A government program is using demolition and relocation to remake neighborhoods with immigrants, poverty or crime.

Last Thursday, a Danish court sentenced a 24-year old programmer from Silkeborg to 60 days probation for his role in operating the torrent tracker ShareUniversity.

The sentencing is the latest in Denmark following an unprecedented crackdown on local torrent trackers that has already resulted in more than a dozen prosecutions, with more yet to come.

The National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) reports that it’s happy with the conviction. In addition to serving the suspended prison sentence, the man must also pay 20,000 Danish kroner ($2,800) to the Rights Alliance, which represents the copyright holders.

“I am satisfied with the verdict, which rests on a thorough investigative work. The judgment emphasizes that copyright infringement is a crime that is taken seriously by the legal system,” NSK’s prosecutor Jan Østergaard says.

Thus far, the Danish courts have mostly handed down suspended prison sentences, which makes the associated press releases a little repetitive. However, the Rights Alliance , which was a driving force in the early investigations, recently decided to share additional background.

Undercover Operation

Thomas Heldrup, the anti-piracy group’s Head of Content Protection & Enforcement, has been running an undercover operation for more than half a decade. This helped the police to pinpoint many of the targets and also played a role in the most recent prosecution.

“We were undercover at ShareUniversity and based on what we gathered from this work the authorities filed the case which led to last week’s sentence,” Heldrup tells TorrentFreak.

As detailed in the Danish podcast Zetland , it all started when the Rights Alliance went undercover at the private DanishBits tracker in 2016.

Heldrup initially registered as a regular user of the tracker seven years ago. He wasn’t interested in downloading movies or music. Instead, he tried to map and follow the site’s lead figures, with the ultimate goal of identifying the main boss, MrDB.

The undercover operation meticulously followed public discussions, taking notes on the tracker’s key figures. Occasionally, some comments would reveal people’s ages or occupations, but progress was slow. It eventually took a financial problem to really get the ball rolling.

MrDB was particularly cautious and didn’t share personal details. However, when there was an issue with the site’s Bitcoin donations he swiftly put up a new payment option, so users could pay directly in Danish kroner. This patch allowed the lawyer to follow the money, which was routed to a bank in Belize.

From the Caribbean to Africa

While it’s fitting for a pirate to bank in the Caribbean, the paper trail eventually led to the tracker’s downfall. The real breakthrough came when Heldrup’s constant monitoring revealed MrDB’s real name.

It’s not clear where the name surfaced but, according to Zetland’s writeup, it was mentioned during online arguments between Danish trackers, which had a long-running rivalry. That name, combined with the information from Belize, ultimately led to the operator, who was neither in the Caribbean nor in Denmark.

In the fall of 2020, Danish authorities eventually located the then 33-year-old DanishBits operator in Morocco, where he was arrested and eventually extradited to Denmark.

Tracker Domino

The arrest marked the end of the popular tracker and the start of a crackdown, which also hit a rival tracker around the same time. In that investigation, police identified the 69-year-old operator of NordicBits, who was living in Spain.

Under questioning, the NordicBits operator admitted his involvement in the site and agreed to shut it down voluntarily. Danish authorities intended to take the operator to court, but the man was seriously ill and passed away before being prosecuted.

The prosecution of MrDB continued and he eventually received a one-year prison sentence, of which nine months were conditional. Meanwhile, other targets were lining up as well.

After DanishBits and NordicBits shut down, two smaller trackers – Asgaard and ShareUniversity – took over. These sites accepted a lot of new members but also attracted the attention of the Rights Alliance and the police, which kept up the pressure.

With help from undercover work and follow-up investigations from the authorities, the trackers folded after a few weeks , effectively decimating the local torrent tracker scene.

Several people involved with these sites, including uploaders and users, were prosecuted, with many receiving suspended prison sentences.

Undercover Lawyer Speaks

Looking back at the past few years, Thomas Heldrup is proud of what was achieved. While the undercover work was important, the active collaboration between rightsholders and the dedicated IP crime unit of the Danish police, proved to be the key to success.

“Our work usually needs to be backed up with the investigation tools that the police have at their disposal to track and disclose information about the citizens,” Heldrup tells us.

The Right Alliance could have opted to file civil cases, but that wouldn’t have been as successful. The investigative tools of the authorities are broader and the anti-piracy group also believes that it’s more appropriate for the official authorities to bring these cases to justice.

Heldrup was sometimes surprised to see how much personal information staffers and uploaders shared online. At times, they were simply too eager to share, which eventually allowed both Rights Alliance and the police to connect the dots.

“I can say that our undercover work put us in a position to map what profiles were the crucial players in running the sites and where resources at the police were best spent to bring down the sites.

“We spent a long time collecting info that, when looked at as a whole, could lead to the identification of the people who have been arrested in these cases. And yes it did come as a surprise to what extent people are willing to share info about themselves on these platforms,” Heldrup concludes.

—

An overview of the cases prosecuted thus far can be found below. The trial against several alleged operators of the Asgaard tracker is scheduled for February next year. Danish readers can hear more about the undercover operation through the Zetland podcast .

Targets	Service	Date of judgement
ringleader	ShareUniversity	05.10.2023
users and uploaders	DanishBytes, Notor, SuperBits	13.09.2023
users and uploaders	Asgaard	22.06.2023
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	24.04.2023
ringleader(s)	Seedbox	28.02.2023
users and uploaders	DanishBytes	25.11.2022
ringleader(s)	DanishBytes	14.11.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	03.11.2022
users and uploaders	SuperBits / Nielsen Networks	01.09.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.03.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.03.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	04.02.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.06.2021
ringleader(s)	DanishBits	27.04.2021
users and uploaders	DanishBits	23.03.2021
ringleader(s)	Plex-server	03.03.2021
ringleader(s)	NextGen	07.05.2020
users and uploaders	DanishBits	12.02.2020
users and uploaders	DanishBits	25.06.2019
ringleader(s)	Movielocker	01.11.2018

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

A group of Indigenous women in Greenland say Danish doctors inserted intrauterine devices without their consent. They are now seeking damages from the Danish government.

There is little doubt that video and music streaming services have taken the Internet by storm over the past decade.

An entire “on-demand” generation is growing up, with the streaming business model now generating billions of dollars in revenue.

Competing With Piracy

This growth was spurred on by piracy. When Netflix first launched its streaming services, the company openly positioned itself as a piracy competitor. And indeed, in the early years, many casual pirates were drawn to streaming platforms.

In recent years, this early selling point has been pushed into the background. With the launch of many more streaming services targeting the same audience, attractively broad content selections have given way to exclusive releases in a bid to lure customers.

The video streaming wars have reached a point where many people can no longer afford to pay for everything they want to see. Ironically, this drives them back to illegal options such as pirate sites and platforms where hacked accounts are listed for sale.

Streaming Service Reseller Faces Prison

These ‘hacked’ accounts, which belong to third-party customers, are sold through a wide variety of sites. Many people fall for these cheap offers without asking questions. The resellers, however, are not so innocent.

This week, the Danish National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) announced that a 29-year-old man from Odense has been charged with illegally reselling 500,000 leaked login credentials and now faces a potential prison sentence.

A subsection of these accounts are logins for streaming services including HBO Max, Paramount+ and Viaplay. These accounts were sold through a dedicated website at a fraction of the official price.

According to Brian Kaas Borgstrøm, Deputy prosecutor at NSK, the accounts on sale were likely obtained through data leaks.

“It is our opinion that the defendant has used a data leak to obtain the login information of random paying customers at a number of popular streaming services and then sold the information both collectively and individually. This has given buyers the opportunity to abuse the accounts of real customers.”

This doesn’t mean that the mentioned streaming services were compromised. People often use the same credentials across various sites, so hackers can use third-party leaks to hijack streaming accounts.

Not an Incident

The Danish Rights Alliance is pleased with the police action and notes that this isn’t the first time that someone has been caught reselling login credentials.

In July, a 31-year-old man from North Jutland was arrested for a similar offense. He is believed to be part of a bigger group that, in addition to hacked logins, also sold pirate IPTV subscriptions.

“Cases like this help to make visible that criminals are constantly developing new models to illegally make content available for their own profit – regardless of the fact that their crime goes beyond unsuspecting people,” says Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund.

Major Streaming Services Unite

These types of criminals are able to run their profitable businesses because consumers are eager to save on streaming subscription costs. These types of enforcement actions may deter some criminals, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Interestingly, several of the largest streaming services including Netflix, HBO, and Disney launched a new coalition yesterday that has “affordability” high on the agenda.

The “Streaming Innovation Alliance” ( SIA ) conducted a detailed survey which suggests that more than half of all consumers believe that streaming services are too expensive, while 75% indicate that costs are highly important.

This sentiment explains why some consumers resort to illegal options such as piracy and cheap hacked accounts.

Unfortunately, however, the Alliance informs TorrentFreak that it’s not their goal to make services cheaper. Instead, it’s an effort to push back against taxes and costly regulations that could make the services even more expensive.

Affordability as a piracy driver is not on the agenda yet. That’s a shame perhaps, as the Alliance could be a great way to find creative solutions to make progress on the cost front in other ways.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In a major review of the language, ‘career women’ are now paired with ‘career men’ and manslaughter is a linguistic offence

The Danish language does not officially carry a male equivalent for the (often pejorative) term “career woman” or a female equivalent for the male-gendered noun “financier”.

But after a major review of all keywords ending in - mand (man), - kvinde (woman) and - person (person), soon the terms karrieremand (career man) and finanskvinde (female financier) – as well as many new gender-neutral terms – will officially join the ranks of the Danish spelling dictionary, the Retskrivningsordbogen .

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Danish law enforcement authorities have worked hard to shut down the thriving local torrent tracker scene.

It started in September and October 2020 when DanishBits and NordicBits went offline after their alleged operators were identified and arrested.

The shutdown of these sites was a major blow to the local piracy ecosystem, but it didn’t take long before other sites stepped up. Both Asgaard and ShareUniversity opened their doors to new members, resulting in explosive growth.

The difference in this instance, however, was that the enforcement authorities kept up the pressure. Helped by local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance , Danish police swiftly put a target on these growing sites, which soon suffered the same fate.

This type of law enforcement action against private torrent trackers is rare, but rightsholders believe that it was essential to ensure the greatest impact on Danes’ file-sharing habits. The authorities seem to agree as their actions weren’t just limited to pulling the plug; they were followed up by prosecutions.

Court Sentences ‘Serial Infringer’

Over the past years, the Danish torrent crackdown has resulted in more than a dozen convictions. This includes jail sentences, most of which are conditional. Last week, another one was added to this still-growing list.

A Danish court sentenced a 37-year-old man from Jylland to a 60-day suspended sentence, for uploading more than a thousand works. These pirated releases were shared through multiple torrent trackers including DanishBytes, SuperBits and NorTor.

In addition to the prison sentence the man, who is described as a ‘serial infringer’, also agreed to pay 10,000 Danish kroner (~$1,500) in damages to the Rights Alliance.

The National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) reports that at least 242 works were shared on SuperBits and NorTor between December 2020 and February 2021. From March 2021 to March 2023, the same man downloaded 676 and uploaded 356 pirated files on DanishBytes.

Deterring Prospective Pirates

According to Jan Østergaard, Special prosecutor at NSK, the conviction once again sends a clear message to site operators and users that copyright infringement can result in serious sentences.

“I am pleased with the sentence, which is based on solid investigative work. The verdict sends a clear signal to all file sharers that illegal sharing of films, music and other copyright protected material can have serious consequences,” Østergaard notes .

Rights Alliance CEO Maria Fredenslund is also pleased with the outcome and notes that these convictions have a deterrent effect.

“High penalties have a preventive effect on illegal file sharing, and therefore we are pleased that the case can contribute positively to protecting content in the future,” she says .

More to Come

Since the start of the crackdown at the end of 2020, thirteen cases involving operators and users of torrent trackers such as Asgaard, DanishBytes, Notor and SuperBits, have resulted in successful convictions.

These cases include six against the ringleaders of the Asgaard tracker. The prosecution of the seventh and final operator of the defunct torrent site is more complex and that trial is scheduled to take place in February 2024.

Later this month, an alleged operator of the ShareUniversity tracker also goes on trial, so the courts are certainly not done with these cases just yet.

—

An overview of several of the most recent piracy-related convictions in Denmark, provided by Rights Alliance, is listed below.

Targets	Service	Date of judgement
users and uploaders	DanishBytes, Notor, SuperBits	13.09.2023
users and uploaders	Asgaard	22.06.2023
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	24.04.2023
ringleader(s)	Seedbox	28.02.2023
users and uploaders	DanishBytes	25.11.2022
ringleader(s)	DanishBytes	14.11.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	03.11.2022
users and uploaders	SuperBits / Nielsen Networks	01.09.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.03.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.03.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	04.02.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.06.2021
ringleader(s)	DanishBits	27.04.2021
users and uploaders	DanishBits	23.03.2021
ringleader(s)	Plex-server	03.03.2021
ringleader(s)	NextGen	07.05.2020
users and uploaders	DanishBits	12.02.2020
users and uploaders	DanishBits	25.06.2019
ringleader(s)	Movielocker	01.11.2018

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Ukrainian president also meets leaders of Serbia and Croatia in bid to broaden support base

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s high-speed tour of Europe’s smaller countries continued in Athens on Tuesday, where he obtained further military and diplomatic support after securing a long-awaited commitment to receive F-16s at the weekend.

The Ukrainian president met Serbia’s president and Croatia’s prime minister at a Balkans summit in the Greek capital, while a day earlier Greece’s prime minister had said his country would help train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 jets.

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Today’s youth is growing up in an era where all knowledge and information is literally at their fingertips.

The internet is a great source of knowledge, entertainment, and a key tool for social interactions. However, it also comes with many darker sides, although kids won’t always recognize the dangers.

In Denmark, local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has repeatedly warned that today’s youth should be properly educated when it comes to copyright and piracy. A few weeks ago, the group launched a dedicated piracy panel for teens, hoping to learn more about their bad online habits.

By understanding the motivations of today’s youth, the anti-piracy group hopes to be in a better position to influence their behavior. That’s not the only effort on this front; Rights Alliance also helped to create a new curriculum for high schoolers.

Are You a Thief?

The new course material titled “ Are You a Thief ” aims to allow students between the ages of 13 and 16 to investigate their own habits, while also learning about the law and the potential risks they face.

“Students must learn about copyright and relate this to the streaming culture they are a part of. This includes knowledge of what rules and laws are broken when you misuse and spread creative content, as well as what personal and societal consequences you risk with illegal streaming,” Rights Alliance notes.

The study material is targeted at social studies students. It was created in cooperation with publisher Gyldendal, which operates the educational platform, and is supported by the Danish Ministry of Culture.

It’s Stealing

Whether the course will have the desired effect remains to be seen but there’s plenty of room for improvement. According to a recent survey, nearly a third of all Danes between the age of 15-29 admitted to streaming or downloading pirated content .

The course material shows video footage of creators who were harmed by online piracy and stresses that piracy breaks the law.

“[Piracy] actually amounts to stealing. It is theft directly from the people who make a living from producing TV, films, series and sporting events – and every time you break the copyright law,” the course website notes.

“In the real world, we learn to control desire, postpone needs, and resist temptation. This lesson also applies to the digital world. Stealing is wrong and punishable,” it adds.

The last sentence suggests that, in some cases, pirates can get content sooner than their paying counterparts. This availability issue is often seen as a main driver of piracy. While improvements can be made on the supply side, the course urges teens to postpone their needs instead.

Malware

In addition to the effect piracy has on others, the curriculum also highlights that pirates put themselves at risk. Pirate sites don’t adhere to privacy regulations and, on some scammy pirate sites, there’s a higher risk of running into malware.

When a pirate site doesn’t charge anything, it will likely make money in other ways. According to the course material, hackers and criminals are particularly keen on shipping malware.

The curriculum includes a quote from Jens Myrup Pedersen, professor of cyber security at Aalborg University, who notes that malware can lead to all sorts of trouble.

“It can be abused in countless ways. Hackers can extort money from you, redirect your computer so that you constantly end up on other illegal websites, and monitor everything you type on your keyboard,” Pedersen warns.

The course material isn’t mandatory but the creators offer it for free, so schools can offer it to their students if they wish. If everything goes well, Rights Alliance and its partners hope to see the piracy rate drop over time.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Three years ago, Danish law enforcement carried out a series of raids and arrests , effectively dismantling several popular torrent trackers.

These actions were supported by the local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance , which eventually declared victory , noting that all notable pirate sites with Danish roots had reportedly shut down.

Such statements can be dangerous since pirates can be quite resilient, but there is no doubt that the law enforcement actions and subsequence convictions left a mark. So does that mean online piracy lost its appeal too? According to a recent survey, that isn’t the case.

Study: Pirates are Stubborn

The Danish Chamber of Commerce conducts a bi-annual study to track the piracy habits of locals. The most recent results for 2022 were just released and show that illegal streaming and downloading remain prevalent.

Roughly a third of the respondents (33%) admit to having downloaded or streamed something in the past and 15% did so over the past year. The last figure is up from 12% during the previous survey in 2020, and in 2018 it was only 10%.

These figures suggest that, if anything, the number of people who download or stream pirated content is increasing. It should be noted, however, that in the most recent version, people between the ages of 15 and 17 were included too, while earlier samples started at 18 years.

Age certainly matters when it comes to online piracy. Younger people typically pirate more and that’s also reflected in the Danish survey.

56% of Respondents Have Piracy Experience

More than half (56%) of the 15-29 year-olds admit they have downloaded or streamed pirated content in the past. For the 30-39 year-olds, this figure is still relatively high at 52%, but in the higher 50-74 year category, it drops to just 14%.

Younger Danes don’t just pirate more than their older counterparts, piracy prevalence also grows within the group. In 2020, fewer young Danes said they had downloaded or streamed pirated content.

There are also substantial differences between men and women. Men are twice as likely to have pirated something over the past year than women. For some categories, the difference is even more pronounced. For example, men are five times more likely to pirate music.

Social Media

In recent years, the authorities have managed to crack down on local file-sharing communities but that ‘distribution’ role now seems to have shifted to social media platforms.

“In the last two years, police have handed out more [file-sharing] sanctions and investigated more in the area. However, the consequence has been that Danish pirates have moved their illegal behavior on the internet to a new platform, social media,” the survey notes.

Of the 15% who admit to having pirated something over the past year, more than half used social media. YouTube is the most cited piracy gateway, followed by Facebook, TikTok, messenger services, Instagram, and Snapchat. As expected, the use of social media is most prevalent in the youngest age cohort.

Commenting on these findings, Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund calls on social media platforms to take more responsibility, or else.

“Now that the police’s [Special Crime Unit] has stopped the dedicated Danish file-sharing services, it is a real shame that illegal consumption is moving to legal social media,” Fredenslund says.

“This calls for increased efforts from these platforms both in terms of informing users and stopping the distribution of illegal content. It requires the platforms to take an active role, and if there are platforms that do not live up to that responsibility, it may be necessary to involve the authorities.”

You Wouldn’t Steal…

Casper Klynge, Deputy Director of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, notes that streaming piracy presents a huge problem. He believes that it deserves more attention from the authorities, as the unbridled ‘stealing’ threatens the production of future content.

“Streaming digital content without paying for it is basically the same as walking past a store and grabbing items to take home without paying for them,” Klynge says.

This isn’t the first time that piracy is compared to stealing. Interestingly, however, the Chamber of Commerce study shows that many people do see a difference between piracy and shoplifting.

Of all people who participated in the survey, 89% believe that it’s unacceptable to steal candy from a store, while ‘only’ 63% see sharing digital content without permission from rightsholders as unacceptable.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.