In the 1980s, those with access to Bulletin Board Systems would download programs and share them with their friends, all with the full encouragement of the software’s creators. Shareware, as it was known, often encouraged users to send off a snail-mailed registration fee in return for a code to unlock premium features. Although basic, freemium had been born.

Today the concept has gone way beyond those humble roots. The App Store and Google Play are awash with free-to-play games with premium addons, and services such as Spotify and Dropbox offer decent free levels of service to get users onboard and primed to start parting with real cash.

If Joe Public was pressed into a snap judgment, Microsoft would probably be more associated with premium than free, with the company historically charging sizable amounts for its Windows and Office products, for example. However, speaking with CNBC, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that the company has always had an eye on the freemium experience.

The idea, the CEO notes, is to get people on board with a product they find useful. Then, when it becomes clear how users are utilizing the service, options to monetize become available alongside their demands for improved service. He uses the company’s cloud-storage service as an example.

“We want everybody to use OneDrive. And then when you are starting to use it for business, that’s when we want to monetize. So we do not want to have you only start using us when you have a business license or subscription. We want to have you use us when you just want to save any file or any document, any artifact of yours. And then have a natural way for us to monetize as you use more of it in the commercial context,” Nadella explains.

By now millions of people online are familiar with ‘freemium’ in one shape or another but comments from Nadella suggest that while this business model has been leveraged by Microsoft for quite some time, the company had it forced upon them.

“Well, we’ve always had freemium. Sometimes our freemium was called piracy,” Nadella reveals.

“[The] thing that I don’t want us as a company to shy away from is usage first. Because I think if anything, the new competition has taught is that, you know, what matters is do not try to equate revenue and usage day one.”

The ‘piracy is promotion’ angle is something rarely spoken about by company execs, probably in fear of endorsing an illegal activity and validating it in the eyes of piracy proponents. However, by speaking of it alongside ‘freemium’, Microsoft’s CEO appears to have confirmed what many have been saying all along, that getting people on board for free – via piracy if necessary – is one the first steps on the monetization trail.

Indeed, this belief his held so strongly in some quarters that there are some who insist that it’s preferable for people to pirate the software of company ‘A’ than switch to the opposition, whether paid or not.

That said, what Microsoft does not want is people selling pirated copies of its premium products – that kind of ‘promotion’ is never welcome. If people use a free sample of Microsoft products at home, the company isn’t likely to kick down the door. Do the same in a business environment, however, and things aren’t anywhere near as open-minded.

There are no signs that Microsoft is going soft on piracy but as business models change, as they have with Adobe’s Creative Cloud, free tiers attractive to would-be pirates will become more commonplace. And that can only mean one thing for piracy rates.

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

This has resulted in arrangements with Internet providers in several countries including the United States and the UK, where unauthorized file-sharers are monitored and warned.

The Dutch movie industry is now calling for a similar scheme. Traditionally the Netherlands has been one of the countries with the highest piracy rates, and without any sign of improvement the movie industry wants to take action.

“Consumers should be educated. They must understand that it’s not allowed,” says René van Turnhout, director of film distributor Dutch Filmworks and chairman of trade association NVPI Video.

The Dutch film industry is calling for a warning system modeled after the British VCAP initiative. This means that accused pirates are sent a series of warning letters, but without any punishments.

While an agreement with ISPs is still miles away Van Turnhout already has a suggestion for what the letters should look like. Aside from alerting pirates to their unauthorized behavior, the notice should include links to legal alternatives.

“We’ve found that you have tried to view films from illegal sources. Filmmakers also have to earn money to make a living. We refer you to the following legal alternatives,” is what the letter could read, according to Van Turnhout.

Just how popular movie piracy is in the Netherlands became apparent last week when Popcorn Time revealed that its application is installed on 1.3 million devices there, trailing only behind the United States but with a population of less than 17 million people.

Convincing Dutch ISPs to participate is going to be quite a challenge though. Traditionally they have been very cautious when it comes to anti-piracy measures. Earlier this year ISPs successfully appealed the local Pirate Bay blockade, which they deemed to be ineffective and in violation the their customers’ rights.

The Dutch proposal is in line with increased calls for warning systems around the globe. Among other countries, Australia is also looking into it. Last week local ISPs said there’s no evidence that these schemes are effective, but that they would be willing to consider one if the Government desires.

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

Another important driver of piracy is exposure or promotion through traditional media.

The latter is illustrated by new research from piracy monitoring firm CEG TEK, who found that the interest in pirated copies of Emmy nominated TV-shows surged after the award show aired on television.

The company measured the BitTorrent swarms of 50 Emmy-nominated TV-shows and found a big spike in overall piracy rates.

Breaking Bad, winner of the Emmy for best drama series and several individual awards, saw a 412% increase in peers after the award ceremony.

Pirate’s interest in True Detective, House of Cards, Homeland and The Newsroom also spiked at least 340% the day after the Emmys. These peaks are unusual according to CEG TEK, who note of the 47 of the 50 nominated shows they monitored saw an increase in sharing activity.

“Typically, piracy peaks on weekends, but of the 50 shows we monitored, 47 were pirated more as a result of the Primetime Emmy Awards broadcast,” CEG TEK CTO Jon Nicolini says.

“Clearly, the prestige of the Emmys is alive and well,” he adds.

While an Emmy award is certainly a big win, some people in the TV industry believe that being the most pirated TV-show may do even more to boost a show’s profile.

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of HBO’s parent company Time Warner, previously said that Game of Thrones piracy resulted in more subscriptions for his company and that receiving the title of “most pirated” show was “better than an Emmy.”

So that’s a double score for the Emmy winners then.

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

The Philippines-based company filed a lawsuit at a federal court in Oregon looking for millions of dollars in damages from two local residents. The court case has barely started but that didn’t prevent ABS-CBN from using its journalistic outlet to taint public opinion.

In a news report released by its American branch, the company slams the defendants who they align with hardcore criminals.

The coverage is presented as news but offers no balance. Instead it frames online piracy as a threat to everyone, with billions of dollars in losses that negatively impact America’s education and health care budgets.

But it gets even worse. It’s not just public services that are threatened by online piracy according to the news outlet, national security is at stake as well.

“Piracy actually aids and abets organized crime. Gangs and even terrorist groups have reportedly entered the piracy market because the penalties are much lighter than traditional crimes such as drug dealing – and the profit could be much higher,” ABS-CBN’s senior reporter Henni Espinosa notes.

It’s not the first time that we have heard these far-fetched allegations. However, for a news organization to present them without context to further its own cause is a line that not even the MPAA and RIAA would dare to cross today.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, on the other hand, has also noticed the link with organized crime and terrorism.

“[Piracy is] supporting their ability to buy drugs and guns and engage in violence. And then, the support of global terrorism, which is a threat to everybody,” LA County Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers tells the new outlet.

Los Angeles County police say that piracy is one of their top priorities. They hope to make the local neighborhoods a little safer by tracking down these pirates and potential terrorists.

“To identify bad guys that we need to take out of the community so the rest of the folks can enjoy their neighborhood and their families,” Rogers concludes.

Since the above might have to sink in for a moment, we turn to the two Oregon citizens who ABS-CBN based the report on. Are Jeff Ashby and his Filipina wife Lenie Ashby really hardcore criminals?

Based on public statistics the five sites they operated barely had any visitors. According to Jeff he created them for his wife so she could enjoy entertainment from her home country. He actually didn’t make any copies of the media but merely provided links to other websites.

‘I created these websites for my wife who is from the Philippines, so she and others who are far from the Philippines could enjoy materials from their culture that are otherwise unavailable to them, Jeff Ashby wrote to the court.

“Since these materials were already on the web, we did not think there would-be a problem to simply link to them. No content was ever hosted on our server,” he adds.

The websites were all closed as soon as the Oregon couple were informed about the lawsuit. They regret their mistake and say they didn’t know that it could get them into trouble, certainly not $10 million worth of it.

So are these really the evil drug lords or terrorists the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and ABS-CBN are referring to?

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

Zoolz is one of the many commercial backup solutions. The company services regular customers but also business clients including Microsoft, Dell, the BBC and the Washington post.

Zoolz allows customers to backup their files in the cloud, including entire hard-drives. This is all done privately and securely, the company claims, with zero knowledge of what’s being transferred.

This zero knowledge claim has been called into doubt recently as one of Zoolz’ customers, Ryan Gallagher, had his account terminated after the company found several .torrent files in his backups. Gallagher didn’t store any infringing media, but just 1 Megabyte worth of old metadata.

Apparently, scanning for pirated filenames is standard practice at Zoolz, which is also explained in the product agreement.

“If Metadata checking (i.e. file names) reveals that an account has content relating to video piracy, software piracy or any copyrighted data with the intent to distribute (i.e. torrents) the account will be immediately terminated,” it reads.

And this is indeed what happened. Zoolz promptly notified the customer that his account would be terminated, and he was given a few days to transfer over a terabyte of data to a safer place.

“My account and all data (1.3TB) was nuked, they would not budge on deleting specific ‘prohibited file names’ saying they had no way to do it. It’s a complete waste of time and bandwidth,” former Zoolz customer Gallagher comments.

While there is nothing wrong with strict anti-piracy policies, deleting an entire account over a few small pieces of metadata goes pretty far. The .torrent files Zoolz found only reference pirated files, nothing more.

And it got even worse. When Geoff Akerlund of the Backup Review site confronted the company with its drastic actions, he was accused of supporting illegal behavior himself.

“We are sad to see you side with illegal behavior, the torrents could mean that the user has the actual media files, and downloading any media file without any proof of ownership is considered illegal,” Zoolz told him.

The backup service claims that the torrents “could” indicate that the user has a copy of the files as well, and that without proof of ownership terminating the account is warranted.

Aside from this rude behavior and terminating users accounts because they store non-infringing .torrent files, one has to wonder what business a backup provider has snooping through the computers of their customers.

In any case, Zoolz has “zero knowledge” of proper customer service.

Update: Zoolz has responded and issued the following statement.

“The flagging system is a deviation of the zero-knowledge policy only applicable to abusive home user accounts, not business users. It is completely automated at the time the abuser accesses the files from the web after entering the encryption password. The system will flag any account with suspicious bandwidth use, multiple access from different locations and will only scan for illegal filenames and not actual data. In rare cases the flagging system could generate false positive and we are currently working enhancing this and increasing the grace period. We have tens of thousands of home users who are happily using the system legally and the scanner has never been triggered on their accounts.”

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

The data was first published by the piracy experts over at Movoto Real Estate. Based on a large sample of three million unique IP addresses collected over a period of 40 days they presented a map of the most torrented movies, TV-shows and games per state.

This was quickly picked up by The Washington Post, Venturebeat and several other publications, who all shared the findings with their readers. TorrentFreak was ready to jump on the bandwagon too, but we couldn’t help noticing a few odd results.

What stands out immediately is that some of the most-downloaded movies in certain states are barely downloaded at all through torrent sites. “La Grande Bellezza” in New Jersey, for example, or “Cuban Fury” in Florida. The same is true for “Witching and Bitching” which, according to the map, is very popular in Indiana and Tennessee.

Are these movies really more often downloaded than blockbuster successes such as Divergent and X-Men as the map below suggests?

The same odd results appear in the games and TV-show maps. Game of Thrones is by far the most downloaded TV-show in America, but for some reason “Awkward” is more popular in Texas and Louisiana. The same Louisianans also download the game “Scribblenauts Unlimited” more frequently than popular releases such as Minecraft and Watch Dogs.

Something is clearly amiss, so we took the unprecedented step of downloading the source data which is readily available.

To our surprise, the maps in question don’t represent the most-downloaded titles. Instead, they appear to reveal for which shows the download numbers differ the most when compared to the national average. This is completely unrelated to which movie, TV-show or game was downloaded the most.

Now back to our earlier question. Is “La Grande Bellezza” really that popular in New Jersey? No, the actual data shows only 2 downloads in this state…

Similarly, is “Awkward” the most pirated TV-show in Texas? Again, no, it has 232 downloads in the dataset compared to 2,554 for a single Game of Thrones episode. And we can go on and on.

In fact, if we made a real map based on the actual download counts in the dataset, Game of Thrones would be the most downloaded show in each and every state, as expected.

Confusingly, however, a map of the most pirated movies per state would list “Blood Widow” on top in pretty much every state.

This suggests that there’s an issue with the data itself too, as this movie is nowhere to be found in the list of most shared files on The Pirate Bay and elsewhere. The most likely explanation is that the researchers ran into a fake torrent file with bogus IP-addresses.

Whatever the case, it’s safe to say that the maps in question should be taken with a grain of salt, or a barrel of rum perhaps.

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

Traditionally these efforts have focused on the United States where ISPs are required to forward takedown notices to their account holders.

A recent trend has seen these notices become more than mere warnings. Companies such as CEG TEK and Rightscorp also tag on settlement requests, hoping to recoup some of the damages allegedly caused by file-sharers.

Since these requests are sent as DMCA notices, copyright holders do not have to involve the courts. Nonetheless, the ‘fines’ can be as high as several hundred dollars per shared file. Thus far these “automated fines” have been limited to the United States, but soon they will expand to Japan, with Australia and Canada next on the list.

TorrentFreak spoke with CEG TEK’s Kyle Reed who confirmed that they will soon start their piracy monetization service in Japan. At the same time the company will run various tests to see how Aussie and Canadian Internet providers respond to their notices.

“Increased coverage for our monetization clients in additional countries has always been top of mind. We have a base of international clients, some of which call these countries home,” Reed tells TorrentFreak

“Canada and Australia are both hot topics with rights owners and the market conditions afford us the opportunity to initiate ISP compliance testing,” Reed adds.

If the notice forwarding goes well with the ISPs, and there are decent response rates, the company will also begin sending out settlement requests in Australia and Canada.

Internet providers have to be tested in advance, because the settlement scheme fails if ISPs ignore or modify the notices. For example, in the U.S. many of the larger ISPs forward the notice without the actual settlement offer.

CEG TEK is not the only piracy monetization service to consider international expansion. Previously Rightscorp announced that it was interested in offering its services in Canada.

Whether Internet providers in Australia and Canada are willing to cooperate has yet to be seen. In Canada there is currently no legal obligation for ISPs to cooperate, although this will change soon. Australia has a notice and takedown policy but this doesn’t require ISPs to forward the settlement requests.

According to CEG TEK their settlement services are superior to traditional anti-piracy warnings since they stop more unauthorized transfers while making money in the process.

“In the United States and around the world, traditional peer-to-peer anti-piracy methods have proved to be largely ineffective. We have the only peer-to-peer solution shown to decrease infringements and repeat offenders, as well as return monetary settlements to rightful copyright owners,” Reed says.

The irony is of course that these companies will render themselves obsolete if they become too effective, but for now there are still plenty of pirates around.

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

With her support for the Pirate Bay founder who’s currently locked up in a Swedish prison, Alexander hopes to reach out to the “other side” with whom she shares a common goal.

Alexander is not a fan of the anti-piracy crusade the MPAA and other groups are waging against file-sharers. The massive losses that are claimed due to piracy are “bullshit” according to her. In fact, she believes that piracy may do more good than harm.

“I get a little upset when I hear how hard my industry jumps into action, sparing neither time, manpower or resources, as soon as someone even hints at potential loss to the crown estate,” Alexander notes.

“Piracy has NOT been proven to hurt box-office numbers, on the contrary, several studies say it may have boosted the bottom line,” she adds.

In recent years the movie industry has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into expensive anti-piracy measures, nearly all of which are counterproductive according to Alexander.

For example, as a German living in Hollywood she can’t watch German news online due to geographical restrictions and the same is true for U.S. shows when she’s visiting Germany. But thanks to the pirates, Hollywood director can easily bypass these restrictions.

“But guess what, for every IP block, DRM and who-knows-what security feature Hollywood spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on, some piracy kid will undo it for free and within a couple of minutes.”

“And this is my favorite part: I am 100% certain that the hacking of entertainment industry’s security features provides better entertainment for these kids than the entertainment we’re trying to prevent them from stealing. Let that sink in for a second, then try not to bust up laughing.”

In a recent interview with Daily Record, Alexander describes criminalization of file sharing as “pathetic.” It is mostly an issue that keeps Hollywood’s “Fat Cats” busy, but not so much independent filmmakers.

“The people who complain most about piracy in Hollywood are Fat Cats who did little to deserve their wealth or position. I doubt you’ll find many people on the anti-piracy train amongst film crews or indie filmmakers, unless they’re being paid a retainer,” she says.

Contrary to what the MPAA and others may lead the public to believe, Alexander says that piracy is rather common among filmmakers. She herself admits to downloading films when there are no legal options available.

“I download stuff myself, so do many of my colleagues here in Hollywood. Usually we do it only when we can’t find something on mainstream streaming services,” Alexander says.

The movie director uses pirate sites to grab movies that are relevant for an upcoming meeting for example, something which has saved her on a few occasions.

“I cannot tell you how often my ass was saved by some torrent site in those situations. And I assume that 99% of my Hollywood filmmaker colleagues or their poor assistants have found themselves on a piracy site for just that reason (if they deny it, they’re lying. The end.)”

Despite her own piracy habits, Alexander doesn’t endorse the existing piracy status quo. In a blog post on her own site she notes that many of the people running pirate sites are just as motivated by greed as the people in Hollywood.

The movie director considered reaching out to Kim Dotcom but concluded that his luxurious lifestyle makes him just like the Hollywood elite. The Pirate Bay team was second on the list, but this was scrapped after learning about historical connections with right-winger Carl Lundström.

The movie director is nonetheless reaching out to all pirates with good intentions who put art and talent before the dollar signs. An “Occupy Hollywood movement,” as she describes it, and calling for Peter Sunde’s release, is her way to reach out to those who support this cause.

So will the real pirates please stand up?

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

Representing major software companies, the BSA uses Facebook ads which encourage people to report businesses that use unlicensed software. If one of these reports results in a successful court case, the pirate snitch can look forward to a cash reward.

Below is one of the promoted Facebook posts that has appeared in the timelines of thousands of people, encouraging them to expose software piracy in return for hard cash.

While most responses on Facebook are negative, it appears that the campaign is not without results. In an interview with Radio Prague, the spokesman for the Czech branch of the BSA notes that the informant program has been a great success thus far.

“[The campaign is] very successful. We did it because we wanted to catch big fish. In the past, many informants did not want to disclose who they were, and it was difficult to set up serious communication with them.” the BSA’s Jan Hlaváč says.

“The only way out of this was to offer them something that would motivate them to fully cooperate. That’s why we decided to launch this programme, to reward information that leads not only to identifying illegal software but to bringing the whole case to the end,” he adds.

The cash reward has increased the number of serious tips and in the Czech Republic alone the BSA receives about 30 leads per month. Similar campaigns also run in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia, where hundreds of tips come in every week.

Some of these tips lead to a follow up investigation where BSA offers the alleged infringer a settlement offer. In the Czech Republic alone there are currently several cases pending, worth roughly $500,000. If a settlement is reached, the informant will get a share, ranging from $5,000 to $200,000.

Earlier this week the BSA released new data (pdf) on piracy levels worldwide, with the rate of unlicensed software decreasing in most western countries.

Between 2011 and 2013 the percentage of unlicensed software installed on computers dropped from 19% to 18% in the United States, and similar downward trends were observed in the UK and elsewhere.

In the Czech Republic piracy rates decreased from 37% to 34%, and according to the BSA this is in part due to the snitch campaign.

“Definitely. The programme has helped a great deal convince companies that the legal risks are not worth it,” Hlaváč says.

Despite this success there is still plenty of work to be done. Globally the percentage of pirate software increased slightly, representing a total value of $62.7 billion, so there’s plenty of bounty left.

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

New data published in a Dutch report detailing the impact of unauthorized P2P file-sharing on the movie industry reveals that in the Netherlands alone an estimated 78 million euros are lost due to movie piracy.

The same report also provides some interesting statistics that shed some light o geographical file-sharing differences.

During the first half of the year MarkMonitor, which is also the technology partner for the U.S. six strikes program, tracked 16 popular English language blockbuster movies. The list includes titles such as Frozen, The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The movies were monitored via both eDonkey and BitTorrent, with the latter having the largest audience. In total MarkMonitor found that these movies were shared 150,186,156 times without permission.

Despite the focus on English language films, most pirated copies – more than 20 million – were shared from Russia. The bar chart below shows the full top 10 based on the absolute number of infringements that were detected, with the United States, Italy, Brazil and Spain completing the top five.

It is of course no surprise to see these large countries on top. It gets more interesting when we look at the number of file-sharers per capita.

In the United States for example, 12.5 million pirated copies were shared in a population of more than 310 million, which is roughly 4%. In Russia this percentage is much higher at 15% and in Australia it’s more than 16%.

Not surprisingly, the list of countries that share the most pirated movies per capita is quite different.

According to the report, the movies in the sample were relatively most shared in the United Arab Emirates, followed by Israel, Estonia, Greece and Italy. Australia, Qatar, Sweden, Singapore and the Netherlands complete the top 10.

It has to be noted that the findings above are based on a sample that is biased towards Western content. This explains the absence of Chinese downloaders, who tend to share files through other channels. Similarly, the data doesn’t cover direct downloads and streaming sites which may be relatively more popular in other regions.

That said, the numbers do give some more insight into the popularity of P2P movie piracy, or lack thereof, across various countries.

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