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Friday, December 19th, 2014
| Time | Event |
| 9:34a | Google & MPAA Publicly Slam Each Other Over Piracy
Earlier this month a TF report revealed how the MPAA (with a SOPA defeat still ringing loudly in its ears) is still intent on bringing website blocking to the United States. The notion that Hollywood was intent on reintroducing something so unpopular didn’t sit well with critics, but that was only the beginning. A subsequent article in The Verge revealed a campaign by the MPAA to attack “Goliath” – a codeword for Google – by “convincing state prosecutors to take up the fight” against the search giant. The MPAA budgeted $500,000 for the project with costs potentially rising to $1.175 million. The Hollywood group subsequently called on SOPA-supporting Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood to attack Google, which he did. The New York times has a copy of the letter he sent to the search giant – worryingly it was almost entirely drafted by the MPAA’s lawfirm Jenner and Block. After a week of “no comment” from Google, the company has just broken its silence. In a statement from SVP and General Counsel Kent Walker, Google questions the MPAA’s judgment over its SOPA-like aims and apparent manipulation of an Attorney General. “Almost three years ago, millions of Americans helped stop a piece of congressional legislation—supported by the MPAA—called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). If passed, SOPA would have led to censorship across the web. No wonder that 115,000 websites—including Google—participated in a protest, and over the course of a single day, Congress received more than 8 million phone calls and 4 million emails, as well as getting 10 million petition signatures,” Walker writes. “We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means, and helped manufacture legal arguments in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood.” Then, in what can only be a huge embarrassment for the MPAA and the Attorney General, Walker turns to the letter AG Hood sent to him in 2013. “The MPAA did the legal legwork for the Mississippi State Attorney General. “The letter was signed by General Hood but was actually drafted by an attorney at Jenner & Block — the MPAA’s law firm. As the New York Times has reported, the letter was only minimally edited by the state Attorney General before he signed it.” The Google SVP ends with a shot at the MPAA and questions its self-professed position as an upholder of the right to free speech. “While we of course have serious legal concerns about all of this, one disappointing part of this story is what this all means for the MPAA itself, an organization founded in part ‘to promote and defend the First Amendment and artists’ right to free expression.’ Why, then, is it trying to secretly censor the Internet?” Walker concludes. Without delay, Google’s public comments were pounced upon by the MPAA who quickly published a statement of their own. It pulls no punches. “Google’s effort to position itself as a defender of free speech is shameful. Freedom of speech should never be used as a shield for unlawful activities and the internet is not a license to steal,” the statement begins. “Google’s blog post today is a transparent attempt to deflect focus from its own conduct and to shift attention from legitimate and important ongoing investigations by state attorneys general into the role of Google Search in enabling and facilitating illegal conduct – including illicit drug purchases, human trafficking and fraudulent documents as well as theft of intellectual property.” And, in a clear indication that the MPAA feels it acted appropriately, the Hollywood group lets Google know that nothing will change. “We will seek the assistance of any and all government agencies, whether federal, state or local, to protect the rights of all involved in creative activities,” the MPAA concludes. The statements by both Google and the MPAA indicate that in this fight the gloves are now well and truly off. Will ‘David’ slay ‘Goliath’? Who will get hurt in the crossfire? Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| 1:07p | The Open Bay: Now Anyone Can Run A Pirate Bay ‘Copy’
Many people have been looking for Pirate Bay alternatives in recent days. While there is nothing that can match the old Pirate Bay, there are plenty of copies available. Earlier this week the TPB crew said that it would be a good thing to have clones of the site all over the Internet, and it appears that the Isohunt.to team heard this message loud and clear. The same team that previously resurrected isoHunt launched a copy of TPB on Oldpiratebay.org last week, and now they’re opening up its code to the public. The initiative, properly named The Open Bay, opens up the source to their Pirate Bay clone. This means that in a few simple steps anyone can have a copy of the Pirate Bay installed on his or her own domain. “We, the team that brought you Isohunt.to and oldpiratebay.org are bringing you the next step in torrent evolution. Open Pirate Bay source code,” Isohunt.to says. According to the people behind “The Open Bay” there’s a lesson to be learned from the isoHunt and Pirate Bay shutdowns. Instead of a few big players, the torrent community itself should be a swarm of copies. “We want to change the torrent landscape which has been frozen for 10 years. We need to push it ahead,” Isohunt.to tells TF. “The Open Pirate Bay source code will give absolutely anyone with minimal knowledge of how the Internet and websites work and some basic hosting, the opportunity to create a pirate bay copy on his own domain.” To do so, the Isohunt.to team offers code and scripts and a large database dump with instructions to get it up and running on a simple shared hosting account. In addition, they put all files in a GitHub repository so people can create improved copies of their copy.  We have to emphasize that the term Pirate Bay “copy” should be used loosely here. The standard release includes oldpiratebay.org’s theme and a database dump of roughly 8 million torrent links, while Pirate Bay only had around 3 million. The difference is explained by the fact that The Open Bay database also includes files that originated from KickassTorrents and Isohunt.to. The original Pirate Bay code or descriptions are not there, and it’s not possible to upload or comment either. Finally, it may go without saying but people should keep in mind that hosting a Pirate Bay copy comes with a legal risk. Whether the surge in Pirate Bay copies is really a good development is open to debate, but we’ll examine this topic in an upcoming article. For those who want a local copy of The Pirate Bay’s archive for historical purposes there’s a safer option. A recent dump of the files database, complete with all original pirate bay IDs, torrent descriptions and hashes is available here. Torrent savvy people who know how magnet links work can even use the latter as a local Pirate Bay search engine, with the help of notepad. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
| 7:21p | Hollywood Tries to Crush Popcorn Time, Again
The breakthrough app had Hollywood concerned but luckily for them the developers shut it down after a few weeks, saying that they wanted to move on with their lives. It was never revealed whether Hollywood forces had threatened the developers, but an MPAA update that surfaced as part of the Sony leaks now reveals that this was indeed the case. In the MPAA’s “first quarter update,” sent to the movie studio heads in March, the group stated that it had “scored a major victory in shutting down the key developers of Popcorn Time.” The MPAA added that the investigative and enforcement actions required collaboration on three continents, which they hoped would prevent Popcorn Time from becoming a “major piracy threat.” Unfortunately for Hollywood the threat didn’t go away. The Open Source project was quickly picked up by others and in recent months several popular forks gained steady user-bases. Popcorn-Time.se, one of the most-used forks, has since turned into a bigger threat than the original application. As a result, Hollywood is trying its best to dismantle it. Previously the fork had its domain name suspended and over the past few weeks found itself being kicked out by various hosting providers. Complaints from the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN were to blame. The hosting troubles resulted in long periods of downtime, which isn’t good for morale among the developers. “We had a tough two weeks with a few shut downs that came unexpectedly. We moved our service through three different hosting companies in these weeks,” the Popcorn-Time.se team tells TF. “All caved after a few hours to a day or two, after ‘some’ copyright organization contacted them, saying suddenly that they don’t want to host our ‘illegal’ domain. We were shocked actually to see how quickly these organizations work.” While Popcorn-Time.se might have been down, they’re not out yet. The team is determined to keep its software available and will be releasing new updates to the app today. “BREIN is on our backs? Well, we found a new hosting company which we hope will be more cooperative, and we’re releasing updates for both Windows and Mac today to show everyone that business is as usual.” “No one said it was gonna be easy, but what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, and we’re not into dying… ;-),” the Popcorn-Time.se team concludes. Whether other Popcorn Time forks have had similar problems recently is unknown, but the above makes it clear that Hollywood is still determined to crush these popular apps. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. |
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