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Sunday, February 17th, 2019

    Time Event
    10:32a
    When Building a Torrent Site, Streaming Service, or App, Intent is Almost Everything

    Several weeks ago, former BitTorrent Inc. executive Simon Morris published a series of articles on Medium, discussing his time at the company and thoughts for the future.

    By any standard, his articles are absolutely first class and a must-read for anyone interested in the resilience of the BitTorrent protocol, decentralization, and how ‘breaking rules’ can create both winners and losers.

    The third piece in the series raises an extremely important issue – that of initial intent when creating disruptive platforms or technologies.

    Perhaps most notably and despite his technology facilitating the sharing and downloading of billions of dollars worth of content, BitTorrent protocol inventor Bram Cohen was never sued for his work. Cohen set out to solve the problem of transferring big files in an efficient way, there was never any talk of piracy.

    The same can be said of BitTorrent Inc., which despite controlling uTorrent, the world’s most recognizable file-sharing client, has never been taken to court for its activities. Considering the scale of infringement that’s now accidentally associated with the work of Cohen and his now-former company, it’s notable – but not that surprising – that the lawyers have stayed away.

    That didn’t happen by chance. Neither Cohen or his former company have ever advocated the use of their technologies for infringing purposes.

    This valuable lesson, of not promoting a tool or service for illegal uses, should never be underestimated. Intent, as mentioned earlier, is almost everything. No matter if a product passes the test of having “substantial non-infringing uses”, incriminating statements made by its creator (even before a project even gets off the ground) can come back to haunt – indefinitely.

    Regularly, on various online discussion platforms, technically gifted individuals report that they are about to launch a new torrent site, streaming service, app, or similarly functional platform. Invariably they explain their project’s progress thus far (sometimes with links to Github) and then seek opinions on what users might find useful in a finished product.

    However, more often than not, they also shoot themselves in the foot by talking about piracy-related matters. While it’s undoubtedly useful to consider how the law might view such a platform in the future, very often the conversations step over the line, with the effect of forever associating the finished product with copyright infringement.

    Admittedly, the odds of site/service/app operators getting sued are relatively small, given the large number of sites out there that continue to operate both blatantly and with impunity versus the number of lawsuits filed.

    However, given the importance of intent, especially that which is made public in discussions when a project is getting off the ground, the chances of any subsequent prosecution being successful increases exponentially.

    Given that people launching such sites and services must be pretty familiar with the hostile legal environment surrounding these platforms, it seems entirely counter-intuitive to state from the outset that the intent is to infringe, or at least assist others in their infringing activity. But herein lies the problem.

    As Morris suggests, those who set out to break rules (disrupting big business or even governments with cryptocurrency, to take his example) essentially have two choices.

    They can either do so without displaying ‘evil’ intent while throwing plenty of positive reinforcement into the mix (promotion of legal activity). Or they can do so anonymously, so a potentially incriminating past doesn’t catch up with them later.

    While anonymity is an option for those intending to create piracy-focused platforms, it isn’t a simple position to maintain long-term, especially for those whose aim is to generate and ultimately enjoy revenue.

    Also, not promoting a ‘pirate’ service for piracy purposes means that the intended audience won’t easily flock aboard to make the site or service a success, since there are so many competitors obviously doing so already.

    So, while the headline of this piece states that ‘intent’ is almost everything, in today’s environment it could be argued that for prospective ‘pirate’ site operators, anonymity is even more important.

    A third option, which is generally underrated, is obscurity – but that’s way too boring for those seeking notoriety on the high seas.

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

    8:13p
    Torrent Sites Ban Popular Uploader ‘CracksNow’ for Sharing Ransomware

    The entertainment industries regularly warn the public at large that pirate sites are riddled with malware and viruses, posing a threat to unwitting visitors.

    While these comments are partly made out of self-interest, they’re not entirely overblown. There are indeed plenty of scammers who upload nasty content that is added to, or disguised as, popular files.

    This is nothing new and generally speaking, these files are easy to spot and swiftly removed from well-moderated sites. However, in a recent case, this wasn’t as apparent, since it involved a well-known uploader that had a “trusted’ status on some sites.

    The uploader in question is Cracksnow, who shared tens of thousands of cracked software titles in recent years. A dedicated group of followers watched these torrents and “Cracksnow” was previously listed as one of the most searched for terms on torrent sites.

    In recent months, however, numerous reports claimed that these popular releases contained malware, or even ransomware, which can do serious harm to one’s computer. 

    Below is an example of a now-removed torrent on 1337x.to which reportedly included a copy of the GandCrab ransomware.

    Ransom?

    A few of these reports are nothing out of the ordinary. Anti-virus vendors sometimes flag cracks as malicious, without good reason, for example. Also, “rival” uploaders may try to discredit the competition with fake malware reports.

    However, in the case of CracksNow, the complaints were plentiful, persistent, and not without consequence.

    Earlier this month, the popular torrent site 1337x took action and banned the account. This is quite unusual since it was a “trusted” uploader, but a senior staffer informs TorrentFreak that the reports were warranted.

    “He was banned by myself because I found ransomware in his uploads,” the 1337x admin, who prefers not to be named, tells us.
     
    “I also checked the same uploads from him on a couple other torrent sites and got the same results. I immediately alerted their staff about it so they could investigate and take appropriate action, which they did,” the admin adds.
     
    GandCrab 5.1, found by the admin
    Indeed, several other torrent sites, including TorrentGalaxy,  have banned the CracksNow account as well. A Pirate Bay admin also confirmed that the uploader was purged from their site months ago, but no reason was specified. 
     
    Every day moderators on torrent sites have to review a lot of reported torrents. These are all checked carefully and in many cases, there’s nothing malicious going on. That said, malware infested torrents are found on a daily basis. 
     
    The 1337x admin informs us that they have a system in place to ensure that things don’t get out of hand. This includes an approval process for uploaders. However, this obviously isn’t perfect.
     
    “It is a daily battle to sort the scumbags from the legit uploaders and staff work very hard but it’s not foolproof. What I will say is staff are very quick to adapt to all the new ways people try to beat our systems,” the admin says.
     
    In the case of CracksNow, the moderators didn’t see it coming. That said, the account is banned now and the team believes that all malicious torrents have been deleted. 
     
    “I must admit that it is rare for a trusted uploader of this caliber to go rogue. It’s normally new guys that have the infected files,” the 1337x admin notes.
     
    “CracksNow was a trusted uploader and had been warned in the past but only for misdemeanors.  To the best of our knowledge, the remaining torrents are ransomware free but his account is due for removal.”
     
    Banned!
    Indeed, while many recent torrents have been deleted, the CracksNow account and many older torrents remain available. This is because the site has some built-in protections which makes it hard to delete accounts with this many torrents.
     
    The moderation team doesn’t believe these older torrent are malicious but it’s working on a full removal of the account. This will take some time though.
     
    While CracksNow is no longer welcome at several torrent sites, the uploader still has his own home at CracksNow.com. Plenty of new uploads still appear there regularly.
     
    TorrentFreak reached out to the uploader to hear the other side of the story, but after a few days, we have yet to get a response. 
     

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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