RIAA Wants $17 Million Damages From ‘New’ Grooveshark

Earlier this year the long running lawsuit between the RIAA and Grooveshark came to an end. However, within days a new site was launched aiming to take its place.

The RIAA wasn’t happy with this development and quickly sued the reincarnation, obtaining a restraining order to prevent domain registrars and hosting companies from offering their services to the site.

Namecheap quickly suspended the original domain name. CloudFlare initially refused to cooperate, but after protests the CDN provider was ordered by the court to comply.

The new Grooveshark wasn’t giving up easily though and continued to operate for a while under several new domain names. However, in recent weeks the entire operation has gone dark.

The RIAA, undeterred, has no intention of dropping the case. This week the music group asked a New York federal court to issue a default judgment against the site’s operator.

In their motion the record labels describe the site as a copyright-infringing operation which tried to use the Grooveshark brand to gain popularity with former users.

This worked, as the site was widely covered in the press. However, with the labels controlling Grooveshark’s trademarks it only provided the RIAA with more legal ammunition.

“Defendants’ Counterfeit Service prominently featured counterfeit replicas of the Grooveshark Marks as well as identical graphical elements taken from the original Grooveshark website,” the RIAA writes in its motion (pdf) this week.

In addition, the labels also accuse the new Grooveshark of distributing numerous copyrighted tracks without permission.

“Plaintiffs have provided conclusive evidence that infringing copies of MP3 files that correspond to each of the Works-in-Suit have been streamed, reproduced, and distributed via the Counterfeit Service to computers located in New York.”

The RIAA lists 89 tracks as evidence and asks for the maximum statutory damages for each infringement. This brings the total amount to a massive $13,350,000.

In addition, the record labels are asking for $4 million for willful counterfeiting of two Grooveshark marks, and another $400,000 for cybersquatting, by registering four Grooveshark domain names in bad faith.

Finally, the RIAA has also filed a request for the court to transfer the four Grooveshark domain names so they can’t be used for any infringing actions in the future.

There is little doubt that the RIAA will win the case, especially since the operator of the new Grooveshark has not appeared in court. However, since the operator is reportedly located in Ukraine, it may be difficult to cash in on those millions.

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

Weekly Indicators: weak but steady edition

In the rear view mirror, Q3 GDP came in at +1.6%. Excluding inventory reductions, it was over +3%! The Employment Cost Index rose +0.6%.

 

Monthly data for September included positive real personal income and spending, positive Chicago PMI, but declines in consumer sentiment and durable goods orders. New home sales fell off a cliff - but this very volatile and heavily revised series should always be taken with a grain of salt.

 

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With Popcorn Time Faltering, Stremio Eyes the Top Spot

Most readers will not need to be reminded of the chaos that has surrounded the Popcorn Time brand this last couple of weeks, but for those needing a short summary, here goes.

The main fork of Popcorn Time, PopcornTime.io, is now dead. Previously sanctioned by the original Popcorn Time creator, the project in its most recent form is now consigned to history. In its place sits ‘Butter‘, a new project which aims to take the legal heat off the project’s developers but is less likely to become an instant hit like its predecessor.

Making matters worse, most variants of Popcorn Time relied on the YTS torrent site for their main movie content. That site has now been down for well over a week and will not be coming back. As a result the Popcorn Time applications installed on users’ computers are less useful than they previously were.

While movie companies around the world will have hoped that disenchanted users simply switched off Popcorn Time at the first signs of trouble and signed up with Netflix, life just isn’t that simple. There’s now room at the top of the unofficial streaming market for a new challenger and a group of programmers from Europe think they have such a contender up their sleeve. It certainly looks impressive.

Under development since 2012, Stremio is hardly a newcomer. Back then, however, it was known under a different name.

“We always knew that torrents were a huge source of video content so we decided to try building an app that can stream torrents – for fun,” Stremio co-founder Ivo informs TorrentFreak.

“A few months later, we had our first prototype called Cinematic. The app was based on libtorrent, python and nw.js. We basically had a click-and-play movie catalog streaming from torrents.”

Cinematic utilized the Peerflix engine and Ivo says he loved what developer ‘Mafintosh‘ was doing.

“We helped with Peerflix as well as integrated it into Cinematic,” he explains.

At this point in its life Cinematic remained an unpublished project. “It wasn’t as polished or legally sustainable as we’d like,” Ivo says. But then another application with Peerflix roots hit the big time.

“Born out of Peerflix, came Popcorn Time,” Ivo says. “It was very interesting for us to see what was going to happen with their product.”

With Popcorn Time grabbing the majority of the headlines, Ivo and his co-founder continued work on their own software and last year had a breakthrough.

“In 2014 we focused on creating a general-purpose app that’s a movie/series browser, which provides content from different sources. Not just torrents. We started developing an add-on system to supply the content. That’s how Stremio was born,” he reveals.

“We left the development of our torrent streaming add-on to our community. Currently we have ‘Torrent Stream’ – a third-party add-on available if Stremio users want to enable it.”

While Stremio had the ability to pull content from YTS, that site is gone for good. However, in its absence it uses sites such as Kickass, Torrentz and others. It then augments the video content with artwork and data pulled from the world’s leading movie databases.

“Stremio associates every usable video file within the torrents with an IMDB ID. The beautiful thing here is that even if YTS goes off, and never recovers, this system will continue working with other sources,” Ivo says.

“It’s based on the Multi-Pass Torrent open-source software. In comparison to Popcorn Time, I think Torrent Stream and the way it works makes Stremio more content rich and reliable streaming from torrents, if you enable it and if it is legal in your area.”

In addition to pulling video from torrents (people can also post a magnet link in the search bar), Stremio is also able to grab recorded and even live content from elsewhere.

“Right now, Stremio’s official add-ons allow people to watch from YouTube and [live TV broadcasts from] Filmon.tv. We also have an add-on providing you with the cheapest legal source to stream a movie / TV show. You can also watch videos locally from a hard drive,” Ivo notes.

“Our plan for the future is to provide a one-stop place to organize and watch instantly all your favorite video content – movies, TV shows, video channels, TV channels.”

But in addition to merely viewing content, Stremio’s devs hope to assist users to remain both organized and mobile. The app already has a library feature to keep track of TV series and movies plus notifications and recommendations. It can also cast (work in progress) to Smart TVs and mobile devices.

Furthermore, since Stremio uses an add-on system (making it a little more like Kodi than Popcorn Time), third-party developers are free to chime in with their own ideas and tools for extra functionality. For those that way inclined, anime and adult add-ons are reportedly on the way.

“We’re also working on providing more official add-ons ourselves – in fact, we even have a TV show officially licensed for us now in the Cinema add-on,” Ivo concludes.

Stremio is still being developed (PC, Mac, Linux – partially open source) so can be a little temperamental at times. However, it illustrates perfectly where a Popcorn Time-style application can go in the future when plug-ins are utilized. Perhaps this is what ‘Butter‘ has in mind.

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

YIFY/ YTS Shuts Down Forever – The End of a Piracy Icon

Ten days ago the popular movie torrent site YTS stopped working.

The downtime raised concern among many BitTorrent users, not least because the site belongs to movie release group YIFY, which has dominated public BitTorrent sites for several years.

Today we can report that this reign has come to an end. YIFY and YTS have shutdown permanently, as predicted earlier this week.

A lot of information has been made available over the past several days and multiple sources have now confirmed that YTS and YIFY will not return. The entire operation has stopped which means that no new official YIFY movie releases will appear on any torrent site, anywhere.

TF has received additional explanatory details from trusted sources, but we have been asked not to reveal all of the information just yet. However, our sources confirm without doubt that the shutdown is permanent.

The operator of YTS/YIFY, meanwhile, remains silent.

The news marks the end of a remarkable era. YIFY first arrived on the scene in 2010 and the group has shared over 6,000 movie releases since.

The group’s website (YTS.to) also gained popularity in recent years. Earlier this year the operator informed TF that they had close to a million unique visitors per day, generating six million pageviews.

The YTS/YIFY shutdown doesn’t mean that piracy will end anytime soon, but it’s one of the most significant changes to the landscape in recent history. YIFY releases were consistently among the most-pirated movies, week after week.

In an interview in 2013, YIFY attributed this popularity to the presentation and consistency of its releases.

“I personally think that many people are following and downloading YIFY encodes due to the consistency we offer in our releasing. Everything from the consistent film cover art, to the information layout, and ultimately to the file-size of our encodes,” YIFY said.

“I believe this is important because people like stability and assurance with what they are downloading. By adding consistency to a reasonable file-size, we have filled a spot in the community, which seemingly has a lot of demand,” he added.

YIFY also played a crucial part as the primary movie supplier for many Popcorn Time forks. The size of the shutdown fallout will become apparent during the weeks to come.

Over the past several days many people have been misled by fake YIFY websites, Facebook accounts and impostors. These should not be trusted and are trying to profit from the confusion.

To be continued.

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

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Oct 30, 2015

The dollar was under modest pressure in N.Y. on Friday, ending the week and the month on a softer footing. U.S. ECI, income and consumption data was disappointing, while Michigan sentiment missed the mark as well. The oily bright spot in the data was a nice rebound in Chicago PMI. The mix of report helped the greenback lower generally, though FX ranges were relatively narrow. EUR-USD found support at 1.1000 early in the session, and later managed a 1.1072 peak.

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The best +1.6% GDP report you'll ever see

Yesterday's GDP report was the best +1.6% reading you could want.
 
The big issue this year has been the effect of the 20% increase in the broad trade weighted dollar. Yesterday's report indicates that 
(1) the consumer has not been harmed, and continues to power the US economy forward; 

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The best +1.6% GDP report you'll ever see

Yesterday's GDP report was the best +1.6% reading you could want.
 
The big issue this year has been the effect of the 20% increase in the broad trade weighted dollar. Yesterday's report indicates that 
(1) the consumer has not been harmed, and continues to power the US economy forward; 

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XE Market Analysis: North America - Oct 30, 2015

The BoJ disappointed many overnight, as policy was left on hold, resulting in a USD-JPY sell-off to 120.30 lows. The pairing later bounced back as a Nikkei story indicated a fresh stimulus budget was being prepared. EUR-USD reclaimed the 1.10 handle on mostly better EU data, though month-end related demand was a factor in the euro's rally. USD-CAD was steady as oil prices settled in inside of Thursday's trading range. Cable advanced to 1.5359 highs, after finding good buyers into the 1.5310 level earlier in the session. The U.S.

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Should RuTracker Delete 320,000 Torrents to Pacify Record Labels?

Previously known as Torrents.ru, RUTracker.org is a very large torrent tracker and one of Russia’s most popular sites overall. It’s also facing a huge dilemma which has the potential to seriously affect the site’s functionality and perhaps its entire future.

RuTracker’s problems arise from its poor relationship with the National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI), a group which counts Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI among its members. They insist that RuTracker repeatedly infringes their copyrights on a grand scale and as a result they want the site blocked in Russia.

To achieve this aim, earlier this month NFMI filed a lawsuit at the Moscow City Court, the first of its kind against a torrent site. If successful, RuTracker would be permanently blocked by all Russian ISPs. However, it appears that RuTracker’s operators see the chance of a negotiated way out.

Takedown

RuTracker insists that it cooperates with rightsholders who want torrents removed and says that since the start of the year around 10,000 have been deleted. It has also responded to 19 direct requests (covering 60 torrents) from telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor.

“We cooperate with right holders, precisely because the role of RuTracker is a non-profit library,” the site said in a statement this week.

According to the site (and present issues aside), things have been running pretty smoothly too. In the past three years no complaints have been filed with its ISP or domain registrar. Furthermore, no copyright holders have ever publicly complained that the site refuses to take down torrents.

Nevertheless, RuTracker says it has been handed an ultimatum.

“We have been handed a huge list containing several million artists, albums and songs with an ultimatum to remove everything that is in this list and block the appearance of any of these songs, albums or artists on RuTracker in the future. Otherwise the NFMI will insist on blocking RuTracker in the territory of the Russian Federation through the courts,” the site says.

After trawling through the lists provided by the labels, RuTracker says it has drawn a number of conclusions.

First, they contain matches for around 22,000 music albums/torrents accessible via the site. Second, “full or partial matches” for songs present on the list appear in a further 300,000 torrents.

While not all of the songs on the second batch of albums are a problem individually, as long as just one NFMI track exists in a torrent (in a compilation, for example), that whole torrent becomes an issue. The site believes that to wade through them all properly could take months or even years to complete.

Let the people decide

So, in a nutshell, RuTracker is presenting its users with a choice. Do they want the site’s operators to delete 320,000 torrents to pacify the labels, or would they prefer them to be left intact but face a nationwide ISP ban?

While the choice appears simple on first view, on closer examination it becomes more complex. Losing 320,000 torrents would obviously be a blow, but an estimated 50% of RuTracker’s users are from Russia and it’s far from clear how many would be capable of circumventing a blockade.

“Not all users from Russia will be able to bypass the ISP block so the current audience of RuTracker (about 13 million active accounts) would be quickly reduced. Also, the number of new torrents would decrease strongly and the speeds available on existing torrents would be noticeably lower,” the site explains.

And of course, even if the site does remove 320,000 torrents as asked, who’s to say the demands will stop there? The site predicts that sooner or later there will be other unresolved copyright issues which will result in RuTracker being blocked in Russia anyway.

RuTracker reportedly has around 1.6 million torrents so the chances of further complaints are indeed extremely high. Nevertheless, the site is currently running a poll among its members to decide its fate. Delete the torrents and try to stay useful to all, or refuse and have millions of members locked out?

Currently the poll has attracted almost 278,317 votes, an indication of just how big RuTracker is. Thus far nearly three-quarters are defiant. While 30% think the site should remove the torrents to avoid being blocked, 70% disagree. That large majority believes that the site should leave the torrents where they are and trust users to find a way to circumvent any blockade.

It’s a dilemma no other torrent site has ever faced. The outcome and fallout will be extremely interesting.

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

Google Asked to Remove One Billion “Pirate” Search Results

In recent years copyright holders have overloaded Google with DMCA takedown notices, targeting links to pirated content.

These requests have increased dramatically over the years. In 2008, the search engine received only a few dozen takedown notices during the entire year, but today it processes two million per day on average.

This week TorrentFreak crunched the numbers in Google’s Transparency Report and found that since its publication Google has been asked to remove over 1,007,766,482 links to allegedly infringing webpages.

Indeed, that’s more than a billion reported URLs, a milestone Google crossed just a few days ago.

The number of notices continues to increase at a rapid pace as nearly half of the requests, 420 million, were submitted during the first months of 2015. The graph below illustrates this sharp rise in takedown notices.

While some notices identify pages that are not infringing, most are correct. These are then removed by Google and no longer appear in the search results.

The successful takedown notices are also factored into the Google’s search algorithms, where frequently targeted websites are downranked.

TorrentFreak asked Google for a comment on the most recent milestone but the company chose not to respond on the record.

In a submission to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator last week Google stated that it has taken various measures to help copyright holders, including swift removals.

“We process more takedown notices, and faster, than any other search engine,” the search giant commented.

“We receive notices for a tiny fraction of everything we host and index, which nonetheless amounts to millions of copyright removal requests per week that are processed, on average, in under six hours.”

The company rejects broader actions, such as the removal of entire domain names, as this would prove counterproductive and lead to overbroad censorship.

Copyright holders, however, don’t share these concerns. Over the years groups such as the MPAA and RIAA have repeatedly argued that clearly infringing sites should be barred from Google’s index. In addition, they want Google to promote legal services.

While Google believes that the billion reported URLs are a sign that the DMCA takedown process is working properly, rightsholders see it as a signal of an unbeatable game of whack-a-mole.

As this stalemate continues, we can expect the number of reported pages to continue to rise in the future, adding millions of new URLs on a daily basis.

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

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Oct 29, 2015

Following Wednesday's sharp rally, the dollar was relatively subdued through the N.Y. session. Q3 U.S. GDP disappointed, though yields continued their march higher. The dollar later settled into a narrow trading range versus the major currencies, though has retained the bulk of gains it made post-FOMC. EUR-USD made N.Y. session lows of 1.0925 earlier, before topping out at 1.0986, and then settling in near 1.0960. USD-JPY has held the 121 handle in the lead-up to tonight's BoJ meeting, while cable plied a thin range on either side of 1.5300.

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Minister Asks Indian ISPs to Permanently Block Hundreds of ‘Pirate’ Sites

For several years, filmmakers in India have sought to protect their content from unauthorized online distribution. That has mainly taken the form of so-called ‘John Doe’ orders.

Back in May 2015 one such order not only targeted The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, Torrentz and TorrentFunk, but also video streaming site Vimeo. As a result, local ISPs were given just 24 hours to stop their subscribers from accessing the sites.

While it seems relatively easy to obtain these kinds of court orders, they have to be obtained each time a film is released to the public. That clearly has cost implications for those obtaining the orders and in recent months there have been calls for a more suitable system to be put in place.

During a meeting yesterday between representatives from the film industry, government, police and ISPs, the discussion centered around the “grave threat” posed by online piracy and what actions can be taken against it.

Highlighting measures taken elsewhere, particularly in Europe, the notion of a national ‘pirate site’ blacklist was put on the table. Information Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao was also briefed on the actions being taken by City of London Police and was asked to consider similar measures.

A slide shown in India yesterday

Industry figures told the minister that piracy carried out on a core 240 websites costs them millions of dollars.

“If government could take action against all these websites, then piracy could be controlled,” said producer Suresh Babu.

The appeal appeared to resonate with Minister K.T. Rama Rao who responded with a promise of government action. He also called on the ISPs present to block the offending sites, which according to one report could number 1000.

The ISPs are said to have responded positively with an indication that they wish to play no part in illegal activities. However, they also urged the government to provide clear official instructions detailing their requirements.

In response to the industry calls the Minister promised to react quickly, with the creation of a special police unit and action against the main sites within 30 days.

“Unlike before, piracy has taken new shape. Even educated professionals, engineering students are resorting to the crime of movie piracy which is not good for society. I’m happy that Mr KT Rao is seriously looking into the issue,” said producer Suresh Babu.

It will be interesting to see how the Indian government will push through tough anti-piracy measures in such a short time-frame and how it will do so without punishing sites such as Vimeo who are clearly engaged in legitimate business.

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

XE Market Analysis: North America - Oct 29, 2015

The dollar's post-Fed surge petered out today. EUR-USD logged a rebound peak of 1.0976, and then turned back under 1.0960. The run higher coincided with an unexpected rise in the Eurozone economic confidence index, to 105.9 from 105.6, though the data is not likely to re-route the ECB's course to turning the stimulus spigot again. USD-JPY failed to sustain post-Fed statement gains above 121.00, with the pair subsequently settling around 120.80 with markets cautious ahead of tomorrow's BoJ meeting.

[EUR, USD]

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Dotcom’s Bid to Halt Extradition Hearing Fails, Defense Begins

It was an extremely long road up until that point, with multiple successive delays hindering progress, but last month saw Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing finally get underway.

The hearing was expected to take around four weeks but earlier this month it became clear progress would not be so swift. After the U.S. had made its case to extradite Dotcom and former colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk, the defendants repeatedly claimed that the hearing was unfair.

The United States had done everything possible to stop the quartet from mounting a proper defense, they argued, so the whole thing should be paused or even thrown out altogether following submissions to that effect.

The hearing was due to end on October 16, despite Dotcom being absent due to pain from an existing bad injury. That didn’t happen and today the court revealed that efforts to have the hearing thrown out had failed.

In a ruling released today, Judge Nevin Dawson said he would not hear full argument of the applications to have the extradition hearing brought to a close.

The defense wanted to show that the New Zealand government had acted illegally when they arrested Dotcom in 2012 but that was disallowed. The Judge gave no reasons why, only indicating he would reveal all when the hearing was completed.

As a result the defense will now begin stating its case on Monday but that hasn’t stopped a clearly irritated Dotcom airing his opinions in public.

“We will identify why the United States case is flawed. Sadly because of the limited focus of such an extradition hearing I can’t call the required and planned expert evidence to simply answer the incorrect factual assertions by the United States. The United States won’t permit [experts] to be paid,” Dotcom explained.

“The case will now turn on important legal argument. We outline this on Monday. However, when we enter the ring we do so to win. The obstacles the United States has put up to stop us from fighting back won’t stop us. We won’t be silenced by bullies!”

Dotcom’s entire future could hang on the outcome of this extradition hearing. If extradited and found guilty in the United States, he and his co-defendants face the possibility of decades in jail. Nevertheless, Dotcom seems up for the fight.

“I wish you could all be at my court hearing on Monday. It’s going to be good,” he concludes.

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

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Oct 29, 2015

The dollar is flying high in the wake of yesterday's post-FOMC Fed statement, which has been generally accepted as leaving the possibility of a rate hike in December on the table (see report). The euro has been the principal victim, as the Fed's guidance brings the monetary policy paths of the U.S. and Eurozone into sharp contrast. EUR-USD is trading in 14-month low territory on the low 1.09 after leaving a low at 1.0887. The July 2014 low at 1.0808 is in scope, while 1.0996-1.1000 now marks a resistance zone, as it encompasses last Friday's and this Monday's lows.

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XE Market Analysis: Asia - Oct 28, 2015

The dollar was steady to lower ahead of the FOMC announcement, with USD-CAD the biggest mover on the day on the back of a 6% surge in oil prices. The pairing fell from overnight highs of 1.3280 to 1.3092 lows. EUR-USD ranged between 1.1058 and 1.1095 ahead of the fed, while USD-JPY found support from higher equity markets, and firmer Treasury yields. That pairing based at 120. 30, and rallied to near 120.60 before the FOMC. The dollar surged higher after the FOMC statement, which left the door open for a December rate hike.

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Legality of Voluntary ‘Pirate’ Site Blocking Regime Under Fire

In September 2013, a coalition of Portuguese copyright trade groups announced they would file for an injunction to prevent ISPs from providing access to The Pirate Bay. They argued it would not pose a problem, since ISPs already filter to prevent access to criminal content such as abusive images.

It took more than 18 months for the Association for Copyright Management, Producers and Publishers (GEDIPE) to get its way but eventually the Intellectual Property Court gave ISPs Vodafone, MEO and NOS just 30 days to block The Pirate Bay.

While GEDIPE had its victory, the battle was still not won. Each time the group needed a site blocked in future it would have to take ISPs to court, an expensive and time-consuming process. Warning that it would do so if necessary, GEDIPE advised ISPs to enter into discussions to form a voluntary site-blocking mechanism instead.

“It is time to sit down and negotiate blocking measures that don’t require the courts to get involved,” GEDIPE boss Paulo Santos said.

ISPs initially objected to the idea saying that legitimate content could become blocked without legal oversight. Nevertheless, by this summer they were singing a very different tune.

In July the Ministry of Culture announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding between its own General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), the Portuguese Association of Telecommunication Operators (APRITEL), various rightsholder groups, the body responsible for administering Portugal’s .PT domain and representatives from the advertising industry.

The agreement would see local anti-piracy group MAPINET filing copyright complaints with the Ministry of Culture which in turn would conduct an assessment and then order ISPs to block sites. Importantly, no expensive courtroom argument would take place and no legal judgments would be handed down.

This week the agreement began to bite when 51 domain names connected to sites including KickassTorrents (Kat.cr), ExtraTorrent, Isohunt, YTS and RARBG were ordered to be blocked. However, there are now concerns over the legality of the process.

Speaking with the Economic Daily, intellectual property law expert Leonor Chastre, a partner at the Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira lawfirm, says he has doubts over the agreement and the actions taken under it.

“There are a number of entities that have signed the memorandum but it does not legitimize the role of the two main entities [the government and MAPINET] so they will not be able to determine what is legal and illegal in this field. The latter is a private entity, susceptible to external influences. What is the representativeness of that association and what is its intention?” he questions.

The argument that only a court is able to decide on the legality of a site is a common one that has played out in countries across Europe. Prolonged legal battles on that very topic have taken place in the Netherlands, Austria and currently Sweden, to name a few, so concerns that Portuguese authorities might be overstepping the mark are hardly a surprise.

Interestingly, MAPINET has a rather different perspective. The anti-piracy group says that laws already exist in the EU for blocking content when it’s deemed to be infringing copyright.

“The implementation of the E-Commerce Directive already includes procedures for removing illegal content,” MAPINET’s Miguel Carretas argues, adding that the purpose of the memorandum is to “regulate the application” of this legal provision.

“[ISPs] already had the power to block access to sites where illegitimacy is demonstrated,” Carretas says.

In response, Vodafone says that it “acts in accordance with the provisions of the law and the Memorandum of Understanding.” Other ISPs, MEO and Cabovisão, declined to comment.

The question now is how these concerns will develop. The most logical route for an intervention is for a site subjected to blocking to take the matter to court. That would be an expensive affair though and could involve challenging not only the government but also copyright holders and ISPs.

Nevertheless, a challenge is not without precedent. In 2013 Rapidgator was blocked in Italy following a broad crackdown on copyright infringement. The company hired local counsel to object and eventually won its case.

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

XE Market Analysis: North America - Oct 28, 2015

The dollar softened fractionally against the euro and yen as markets await the FOMC. EUR-USD lifted north of 1.1050, while USD-JPY ebbed south of 120.30. ECB member Hansson provided a reminder that not all council members are of a dovish mind-set, saying that he doesn't see any "convincing reason" to consider further policy action in December. Japanese retail sales fell 0.2 y/y, but rose 0.7% m/m, up from 0.0% in August, though below the median forecast for a 1.1 y/y gain.

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Spotify Helps to Beat Music Piracy, European Commission Finds

When Spotify launched its first beta in the fall of 2008 we branded it “an alternative to music piracy.”

With the option to stream millions of tracks supported by an occasional ad, or free of ads for a small subscription fee, Spotify appeared to be a serious competitor to unauthorized downloading.

While there has been plenty of anecdotal support for this claim, actual research on the topic has been lacking. A new study published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre aims to fill this gap.

In the study researchers Luis Aguiar (IPTS) and Joel Waldfogel (NBER) compare Spotify streaming data to download numbers from the 8,000 pirated artists on torrent sites, as well as legal digital track sales.

Based on this data the researchers conclude that Spotify has a clear displacement effect on piracy. For every 47 streams the number of illegal downloads decreases by one.

This is in line with comments from Spotify’s Daniel Ek, who previously argued that the streaming service helps to convert pirates into paying customers.

“According to these results, an additional 47 streams reduces by one the number of tracks obtained without payment,” the paper reads (pdf).

“This piracy displacement is consistent with Ek’s claim that Spotify’s bundled offering harvests revenue from consumers who – or at least from consumption instances – were previously not generating revenue,” the researchers add.

While that’s good news for the music industry, it doesn’t necessarily mean that more revenue is being generated. In addition to piracy, streaming services also impact legal track sales on iTunes and other platforms.

According to the researchers, 137 Spotify streams reduce the number of individual digital track sales by one. Factoring in the revenue per stream and download, the overall impact is relatively neutral.

“Given the current industry’s revenue from track sales ($0.82 per sale) and the average payment received per stream ($0.007 per stream), our sales displacement estimates show that the losses from displaced sales are roughly outweighed by the gains in streaming revenue.”

“In other words, our analysis shows that interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry,” the researchers add.

More studies are needed to see how streaming services impact the music industry in the long run, but for now it’s safe to conclude that they do indeed help to beat online piracy, as often suggested.

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

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Oct 28, 2015

The AUD provided the main action in otherwise subdued trade, with the antipodean currency taking a tumble in the wake of sub-forecast Australian inflation data. AUD-USD fell some 80 pips in making a three-week low at 0.7111, taking out its 50-day moving average at 0.7138 on route. Mostly lower stock markets in Asia-Pacific (Japan's Nikkei was an exception) added to a bearish backdrop for the Aussie dollar. The Australian trimmed mean CPI fell to 2.1% y/y in the September quarter, near the RBA's 2% - 3% target range.

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Aurous Offers to Shut Down But RIAA Isn’t Interested

It’s been an eventful month for music discovery tool Aurous. Within days of its October 10 launch, Aurous Group and developer Andrew Sampson were being sued by the RIAA.

“This service is a flagrant example of a business model powered by copyright theft on a massive scale,” the RIAA said.

Shortly after the labels demanded a temporary restraining order. The request, filed by plaintiffs Atlantic Records, Warner Bros, UMG, Sony and Capital Records, was quickly granted by a Florida district court.

Judge Jose E. Martinez declared that Sampson and everyone else associated with the Aurous project were forbidden from “infringing, or causing, enabling, facilitating, encouraging, promoting and inducing or participating in the infringement of, any of Plaintiffs’ copyrights protected by the Copyright Act, whether now in existence or hereafter created.”

Those restrictions including any further making available of the Aurous software in any form but there are now claims that Sampson has already breached the order.

According to a motion filed yesterday by the labels, on October 23 following a request from defendants’ counsel, it was agreed that the defendants would be given more time (until November 13) to respond to the original complaint. In the meantime the temporary restraining order (TRO) would remain in force.

However, the RIAA says that less than two days after the extension was agreed, the defendants “flagrantly violated [the TRO], in the most damaging way possible.”

“Shortly after 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, Defendants announced that they had publicly released the core ‘back-end’ source code for Aurous, which contains the instructions for exactly how the Aurous software finds, retrieves, and downloads (copies) unauthorized copies of recorded music,” the labels write.

“At 1:07 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, Defendants sent a tweet from the official Aurous Twitter account announcing that Aurous was now an ‘open source project available on Github’ and providing a link to the Aurous source code repository on the website GitHub.com.”

The tweet and Github posting have both since been removed. However, in their court filing the labels says that they managed to secure copies while characterizing the deletions as an attempt to destroy evidence.

Describing the ‘core’ as the “critical ‘back-end’ source code” powering Aurous, the labels say that by posting the code Sampson breached the terms of the TRO. Furthermore, the labels claim that the release proves that Sampson continued working on Aurous after the TRO was issued in an effort to improve its ability to retrieve and download infringing content.

“There can be no doubt that Defendants did so with the intent of releasing an improved version of the software to the public, notwithstanding this Court’s explicit and unambiguous prohibition against doing so,” they write.

Following the Github release the labels contacted Aurous demanding an end to the violation of the TRO. They also advised the music service that their consent to a delay for the preliminary injunction hearing should now be considered withdrawn.

Counsel for Aurous responded by noting that the breach of the TRO had been accidental and even offered to throw in the towel completely on behalf of his clients.

“Our clients are willing to transfer control of the Aurous domain and anything else you may require including closing the site and all operations (which may have been done already) provide access to their github and social media accounts as early as tomorrow if this proposed settlement can be kept forthwith,” Aurous counsel wrote in an email.

“Our clients have acted in good faith to uphold the proposed settlement agreement and not violate the TRO. Again this is only a misunderstanding that should be bridged in order to serve the best interests of all parties.”

In response the labels dismissed the offer, insisting that the breach had been both intentional and damaging.

“During the five hours or more that Defendants willfully made the core Aurous source code available to the public, while brazenly urging their Twitter followers and other members of the public to visit the repository where it was housed, an unknown number of third parties accessed and copied the source code,” the labels explain.

In the background of this current dispute is Aurous’ response to the RIAA’s allegations that it offers an illegal service.

“The allegations that the purpose of this website is to pirate music is false
and unfounded. Aurous exists for the purposes of bringing together multiple sites all with DMCA takedown capabilities and anti-piracy bylaws,” Aurous’ counsel informed the court.

“Aurous in no way encourages, the downloading or playing of copyrighted music.
Additionally, Defendant maintains a DMCA takedown email. To date, Plaintiff has not submitted any DMCA takedown requests, and simply initiated a lawsuit within days of the website’s publication.”

Aurous says that if the RIAA removed the illegal content from the third-party sites, the Aurous software would not be able to play it. It also claims that the source code released on Github was an old and obsolete version of the software. Nevertheless, the RIAA seems entirely disinterested and is currently overwhelming Aurous with its legal might.

As a result the labels are now asking for Aurous Group and Sampson to be held in contempt of court and punished via monetary sanctions. Perhaps of concern for those who downloaded it, the labels also ask the court to force the defendants to provide a “precise description of when, where, and to whom they disseminated the Aurous application and source code” after the TRO was granted October 15.

While the case is not over yet, the Aurous dream seems well and truly dead. All that remains is to discover how painful it will for those behind the project.

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

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Oct 27, 2015

The dollar started off on a softer footing in early N.Y. trade on Tuesday though recovered its poise as the session progressed, despite weak incoming U.S. data. Durable orders were much softer than forecasts, as was consumer confidence. EUR-USD peaked at 1.1078 after the early data, though eased back into 1.1030 at mid-morning. USD-JPY meanwhile, found support under 120.20, later making its way to 120.46 highs. USD-CAD touched 1.3260, as oil prices made two-month lows, as cable traded under 1.5300.

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EU Adopts ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules, Keeps Loopholes Open

The European Parliament has debated the issue of net neutrality for several years.

The results of these negotiations were included in the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) regulation, which went to a vote this afternoon in Strasbourg.

With support of a majority the rules were passed, as expected. This means that the new rules will become law, replacing existing network neutrality laws in member states of the EU.

However, four proposed amendments that would close various loopholes all failed, much to the disappointment of net neutrality experts and activists.

As a result Europe’s ‘net neutrality’ rules are rather week, allowing prioritized paid services (so-called fast lanes), and slowing down of torrent and VPN traffic, among other things.

This is especially disappointing for member states that have strong net neutrality rules in place, such as the Netherlands and Slovenia, as they may have to implement watered down versions now.

“The European Parliament has avoided making decisions on all crucial points,” Joe McNamee, Executive Director of European Digital Rights, comments on the decision.

“Now, national regulators will have to decide – on abuses imposed through ‘zero rating’, on rules on congestion management, on specialized services and so on,” he adds.

Julia Reda, MEP for the Pirate Party, is disappointed with the vote and hopes that Europeans will hold their elected representatives responsible.

Over the past several weeks many activist groups and digital rights experts supported the SaveTheInternet campaign which encouraged European citizens to share their concerns while asking their representatives to vote in favor of the amendments.

The efforts received widespread support, but not enough to have the majority of parliament members vote for the proposed changes.

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