Pirate Bay Enjoys 12 Million Traffic Boost, Shares Unblocking Tips

Last week the UK High Court ruled that several of the country’s leading ISPs must block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. The decision is designed to limit traffic to the world’s leading BitTorrent site but in the short-term it had the opposite effect. Yesterday, The Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than it has ever had, providing a golden opportunity to educate users on how to circumvent blocks. “We should write a thank you letter to the BPI,” a site insider told TorrentFreak.

Last Friday the UK High Court ruled that several of country’s leading ISPs must censor The Pirate Bay website having ruled in February that the site and its users breach copyright on a grand scale.

The blocks – to be implemented by Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media (BT are still considering their position) – are designed to cut off all but the most determined file-sharers from the world’s most popular torrent site.

On hearing the news a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that the measure will do very little to stop people accessing the site and predicted that “the free advertising” would only increase traffic levels.

It’s not possible to buy advertising “articles” from leading UK publications such as the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph, but yesterday The Pirate Bay news was spread across all of them and dozens beside, for free. The news was repeated around the UK, across Europe and around the world reaching millions of people. The results for the site were dramatic.

“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today.

“We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.

The blockade, which was not contested by any of the ISPs listed above, will be implemented during the course of the next few weeks. While that time counts down, The Pirate Bay say they are viewing the interim period as an opportunity to educate site visitors on how to deal with censorship by bypassing it.

“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added.

In court papers released today, Mr Justice Arnold said that since the terms of the court order (how the blocks would be implemented technically) had been agreed to by the ISPs in question, there was no need for him to detail them in his ruling. However, The Pirate Bay told us that by taking a range of measures, any blocking technique employed by any ISP can be overcome.

First off they advise that the most simple solution is to use a VPN, such as iPredator or other similar services that carry no logs.

These VPN providers cost money but there are free solutions too. Companies such asVPNReactor offer a free service that is time limited to around 30 mins per session, but that’s plenty of time for users to get on Pirate Bay and download the torrent files they need. Once users have the torrents in their client, the blocking has been bypassed and even with the VPN turned off, downloads will still complete.

Pirate Bay are also recommending the use of TOR but only for the initial accessing of their website and the downloading of the .torrent files. Torrent clients themselves should never be run over TOR, the system isn’t designed for it and besides, transfers will be pitifully slow. TPB also point to I2P as a further unblocking option.

While the above options will cut straight through any kind of blocking with zero problems, Pirate Bay are also advising people to change their DNS provider. By permanently switching to a DNS offered by the likes of OpenDNS and Google, users of UK ISPs that censor The Pirate Bay purely by DNS will have a free and effective work around.

As readers will recall, there are other simple unblocking solutions where domain names are blocked by ISPs but their related IP addresses remain unfiltered. These include theMAFIAAFire plugin and the simple action of typing a site’s IP address directly into a browser. However, in this UK case there is a problem with these solutions.

According to court papers made available today, it seems that on the advice of an expert and after being agreed to by the ISPs in question, IP address blocking of The Pirate Bay is now part of the injunction. This means that the techniques in the above paragraph simply won’t work.

To circumvent this kind of problem, The Pirate Bay can be accessed via a 3rd party – a so-called ‘proxy’. One of these purely for the job is being operated by the UK Pirate Party.

Quite how long this particular proxy stays up remains to be seen though. The Dutch Pirates tried a similar thing and were quickly pursued by rights holders. Nevertheless, there are countless free proxies online that can do the job just as well.

In just a few weeks the block of The Pirate Bay will be implemented and despite all the coverage and millions of extra visitors to the site, thousands of users will remain unprepared. Those patient enough to type a question into a search engine will regain access to the site in a few minutes.

But will the impatient start pumping more money into the pockets of the BPI? That’s the big question.

Update: Virgin Media just started blocking The Pirate Bay.

Blocked

Judge: An IP-Address Doesn’t Identify a Person (or BitTorrent Pirate)

A landmark ruling in one of the many mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US has delivered a severe blow to a thus far lucrative business. Among other things, New York Judge Gary Brown explains in great detail why an IP-address is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright infringers. According to the Judge this lack of specific evidence means that many alleged BitTorrent pirates have been wrongfully accused by copyright holders.

Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for more than two years in the US, involving more than a quarter million alleged downloaders.

The copyright holders who start these cases generally provide nothing more than an IP-address as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, allowing them to ask Internet providers for the personal details of the alleged offenders.

The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Or put differently; an IP-address is not a person.

Previous judges who handled BitTorrent cases have made observations along these lines, but none have been as detailed as New York Magistrate Judge Gary Brown was in a recent order.

In his recommendation order the Judge labels mass-BitTorrent lawsuits a “waste of judicial resources.” For a variety of reasons he recommends other judges to reject similar cases in the future.

One of the arguments discussed in detail is the copyright holders’ claim that IP-addresses can identify the alleged infringers. According to Judge Brown this claim is very weak.

“The assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time,” he writes.

“An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones.”

“Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function – here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film – than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call.”

The Judge continues by arguing that having an IP-address as evidence is even weaker than a telephone number, as the majority of US homes have a wireless network nowadays. This means that many people, including complete strangers if one has an open network, can use the same IP-address simultaneously.

“While a decade ago, home wireless networks were nearly non-existent, 61% of US homes now have wireless access. As a result, a single IP address usually supports multiple computer devices – which unlike traditional telephones can be operated simultaneously by different individuals,” Judge Brown writes.

“Different family members, or even visitors, could have performed the alleged downloads. Unless the wireless router has been appropriately secured (and in some cases, even if it has been secured), neighbors or passersby could access the Internet using the IP address assigned to a particular subscriber and download the plaintiff’s film.”

Judge Brown explains that the widespread use of wireless networks makes a significant difference in cases against file-sharers. He refers to an old RIAA case of nearly a decade ago where the alleged infringer was located at a University, on a wired connection offering hundreds to tracks in a shared folder. The Judge points out that nowadays it is much harder to pinpoint specific infringers.

Brown also cites various other judges who’ve made comments on the IP-address issue. InSBO Pictures, Inc. v. Does 1-3036 for example, the court noted:

“By defining Doe Defendants as ISP subscribers who were assigned certain IP addresses, instead of the actual Internet users who allegedly engaged in infringing activity, Plaintiff’s sought-after discovery has the potential to draw numerous innocent internet users into the litigation, placing a burden upon them that weighs against allowing the discovery as designed.”

Judge Brown concludes that in these and other mass-BitTorrent lawsuits it is simply unknown whether the person linked to the IP-address has anything to do with the alleged copyright infringements.

“Although the complaints state that IP addresses are assigned to ‘devices’ and thus by discovering the individual associated with that IP address will reveal ‘defendants’ true identity,’ this is unlikely to be the case,” he concludes.

In other words, the copyright holders in these cases have wrongfully accused dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of people.

Aside from effectively shutting down all mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the Eastern District of New York, the order is a great reference for other judges dealing with similar cases. Suing BitTorrent users is fine, especially one at a time, but with proper evidence and not by abusing and misleading the courts.

The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record

Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie’s profits, it’s really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage.

A week before its premiere in US movie theaters, a camcorded version of The Avengers appeared online.

Immediately thousands of fans jumped on the release and according to figures collated by TorrentFreak, in the days that followed it was downloaded half a million times. While this may very well be a record for a “CAM” movie, it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality.

Record or not, the movie’s distributer Disney must have been terrified by this early release. However, this weekend the suits at the studio were able to breathe a sign of relief, or rather, start popping open the Champagne.

With more than $200 million in box office revenue, The Avengers had the most successful first weekend in movie history. It broke the record set by Harry Potter last year by more than $30 million, despite the “massive” piracy.

But is this really such a big surprise? Not when you look at the numbers.

Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the US. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher.

Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these “pirates” do not all count as a lost sale.

We don’t think that there are many movie fans who see a low quality camcorded version of a movie as a true alternative to watching a film in a movie theater. The two are totally different experiences, and not direct competition at all.

If anything, downloading a camcorded movie could be compared to downloading a low quality bootleg of a concert. People who download these are collectors, passionate fans, or just curious. But in no way do these bootlegs seriously hurt concert attendances.

The same might be said for advance leaks of games. These pre-release copies are often downloaded by tens of thousands of people, but not necessarily those who refuse to pay. The people who download these buggy and sometimes hardly playable games are often curious game fanatics who tend to buy the official game when it comes out.

The claim that camcorded films are killing the movie industry is nonsense and spending millions of dollars on anti-camcording technologies is simply not worth it.

But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

These high quality copies are more likely to “compete” with movie theater attendance and if a movie is not showing in local theaters at all, it definitely has the potential to impact future attendance.

This is even more true for the DVD-aftermarket and VOD sales. High quality pirated copies are direct competition and can impact revenues.

The challenge for the movie industry is to make legal offerings more appealing than pirated counterparts. Of course it may not always be able to compete with “free,” but there is still a lot of ground to make up when it comes to availability and quality of legal offerings.

But in no way are camcorded copies killing the US movie industry.

Monster Cat Goes Free

The young band Monster Cat took a decision to put their album called Mannequins up for free downloading on the world’s most famous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.

RJ, also known as Psycho Cat, the alternative folk-rock band’s guitarist and vocalist, hopes that this approach will work for their audience. The band had posted the link to the tracker on their official website. Indeed, LOUD’s download made the musicians happy. The five tracks album, which is actually a mix of folk-rock tracks, is currently free for download. The band’s album also includes original wallpaper artwork and a 15% discount to their merchandise.
One may wonder why a self-funded album, which apparently costs each member of the band a four-figure sum, is now available on what the entertainment industry called “the largest facilitator of online piracy”. The band replies that as musicians, they are afraid of not to get heard, so The Pirate Bay is a great chance for them to get heard by everyone around the globe. They added that the band sold 450 CDs and 150 digital downloads before reaching the BitTorrent tracker. The musicians pointed out that The Pirate Bay also offers a promotional mechanism called The Promo Bay, which is open up to anyone and everyone willing to promote their creative works.
Monster Cat wrote in, and the website asked its own Facebook group what they thought of the band. The response was positive, and the album photo appeared on the front page on The Pirate Bay for 3 days. Although it is considered an unconventional solution, the musicians think that it’s the future of entertaining. Meanwhile, the band feels that this sort of advertising has worked out thus far. Moreover, they said that the traffic to their official website rocketed – 150.000 hits over the 3 days since their launch on The Pirate Bay.
Since the members of Monster Cat have no business background thus far, they believe that a business boost is very important, because digital downloading is changing the patterns of music distribution and ownership.
As creators of music, the band members believe they should respect digital culture and the way it is changing consumer habits. To Monster Cat, file- sharing is part of reality and they have to learn how to benefit from it. Those who are interested in the band are welcome to visit their official website to obtain details and watch their newly released music video, “Underwater”.

Portuguese File-Sharing Lawsuit is Over

6-year-old copyright lawsuit over several songs is finally over. The Portuguese Phonographic Association has started the suit against a 17-year-old back in 2006, and the court decided to grant him a suspended jail sentence plus penalties of 880 euros.

The outfit in question has introduced file-sharing lawsuit in order to drive web users from unauthorized file-sharing to legitimate alternatives. However, the plan didn’t work as they hoped.
Since 2006, the music body had filed over two dozen lawsuits with the Attorney General’s Office, but only a couple of them were successful: the first one was back in 2008 and the second one continued for as long as 6 years.
The defendant in the lawsuit, a 17-year-old boy, was accused of sharing a lot of copyrighted tracks, but for some reason the original claims were reduced to only three songs.
It took the Lisbon Criminal Court 6 years to finally deliver its verdict, which was a 2-month suspended jail sentence. The judge took into account that the defendant was underage and had a clean criminal record before the lawsuit in question, so the sentence was supposed to be replaced by a fine of 880 euros .
Meanwhile, the anti-piracy outfit claimed that it would no longer pursue such strategy, after filing forty similar complaints against the suspected copyright infringers over the last six years.
According to the outfit’s president, 6 years ago it was believed that the existing legislation allowed to start controlling the problem of online piracy. However, the current law cannot deal with Internet file-sharing. That’s why the association asked the government to implement new laws, such as the “three-strikes” regime. The PPA now controls 95% of recorded music in the country, but it seems to face a crisis. Their latest report shows that the last decade’s profits decreased by 80%, and last year the sales of physical products dropped 34.4%.
At the same time, the association, along with blaming piracy and the economic crisis, also cites the lack of development in online alternatives, and the musicians’ new tendency of promoting themselves. Meanwhile, another entertainment branch, the county’s film industry, is also trying to reduce piracy, but lacks the legal support. Nevertheless, it has been successful – last year they have managed to close down 302 local websites alleged to facilitate copyrighted content.

EU Pirate Party Offered Copyright Platform

Christian Engstrom, the Pirate Party MEP, with its founder Rick Falkvinge, are trying to offer a better alternative to ACTA treaty by releasing The Case For Copyright Reform, which is a 107-page e-Book explaining the Party’s vision for reconciling copyright protection with online sharing.

The International Pirate Party appeared in Sweden 6 years ago and has decided to take the bull by the horns, offering the clearest and detailed statement on the way their outfit is going to act on the problem of digital piracy.

First of all, their proposal highlighted that the growth of file-sharing can’t be stopped without monitoring private communication. This means that such strategy would violate basic human rights. The Pirate Party points out that they don’t want to abolish copyright. Albeit copyright management systems would be banned under their suggestion, copyright would still prevent people from making money on someone else’s works. Non-profit copying and use is suggested to be made absolutely legal. In order and to make things clear on the meaning of copyright, the Party agreed that Internet users could once copy a poem or a cassette and send it to friends without infringing the law.

Moreover, in order to clarify the boundaries for sharing, the Pirate Party offered setting explicit guidelines for legitimate audio and visual sampling, such as the kinds of established legitimate quotation rights for text. Copyright protection is suggested to be cut from 70 to 20 years since the time of publication. In addition, these copyrights should be renewed 5 years after publication in order to “allow orphaned works quick entry back into the public domain”.

The Party’s proposal also details on how current copyright legislation meddles with technological and creative progress, let alone the freedom of private communication and due process. They also offered evidence from Norway and Sweden to prove that musicians are still able to get revenue in a world where their works can be copied without restrictions, by shifting to other revenue sources.

The hopes are that this suggestion will help some German intellectuals change their minds, as they have reportedly turned against the online party recently.

Aviva Wrongly Fired the Entire Staff

Aviva’s email blunder left employees cleaning their desks, as over 1,300 workers of UK-based Aviva Investors were instantaneously fired by accident by email. The local media explained that the employees have got an email from their Human Resources department which told them to hand over corporate property and security passes prior to leaving the building, even though this letter was actually intended for one person. The letter in question reminded all employees of contractual obligations about retaining any confidential data pertaining to the company operations, systems and clients.

The email in question was sent to Aviva’s entire staff of 1,300 people, based in more than a dozen countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Canada, Poland, and the Netherlands. It took Aviva’s HR department almost half an hour to realize their mistake and release another letter apologizing to the personnel.

The employee the letter intended for was someone leaving on the day. However, somehow the letter was sent to all Aviva Investors employees across the globe. The representative of the company explained that staff would have known better. Nevertheless, that might not have been the case.

Two days before the incident, Aviva’s Chief Executive Officer Andrew Moss promised he would be overhauling the board and booting the corporate head, along with the heads of Europe and North America. At the moment the company is about to cut 160 jobs, which is about 12% of its global workforce. The observers would have thought it would mean that many of the staff would have entertained the very idea of them being fired a lot longer than Human Resources believed.

UK Anti-Piracy Legislation Postponed

The provisions of the anti-piracy law of the United Kingdom (under its Digital Economy Act) have been delayed again until 2014. Meanwhile, the “three-strikes” regime was designed to cut off repeat infringers and illegal file-sharers.

Actually, the “three-strikes” regime consists in the involvement of Internet service providers, because they are the ones to send notifications to alleged pirates (if caught) and monitor the overflow of authorized file-sharing. However, the country’s government department responsible with the DEA confirmed that all these plans of the creative industry have been put to a hold until 2014. The Big Content must be disappointed…
Among the measures that the graduated response system includes, you can find broadband limitations, but they only apply as a final solution for repeat infringers. Ofcom, the country’s communication regulator, had also confirmed earlier that it would start sending out warnings to file-sharers since the middle of 2013.
Nevertheless, because of legal challenges and bids raised (to clarify the legislation) by ISPs, the anti-piracy law has been delayed. The DEA was passed at the end of 2011 Labour government. Because of the bill’s controversy, major part of MPs withdrew their support, and the bill ended up with being voted by less than 10% of all the country’s representatives.
Meanwhile, the most prestigious Internet service providers of the United Kingdom, TalkTalk and BT, decided to intervene, saying that the legislation was breaching EU laws unsuccessfully. Moreover, the government of the United Kingdom had also faced criticism after the questions were raised in a Parliamentary committee regarding the evidence for the bill.
Since 2015 is the election year, this piece of legislation will undoubtedly appear at the centre of heated debates. You can imagine the Labour government drafting and implementing the controversial anti-piracy act, and the Conservative-led coalition government pushing through its measures. Of course, in 3 years it will be a hot topic for the politicians on the soapboxes. As for now, the pirates can sleep easily, at least until any new developments.

Take Care of Sensitive Data

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has released a report saying that the general public is at constant risk of becoming an easy target for online fraudsters. The results of the research showed that after the outfit managed to get 200 hard drives, 20 memory sticks and a dozen of mobiles, just buying them online or at trade fairs, it turned out that more than 34,000 files with personal or business information were left on the storage devices. Some of them contained sensitive health and financial data, and 2/3 of the hard drives had enough personal details to commit an identity theft.

The matter is that a lot of people believe that pressing the “delete” button will mean that the file is gone forever, but this data can actually be easily recovered. Taking into account the staggering number of headlines all over the world about losing important information in sensitive sectors, it is really frustrating that such a lax approach to personally identifiable data is pervasive. Although the report in question focuses more on the consumer, everyone knows about human folly leading to information disasters at companies in both the public and private sectors.

This point of view is shared by security company Sophos, which points out that this problem isn’t simple and reveals yet another example of people not paying 100% attention to where their sensitive information sits. Another survey of the company found that only 5% of British IT managers in the public sector act on data security due to the threat of ICO fines. However, the industry should do more to help the education. So, while 5% are reacting because of realizing the actual threats around protecting information, a staggering 95% aren’t that worried.

According to the survey, 65% of people surveyed pass on their old mobiles, PCs, and laptops to other users, while 20% would sell their devices on. However, this figure increased to 31% among 18-24 year olds. As for the Information Commissioner’s Office, it’s in a really difficult position, as the powers are already set. The punishment depends on the kind of company you are looking for: with a $500,000 fine levied on a financial institution, the impact will be minimal. However, if you press an SME for such punishment, it’ll be wiped out.

State-Backed IP Thieves

One of the advanced threat and intellectual property protection companies, named Bit9, has announced that every innovating company is in danger of corporate sabotage and theft. Moreover, the biggest threat is nation-states pulling the strings behind the scenes. The company says that if a company has resources, it can infiltrate someone’s networks easily. As for IP theft, the threats usually do not come from rogue hackers, but some employees whose job is to crack into a corporate network. Once they have made their way in, their colleagues will lay out the network’s topology. The data in question is collected to be passed on to other colleagues, who will get it out of the company in some undetectable way. In most cases they use a network of proxy servers for that purpose, sending the data on to other locations near the attacked company’s headquarters. Finally, the information will make its way into another country, in most cases – untraced.

Bit9 has developed software installed on endpoints that would watch every bite of data that goes on the device, checking trusted software and allowing it to run. Although the company couldn’t talk on specific clients, they are in most cases very large Fortune 500 international corporations that need a certain level of trust in place. Every company, including traditional global brands, has heavy R&D programs, and therefore opens itself up as targets.

There are many examples of such attacks, like the case of RSA security token snatch that was used to gain data from the America’s largest military contractor. Meanwhile, Bit9 was deployed with another firm targeted by hackers, the exact same as against RSA, which it stopped.

One more company was developing a large project and was also a very sensitive customer, which had to create an application on top of Google Earth. When Bit9 deployed its software at another end point in the firm, it turned out that Google Earth had a trust rating of 0. The matter is that they had built a sensitive project on Google Earth, with only one file that had been changed into a piece of dropper technology. In other words, of thousands of files only this one had been pulled out.

Taking into account London’s wealth and its position of the world’s largest financial centers, there’s no surprise that it’s as targeted as the United States.