News from the World of Online Piracy

Gladius:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-01-06 07:13:48(254Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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The Art of War: Lessons for Pirates and Anti-Pirates Alike

Courtesy : Torrentfreak

There have been countless anti-piracy strategies deployed over the years and pirates have deployed their own in response. In the end, the parties "at war" aren't so different and may even benefit from the same techniques. The most fundamental ones aren't new either, having been around for at least 2,500 years.

People who run pirate sites and services tend to be pretty interesting individuals. Some are extraordinarily talented and smart, with technical skills that can leave one in awe. Some are funny and insightful too, while others are irritable and almost impossible to deal with.

Surprise. People who work at anti-piracy companies can be pretty interesting individuals too. They also tend to be talented and smart, with technical skills in abundance. In some cases they are some of the nicest people you will ever deal with while some are the nastiest characters around. Like their counterparts, they cover the usual spread of human traits.

In many ways, however, these warring groups of people are very similar, they just approach the same thing from different angles. The aim of pirates is to spread media and the aim of anti-pirates is to stop them from doing so. Put this scenario into a video game and its no different from a team deathmatch. It’s not personal either, it’s just business.

The point is that both ‘teams’ are on the same battlefield and as a result, can benefit from the same strategies. And it can be argued that there has been no greater strategist than Chinese general Sun Tzu, the credited author of The Art of War.

Despite being written 2,500 years ago, the wisdom of this work shines through today. So which of his teachings are most relevant to both sides of the piracy ‘wars’?

Perhaps the most obvious, which underlines the similarities between the factions, is that “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy“. On a basic level, by understanding your adversary deeply, you are able to think how he thinks. Stepping deeper, some ‘pirates’ on pirate sites are not pirates at all, even though they act like them.

“It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.”

Perhaps one of the great ironies of starting a pirate platform is that if it fails quickly, the disappointment comes with a gilded edge – the enemy will never come. Great success, on the other hand, almost certainly means the opposite. Not considering this at the very beginning can be a recipe for disaster.

As Sun Tzu said: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

In 2019 this quote became relevant every time we wrote about small Kodi-addon developers in the UK being targeted by FACT and even the police. The majority of these people seemed to have miscalculated how important their software would ultimately become and, as a result, left a trail of digital breadcrumbs to their front doors.

When the authorities arrive with overwhelming force, a cascade of quotes inevitably follows, all centered around the imbalance of power and the pointlessness of self-sacrifice in an unwinnable battle. Importantly, they know that “supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

That’s what the strongly-worded cease-and-desist letters backed up with a credible threat of civil or criminal prosecution aim to achieve. They don’t want a war, you don’t want to lose, so be sensible and back away now, they say. Or as Sun Tzu put it “build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across” in the hope that the “the wise warrior avoids the battle.“

Of course, there is a valid theory that anti-piracy groups cannot take on the world so if everyone resisted they would be unable to cope with the workload. They know that better than anyone so they pick their fights wisely, in order to project an image of power and present a credible deterrent.

“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill,” Sun Tzu said. “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

But for some pirates, giving in has never been an option and one needs to look no further than The Pirate Bay to see how Sun Tzu’s teachings have applied again and again. Every single time that site or the people behind it have been targeted, the response has been the same – this will not work and we will never stop.

Host targeted, we have another – and another. Domain targeted, we have a dozen more. Blocked by ISPs, here are a thousand proxies. Or as Sun Tzu wrote, “Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you. This will diminish his enthusiasm.”

Tying up disproportionate resources in one battle is not prudent, particularly against a resilient enemy such as The Pirate Bay. “If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak,” Sun Tzu taught. “By reinforcing every part, he weakens every part.”

The Pirate Bay, however, is a unique case. Having lost so many battles, they now operate from a position of strength. The site isn’t invincible but there are many softer targets that produce more bang for content providers’ buck – and less embarrassment when it all comes to nothing – again.

When everything is said and done, setting out to achieve anything significant in piracy is a gamble. Sun Tzu probably has something to say about that too, but a Chinese proverb explains things perfectly. It’s a plan that should never be deviated from, if survival needs to be ensured.

“If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.”

 
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sherb:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_sitelover::_junkie::_kitty::_sun::_turtle:Posted at 2020-01-17 15:35:19(253Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
El Wino
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Pirated Copy of ‘1917’ Leaks in Massive Screener Dump

Six pirated movie screeners have leaked in the span of just a few hours. The screener dump includes a copy of Golden Globe winner 1917, one of the most prominent leaks thus far. Also notable is the involvement of the group TOPKEK, which hasn't released any screeners before.

Earlier this week we reported that the number of leaked screeners was on the rise again after an all-time low last year.

Over the past 24-hours, this number went up significantly with six new leaks bringing the total to 16.

A pirated screener dump of this magnitude in such a short timeframe is something we haven’t seen before.

What’s also new is that the release group ‘TOPKEK’ is one of the driving forces. Although TOPKEK is not new to releasing pirated movies, they haven’t gotten involved in leaking screeners in the past.

The most prominent release is ‘1917,’ which won the Golden Globe for best film and received ten Academy Award nominations earlier this week. A screener copy of the movie was released by both TOPKEK and Hive-CM8.

It’s likely that both groups obtained their screener copy from a separate source. The file sizes of the releases vary and, according to reports from users, the quality is not the same either.

In their release notes, Hive-CM8 mentions that the movie has already generated enough revenue for it to be released in the open. “Gross is doing ok, so it’s ready to go,” the group writes.



Both TOPKEK and Hive-CM8 also released a copy of the biographical drama ‘Richard Jewell,’ another contender for the Oscars.

The other four screeners that leaked all came from TOPKEK. These include ‘A hidden Life,’ ‘Color Out of Space,’ Dark Waters,’ and ‘Queen and Slim.’ The latter comes with the unusual ‘QuerySCR’ tag which suggests that the source of the screener copy may not be known.

The Dark Waters release also stands out. It’s tagged as a 1080p release and is 33.7 gigabytes in size, considerably larger than the rest.

Seeing this many leaks in the span of a few hours is quite unique. As far as we know, it has never happened before. This certainly makes it newsworthy and may also draw the attention of Hollywood and law enforcement.

Original article

 
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Gladius:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-01-24 05:12:04(252Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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sherb wrote:

Pirated Copy of ‘1917’ Leaks in Massive Screener Dump

Six pirated movie screeners have leaked in the span of just a few hours. The screener dump includes a copy of Golden Globe winner 1917, one of the most prominent leaks thus far. Also notable is the involvement of the group TOPKEK, which hasn't released any screeners before.

Earlier this week we reported that the number of leaked screeners was on the rise again after an all-time low last year.

Over the past 24-hours, this number went up significantly with six new leaks bringing the total to 16.

A pirated screener dump of this magnitude in such a short timeframe is something we haven’t seen before.

What’s also new is that the release group ‘TOPKEK’ is one of the driving forces. Although TOPKEK is not new to releasing pirated movies, they haven’t gotten involved in leaking screeners in the past.

The most prominent release is ‘1917,’ which won the Golden Globe for best film and received ten Academy Award nominations earlier this week. A screener copy of the movie was released by both TOPKEK and Hive-CM8.

It’s likely that both groups obtained their screener copy from a separate source. The file sizes of the releases vary and, according to reports from users, the quality is not the same either.

In their release notes, Hive-CM8 mentions that the movie has already generated enough revenue for it to be released in the open. “Gross is doing ok, so it’s ready to go,” the group writes.



Both TOPKEK and Hive-CM8 also released a copy of the biographical drama ‘Richard Jewell,’ another contender for the Oscars.

The other four screeners that leaked all came from TOPKEK. These include ‘A hidden Life,’ ‘Color Out of Space,’ Dark Waters,’ and ‘Queen and Slim.’ The latter comes with the unusual ‘QuerySCR’ tag which suggests that the source of the screener copy may not be known.

The Dark Waters release also stands out. It’s tagged as a 1080p release and is 33.7 gigabytes in size, considerably larger than the rest.

Seeing this many leaks in the span of a few hours is quite unique. As far as we know, it has never happened before. This certainly makes it newsworthy and may also draw the attention of Hollywood and law enforcement.

Original article
CM8 doesn't want to get busted so they play late & safe, but why blaming others unnecessarily, only because they are stealing your limelight ?

Those who play on screener level should know they are playing with fire, so let them be.. if a new group starts leaking they mean no harm... CM8 your are in underground business for several years, ranting wont help here

 
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sherb:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_sitelover::_junkie::_kitty::_sun::_turtle:Posted at 2020-01-24 05:23:05(252Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
El Wino
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Image error

Totally agree Gladius:_trusted_user: tis indeed a dangerous game B)

 
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Gladius:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-01-24 07:00:58(252Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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sherb wrote:

Image error

Totally agree Gladius:_trusted_user: tis indeed a dangerous game B)
indeed if TOPKEK knows what they are doing then let them be B)

 
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Gladius:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-01-25 04:00:16(252Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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Russia’s Anti-Piracy Deal to Delete Content From Search Engines Extended Until 2021


Courtesy : Torrentfreak



The ground-breaking anti-piracy deal signed by Russia-based content and Internet platforms in 2018 will not be written into local law any time soon. The agreement, which sees search engines voluntarily delete allegedly-infringing links, was supposed to be formalized in recent months but in the face of complexities and parliament being tied up with other things, will now be extended until 2021.


When leading content companies and distributors plus Yandex, Rambler Group, Mail.Ru Group, vKontakte, and RuTube signed up to a landmark anti-piracy memorandum in 2018, new ground was broken in Russia.

Assisted by the creation of a centralized database of allegedly-infringing content, Internet platforms agreed to voluntarily query the resource in near real-time before deleting content from their search indexes. The plan was to make pirated content harder for users to find and within months, hundreds of thousands of links were being purged.

The end-game was to have the terms of the agreement written into local law but as some expected, things didn’t run entirely to plan. Early October 2019, with the memorandum a year old, it effectively timed out. Negotiations ensued and a short extension was agreed but a deadline of end October came and went without a draft being presented to parliament.

With another deadline missed, an automatic extension to end December 2019 came into play but it’s now clear that the plan to formalize the agreement in law is still a very long way off.

During a meeting at the Media and Communications Union, the industry association formed by the largest media companies and telecom industry players, the parties – with assistance from telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor – have now agreed to another extension. The voluntary agreement will now continue for at least another year, the clearest indication yet that this isn’t a straightforward matter.

According to industry sources cited by Vedomosti (paywall), the decision not to push ahead now towards legislation was taken jointly by the signatories and Roscomnadzor.

While many specifics aren’t being made public, sources indicate that the mechanism for resolving disputes between the copyright holders and Internet platforms has proven complex. Another area of disagreement centers around demands from rightsholders and content companies to have sites delisted on a permanent basis, if they are repeatedly flagged as offering links to infringing content.

Another key issue is that under the current system there is a clear bias towards video content and the largest copyright holders, while others have to take a back seat or are left out altogether. It will take a considerable period of time to overcome these hurdles, a situation that isn’t helped by a reported lack of time in the State Duma to deal with the legislation.

As a result, the memorandum will now be extended to the end of January 2021, to allow the parties and the government to come up with a credible framework before writing it into law.

 
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Gladius:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-01-25 04:01:12(252Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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Gladius wrote:

Russia’s Anti-Piracy Deal to Delete Content From Search Engines Extended Until 2021


Courtesy : Torrentfreak



The ground-breaking anti-piracy deal signed by Russia-based content and Internet platforms in 2018 will not be written into local law any time soon. The agreement, which sees search engines voluntarily delete allegedly-infringing links, was supposed to be formalized in recent months but in the face of complexities and parliament being tied up with other things, will now be extended until 2021.


When leading content companies and distributors plus Yandex, Rambler Group, Mail.Ru Group, vKontakte, and RuTube signed up to a landmark anti-piracy memorandum in 2018, new ground was broken in Russia.

Assisted by the creation of a centralized database of allegedly-infringing content, Internet platforms agreed to voluntarily query the resource in near real-time before deleting content from their search indexes. The plan was to make pirated content harder for users to find and within months, hundreds of thousands of links were being purged.

The end-game was to have the terms of the agreement written into local law but as some expected, things didn’t run entirely to plan. Early October 2019, with the memorandum a year old, it effectively timed out. Negotiations ensued and a short extension was agreed but a deadline of end October came and went without a draft being presented to parliament.

With another deadline missed, an automatic extension to end December 2019 came into play but it’s now clear that the plan to formalize the agreement in law is still a very long way off.

During a meeting at the Media and Communications Union, the industry association formed by the largest media companies and telecom industry players, the parties – with assistance from telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor – have now agreed to another extension. The voluntary agreement will now continue for at least another year, the clearest indication yet that this isn’t a straightforward matter.

According to industry sources cited by Vedomosti (paywall), the decision not to push ahead now towards legislation was taken jointly by the signatories and Roscomnadzor.

While many specifics aren’t being made public, sources indicate that the mechanism for resolving disputes between the copyright holders and Internet platforms has proven complex. Another area of disagreement centers around demands from rightsholders and content companies to have sites delisted on a permanent basis, if they are repeatedly flagged as offering links to infringing content.

Another key issue is that under the current system there is a clear bias towards video content and the largest copyright holders, while others have to take a back seat or are left out altogether. It will take a considerable period of time to overcome these hurdles, a situation that isn’t helped by a reported lack of time in the State Duma to deal with the legislation.

As a result, the memorandum will now be extended to the end of January 2021, to allow the parties and the government to come up with a credible framework before writing it into law.
Russia is still safe heaven for english or other non russia-based content :D

 
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CheGuevera:_male:Posted at 2020-02-01 05:43:55(251Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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About an employment lawsuit filed against BitTorrent... Will be interesting to see what happens from it as I can also see piracy being a question raised.

https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-owner-accused-of-profiting-from-movie-piracy-200128/

 
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sherb:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_sitelover::_junkie::_kitty::_sun::_turtle:Posted at 2020-06-16 14:31:21(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
El Wino
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Good ole Pirate bay :D catch us if you can B)

Earlier this month it became evident that copyright holders and their anti-piracy representatives had not forgotten about The Pirate Bay.


Aside from occasional downtime, the world’s most famous torrent site had been sailing relatively trouble-free but, behind the scenes, movie companies Svensk Filmindustri and Nordisk Film, supported anti-piracy partner Rights Alliance, were plotting their next enforcement action.


The process began when the movie companies presented Cloudflare with a copyright infringement complaint, stating that The Pirate Bay was connected to mass infringement of their rights. In response, the CDN company revealed that on June 2, 2020, an IP address apparently operated by Swedish ISP Obenetwork was in use by the torrent site.



Movie Companies Apply For Information Injunction

With this information in hand, the companies went to court in Sweden, filing for an information injunction against Obenetwork and demanding that the ISP preserve all records relating to its business with The Pirate Bay. The companies claimed that the matter was so urgent that Obenetwork should not be heard in the matter and fined SEK 100,000 (US$10,667) in the event of non-compliance.


When reporting on the matter last week, however, we opined that it was likely that The Pirate Bay would’ve expected this kind of move and therefore been prepared for it. It now appears that was indeed the case.



The Alleged Obenetwork IP Address – Who Really Owns It?

The IP address provided by Cloudflare and said to be in use by The Pirate Bay was directly linked to Obenetwork by the studios. In comments to Tarnkappe last week, however, the ISP was crystal clear: this is not their IP address and it actually belongs to someone else.


“The IP address that The Pirate Bay uses in our network belongs to the anonymous VPN provider ‘OVPN.se’,” the company said in a statement, referring to one of its customers.


Speaking with TorrentFreak this morning, Obenetwork provided more technical details relating to the apparent confusion.


“The IP specified in the court order is from OVPN’s own PA-space [Provider Aggregatable Address Space] they have directly from RIPE. However OVPN doesn’t have its own AS-number, their space is announced by different ISPs around the world where they have servers,” Gustav from Obenetwork explained.


“I believe [the movie companies] just looked at whoever owned the AS-number and found our name. We’ve however opposed the court order with the simple explanation that the IP address does not belong to us and the injunction is invalid.”


TF asked the ISP for its opinion on why it was identified as the owner of the IP address and not OVPN? It’s a question the ISP would also like an answer to.



‘Poor Tracing’ or Ulterior Motive?

“Either they did a very poor job in tracing the IP or did it on purpose for some reason to give us bad press,” Gustav says.


“We’ve however told the court of our displeasure with the decision to give the order without even asking us any questions before. The movie companies have stated it was very important that the decision was made without our knowledge due to fear of logs being destroyed.”


In their application, the movie companies claimed that Obenetwork has “close ties” to The Pirate Bay, hence the urgency of the injunction and keeping the ISP out of the process. Gustav says that any alleged connections to the current operations of TPB “are complete nonsense” and no proof to support that claim was ever presented to the court.


“If they actually felt this urgency it would have been much better if they went for the correct company,” he added.


With the clear objections of Obenetwork now with the court, the future direction of this matter remains unclear. However, with OVPN now being pushed into the spotlight, the complexity of hunting down the location of TPB becomes even more apparent.



OVPN Also Confirms That ‘Pirate Bay’ IP Address is Theirs

Speaking with TorrentFreak this morning, OVPN’s David Wibergh confirmed that the IP address in question is indeed owned by OVPN and not Obenetwork. Whether TPB was ever a customer is a question he won’t answer though.


“As we don’t provide information regarding any potential customers, I won’t confirm if thepiratebay.org was actually using OVPN or not. I can only confirm that the IP address specified in the injunction was one that OVPN owns and not Obenetwork. I will not confirm whether or not thepiratebay.org was actually using that IP address,” Wibergh said.


In our most recent overview of VPN providers that take anonymity seriously, OVPN gained a spot for its attention to privacy.


“Our entire infrastructure and VPN service is built to ensure that no logs can be stored – anywhere. Our servers are locked in cabinets and operate without any hard drives,” the provider told us.


Wibergh confirmed today that the IP address is one that belongs to the company’s Public IPv4 add-on, which is covered by exactly the same strict no-logging policy deployed on its standard service.


“The only difference between Public IPv4 and OVPN’s standard service is that the Public IPv4 address is reserved for a specific user. We therefore advise users to purchase the add-on anonymously. It is impossible to retroactively check who had a specific Public IPv4 address at a specific date since users are free to change their assigned Public IPv4 address,” Wibergh added.


At the time of writing, OVPN has not been approached for information relating to the possible use of the IP address by The Pirate Bay. Given the above, however, it seems that The Pirate Bay – if it is a customer – chose its supplier carefully.


Original article

Last edited by sherb on 2020-06-16 14:52:57


 
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sherb:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_sitelover::_junkie::_kitty::_sun::_turtle:Posted at 2020-06-16 14:52:13(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
El Wino
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Google doesn't always show the most relevant results to users. Much to the delight of copyright holders, popular pirate sites have started to 'disappear' from the search engine. This goes far beyond traditional DMCA takedown notices and is not without collateral damage.

Google is widely regarded as the best search engine, a reputation the company has carefully built up over the past two decades.

However, when it comes to one particular niche, Google’s results are rapidly deteriorating. We’re talking about pirate sites.

As background, it’s good to mention that search engines have been under a lot of pressure to remove pirate sites from their indexes entirely. Google categorically refused to do so. Instead, it chose to push down popular pirate sites for certain keywords, including movie and music titles.

This started many years ago and worked as intended, according to Google. Someone searching for “Game of Thrones torrent” was not going to find The Pirate Bay in the top results. Similarly, filters were set up for music-related queries as well.

As a result, pirate sites saw their search traffic decline drastically. This meant a drop in new visitors to these sites. However, people could still find these pirate sites by searching for their name. We use the past tense here because that has changed for many sites as well.

Over the past few months, it has become harder and harder to find the homepages of some popular pirate sites. Instead, Google points people to Wikipedia pages or entirely different – sometimes scammy – sites that use the same name. We’ll address a few examples here, contrasting our findings with Bing and DuckDuckGo.

We start with 1337x.to, a popular torrent site that has been around for well over a decade. While search results may vary from day to day and can differ based on location, our tests across several continents failed to show the official ‘1337x.to’ domain in the top results when searching for “1337x.”

Image error

1337x’s official Wikipedia entry is highlighted among the top results and in the “knowledge graph“. However, it sits among a list of unofficial ‘1337x’ entries which drives visitors to third-party sites. This provides a major opportunity for scammers and phishing sites.

Of course, Google hasn’t suddenly forgotten the details of the real 1337x site. Also, the ‘disappearance’ of the main domain is not the result of a DMCA notice, as that would be explicitly highlighted and 1337x’s homepage doesn’t link to any infringing content directly. The official site has likely been punished based on some algorithms.

When we compare the results to other search engines, the difference is clear, with Bing and DuckDuckGo returning the official 1337x homepage on top. That is the correct result for this query.

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The same disappearing trick also applies to other popular torrent sites, such as Torrentz2, EZTV, NYAA, and LimeTorrents. Google users who enter these keywords in Google’s search engine are not directed to the official sites, but will see unaffiliated sites on top that hijack traffic by using the same name.

A search for NYAA on Google, for example, doesn’t show the official domain anywhere on the first results pages. Again, DuckDuckGo has no trouble finding the official site and Bing returns the proper result as well, including a search box that allows people to search the site directly.

Image error

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of LimeTorrents.info, one of the most popular torrent sites, who confirmed that Google’s actions have impacted the site’s traffic. That also applies to the site’s official proxy domains too. However, the number of people searching for ‘Limetorrents’ hasn’t dropped, so these people end up elsewhere now.

“Google removed almost all torrent site homepages from its search results and our site’s traffic is affected too,” LimeTorrents’ operator says. In this case, the disappearance is not linked to a DMCA notice either.

Image error

The disappearance of homepages is not limited to torrent sites. The same can be observed for other pirate sites, including streaming portals. For example, Kissanime is nowhere to be found in Google’s top results. Again, Bing and DuckDuckgo have no trouble locating the correct URL.

That doesn’t mean that other search engines are without ‘issues.’ When we searched for Fmovies on Bing and DuckDuckGo we noticed that all official URLs have been removed. Google still indexes Fmovies.to links (not in the top results of course), but doesn’t show them when searching for “Fmovies”

In some instances, Google’s ‘decisions’ can result in outright embarrassing situations. For example, a search for Fmovies and other popular pirate brands now shows an Associated Press (AP) story on top.

Image error

This may sound like a legitimate link but it’s not. AP runs paid press releases filled with pirate keywords which promote the pirate streaming portal Yolamovies. That’s not a good look.

When we look at The Pirate Bay’s results, things get complicated. In many of the locations the popular torrent site wasn’t listed in the first pages of results. This can be quite confusing and points people to malware warnings and copycats, a trap even the BBC fell for.

Interestingly, however, the official TPB domain was the top result in our North American tests. This means that TPB’s localized ‘disappearance’ may be the result of local traffic patterns, which change in countries where the site is blocked.

While these observations are intriguing, we have no idea why Google is acting this way. A likely option would be to limit the exposure of certain infringing sites. However, the question is whether it actually improves the situation, as people are now driven to third-party pirate sites, which may not have good intentions.

Google’s actions are also interesting in light of comments that were made earlier regarding the removal of entire domains.

“Whole-site removal is ineffective and can easily result in the censorship of lawful material,” Google previously said, adding that it would send “the wrong message by favoring over-inclusive private censorship over the rule of law.”

With their current measures, pirate sites remain indexed. However, when one can no longer find 1337x’s non-infringing homepage by typing in “1337x,” there’s certainly some type of algorithmic censorship involved, inadvertent or not.

Original article

Solution: STOP USING GOOGLE.

Last edited by sherb on 2020-06-16 14:54:05


 
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taker:_trusted_user::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie::_turtle:Posted at 2020-06-17 16:58:48(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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sherb wrote:

Google doesn't always show the most relevant results to users. Much to the delight of copyright holders, popular pirate sites have started to 'disappear' from the search engine. This goes far beyond traditional DMCA takedown notices and is not without collateral damage.

Google is widely regarded as the best search engine, a reputation the company has carefully built up over the past two decades.

However, when it comes to one particular niche, Google’s results are rapidly deteriorating. We’re talking about pirate sites.

As background, it’s good to mention that search engines have been under a lot of pressure to remove pirate sites from their indexes entirely. Google categorically refused to do so. Instead, it chose to push down popular pirate sites for certain keywords, including movie and music titles.

This started many years ago and worked as intended, according to Google. Someone searching for “Game of Thrones torrent” was not going to find The Pirate Bay in the top results. Similarly, filters were set up for music-related queries as well.

As a result, pirate sites saw their search traffic decline drastically. This meant a drop in new visitors to these sites. However, people could still find these pirate sites by searching for their name. We use the past tense here because that has changed for many sites as well.

Over the past few months, it has become harder and harder to find the homepages of some popular pirate sites. Instead, Google points people to Wikipedia pages or entirely different – sometimes scammy – sites that use the same name. We’ll address a few examples here, contrasting our findings with Bing and DuckDuckGo.

We start with 1337x.to, a popular torrent site that has been around for well over a decade. While search results may vary from day to day and can differ based on location, our tests across several continents failed to show the official ‘1337x.to’ domain in the top results when searching for “1337x.”

Image error

1337x’s official Wikipedia entry is highlighted among the top results and in the “knowledge graph“. However, it sits among a list of unofficial ‘1337x’ entries which drives visitors to third-party sites. This provides a major opportunity for scammers and phishing sites.

Of course, Google hasn’t suddenly forgotten the details of the real 1337x site. Also, the ‘disappearance’ of the main domain is not the result of a DMCA notice, as that would be explicitly highlighted and 1337x’s homepage doesn’t link to any infringing content directly. The official site has likely been punished based on some algorithms.

When we compare the results to other search engines, the difference is clear, with Bing and DuckDuckGo returning the official 1337x homepage on top. That is the correct result for this query.

Image error

The same disappearing trick also applies to other popular torrent sites, such as Torrentz2, EZTV, NYAA, and LimeTorrents. Google users who enter these keywords in Google’s search engine are not directed to the official sites, but will see unaffiliated sites on top that hijack traffic by using the same name.

A search for NYAA on Google, for example, doesn’t show the official domain anywhere on the first results pages. Again, DuckDuckGo has no trouble finding the official site and Bing returns the proper result as well, including a search box that allows people to search the site directly.

Image error

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of LimeTorrents.info, one of the most popular torrent sites, who confirmed that Google’s actions have impacted the site’s traffic. That also applies to the site’s official proxy domains too. However, the number of people searching for ‘Limetorrents’ hasn’t dropped, so these people end up elsewhere now.

“Google removed almost all torrent site homepages from its search results and our site’s traffic is affected too,” LimeTorrents’ operator says. In this case, the disappearance is not linked to a DMCA notice either.

Image error

The disappearance of homepages is not limited to torrent sites. The same can be observed for other pirate sites, including streaming portals. For example, Kissanime is nowhere to be found in Google’s top results. Again, Bing and DuckDuckgo have no trouble locating the correct URL.

That doesn’t mean that other search engines are without ‘issues.’ When we searched for Fmovies on Bing and DuckDuckGo we noticed that all official URLs have been removed. Google still indexes Fmovies.to links (not in the top results of course), but doesn’t show them when searching for “Fmovies”

In some instances, Google’s ‘decisions’ can result in outright embarrassing situations. For example, a search for Fmovies and other popular pirate brands now shows an Associated Press (AP) story on top.

Image error

This may sound like a legitimate link but it’s not. AP runs paid press releases filled with pirate keywords which promote the pirate streaming portal Yolamovies. That’s not a good look.

When we look at The Pirate Bay’s results, things get complicated. In many of the locations the popular torrent site wasn’t listed in the first pages of results. This can be quite confusing and points people to malware warnings and copycats, a trap even the BBC fell for.

Interestingly, however, the official TPB domain was the top result in our North American tests. This means that TPB’s localized ‘disappearance’ may be the result of local traffic patterns, which change in countries where the site is blocked.

While these observations are intriguing, we have no idea why Google is acting this way. A likely option would be to limit the exposure of certain infringing sites. However, the question is whether it actually improves the situation, as people are now driven to third-party pirate sites, which may not have good intentions.

Google’s actions are also interesting in light of comments that were made earlier regarding the removal of entire domains.

“Whole-site removal is ineffective and can easily result in the censorship of lawful material,” Google previously said, adding that it would send “the wrong message by favoring over-inclusive private censorship over the rule of law.”

With their current measures, pirate sites remain indexed. However, when one can no longer find 1337x’s non-infringing homepage by typing in “1337x,” there’s certainly some type of algorithmic censorship involved, inadvertent or not.

Original article

Solution: STOP USING GOOGLE.
rofl no one with half a brain uses google.

 
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battlestar:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie:Posted at 2020-06-17 21:53:59(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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taker wrote:

rofl no one with half a brain uses google.
Incorrect.
Plenty of people use Google.

That said, no search engine would be my choice to look for a torrent.
Pretty much anyone who wants torrents knows the sites anyway (who hasn't heard of Pirate Bay for instance).

 
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taker:_trusted_user::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie::_turtle:Posted at 2020-06-18 06:00:21(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rofl no one with half a brain uses google.
Incorrect.
Plenty of people use Google.

That said, no search engine would be my choice to look for a torrent.
Pretty much anyone who wants torrents knows the sites anyway (who hasn't heard of Pirate Bay for instance).
rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain

 
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SweetSkunk:_blocked:Posted at 2020-06-18 06:57:09(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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taker wrote:

battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rofl no one with half a brain uses google.
Incorrect.
Plenty of people use Google.

That said, no search engine would be my choice to look for a torrent.
Pretty much anyone who wants torrents knows the sites anyway (who hasn't heard of Pirate Bay for instance).
rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain

taker wrote:

battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rofl no one with half a brain uses google.
Incorrect.
Plenty of people use Google.

That said, no search engine would be my choice to look for a torrent.
Pretty much anyone who wants torrents knows the sites anyway (who hasn't heard of Pirate Bay for instance).
rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain
well.    lead the way.  fearless ladder.  

we well surely fallow you,  to whateverr serch engine you suggest :-)

 
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battlestar:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie:Posted at 2020-06-18 21:05:20(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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taker wrote:

rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain
Complete nonsense.
Anyone with a brain can also write proper sentences. :facepalm

 
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taker:_trusted_user::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie::_turtle:Posted at 2020-06-18 21:50:36(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain
Complete nonsense.
Anyone with a brain can also write proper sentences. :facepalm
you wish it where Complete nonsense.but just show how clueless you realy are.you should know better your even a admin.what a shame to be that cluless.:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm

 
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Alien4:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-06-18 22:12:14(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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taker wrote:

battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain
Complete nonsense.
Anyone with a brain can also write proper sentences. :facepalm
you wish it where Complete nonsense.but just show how clueless you realy are.you should know better your even a admin.what a shame to be that cluless.:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm
I've known taker since my earliest days at extratorrent, hell he even blocked me over a mix up... One thing i will say is he's always typed, spoken that way, and that's just him, he was a great SA and if you've not came across him before or even talked with him then your missing out on a documentary of p2p that probably should be made. He's been around longer than all the staff in here combined, all i ask is that some respect is shown to him. Peace

 
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Deep61:_moderator:Posted at 2020-06-18 22:53:14(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
Mr.  Spreadsheet
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Alien4 wrote:

taker wrote:

battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain
Complete nonsense.
Anyone with a brain can also write proper sentences. :facepalm
you wish it where Complete nonsense.but just show how clueless you realy are.you should know better your even a admin.what a shame to be that cluless.:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm
I've known taker since my earliest days at extratorrent, hell he even blocked me over a mix up... One thing i will say is he's always typed, spoken that way, and that's just him, he was a great SA and if you've not came across him before or even talked with him then your missing out on a documentary of p2p that probably should be made. He's been around longer than all the staff in here combined, all i ask is that some respect is shown to him. Peace
Respect has to be earned

 
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Alien4:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-06-18 23:51:27(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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Deep61 wrote:

Alien4 wrote:

taker wrote:

battlestar wrote:

taker wrote:

rest my cage ill reface it.only stupid ppl who dont know any better uses google.google may be the bigist or one of the biggest.but.no one should use it.if got any brain
Complete nonsense.
Anyone with a brain can also write proper sentences. :facepalm
you wish it where Complete nonsense.but just show how clueless you realy are.you should know better your even a admin.what a shame to be that cluless.:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm
I've known taker since my earliest days at extratorrent, hell he even blocked me over a mix up... One thing i will say is he's always typed, spoken that way, and that's just him, he was a great SA and if you've not came across him before or even talked with him then your missing out on a documentary of p2p that probably should be made. He's been around longer than all the staff in here combined, all i ask is that some respect is shown to him. Peace
Respect has to be earned


 
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Alien4:_trusted_user:Posted at 2020-06-18 23:52:32(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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Oh he's earned that Deep, i guarantee you that, as you have my respect he absolutely has mine

 
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battlestar:_trusted_uploader::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie:Posted at 2020-06-19 01:57:51(231Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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taker wrote:

you wish it where Complete nonsense.but just show how clueless you realy are.you should know better your even a admin.what a shame to be that cluless.:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm:facepalm
Your incoherrent babble continues I see.  :facepalm You have no idea what I wish for.
Your obviously just a bit of a muppet, you can't even figure out I'm not an admin, so who is "clueless" again ?
You really are not worth wasting more of my time on, so I won't. If you ever grow up and figure out how to type, maybe.
Enjoy having the last post, as I'm sure you will, I'm sure it'll make you feel good. 8o

Last edited by battlestar on 2020-06-19 02:00:43


 
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Ry3pUTKSyzZ2i75Posted at 2020-09-04 17:45:12(220Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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any comments on the scene busts?

 
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Mafketel:_super_admin::_male:Posted at 2020-09-23 07:47:49(217Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
Galaxy OG
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https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-coalition-wants-cloudflare-to-expose-operators-of-pirate-bay-yts-1337x-and-others-200923/


 
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brightshadow:_trusted_user::_male::_junkie::_sun::_turtle:Posted at 2020-09-23 08:22:12(217Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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Mafketel wrote:

Good thing TGx don't use CF.

 
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Csabaxb:_vip::_trusted_user::_sitefriend::_male::_sitelover::_junkie::_kitty::_sun::_turtle:Posted at 2020-09-23 08:22:29(217Wks ago) Report Permalink URL 
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sad news, thanx maf 4 info

 
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