Category Archives: Red Hot

Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

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It’s taken a while, but Google has finally caved in to pressure from the entertainment industries including the MPAA and RIAA. The search engine now actively censors terms including BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload from its instant and autocomplete services. The reactions from affected companies and services are not mild, with BitTorrent Inc., RapidShare and Vodo all speaking out against this act of commercial censorship.

The entertainment industries’ quest to root out piracy on the Internet has yet again resulted in commercial censorship. A few weeks ago Google announced that it would start filtering “piracy related” terms from its ‘Autocomplete‘ and ‘Instant‘ services and today they quietly rolled out this questionable feature.

Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.

Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.

All combinations of the word “torrent” are also completely banned. This means that “Ubuntu torrent” will not be suggested as a user types in Ubuntu, and the same happens to every other combination ending in the word torrent. This of course includes the titles of popular films and music albums, which is the purpose of Google’s banlist.

We contacted BitTorrent Inc. for a reaction, and Simon Morris told us that he believes the scope of this filter is too broad.

“We respect Google’s right to determine algorithms to deliver appropriate search results to user requests. That being said, our company’s trademarked name is fairly unique, and we’re pretty confident that anyone typing the first six or seven letters deserves the same easy access to results as with any other company search,” Morris said.

“A quick search for ‘BitTorrent’ currently returns a variety of legitimate and useful links, including company information, our software, our open-source protocol, and more. What Google may not realize is that our technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large,” he added.

Google’s New “Piracy” Filter (No AutoComplete)

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What is most surprising about the new filter is that the keywords appear to be picked arbitrarily. It includes BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent and Xunlei, but not BitComet and Vuze. While cyberlockers such as RapidShare and Megaupload are banned, prominent sites such as 4shared, HotFile and MediaFire are not.

In addition, all the names of popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay are not included in Google’s banlist either. BitTorrent’s Simon Morris agrees that this is odd, to say the least.

“There’s no reason for Google to throttle search results for our trademarks, including BitTorrent, µTorrent and torrent. Indeed, they do still enable autocomplete for many third-party clients that use the BitTorrent protocol, including BitComet, BitLord, and even sites like The Pirate Bay and Isohunt.”

Morris further points out that the inclusion of Xunlei is a little hypocritical since Google is one of the investors in the Chinese BitTorrent client.

“We’d also like to point out that while Google doesn’t enable autocomplete for Xunlei (China’s largest software client that uses the BitTorrent protocol) Google did invest $5 million in the company in 2006, according to reports,” Morris says, adding, “We sincerely hope Google will recognize the value of BitTorrent and reevaluate this decision expeditiously.”

RapidShare is not pleased with Google’s new filter either, at least not with its current scope in today’s roll-out.

“We knew about Google’s plans for quite a few weeks now. We embrace that certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests of our users will also be affected. We believe it was the wrong decision to remove the term ‘RapidShare’ from the search suggestions,” RapidShare told us.

“RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their perfectly legitimate interests. That is why Google has obviously gone too far with censoring the results of its suggest algorithm. A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s,” the company added.

Indeed, RapidShare has certainly touched a nerve here. It is clear that this filter is the result of pressure from the entertainment industries, which is not at all in the interests of users. Now that Google has begun proactively censoring their services for commercial reasons, more companies will demand the same. At the same time, the entertainment industries will continue to pressure Google to go even further, and censor the actual search results.

Apparently Google has decided that its users should not be searching for the keyword BitTorrent, so why list any results then? It’s the beginning of the end.

Jamie King, the founder of Vodo – a platform where artists can share their work with million of people at no cost – agrees with this assessment. Searching for one of their perfectly legal releases on Google used to suggest the word “torrent” with a link to the download page, but not anymore.

“Google already showed it will censor for the highest bidder — China Inc. springs to mind. Now it’s doing it for MPAA & Co.,” King told us.

“I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes.”

Indeed, Google is going down the wrong path by willingly and broadly censoring its services to please a few big companies. This is not the way to get rid of piracy, it’s the way to a corporate controlled Internet. Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide.

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The Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry

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For years The Pirate Bay has been a thorn in the side of the music industry, but things could be about to take a turn for the worse. Over the past days rumors of a new project titled “The Music Bay” have been circling, and now a Pirate Bay insider has just confirmed us that the major record labels have good reason to be afraid, very afraid.

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A few years ago the Pirate Bay crew registered a domain name that until now hasn’t been very active, themusicbay.org. At the time it was registered there were plans to create the most efficient music sharing system ever built, but these were put aside as other projects needed more urgent attention.

In recent days, however, rumors started to grow that The Music Bay domain might be put to use after all. It is currently setup to serve ads for The Pirate Bay website, but this spring it could be hosting a special surprise for the music industry.

The currently active subdomain fear.themusicbay.org is currently displaying a “comming soon” [sic] title so we caught up with a Pirate Bay insider to learn more about the plans for the site. Although the Pirate Bay crew is reluctant to release any specific details, their intentions are obvious.

“The music industry can’t even imagine what we’re planning to roll out in the coming months. For years they’ve complained bitterly about piracy, but if they ever had a reason to be scared it is now,” we were told. “It will be a special surprise for IFPI’s 78th birthday, and we’re thinking of organizing a huge festival in Rome where IFPI was founded.”

IFPI is of course the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, one of the most active anti-piracy outfits and a long-time adversary of The Pirate Bay. Formed under Italy’s fascist government of Benito Mussolini in 1933, IFPI will turn 78 in April of 2011.

We did ask for more details about “The Music Bay”, but the above is all we are able to reveal at this stage. What’s clear from the conversation we had, however, is that the major record labels are in for a big surprise. More details are expected to follow in the near future.

Without any hard evidence all the above can of course be interpreted in a million ways. We simply don’t know what the announced project will be, who will run it and what it will do. For all we know the entire project is nothing more that a domain name, registered and used just for the purpose to put fear into the already quite paranoid music industry.

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MegaUpload Accuses ISP of Restricting Access To Its Services

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Cyberlockers are the new fall guys for the entertainment industry it seems, as yet more news comes in of action being taken against MegaUpload, one of the largest one-click download sites. According to reports from users and the site itself, MegaUpload is being blocked or slowed down by Orange, one of the major ISPs in France. MegaUpload has publicly outed the ISP, that on its turn denies all accusations.

Cyberlockers are becoming increasingly popular and may have overtaken torrents as the file-share medium of choice. Of course, this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the entertainment industry who have labeled such sites as rogue piracy havens.

While RapidShare has gone on the offensive, describing claims in anti-piracy-funded studies as ‘defamation’, MegaUpload has been more direct. A few days ago the company responded to accusations the RIAA and MPAA made about the facilitation of copyright infringement, calling them “grotesquely overblown allegations.”

While all of this was going on a separate conflict was brewing in France, between MegaUpload and France Telecom, specifically the Orange subsidiary.

MegaUpload has claimed that Orange has been substantially slowing down, or blocking access to its servers. Presumably these actions were taken in an attempt to discourage people from using the service, a claim Orange denies.

Accusations and claims have been flying back and forth for the past few days, including a banner run by Megaupload this week which suggested that Orange subscribers call up and cancel their subscriptions, in favour of ISPs with better peering.

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The full text is (translated from French)

Slow Downloads? Video playback is hesitant?
It is likely that your Internet provider is intentionally restricting your access to significant portions of the Internet! Our claims statistics show that most users who have this problem are accessing the Internet via France Telecom, often under the Orange brand (also “Ya” in Spain).

If you are concerned, please call Orange customer service on 3900 and tell them that you can not connect to sites hosted on Cogent and TATA. Also tell them that you are considering moving to an Internet provider with an excellent global connectivity, such as Iliad or SFR (free.fr, Alice). If you’re impatient and you need a good service immediately, consider changing your supplier for one of them, and be sure to tell Orange the reason for your decision to terminate your line!

In a telephone press conference last Thursday, Orange hit back at MegaUpload. The ISP stated that it follows the Net Neutrality rules as laid down by the communications regulation body ARCEP. Instead, the ISP argued that MegaUpload’s users are the victims of ‘a low-cost business model,’ where the cyberlocker signs cheap peering contracts that lead to the slow downloads.

Orange further noted that it takes no responsibility for the situation, and that MegaUpload should improve their infrastructure as other French ISP’s have had the same kinds of problems with MegaVideo/MegaUpload at times. They also added that although difficult, MegaUpload needs to find a balance between quality and economic performance.

While some might suggest it’s a battle between peering companies, there may well be more to it, which will bring the focus on ARCEP’s 4 month old net neutrality guidelines for France. It’s clear however, that this battle of wills is just heating up. Especially when (or if) the likes of HADOPI get involved, the new anti-piracy law which ironically doesn’t affect users of cyberlockers.

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Anti-Piracy Outfit Unplugs Warez Topsite ‘Swan’

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Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN managed to pull one of the largest warez scene topsites offline yesterday. The servers of Swan, formerly known as ATS, were unplugged by their hosting provider WorldStream. The provider acted based on evidence provided by BREIN, and also handed over the servers to this private outfit. The police were not involved in the takedown, but instead it was the result of information allegedly provided to BREIN by a rogue member.

Image is Loading....The top of the so-called piracy pyramid lost a stone once again yesterday, as BREIN publicized that the Swan topsite had been pulled offline. According to the Dutch anti-piracy outfit, the topsite – formerly known as ATS – operated from 12 servers carrying a massive 220 terabytes of data.

The site had connections to a variety of scene groups and allegedly sold access to several well-known private BitTorrent trackers. Although the unplugging will be seen as an inconvenience and might delay some releases, none of the persons connected to the site appear to be facing legal action.

BREIN generally informs hosting providers of its suspicion that ‘illegal activity’ is taking place on their infrastructure and without the authorities getting involved the hosting provider then decides whether or not to take action. According to this scenario it is not impossible that Swan could reappear in a different location, as we’ve seen happening dozens of times after BREIN pulled torrent sites offline. But Scene groups and networks are complex creatures and take more time to reconstruct.

However, BREIN’s head Tim Kuik stated in a comment that his outfit is now in possession of the Swan servers. This is interesting to say the least, because BREIN has no authority to seize any equipment on its own, and the hosting provider can’t just hand over private customer data without a warrant.

In a comment Swan’s hosting provider Worldstream avoided these peculiarities and simply stated that they were happy to cooperate with BREIN.

“We can not accept such activities in our network,” the WorldStream owners explained. “BREIN is known as a reliable partner and provided very clear evidence to demonstrate that unauthorized files were made available on the servers. For us it was therefore quickly decided to cooperate in this action.”

The owner of Swan, who operates under the nickname MrTB, has also responded with a response to the events. With the exclamation “F*** me i’m famous!” MrTB claims that the ‘bust’ is the result of the actions of a rogue member. In addition he claims that BREIN misrepresented the facts since Swan only operated 8 servers holding 175 terabytes of data.

“I’m waiting for BREIN to offer me a job. I’ll be a one man wrecking crew: TaH, TDA, KoP, AUS, TEL, DC, FUK, TITS, PANDORA, NOT, GUK, 100SE plus the other 30 sites I was on,” he added.

“Peace out, and fuck you all!”

The last statement seems to indicate that Swan is not planning to make a return any time soon. This makes the BREIN action, albeit trivial, very effective. BREIN’s head Tim Kuik was asked for a comment regarding the ‘seizure’ of the servers but has yet to respond.

Update: Tim Kuik told us the following in response to the seizure of the servers.

“BREIN exerts the rights and civil enforcement remedies of copyright holders. That includes seizure of servers used for infringements. These can be claimed as property of the right holders. If the owner wants them back, he needs to identify himself, which of course means that he can be held liable as well, if we don’t locate him first. We have ample evidence of the unlawful activities carried out with the servers in question. This evidence convinced the hosting provider to cooperate. Conducting unlawful activities also is in contravention of hosting providers’ terms of use.”

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