TorrentFreak

A UK-based anti-piracy group is continuing to crack down on any sites considered to be engaging in copyright infringement. Last week representatives of The Federation Against Copyright Theft personally turned up at the home of a torrent site owner who was told to cease and desist, or else. Hand over your domains, FACT explained, and things should turn out OK.

The popular movie and TV streaming script TVstreamScript has shut down “voluntarily” following pressure from movie industry group FACT. The script was used by hundreds of streaming sites, which have all been rendered useless overnight. FACT tells TorrentFreak that convincing site owners to sign over their domains is one of the strategies they use to tackle online piracy.

This week Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group FACT revealed that the Film Distributors Association had handed out cash rewards to more than a dozen cinema workers who managed to sniff out so-called movie ‘cammers’ in UK cinemas. But despite every case being reported to the police – some involving Skyfall and The Hobbit – authorities could do little in response. Not a single cammer was charged or prosecuted.

Two brothers from the UK in their mid-twenties have been convicted for operating websites that indexed links to unauthorized streams of copyrighted movies. The pair were charged in 2010 and this week were handed nine month suspended jail sentences and ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work. The convictions follow an investigation by West Yorkshire Police in collaboration with the movie industry group FACT, who feel that in the UK the tide is turning in favor of copyright holders.

A recent tip followed by a trawl through the WHOIS domain registry has revealed that a Hollywood anti-piracy group is now the proud owner of a number of file-sharing related domains. Is a major conspiracy ready to unfold? Well, not exactly. It appears that some previously happy site owners have been willingly handing over their domains to the Federation Against Copyright Theft in order to avoid visiting the inside of a court room.

The MPAA-funded anti-piracy group behind the prosecution of UK streaming links site SurfTheChannel has claimed another prominent victim. UKNova, which has been in existence for almost a decade, has a strict ‘ethical’ policy which forbids users from uploading any material which is available to buy, but that didn’t stop the Federation Against Copyright Theft targeting the site. UKNova will now disable their torrent trackers, depriving thousands of expats access to the TV shows from home they know and love.

The Hollywood-backed Federation Against Copyright Theft was the driving force behind the four-year jail sentence handed down to former SurfTheChannel owner Anton Vickerman yesterday. The organization conducts its own investigations and then hands its findings to police and other authorities, but just how much can they discover about targets such as Vickerman? Internal FACT documents obtained by TorrentFreak show the anti-piracy group go to scary lengths to delve deep into people’s private lives.