Unsurprisingly, the first signs of trouble were not far away. During the middle of the week the software was removed from Mega.co.nz. It’s still unclear if that action was taken by Mega under its own steam or after it was prompted by Hollywood, but with the Popcorn Time developers confirming they had nothing to do with it, one or the other must be to blame.

But after a stormy week, with the software receiving critical acclaim, last night the veils were being drawn over the project. In a long announcement on the tool’s website, the Popcorn Time team confirmed they were stepping down.

“Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives,” the team explained.

“Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.”

The Argentina-based team added that piracy is not a people problem, it’s one based around service created by an industry that “portrays innovation as a threat to their antique recipe to collect value.”

But just as another flood of articles hit the mainstream press, each waving goodbye to Popcorn Time before moving on to something else, there’s important news yet to report.

Popcorn Time is not dead and will live on, seamlessly.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, YTS (formerly YIFY-Torrents) developer Jduncanator has confirmed that Popcorn Time will not die with the withdrawal of its founding team. Instead, YTS will pick up the baton and run.

“The YTS team will now be picking up the Popcorn Time project and continuing on like previously. We are in a better position copyright wise as for us, because it’s build on our API, it’s as if we have built another interface to our website. We are no worse off managing the project than we would be just supplying the movies,” the dev explains.

“It’s our vision at YTS that we see through projects like these and that just because they create a little stir in the public, it doesn’t mean they are shut down. That stir is exactly what the public needs and it’s already evident that people are becoming more aware of copyright-related issues.”

The project, which can now be found here, is open to all former developers who will be given contributor access upon request. The Popcorn Time installer will be made available shortly.

UPDATE: Since our interview with the YTS developer, YTS have given us a new statement which effectively distances them from the Popcorn Time project.

“Popcorn Time is a community driven project, not owned nor maintained by a single person or entity,” the site said.

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

Speaking with TF, site developer Jduncanator says that since last month’s rebranding the team have been not only working on new features, but also making sure that existing processes are fine-tuned. The dev says that user experience at YTS is paramount.

Don’t make users wait

“Studies show that 100ms is how long you have for the user to feel like the task was instantaneous. One second is how long you have for the user’s state of flow to remain uninterrupted (though the delay will still be noticeable). Ten seconds is how long you have before the user loses interest entirely and will want to multi-task while the task is completing,” JD explains.

“That 100-1000ms sweet spot is something most web developers aim for, but whats even more surprising is that only around 5% will actually achieve that. An average visitor will spend between 30 seconds to 4 minutes on YTS, so each individual page load will make up a large proportion of their overall user experience. This is what we wanted to focus on heading into 2014.”

Google-powered

One key upgrade towards achieving that aim is the inclusion of a brand new protocol called Spdy (pronounced Spee-dy), a Google-developed protocol designed to shift web content.

“Google’s new protocol enables extremely low latency round-trip times and compression of headers. All leading (up-to date) browsers support SPDY 3 and so now do our servers allowing for high speed access and connection to all of our site,” JD reveals.

While most site visitors won’t have any idea that things have changed, JD says that behind the scenes that’s definitely not the case. Network infrastructure has undergone significant upgrades, enhancing not only speed but security and overall experience.

Security

“With the latest NSA revelations and with overall ‘security’ paranoia going through the roof we decided to revise our current security setup to see if we could do anything better – turns out we could,” JD says.

“We used to have 2048-bit RSA keys. These by themselves don’t pose a security risk, but if we are to go by anything the NSA reports show, they could possibly have the technology to crack these more efficiently than the public. To be on the safe side, we decided to double the key size to 4096-bit RSA which effectively multiplied the amount of time to crack our encryption keys by 2³².”

And then, despite our requests to keep things pretty simple, JD just couldn’t contain himself, detailing the site’s BEAST attack protection, OCSP stapling enabling and HSTS implementation. Needless to say, he’s passionate about the site and keeping it finely tuned – fortunately he doesn’t mind if those listening need to Google acronyms every two minutes either.

“You can see a report of our SSL over here. We score an A+ and are in the top 3%, something even Google couldn’t achieve,” he proudly adds.

Network setup – On the Edge

YTS operates two levels of network – Edge and Internal. The Edge network is an array of servers running the open source NGINX high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy software. These servers are what users connect to when visiting the site. The Edge servers communicate with the servers on the Internal network, keeping the latter hidden from the public eye.

“The idea of these reverse proxies is that they simply forward web requests to our ‘hidden’ network and then pass the response back to you. This means that all you ever see is our cheap web servers’ IP addresses and never our internal networks. It allows us to have large amounts of high capacity connections to gobble up any ‘naughty’ or attack packets trying to take down our site and allows us to get our static content (images) closer to our end users, improving page load time and overall User experience.”

YTS’ ‘Edge’ network proxies, locations marked with blue squares

“Because the closer you are to the server, the faster the connection, we obviously want as many servers as possible as close to as many countries as possible. In the last two days we have added 13 new edge servers all around the world. Up until then, we only had 9 edge servers located around Europe but we wanted to aim big and get our content closer to our users to obtain faster load times. We now have 22 Edge servers.”

JD says that initially the YTS setup was modeled on Cloudflare’s, but now the site has servers in more locations than Cloudflare does.

“With these now in place and serving content, you should immediately see an improvement in screenshot and static content load time as well as faster overall page load speeds if the Edge node is a reverse proxy,” he notes.

Network setup – On the inside

“Our Internal network is made up of a few dedicated servers that are located in a hidden location far away and never see a public internet request EVER,” JD explains. “There are many reasons behind this from mitigating DMCA issues and annoyances to DDoS and attack protection.”

YTS runs two other main servers with 16 cores each, easily allowing them to cope with the traffic generated by the site’s users. All key infrastructure is in one location allowing for easier maintenance and backups. Perhaps understandably JD didn’t share any additional information on the Internal network and there is certainly no map indicating server location.

However, the diagram below shows the YTS setup, with the user at the bottom communicating with the site’s Edge servers which in turn talk to the Internal setup consisting of a main web server and dedicated database server.

What is evident when speaking with JD is that the site’s operators are not only passionate, but also blessed with seemingly endless energy and enthusiasm. The upgrades detailed above are just the beginning too, with yet more tweaks to come.

“Over the next few weeks we will be playing with our DNS settings to try and even out our load amongst servers and to make pings even LOWER. Updates to our DNS infrastructure now mean that all users will be given IPs for Edge servers that are closest to them and should provide the lowest pings possible.

“We’ll always be looking for ways to improve user experience and we plan on optimizing site code over the next few months to try and obtain even more speed out of the site,” JD concludes.

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

Just a year later and YIFY releases – easily visible on torrent sites due to the YIFY ‘tag’ at the end of their file titles – had gained enough traction to warrant their very own website.

In 2011, YIFY-Torrents.com was born and since then millions of movie fans have flooded to the YIFY website and others such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents to obtain YIFY releases. Like the aXXo group before them YIFY took the crown of most popular movie release group with the general public, and one with successful branding to match.

YIFY itself was founded by a guy, unsurprisingly, nicknamed YIFY. He was not only the group’s founder but its main movie encoder.

“I personally think that many people are following and downloading YIFY encodes due to the consistency we offer in our releasing,” YIFY told TorrentFreak in a 2013 interview. “Everything from the consistent film cover art, to the information layout, and ultimately to the file-size of our encodes.”

But after founding the YIFY group, brand and website, today marks his retirement.

“After two and half years of running the YIFY-Torrents website, and almost four years of being involved in the torrent community, I have decided that the time has come for a new challenge. As much as I have loved being able to provide content for all of you, it is simply time for a change in my life,” YIFY explains.

From today, YIFY-Torrents and the site’s releases will switch over to a new management team comprised of existing staff members, with OTTO handling encodes and uploads and Seraph managing the site. The site will also undergo a re-branding exercise.

“The website, domains and everything linked to the website will be changed to YTS,” YIFY (now YTS) web developer jduncanator informs TorrentFreak.

“We’re looking forward to the future, and have been lucky to be entrusted with such an excellent platform and userbase by YIFY,” the team adds.

Visitors to the site’s main page at the existing URL can already see the new YTS logo, but should be aware that the domain switches to YTS.RE, the URL the site will use going forward.

Although the site has changed its name and domain, the famous YIFY release name will continue, even with YIFY himself long gone. This will make searching for past and future releases as easy as its ever been.

“Releases and torrents will still carry the YIFY tag,” jduncanator clarifies.

For those who have always accessed YIFY releases without visiting the site itself, nothing will change. All uploads on sites such as PublicHD, KickassTorrents, 1337x, The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent will still be marked with the YIFY tag at the end. All files inside torrents and torrent naming conventions will remain intact.

YIFY himself says he has fond memories of his time with the group, citing the joys of uploading from a 10-year-old laptop, being featured on TF in last year’s interview, and battling Internet censorship in the UK. But essentially, he says, none of that would have been possible without followers of the group.

“Thank you all, for spreading your seed, making us one of the biggest trackers in the world, and for giving me a reason to do this for so long. You were YIFY Torrents every bit as much as I ever was,” he concludes.

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

This week a new High Court ruling went into effect ordering BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk to block access to the popular torrent site YIFY-Torrents, as well as streaming portals PrimeWire, Vodly, WatchFreeMovies and Project Free TV.

The major UK Internet providers have stopped defending themselves against entertainment industry requests, making it a mere formality for copyright holders to have a torrent or similar site blocked by order of the High Court.

Talking to TorrentFreak Virgin Media confirmed the latest additions.

“We obey court orders when addressed to the company,” Virgin’s Gareth Mead said, noting that the streaming sites SolarMovie and Tubeplus will also be blocked next month.

The total number of websites blocked on copyright grounds is 33, not counting proxies and other alternative domains. This list includes all the 10 most visited torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, and is expected to expand further in the weeks and months to come.

Whether the measures will be successful in preventing people from downloading and watching “pirated” content entirely has yet to be seen. These are still hundreds of alternative sites still available, as well as many proxies that provide access to blocked sites via a detour.

The entertainment industries, however, are confident that their actions will not be in vain. The movie studios and record labels will continue to press site owners to take down their services, and will submit complaints to the High Court for those that fail to comply.

“All of the sites in recent actions have been asked to comply with UK and international law and have refused to do so,” a FACT spokesman told TorrentFreak in response to the recent blocking orders.

“We have made it clear that we will seek action against sites that continue to provide unremitting mass access to infringing content following due legal process,” the Hollywood group said.

And so the Whack-a-Mole continues.

—

The full list of sites that are currently blocked in the UK is as follows:

Primewire, Vodly, Watchfreemovies, Project-Free TV, Yify-Torrents, 1337x, Bitsnoop, Extratorrent, Monova, Torrentcrazy, Torrentdownloads, Torrentreactor, Torrentz, Ambp3, Beemp3, Bomb-mp3, Eemp3world, Filecrop, Filestube, Mp3juices, Mp3lemon, Mp3raid, Mp3skull, Newalbumreleases, Rapidlibrary, EZTV, FirstRowSports, Download4all, Movie2K, KickAssTorrents, Fenopy, H33T and The Pirate Bay.

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

Traditionally these pirated released were leaked from “the Scene,” but in recent years the landscape has evolved bringing many new groups to the forefront.

These P2P groups release their own pirated versions and often beat the Scene to it. The primary motivation, however, is the competition element of being the first to get a movie out there in top quality.

YIFY doesn’t fit into either of these categories. Unlike most other groups they are not motivated by the competition and the credits that come with it, but by serving their ‘audience’ the best way they can.

This approach appears to work, as millions of people are now following the group’s releases. Their own website YIFY-torrents is now among the top ten most-visited torrent sites on the Internet, and on sites such as KickassTorrents the term YIFY constantly appears as one of the top searches.

To find out how it all came to be and what makes this group tick, TorrentFreak caught up with its founder. Using the handle YIFY, he tells us that one of the main goals is to make films accessible in all parts of the world, combining relatively small file-sizes with good quality.

“We aim to bring Hollywood films to the masses at smaller file-size. Our primary goal is to enable users from all parts of the world, who have bandwidth or hard drive limitations, to download and enjoy this content,” YIFY says.

YIFY started three years ago by releasing movies on various torrent sites and quickly added its own website a year later.

“It all started in 2010 when x264 started to gain significant popularity. I saw the potential application of using this codec to spread films at a smaller size. By August 2011, YIFY releases had gained enough popularity to launch our own website, serving as a platform for our releases.”

The steady release of popular titles in an easily digestible size and format piqued the interest of many movie pirates. Around this time last year the number of visitors to YIFY’s own site had grown to 200,000 a day, and over the past year this exploded to 700,000.

Together with the hundreds of thousands of followers on other sites, it is safe to say that YIFY caters to the demands of millions of people.

YIFY currently uploads its releases to its own site and five other public indexes: PublicHD, KickassTorrents, 1337x, The Pirate Bay, and ExtraTorrent. The group posts dozens of new and older films every month, a schedule that appears to appeal to a wide audience.

The high volume of searches for YIFY shows that more people actually search for the group tag than for specific movie titles, so in a way the group is guiding people’s viewing habits.

“I personally think that many people are following and downloading YIFY encodes due to the consistency we offer in our releasing. Everything from the consistent film cover art, to the information layout, and ultimately to the file-size of our encodes,” YIFY says.

“I believe this is important because people like stability and assurance with what they are downloading. By adding consistency to a reasonable file-size, we have filled a spot in the community, which seemingly has a lot of demand.”

Behind the scenes there’s a lot going on before a release is published on the Internet. YIFY doesn’t reveal specific sources but says it mostly relies on “leaked Blu-ray disks from friends.” A set of automated scripts then handles the encoding and subsequent uploading.

In many ways the popularity of YIFY is reminiscent of aXXo, the uploader that gathered an immense popularity during the latter half of the last decade. YIFY is flattered by this comparison, but personally he believes that’s too much credit.

“aXXo revolutionized the file-sharing community with highly accessible releases, while we are just a popular name; we have not actually introduced anything new to the community,” YIFY says.

Of course there’s also a darker side to YIFY’s newly gained fame. The group is clearly in the cross-hairs of Hollywood since the UK anti-piracy group FACT has already asked the court to block the site in the UK. At the same time, more radical legal steps can certainly not be excluded.

YIFY notes that their legal issues are limited to DMCA requests for now, which they comply with as other torrent sites do. Their biggest challenge at the moment is keeping the site online, which is easier said than done with the rapid increase in visitors.

“One year ago we were getting around 250,000 visitors daily on the website, presently we get around 700,000. Setting up our system to handle this growth in traffic has been the main challenge thus far,” YIFY says.

As for Hollywood, YIFY points out that the movie industry would be wise to move away from expensive per item sales, and focus more on free access models such as Hulu and Netflix-style subscription models in countries where these are not yet available.

“I do not think that Hollywood needs to learn anything specifically from our success. Rather, I think that our success is just a symptom of a much wider, and fast growing, worldwide phenomenon. I think that this demonstrates that people all around the world are no longer willing to pay a premium for their digital media,” YIFY concludes.

For the time being, YIFY is happily filling this gap.

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

The major UK Internet providers have stopped defending themselves against entertainment industry requests, making it a mere formality for copyright holders to have a torrent or similar site blocked by order of the High Court.

The popular TV-torrent site EZTV is one of the latest casualties of the blocking spree. Last month the Motion Picture Association, together with FACT, asked the site’s owner to cease operating or face legal action.

“The Motion Picture Association (MPA) and FACT wrote to EZTV last month asking it to stop infringing creative content. This site provides access to copyrighted material on a large-scale with no permission from the copyright owners,” a FACT spokesman told TorrentFreak.

“No response was received, so further action has been taken against EZTV through the courts,” the movie industry group added.

Legal action initiated by FACT then took place behind the scenes and late last month the High Court ordered the UK’s major Internet providers to block EZTV. FACT confirms that in addition to the popular TV-torrent site, movie torrent site YIFY-Torrents is also covered.

The court order hasn’t been made public, but it is expected to be similar to previous ones against sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents. This means that EZTV and YIFY-Torrents will be rendered inaccessible by the Internet providers, possibly during the course of this week.

Although the effectiveness of the blockades remains unclear, the movie studios are determined to keep adding new sites to the ban list during the months to come.

“We have made it clear that we will seek action against sites that continue to provide unremitting mass access to infringing content following due legal process,” FACT tells TorrentFreak.

At the same time the music industry is also preparing another major round of blocks. The BPI recently made a “hit list” including the popular torrent sites isoHunt, Extratorrent and Torrentz, as well as several cyberlockers and the music streaming service Grooveshark.

And so it continues.

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