For those researching the piracy phenomenon these databases prove particularly useful, but for the countless thousands viewing these sites looking to download the videos themselves, there is nothing but disappointment. Strict rules ban the posting of links and on some sites even mentioning where something can be obtained is forbidden.

But a few years ago and alongside the rise of regular blogging with software such as WordPress, people began posting news on their own blogs detailing which releases had become available. Growing in confidence they later added a crucial element that release news sites had previously omitted – links to the content itself.

Founded in 2006, RLSlog.net was one of the pioneers of the ‘release blog’ format. At its inception the site didn’t post any download links but over the years that position changed to the point where it was reported by the RIAA to the U.S. Trade Representative as a “notorious market”.

But while it was the recording labels making the most noise in 2011 (and a year earlier when the site was taken offline following a complaint from Universal), it was a 2012 action initiated by the Hollywood studios that would end up having the biggest impact on how RLSlog operates.

In December last year, Usenet indexing site NZBMatrix was shut down following an aggressive complaint from the Wiggin LLC lawfirm. Quickly following up on this success the studios instructed Wiggin to go after RLSlog.

“Wiggin represent most movie studios. They asked us to remove all movie and TV shows represented by these companies,” RLSLOG’s admin informed TorrentFreak.

Rather than the takedown of specific “infringing” pages, Wiggin asked RLSlog to take down more than 90% of their content. In advance of a full agreement with the lawfirm RLSlog agreed to close the comments section of its site on movie and TV show releases to stop users posting links.

But that didn’t go far enough for the studios and yesterday RLSlog was forced into much more aggressive action.

“We would like to announce that starting from now, RLSLOG will no longer post any kind of download links or links to filesharing sites on all TV Shows and Movies,” site admin Martin announced. “This decision was done to comply with [the] requests of a legal company representing major Hollywood film studios and companies.”

RLSlog goes on to underline the fact that the site never hosted any content itself but of course neither does The Pirate Bay, and Hollywood still want that site shut down.

“Our site is strictly informative and never stored any files on its servers – we just linked to 3rd party websites which were actually offering the files,” Martin explains.

But there is a final twist to the tale.

Although RLSlog is doing as asked, the site will continue to provide news on which TV shows and movies appear online in pirate form. That is reporting and there is nothing illegal about that. However, what RLSlog is adding to fresh news posts is links to custom searches on Google utilizing the unique filenames that go along with pirated releases. These generate dozens of results, any of which allow users to download content just as they did before.

If the studios want those links removed they’re going to have to keep sending takedowns to Google. That’s individual takedowns too. Better put on a pot of coffee, this could take some time.

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

The site provides information on new content availability in the popular “release blog” format and covers all the main categories including movies, music, TV shows, games, eBooks and software.

Like all large file-sharing related domains RLSLOG has had its share of legal threats. It has been taken offline temporarily in the past due to complaints from outfits such as the Web Sheriff and record label Universal, and was reported to the USTR by the RIAA.

RLSLOG has always recovered, but this month the site has something apparently much bigger on its mind. According to the site’s operator, RLSLOG has received a threat of legal action from the same law firm that has just taken down NZBMatrix on behalf of the major Hollywood studios.

“I can tell you the company is called Wiggin LLC, the same that forced NZBmatrix to shutdown,” RLSLOG’s admin informs TorrentFreak. “Wiggin represent most movie studios. They asked us to remove all movie and TV shows represented by these companies.”

RLSLOG told us that the studios estimated that around 94% of all content listed by the site is material to which they own the copyright, an amount RLSLOG contests.

Although NZBMatrix have provided a few details on the threats made to them, largely they have remained quiet. However, it does appear that the threats they received are similar in nature to those now being received by RLSLOG.

“RLSLOG has always cooperated with DMCA requests, it’s just the fact we haven’t received so many of them in the past, lets say 10 or 15 per month, because we do not host the content, we just inform about it and post some links,” says the site’s admin.

“But Wiggin didn’t want us to remove particular posts/pages like its common with other DMCA requests but rather the whole thing. We are still in the process of negotiating.”

While discussions continue, RLSLOG have already taken the first step towards satisfying the studios.

Say, for example, RLSLOG announced that movie X or TV show Y was made available online today, they would post up an article including a link or two of their own to where they could be found. However, underneath the news article would be a section where site users could make their own comments, which in recent times mainly consisted of people posting dozens of links to the content on different file-hosting sites.

The site’s operator says he has taken the decision to remove these comments sections on every movie and TV show post to eliminate links to 3rd party sites hosting the content.

For now, the changes only affect the movie and TV show sections, but it is possible that the changes could spread to other parts or indeed all of the site, depending on how things pan out in the future.

“We started like that, not posting any download links, and it is possible we’ll return to this model,” the site’s admin concludes.

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

Millions of readers visit the site every month, looking for the latest releases that are posted daily by the site’s editors.

For the past few days, however, RLSLOG readers were shaken up by an absence of news as the site has been unreachable.

Although some have rumored that the RIAA finally got what it wished for, the current outage is not related to legal issues.

RLSLOG founder Martin informed TorrentFreak that the prolonged downtime is caused by the site’s hosting provider.

The RLSLOG server has been stuck for a few days and thus far Martin has been unable to get in touch with the hosting provider to fix the problems.

A new server has been ordered now, which means RLSLOG should make a successful comeback in a few days.

Fingers crossed.

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

RLSLOG has grown out to be the authority when it comes to news about, and links to, scene releases. Millions of readers visit the site every month, looking for the latest releases that are posted daily by the site’s editors.

After being pulled offline by a complaint from Universal Music in April, the site moved to a new host in The Netherlands. Initially it seemed that this move had ended the trouble but it turned out to be just a temporary reprieve.

“Shut down again, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative,” a message just posted at the site’s home page reads.

TorrentFreak spoke with RLSLOG founder Martin who told us that he’s working on getting the site back online as soon as possible, the first step being the discovery of a suitable hosting provider. After being thrown out by a German and Dutch host, he will now try his luck elsewhere.

The current hosting company refused to forward the actual complaint to RLSLOG, so it is unknown who is behind the request. Martin was told by the webhost that the “German government” and a local anti-piracy organization are responsible, but he has been unable to verify these claims.

RLSLOG has been targeted by rights holders several times over the last year. Previously, Web Sheriff sent a complaint to RLSLOG’s former host who then took the site offline and a few weeks ago Universal Music also managed to take the site offline.

RLSLOG, however, sees no wrong in what it does as the site does not host any copyrighted files on its servers. Although the site appears to operate in a gray area when it comes to copyright, a website doesn’t have to store any copyrighted files in order to be seen as a copyright infringement facilitator by the courts.

The court cases against isoHunt, Mininova and The Pirate Bay have shown that linking to files can be enough to be found guilty of, or liable for, infringements. As we’ve said before, RLSLOG might actually have an even worse case since the ‘links’ are selected and published by the site’s editors.

Thus far RLSLOG’s problems are only limited to finding a host that would allow the site to operate despite any complaints that might roll in. If everything goes well, the site should be back online in a matter of days.

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

Yesterday, however, its readers were shook up by an absence of news. Instead of seeing the regular homepage, visitors were welcomed by the following unpleasant message:

“RLSLOG.net was suspended by its German hosting company after removal request from law firm representing Universal Music, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative,” the message reads.

TorrentFreak briefly caught up with RLSLOG founder Martin who told us that he’s currently trying to find a new home for his site, hopefully with a hosting company that will not shut down the site so easily. The suspension came without prior notice, hence the downtime.

This is not the first time that RLSLOG is been put out of action by takedown notices. Last year, Web Sheriff sent complaints to RLSLOG’s former host and the host’s bandwidth provider, who then took the site offline. Also, Google has filtered several of RLSLOG’s pages from its search results after complaints from copyright holders.

These issues raise the question whether sites such as RLSLOG are acting within the law or not. Technically the site is not hosting any copyrighted material, but it generally does point readers to various locations where copyrighted material can be found. Legally, this is a gray area in most countries.

As we’ve learned from the cases against torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova, not hosting copyrighted material on ones site is no prerequisite for the courts to find operators not guilty of assisting in copyright infringement. RLSLOG might actually have an even worse case since the ‘links’ are selected and published by the site’s editors.

Refraining from posting links to searches or files hosted externally might be the only option to avoid legal issues at a future host. However, for RLSLOG founder Martin, his primary concern is finding a new hosting provider so he can get the site back online again.

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

After making threats to SceneReleases, the anti-piracy outfit turned its attentions to RLSlog, demanding that the site display a full apology to Franz Ferdinand on its homepage. Of course, RLSlog wasn’t about to apologize but did remove the links, as a look at Google’s cache of the ‘offending’ page reveals. However, that wasn’t enough for Web Sheriff, and he decided to teach RLSlog a lesson.

Two days ago, RLSlog went down. Initially thought to be the victim of a DDoS attack, the site fired off emails to its host in the Netherlands to find out what was happening. Since it was the weekend, responses were expected to be less sharp than during the week, but it took the host a full two days to reply. When it did, the news wasn’t good.

Following complaints sent to the host and the host’s bandwidth provider, RLSlog’s host completely disabled the site. There was no discussion and no checking the validity of Web Sheriff’s claims. If the host had bothered to check any supposed links to the album, they would have seen that the links were gone. Indeed, the links were all dead before we reported on the situation last Wednesday. Nevertheless, the host completely disconnected the site, with no warning.

At this stage it’s still unclear if RLSlog’s host will reactivate the site but if they don’t, it won’t be the end of the world. RLSlog is fully prepared for disaster recovery and has everything in place to simply move to a new host, should that prove necessary. Of course, this might take a little time but the site will return. In the meantime, although RLSlog is down, their forums are up at RLStalk. They are running a little slowly at times but appear fully functional.

This takedown is quite the metaphorical ‘feather in the cap’ for the Web Sheriff, using their pages of legal jargon to great effect and successfully intimidating a weak host into a knee-jerk takedown. However, there is an unintended side-effect to these ‘cut-and-paste’ warnings. While researching Web Sheriff’s attempted takedowns of ‘Tonight’, I discovered a very easy way to find dozens of release sites and music blogs that i’d never heard of before, using a simple Google search.

Despite being very active in getting links to the album removed, Web Sheriff’s old nemesis The Pirate Bay still tracks ‘Tonight’. As far as we know, they didn’t ask them to remove the torrent. No point really, they already know the answer.

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