XE Market Analysis: Asia - Mar 31, 2016

The dollar lost ground again in morning N.Y. trade on Thursday, resulting in EUR-USD rallying to five-month highs of 1.1412. USD-JPY held above 112.00, but struggled over the 112.50 mark. USD-CAD printed a five-month low of 1.2858 on better Canada GDP data, though later moved back over 1.3000 as oil prices fell again. Cable traded a broad path on either side of 1.4400. U.S. data was mixed, with jobless claims ticking up some, while Chicago PMI returned to expansionary territory again. Wall Street traded a narrow band, while yields remained inside of familiar territory.

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Rightscorp Blames VPNs and ISPs For Drop in Revenue

More than ten years ago when it became clear that piracy might never be stopped, anti-piracy outfits began to pursue alleged infringers for cash settlements in a bid to turn file-sharing into profit.

One of the most prominent companies employing this model today is US-based Rightscorp. By using ISPs’ responsibility to forward infringement warnings to users, Rightscorp attaches settlement demands to DMCA-style notices. When these reach the user they are currently invited to pay around $30 or face a potential lawsuit.

How many notices the company sends out is unclear but it’s likely to be millions overall, since according to the company’s most recent filing around 230,000 people have settled. It sounds like it should be a lucrative business but ever since the company was incorporated in 2010 the numbers haven’t added up. Indeed, Rightscorp’s latest filing, its 2015 Annual Report, indicates a crisis at the company.

The report begins with a positive, noting that in September 2015 Rightscorp entered into a representation agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. But that’s where the good news ends.

During the year ended December 31, 2015, Rightscorp generated revenues of $832.2K. That’s down 10% ($98.5K) when compared to the $930.7K generated in 2014. Not a great start and gets worse.

To begin, all of those revenues aren’t for Rightscorp to keep. The total is split with rightsholders, roughly 50/50, meaning that in 2015 Rightscorp paid almost $439K to its copyright holder partners, down from the $465.3K paid out in 2014. Sadly for Rightscorp the $392K in revenue left over isn’t enough to make ends meet, not by a long way.

In 2015 the anti-piracy outfit burned through more than $1.67m in wage and related expenses plus $216.3K on sales and marketing. Also causing problems are the costs mounting up due to various legal battles (1,2,3). In all, Rightscorp spent more than $951K on legal proceedings in 2015, up from $465K the year before.

When combined Rightscorp’s general and administrative expenses were close to $4.5m in 2015, up almost $737K on the previous year. As a result the company recorded a net loss of $3.43m, up from the $2.85m net loss recorded in 2014.

Furthermore, the company’s precarious position is only underlined with the revelation that 72% of its revenues are attributable to just two rightsholder customers, with one alone accounting for 58% of revenues.

While it’s fairly obvious that this model isn’t currently working, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Not only are Rightscorp’s costs going through the roof but its revenues are falling too, despite the company’s insistence that piracy is as prevalent as ever.

So how does Rightscorp explain the drop in settlements achieved? Well, this is where it gets interesting.

According to the company’s annual filing there are three key reasons, including an unwillingness by Internet service providers to forward Rightscorp settlement demands to their customers. If that is the case then the anti-piracy outfit has a huge problem, since without that mechanism it cannot cheaply contact alleged pirates with an offer to settle.

But while the ISP dilemma is clear, the other reasons provided by Rightscorp for falling revenues are less so.

The anti-piracy outfit additionally blames “changes in the filesharing software intended to defeat detection of copyrights being illegally distributed.” For a company specializing in anti-piracy technology this statement is terribly uninformative and gives the impression of a riddle designed to confuse.

So, since there have been no real changes in the way BitTorrent software operates since its inception, the truth must lie elsewhere. Reading between the lines this seems likely to be a reference to people using anonymizing techniques (VPNs, proxies etc) which make it impossible for Rightscorp to track them down. Not a good situation for shareholders.

Oddly, the language used by Rightscorp to explain the third reason behind its drop in revenues in no more clear. Blaming “the shutting down of some filesharing network infrastructure” for achieving fewer settlements, the company gives no hint as to what that might mean, especially since according to them file-sharing traffic is only on the increase.

With file-sharers seemingly hiding, ISPs passing on fewer notices, coupled with Rightscorp’s inability to control its costs, it seems unlikely that the company has much of a future.

“Our independent registered public accounting firm has expressed substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern, which may hinder our ability to obtain future financing,” the company concludes.

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

XE Market Analysis: North America - Mar 31, 2016

The dollar extended Yellen-inspired declines against the euro, which was the chief benefactor of the dynamic, while ebbing back toward lows versus other currencies. This put EUR-USD at a 1.1383 peak after breaching the February high, trading at levels last seen in October. EUR-JPY, meanwhile, nudged out a six-week peak at 122.87. A slew of data out of the Eurozone added weight to dovish arguments at the ECB, but cast little impact on the euro, USD-JPY traded heavily, but held above yesterday's low at 112.01.

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28% of Piracy Takedown Requests Are “Questionable”

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.

Copyright holders have used this increase to call for tougher anti-piracy actions from search engines and other intermediaries, claiming that the current system is broken. For its part, Google is concerned that the continued increase may lead to more mistakes.

This week, researchers from Columbia University’s American Assembly and Berkeley published an in-depth review of the current takedown regime, with one study zooming in on the millions of takedown requests Google receives every week.

Using data Google provides to the Lumen database, the researchers reviewed the accuracy of more than 108 million takedown requests. The vast majority of these, 99.8%, targeted Google’s web search.

According to the researchers their review shows that more 28% of all requests are “questionable.” This includes the 4.2% of notices in which supposed infringing material is not listed on the reported URL.

“Nearly a third of takedown requests (28.4%) had characteristics that raised clear questions about their validity, based solely on the facial review and comparisons we were able to conduct. Some had multiple potential issues,” the researchers write.

Among the “questionable” takedown requests are those that target websites that have been shut down over a year ago. As shown in the figure below, rightsholders such as NBC Universal continued to target websites such as Megaupload.com and BTJunkie.org long after they were gone.

“A few senders—generally targeting unauthorized file-sharing sites—continued to send requests targeting links that led to long-defunct sites, calling into question the checks they do to keep their automated algorithms accurate,” the researchers write.

Reporting dead sites

Other questionable notices were improperly formatted, included a subject matter inappropriate for DMCA takedown, or had potential fair use issues, among other things.

Joe Karaganis, co-author of the report and vice president of Columbia University’s American Assembly, informs TorrentFreak that the often automated notices are problematic because the increase in volume makes human review rather impracticable.

“The problem with automation isn’t that it gets stuff wrong. Human senders turn out to be even worse on average. It’s that automation scales the process up in ways that has made meaningful human review difficult or impossible,” Karaganis says.

“With notice sending robots talking to notice receiving robots, the step of actually looking at the targeted content often drops out of the equation. The main contribution of our study is to go back in to look at the targeted content and make those human judgments,” he adds.

The result of the high number of “questionable” takedown notices is that Google likely removes more content than it should. The company currently acts in response to 97.5% of the takedown requests, which means that the vast majority of the questionable notices are honored.

“At a minimum, Google takes a very conservative approach to these issues and yes, probably over removes content,” Karaganis says.

“They are not special in this regard. Given the risk of high statutory penalties if a service rejects a valid notice, most if not all of them err on the side of takedown. Some just categorically take down 100% of the requests they receive.”

The researchers include several policy recommendations on how the current takedown process can be improved. Among other things, they suggest making it more difficult for senders to issue questionable notices without risk.

In addition, they warn against the “notice and stay down” and automated filtering mechanisms copyright holders frequently call for, as these may increase the potential for abuse while hurting due process.

The report, first highlighted by the Washington Post, is very much in line with the position Google has taken thus far.

In that regard, it is worth highlighting that the research is in part funded by Google, who will undoubtedly deploy it in future lobbying efforts, much like the copyright industries do with the research they fund.

Google won’t have to wait long before it can put the study to use, as the U.S. Government is currently running a public consultation to evaluate the effectiveness of the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions. This includes issues around automated takedown requests and potential abuse, and the deadline for comments expires tomorrow.

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

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Mar 31, 2016

The dollar has found its feet after two down days in the wake of Fed Yellen's "proceed cautiously" remarks of Tuesday. EUR-USD has drifted to the low 1.13s after capping out yesterday at 1.1365, which left the Feb-10 peak unchallenged, while USD-JPY has posted a 112.16-66 range, holding above yesterday's nine-day low at 112.01. Stock markets in Asia mostly firmed before sentiment flagged in quarter-end trade.

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Copyright Does Not Protect the Klingon Language, Court Hears

Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of the Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement.

The dispute centers around the well-received short film Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar and the planned follow-up feature film Anaxar.

The project is an idea from Alec Peters who started working on it half a decade ago. The short film turned in to a massive hit and quickly raised more than $100,000 through crowdfunding, and the follow-up feature raised another $638,000 on Kickstarter alone.

That’s a serious budget for a fan-art project and the success prompted the attention of both Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios, who filed their complaint at a California federal court last December.

Among other things, the Star Trek rightsholder claimed ownership over various Star Trek related settings, characters, species, clothing, colors, shapes, words, short phrases and even the Klingon language.

This week, Axanar productions and Alec Peters responded to the allegations put forward in the complaint (pdf). According to the makers of the fan film, several of the allegedly “infringing elements” are not protected by copyright to begin with.

In their reply the filmmakers argue that words and short phrases such as names, titles and slogans can’t be protected. This includes the popular phrase “beam me up” as well as several Star Trek related names.

“…the names Garth of Izar, Soval, Richard Robau, and John Gill are not protectable, and neither are the words Andorians, Tellarites, Romulans, Axanar, Archanis IV, Q’onoS, Nausicaa, Rigel, Andoria, Tellar Prime, Vulcans, Klingons, Terra, Starship Enterprise, Starfleet, Federation, Starships, Stardate, and Federation or the short phrase ‘beaming up’,” they write.

In addition, Axanar productions points out that Paramount and CBS can’t claim ownership of the Klingon language, which is nothing more than an idea according to the defendants.

“The Klingon language itself is an idea or a system, and is not copyrightable,” they write.

“The mere allegation that Defendants used the Klingon language, without any allegation that Defendants copied Plaintiffs’ particular expression of that language, is therefore insufficient to state a claim for copyright infringement as to any protected element.”

Vulcan comparison

The defendants continue by stressing that the use of the Vulcan appearance and the Heat-Ray Phaser weapons are not unique to Star Trek. They are common appearances in nature and / or have been used in fictional works before.

“Vulcan appearance: a species with ‘pointy ears’ is not original to Star Trek, and has appeared in many fictional fantasy works depicting imaginary humanoid species predating Star Trek, including, but not limited to, vampires, elves, fairies, and werewolves, as well as in many animals in nature.”

“Phasers are also known as Heat-Ray weapons, which have existed in science fiction since H.G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ in 1898,” the complaint notes.

Besides the questions Axanar raises over the copyright protections, they also argue that the allegations aren’t specific enough, since it’s not specified which exact copyrights have been infringed.

“While Plaintiffs allege that they own ‘more than 700’ Star Trek television episodes, a dozen motion pictures, and four books, they still fail to specify which of those copyrights Defendants have allegedly infringed,” the write.

As a result, Axanar Productions asks the court to dismiss or strike the copyright claims in question.

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

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Mar 30, 2016

The dollar mostly faded lower through the morning session in N.Y. on Wednesday, taking EUR-USD to nearly two-month highs of 1.1365, cable to near a near two-week peak of 1.4460, and USD-CAD to five-month lows of 1.2912. USD-JPY rallied back modestly from London lows near 112.00. Fallout from Yellen's dovish speech on Tuesday continued, supporting risk taking levels, while pressuring the greenback. The ADP employment survey was slightly better than expected, and a reminder of the BLS jobs report coming up on Friday.

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Creative Content UK Aims to Re-Educate Book Pirates

While the UK continues its aggressive pursuit of those who run or even facilitate access to sites offering copyright infringing material, its efforts to deal with consumers of pirated content have been painfully drawn out.

With the provisions of the Digital Economy Act now somewhat of a distant memory, using force to deal with Internet subscribers has been largely overtaken by plans to re-educate the masses.

To that end the government-funded, rightsholder-supported Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative has been trying to gather momentum since its somewhat subdued debut in December last year. Though various PR campaigns the project hopes to change the public’s attitude towards Internet piracy.

Currently CCUK is running “Get It Right from a Genuine Site”, a campaign that hopes to deter people from using sites like The Pirate Bay in favor of licensed services that ensure that creators are properly paid.

The campaign has been largely inoffensive and quite colorful thus far but has struggled to achieve mainstream exposure. However, the latest video in the “Get It Right” series hopes to change that with a properly “grown up” attempt at reaching out to would-be pirates.

Featuring bookseller Nic Bottomley and his real-life book store ‘Mr B’s Emporium Of Reading Delights’, this Bookseller Association-supported video is a somewhat refreshing and calming anti-piracy short that’s a million miles away from “You Wouldn’t Download“.

Located in the beautiful city of Bath, the Emporium is a classic UK book shop and the video begins with its owner’s memories of repeatedly reading the Roald Dahl classic Fantastic Mr Fox. It’s warming stuff and a welcome change from the aggressive threats featured in other campaigns.

From the moment it begins it becomes clear that the aim of this short is to encourage the viewer to empathize with Bottomley, who together with his wife has built up a really decent book business over the past 12 years. And it works.

Bottomley’s tone is superb and doesn’t sound ‘preachy’ at all, and it’s genuinely nice to hear a little about what it’s like to run his shop and help out customers. But of course, that’s only possible if the public spends money with him and by extension, those writing the books.

“You know that when you buy a book from a high street book shop, or a book or an ebook from a legitimate website, that the creator of that content, in other words the writer of the book or ebook, has been properly rewarded for their work,” Bottomley tells the viewer.

But while it’s easy for those who grew up with mountains of real books to have the utmost respect for what Bottomley has achieved, it’s questionable whether his story will resonate so clearly with the ‘downloading generation’. Real books and real book shops are indeed beautiful, but increasingly digital downloads are taking over, with products like Kindle Unlimited (the Netflix of books) a more attractive proposition for those on the go.

Still, it’s hoped that booksellers of all kinds will get behind the initiative and spread the word that supporting writers (and sellers) is the right thing to do.

“We need to help the creative community to invest in creating more of content, and the development of new artists and writers and ideas as a result,” says Bookseller Association CEO Tim Godfray.

Finally, it will be interesting to see to what extent publishers, writers and book sellers will be supported when UK Internet service providers finally begin to send out warnings to alleged pirates in the months (years?) to come. The scheme has already been hugely delayed and thus far there has only been discussion of music, movie and TV show downloaders being targeted.

Also problematic is the manner in which ebooks are shared online. While torrents are the preferred method for larger files, books are much more likely to be distributed via hosting sites and forums. This kind of sharing cannot be tracked, so the education component is even more critical for the book sector.

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

XE Market Analysis: North America - Mar 30, 2016

The dollar extended losses catalysed by the dovish turn of Fed chair Yellen yesterday. This yielded a 12-day peak of 1.1333 in EUR-USD and a one-week low of 112.01 in USD-JPY before the buck managed a moderate rebound on the view that Friday's U.S. payrolls report carries upside rise given the sharp March rebound in producer sentiment and a tight claims path. Other pairings saw a similar price action. The Kiwi dollar rallied strongly, sparked by news that Air New Zealand is considering selling its $350 mln stake of Virgin Australia.

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Instagram Sued for Failing to Remove Copyrighted Photo

With hundreds of million of active users, Instagram is often asked to remove copyrighted material being shared on its servers without permission.

If rightsholders submit a takedown request, Instagram swiftly takes the infringing content down. At least, that’s what it is supposed to do.

A new lawsuit filed in a California federal court suggests that Instagram’s takedown procedure is not always as effective as it should be.

This week Wisconsin-based photographer Jennifer Rondinelli Reilly filed a complaint (pdf) against Instagram in which she accuses the service of hosting or linking to one of her works without permission.

The work in question is an image of red lips and a microphone, which was registered at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2013. The image in question is used on several occasions, including in the profile below.

One of the alleged infringing uses

After discovering the unauthorized use of her work the photographer sent Instagram dozens of DMCA takedown requests. However, according to the complaint Instagram failed to take action in response.

“Reilly sent DMCA notices to Instagram regarding the Infringing Uses on January 26, 2016, January 27, 2016, January 28, 2016,” the complaint reads.

“Reilly never authorized the Infringing Uses,” the complaint states, adding that the images are still present on the site. “Instagram has not removed or disabled access to the Infringing Uses.”

At the time of writing several of the reported images have been removed. However, the profile picture shown above is still present and the same is true for other copies of the image on Instagram.

To resolve the matter, Reilly requests a permanent injunction against the service, as well as statutory damages for the alleged losses she has suffered.

This is not the first time the photographer has gone after a social network. A few months ago she filed a similar lawsuit against Twitter. This case was dismissed not much later, but it’s unclear if both parties reached a settlement out of court.

A few weeks ago Reilly also sued Buzzfeed for copyright infringement and the case is still ongoing.

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

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Mar 30, 2016

The dollar is trading softer following yesterday's sizable correction in the wake of Yellen's dovish-tilted proceed "cautiously" remarks, which deflated the more hawkish-tilting rhetoric of some of her colleagues over the previous week. A side-theme has been yen outperformance, rebounding following a run of eight straight down sessions. EUR-USD has clocked a 12-day peak at 1.1311, returning focus on the Mar-17 peak at 1.1342. USD-JPY has fallen to a one-week low at 112.21.

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KickassTorrents Celebrates ‘Happy Torrents Day’

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) has become the most-used torrent site on the Internet, beating even The Pirate Bay.

The site also has a very active community of torrent aficionados from all over the world. On March 30, staff and members come together to celebrate their beloved pastime on ‘Happy Torrents Day‘.

“Five years ago we realized that what our users do on KickAssTorrents, what they believe in and enjoy, needed celebrating. A day to give back to them what they give to us,” KAT administrator Mr. Black tells TorrentFreak.

“Every torrent community is different and individual in its own way but we all believe in freedom of sharing and of course share one of the most important things in common. Torrents.”

Happy Torrents Day

The event was initially started by KAT administrator Mr. Pink in 2011. It began as a small celebration, but over the years it has turned into a recurring tradition with many thousands of people participating.

Last year more than 115,000 registered users checked in. The number of uploads also increased significantly on Happy Torrents Day, well above the 4,000 torrents that were added on an average day that year. This year, the KAT team hopes to break this record.

“Torrents Day in 2015 took us to just short of 6,000 torrents uploaded… 5,775 to be exact. But due to the users we have gained and the services provided we are expecting to well exceed these numbers,” Mr. Black says.

The KAT staff have put together an overview of the various challenges and events. For example, users can add their favorite song to the official soundtrack, or participate in the upload challenge.

If everything goes according to plan Torrents Day 2016 is expected to drive a lot of traffic to the site and perhaps set several new records. Judging from the discussion already going on, there’s definitely plenty of interest for this young tradition.

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

XE Market Analysis: Asia - Mar 29, 2016

FX trade was largely sideways through the morning session, as the market awaited the speech from Fed chair Yellen. The dollar fell across the board as Yellen headlines hit the wires after 12:20 EDT, where she voiced "caution", saying only gradual increases in the fed funds rate will be warranted in the coming years, with the best policy being greater gradualism. She said global developments pose ongoing risks, and she expects growth to be weaker for the remainder of the year, than previously expected.

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Piracy Group Thanks HDFury as “Sponsor” for Netflix Leak

Late last year several pirated copies of 4K videos started to leak from both Netflix and Amazon. These leaks were unusual as online 4k streams were always well protected against pirates.

While it’s still not clear how these videos were copied, several sources suggested that one of LegendSky’s latest HDFury devices may have been involved.

These suspicions were corroborated a few weeks ago when Warner Bros. and Intel daughter company Digital Content Protection (DCP) sued the HDFury manufacturer over its ability to “strip” the latest HDCP encryption.

The Chinese hardware manufacturer refutes this claim and has pointed out that its tools merely allow users to convert HDCP encryption, which would be fair use and permitted by law.

While the case continues in court, a pirate group has stepped up to add some fuel to the fire. In an NFO file packaged with a recent release of the Netflix film “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” Scene group ‘Team QCF’ thanks HDFury while describing it as one of its sponsors.

“We like to give a shout out to our sponsors without them this is not possible :p,” the NFO file reads, linking to the controversial HDFury 4k splitter.

While the release in question is 1080p, the controversial hardware makes it possible to use a 4K source to get a better encode.

The nfo

In addition, Gatorade also gets a plug. “Drink Gatorade it will help your encodes,” the NFO file adds, linking to the Gatorade website.

Team QCF doesn’t normally list any sponsors, and it’s pretty unlikely that HDFury or Gatorade have intentionally contributed to the Scene group. However, the wink to HDFury suggests that the devices are indeed used to rip 4K content from Netflix.

At least, the group felt the urge to respond to the recent controversy over the HDFury devices.

It is doubtful that the “endorsement” will be featured in court though. As an anonymous source, Team QCF may just as well be putting up a smokescreen for fun, or perhaps to divert attention from another vulnerability.

That said, LegendSky is probably going to be unhappy with the fact that their HDFury devices are now openly being plugged by a well-known Scene group.

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

XE Market Analysis: North America - Mar 29, 2016

The dollar has been trading mixed today, slumping against the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar, while holding firm versus the yen and Australian dollar. The risk appetite backdrop has been neutral-to-off with stocks in Europe giving back intraday gains following a soft performance in Asian markets, while oil prices have headed south for a second day. European data were second tier, including Eurozone data showing a rise in lending to businesses and consumers, while Japan released a slew of figures, which painted a mixed picture.

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UK Government Video Urges Advertisers to Boycott Pirate Sites

Underlying a multitude of strategies designed to limit traffic to pirate sites, there is a strong belief among copyright holders that operators only keep their sites online due to how profitable they are.

Since most portals don’t make their motivations public it’s unclear as to how many sites this applies. However, it can’t be denied that the largest sites are pulling in decent revenues via advertising so with this in mind there is an ongoing and concerted effort by authorities to “Follow the Money.”

Part of this strategy is ensuring that major brands and smaller companies refrain from placing their advertising on infringing sites. In addition to funding the sites in question, copyright holders insist that having “household name” branding appearing alongside pirate content suggests that sites are not only legitimate but somehow endorsed by their advertisers.

While the US has its own initiatives underway, the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) maintains the Infringing Website List (IWL), a database of sites that police and copyright holders have deemed to breach copyright law.

PIPCU earlier claimed to have placed warning ads on these domains to deter would-be downloaders and is now receiving help from the government to reach more advertisers.

In a new video published by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), the Internet is described as the most powerful communication tool ever invented, noting that by 2020 the total Internet advertising spend will outstrip that of TV. But while reaching billions of consumers has its benefits, the IPO says that advertisers need to be aware of the problems being caused by IP crime.

Starting with an image of a presumably unlicensed pharmaceutical site, the video quickly moves on to the world of torrents, with an image of a fake website called “Super Torrent”.

Somewhat ironically the screenshot from the video shown above is actually a copy of ExtraTorrent (the world’s 3rd largest torrent site) but with a name switch. In fact, those who look closely will see that on the left hand side of the image where ExtraTorrent displays its news feed, there’s even a link directing people to find more news on TorrentFreak.

“Illegal websites offering copyright infringing content, illegal websites facilitating fraud, organized crime, even terrorism,” the voiceover warns. “You wouldn’t want your brand, your client’s logo, your hard-earned reputation mixed up with that, would you?”

The video continues by stating that of the top 500 infringing websites, 294 carried advertising for recognized brands, 43 of which were businesses in the top 1000 for advertising spend. By placing ads on such websites, advertisers give them legitimacy while tarnishing their images by associating themselves with viruses and malware, the IPO adds.

Of course, knowing which sites are considered a risk isn’t always easy for advertisers and that’s where copyright holders and the police step in.

“The Infringing Website List lists all known websites determined by the police to be illegal on the basis of copyright infringement. It’s the first of its kind in the world,” the IPO says.

“Sites are identified by the creative industries, evidenced and verified by the police. The IWL then provides an up to date list of copyright-infringing websites to enable advertisers, agencies and brands to cease advert placement on illegal websites.”

The idea is that ad agencies can integrate the IWL into their ad placement systems in order to boycott pirate sites, something which can prevent direct advertising on designated platforms. However, the advertising world isn’t as straightforward as that and the use of various middle-men ensures that advertising often makes it onto pirate sites, even though they have been ‘blacklisted’ in Europe and the United States.

Nevertheless, the IPO and PIPCU say they are making progress and in August 2015 reported that top UK advertisers were placing 73% fewer ads on pirate sites. More current stats aren’t presented in the video but the message from the IPO remains the same.

“Stop funding criminals, sign up to the IWL,” the IPO concludes.

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

XE Market Analysis: Europe - Mar 29, 2016

The dollar found support in the Asia session, recovering from yesterday's bout of weakness ended six consecutive sessions of gains. USD-JPY clocked a two-week peak of 113.72, and EUR-USD dipped to a low of 1.1182, putting in a little distance from yesterday's four-session peak at 1.1220. AUD-USD managed to eke out a five-day peak at 0.7570 during Sydney trade, but has since drifted back to fractionally net lower on the day.

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XE Market Analysis: Asia - Mar 28, 2016

With London on holiday Monday, FX trade was relatively quiet in N.Y. The dollar did trade mostly lower however, largely as soft income and PCE prices data came in on the soft side, which dialed back expectations for an April Fed rate hike. Yields eased some, while Wall Street traded on either side of flat through the session. EUR-USD opened near 1.1160 and peaked at 1.1219 by mid-morning. USD-JPY meanwhile, started near 113.50, and later based at 113.18. USD-CAD eased from 1.3250 to 1.3179 lows, as cable reclaimed the 1.4200 handle, topping at 1.4283.

[EUR, USD]

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‘Pirate’ Sites Ordered to Pay $450,000 for Expendables 3 Leak

During the summer of 2014 LionsGate suffered a major setback when a high quality leak of the then unreleased Expendables 3 film appeared online.

Fearing a massive loss in revenue the movie studio sued the operators of several websites that allegedly failed to remove the infringing files.

Since most of the defendants failed to appear in court, LionsGate asked for a default judgment against the alleged operators of LimeTorrents and the defunct Dotsemper and Swankshare sites.

While the websites are not responsible for the original leak, they failed to respond to a slew of takedown requests sent by the movie studio in the days after the film first appeared online.

Last week United States District Judge Otis Wright granted the default judgment (pdf), ordering Muhammed Ashraf (LimeTorrents), Tom Messchendorp (Dotsemper), and Lucas Lim (Swankshare) to pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 each.

The maximum amount in statutory damages is appropriate, according to the Judge, because the movie studio likely suffered substantial losses as a result of the pre-release leak of The Expendables 3.

“In light of the fact that the film garnered over $575 million dollars in worldwide box office revenues, the ‘value of the copyright’ strongly favors a high award of statutory damages,” Judge Wright notes.

“Defendants hosted the anticipated film available online prior to its theatrical release for the purpose of enabling users to illegally download it, which more than likely diminished Plaintiff’s revenue substantially,” he adds.

Judge Otis Wright’s order

In addition, the maximum in damages may serve as a deterrent for the defendants and any other site operators that link to or host infringing content.

“Moreover, an award of the enhanced statutory damages will likely serve to deter Defendants and others from infringing Plaintiff’s rights in the future,” Judge Wright’s order reads.

The court also issued a permanent injunction on top of the damages, forbidding the men from operating their sites going forward, as well as any other websites through which The Expendables 3 is being made available.

Whether this injunction will be very effective is doubtful. TorrentFreak previously spoke with the LimeTorrents operator, who informed us that his site will remain online, no matter what the outcome is.

“We want to keep the site up and running, and we don’t care about default judgment because we don’t have any faith in the United States,” Ashraf told us.

The site operator, who also runs Torrentdownload.biz, said that the “Expendables 3” keyword was already banned from appearing in the search results, and that he doesn’t intent to pay any damages.

“We already took action and blocked their keyword, so we don’t have a penny to pay them for their own leak problem,” the operator said.

At the time of writing LimeTorrents and Torrentdownload indeed remain operational. LimeTorrent’s .com domain name was locked earlier, but the site is still accessible via a new .cc TLD.

Dotsemper and Swankshare previously shut down. The operators of these sites live outside of the United States and haven’t been responsive, so whether LionsGate will recoup much of the $450,000 is highly doubtful.

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

Long leading indicators show increased risk of recession in 2017

Several months ago I made a qualified forecast for continued growth in the second half of 2016.  On Friday, the BEA finally reported corporate profits for the 4th Quarter of last year.  While usually proprietors' income (reported in the initial GDP release) tracks corporate profits well, sometimes they do lag, and this was one of those times, as profits declined significantly.  Beyond that, we now have two to three months of data on the remaining long leading indicators, so this is an important time to update my outlook.

 

And the news isn't good.

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XE Market Analysis: North America - Mar 28, 2016

Yen weakness was the main theme in town in thin trade with market centres closed for public holidays in Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, and most of Europe. EUR-USD has so far posted a 20 pip range, of 1.1153-73. USD-JPY, meanwhile, rose to a 12-day peak at 113.68, and EUR-JPY a two-week high, at 126.88. This comes with markets anticipating extra stimulus from the BoJ, juxtaposed to a flow of hawkish-tilting Fedspeaak over the last week and uncertainty about the future course of ECB policy.

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RuTracker to Bypass Web Blockade With IM Delivered Torrents

If copyright holders had their way the world’s leading torrent sites would be blocked by Internet service providers in every country of the world. That goal remains in the distance but there can be little doubt that the process is moving forward.

Several countries around Europe are now blocking between dozens and hundreds of ‘pirate’ sites and surprisingly, given the country’s traditional attitude to infringement, Russia is also becoming a blocking front-runner.

But while copyright holders remain enthusiastic about the implementation of bans, millions of Internet users are only interested in circumventing them. VPNs, proxies and mirrors are all playing their part but it now appears that Russian torrent giant RuTracker is about to deploy an alternative system to beat the censors.

In addition to other counter-measures already being deployed, RuTracker is reportedly working on a bot system that will deliver torrents to users via the encrypted instant messaging service Telegram.

Financed by Russian Facebook (vKontakte) founder Pavel Durov, Telegram is a multi-platform messaging system that has grown from 100,000 daily users in 2013 to an impressive 100 million users in February 2016.

“Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security, it’s super-fast, simple and free. You can use Telegram on all your devices at the same time — your messages sync seamlessly across any number of your phones, tablets or computers,” Telegram explains.

The attractiveness of Telegram for RuTracker lies in its reach. In addition to sending any kind of file (doc, zip, mp3, torrent, etc), it can broadcast such content to an unlimited audience. It’s believed that the site will use Telegram to distribute magnet links, which makes sense after the site added them in recent months.

The big question now is how RuTracker will be received by Telegram’s operators. While the platform is generally anti-censorship and refuses to comply with local government restrictions on freedom of speech, it does have rules about infringing content.

Private chats between groups of users up to 5,000 members are strictly off-limits, so any exchanges there are not subjected to any takedowns. However, something more public could fall foul of the site’s rules.

“Our mission is to provide a secure means of communication that works everywhere on the planet. To do that in the places where it is most needed (and to continue distributing Telegram through the App Store and Google Play), we have to process legitimate requests to take down illegal public content (sticker sets, bots, and channels) within the app,” Telegram’s ToS reads.

While it remains to be seen how the service will view the transmission of magnet links, entertainment industry bosses are already beginning to chime in with their opinions. Alexander Blinov, General Director of Gala Records / EMI, told news outlet Izvestia that if Telegram doesn’t take action against RuTracker, his company will take the fight to Google and Apple.

“The appearance of RuTracker in Telegram is not good and if RuTracker continues to distribute illegal content through this channel, we will have to take the necessary measures, in particular filing complaints with Apple and Google,” Blinov said.

“Working relationships with these companies have already been established. However, response times are unpredictable: sometimes they act quickly, and sometimes they do not pay attention to complaints.”

According to Alexei Byrdin of the Internet Video Association, Telegram is an international project so will need to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There are no mentions of that legislation anywhere on the Telegram site but it’s certainly possible that Google and Apple could inflict the terms of the DMCA upon the service.

In any event, the move by RuTracker is certainly an interesting one. The site hasn’t really concerned itself with too much innovation over the years but in recent months has responded aggressively after receiving a lifetime block in Russia. Necessity really is the mother of invention.

Image credit: John Palmer

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