Paramount Pictures Fails to Silence uTorrent Discussions

Week in and week out copyright holders scour the Internet to detect and report millions of alleged infringements.

Most attention goes out to Google which receives around a dozen million takedown requests per week for its search engine alone.

Many of the reported links are from torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and point to pirated content. However, some of the URLs copyright holders complain about to Google are not infringing at all.

Last week Paramount Pictures asked for the removal of various discussions at the forums of the popular torrent client uTorrent. The notices claim that the discussions are “infringing” but the threads themselves show no evidence of that.

For example, Paramount sent a takedown notice to protect the 2009 movie “Imagine That.” The list of allegedly infringing URLs includes a uTorrent forum thread, as shown below.

After reading the topic we could find no mentions of a pirated movie. Instead, the only mention of “imagine that” was in the post below, which doesn’t appear to be infringing at all.

The same error was repeated several times in other targeted discussions on utorrent.com. One notice lists a forum thread that allegedly offers an infringing copy of “Ghost,” but again the topic itself is completely unrelated to the movie.

This also happened to a thread where a user pointed out that he was “clueless” about something. This apparently rang alarm bells at Paramount’s content protection company who assumed that this person was referring to a pirated copy the film “Clueless.”

Talking about clueless, the same notice also targets the Disqus profile of the user “Clueless°,” simply because he or she shares a name with the movie title.

The most likely explanation for the errors is a lack of oversight. Paramount’s content protection company scans the Internet for keyword combinations and when movie titles are used in combination with other ‘suspicious’ terms such as “torrent,” URLs may be flagged automatically.

Unfortunately these mistakes are not isolated incidents. In recent years we’ve highlighted countless examples of takedown requests that censor legitimate content, often hurting traffic for the affected sites.

The good news is that Google appears to have white-listed several domains, including utorrent.com and Disqus. This means that while the links reported on behalf of Paramount Pictures were not removed, less prominent sites may not be so lucky.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Sep 30, 2015

The dollar was mixed in N.Y. trade on Wednesday, moving higher against the euro after negative EU headline inflation data, and easing back modestly versus the yen on quarter-end activity, and fading yields. EUR-USD opened near 1.1210, and made its way to 1.1158 lows into the London close. USD-JPY peaked at 120.29 after the in-line ADP jobs report, though later fell back to 119.55 lows. USD-CAD steadied on either side of 1.34, as oil prices firmed up some, while cable posted new five month lows under 1.5110, after briefly breaching the 1.52 mark.

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MPAA and RIAA’s Megaupload Lawsuits Delayed Until 2016

Nearly four years have passed since Megaupload was shutdown but aside from Andrus Nomm’s plea deal there has been little progress in the criminal proceedings.

Dotcom and several of his fellow Megaupload defendants are currently in the midst of an extradition hearing to determine whether they will be sent to the U.S. to stand trial.

But regardless of the outcome there’s more legal trouble ahead for Kim Dotcom and the defunct file-hosting service. In addition to the criminal case, Megaupload and Dotcom were sued last year by the major record labels and Hollywood’s top movie studios.

Fearing that they might influence criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these civil actions on hold and this week it requested another six month stay.

Yesterday U.S. District Court Liam O’Grady granted Megaupload’s request in the RIAA lawsuit under the same conditions as the earlier orders.

Judge O’Grady’s order

A similar order is also expected in the MPAA case, as the movie studios haven’t objected to another extension.

The ruling means that both the MPAA and RIAA cases will now be delayed until April 2016, given that the criminal proceeding has progressed by then. A stay was also granted in a third civil suit filed by the music group Microhits on similar grounds.

Considering the legal action on multiple fronts and the fact that civil cases can take over half a decade to complete, Megaupload is likely to be tied up in legal proceedings for years to come.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Corporate Yields Are Widening

The above chart from the FRED system shows corporate spreads have widened.  The Aaa (red line, left scale) rose from 1.6% to 1.9% since the first of the year while the Baa spread (blue line, right scare) increased from 2.2% to 3.2%, but over a longer time period (approximately mid-2014 to now).

The CCC chart is more concerning:

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XE Market Analysis: North America - Sep 30, 2015

The dollar has been mixed, lifting versus the yen and euro, but losing ground to a revived pound and ebbing against the dollar bloc currencies. Quarter-end activity has been at play. Equity pundits at the FT and Reuters reported that window-dressing has underpinned a rebound in Asian and European stock markets, a backdrop which has underpinned the likes of the Aussie while weighing on the yen. USD-JPY re-established itself above 120.00 and extended to a 120.35 high.

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Rightscorp Retains Dallas Buyers Club Copyright Troll Lawyer

When the anti-piracy activities of Rightscorp became a topic for public discussion around four years ago (under the name Digital Rights Corp), the company was taking a fresh look at solving the piracy problem.

Rather than going down the RIAA route of aggressive and ruinous litigation, the company began asking for $10 from Internet users found to be downloading and sharing their clients’ content.

Ten bucks was hardly a big deal but it took just 12 months for the fees to be increased to $20 when the company felt account holders could be squeezed for a bit more cash.

The company is currently going through a financial crisis and as a result wants $30 for each alleged offense. The escalation is an indication of a business under pressure and a fresh announcement from Rightscorp suggests that it’s about to get even more aggressive in order to force settlement.

Yesterday the company revealed it has signed an agreement with lawyer Carl D. Crowell of Crowell Law in Salem, Oregon. While he works with other companies too, Crowell is perhaps best known for his work with notorious copyright troll Dallas Buyers Club.

According to Rightscorp, Crowell will be working with the anti-piracy firm’s clients to raise awareness and “educate people” about the effects of piracy. He will also be sending notices to infringers while pursuing litigation against “persistent and egregious infringers.”

Retaining Crowell might be the clearest sign yet that Rightscorp understands the current limitations of its “pay $30″ business model. Rightscorp sends its notices via ISPs and has no idea of the true identity of the people they’re trying to force a payment from. As a result and without a credible threat of litigation, Rightscorp’s targets are simply free to ignore the company’s emailed threats.

Should they subsequently receive correspondence from Mr Crowell, however, who has a track record with companies like Dallas Buyers Club, then the situation could very well take on a more urgent tone, forcing a payment and keeping Rightscorp and its clients happy.

“Crowell has been recognized by the courts for his successful targeting of the worst offenders that illegally download films and TV shows to make sure they are held accountable for their actions with dozens of judgments and injunctions against infringers,” says Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec.

“This agreement will be beneficial to both parties and our clients and we hope with our continued efforts to see an increase in public awareness and recognition of the problems with online piracy and greater respect and appreciation for the value and work of the artists we represent.”

The team up with Crowell, who last month claimed it was impossible for BitTorrent users to remain anonymous online, is the second legal partnership publicly announced by Rightscorp.

In August the company said it had signed an agreement with lawfirm Flynn Wirkus Young to target users who ignore DMCA notices and settlement offers sent by copyright holders. Cases filed earlier in the year on behalf of Rotten Records targeted Comcast users, among others.

While Rightscorp appeared to start out with fresh ideas, it appears that the company is now well and truly on the path to becoming yet another aggressive copyright troll outfit. The big question now is how this new approach will sit with ISPs in the United States, many of whom willingly forward Rightscorp DMCA notices settlement threats to their customers.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Sep 30, 2015

A disorderly quarter came, or is coming to, an orderly finale in most Asian markets today, a backdrop that inspired moderate gains in the Aussie dollar and Asian currencies, and moderate losses in the yen. Asian stocks rallied. The Nikkei 225 closed with the solid 2.7% gain and Australia's ASX 200 with an impressive 1.8% rise, while the Shanghai Composite was showing just over a 1% advance in late PM session. These upward flurries, of course, belie what has been an ugly quarter, with the Nikkei losing 14.9% over the period, its worst quarter since the June 2010 quarter.

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RUTracker Says Copyright Holders Can Moderate its Torrents

Last week Russian telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor marked the two-year anniversary of a 2013 amendment to copyright legislation by releasing details of how many times the law has been used to block sites.

Since August 1, 2013, Roskomnadzor received 189 copyright-related complaints from rights holders and access to 282 sites was restricted as a result.

Unsurprisingly, several torrent sites have been targeted over the past 24 months including The Pirate Bay, the world’s most controversial index. This week, however, the spotlight falls on Russia’s most popular torrent site.

Known as Torrents.ru before a controversial domain seizure in 2010, RUTracker is a huge site with a thriving community. According to Alexa it is the 17th most popular site in the whole of Russia and as a result attracts a lot of attention.

This week the National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI), a group which counts Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI among its members, will attempt to have RUTracker permanently blocked by local ISPs. According to NFMI CEO Leonid Agronov, his group tried to negotiate with RUTracker over the removal of content but the effort came to nothing, leaving legal action as the only option.

Nevertheless, RUTracker says the site is still prepared to work with NFMI, initially on the basis of traditional notice-and-takedown, in an effort to stave off a nationwide blockade.

“Of course, we are ready for talks, but it is not clear what we can arrange. If we receive from rightsholders links to the data that violates their rights, we can remove them during the day,” a site spokesperson said.

“If copyright holders act in accordance with established practices, by sending us an email notice referencing the items that violate their rights, we would long ago have removed them, as we do in thousands of similar cases. But they chose the court instead.”

However, RUTracker says it is actually prepared to go way beyond standard takedowns, by effectively giving copyright holders torrent moderation rights on the site.

“If there are many links [that breach copyright] we can give the rightsholders their own special account, and they can remove links that violate their rights. Similar to [the system available] on YouTube, for example,” the source added.

At this late stage it seems unlikely that the record labels will back away from their efforts to have RUTracker blocked, but even if successful that may only serve to discourage the site from cooperating fully on takedowns in the future.

In any event, RUTracker appears prepared for the long haul. After being founded in 2004 the site has just celebrated its 11th birthday, a somewhat rare achievement in the torrent world.

“Over the years everything has happened – bad and good,” the site said in a statement.

“We’ve tried to block the whims of some copyright holders, although we are always ready for constructive cooperation on copyright, and most of them have reached a compromise that would accommodate the interests of both the authors of the content and its consumers.

“They are trying to drown out the various computer hooligans, but our friends help us to cope with it. We are told that ‘RUTracker is not the same, and will die soon’, and we smile at the skeptics, increasing our audience with petabytes of content!” the site concludes.

RUTracker is mostly popular with Russians although on-site language options now encourage visits by many thousands of users from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. English speakers are also enjoying the tracker in increasing numbers, thanks to Google Translate and a little patience.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Sep 29, 2015

The dollar started the session on a firmer footing, though as Wall Street squandered its early gains, the greenback mostly headed south. Decent house price data and a surprise rise in consumer confidence aided the USD early on, resulting in EUR-USD dipping to 1.1195 lows and a 120.16 peak for USD-JPY. The 1.11 and 120 handles were soon given back however, as the euro headed to 1.1260 highs, and dollar-yen slipped under 119.65.

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Russian Facebook Ordered to Crack Down on Piracy

In 2014, Universal Music and Warner Music ran out of patience with Russian social networking giant VKontakte.

Alongside claims that VK facilitates large-scale copyright infringement, the labels filed a copyright complaint with the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court.

“VK’s music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large-scale. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem,” IFPI’s Frances Moore said at the time.

Today, more than a year later, a decision has been handed down. According to Russian news agency TASS, the Court largely upheld the claims of the labels. As a result, VKontakte is now obliged to implement “effective” filtering technology to prevent infringement of Universal’s and Warner’s rights.

According to IFPI this means that VK will not only need to remove the labels’ music from its service, but also prevent the re-uploading of the same in the future.

“This is a very important and positive decision for the Russian music market and for music creators in Russia. VK’s infringing music service has been a huge obstacle to the development of a licensed business in Russia, making available hundreds of thousands of copyright infringing tracks to more than 70 million daily users,” says IFPI CEO Frances Moore.

“Now, the Russian court has ordered VK to use technology to stop infringements. This is good news for rights holders in Russia. We now look to VK to implement the court’s decision and stop these ongoing infringements.”

While the labels will be content with what could amount to a significant victory, they didn’t have things entirely their own way. The Court rejected their calls for 36 million rubles ($547,000) in compensation.

Sony Music was originally involved in the action against VKontakte but dropped out after agreeing a confidential settlement last summer.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: North America - Sep 29, 2015

The dollar rebounded from lows seen against its G3 peers during a firmly risk-off session in Asia as investor spirits recovered during the European AM session. EUR-USD ebbed to the low 1.12s after logging a five-year peak of 1.1281 in early Europe trade. A bigger than expected deflation reading in Spanish HICP data, and German state figures pointing to a risk that German HICP might dip into negative territory, elicited euro selling as the data gives talking-down-the-currency ammunition to the ECB.

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Dutch Filmmakers Claim Piracy Damages From Government

Compared to many other countries around the world, pirating movies and TV-shows is hugely popular in the Netherlands.

Up to a third of the population is estimated to download and stream copyrighted content without paying for it.

This high percentage is not surprising as the Netherlands has traditionally been a relative safe haven for pirates. Downloading movies without permission was not punishable by law until last year when the European Court of Justice spoke out against the tolerant stance.

As a result the Dutch Government quickly outlawed unauthorized downloading. However, breaking the habits of a large section of the population will take more than that and local piracy rates still remains high.

This prompted Dutch filmmakers’ association SEKAM to hold the Government responsible and demand compensation for the piracy losses they claim to have suffered.

FD reports that SEKAM submitted their claim to the Ministry of Security and Justice earlier this year. The request was denied but the filmmakers intend to press on. They maintain that their demands are legitimate and want the Government to compensate them for 10 years of piracy damages.

SEKAM lawyer Bas Le Poole points out that despite the new ban on illegal downloading, not much has changed. Piracy is still rampant and there haven’t been any prosecutions of individual downloaders.

This stance is shared by film producer San Fu Maltha. He notes that the Government has actually encouraged the public to pirate, costing the industry millions in revenue.

“Downloading pirated movies has only been outlawed recently in the Netherlands. Previously, the Government not only tolerated but even encouraged illegal downloading. As a result the industry has been severely damaged”

Critics often argue that the film industry itself can do more to counter piracy by making sure that content is widely available for a decent price. Maltha admits that improvements can be made on the supply side but adds that this should coincide with stronger enforcement.

“The Government has already decided that consumers should not be prosecuted. I understand that it’s not a popular move and electoral suicide, but they shouldn’t rule it out,” he says.

SEKAM is now calling for an accurate estimate of the damages the industry has suffered. Determining this is hard, but the association points to a recent Considerati study which estimated the losses at 78 million euros per year.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Sep 29, 2015

Risk has most distinctly been off during the Asian session following hefty Wall Street losses and yesterday's headline-hogging nosedive in London-listed commodity miner Glencore as investors fret about waning Chinese demand. Japan's Nikkei 225 and Australia's All Ordinaries indexes were walloped, the former finishing with a 4.05% loss and the latter with a 3.5% decline. The Shanghai Composite was off its lows in late PM session, but was still showing a 1.6% loss.

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Aurous Dev Fires Back at “Fearmongering, Babbling” Rightscorp

Earlier this month, news of an upcoming piece of music software began to cause waves.

Centered around a media player supporting a wide array of audio formats, Aurous will leverage content on the BitTorrent network and other web sources to bring a Spotify-like experience to users.

With its clean and tidy interface, it’s no wonder that Aurous has already been likened to a “Popcorn Time for music”, a branding that could yet prove to be both blessing and curse in equal amounts, depending on one’s perspective.

The software, which TF tested in pre-alpha, is not yet available to the public but that hasn’t stopped anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp jumping into the fray with both feet. Last Friday the troubled company issued a press release, claiming to have a solution to the threat supposedly posed by Aurous.

Highlighting the decentralized approach taken by developer Andrew Sampson, Rightscorp warned potential customers that Aurous could not be dealt with by regular means. Monetizing piracy will be their only chance, the company argued.

“Aurous’ technology will be unaffected by take-down notices, site blocking and will not use Pirate Bay or any domain names that can be blocked,” the company warned.

“It will distribute the music search metadata via the peer-to-peer networks, allowing the ability to stream large amounts of free music illegally and providing a very easy-to-use interface to the BitTorrent network.”

Rightscorp CEO Christopher Sabec added that there is a “lot of concern” over the impending Aurous launch but noted that his company can provide a solution.

“The Aurous app allows for access to a large amount of free music, acting like a Spotify, however, offering zero payments to the rightsholder,” Sabec said.

“Rightscorp’s ability to get individual seeders to stop seeding will be the only scalable way to stop this next explosion of free music,” he added.

TorrentFreak asked Sampson to comment on Rightscorp’s announcement and the somewhat irritated developer responded.

“Rightscorp has no idea how our technology works, nor our plans at protecting right holders from copyright infringement and giving copyright holders the tools for managing their content, monetizing and/or protecting work their work,” he told TF.

“We announced earlier through Twitter [well before the Rightscorp announcement] that we will be creating a content-id system and DMCA portal so we can ensure Aurous does not infringe on anyone’s copyrights. Because this system is still so premature in its development, we can’t give more details, however, we can assure you Rightscorp is wrong.”

Sampson insists that first and foremost Aurous is a music player, albeit one with search engines that leverage existing APIs from “completely legal and licensed services” backed up by the power of P2P.

“The P2P portion of Aurous is nothing more than a comprehensive and cached list of these searches so results can be delivered faster to users as spoken about in our tech blog. While you can search across P2P, it is not a default option, our P2P search option is there for hard to find copy-left content, but in that regard, is still a search engine.”

Sampson feels that by announcing an anti-piracy solution for a product that hasn’t even been released yet Rightscorp has jumped the gun somewhat. However, the likelihood that this is almost certainly an attempt to grab publicity isn’t lost on the developer.

“The fear mongering by Rightscorp is nothing more than babble and attempts to garner clients to ‘protect’ them from our application which hasn’t even been released,” Sampson says.

“Maybe Rightscorp should read this piece. A French economist predicted the current state of music 40 years ago. The music industry is killing itself. We live in a world were licensed material can be streamed close to 200,000,000 times from Spotify and the writer for that song receives a pitiful $5,600.

“But according to many studies, sells are still at an all time high. Aurous is here to change the music industry for the better,” Sampson concludes.

This isn’t the first time that Rightscorp has attempted to ride on the tails of a ‘new’ sharing phenomenon. Late August the company launch its Popcorn Time ‘mitigation service’ but in reality its offering was the same old model with a new coat of promotional paint.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Sep 28, 2015

Another risk-off session saw the dollar suffer versus most major currencies, as China's corporate profit slide weighed on equities, yields, and commodities through the N.Y. session on Monday. Nearly in-line U.S. income and consumption data helped the greenback briefly, though as Wall Street indices fell as much as 3%, USD bears took the upper hand. EUR-USD found support into 1.1150, before vaulting to 1.1247 highs, as USD-JPY gave back the 120 handle, to base at 119.70.

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Pirate Bay Founder Finally Free After Three Years

Gottfrid Svartholm, also known as Anakata, was a founding member of The Pirate Bay and played a key role during the site’s early years.

He has spent the last three years in prisons in Sweden and Denmark, for a variety of offenses. Last month his prison time in Denmark ended and after serving a final month in Sweden he is now a free man.

At this time Gottfrid and his family prefer not to make any public statements, which is understandable considering all that’s happened, but his mother just confirmed the good news.

His release marks the end of a tough time with several consecutive setbacks.

It all started in 2011 when Gottfrid received a one-year prison sentence for his involvement with the notorious site, which he initially avoided.

September 2012 he was arrested by Cambodian police in Phnom Penh, the city where he had been living for several years. A few days later he was transferred to Sweden to serve his sentence, but that was only the start.

Soon after his release the Pirate Bay founder was accused of several hacking and fraud offenses.

The case went to trial in 2013 and Gottfrid was subsequently found guilty of hacking, aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, which resulted in a two-year prison sentence. The Pirate Bay founder always maintained his innocence and went on to appeal the verdict.

The Appeal Court agreed in part and cleared Gottfrid of hacking the Nordea bank. The court still found him guilty of hacking IT company Logica but decided to reduce his sentence from two years to one.

While he was serving the Swedish hacking sentence Denmark also went after Gottfrid. Despite public protests and an appeal to the Supreme Court in Sweden, he was extradited during the fall of 2013 and held in solitary confinement for weeks on end.

In Denmark the Pirate Bay founder stood accused of hacking into the mainframe computers of IT company CSC. Gottfrid denied these allegations and during trial he pointed out that Sweden previously acquitted him of a similar offense.

Despite the “not guilty” plea and expert witness testimonies in his favor, Gottfrid was sentenced to another 3.5 years in prison, which was affirmed following an appeal to the High Court.

As in many other countries, well-behaved convicts only have to serve part of their sentence in Denmark so Gottfrid was released last month.

That’s also when the latest setback was announced. Shortly after his release he was arrested again to serve one remaining month of his hacking sentence in Sweden.

Today Gottfrid is truly a free man again. While prison wasn’t easy for him and his family, the future is finally looking a bit brighter.

Over the past years Gottfrid has received a lot of support from the public, but first and foremost from his mother Kristina, who stood beside him every step of the way and always was kind enough to answer questions and have her son’s voice heard outside of prison.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: North America - Sep 28, 2015

The dollar has been mixed in early-week trade, losing ground to an outperforming yen while posting fractional gains versus the euro, and holding at near net-unchanged levels in the cases against the Aussie and Canadian dollars. There was a sense of markets hunkering down ahead of a busy data week, which will include the release of PMI surveys from key global economies and culminates with the September U.S. payrolls report on Friday. USD-JPY fell to a 120.01 low, the lowest level traded since last Thursday and over 1% down on Friday's peak.

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Megaupload Paid Prolific Pirates Thousands in Rewards, U.S. Says

As the extradition hearing of Kim Dotcom and his former Megaupload colleagues enters a second week, a lawyer acting for the United States government has continued to make the case against the Internet entrepreneur and co-defendants Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk.

With Dotcom and friends due to have their right of reply later in proceedings, thus far media attention has been focused on a totally one-sided version of events. Today that pattern continued, with Christine Gordon QC focusing on the rewards scheme operated by Megaupload between 2006 and 2011.

Just like YouTube does today, Megaupload rewarded users whose videos were downloaded thousands of times. However, the U.S. suggests that Dotcom and his colleagues were well aware that the users that brought the most traffic to the site – and earned the most in rewards – did so by uploading infringing content.

A user known only as “TH” is reported to have been paid more than $50,000 in rewards between 2006 and 2011, despite his sharing being in the spotlight of copyright holders.

“So far TH has provided us 18 million download pageviews [and] US$112,257 premium sales to users who have downloaded at least 15 of his files,” Mathias Ortmann wrote to Kim Dotcom in 2007.

However, the company also received a significant number of copyright complaints against “TH” – 1,200 in all – which were processed by Bram van der Kolk. According to the lawyer, Megaupload failed to terminate the user’s account, instead offering him additional server space. In a 2008, another conversation centered around whether infringers should continue to get paid.

“Growth is mainly based on infringement anyway,” Van der Kolk said via Skype.

“What if we modulate our tolerance according to sales triggered?” Ortmann responded.

According to NZHerald, 77% of Megaupload’s members had received at least one takedown notice against their accounts, with 56% receiving 10 or more. Even today, however, single strikes against user accounts are tolerated by YouTube, for example, while users of some of the main ISPs in the United States have amassed dozens of infringement notices without being terminated.

During the summer of 2011, Megaupload discontinued its rewards program, a move that proved unpopular with the site’s uploaders. According to U.S., Dotcom then took the opportunity to contact PayPal with complaints about his competitors who continued to “illegally” pay such bonuses to their users.

“They pay everyone no matter if the files are pirated or not and they have NO repeat infringer policy, and they are using Paypal to pay infringers,” Dotcom wrote.

In court today, Christine Gordon pointed out that Megaupload had run a similar program for more than half a decade.

“They describe the payments as illegal but Megaupload had done that for six years,” she said.

While Dotcom and associates will eventually enjoy a full right to reply, lawyer Ron Mansfield raised objections against the U.S. citing evidence from users such as “TH” who have allegedly provided evidence against Dotcom while being allowed to remain anonymous.

“I’m just inquiring whether the US is prepared to identify the users so we are at least in the position of knowing who the users are and making some inquiry in relation to these conversations,” he said.

“In my submission it’s unfair that the identities of relevant parties are being withheld.”

Today’s evidence comes on the heels of revelations during last Friday’s session in which conversations between Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk suggested that the pair knew the company might get into trouble over rewards.

“That’s the big flaw in the rewards program: we are making profit off more than 90 per cent infringing files,” Van der Kolk said.

The hearing is expected to continue for another three weeks.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Sep 28, 2015

The yen has traded firmer amid a backdrop of mixed stock markets. More disappointing data came out of Chia, where industrial profits fell 8.8% in August, the third consecutive month of decline. The Shanghai Composite gave up intraday gains and was showing a 0.5% in late PM session, while Japan's Nikkei 225 closed with a 1.6% loss and Australia's ASX 200 with a 1.2% gain. Conditions were thinned by the absence of Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, which were closed for the Mid-Autumn Festival. China is also about to start a week-long holiday.

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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 09/28/15

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Tomorrowland 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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(10)	Tomorrowland	6.6 / trailer
2	(…)	Terminator Genisys	6.8 / trailer
3	(…)	San Andreas	6.2 / trailer
4	(1)	Avengers: Age of Ultron	7.8 / trailer
5	(2)	Minions	6.7 / trailer
6	(…)	Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation	7.7 / trailer
7	(3)	Mad Max: Fury Road	8.4 / trailer
8	(4)	Vacation (Subbed WEBRip)	6.3 / trailer
9	(…)	Magic Mike XXL	5.9 / trailer
10	(7)	Fantastic Four (Subbed HDrip)	4.0 / trailer

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.