Posts by Prophet

  • Piracy not worth risk of prison : Cammer

    PIRACY ISN’T WORTH THE RISK OF PRISON, FREED CAMMER SAYS


    Last year Philip Danks was sentenced to almost three years in jail for recording Fast and Furious 6 and uploading it to the Internet. After a Ministry of Justice appeal Danks is now on home detention. Speaking with TorrentFreak, the former pirate gets a lot of things off his chest while advising others not to make the same mistakes.


    On May 23, 2013, five unmarked cars containing 10 police officers and representatives from the Federation Against Copyright Theft tracked down UK-based Philip Danks.


    From Walsall in the West Midlands, then 24-year-old Danks had cammed Fast and Furious 6 at a local Showcase cinema before uploading it to the Internet. A year later the computer programmer was handed an unprecedented 33 months in prison.


    Following a successful appeal to the Ministry of Justice, Danks is now on home detention after serving one year and 18 days of his sentence. Earlier this week he read a TF piece which covered FACT’s warning to potential cammers of the upcoming Bond film ‘Spectre’. We suggested that releasing the movie in the UK almost two weeks before the U.S. launch was a recipe for piracy. Danks agrees.


    “The movie industry do staggered releases to build up suspense with a movie but I for one know this does not work. As you know movies are (usually) released in the company they are created in, hence James Bond and Fast 6 being released here in the UK first,” Danks told TF.


    “However, this just creates an unnecessary window for pirates to grab the film before anyone else. It gives them the opportunity to obtain maximum results from being the first group or person to leak the movies online because people who cannot watch it at the cinema will be wanting a pirate copy to give them their movie fix.”


    That escalated quickly


    That urge to be first was what put Danks on the radars of FACT and then the police. After his arrest and subsequent conviction Danks was initially sent to HMP Hewell, a Category B prison in Worcestershire, later being transferred to the low-to-medium risk HMP Oakwood. But despite committing only white-collar crime, Danks was placed alongside those with a thirst for violence.


    “I was locked up with all sorts of people, including murderers, bank robbers etc. I remember one guy who I worked with in the kitchens who had been sentenced to 18 years for killing someone. He got out and within six hours was arrested again for killing his victim’s friend,” Danks explains.


    Easy prison life…..for a celebrity


    Given comments made last week by Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde who said that he’d been asked to sign autographs in prison, it’s interesting that Danks enjoyed a similar reception.


    “To be honest I was somewhat of a celebrity in prison, amongst both prisoners and staff alike. Not one person (including my offender manager) thought the punishment fit the crime,” he reveals.


    Overall, however, Danks says that prison itself wasn’t that bad.


    “Personally I believe locking people up will not work, prison is easier now than ever. I had (which everyone gets) a 22in Sharp TV with 135 channels, a phone in my cell, a kettle, and my own shower and bathroom facilities.


    “In all honesty prison was comfortable, I was never scared or even worried about the people around me. So no, prison does not work. Prison isn’t a deterrent for the most heinous acts of crime, let alone ‘copyright theft’.”


    Worth it then? Absolutely not…


    Despite having an easy life in prison, Danks told TF that the whole punishment package amounts to something a lot more than just being denied freedom for a while. The personal costs outside the prison walls were considerable.


    “Prison has affected my life dramatically. I lost my home due to not being able to keep up with rent, I lost my car, job, and everywhere I go I’m not recognized as someone who does good things, I’m just ‘that guy who’s been in prison’,” he explains.


    “I applied for a job at a sports shop last week, where I have worked before and known the manager for 13 years. His response was ‘we do not employ ex-cons’. So it’s even difficult to gain employment.”


    Family strain


    Having no way to make real money, Danks said that his family were always under pressure to send cash for things like phone credit – and then found themselves worrying when he didn’t manage to call them.


    “Life was more of a strain on my family then on me,” he notes. Tragically, his family became significantly smaller during his time in prison.


    “Whilst I was in prison I sadly lost two of my uncles and my grandad, all of whom I never got to say goodbye to because I was refused leave to go to funerals. I am not a religious man but was forced to pray at the chapel because it was the only way to say goodbye.”


    Just not worth it


    Overall, it’s clear that Danks is still upset about what happened to him. He admits that he’s done wrong but blames FACT for an aggressive prosecution and a court system ill-equipped to deal with cases like his.


    “Crown Courts are meant for criminals, those who hurt people or are a danger to the public, not for civil cases brought to a criminal trial because the government are in the back pocket of the movie industry. They have their priorities all wrong and favor corporations over consumers,” he says.


    Not even Danks’ lawyer escapes criticism.


    “My solicitor never actually defended me. He simply sat back and let the prosecution bludgeon me to the point of no return,” he explains.


    Thinking of camming? Think again


    “People really need to think twice. Going to prison is an extremely tough strain not on yourself, but on your family. You will lose respect from loved ones, friends and work colleagues. Prison never has a happy ending, it will always hang over you wherever you go.”


    “Simply put, prison isn’t worth the kudos you get from being the first to leak a movie, stay away from it all and be happy with your family!”


    One last thing


    The work of movie cammers is often talked about in the media but how they operate is often shrouded in secrecy. Join us next week for an A to Z reveal of Danks’ activities, from selecting movies, locations and equipment, to staying undetected in the cinema and making a clean getaway.


    To get a year’s worth of things of his chest, Danks has taken to YouTube. His rant is embedded below.

  • Pirate bay forum knocked offline

    PIRATE BAY FORUM KNOCKED OFFLINE BY ICANN COMPLAINT


    The Pirate Bay's official SuprBay forum has gone dark after experiencing domain name problems. The forum's domain name registrar eNom suspended the site following an ICANN complaint over inaccurate Whois information, and the site remains offline for now.


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    The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of domain issues over the past several years.


    The notorious torrent site has burnt through half a dozen domains and currently uses four different ones to avoid a single point of failure.


    Today, the site’s official SuprBay forum, which is separately operated by the site’s moderators, has also run into trouble. The forum has been offline for more than a day returning incomplete DNS records.


    TF hasn’t been able to reach the person in charge of the forums but domain registrar eNom informs us that the platform’s domain was suspended following an ICANN complaint.


    The domain was apparently registered using inaccurate information and the owner did not respond to repeated requests to address the problem.


    “This domain (pirates-forum.org) was placed on hold yesterday due to an ICANN complaint of invalid Whois contacts. We did not receive a response to our inquiries within the required 15-day period,” eNom says.


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    While the issue doesn’t impact the Pirate Bay site, it does make it harder for users to communicate with moderators. Among other things, the forum was frequently used to report spam and other malicious torrents.


    The domain name registrar did not mention the source of the ICANN complaint, but it’s not unlikely that a copyright holder group is behind it.


    SuprBay also allowed users to discuss and promote torrents but wasn’t particularly known for distributing pirated content. However, rightsholders certainly have an interest in knowing who’s operating the site.


    Since the issue is limited to the domain name, it’s expected that the moderators will switch to a new one, which should resolve the problem. Alternatively, they can update their Whois information to get the original domain reinstated.

  • Uk police arrest movie cammer / uploader

    Police in the UK have arrested a man believed to have recorded newly-released movies in cinemas and then uploaded them to the Internet. The 33-year-old, who was arrested under the Fraud Act following a FACT investigation, is thought to be responsible for leaks of American Ultra and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.


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    Every week movies appear online after being illegally recorded in cinemas using camcorders. Hollywood has blamed the phenomenon for eating into box office revenues and has spent years trying to stamp it out.


    Pirates, on the other hand, download the illicit copies in their millions, despite them being of generally poor quality. Today, however, there is one less source for these so-called ‘cams’.


    According to the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), a UK-based man in his thirties was arrested before weekend on suspicion of recording Hollywood movies in cinemas and then uploading the copies to the Internet.


    The 33-year-old, from Nottingham in the East Midlands, was tracked down following a joint investigation carried out by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Government Agency Intelligence Network (GAIN).


    FACT reports that it supported officers from both the East Midlands GAIN Disruption Team and EMOpSS during the execution of search warrants in the Hinkley area last Friday. Items including laptops were taken away for examination.


    A man was arrested on suspicion of recording American Ultra and Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials on the days they were released and then uploading that footage to the Internet. He was questioned and later bailed pending further inquiries.


    “Over 90% of counterfeit versions of movies originate initially from a copy recorded in a cinema. Piracy not only costs the film industry millions of pounds but can also affect thousands of jobs, so it is crucial we act upon intelligence we receive about this activity,” says Kieron Sharp, Director General of the Federation Against Copyright Theft.


    “With two big releases due to hit the screens in the next few months it is incredibly important we work to combat those behind illegal film recordings. We thank the East Midlands GAIN Disruption team for their support in this investigation.”


    Earlier this year a leaked report shone light on FACT’s anti-camming activities in the UK. One of the slides references offenses taking in place in Leicester although its unclear whether they relate to Friday’s arrest.

  • Pirate bay: Police never got our servers

    Late last year The Pirate Bay was pulled offline after Swedish police raided a datacenter near Stockholm. The police confiscated dozens of servers which many believed to belong to the notorious torrent site. Today, the TPB team reveals that this is not the case.


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    December last year The Pirate Bay went dark after police raided the Nacka station, a nuclear-proof datacenter built into a mountain complex.


    Around the same time one of Pirate Bay’s moderators was arrested, fueling the idea that the site had been seriously compromised.


    The events resulted in the longest ever period of downtime for the site, nearly two months, and led to a revolt among the site’s moderators.


    While it was generally believed that Pirate Bay needed time to recover the site from various backups, The TPB team now says that this was not the case. In fact, Pirate Bay’s servers were never raided by the police.


    The police did raid the Nacka datacenter but instead of Pirate Bay’s servers they raided those of EZTV. Sladinki007 of the former EZTV team confirmed that their hardware was indeed taken, but the Pirate Bay team says they were barely hit.


    Only one Pirate Bay related server was confiscated last December, which was hosted at a different location. This (crew.thepiratebay.org) was operated by the moderators and used as a communication channel for TPB matters.


    The Pirate Bay team believes that it may not have been the prime target of last year’s raid, and if they were, then the police followed the wrong lead. Pirate Bay’s servers were and are hosted in the cloud, outside of Sweden.


    But if TPB wasn’t raided, why did it have to go offline?


    According to the TPB team they decided to pull everything offline as a precaution. It was unclear how much information was held on the crew server and if there was a breach of trust after one of the moderators was arrested.


    The TPB team feared that the locations of the servers could have been compromised as well and prepared to move everything over to new cloud hosting providers.


    Relocating the site proved to be harder than initially anticipated though. In fact, technical challenges were one of the main reasons for the long downtime. All the data was there, it just had to be setup correctly. So, at the same time the team decided to revise the backend code to better handle the new cloud environment.


    The lack of data loss already became apparent when the site returned online in February, as all recent torrents and comments were still there.


    TF also asked about the cryptic messages TPB communicated during the downtime, and we were informed that they were put there “for fun.” The messages were not a way to communicate with people, but simply a link to a Arnold Schwarzenegger “i’ll be back” montage video on YouTube.


    In addition to The Pirate Bay, several related sites including Bayimg, Bayfiles and Pastebay also went dark. These sites are still offline today and we are informed that this is an issue of ‘resources’ and ‘priorities,’ not because any data is missing.


    So why reveal all this now?


    The TPB team says it waited this long to make sure that they were not compromised in any way. This was also the main reason why the site’s moderators were left in the dark for such a long time and why the Suprbay forums remained offline.


    Since more than nine months have now passed, it’s finally time to reveal what really happened. Police may still believe that they have the encrypted Pirate Bay servers, but according to the people behind the site they have nothing substantial.


    Given today’s revelations it’s unlikely that the raid will help police to mount a new case against The Pirate Bay, as they were planning. Time will tell whether the authorities will try to hit the site again.