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Monday, January 2nd, 2017
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| 8:22a | Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 01/02/17
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is the most downloaded movie. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart. This week’s most downloaded movies are:
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 10:50a | RightsAlliance Forces Ten-Year-Old Site to Delete All Torrents
While The Pirate Bay continues to this very day, another long-time Rights Alliance target has just thrown in the towel. Founded around 2005, ‘The Internationals’ was a tight-knit private tracker with a decent reputation for content availability. That placed it on the radar of copyright holders, who started an investigation. In 2009, in the wake of The Pirate Bay convictions, then-Antipiratbyrån sent out a batch of warnings to other sites hosted in Sweden. Shut down or else, they warned. The Internationals heeded the warning almost immediately, but after a month the site returned. Two years later in 2011, police carried out raids in two locations in Sweden, seizing the site’s tracker and community data servers. Two men were also arrested, including the site’s operator, Joel Larsson. In 2015, Larsson was found guilty of copyright infringement and was sentenced to 90 hours community service. In the meantime, however, The Internationals had already been resurrected under another domain name and was operating normally. A few days ago, however, Rights Alliance showed that it has a long memory. According to a report from The Internationals operator ‘Hachiko’, the site received correspondence from the anti-piracy group ordering it to shut down. “Hi all. As of now, all torrents on The Internationals has been removed. Download, upload, offers and requests have been deactivated,” Hachiko told the site’s members. “Why? We’ve been informed on Dec. 29, -16, by a representative, Anders Nilsson, from something called ‘Rättighetsalliansen’, that it’s illegal according to local laws in their country, Sweden.” Anders Nilsson is a Rights Alliance investigator and former policeman who has been with the anti-piracy outfit for a number of years. “Due to this fact, we have no other option than to disable all torrents and deactivate all possibilities to engage in what they call illegal file-sharing,” Hachiko said.  While all torrents have now disappeared from the site, it will stay open to enable the community to stay together. Whether that will happen will remain to be seen. History tells us that sites rarely maintain their strength after the content has been removed. Aside from its long-running issues with copyright holders, The Internationals will be remembered for being perhaps the only site to have its webhost prosecuted for its activities. When the site’s operator was raided in 2011, the owner of webhosting company PatrikWeb was also detained. Patrik Lagerman had been previously ordered by Rights Alliance to take down The Internationals’ site but without a court order, he refused. That eventually landed him in court but he stood firm and was acquitted of all charges. Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7:30p | Cox’s Repeat Infringer Policy Was an Elaborate Sham, BMG Says
The ISP was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered to pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million in damages. Last November Cox filed its appeal arguing that the district court made several errors which may ultimately restrict the public’s access to Internet services. One of the crucial factors in the case is whether Cox has safe harbor protection under the DMCA. In order to qualify, the company is required to terminate accounts of repeat infringers, when appropriate. According to a 65-page reply brief just filed by BMG, the Internet provider failed to satisfy this burden as it willingly kept serving some customers, even after they had received over a dozen infringement notices. “… Cox ignores its burden and points to no evidence that it adopted or implemented such a policy. Indeed, the undisputed evidence shows that Cox’s claim to terminate repeat infringers was an elaborate sham,” BMG writes (pdf). “Though the precise mechanism changed in the Fall of 2012, Cox’s actual policy throughout the entire time period covered by the complaint was not to terminate repeat infringers because ‘for DMCA – we don’t want to lo[]se the revenue’.” BMG notes that from 2010 until the Fall of 2012, Cox had a “policy” under which it purported to terminate accounts of repeat infringers. However, these were instead swiftly reactivated to keep customers on board and generate more revenue. “Over and over, Cox failed to terminate flagrant repeat infringers, including one who admitted to ‘years of doing this’ and whom Cox abuse employees regarded as ‘well aware of his actions’,” BMG writes. In its appeal, Cox mentioned that it doesn’t believe that one-sided piracy complaints are enough to warrant account terminations. In addition, the ISP noted that several of the infringement notices BMG sent via Rightscorp contained serious errors. However, BMG believes that this is a red herring which didn’t warrant the decision to disregard hundreds of thousands of infringement notices. “Cox claims that BMG’s notices are ‘littered with flaws.’ But Cox was able to identify errors in a tiny handful of the 1.8 million BMG notices at issue. The evidence showed that Rightscorp’s system was ‘well over 99%’ accurate.” In addition to the repeat infringer issue, the music group also maintains that the ISP is liable for contributory infringement. Also, it disputes Cox’s argument that the jury instructions were incorrect on several points. With the appeal, Cox hopes to reverse the judgment or at least have the opportunity of a new trial, but BMG asks the court to keep the district court ruling intact instead. The outcome of the case, which may go all the way to the Supreme Court, will be crucial in determining what obligations ISPs have when it comes to repeat copyright infringers. As such, we can expect some more fireworks later in the year, as the case moves forward. Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week we have three newcomers in our chart. 
Late 2015 a Virginia federal jury ruled that Internet provider Cox Communications was responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers.| << Previous Day |
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