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Tag: piracy

  • How the Cyber-Thriller ‘Red Rooms’ Became a Cult Classic Before It Was Ever Released

    How the Cyber-Thriller ‘Red Rooms’ Became a Cult Classic Before It Was Ever Released

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    Digital piracy often gets a bad rap. Maybe it’s memories of those old “You wouldn’t steal a car” pre-roll ads that were a fixture in theaters. Maybe it’s the word “piracy.” But recent research suggests that uploading, downloading, and swapping movies illegally isn’t necessarily an impediment to a given title’s bottom line. One study found that word of mouth generated by illegal sharing of movies can actually increase box-office revenues. And for cinephiles who may be cut off (either financially or geographically) for the indie or art-house cinemas, piracy can prove essential—or at least a necessary evil. As Andy Chatterley, CEO of research firm Muso, told WIRED earlier this year, “The thing about piracy is, it’s really just people wanting to consume content. They’re not doing it for the act of piracy; they’re being driven by marketing on other things that drive legal consumption.”

    Smaller films like Red Rooms often find audiences in such less-than-legal circles. Lucas Tavares, 23, lives in a small town in Brazil. He obsessively follows film coverage on social media platforms like X and Letterboxd. Red Rooms first came to his attention over a year ago, when it premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. A few weeks later, he was able to scrounge a copy online. “Where I live,” he says, “it’s very hard to see smaller movies, and independent movies, especially if they are not American blockbusters. So I rely on torrents a lot.”

    For Henry Meeks, a 29-year old school teacher in Philadelphia, torrents and online piracy channels became essential during the Covid-19 lockdowns. With cinemas shuttered and film production all but halted, many cinephiles took the opportunity to dig deeper into older, harder-to-find films. “What I love about piracy,” Meeks says, “is that there’s tons of movies that have fallen out of distribution. There’s no Blu-ray. So it’s a really good archival practice. Stuff that I really can’t find anywhere, even if I wanted to buy it, is kept alive on those websites.”

    When Meeks heard some buzz about Red Rooms, he downloaded it and immediately shared it with friends on Plex: the freeware streaming-media service that allows users to amass and share collections of private media. This curation distinguishes private servers like Plex from the bigger, aboveground streaming services with their algorithmic recommendation systems. “Netflix and Amazon Prime have more movies than you could ever see,” Meeks says. “But it’s not really curated by a human.”

    Plante seems a little ambivalent about his movie’s success online. While he is embracing his movie leaking, he notes that building this sort of word of mouth was very much “not a strategy.” He says the film’s French-Canadian distributor insisted on dropping Red Rooms’ on Canadian video-on-demand services shortly after its theatrical premiere. “I told him that the day after it’s on iTunes in Canada, it’s going to be on freaking PirateBay,” he says, referring to the popular BitTorrent client.

    Of course, not everyone has the ability, or inclination, to download MP4 or AVI files of relatively obscure French-Canadian cyber-thrillers. Plante is confident the film’s upcoming wide release in US cinemas, on September 6, will help expand his movie’s niche, cultish appeal. Smaller movies like this tend to have a long life, moving through the international film festival circuit to bigger bookings in cinemas and to home video. Gray-web peer-to-peer file-sharing websites are just one place people can find the film.

    Still, Plante finds it totally appropriate that his movie about the internet’s underbelly has found an audience among people who wade in those same waters.“It’s a very online, very geeky film,” he says. “Of course people are going to torrent it.”

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  • Taylor Swift Concert Terror Plot Was Thwarted by Key CIA Tip

    Taylor Swift Concert Terror Plot Was Thwarted by Key CIA Tip

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    Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the communication app Telegram, was arrested in France on Saturday as part of an investigation into his and Telegram’s alleged failure to moderate illegal content on the platform, among other allegations. After being detained for four days, he was charged on Wednesday evening, barred from leaving France, and released on the condition of posting a €5 million ($5.5 million) bail and reporting to a French police station twice a week. The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that Durov faces complicity charges related to child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, as well charges for importing cryptology without prior declaration, and a “near-total absence” of cooperation with French authorities.

    “Nudify” deepfake websites that generate images of people’s naked bodies without their consent have been incorporating mainstream single sign-on authentication systems into their websites, a WIRED investigation found. Discord and Apple are terminating some developers’ accounts over this usage.

    Microsoft published research on Wednesday about a new multistage backdoor that the notorious Iranian hacking group APT 33 or Peach Sandstorm has been using to target victims in sectors including satellite, communications equipment, and oil and gas. And Google researchers found that suspected Russian hackers compromised Mongolian government websites between November 2023 and July 2024 and then infected vulnerable users who visited the sites with malware. Crucially, the attackers compromised targets using exploits that were identical or very similar to hacking tools created by the commercial spyware vendors NSO Group and Intellexa.

    And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

    The US Central Intelligence Agency provided Austrian law enforcement with crucial intelligence that led to the arrest of suspects who were allegedly plotting to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Austria at the beginning of the month. All three of the singer’s planned concerts were canceled at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium because of the threat. CIA deputy director David Cohen said at the Insa intelligence conference on Wednesday, “Within my agency and others there were people who thought that was a really good day for Langley and not just the Swifties in my workforce.”

    The central suspect is a 19-year-old Austrian of North Macedonian background who reportedly made a full confession. Austrian law enforcement also arrested an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old in relation to the plot. Cops also reportedly interrogated a 15-year-old. The plot was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State and included plans to attack fans outside the venue with knives or explosives. Earlier this month, Austrian interior minister Gerhard Karner said foreign intelligence agencies contributed to the investigation because Austrian law bars text message surveillance.

    “They were plotting to kill a huge number, tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans, and were quite advanced in this,” the CIA’s Cohen said at the conference. “The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”

    Hackers who may be backed by the Chinese government have been exploiting a recently patched vulnerability in network management virtualization software known as Versa Director to compromise at least four US-based internet service providers and steal authentication credentials used by their customers. Researchers from Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, said on Thursday that the attacks began as early as June 12 and are likely still going on. Hackers exploit the Versa Director vulnerability to install remote access malware that Lumen dubbed allow “VersaMem.”

    “Given the severity of the vulnerability, the implications of compromised Versa Director systems, and the time that has now elapsed to allow Versa customers to patch the vulnerability, Black Lotus Labs felt it was appropriate to release this information at this time,” the researchers wrote in a blog post. “Lumen Technologies shared threat intelligence to warn appropriate US government agencies of the emerging risks that could impact our nation’s strategic assets.”

    The movie studio coalition known as the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment said on Thursday that Hanoi police have investigated and taken down the Vietnam-based pirate streaming service Fmovies and its affiliates. The working group said it collaborated with law enforcement and provided information about Fmovies, which it called “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world.” The group added that Fmovies and its affiliate sites—which included bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer, and aniwave—had more than 6.7 billion visits between January 2023 and June 2024. The law enforcement operation also led to the takedown of video hosting provider Vidsrc.to and its affiliates because these services were allegedly “operated by the same suspects.” Hanoi police have arrested two men in connection with the case.

    Following a digital attack against dozens of French museums during the Olympic Games earlier this month, the ransomware gang known as Brain Cipher has claimed responsibility for the hacks and is threatening to leak 300 GB of stolen data from the museums. Le Grand Palais and dozens of other French national museums and cultural organizations are overseen by Réunion des Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais and reportedly all use some shared digital infrastructure, which the attackers targeted.

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  • The Pirate Party Survived Mutiny and Scandal. In the EU Elections, It’s Trying to Rewrite the Rules of the Web

    The Pirate Party Survived Mutiny and Scandal. In the EU Elections, It’s Trying to Rewrite the Rules of the Web

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    Outside the skatepark in Prague, on a scrubby patch of grass, Bartoš leans back into his deck chair as he tries to impress on me that Pirates are not your regular stiff politicians. From the campaign launch unfolding behind us, that’s pretty obvious. Yes, there are long speeches and polite rounds of applause. But there are also gangs of shirtless skateboarders, a blue-haired rapper, rainbow banners showing our solar-powered future, and references to the online forums where party members can vote on new policies or demand new leadership.

    He disagrees that the broadening of the Pirates’ focus has diluted its identity. “We cannot be a single issue party,” he insists. Instead, he compares the Pirates’ evolution to Europe’s Greens, which started as a grassroots movement built around a single issue: the environment. Now the Greens are applying their original values to everything from housing to energy, as they sit in coalition governments in Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Austria. Although the Pirates “don’t preach” like the Greens, he says, “we’re doing the same journey they did a while ago.”

    The Czech branch demonstrates the Pirates’ potential—how an internet-first ideology can be woven into national politics—but it is also a microcosm of the party’s problems. Like other Pirates before it, the Czechs suffer from internal bickering, factionalism, and claims of sexual harassment. Former campaign manager Šárka Václavíková has spoken publicly about her decision to leave the party and her police complaint against a fellow party member for what she describes as stalking and psychological abuse. Over Zoom from her new home in Italy, she says sexual harassment of women was systemic before she left last year—a claim the party strongly denies. “Isolated incidents can, of course, happen, just as in society or any other party. However, if we had any information about such incidents, we would take immediate action,” party spokesperson Lucie Švehlíková told WIRED.

    But Václavíková says she’s also disappointed with the direction of the party as a whole. “There are two factions in the Pirate Party,” she declares. There are the centrists, the people who want to appeal to everyone and are disowning the party’s Pirate Bay roots in the process. Václavíková says she identified with the other faction, whom she calls “the real pirates.” “For us,” she says, “the ideology of transparent policy and privacy, and also human rights, are more important than just gaining more power for our own profit.”

    So far, Bartoš has prevented these issues from tearing the party apart. Part of why he has lasted so long, surviving a series of leadership challenges (including from Gregorová), is because he can clearly describe what makes the Pirates’ outlook different. Across Europe, other Pirates are still struggling to define what a better future—with more technology, not less—would actually look like. When I sign into a Zoom call with Tommy Klein, political adviser to the Pirates in Luxembourg, he is sitting in front of a poster emblazoned with the phrase “Save Our Internet.” When I ask how exactly the internet needs saving, he replies without enthusiasm that the poster is old. “It’s from the 2018 election,” he says.

    Under Bartoš, however, the Czech Pirates have found a way to articulate a utopian vision of a technology-infused future that means more than just reducing Big Tech’s influence on the European internet. Like the Pirate Bureau 20 years ago, the Czech Pirates also have a bus—really more of a camper van—that carries illustrations of their message. There is a sun, with rays resembling internet nodes. Wind turbines and solar farms grow out of rolling pink hills. Slogans like “Girl Power” and “Tolerance” hover over people doing peace signs and smiling through heart-shaped glasses. In Bartoš, the original Pirate vision for an alternative technology-enabled future still lingers. “I believe that we can save the planet and society through technology,” he declares from his deck chair. Whether that optimism is still applicable, 20 years later, is up to the voters to decide.

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  • Makers of Popular Switch Emulator Yuzu Agree to Pay $2.4 Million to Settle Nintendo Lawsuit

    Makers of Popular Switch Emulator Yuzu Agree to Pay $2.4 Million to Settle Nintendo Lawsuit

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    The makers of Switch emulator Yuzu say they will “consent to judgment in favor of Nintendo” to settle a major lawsuit filed by the console maker last week.

    In a series of filings posted by the court Monday, the Yuzu developers agreed to pay $2.4 million in “monetary relief” and to cease “offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu.”

    In a statement posted Monday afternoon on the Yuzu Discord, the developers wrote that support for the emulator was ending “effective immediately,” along with support for 3DS emulator Citra (which shares many of the same developers):

    We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.

    Yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.

    We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.

    We Admit It

    The proposed final judgment, which still has to be agreed to by the judge in the case, fully accepts Nintendo’s stated position that “Yuzu is primarily designed to circumvent [Nintendo’s copy protection] and play Nintendo Switch games” by “using unauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch cryptographic keys.”

    Though the Yuzu software doesn’t itself include copies of those Nintendo Switch cryptographic keys, the proposed judgment notes that “in its ordinary course [Yuzu] functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization.” That means the software is “primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures” and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to the proposed settlement.

    While that admission doesn’t technically account for Yuzu’s ability to run a long list of Switch homebrew programs, proving that such homebrew was a significant part of the “ordinary course” of the average Yuzu user’s experience may have been an uphill battle in court. Nintendo argued in its lawsuit that “the vast majority of Yuzu users are using Yuzu to play downloaded pirated games in Yuzu,” a fact that could have played against the emulator maker at trial even if non-infringing uses for the emulator do exist.

    Not Worth the Fight?

    The Yuzu Patreon currently brings in about $30,000 a month, making a $2.4 million settlement a significant expense for Tropic Haze LLC, the US company set up to coordinate those Patreon donations for the emulator’s development. But in the proposed settlement, the Yuzu developers say this figure “bears a reasonable relationship to the range of damages and attorneys’ fees and full costs that the parties could have anticipated would be awarded at and following a trial of this action.”

    The potential attorneys’ fees necessary to fully bring the Yuzu case to trial likely played a significant role in the quick settlement in this case. As attorney Jon Loiterman told Ars last week, “Unless Yuzu has very deep pockets, I think they’re likely to take [the emulator] down, and the software will live on but not be centrally distributed by Yuzu.”

    Yuzu’s developers also faced some relatively distinct allegations of aiding and acknowledging potential Switch pirates through various communication channels, including bragging about successfully emulating leaked Switch games before their release date. “I’ve personally experienced how strict most emulator communities/discord servers/forums are regarding copyright and piracy, so it’s really weird to me that Yuzu devs wouldn’t be like that,” emulator developer Lycoder told Ars last week.

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  • Nintendo Sues Makers of the Wildly Popular Yuzu Emulator

    Nintendo Sues Makers of the Wildly Popular Yuzu Emulator

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    “Whether Yuzu can get tagged with [circumvention] simply by providing instructions and guidance and all the rest of it is, I think, the core issue in this case,” he continued.

    In a response on the Yuzu Discord, the development team wrote, “We do not know anything other than the public filing, and we are not able to discuss the matter at this time.”

    What About My Backup Copies?

    In its lawsuit, Nintendo argues that “there is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games.” But that statement has a few potential holes that could serve as possible defenses for the emulator maker.

    For one, the US Copyright Office generally allows users to make copies of legitimately purchased software for archival purposes, with a few basic caveats. Accessing such personal archival copies would potentially be a legal use for an emulator like Yuzu.

    Nintendo goes directly after this argument in its lawsuit, arguing that buying a Switch game only means you “have Nintendo’s authorization to play that single copy on an unmodified Nintendo Switch console.” Any other copy is, by definition, an “unauthorized copy,” Nintendo says, even if it’s made by the original purchaser for their own personal use.

    What’s more, Nintendo argues that using Yuzu as a way to play legitimate Switch purchases on another platform (e.g., an Android device or Windows machine) is also forbidden. “Nintendo has the right to decide whether or when to enter the market of games for platforms other than its own console,” the company writes.

    In this, Loiterman thinks Nintendo’s arguments probably go too far. “Nintendo wants to say that the license agreement for all users restricts their use of the game to only run on the Switch,” he told Ars. “That’s problematic because the 37 CFR § 201 includes a number of exceptions and limitations on how far-reaching and applicable licensing terms like that can be.”

    Homebrew and Accessibility

    Yuzu defenders could also point to the emulator’s ability to run a wide variety of homebrew Nintendo Switch games and software, ranging from weather-tracking apps to an obligatory Doom port. Running this software through Yuzu is a legitimate use that doesn’t require breaking Nintendo’s encryption or software copyrights.

    In its lawsuit, though, Nintendo argues that “the vast majority of Yuzu users are using Yuzu to play downloaded pirated games in Yuzu.” For instance, the lawsuit points to data showing that leaked copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were downloaded 1 million times in the week and a half before the game’s release, a time period that also saw “thousands of additional paid members” added to Yuzu’s Patreon. Yuzu is “secondarily liable” for “inducing” this kind of infringement, Nintendo argues.

    Inducement arguments aside, the presence of some legal homebrew uses could help Yuzu here. “We have plenty of objects that can be used in either legal or illegal ways that are not illegal to own or use,” attorney and game industry analyst Mark Methenitis told Ars. “Lockpicks, for example, have perfectly legitimate use cases as well as illegal ones, and we don’t restrict ownership of lockpicks … But these are the balancing acts a finder of fact has to consider in the context of all of the arguments presented.”



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  • Music Piracy Is Back in a Big Way—Especially From YouTube

    Music Piracy Is Back in a Big Way—Especially From YouTube

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    This weekend, dozens of artists are set to descend on Los Angeles for the 66th annual Grammy Awards. Trevor Noah will tell jokes, musicians will get trophies—and somewhere on the internet, someone will be downloading their music for free.

    There were more than 17 billion visits to music piracy websites worldwide last year, a staggering 13 percent increase from 2022, according to research firm Muso. After years of downturn in music piracy brought about by streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, the uptick is somewhat startling. According to Muso’s report, the increase shows “an urgent need for the [industry] to understand the changes continuing to drive consumers toward unlicensed channels.”

    Music piracy had generally been on the decline over the past seven years, in large part because artists and labels stopped offering exclusive album releases to certain music platforms, says Muso CEO Andy Chatterley. Back in 2016, albums like Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Frank Ocean’s Blonde would be released as exclusives on Tidal or Apple Music and then get pirated by folks who didn’t use those services. Following a missive from Universal Music Group CEO Ludcian Grainge decrying the practice, exclusives died down. So did piracy. Now, it’s back in a big way.

    Chatterley says there are multiple factors causing the resurgence, but he suggests that in some cases it’s a matter of people not being able to afford music streaming services. In others it’s a matter of mobile data costs being high in some regions, leading people to download tracks to their phones over Wi-Fi rather than streaming them over a mobile data connection. He points to one specifically surprising stat in Muso’s findings: Some 40 percent of the music piracy the firm tracked went to sites that rip the audio from YouTube videos and turn it into downloadable music files. That represents the largest share of piracy, according to Muso’s data—more than illegal streams, torrents, or other forms of web downloads. “It’s a really significant problem,” Chatterley says.

    When asked about Muso’s findings, YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon noted that as soon as the video-sharing service is alerted to stream-ripping tools, steps are taken to block offending domains and develop technical methods to stop their use. YouTube also has a staff dedicated to sending cease-and-desist notices to those behind such applications. “We invest significant resources in tools to report and manage copyrighted material, while working closely with other industry leaders to set the standard for how tech companies fight piracy,” Malon says. “We remain committed to continuously strengthening these efforts.”

    Muso wouldn’t disclose which ripping sites it tracked for its latest report. Chatterley says this information is being withheld in order to not promote piracy services. The firm also wouldn’t disclose how many downloads the ripping sites were responsible for. To provide context, Chatterley offered up torrent numbers for 2023.

    Take, for example, Taylor Swift. The ubiquitous phenom is up for six Grammys this weekend and, although she didn’t release a new album in 2023, had six of the top 20 top-selling records in the US. Her release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the rerecorded version of her 2014 powerhouse pop record, sold some 2.9 million copies—the biggest-selling album of any year in nearly a decade. That same album was downloaded via torrent more than 275,000 times. (The original 2014 version of the album was torrented 430,077 times.)

    The other albums Swift had on that top-20 list also saw large numbers of torrents. Like 2022’s Midnights. That record was torrented more than 493,000 times last year. In fact, most of Swift’s most popular albums—Speak Now, Red, Folklore, Lover, Evermore—were torrented between 400,000 and 700,000 times. All told, Swift albums were torrented fewer than 5 million times in 2023, which seems like a small figure when you consider that Swift sold 19 million records in the US alone in that time, according to data from Luminate. Then you remember that torrents are the smallest fraction of music piracy worldwide; only about 3 percent of visits to piracy sites worldwide led to someone seeking out a torrent.

    And now that piracy appears to be on the rise—again. It’s been nearly a quarter-century since Napster changed how people acquired music. In that time, scores of options have emerged for how to buy and stream tunes, but snagging them from the internet may never go away.

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