It’s a system that first started in Europe with

The aim for copyright holders is to avoid litigation while generating revenue. Their evidence is often questionable and as a result those that fight back often have their cases dropped – trolls tend to prefer the escape option over the consequences of an adverse verdict.

After moving to the U.S., settlement programs gained prominence through the actions of entities including Prenda and X-Art. These schemes have come under increasing fire in U.S. courts, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a new country is now on the agenda.

Citizens of Finland are now being subjecting to pay-up-or-else letters, but the decision to target this Nordic country isn’t the most obvious one, thanks to less favorable laws than those in the US.

Letters that have recently gone out to some Finnish Internet subscribers (translated example below, from a DNA customer)  accuse them of downloading porn using BitTorrent and include an offer to settle for ‘only 600 euros’ (about US$825). A vague reference to the police is also included,  ratcheting up the pressure to comply.

According to Ville Oksanen, vice chair of the EFFi and Post-doc researcher at Aalto University, under Finnish law the account holder is presumed to be the infringer by the courts, unless the or she can show that someone may have used the account.

In addition, the loser of a case pays the costs, unlike in the U.S. where each side pays its own costs with a few exceptions (such as a baseless case). More and more courts around the world are starting to look closely into these kinds of cases, and in some instances throwing them out. That’s not so good if you’re liable for the substantial cost of defense.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm that the letters relate to content from the Hustler stable, who committed to “turning piracy into profit”, presumably through these troll tactics, as far back as 2009.

Why this scheme is starting in Finland now is unknown, although the crowdsourced copyright law may make it less profitable in the future. According to Oksanen, the law as written would remove some sections of copyright law, making account-holder identification much harder.

The lawfirm behind this letter, Hedman Partners, did not respond to requests at the time of publication.

With thanks to rehanna, vhautaka and mikachu

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

Unfortunately, in the rush to censor content for the claimed good of some group or other, the unintended consequences of these systems usually take a back seat.

In 2008, the UK Internet Watch Foundation (a private company operating confidentially) added a Wikipedia page to their list with the result that all Wikipedia visitors from Cleanfeed-using ISPs used one of a handful of IP addresses, leading to user verification issues and bans.

Another example closer to home involves UK ISP TalkTalk. They offer their customers a filtering system already and TorrentFreak – strictly a news resource – is unavailable when customers turn on the option to block file-sharing sites.

Not all such consequences are unintended, however. The new anti-porn lists, which are opt-out, may end up instituting a block on torrent and other filesharing-related sites. The lists were announced along with a piece by Prime Minister David Cameron in the Daily Mail newspaper (which has plenty of sexually-charged content of its own), who had run a morality campaign on the topic for the last few months.

Torrent site blocking has been postulated occasionally and has been implemented in the UK via High Court orders, which have both over-reached and been easily circumvented. Site blocks in other countries have also been tried, mainly against the claimed “root of all evil”, The Pirate Bay, albeit with extremely limited success (seriously).

The lengthy and costly High Court approach may not be needed now though. Many torrent sites contain, to a greater or lesser extent, pornographic content, as well as more acceptable (but likely still to be blocked) ‘adult’ or ‘mature’ content. As such, we can only assume that torrent sites will be included initially or added later on.

This will be another blow against independent artists and creators who have leveraged the power of torrents to distribute content. And like all other attempts to legislate some personal interpretation of morality, it’s doomed to fail at its intended use, while creeping to the personal desires of those in charge, to the public detriment.

We’ll report more on how these lists impact torrent sites when more details become available.

UPDATE/Clarification 17:33 29/12/2012
While many commenters have pointed to this BBC piece about it being rejected, the piece was written about the rejection of an ‘opt-out’  system, and printed 4 days before Prime Minister Cameron’s Daily Mail announcement. In his plan, the system will be opt-in, and involve the ISPs in some form, but will have the default values (for people that just click through without reading) to turn on a basic level of filtering, if there are children in the house.

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

The studios also filed suit against 80 websites accused of aiding and abetting the distribution of the illegally uploaded movies.

A National Police Agency spokesman said that the lawsuit was filed at 10 police stations in the South Korean capital, Seoul, and in the Gyeonggi province. The studios asked the police to investigate the infringements, which carry a potential jail sentence.

However, from the 10,000 complaints issued, prosecutors charged just 10 people with copyright infringement. In response, the disappointed studios say they will fight back. Next week they promise to re-file their lawsuit, but this time will increase the number of individuals accused to 65,000.

Kim Han-Seo, a lawyer representing the movie producers, said that the prosecutors were not tough enough so they had decided to up the ante.

“Now, we’ve drawn up a new list of some 65,000 users who fit this guideline,” he said. “We’ll see whether the prosecutors will press charges against them all.”

As we reported earlier on our sister site FreakBits, at the end of August distributors of a hit Korean disaster movie called in the police after it was leaked to the Internet and was downloaded 100,000 times. Kim Han-Seo said that the Korean authorities had responded quickly to that local problem, but accused them of different standards when it comes to protecting foreign content, such as the material produced by his porn movie employers.

“We believe that [the prosecution] should not be discriminatory in applying copyright laws. Illegal copying and distribution run rampant in Korea because it is one of the world’s most wired countries. We decided to take legal action to minimize our past business losses and to protect anticipated future profits,” he said.

The threat now is that if the local Korean authorities fails to act in a way that pleases the porn producers, they will take their case directly to the US government instead.

The initial lawsuit indicated that the studios had also harvested the IP addresses of around 100,000 individuals who downloaded the adult movies but to date, there is no indication that they will become a target.

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

Today, users searching Google for Empornium.us are met with a warning under the URL: “This site may harm your computer”. After ignoring the warning and clicking the link using Internet Explorer, the Empornium main page starts loading, but is then punctuated with virus/malware/exploit warnings from an up-to-date anti-virus scanner. Google reports “Malicious software includes 4 trojans, 3 exploits. Successful infection resulted in an average of 11 new processes on the target machine.”

During our tests we caught malware or exploits which seemed to originate from:

hxxp://hardmoviesporno.com/test/exp/update1.pdf
hxxp://ffseik.com/25/2/getfile.php?f=vispdf

At this point we deemed the Google Safe Browsing report to be correct and abandoned our own tests. Accessing the Empornium homepage using Firefox3 caused an immediate halt:

Google notes that the ‘malicious software’ is actually hosted on 4 domains, including gianttopnano.cn, mmcounter.com, filmmultimediaonline.cn. Furthermore it states that two domains appear to be “functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site” including vxhost.cn, and filmmultimediaonline.cn.

TorrentFreak has contacted Empornium management for a comment, but so far there has been no response.

Update: Empornium Team contacted us, confirming that the malicious code has nothing to do with them and they are “taking action to shut down the infiltration & remove the code asap”. Their own tests so far show it is “exploiting a known & patched security hole in Acrobat”.

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

Following the revelations that ‘Big Media’ hired MediaDefender to illegally sabotage The Pirate Bay’s activities in Sweden, we reported that complaints have been filed with the police. The porn industry – already in the early stages of its own personal war against BitTorrent – could’ve been expected to demonstrate a united front in support of MediaDefender and its actions against The Pirate Bay. This is not the case. They are hugely divided with many openly supporting the world’s most famous pirates, with some even making it public that they are donating hard cash to help their cause.

Using language as filthy as their movies (mostly without spell-checkers), those of a sensitive nature should proceed with caution when reading these quotes from some of the longest-standing senior members on the porn industry’s GFY forums:

It all started in quite a civil manner, with Madrox quite correctly pointing out: “well what they are trying to do to PirateBay is illegal, so i guess they are trying to fight fire with fire, i hope PB wins…” to which a disbelieving 34,000-post count “tony404″ responded angrily: “Your fucking kidding right?”

Jace goes on to demonstrate the reality of the situation: “the fucked up part is that what the thepiratebay is doing in their country is legal, and what the movie companies are doing in the country of thepiratebat is ILLEGAL, so there is a good chance this will be a pretty damn good fight” to which GhostCash Rush responded: “I agree. This is the one shot Gottfrid has been waiting for.”

Madrox steps in again: “and thats exactly the reason why im rooting for PB, sure its illegal over here for what they are doing, but they aren’t doing anything illegal in their own country, so im not gonna hate them for breaking laws in another country… premarital sex is illegal in a lot of 3rd world countries, but oh wait, not in America, but you don’t see them trying to sue us do ya?”

…..which provoked several “fuck you” and “asshole” comments from people who are clearly hugely frustrated by their limited legal and geographical knowledge. According to will76, Sweden is a 3rd world country “where hacking is legal you dumb fucks” and while pointing out their ‘legal’ page claims TPB staff are “cocky mother fuckers asking for trouble”.

At this point, in steps ‘RawAlex’ who has more to say on this matter than anyone else on the porn industry forum and has some really ‘interesting’ ideas about the legality of TPB and copyright law: “The funny part is that piratebay would have to first admit what is on those trackers. So they would have to admit to sharing copyright material in the first place before they could move forward.”

TPB host only .torrent files and never distribute copyright works, that’s why they are legal in Sweden and are still operating. So we can all ‘move forward’ now…with some common sense from ‘hungry hungry hippy’:

“usa law stops at the borders, tpb does nothing illegal in their country, period. because you can’t come to grips with that does not mean you can go vigilante and hack them – that is illegal in both countries. sorry to interrupt the whine fest, someone want to pass the cheese?”

…to which RawAlex responds: “Sorry moron, but you forget that piratebay doesn’t limit themselves to distributing stuff in Sweden – they distribute worldwide.” Sorry to correct you again Alex – they don’t distribute anything but .torrent files – which are totally legal.

‘Amputate Your Head’, a member since 2001 supports Pirate Bay “fully” while ‘Dirty Franck’ explains that he “just donated 200 bucks to PB for their case” along with ‘Bang.TV‘. Pryda exclaims: “Go Pirate Bay! I always loved them, but now I’m rooting for them even more, since I read the MediaDefender story.”

Matt 26z makes an interesting point when he refers to legal issues faced by many adult webmasters: “If you support ThePirateBay being brought to justice in other countries for doing what is perfectly legal in their own country, then you MUST support the extradition of adult webmasters to China to face trial. This is the WORLD wide web. With that comes severely conflicting beliefs and laws that clash online.”

After the industry claimed to have taken down the ijsklontje.nl site recently, one has to wonder how on earth this was possible. The only people who have a grasp of the law on GFY are the ones coming out in favor of The Pirate Bay, which leaves the ill-informed to make hollow threats and blow hot air. This all adds credence to the claims that ijsklontje.nl was taken down by its owners own choice and actually had nothing to do with porn industry action.

I’ll leave the last comment with RawAlex: “If they want to steal from others and profit from it, they should get fucked up the ass with a broomstick without lube” – an idea he probably pirated from TPB’s legal page as they corresponded with the lawyers from Dreamworks, although substituting ‘retractable batons‘ with ‘broomsticks’ probably keeps him safe from copyright police persecution.

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

Their theory is that if you take out part of the source, the torrent sites won’t have any content for others to download.

According to a source, the site ijsklontje.nl was a very important source of latest release porn NZBs: “It’s the biggest Usenet pr0n (porn) posting community. It’s been going for years, everyone into Usenet knows about it.” Indeed, a quick search on Binsearch.info for ‘ijsklontje’ reveals a huge amount of porn.

Yesterday, visitors to the ijsklontje.nl forum were greeted with a sad message with suspicious timing:

Hello fellow members of IJsklontje

After 3 years the staff had to decide to stop all activities on this forum.

The busy life of admins and moderators is the main reason.

This forum has been brought to the top by lots and lots of hours by many staffmembers, posters and spotters. It doesn’t deserve to melt bit by bit …… So we stop at our highest level and get on with our real lifes.

We made an example for many other usenet forums, the groups are now filled by many posts from other places than IJs, so there will be no shortage of erotic binaries.

We would like to say thanks to all who made IJsklontje to the world’s most famous erotic usenetforum….

Sorry for this sad thread, we are mentally broken as well… we love you all and may you all live to see the dawn.

We salute all our friends… maybe we will see each other at other places.

Staff IJsklontje

At this stage, it has been impossible for us to verify if this shutdown is in fact the result of some legal pressures from the porn industry but judging the amount of gloating on the GoFuckYourself forums, it’s difficult to see it any other way:

ServerGenius breaks the news:

Hello everybody….as I have posted before Usenet Piracy Forum IJSKLONTJE
the site is now shutdown. This will be a HUGE blow to a lot of other piracy sites on the net as many torrent sites used this place as their main source for content.

He goes on to acknowledge the non-profit nature of the community:

I do know that these guys and their site didn’t generate them a lot of revenue
unlike a lot of other sites……as big and popular as they were they didn’t advertise or took advantage of their traffic in any way that would have made them a lot of money…….which probably made their decision to close shop a lot easier for them take….

and then makes some comments about the BitTorrent sites he believes he’s starved of content by closing ijsklontje:

….however a lot of others sites that feeded from their content do/did make money indirectly of them…..so them closing still hurt quite a few others than them in their income revenue…….and writing this down….makes me feel a little warm and happy inside

ServerGenius says he has a hit list – the sites ‘youporn’ and ‘megarotic’ are on it apparently.

As one of the forum posts quite rightly points out, closure of this site will not stop the digital flow of erotic pirate binaries. Even if this action does turn out to be the first victory for the porn industry, it will prove very quickly to be a short-lived one as the file-sharing hydra strikes again.

Stay Tuned

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

Plan A: Starve the Internet of Pirate Porn

ALL Major Content Producers / Studios / Big Brand names IN HERE NOW!!!!

Hit me up, I have extremely important information regarding content theft, distribution of both Interactive Online Media as well as DVD movie releases. I’m onto a major site that is one of the main sources in distributing new fresh stolen content on a daily basis on usenet but also most torrent sites grab their content from this source to add it to the torrent networks. I not only have info but also everything needed to legally deal with them and to get them permanently shutdown. I’m not joking, I’m not bullshitting I already have taken all the steps needed to get them shutdown…..but want to collect as much evidence from companies who their content is listed before getting them closed down. Doing so will ensure they’ll stay down…..I will assist every step that’s required to get this done properly I need you to confirm on the content that’s yours and your approval to include that info in the documentation to be used to whipe them out.

ServerGenius (SG) reveals the plan to stop porn piracy and starve torrent sites:

I’m after a forum which is very active releasing adult content by using usenet…..The site offers .nzb downloads for its users to download everything without having to look for it……..it’s a usenet for dummies kinda thing as well as a community for quite a few of the bigger release teams that do porn.

The forum is also used a LOT for the torrentsite owners as their main source for new releases……example: Shane’s World releases a new DVD today……it’s ripped, uploaded and added with all the info, screen shots and full dvd-rip tomorrow…..same day or day after…..same content is listed on sites like: puretna.com, empornium.us and many others.

Do I make this up? No I don’t, are you sure about that? Yes I am…… I have logs and any other info that will backup everything I claim….how did you get all this info? Believe it or not, they gave it themselves to me…….but more about that later…..

So the plan seems to revolve around taking down a single NZB site (a site which simplifies UseNet downloading) so that adult trackers immediately lose their source material, just like that. The problem with this plan is – well, everything really. 1) Taking down an NZB site doesn’t remove the content from Usenet. 2) There are lots of other NZB sites and sites which enable you to make your own NZBs. 3) Experienced Usenet users don’t need NZB sites. 4) Releasers have multiple sources, not just Usenet. 5) They’re discussing their take-down plans on the open internet. People read and report on such things.

Plan B: The Solutions to BitTorrent Sites

Ron Cadwell CEO of CCBill (processer of credit card transactions for porn sites) weighs in with some ideas of his own:

I was reading a post that Raw Alex (very smart guy) made in another tread that got me thinking on how you could stop the Torrent sites. You need to attack them like the Spam Groups did on spammers. They went after the backbone providers (Level 3, Sprint, ATT etc). If you could get 7 out of 10 of the major providers to blackhole them they are dead.

The question is how do you do that? Simple.

1. You get a group of adult webmasters to file DMCA notices by the truck load or allow you to file them on their behalf to the backbone providers. The laws are very specific on Damages and what an ISP must do if a proper DMCA notice is files. (Be Very Annoying Here)

2. You start sending them URL’s like what Raw Alex showed about Child Porn. This is a HOT topic and no backbone provider that is a PUBLIC COMPANY would want to be associated with Child Porn Traffic?

3. Each of the large adult hosting companies have a good relationship with 1 if not more major backbone providers. We can also put pressure on their Abuse Departments to blackhole them also due to the complaints?

I am not sure if it will work but if you put enough pressure on them and the fear of newspapers/major companies finding out about it they will want to distance themselves very quickly from these sites.

Bingo Problem Solved

Not even the mighty MPAA/RIAA with their gargantuan anti-piracy budgets seem to have thought of this plan, however Ron Cadwell felt that spamming DMCA notices is the way to go:

With a little programming I am sure A1R3K’s new group could put an online system that could make it very easy to send hundreds of complaints a day to each backbone provider and really put the pressure on them to black hole the sites.

Drunkspringbreakgirls sees no complications and is eager to get on with it:

We need to make a list of all the torrents, which backbone they are using and then we can all start contacting their abuse departments of the providers.

RawAlex steps in with his way to take down The PirateBay:

Swedish embassies based in the US are great places to drop off DMCA notices. Their government not wanting to take action on obvious copyright violation is a real issue, and raising this issue to this level may in fact make a difference.

…and continues:

…with due respect, 90% of the companies providing the actual connectivity are either based in the US or are owned by US companies. As such, to a greater or less extent, they can be touched by a DMCA because they have responsibilities as good corporate citizens in the US.

Example, is piratebay.org – “hosted” by p80.net, which is (shock) registered at Directnic. That would be a good place to send a DMCA.

P80.net is getting their connectivity (the route I get) from sprintlink. Spring comes up with an address in Kansas.

There are all sorts of fun places to deal with on this issue. If P80 / port80 / rix internet is not going to remove connectivity from pirate bay (and like pirate bay will try to hide behind lax swedish laws) then you get the US based companies that provide their connectivity to take the action that US law obliges them to take……

…Piratebay is hiding in Sweden because they know pretty much anywhere else they would get escorted to a cell with Bubba for recreation for the next few years. Again, shows a consciousness of guilt. If they thought they were right, they wouldn’t be hiding under the ice in Sweden.

….unless the guys from PirateBay happened to be a) Swedish and b) not hiding and c) not breaking any Swedish law.

Brokep, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay is not really impressed by these plans. He told TorrentFreak in a response: “We welcome the porn industry to contact us, we need more updates for the legal page, hasn’t been any fun legal threats for a while – and the porn industry have a good sense of humor, just look at the movie names they copy and remake.”

The porn industry certainly isn’t getting much sympathy from the guys on Digg either. Kikkomann felt that torrents provided great publicity for their stars while str3ama felt that the adult industry had some infringement issues of it’s own to deal with.

homesickalien couldn’t understand how the porn movie business could ever lose any money: “it’s not like they’re shelling out millions to some a-list actors or spending loads on CG effects” he said. “All you need is a $50 hooker, a dv camcorder and a dvdburner. the porn industry couldn’t lose money if it tried to.”

However, the industry maintains that it loses 4% of its total worldwide revenue to piracy. ButterBuddha feels they should proceed with caution:

“The fight for that 4% will ruin the industry…”

The full discussions on GFY can be found here and here.

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

In an attempt to stop these sites from spreading their content the porn industry organized an anti-piracy conference. AVN quotes Andrew Blake, one of the 65 adult industry representatives at the conference and director of Studio A Entertainment: “What I’m getting out of this [conference] is that this is so pervasive, and we all kind of laughed when they came for the record industry , ‘Eh, couldn’t touch us’ , but here it is, a lot of people on the verge of extinction almost, from a business point of view.”

The adult industry representatives that took part in the three hour anti-piracy session estimated that they lose approximately $2 billion a year thanks to piracy, about 4% of their total income worldwide. The main consensus was that P2P networks, and BitTorrent in particular, posed the greatest threat to the porn industry.

Several countermeasures were discussed during the meeting. One of the suggestions was to create an MPAA/RIAA equivalent for the adult industry that helps to track down pirates and pursue legal action.

Greg Piccionelli, a Los Angeles based attorney with a professional interest in porn, explained the benefits of such an overarching organization: “If a neutral party does it [suing pirates], then they’re the face. And it shields the various parties that are being damaged. We believe that there is a substantial amount of interest, especially now that what is finally beginning to happen is that virtually every producer of content now is feeling the pinch of this rampant piracy, and it’s only got to get immeasurably worse as the technology improves.”

There are also more amateuristic ideas to fight porn piracy. For example, Megan Stokes from Shane’s World announced that they are launching a forum where content owners can post screenshots of pirated content. Somehow Stokes thinks that these screenshots could be of great help in upcoming court cases: “It’s for any kind of stolen content, because with the time-stamp and the screenshot, it’s something that we can start using as evidence in court cases.”

Stokes further stresses that the adult industry has to take action before it’s too late. “I really think studio owners need to stop turning a blind eye,” Stokes said “This isn’t going to go away, and just to sit and complain and do nothing doesn’t solve anything, and at this point, in five years, because of this, there’s a lot of people who are going to be disappearing from the business, if they don’t take a proactive stance.” Stokes is probably right, but taking screenshots of BitTorrent sites is the most clueless solution to the problem I’ve ever heard.

Update: How the Porn Industry Plans to Wipe Out BitTorrent

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

Cheggit went public nearly a day ago but the torrent site already has 20806 registered users, a great success for a site that’s just starting.

Cheggit implements some neat features like a wiki and a tag based search engine.

Cheggit out

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