The USTR releases its "notorious markets" list, with several familiar names, but also notable absences, including Megaupload, Demonoid and Chinese website Taobao
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has released its annual "notorious" markets list, which lists Internet and physical locations where the office believes piracy and counterfeiting are prevalent.
Among those listed include several Internet websites, mostly BitTorrent indexers and cyberlocker storage websites.
As expected, BitTorrent indexers The Pirate Bay and isoHunt both made the list, along with KickassTorrents, and Torrentz.
Notorious cyberlockers include Rapidgator, Putlocker and the Ukraine based Ex.ua. The most notable change from this list is the removal of Megaupload, after the file storage website was shuttered by the government at the start of the year.
Once again, Russian's version of Facebook, vKontakte, remains on the list, with the Vietnamese social media site Zing.Vn also included.
For physical markets, several marketplaces from China, Ecuador, Paraguay, Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Mexico, Thailand and Pakistan are all included.
The USTR notes that there have also been several positive developments in the last year. Other than the notable Megaupload shutdown, Chinese buying and selling website Taobao and search engine Sogou has been removed from the list because the USTR notes that the website has "undertaken notable efforts" to "clean up its site". The USTR also noted the closures of btjunkie and Demonoid as successes, the latter due to pressure being placed on the Mexican government to take action against the popular private BitTorrent indexer.
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