In 2011 the war against BitTorrent and other file-sharing sites will reach a new level. Since sites such as The Pirate Bay have proven that no amount of litigation or criminal sanctions against their operators can take them down, the focus will switch to undermining their infrastructure. Companies and organizations providing file-sharing sites with essential services are set to face the glare of the spotlight and attempts to hold them accountable for the actions of their customers’ users.
After nearly a half decade of criminal and civil action against The Pirate Bay and untold millions spent trying to take the site down, one might have just a little cold sympathy for the position of the international music and movie industries.
The combined might of the MPAA and IFPI, with almost limitless funding and the ears of politicians worldwide, has failed miserably to take The Pirate Bay offline. Their lawyers couldn’t do it and their friends in government assisted by their friends in the Swedish police department couldn’t do it either.
Nevertheless, the entertainment industries will have learned a lot on the way. In 2011 they will continue their pressure on BitTorrent and other file-sharing sites with a multi-pronged strategy that will see them pile pressure not just on the sites themselves, but on those providing them with critical services and infrastructure. Here are five predictions for 2011.
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Updated The attack on a second law firm with a history of involvement in copyright litigation has turned out to be something of a damp squib. Anonymous extended its fight against organisations supporting anti-piracy efforts to solicitors Davenport Lyons on Thursday night, with plans to flood its website with spurious traffic and carry out a defacement.
The move is the latest phase in a campaign dubbed “Operation: Payback Is A Bitch”, which began over the weekend with successful DDoS attacks against the websites of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), before proceeding to less successful assault against the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The campaign is a retaliation against the use by Bollywood studios of a firm called Aiplex Software, which launches DDoS attacks on Torrent sites that fail to respond to takedown notices. Aiplex was among the early targets of the attacks.
These assaults moved onto the website of solicitors ACS:Law on Tuesday, briefly taking it offline. The law firm sends threatening letters to alleged copyright infringers urging them to pay £500 or risk being taken to court.
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In an offense called “Operation Payback,” members of the Internet collective Anonymous have organized what seems to be anti anti-piracy movement. Dubbed by Torrent Freak as the ”protest of the future” the group has been pretty busy over the past 36 hours launching DDoS attacks on the MPAA, Indian anti-piracy site AiPlex Software and today both RIAA.com and RIAA.org. The attacks are apparently in retaliation for comments the CEO of Aiplex software made about his firm being hired by the film industry to take down The Pirate Bay.
The original call to arms below:
How fast you are in such a short time! Aiplex, the bastard hired gun that DDoS’d TPB (The Pirate Bay), is already down! Rejoice, /b/rothers, even if it was at the hands of a single anon that it was done, even if ahead of schedule. now we have our lasers primed, but what do we target now?
We target the bastard group that has thus far led this charge against our websites, like The Pirate Bay. We target MPAA.ORG! The IP is designated at “216.20.162.10″, and our firing time remains THE SAME. All details are just as before, but we have reaimed our crosshairs on this much larger target. We have the manpower, we have the botnets, it’s time we do to them what they keep doing to us.
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Following a call to arms yesterday, the masses inhabiting the anonymous 4chan boards have carried out a huge assault on a pair of anti-piracy enemies. The website of Aiplex Software, the anti-piracy outfit which has been DDoSing torrent sites recently, is currently down having been DDoS’d. They are joined in the Internet wasteland by the MPAA’s website, also currently under huge and sustained attack.
Don’t mess with the Internet they say. Well, actually stronger terms than that are often used, but the end result is the same. When people get organized on the Internet, very strange and powerful things can happen and in few places can this be more true than on the 4chan message boards.
Sometimes things need sorting out, and what better way than getting hundreds of thousands of anonymous users of this notorious message board to work together to achieve it. If they’re not trying to bring down Scientology, they’re teaching foul-mouthed pre-teen girls a lesson or using their combined forces to destroy the lives of stupid bankers who think it’s ‘funny’ to throw cats in the trash.
Yesterday two new targets hit the radars of ‘Anonymous’, the faceless and powerful hordes who carry out 4chan attacks. The beauty is that anyone can join in the action, 4chan ‘membership’ is not even required. People wishing to participate can simply load up their Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) and enter the IP address they want to attack. The resulting assaults are massively distributed making defending against them almost impossible.
Yesterday’s target one was everyone’s favorite Indian anti-piracy company, AiPlex Software. A completely unknown entity until a couple of weeks ago when they stupidly admitted to DDoSing uncooperative torrent sites (then unsuccessfully trying to backtrack), it seems their rise to fame came at a price.
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This week a ruling from Switzerland’s Federal Court said that an anti-piracy company broke privacy laws when they monitored file-sharers and then used the collected data to extract payments from alleged infringers. While some may think this gives a green light to file-sharers, those sharing large amounts of media should think again – the police might just start showing an interest.
This week an important ruling was handed down by the Swiss Federal Court. The majority of a panel of five judges decided that anti-piracy company Logistep breached Switzerland’s strict privacy laws when it monitored and gathered information on file-sharers.
The ruling, which is final and cannot be appealed, made clear that it is illegal to collect IP addresses in Switzerland with the aim of later filing a lawsuit. While Logistep said that this would make the country a safe-haven for pirates, things may not be quite as safe as some people imagine.
While obtaining evidence for civil lawsuits will be hugely problematic for private companies, the state can still take action against file-sharers. The police in Europe are only usually interested in file-sharers if they are deemed to be pirating media on a commercial scale or are committing other criminal offenses, and Switzerland is no different.
Just this week, Swiss police closed in on a woman who made available thousands of music tracks on the Internet. The 21 year-old is suspected of sharing more than 3,100 music tracks without the permission of copyright holders.
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A raid on file-sharing servers in the early hours of the morning has conspiracy theorists talking. The raid, which took places in various European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Sweden (among others), targeted peer-to-peer service providers. What has the tin foil hat wearers wondering is: why was one Wikileaks’ Swedish providers caught in the crossfire? Is “the man” out to get Wikileaks?
If we’re to believe Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad, then no, it doesn’t. He told a Swedish newspaper that Wikileaks wasn’t the target of the raids today. It just so happens that Wikileaks is hosted on the same service that was one of the targets.
Mmhmm.
As for the raid itself, police say it was in the works for some two years, and targeted the very top of the “piracy pyramid.”
Which of course means that by the end of the week we’ll have a new set of folks ready to run things.
And while police may have showed up and expected to find all sorts of “smoking guns,” as the cable news channels here like to say, one of the providers caught in the raid said, “They were interested in who were using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards. We have no records of our clients but we’re handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it’s rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable.”
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In recent years, technical anti-piracy enforcement has taken a less aggressive approach to that previously demonstrated by the infamous MediaDefender. But now, according to a company being hired to protect Bollywood blockbusters, if BitTorrent sites don’t cooperate by taking down torrents when asked, they will have denial of service attacks launched against them and material taken down by force.
While anti-piracy actions had grown steadily more aggressive, it still came as a bit of a surprise when it was revealed in 2008 that a DoS-style attack had been launched against Revision3′s BitTorrent tracker.
Founded by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson of Digg fame along with David Prager of TechTV, Revision3 serves up around 6 million downloads per month. However, their whole operation was turned upside down two years ago when the now-defunct MediaDefender abused Revision3′s tracker for their own ends and when denied access “threw an epic tantrum” which took down the whole site.
Since the demise of MediaDefender, anti-piracy companies certainly haven’t gone away and some have still resorted to DoS-style attacks. Trident Media Guard, the French anti-piracy outfit selected by the music and movie industry to track down French pirates under the new ‘Hadopi’ law, was recently spotted trying to pointlessly smother a user sharing via BitTorrent.
Most groups working in this field keep their techniques private but as we shall see, that’s not true for all of them. According to an India-based company working on behalf of Bollywood studios, there are a number of techniques they can use to deal with movie piracy, from the gentle to the particularly aggressive.
According to Girish Kumar, managing director of AiPlex Software – a company recently hired to combat piracy on the movie My Name is Khan (which trended at #1 on KickAssTorrents earlier this year) – they begin with a simple notice and takedown.
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In a valiant effort to stop illegal feeds of their pay-per-view events, Zuffa, LLC, the parent company of the UFC and WEC, announced Friday it has served subpoenas on two popular streaming websites, demanding them to reveal the identities of users who have uploaded UFC videos for free.
“I can’t wait to go after the thieves that are stealing our content,” said UFC President Dana White. “This is a fight we will not lose.”
Justin.tv and Ustream.tv enable anyone with an Internet connection to broadcast live streaming video to an unlimited audience. Although originally developed to bring user-generated content to a large live audience, these sites have been exploited by some users to broadcast illegally uploaded content, including Octagon events.
According to Zuffa, over 36,000 people watched a live stream of the UFC 108 PPV broadcast that was uploaded from a single IP address. Less than two months later, that same IP address uploaded multiple live streaming feeds of the UFC 110 PPV event, which was watched by over 78,000 non-paying users.
Zuffa is the largest provider of Pay-Per-View content in the world, reaching fans in over 430 million households across 147 countries and territories.
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Nothing like helping out your fellow man. As you know, copyright infringement, known as “theft” by people looking to spread FUD, is the worst crime a person can commit. I mean, you can be in charge of financial intuitions that rip off people’s money, you can be in charge of an energy company that randomly drills into the planet then feigns ignorance when something goes wrong, but hey, whatever—there are people out there downloading “Oh My Gosh.” This must be stopped!
What has emerged in recent days is that Sweden’s Antipiratbyrån (Anti-Piracy Agency, or APB) has effectively been threatening teens with retribution unless they dole out their friends’ details. You know, “Hey! We know your friends are downloading Justin Bieber 24/7. You had better tell us what sites or services they’re using, or you’re doomed.”
Doomed? All that’s mentioned is that these people could look forward to “reprisals” should they fail to cooperate.
Sounds like Mafia tactics to me.
Again, I solved this problem some time ago: just ban music altogether. The world will forever be free of “Baby,” and the record companies can open up a new business doing what they do best:making a living off the talents of others.
Admission: I actually find that Usher song, “Oh My Gosh,” rather catchy. Where do I turn in my cynical jerk membership card?
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After a surprise visit to his home by lawyers and anti-piracy group executives earlier this year, the admin of a BitTorrent site has been hit with a large claim for damages. The 18 year-old operator of the EliteBits private tracker now faces a demand for more than $261,000, but will be assisted in his fight by pro-sharing group, Piratgruppen.
While public BitTorrent sites usually get most of the unwanted legal attention, earlier this year it was the turn of a private tracker.
In early January ‘Laeborg’, the Denmark-based administrator of the EliteBits BitTorrent tracker, was confronted at 7:00am on his doorstep by a man from the enforcement court accompanied by three men from Johan Schlüter Advokatfirma, a law firm that works with Danish anti-piracy group, Antipiratgruppen.
They showed Laeborg, real name Jonas Laeborg, screenshots from EliteBits while revealing information on the bank account used to collect site donations. In their possession was a warrant which they said gave them authority to gather evidence to show that Laeborg was involved in the illegal distribution of copyright works.
After accessing Laeborg’s computer and his admin account on EliteBits, screenshots were taken of all the staff profiles, the site’s Top 10 downloaders, Top 50 uploaders and uploaded torrents lists.
That case has now progressed to the point where 18 year-old Laeborg has been hit with a cash claim totaling some 1.6 million kroner ($261,150) from Antipiratgruppen. But he won’t face this battle alone.
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Back in 2003, German-based company Medien Patent Verwaltung (MPV) previewed and disclosed its anti-piracy tools for Warner Bros, Technicolor and Deluxe at their request. Now, after seven years, the company decided to file a patent-infringement lawsuit against all those companies mentioned above.
MPV claims that Warner Bros used its technology all these years to track down movie pirates across European cinemas without paying for the proper (or any) license. This means that, in a weird, twisted way, Warner Bros used pirated technology to track down pirates. Or so it seems until the court rules out on this complaint.
“We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros, in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly,” an MPV representative said. ”Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us. However, we had taken care to obtain patents to protect MPV’s technology, and we are now in a position where we must assert our rights.”
The technology in question would allow Hollywood studios to mark film rolls with a distinctive trackable code. If any copies are made from that roll, the studios would then be able to track them down to the original and get the location or places where it was screened. This would allow police investigations to be much faster, the studio’s narrowing down the search area for them.
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Nintendo’s president said Friday that anti-piracy measures will be beefed up in its planned handheld game device with 3-D technology in a move to guard against software theft.
Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata was otherwise tightlipped about the machine, which the Japanese game-maker said in March will be shown at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles next month.
It’s set to go on sale sometime in the fiscal year through March 2011, according to the Kyoto-based maker of Super Mario and Pokemon games.
The problem of piracy is serious, especially in Asia and Europe, and contributed to the recent drop in game software sales in Europe, Iwata said at a Tokyo hotel.
But he declined to go into details on the planned measures, saying such comments will merely give “hints” to the culprits. Iwata was also concerned people were becoming more tolerant of piracy.
“We fear a kind of thinking is become widespread that paying for software is meaningless,” he said. “We have a strong sense of crisis about this problem.”
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