Microsoft is offering Office pirates a tempting offer, giving them 50% off if they will convert to a paid license.
As the most popular office suite on the planet, Microsoft Office is a popular target of software pirates. Microsoft is looking to convert them to paying customers, offering pirates 50% off of a genuine license.
The company is highlighting the risks associated with pirated software as an additional incentive, including:
Exposure to virus and malware attacks
Corrupted files and data loss
Inability to receive critical updates or edit files
The company says users of pirated copies of office may see a notification offering an upgrade to a genuine copy.
After launching an Office app you might receive a message that says Get genuine Office.
If you see this, we’ve determined that the Office product installed on your device isn’t legitimate and you may be a victim of software counterfeiting.
Users interested in taking advantage of Microsoft’s offer for Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family licenses for 50% off, can do so by clicking on the message notification, which links to this page.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has secured guilty pleas from two programmers who ran massive illegal streaming sites, following an investigation by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
Darryl Julius Polo plead guilty “to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of criminal copyright infringement by distributing a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution, one count of copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution, one count of copyright infringement by public performance and one count of money laundering.” His co-defendant, Luis Angel Villarino plead guilt “to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.”
According to the report, at least one “site called iStreamItAll (ISIA), an online, subscription-based service headquartered in Las Vegas that permitted users to stream and download copyrighted television programs and movies without the permission of the relevant copyright owners. Polo admitted that he reproduced tens of thousands of copyrighted television episodes and movies without authorization, and streamed and distributed the infringing programs to thousands of paid subscribers located throughout the U.S. Specifically, Polo admitted that ISIA offered more than 118,479 different television episodes and 10,980 individual movies. In fact, according to the plea agreement, ISIA had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime, and Polo sent out emails to potential subscribers highlighting ISIA’s huge catalog of works and urging them to cancel those licensed services and subscribe to ISIA instead.”
Evidently, Polo ran a sophisticated set of automated scripts that scoured pirate sites, torrents and Usenet groups 24/7 looking for new content. The content was then processed, stored and made available to subscribers of ISIA and Jetflicks, the other site in question. Both ISIA and Jetflicks were designed to work on a variety of operating systems, mobile devices, set-top boxes, consoles and smart televisions.
The level of sophistication is truly impressive and likely only a taste of what’s to come as technology continues to be democratized.
If you live in a town with a good bar or brewery, it’s likely that come 9pm on Sunday, it’s packed with people gearing up for the new episode of Game of Thrones.
Public viewing parties of popular shows have taken off in recent years – people sharing beers and tears over shows like Games of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and more. It’s the communal viewing experience that leads to incredible moments like this, an entire bar watching the Mountain v. The Viper scene from Game of Thrones:
Gee, looks fun. HBO wants to murder than fun.
It looks like HBO is now going after bars that hold these live screening parties. The NY Daily News reports that one Williamsburg bar, Videology, was recently sent a cease and desist letter – which the owner described as “a very polite but official letter asking us to stop showing it.”
They plan to comply with HBO’s polite request, because yeah it’s their content but come on, man.
“As a pay subscription service, HBO should not be made available in public establishments,” said HBO in a statement. “When it does happen, it is of particular concern when there is an attempt to profit off the programming. We have taken such actions for well over a decade.”
It appears HBO is frustrated over the fact that someone leaked a screener of the first four episodes of the new season of Game of Thrones, and it’s taking it out on some truly puzzling targets. This cease and desist order to a New York bar was preceded by legal action against Periscope, Twitter’s live broadcasting app. The company sent takedown notices, following reports that users were live-streaming the season five premiere of Game of Thrones for their followers to see.
Of course, there are a couple of things peculiar about this. For one, Periscope streams vanish after 24 hours – they aren’t permanent videos like, let’s say, YouTube videos. So essentially, HBO is fighting ghosts.
Also, you can’t believe that HBO really considers Periscope a piracy threat. How many Game of Thrones fans do you know who would suffer through watching the show via a low-quality live-stream on Twitter? As in someone recording their TV screen? It makes no sense.
HBO has always had a complicated relationship with piracy. Until the release of HBO NOW, the company’s new standalone streaming app (no cable subscription required), the only way to get HBO content outside of a cable subscription was to steal someone’s HBO GO password or simply download it. Game of Thrones has sat atop the Iron Throne of piracy for years.
But HBO execs have said some interesting things about piracy and password sharing over the years.
In 2013, a GoT director said that piracy doesn’t matter to the overall success of the show and that shows like Game of Thrones survive on cultural buzz. He later backtracked.
A few months later, HBO programming head Michael Lombardo referred to the rampant Game of Thrones piracy as a “compliment of sorts.”
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” Lombardo said. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”
Last year, HBO CEO Richard Pleper said sharing HBO GO passwords helps them “build addicts.”
“To us, in many ways, it’s a terrific marketing vehicle for the next generation of viewers and it is actually not material at all to our business,” said Plepler.
“It’s not that we’re ignoring it, and we’re looking at different ways to affect password sharing, I’m simply telling you that it’s not a fundamental problem, and the externality of it – it presents the brand to more and more people and gives them the opportunity to hopefully become addicted to it. What we’re in the business of doing it building addicts – building video addicts. And the way we do that is by exposing our product, and our shows, and our brand to more and more people.”
Facing stiff competition from streaming-only services like Netflix, HBO courted cordcutters with the new, cable-free HBO NOW option. But its coming out party was marred by the massive episode leak, and it looks like HBO is pissed.
A day before HBO was set to air the highly-anticipated premiere of the new season of Game of Thrones, the first four episodes from said season leaked online. Of course, the prompted a huge dilemma among the show’s ardent fans. On one hand, the weekly anticipation is part of the fun of the show – and who wants to blast through the next four weeks’ worth of episodes in four hours? On the other hand, well, everyone does. Duh.
According to TorrentFreak, the episodes were downloaded more than 100,000 times in just the first few hours of availability. Now, that number is well over a million.
But according to numbers, this leak didn’t stop Game of Thrones from having its biggest opening ever.
Deadline has the ratings, and Game of Thrones‘ Sunday night premiere crushed it. It garnered 7.99 live viewers – a series best. It beats the previous record, which was 7.1 million viewers during last season’s finale.
“Of Sunday night’s Season 5 premiere crowd, 5.32 million fell into the 18-49 demographic, and 2.64 million came from the 18-34 crowd, while 5.25 million fell into the older 25-54 age bracket,” says Deadline.
Leak or no leak, Game of Thrones is more popular than ever.
“Sadly, it seems the leaked four episodes of the upcoming season of Game of Thrones originated from within a group approved by HBO to receive them. We’re actively assessing how this breach occurred,” said HBO following the leak.
And now that the episodes are out there in the wild, GoT fans will face a quandary for the next few weeks. Download, for instant gratification? Or wait it out, for maximum gratification. One thing is for sure – beware the internet, for it’s dark, and full of spoilers.
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was definitely the most gloriously profane movie of the year (it’s in the record books!), and now it has another title.
According to data from Excipio, as obtained by Variety, the film was the most-pirated film this year, with just over 30 million downloads.
It just edged out Disney’s mega-hit Frozen for the top spot.
The top 10 is filled with big-budget blockbusters like The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Oscar-winner for Best Picture 12 Years a Slave snuck in at #10.
Here’s the top 20 most-pirated of 2014:
1. The Wolf of Wall Street: 30.035 million
2. Frozen: 29.919 million
3. RoboCop: 29.879 million
4. Gravity: 29.357 million
5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: 27.627 million
6. Thor: The Dark World: 25.749 million
7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier: 25.628 million
8. The Legend of Hercules: 25.137 million
9. X-Men: Days of Future Past: 24.380 million
10. 12 Years a Slave: 23.653 million
11. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: 23.543 million
12. American Hustle: 23.143 million
13. 300: Rise of an Empire: 23.096 million
14. Transformers: Age of Extinction: 21.65 million
15. Godzilla: 20.956 million
16. Noah: 20.334 million
17. Divergent: 20.312 million
18. Edge of Tomorrow: 20.299 million
19. Captain Phillips: 19.817 million
20. Lone Survivor: 19.130 million
Do note that the RoboCop figure is not entirely accurate, as it also includes downloads of the original 1987 film of the same name.
As far as TV shows go, no surprise in which took the most-pirated crown. According to Torrent Freak, Game of Thrones was, once again, the most-downloaded TV series of 2014.
The creators of the cryptocurrency known as “Coinye” were officially shut down after receiving 84 court documents describing copyright violations from Kanye West’s legal team.
Coinye, originally called “Coinye West”, a scrypt-based cryptocurrency that featured West’s face as its symbol, was set to be released on January 11. Though, on January 6, West’s lawyers sent the creators of Coinye West a cease and desist letter, citing trademark infringement, unfair competition, cyberpiracy and dilution.
The developers changed the name of the currency to Coinye, and switched domain names. An addition of a fish tail to the mascot was included as a nod to a South Park episode that depicted West as being unable to understand why people were referring to him as being a “gay fish.”
The Gay Fish song:
Needless to say, West and his lawyers were not satisfied with the gay fish alteration, and the creators of Coinye jumped ship, and sold all of their Coinye holdings. Though, volunteers have continued to develop the coin, even though the original creators refer to them as being “morons trying to revive this coin.”
Hope I wont get sued for owning this twitter account lol :D
( Seriously, can I get sued? )
At present, Coinyethecoin exists online, with a tagline reading, “That’s right bitches. Look who never died!!”
West’s lawsuit named several defendants, many of whom never responded to any claims, which rendered them in the wrong by default. Named defendents Harry Wills and Richard McCord have reached a settlement with West.
We have been hiding in a box for 6 months… Hurry up @kanyewest
Wills, a 17-year-old U.K. high school student, commented, “The main reason I settled is because I get to have West’s lawyer, a United States district judge and Kanye West’s signature along with my signature on the legal document that removes me as a defendant, which I will print off and frame.”
The season finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones has shattered a piracy record, previously held by…Game of Thrones.
According to torrent trackers, over 254,000 people were, at one point, sharing a single torrent for the season four finale episode, “The Children.”
None of this should surprise you, really – at least if you’ve been following Game of Thrones and its swelling popularity. The show has won the most-pirated crown for two years in a row now, and continues to best its own records on an episode-to-episode basis.
Data gathered by TorrentFreak further shows that, in 12 hours, the season finale has been downloaded roughly 1.5 million times. Translated into actual data, that’s close to 2,000 terabytes transferred in half a day.
The download total is expected to increase to more than 7.5 million during the weeks to come and means that unless a miracle happens, Game of Thrones will be crowned the most-pirated TV-show of the year once again.
On the official front, Game of Thrones also bested itself. Nielsen reported 7.1 million total viewers on Sunday night, a record-breaking number which climbed to 9.3 million when you add in encore showings. That’s 32 percent more viewers than GoT had for its third season finale.
So, what’s the significance of this piracy record? Well, Game of Thrones is an incredible show and people want to watch incredible shows. HBO has decided to tether their content to cable, refusing to offer a standalone streaming service. Some people don’t have buddies to share HBO GO passwords with. Remember, people like good shows.
It may seem like a lot of missed revenue opportunity for HBO but strangely enough, the company has expressed indifference toward Game of Thrones‘ piracy in the past.
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts. The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network,” HBO programming head Michael Lombardo famously said last year.
He seems to have a point. Last year, Game of Thrones took the title for most-pirated show and Amazon’s best-selling show of the year.
In January 2012, New Zealand police arrested internet icon Kim Dotcom due to claims from the United States that Dotcom had used his website to host pirated files, costing the music and movie industries more than $500 million in assets. While Dotcom awaits his subsequent trial and sentencing, he has ventured to the internet in order to ask for much needed help in his case against the entertainment industry.
In a tweet sent out Sunday afternoon, Dotcom offered a $5 million bounty for anyone who would become a “whistleblower” and provide his legal team with any information which could lead to his freedom. As Dotcom and his legal team see it, anyone seeking to divulge such information would be protected from any legal wrongdoings: “It is the opinion of my legal team that disclosure of such information would be lawful. I would also guarantee that any whistleblower coming forward would have the best legal representation at zero cost.”
My case is unfair:
I was declined discovery
I didn't get my own data back
I need Whistleblowers
I am offering USD $5M
http://t.co/OhE7k3KlUL
So what kind of information is Dotcom and his team searching for? “Let me be clear, we are asking for information that proves unlawful or corrupt conduct by the US government, the New Zealand government, spy agencies, law enforcement and Hollywood,” Dotcom stated.
Dotcom believes that the United States originally went after him and his website, MegaUpload, in order to win Hollywood’s vote for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection.
If anyone has information one would deem advantageous to Dotcom’s trial, the information can be submitted via a new whistleblowing program released by The Guardian, the British newspaper which originally hosted the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Dotcom even provided advice as to exactly how one should proceed in providing such crucial information: “In order to be completely safe I would advise any Whistleblower not to use this tool from home or work. Go to an Internet cafe with a memory stick. Don’t use your own computer or phone. You can also buy a cheap laptop or netbook just for the purpose of leaking and destroy it after you’re done.”
If you have anything to leak about the Megaupload case: https://t.co/M2ddGUhOQR
If your leak results in my victory you'll get USD 5 Million
Dotcom added extra incentive to the deal by stating that he would not only provide a money reward for “case-winning information”, but for any useful information at all:
We know that there are people out there with information. I’m willing to pay for that information. I’m determined to fight a grave injustice that has been done to a legitimate cloud storage business, its 220 employees and over 100 million users. This struggle has just begun and it will take time. But in the end we shall be victorious and we shall expose those who have abused their power.
Dotcom is currently awaiting a New Zealand court’s decision as to whether or not his assets will be frozen again following the testimony from four music industry companies and six film studios on Monday.
Back in January the U.S. charged four people in connection with pirate app stores developed for Android devices. Now all four of these defendants has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. The cases represent the U.S. Justice Department’s first cases against alleged mobile app pirates, and now appear to have been a success.
Thomas Pace of Oregon City Oregon is the latest of the pirates to plead guilty to copyright the charges. The 38-year-old Pace was a member of the Appbucket Group, the developers of the Appbucket market for Android. Through their market app the Appbucket Group distributed more than one million copyrighted Android apps without permission from the apps’ creators from 2010 to 2012. The retail value of those apps was estimated by the U.S. Justice Department to total over $700,000.
Pace’s sentencing is scheduled for July 9. He faces up to five years in prison.
Two other members of the Appbucket Group, Thomas Dye and Nicholas Narbone, both pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge back in March.
A fourth pirate, Kody Jon Peterson of Clermont, Florida, pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge on Monday. The 22-year-old Peterson was a member of the SnappzMarket Group, an organization similar to the Appbucket Group. SnappzMarket operated an alternative Android app market from 2011 to 2012, offering over one million copyrighted Android apps. The SnappzMarket is estimated to have distributed over $1.7 million worth of Android software. The SnappzMarket app was shut down by the U.S. government in late 2013 following an FBI investigation into the group.
“These crimes involve the large-scale violation of intellectual property rights in a relatively new and rapidly growing market,” said Mythili Raman, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. “While this represents the first counterfeit apps case by the Department of Justice, it exemplifies our longstanding commitment to prosecute those who steal the creative works of others.”
When the season four premiere of HBO’s fantasy-drama series Game of Thronesaired on Sunday night, a record 6.6 million viewers tuned in legally. Another million-plus viewers pirated the episode, setting another record. Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, which owns HBO, called the new piracy record “better than an Emmy.”
The Sunday night episode entitled “Two Swords” garnered a number of viewers not seen since the series finale of HBO’s The Sopranos in 2007, and the level of piracy exceeded the previous record, which was held by the Game of Thrones season three premiere.
BitTorrent protocol blog TorrentFreak reported over a million downloads within 12 hours of “Two Swords” airing, with the majority of the torrents being shared in Australia. Naturally, due to HBO’s subscription-only status, piracy is rampant. Though another contributing factor was the crashing of HBO’s streaming service, HBO Go, due to overwhelming demand.
Game of Thrones was created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. The series is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, a set of fantasy novels penned by George R. R. Martin. The complex storyline is set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos at the end of a decade-long summer, and concerns the dealings of several noble families in a civil war over the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. Sex and violence prevail, as an army of zombie-like creatures gain strength in the northern reaches of the fantasy realm.
Torrent downloads in the United States came in behind those in Australia at 9.3%. File sharing was also significant in the United Kingdom, Canada, The Netherlands, Philippines, India, Greece, Poland and Sweden. HBO has roughly 114 million legal subscribers worldwide, and has also made Sunday night’s GOT episode free to XBOX live users.
Update: Since this was first published, Google is now showing Netflix at the top of the organic results for the House of Cards example. It has also been brought to my attention that nobody is really using the “watch house of cards” query. I guess that’s good. I really wasn’t trying to suggest that this is the way everybody gets to these shows. I just found it odd that Google would display such results for such queries. Despite its apparent low search volume, a query like “watch house of cards” doesn’t seem all that crazy to me. Either way, this isn’t how the majority of people find these shows, and it was never my intention to imply that it was.
Google is suggesting that users looking to “watch House of Cards” check out Stream-TV.me, which is pointing users to episodes from both seasons “online free”. I’m sure you’ve encountered sites like this before even if not this specific one.
Note: I’m adding this update in response to comments received on this article. This is Google’s algorithm dictating which results to show. I’m in no way suggesting that Google as a company is encouraging piracy.
What’s interesting is that Google would put this as the first result for the query, ahead of Netflix itself (which is the second result). Other sites like couchtuner.eu and TVmuse.com also promising episodes online for free are sprinkled throughout the top ten, along with various videos and articles from sources like ABC and Variety. The “news” results suggest the user “watch the kinky sex scene everyone is talking about.”
If you turn off “Search Plus Your World,” a Netflix ad appears at the top, but it’s still under Stream-TV in the organic results.
I’m not sure what the personalization of SPYW is about here, by the way. Does Google know I’m a Netflix subscriber so it doesn’t bother to show me the ad when I have it enabled?
Look how far down on the page Netflix is for Orange is the New Black:
Similar results occur for other Netflix originals like Lilyhammer, Hemlock Grove, Arrested Development, and Derek. Netflix isn’t even in the results for Mako Mermaids:
Netflix doesn’t make an appearance at all until page six, and that’s just a post from the Netflix Nodics newsroom, which doesn’t even work. I got through fourteen pages of results without finding a link to watch it on Netflix, which is without question the most relevant destination (at least here in the U.S.).
How does it do on other Netflix original content like documentary The Square, which is nominated for an Oscar? Well, Netflix gets the top spot in the organic results on that one, but a Google house ad to get it from Google Play appears above that, which is interesting considering it’s not currently available on Google Play. Click it, and you’ll realize that Google is just trying to sell you a 2008 film of the same name. All of Google’s organic results know that this isn’t the film you’re looking for (and by the way, where’s the Knowledge Graph option to choose on this one?), but that doesn’t mean Google can’t try to sell you something completely irrelevant at the top of the page. Also notice the other irrelevant ad on the side.
How about the Aziz Ansari stand-up special Buried Alive? Keep in mind, this is a six-month Netflix exclusive (which Netflix has gone out of its way to promote heavily compared to other specials). it debuted in November on Netlix, and after a six-month run, Ansari said a $5 download option would become available. Google gives you a site with a list of seventeen links to find it (SolarMovie.so) as well as another option above the Netflix link. Netflix does have an ad spot on this one, which Google showed at the bottom of the page (though I refreshed it and lost it for the screenshot).
It’s not just Netflix content. Google has some questionable results for a lot of TV shows, though it seems to do a little better with HBO content in some cases. “Watch Game of Thrones” and “Watch True Detective” both returned HBO as the top result.
Netflix is the obvious choice for its original shows, but it’s not even the only legitimate option in some cases. You can find episodes of House of Cards on Amazon, for example, yet this did not appear on the first page of results either.
The openness of the Android platform has many advantages, but it also makes the platform more of a gamble for developers. Apple’s iOS is still the leading platform for many app releases (especially games) and apps can often sell on iOS while their Android versions are free. The reason for this is the expectations that Android users have, as well as the ease with which Android apps can be pirated using alternative app stores that operate in the open. Now, however, app pirates will have to be more careful or face legal consequences.
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four people in connection with running alternative pirate Android app stores. All four defendants in the case have been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. They could each face up to five years in prison if found guilty.
One of the defendants is accused of involvement in the SnappzMarket app store, which the Justice Department believes distributed over one million pirated Android apps. The other three defendants have been charged for their involvement in the Appbucket app store, which authorities also believe distributed over one million pirated apps.
All of the defendants are accused of renting server space for their respective app stores. Both of the stores were seized by U.S. authorities in August 2012.
“These crimes involve the large-scale violation of intellectual property rights in a relatively new and rapidly growing market,” said Mythili Raman, acting U.S. assistant attorney general. “While this represents the first counterfeit apps case by the Department of Justice, it exemplifies our longstanding commitment to prosecute those who steal the creative works of others.”
As the debate rages on concerning where you can and cannot operate Google’s new nerd goggles, Google Glass, can we at least agree on something – it’s probably best to leave them out of the movie theater?
This is not a piracy argument, and it’s not an argument for or against any tactics law enforcement may or may not have employed. If this currently one-sided story is to be taken at face value, the authorities in charge here appear to have acted inappropriately – or at least took things a bit far. I’m simply talking common sense here. Seriously, just leave the Google Glass at home next time you go to the movies (or at least take them off your face when the movie starts).
So here’s the story. According to someone who wishes to remain anonymous, the Feds had a pretty rough go at him for wearing Google Glass at a Saturday night showing of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Our Google Glass pioneer’s story first appeared on The Gadgeteer, where he claims that the AMC theater in Columbus, Ohio aided the FBI in removing him from the movie, “detaining,” and questioning him for over an hour – all the while accusing him of illegally recording the film.
A charge that he vehemently denies. From his account:
I kept telling them that I wasn’t recording anything – my Glass was off, they insisted they saw it on. I told them there would be a light coming out the little screen if Glass was on, and I could show them that, but they insisted that I cannot touch my Glass for the fear “I will erase the evidence against me that was on Glass”. I didn’t have the intuition to tell them that Glass gets really warm if it records for more than a few minutes and my glasses were not warm.
They wanted to know where I got Glass and how did I came by having it. I told them I applied about 1000 times to get in the explorer program, and eventually I was selected, and I got the Glass from Google. I offered to show them receipt and Google Glass website if they would allow me to access any computer with internet. Of course, that was not an option. Then they wanted to know what does Google ask of me in exchange for Glass, how much is Google paying me, who is my boss and why am I recording the movie.
Our Glass user says that he was only wearing them because they contain his prescription lenses – basically he was just wearing the tech as his normal prescription eyewear (he had a normal pair of glasses which he’d left in the car).
After an hour or so of questioning, one which involved the downloading of personal files from his Glass onto a satellite laptop in order to prove he wasn’t recording the movie (something he himself suggested), he was apparently given free passes to another show and an apology from a guy at the so-called “Movie Association.”
An apology which didn’t really assuage his frustration, by the way.
In the end, our anonymous Glass user concedes that this probably could have been avoided:
I guess until people get more familiar with Google Glass and understand what they are, one should not wear them to the movies. I wish they would have said something before I went to the movies, but it may be my mistake for assuming that if I went and watched movies two times wearing Glass with no incident the third time there won’t be any incident either. As for the federal agents and their level of comprehension… I guess if they deal with petty criminals every day, everybody starts looking like a petty criminal. Again, I wish they would have listened when I told them how to verify I did nothing illegal, or at least apologize afterwards, but hey… this is the free country everybody praises. Somewhere else might be even worse.
It also may have been the case that he simply got unlucky. Here’s what he told Phandroid:
“From what (REDACTED) said, they were having known issues on that theatre, and they had suspicions there would be attempts to pirate that particular movie. Columbus is not a big city, and I think it was about an hour after the movie started until they snatched me out.”
Yeah, the Feds look pretty incompetent here. As does the theater. But in the end, dude shoulda saw this coming, right? If I were to watch a movie, in a theater, with my iPhone pointed at the screen the entire time – what would be the result? On or off, innocent or malicious – that just looks bad. If you sit through a movie with a camera on your face, it’s can’t be that shocking when suspicions are aroused.
Alongside casinos and motor vehicles, I’m sure we’ll soon add movie theaters to the list of places where Google Glass is banned. But until it’s specifically banned, it’s probably wise to take the damn things off your face when you’re in a movie.
In-between all of the end-of-year best-of lists, there are a few lists that it might be questionable for entertainment properties to end up on. One of these is undoubtedly the list most-pirated shows for the year.
Though a good showing of that list is undoubtedly a sign of popularity, copyright holders would almost certainly rather have those viewers paying to watch their shows. It stands to reason, then, that the most-pirated of the year list also pinpoints which shows come at too high a cost to view.
Keeping price concerns in mind, it isn’t a surprise that several cable and premium-channel shows appear on TorrentFreak’s list of the ten most-pirated shows of 2013. The publication’s rankings are based off of BitTorrent downloads throughout the year.
Game of Thrones tops the list this year, taking the title of most-pirated show for the second year in a row. The show’s season finale set a record earlier this year by having 171,572 sharing the episode via BitTorrent at the same time.
AMC’s popular cable shows Breaking Bad and The Waking Dead also made an impressive showing on the list, coming in second and third, respectively.
Showtime’s Dexter and Homeland also make the list, though fans of Dexter might now regret having gone through the trouble of pirating the show’s final season.
Though they cost no money to watch on U.S. network TV channels, it seems that many fans of The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother decided to catch up on the series’ via BitTorrent instead. As seen on the full list below, these shows came in at fourth and sixth on the list, respectively.
The United States’ largest copyright lobbies, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, have initiated a highly controversial program nudging the educational system to shoulder the burden of teaching kids about how evil piracy really is.
The LA Times reports that a nonprofit group known as the Center for Copyright Information has commissioned a program to teach kids between kindergarten and sixth grade about intellectual property ownership.
The program is to be called “Be a Creator,” and the proposed curriculum includes lesson plans, videos, and activities that promote “being creative and protecting creativity” with topics like: Respect the Person: Give Credit; It’s Great to Create; and Copyright Matters.
The president of a nonprofit organization (iKeepSafe) that focuses on helping keep kids safe on the internet, Marsali Hancock, defended the program by saying “It’s important to prepare children to succeed and thrive and learn how to share and create and move files in a way that’s ethical and responsible.”
Even though nothing of the plan has even been written yet, the idea of implementing it has come under intense scrutiny. Frank Wells, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association, said “While it’s certainly a worthy topic of discussion with students, I’m sure some teachers would have a concern that adding anything of any real length to an already packed school day would take away from the basic curriculum that they’re trying to get through now.”
In one curriculum draft acquired by Wired a couple months ago, a property attorney described the information being disseminated as “thinly disguised propaganda” because the program omits any mention of the concept of Fair Usage, such as satire, parody, or commentary.
Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said “It sends the message that you always have to get permission before you can copy anything and that sharing is always theft and that if you violate copyright law all kinds of bad things will happen to you. It’s a scare tactic.”
Stephen Smith, a managing partner with Greenberg Glusker and an expert on copyright law, said “The idea that time would be taken out of kids’ days to teach them copyright law, when they ought to be learning reading, writing and arithmetic, I find to be strange… I just don’t think it’s appropriate curriculum for kindergartners to sixth-graders.”
Meanwhile, in spite of the MPAA’s constant whinging about immense profit losses caused by online piracy, recently conducted economics studies suggested that their “losses” are sensationally inflated and that the music and film industries are fiscally performing better than ever.
Earlier this month, IsoHunt, one of the world’s largest torrent trackers, shut down after settling a seven year lawsuit with the MPAA. There were efforts to archive all of IsoHunt upon the news, but founder Gary Fung killed the site earlier than planned to thwart those efforts. Now an entirely new team has resurrected the site in its entirety.
TorrentFreak reports that a carbon copy of IsoHunt is now online at isohunt.to. The new site has nothing to do with the original site as it was brought back by a team that feels the site was a “file-sharing icon.” The team confirmed just as much in a post on the new IsoHunt under the title of “IsoHunt is back!”
Hey everyone! IsoHunt is back online! It’s the same old isoHunt from the outside but very different from the inside. We have nothing in common with the isoHunt Inc. that made the original website. We proudly copied it and are happy to share. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?
Feel free to search and download torrents like you used to. We’ll try to bring some of the old features back so we can recreate everything together.
So, how similar is the new IsoHunt compared to the one one? The team behind it tells TorrentFreak that they have rescued about 75 percent of the original IsoHunt’s torrent database, and that they’re trying to bring more back online. They also might be able to bring back user comments, but it looks like the forums and user profiles will not be coming back.
The death of IsoHunt was a big win for the MPAA in its tireless crusade to remove all file-sharing sites from the Internet, but its return is a powerful reminder that the the Internet doesn’t tolerate forced censorship. Even if what the site is doing is deemed illegal by the justice system, somebody on the Internet will ensure that it survives. That has happened here and it will happen again if the MPAA forces this new version of IsoHunt to shut down.
IsoHunt was mine, and presumably many others, first run in with torrents and file sharing. Many have moved on, but the MPAA just couldn’t leave it alone. After launching a lawsuit against the site in 2006, the site’s founder, Gary Fung, and the MPAA went back and forth in court for more than 6 years. Now it’s all over and Fung didn’t win.
Wired reports that Fung has reached a settlement with the MPAA in which he’ll pay $110 million in damages. As part of the settlement, he is also shutting the site down for good. The site, which currently has over 13 million active torrents, isn’t down just yet, but Fung has seven days to shut it down.
With the announcement of the settlement, MPAA chairman Chris Dodd said that bullying a file sharing site into a settlement that it can’t possibly afford is somehow a win for innovation:
“Today’s settlement is a major step forward in realizing the enormous potential of the internet as a platform for legitimate commerce and innovation. It also sends a strong message that those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling, and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers, and will be held accountable for their illegal actions.”
Now, I’m not saying that piracy is innovation, but Dodd’s statement is like the pot calling the kettle black. The MPAA chairman singing the praises of the Internet as a bastion of innovation for the film industry is disingenuous as the group he oversees has done everything in its power to resist the future that file sharing gave users in instant gratification.
In fact, a study from earlier this week found that the film industry is to blame for piracy, not file-sharing sites. Out of the top 10 most pirated films over the last three weeks, not a single one was available via a legal streaming service. Consumers demand instant gratification in the Internet era, and streaming is the easiest way to deliver that. Sure, some new films are available for digital purchase, but the hoops one has to jump through to purchase and watch said films make piracy the much more appealing option.
I’m not saying all this to defend IsoHunt, nor do I defend other file sharing sites like The Pirate Bay. What I do defend is the consumer, and the MPAA alongside other other copyright maximalist groups are doing the consumer no favors by going after file sharing sites. All their doing is desperately clinging to a business model that should have died over a decade ago. If they really cared about innovation, they would have fully embraced services like Netflix while reaching out to their biggest fans who usually happen to also be the biggest pirates.
Oh, and as for Fung’s next move, he has submitted a petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court. If it ends up like other file sharing cases, the SCOTUS will kick it back to the lower courts. We might get lucky, however, as Fung feels that IsoHunt is a search engine and that this ruling will affect services like Google and Bing as well.
Every few months, the MPAA comes out of the woodwork to claim Google’s search results encourage piracy. According to their logic, the prevalence of illegal sources on Google’s front page indicates that something is wrong. Now a group of researchers are pushing back against the logic.
The Hill reports that George Mason University’s Mercatus Center has recently launched a Web site called piracydata.org. The Web site takes the top 10 most pirated movies of the week and mashes it up with data from CanIStreamIt.It. The result is a graph detailing when a movie is available online for legal purchase, rental or stream.
As you might expect, the top 10 most pirated movies of the week are not available on any legal streaming services. In fact, not even all of them are available for digital rental or purchase. The researchers behind the project say that’s the real problem – not search engines.
“When movies are unavailable, illegal sources may be the most relevant search results,” Jerry Brito, director of the Mercatus Center’s Technology Policy Program, said. “Despite what the content industry might like to see, search engines are just telling it like it is.”
The findings come over a year after the entertainment industry successfully convinced Google to alter its search algorithm to take piracy into account. As you may recall, Google introduced a ranking algorithm change in April 2012 that would demote sites based upon the number of takedown requests Google receives for that site. The change was controversial, but it remains in effect.
Since then, the entertainment industry and governments have doubled down their efforts to partially pin the blame of piracy rates on search engines. Back in November of last year, seven months after the algorithm change went into effect, the UK government said that Google still wasn’t doing enough to stop piracy. It pointed out that searches like “Maroon 5 free MP3” returned links to sites that offered pirated music.
While the evidence may seem damning, it completely ignores that piracy rates have been plummeting thanks to the likes of Spotify and Pandora. As it turns out, giving people what they want in a convenient method at a good price leads to people paying for that service.
So, let’s apply the same logic to movies. In an interview with Tweakers, Netflix CEO Reed Hasting said that the arrival of Netflix in Canada reduced local piracy rates by 50 percent. There’s no comparable number for U.S. piracy rates, but it’s probably has reached a similar rate thanks to Netflix.
Of course, you can only take piracy rates for TV shows and movies that are available on Netflix into account. For the past three weeks, the top 10 most pirated movies haven’t been on Netflix or any other legal streaming service. The big movie studios would tell you that it’s all about making the most money on a product, and how it doesn’t make sense for a movie to hit Netflix at the same time as it hits digital marketplaces. The music industry has already blown holes in that theory as its embrace of Spotify has led to the industry making its first profit in over 10 years.
What does all of this tell the movie industry? It tells the industry that it should stop looking for the splinter in Google’s eye while ignoring the plank in its own. The industry must embrace digital revenue models that aren’t tied to crappy services like Utraviolet that limit what a person can do with their movies. It needs to be instant, seamless and easy – just like what Spotify is to music. Netflix is undoubtedly waiting with open arms to become the Spotify of movies, and it’s just waiting for the film industry to finally pull its head out of its ass.
A new study by The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) says that online piracy isn’t hurting the entertainment industry, but is actually helping it. The study, authored by Bart Cammaerts, Robin Mansell and Bingchun Meng, also asks governments to re-evaluate their antipiracy laws while including data from studies beyond those directly sponsored by the entertainment industry itself.
Cammaerts, drawing upon the findings of a report conducted by file sharing site TorrentFreak, states, “contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is not in terminal decline, but still holding ground and showing healthy profits. Revenues from digital sales, subscription services, streaming and live performances compensate for the decline in revenues from the sale of CDs or records.”
A study conducted last June showed that 45% of Americans download pirated media, and 70% of the 30-and-under crowd share pirated files. Regardless, the movie industry is seeing larger revenues. “Despite the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion in 2012, a 6% increase over 2011,” according to the LSE report.
Studies have repeatedly shown that pirates are more apt to actually pay for physical and digital media, and are the biggest champions of media in general. The Columbia study has also shown that half of all pirates would be willing to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to all media.
Still, the record industry has been stagnating for a long while. But merchandise and live performance revenues have supplemented industry losses. The LSE study authors suggest that the entertainment industry might need to figure out how to better bridge the gap between content providers and media consumers.
The authors conclude, “within the creative industries there is a variety of views on the best way to benefit from online sharing practices, and how to innovate to generate revenue streams in ways that do not fit within the existing copyright enforcement regime. When both [the creative industries and citizens] can exploit the full potential of the Internet, this will maximize innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders.”
Interestingly, Netflix surveys piracy sites to deem which shows and movies are most popular, before incorporating them into their lineup.
As the Internet went wild watching the final moments of Walter White’s existence in the land of television–an existence that will no doubt live on in streaming reruns–folks who didn’t have access to the episode made sure they didn’t have to wait long to find out how the show ended. Naturally, the content acquisition method of choice for the Breaking Bad finale was copyright infringement. Instead of waiting for AMC/Netflix/iTunes/Amazon Instant Video to post the episode, a few hundred thousand impatient fans turned to their favorite bit torrent search engine and downloaded the appropriate torrent file.
While we can debate the entertainment industry’s willingness to adapt to the Internet and the freedom it provides (emphasis on “free”), these acts of content distribution are still illegal in most countries, except for maybe Portugal. Considering how many almost-immediate downloads of the premiere episode of Breaking Bad’s final season there were, the news of finale downloading should come as no surprise. It is, however, worth noting the Breaking Bad finale is trying claim to another crown:
The most illegally downloaded television episode of 2013.
It’s certainly off to a good start. According to research done by Torrent Freak, in just 12 hours after airing, the final episode has been downloaded over 500,000 times. To determine these findings, the publication sampled data from multiple torrent tracking sites, and to the potential surprise of some, the United States was not the leader in the clubhouse for most downloads; although, it was second. The country rankings, according to Torrent Freak’s data:
1 Australia – 18.0%
2 United States – 14.5%
3 United Kingdom – 9.3%
4 Canada – 5.7%
5 India – 5.1%
6 Netherlands – 2.4%
7 Poland – 2.4%
8 Philippines – 2.3%
9 France – 2.2%
10 South Africa – 2.1%
As noted when the downloading frequency of the premiere episode was being discussed, many of these countries have legal alternatives to downloading, and in the United States especially, that alternative is free, courtesy of AMC streaming the Breaking Bad finale on their site. Nevertheless, file sharing as a means of content delivery clearly remains a legitimate, if not the preferred method for many.
In other news, considering the way Netflix uses file sharing data in relation to its content, one wonders if they’ll put any pressure on AMC to get access to the final Breaking Bad episodes a little earlier for their United States subscribers.
The Netflix team has a very important job when it comes to purchasing what it’s consumers can view. How would they differentiate it to buy or not? What does the Netflix customer want to watch? These are very broad questions. Before purchasing the shows to make available to customers, Netflix is wisely checking piracy sites to research the demand of various movies and TV shows based on how many viewers are watching something, VP of Content Acquisition Kelly Merryman explained to Tweakers. The Netflix team is hoping instead of you stealing the information a.k.a. “pirating,” that you’ll spend a few extra dollars with them to view the same information legally.
This tactic definitely contains some brilliance.
Why? Not only are people having issues pirating after government authorities are doing their jobs, and cracking down on some of the commonly used sites. But spam, and other items, can be downloaded to your computer when trying to download and view your programs. There’s also that chance that you could set yourself up to watch something really spectacular, and then it could turn out to be a shoddy bootlegged version.
With Netflix, you may not have the material on your hard drive, but you can view anything from one source, and on multiple platforms, without having the needle in the haystack search for something. They put it as the “Click and Watch.” On netflix, you can find something to watch without knowing what you want to watch. search by genre, search recommendations based on other items you like, or go really crazy and type in crazy keywords in the search bar. (I do not recommend the last one, but whatever. You get the point.) As long as you have WiFi, you can essentially watch anything they own from anywhere on your phone, tablet, or television from an ever-growing library of media, and you know you will be viewing a good version.
In August, Netflix introduced Profiles on their website, which solved one of the main problems that consumers were having. Here was the issue: Say you live in a home with a family of five. Two adults, three children ages: 15, 12, 8. This is a hypothetical. Within this home, the adults would be watching different programs solo, than any of the kids, and these programs may not be suitable for any of them. What is the 15-year-old is watching, may not be appropriate for the 8-year-old, or even the 12-year-old. But yet, within this one family their Netflix is keeping a record of what everyone views, and making recommendations on what everyone is watching. See the problem? After you spent Spring Break watching Lilo & Stitch with your eight-year-old, Netflix suggests other Disney moves. Or it suggests Bridget Jones’s Diary or Sweet Home Alabama, because your wife enjoys Chick-Flicks. See the problem?
The new profiles is a free add-on available to eliminate this problem, by only making suggestions based on your own personal profile. You can add up to 5 on the standard account ($7.99 per month) and you can indicate if a child is under 12, which is sorta refreshing. I can already think of a few issues with the Profile concept, like for families who actually watch things together, but also separately. Or Netflix account sharing among many people, which Netflix presumably dislikes this behavior anyways… but it does happen. Although kinks are still being worked out with the Profiles, it’s a good start.
Netflix is progressively getting better at providing a better experience for its customers. Clearly, with 37 million members in 40 countries they aren’t too bad of a job at providing people what they want to watch, because Netflix is being smart: there’s a method to their madness.
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