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Certified Anti-Piracy Coach Helps Piracy Addicts Go LegalAndy Maxwell, 22 May 10:41 AM The insidious nature of a developing addiction often takes pe

Certified Anti-Piracy Coach Helps Piracy Addicts Go Legal Andy Maxwell, 22 May 10:41 AM The insidious nature of a developing addiction often takes people by surprise, regardless of the substance involved, but especially when it's freely available, all over the internet. While an occasional copy-and-paste is known to alleviate boredom, peer pressure at a vulnerable moment can lead to a whole file or even an entire folder being permanently copied to a USB stick. Most people feel no ill effects but for thrill-seekers, the instant high is over in moments, triggering a vicious cycle of increasingly risky copying and diminishing returns. A new campaign unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival aims to raise awareness of this addiction and how creators end up suffering the consequences. "Protecting Creation Against Piracy: Can We Go Further?" Revealed during an anti-piracy roundtable at the Festival on Saturday, the campaign is the work of two French government agencies – CNC (National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image) and ARCOM, the new anti-piracy/audiovisual regulator in France. CNC CEO Olivier Henrard and ARCOM's Denis Rapone unveiled the campaign with support from Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association. Google: United Against Piracy "The ambition of this campaign, with a slightly offbeat tone, is to encourage more and more Internet users to change their habits in favor of practices that respect creation," ARCOM notes. "In 2022, 86% of French Internet users aged 15 and over have consumed at least one cultural good online, films, series, video games, music, etc." Recovering Piracy Addicts in Therapy The campaign features a series of spots set to appear on television, cinema, radio and social networks, from June 15, 2023. They reveal the struggles of recovering piracy addicts as they transition from illegal to legal content with the help of Isabelle Champart, a certified anti-piracy coach/therapist. It appears that with guidance from Isabelle, French piracy addicts will make a full recovery and have no further use for her skills. Here's a sneak preview of six slots, with general translations from French under each. TV and cinema spots CNC and ARCOM film spot (all addicts) Hector: "It's been two years since I stopped everything, no relapse!" Sam: "I loved this little thrill, the feeling of it being forbidden." Isabelle: "And Now?" Sam: "Now I'm back in line, coach. One movie or TV series per night, legally." Isabelle "You see, there is life after piracy." Clementine: "I think about it all the time!" Isabelle: "The key is breathing." Clementine: "I still want it." Isabelle: "Ah yes?" Isabelle: "That's good." Hector: "Yes, I'm holding on." Isabelle: "Bravo!" Hector: "I'm hanging in there." Isabelle: "Yes, I understand" Voiceover: "Thank you to you who support creation by watching your films and TV series legally." Link CNC and ARCOM film spot featuring Hector Hector: "It's true, I was hanging out on the internet a bit last week. I came across some cracked codes…but I didn't crack!" Isabelle: "Bravo!" Hector: "I stood my ground" Isabelle: "I am proud of you." Hector: "I'm holding on" Isabelle: "This is good." Voiceover: "Thank you to you who support creation by watching your films and TV series legally." Link Anti-piracy awareness campaign: CNC and ARCOM film spot featuring Sam Isabelle: "As soon as you're on the verge of cracking, you put these mittens on. Try to go pirating wearing these." Sam: "It's well designed! Thanks coach!" Voiceover: "Thank you to you who support creation by watching your films and TV series legally." Link CNC and ARCOM film spot featuring Clementine Clementine: "I think about it all the time, I need to….." Isabelle: "I need you to relax. The key is breathing, and in the exhalation, we reject the urge." Voiceover: "Thank you to you who support creation by watching your films and TV series legally." Link Radio Spots CNC and ARCOM Radio Spot 1 Isabelle: "Hello, I'm listening!" Caller: "Hello, I'm about to pirate a movie, I'm going to crack. Help me!" Voiceover: "We don't need a coach for everything in life. Thank you to you who support creation by watching your films and TV series legally." Link CNC and ARCOM Radio Spot 2 Isabelle: "Want to put an end to piracy? I am Isabelle Champart, certified anti-piracy coach. My revolutionary method, you will hold all the cards and never need a coach again to stop pirating. Thank you to you who support creation by watching your films and TV series legally." Link Compared With Similar Campaigns, Not Bad At All Given the reaction (read: mockery) to traditional anti-piracy campaigns, it's good to see a light-hearted approach executed with sophistication – not a bulldozer. Any campaign that begins with an air of superiority leading to blame, and then hammers that home to ensure everyone gets the message, ends up being part of the problem. That certainly isn't the case here. While piracy itself doesn't usually amount to an addiction, there's no question that for some it's a deeply ingrained habit. Even people who subscribe to legal services but still pirate on occasion report instinctively searching unlicensed resources first. It's doubtful they need professional help but they may need a little more time. Image credit: Pixabay/TheDigitalArtist From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 05/22/2023 Ernesto Van der Sar, 22 May 01:09 AM The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources. This week we have two newcomers on the list. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title. The most torrented movies for the week ending on May 22 are: Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer Most downloaded movies via torrent sites 1 (9) The Super Mario Bros. Movie 7.3 / trailer 2 (…) Sisu 7.0 / trailer 3 (3) Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 7.4 / trailer 4 (1) The Covenant 7.6 / trailer 5 (7) Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 6.4 / trailer 6 (5) Evil Dead Rise 6.9 / trailer 7 (6) Avatar: The Way of Water 7.8 / trailer 8 (2) Air 7.6 / trailer 9 (…) To Catch a Killer 6.6 / trailer 10 (4) Renfield 6.4 / trailer Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. A Decade of Pirate Bay Proxy War: Did ISP Blocking Slay the Hydra? Andy Maxwell, 21 May 09:20 PM Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium and Brazil; just two letters of the alphabet and that's already five countries that have implemented ISP blocking against The Pirate Bay. The growing list, which continues with Denmark and persists through Finland, France and Germany, doesn't stop until it reaches the United Arab Emirates and finally, the UK. That's around 30 countries overall, give or take, that have resorted to ISP blocking because no matter what's thrown at it, The Pirate Bay simply refuses to die. At least in part, the site is still alive after more than a decade of widespread blocking due to the existence of proxy sites. These sites tend to look and feel like The Pirate Bay but operate from different domain names that aren't yet on ISP blocklists. This means that otherwise blocked internet users get to enjoy broadly the same Pirate Bay experience as they did before. At least for a while. Rightsholders Also Block Pirate Bay Proxies As reported yesterday, one of the most popular Pirate Bay proxy indexing sites recently disappeared from GitHub. ProxyBay was a significant player, one that had helped dozens of millions of users gain access to The Pirate Bay by directing them to active Pirate Bay proxy sites. However, in common with The Pirate Bay itself, proxy sites are also subjected to ISP blocking, which can render some of them redundant, not to mention inaccessible. Given that proxy sites and proxy indexes contribute to the overall health of the Pirate Bay 'hydra', that got us thinking: Is the hydra alive and well? Or has it lost a few too many heads over the years? Data Sources Used While we're aware that proxy sites face blocking in several countries, until today we'd never drilled into the details. It quickly became apparent that a complete overview would require significant time and resources but our short report today should help set the tone. To weigh rightsholders' responses to strictly Pirate Bay proxy sites, we obtained domain blocking lists used by ISPs in the UK, Denmark and Italy. The original plan was to include Portugal, India and a handful of other countries but the volume of data was soon overwhelming. Instead of including those additional countries, we used data from the Infringing Website List (IWL) operated by the UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Proxies Face Massive Blocking After merging data from all four sources, we removed any duplicate proxy domains, any domains that weren't clearly dedicated or directed at the Pirate Bay, plus any domains where their key role could not be identified due to downtime or other reasons. The final total of Pirate Bay proxies, all of which are subjected to blocking and/or restrictions on business due to their appearance on the IWL, is 670 to 690 domains, give or take. While that remains a large number, including other countries' blocklists would've inflated that number considerably. The big question is whether all of those domains are live, in business, and helping to unblock The Pirate Bay. The simple answer to that is 'no'. While we were able to test whether sites were active in some way, we couldn't determine exactly what they were doing, unless we visited every last one and took a screenshot for proof. …..So That's What We Did The image below is comprised of roughly 670 screenshots featuring obviously live proxies (mostly white), a lot of seemingly dead proxies (dark), and a surprising number of domains up for sale (mostly blue). (click to enlarge) It's not possible to determine the exact reasons why so many proxies appear to have thrown in the towel, in some cases on multiple domains. That being said, it's highly likely that ISP blocking played an important role in dampening enthusiasm for spending more money on yet another domain. Since the data was at hand, we decided to throw all of the live domains at their DNS and then wait for a list of IP addresses to come out. We fed those into an IP location service which produced the map in the image below. The large blue blob on the left, representing the location where most Pirate Bay proxies point, is the home of Cloudflare and another kind of proxy – a reverse proxy. That means that in all likelihood, the Pirate Bay proxies are hosted somewhere else entirely, not unlike The Pirate Bay itself. At least for now. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2023 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company