On June 25th 2005, the homepage of the EliteTorrents.org tracker displayed an ominous message. Thousands of members trying to log in to get a sneak peak at a leaked copy of Star Wars: Episode 3 were surprised and confused in equal numbers. Had the FBI really raided one of the largest BitTorrent communities and put up a badly made Word document, or were hackers to blame?

There’s no denying it was a very confusing day. For a while the site just didn’t respond for me. The rumors were starting to circulate. Had the EliteTorrents site really been raided by the FBI? Many furious refreshes later and there it was, a crude webpage with a blood-red background, with a DOJ graphic on one side and an FBI one on the other. In the middle sat part of the EliteTorrents banner (enlarge).

The page was so crude that it gave the tens of thousands of worried users a little relief - if the FBI was really behind the shutdown they would’ve made a better job of the page design than this, surely? The conclusion I reached along with many others was that this was the work of hackers. Site staff reported that the DNS had been hacked, which at the time was actually relatively good news, as reports started to come in that the site now traced to the Department of Homeland Security.

For many sci-fi fans the site downtime was really badly timed, as they (and just about everyone else) were desperate to get on the site to get the leaked ‘ViSA‘ workprint copy of Star Wars: Episode III. But as time passed you could feel the mood change. Most people knew deep down something was wrong but just didn’t want to admit it. Operation D-Elite had been and now EliteTorrents was gone.

When the confirmation came, it did so via a notice in the site’s IRC channel: “A few of the admins have been raided by the FBI, sorry, but ET [EliteTorrents] is now closed”, closely followed by an announcement by Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI’s Cyber Division:

This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles - including movies and software - which were downloaded 2.1 million times.

BitTorrent sites had been shut down before in the United States, such as the LokiTorrent case, but none had been closed down by the FBI - something had changed. The recently introduced Family Entertainment and Copyright Act meant that when EliteTorrents admin SЮt uploaded Star Wars: Episode III, he didn’t just commit a civil infringement, it was now a serious crime. The huge popularity of the movie meant it was downloaded at least 10,000 times during the first 24 hours with some claiming in the region of 20,000 downloads worldwide, and this was reportedly enough for the MPAA to finally lose its patience and make good on its successful infiltration of the site.

The federal agents involved in the case executed 10 warrants and took control of the server. In a recent interview, Scott McCausland, aka sk0t, an administrator of the site told Slyck: “Star Wars was uploaded… and then it was game over. I awoke one morning to see the FBI warning on the ET site, and thought to myself “Damn, I think we are screwed.” It didn’t dawn on me at the time that I could be a target. I didn’t upload a lot, just a couple movies. But I did Star Wars, so… Then, at 6AM I am woken up to the sounds of 6 FBI, 6 ICE, and 2 Local Police at my front door. They come in, confiscate everything, and that begins my 2+ years saga.”

In the BitTorrent community many people were absolutely furious at the loss of their favorite site, with a passion not seen since the demise of Suprnova. Thousands of others were panicking. Forums and IRC were awash with theories of who had been arrested so far and who would be targeted next by the FBI, and why. Would it be limited to admins? What about the uploaders? Would regular users be chased down? In the end, around 130,000 users had nothing to worry about but some admins and uploaders weren’t so lucky.

In 2006, Scott McCausland pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement for his uploading of Star Wars: Episode III. He received jail time and home confinement and on his release told TorrentFreak: “After 5 months in prison, and another 5 months on home confinement, I have just one obstacle left: my 1.5 years years left of probation.”

Fellow site admin Grant Stanley, then aged 23, pleaded guilty to the same offenses as Scott and received the same sentence with the addition of a $3,000 fine. Other admins and uploaders who pleaded guilty included Sam Kuonen, then aged 24, 22 year old Scott D. Harvanek and An Duc Do, aged 25.

Not everyone arrested in connection with the case pleaded guilty. Daniel Dove, an administrator of the site, opted for a ‘not guilty’ plea. For Dove, the gamble hasn’t paid off. The jury was told that Dove was responsible for managing and recruiting the crucial ‘uploaders’ on the site (original seeders) and that he also operated a server which was used to distribute pirate material. The jury believed it and found him guilty on one count each of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement.

Dove will be sentenced on September 9th 2008 where he, like some of the other admins, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail, but is likely to receive substantially less.

Historically, the EliteTorrents case is an important one. Many BitTorrent trackers used to be hosted in the United States, but had been essentially scared or pressured to leave, largely due to direct or indirect MPAA pressure. Right up until the creation of the Family Entertainment Act, any action against sites would have taken place in the civil domain. The act coming into force gave the FBI the green light to get involved, much to the delight of the MPAA who possessed significant investigative powers but lacked the killer ability to quickly shut down a non-compliant site.

The MPAA loves to issue a stream of data about how much piracy went on at EliteTorrents (and a lot did go on), but it was the seeding of a movie, a single pre-release movie that eventually killed the entire site and caused the imprisonment of the admin team. Clearly the leak did nothing to hurt the movie as it went on to gross nearly $110m in its first weekend and has nearly reached a worldwide total of $1bn. But we knew that anyway.

Despite the massive resources at the disposal of the FBI and supposed importance of the case, the person that originally leaked the Episode 3 workprint copy direct from Lucas is nowhere to be seen.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

How The FBI Dismantled a BitTorrent Community

In an attempt to cut down on so-called “illegal downloading” in the UK, the anti-piracy outfit BPI has sent out a round of intimidating emails, based on faulty evidence. BREIN plans to follow this example in The Netherlands, and meanwhile, the French Minister of culture is encouraging all EU member states to do the same.

Disconnecting filesharers has been one of the most debated anti-piracy measures this year. Many countries have discussed the possibility of doing so, and recently French authorities proposed a controversial “three strikes” law that allows anti-piracy organizations to disconnect pirates without a court order, or decent proof.

Next month, France will be the chair of the European Union, and Christine Albanel, the French Minister of Culture said that they will take this opportunity to encourage member states to take on piracy as well. Albanel further said that the “three strikes” law aims to change the behavior of the “average downloader”, not the hardcore pirates.

Albanel does not mention that the French law goes directly against the European Parliament who, this April, condemned state plans to authorize the disconnection of suspected file-sharers from the Internet. The European Parliament said that disconnecting petty file-sharers would be “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness”.

However, recent developments indicate that anti-piracy outfits don’t need a law to threaten pirates. Since most countries are hesitant to adopt such laws, organizations like the BPI and BREIN are now looking to make deals with UK and Dutch ISPs, to establish a “three strikes” policy, without having to change the law.

The BPI already managed to convinced the British ISP BT to work with them. Earlier this week, the Register reported that a BT customer received an email, stating:

BPI will monitor for further infringements of copyright and, if further evidence is obtained of infringement via your internet connection, then further action is likely to be taken against you. That action may include litigation against you, as well as the suspension by BT of your internet connection.

A few days later, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN said they would like ISPs in The Netherlands to do the same - forward letters to alleged offenders, and threaten to terminate their Internet connection. In France, this is already happening as well, without the “three strikes” law being officially passed, with at least one ISP having agreed to work with an anti-piracy organization, to combat piracy.

So, while claiming they need such a law, they are working with ISPs to do the same thing anyway. This will be a huge problem, not just for the customers that may lose their connections, but just because people are being hit with, in many cases, baseless accusations. Until something is done to hold organizations accountable for false or inaccurate claims, the industry will continue to use shoddy data gathering techniques, pointing the finger at as many innocent net users as may be guilty.

This leads us to believe that the disconnection threats, are nothing more than an attempt to scare people, who often didn’t even commit the “crime”, as we pointed out before. Sad but true.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

3-Strikes Law Not Needed to Disconnect Pirates

The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “ The Ruins” tops the chart this week.

We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of June 30, 2008…

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk26)

The Internet is a world penitentially embroiled in a Cold War. Now, as then, an arms race between factions is constantly ongoing, each working to counter the efforts of the other. Into this race, comes deep packet inspection, a serious threat to online privacy.

When I say Cold War, it’s not just an a reference thrown up to thrown up to invoke emotion. Like the real Cold War, it is mainly fought by proxy, one side using a third party to score hits. However, unlike the Cold War, it is not a contest between two fairly equal forces. One side has money and power, and the will to use it. The other has sheer weight of numbers, but what seems like general apathy.

One of the new weapons in this conflict, is called ‘Deep Packet Inspection‘ (DPI). An innocuous sounding name for a technology that basically means ‘Internet monitoring’. Deep packet inspection is a technology that some companies are salivating over, including advertisers and entertainment lobby groups like the MPAA. With it, their dreams can come true, some of them anyway.

There are various uses for deep packet inspection, such as its use by intelligence agencies (It’s a wiretap for the Internet) to intercept email and other web traffic, like in Sweden. However, there are two more sinister usages being rolled out that are not so good for the everyday Internet user.

With the ability to see the contents of data packets, it’s no surprise that it’s a prime candidate for traffic shaping and throttling. With ISP’s increasingly overselling their capacity, they are starting to spend money not on infrastructure, but on DPI equipment, to throttle BitTorrent traffic for example. Until recently, the processing power required to inspect data packets has made this prohibitive, as it required massive computers, and significantly slowed down network traffic. Now, though, companies like Procera Networks are selling systems capable of DPI on 40Gbps of traffic, per system. Think Sandvine, without the telltale RST packets.

The MPAA loves the idea of DPI as well. It, like other groups, figure, that if people can see the contents of packets, that it can tell if those packets contain copyrighted data. Of course, they’re oblivious to the idea that their material can be used in a non-infringing way, and staunchly against fair use (and don’t forget, Fair Use Day is only a week or two away). If this becomes a popular view, though, we may see multi-part rar files in torrents growing in popularity again.

The other, arguably more sinister usage of DPI, is the growing interest by advertising companies to use deep packet inspection to observe what Internet users are doing. Watching your browsing activity, you can gain all kinds of insights into the user behind the keyboard. Similar to spyware, but on your line not your system, it’s not a good thing, and impossible to remove. Worse, it may be able to tell who is behind the keyboard at the time, by identifying trends in connection behavior. In the case of a p2p lawsuit, these DPI-based advertising companies may end up being called to testify who their systems believe to be behind the keyboard at the time of the allegations.

With British Telecom in the UK having experimented with DPI based advertising – without telling the subscribers about it – and with Charter in the US looking into trialling it (or as has just been announced - discouraged from it) it is a pressing concern. Fortunately, some people are not exhibiting the apathy mentioned above, and are doing something about it. Alex Hanff (you might remember his tangle with the MPAA) has been studiously working against the likes of Phorm, and indeed, we linked to his dissertation on it last time. He is holding a protest outside British Telecom’s AGM next month, to protest this rape of user’s privacy for commercial gain.

While the protest might be mainly against advertising based systems, it’s a worry for all net users, and needs to be dealt with by something other than apathy. At least one torrent site admin has told me he will be there and I may be there, but the more that attend, the better. So, users of the world, it’s time to start acting for what you believe in, and stop just moaning about it.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Deep Packet Inspection and Your Privacy Online