Posts by Prophet

Providers who defied TV company demands to switch off their VPN services have caved in following legal threats. CallPlus and Bypass Network Services faced action from media giants including Sky and TVNZ for allowing their customers to access geo-restricted content. Their 'Global Mode' services will be terminated by September 1.

Unlocking geo-restricted digital content is an activity carried out by millions every day, but the practice is frowned upon by entertainment industry companies.

The large amounts of time, effort and financial planning that go into complex licensing agreements can be undone in an instant by a user of a VPN or ‘smart’ DNS service, opening up services like Netflix and breaking down barriers to U.S-based products such as Hulu.

In April, media companies SKY, TVNZ, Lightbox and MediaWorks told several Kiwi ISPs that if they didn’t stop providing geo-unblocking services to their subscribers, legal action wouldn’t be far ahead.

Within days and following claims of breaches of the Copyright Act, Unlimited Internet pulled its VPN service. However, CallPlus and Bypass Network Services stood firm and stated that they weren’t going to be bullied.

Now, just two months later, both providers have caved in to the demands of the media companies. The news was revealed in the briefest of announcements posted to the NZX by Sky TV this morning.

“The legal proceedings against ‘Global Mode’ service providers have been settled. As a result, from 1 September 2015, the ‘Global Mode’ service will not be available to any person for use in New Zealand,” the statement reads.

The news will come as a blow to users of the ‘Global Mode’ service who will now have to find alternatives if they wish to continue accessing geo-locked content. While that will be extremely easy, Global Mode was a free product so it’s likely that additional costs could be on the horizon.

InternetNZ, the non-profit group that oversees the Internet in New Zealand, says it is “deeply disappointed” by the news.

“Global Mode was a great example of Internet-based innovation that challenged traditional content distribution models. It was by no means clear that the service was illegal, and we were keen to see the matter go before the courts to provide users and the industry with clarity,” said InternetNZ Chief Executive Jordan Carter.

“Withdrawing the service and settling before court seems a worse outcome for all concerned. The media companies have said that they wanted to clarify their own legal rights over content – a settlement doesn’t achieve this, and leaves us all none the wiser.”

Noting that both Internet users and innovation have “taken a back seat to entrenched old media interests”, the InternetNZ chief called for a revised look at local copyright legislation.

“This outcome makes it ever more important that we review New Zealand copyright law, to ensure that the interests of consumers and creators are appropriately balanced.”

Those looking for the all-important details on why the companies backed down will be disappointed. The details of the settlement between the providers and entertainment companies are confidential. Submissions will be made to the court but they will not be for public consumption.

Copyright holder and government efforts to stop people from accessing websites simply won't succeed according to the boss of a leading VPN provider. Speaking in the wake of the latest developments in Australia, CyberGhost chief Robert Knapp says those doing the blocking should consider the technical abilities of who they are taking on.

After years of pressure but mere months of deliberations, yesterday the Australian government imposed a new copyright law on its citizens.

As soon as it receives the formality of royal assent, the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 will enter into force and soon after it’s expected that rightsholders will make their first moves to have a site blocked.

After the passing of the law yesterday a lot of furious people took to the web, many decrying the censorship and filtering efforts of the Australian government. But despite the outcry there are others who are not only relaxed about the upcoming efforts but also stand to profit handsomely from them.

They are of course VPN providers, services setup to cut through web-blockades and similar efforts like a hot knife through butter. They’re already extremely popular in Australia due to their geo-unblocking abilities and will now do even more business as a result of the country’s new law.

However, there are still those that remain concerned over the future of VPNs and their status as site-blocking kryptonite. Might the government eventually run out of patience and do a U-turn on assurances they won’t tackle the technology by blocking? Would it matter, practically, if they did?

Robert Knapp, chief executive at CyberGhost, one of the more popular VPN providers, doesn’t think so. He is calm, taking developments completely in his stride, and foresees no threat to his business.

“We see in general the same that you see in nature if somebody tries to block a river floating – the water finds his way,” Knapp says.

Despite attempts by the Australian Greens to have VPNs exempted from the new law, it is unlikely that services who play by the rules (i.e do not promote their products for infringing purposes) will be blocked. However, if the authorities want to test the waters, companies like CyberGhost will be up for the challenge.

“They should also then realize with whom they play in the same league,” Knapp says.

“Maybe they do it [blocking], maybe they don’t do it, it’s kind of a technical race. So it’s our daily business. They might do it, we will find a way to keep our servers running.”

While most people understand that blocking a determined service provider could descend into an endless arms-race, rightsholders are also keenly aware of the political fallout from attacking legitimate technologies.

“We didn’t intend this law to be used specifically against VPN because there are many legitimate uses of VPN and the intention of the law is not to stop people using the internet for legitimate purposes,” a Foxtel spokesperson told Mumbrella this morning.

And herein lies the problem. By driving traffic underground, into the encrypted tunnels of VPNs, rightsholders now have even less of an idea of who is pirating what and from where. VPNs are a legitimate but “dual use” technology, one that can be used for privacy or indeed piracy purposes. It’s a giant loophole that will be difficult to close. Nevertheless, companies like Foxtel say they will keep an developments.

“We would obviously be concerned if it meant there was a hole in the law,” the spokesman said. “We will be monitoring how things go and see if there is a serious issue in the future.”

So what next for Australia’s blocking regime?

If history from the UK repeats itself (and there’s every reason to believe that it will), rightsholders will first take on a site that is guaranteed to tick every ‘pirate’ box. That forerunner is almost certain to be The Pirate Bay, a site that is not only located overseas as the legislation requires, but one that also has no respect for copyright. The fact that it has been blocked in plenty of other regions already will be the icing on the cake.

Once the case against The Pirate Bay is complete then other “structurally similar” sites will be tackled with relative ease and since none of their operators will be appearing in court to defend themselves, expect the process to be streamlined in favor of copyright holders.

Australia yesterday passed controversial new legislation which allows for overseas 'pirate' sites to be blocked at the ISP level. Despite opposition from the Greens, ISPs and consumer groups, the Senate passed the bill into law with a vote of 37 in favor and 13 against. Expect The Pirate Bay to be an early target.

Following intense pressure from entertainment industry groups, late 2014 Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked the Cabinet to develop legislation which would allow ‘pirate’ sites to be blocked at the ISP level.

In March 2015 the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 (pdf) was introduced to parliament and earlier this month it received the green light following a parliamentary committee investigation.

A few moments ago and following just three months of consideration by parliament, the Australian Senate passed the legislation into law. The net result is that in the months and years to come, sites like The Pirate Bay will become inaccessible by regular direct means to most local Internet users.

While there will be celebrations in Hollywood, not everyone in the process is happy with the outcome. The Australian Greens outright rejected the legislation, a position shared by several independents. ISPs and technology companies also complained about elements of the legislation, alongside consumer groups such as Choice who expressed concern that the scope of the law could be expanded in future.

In the final count, 37 voted in favor and 13 against, with the Coalition and Labor in favor and the Greens and three other senators voting against. Labor joined the government to vote down several amendments tabled by the Greens aimed at narrowing the scope of the legislation.

Despite an effort by the government to calm nerves last week by ensuring consumers that VPNs won’t be targeted by the legislation, a specific exemption for VPN providers was rejected.

The legislation does not detail who will pay the ISPs’ costs associated with blocking websites. Earlier this month it was noted by a parliamentary committee that costs should “primarily be borne by those parties who are seeking the remedy” but nothing firm has been agreed thus far.

The passing of the law was welcomed by Foxtel Chief Executive, Richard Freudenstein.

“We are pleased that the Government and Opposition have taken strong action to combat online piracy. They recognize that, not only is piracy theft and therefore morally wrong, it is harmful to Australia’s creative communities and to businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of Australians,” Freudenstein said.

“These offshore sites are not operated by noble spirits fighting for the freedom of the internet, they are run by criminals who profit from stealing other people’s creative endeavors.”

The Bill will now be sent to the Governor-General for royal assent at which point it will become effective immediately.

closing the thread as both parties now happy and will move to expired trading

Live link removed and uploaded to the site

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UK quad-play operator Virgin Media has confirmed that the north-west city of Manchester is to be the first to benefit from ‘Project Lightning’, unveiled earlier this year. This major expansion of ultrafast connectivity to 4 million premises over the next five years is claimed as the single largest investment in the UK’s broadband digital infrastructure for more than a decade.

An extra 150,000 Manchester premises benefit from ultrafast broadband for the first time as Virgin Media expands its network based on demand from consumers and communities which register their interest at virginmedia.com/cablemystreet.

The initiative covers premises in Manchester. Virgin Media expects to connect more premises in neighbouring postal towns prioritised according to demand from consumers and businesses.

Work starts this week to connect the first 20,000 Manchester homes and businesses to broadband speeds of 152Mb, which the operator says is at least twice as fast as the fastest speeds available from BT, TalkTalk and Sky. Broadband speed and the capacity it delivers matter for consumers and businesses. Data usage on the Virgin Media network is growing at 60 per cent every year which, if this trend continues, will be 10,000 per cent higher in ten years.

Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey, said: “This is wonderful news for Manchester residents and businesses. We are in the midst of a remarkable transformation of the UK’s digital landscape, and Virgin Media’s £3 billion investment will play an important role in ensuring our cities are fully equipped to meet the challenges of the digital age in which we live.”

Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media Chief Executive Officer, said the company’s message was simple: “Help us to cable your street. If you want to switch to broadband speeds twice as fast as you can get today, simply register with Virgin Media to ‘cablemystreet’.”

Source : http://advanced-television.com…irgin-ultrafast-roll-out/

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According to BBC director general Tony Hall, the BBC licence fee has “got 10 years of life left in it,” and he has dismissed the suggestion of replacing the charge with a subscription model to pay for the Corporation’s output.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Hall agreed the licence fee needed to “adapt, modernise and change” to reflect changing consumption patterns.

In February 2015, an influential group of UK MPs said it sees no long-term future in the BBC licence fee and set out advantages of a broadcasting levy. The Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for major changes to the BBC’s governance and for reforms to its funding.

Committee Chairman John Whittingdale said at the time that in the short term, there appeared to be no realistic alternative to the licence fee, but that model was becoming harder and harder to justify and sustain. Whittingdale was appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the new Conservative administration elected in May 2015. One of his first duties will be to oversee negotiations for the corporation’s charter renewal in 2016. The BBC’s royal charter determines the level of the licence fee and the other terms under which it operates.

“Reform is up for the government to decide and have a debate,” Hall said, advising that the BBC had suggested ways of reforming the licence fee to reflect whatever way BBC services are consumed and used they could be paid for. “Somewhere in there lies a solution.”

According to Hall, by everybody paying something, “we all get great services for a lot less than if you went down a subscription model route.”

Hall said that Whittingdale’s Committee report said some positive things about the BBC. “He knows the sector and loves what the media do – and the arts – and it’s a positive way to start.”

Source : http://advanced-television.com…ears-left-of-licence-fee/

If both parties can post on the thread when the deal has been completed and both parties are happy with the deal and i will close the thread and move it to Closed & Expired Trading

Several music industry organizations in the UK have won a judicial review which renders the Government's decision to allow copying for personal use unlawful. According to the High Court, there's insufficient evidence to prove that the legislation doesn't hurt musicians and the industry at large.

Late last year the UK Government legalized copying for private use, a practice which many citizens already believed to be legal.

However, until last October, anyone who transferred music from a purchased CD to an MP3 player was committing an offense.

The change was “in the best interest” of consumers, the Government reasoned, but several music industry organizations disagreed.

In November the Musicians’ Union (MU), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) and UK Music applied for a judicial review of the new legislation.

While the groups are not against private copying exceptions, they disagreed with the Government’s conclusion that the change would cause no financial harm to the music industry.

Instead of keeping copies free, they suggested that a tax should be applied to blank media including blank CDs, hard drives, memory sticks and other blank media. This money would then be shared among rightsholders, a mechanism already operating in other European countries.

Today the High Court largely agreed with the music industry groups. The Government’s conclusion that copyright holders will not suffer any significant harm was based on inadequate evidence, Mr Justice Green ruled.

“In conclusion, the decision to introduce section 28B [private copying] in the absence of a compensation mechanism is unlawful,” the Judge writes.

The Judge didn’t agree with all claims from the music groups. For example, he rejected the allegation that the Government had unlawfully predetermined the outcome of the private copying consultation.

Nonetheless, the application for a judicial review succeeded meaning that the private copying exceptions are now deemed unlawful. As a result, the Government will likely have to amend the legislation, which took roughly half a decade to implement.

The UK music groups are happy with the outcome and are eager to discuss possible changes with lawmakers.

“The High Court agreed with us that Government acted unlawfully. It is vitally important that fairness for songwriters, composers and performers is written into the law,” UK Music CEO Jo Dipple commented on the ruling.

“Changes to copyright law that affect such a vital part of the creative economy, which supports one in twelve jobs, must only be introduced if there is a robust evidential basis for doing so,” Dipple added.

The High Court scheduled a new hearing next month to decide what action should be taken in response to the judgment, including whether the private copying exceptions should be scrapped from law.

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Hispasat has no doubt that 4K is coming, and maybe quicker than anyone expects.

As a result, said Ignacio Sanchis, the company’s CCO, it has decided to take an active role. Having already launched a 4K channel, it will now hold a 4K film festival this November.

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On the technical side, its challenge for this year is to bring the bit rate down from 18 Mbps to 15 Mbps.

In a Q&A, when asked if 4K would be transient ahead of a move to 8K and beyond, he said that Hispasat believed that Ultra HD in 4K is a good balance of quality and ability to deploy.

Commenting on other issues, Sanchis said that the future winners of consolidation would probably be telcos.

He also said that the future would also not be entirely about OTT.

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Al Jazeera’s beIN Sports is bidding up to €250 million to broadcast football matches in Spain every week featuring either Real Madrid or Barcelona. The figure has emerged in the run-up to the bidding war for the new TV rights packages.

beIN Sports, owned by Qatari news network Al Jazeera, are set to make a significant play for football rights and are specifically interested in airing 20 Barcelona and 20 Real Madrid games each season in a premium slot. The possibility has been mooted during discussions of having these fixtures kick off at 18:15 on Saturdays, which would be a strategic time to attract viewers in England.

The auction is set to start in two weeks’ time.

Source : http://advanced-television.com…barca-real-madrid-rights/

Up to 75 per cent of UK households are not getting the broadband speeds promised by advertisements, according to consumer watchdog Which?. Over 15 million households are paying for packages with advertised maximum speeds they cannot achieve, the report suggests.

Ofcom has already commenced a crack down on slow speeds, making it easier for people to swap providers if they are unhappy with their service, but Which? says more needed to be done.

Tests suggest that just 17 per cent of homes were achieving the average advertised speed, with even fewer during peak evening times. The problem was particularly bad in rural areas where 98 per cent of homes were unable to get the advertised headline speed of the broadband service they had chosen.

“We want Ofcom to ensure consumers get the speeds promised by providers,” commented Which? executive director Richard Lloyd. “It is not good enough that millions of homes are so poorly served by their broadband provider with speeds that just don’t live up to what was advertised.”

Under current rules, ISPs must ensure that 10 per cent of customers can achieve a top speed before they can advertise it as the maximum. The report suggested that some packages could not even meet that low threshold.

The tests indicated that only 4 per cent of customers on TalkTalk’s 17Mbps package were getting the top advertised speed and just 1 per cent of those on BT’s 76Mbps deals could obtain that speed.

The ISPs have immediately disputed these claims.

“Our data, based on over half a million customers, which far exceeds Which’s base of a few hundred, shows that TalkTalk homes can achieve speeds beyond 17Mbps,” said a TalkTalk spokesman. “We’re compliant with the advertising guidelines and if they change, we will continue to comply. Our network is faster and more resilient than ever and we continue to work hard to further increase broadband speeds.”

Meanwhile BT said that more than 10 per cent of its super-fast broadband customers could achieve speeds of 80Mbps or above.

“We’re very clear that customers should not rely on headline claims, but instead use the personal speed quote we give them at the point of sale, which is based on their own line,” it said in a statement. “If they aren’t happy with this personalised speed they can decide not to buy from us; if they are happy with the speed, but find they don’t achieve it, we allow them to end their contracts in line with the Ofcom code of practice.”

In its report, Which? stated it wants Ofcom to work with the ASA to ensure that broadband providers advertise only speeds that are available for the majority of their customers. It also wants the watchdog to publish data annually showing what proportion of consumers receive the advertised speeds for the main broadband packages.

As some others have probably realised, some of the FTA HD channels that got paired a while back are now back in sharing and also clearing with a basic viewing card inserted in the original receiver

The past few days these have all been clearing

ITV2 HD
ITV3 HD
ITV4 HD
Encore HD

There has been nothing official on this (for obvious reasons), but it could be speculated that the ITV are concerned that they will lose revenue from potential advertisers who are no longer reaching the larger FTA market

Good news indeed for us all, let's hope this is not just a temporary thing and they are back with us for good

The Pirate Bay has dropped the www prefix for all of its domains. The changes occurred earlier this week and were made without a redirect, which is causing some visitors to believe that the site is currently offline.

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The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of legal problems and technical difficulties over the years.

Just last month a Swedish court ordered the seizure of site’s main .se domain name. This case is currently on appeal but in the meantime TPB is rotating several new domains.

A few days ago, however, reports started rolling in that the notorious torrent site is no longer accessible to some, across all domains.

Instead of the usual homepage visitors see an error message in their browser, suggesting that the DNS lookup failed.

Luckily enough, the problems are only affecting URLs with a www prefix. For some reason, the corresponding DNS entries have been removed rendering all www links inaccessible.

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While it’s quite common for websites not to use the www prefix (we don’t), there’s usually a redirect setup so visitors are directed to the correct URL.

Since TPB doesn’t have a redirect set up, many people are inaccurately assuming that the site is suffering downtime.

For now it remains a mystery why the DNS entries were updated. TF spoke with a moderator of the site, who told us that he and his team were not informed about the changes.

The dropped www prefix is not the only issue The Pirate Bay has been facing recently. Over the past weeks several parts of the site broke temporarily, including user registrations and torrent uploads.

To inform users about these and other technical difficulties, the TPB crew has a status page showing which services are up and running. This page is maintained by the moderators and separately hosted at the Suprbay forum.

As shown below, all crucial features are fully operational at the time of writing. That is, if users have dropped the www prefix from their bookmarks.

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If you can both post back here when the deal is complete and both parties are happy and i will close the thread

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Sharp's new 70-inch UH series TV backs up its 4K resolution with Android TV, local dimming, and a wide color gamut.

IF YOU’RE IN the market for a ginormous TV, you are in one of the few scenarios in which buying a 4K TV makes perfect sense. At 70- and 80-inch screen sizes, 1080p can look like a pixelated mess. Thanks to four times as many pixels packed into that mammoth display, 4K content remains super-crisp when stretched across 70 or 80 inches of screen real estate.

Super-huge screens have been Sharp’s calling card for years now, and this year, all the company’s new big-screen sets offer 4K resolution. This hardware shift to 4K is a trend across the entire TV industry, but Sharp’s new lineup includes a few distinct hooks: One of their offerings is the only THX-certified 4K TV so far this year, and the prices are decent for the features baked into the new sets. Sharp has shifted to Android TV as its smart ecosystem for 2015, and it’s also offering color and contrast enhancements on the new 70-inch TV.

There’s one THX-certified 4K television in the early-2015 stable—the 70-inch Sharp Aquos LC-UH30U—and Sharp claims it had to pass around 400 image-quality tests in order to get that certification. What that gets you is a THX mode with all the settings optimized for movie playback; THX claims its certification signifies a set can deliver the image quality and attributes originally intended by the director.

Given the rarity of a THX-certified 4K TV, the 70-inch Sharp UH set is actually pretty cheap: It’s selling for $2,600 through the company’s website. It’s an edge-lit TV with a few more goodies for the price, as well. It runs Android TV as its smart platform, which means the set doubles as a Chromecast without any extra hardware. The new UH series sets come with a remote control with a touchpad and microphone built into them, so you’ll be able to use voice search to navigate Android TV content. In the Android TV-based Nexus Player, that voice-recognition worked beautifully.

The UH sets also have Sharp’s AquoDimming local-dimming feature and Spectros color-gamut-widening technology. Spectros is essentially Sharp’s answer to quantum-dot technology, although it works in a slightly different way. Like a quantum-dot set, the new UH televisions have a blue LED backlight system. However, there’s no layer or tube of quantum dots to produce red and green light in these Spectros sets. Instead, each blue LED is coated with red and green phosphors, creating a similar but ultimately cheaper effect. Sharp claims the technology can create a wider color gamut than a normal LCD TV by about 20 percent.

There’s one more set in Sharp’s high-end UH lineup, but it lacks the THX certification of the 70-incher. The 80-inch Aquos LC-80UH30U has a full-array backlight system, as well as the Android TV ecosystem, microphone-equipped remote, and Spectros color-enhancement features. That bigger set is on sale for $5,000 at launch.1

If you can deal without the wider color gamut and the voice remote, there are some new big-screen models in the mid-range UE 4K lineup, as well. The edge-lit 70-inch Aquos LC-70UE30U, which offers Android TV and the same local-dimming system as the higher-end UH models, is selling for $2,300 at launch. There’s also a 60-inch version of that set for $1,700—for the price-conscious buyer, of course.

Source : http://www.wired.com/2015/06/s…certified-4k-tv-far-year/

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The momentum for 4KTV is building, says research firm IHS, which has identified record panel shipments and predicts that in 2016, a fifth of all panels expected to ship will be in the new high quality resolution.

The analyst says that the rise in 4KTV LCD panel shipments is being driven by forces on both the supply side and the demand side. In April 2015 4KTV shipments of panels exceeded three million units for the first time, comprising 14% of all TV panels shipped globally during the month. Over the next 12 months, the trend toward higher resolution panels in the high-end TV segment and improved production efficiency of panel maker will drive the Ultra HD panel shipments past the 20% mark.

Putting this into context, IHS noted that just three years ago, when AU Optronics (AUO) introduced the first 55" 4KTV panels in Taiwan in 2012, fewer than 100 units were shipped each month. In 2013, panel makers managed to improve their 4KTV panel yield rates, but shipments still made up less than 2%.

"Prices for 4KTV panels continued to decline in 2014 and early this year, causing a rise in their adoption," explained Linda Lin, IHS Technology senior analyst. "Most global TV brands have now launched 4K/Ultra HD products and are introducing more 4K models to their television offerings ... While panel makers in Taiwan initially developed and stimulated 4KTV panel production, South Korean panel makers are now leading the 4KTV panel market. In fact, LG Display and Samsung Display have risen to become the largest global manufacturers of 4K displays."

Source : http://www.rapidtvnews.com/201…l-2015.html#ixzz3dJ1eKz73

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Poland’s Cyfrowy Polsat will switch entirely to MPEG-4 compression for the delivery of its TV services at the beginning of October.

It adds that the transition will take place in stages up until the end of September and almost 100% of its subscribers already use HD decoders enabled to receive MPEG-4 signals.

Those that don’t will be able to exchange their current ones free of charge.

Cyfrowy Polsat is the largest provider of integrated multimedia services in Poland.

Source : http://www.broadbandtvnews.com…y-polsat-moves-to-mpeg-4/

Quote from muzz

hi lads is anyone els having problems with the movies and some other channels me and two mate have lost movies and some are mixed up.
thanks.
Just looked again and all movies have gone sports are ok, HELP

hey muzz, there is already a thread on the topic here http://linuxsat-support.com/showthread.php?t=81696

i will close this one now

MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO COSTING FILM INDUSTRY “MILLIONS” THROUGH PIRACY

A man has pleaded guilty to costing the film industry several millions of pounds after operating websites which allowed people to view content illegally. The offenses, alleged to have taken place between 2008 and 2013 and initially denied at a hearing in February, involve websites including the now-defunct FastPassTV.

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In May 2011, police reported seizing £83,000 and computer equipment following a raid in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The operation was a culmination of an investigation carried out by the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

By the end of the month more details began to emerge, with TorrentFreak sources confirming that an operator of video streaming site known as ‘FastPassTV’ had been arrested.

With hundreds of thousands of daily visitors the site was a significant player in the streaming market. However, FastPassTV did not store any content of its own, instead linking to movies hosted elsewhere.

“Fast Pass TV does not host, store, or distribute any of the videos listed on the site and only link to user submitted content that is freely available on the Internet,” a notice on the website read.

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Somewhat typically the case dragged on through the legal system and it took more than four years to come to court. However, the case was more complex than it first appeared.

At his arraignment in February 2015, Paul Mahoney from Carnhill, Londonderry, was not only charged with offenses connected with FastPassTV but also BedroomMedia, a discussion and linking forum he also operated. It’s alleged that the man generated £82,390 in advertising revenue from the criminal operation of both sites.

Mahoney was also charged with two further offenses of conspiring with individuals known online as ‘Hunter Grubbs’ and ‘ADigitalOrange’ to defraud the movie industry. The 28-year-old pleaded not guilty to all charges and was bailed to appear at a later date.

This week, however, Mahoney was back in court with an apparent change of heart, pleading guilty to all four charges. In what’s being described as the first prosecution of its type in Northern Ireland, Mahoney was re-arraigned Monday.

He pleaded guilty to a charge that between April 2008 and May 2011 he conspired with others to operate websites which allow the public to view copyrighted movies without permission from rightsholders.

Mahoney also pleaded guilty to a charge of generating £82,390 in advertising revenue between April 2010 and April 2013 from this websites FastPassTV and BedroomMedia.

Finally, the 28-year-old pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiring with ‘Hunter Grubbs’ and ‘ADigitalOrange’ between May 2011 and April 2013.

“Paul Mahoney operated websites over a number of years which knowingly provided illegal access to thousands of films, generating significant income for himself and causing the film industry millions of pounds of loses,” Kieron Sharp, Director General of FACT, informs TorrentFreak.

Unusually, however, there will be no claim for compensation. FACT hopes that Mahoney’s prosecution alone will send a clear message to others thinking of embarking on the same line of business.

“Websites of this kind cause untold harm to the UK’s creative industries. We hope that this prosecution will serve as a deterrent to others engaging in this type of criminality, and look forward to Mr Mahoney’s sentencing on 25th August,” Sharp concludes.