German Court Shut Down Popular Torrent Trackers

A court in Hamburg has recently ruled that a hosting company has to identify the owners of 3 popular BitTorrent trackers, which coordinate dozens of millions of transfers every day. The court order was delivered following a complaint from German music group BVMI, which also claimed responsibility for the shutdown of the torrent trackers that went offline earlier this year.

OpenBitTorrent, PublicBT and Istole.it were popular torrent trackers that coordinate the downloads of 30 million people at a time. In order words, each of these non-profit websites, powered by the open source Opentracker software, handled 3bn connections per day. However, the services went offline almost 4 months ago, and now the German music industry group BVMI takes credit for the shutdowns. It explained that the hosting company took the tracker offline after it was ordered to identify its operators.

It also admitted that the host was fighting against the shutdown, initially refusing to disclose the personal details of the site operators. Now it is obliged to do so in accordance with the court injunction. This court ruling follows a complaint from the German music industry group BVMI and is recognized as the first against the so-called standalone BitTorrent trackers, which don’t actually host or process any infringing content themselves, but are just a neutral part of the BitTorrent ecosystem.

The entertainment industry admitted that they had to target standalone trackers, because they make it possible for those who offer and seek unauthorized content to make the first connection. The only problem is that these trackers are also used by legal torrents to coordinate connections.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

Kim Dotcom Got Back Some of His Money

The founder of MegaUpload was allowed to get more of his seized funds in New Zealand. Kim Dotcom will receive millions to pay his legal expenses and extra $128,000 per month to pay mansion rent, buy grocery cover staff, security and other expenses.

 

In February 2015, Kim Dotcom came to court to ask for money to cover living expenses and pay his legal fees. Previously, Kim Dotcom was given about $15,000 per month to live on, but this was not enough for him. So, the recent ruling is largely good news for Kim Dotcom, with the judge also reviewing objections by authorities that he has funds in a trust that he could use. The judge ruled that the major asset of Dotcom's trust was its shareholding in Mega Ltd, but he couldn’t sell those shares until the planned listing of Mega. As a result, the judge decided that Dotcom does not have the ability to meet his legal and reasonable living expenses. Taking into consideration that Dotcom still owes his lawyers about $1.5m, the judge decided that Dotcom would need between $1.5m and $3m to fight against extradition. This money will be granted to him from currently restrained government bonds.

The judge also considered Kim’s needs to cover family’s accommodation costs ($60,000 per month) and his claims for such items as security, staff wages and other general expenses. Kim Dotcom currently has 8 staff in his mansion, but the judge ruled that 5 people would be enough and granted $19,000 per month for staff. He will also get $11,000 for grocery.

Overall, Kim Dotcom was awarded his legal fees and $128,000 per month to cover living expenses pending the expiry of the lease on his mansion (2016). Apparently, the position will be reviewed afterwards.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

Companies Still Fail to Monetize Piracy

Financial results of Rightscorp, a piracy monetization company, show that monetizing piracy isn't as easy as it expected. Rightscorp did a great job by protecting more copyrights, attracting more Internet service providers to cooperation and settling more court cases, but it still ended up with an operating loss of almost $930,000.

Rightscorp’s mission is to turn piracy into profit: they cooperate with copyright owners, track file-sharers and send them a settlement offer to avoid lawsuits. There are a lot of copyright trolls out there, but Rightscorp only asks for $20 per case of violation, which is a relatively cheap deal in comparison to others. The only problem is that Rightscorp still can’t make its operation profitable: back in 2014, it lost $3.4 million, and the most recent results don’t seem much better.
As for the fundamentals, Rightscorp currently has 1.5 million in its authorized copyright catalog, but only 256,000 are in its full system. 233 Internet service providers cooperate in the scheme at the moment, and the company has access to 15% of all homes in the US. As a result, Rightscorp has closed 200,000 cases of copyright infringement in the past two years.
Reported revenue for Q1 2015 was a little over $300,000, but reported loss was almost $930,000 due to the costs, including fees it pays to rightsowners (half of revenues), wages and legal costs. Aside from the usual advice required for company operation, Rightscorp is being sued over the methods employed to extort cash from alleged pirates.
It remains unclear whether Rightscorp will eventually be able to monetize piracy – perhaps, increased volumes and economies of scale can help.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

All Encrypted Traffic Comes through Torrents = 1/4 of Total Traffic

Nowadays, Internet traffic is more and more encrypted, and BitTorrent transfers are accounting for a quarter of the encrypted downstream traffic in North America, second only to YouTube.

It seemed that today BitTorrent users keep searching for options to hide their download traces, but thus far there was almost no information on how much of all encrypted traffic relates to file-sharing. A recent report finally clarified the picture. The data was gathered to find out how much of all Internet traffic is encrypted, and what the most popular sources are.
The outcomes of the research were the following: almost 30% of all downstream traffic is now encrypted, so you can understand that 2/3 of the traffic still remains unencrypted. As for the sources of encrypted traffic, YouTube currently accounts for most of it – over 11% of all downstream traffic comes from encrypted YouTube data, which makes it about 40% of all encrypted traffic. The second place is taken by BitTorrent (7.2% of the total downstream traffic), which accounts for almost 25% of all encrypted data.
However, the report only considers downstream traffic, while BitTorrent’s share of upstream traffic is usually much higher. In other words, the total percentage of all encrypted traffic will be well over 25%.
It should also be noted that before YouTube made the transition to support secure data transfers, BitTorrent was the most popular source of encrypted traffic. In the meantime, when Netflix moves to encryption by default, BitTorrent’s part may drop even further, while the overall traffic will keep growing.
Obviously, BitTorrent users are now increasingly using various anonymizing services to avoid troubles with copyright legislation.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

Microsoft Tracks Windows 7 Pirates

Microsoft filed a lawsuit, claiming that it logged hundreds of suspicious product activations from one IP address. The software giant is currently seeking damages.

Such software as operating systems suffers a high piracy rate due to the fact that a user needs to be present on most computers in order for them to work at all. Over the last three decades, Windows OS has been pirated millions of times. The Seattle-based company had to accept this fact as granted, and regular users usually avoided Microsoft’s aggression.

Now at least one pirate is about to find out that the same can’t be said of users pirating Windows on a commercial scale. Microsoft targets a person or persons behind a single Verizon IP address, who are responsible for some serious Windows pirating. The tech giant analyzed product key activation data, including the IP address from which the key was activated. It should be noted that the users voluntarily provided this information when they activated Windows. The forensic tools of the company allow it to analyze billions of Windows activations and discover patterns that make it believe that pirated software was being activated through that particular IP address.

The company detained in its complaint that its cyberforensics have identified hundreds of product key activations originating from a single Verizon IP address. Microsoft claims that those activations make it believe that defendants are using the IP address in question to activate pirated Windows 7. The company provided evidence that the defendant(s) have activated hundreds of copies of its operating system using product keys “stolen” from Microsoft’s supply chain or having a valid license. In some cases, the keys were used more times than their license allows.

Microsoft is now claiming damages resulting from such piracy – aside from immediate injunctive relief and the impounding of all infringing content, the Seattle-based company demands profits attributable to the infringements, treble damages and attorney fees or statutory damages.

This is not the first time when Microsoft launches a lawsuit of such a kind. The company took a similar action last December, targeting a user behind an AT&T account.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

Facebook Removed ExtraTorrent Facebook Page with 350k+ fans

Hi Everyone!

We are “unhappy” to inform you that ExtraTorrent Facebook Page with 352k+ fans was removed from Facebook this night.

We used Facebook to have a place for ExtraTorrent community to meet, talk, debate, have fun and hang out with each other. Many ET users liked to spend their time on their ET Facebook page.

But this morning, we have received the following message from Facebook:

Facebook wrote:

"We have removed or disabled access to the following content that you have posted on Facebook because we received a notice from a third-party that the content infringes their copyright(s)"

The official URL of the ExtraTorrent Facebook Page with 352k+ fans which was removed is https://facebook.com/ExtratorrentPage

It's was the most popular Facebook page among all existing torrent websites' pages on Facebook. Many ET fans liked to spend their time on our Facebook page. ExtraTorrent ran the several contests during the last years. The winners of contests received iPad, iPad Air, iPod and other prizes, including free VIP membership on the website.

The curious thing that the last warning (the day before) we got from Facebook was the following:

Facebook wrote:

"We've removed or disabled access to the following content you posted on Facebook because we received a notice from a third party that the content infringes their copyright(s):
Elysium (2013) BRRip"

It's very curious. Looks like Facebook removed ExtraTorrent Page because of the post in 2013. Meanwhile, ExtraTorrent didn’t violate any rules of Facebook and didn’t publish torrent links on Facebook since 2013.

In spite of the Facebook ban, ExtraTorrent will continue the Facebook life. ExtraTorrent Team thinks that website didn't break terms and condtions of Facebook and the remove of the page was done by mistake because ExtraTorernt didn't post any torrent links since 2013.

We have launched a new ExtraTorernt Facebook page


https://www.facebook.com/Extratorrent


6k+ fans have already joined the page in 12 hours!
Join Extratorrent on Facebook. The ET – The Place to Be!

Snowden called Australia’s Data Retention Legislation Dangerous

Edward Snowden expressed his views on Australia’s new data retention laws and pointed out that such bulk surveillance has allowed acts of terror to occur rather than foiled attacks. The world-known whistleblower said that Australia is adopting data retention legislation, which “has been proven not to work”.

Edward Snowden spoke from Moscow, saying that Australia’s role in bulk surveillance can be compared with the United Kingdom and the Tempora program, which collect everyone’s communications as part of a so-called “pre-criminal investigation”. In simple words, the surveillance outfits just watch everyone all the time. As for Australia’s outfits, they are able to search through that data not just within the country, but also share with foreign governments like the United States and United Kingdom.
It’s been a couple months that the Australia’s metadata laws had been passed to require telcos to store data on their customers for up to 24 months. According to the federal government, this measure can help fight terrorism. Edward Snowden argued that such laws were a radical departure from the operation of traditional liberal societies. Despite the fact that the company only collect metadata rather than content itself, it can still act as a proxy for content.
Edward Snowden brought a few examples, saying that mass surveillance hadn’t stopped such terrorist acts as the Sydney siege, the Boston marathon bombings or Charlie Hebdo. Snowden said that perhaps the governments missed these attacks because they had too much data to process without prioritizing. In addition, too many resources are wasted on spying on people who didn’t present a threat. The former NSA contractor suggested that governments should cooperate in order to avoid choosing between surveillance and security.
In the meantime, the US federal court ruled that mass storage of telephone data was illegal, and Edward Snowden called this decision “very significant”, as it could lead to further legal challenges of mass surveillance.
Greens senator Scott Ludlam, when discussing this issue with Edward Snowden, explained that intelligence agencies in the country operate with the “bare minimum of scrutiny” and pointed out that the debate in Australia is very stifled.

Protect Yourself with VPN While Torrenting – Save TorrentSsS

Hi Everyone!

As you know, ExtraTorrent is trying to keep ET servers alive. Unfortunately, we have no sponsors. ET still shows some popups on the website (sorry for that...) because we need to earn something to support our servers and website.

Recently, a part of ExtraTorrent community launched a VPN called by Trust.Zone VPN for safe torrenting. This is a bit experimental project. But it cares about safety of ET members and every downloader.

What's a VPN?

It's a tool that hides your IP address and your identity, it encrypts traffic and has no logging, so, your IP address will never be revealed and you will be 100% anonymous while torrenting. Government or your ISP can't track your activity. With a VPN, you are free to download any files you need without any risk.

Trust.Zone has founded by the part of ExtraTorrent community. The tool has 3 days free TRIAL period. If period ends, unfortunately, the service asks for money from you but..... our partners tried to make it as CHEAP as possible - $3.99/mo - it's the cheapest price among all popular VPN providers...

Have you tried Trust.Zone VPN?

If so, do you have a minute to leave a feedback? Don't hesitate to share your opinion RIGHT NOW! Let’s make torrenting safer!

Protect Yourself with VPN While Torrenting – Save ExtraTorrent!
ET - The Place to Be!
Posted by: 

spectator

Date:  Saturday, May 16th, 2015

Russian Pirates Received a Final Warning

Russian government issued “a final warning” for people operating illegal websites. The local copyright legislation was amended again to not just protect more content, but also enable authorities to permanently block websites making copyrighted content available.

Following massive pressure from the copyright owners all over the world, a couple years ago Russia started taking attempts to improve its reputation of the highly pirated nation. Back in 2013, a new IP law was introduced in the country, which outlined a mechanism to block the sites by intermediaries if those failed to comply with takedown notices within 3 days.

Over the first year, preliminary interim injunctions were imposed against 175 websites, but only 12 file-sharing domains were blocked. Now the law was further amended – from May 2015, it will cover not only video? but all multimedia content (except pictures).

Under the amended law, the intermediaries (Internet service providers and webhosts) can be ordered to permanently block sites that continually make unauthorized content available online.

Russian authorities officially explained the legislation’s reach, saying that the law enables to block access to online services providing access to copyright-infringing videos, TV shows and from May 1 – to music, books and software as well. The upgraded law also states that the systematic violation of intellectual property rights will lead to permanent blockage of the infringing portals.

The operators of torrent and other file-sharing websites received a particular notice. The authorities warned they have until May 1 to enter into constructive dialogue with copyright owners who are open to cooperation. The authorities underline that the common goal of the industry is to ensure that all copyright works are adequately rewarded and successful books, music and software bring profits to their creators, and not the pirates. If the website operators fail to start a legal business, the response of the government will become quite obvious.

In the meantime, the industry observers note that the first attempt of the country at website blocking legislation didn’t produce any apocalyptic conclusion. Now we’ll see how these latest amendments work out for Russian file-sharing sites.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

Hackers Believe that Obama's and Clinton's Communications Are Secure

According to cybersecurity experts and even hackers themselves, both Obama’s government emails and Clinton’s private, encrypted email system are secure enough to withstand the attack from foreign powers. For example, Obama carries a specially secured BlackBerry device, which so far has proved safe from cyber spies.

Even the National Security Agency admitted that the president’s BlackBerry has a satisfactory level of security. Recently, the US government had to admit that hackers attacked systems at the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department, but the breach in question related to the lowest-level unclassified email.

Meanwhile, controversy continues to rage over Hillary Clinton using a private email system while serving as the secretary of state. Nicknamed her “home brew” clintonemail.com system, it has sophisticated cyber “shields” to protect Clinton’s emails from prying eyes. The private domain has been used by her to conduct government business for four years, though it is not clear to what extent. Perhaps, now she would not be using this system as much, because it can appear vulnerable to some kind of hack, although it has still not been knocked offline or breached.

At the moment, the security experts are trying to work out how the hackers gained access to White House communications recently. One suggestion is that they could have infected the computer systems through the staffers while they were working on government business outside the office. Another suggestion is that they used an intrusion method called social engineering in order to lure staffers into clicking on a malicious link.