Gaming Torrent Trackers Shut Down Citing Legal Threats This week two of the largest gaming oriented BitTorrent trackers pulled the plug to prevent legal trouble. GazelleGames shut down permanently while Underground Gamer is leaving the door open for a possible restart. At this point it’s unclear which industry group is behind the legal pressure, but it appears to go beyond the occasional DMCA notice. Thousands of members, meanwhile, are looking for alternatives to resume their torrenting habits. Founded early 2010, GazelleGames quickly grew out to become one of the larger private BitTorrent trackers dedicated to games. Before the end of its first year the site amassed thousands of members, and this number continued to increase until a surprise message was posted by the site’s owners yesterday. After three years it’s Game Over for GazelleGames. The decision to close the site comes a few days after the closure of Underground Gamer, another popular gaming tracker. While the exact details of the closures remain unknown to the outside world, both trackers have mentioned legal threats as motivation. In a goodbye notice posted on the site’s frontage, GazelleGames says it wants to protect staff and users from running into trouble with the law. The site also assures its members that all personal information will be wiped. “GazelleGames will be closing its doors. This came as a surprise to all the staff team, but it’s a move not unexpected. In light of UG’s closing five months after BG, it seemed like a prudent move to keep any legal actions from being taken upon anyone. “So yes, it’s a precautionary measure taken in reaction to the recent movements in the torrent world. All of your contact data such as IP addresses and emails will be wiped along with the server itself.” Gazelle Games’ goodbye note Unlike Underground Gamer, the shutdown of GazelleGames is said to be permanent. Underground Gamer is leaving the door open for a comeback but notes that all non-essential data was wiped out to protect staff and members, a fact relayed to TorrentFreak when we spoke with a tech admin at the site. Counting in bitGAMER, this is the third large gaming tracker to shut down in a matter of months. While it’s unclear which industry group is behind the legal pressure, there have been some rumors that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is involved. In an IRC chat Underground Gamer’s Lenk mentioned that there were complaints regarding games from major publishers, including FIFA 98. However, the threats came from a “watchdog,” not EA or any of the other game makers themselves. “That’s what you get when you have organizations whose sole purpose is scoring points by taking down sites. They don’t care about what they take down. They just do what they are paid for,” Lenk wrote. “Companies don’t care about UG. Copyright watchdogs make it their job though,” he added. Whoever is behind the pressure, it appears to be serious enough for the two trackers to cease their operations. The question remains whether the shutdowns will stop people from sharing games. There are already talks to re-spawn the fallen communities at new BitTorrent trackers, as is often the case when large sites die. Other members will simply resume their sharing habits at one of the trackers that are still in the game.

Title: Invitations!! We have had a lot of requests from members for invites to the site, so, every person from Power User and above has been given 1 invite each, this will expire at the end of the month, so if you have friends or family you would like to invite to the site then now would be the best time to do it, as the chances are that invites will only be given to donors in the future. Please make sure that you do NOT invite previously banned members, or create yourself a 2nd account, as you will risk your own account by doing so. Note: for those who doesn't know --> RTN it's the ex LL [ LeechersLair ]

Pirate Bay Founder Now Wanted by Denmark This week the trial of Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm concluded in Sweden, but before the verdict is announced more trouble awaits the 28-year-old. Authorities have revealed that Denmark has requested the extradition of Svartholm, who is suspected of similar hacking-related crimes in the neighboring country. Gottfrid’s mother tells TorrentFreak that she is surprised by the new allegations. Following a lengthy investigation the trial of Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm kicked off in the Stockholm District late last month. The charges relate to the hacking of Logica, a Swedish IT company working with local tax authorities. Much of the prosecution’s evidence was obtained from a computer seized from Gottfrid when he was detained last year in Cambodia. Gottfrid denied the charges and when confronted with evidence found on his computer he said that someone else must have gained access while he was in Asia. Prosecutor Henrik Olin described this explanation as “not credible” and asked the court to hand down a tough sentence. After nearly three weeks the trial has now concluded. However, as the case was winding up the authorities revealed that Sweden is not the only country that wants to prosecute Gottfrid. According to new information, Denmark has put in a request to extradite the Swede for “similar” hacking related offenses. At this point it is unclear what the Danish hacking charges entail or when the alleged crimes took place. Negotiations between Sweden and Denmark have been going on behind closed doors and the investigation is shrouded in secrecy. However, the Danish police issued a press release today regarding a police investigation into the hacking of CSC, a Danish IT company that works for the Government. The hacks were carried out between April and August 2012 and among other things the hackers accessed police records. One of the suspected hackers is referred to as a Swedish citizen who is currently in custody. TorrentFreak talked to Kristina Svartholm, Gottfrid’s mother, who told us that her son is being kept in solitary confinement until Danish investigators come over to question him. She doesn’t know the exact nature of the new allegations, but believes they are unrelated to the Logica case. Kristina further points out that the timing of the announcement is suspicious, and that it wouldn’t surprise her if it was made public at this specific time to influence the court’s opinion of Gottfrid. Talking about the Swedish trial Gottfrid’s mother says that it wasn’t a fair process, as Gottfrid had very limited resources to prepare his defense. “There is a striking unbalance between the enormous resources that the authorities and private companies involved have had available for their investigations, and the resources Gottfrid had. It’s undemocratic and shows how unequal the justice system is.” One of the problems was that Gottfrid had very limited options to communicate while being in detention, which made it hard to prepare for his defense. All communication went through his lawyer and mother, and the latter was not able to make any notes of what was said during their conversations. “Gottfrid could only contact people indirectly through me or his lawyer. Since I was denied to bring paper and pencil into custody to make notes while visiting him, I often felt rather helpless during this process,” Kristina told TorrentFreak. “I can’t memorize all technicalities and his lawyer lacks these technical skills as well. Gottfrid had no opportunities whatsoever to discuss the technical matters with anyone else,” she adds. In addition to limited resources, Kristina points out that it was extremely difficult to find an expert who would agree to testify on the technical details, as many excused themselves for having ties to the authorities or companies involved. One was eventually found, but Kristina doubts whether the court can make an accurate assessment of the presented evidence because of its technical nature. “I am absolutely sure that there is no judge and no jury in Sweden that has the technical skills to handle a case like this, and correctly weigh and assess the evidence that was presented. You can’t expect any lawyer to have these skills either.” Next week the court is expected to deliver its verdict in Gottfrid’s Swedish trial, and around the same time the authorities will announce their response to the extradition request. Gottfrid, meanwhile, remains in custody as he’s still considered a flight risk. He is kept in solitary confinement upon request from the Danish authorities.

MPAA Says Court Action Could Give Google Legal Basis to Delist Sites The UK Minister for Culture plus representatives from the MPAA, BPI, Google and four major ISPs met for a roundtable discussion on the issue of online piracy last month. The minutes of the meeting suggest that not only are the parties keen for site blocking to continue, but are considering whether the same High Court mechanism could be used to provide Google with a legal basis on which to delist sites. Following the passing of the UK’s Digital Economy Act in 2010, one of the remaining big questions is when ISPs will begin sending out warning letters to subscribers suspected of illicit file-sharing. There has been delay after delay, but yesterday Mark Jackson of ISPreview broke the news that the Department for Culture, Media & Sport had confirmed that the previous target of early 2014 will no longer be met. The notices are now expected to go out during the second half of 2015. However, the revelation didn’t come from any official announcement but from the minutes of an anti-piracy roundtable held in May and hosted by UK Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey. A copy obtained by TorrentFreak shows that the meeting was attended by a who’s who of rightsholders, anti-piracy groups and ISPs, including the MPAA, BPI, FACT, Google and the Premier League, plus BT, Virgin, TalkTalk and Sky. Pressuring Google Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point is how rightsholders and the authorities are increasingly putting pressure on Google. Ed Vaizey said the UK Government now wants to see the issue of infringing search results “addressed and producing tangible results.” The usual complaints came from Ian Moss, the BPI’s Director of Public Affairs, over the apparent lack of progress demonstrated by Google following the earlier tweaking of its search algorithm. Autocomplete, Moss said, is still suggesting illegal sites in response to user searches. Theo Bertram, UK Policy Manager for Google, countered that progress had been made but conceded there was more to be done. Over time the algorithm would yield better results, Bertram said. Censoring search via legal action? While the wrangling over algorithm adjustment has been heard many times before, what followed next appears to be something quite new. Noting that an analysis is under way to investigate the role of search engines on infringement, the discussion turned to how the law might have a role to play in manipulating search results. Section 97a of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is currently being used by the MPAA and BPI to have sites such as The Pirate Bay and KAT.ph blocked by UK ISPs, but could it have additional usefulness when it comes to dealing with search? The meeting suggested that s97a could provide Google with a legal basis on which to remove sites from its search rankings. Rightsholders could “apply to the courts to establish principles on which Google could base decisions to remove sites from rankings,” the MPAA’s Chris Marcich said. Current site blocking New uses for S97a aside, the current process appears to be going quite well, at least as far as the rightsholders are concerned. The BPI and MPAA told the meeting that the court procedure to have sites blocked in the UK had become “increasingly efficient and quick” on the back of ISPs becoming more comfortable with the process and copyright holders getting a better grasp on the kind of evidence required by the court. However, for reasons not made clear, the MPAA doesn’t consider the process quick enough to deal with “streaming websites.” Advertising Another area discussed was the advertising being placed on unauthorized content sites. Peter Szyszko of whiteBULLET said his company has a system in place funded by ad networks looking to protect their brands. It contains a database of 150,000 sites which have been scored for ad suitability. Szyszko said that rightsholders could use his company’s system to measure the advertising on “high-risk” sites so that decisions could be made on “compliance action.” Lavinia Carey of the Federation Against Copyright Theft expressed support for such independent automated systems and said they could prove useful for evidence purposes. Bill Bush, Director of Communications and Public Policy at Premier League, raised the issue of online gambling sites advertising on sites illegally streaming live sport. He questioned whether this problem could be addressed not via copyright legislation, but through the Remote Gambling Bill. Ed Vaizey said he would follow this up through the Minister for Sport and Tourism’s office. Finally, as revealed earlier this week, the music and movie industries are working more closely than ever with police in the UK. FACT’s Lavinia Carey told the meeting that copyright owners had been working with the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to compile a register of infringing sites. That work, she said, would be completed soon.

Dotcom’s Mega Pushes More Bandwidth Than New Zealand Kim Dotcom’s Mega has grown exponentially since its launch earlier this year. According to Dotcom, the bandwidth generated by the encryption-focused file-hosting platform has now exceeded that of the entire country of New Zealand. At the same time, the number of complaints by copyright holders remains remarkably low at 80 to 100 DMCA requests per day. The introduction of Mega has been one of the most successful tech launches this year. In a matter of days the site’s membership went from zero to more than a million and in the weeks that followed the site continued to expand its user base. Thus far Kim Dotcom and his colleagues have kept most of their statistics under wraps. However, earlier today Mega’s founder said that “the privacy company” now pushes more bandwidth than the entire country of New Zealand. “Only 5 months after the #Mega launch we are now pushing more bandwidth than the entire country of New Zealand,” Dotcom tweets. Mega’s founder doesn’t specify any numbers but Mega’s bandwidth should be well over 100 million petabytes at this point. While the site’s traffic still pales in comparison to the defunct Megaupload and several other file-hosting services, it’s still a force to be reckoned with. The company certainly doesn’t lack any ambition and hopes to go public on the New Zealand or Australian stock markets in the near future. Those not sharing in the Mega excitement thus far are Hollywood and the major music labels. The RIAA has devoted part of its website to tell the(ir) “real story” about Megaupload and would prefer it if Dotcom disappeared from the limelight. Interestingly, however, copyright holders haven’t had much to complain about during Mega’s first few months of business. Although Hollywood studios have tried to get Mega de-listed from Google on copyright grounds, not many complaints have been sent to the cloud hosting company itself. Dotcom informed TorrentFreak that the number of DMCA notices per day doesn’t exceed double digits, yet more than a million files are uploaded per day. “We currently receive between 80 – 100 notices per day. That’s tiny considering the 1.6 million uploads we receive daily and compared to the takedown volume of sites like Dropbox & YouTube,” Dotcom informs TorrentFreak. “We are reacting swiftly to these takedown notices, just like we did at Megaupload,” Dotcom adds. Indeed, Mega’s numbers are nothing compared to the tens of thousands of notices other service providers receive. In part this difference can be explained by the fact that unlike Dropbox and YouTube, Mega doesn’t allow Google to index its files. One thing is clear though, U.S. authorities and copyright holders will have a hard time portraying Mega as a criminal operation setup to infringe on content owners’ copyrights. It will be interesting to see whether Mega can keep up current growth in the future and “take over” a few other countries in the process.

Har den äran! Grattis och Hurra Sverige på eran Nationaldag. ======================== Translation | Happy birthday! Congratulations and Hooray Sweden the era National Day.

通告二则 1、小红花： 为嘉奖会员 opernal、mousew1979、prozac长期以来保种，特颁发终身荣誉奖章一枚，积分10万。 希望各位会员能够见贤思齐，发扬我为人人，人人为我的精神，积极保种，促进论坛良性发展。 当前他们的保种数分别为1396、1028、750种。 其中会员mousew1979保种资源全部为iHD资源，更需嘉奖。 2、小血腥： 本站清理了历史被封禁会员，具体清理标准如下： a)所有在2012年6月31日后未有登录记录的被自动封禁会员； b)所有因未通过考核的被自动封禁会员； 特此通知。

http://gazellegames.net/

Recent News Jun-05-13 - IRC - #music-vid You can tell your friends, who needs help, that #music-vid as support is active again I will be there usually on weekends//Jozek

U.S. Copyright Czar Praises Voluntary Anti-Piracy Agreements at Creators Summit During her speech yesterday at the World Creators Summit in Washington D.C, United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator for the White House Victoria Espinel warned that there is no “silver bullet” for ending online piracy. The copyright czar said that a variety of tools and approaches will be needed to reduce infringement and that existing collaboration with ISPs, advertisers, credit card companies and domain registrars will continue into the future. Not so long ago there was a massive effort in the United States to introduce legislation that would force companies to take responsibility for online piracy. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith, would have bolstered the powers of law enforcement while compelling ISPs, search engines, advertisers and payment processors to stop doing business with and cease providing access to allegedly infringing websites. In January 2012 the backlash was huge, with a coordinated blackout receiving support from sites such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit. Eventually, key supporters of the legislation such as the RIAA and MPAA had to concede the battle had been lost. With the train wreck of SOPA providing valuable lessons, some pro-copyright advocates in the U.S. are beginning to realize that legislation is only part of the solution. Virginian Congressman Bob Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, recently said that copyright protection can also be achieved by other routes, such as through voluntary agreements with the private sector. This theme was maintained yesterday by United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator for the White House, Victoria Espinel. Delivering a keynote speech at the World Creators Summit in Washington D.C, the ‘copyright czar’ spoke of the importance of employing a multi-directional approach to dealing with the issue of online infringement. “We believe that if we target infringement using a variety of approaches and tools at the same time we can make some headway and reduce infringement online and protect the creativity that our artists and artists around the world create while supporting the benefits the Internet creates,” she said. Espinel noted that “there is no silver bullet” to ending online piracy but that a combination of tools will yield results. “We, the Obama Administration, believe that a combination of law enforcement, voluntary private sector initiatives, engagement with other countries and consumer education is effective and appropriate.” Perhaps the most public of the private sector agreements is the one between several of the largest ISPs in the United States and the content industries represented by the RIAA and MPAA. The so-called “six strikes” initiative got underway in February. “The goal of this agreement and under the terms of the agreement, they will notify subscribers through a series of educational alerts when their Internet service accounts appear to be misused for infringement on P2P networks,” Espinel said. The copyright czar also noted other voluntary initiatives underway involving advertisers, credit card companies, payment processors and domain name registrars. These will continue, she said, with a view to developing “voluntary effective ways to take action to avoid supporting infringement activity.” As previously reported, the ISPs involved in the so-called “six strikes” scheme have been keen to emphasize that any voluntary agreements with other private sector companies will not infringe on consumer rights. Espinel said that the Obama Administration supports initiatives that “respect privacy, due process, free speech and competition.” Solutions must also be practical, she said, and “truly work to protect legitimate uses of the Internet. The U.S. Government should also “look for ways that we can help facilitate smooth and efficient access to creative content.” While voluntary agreements do have some benefits, such as avoiding tough legislation that could cause collateral damage, so far there have been few signs of the kind of transparency that can promote consumer confidence in the activities currently taking place behind closed doors.

The Pirate Bay Helps to Expose Copyright Troll Honeypot It’s no secret that copyright trolls will go to extremes in their efforts to nail accused BitTorrent pirates. Prenda Law provides the latest shining example and in a new filing the firm stands accused of running a honeypot to lure in potential porn pirates. Following this revelation The Pirate Bay has handed logs to TorrentFreak which reveal that a user called “Sharkmp4″ is indeed directly linked to the infamous anti-piracy law firm. Last month copyright troll law firm Prenda suffered losses on several fronts, including a $81,319.72 court sanction. However, Prenda’s troubles are far from over. A new filing submitted by defense lawyer Graham Syfert opens up a new can of worms, accusing the copyright trolls of seeding the very files they claim to protect. In the filing Prenda and its boss John Steele are accused of running a “honeypot” based on an expert report authored by Delvan Neville, whose company specializes in monitoring BitTorrent users. Neville gave Prenda a taste of their own medicine by conducting a thorough analysis of the IP-addresses sharing the files the copyright trolls are suing for. Many of the torrents detailed in Prenda lawsuits originate from a user on The Pirate Bay called ‘Sharkmp4′. Could it be that this user is somehow linked to Prenda and distributing the files to increase their list of potential targets? The expert report found that some interesting patterns emerge from the list of IP-addresses observed sharing these files. Several IP-addresses were present in the majority of the swarms, all using a rather rare version of the BitTorrent client Vuze which is often used for BitTorrent tracking. The IP-addresses in question resolve to the VPN provider Mullvad, and Neville suggests in his report that these IPs were used by Prenda’s BitTorrent tracking company 6881 Forensics. The same addresses were also found commenting on Prenda topics published on the anti-copyright troll blogs FightCopyrightTrolls and DieTrollDie. The report goes on to describe many connections between Sharkmp4, the tracking company, and Prenda. Among other things it ties the Comcast IP-address 75.72.88.156 to John Steele’s GoDaddy account. The same IP-address is also associated with porn studio Ingenuity 13 whose work was shared by Sharkmp4 before it was commercially available. Steele’s GoDaddy account “It appears from all the evidence that John Steele (or someone under his control or with access to his GoDaddy account records with authorization to make changes to domain names) is the most probable candidate for the identity of Pirate Bay user sharkmp4. Sharkmp4 was the originator of the only found public releases of Ingenuity 13 works prior to the creation of naughty­hotties.com,” Neville writes. “Some works were shared by sharkmp4 prior to the registered copyright date with indications of access to a higher resolution copy more related to the direct source,” he adds. While the above makes it likely that Prenda were indeed sharing the files they were supposed to protect, there is one final piece of evidence to conclusively link “Sharkmp4″ to the copyright trolls. It’s no secret that The Pirate Bay stores users’ IP-addresses, so after hearing about the new filing they handed TorrentFreak the log files for Sharkmp4. They link the user to John Steele and Prenda Law. Below is an overview of some of the uploaded files which are all still online. Sharkmp4 IP-addresses The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files. The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs. The logs provided by The Pirate Bay can be seen as the missing link in the evidence chain, undoubtedly linking Sharkmp4 to Prenda and John Steele. Needless to say, considering the stack of evidence above it’s not outrageous to conclude that the honeypot theory is viable. While this is certainly not the first time that a copyright troll has been accused of operating a honeypot, the evidence compiled against Prenda and Steel is some of the most damning we’ve seen thus far. It’s now up to the judge to decide what to do with it. Update: The logs caused some confusion among TPB users but Pirate Bay’s Winston ensures TorrentFreak that IPs in the database are wiped after 48-hours. “the IPs I dug up are from the daily database backups. I had to decrypt the backups one by one after checking the upload times and fetching the correct backup file for that day,” Winston tells us. “The backups are stored on a separate cloud provider, pgp encrypted so the decryption key is not the same as the encryption key, and the decryption key is safely stored offline and is itself encrypted with a passphrase. So there’s no risk of users IPs getting compromised in a raid!” “As for us sharing the IPs, we would obvious only do this to out the bad guys, after we linked them to the addresses.”

UK Police Launch Campaign to Shut Down Torrent Sites City of London Police inform TorrentFreak that they have begun targeting sites that provide access to unauthorized content for “criminal gain.” The initiative is part of a collaboration with Hollywood studios represented by FACT and the major recording labels of the BPI. In letters being sent out now, police accuse site operators of committing offenses under the Serious Crime Act. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau further warns that the crimes carry a jail sentence of 10 years. Authorities and entertainment industry companies in the UK are working together on a new initiative which targets sites said to be offering copyrighted material without permission, TorrentFreak has learned. The first signs came last week when a major torrent site received a letter from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), a unit set up following the Government’s National Fraud Review. The unit has a mission to identify serial offenders and organized crime gangs in order to disrupt their activities. The letter (copy below), sent to “The owners and/or operators of the website known as ‘XXXXX’,” states that the NFIB has become particularly concerned by websites causing harm to the UK’s creative economy. “We are therefore currently working on an initiative with Government and industry bodies to help prevent, deter and disrupt the criminal activity linked to websites involved in online copyright infringement. In that regard, we have reasonable grounds to suspect that through your ownership and/or operation of the website known as ‘XXXXX’, you are involved in online copyright infringement,” NFIB explain. So far TorrentFreak is aware that at least two torrent sites have already received letters from the NFIB. Their operations are detailed as follows: “XXXXX is a BitTorrent website that – without the permission of the copyright holder – actively provides UK internet users with a bespoke directory and search engine for torrent files. This enables users to find and download copyright content which would otherwise be time consuming or impossible to locate,” the letter notes. Even though neither site is located in the UK, police believe that sites’ operators are committing crimes there. “We have grounds to suspect that as owners and/or operators of the XXXXX website, you are committing the offense of communication to the public under s.107(2A) of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 (“CDPA”). Section 107(2A) is an indictable offence punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment,” NFIB state. But while allegations of copyright-related offenses are nothing out of the ordinary, in their letter the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau elevate the seriousness of file-sharing offenses to unprecedented levels. “Further, we have grounds to suspect that as owners and/or operators of the XXXXX website, you are committing offenses under the Serious Crime Act 2007 by doing acts capable of encouraging and assisting communication to the public (under s.107(2A) of the CDPA); and/or distribution (under s.107(1)(e) of the CDPA) of copyright content seeded by others – intending or believing that those offenses will be encouraged or assisted. “Such activity is an indictable offense under the Serious Crime Act 2007 and is punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment (two years for encouraging/assisting communication to the public; and ten years for encouraging/assisting distribution),” the NFIB warn. The letters conclude with advice for site operators to contact the NFIB immediately in order to “prevent the further commission of offenses.” “If no contact is made before 14th June 2013 then you and/or the XXXXX website may face police action,” the letter concludes. TorrentFreak contacted NFIB who confirmed that an initiative is indeed underway. “City of London Police has begun an initiative to target websites that attract visitors by providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content for criminal gain. These websites are able to operate and profit from advertising on their sites without having licenses or paying the creators and owners of the films, TV programmes, music and publications,” a spokesman said in a statement. “Intellectual property crime is a serious offense that is costing the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds each year. Working with the UK advertising industry, City of London Police and rights holder groups FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft), BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) and The PA (The Publishers Association) are committed to tackling this problem.” The BPI say that an NFIB officer was previously embedded with their anti-piracy unit. “This appointment is the first secondment by NFIB into private industry, enabling City of London Police to develop a greater understanding of the illegal distribution and sale of music online by organised crime gangs,” the music group reveals. The NFIB add that their initiative also seeks to protect UK consumers from “malware and other harmful programs that may be downloaded unwittingly from sites that provide illegally offered content.” Any site or service in receipt of the NFIB letter can contact us in confidence at the usual address. The letter

Movie4K Clones Movie2K, Pirate Party & Police Sucked into Controversy The mystery surrounding the demise of Movie2K.to and the apparent reincarnation of the site at Movie4K.to has taken on yet another twist. Last week TorrentFreak informed the German Pirate Party (to their apparent surprise) that their DNS servers were being used by the old Movie2K. That redirection attracted the attention of the police but is now being used by the party to promote their political message to millions of former Movie2K users. Over the past few years we’ve witnessed quite a few instances of sites disappearing under pressure only to reappear on a new domain with fresh management. These reincarnations are understandably viewed with an element of suspicion. Is the replacement site the real deal? Is it endorsed by the original site’s former owners? Maybe the former owners are still behind the wheel? Or is the new site suddenly going to start serving up malware? The answers to these questions are always hard to come by for good reason, and the current Movie2K case is no different. As previously reported, last week the site inexplicably disappeared leaving millions of former users without a home. One of the main theories is that some kind of legal pressure – or the threat of it – caused the site’s operators to jump ship. However, very quickly a new site appeared – Movie4K.to – looking very much like the now-defunct Movie2K.to and accompanied by all the usual questions. Is it the real deal? Is it sanctioned by the former operators of Movie2K? Is it a trap? We tried to unravel the mysteries right at the very start and one of our findings raised a few eyebrows. The old Movie2K domain had begun using the DNS servers of the German Pirate Party. Were the pirates somehow involved? They told TorrentFreak that they were not, but now they appear to be using the site’s demise to spread their political message. This morning Markus Drenger, a member of the Piratenpartei Deutschland press team, emailed TF to advise us that they are now taking advantage of the Movie2K.to redirect to spread the Pirate message. “This isn’t our domain, and we don’t know who owns it. However, they apparently redirected it to our servers. We don’t know exactly why, but we assume that the people responsible for it wanted to allow us to inform the visitors about the issues with current copyright law. For this reason, we are now displaying this info page here,” the Party explains. Already the DNS issues have caused problems, with the police contacting the party and the party’s webhost. However, referencing an earlier raid on their infrastructure, the party says that this time the police didn’t seize their hardware. The party’s latest position is that if the redirect to their DNS continues then they will possibly put up some Creative Commons movies for former Movie2K users to enjoy. However, while that might prove entertaining for a while, people are obviously looking for more varied content. It seems that Movie4K – whoever they are – intend to fill that gap immediately. “Nobody should have the power to suppress somebody just because of money! This site is the result of the need of many Human Beings. Everyone wants Movie2k.to/Movie4k.to back,” they state in a broken English announcement. “We, the Citizens, have to make clear that a ‘copyright infringement’ cannot be compared to a violent crime. How come bootlegger get five years of jail time while child abuser are free on a 22-month probation? That is because money is way more important than an unique human life.” “You cannot suppress the will of the People!” they continue. “One website goes, the next day five new appear. Did not the time come to overthink your marketing concepts and accept the new media?” In a parting shot, Movie4K attack the entities they suggest are behind the demise of Movie2K. “FU Hollywood, FU GVU, FU Anti-piracy and FU Police. But we love Obama!” they conclude. As a final note, Movie4K is currently using AS44571 (Akrino Inc). Records show that five out of the last six times that was used it was inhabited by a site called kinox.to, a site that took over from the now-defunct Kino.to, the subject of the biggest ever anti-piracy action in Europe.

ARM Launches Hollywood Approved Anti-Piracy Processor Chip manufacturer ARM has announced a Hollywood-approved video processor that enables content producers to prevent piracy on mobile platforms. The Mali-V500 video chip features hardware embedded anti-piracy capabilities which secure playback of high-definition video. According to ARM the new chip meets the toughest anti-piracy standards for mobile devices. If you have a smartphone then there’s a good chance that it comes with an ARM chip inside. The British company ARM Holdings is the market leader in smartphone processors. Today the company announced a series of new products at Computex, with one standing out in particular. Not because it includes ground breaking features that will improve the consumer experience, but through its embedded hardware DRM. Developed on Hollywood’s demand, the Mali-V500 video processor is the first mobile chip optimized to prevent high-definition video from being pirated. Until now the major movie studios have been hesitant to move some of their videos to mobile platforms since these are harder to secure. However, this will change in the future if ARM’s new processor is implemented. “In order to protect their multi-billion dollar investments, studios and content owners are demanding hardware-backed security across all devices that play their premium content,” ARM’s director of market development Cris Porthouse notes in a blog post. “This means that in order to support premium content mobile and other consumer embedded devices must support hardware-backed protection of content from download to display.” Mali-V500 ARM’s Mali-V500 is the first chip of its kind to offer this kind of protection, sometimes dubbed hardware DRM. According to Porthouse the video processor offers state of the art security with support for a wide variety of DRM solutions. “In order to meet the stringent security requirements of movie content owners, Mali-V500 has been architected to efficiently support ARM TrustZone and associated media playback use cases efficiently,” he writes. Speaking with the Financial Times, Porthouse said that Hollywood and Netflix demand hardware protection as traditional DRM solutions are no longer sufficient. “Hollywood movie studios and major content distributors like Netflix and others are demanding for premium or early window content – their highest-value content – to be protected not just by digital rights management but by the hardware, all the way from download through to display.” So if it’s up to ARM your smartphone will soon be shipped with built-in DRM to keep pirates at bay. The question is, however, whether all this expensive technology will be effective in preventing movies from leaking out. Or will it mostly cause trouble for legitimate consumers, as is often the case with other forms of DRM.

Sky Broadband Starts Blocking Pirate Bay Proxies UK Internet provider Sky Broadband has quietly started to restrict access to a wide range of proxy sites through which subscribers could reach The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, Movie2k and other blocked sites. The new blockades go beyond the initial court orders and appear to adjust automatically to IP-address changes. TorrentFreak talked to several proxy site operators who are determined to bypass the new measures. Following a High Court ruling in March, six UK ISPs were required to block subscriber access to three of the world’s largest torrent sites, Kat.ph, H33T and Fenopy. The legal action was initiated by the music industry group BPI on behalf of a variety of major labels who previously won a similar case regarding The Pirate Bay. The movie studios also successfully targeted other infringing sites, as illustrated by the recent blockade of Movie2K. While the court rulings in these cases are public, the actual blocklists are not. We do know that one list of prohibited domains is maintained by the music industry group BPI, who have the freedom to add new entries when sites move to new domains or IP-addresses. As of last week, however, Sky Broadband appears to have updated its blocking measures with several new domains that go beyond the specific sites detailed in the initial court action. Before the weekend Sky subscribers started to notice that several proxy sites, which are meant to bypass the blockades, are not longer accessible. The new Sky blockade restricts access to a wide variety of proxies including pirateproxy.net, fenopyreverse.info, h33tunblock.info, h33t.uk.to, kickassunblock.info, katproxy.com, movie2kproxy.com. In addition, torrentproxies.com, a site that offers a list of available proxy sites, is also rendered inaccessible. Thus far it is unknown whether Sky is acting on its own or whether the new sites are part of a blocklist update sent out by BPI. The latter would mean that other ISPs will also start blocking these proxies in the near future. Both Sky and the BPI were asked for a comment on the recent changes, but we have yet to receive a response. TorrentFreak talked to the operator of pirateproxy.net, the most visited proxy site in the UK, who is convinced that the new blockades are not an accident. “I believe the blocks are intentional based on the specific list of sites they are blocking,” PirateProxy’s Drastik tells us. Drastik says that the new blockades took him by surprise, but that they won’t work for long. PirateProxy is already working on a bypass and other proxy site owners are doing the same. “I find the blocks to be a bold move since there are so many proxy sites and workarounds out there. If they do continue blocking proxy sites, it will be a cat and mouse game on a large scale,” he says. The Pirate Reverse team, who operate a series of proxies and the proxy list torrentproxies.com have also begun taking countermeasures. Among other things, they have released a tool which allows subscribers to check which sites are being blocked by their ISP. “We created the proxy block checker tool because it is difficult from our perspective to see what ISPs have blocked what sites, so the data that it provides is crucial if we are to implement workarounds and continue fighting censorship,” Pirate Reverse told us. The user submitted results will help the Pirate Reverse team to roll out effective countermeasures. Block Checker “The end result is to analyse the data and use it to come up with better solutions, at the moment even though there are only a few results gathered we can see a pattern emerging in how the recent Sky blocks are implemented.” Ironically, the block checker tool may not be all that effective as Sky has begun blocking that website too. From the reports we received it appears that Sky’s new blocking mechanism is highly adaptive. Several proxies moved to new IP-addresses, only to find out that these were also added to the list in a matter of hours. Pirate Reverse is now trying to figure out a way to game this system. “The system they are using is automated and queries our DNS to get our current IPs, then blocks them, however it removes previously blocked IPs that we are no longer using. We are testing an automated method of cycling through our IP addresses,” they say. Perhaps we will soon see the first proxy sites that allow users to access proxy sites? In any case, the game of whack-a-mole continues.

“Irish SOPA” To Receive First Test in Pirate Bay Blocking Case One of the ISPs targeted by the major recording labels in the latest Pirate Bay blocking case says it will not voluntarily censor the website. Irish ISP UPC, the second largest in the country, says that service providers should not be the ones to decide what subscribers can and cannot consume. As a result, the so-called “Irish SOPA” legislation introduced last year will soon receive its first test at the Commercial Court. In common with many of their counterparts around Europe, six ISPs in Ireland are currently under fire for providing access to The Pirate Bay, the world’s most controversial file-sharing site. The Internet service providers – UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G and Telefonica O2 – are being targeted by IRMA, the Irish Recorded Music Association. The group, which represents the major recording labels including EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal, wants ISPs to block subscriber access to TPB. IRMA’s application, currently before the Commercial Court, is supported by other rightsholder groups including the MPA, the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency and Games Ireland. Last week the labels argued that as many as 200,000 Irish ISP users access TPB every month, causing collective losses to the labels of around 20 million euros a year. At the same time, they argued, TPB generates more than $30 million per year in advertising revenues. The labels are seeking court orders which would force the ISPs to disable access to The Pirate Bay within 30 days. Clarity was also sought on whether the labels should have to return to court with a new application should The Pirate Bay change domain or switch IP addresses. While none of the targeted ISPs expressed outright opposition to the application, UPC says that its previous stance of not cooperating voluntarily with the labels (it previously declined IRMA’s request in pre-litigation correspondence) remains the same. “UPC’s position remains unchanged. Piracy in general is a collective and industry wide concern. From a UPC perspective, we firmly believe people should pay for content they consume,” the ISP said in a statement. “As an industry, Pay-TV has pioneered encryption technology to prevent piracy of the TV signal. However, we have no visibility as to what users do online. Our position is that ISPs should not, on a voluntary basis, decide what can or should be consumed by users.” The stance of UPC is important, not least since the blocking of The Pirate Bay is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. During an earlier hearing the labels revealed they have a list of some 260 “objectionable” websites to be targeted in future should this effort succeed. “It is the government or the courts who are the appropriate body to make such determinations and we await Judge McGovern’s decision in this regard,” UPC concludes. This latest action is the first of its kind since Ireland’s signing into law of the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012. Dubbed “the Irish SOPA“, the legislation should make it easier for rightsholders to have sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked by court order.

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again, ‘Jack The Giant Slayer’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Iron Man 3′. ‘Hammer Of The Gods’ completes the top three. This week we have four newcomers in our chart. Jack The Giant Slayer is the most downloaded movie. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart. Ranking (last week) Movie IMDb Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (…) Jack The Giant Slayer 6.6 / 2 (1) Iron Man 3 (R6) 8.0 / 3 (…) Hammer Of The Gods 5.9 / 4 (2) Fast and Furious 6 (Cam) 7.7 / trailer 5 (3) Snitch 6.7 / 6 (…) The Hangover Part 3 (TS) 6.3 / 7 (…) Epic (TS) 6.8 / 8 (4) A Good Day to Die Hard 5.5 / trailer 9 (7) Oz The Great and Powerful 6.7 / 10 (5) Bullet To The Head 6.1 /

Copyright Monopoly Enforcement Today Is A Mass Psychosis When I was giving a presentation in Lisbon, Portugal this week, I called the copyright monopoly worship we see around us a “mass psychosis” and a “race to the bottom”. My opponents from WIPO and the Motion Picture Association were not amused. Still, it’s an accurate picture, if history is a judge. I have written before on TorrentFreak about the Red Flag Act of 1865 in the United Kingdom. As the automobile industry gained steam there, lobbyists spoke out and pretended to embrace the automobile, while in reality acting to kill its utility value to the benefit of the previous generation of industries. More specifically, the Red Flag Act stipulated that any car in the United Kingdom must have a “crew” of three people: the driver, a stoker (essentially a mechanic), and a man walking in front of the car waving a red flag. Yes, you read that right. In this way, the car could be used to safely (and slowly) transport people and cargo to the incumbent transport industries of the day: the stagecoach and railroad stations, while at the same time preventing the car from replacing the stagecoach and railroad. Unsurprisingly, it turned out later that these same industries – the stagecoach and railroad industries – had been behind the lobbying that led to the law that killed the disruptive innovation against their industries. As a result, the German automobile industry got a head start of several decades against the British, which still – 150 years later – is clearly visible in market share and engineering know-how. That’s how damaging it is to let an incumbent industry set the terms for the disruptive upstarts. These days, we can observe three industries trying to pull a Red Flag Act trick on the Internet. Apart from the copyright industry, which is completely obsolete and literally fighting for its life, we can also trivially observe that the telco and cable TV industries are pretending to embrace the net, while actually trying to prevent its utility value for as long and as much as possible (as the net will disintegrate both of those industries, too). But the real interesting thing happens when the described mass psychosis sets in, and legislators in several countries perceive a thing like the Red Flag Act to be a good idea. It wasn’t just in the United Kingdom that an automobile-killing law was created, and to be frank, the UK law requiring somebody to walk in front of a car waving a warning flag was one of the more sensible incarnations. For once this kind of industrial protectionism (“IP”) laws are wrongly imagined to be good for the public, just because they are good for an obsolete industry, everybody lines up in a race to the bottom to save the old obsolete industries at any cost against the threat of everything new and disruptive. There is a word for this: neophobia. It means “fear of the new”, and is very often seen in politics in general, and in lobbying in particular. My favorite example of how the Red Flag Act spread in a mass psychosis is its appearance in Pennsylvania, 1896. (That’s thirty years after the initial law – don’t think that people see a horrible idea for what it is anytime quick, if there are financial interests to prop it up, the public interest be damned.) The bill proposed in Pennsylvania stated that any driver of a car, when he or she sees cattle or horses up ahead on the road, must immediately take three actions in order: the driver must a) stop the vehicle, b) disassemble the vehicle completely, and c) hide all the parts in the nearest shrubbery until the animals have passed. That crazy bill passed both legislative chambers in Pennsylvania. Unanimously. In retrospect, that’s what I’d definitely call a mass psychosis. To us, today, it’s obvious that the law was not just a bad idea, but asylum-worthily catastrophic. That’s where we are with copyright monopoly enforcement today. Saving the old, obsolete industries at any cost, defending the copyright monopoly and obsolete distribution models against the future, and seeing legislators taking part in this neophobic race to the bottom is a clinical mass psychosis. The future will not be happy about these events, rightly laughing at them. But the good news is that we know we can build a better future than the equivalent of Pennsylvania’s car laws (three strikes, ISP liability, DMCA, InfoSoc, domain seizing, culture-sharing bans in the first place, the list goes on) – we, the people aware enough to read this article and understand the ridicule of everything proposed and enacted to defend the copyright monopoly today.

Are Torrent Sites All About the Money? One of the claims of anti-filesharing groups is that the people behind file-sharing sites and services only run them to make money. Those who believe in sharing for sharing’s sake believe that the opposite to be true. But in actual fact, and in common with so many facets of the piracy debate, the truth lies hidden behind many shades of gray, somewhere in the middle. Imagine a scenario in which all file-sharing, streaming, linking and hosting websites are completely drained of cash, their revenues throttled by relentless anti-piracy company pressure. Free content and online piracy more or less comes to an end – right? If the rhetoric coming out of industry bodies like the RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BPI and FACT is to be believed, that’s exactly what would happen. These organizations think that file-sharing sites and services are motivated only be the reward of hard cash and without it they would cease to function. But is that the case? Is The Pirate Bay only interested in being super-resilient in order to maintain its advertising revenue? Is your favorite private tracker only making the site better and enforcing tight ratio rules in order to keep this month’s donations healthy? Entertainment companies nearly always offer a resounding ‘YES’ to each of the above while uncompromising pro-piracy advocates throw in a blanket “NO”. The truth, as with most things in the file-sharing debate, lies somewhere in the middle. Everyone needs at least a little money Let’s get one thing straight from the start – ALL file-sharing related sites are interested in money, just as everyone reading this article will be. Money is a fact of life (ask charities who rely on handouts) and in the file-sharing world servers and bandwidth have to be paid for. Sites cannot operate without cash so revenue has to be generated to keep them online. Basics out-of-the-way, the question switches to how that cash is raised. Advertising and affiliate schemes, free and forced donations. Public sites like The Pirate Bay raise money in a way that is roughly compatible with the original file-sharing ethos. Not only is content-free but the site is free to use too, with money generated via advertising and affiliate schemes. Unless users want to, they don’t contribute a penny towards the site’s upkeep. Broadly speaking, the same can be said about most publicly available sites, such as the many varied public indexes that cull torrents from other sites. They tend not to have communities of their own and generate revenue from advertising and affiliate schemes. It is hard to prove or say with the utmost certainty, but it seems likely that some of these exist mainly for the money. Private trackers, on the other hand, are a different prospect altogether. They have their own walled ecosystem where the main unit of currency is bandwidth. In most cases all users must contribute bandwidth via their uploads or face getting kicked out. Users with lots of upload bandwidth need never pay any actual money to the site. On the other hand, those with limited upstream clout may find themselves in a position of having to donate real cash to stay on board. Private torrent sites generally generate cash from this latter group, plus other users who simply value what the site has to offer and voluntarily hand over cash as a ‘thank you’. But while these are basic explanations of how money is raised to keep sites running, we still don’t have an idea of whether the operators of these sites are only running them to make money. The truth is that only the sites and those close to them know for sure, but there are some interesting signs to be read. Ethical pirates, evil pirates, and the swashbucklers in between. If we take a look at The Pirate Bay, we can see a site that in pretty much all respects has not improved in more than half a decade. For a traditional business this would be suicide. Expansion plans and grand ideas for the future aren’t fueled by standing still. The site definitely makes some money and the people behind the site could certainly make money elsewhere in a less risky occupation. On the other hand, private sites are very much a mixed bag. There are some trackers around that aren’t interested in any more money than is needed to pay the bills each month and these are quite easy to spot with their relaxed attitudes. These sites are often over-sized hobbies for their owners. At the other end of the scale (and this is a bitter pill) are trackers, large and small, that are almost entirely focused on money. They have donation drives every other month plus tight ratio restrictions and ruthless bannings unless users stump up cash. Every Christmas there is some crisis or other which imperils the admin’s drink supply future of the site unless there is an immediate cash influx from site members. Often these sites are completely filled to capacity, unable to process even one solitary extra invite. Until cash is handed over for one of course, then space is magically found. In between though there are many other trackers which through no fault of their own have become slaves to their site’s finances. What started off as a fun hobby with a few hundred members costing very little, can rapidly turn into a much larger concern that without funds cannot be kept going. The admins of these sites aren’t in this to make money but if they don’t then the site won’t survive in its current state. The options are i) cull the site back to its roots and pay the small bills from your own pocket, ii) say it was good while it lasted and shut down, or iii) leave the decision to another day that never comes. Many site owners are in this final position. But for all of this post’s previous 800 or so words we still have no idea whether site operators are all in this game for the money. The likely truth is that some are and some aren’t, but in most cases their users don’t really care one way or the other. A good service is being provided – for free. Sharing is not all about money However, what we do know is that the people actually sharing the files in the first instance are almost completely not motivated by money at all. They do it for fun, for entertainment. They do it for the thrill and to enjoy the act of sharing something with others. How do you deal with that – ineffective strike systems or the on-the-spot fines being mulled by France at the moment? That won’t cut off their finances for long – or place them in the industry’s back pocket either. The simple fact is there were file-sharers before torrent sites came along and there will be file-sharers after they have gone. If the authorities squeeze every last drop of revenue from all the major sites, no matter what their financial motivations were, then people will come together to find a new solution. The biggest fear for the entertainment industries must be that even after they’ve removed all financial incentives and blocked all the sites, the sharing culture simply continues. Then what?

Important Notice Hi, We are open currently, please recommend our tracker to more friends, we are going to send 10GB to every USER and Peasant when the 2013 NBA Finals comes, also, every new USER will now apply new rule: 20GB, 0.6 ratio requirement

FINANCIAL UPDATE: PART ONE It's time for a brief update about our financial situation. We intend to release a larger update within a month, so keep an eye on the news section for further developments regarding the site's financial future, and your role in shaping it. We'd like to thank everyone who has contributed in the form of a direct donation or store purchase since the time of the last announcement. This fundraiser has proven successful enough to keep the site running in the short term. The final two weeks of April were especially strong, and if this is indicative of a continuing trend, it would suggest that we're momentarily in the black as of the time of this post. However, it is clear that funding What.CD is a challenge with more systemic problems (as is indicated by previous fundraisers). Without stimulating the user base with an occasional call for help, we eventually fall behind. As the site grows, our bills grow. With this comes the cost of server upgrades. Keep in mind that we own our servers, so fixed costs are a luxury we do not enjoy. As stated previously, the cost of one server breakdown can easily exceed many months of average operating costs. For these reasons, it is difficult to fund the site primarily through the What.CD Online Store, although it helps. But the reality is that not everyone wants to purchase merchandise, nor is everyone willing (or able) to pay for costly international shipping. While the store will remain an effective way for users to show their support for the site, we understand that it isn't an absolute solution. We also acknowledge that everyone would prefer additional options which allow closer to 100% of contributions to directly fund the site—something impossible to achieve when selling tangible products. Toward this end, we have been discussing the implementation of new donation incentives, as well as a more profitable utilization of the store. Changes beyond these are being discussed, but are nowhere ready for public hinting, much less public introduction. Beyond keeping the site afloat, additional short-term goals include replenishing a safety net of emergency funds, and funding an overdue hardware upgrade. The longest-term and most important goal remains ensuring that each month's donations haul is at least large enough to cover monthly costs. At this time, we encourage our users to be patient. Proper execution of our plans requires frequent discussion as a staff team, coordination with external partners, many developer hours, and time spent ensuring the security of everyone involved. But, hey—thanks to you, we're still here. Turn it to eleven and kick it.

TheGeeks Review Tracker: The Geeks Category: E-learning Signup: Closed (invite only) IRC: irc.thegeeks.bz:+6697 #TheGeeks.bz Tracker Birthdate :8th September 2010 Tracker System : Ratio Based Torrents: 7/10 Speed : 8/10 Community : 6/10 Categories: Browse : State: Forum: Rules: FAQ: Upload Page : Donations: IRC : Is The Tracker Worth To Join : Hell YeaH !!!! Review End Hope That I Have Mentioned Every Thing !!!

Hit & Run System To encourage seeding and the life of the torrents on site, we have decided to implement a Hit and Run system. It has become apparent that users are not seeding what they snatch, and this is preventing other users from having a chance to grab the music that they undoubtedly searched high and low for. What does this mean for you? Basically, just seed what you download, and give what you take. Read more about this here. Note: Any torrents that you are seeding as of this moment will begin being monitored. Please take a look at the wiki link above to see what this means. Discuss here

Today we would like to announce that everybody can upload torrents on Freakleech even with user status. In the next cooming days we will change some rules and add new user classes, status user, power user, uploader will remain for busy uploaders. User - The default class of new members, but they can upload torrents. Power User - Can download DOX over 1MB and view NFO files. Mostly these are white-skinned people. Power Users also can upload torrents. VIP - Same privileges as Power User and is considered an Elite Member of FreakLeech.net. Immune to automatic demotion. Uploader - Can upload torrents. They are fine and intelligent people, usually with super-speed lines. Freaky Uploader - People who have uploaded more than 350 torrents. They live for uploading torrent. Elite Uploader - Only for rippers and repack grups