A new piece of malware uses paid advertisements in search results to target users searching for pirated software. It uses sophisticated techniques to hide its presence while dropping a Pandora's box of malicious programs onto victims' systems.

Security company Bitdefender detailed the MosaicLoader software’s inner workings, which mimics legitimate games-related software to avoid detection.

Bitdefender's report found the initial malware dropper stored in archives that pretend to offer cracked software installers. The company said cyber criminals appear to be purchasing pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements related to pirated software then inserting these links to the malware droppers into their ads.

The initial program acts as an installer for “malware sprayer” software that it downloads from a command-and-control (C2) server. This malware comes from a list of sources maintained by the criminals behind the software, which include URLs dedicated to hosting malware files and public Discord channels.

The malware the program installs includes simple cookie stealers that can be used to hijack victims' online sessions. They can exfiltrate Facebook login data, enabling cyber criminals to take over a victim's account, making posts that damage a victim's reputation or spread malware further.

Other malware the dropper installs include cryptocurrency miners and the Glupteba back door, which is a botnet program that launches multiple attacks on browsers and home routers and takes its instruction via the Bitcoin blockchain.

After downloading its initial files, the malware dropper uses PowerShell to exclude them from Windows Defender's anti-malware scanner. Then, it registers an executable in the Windows registry and installs a service to reinsert that entry if the user removes it.

BitDefender's analysis shows the malware using plenty of tricks to avoid detection. It creates folders that look like gaming directories to store its files and uses processes that look like they're running software from GPU vendor NVIDIA.

The malware also obfuscates its activities by breaking its code into small chunks and jumping between them. It also uses mathematical operations with large numbers to generate data the program needs, making its code look more like chunks of data. It also includes filler data that does nothing but introduce more noise into the code, making it harder for security researchers to debug.

In stark contrast to their code obfuscation, the malware authors hard-coded their C2 server’s URL. This enabled the researchers to find the server's IP address and link it to several other malware campaigns.

Congress is unlikely to pass a federal data protection bill this year as lawmakers continue to disagree on how it should be implemented, according to sources speaking to Reuters, meaning big tech companies will have to comply with much stricter state laws.

Many of the protections and rights for data subjects outlined in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) mirror those of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), making it one of the strictest and most progressive pieces of data security legislation in US history.

Under the CCPA, consumers will have the right to request the data that companies have collected on them, request the deletion of that data, and deny third-party access to it. Companies not up to CCPA snuff will be subject to steep sanctions, including fines of up to $7,500 for each intentional violation and up to $750 for every consumer affected in the event of a data breach.

The delay in passing federal data protection laws means that companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google, and even retailers like Walmart that depend on consumer data for their user tracking and advertising must comply with the robust restrictions of the new California law.

Major US tech companies, as well as associated businesses that depend on them, had been pushing for more lenient federal laws to be created to get ahead of the CCPA, set to come into force on 1st January 2020, but the prospect of passing any legislation in the midst of current congressional debates does not look promising.

"This will be tremendously challenging... companies need to really focus on complying with California now because there is not going to be a life raft from a federal level," said Gary Kibel, technology and privacy partner at Davis & Gilbert law firm, speaking to Reuters.

Despite the efforts of some senators to draft a federal bill by the end of the year, negotiations are still ongoing for matters such as how to adequately facilitate consumers' informed consent so they may choose to opt-out of personally-identifiable data collection, and how such a process would be enforced.

The information that can be considered private and the consumer information that can be freely exchanged with third parties are also up for continued congressional debate, though they are already included in California's new law.

Although negotiations over federal legislation are still underway, many lobbyists remain optimistic that the privacy bill will pass, given that data security is a bipartisan issue and the new law won't take a penny out of taxpayers' pockets.

Ambitions to curb bulk data collection practices in the government's Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA) have ended in defeat as judges ruled the bill doesn't infringe on human rights.

The UK-based human rights group Liberty has expressed its disappointment after the High Court quashed its legal challenge against what's commonly dubbed the 'snooper's charter'.

The group's challenge was based on the notion that the IPA violates citizens' right to privacy and freedom of expression as outlined by Article 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Holgate, however, dismissed the claim at the high court in London today, arguing there are appropriate safeguards in place to protect people against abuse of their fundamental rights.

"This disappointing judgment allows the government to continue to spy on every one of us, violating our rights to privacy and free expression," said Liberty lawyer Megan Goulding.

"We will challenge this judgment in the courts, and keep fighting for a targeted surveillance regime that respects our rights.

"These bulk surveillance powers allow the state to hoover up the messages, calls and web history of hordes of ordinary people who are not suspected of any wrong-doing.

"The Court recognised the seriousness of MI5's unlawful handling of our data, which only emerged as a result of this litigation. The security services have shown that they cannot be trusted to keep our data safe and respect our rights."

Liberty and other human rights and privacy groups have been wrangled in a legal battle with the government over the IPA since its passage through parliament.

This fight has seen the group claim a handful of victories, including a successful challenge last year against the government's power to force communications and internet companies to store data on UK citizens.

Most recently, Liberty challenged the secrecy of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), an independent body that judges whether GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 cyber activity remains within the scope of the law.

Previously, complaints received would lead to judgements being made in secret, but a 4-3 majority on the supreme court ruled these agencies' powers be open to judicial review, and openly challenged in court.

A premium email startup which gained notoriety for letting users see who opened their messages and the location they were opened, by default, has apologised and promised to change its service.

Superhuman, a plugin for email accounts that aims to speed up emailing, came under fire for using 'pixel tracking' by default and without consent from those that receive messages sent from users of the service.

But, after a number of complaints and a critical blog post that went viral, the company has issued an apology and promised to change its service.

Faster Emails

A lot of people became aware of Superhuman via a New York Times profile. Under a picture of a diamond-encrusted 'new message' pendant, the startup was described as a premium app for speeding up emails with AI-powered shortcuts and quirks. One of the reasons it attracted such attention was because it's a $30 a month service and invitation only - aspiring users need to fill in a questionnaire about their email usage to determine whether they need it.

"We have the who's who of Silicon Valley at this point," the company's founder Rahul Vohra, told the NYT. It's alleged that 180,000 people are on a waiting list to use the service. "We have insane levels of virality that haven't been seen since Dropbox or Slack," Vohra added.

What these people are supposedly desperate for is an app that plugs into their existing email account (currently only works with Gmail and Google G Suite addresses) that promises to speed up the process of emailing others. There are features that let users undo sending, buttons to automatically pull up a contact's LinkedIn profile, an "instant intro" shortcut that moves the sender of an introductory email to bcc, and a scheduling feature, which sees that you're typing "next Tuesday" and automatically pulls up your calendar for that day.

But one feature that was briefly mentioned in the piece caught the attention of users on Twitter; email tracking.

Read Receipts

"Superhuman is a surveillance tool that intentionally violates privacy by notifying senders every time their emails have been viewed by recipients," Mike Davidson, a VP at InVision, tweeted. "I would never trust this company. Only way to make sure your own privacy isn't violated is to disable images in your own email app."

Later, in a blog post that went viral, Davidson explained out that the email tracking, called 'Read Receipts' on Superhuman, is a default setting for the service. He wrote that the read/unread status of an email is not something the receiver can opt-out of. He showed an example of an email he had sent via Superhuman.

"A running log of every single time you have opened my email, including your location when you opened it," he explained. "Before we continue, ask yourself if you expect this information to be collected on you and relayed back to your parent, your child, your spouse, your co-worker, a salesperson, an ex, a random stranger, or a stalker every time you read an email. Although some one-to-many email blasting software has used similar technologies to track open rates, the answer is no; most people don't expect this. People reasonably expect that when - and especially where - they read their email is their own business."

Pixel Tracking

Every time you view an image while browsing the Web, that image is stored on a server and downloaded to your computer. As such the host server has knowledge of where that computer is and when it downloaded the image.

This technicality can be used to embed a tiny image, often a mere pixel wide, into web pages and emails, which can be very difficult to spot or transparent.

As such, opening an email with such an image in it triggers a download from a server which effectively exposes the time the recipient opens the email and the computer's location, essentially serving at the foundations for automatic read receipts.

As Davidson's example showed, the emails not only show when they were opened but also where they were opened. So in a sense, Superhuman could be used to track the location of people by simply sending them an email. This is down to IP addresses as the downloaded tracking pixel records it - this how the internet determines where your computer is physically and digitally. Criminals sometimes exploit this to work out if a house is empty and ripe for looting.

The Outcome

The exposure Superhuman received in the NYTs quickly turned to controversy, but the company has been swift to offer a fix. CEO Vohra posted an apology in a blog and said that effective immediately, Superhuman will stop tracking locations, will delete existing location information and will turn off read receipts by default.

"When we built Superhuman, we focused only on the needs of our customers," he wrote. "We did not consider the potential bad actors. I wholeheartedly apologize for not thinking through this more fully.

"We are removing location information in all read statuses for all emails sent with Superhuman, effective immediately. This will also apply to emails sent in the past."

Digital leaders continue to develop innovative services that make use of customer data. Those services can create significant benefits for consumers, yet research suggests the general public remains unconvinced about the ability of enterprises to treat their information with care.

While regulation and technology provide a means to help build trust, businesses must do more to ensure customers are comfortable with the exploitation of their data for the development of new services.

Detective superintendent Andrew Gould, who is the National Cybercrime Programme lead at the National Police Chiefs' Council, says technology companies often push tools with high capability into the marketplace without taking commensurate responsibility for security and encryption. The end result is that too many IT firms - and the businesses who use these products - are too reliant on consumers acting in a secure manner.

"If we're relying on consumers to educate themselves, I think we're giving industry a free path - and that's not right," says Gould, who joined an expert panel on digital risk at a recent security event run by RSA Security in central London. Gould, who has worked in both counterterrorism and organised crime, says IT industry and business leaders must take more responsibility for data integrity.

"We must all think about how technology can be used and abused," he says. "When a company is developing an Internet of Things product to help network a house or adjust lights in a smart city, they can create fantastic social benefits, but these organisations aren't necessarily thinking about how people with malicious intent will try and use these tools and the information they produce."

Companies blamed above all others

The event in London coincided with the launch of a global survey by RSA Security and YouGov. The research, which surveyed more than 6,000 adults across France, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States, suggests there is a growing disconnect between how companies exploit client data and how consumers expect their information to be used.

Less than half (48%) of consumers believe there are ethical ways companies can use their data. As many as 57% of consumers, meanwhile, blame companies above anyone else, even a hacker, in the event of a data incident. The research suggests a consumer backlash in response to high-profile data breaches and a consequential loss of trust.

Neira Jones, partner at cross-sector advisory specialist Global Cyber Alliance, recognises the concerns around trust and says success in terms of combating fraud should come down to rules and regulations. The recently enacted General Data Protection Regulation creates a new set of obligations for vendors and businesses. However, Jones questions the extent to which rules have been effective so far, both nationally and globally.

"Regulators will always be behind the times - not because they want to be but because that's the nature of the beast," she says. "It often takes years for regulation to come to fruition. In the meantime, there's a collective responsibility - for individuals and organisations - to understand what is happening and what it means when our world becomes increasingly digitised. Because that digitisation is not going to stop."

Privacy before personalisation

Jones is keen to see much more focus placed on the context for data collection. The RSA survey results highlight how consumers do not want personalised services at the expense of data privacy. Just 17% of survey respondents view tailored advertisements as ethical, and only 24% believe personalisation to create tailored newsfeeds is ethical.

"We have to move towards context and attribute in regard to the activity being undertaken - the whole movement shouldn't be about looking backwards and collecting masses of data, but moving forwards and using the insight for something good," says Jones. "We need to use the layers of technology to help understand context, such as how using payment data represents more of a risk to an individual than reading a news item."

Andy Kravitz, head of fraud systems and controls at Lloyds Banking Group, also believes business leaders need to start taking more responsibility for data privacy. Kravitz says he and his IT leadership peers in the banking industry are investing significantly in technology and are creating strong controls in terms of card fraud. But there is no room for complacency.

"Fraudsters are always moving on and they're looking for the weakest link in the chain," says Kravitz. "These days, that often means not attacking banks directly but instead trying to get hold of card information through a data breach. That might mean going to the customer and using social engineering tactics to get them to pass over their details or move their money."

Ethical processing

Kravitz says organisations cannot afford to take the level of consumer awareness regarding data use for granted. Consumers often make assumptions around the high level of information integration between organisations, and it's these assumptions that create expectations around service levels and challenges for enterprise IT managers, says Kravitz.

"For example, consumers will book a flight on their credit card and assume - because we as a firm know about this booking - that we also know all the data associated to their travel plans," he says. "Yet as a bank, all we actually know is that you've booked a flight - we don't know when you're flying and where to. So, data often builds an expectation around access and trust that goes far beyond the information we've actually got."

Kravitz suggests the only sensible course of action is for firms like his own to think much more carefully about how they exploit information. "At Lloyds, we talk a lot about data privacy - how we protect it and how we constrain how data is used. If I'm trying to protect the customer, how much can I use data to make the right decisions, whether that's about stopping fraudsters or giving our customers a seamless experience?" he asks.

"I want to support the clever and interesting use of data to do these things, but I must also think about how to do that securely and ethically. As a digital leader, you have to think about how much data you and your team can you use on behalf of the customer. So, you need to think about how many factors you should use in combination to create the best experience for the customer and where, as a business, you should draw the line."

Biometric technology, such as facial recognition, has been successfully trialled at three UK prisons, the government revealed on Tuesday.

The technology, which includes iris scanners, has been tested at HMP Hull, Humber and Lindholme as part of a wider crackdown on drug smuggling into prisons.

Intelligence work has identified a trend of prison visitors supplying illicit items to multiple prisoners and jails across the country and according to the government, more than 23,000 drugs and mobile phones were seized by prison staff - a 4,000 increase from the year before.

Justice Secretary David Gauke, who announced the trials, said that the new technology was needed to stop drug smuggling and ultimately aid rehabilitation.

"New technology is vital in our fight against the gangs that seek to cause chaos in prisons and this biometric equipment has the potential to significantly aid our efforts," he said.

"It forms part of this government's multi-million-pound investment to improve the safety and security of our prisons. Alongside our successful officer recruitment drive, measures like this will help make prisons places of rehabilitation where offenders can turn their lives around. This will cut reoffending and make the public safer."

Individuals that smuggle drugs and devices into prisons are often difficult to track as organised criminals often falsify their identity documents. While some prisons have fingerprint recognition technology, the majority in the UK use paper-based verification, such as drivers licences, which is easy to exploit and slow to process.

However, biometric technology trialled at the three UK jails has reportedly allowed staff to identify visitors using applications based around document validation, iris scanning and facial recognition software.

As yet, there are no details of any arrests or interceptions of contraband from the trials, but as a deterrent, one of the trial prisons saw a higher than usual 'no show' rate at visits after attendees found out the software would be in operation.

The Prison Service is now looking at how this, and other similar technology, could be used most effectively across the system, but governmental and authoritarian use of facial recognition has not always gone smoothly.

Without any hard statistics, such as arrests, the prison use of the technology could turn out similar to the Met Police's use of it. Last year the force continued to use facial recognition at events such as the Notting Hill Carnival, despite the fact it had proved to be 98% inaccurate. Further to this, the software identified innocent people as criminals and resulted in zero arrests.

The European court of human rights (ECHR) has ruled GCHQ's mass surveillance programmes violated privacy rights, and lacked the necessary safeguards to ensure collected data was protected.

Judges ruled the agency breached Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), concerning privacy and freedom of expression respectively, in its data collection methods disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013.

"This landmark judgment confirming that the UK's mass spying breached fundamental rights vindicates Mr Snowden's courageous whistle-blowing and the tireless work of Big Brother Watch and others in our pursuit for justice," said Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo.

"Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the UK has adopted the most authoritarian surveillance regime of any Western state, corroding democracy itself and the rights of the British public."

The landmark case, brought by several rights groups including Big Brother Watch, Liberty and Amnesty International, considered three aspects of surveillance: intelligence sharing, obtaining communications data from service providers, and bulk interception of communications.

While the latter two aspects were found to represent a violation of human rights law, judges ruled intelligence sharing with foreign governments did not contravene either Article 8 or Article 10 of the ECHR.

While bulk data collection did not in itself violate the ECHR, according to the judgement, the practice of obtaining communications data from service providers via interception was not in accordance with the law, and therefore was in violation of Article 8.

While representing the privacy rights set out in Article 8, the practice also violated Article 10, freedom of expression, "as there were insufficient safeguards in respect of confidential journalistic material".

The ECHR also concluded there was a "lack of oversight of the entire selection process" and that safeguards were not "sufficiently robust to provide adequate guarantees against abuse".

"The Court has put down a marker that the UK government does not have a free hand with the public's communications and that in several key respects the UK's laws and surveillance practices have failed," said Dan Carey, who represented the applicants in the ECHR.

"In particular, there needs to be much greater control over the search terms that the government is using to sift our communications. The pressure of this litigation has already contributed to some reforms in the UK and this judgment will require the UK government to look again at its practices in this most critical of areas."

The Strasbourg-based court wrapped three separate challenges being made against the UK into one ruling, which was marked by an initial hearing in November 2017. Its final decision represents the most significant challenge to the government's intelligence gathering practices made to date.

The UK government has maintained its mass data collection practices, as revealed in the Edward Snowden leaks, are necessary to fight extremism.

But its Investigatory Powers Act 2016 which legalised many of these practices under domestic law was found to have violated European law in a UK High Court ruling earlier this year. The court gave ministers until 1 November 2018 to make changes to the legislation.

"The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 replaced large parts of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) which was the subject of this challenge," a government spokesperson told IT Pro. "This includes the introduction of a double lock' which requires warrants for the use of these powers to be authorised by a Secretary of State and approved by a judge.

"An Investigatory Powers Commissioner has also been created to ensure robust independent oversight of how these powers are used. The Government will give careful consideration to the Court's findings."

Facebook has suspended 200 apps following its on-going investigation into the misuse of data. "Thousands" of apps have been examined, pending what the social network describes as a "thorough investigation" into whether these apps misappropriated user information.

The move is part of an audit run by the company to examine how many third-party apps had extensive access to user information, and how many used that data inappropriately. This applies primarily to apps created before Facebook's data policies were changed in 2014. Mark Zuckerberg announced the internal investigation on 21 March, following the revelations about Cambridge Analytica and the site.

An update penned by Facebook's vice president of product partnerships, Ime Archibong, claims the audit is "in full swing", and consists of two stages:

"First, a comprehensive review to identify every app that had access to this amount of Facebook data. And second, where we have concerns, we will conduct interviews, make requests for information (RFI) which ask a series of detailed questions about the app and the data it has access to and perform audits that may include on-site inspections."

The social network has not given a specific figure about how many apps have so far been investigated, referring only to "thousands" of apps. The update notes that if evidence is found for apps misusing user data, it will show users whether they or their friends installed those apps before 2015. The site did a similar thing for Cambridge Analytica.

There's no word on how long Facebook's investigation will take, with Archibong saying only that "a lot more work" is needed. Even those 200 suspended apps will need to be further investigated via interviews and RFI requests, and we can likely expect the figure to go up as more third-party apps are audited.

One question around all of this is whether Facebook will publicly publish a list of suspended apps. The blogpost notes that the site will "show people" if they or their friends installed the apps, and it looks like this will be done via the same section of its site used to check if information had been shared with Cambridge Analytica. Whether or not each of the apps will be named and shamed remains to be seen, however. We've contacted to Facebook for comment.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Major entertainment companies such as Disney, HBO, NBCUniversal, Fox, and BBC Worldwide have come together to form the Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) in an effort to eliminate pirate streaming boxes and deter their creators.

The coalition hopes to accomplish this by coordinating with and aiding in local enforcement efforts against piracy and copyright infringement in Asia.

The goal is to disrupt and eliminate the businesses behind the making and selling of these devices, which usually use Kodi paired with illicit streaming devices in order to stream content. The coalition will focus primarily on pirate streaming boxes and apps.

Neil Gane, CAP's general manager, who has previous experience with anti piracy initiatives as the Chief of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, views the pirate streaming boxes as a serious threat to the entertainment industry.

"The prevalence of ISDs across Asia is staggering. The criminals who operate the ISD networks and the pirate websites are profiting from the hard work of talented creators, seriously damaging the legitimate content ecosystem as well as exposing consumers to dangerous malware", said Gane, as reported by Indian Television.

"This is a highly organised transnational crime with criminal syndicates profiting enormously at the expense of consumers as well as content creators," Gane added.

As reported by Torrentfreak, CAP recognises that although the creative industry in Asia is growing through the creation of legal content, it is threatened by these pirate boxes and apps.

While the coalition is focusing its efforts primarily in Asia, with the majority of the companies involved coming from the US and UK, the battle against pirate streaming boxes could very well make its way into the UK, US, and other European countries in the future.

CAP will officially launch at the CASBAA anti-piracy convention in November.

Google and Microsoft have agreed to downgrade any links to pirated content in their search results following an agreement with the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the creative industries.

The IPO developed a voluntary code of practice that urges search engines to remove infringing links from the first page of search results, and both Microsoft and Google have agreed to follow the advisory.

Ofcom has also supported the campaign, which has been independently researching ways to prevent pirated content being distributed across the internet, according to the BBC.

The IPO worked with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to urge the major search engines to adhere to the guidelines in an attempt to prevent copyrighted content being downloaded.

"Search engines play a vital role in helping consumers discover content online," Jo Johnson, minister of state for universities, science, research and innovation, said.

"Their relationship with our world leading creative industries needs to be collaborative. Consumers are increasingly heading online for music, films, e-books, and a wide variety of other content. It is essential that they are presented with links to legitimate websites and services, not provided with links to pirate sites."

Although Google already has a number of measures in place to stop offending content being surfaced at the top of searches, it said it wouldn't change its existing policies, but the code of conduct would help it communicate its commitment to anti-piracy.

"We are one of the world's leading digital nations, and we have a responsibility to make sure that consumers have easy access to legal content online," minister for digital and culture, Matt Hancock, said.

"Pirate sites deprive artists and rights holders of hard-earned income and I'm delighted to see industry led solutions like this landmark agreement which will be instrumental in driving change."

"As we build a more global Britain we want the UK to be the most innovative country to do business, and initiatives like this will ensure our creative and digital economies continue to thrive," Hancock added.

Kim Dotcom is set to relaunch Megaupload next year, hinting it will include elements of Bitcoin.

The content sharing platform, first established in 2005, will come back with 100GB of free cloud storage and no limits on data transfer, Dotcom said in a series of tweets outlining his plans.

Megaupload 2.0 will also allow users to sync all their devices and Dotcom has ensured no legacy code from the original venture underpins it.

Files will be encrypted in transit and no servers will be hosted in the US when the site launches on 20 January 2017, the fifth anniversary of the US Department of Justice's seizure of domain names and closure of sites associated with Megaupload.

Dotcom said: "Megaupload comes back on January 20th 2017, the 5th anniversary of the raid. It will be better than the original and it will feel like home.

"I can tell you that Megaupload and Bitcoin had sex. There is a pregnancy and I have a feeling that the baby will be such a joy."

Dotcom, who lives in New Zealand, is fighting a legal battle against extradition to the US, where he and colleagues would face criminal charges including copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering.

While a New Zealand judge ruled last December that they can be extradited, an appeal from Dotcom has been scheduled for 29 August.

He tweeted: "I'll be the first tech billionaire who got indicted, lost everything and created another billion $ tech company while on bail. #goals"

Dotcom started a new service, Mega, in January 2013, but stepped down as director in September that year. Last year, Dotcom said he no longer trusted the site after what he claimed was an investor's hostile takeover.

He expects the new site to launch with a critical mass of 100 million users, saying "most Megaupload accounts" will be reinstated with Premium-tier privileges on its launch.

He added: "To former Megaupload and current Mega employees. We welcome you with open arms. Mega App developers, we have a great deal for you. Ping me."

Picture: By Sam Churchill

Security researchers have warned that Game of Thrones fans may be at risk of malware when searching for pirate copies of the hit HBO series.

Research carried by RiskIQ identified over 450 pirate content sites serving malware to people trying to download or stream illegal versions of Game of Thrones. It said that recent investigation it carried out showed that 6 in 10 consumers access pirated content and 75 per cent of it is often used as the bait to serve malware.

The firm used its virtual user technology across five countries, running Google searches for Game of Thrones download or streaming content and interacting with the resultant list of URLs as real users would.

It said that even with the ongoing efforts of the show's creator to shut down illegal websites, at the end of ten days of scanning it identified more than 450 unique sites serving malware. Of these, the company identified 323 unique sites and 571 unique pages on those sites serving malware and 127 unique sites and 668 unique pages that had recently been flagged by other security organisations as malicious, although its virtual users weren't infected.

"While we're increasingly hearing that pirate sites are to be avoided, our recent research into people's behaviour shows that the message is being ignored by many", said Ben Harknett, VP of EMEA at RiskIQ.

"Specific examples like this will hopefully make it more real for people and result in a change in behaviour. It's not only your internet safety that you put at risk, but your employer's as well if you use your personal devices to access corporate systems".

The research was conducted earlier in May with virtual users launched from the US, UK, Germany, France and Netherlands. Of the malicious pages detected, 34 per cent were spreading malware through malicious ads.

Linked to pirated content online cannot be seen as copyright infringement, the EU advocate general has advised.

Melchior Wathelet, a top legal advisor within the EU Court of Justice, has said that posting hyperlinks to copyrighted content hosted by a third party cannot in itself constitute an infringement.

The decision comes after an ongoing legal battle betweLinking to pen Dutch website GeenStijl.nl and the publisher of Playboy.

The site linked to a series of leaked photos, hosted on file-sharing service FileFactory, but when Playboy publisher Sanoma had the pictures removed from FileFactory, GeenStijl simply linked to another source.

The EU Court of Justice now has to rule on whether or not these hyperlinks are a "communication to the public" and therefore an infringement of copyright.

In his advisory, advocate general Wathelet said that "the posting of the hyperlinks in the main proceedings does not, in my view, constitute a 'communication to the public'".

He also added that any other interpretation "would significantly impair the functioning of the Internet and undermine one of the main objectives of Directive 2001/29, namely the development of the information society in Europe."

Wathelet's decision is not legally binding, and the court will still have to reach its own consensus on the case. However, the advocate general's advice often informs the court's decisions in these matters.

The case is a landmark one, and could "distort the fair balance of rights and interests between the different categories of rightholders", according to Wathelet. "In my view," he said, "such interference in the functioning of the internet must be avoided."

Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde has built a cloning machine out of a Raspberry Pi computer, a screen and Python code that can duplicate singles at a rate of 100 copies per second.

The piracy maestro is frustrated that record companies put so much emphasis on the cost of pirated copies and so decided to take matters into his own hands.

"I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy. The machine is made to be very blunt and open about the fact that it's not a danger to any industry at all," Sunde told TorrentFreak.

"But following their rhetoric and mindset it will bankrupt them. I want to show with a physical example that also is really beautiful in it's own way that putting a price to a copy is futile."

The machine, called Kopismashin is currently set to creating eight million copies of Gnarls Barkley's track 'Crazy', which Sunde explained will result in around $10 million (6.7 million) in losses.

The copies won't be illegally sold or distributed, but they are part of an art installation describing the cost of digital copies to demonstrate how absurd the current piracy model is. In fact, he's setting out to show that the millions in financial losses that record companies are claiming piracy costs them are as fictional as the numbers the Kopimashin is displaying.

"I think the file-sharing trials of this century are going to be our obscenity trials. The claims are never valid, they're never based on actual damage. If that was the case, we would have been awarded money," Sunde continued.

"The economics work differently in a global networked society. But the industries will not change. That's why we need to take them down."

Sunde owes record companies millions in damages and spent time in prison last year after the industry took offence at the running of Pirate Bay.

A Swedish court has ruled that internet service providers cannot be compelled to block The Pirate Bay.

Primarily used for illegal torrents and file-sharing, The Pirate Bay has been at the centre of a maelstrom of controversy for years.

Although many of the site's operators have faced court charges, the site has continued to operate more or less consistently since its creation, thanks to several domain name changes and a network of mirror sites.

Since attempts to take the Swedish-born site down at the source have proven ineffective, copyright holders have instead opted to try and force ISPs to block the site from being accessed.

However, a case filed by Nordisk Film, Sony Music, the Swedish Film industry and Warner Music against Sweden's second-biggest internet provider Bredbandsbolaget has provided a rare victory for the pirates.

The copyright holders argued that by allowing users to access sites like the Pirate Bay, Bredbandsbolaget contributed to users' copyright infringement.

Stockholm District Court ruled against the companies, however, stating that under Swedish law, the provider was not at fault. It also stated that ISPs could not be legally forced to block The Pirate Bay and other file-sharing sites.

The companies will be able to fight the decision by taking it to the Svea Court of Appeal but only have until 18 December to do so.

Despite numerous similar blocks having been instituted in countries such as the UK, this ruling follows the overturning of a Dutch court decision last year, which saw two local ISPs defeat a similar block.

A government proposal to raise the maximum sentence for online piracy to 10 years would mean offenders could face the jail time as sex offenders.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has launched a consultation aiming to determine whether the maximum sentence for online piracy should be raised from two to 10 years in jail, to match the current maximum prison time for physical piracy of goods, like bootlegging DVDs.

But other, more serious crimes carrying a jail term of up to 10 years include sexual assault, grooming a child for sex and then meeting them, and some firearms offences.

Affray and brothelkeeping carry more lenient maximum tariffs.

The consultation paper claims "there is no doubt that copyright infringement is serious and there is no strong case for treating online infringement any differently to physical infringement".

It adds that "the links to other criminal behaviour are clear; criminal gangs are making vast sums of money through exploiting the creations of others, causing real harm to those individuals, their industry and the wider economy".

The government also claims in the document that a change in sentencing guidelines "will send a clear message to rights holders and criminals that copyright infringement will not be tolerated".

But is this really a reasonable course of action?

A case of equivalence

That digital piracy could be put on a par with serious sexual offences shows the disproportionate way that sentencing for piracy is doled out, an expert told IT Pro.

"That the maximum sentence for online piracy would be the same as sexual assault is not appropriate," Natalie Reeves, a paralegal at the Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB) said. "It shows that we value money above the welfare of people."

The IPO, however, disagrees, citing independent research commissioned by the government body last year, which concluded: "There is logic to placing serious online copyright offences into a more serious category. The precedents within the IP landscape are either to leave offences outside the criminal justice system altogether (as in the case of patents) or to set a maximum offence on conviction of ten years. Fundamentally, either online copyright offences are capable of causing serious harm, or they are not."

An IPO spokesperson also told IT Pro that the proposed elevation of the maximum sentence for online piracy "is made in the context of the recognition of the serious harm that commercial scale infringement, frequently linked to serious and organised crime, can cause to both society and the economy."

"The Annual IP Crime Report contains evidence showing the links between IP crime and other crimes including drug dealing, violence, people trafficking and prostitution," the body added.

Let the punishment fit the crime

In the consultation document, it is stated that potentially raising the maximum custodial tariff for online piracy to 10 years is "supported by the Conservative manifesto commitment that sentencing should reflect the seriousness of the crime".

Additionally, the Penalty Fair report, which was carried out last year, found a general consensus among industry bodies that stiffer sanctions for serious online infringement cases would be helpful.

"The argument is, perhaps, most persuasive when it comes from organisations such as FACT and BPI who have hands-on experience of the shortcomings of the existing CDPA 1988 provisions regarding online infringement (though they do of course represent organisations who are already convinced of the advantages of bringing prosecutions, and are funded in a manner that enables them to do so, at least occasionally)," the report added.

However, research has consistently shown that harsher penalties do little to dissuade individuals from committing a crime.

Research carried out by Andrew von Hirsch, Anthony Bottoms, Elizabeth Burney and Per-Olof Wikstrom, Criminologists from the University of Cambridge, for the Home Office in 1999 showed that "[while] results revealed negative statistical associations between certainty of punishment and crime rates ... the statistical associations between severity of punishment and crime rates are considerably weaker".

In other words, if a person is certain they will be punished for a crime they commit, they are less likely to carry out the act. However, the severity or leniency of the punishment is has no clear effect.

Anthony Doob and Cheryl Marie Webster, in their 2003 paper Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis, noted that "variation in the severity of sanctions is unrelated to levels of crime".

Looking at the American justice system, Valerie Wright, research analyst at non-profit organisation The Sentencing Project, wrote in 2010 that: "As a consequence of more punitive laws and harsher sentencing policies 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails, and the US leads the world in its rate of incarceration."

However, in one of many studies referenced by Wright, criminologists David Farrington, Paul Langan, and Per-Olof Wikstrom "failed to find an effect for severity" when comparing crime and punishment trends across the US, Great Britain and Sweden.

"The statistical associations were weak and even when there was a negative relationship between severity of punishment and crime rates, the findings were not strong enough to achieve statistical significance. This finding is noteworthy because it reflected varying degrees of punitiveness in the sentencing policies of the three nations," Wright added.

All of these findings then raise an important question: why is an increase in the potential maximum sentence for online piracy being considered when it is unlikely to have an effect on the level of crime being committed?

Indeed, a positive correlation between incarceration and the likelihood of reoffending has been demonstrated repeatedly, particularly if the sentence is lengthy and there is little emphasis on rehabilitation.

Rhetoric vs reality

Should the consultation currently underway recommend that the maximum sentence is raised from two years to 10, and should the government accept the proposal, the impact on the criminal justice system, and prisons in particular, could be significant.

That prisons in England and Wales (Scotland has its own justics system) are currently overcrowded is a matter of public record. The latest report from HM chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, Nick Hardwick, noted: "Overcrowding remained a significant problem across the range of prisons we inspected in 2014-15, particularly in local and category C training prisons, where most prisoners were held. As I have argued before, overcrowding is not simply a matter of two prisoners sharing a cell designed for one with an unscreened toilet - undesirable though that is. It means that a prison will not have the activity places, the support mechanisms or the rehabilitation programmes it needs for the size of its population. More prisoners cannot simply be crammed into the available space."

With regard to the sharp uptick in violence, deaths, self-harm and drug use in prisons over the past 12 months, as part of a longer five-year trend, Hardwick said: "It remains my view that staff shortages, overcrowding and the wider policy changes described in this report have had a significant impact on prison safety.

"I share the conclusion of the Justice Committee report: 'We believe that the key explanatory factor for the obvious deterioration in standards over the last year is that a significant number of prisons have been operating at staffing levels below what is necessary to maintain reasonable, safe and rehabilitative regimes'."

Could raising the sentence above two years for digital piracy, irrespective of where it is raised to, further compound this problem?

Reeves told IT Pro: "We don't know what this will affect the criminal justice system, because we don't know how many people will be prosecuted."

However, the figures for current prosecutions for physical piracy provide some insight.

The Crown Prosecution Service was unable to provide IT Pro with figures relating to convictions and sentencing for offences charged under the relevant sections of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, but it did offer details of the number offences that had been charged, and they make for enlightening reading.

In 2012/13, the total number of offences charged and reaching a first hearing in a magistrate's court under all relevant sections of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 was 137. In 2014/15, that number fell to 36.

As mentioned, this does not show how many people were convicted, or how long they were sentenced for. Logic would dictate, however, that the number of convictions was less than the total number of court appearances, that the number of custodial sentences handed out was less than that, and that the number of people sentenced to the maximum 10-year tariff would be even less and potentially none.

"If very few people are going to be prosecuted under the proposed amendments, then why are we wasting time and money changing the legislation?" said Reeves. "And if lots are prosecuted, are we really putting large scale dealing in media on a level with large scale dealing drugs?"

British ISPs must block seven websites for sharing pirated ebooks, after a complaint from the Publishers Association (PA).

The UK High Court has previously ordered major ISPs to block more than a hundred piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, but it's the first time it's specifically targeted websites sharing ebooks.

Under the order, BT, Virgin, Sky, EE and TalkTalk must block seven sites within the next ten days - they are AvaxHome, Bookfi, Bookre, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwap and LibGen.

The order comes after an investigation by the PA itself showed that at least 80 per cent of the 10 million ebook files on the sites infringed copyright.

The PA had previously used takedown orders to fight piracy, filing a million requests to the seven sites.

A message on Freebookspot reads: "Publishers Association is going to block this site. I was forced to delete over 10,000 books."

Richard Mollet, CEO of the PA, welcomed the ruling. "A third of publisher revenues now come from digital sales but unfortunately this rise in the digital market has brought with it a growth in online infringement," he said.

"Our members need to be able to protect their authors' works from such illegal activity; writers need to be paid and publishers need to be able to continue to innovate and invest in new talent and material," he added.

The sites are blocked at the network level, using technology originally developed to stop child-abuse images from being viewed in the UK.

The Pirate Bay torrent site opened for business again over the weekend, several months after a Swedish police raid saw it taken offline.

Reports suggesting its return was imminent began circulating late last week, after a new website appeared online featuring a countdown timer and a phoenix logo.

Meanwhile, an animation showing the infamous Pirate Bay logo moving towards a cartoon island with a harbour marked "welcome home", added fuel to the fire.

Update 3/2/15

Hacking group Anonymous claims that the FBI is controlling the domain of the relaunched Pirate Bay website and warned users about visiting.

On its Twitter account @TheAnonMessages, it was claimed that the domain had been compromised and pointed users in the direction of a newly built domain.

TorrentFreak

However, in a separate story, published days earlier by TorrentFreak, it was claimed the new version will be markedly lighter than the one it replaced, with fewer moderators on hand to rid it of spam and fake torrents.

The news has not been greeted favourably by former site admins, some of whom have worked on the site for more than a decade.

"As an admin and human, I won't stand aside and accept this kind of behaviour. This is the worst scenario that could happen," said one of the site's lead admins WTC-SWE.

Because of the alleged lack of moderator support, the site's former admins are also warning users to be wary of using it.

In the meantime, The Pirate Bay's former admin team is said to be working on its own version of the site, which will be operated from a new domain.

"It's only a matter of time. I will need to blast the whole coding and clean up all the mess. The real [The Pirate Bay] will be back with proper staff and all," WTC-SWE added.

The Pirate Bay: The story so far

The Pirate Bay was previously resurrected by torrent site Isohunt, after a Swedish police raid knocked the notorious file-sharing site offline in early December 2014.

Police seized the Swedish servers used to host the site on copyright violation grounds. This is the second time a raid like this has caused the site to go dark since 2006.

In the wake of the December raid, speculation about how long it would take a replacement site to pop-up had been rife, before a new version of The Pirate Bay appeared, thanks to UK torrent site Isohunt, at oldpiratebay.org.

To recreate the site, it's thought the team at Isohunt compiled a copy of The Pirate Bay's old database of torrent links.

Since then, Isohunt has created a more permanent replacement for The Pirate Bay, dubbed Open Bay, based on feedback from users.

In a blog post, announcing its launch, the organisation said Open Bay would continue to run in this democratic way.

"Our goal is to make [a] torrents database that will maintain, improve and gain content by itself, with no participation on our side. It'll be base that only Open Bay community will control and manage," the post stated.

"We put out polls on the main page and you guys will vote for a feature you want, and then it's up to community to make it.

"It is the only way, the right way to do it. Open Bay should be controlled only with democratic institute, which involves every user in the world," the post concluded.

Pirate Bay goes down: The reaction

In the wake of last December's raid, The Pirate Bay's co-founder Peter Sunde said he'd be happy to see the site remain "closed forever."

In another blog post, he said the last time The Pirate Bay went offline there were protests in the street, but now it feels like no-one cares.

"Today few seem to care. And I'm one of them," he wrote.

"It feels good that it might have closed down forever, just a real shame the way it did that."

He then went on to say the site had become "ugly, full of bugs, old code and old design" in recent times, and was slowly being filled with an increasing number of adverts for porn and viagra, he claimed.

"The past few years, there was no soul left in [The Pirate Bay]. The original team handed it over to, well, less soul-ish people to say the least.

"From the outside, I felt that no-one had any interest in helping the community if it didn't eventually pay out in cash," he added.

The raid has been linked to a criminal complaint made against the site - which is used to share links to pirated films, TV shows and music - by the anti-piracy group Rights Alliance.

In a post on its website in reference to the raid, the organisation explained the rationale behind its complaint.

"Pirate Bay is an illegal commercial service that makes considerable earnings by infringing the work of others," it states.

"The infringements affect all creators and it also hinders the growth of the legal services."

Speaking to Radio Sweden, Fredrik Ingblad a Swedish prosecutor confirmed the raid, but refused to reveal exactly how much of The Pirate Bay's infrastructure was seized.

"There were a number of police officers and digital forensics experts there. This took place during the morning [of Tuesday] and continued until this afternoon," he said.

"Several servers and computers were seized, but I cannot say exactly how many."

Meanwhile, a report on Torrentfreak suggests several other, smaller file-sharing sites were also taken down around the same time as The Pirate Bay.

In April 2012, the UK High Court ordered ISPs to block access to the site to make it harder for people to visit, but according to The Pirate Bay traffic to the site has actually doubled since then.

This story was originally published on 10/12/2014, before being updated to reflect the co-founder's thoughts on its closure, and the site's apparent resurrection on 2 February 2015.

The BBC has said people who repeatedly infringe copyright should not have access to an internet connection and that ISPs should be responsible for making sure they cannot break the law.

The statement was made in a submission to the Australian government's online copyright infringement paper, saying: "ISPs need a policy to deal with repeat offenders," the BBC Worldwide submission reads.

"Possible sanctions could include subjecting repeat offenders to a slowing down of their bandwidth, but stopping short of cutting off the internet service, except in the most serious and egregious circumstances, as is the case in the United States. A competent court or authority should be involved in such cases."

The BBC used the example of Dr Who being distributed illegally in Australia before it was even aired on TV, saying although the leak was down to the broadcaster not putting secure enough controls in place, those who leaked the programme should be punished.

It said, despite the BBC dedicating considerable resources to taking down and blocking access to the materials, 13,000 download attempts were made from Australian IP addresses.

The BBC would like to go down the educational route, warning those who infringe copyright and educating them about the law. If they do not stop illegally downloading content, they should be subject to more serious action - such as their connection being terminated.

Additionally, the BBC said anyone who is proven to be using VPN-style services and consuming a lot of bandwidth in the process should be investigated for piracy.

It said: "It is reasonable for ISPs to be placed under an obligation to identify user behavior that is suspicious' and indicative of a user engaging in conduct that infringes copyright. Such behavior may include the illegitimate use by Internet users of IP obfuscation tools in combination with high download volumes."

BitTorrent site Pirate Bay has launched a mobile version of its website, with separate TV, music and movie sites.

The new design, which is the first change to the site for more than ten years, includes clearer navigation and it's hoped using separate domains to the full site will make the website harder to close down.

Pirate Bay has already introduced a number of protocols to prevent authorities blocking or taking the whole site offline, including removing the tracker, trading torrents for magnet links and moving its server to the cloud.

Anyone using a mobile domain to access the Pirate Bay website will be forwarded to the Mobile Bay domain and although like any mobile website, this can be overridden if you want to access the full site instead, Pirate Bay doesn't think many users will do this telling TorrentFreak: "The normal version of the site renders like crap on mobile devices."

The Pirate Bay has more changes in the pipeline including the addition of RSSbay, allowing users to use RSS feeds to access the torrents they want remotely.

A spokesperson told TorrentFreak: "We will add more features later on, such as personal RSS feeds so users can browse torrents at work or school, and start the downloads at home."

iOS users won't be able to download torrents onto their iPhone or iPad unless it's jailbroken, but both Android and BlackBerry mobile users can download a torrent client.

Last week, it was reported that The Pirate Bay's traffic has doubled since ISPs started blocking the torrent download site. The majority of this traffic comes from the US, but it demonstrates the struggles the industry has in trying to stop people illegally downloading music, films and TV shows.

Users can download PirateBrowser to access torrents on Pirate Bay even if their ISP has banned it.

Recently, the government announced the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (Vcap) that will form part of the Digital Economy Act 2010. To try and reduce instances of piracy, ISPs will send letters to repeat piracy offenders in the hope to educate them about how their activity is affecting the industry.

Those who pirate music, films and other media will start receiving emails from their ISP from next year, in the hope it will educate offenders of the damage illegal downloading is having of the music and film industry.

The initiative, officially called the Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (Vcap) forms part of the Digital Economy Act 2010 and states that household can receive up to four warnings per year, but if those in receipt of the messages decide to ignore them and continue to illegally download material, no further action will be taken.

Those in the film and creative industries whose work is repeatedly illegally downloaded also want the warning letters to include information about penalties people face if they decide to download material without paying and have also requested that a database of repeat offenders is published.

Vcap brings together some of the UK's biggest ISPs including BT, TalkTalk, Virgin and Sky and a number of film industry bodies including the British Phonographic Institute (BPI) and the Music Publisher Association (MPA). It was announced by Vince Cable as part of a 3.5 million campaign to promote legal ways to listen to music and watch films. It's expected smaller ISPs will take the lead of the larger ones and join the scheme in the future.

The MPA's Chris Marcich said: "It is fantastic that the UK creative community and ISPs have come together in partnership to address online copyright infringement and raise awareness about the multitude of legitimate online services available to consumers. We are also grateful to the UK Government for backing this important new initiative."

However, P2P sharing site TorrentFreak announced the ruling on its site with a more negative stance, saying: "While the scheme is being overwhelmed with praise, the parties also announced that the first warning emails will not be sent out before next summer, possibly even later. These delays are a thorn in the side of both copyright holders and the Government, suggesting that negotiations behind the scenes are less uplifting."

Google Glass headsets have just become available to UK customers for the hefty price of 1,000, but cinemas around the UK have deemed them a potential aid to video piracy, and have thus banned them from use.

The worry is that those wearing the tech will be able to record blockbuster films without detection, contributing to the problem of film piracy in Britain and around the world. One early user was asked to remove his Google Glass headset in a Leicester Square cinema recently.

Phil Clapp, chief executive of the Cinema Exhibitors' Association, said: "Customers will be requested not to wear these into cinema auditoriums, whether the film is playing or not."

The glasses allow users to read their emails, capture videos, browse the internet and more through a display panel situated above the right eye. Though Google Glass' panel lights up when filming, there are still worries the act can go unnoticed in certain situations.

Concerns over video piracy are in many ways an extension of privacy issues that have plagued Google since the wearable tech was announced. With users granted the ability to record what they see without permission, and often without detection, this has brought with it many concerns.

In addition to cinemas across the country, other entertainment outlets are reportedly looking into taking similar precautions. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group, for example, announced it would "evaluate the implications, especially with regard to the effect on the cast, creative team and members of the public."

A spokesperson for Google said: "We recommend any cinemas concerned about Glass to treat the device as they treat similar devices like mobile phones: simply ask wearers to turn it off before the film starts. Broadly speaking, we also think it's best to have direct and first-hand experience with Glass before creating policies around it.

"The fact that Glass is worn above the eyes and the screen lights up whenever it's activated makes it a fairly lousy device for recording things secretly," the spokesperson added.

David Cameron's intellectual property advisor has written a report about online piracy, saying the first actions should be taken by search engines such as Google.

MP Mike Weatherley's report includes a list of recommendations for business secretary Vince Cable to take onboard in the fight against online piracy, including blocking the ad funding used to keep such websites active.

He said the fight back should begin with search engines - Google in particular - to stop people accessing pirated content in the first place.

"Search engines can and must use the resources available to them in order to safeguard the UK's creative industries. Piracy remains the biggest threat to the growth of digital commerce. If we want the UK to continue to be a leader in creativity and innovation, the UK must also be an international leader of intellectual property rights protection," Weatherley said.

"As the main provider of search facilities in the UK it is widely felt that Google should take the lead in setting responsible industry standards for search," he continued.

Aside from working with search engines to prevent illegal content being surfaced, Weatherley said consumers should be educated about piracy by including "warning marks" and putting legitimate download sources at the top of search results.

Pirate sites should be removed from search results if a court order has been issued to the domain registrar, alerting them illegal activity and requesting they shut the site down.

Earlier in the week, Torrentz.eu was closed down. It's the latest website to be suspended as part of Operation Creative.

If Weatherley's plan comes to fruition, any content previously available on Torrentz.eu would be removed from search engines.

Moves to combat online film and music piracy with the help of the ISP community have been criticised for being too lenient.

The big four ISPs - BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin Media are close to striking a deal with the BPI and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) to clamp down on individuals who illegally download music and films online.

As part of this, repeat offenders will receive "educational" letters from their ISPs that will reportedly point them in the direction of sites offering legal download services.

Individuals will receive a maximum of four such alerts, in the form of either a written letter or email, but they will face no further action from their ISP after this point.

The ISPs will only be allowed to send out 2.5 million of these warnings per year, although this number is expected to go up if other ISPs decide to join the scheme.

The first letters are expected to be sent out next year.

According to a report on the BBC, the original draft proposals suggested these letters should warn people who repeatedly download illegal content about the legal implications of their actions.

The BPI and MPA had also originally requested access to a database listing details about repeat offenders, so that they could pursue legal action against them.

However, the final draft of the proposals which have been four years in the making contain no mention of either of these measures.

In a statement, the MPA and BPI said: "Content creators and ISPs, with the support of government, have been exploring the possibility of developing an awareness programme that will support the continuing growth of legal creative content services, reduce copyright infringement and create the best possible customer experience online."

Andrew Goode, COO of ad tech provider Project Sunblock, hit out at the plans, claiming the ISPs' proposed letter writing campaign will not stop people downloading content illegally.

"Sending out letters to consumers won't come close to quelling the tide of illegal downloads from sites like the Pirate Bay. Letters issued by ISPs will be entirely unenforceable and without threats of punitive measures, like internet throttling, it simply won't work and, even worse, the initiative targets the wrong side of the illegal download exchange," he said.

"Instead of targeting consumers, what's needed is to cut off the flow of advertising revenue that fuels these copyright infringing sites. These sites are funded almost exclusively by ad revenue, which in many cases comes from some of the UK's biggest brand names."

Therefore, he wants to see more being done to cut the flow of ad revenue to the sites that facilitate illegal downloads.

"Advertisers must act in collaboration with the police and other enforcement bodies in order to make any real impact; otherwise, letters from ISPs will fall on deaf ears," he added.

Nearly all of the most popular illegal film and TV pirate websites contain malware or credit card scams, according to a study from protection intelligence analyst firm Incopro.

The research revealed 97 per cent of these illegal sites contained dangerous content.

The UK TV and film industry body, The Industry Trust commissioned a study of 30 of the most frequently used illegal film and TV sites in the country. It found 90 per cent contained malware and other Potentially Unwanted Programmes' (PUPs) designed to deceive or defraud unwitting viewers.

The rogue sites were also crammed with credit card scams, with over two thirds (67 per cent) of the 30 sites containing credit card fraud. In total, just one of the 30 pirate sites monitored over a two week period showed no signs of malware or credit card fraud. Unsurprisingly, the report didn't say which site this was.

According to the research, malware is usually disguised behind innocent looking Play' buttons which viewers unwittingly click on thinking it will play the film or TV show, but which actually trigger the malware or other programmes to start downloading onto the device.

Alongside the research, a survey from ICM found that of people who have unwittingly or intentionally visited a pirate website, more than three quarters (77 per cent) experienced unwanted extras including downloading malware, spyware, other viruses and pop-up ads as a result. Almost one in five (17 per cent) lost personal data or had personal information stolen and 14 per cent were exposed to unwanted or explicit material such as pornography or violence.

DCI Andy Fyfe, head of the police intellectual property crime unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police, said: "It is very important that the public recognises the dangers of visiting illegal websites and so we welcome the Industry Trust's current campaign to raise awareness on this issue."

"People need to know that by visiting copyright infringing websites they are running the risk of having their personal details stolen and used fraudulently, as well as exposing their computer to malicious malware and viruses," he said.

A Google Glass user has warned others not to wear the devices in public, after being hauled out of a US cinema by law enforcers who claimed he was using the device to illegally record a movie.

The unnamed Google Glass user visited a cinema with his wife in Columbus, Ohio, while wearing the device. He was then asked to step outside an hour into a showing of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit by a law enforcement officer.

He was accused of using the device to illegally record the film, but maintains he did not have Glass switched on in the cinema.

"Because I don't want Glass to distract me during the movie, I turn them off (but since my prescription lenses are on the frame, I still wear them," he told tech blog The Gadgeteer.

The accused said he was held for several hours by representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security before being released without charge.

"I kept telling them I wasn't recording anything my Glass was off, [but] they insisted they saw it on," he wrote.

Despite repeated attempts by the unnamed man to get the attending officers to check the device themselves, he claims they only did this after questioning him.

"Eventually, after a long time somebody came with a laptop and a USB cable at which point he told me it was my last chance to come clean. I repeated for the hundredth time there is nothing to come clean about and this is a big misunderstanding," he said.

"So the...guy finally connected my Glass to the computer, downloaded all my personal photos and started going through them one by one.

"Then they went through my phone, and five minutes later they concluded I had done nothing wrong," he added.

When he complained, a representative from the Movie Association blamed the high rates of piracy at the theatre he visited and gave him two free passes to see the film again.

"Considering it was 11.27pm when this happened, and the movie started at 7.45, I guess the three and a half hours of my time and the scare my wife went through is worth about 30 bucks in the eyes of the Movie Association and the federal militia," he wrote.

"I guess until people get more familiar with Google Glass and understand what they are, one should not wear them to the movies."

In a statement to US newspaper the Columbus Dispatch, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the incident.

"On Jan. 18, special agents with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations and local authorities briefly interviewed a man suspected of using an electronic recording device to record a film at an AMC Theatre in Columbus," the statement reads.

"The man, who voluntarily answered questions, confirmed to authorities that the suspected recording devices was also a pair of prescription eye glasses in which the recording function had been inactive. No further action was taken."

This isn't the first time wearing Google Glass has landed someone in hot water, as there have been numerous reports of a similar nature in recent months.

For example, a restaurant in Seattle banned the device because of concerns about its recording capabilities, while the UK Department for Transport reportedly has too because of fears it might distract people when they're behind the wheel.

Broadband providers, including Virgin, BT, BSkyB and Talk Talk, have been asked by the record industry trade body BPI to create a database of customers who illegally download digital entertainment content.

According to a report in the Guardian, the information could be used to disconnect or prosecute persistent offenders.

The BPI has allegedly been working with the British Video Association to negotiate with ISPs on what action to take on piracy.

The decision to carry out direct talks has apparently been sparked by the fact the Digital Economy Act, which was created to combat piracy, will not come into force until 2014 at the earliest and possibly after the 2015 general election. This is despite the Bill being voted into law three years ago.

Any collaboration would be a voluntary one and there is no obligation on broadband providers to join any alliance.

However, should they choose to do so, it will operate a three strikes' policy, with three warning letters being sent out initially before preventative measures - such as site blocking and broadband speed throttling - are used.

If these actions fail to deter the downloader, prosecution would be sought.

The plan is not as straightforward as it may seem, as concerns have been raised that the creation of the initial database recording to whom letters had been sent to and any further action that had been taken could be in breach of the Data Protection Act.

This is because companies are only allowed to store customer data for commercial purposes under current legislation.

The reactions to the BPI's proposals from ISPs themselves, according to statements in the Guardian, have been lukewarm.

A spokesperson for Virgin Media described the current proposal as "unworkable". Talk Talk meanwhile said it would like to reach a voluntary agreement.

"However our customers' rights always come first and we would never agree to anything that could compromise them," a spokesperson added.

Microsoft settled 3,265 copyright infringement cases around the world during the last 12 months, as part of the software giant's ongoing fight against piracy.

The company's software is considered to be among the most pirated in the world, with the firm regularly warning users off cheap versions of Office and Windows as they are unlikely to be authentic.

In a statement, Microsoft said it had settled 3,265 cases over the past year, with the majority resulting from tip-offs by end users.

Out of these settlements, 35 took place in the US, while the remaining 3,230 cases occurred in 42 other countries across the globe.

David Finn, associate general counsel in the Microsoft Cybercrime centre, said the company was pleased to have resolved these cases, given the economic impact counterfeit software use can have.

"Software counterfeiting negatively impacts local and global economic growth, stifles innovation, and puts consumers and businesses at risk," he warned.

In total, Microsoft claims to have been contacted by more than 450,000 counterfeit software whistleblowers since 2005.

According to a recent study by analyst IDC on the dangers of using pirated software, end users will waste 1.5 billion hours dealing with counterfeit software-induced security issues.

Its findings also suggest that one in three consumer PCs running counterfeit software will be infected by malware in 2013.

Warner Bros. and NBC Universal have asked Google to block notorious file-sharing websites such as Mega from search results to help cutdown on piracy.

The two Hollywood studios have filed takedown claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in relation to the films Gangster Squad and Mama.

NBC claims to have found 5,857 links, which offer users the chance to illegally download the 2013 horror film Mama. There are 35 links to the file-sharing site Mega, which was launched by internet mogul, Kim Dotcom, in January.

Meanwhile Warner Bros. alleges there are 404 links to download Gangster Squad. There are no specific links to Mega, with the studio simply asking Google to block the file-sharing site's homepage.

Dotcom claims blocking the homepage would be unreasonable, and that content providers are abusing their rights under the DMCA.

"During the Megaupload days over 20 per cent of all takedown notices were bogus. We analysed big samples of notices and most were automated keyword-based takedowns that affected a lot of legitimate files," Dotcom told TorrentFreak.

"The abuse of the takedown system is so severe that no service provider can rely on takedown notices for a fair repeat infringer policy."

When launched in January, Mega claimed that users who joined the site would automatically agree to absolve the company of any responsibility if copyright laws are broken. However, Hollywood studios clearly feel the site is not doing enough and is still a prime source for copyrighted material.

Microsoft and the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) have launched a campaign, dubbed Play It Safe, to raise awareness of the business problems caused by using counterfeit software.

According to Microsoft commissioned research, carried out by analyst IDC, 30 per cent of businesses are at risk of infection by unexpected malware through using pirated software.

The research was conducted across ten geographies, including the UK, where results showed there was a particular problem in the SMB market when it came to using counterfeit software.

Speaking to IT Pro, Michala Wardell, head of anti-piracy at Microsoft UK, also referenced a recent study by the BSA, which revealed 52 per cent of UK small businesses have either bought or are running some kind of illegal software.

"In the UK, SMBs are definitely increasing their piracy consumption, and as a result are having a whole host of problems, such as identity theft and credit card fraud," said Wardell.

"They then have to spend many, many hours trying to reverse the impact the counterfeit had on their business, [which can impact their profits]."

Wardell said SMBs were being disproportionately affected by the problem because very few small businesses use software asset management.

"They have not yet realised the value [such an] investment can have on their business," she said.

Meanwhile, Alex Hilton, chief executive of anti-piracy body FAST, claimed the small profit margins of SMBs were also a factor.

"[Smaller businesses] are less concerned about things like software asset management. What they are concerned about is paying their bills, getting the money in from their customers and keeping the lights on," he said.

Both said cloud was reducing the consumption of counterfeit software, and that the Play It Safe campaign would help to raise awareness of the risks of pirated material.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has had a setback in his piracy case after the Court of Appeal in New Zealand ruled the US authorities do not have to hand over evidence against him.

The Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that the FBI should disclose all its evidence to Dotcom ahead of his extradition trial in August.

The US government had a duty of "candor and good faith" in making an extradition bid, the Court of Appeal said, before ruling the authrorities only have to hand over a summary of the evidence they have.

"It is for the requesting state to decide what information it wishes to put before the requested state in support of its request," Reuters reported the court as saying.

Dotcom expressed his disappointment at the decision on Twitter, and claimed his legal team would take the fight to the Supreme Court.

"Am I disappointed about the ruling today? YES. Do 'good faith' & 'US govt' go together? NO. Will I sleep like an innocent baby tonight? YES," he told his 290,000 followers.

"The fight goes on. Next is the Supreme Court of New Zealand."

Dotcom founded the popular Megaupload file-sharing site which allowed users to share any files they wanted. The site raked in $175 million from 2005 until it was shutdown in January 2012 by the FBI.

The US government has accussed Dotcom of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted content - in particular films and music. Authorities are trying to extradite him from New Zealand to the US on charges of piracy, fraud and money laundering.

It remains to be seen whether the US authorities will be successful. The initial raid on Dotcom's property was bungled as courts have ruled the search warrants used were illegal.

A New Zealand government agency was also found to have illegally spied on him, and Dotcom could be entitled to damages.

The extradition hearing for Dotcom and the other three defendants is scheduled to be held in August.

ISPs have been ordered to block more torrent websites following a ruling from court ruling

Virgin Media, BT, BSkyB and other UK ISPs have been told that they must block access to three file sharing websites: Kickass Torrents, H33t and Fenopy.

In a written ruling, Judge Richard Arnold said that users and operators of the torrent websites had infringed on the copyrights of ten music companies "on an industrial scale".

Music and film industry groups welcomed the news.

"The growth of digital music in the U.K. is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music online without permission," said Geoff Taylor, chief executive officer of the British Recorded Music Industry group BPI. "Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow."

One of the ISPs that will have to block access, Virgin Media, said in a statement that it "supports the clear, legal framework put in place to protect against copyright infringement and we continue to comply with court orders specifically addressed to the company."

But critics of the tactics deployed by the music and movie industry said that blocking access wouldn't solve the problem of piracy.

"The British music industry has nothing positive to show from their site blocks and personal legal threats. Looking at sales figures from 2012, you can't draw the conclusion that stopping access to the Pirate Bay did anything to help artists," said UK Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye.

"Even so, the industry is insisting on pushing for ever greater blocks, just as we in the Pirate Party have been warning."

Kaye said that this latest move meant that the UK has now "handed the power over what we see on the Internet to corporate lobbyists."

Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group said that blocking was "an extreme response", which will encourage new forms of distributed infringement.

"The BPI and others should be mindful that their tactics may have the opposite effect to their intention, by legitimising and promoting resistance to their actions," he said.

"We are concerned that these orders are not protecting speech, are overblocking forums and discussion, and are prone to error as the actual block lists are private."

More than half (52 per cent) of UK SMBs have bought or downloaded illegal software, claims research by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

The anti-piracy body enlisted research company Vanson Bourne to oversee the survey, which polled IT decision makers from 250 UK SMBs.

BSA discovered that 41 per cent of the SMBs that admitted purchasing illegal software had reportedly fallen victim to identity theft or had their credit cards cloned (21 per cent).

Although 88 per cent of SMBs said the use of illegal software creates liability concerns, 21 per cent admitted using software key generators, which are programmes that generate an unauthorised registration key or serial number.

"The research suggest that a large number of UK businesses have an unclear understanding of what constitutes illegal software use, at best, and a blatant disrespect for copyright law and business ethics, at worse," said Michala Wardell, UK committee chair of the BSA.

The use of illegal software reportedly proved to be accidental for many of the SMBs that took part in the poll. For instance, after discovering their software was illegal, 51 per cent said they replaced it with a legitimate copy.

Furthermore, 27 per cent paid for a legal software key and 10 per cent uninstalled the software, without replacing it.

Handley Brustad, a joint lead officer for intellectual property at the Trading Standards Institute, said SMBs that use illegal software are exposing themselves to security threats.

"While we strive to bring down dishonest traders, we rely upon businesses to take proper precautions when purchasing their software," he continued.

Software pirates have been exploiting a Microsoft promotion to get a free copy of Windows 8 Pro.

Microsoft has been offering users the chance to download the Windows Media Center (WMC) add-on for Windows 8 without charge until January 2013.

However, users have found that the product key generated to install the add-on can also activate preview editions of Windows 8.

The method was outlined on Reddit, by a user known as noveleven.

"Microsoft is giving away free upgrade keys to turn Windows 8 Pro into Windows 8 Pro+WMC [Windows Media Center, which is a separate add-on for Windows 8], and they don't bother to check if the key you are currently using is valid.

"As long as the system is activated, even if it is activated with KMS [Key Management Service], it will take the key and apply the upgrade.

"Since the WMC key comes directly from Microsoft and is unique for each user, it activates Windows 8 Pro permanently. Oops!"

With previous editions of Windows, pirates used to bypass the need to purchase codes by activating multiple copies using "volume keys".

These 25-digit activation codes were used by PC vendors to economically activate mass numbers of Windows machines. However, they were prone to being leaked out.

Scamsters even used to game Microsoft's phone activation system to install multiple copies of operating systems, such as XP.

Despite Microsoft beefing up activation for Windows 8 (each copy requires a unique code), this flaw appears to have been pounced on by a number of pirates.

Currently, Microsoft is claiming that a product key to activate WMC will be sent within 72 hours.

Microsoft has yet to confirm whether the flaw has been plugged.

Online brand protection company NetNames has warned that the growing popularity of eBooks and e-readers has led to a rise in digital piracy.

"The explosion of digital books has transformed the publishing industry but there is one quietly growing problem that is often overlooked - piracy," said David Price, head of Piracy Intelligence at NetNames.

Price was speaking out following the UK launch of the 7in Amazon Kindle Fire HD, which allow users to watch films, read books and play games.

Publishers who stay one step ahead of online piracy will reap benefits.

He also warned that textbook publishers, in particular, are susceptible to piracy as they tend to be read by more "tech-savvy" users.

"NetNames recently took twenty textbooks from the bestselling lists on Amazon and found that each book was available from over 20 links on ebookee.org, one of many download sites that have proliferated and offer easy access to files stored on cyberlockers," he added.

"The small target audience of these textbooks means that any sales diverted to piracy could have devastating effects for publishers."

To tackle this problem, Price suggested introducing one-time online use codes or offering Amazon-like refunds on textbook rentals.

"Moving forward, it is publishers who aim to stay one step ahead of online piracy that will reap the benefits of an increasingly digital world," added Price.

Julian Heathcote Hobbins, general counsel for the anti-piracy body the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), backed Price's view that eBook piracy is on the rise.

"The advancing popularity of eBooks has naturally led to a piracy increase in this area from the beginning of this year and publishers are now facing a battle not dissimilar to that endured by the music and film industry," he told IT Pro.

"DRM (Digital Rights Infringement) seems the most obvious tool to protect against infringement but it depends on what strategy the publishers wish to do, but action against infringement must be effective," he added.

One of the co-founders of file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Cambodia, and could be passed over to Swedish authorities for the alleged breach of copyright laws.

The Swedish man, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 27, has been living in Cambodia for some time.

An appeals court in Sweden sentenced three others behind the site to between four months and 10 months in prison plus fines in 2010.

Warg failed to attend that hearing due to illness and his sentencing was deferred. He had originally been sentenced to a year in prison in 2009.

"We had a request from Sweden to make an arrest as he had committed cyber crime there," police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told Reuters.

"We don't have an extradition treaty with Sweden but there are other ways to do it," he added, without elaborating. Cambodian authorities were waiting for legal documents from Sweden, he said.

Cambodian website, Khmer440.com, which originally reported Warg's arrest, said he had been living in Phnom Penh for four years.

Swedish subsidiaries of prominent music and film companies had taken Pirate Bay to court claiming damages for lost revenue. Mainstream media firms have also taken steps in other countries to have it blocked.

Pirate Bay, launched in 2003, provides links to other sites where people can download music and films for free.

The group that controls it says no copyrighted material is stored on its servers and no exchange of files actually takes place there so it cannot be held responsible for what material is being exchanged.

Google has announced a change to its search algorithm that will see sites accused of copyright infringement appear lower down its list of search results.

From 13 August, the number of valid copyright removal notices received by the search giant will be used as a signal when generating a list of results. Sites with a high number of take down' notices will receive a less favourable ranking.

Google says this change should make it easier for users to find legitimate and quality sources of audio-visual content.

Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law.

In a statement, Google noted it is only courts to decide if copyright has been infringed, so it will not remove pages from search results unless a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner is received.

"Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law," the firm said.

"We'll continue to provide counter-notice' tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated. We'll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals."

The algorithmic change comes two years after Google overhauled its copyright removals' system, which led to a huge increase in available data regarding infringement online.

Copyright infringement has been on the rise, with the firm saying it now receives more removal notices each day than it did in the whole of 2009.

The controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) legislation has been rejected by the European Parliament.

The anti-piracy legislation has been under discussion since 2007 and was designed to promote the global enforcement of intellectual property rights for digital and physical goods.

The UK, along with 21 other EU member states, signed up to the treaty in January, but it required European parliamentary ratification for it to be approved.

However, the European Parliament rejected the treaty, by a vote of 478 to 39 with 165 abstentions, earlier today.

The proposed legislation had previously come under fire from civil liberties groups and campaigners who claimed its enforcement would result in internet censorship.

News of its rejection has been warmly welcomed by privacy campaigners, the Open Rights Group (ORG).

In a statement, Jim Killock, executive director of the ORG, said: "This is a tremendous victory for the movement, for democracy and for every European citizen that has demanded that their rights be respected," he said.

The result of the vote means ACTA's fate now hangs in the balance, but Killock said the authorities would be foolhardy to revive it.

"ACTA must be abandoned. The Commission must drop its calls to try again," he added.

The software industry is tipped to respond to the European Court of Justice's declaration that digitally distributed software can be resold as new by tightening up its licensing laws.

The EU court released a statement yesterday, announcing the result of an ongoing legal spat between software giant Oracle and German software license reseller UsedSoft.

The vendor took umbrage against UsedSoft's strategy of reselling software licenses acquired from Oracle customers, and brought legal proceedings against the firm in the German courts.

The opportunity to sell-on their software creates options for businesses to cut costs directly.

But, the court ruled in UsedSoft's favour, claiming the software vendors have no right to oppose the resale of software, even if it is prohibited by its licensing agreement.

"The principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium, but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website," said the Court of Justice in a statement.

"Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy and at the same time concludes a licence agreement, granting the customer the right to use [it] for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right."

The court's verdict may not be binding at this stage, as the German court still needs to return its judgement, but if approved could have dire consequences for the software industry.

In an alert to subscribers, Angela Eager, research director at analyst house TechMarketView, said: "With mid-tier and cloud vendors already posing a threat to established vendors like Oracle, the incumbent providers have a lot to lose."

This was a view backed by Andy Trish, managing director of Microsoft software supplier NCI Technologies.

"This could be devastating news for the vendor community," he told IT Pro. "End users will have no idea if their software is legal and virus-free and vendors will still be responsible to ensure they are."

Meanwhile, Eager said the ruling could pave the way for the development of a second-hand software market.

"One of the tasks occupying many enterprises is how to reduce the cost of Oracle (and other vendor) deployments in light of reduced workforces and changes to businesses that render certain software unnecessary," she said.

"The opportunity to sell-on their software creates options [to cut] costs directly."

Simon Placks, director of fraud investigation and dispute services at advisory firm Ernst & Young, told IT Pro the move could result in vendors losing track of software sales.

"Businesses will need to increase their vigilance over the ways in which digital downloads percolate through their IT infrastructure," he said.

"Consequently, we could see this ruling acting as a catalyst for more publishers to move to subscription and-cloud based licensing models in an attempt to regain control of their intellectual property."

However, Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst Quocirca, said vendors should find the changes easy to circumnavigate.

"Vendors could move from a perpetual license to an annual one," he suggested.

"If the customer does not pay to renew the license, then the customer's right to use the software is revoked."

Software firms could also introduce restrictions about the exact locations where their products can be used or adopt subscription-based licensing models.

"This will have an immediate, but temporary impact on the market. Expect a massive leap in sales of second-hand software, including perpetual licenses , followed by a clampdown on contracts to make this possible," he said.

Network operator O2 and its subsidiary Be Broadband have withdrawn access to notorious torrent site, The Pirate Bay, overnight.

The company is the latest in a long line of ISPs, including Sky Broadband and Virgin Media, who have moved to stop their customers accessing the site in recent weeks.

We wouldn't choose to do this voluntarily, but we need to comply with UK laws just like any other business.

The move was prompted by the issuing of a High Court order back in April, which called on Sky, Everything Everywhere, Talk Talk, O2 and Virgin Media to block access to the website, which features pirated films and music.

In a statement, sent to IT Pro, O2 said: "The main UK internet providers were ordered by the High Court to block access to specific IP address and URLs used by The Pirate Bay website. We have no option but to comply with this order and did so last night."

Be Broadband announced the ban in a blog post, which prompted several customer complaints about losing access to the "whole of the internet".

"We wouldn't choose to do this voluntarily, but we need to comply with UK laws just like any UK business," said the firm in an updated post.

"Our policy of zero traffic management means that we treat all protocols equally (e.g. web, downloads, VPNs) and we will do as much as we can to give you the internet as you want it, whilst complying with UK laws."

Lawyers for popular file-sharing company Megaupload, accused of copyright theft and internet piracy, have moved to have the case thrown out, a US counsel said on Thursday.

Before it was shut down in January, Megaupload was one of the world's most popular websites, where millions of users stored data, either for free or by paying for premium service.

The law states that you can't indict and serve a company that does not have a presence in the United States

The FBI claims founder Kim Dotcom masterminded a scheme that made more than $175 million in a few short years by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorisation.

Papers have been filed stating that US federal authorities cannot charge the company with criminal behavior because it is Hong Kong based, and also that no papers have ever been formally served, the lawyer said.

Megaupload's assets were seized and its executives in New Zealand and Holland arrested in January on warrants issued by the FBI alleging money laundering, internet piracy, and illegal file sharing.

But Megaupload's US counsel said the FBI had made a fundamental mistake.

"The law here in the United States is that you can't indict and then serve a company that does not have a presence in the United States," Ira Rothken told Radio New Zealand.

He said the case against Megaupload and its executives should be dismissed.

"This case was flawed from the start, once this case gets dismissed it cannot be fixed," Rothken said.

Megaupload chief executive Dotcom, 39, spent nearly a month in jail after New Zealand police raided a luxury country estate and cut him out of a safe room in which he had barricaded himself.

US authorities have asked for him and three other executives to be extradited.

Megaupload has always maintained that it simply offered online storage, and that music and movie companies were given every opportunity to have illegal material removed.

Dotcom is on bail after he convinced a court that he was not going to abscond.

In the past week he has been allowed back to his mansion, and had travel restrictions eased. A New Zealand judge also ordered prosecutors to give Dotcom's lawyers access to evidence collected against him and co-defendants.

Rothken said he had also filed papers in the U.S. to unfreeze Megaupload funds, which could be used by the defendants to defend themselves.

The FBI was not immediately available for comment.

A group of intellectual property (IP) experts gathered at Microsoft's office in Brussels last week to discuss how to change the way Europeans think about IP.

They included inventor Trevor Baylis (pictured above), Philippe Lacoste of the fashion and sports ware brand, MEPs and members of the software giant's legal team.

But this was not the usual gathering of record companies and music studios, set to co-ordinate their fire on the torrent sites or the Pirate Bay. In fact, the music and movie industries were mentioned only in passing and there was no impassioned debate about the pros and cons of ACTA.

Ideas Matter, as the group calls itself, has a wider remit than anti-piracy. Instead, it is setting out to promote the value of intellectual property, and the economic wealth that is so closely tied to both its creation and its protection. Around a third of the US economy depends on IP, and the EU wants to catch up.

Digital piracy is, of course, an issue. Microsoft is not often portrayed as a victim, but its Windows and Office products are among the most pirated software applications in the world. But it is not just about stopping someone duplicating Office DVDs by the container-load. It is, as the company's associate general counsel Ronald Zink says, as much about protecting the small ideas, and the small inventors.

There are practical hurdles. Europe lacks a single, coherent intellectual property framework, often forcing inventors and brand owners to register trademarks and patents several times over.

The costs are high. As Trevor Baylis explains, protecting a patent can cost upwards of 50,000. "But then someone comes along and steals your idea, and the lawyers want another 100,000 to fight it," he says. Individual inventors and SMEs can scarcely afford those fees.

Part of the answer lies in raising awareness, so that inventors know when to start the patent application process, and what they can say in public about their ideas. The EU is working to make the process easier, and to boost the amount of advice on offer, especially to smaller firms.

And, although the internet is a great help to companies when it comes to product development, fundraising, manufacturing and distribution, it also makes it much easier for people to copy ideas. SMBs, in particular, often lack the IT security measures needed to protect designs and blueprints, for example.

Europe lacks a coherent intellectual property framework, often forcing brand owners to register trademarks and patents several times

Physical copying is also an issue. Ripping CDs to MP3s is one thing, but, as Philippe Lacoste warns, there are entire factories set up to make counterfeit physical goods. These can look convincing, even if they rarely match the quality of the original.

One way of clamping down on the problem, he suggests, is to go after online merchants, and payment gateways, to identify the fakers. But, this would require much better international co-operation, which will take time.

Although Ideas Matter is not specifically a campaign for the IT industry, in many ways IT is central to the task of protecting IP. Legal protection, either through the courts or organisations such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation, can do so much to protect companies, if they fail to safeguard their own data and IP from loss or theft.

The Pirate Bay has taken a hit in the UK after a judge at the High Court said the file-sharing site infringed on copyrights of major record labels.

Today Justice Arnold ruled the Pirate Bay and its users unlawfully share copyrighted music, after the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) led Sony and other record labels in taking their complaint to court.

In a written statement, Justice Arnold said in his judgement, the operators of the Pirate Bay "do authorise its users' infringing acts of copying and communication to the public."

The UK is sleepwalking into comprehensive site blocking.

"They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting," he added, according to a report in the Guardian.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said the group of record labels would now proceed with its application to get the Pirate Bay blocked. A decision on that is now expected in June.

The BPI sent a letter to BT last year, asking the ISP to block access to the service.

No Pirate Bay officials were represented in court and were not required to do so. The record labels needed this trial so they could seek a blocking order on the site.

"This hearing clearly demonstrates the limitations of merely requiring judicial involvement in censorship orders. Without any party there to represent either the website or its users (including lawful users), there was no opportunity to raise any defence as to the damage allegedly done by the site, or the proportionality in blocking the entire website," said Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party UK.

"While it is understandable that the ISPs would be unwilling to show up - given the surprising costs order awarded against BT after the Newzbin2 judgment - it is disappointing that, once more, no one was able to stand up to the BPI and the major record labels."

UK ISPs have been ordered to block other file-sharing sites in recent months. In October last year, BT was ordered to bar access to Newzbin2 something TalkTalk was told to do this month.

"The UK is sleepwalking into comprehensive site blocking. This is not a tool we should be handing our Governments or our courts," Kaye added.

Google and Mozilla have joined the raft of companies opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the PROTECT IP Act (Pipa) in the US.

Various tech giants have criticised aspects of the two bills, Pipa going through the US Senate and Sopa in the House of Representatives.

Wikipedia and Wordpress have both shutdown for the day in protest, whilst other firms such as Rackspace and Twitter have voiced their opposition to Sopa and Pipa.

We oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites.

Google claimed the acts would censor the web, handing powers to law enforcement to filter the web and block access to tools that would bypass such filters.

"We know from experience that these powers are on the wish list of oppressive regimes throughout the world," said David Drummond, Google's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer, in a blog post.

"Sopa and Pipa also eliminate due process. They provide incentives for American companies to shut down, block access to and stop servicing US and foreign websites that copyright and trademark owners allege are illegal without any due process or ability of a wrongfully targeted website to seek restitution."

Google also claimed the acts would not stop piracy, as pirate sites would simply change their addresses.

The internet giant has highlighted this issue on its US home page and is asking people to petition congress via a special landing page.

"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the internet," a Google spokesperson said.

Mozilla has chosen to redirect traffic from Mozilla.org to an action page for 12 hours. Visitors will be presented black page with a call to action message to increase awareness of Pipa and Sopa.

The action will run from 13:00GMT today through to 01:00 GMT tomorrow.

"While we generally support the end goal of the legislation to limit online piracy of legitimate content we believe that both Pipa and Sopa, in their current drafts, have serious flaws in the proposed implementation of the legislation," said Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, in a blog post.

"Among them is the requirement for online service and content providers to police the system. This would create an undue burden on businesses that were not designed for this purpose, would require more lawyers to be involved, and would extend the hand of government much deeper into these organisations."

Kovacs claimed the acts would "spread a chilling effect across the web that would significantly limit innovation."

Sopa has been shelved for the time being, but Pipa could still pass through the Senate.

The Wikipedia blackout is not as comprehensive as the company may have liked. Firefox users can simply add the NoScript add on and disable JavaScript to access the site.

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has caused more controversy on his Twitter feed, labelling Google a "piracy leader."

Murdoch made the comments on Friday, the same day he issued a tirade against President Barack Obama's criticism of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

"Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying," Murdoch tweeted, later saying Google was a "great company doing many exciting things."

Google respects copyright - and we've worked hard to help rights holders deal with piracy.

"Only one complaint, and it's important," he added.

Google has responded to Murdoch's criticism by pointing to the anti-piracy work it has done.

"Google respects copyright - and we've worked hard to help rights holders deal with piracy," a spokesperson said.

"Last year we took down five million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads. Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the internet."

Google faced pressure in September last year to block copyright infringing websites in its results.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is said to be expanding its antitrust probe of Google to cover the company's social network Google+, according to Bloomberg.

Obama bashing

As for Obama, Murdoch said the president had "thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery."

The Obama administration has made it clear it will not stand for some of the more controversial aspects of Sopa and its Senate equivalent the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa).

In particular, Obama is concerned about legislation that would force internet service providers to block access to websites deemed to be infringing copyright.

According to Texas congressman Lamar Smith, the DNS blocking provision in the bill is to be dropped.

Various tech companies have distanced themselves from Sopa support, some soon after Anonymous threatened to take action against those in favour of the bill.

EA, Nintendo and Sony all recently backed away from the legislation.

A student accused of breaching piracy laws is facing extradition to the US, where he could get up to five years in jail.

Sheffield Hallam student Richard O'Dwyer, the 23-year-old behind the TVShack website, lost his case at Westminster Magistrates' Court, but his lawyer indicated an appeal would be made.

US authorities believe TVShack, which O'Dwyer's lawyer Ben Cooper claimed hosts links to content rather than the actual content itself, breaches copyright laws.

The case was brought by the US Customs and Border Protection agency and no criminal charges were lodged by British authorities. TVShack was shut down by US authorities.

A 19-year-old British kid built a search engine, gets sued by US Government and is now fighting extradition to USA.

O-Dwyer's mother, who told the BBC she was not fully aware of what her son's website did, said Britain's extradition treaty with the US was "rotten."

Some from the tech industry have expressed their opinions over the case on Twitter.

"A 19-year-old British kid built a search engine, gets sued by US Government and is now fighting extradition to USA," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure.

The case comes at a time when the Government is under pressure from MPs to review how it handles extradition hearings.

An independent review of the UK's current extradition arrangements carried out by Sir Scott Baker in 2010 claimed the current treaty between the US and the UK was fair.

However, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has called on the Government to renegotiate the UK-US agreement to ensure UK citizens get equal treatment to Americans.

The case of Gary McKinnon, who was accused of hacking into US military and NASA systems, continues as he also looks to avoid extradition.

BT has been told to block access to Newzbin 2, a site sharing links to pirated films.

The landmark case marking the first time an ISP has been told to block such a site was originally brought by Motion Picture Association (MPA).

BT and MPA will meet later in the year to discuss how the blocking of Newzbin 2 will work.

At the High Court, Justice Arnold said he believed "it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright," the BBC reported.

"It knows that the users and operators of Newzbin 2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes," he added.

"It knows that the users of Newzbin 2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin 2."

BT was pleased a decision had been made to clarify what steps rights holders need to take if they want the ISP to block a website.

"This is a helpful judgement, which provides clarity on this complex issue," an official statement read.

"It clearly shows that rights holders need to prove their claims and convince a judge to make a court order. BT has consistently said that rights holders need to take this route. We will return to court after the summer to explain what kind of order we believe is appropriate."

Chris Marcich, president and managing director of MPA Europe, said the ruling was "a victory for millions of people working in the UK creative industries and demonstrates that the law of the land must apply online."

"This court action was never an attack on ISPs but we do need their co-operation to deal with the Newzbin site which continually tries to evade the law and judicial sanction," he added.

"Newzbin is a notorious pirate website which makes hundreds of thousands of copyrighted products available without permission and with no regard for the law."

Of course, not all were overjoyed by the decision. Peter Bradwell, copyright campaigner at the Open Rights Group, said website blocking was "pointless and dangerous."

"These judgements won't work to stop infringement or boost creative industries and there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown," Bradwell said.

"If the goal is boosting creators' ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand."

Major film companies have approached a software firm in India to potentially carry out denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against websites hosting pirated material.

This is according to Girish Kumar, the managing director of the Indian company Aiplex Software, who claimed to have been working with Fox Star, a branch of 20th Century Fox, and said talks are in progress to work with Walt Disney.

Neither Disney nor Fox had confirmed or denied working or being in talks with Aiplex at the time of publication.

Kumar explained to IT PRO that Aiplex had come up with the idea of helping out film companies during the recession and officially launched its service targeted at movie makers in 2009.

Copyright notices are sent to the owners of sites identified as hosting pirated film downloads, asking them to remove offending links, Kumar said.

If no action is taken by the website owner, then Aiplex will inform the movie house, who may wish to contact the authorities, he said.

It is then left up to the cyber crime police if they wish to get back in contact with Aiplex, who have the capability to carry out a DoS attack on the offending websites, Kumar told IT PRO.

"This is how we help the industry overall, putting illegal links down," he claimed.

"It [film piracy] is causing immense loss to us, to the country overall."

In the UK, a DoS attack is now illegal, as is paying someone else to launch such an action, as laid out by the 2006 Police and Justice Act.

Furthermore, supplying software to carry out a DoS attack is against the law.

However, Kumar told IT PRO Aiplex's work in this area thus far has been in protecting Bollywood film houses in India.

Most apps in the Android Market can have their licensing protection stripped away, making them easy targets for pirates, it has been claimed.

In a report from the Android Police, the author claimed minor changes could easily be made to an app's code, meaning it could be copied and then reconfigured to help it pass Google's Licence Verification Library (LVL).

By this time, of course, it will not longer be an official app but a pirated one.

Most Android apps are written in Java, the author explained, and these apps are compiled into byte-code. There are numerous software suites that can easily disassemble bytecode, which is in itself "fairly readable", leaving it more open for tampering.

Hackers can then reassemble the code of an app and make alterations to bypass the LVL verification process, therefore placing a pirated app on the marketplace.

The author called for improved solutions for preventing pirated apps finding their way onto the Android Market, such as "ways to confirm an application was installed through official means."

Tim Bray, from the Android developers team, responded to the Android Police findings in a blog post defending LVL.

"Android Market is already a responsive, low-friction, safe way for developer to get their products to users," Bray said.

"The licensing server makes it safer and we will continue to improve it."

Bray also pointed out developers can write custom authentication checks for each of their applications.

Furthermore, all attacks on apps seen by the official Android developer team had so far been on apps which did not feature obfuscated code, providing a further layer of protection, he said.

Bray added: "100 per cent piracy protection is never possible in any system that runs third-party code, but the licensing server, when correctly implemented and customised for your app, is designed to dramatically increase the cost and difficulty of pirating."