It involved a pair of now-shuttered websites – Watch The Simpsons Online (WTOS) and Watch Family Guy Online, launched 2008 and 2009 respectively. Both websites gave visitors the chance to watch episodes of the named TV shows via embedded web players utilizing external video sources. Neither site hosted infringing content.

Together the sites had around 87 million visitors during their lifetimes and as a result attracted the unwanted attention of Fox. During 2008, WTSO was targeted several times and had to keep shifting hosts and at one stage had its domain seized following a WIPO dispute. In 2010 the MPAA began filing its own cease and desists.

Although the sites continued to operate without further major incident, it was the calm before the storm. Early October 2013, Fox filed a copyright infringement lawsuit at the Federal Court of Canada, alongside requests to keep its contents secret pending a raid on the site operator’s home. That was carried out October 9.

With the site admin unwilling to fight Fox in an expensive case he knew he could not win, matters proceeded without him. Just before Christmas the defendant found out the case had been concluded in his absence.

Details sent to TorrentFreak by Timothy Lowman, a lawyer at the Sim & McBurney lawfirm which handled the case for Fox, spells out the extent of the judgment.

“The Judgment awards $10 million [CAD] for statutory damages, $500,000 for punitive damages and fixed/assessed solicitor client costs of $78.573.25 (in addition to an earlier cost award of $107,665.55),” Lowman explains.

“The significant judgement in this case points up the risk courted by those who engage in internet piracy, in particular for commercial purposes. The Federal Court considers that such activities warrant significant assessments of statutory damages, in this case $13,888.88 per work infringed, and that such misconduct is also deserving of substantial awards of punitive damages to achieve the goal of punishment and deterrence of the offense of copyright infringement,” he concludes.

According to Lowman the statutory damages and punitive damages awards in this judgment are the largest given to date by the Federal Court of Canada and according to the person expected to pay them, the admin formerly known as ‘Joecool6101′, the amount is simply unmanageable. He cannot pay but Fox are pressing ahead anyway.

“Fox are pursing for the money and they are doing so as hard as they possibly can. They’ve ruined my life and continue to do so as long as they don’t leave me and my family alone. As it’s been referenced by a lawyer: ‘they are killing a fly with a nuke’,” he told TorrentFreak.

“This experience was the worst thing I could possibly imagine, Fox takes no mercy when destroying your life as you once knew it and then begins to drag your new life down as much as possible as well. I don’t wish this upon anyone and simply wish the dinosaurs would just give their consumers what they want — which is to be able to stream their videos online easy, fast, worldwide.”

The judgment also forbids JoeCool from infringing Fox’s copyrights in future, but rest assured there will be others to fill the gap – unless Fox takes his advice of course.

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

With more than 100 million links to pirated files Google is steadily building the largest database of copyrighted material. This is rather ironic as it would only take one skilled coder to index the URLs from the DMCA notices in order to create one of the largest pirate search engines available.

Indeed, the DMCA notices are meant to make content harder to find on the Internet, but in the process they create a semi-organized index of links to infringing material.

This problem is illustrated by several takedown requests that were sent on behalf of movie studio 20th Century Fox recently. Usually these notices ask Google to remove links to pirate sites, but Fox also wants Google to remove the DMCA notices they sent earlier.

Below is an example, with Fox stating that this DMCA takedown request is “infringing” itself.

The movie studio is not the only copyright holder going after their own takedown notices. Other Hollywood studios including NBC Universal and Lionsgate have done the same, and Microsoft too.

We expect that the notices are just another byproduct of the automated tools that are used to find infringing URLs. However, it’s a “mistake” that signals one of the key problems of automated censorship, and one that can lead to an endless loop of DMCA notices.

Thus far the infringing takedown notices remain accessible through Google search. Apparently Google has white-listed the Chillingeffects domain because it doesn’t see these indirect links as infringing.

While this may seem logical, Google is no stranger to removing non-direct links to links. If we take a look at the text pasting service Pastebin we see that Google removed 82,937 URLs from its index. These indirect links are all non-clickable and no different from the DMCA notices.

The standards are shifting in other ways too. No longer is Google merely asked to remove direct links to copyrighted material as the DMCA prescribes, but also links to links to links to copyrighted material.

The above shows the growing mess the current DMCA procedures are creating and for now there is no end in sight. Both Google and the copyright holders agree that something has to change, but understandably the solution they envision is quite different.

In the meantime, copyright holders continue to push the search engine to its takedown limits at a rate of 20 million URLs a month.

To be continued.

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

Fox stopped offering free access to its TV-shows the day after they air on television, and put in an 8-day delay before these appear on Hulu and Fox.com.

“The decision goes directly against the wishes of the public but Fox will take this disappointment as collateral damage in the hope that the delay will result in more live viewers and better deals with cable and satellite distributors,” we wrote in an article.

A good move business wise maybe but viewers weren’t all that happy and many decided to pirate the shows instead.

Our research showed that the number of U.S. downloads on BitTorrent more than doubled for both recent episodes of Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef.

Yesterday Fox responded to our findings, and they told HWR in a comment:

“The TorrentFreak blog post is a little over the top. The story indicates that we ‘took this drastic step in the hope of getting more people to watch shows live and thus make more revenue.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. Authenticating viewers is not about making sure they only watch live…in fact, quite the opposite—we support a ‘TV Everywhere’ proposition and are working with our distribution partners to benefit our businesses. It’s about receiving fair value so we can continue to produce this expensive and high quality programming. We are pursuing a strategy where the 90+ million households who pay to watch our programming via cable/satellite/telco will ultimately receive maximum benefit. They can watch live, via DVR, on VOD, online, or through one of the various tablet apps that allow in-home viewing. We are actively in negotiations with all cable/satellite/telco providers regarding authentication of their customers. We hope to announce several more agreements before the start of the new television season in mid-September.”

Oh really? We were totally wrong?

As we mentioned in or original article, we thought that Fox was making this move to increase live viewers and satellite /cable offerings. Fox clearly disputes the live angle, but the bottom line is that they expect to make more revenue by delaying the releases.

It’s all about making more money, and with more live viewers they do exactly that. A TV viewer is worth much more than a web viewer so we have to assume that Fox wont be disappointed if their decision leads to more live viewers.

The most annoying part is of course that they try to sell their decision as a good thing.

They claim to add value for paying (and authenticated) customers, but they add nothing at all. What they do is remove value for millions of regular viewers.

If that’s not backward thinking I honestly don’t know what is.

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

When the plan was first announced last month we predicted that it could lead to a significant boost in online piracy of Fox shows, and this does indeed turn out to be the case.

Over the last week TorrentFreak tracked two Fox shows on BitTorrent to see if there was an upturn in the number of downloads compared to the previous weeks, and the results are as expected. For both Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef the download numbers have surged.

During the first 5 days, the number of downloads from the U.S. for the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen increased by 114% compared to the previous 3 episodes. For MasterChef the upturn was even higher with 189% more downloads from the U.S. For MasterChef; the extra high demand may in part have been facilitated by the fact that it was the season finale.

Aside from BitTorrent, there are of course many other options for people to catch up with a missed episode. YouTube for example, from where tens of thousands of people streamed the latest Hell’s Kitchen episode.

Instead of Hulu or Fox, the pirates get the praise. On YouTube and BitTorrent sites many users thank the uploaders for making the shows available.

“You so rock and allowed me to keep my promise to my son. I promised if he cleaned for one hour he could watch Hell’s Kitchen with me. He was excited and then disappointed that we couldn’t watch it on Hulu or Fox.com,” WithurShield writes.

“Thanks a lot for uploading these, Hulu used to be my go-to but alas, they have failed me,” minniemica adds.

On the other hand, several users who went to Hulu expecting to see a fresh episode left comments berating Fox (although most target Hulu) for their decision not to make the episodes available for free.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I went to Hell’s Kitchen and Master Chef. Right in the middle of the series idiot at Hulu decided to through in the pay services. At least have the decency to wait till the end [sic],” one commenter writes on Hulu.

“What I don’t like is up until now I have been able to watch the episode of Hell’s Kitchen the day after it airs and all of a sudden they now want me to pay for it?” another commenter adds.

There is no doubt that the Hulu delay is not in the best interests of TV-viewers. Although it might be a good business decision in the short term, one has to doubt whether driving people to ‘pirated’ content is a wise choice. To many viewers it is clearly a step backward.

Instead of artificial restrictions the public demands flexibility when it comes to entertainment. They want to decide when and where they want to watch something, and right now video streaming sites, BitTorrent and even the old VCR do a better job at this than Fox.

“I’m going to go buy a DVR or dust off my VCR and I will be recording my tv shows from now on,” a commenter writes on Hulu.

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

Having a free, legal and on-demand option to catch up with missed TV-shows suddenly made BitTorrent a less urgent need.

But in the years that followed Hulu and other TV-streaming sites didn’t turn out to be the holy grail for everyone. Although many consumers were delighted with the services, the TV bosses noticed that online ad revenue couldn’t compete with that of traditional TV.

This is one of the main reasons why Fox will stop broadcasting its shows on Hulu and Fox.com the day after they air on TV. Starting August 15, the public will have to wait at least 8 days before Fox content will be streamed online, a delay that may motivate many people to once again turn to BitTorrent.

When Hulu first launched, TorrentFreak researched whether it had any effect on the number of people from the U.S. who were downloading TV-shows. Our findings suggested that this could be indeed the case. Between October 2007 and October 2008 nearly all the shows we tracked saw a decrease in U.S. downloaders.

One of the most pronounced decreases came from the Fox show Prison Break, where the percentage of U.S. downloaders went down 36%. The decrease was the sharpest in the first week, where the number of U.S. downloads of a single episode dropped by tens of thousands.

Based on the above, it’s a safe guess to say that Fox’s decision to add a delay to the online broadcast will now cause a healthy bump in the number of U.S. downloads. But this is not a big surprise for Fox, it is a calculated business decision where piracy is merely seen as collateral damage.

Although some people may turn to BitTorrent, Fox hopes that there will also be more TV-viewers because of this new delay. And since TV-advertising is much more lucrative than online ads, they may end up making more money because of it, at least in the short run.

In the end, making money is much more important than pleasing consumers or decreasing piracy.

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

Last year this happened with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Three long weeks before the official premiere in the movie theaters an unfinished copy (Workprint) appeared online, and in advance of its release over a million people had already downloaded it via BitTorrent.

20th Century Fox wasn’t happy with this global sneak preview and asked the FBI and MPAA to investigate the case. This investigation eventually led to the arrest of a scapegoat, but the original leaker was never caught. Now, a year on from the Wolverine drama, Fox is again up in arms about a leaked and potentially unfinished movie.

Little over a month ago a workprint copy of Vampires Suck was uploaded to various torrent sites by the P2P release group KiNGDOM. This time around Fox wisely kept quiet about the leak. Behind the scenes, however, Fox’s legal department has been sending numerous takedown requests to torrent sites and Google. Interestingly, some of the URLs that were sent to Google are links to fake copies of the movie.

Vampires Suck, a parody of the popular Twilight series, premieres in the United States and Canada tomorrow, but despite Fox’s efforts the movie has already been downloaded over 100,000 times. According to commenters, the quality of of the audio and video is more than decent and the film appears to be complete, although one can not be sure if the scenes in the workprint will all be in the actual film.

It is not unlikely that Fox will be trying to find the source of the leak once again, and the first leads are presented to them by KiNGDOM. “Got this from a friend blurred the needed areas for security reasons and cropped others. It came in 5 reels at the beginning of each there was a countdown till the reel started so I had to cut them out too, as for filtering I did the normal,” we read in the release notes.

Whether the leak will end up hurting the success of the movie in the long run or not is open for debate. It might, if those who have downloaded the film don’t end up seeing it in the movie theater or on DVD, where they originally planned to do so. On the other hand, the leak might lead to some additional press coverage and thus serve as a useful promotional tool.

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

Leaks can be even more advanced than that though. There is also a ‘scene’ of script aficionados who share movie scripts, often before the movie in question has started filming. There are even entire blogs dedicated to this type of reading material.

One of the scripts that made its way onto the Internet a few weeks ago was that of the upcoming Twentieth Century Fox film “Water For Elephants“. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson and based on Sara Guen’s novel, the film tells the story of a traveling circus.

As is the fate of many Hollywood scripts this one also ended up being shared on the Internet, on several file-hosting sites and on BitTorrent. What’s quite new though, is that the Fox Intellectual Property department has been sending out takedown notices in an attempt to stop the script from being shared.

Below are some quotes from an email that has been sent to several site administrators in recent weeks.

…

We have recently learned that ***** and/or its users (hereinafter “You” or “Your”) has posted scripts and/or links to downloads thereof purportedly from Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation’s (“Fox”) “WATER FOR ELEPHANTS” motion picture (the “Film”) on the following Internet pages without authorization from Fox:

Such unauthorized use infringes the intellectual property rights in and to the Film owned by Fox and its associated entities. Therefore, we must demand that you immediately remove the scripts and/or links to downloads thereof from your website. We further request that you provide written acknowledgment to the undersigned that you have ceased the infringing conduct complained of herein.

…

The email further states that Fox will take action against the site when the torrent files or other links to the script aren’t removed by a certain date. As we know from previous cases, Fox doesn’t shy from extreme measures when it comes to leaked material, especially when it’s in an unfinished state.

Last year, an unfinished copy of the highly anticipated “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” movie leaked online before it came out in theaters. 20th Century Fox wasn’t happy with this global sneak preview and asked the FBI and MPAA to investigate the case.

At the time Fox had also been sending out takedown notices to various torrent sites, hoping to keep the damage to a minimum. Most site operators were kind enough to take down the links, but in many cases new ones are already uploaded before the requests are processed.

It is doubtful that Fox will involve the FBI this time, especially since Hollywood lobbying for tougher, criminal copyright laws didn’t extend past actual motion pictures. Unlike the Wolverine case, scripts are usually widely available online to those who know where to look. “Water For Elephants” meanwhile, started filming two weeks ago and is expected to be released somewhere next year, in theaters and on BitTorrent.

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

Just before the official US release, that became possible. There appears to be several releases of the movie online, although some appear to originate from the same TS (Telesync) copy, although without downloading and watching them all, that is very hard to verify from the screenshots currently available.

Normally an Internet leak of a movie, particularly one the size of Avatar, leads to furious statements from the studios. Indeed, when a movie is leaked before it hits US theaters, as was the case with productions such as Star Wars Episode III, Wolverine and now Avatar, the FBI usually gets called in. This time things seem a little different.

This weekend a press release began to circulate which quotes Eden Wright, a Fox representative, saying that due to the movie’s availability in 3D at the cinema, “piracy will play a much smaller role in stealing profits from [Avatar] due to the technological hurdles it imposes.”

It’s difficult to disagree with Wright. James Cameron has gone to extraordinary lengths to produce this 3D movie and seeing a blurred copy acquired from the Internet will just ruin the whole experience – people who are prepared to pay will want to see it properly.

Indeed, the figures seem supportive. Avatar pulled in more than $3.5 at its midnight launch with 3D viewings accounting for 85% of the gross. On Friday it took $27 million, with 3D accounting for 58% of the gross.

However, there are always those that either don’t have the money or easily succumb to the temptation. These people have been feverishly hitting BitTorrent and according to data collected by TorrentFreak, thus far Avatar has clocked up around 500,000 downloads in just two days.

The press release mentioned earlier also put a lesser-known blog firmly in the spotlight. “James Cameron’s Avatar first appeared on a blog GetTheNew.com,” it read, going on to say that such sites “…now account for as much as 20% of online piracy.”

While the release states that the site is a source of information, those unfamiliar with how Internet piracy works could be forgiven for thinking that somehow GetTheNew was responsible for the leak, but that’s not true.

GetTheNew, which opened just this September, told TorrentFreak that while they may have been the first site to publish the name of the pirate release (which incidentally leaked to P2P first, an increasing phenomenon), any Google searches the site provided would have come up blank since the movie had not hit public torrent sites yet. All GetTheNew had published at the time was a review of the movie and links to the relevant pages on IMDB.

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

It turns out that Fox’s assumption is right. We decided to look into the download locations of one of the most popular Prison Break torrents and found that, based on a sample of more than 250,000 downloads, most downloaders are located in Europe.

In our sample, which represents approximately 10% of the total downloads this week, the show was most downloaded in Poland (12%). UK and France were in second and third place respectively, followed by Canada and The Netherlands. The US was sixth in the list with only 4% of the total downloads, and Greece, Spain, Australia and Brazil complete the top 10.

As we have said before, availability seems to the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent. Non-US Prison Break fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country, and many of them are not that patient, or willing to torture themselves. Until this problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV-show downloads from BitTorrent.

The 4% US downloaders that preferred to get the show via BitTorrent instead of streaming it online probably did so because they wanted to watch it on their TV or get a higher quality copy – streaming isn’t all that. Both Fox and Hulu, the two sites that offer Prison Break streams have not published any numbers, so it’s hard to compare the number of US downloaders (~100.000) with the US streamers.

We do have a new TV-torrent download chart, with plenty of newcomers. So, let’s take a look at the 10 most downloaded shows this week. The data for the weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Top Downloads August 31 – September 07

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

The Czech dubbed version of The Simpsons Movie made it to BitTorrent trackers a few hours after its world premiere, followed by a Pirate Bay celebration. Due to the Czech Republic screening movie premieres on Thursdays, the Czech fans were amongst the first people worldwide to watch the movie.

The Bontonfilm company – the official Czech distributor of the movie – was apparently a bit surprised when a CAM version of the movie made it to various torrent sites including the Czech tracker MegaTorrent.cz and Sweden’s The Pirate Bay, just a few hours after its premiere.

As for quality, it’s a typical CAM version. People who have already seen this copy are saying that sound quality is satisfying for a CAM version. However, English speaking citizens are likely to be disappointed, its dubbed in Czech and there are no subtitles.

Representative of Bontonfilm Kristina Maixnerová said: “We’ve received an announcement from Czech Anti-Piracy Union that there has been made a recording of this movie directly in the cinema. At this point, it’s still unclear in which cinema, or who made the recording. As far as we know, this is the first case of this type of leak whatsoever in Czech Republic.” She also said that Bontonfilm will make a prosecution against the unknown offender (John Doe) on Monday.

Apparently, the guys at FOX international didn’t like the work of this unknown Simpsons fan either. As Maixnerová said: “Foreign reputation of Czech republic really suffered due this case. As FOX International stated, this will means tightening the security measures in Czech movie distribution.” Night vision goggles, anyone?

This is not the only piracy controversy to hit the Czech republic recently. A DVDrip of Czech film Vratne Lahve (Empties) leaked to the internet a few days ago. The special watermarked copy was originally sent by the Director of the movie to the Czech Culture Department for the purposes of review. Just after this it started showing up on BitTorrent.

As a Czech Homer Simpson might say: “SáákryÅ¡!”

(doh!)

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

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