In contrast, only 5-percent of iOS users pirated Towelfight 2, Butterscotch revealed on the DroidGamers forums. On both platforms, the game was priced at $0.99; “these numbers are dwarfed by the size of an audience we could get with a free title” the developers suggest.

“While it’s great that the pirates are playing the game, and we’re happy for the exposure, they are operating “off the grid”. That is, our app rank doesn’t jump up in the app stores when a pirate downloads it, they can’t review it, and they tend not to contact us for support if something goes wrong with the game. They play the game in the shadows” Butterscotch Shenanigans

Although the statistics are from one game developer’s experience, and shouldn’t be extrapolated across the entire Android app industry, it’s not the first time we’ve seen Google’s platform criticized for how relatively straightforward it is to find and install unofficial apps. Last year, another developer made headlines by blaming “unbelievably high” piracy rates for being forced to drop the Android version of its game from $0.99 to the “freemium” model, where a free-to-download app is monetized with adverts.

That freemium switch is the approach Butterscotch will be taking with its newest title, the developer team says, with monetization “solely based” on in-app purchases. Progress within the game will be achievable both by beating goals and by paying for access, with cut to the price if partial-progress has already been made.

Attempts have been made to curtail Android piracy – last year, the US Department of Justice and FBI seized and shut down three app pirate sites for instance – but the more open nature of the Google Play store versus Apple’s App Store has meant circuitous routes to find and load titles without paying for them remains a key issue for the OS. Last month, one developer attempted to use irony to highlight the issues of stolen content, lacing a specially-leaked version of their dev-studio simulator game with inescapable failure through piracy, though many players didn’t appear to understand the message.

For Butterscotch, the initial piracy numbers were a tough lesson in how to monetize in different ways on different platforms. “We made a free game” the developers concluded, “we just didn’t know it at the time.”

Essentially, a Bundle consists of a couple of free pieces of content, whether it’d be a song, video, trailer, etc. However, in order to unlock more content within the Bundle, you have to pay (or at least submit an email address) for the bonuses to unlock. This could be a full-length album or a full movie where the trailer is the free part.

BitTorrent Bundle is in its alpha stages, so its way off from being a final product, but you can already try it out for yourself with the first Bundle being released today from BitTorrent, which is a promo for “Kaskade’s Freaks of Nature” DVD. In this case, the Bundle consists of a free song and trailer for the DVD, but if you submit your email address, it’ll unlock some sweet concert footage and “an exclusive digital tour booklet.”

Hopefully this move will make content creators less scared of BitTorrent and more willing to take advantage of the torrenting community. Plus, a method like this could cut down on piracy, as BitTorrent is actively seeking ways to come up with legal alternatives to prevent more people from illegally downloading content, and Bundles could be their saving grace.

BitTorrent says that two of Sarandos’ statements are not true, the first being that the BitTorrent application is a synonym for internet piracy, and the second being that BitTorrent traffic drops when Netflix arrives in new markets around the world. BitTorrent says that neither of these statements is true.

BitTorrent says that it’s an excusable mistake to connect internet piracy with BitTorrent, but the company claims that it’s addressing the public’s concern with piracy. However, BitTorrent says that many companies use BitTorrent to “preserve terabytes of data,” including Facebook, Twitter, Blizzard, Eve Online, genetic researchers, and even CERN.

As for the piracy correlation that Sarandos mentioned, BitTorrent says that they are not competing with Netflix, and Netflix shouldn’t have to compete with BitTorrent. The company says that they are “actually finding ways to support companies like [Netflix], content creators, studios, and other rights-holders directly.” BitTorrent went as far as saying that they’re “getting ready to roll out an Alpha program” that they believe could drive more traffic to movie streaming services.

When the company ditched DRM, it said that DRM was preventing its buyers from using their legitimate purchases in perfectly legal ways. One of those perfectly legal ways that Tor said its readers were unable to use their books was in switching between different digital readers. The publisher has now offered up an update a year after it ditched DRM.

According to a company spokesman named Julie Crisp the company has seen “no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles.” You read that right, after having no DRM for a year the company says piracy hasn’t increased. Tor’s customers were very happy at the announcement that the company would remove any anti-piracy protections from its books.

Tor says that it’s authors were also very happy to sign up to have their books published without DRM. However, a letter the turned up from Hachette UK, another book publisher, said that the DRM free books from Tor would make it difficult for it to protect its own rights. In other words, Hachette feared it would be forced to follow suit with no DRM.

[via Arstechnica]

Sarandos says that there is a correlation between Netflix launching in a certain country and BitTorrent traffic slowing down in that same region. It’s quite easy to see why, as well. Netflix offers unlimited streaming of a large collection of TV shows and movies for only $7.99 per month. Other streaming services, like Spotify and Rdio for music, also offer similar features for a low monthly cost.

Sarandos says that “people are mostly honest,” and a big reason why users illegally download content is because they can’t get it any other way conveniently and cheaply. For instance, you can buy and rent movies and TV shows from a variety of services, but they’re usually caked with DRM, which is a turn-off to any media junkie.

As for Netflix’s commitment to 4K streaming, there isn’t one just yet. Sarandos says that Netflix will wait until 4K evolves into a format where it can be streamed logically, at which point the company may look into it, but for now they’re only keeping their eye on it to see how 4K unfolds over these next few years.

The pirates began testing out the Copyright Alert System shortly after it launched in late February. They proceeded to download many popular files illegally using Bittorrent and The Pirate Bay. They downloaded popular movies, TV shows, music albums, and even uploaded each file back into The Pirate Bay. These pirates made no attempts to mask their IPs and were intending to get caught.

But after quite a while, not a single warning was issued. Granted, these pirates were all using Verizon as their ISP, so we don’t really know just how efficient AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, or Cablevision’s system is. The pirates intentionally went after torrents that have been proven to trigger CAS alerts in countries like France and New Zealand, but apparently in the United States, they aren’t so heavily tracked.

The study lasted 3 weeks long, with the pirates downloading popular files and seeding them every day. But no warning was ever issued. A Verizon executive defended the company’s position, saying that despite the study performed by these pirates, they have been issuing copyright warnings frequently. While we know that Verizon’s Copyright Alert System needs a bit more tuning, we still don’t know yet how efficient the other ISPs are.

[via Daily Dot]

After a period of play – particularly if the pirate gamer is doing well, their in-game studio creating highly-rated titles – a message from one of the virtual dev team pops up warning them that piracy has become a problem:

“Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt”

After that point, it’s pretty much game-over for the player’s studio, with their bank account shrinking and bankruptcy the only result. Unsurprisingly, the clueless pirates weren’t too keen on a game that seemingly had no outcome but failure, missing the irony of their own behaviors in the process.

“Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me! I had like 5m and then people suddenly started pirating everything I made, even if I got really good ratings (that I usually get). Not fair” Anonymous complaint

After a single day out in the wild, over 90-percent of those playing Game Dev Tycoon were using the cracked version, Greenheart Games discovered, thanks to some phone-home anonymous usage code built into both versions. Unfortunately, attempts to actually encourage those who might be tempted to pirate the game to instead pay for a legitimate copy have floundered, the developers say.

Whereas Greenheart Games says it will still continue with non-DRM on its titles, that isn’t the approach some teams have decided to take. Notably, Microsoft is believed to be adding a mandatory internet connection requirement to its next-gen “Xbox 720” which would require titles be installed to the console’s hard-drive, and then connect to a server to be validated before play can take place.

Greenheart’s site is currently up and down, probably due to interest in this little life-lesson, but you can find the Google cache here.

We knew the six-strikes system was coming for quite some time, with it suffering a delay before its targeted roll-out date last year, finally going into effect on February 25 of this year. The system is being utilized by the big-name ISPs – Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Cablevision – to curbstomp piracy via education using a variety of punitive methods often decried as draconian in nature.

While leaked memos and such had revealed ahead of time the various punishments subscribers would face under the six-strikes system, they were officially revealed a couple days after the system went live. You can read a detailed write-up of each ISP’s six-strike system here, but the basic idea is that when a copyright alert is triggered, the subscriber will face throttled speeds, an educational session, limited website access, or other similar effects.

Now, a little over a month after the system went into effect, a Verizon subscriber is facing legal action from Malibu Media, producer of adult entertainment, over alleged sharing of copyrighted materials. Malibu Media has subpoenaed Verizon for copies of the six-strike notices the subscriber received under the new system, as well as information on how much bandwidth he used and a list of viewed pay-per-view films he watched.

The twist in the case is that Verizon said “No.” It says that in addition to Malibu having harassed it in the past, the ISP wishes to protect its subscribers from “shakedown tactics against Doe defendants.” The studio has pushed back and is trying to force Verizon’s hand, but that issue aside, there’s a larger one at play: will the six-strikes system, which was designed and intended to serve merely as an educational tool on the realities of copyright and infringement, be used as a weapon against the browsing public?

[via Torrent Freak]

In 2012, Game of Thrones was one of the most pirated shows on television. Lombardo says that being ranked as the most illegally downloaded TV series for 2012 “is a compliment of sorts.” He went on to say that the demand for the content is there and that despite the huge amount of piracy for Game of Thrones, “it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales.”

Lombardo sees piracy as something that simply comes along with a successful show on a subscription network. The executive also noted that Game of Thrones is currently on a per-seasonal basis and is the highest earner for the network. Lombardo specifically said when aggregate sales internationally and for DVDs are considered Game of Thrones is the highest earning show HBO has on the air now.

Despite seeing piracy as a sort of compliment, Lombardo says that HBO’s policy continues to be anti-piracy. HBO does try to stop piracy when it sees it happen according to the executive, particularly when people were selling pirated versions of the show. He does say that HBO hasn’t sent out the “Game of Thrones police” for individual users downloading pirated versions of the show.

[via Entertainment Weekly]

According to TorrentFreak, The Pirate Bay is back on top, mostly thanks to the demise of several popular one-click download sites (a.k.a. cyberlockers), like Megaupload. A little less than two years ago, the piracy landscape was vastly different at the time, with bittorrent straggling behind one-click download sites. The Pirate Bay was ranked sixth back then.

The last couple of years has seen major changes in the file-sharing landscape, with big changes in the rankings. Along with The Pirate Bay jumping six spots up to first, Mediafire comes in second after finishing fourth two years ago. 4shared, which had the top spot back then, is now sitting in fourth place. Torrentz.eu is now up to sixth, up from ninth place in 2011.

Furthermore, six file-sharing sites made the top ten this year that weren’t in the top ten back in 2011. These sites include Kickass Torrents, Uploaded, isoHunt, PutLocker, ExtraTorrent, and Rapidgator. Of course, this list only consists of public trackers and cyberlockers. Private trackers have gained in popularity significantly over the past couple of years, so many users may have switched by now.

[via TorrentFreak]

The 18-week study consisted of 12 countries, and revenues from digital sales and rentals for two movie studios were anywhere from 6% to 10% higher than they would have been if Megaupload hadn’t been shut down. Unsurprisingly, the countries that featured the most Megaupload users were the countries that experienced increased usage in legal downloads.

It’s interesting to note that most Megaupload users would think about just switching to a new service to illegally download copyrighted content, but with the movies and music easier to obtain legally, it seems a lot of users have decided to think twice after the Megaupload shutdown and have switched over the legal means.

Countries such as France, Spain, Mexico, and Belgium saw the most growth in legal downloads, while Canada, Australia, and Ireland saw the least impact. The study suggest that the number of users using legal means of obtaining digital content could rise if studios made their content more readily available.

The Pirate Bay’s announcement about moving their servers to North Korea existed right up on their homepage’s front page. From there they showed a lovely North Korean set of sails on their own branded pirate ship, proceeding to tell the world that North Korea – of all places – invited them to host their servers and become a new beacon of freedom. But it was not to be.

Down on The Pirate Bay’s Facebook page, the team has shown the world that they’re “in it for the lulz”. Speaking for TPB, users Winona, Winnie, and Winston Bay have spoken up about how creating a ruse such as the one they’ve executed this week proves that they “don’t run TPB to make money.” They also call out the RIAA (cleverly re-named MAFIAA in the statement) for being a “profit hungry idiot”.

“We’ve hopefully made clear (once again) that we don’t run TPB to make money. A profit hungry idiot (points at MAFIAA with a retractable baton) doesn’t tell the world that they have partnered with the most hated dictatorship in the world. We can play that stunt though, cause we’re still only in it for the f***** lulz and it doesn’t matter to us if thousands of users disband the ship.” – TPB

Of course the fun didn’t end there, the team continuing by calling out none other than the readers and the users – all of us, that is – for not calling them out when they announced such an absurd notion as moving to North Korea.

“We’ve also learned that many of you need to be more critical. Even towards us. You can’t seriously cheer the “fact” that we moved our servers to bloody North Korea. Applauds to you who told us to f*** off. Always stay critical. Towards everyone!” – TPB

So that pins it, in the end. We now live in a world where we cannot trust any company to speak the truth about their own organization – or it may just be that we’re not going to be able to read anything the team at The Pirate Bay publish from this point forward without a large grain of salt. That sounds reasonable – as does remembering that anyone could make a mistake in this fast-paced online publishing world of ours.

How do you feel about the situation?

UPDATE: Courtesy of The Pirate Bay itself, this news announcement was a complete hoax. Have a peek at the real story in our March 5th report.

It turns out that The Pirate Bay was actually in talks with North Korea for a little while. An insider from TPB stated, “We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country.” While TPB isn’t exactly situating itself in North Korea, it will be using North Korea’s network to provide its services to the rest of the world.

This comes only a few days after Norway was forced to let go of The Pirate Bay. The pirate party in Norway began receiving threats from local anti-piracy groups to shut down its services, similar to what Sweden’s Pirate Party had to face. By being offered virtual asylum by North Korea, it will be very interesting to see what anti-piracy groups will due in attempt to shut down the site again.

The Pirate Bay, and many others, believe that this is a truly ironic, seeing as the United States is known as a place of freedom and North Korea is known as the opposite. TPB hopes that it will bond with North Korea, and maybe someday convince the government to allow its people to utilizes its full services. This is an interesting turn of events, and we’d love to see how this new relationship will turn out for The Pirate Bay.

[via Torrent Freak]

AT&T’s methods will focus more on educating its users about online piracy in order to deter them from it. If a user reaches their 5th or 6th warning, AT&T will “demand they take an extra step to review materials on an online portal that will educate them on distribution of copyrighted content online.” Users will have to review the materials before they are able to access other websites. AT&T has said that they will not throttle its users data speeds.

Verizon, however, will throttle its users data speeds. Customers who reach their 5th or 6th warning will have to watch instructional videos about downloading copyright material legally at first, and if they still proceed to pirate, they will have their data speeds reduced to dial-up speeds. The throttle will last 2-3 days. The users will be warned 2 weeks in advance before their speeds are throttled, just in case there is something wrong on Verizon’s side and the users want to dispute the warnings. To appeal the warnings, users will have to pay a $35 fee, which will be returned if the user is granted the appeal.

Comcast, like AT&T, will not cap its users data speeds. If they reach their 5th/6th warning, they will receive constant in-browser alerts about their piracy, and in order to stop the alerts, they will have to call Comcast Security Assurance, who will then lecture them on copyright methods and how to download legal content. Like AT&T, Comcast’s goal is to inform its customers.

Time Warner Cable will not throttle its users data speeds either, but users will receive a lock on their internet browsers if they reach the 5th/6th alert. In order to remove the lock, like Comcast, users will have to contact customer service where they will receive a lecture on copyright methods and legal alternatives to downloading media.

Cablevision didn’t chime in with their consequences, but it seems that Verizon will be the only company that will throttle its users’ data speeds. With Cablevision, you’ll probably receive a lecture as well. So far none of the companies plan on terminating their contracts with their users due to piracy. These details of the consequences for violating the “six strikes” program does make the program seem less intense, compared to when we really didn’t know what they had planned. What do you think of the ISPs’ anti-piracy program?

[via Mashable]

The Swedish Pirate Party reluctantly let go of The Pirate Bay because the legal battles would be too damaging on the party’s limited resources. But of course, The Pirate Bay isn’t one to go down so easily. The Pirate Bay is now being serviced by two new pirate parties located in Norway and Catalonia. Anna Troberg, the leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, stated, “It is wonderful to be able to pass on the baton to two sister parties. It is testament to the pirate movement’s maturity and strength.”

The pirate parties in both Norway and Catalonia will join together and form what will now be called “The Hydra Bay”. The Pirate Bay, however, stated that this isn’t a permanent move on their part, but more of a vacation, and that there will be major “under-the-hood” changes to the site coming soon. The Pirate Bay stated in a Facebook post, “Let’s just say that it will change a lot of things for a lot of people. When the bomb goes off, remember that we did it with love in our hearts and with hope of humanity. We believe we can change the world by doing this.”

Despite all of the legal threats against The Pirate Bay, it still has the support of many pirates all around the world. Troberg stated that The Pirate Party will be holding a board meeting in a few days, where she will recommend that the board “file a police report against the Rights Alliance for unlawful coercion.” She continued with, “It is important to determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others.”

[via Torrent Freak]

However, the NPD Group says that P2P wasn’t the only illegal activity experiencing a decline. Music files burned and ripped from CDs owned by friends and family also fell by a whopping 44%, and the number of files swapped between hard drives and flash drives dropped 25%, with the volume of music downloads from digital lockers decreasing 28%.

NPD attributes the drop in illegal music activity mostly to free music-streaming services like Spotify and Rdio. They say that nearly half of those who stopped illegally downloading and sharing music said it was because they started using free and legal streaming services as their primary music outlet.

NPD also says that P2P file sharing actually peaked in 2005, when one out of every five internet users aged 13 and older (approximately 33 million users) used such illegal means to download music. However, with the advent of free music streaming, users have had fewer reasons to illegally download music, and the music labels and artists are still making their share of royalties from the streaming services.

Essentially, the Copyright Alert System is just the latest implementation in a line of anti-piracy initiatives, and it works in the same fashion as past systems have worked. Movie studios and music labels will join public P2P networks to see if their content is being pirated, and if it is, they’ll contact the ISP. From there the ISP will contact the offender and issue a strike.

These strikes will come in three different steps or phases. Your first two strikes will be all about education, where the ISP will point you to information on how you can obtain content legally. The next level is acknowledgement, where ISPs will force users to complete something, such as watching an anti-piracy video, and the last phase is throttling your internet connection, since the ISP can’t legally cut you off.

However, it doesn’t seem like a huge deal at this point yet. From the looks of it, it seems that users will have to be caught four times before they’re actually legitimately punished. Of course, no one can really say how well this new system will work, but if it’s like any other system that ISPs have tried in the past, it probably won’t make a huge splash at this point.

Image via Flickr

Specifically, the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy organization BREIN and the RIAA, which both represent a handful of media companies, wants to increase the daily DMCA cap to 40,000, but wants to eventually remove the cap altogether at some point. Google has seen a huge spike in takedown requests recently, and it’s large enough amount that Google is worried that it violates freedom of speech, but copyright holders say they are just looking out for their businesses.

However, it doesn’t look like Google will budge on its set daily limit. The company says it can’t increase the limit because it may cause technical problems due to unexpected peaks in server performance. However, the RIAA isn’t having none of that, and has said that Google has the resources to increase the limit. They also say that Google’s number of allowed requests per day is “minuscule.”

Copyright holders are afraid that if Google doesn’t lift the limit of daily takedown requests, they fear that they will be unable to keep up with the numerous links (in the hundreds of thousands) that are added to Google search results every day. However, Google notes that BREIN is currently only sending under 5,000 takedown requests per day, far below the current 10,000 request limit. Then again, this certainly won’t be the last that we hear from the RIAA and BREIN, so get out the popcorn and stay tuned.

[via TorrentFreak]

The film TPB AFK follows the three founders of the “TPB” (aka The Pirate Bay) as they discuss the beginnings of the site through the recent trials they each went through in Sweden. It’s Swedish producer and filmmaker Simon Klose that covers this major era in the history of The Pirate Bay’s history as both an epic series of events for the company and the world. It’s here that long-lasting internet-related bills and laws are being decided – no joke!

The premiere on the web exists right alongside the first viewing many users will have during the Berlin Film Festival in Germany. As will be made clear to you in viewing the documentary, it’s not just a peaches-and-cream team effort from start to finish – it’s as much an exploration of the way these founders went about their business as it is a telling of the story of the site’s goings-on. In the end, according to founder Peter Sunde, it was “Simon’s decision what to include and it’s his view of our story.” And not a bit of objectivism was left in the world.

Click the above thumbnail for a full-sized movie poster that you’ll be able to use for your smartphone or tablet wallpaper right this minute!

Sunde went on to note, according to Torrent Freak, that “I like that he’s independent from us and that he’s promised to release lots of extra material for some of the things that I might have wanted to have included.” So you’ll be wise to expect an “extended cut” in the future if not a B-Roll offering in the near future. By the general rules of our modern web, someone’s bound to release the full collection at some point – it’s just a matter of time.

You’ll be able to download the official TPB AFK film from Simon Klose’s own Pirate Bay account immediately if not soon. At the moment there are three different versions available, each of them the same cut at different quality video sizes. Let us know if you plan on popping in some popcorn and sitting down for a spell tonight!

It would seem the problem lies with sites that index the content on Mega, with one site in particular – Mega-search.me – getting some attention today. Users can submit submit links for their Mega files to Mega-search.me, allowing others to access them. Apparently, these copyright holders are finding their content through indexes like Mega-search.me and then issuing takedown requests.

That all appears to add up, but now we run into another problem, as content that’s completely legal is also being taken down. Many of the links on Mega-search.me have gone dead in just a matter of hours, with users seeing their legal content disappearing after receiving a DMCA takedown request. This isn’t very easy to explain, but TorrentFreak suggests that someone out there is filing fake DMCA requests and Mega is complying with most of the copyright warnings.

Another possibility is that Mega itself is targeting these indexes as a way to prevent users from finding and sharing copyrighted content uploaded to the site. Whatever is happening, it’s got some Mega users understandably upset, and the rest of us scratching our heads. We’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for more information, so keep it here at SlashGear for additional details.

Dotcom’s service here is what he describes as a culmination of seven years working with the largest file serving service in the world, Megaupload, here in 2013 made to be “the best cloud storage business the world has ever seen.” Dotcom’s questions from WSJ also included a query on how large Mega would be getting, be it as large or larger than Megaupload. Dotcom let it be known that “it will hopefully take off within a year” but that “it’s just so good that it’s going to spread” – confidence indeed!

Perhaps the most important bit that Dotcom went into here in the security and multi-tiered service that Mega is now and will soon offer to its users. The following is what Dotcom describes as new and unique about Mega as compared to the Megaupload and Megaupload-like sites of the past:

“I would say the biggest new development is on-the-fly encryption. Without having to install any kind of application—it happens in your browser in the background—it encrypts, giving you privacy. This means when you transfer data, anyone sitting on that line will get nothing as it is all scrambled and impossible to decrypt without your key. This is going to take encryption to the mainstream.

We have some servers in New Zealand, we have some servers in Europe and we have invited hosting partners to sign up to join us. Basically anyone can connect a server in their hosting facility, hook it up to Internet, give us access and we can make it a Megaserver. Every file that is being uploaded to Mega is not just on one server, meaning if one hosting company goes bankrupt then those files will be on least two servers in the world and in two different jurisdictions.” – Dotcom

Have a peek at the timeline below to see what’s happened with Mega since it’s launch and stay tuned as we follow this service through the future as well. Do you use Mega right this minute? Did you utilize Megaupload before it was cut down at the knees by the government powers that be? Let us know what you think!

Mr. Li ran the website Crack99.com in addition to a handful of others, specializing in the discounted sale of copyrighted software. Li hired hackers to find, acquired, and crack software, which he then hosted on his websites for sale, with the New York Times reporting that he offered in excess of 2,000 applications. The total value of the products he illegally sold totaled over $100m.

Investigators uncovered over 25,000 emails to customers in Li’s Gmail account, as well as over 500 transactions across the globe. Over 200 companies were hit by Li’s scrapping and cracking enterprise, with reports stating that he made 10-percent of the profits from the illegal sales. Some of his customers included a NASA electronics engineer and a military contractor scientist.

Turns out, Mr. Li’s case is the largest instance of criminal copyright prosecution ending in success. The trial took place in the Federal District Court of Delaware after he was arrested in an undercover sting operation in Saipan. Li’s illegal software selling business sold to buyers in 28 states and 60 countries. Some of the software he sold included very high-end applications used by the government and military, including Analytical Graphics, which is priced at $150,000.

[via New York Times]

No one knows why the immensely-popular pirate app store shut down without warning, but Hackulous claims that “stagnant” forums and the difficulty in moderating them eventually led to the team quietly shutting it all down. However, we have to assume that there were other factors involved in the shutdown, since we have a hard time believing that the forums for such a popular service were “stagnant” by any means. If anything, the forums could’ve been booming, and moderators had a hard time keeping up with duties.

Unfortunately, for those who currently have Installous installed on their jailbroken iOS device will no longer be able to access the app at all — it immediately prompts you with a “Installous will now terminate” message, and simply goes back to the iOS home screen, deeming the app completely useless. It’s even been removed in the Cydia store, where it will still show up in search results, but will fail to install

SlashGear isn’t responsible for users jailbreaking their devices, and you do so at your own risk.

Jailbreakers will no doubt miss Hackulous, and the team’s one-stop shop for “cracked” or pirated apps and games on iOS was one of the main reasons that users jailbroke their iOS devices in the first place, but it looks like users will have to pony up that $0.99 for an app or game they would’ve gotten for free otherwise. Or they can resort to other sources, like Zuesmos and Kuaiyong, both of which don’t even require jailbreaking in the first place. But we’re guessing that it’ll be a long time before we see another pirate app store show up that will impact the iOS jailbreak community the way that Installous did.

Zeusmos and Kuaiyong are two alternatives to Installous, and both have been gaining significance since the exit of Installous. The former has been around for a few months now, while the latter has appeared almost from nowhere over the past couple of weeks. Both of these services offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and don’t require that devices be jailbroken.

Obviously, this opens up the arena for more even more users to install cracked ups, instead of just the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices, and it’s now easier than ever to pirate iOS apps. While Zeusmos is available for free on jailbroken devices, it charges a fee for non-jailbroken users. However, the creator of Zeusmos says that the service is intended to solely code sign applications, and he doesn’t encourage any form of piracy — it’s merely a way to “try before you buy”.

The Chinese service Kuaiyong also offers a similar service: allowing you to install apps for free from your device without paying for them. It seems the service offers enterprise-licensed apps, which allow them to be installed on multiple devices. Both Kuaiyong and Zeusmos are terribly easy to use, and it makes pirating apps that much easier. And while these services aren’t as popular as Installous, there are bound to be new services emerging that will get everyone’s attention sooner or later.

[via The Next Web]

Hackulous has been a big name in the jailbreak community for years, and jailbreakers will no doubt miss their company. The one-stop shop for “cracked” or pirated apps and games on iOS was one of the main reasons that users jailbroke their iOS devices, but it looks like users will have to pony up that $0.99 for an app or game they would’ve gotten for free from Installous.

While Hackulous blames the lack of participation in the forums, we find it hard to believe that there was little activity on there, especially given the notoriety of Hackulous in the piracy and jailbreak world. The Hackulous repository, which was home to Installous and AppSync, a tweak that allowed users to sync their cracked apps with iTunes, has been taken offline.

Sadly, users who currently have Installous installed on their jailbroken iOS device will no longer be able to access the app, which will immediately prompt you with a “Installous will now terminate” message, and will simply go back to the iOS homescreen. This is certainly a small victory against app piracy in general, but it’s very likely that other developers will pick up where Hackulous left off.

[via iDownload Blog]

Game of Thrones topped out at almost 4.3 million downloads for a single episode, and while TorrentFreak notes that TV show downloads have leveled off the past few years, they’ve seen an increase in 2012. The biggest reasons why Game of Thrones made it to the top of the list are due to various airing delays and HBO’s choice not to make the show widely available online.

Project X ended up receiving over nine million downloads through illegal means. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and The Dark Knight Rises rounded out the top three. Surprisingly though, a few of the more popular movies were absent from the top 10, including The Hunger Games and the latest James Bond film, Skyfall.

Some other notable TV shows and movies that made the top 10 on their respective lists include Dexter, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Breaking Bad, The Avengers, and Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows. Overall, a handful of HBO and CBS shows made the list, mostly due to not being available online, as previously mentioned.

The takedown requests concern a mixture of both infringing and legitimate links, with the proportion of legitimate links being exceedingly high. Several movie studios are swept up in the takedown requests, including Lionsgate, BBC Films, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Summit Entertainment, and Disney Pictures. Fortunately for them, Google has not censored most of the links.

Some examples include a takedown notice on behalf of Lionsgate, that, if it were followed through, would end with copies of Cabin in the Woods available via Blockbuster, iTunes, Comcast, and Amazon all being censored. This same sort of issue strikes the other studios, with other legitimate links including the Family Guy Wikipedia page, movie reviews on sites like The Independent and the Daily Mail, news pieces published on various websites, including CNET and Forbes, as well as links related to films other than the ones specified in the takedown notices.

There is speculation, however, that the takedown notices are not valid. The website YesItIs.org, which issued the takedown notices on behalf of the movie studios, now leads to a Go Daddy landing page. There’s no official word yet on whether the takedown notices were authorized, but if they weren’t, this is an excellent example of how the system can be abused by those with ill intent.

[via Torrent Freak]

The Center for Copyright Information is a collective of five major Internet service providers, including Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. Alongside the MPAA and RIAA, the service providers formed an agreement wherein copyright-infringing subscribers will receive some sort of alert, depending on which provider they use. Upon receiving a certain number of alerts, the subscriber will then receive a punishment, which also varies based on which provider the individual uses.

Each service provider has its own system. We first got a peek into what Internet users have in store thanks to a leaked AT&T memo, which detailed a large portion of the anti-piracy system the company will use, which includes several warnings when infringement is detected, followed by an “online education tutorial on copyright.” Verizon users will be given two warnings before being forced to sign an acknowledgement of infringement, followed by severely throttled Internet speeds for a couple of days. Time Warner subscribers will be directed to a landing page rather than having their speeds reduced.

The system was slated for launch today, November 28. However, the Center for Copyright Information has announced that the launch date has been bumped due to Hurricane Sandy, and won’t be implemented until early next year. “Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy which have seriously affected our final testing schedules, CCI anticipates that the participating ISPs will begin sending alerts under the Copyright Alert System in the early part of 2013, rather than by the end of the year.”

During the New York Chapter of the Internet Society panel discussion, both Verizon and Time Warner discussed their plans for dealing with piracy. Verizon customers will receive an email notification when their account is flagged for copyright-violating activities. A total of two alerts will be issued.

Upon receiving a third flag, a popup will appear that forces the subscriber to read a notice and confirm that they acknowledge the copyright infringement. If the illegal activity continues, a punishment will be enacted for the 5th and 6th flags. The user’s Internet speeds will be severely throttled for a period of two or three days, at which point it will return to normal.

As for Time Warner, the company will likewise deliver notifications when the account is flagged for copyright violations. Rather than reduce speeds for repeat offenders, however, the users will be redirected to a landing page. No word was given on whether all Internet activity will be redirected, or only some, and how long the punishment will be in place for. According to CCI, the purpose of these punishments is to educate the public on the issue of piracy.

[via Torrent Freak]

Back in September, a French court said Alain Prevost had to pay a $194 fine for leaving his wifi network unsecured while ignoring warnings that were issued regarding piracy. The issue arose when his wife, who admitted guilt in court, downloaded two Rihanna songs. Prevost was the owner of the account used, and was thusly fined after stating that network was unsecured, incriminating himself.

According to the French government document “2013 Report on Indepedent Public Authorities,” HADOPI’s budget for 2013 is being cut from €10.3 million to €8 million. This is the third drop in a row, with the 2011 budget coming in at €11.4 million. This comes after a statement in August by the French Minister of Culture Aurelie Filippetti indicating that the program was going to get the kibosh.

The United States is slated to have a similar program in place this year called the Copyright Alert System. The CAS will utilize MarkMonitor to pinpoint piracy, and is funded by the five big ISPs: Verizon, AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable. Customers get six-strikes, and can appeal for a $35 fee, which is refunded if they win.

[via ars technica]

That definitely isn’t chump change, so it’s no wonder that Nintendo went after him. Brooks found himself on the wrong end of an investigation carried out by the big N and the United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment Association after it came to Nintendo’s attention that an online retailer was selling unauthorized Nintendo goods. The two began buying these bogus products from various online retailers, and their investigation eventually brought them back to the mastermind behind the whole operation: Brooks.

According to Croydon Guardian, Brooks was charged “two counts of fraudulent trading, two counts of supplying an article to use in fraud, two counts of unauthorised possession of goods bearing a trademark and one count of unauthorised use of a trademark,” and appeared in court last Friday to plead guilty to all of the charges brought against him. He’s currently out on bail at the moment, but he’ll be back in court soon enough – he’s scheduled to go back in front of judge on Friday, November 9 to receive sentencing.

Don’t expect the court to just let him off with a slap on the wrist either. As we said, making nearly $1 million from the sale of bogus products isn’t anything to scoff at, so it’s almost certain that he’ll be thrown in jail. This shows that Nintendo is obviously taking this anti-piracy thing seriously, so it may not be the best idea to hit up those Super Mario Galaxy torrents you’ve been eyeing.

The notices from CAS will be just that: a notice, and it will be up to internet service providers to take further action on offenders. This includes punishments, which could range from throttling download speeds to terminating internet services entirely, depending on the ISP. However, offenders can request a review of their network activity by paying a $35 billing fee. If the offender is found not guilty, the $35 will be refunded.

The Center for Copyright Information has partnered with several major ISPs, including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon. Each ISP will use their own version of the CAS. In general, though, the system will detect illegal downloading by using a mix of humans and automated processes provided by MarkMonitor.

The CCI noted that they won’t have the ability to obtain personal information from the data they collect, and the overall goal of the CAS is to simply inform users rather than punish them. The CCI says that the system is designed to make users “aware of activity that has occurred using their Internet accounts, educate them on how they can prevent such activity from happening again, and provide information about the growing number of ways to access digital content legally.”

[via Ars Technica]

“All attempts to attack The Pirate Bay from now on is an attack on everything and nothing,” a Pirate Bay blog post reads. “The site that you’re at will still be here, for as long as we want it to. Only in a higher form of being. A reality to us. A ghost to those who wish to harm us.” The site told TorrentFreak after the switch that its currently being hosted by two different cloud providers in two different countries, and what little actual hardware it still needs to use is being kept in different countries as well. The idea is not only to make it harder for authorities to bring The Pirate Bay down, but also to make it easier to bring the site back up should that ever happen.

Even if authorities do manage to get their hands on The Pirate Bay’s remaining hardware, they’ll only be taking its transit router and its load balancer – the servers are stored in several Virtual Machine instances, along with all of TPB’s vital data. The kicker is that these cloud hosting companies aren’t aware that they’re hosting The Pirate Bay, and if they discovered the site was using their service, they’d have a hard time digging up any dirt on users since the communication between the VMs and the load balancer is encrypted.

In short, it sounds like The Pirate Bay has taken a huge step in not only protecting its own rear end, but those of users as well. If all of this works out the way The Pirate Bay is claiming it will, then don’t expect to hear about the site going down anytime soon. Still, there’s nothing stopping authorities from trying to bring it down, or from putting in the work to try and figure out who the people behind The Pirate Bay are. Stay tuned.

By now, you’ve probably heard plenty of iPad Mini rumors, but today we found out that Apple may reveal a new Mac Mini alongside the bite-sized tablet. Today we saw some pictures that appear to have been snapped by the camera on the yet-unannounced Nexus 4, and Apple has managed to bring former Amazon executive William Stasior on to oversee the continuing development of Siri. Android 4.1.2 was sent out to eager Galaxy Nexus owners today, and just in case you missed Felix Baumgartner’s death-defying jump over the weekend, you can see the highlights again today – complete with terrifying shots from his helmet cam.

LG delivered its Jelly Bean update schedule for a few of its devices today, and speaking of LG, AT&T announced that the Optimus G goes up for pre-order tomorrow with a price tag of $200. We heard that Windows 8 is getting an underwhelming response from vendors today, and Nintendo dropped the price of the original Wii down to just $130 in anticipation of the holiday rush. A new study is claiming that file sharers actually buy more music than people who don’t partake in that rather controversial activity, and Microsoft released a brand new Windows 8 ad today.

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition players found out that they’re in for a treat tomorrow, while Notch was busy showing off new footage from his upcoming game 0x10c and Microsoft was handing out Xbox Live bans to Halo 4 pirates. Activision announced today that Call of Duty Elite will be free with Black Ops II, and we were told that the Wii U gamepad boasts a latency of only 1/60 of a second. Google is in trouble in Europe over privacy concerns again, and we got to take a look at a new robotic wheelchair that can actually walk up stairs. How cool is that?

Finally tonight, we have quite a few original articles for you to have a look at. Chris Burns puts the Optimus G through its gaming paces with Wild Blood, and we pit Xbox Music, Spotify, iTunes, and Google Music against one another to see the strengths and weaknesses of all four. We’ve got a new review of the Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL by Chris Burns, and a review of the Motorola Electrify 2 by your humble wrapper-upper. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!

You’ve probably heard the gripe from multiple music labels about how piracy is translating to billions of dollars of lost revenue, citing that the more people who illegally download content, the less likely they are to buy the content. However, the American Assembly, which is a non-partisan public policy forum affiliated with Columbia University, published part of its upcoming Copy Culture Survey that sheds a little light on this “issue.”

The study focuses on the digital music collections of different users and how they obtained the music in their collection. The study found that not only do file sharers have larger music collections compared to others (predictably so), but file sharers also buy more music legally than those who don’t illegally download.

The explanation for this isn’t too tricky. A lot of file sharers use Bittorrent and P2P services as a way to sample music first and then decide if they want to buy a certain song or album. It’s a pretty solid system, and the study even says a lot of the music that users get for free simply come from friends through physical media as well — such as borrowing a CD and ripping the files to your computer.

[via TorrentFreak]

Of course, pirated versions of Halo 4 will only work on modded Xbox 360s, and why anyone would take their modded console onto Xbox Live is entirely beyond us. Some particularly dumb 360 owners are doing just that, though, as evidenced by the email MCV posted. The email is from the Live Enforcement Team, and lets the user know that they’ve violated the Xbox Live Code of Conduct. The punishment? Permaban, baby.

Though the email states that users won’t be able to log into Xbox Live during their suspension (which is never-ending in this case), it’s a little unclear at the moment if Microsoft is banning consoles or just gamertags – two very different things. If Microsoft is banning consoles, that means the console will never be able to access Xbox Live again, effectively bricking it as far as multiplayer and Xbox Live Arcade are concerned. If Microsoft is only banning gamertags, then the infringing gamer could just create a new tag and go online with that, which is a far less severe punishment.

In any case, you’re in for some headaches if you’re caught playing Halo 4 ahead of release while your 360 is connected to Live. Microsoft has launched an investigation to find out who leaked Halo 4 ahead of release, but in the meantime, the company is showing us that it has no problem at all with dropping the banhammer left and right. We’re going to go ahead and suggest that you just wait for Halo 4‘s official release on November 6 – yes, its release is still a few weeks off, but we’re thinking that waiting three weeks is much better than having your Xbox Live privileges taken away.

This comes after the team-up of AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon, who joined ranks with the MPAA and RIAA to form the Center for Copyright Information (CCI). The providers and MPAA/RIAA set out an agreement in which Internet subscribers would receive warnings for downloading copyrighted items. The subscriber will receive several warnings before the provider can then enact a harsher punishment.

None of the five providers have publicly commented on their involvement in the anti-piracy scheme. The leaked AT&T training documents provide the first glimpse into the plan, which is not without (extensive) controversy. The documents explain the upcoming changes to staff, and include this bit of info: “AT&T will not share any personally identifiable information about its customers with content owners until authorized by the customer or required to do so by law.”

An alleged source within the Center for Copyright Information told TorrentFreak that all five providers planned to launch the program on the same day. If true, this means that Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner customers will begin receiving piracy notices November 28th, in addition to AT&T subscribers. The “online education tutorial on copyright” will be triggered on the fifth or sixth warning notice, at which point access to certain frequently visited websites will be blocked until the tutorial is completed.

[via TorrentFreak]

That includes the websites of the Swedish Security Service, the Swedish Prosecutors’ Office, and the Swedish Central Bank. It sounds like these sites were all taken down by DDoS attacks, which has become the trademark weapon of Anonymous throughout the years, in a way. In all, over 20 Swedish sites have been taken down this week, though authorities can’t say at this time if all of those attacks are related.

It’s clear that Anonymous is behind at least some of them, however. This new operation is being called #OpPRQ #OpPirateBay, and though some were claiming this was a honeypot – essentially a government-organized setup to catch these Anonymous members in the act – the AnonNCarolina2 Twitter account said earlier today that there isn’t any evidence that a honeypot is being carried out.

Interestingly, The Pirate Bay has been down for a few days now, and we’re not really sure why. Earlier this week, The Pirate Bay’s former host, PRQ (the same service mentioned in the name of this operation) was raided by police, but The Pirate Bay Facebook page says there’s no relation between the raid and the site outage. Instead, the outage seems to be the result of “power problems,” though we aren’t getting anything in the way of specifics. Whatever the reason, those who run The Pirate Bay expect the site to be back up tomorrow, and it appears that this Anonymous operation will be ongoing, so we’ll share any new details that surface. Stay tuned.

[via PCMag]

Cambodian officials were presented legal documents on the copyright infringement case against Warg several days after his official arrest. Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith noted that the papers were presented after the arrest, after which the transport of Warg was able to begin. Warg and three Pirate Bay colleagues owed major entertainment companies 30 million kronor – aka $3.6 million USD – back when they had their first sentence in 2009.

The Pirate Bay crew were set to spend one year in prison as well as paying the initial amount. They appealed, suggesting that The Pirate Bay doesn’t actually host any media that’s protected under copyright itself, instead acting as a forum through which people can use their own technology to do as they wish. Warg failed to appear at an appeal hearing for the case in 2010 due to what his defense attorney suggested was an illness.

The appeal resulted in reduced prison sentences (between 4 and 10 months) but a raised amount in damages to 46 million kronor – aka $6.5 million USD. Warg’s final sentence is not yet known. This case has resulted in several “payback” hacking incidents from groups such as NullCrew. Stay tuned as this case continues and the future of The Pirate Bay is decided!

[via Washington Post]

“[Warg's] arrest was made at the request of the Swedish government for a crime related to information technology” spokesman Kirth Chantharith said. Cambodian authorities are now waiting for further information from the Swedish government, having detained Warg in Phnom Penh on Thursday last week.

The Pirate Bay co-founder failed to attend an appeal hearing earlier in 2012, and in his absence the Swedish court upheld his original 12 month jail sentence. Warg also saw no reduction in his fine, unlike three other men from the site who attended appeals. His lawyer claimed he was too ill to appear in court.

Despite ongoing legal action and attempts by some ISPs to block access to subscribers to The Pirate Bay, the actual impact on file-sharing has been minimal. A report from July suggested that, although blocks were in place and saw a dip in traffic for a week, after that point it returned to normal levels.

[via The Guardian]