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ARS Technica – by David Kravets
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said Monday it’s concerned that intellectual property pirates are being exposed to malware and other dangers.
“It is important to note that websites that traffic in infringing movies, television shows, and other copyrighted content do not harm only the rights holder. Malicious software or malware, which puts Internet users at risk of identity theft, fraud, and other ills, is increasingly becoming a source of revenue for pirate sites,” the lobbying group told (PDF) US trade officials on Monday in its latest report about global “notorious markets” for illegal content.
The group added that “such risks jeopardize legitimate e-commerce and consumers” and that the “MPAA continues to work with global partners against criminal organizations and activities in an effort to protect consumers not only from the dangers of illicit audiovisual goods and services, but other potential threats, such as malware.”
The MPAA’s concerns for the well-being of pirates is included in the group’s report to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) as part of a lobbying effort to get a host of cyberlockers and websites included in the USTR “Notorious Markets List”—with the goal of global governments taking action against them.
“Robust protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights both domestically and abroad are vital to ensuring the sustained growth of America’s creative industries,” Chris Dodd, the MPAA’s chairman, said in a statement.
The report comes a week after Google announced that it is taking steps to combat online piracy. Google is rolling out a change to its search algorithm that the media giant said would “visibly affect” rankings of piracy sites globally.
According to the MPAA, these are the top illicit cyberlockers:
- VK.com of Russia “is the leading social networking site in Russia and Russian speaking territories and a hotbed of illegal distribution of movie, television, and music files.”
- Uploaded.net of the Netherlands “is a direct download cyberlocker that incentivizes users to upload large files, such as those associated with television episodes and motion pictures, by paying rewards based on the file size, as well as a percentage of premium account sales referred by the user.”
- Rapidgator.net of Russia pays users who upload files “up to approximately $40 for every 1,000 downloads and for every initial purchase of a premium membership, the user making the referral is paid 50 percent of the sale.”
- Firedrive.com of New Zealand offers “premium accounts” that “enable users to download or stream content without the distraction of advertisements with unlimited amounts of storage.”
- Nowvideo.sx of Panama/Switzerland/Netherlands offers its uploaders one of the most generous rewards programs of about $20 USD per 1,000 downloads.”
The MPAA says that these are the top illicit peer-to-peer sites:
- Kickass.to of several global locations “facilitates the distribution of infringing copies of movies, TV shows, music files, apps, video games, and books. The site claims to provide access to 10,000 torrents for each of the preceding file categories.”
- The Pirate Bay of Sweden. “Traffic arrives on this website through multiple changing ccTLD domains and over 90 proxy websites that assist TPB to circumvent site blocking actions.”
- Torrentz.eu of Germany is “one of the oldest and most popular BitTorrent websites on the Internet,” with 10 years of service.
- Rutracker.org of Russia s a “BitTorrent indexing website with 13.9 million registered users and 1.5 million active torrents. It is one of the world’s most visited websites with a global Alexa ranking of 331 and a local rank of 18 in Russia.”
- Yts.re of several locations “is a torrent website owned and operated by one of the largest release groups in the world, YTS (previously YIFY).”