The dollar majors have mostly remained comfortably within Thursday ranges with markets hunkered down ahead of Fed Yellen's speech later today, which precedes the long U.S. holiday weekend. Cable was an exception, logging a two-day low at 1.4620, while sterling posted three-day lows versus both the euro and yen. The pound has been giving back some of the gains seen during the week.
Their first target was Usenet-indexing site Newzbin, a somewhat soft target considering the site had already been declared as operating illegally in the UK.
Almost five years ago the High Court ruled in the studios’ favor, ordering ISP BT to block the site. This action set a precedent in the UK and in the years that followed a similar process was used to block hundreds of ‘pirate’ sites, with the recording, publishing and sports industries all getting involved.
Currently, sites are blocked on a regular basis as copyright holders are allowed to add new domains to existing court orders if the domains are considered to be closely associated with a previously blocked site. This covers new Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents proxy sites, for example.
However, during the past few days several sites became unavailable via UK ISPs that were not closely associated with sites already blocked, CouchTuner for instance. This was a fairly clear indication that a new High Court order had been obtained.
That confirmation has now arrived, with notification from ISP Virgin Media that it has blocked several streaming sites in compliance with an injunction obtained by the Motion Picture Association on May 5. The sites are Couchtuner.ag, Merdb, Putlocker.is, Putlocker.plus, Rainiertamayo.com (Rainierland), Vidics.ch, Watchfree.to and Xmovies8.tv.
From a traffic perspective, Putlocker is without doubt the largest target. According to Alexa the streaming portal is the 219th most popular site on the Internet, 166th in the United States and an impressive 35th in the UK.
Next up is Watchfree.to, a site that rocketed from relative obscurity this time last year to become the 1,369th most popular site on the Internet. In third place comes CouchTuner, a fan favorite that’s currently ranked 1,609th worldwide. The remainder are relative minnows, with Vidics barely able to break the 28,000 barrier.
As always the current injunction was obtained under Section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act but one has to go back more than a year to find a similar fresh order obtained by the MPA. That came in April 2015 when several PopcornTime, isoHunt, EZTV and sundry streaming sites were targeted.
But while the MPA’s applications are spread out, it’s likely their reach will continue to grow. Any sites that have a similar name and/or functionality to those in an existing order will be added to the injunction without having to obtain a new one. In an effort to thwart workarounds, that includes proxies, mirrors and even copycats too.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
The major currencies have traded without direction with markets hunkered down into Fed chairwoman Yellen's speech later today, and ahead of the long U.S. holiday weekend. The dollar has lost its rallying impetus, tracking a decline in U.S. Treasury yields as markets take a more circumspect view of Fed tightening prospects. We doubt that Yellen's appearance today will be either the time or place for her to spill the beans on policy. She will be in conversation with Greg Mankiw to discuss her professional achievements.
Profit taking on long dollar positions was the feature of the FX market in N.Y. on Thursday, taking the dollar mostly lower. Ahead of Yellen's Friday speech, and the upcoming long weekend in the U.S. and London, traders appeared to think it best to lighten up on greenbacks. The drop today followed a week of gains, which were kicked off in earnest following the release of the FOMC minutes last week. Incoming data was mixed, as jobless claims were lower than expected, while headline durable orders beat the street. Internal components of the report however, were light of expectations.
During the last 10 years many companies have gained infamy with this business model, but few stirred up as much hatred as Prenda Law. Prenda and its principals John Steele, Paul Hansmeier and Paul Duffy grabbed dozens of headlines, mostly surrounding negative court rulings which found the outfit to have engaged in everything from vexatious litigation through to identity theft, misrepresentation and even deception.
Underlying this deviant behavior was the disturbing fact that rather than simply monitoring pirates online, Prenda actually uploaded content itself in order to create pirate honeypots on The Pirate Bay and elsewhere, a practice that pushed the company well over the moral line.
Although now defunct, Prenda is still fresh in the minds of its many victims so news last year that the outfit was under investigation by the FBI was well-received. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij confirmed that they had both been interviewed in prison by police acting on behalf of the FBI.
“They wanted to know if I could verify the accuracy of the IP-address logs, how they were stored, and how they could be retrieved,” Neij explained.
But since then another year has passed and memories of Prenda have continued to fade. Will the world’s most hated trolls ever be brought to criminal justice? Well, fresh news from Ken White at Popehat suggests that the FBI still have a keen interest in the case and could be close to their goal.
Operating out of its Minneapolis office, the FBI has continued to seek additional information about Prenda and has reportedly sent out a letter “on a large scale” to attorneys who have represented alleged file-sharers targeted by the law company.
Ken White says he has seen the document and it reveals that the FBI is investigating several entities connected to Prenda including Steele Hansmeier PLLC, LW Systems, Livewire Holdings, AF Holdings, Ingenuity13, and Guava LLC.
“The FBI has devoted substantial resources to soliciting victim impact in a systematic way, and based on its questions about availability to testify is contemplating prosecution,” White explains.
Noting that the letter has gone out in a fairly public fashion, While says he believes that the investigation is probably in its latter stages, with the FBI already in possession of the evidence it needs to prosecute a case of wire and/or mail fraud.
By contacting Prenda’s victims, White believes the FBI is attempting to establish the amount of damages to claim, which could be substantial.
“Bear in mind that under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the more money wrongdoers made, the more time they’re facing. Team Prenda needs federal criminal defense attorneys, and needs them right now,” he concludes.
News that the investigation into Prenda’s activities could be in its final stages will be well received by thousands of victims and the possibility of peering behind the curtain of one of the most hated troll outfits is certainly welcome. The cherry on the top would be a successful prosecution but that could be some time away yet.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
The dollar has traded softer, with USD-JPY ebbing under 110.00 and EUR-USD lifting to the upper 1.11s. There has been some impetus to square positions ahead of Fed chair Yellen's speech tomorrow, which will be a key determiner for markets with regard to Fed tightening expectations. This, along with a fresh gain in oil prices, drove USD-CAD for a second day, which extended losses sparked by the BoC's policy statement yesterday. Brent crude rallied above $50 for the first time since last November, which follows data this week showing bigger than forecast declines in U.S. inventory levels.
As a result it has become harder to use VPN services to access Netflix content from other countries. However, the measures also affect well-intentioned customers who merely use a VPN to protect their privacy.
This broad blocking policy has sparked wide protests and tens of thousands Internet users have signed a petition launched by digital rights group OpenMedia, which asks Netflix to stop the VPN crackdown.
A few weeks ago OpenMedia sent an open letter to Netflix, inviting CEO Reed Hastings to discuss possible alternatives. In absence of a reply, the group is now following up with a new message that’s unmissable.
This week a massive mobile billboard is driving through the streets of Los Gatos, California, where Netflix headquarters are located. The billboard carries the message “We ♥ Our Privacy,” with the URL of the VPN unblocking campaign.
OpenMedia hopes that the billboard will send a clear message. The protests are not going to stop and with thousands of new signers per week the campaign is gaining momentum.
“Right now, Netflix customers are being forced to choose between watching their favorite shows and safeguarding their privacy,” OpenMedia’s digital rights specialist Laura Tribe says.
“Our mobile billboard is one more way we’re working to encourage Netflix to rethink their approach. The company has much better options available to it, than undermining the privacy of over 80 million paying Netflix customers in the post-Snowden world.”
OpenMedia understands that Netflix has to comply with Hollywood’s demands to restrict access, but it believes that there a there are better ways to make sure that geographic restrictions are enforced. For example, by simply linking content libraries to credit card addresses.
Thus far Netflix hasn’t been very receptive to the concerns. During an investor call last month Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the recent crackdown on VPN users hasn’t hurt the company’s results, and that the complaints came from a “small but vocal minority.”
A ‘small’ minority with a huge billboard…
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
