Martin Mills, ‘technology companies should be the partners of rights companies, not their masters’.”

The Culture Secretary said that when it comes to tackling piracy, the government, music industry and tech companies are “three sides of the same triangle.” But despite that expectation of togetherness, only time will tell if the search engines agree to the point of taking voluntary action to support it.

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

For sites like The Pirate Bay, which point-blank refuses to remove any torrents whatsoever, the labels have little option than to head off to Google. There the search giant will remove Pirate Bay links from its indexes so that users won’t immediately find them.

However, rather than engaging a link whack-a-mole, the best solution by far is to remove the content itself. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the world’s leading file-lockers (even ones labeled ‘rogue’ by the United States), allow copyright holders direct back-end access to their systems so they can remove content themselves. It doesn’t really get any fairer than that, and here’s the issue.

This week, while looking at Google’s Transparency Report, TF noticed that during the past month massive file-hosting site 4shared became the record labels’ public enemy number one. In just four weeks, Google received 953,065 requests for 4shared links to be taken down, the majority of them from record labels. In fact, according to Google the BPI has complained about 4shared a mind-boggling 6.75 million times overall.

So, is 4shared refusing to cooperate with the BPI, hence the group’s endless complaints to Google? That conclusion might make sense but apparently it’s not the case. In fact, it appears that 4shared operates a removal system that is particularly friendly to music companies, one that not only allows them to take content down, but also keep it down.

“Throughout the years 4shared developed several tools for copyright owners to protect their content and established a special team that reacts to copyright claims in timely manner,” 4shared informs TorrentFreak.

“We don’t completely understand BPI’s reasons for sending claims to Google instead of using our tools. From our point of view the best and most effective way for copyright holders to find and remove links to the content they own is to use our music identification system.”

To find out more, TF spoke with the BPI. We asked them to comment on 4shared’s takedown tools and in the light of their existence why they choose to target Google instead. After a few friendly back-and-forth emails, the group declined to comment on the specific case.

“We prefer to comment on our overall approach on search rather than on individual sites, which is to focus on known sources of wide scale piracy and to use a number of tools to tackle this problem,” a BPI spokesman explained.

“Notice-sending represents just one part of the measures available to us, along with site blocking and working with the Police to reducing advertising on copyright infringing sites.”

We asked 4shared to reveal other copyright holders using their system, but the site declined on privacy grounds. However, it’s clear that the BPI isn’t a user and 4shared have their own ideas why that might be.

“It’s possible that BPI goes for quantity not quality,” TF was told.

“If they are trying to increase the number of links in reports or for PR reasons, they probably use a bot to harvest and send links to Google despite the fact that such an approach may also result in false claims.”

The “PR” angle is an interesting one. Ever since Google began publishing its Transparency Report rightsholders have used it to demonstrate how bad the piracy problem is. Boosting those numbers certainly helps the cause.

But is it possible, perhaps, that the BPI doesn’t trust the 4shared system. They didn’t answer our questions on that front either but it seems unlikely since 4shared uses EchoPrint, a solution purchased by Spotify earlier this year.

“Our music identification system which is based on Echoprint technology will not only find all matching content but will also restrict sharing of all potential future uploads of such content,” 4shared concludes.

Take-down-and-stay-down is the Holy Grail for anti-piracy companies. It’s a solution being pushed for in the United States in the face of what rightsholders say is a broken DMCA. On that basis there must be a good reason for the BPI not wanting to work with 4shared and it has to be said that the company’s “PR” theory proves more attractive than most.

The volume of notices in Google’s Transparency Report provide believable evidence of large-scale infringement and it’s certainly possible that the BPI would prefer to have 4shared blocked in the UK than work with the site’s takedown tools.

We’ll find out the truth in the months to come.

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

Instead, frustrated rightsholders – who believe that doing nothing against unauthorized file-sharing just isn’t an option – have been channeled into talks with ISPs to try and find a voluntary solution to the problem.

Today, and after years of wrangling, it now appears the sides have agreed terms on what will be known as Vcap – the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme.

The system will see the music and movie industries monitor BitTorrent file-sharing networks for infringement, logging pirates’ IP addresses as they go. These will be tracked back to ISPs who will send out a warning letter to the subscriber account associated with the alleged deed.

According to the BBC, only four ISPs – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media – are currently signed up to the BPI and MPA scheme. Users of other ISPs won’t receive any letters for now but that could change in the future.

Unlike other “graduated response” schemes elsewhere in the world, the UK’s Vcap has no real “teeth”. Even though the language used in the letters will reportedly increase in tone, there will be no punishments, and after receipt of a fourth warning no account will receive a fifth.

On the privacy front subscribers will be pleased to know that within Vcap, ISPs won’t be handing their identities over to the music and movie companies. Rightsholder access to Vcap data will be limited to how many alerts have been sent out but since they are the ones generating the data for the warnings, the IP addresses of the alleged infringers will already be known to them.

The BPI and MPA will be pleased that a deal has been reached, but it has come at a cost. While the language used in the warnings will increase, threats or suggestions of consequences for continued infringement have been replaced by messages designed to educate. Also, warnings sent will be capped at 2.5 million over three years.

It will also come at a financial cost. The BBC reports that rightsholders will pay each ISP £750,000 to set up the system, or 75% of the costs, whichever is smaller. On top of this initial outlay the BPI and MPA will pay each ISP an additional annual sum of £75,000 to cover administration costs.

While the ISPs and industry groups have agreed terms, Vcap is not quite a done deal yet. As part of the scheme, ISPs hope to keep records for up to a year detailing which subscribers have received warning letters and how many each has received. On this issue they are awaiting approval from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

In the right circumstances and armed with a court order its certainly conceivable that not only the BPI and MPA could gain access to this data, but also outside companies with similar interests.

Finally, and despite the ‘gentle’ tone of Vcap, there is a sting in the tail. In the agreement seen by the BBC, rightsholders say that if Vcap doesn’t achieve results, they will call for the “rapid implementation” of the harsh measures promised by the Digital Economy Act.

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

In a letter sent to the domain registrars of several torrent and MP3-related sites, police stated that the domains in question (including ExtraTorrent.com, SumoTorrent.com, emp3world.com, full-albums.net and maxalbums.com) were being run by criminals who were breaking UK law. Therefore the domains should be suspended within 48 hours, the police explained.

One registrar, PDR Ltd, immediately complied with the request, even though the police had not obtained a court order compelling them to do so. Another, EasyDNS, refused to comply on the basis that there needed to be due process. This led to an attempt by the owner of the latter three sites listed above to transfer his domains to EasyDNS as he believed the registrar would stand up for his rights.

However, PDR Ltd refused to transfer the domains over, prompting EasyDNS to embark on a crusade to force PDR Ltd to accept that while seizing domains with a court order might be acceptable, doing so simply because someone asks you to is not, even when that someone is the police.

EasyDNS took the matter to Verisign (who issued a decision of “No Decision”) and eventually all the way to the National Arbitration Forum. Yesterday the ICANN Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy panel handed down its decision and it was good news for EasyDNS, the sites in question, plus any others that may face future domain seizures that are not backed by court orders.

“Although there are compelling reasons why the request from a recognized law enforcement agency such as the City of London Police should be honored, the Transfer Policy is unambiguous in requiring a court order before a Registrar of Record may deny a request to transfer a domain name,” the panel wrote in its decision.

“To permit a registrar of record to withhold the transfer of a domain based on the suspicion of a law enforcement agency, without the intervention of a judicial body, opens the possibility for abuse by agencies far less reputable than the City of London Police.”

Concluding, the panel found that PDR Ltd had violated the policy on domain transfers and ordered the registrar to transfer emp3world.com, full-albums.net and maxalbums.com to EasyDNS.

“This is a big victory for all domain holders because it upholds their right to ‘vote with their feet’ in response to unreasonable takedown of their domain names,” EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic tells TorrentFreak.

“We expect all modern democracies to accord a legal process against parties accused of something, something that has been conspicuous in its absence from the London Police requests, which encouraged registrars to summarily shutdown domain names and then go so far as to hijack their traffic to competing interests.”

The question now is whether the police or the BPI / FACT will choose to step away from domain seizures or try a fresh approach with the backing of the courts.

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

Two weeks ago we reported that the new Healthcare.gov website had stripped the copyright notice from one of the scripts it used. This blatant act of ‘piracy’ prompted us to take a closer look at the websites of several anti-piracy organizations, and today we present our findings.

As it turns out the U.S. Government is not the only one violating copyright licenses. The websites of music industry groups RIAA and BPI also use infringing code.

On both sites we found open source JQuerys scripts that are released under the MIT license. This license permits any person or organization to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, or even sell copies of the software. There’s only one condition users have to agree to; that the original copyright notice stays intact.

Ironically, the scripts used on the RIAA and BPI websites have the copyright licenses removed.

BPI uses the depreciated template script jQuery.tmpl.min.js, and as can be seen below, yesterday there was no reference to the MIT license or the copyright holder listed at the top of the file.

The image below shows what the 2011 copy of the script should look like, with the proper copyright credits and applicable licenses included.

The RIAA makes a similar mistake with the image slider plugin jquery.orbit.min.js. This software is copyrighted by the design firm ZURB but the version in use at the RIAA website yesterday fails to mention this, or the MIT license.

Here is what a copy of ZURB’s plugin should look like when the copyright holder and MIT license are properly mentioned.

TorrentFreak asked both RIAA and BPI for a comment yesterday. RIAA said it was looking into the issue and appears to have added the copyright notice now (Internet archive copy). BPI has not responded to our question but clearly received our email as they also updated the file with proper credits (cf. Internet archive).

These type of violations are not unique, and can be found in many websites all over the Internet. Still, from outfits whose raison d’être is protecting copyrights, we have to expect that these issues are carefully checked.

The violations were probably caused by the web developers who coded the RIAA and BPI sites. We doubt that any of the higher ranked executives know about it, but next time they may want to instruct their coders to keep their site free from copyright infringements.

This is not the first time that an anti-piracy group has been accused of pirating software. A few years ago the MPAA removed the linkware license form Patrick Robin’s Forest Blog software. The movie industry group later said that this was a mistake, and it was only used for testing purposes.

Instant Update: A final check upon publication revealed that RIAA and BPI both fixed the infringements, probably more swiftly than the average website processes DMCA requests. Neither group provided a comment on the copyright violations.

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

But of course, as more and more copyrighted files such as music, movies and TV shows have been shared online over the years, rightsholders have employed varying techniques to try and bring that to a halt. Their latest tool is the blocking of entire domains by Internet service providers and thanks to the efforts of the music industry, the UK will today become the world leader.

As predicted by TorrentFreak back in May, the BPI have been building cases against more than 20 sites that they say are infringing their members’ copyrights. Today that work will come to fruition when six ISPs – BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk – begin blocking them at the ISP level.

The range is the broadest so far, hitting BitTorrent indexing sites, a torrent meta-search engine, a cyberlocker search engine, and several MP3 search engines/download sites.

Torrent sites: 1337x, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent, Monova, TorrentCrazy, TorrentDownloads, TorrentHound, Torrentreactor and Torrentz.

Others: Abmp3, BeeMP3, Bomb-MP3, FileCrop, FilesTube, MP3Juices, eMP3World, MP3Lemon, MP3Raid, MP3Skull, NewAlbumReleases and Rapidlibrary.

The list is almost identical to the original list sent by the BPI to record companies earlier in the year, but has a couple of interesting omissions.

Gone from the blocking proposals are music streaming service GrooveShark and music download service Dilandau. The former now holds several music licensing deals while the latter is the third most DMCA’d domain on the Internet according to Google’s Transparency Report. IsoHunt is also absent, having shut down earlier this month.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the BPI said that over the summer they had contacted all 21 sites with a request that they “stop infringing copyright.”

“Unfortunately they declined to co-operate in any meaningful way, so BPI applied to the High Court, where the judge considered the evidence and decided that the sites should no longer be accessible in the UK. The new blocks will come into force by Wednesday, 30 October 2013,” a spokesman said.

The music industry group, which represents all the major labels, defended its action as both “fair” and “proportionate”.

“All of the sites were given a chance to stop infringing copyright before we went to Court, and the Orders were then only made once a High Court judge had fully considered our detailed evidence,” the BPI said. “We also believe that it is fair that the people who work to create music should be rewarded when it is downloaded, rather than sites overseas that are exploiting this music without permission.”

Interestingly, when conducting a review of the Top 10 Torrent Sites 2013 as published earlier this year, after today none of them will be directly accessible in the UK, either due to BPI blocking or in the case of H33T and isoHunt, being taken offline following legal action.

The BPI told us that they accept that blocking can never be 100% effective, and that is something the team at The Pirate Bay know quite a bit about. Earlier this year they released PirateBrowser, an anti-censorsip tool designed to facilitate access to any blocked site.

PirateBrowser has been downloaded more than a million times and will be in even greater demand after today. TorrentFreak is informed that a fresh update will include bookmarks for all the blocked sites so that users can gain easy access.

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