The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

 

These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

 

This week we have two new entries on the list. “Eternals” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 17 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Eternals	6.6 / trailer
2	(1)	Ghostbusters: Afterlife	7.6 / trailer
3	(2)	The Matrix Resurrections	5.8 / trailer
4	(3)	Sing 2	7.6 / trailer
5	(…)	Hotel Transylvania: Transformania	6.1 / trailer
6	(4)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	9.0 / trailer
7	(5)	Venom: Let There Be Carnage	6.1 / trailer
8	(7)	Dune	8.3 / trailer
9	(6)	No Time to Die	7.5 / trailer
10	(9)	Don’t Look Up	7.3 / trailer

 

 

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

 

Amidst growing concerns surrounding online privacy and security, VPN services have become increasingly popular in recent years.

 

Millions of people use VPNs to stay secure and to prevent outsiders from tracking their online activities. As with regular Internet providers, a subsection of these subscribers may be engaged in piracy activities.

 

Over the past few years we have seen copyright holders take several ISPs to court, accusing them of failing to disconnect repeat copyright infringers. These lawsuits have expanded recently, with VPN providers and hosting companies as the main targets.

 

The VPN lawsuits are filed by a group of independent movies companies that previously went after piracy sites and apps. They include the makers of films such as The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Dallas Buyers Club, and London Has Fallen.

Filmmakers sued VPN Unlimited

In one of these cases, the filmmakers accused VPN Unlimited’s company KeepSolid Inc. of being involved in widespread copyright infringement. The company allegedly ‘encouraged’ subscribers to use pirate sites and did nothing to stop infringing traffic.

 

“Despite Defendant’s knowledge that their subscribers are using their service to engage in widescale copyright infringements, Defendants failed to take reasonable steps to minimize the infringing capabilities of their service,” the complaint read.

 

Most VPNs can’t track the online activities of subscribers and the filmmakers believe that VPN Unlimited and other providers actively promoted their services to online pirates. For example, by referencing known pirate sites.

 

“Defendant KeepSolid encourages its users to access torrent sites including the Pirate Bay,” the complaint read, showing a screenshot from the VPN’s help section, which remains online today.

Confidential Settlement

Instead of fighting the case on its merits, both parties have agreed to settle the case behind closed doors. Last week, they informed the Virginia federal court that an agreement had been reached. As part of this settlement, all claims against VPN Unlimited were dismissed.

 

The full details of the settlement agreement are confidential. Both parties agreed to cover their own costs but it’s unknown whether any monetary damages are involved. What is clear is that, going forward, VPN Unlimited will restrict torrent traffic on its U.S. servers.

 

“Pursuant to the confidential settlement agreement, Plaintiffs have requested and Defendant KeepSolid has agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to block BitTorrent traffic,” the joint dismissal stipulation reads.

 

As it reads, this measure applies to BitTorrent traffic as a broad category. That includes both pirated content and lawful torrent transfers. In addition, VPN Unlimited will also take more targeted measures to stop traffic to torrent sites.

Blocking Torrent sites

VPN Unlimited has agreed to block access to several pirate sites. These include YTS, The Pirate Bay, RARBG, 1337x, and several proxies. These measures are again limited to U.S.-based VPN servers. Popcorn-time.tw is also on the blocklist, but this Popcorn Time fork has already shut down.

 

Needless to say, these are far-reaching measures but VPN Unlimited is not the first company to agree to a blocking arrangement in the United States. Hosting provider SharkTech signed a similar settlement deal a few weeks ago and VPN.ht also agreed to block torrent traffic on US servers.

 

VPN provider Surfshark also signed a confidential settlement with the filmmakers previously, but the company assured us that it does not block any websites on its network.

 

With the settlement, the lawsuit against VPN Unlimited is over. However, the filmmakers’ claims against several other VPN services and hosting companies such as Leaseweb, ExpressVPN, and ZenMate remain unresolved.

 

—

 

A copy of the joint stipulation for dismissal between the filmmakers and VPN Unlimited, which was signed off by the court last week, is available here (pdf)

 

It’s perfectly understandable that copyright holders don’t want pirated copies of their work circulating online.

 

Most companies deal with this problem by sending DMCA takedown requests. These notices are often sent to sites and services that host content, but linking sites and search engines receive them as well.

 

Google search, for example, has processed takedown notices for more than 5 billion URLs over the past few years. Most of the reported links are indeed problematic but copyright holders continue to make glaring errors as well.

Spider-Man Leak

This week we spotted a problematic takedown request sent by anti-piracy group 3ANTS on behalf of Columbia Pictures. The notice is supposed to flag pirated copies of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” but it also targets our recent news coverage of the film in question.

 

If we wanted to stir up some controversy we could argue that the Hollywood studio is removing news articles to make sure that people don’t know that the film leaked. However, we’re pretty sure that this is ‘simply’ an error.

 

As it turns out, we’re not the only news site to be targeted. The takedown notice also lists articles from Syfy, RollingStone, Radio Times, Collider, and The Free Press Journal, among others. None of these articles are even remotely infringing.

Sony Pictures

And things get even more bizarre. The takedown notice also lists the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” page of the official Spanish Sony Pictures website. Needless to say, Sony doesn’t host any pirated content.

 

We fully understand that people can make mistakes, but that might not be the problem here. If a person sent these notices it would have been easy to spot the errors. It wouldn’t surprise us if the errors above were actually made by automated scripts.

 

It often takes humans to spot these errors and hold the senders accountable and that’s exactly what we’re doing here. If another human could then adjust the automated takedown tools to prevent this from happening again in the future, all will be good.

Good and Bad News

This isn’t the first time that we have been targeted by an inaccurate takedown request, it has happened well over a hundred times now. Luckily there is a silver lining, as Google is quite good at spotting these.

 

The same is true for the “Spider-Man” mistakes we pointed out in this article. Most news articles are still in Google’s index and the same is true for Sony Pictures’ site.

 

Not all sites were that lucky though. The Free Press Journal’s article on the cryptocurrency miner that was found in some illegal downloads is no longer in Google’s search results, and the same is true for an article published by the Peruvian news site Depor.

 

While pirate sites offering mainstream movies and TV shows regularly pull in millions of visits every month, just a few years ago it would’ve been unthinkable that those operating in niches could become equally ranked.

 

These days, however, sites offering Japanese comics and animation are immensely popular with ever-increasing audiences in the West, making some manga and anime sites just as highly visited as their ‘mainstream’ content counterparts.

NyaHentai.com – One of the Large Players

NyaHentai.com is a particularly popular platform. Specializing in the ‘hentai’ genre (adult content with often extraordinary themes), the site has built up a huge audience which, according to SimilarWeb stats, is currently topping 24 million visits per month.

 

Indeed, NyaHentai is so popular that it is currently the 75th most popular site in Japan, period, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed by copyright holders. At the time of writing, Google reports that more than 7,260 copyright holders have filed complaints requesting the removal of more than 3 million URLs from search results.

 

While only 53% of those actually resulted in a URL removal, that’s still around 1.6 million delisted URLs. The site is still going strong of course but there is at least one party trying to get closer to its operators.

Complaints Filed With Cloudflare

Late December, Japanese manga artist Maki Murakami filed DMCA complaints with Cloudflare, alleging that a number of pirate sites were infringing her copyrights. The complaints covered 39 URLs, 8 of which were listed against the nyahentai.com domain and the remainder against several other allegedly-infringing platforms.

 

“We represent Maki Murakami, a resident of Japan and the author of the copyrighted works..,” the complaint begins.

 

“It has recently come to our client’s attention that certain user of your services has unlawfully published and posted certain contents on their websites […]. We demand that you immediately disable access to the Infringing Work and cease any use, reproduction, and distribution of the Original Work,” the complaint to Cloudflare adds.

 

Tests this week reveal that some of the works have indeed been removed, including all of the titles listed on NyaHentai. However, it appears that Murakami’s legal team intends to take things a bit further.

DMCA Subpoena Seeks Operators’ Identities

Following up on the DMCA complaint to Cloudflare, the artist’s legal team filed an application for a DMCA subpoena. It seeks to compel Cloudflare to hand over information that could help to identify the operator(s) of NyaHentai, presumably to enable further legal action. The information sought is comprehensive.

 

(i)ncluding but not limited to billing or administrative records that prove the following information used by each of the Infringers, along with time-stamp, from the time of user registration and at the time each of the Infringing Work was uploaded by the Infringers on their websites: name(s); last known address(es); last known telephone and/or cell phone number(s); any and all email address(es); account number(s); billing information (including, but not limited to, names, telephone number(s), and mailing and billing address(es) of each of all of the payment methods (including, but not limited to, credit cards, bank accounts, and any online payments system)); hosting provider(s); server(s); any other contact information; and any and all logs of IP address(es).

Same Information Requested Against Other Sites

In addition to nyahentai.com, the DMCA subpoena to Cloudflare also requires the service to hand over the same information for several other sites.

 

Erocool.net is the most popular with around 1.67 million visits per month, closely followed by ahentai.top with 1.6 million. The remaining pair (hentaidock.com and doghentai.com) have much lower levels of traffic, with around 250K to 300K visits per month each.

 

What will happen next is open to question. While Cloudflare can sometimes hand over useful user information, it is common for website operators to use its services after submitting false registration details. This can hinder investigations but, on occasion, useful intelligence can be recovered.

 

Whether this has anything to do with doghentai.com currently being down is unknown.

 

The DMCA complaint and DMCA subpoena can be found here and here (pdf)

 

In October 2020, the RIAA caused outrage by taking down YouTube-ripping tool youtube-dl from GitHub.

 

The RIAA cited the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, claiming that the tool could be used to download their artists’ musical works from YouTube, in breach of copyright.

 

With little supporting case law in the United States, the RIAA referenced a decision from the Hamburg Regional Court in a similar case, which found that YouTube’s “rolling cipher” should be considered an effective technological protection measure under EU law. Any attempt to circumvent it, therefore, would amount to infringement.

 

Nevertheless, GitHub later restored the software and placed $1m in a takedown defense fund.

Threats Were Also Sent to Others

While the RIAA’s effort to take down youtube-dl from GitHub grabbed all the headlines, moves had already been underway weeks before that in Germany. Law firm Rasch works with several major music industry players and it was on their behalf that cease-and-desist orders were sent to local hosting service Uberspace.

 

The RIAA complained that the company was hosting the official youtube-dl website although the tool itself was hosted elsewhere.

 

“The software itself wasn’t hosted on our systems anyway so, to be honest, I felt it to be quite ridiculous to involve us in this issue anyway – a lawyer specializing in IT laws should know better,” Jonas Pasche from Uberspace said at the time.

Now Comes a Lawsuit

In emailed correspondence today Uberspace informed TorrentFreak that, following the cease-and-desist in October 2020, three major music labels are now suing the company in Germany.

 

In their complaint, Sony Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music broadly maintain the framework outlined in their earlier cease-and-desist notice (pdf, via NetzPolitik), which referenced the decision handed down by the Hamburg Regional Court via a preliminary injunction in another case in 2017.

 

According to the labels, youtube-dl poses a risk to their business and enables users to download their artists’ copyrighted works by circumventing YouTube’s technical measures. As a result, Uberspace should not be playing a part in the tool’s operations by hosting its website if it does not wish to find itself liable too.

Does The Lawsuit Have Legs and What’s its Purpose?

“We don’t think the suit is justified,” says Uberspace chief Jonas Pasche in comments to TorrentFreak.

 

“YouTube has measures to prevent users from downloading specific content, which they make use of for YouTube Movies and Music: DRM. They don’t use that technology here, enabling a download rather trivially. One may view youtube-dl as just a specialized browser, and you wouldn’t ban Firefox just because you can use it to access music videos on YouTube.”

 

According to an Uberspace lawyer, the aim of the lawsuit is to achieve some kind of precedent or “fundamental judgment”. Success could mean that other companies could be obliged to take action in similarly controversial legal situations.

 

And the alleged illegality of youtube-dl is indeed controversial. While YouTube’s terms of service generally disallow downloading, in Germany there is the right to make a private copy, with local rights group GEMA collecting fees to compensate for just that. Equally, when users upload content to YouTube under a Creative Commons license, for example, they agree to others in the community making use of that content.

 

“Even if YouTube doesn’t provide video download functionality right out of the box, the videos are not provided with copy protection,” says former EU MP Julia Reda from the Society for Freedom Rights (GFF) to NetzPolitik.

 

“Not only does YouTube pay license fees for music, we all pay fees for the right to private copying in the form of the device fee, which is levied with every purchase of smartphones or storage media,” says Reda.

 

“Despite this double payment, Sony, Universal and Warner Music want to prevent us from exercising our right to private copying by saving YouTube videos locally on the hard drive.”

 

The question of whether YouTube’s “rolling cipher” is (or is not) a technical protection measure is currently the hot and recurring topic in a lawsuit filed by YouTube-ripping site Yout.com against the RIAA in the United States. After more than a year, the warring factions are no closer to an agreement.

 

Three years ago, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels.

 

A Virginia jury held Cox liable for pirating subscribers because it failed to terminate accounts after repeated accusations, ordering the company to pay $1 billion in damages.

 

This landmark ruling is currently under appeal but Cox also discovered new information that could turn the initial verdict on its head. A few months ago the ISP stated that the music companies concealed important evidence and it now asks the Virginia federal court to review these findings.

Doubts About Piracy Evidence

The new information centers around the copyright infringement notices that were sent by MarkMonitor, the anti-piracy outfit that tracked files downloaded by BitTorrent pirates. To confirm that these files were indeed infringing, they were downloaded and verified by Audible Magic’s fingerprinting technology.

 

Cox has always had doubts about these notices. Before and during the trial, it argued that the underlying evidence was created after the fact. As such, it could be inadmissible. However, the music companies successfully denied that this was not the case.

 

During the jury trial, the music companies presented a hard drive that contained the files, suggesting that they were the original songs that were pirated between 2012 and 2014. This evidence was central to prove direct copyright infringement.

‘Lies and Serious Misconduct’

This eventually resulted in the $1 billion verdict. However, according to Cox, this verdict is based on lies and tainted by serious misconduct.

 

Relying on information that surfaced in a separate lawsuit the music companies filed against Charter, Cox is now convinced that the hard drive evidence was indeed recreated at a later date.

 

This information wasn’t disclosed at trial and Cox accuses the music companies of misrepresenting key evidence and misleading the jury. As such, it has asked the Virginia federal court for relief of judgment, with $1 billion on the line.

 

“As is now clear, evidence produced over Plaintiffs’ objection in their similar litigation against another ISP, Charter Communications, confirms that the unprecedented judgment in this case was based on evidence that was created years after the alleged infringement occurred,” Cox writes.

‘Created After the Fact’

Cox points out that the new revelations show that MarkMonitor compiled the hard drive of the allegedly “infringing” files in 2016, two years after the claim period. These files were allegedly downloaded and verified in 2016, after which the evidence was destroyed.

 

This information was concealed from Cox during the trial and the ISP argues that it would have crippled the record labels’ case.

 

“The materiality of these misrepresentations and the prejudice to Cox could not be clearer: they were intended to — and did — fend off well-founded challenges to the admissibility of key pieces of evidence, the exclusion of which would have crippled Plaintiffs’ case.

 

“The bottom line is that Plaintiffs lied. They lied to Cox; they lied to the Court; and they lied to the jury. And they rode those lies to a $1 billion judgment,” Cox adds.

 

Cox asks the federal court to indicate that it’s inclined to grant the motion for relief. If that’s the case, the ISP will ask the appeal court to send the case back to the district court so the issue can be resolved there.

 

At the time of writing the music companies have yet to respond to Cox’s allegations. They have roughly a month to do so and will likely contest the motion.

 

—

 

A copy of Cox’s motion for relief from the judgment is available here (pdf)

 

An interesting lawsuit filed in a Texas court during the summer last year saw DISH Network and Sling TV partner up to sue the people behind SportsBay.org, SportsBay.tv, Live-NBA.stream, and Freefeds.com.

 

Unlike lawsuits against regular pirate IPTV providers, the platforms were alleged to have circumvented the DRM technologies deployed by Sling TV’s streaming system (Widevine, Fairplay, and PlayReady) in order to provide their users with Sling programming, directly from Sling’s servers, for free.

 

DISH provided considerable detail on how the operation worked while alleging willful violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions and claiming considerable sums in damages.

 

Sometime in September 2021, all of the sites went offline and still haven’t resurfaced, leaving millions of users high and dry. The reasons for the disappearances haven’t been confirmed but DISH had been granted permission to subpoena a number of major service providers to further its case.

Subpoenas Target Major Online Service Providers

The targets of the subpoenas included domain registrar Namecheap (plus domain protection service WhoisGuard), Tucows, Cloudflare, Digital Ocean, Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

 

Namecheap was asked to hand over information related to Namecheap or WhoisGuard accounts associated with sportsbay.org, live-nba.stream, freefeds.com, and the IP address 198.54.117.210, from May 2018 through August 3, 2020.

 

This included documents sufficient to identify the full name and contact information (including street addresses, web addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers) for the person that registered each account, plus documents submitted in order to create or make changes to each account. The subpoena also requested the handover of detailed payment information.

 

A similar subpoena requesting almost the same information was filed with domain company Tucows and another with Cloudflare, the latter also containing a demand to identify the names of the hosting companies connected with the four domains.

 

Highlighting a specific server IP address (159.65.35.50), a subpoena sent to Digital Ocean requested the handover of contact, payment and user IP address information, plus all communications sent or received to the accounts.

 

Google was sent a demand to hand over information related to a specific Google Analytics account including names, addresses and contact records, plus all IP address logs and communications sent to or received from related accounts. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were ordered to hand over all identifying information they hold on the sites’ social media accounts and it appears other providers were required to hand over information too.

Subpoenas Enable Plaintiffs to Name Defendants

With DISH and Sling apparently leaving no stone unturned, it seemed almost inevitable that one or more of the subpoenas would lead to the identities of one or more of the previously unnamed defendants. That now appears to be the case.

 

In a first amended complaint filed this week, the plaintiffs identify two men – Juan Barcan and Juan Nahuel Pereyra, both residents of Argentina.

 

“Defendant Juan Barcan is an individual residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina that owned and operated the Live-nba.stream, Freefeds.com, Sportsbay.org, and Sportsbay.tv domains and websites,” the complaint reads

 

“Barcan used his PayPal account to make payments to domain registrar Namecheap and GitHub for the Sportsbay Websites. Barcan operated the Sportsbay Websites with CloudFlare, GitHub, and Google accounts.”

 

“Defendant Juan Nahuel Pereyra is an individual residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina that owned and operated the Live-nba.stream, Freefeds.com, Sportsbay.org, and Sportsbay.tv domains and websites,” it continues.

 

“Pereyra used his PayPal account to make payments to domain registrar Namecheap for the Sportsbay Websites. Pereyra operated the Sportsbay Websites with CloudFlare and Google accounts.”

 

The amended complaint further notes that all of the ‘SportsBay websites’ had similarities among their domain registrars and service providers, and each deployed Cloudflare as a reverse proxy, pass-through security service. According to the plaintiffs, all four domains used the same Google Analytics ID (UA-187547947) which is also referenced on a number of other defunct streaming portals not mentioned in the complaint.

 

Finally, after repeating their calls for damages, DISH and Sling also call for a permanent injunction to prevent the defendants from infringing their rights moving forward, including by circumventing DRM or any other technological protection measures that control access to Sling programming.

 

The amended complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

Copyright holders have tried a variety of measures to curb copyright infringement over the years, with varying levels of success.

 

Site blocking has emerged as one of the preferred solutions. While these measures are not foolproof, the general idea is that they pose a large enough hurdle for casual pirates to choose legal options instead.

 

This strategy has been rolled out in dozens of countries. Backed by governments or court orders, large Internet providers are required to block The Pirate Bay and other ‘infringing’ domains in the UK, India, Australia, Brazil, Japan and elsewhere.

 

These blocking orders are typically limited to ISPs, so it’s still possible that people are directed to infringing sites through other means. This includes search engines, such as Google, which continue to index these domains.

 

The blockades prevent people from easily accessing these sites. Nevertheless, some copyright holders suggested removing these domains from search engines as well, which Google repeatedly refused to do. According to the company, this would prove counterproductive and lead to overbroad censorship.

Google Started Removing ‘Pirate’ Site Domains

Over the past few months, this stance appears to have changed. A few weeks ago we reported that Google had completely removed several Pirate Bay domains from its search results following a request from anti-piracy group BREIN.

 

In March of 2021, BREIN sent Google a copy of a Dutch court order which compelled local ISPs to block these domains. In response, Google decided to follow suit, even though it wasn’t mentioned in the court order.

 

Google didn’t respond to our request for comment but BREIN informed us that it certainly made sense for the search engine to comply. Otherwise, BREIN would probably have demanded a similar measure in court, based on the ISP order.

 

As far as we know, this was the first time that Google had voluntarily complied with a pirate site blocking order. However, it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

 

This week we stumbled on several other requests which resulted in the removal of Pirate Bay domains. Not just that, several other pirate sites are affected as well. What all these requests have in common is that they refer to an existing ISP blocking order that doesn’t directly involve Google.

Domain Removals Spread to Norway, Brazil and France

In Norway, Google has removed the results of several pirate site domains from search results after the Motion Picture Association alerted the company to ISP blocking orders, which were first issued in 2015.

 

The list of domains includes The Pirate Bay and several mirror sites, as well as ExtraTorrent, and Movie4k domains. These domain names were indeed removed in recent weeks.

 

The same is true in France where The Pirate Bay, Zone-telechargement, Oxtorrent, Cpasbien, and several other domains were also deindexed. This is again in response to an older ISP blocking order, which was sent to Google by French music industry group SCPP.

 

In Brazil, several pirate site domains were removed as well. This request came from Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and does specifically name Google. In addition to more than 200 pirate site domains, the blocking order also covers dozens of piracy-related apps in the Play Store.

UK and Sweden Also Request Domain Removals

Finding these orders in the Lumen database is not easy so it’s possible that there are more. What we know for sure is that new requests continued to come in over the past few weeks.

 

On January 1st, a Swedish law firm acting on behalf of several Hollywood studios forwarded a local ISP blocking order to Google. This notice covers The Pirate Bay and many of its proxies. However, at the time of writing these are still indexed by the search engine.

 

The same is true in the UK where the entertainment industry law firm Wiggin sent 15 older ISP blocking orders to Google. This request, which lists 198 domains in total, was also sent last month and the domains haven’t been blocked yet.

SOPA Anniversary

In a way, it’s fitting that we post this article a few years before the tenth ‘anniversary’ of the SOPA protests. At the time, millions of people were up in arms because search engines could be forced to remove infringing domain names.

 

Google was one of the leading opposition forces and “censored” its logo in protest. “Tell Congress. Please don’t censor the web,” the search giant wrote.

 

Other heavyweights also chimed in, using the same censorship terminology. This included Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet.

 

“Relative to the questionable efficacy of this proposed remedy, requiring search engines to delete a domain name begins a worldwide arms race of unprecedented ‘censorship’ of the Web,” Cerf wrote at the time.

 

Today, there is little outrage. Our previous coverage of Google’s Pirate Bay removals in the Netherlands hardly went noticed. This could in part be because the U.S. is not affected, at least not yet.

 

Or perhaps times have changed? Google seems to think so…

 

The Hollywood studios of the Motion Picture Association are certainly not averse to filing copyright infringement lawsuits against pirate sites. Sometimes, however, it takes them a long time to do so.

 

PrimeWire, a site that has been around in various forms for at least eight years, had to wait until last December to find out it had been targeted by Paramount, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Disney and Netflix in the United States.

 

But with the ante upped, would the site cave under pressure or come out fighting?

PrimeWire Chooses Not To Fight Conventionally

Perhaps the most obvious response to a lawsuit is for the defendant to file an answer to the complaint. That hasn’t happened yet and may never, so the legal process in the United States is probably set to become a one-sided affair. The studios don’t appear to know the identity of the PrimeWire operators so while winning damages is likely, recovering them won’t be as straightforward.

 

However, there are other issues at play too, such as the preliminary injunction handed down by a California court this week. That requires domain name registrars and registries API Gmbh, Gandi SAS, Namecheap, Inc., Nic AG, SWITCH, and Afilias, Inc., to freeze and disable three active PrimeWire domains.

 

That is likely to happen very soon and it is against these measures PrimeWire is preparing to fight.

Is PrimeWire Down?

At the time of writing PrimeWire is still accessible via primewire.li, primewire.ag and primewire.vc but that is likely to change very soon when the registries and registrars take action. The disabling of those domains will mean that site access will be limited but it appears that news has already reached PrimeWire.

 

A few hours ago a new banner appeared on the streaming portal. In an apparent effort not to spook users it makes no mention of the live lawsuit. Instead, it publicizes a new domain that will provide information to counter any domain issues.

PrimeWireStatus Serves Two Purposes

The primewirestatus.org domain was registered on January 11, 2022, and claims it has nothing to do with the main PrimeWire operation.

 

“PrimeWireStatus.org is an independently run informational website that is not affiliated with any other website or service. PrimeWireStatus.org does not promote or provide any hyperlinks to any other website. The sole purpose of PrimeWireStatus.org is to relay signed PGP messages that have been sent to us,” the site’s footer reads.

 

The only signed PGP message published thus far details the three current official domains, all of which are at risk of being disabled without notice. The primary purpose of the messages, therefore, is to provide updates on where new and official domains can be found.

 

Second, since domain seizures tend to encourage the launch of copycat sites to fill the perceived gap, these signed messages can also be used to find out whether any new domains that subsequently appear are actually official.

 

Checking the referenced URL on primewire.vc does indeed return the promised public key, showing that the domain is official and not a third-party clone or proxy.

Preliminary Injunction Served

Court records show that PrimeWire seems to be violating the preliminary injunction. The platform was served with the necessary documentation on January 10, 2022, via three email addresses – one on the primewire.li domain, one on primewire.ag, and another on a ProtonMail address. The court was notified of service to PrimeWire on the same date. Searches on specific movies in the plaintiffs’ list of 138 infringed copyrighted works are still in PrimeWire’s indexes.

 

There’s no indication thus far that the registries and registrars have received the injunction but the Motion Picture Association certainly won’t be hanging around. What additional measures the studios will seek to counter PrimeWire’s apparent countermeasures remain to be seen but it’s not beyond realms of possibility that they will return to court to seek further action, including against additional new domains.

 

Little over two weeks ago we broke the news that a user, going by the name “Widevinedump”, had leaked a collection of movie ripping scripts on GitHub.

 

These were high-profile leaks as Widevine is one of the leading content protection tools in the video business. The Google-owned technology is used by many of the largest streaming services including Amazon, Netflix and Disney+.

 

The code allows people to download HD video from popular streaming platforms including Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix. And indeed, soon after the repositories were live, sources confirmed that it was doing just that.

 

The person who posted the code didn’t necessarily create it. Most of these tools were already circulating elsewhere, often in private groups. However, by appearing on GitHub they became more public than ever before.

MPA Asks GitHub to Remove the Scripts

In our initial report, we mentioned that rightsholders would likely take swift action in response. That was indeed the case, as the Motion Picture Association sent a takedown notice to GitHub on December 31, which was made public by GitHub a few hours ago.

 

“Widevine is proprietary software that prevents stream ripping, and the scripts circumvent that by exploiting a vulnerability to allow stream ripping,” MPA wrote in its initial takedown notice.

 

Acting on behalf of its members, including Disney and Netflix, MPA requested GitHub to remove the “Widevinedump” repositories including ‘DISNEY-4K-SCRIPT’, ‘Netflix-4K-Script’, ‘WV-AMZN-4K-RIPPER’, ‘APPLE-TV-4K-Downloader’ and several others.

 

“In short, the poster has written scripts to circumvent DRM on multiple streaming platforms, including Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and others. These scripts allow users to rip (download) streams directly to their devices, and, then, distribute them on the internet,” MPA told GitHub.

 

Around the same time that the MPA sent its notice, these repositories indeed went offline. However, it is unclear whether GitHub took action. When the platform makes a repository unavailable it will generally display an “unavailable due to DMCA takedown” notice. The Widevinedump links, however, return a 404 error and the account itself has been deleted.

 

Before the MPA sent its takedown notice, “Widevinedump” already informed us that the code would be removed voluntarily in a few days. Perhaps the MPA’s takedown notice was the final nudge?

Hundreds of Forks Appeared

With the repositories offline, the problem wasn’t fully resolved. During the first few days after the leak appeared, hundreds of forks showed up as well, which (partially) copied the code.

 

To deal with this aftermath, the MPA sent another takedown notice last week, which was also made public a few hours ago. This request lists hundreds of forks that allegedly include the same code.

 

“The [Widevinedump] scripts have been removed and we have also reviewed the fork network to determine those that contain the content we reported as a violation of the DMCA in the parent repository,” MPA writes.

 

The notice itself lists hundreds of links. We tried to access these today and found that some point to a 404 error, while others list a DMCA takedown message.

 

Responding to MPA’s notice, GitHub says that it applied the request to the entire network of forks, which includes 934 repositories. However, a quick search of the platform reveals that some copies are still floating around, so this may not be the end of the matter.

 

When “Widevinedump” posted the scripts they wrote that it was a retaliatory move against some people in a Discord group. These people may have returned fire, as a GitHub repository titled “Widevine Dox” was posted a few days later.

 

Finally, it is worth noting that “Widevinedump” asked for money in return for working Content Decryption Modules (CDMs), which are required to use most scripts. Whether people actually paid for and received these CDMs is unknown but that could obviously lead to all sorts of disappointments and even legal trouble.

 

Twitch is best known for its video game live streaming but over time user behavior has taken the platform in new directions.

 

Of course, variety is great for the community, especially when fresh ideas inspire creativity and push the boundaries to enable progress.

 

But what happens when some of the platform’s most popular streamers jump onto a trend that most people know is likely to land both them and Twitch in hot water?

TV Show Piracy on Twitch

Since Twitch users are in control of what content they put out, the site’s terms and conditions (and the law) are essentially the only barriers to creativity. Stay within those parameters and all is fine but step outside and trouble can lie ahead. Given these basics, sticking to the rules shouldn’t be particularly difficult for streamers but for reasons best known to them, some are deliberately going rogue.

 

One of the latest trends on Twitch appears to be an extension of so-called ‘reaction’ videos. In these latest cases, however, it involves the streaming of TV episodes in near full screen alongside little to no reaction, effectively turning some Twitch streams into a pirate streaming service with added ‘watch party’ features.

 

Given the attention these streams are getting, it’s clear they are popular with users. Whether that is the main motivation behind putting these streams up remains a question but it’s pretty clear that if streamers are looking for negative attention from copyright holders, this is a good way forward.

Twitch Users Are Getting Suspended

With 8.8m subscribers, Pokimane is an extremely successful Twitch streamer. However, after reportedly streaming six hours of Avatar: The Last Airbender to her significant audience, she reported a temporary ban from Twitch on January 8.

 

“Confirmed 48 hour suspension!” she tweeted in response to the move.

 

“Just to be clear, I’m not surprised and I don’t think this is unfair. Imo, it was inevitable that publishers would take action, on me or someone else, during this react meta,” she added.

 

Pokimane is not the only high-profile Twitch casualty. Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang also received a suspension after reportedly streaming the anime show Death Note. In his case, however, the suspension appears to be a much more lengthy one.

 

Disguised Toast’s immediate reaction was that the suspension came too soon since it interrupted an episode while it still had 20 minutes to go. Unrepentant maybe, but certainly not unexpected.

Twitch Users Were Warned About Piracy

According to a Dexerto report, earlier this month streamer Ludwig Ahgren called out several popular Twitch users including xQc, Karl Jacobs, and Mizkif for participating in the so-called ‘TV show meta’, warning that nothing good will come from it.

 

“Recently there has been a swath of people on Twitch just outright watching TV shows. The biggest creator xQc does this quite often with MasterChef. It’s f**king crazy. They are just straight up watching TV shows on Twitch!” he said.

 

“Disguised Toast is just straight up watching Naruto. This morning I watched Myth watch Yu-Gi-Oh. Over a million people tuned in to watch Karl Jacobs watch Total Drama Island. And Rich Campbell watching Lord of the Rings on stream. Mizkif with like 41,000 viewers watched Home Alone! This is some pretty dangerous territory we are in!”

xQc Says DMCA Fears Are “Totally Incorrect”

With 9.8 million followers on Twitch, streamer xQc is certainly a fan favorite but despite warnings from his peers about the perils of streaming TV shows on Twitch, he isn’t at all convinced there is a problem.

 

“I’m going to be honest, I think you’re just totally incorrect,” he said in response to a fan warning.

 

“People have been doing all this DMCA sh*t for the longest time ever, watching shows included. I don’t think it’s an issue, really. They enforce stuff based on how likely it is to blow up, and then Twitch has to ban you. TV shows don’t really have that. It’s why boxing is, like, extremely DMCA, so it’s insane.”

 

What is really insane is the prospect of provocative actions like these restricting the freedoms of all Twitch users moving forward.

Actions Have Consequences

Whatever side of the fence one sits on, be that pro-copyright or copyright-skeptic, this take from an influential streamer is pretty bewildering, especially one that was previously suspended from the platform for streaming the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

 

While people have been doing “all this DMCA shit” for two decades now, there have always been consequences. Not once have copyright holders and governments responded to blatant provocation with a loosening of the law or a reduction in enforcement. It doesn’t work like that.

 

Instead, they have gone after platforms like YouTube seeking a billion in damages, even ISPs like Cox (again, a billion in damages) RCN, Charter, Bright House, and Grande Communications.

 

Given its corporate might, Twitch owner Amazon can certainly look after itself on the legal front but if Twitch streamers want their platform to be policed increasingly heavily into the future, restricting their freedoms and their fun, repeatedly poking the bear is the right way to go about it.

 

That said, if Twitch ‘TV meta’ streamers won’t think of the platform itself or the future freedoms of their peers, perhaps they should consider becoming familiar with the ‘repeat infringer’ aspect of the DMCA.

 

In order for Twitch to remain eligible for its ‘safe harbor’ protection under copyright law, it needs to show that it takes action against infringers. In the case of repeat infringers it needs to terminate them “in appropriate circumstances.”

 

The definition of “appropriate” can vary but there is a way to find out how much Twitch is prepared to put up with. But by then it will already be too late.

 

Over the past several years a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed against alleged cheaters or cheat makers.

 

Several game companies including Take-Two Interactive and Epic Games, have taken cheaters to court. More recently, American video game developer Bungie joined in on the action.

 

Bungie is known for the Halo and Destiny series, which have millions of fans around the world. The popularity of these games also attracts cheaters, including those who used the ‘Destiny 2 Hacks’ suite that was offered for sale at AimJunkies.com.

Bungie Sued AimJunkies

In a complaint filed at a Seattle federal court last June, Bungie accused AimJunkies.com of copyright and trademark infringement, among other things. The same accusations were also made against Phoenix Digital Group, the alleged creators of the software.

 

Initially, the parties entered settlement discussions. AimJunkies has already removed the Destiny 2 cheats from its site and was willing to negotiate. However, when Bungie moved for a default judgment, reportedly without prior warning, the mood changed.

 

Yesterday AimJunkies returned fire, asking the federal court to dismiss the lawsuit. The cheat seller, represented by attorney Philip P. Mann, argues that Bungie misuses the law to go after cheaters while cheating itself isn’t unlawful.

‘Cheating Isn’t Against the Law’

This goal is clear from Bungie’s complaint where Bungie mentions that, through the lawsuit, it hopes to “put cheaters on notice” that the game company “will not tolerate cheating.”

 

“What is really going on here is Bungie’s transparent misuse of the legal system to achieve ends not actually permitted under laws actually passed by Congress,” AimJunkies writes, adding that “Congress, not Bungie, sets the rules.”

 

“Bungie apparently hopes to bamboozle this court into proscribing entirely lawful activities. This court should not be party to such questionable tactics and should apply the laws that actually exist, not those Bungie apparently conjures out of thin air.”

 

While cheating may not be outlawed, Bungie’s claims are rooted in law. This includes several copyright infringement allegations. According to Bungie, AimJunkies copied and distributed its copyrighted work, to develop and advertise its cheat software.

Copyright Questions

In response, AimJunkies argues that these copyright infringement allegations are vague and not specific enough to allege a plausible claim. The cheat software itself certainly isn’t a copy of Bungie’s work, they add.

 

The cheat maker also highlights another problem with Bungie’s copyright claims. The original complaint lists four copyright registrations but two of these were first published on November 10, 2020, well after the cheats were first made available.

 

Based on this finding, it would have been impossible for AimJunkies to use the copyrighted work to create its cheats, as the copyrights had yet to be fully registered.

 

“[T]he ‘cheat software’ Bungie complains of in this action was created and distributed long before November 10, 2020, and, therefore, could not have been ‘copied’ from these work.

 

“For this reason, there is no set of facts on which Bungie can plausibly claim that Defendants’ earlier created work was based on or otherwise copied from Bungie’s later created works. It is a factual and legal impossibility long recognized by the courts.”

 

AimJunkies further notes that Bungie has no plausible trademark infringement claim and wants these dismissed as well. The cheat seller also questions the court’s jurisdiction and counters the other accusations, including “breach of contract,” “tortious interference,” and “unjust enrichment.”

 

The latter claims don’t belong in federal court either, AimJunkies notes. It points out that Bungie’s own License Agreement (LSLA) prescribes that, aside from copyright and trademark issues, mandatory arbitration is the ‘sole means’ by which disputes are to be resolved.

‘Bungie is a Bully’

According to AimJunkies, it is clear that Bungie is trying to use its power to “bully” others into submission, but it’s not having any of it.

 

“This is another case of well-heeled companies using their superior resources to bully others and achieve through the courts what they cannot accomplish in the marketplace. Although the rich have as much right to seek redress through the courts as the poor, they nevertheless need to follow the rules that apply to all. Bungie has not done that here.”

 

In conclusion, the cheat seller asks the federal court to dismiss the complaint or – if that’s not an option – refer the appropriate claims to arbitration.

 

Needless to say, Bungie will likely see things quite differently and the company is expected to respond to AimJunkie’s arguments in a few weeks.

 

—

 

A copy of AimJunkie’s motion to dismiss, which also represents Phoenix Digital Group LLC and several individually named defendants, is available here (pdf)

 

Downloading audio and video is prohibited by YouTube’s terms of service but there are numerous ‘stream-ripping’ sites available on the web that do just that.

 

These services are a thorn in the side of music industry outfits, who see them as a major piracy threat. The operators and users of the stream-ripping tools disagree and point out that there are legal uses as well.

 

At the end of 2020, the operator of one of the largest stream-rippers took matters into his own hands. Instead of hiding in the shadows like some competitors, Yout.com owner Johnathan Nader sued the RIAA, asking the federal court in Connecticut to declare the service as non-infringing.

 

The case has been ongoing for more than a year now and Yout.com has filed two amended complaints, which addressed earlier shortcomings and refined the legal arguments. At the heart of the dispute is the question of whether Yout’s service violates the DMCA’s provision that prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs).

 

Yout.com argues that YouTube doesn’t have meaningful technical protection measures so there is nothing to circumvent. In just a few steps, anyone can download audio and video from the site without additional tools. This argument was reiterated last month when Yout responded to RIAA’s motion to dismiss the case.

RIAA Responds to ‘No TPM’ Claim

The RIAA sees things quite differently as it highlighted in a response filed at the court a few days ago. The music group points out that Yout repeats many of the arguments it previously made, which the RIAA characterizes as “wordplay”.

 

“[Yout]’s opposition to RIAA’s motion to dismiss repeats many of the same failed arguments that Plaintiff made in the prior round of briefing and again resorts to wordplay to manufacture a disputed issue of fact,” RIAA writes.

 

The music group specifically cites the DMCA which points out that a technological measure is considered a TPM if it, “in the ordinary course of its operation” requires a process or a treatment to access copyrighted video or audio.

 

Yout’s defense noted that people can go through a series of steps to acquire a “sequence of numbers” in the “Request URL” to then download audio video from YouTube themselves. A valid point, but the RIAA notes that this actually confirms that there are protection measures in place.

 

“[T]hose allegations actually prove that there is a TPM (rolling cipher or by any other name),” RIAA writes.

 

“In the ordinary course, a YouTube user does not obtain or interact with a signature value or Request URL, or reach a download button—ever. In the ordinary course, the user only sees the stream of a music video.”

No Cipher Needed

The RIAA stresses that, even though Yout disputes the “rolling cipher” terminology, the service still helps to bypass copyright protections. That people can also bypass these on their own through a web browser doesn’t matter.

 

The second part of the argument is that Yout circumvents these TPMs. The stream-ripper argued that it simply uses the publicly available code of YouTube’s website without disabling or voiding anything. However, the RIAA sees things in a different light.

 

In fact, the music group uses Yout’s own words to argue that it is indeed circumventing protection measures.

 

“Plaintiff pleads that it interacts with these TPMs by ‘modif[ying]’ the ‘range=’ numerical sequence. That the Yout service provides its users with an ‘automated’ way to avoid or bypass the TPMs to gain access to the file —including modifying a sequence of numbers in YouTube’s source code,— is textbook circumvention.”

Court Will Decide

The above makes it clear that both sides agree on most facts, but not on how these should be interpreted. It is now up to the court to decide which party has the best arguments. Needless to say, this decision is crucial to the future of Yout and many other stream-ripping services.

 

In its complaint Yout also argued that RIAA’s takedown notices defamed the service, which resulted in a loss of revenue. This could come into play later, but only if Yout’s activities are not violating the DMCA.

 

—

 

A copy of RIAA’s reply in support of its motion to dismiss Yout’s second amended complaint is available here (pdf)

 

While there are a handful of other contenders, PrimeWire is one of the most enduring pirate streaming portals on the internet today. In various forms, including under the 1channel branding, the site has been in operation for perhaps eight years.

 

In common with many similar sites, PrimeWire has had its fair share of anti-piracy problems over the years. Its domains are blocked by court order in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and Portugal, and the site has been repeatedly branded a ‘notorious market’ by the MPA.

Lawsuit in the United States

Last November, the MPA and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment obtained a DMCA subpoena from a US court that required Cloudflare to hand over whatever details it holds on the operator of PrimeWire.

 

Then, in early December, companies including Paramount, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Disney and Netflix filed a full-blown copyright infringement lawsuit against the alleged operators of the site including moderators Dev_Team, Silverrain, Fugitive, and drodman250.

 

In addition to demanding millions in damages, the studios requested a broad injunction to bring PrimeWire to its knees in advance of a full trial on the merits of the case.

Considerations for Preliminary Injunction

Following a hearing that took place January 3, 2022, last Friday Judge Mark C. Scarsi at the United States District Court for the Central District of California noted that while the defendants in the case have been served, none have made an appearance.

 

Summarizing the business models of the plaintiffs, the Judge acknowledged that the alleged behaviors of the defendants, which include the provision of links to infringing movies and TV shows hosted on third-party sites, do indeed infringe upon the rights of the studios.

 

“Plaintiffs did not authorize the digital reproduction and streaming of their copyrighted works. Thus, the streaming that occurs on PrimeWire or at websites to which PrimeWire links violates the Copyright Act,” Judge Scarsi writes.

 

“These violations are attributable to Defendants because under the doctrine of contributory infringement, a party is liable for copyright infringement if it materially contributes to infringement it knows another commits.”

 

The Judge further agreed that the PrimeWire defendants’ actions are willful since the platform solicits infringing reproductions and performances (links to movies, TV shows) in its forum. As a result, there is a “significant likelihood” that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit will succeed on the merits.

Weighing the Standards

With no one for PrimeWire participating in the action, the Judge weighed the request for an injunction against case law, agreeing that the plaintiffs had demonstrated to his satisfaction that they would suffer “irreparable harm” without an injunction.

 

The Judge also agreed that while an injunction could cause damage to PrimeWire, that should be weighed against the scale of the infringing behavior and the lack of appearance by the defendants. Also, since an injunction would help to prevent widespread copyright infringement, ordering one would be in the public interest.

Preliminary Injunction Granted

In line with the studios’ request, Judge Scarsi granted a preliminary injunction designed to prevent PrimeWire from continuing to infringe the plaintiffs’ rights.

 

It enjoins and restrains the PrimeWire defendants and anyone acting in concert with them from carrying out a number of actions, including linking to, distributing, reproducing, copying, hosting, uploading, and displaying the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.

 

The defendants are further ordered to refrain from any action that enables, facilitates, assists, encourages or induces any user or third party to carry out any of the above.

 

In what appears any effort to take PrimeWire offline, the Judge says that no action may be taken by the defendants or their agents to transfer the domains primewire.li, primewire.ag or primewire.vc to any other registrant or registrar. Meanwhile, domain name registrars and registries API Gmbh, Gandi SAS, Namecheap, Inc., Nic AG, SWITCH, and Afilias, Inc., must freeze and disable the three PrimeWire domains.

 

If the PrimeWire defendants choose to make an appearance in the case, the Judge says that the preliminary injunction can be challenged, modified, or even dissolved but that currently seems unlikely. At the time of writing, all three domains remain active but that is likely to change in the days to come. PrimeWire does have other domains at its disposal though, so it may choose to deploy those in due course.

 

In a statement, the MPA welcomes the injunction.

 

“The Motion Picture Association applauds the court’s decision to enter a preliminary injunction against the operators of PrimeWire, a notorious foreign online piracy operation that operates anonymously with blatant and repeated disregard for the law. Filing civil actions against piracy operators is one of the many ways the MPA is actively engaged in protecting the legitimate market for creative content around the world,” the group says.

 

A copy of the preliminary injunction can be found here (pdf)

 

Backed by the RIAA, several major music industry companies have taken some of the largest U.S. Internet providers to court.

 

The music companies accuse these providers of failing to terminate the accounts of the most egregious pirates by ignoring millions of copyright infringement notices. To make them whole, the labels demand hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.

 

This has already resulted in a massive windfall in the case against Cox, where a jury awarded a billion dollars in damages. The same music companies now hope to get the same outcome against and RCN, Charter, Bright House, and Grande Communications.

Rightscorp Evidence

Many of these lawsuits are centered around evidence from the anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp. The Delaware company collected settlements from U.S. Internet subscribers for several years but struggled to make a profit.

 

Going after alleged pirates directly wasn’t a great business model, so Rightscorp started to focus on ISPs. They encouraged the RIAA to take legal action against ISPs and offered its data as evidence, in return for a significant cash injection.

 

Thus far the RIAA and Rightscorp have booked quite a few successes already but there’s been plenty of pushback as well. Several Internet providers are doubting the accuracy of Rightscorp’s evidence. This includes RCN, which once again articulated its criticism in court a few days ago.

 

“RCN contends that Plaintiffs and Rightscorp engaged in unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices by flooding RCN with illegitimate copyright complaints and destroying the evidence on which those complaints were ostensibly based,” RCN wrote.

RCN Wants Access to Rightscorp’s Database

These claims are part of RCN’s defense, which has been ongoing for a while. To back up these allegations the ISP requested access to Rightscorp’s evidence databases. This should reveal whether the evidence is reliable and accurate enough.

 

This request for access was submitted months ago but little progress has been made so far. After several back and forths, Rightscorp’s counsel notified the ISP in September that it won’t allow full access to the evidence database. Instead, it offered to allow access to a more limited database.

 

“Rightscorp refused to provide access to its databases and instead offered to create a new database, solely for purposes of this litigation and only containing data that Rightscorp deems relevant to RCN,” the ISP informed the court.

 

The quote above is from a recent court filing where RNC requests an order to compel Rightscorp to open up its database for inspection. This is a reasonable request, the ISP argues, especially since the RIAA is using this evidence to demand over $200 million in damages.

 

The court filing also questions Rightscorp’s reputation. RCN notes that in a related lawsuit, a federal court ruled that the company had intentionally destroyed the source code of its piracy tracking system.

Corporate Status Voided in Delaware

It’s not clear why Rightscorp doesn’t want to open up its database for inspection. RCN says that it has no clue either but the ISP openly speculates that there may be some internal issues.

 

As it turns out, the State of Delaware, where Rightscorp is incorporated, has voided the corporate status of the firm after it failed to its pay taxes.

 

“It may be connected to the fact that Rightscorp appears to lack any corporate powers because its corporate status is void in Delaware for failure to pay over $450,000 in franchise taxes,” RCN writes.

 

This is a serious issue, as it would be a criminal offense for Rightscorp to exercise its corporate powers before the issues are resolved. In addition, another company can now scoop up the Rightscorp name, if it wanted to.

License Revoked in California

The trouble is not limited to Delaware either. Rightscorp also failed to file its annual statements in California, the state where it’s operating from. As a result, its license to conduct business has been revoked.

 

These issues could eventually be resolved in the future but it certainly doesn’t instill confidence. The same is true for the non-www version of Rightscorp’s website, which is still broken after several months.

 

Whatever the reasons may be, RCN is asking the court to issue an order that will allow the ISP to take an uncensored look at the evidence database, requesting an oral hearing on the matter.

 

—

 

A copy of RCN’s request, filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, is rightscorp-corporate-status

Each year the UK Government publishes a new edition of its Online Copyright Infringement Tracker which reveals the results of an annual survey polling the piracy habits of people twelve years old and above.

 

The UK Intellectual Property Office has just published the results of the 11th wave which took place in 2021.

 

A different methodology has been deployed since the 9th wave in an effort to produce robust results and additional insight. In common with earlier years, its a mixed bag of good and bad news for rightsholders.

Key Points in Summary

Overall consumption of content (via legal and illegal sources) increased during this wave across a number of categories, particularly in streaming of content which reached the highest point seen thus far. Consumption of live sports also bounced back to pre-COVID levels and there were small increases in those downloading music, film and TV. In most cases, however, figures were still down on the pre-COVID-19 peak.

 

Once again the main drivers for accessing content online were the choice and variety of content on offer, the ability to access content immediately, and the cost.

 

In terms of infringing consumption, overall infringement for all content categories sat at 25%, up from the 23% reported during the 10th wave tracker. While this represents a small increase, overall infringement levels have remained relatively stable over the past five years, meaning that on average a quarter of consumers are still using illegal sources either in whole or in part.

Music, Movies, TV, Live Sports

This is not all bad news for rightsholders, however. In music, for example, the number of consumers who only access content from legal sources (download and streaming) increased to 85% (+3%) with only 2% using illegal sources exclusively.

 

In respect of film consumption, 80% of respondents consumed only from legal sources, 17% consumed from a mix of legal and illegal, and a stubborn 3% refused to consume anything legally, all unchanged since 2020. The overall level of infringement also remained static at 20%.

 

While not much has changed in the TV piracy world, the situation hasn’t worsened and there are signs of a slight improvement. While overall levels remained stable at 14% in 2021, the number of consumers accessing content purely from legal platforms increased to 86% (+1%) with just 2% downloading or streaming from only illegal sources.

 

Live sports is an unusual category in that the availability of sporting events during the COVID-19 lockdown was severely diminished. In 2020, just 8% engaged with live sports overall but in 2021 there was a significant boost to 15%, almost double the figure in the previous year. Interestingly, however, overall levels of infringement dropped from 37% in 2020 to 29% in 2021.

Video Games and Other Content

Overall infringement remained stable in the video games category at 11% in 2021, with just 2% of consumers accessing content only from illegal sources. In software, overall infringement was up from 20% in 2020 to 23% in 2021 while infringement of e-books decreased by 3% from the previous year to 14%.

 

Overall infringement of digital magazines also decreased in this wave from 28% in 2020 to 27% in 2021 but the same cannot be said about audiobooks, which jumped from 14% in 2020 to 24% in 2021.

“Behaviour Change Opportunities”

In addition to tracking consumption, the UK Government’s annual report also seeks to highlight areas where pirates of all kinds can be encouraged to consume more legal content. In the previous wave, the report found that alluding to the financial impact of infringement on individuals within industries was more engaging than talking about industries as a whole.

 

There is no broad change in the 2021 report but the study adds some nuance.

 

“The communications testing this year managed to drill down further into which individuals to focus on and showed that participants found it hard to sympathize with big artists, producers, executives etc. who are seen to have a lot of money and success. Rather, speaking about smaller artists or smaller production companies as well as those individuals employed by industries in the background elicited more positive responses,” the report reads.

 

Interestingly, the previous report (conducted just three months into the pandemic) described an “underwhelming response” to messages related to the impact of COVID-19 on the creative industries. This time around, things had changed.

 

“One year on, however, with the pandemic ongoing at the time of research, messages about the continued strain on funds and reports of job losses were seen as some of the most impactful messages and caused some participants to reconsider their behavior.”

Concerns (or lack of) Among Pirates

In an effort to deter pirates, the entertainment industries, particularly those in film, TV and broadcasting, have been pushing a narrative of malware and other cyber-related threats in recent years. The study found that while these worry some less experienced infringers, those who infringe regularly are much less concerned.

 

While not discounting potential threats, more experienced users said they had built trust in the sources they use and after not experiencing any issues, feel safe to continue using them.

 

“The notion of increased cyber security threats during the pandemic didn’t seem to increase concern, with many saying they would remain vigilant and knew the warning signs of untrustworthy content to look out for,” the report reads.

 

When presented with hypothetical scenarios around potential enforcement, the most effective proposition for making participants reconsider was the possibility that internet providers might send them warnings and eventually cut off internet access, followed by “greater implementation and enforcement of fines.”

 

At the time of writing a new ISP warning campaign seems unlikely after the most recent venture was abandoned in 2019. Fines (or more accurately settlement letters) are being sent out in the UK but currently cover a very small volume of content sent out by a handful of rightsholders.

 

The full report can be found here

 

Over the years there have been many schemes to obtain movies and TV shows before their commercial release. A notable example includes members of the MiLLENiUM Release Group who were sentenced in 2019.

 

But while pirates who obtain video content in advance of its official release tend to grab the most headlines, a case developing in the United States reveals that valuable literary content such as pre-release novels can be targeted too.

FBI Arrests Italian Man at JFK Airport

Late Wednesday the Department of Justice revealed that the FBI had arrested Italian citizen Filippo Bernardini at John F. Kennedy International Airport for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He was detained in connection with a years-long scheme to obtain novels and other literary works in electronic form before their commercial release.

 

“Filippo Bernardini allegedly impersonated publishing industry individuals in order to have authors, including a Pulitzer prize winner, send him prepublication manuscripts for his own benefit. This real-life storyline now reads as a cautionary tale, with the plot twist of Barnardini facing federal criminal charges for his misdeeds,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

 

According to US authorities, the scheme to obtain the pre-release content had been running for at least five years.

Indictment Unsealed

The indictment, unsealed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, alleges that beginning in August 2016, Bernardini – who was based in London and worked in publishing for Simon & Schuster – began impersonating agents, editors and other individuals in the industry to obtain pre-release literary manuscripts from his targets.

 

This type of content is considered extremely valuable within the industry. As the indictment explains, should an unfinished work leak out to the public, any piracy can dramatically undermine the economics of publishing, undermine an author’s reputation, and interfere with secondary markets such as film adaptations.

 

According to court records, Bernardini obtained hundreds of such works from hundreds of individuals.

Sophisticated Phishing Operation

It’s alleged that in order to carry out the scheme, Bernardini registered more than 160 domains that impersonated real entities and individuals involved in publishing, such as talent agencies, publishing houses, and literary scouts. The domain names were designed to be confusingly similar to real entities by including subtle typographical errors (such as replacing ‘m’ with the letters ‘rn’) that were difficult to spot.

 

In tandem with these domains, Bernardini allegedly created email addresses in the names of actual people who worked at the corresponding entities and used them to contact authors, managers, agents, publishers, and editors to solicit unpublished books, novels and other content. One of his targets was an unnamed Pulitzer Prize-winning author who handed over the requested manuscript.

 

Email records held by the defendant show that he impersonated hundreds of people and engaged in hundreds of attempts to obtain electronic copies of unreleased content. In addition, Bernardini also lured unsuspecting targets to at least two fake websites where they were prompted to enter their usernames and passwords. These credentials were later used to gain unlawful access to a database maintained by a New York-based scouting company.

Statutory Allegations

According to the indictment the scheme ran from August 2016 to around July 2021 and was designed to obtain money and property under false and fraudulent pretenses, causing valuable and unpublished literary manuscripts to be sent and received by means of wire, contrary to the law. The Grand Jury charges also contain allegations of aggravated identity theft.

 

For the wire fraud charge, Bernardini, 29, of London, United Kingdom, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. For the aggravated identity theft charge he faces a possible mandatory consecutive sentence of 2 years in prison.

 

Simon & Schuster, which is not accused of wrongdoing, said it was “shocked and horrified” to learn of the allegations against Bernardini.

 

“The safekeeping of our authors’ intellectual property is of primary importance to Simon & Schuster, and for all in the publishing industry, and we are grateful to the FBI for investigating these incidents and bringing charges against the alleged perpetrator,” the company said.

 

The indictment can be found here

 

In response to rampant cheating in Call of Duty, last October Activision announced RICHOCET Anti-Cheat, a supposedly robust system designed to stop cheaters in their tracks.

 

The system reportedly identified and banned 50K cheaters across Warzone and Vanguard during the first day but this didn’t appear to solve the problem.

 

As recently as yesterday there were reports of players openly mocking the system so, in common with companies including Bungie (1,2,3), Activision has now resorted to legal action.

Lawsuit Filed in the United States

Filed in a California district court yesterday, the complaint targets EngineOwning UG, CMN Holdings S.A, six named individuals (Valentin Rick, Leonard Bugla, Leon Frisch, Ignacio Gayduchenko, Marc-Alexander Richts, Alexander Kleeman) and 50 ‘Doe’ defendants.

 

“By this lawsuit, Activision seeks to put a stop to unlawful conduct by an organization that is distributing and selling for profit numerous malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages (i.e., to cheat) in the COD Games. These ongoing activities damage Activision’s games, its overall business, and the experience of the COD player community,” the lawsuit begins.

 

The defendants allegedly develop and distribute (via the website at EngineOwning.to) a portfolio of cheats and hacks for popular online games, including those in the Call of Duty series. According to Activision, the defendants are also preparing new cheating software for Overwatch, which is published by its affiliate Blizzard Entertainment.

 

“The Cheating Software enables players to manipulate the COD Games to their personal advantage, such as by automatically aiming weapons, revealing the locations of opponents, and allowing the player to see information that is not normally available to players because it would give them an unfair advantage within the game,” Activision adds.

Circumvention of Technical Protection Measures

The complaint states that to protect the COD games from cheating and exploitation, Activision develops and deploys anti-cheat technologies. Activision says it is not possible to play the COD games online without installing its cheat detection system and as a result, it has been able to ban “hundreds of thousands” of accounts in the past year.

 

However, in order for hacks and cheats to work, they must be able to prevent or avoid detection by the anti-cheat software. According to Activision, this means that the cheating software is comprised of or contains technologies that are primarily designed to circumvent technological measures that control access to its games.

 

“As a result of the foregoing, Defendants are offering to the public, providing, importing, or otherwise trafficking in technology that violates 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2). Defendants’ acts constituting DMCA violations have been and continue to be performed without the permission, authorization, or consent of Activision. Defendants have violated Section 1201 of the DMCA willfully and for private commercial gain,” Activision notes.

Claim for Damages

Activision says that the defendants’ conduct has unjustly enriched them and caused damage to its business. As a result, it is seeking the maximum statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the DMCA or, in the alternative, defendants’ profits attributable to their violations. It’s alleged that the defendants made “hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more,” from their distribution and sale of the software.

 

Activision further alleges that the defendants intentionally interfere with contractual relationships between the gaming company and its customers. All COD players must assent to Activision’s Terms of Use (TOU) and when they use the defendants’ cheating software, that constitutes a breach of the agreement.

 

“[D]efendants are aware that the TOU prohibits players from using the Cheating Software and that players are at risk of being banned from the COD Games should they be caught using the Cheating Software. Nevertheless, Defendants intentionally encourage and induce users of the COD Games to purchase and use the Cheating Software, knowing that the use of these products by their customers is a breach of these customers’ contracts with Activision,” the complaint adds.

 

As a result of these actions, Activision says it has suffered damages including a loss of goodwill, diversion of resources to deal with the cheating software and loss of profit from the accounts Activision terminated for a violation of its TOU. The company also seeks damages for unfair competition.

 

“Defendants are guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice, and Activision, in addition to its actual damages, by reason thereof, is entitled to recover exemplary and punitive damages against Defendants,” the company concludes, adding that it is also entitled to an injunction to restrain the defendants’ activities.

 

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

When the original Popcorn Time application launched eight years ago, we billed it as the “Netflix for Pirates.”

 

The software offered a clean and easy-to-use interface to stream pirated movies and TV shows, all powered by BitTorrent.

Rivaling Hollywood and Netflix

In the years that followed Popcorn Time had to endure plenty of legal threats, mostly from Hollywood. The original developers were quick to throw in the towel but the open source code was widely copied with Popcorn-Time.to emerging as one of the leading forks.

 

During those early years, millions of people used the software. This was a major concern for Hollywood and Netflix began worrying too when Google searches for Popcorn Time began rivaling those for Netflix in some regions.

 

“Piracy continues to be one of our biggest competitors,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings commented in 2015, specifically mentioning Popcorn Time’s growing popularity.

 

This triggered a wave of enforcement actions including a lawsuit in the US, targeting the alleged operator of Popcorn-Time.to (later .tw). That case was eventually dismissed after the movie companies realized that they had identified the wrong person. Ultimately the fork remained online.

Popcorn-Time.tw Shuts Down

Despite weathering several storms, the curtain finally fell for Popcorn-Time.tw this week but legal issues didn’t play a role.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the Popcorn Time team says that decreased interest from the pirating public drove it to take this drastic decision.

 

“It’s time to say goodbye,” the Popcorn Time team notes. “The world doesn’t need Popcorn Time anymore.”

 

This decreased popularity is in large part the result of competition from other pirate tools that rendered the software pretty much obsolete. Pirate streaming sites and dedicated streaming boxes have surged in popularity over the years, effectively taking over the “Netflix for Pirates” role.

Alternatives Take Over

The shift in preference also had a clear impact on Popcorn Time usage numbers. A few years ago millions of people regularly used the software but most of those people moved on to more convenient alternatives.

 

This evolution is also summarized by a Google Trends graph posted by Popcorn Time as part of its farewell message. Interest in the application continues to wane, and the days when it rivaled Netflix in some regions have long gone.

 

Popcorn Time’s demise doesn’t mean that Netflix has successfully beaten online piracy of course. Pirate streaming sites and devices remain a massive challenge, and Netflix content is still widely pirated on regular torrent sites as well.

 

Also, pirates who really insist on using Popcorn Time can probably still find a working fork somewhere. The official Popcorn Time repository on GitHub remains online, even though the associated PopcornTime.app domain has been offline for nearly a year.

 

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been booming over the past year.

 

People are willing to pay millions of dollars in return for the rights to unique digital assets as well as any perks that come with them.

 

These NFTs are not without copyright issues. For example, some artists have found their works being sold as NFTs without their permission. There are also more complex copyright angles too, as Quentin Tarantino discovered a few weeks ago.

Miramax Sued Tarantino

The award-winning moviemaker was sued by Miramax after he announced the auction of several exclusive “Pulp Fiction” NFTs. While Tarantino wrote and directed the film, he assigned many of the exclusive rights to the movie studio.

 

Miramax, therefore, argues that it holds the rights to sell Pulp Fiction NFTs as the company also made clear in its complaint.

 

“(i)t could also mislead others into believing they have the rights to pursue similar deals or offerings, when in fact Miramax holds the rights needed to develop, market, and sell NFTs relating to its deep film library,” the movie studio wrote.

 

Tarantino wholeheartedly disagreed. Responding in court, his lawyers pointed out that the director has always retained the right to publish portions of his original handwritten Pulp Fiction screenplay. As such, the lawsuit is characterized as “offensively meritless.”

 

“Now a shell of its former self and flailing under a new ownership consortium, Miramax has decided to bite the hand that fed it for so many years by bringing this offensively meritless lawsuit,” the complaint added.

NFT Auctions Go Ahead

NFTs didn’t exist last century and it will be up to the court to decide whether Miramax’s claims have any merit. However, today it becomes clear that Tarantino is not backing down. The planned NFT auctions will go ahead.

 

SCRT Labs, which is coordinating the auction, circulated a press release noting that the director will “strike back” at Miramax. The first NFT auction will go live on January 17, with six more following in the days after.

 

The NFTs that will go up for auction are linked to iconic Pulp Fiction scenes. They come with a personalized audio commentary from Tarantino, which reportedly offers a unique view into the creative process that led to the final product.

 

“Secret Network is proud to stand with Quentin,” says Guy Zyskind, founder and CEO, SCRT Labs, commenting on the news.

 

“We are committed to working with talented artists across the globe, by providing them a better way to release their works directly to fans without relying on older distribution models, which favor conglomerates over creators.”

Lawsuit Has An Impact on Several Levels

Needless to say, the legal battle is about much more than principles and copyright. The NFTs could potentially bring in millions of dollars, which may also be an incentive for all parties involved.

 

In that regard, the lawsuit could even be a blessing for Tarantino and his team. The mainstream media attention that comes with it can be seen as valuable PR. And indeed, the fact that we received an embargoed press release days in advance shows that the project isn’t shying away from extra attention.

 

This doesn’t mean that the lawsuit had no impact at all. On the contrary, when we look at the TarantinoNFTs.com website there are some subtle changes.

 

For example, early artwork featuring Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta has been replaced with an image of Tarantino himself. The original image was labeled as copyright-infringing by Miramax so this change appears to be a direct response to this claim.

 

In addition, several tweets from the Tarantino NFT team with alleged copyright-infringing material were deleted as well. These tweets are also listed as infringing examples in the legal paperwork.

 

TorrentFreak hoped to hear more from Tarantino directly but, despite the early heads-up, we were informed that the movie director isn’t available to comment on the matter. Similarly, SCRT Labs wasn’t able to respond to our questions before publication.

 

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

 

These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

 

This week we have one new entry on the list. “The Matrix Resurrections” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 03 are:

 

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	The Matrix Resurrections	5.8 / trailer
2	(2)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	9.0 / trailer
3	(5)	Don’t Look Up	7.3 / trailer
4	(3)	Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City	5.2 / trailer
5	(4)	Venom: Let There Be Carnage	6.1 / trailer
6	(7)	Encanto	7.4 / trailer
7	(…)	Ghostbusters: Afterlife	7.6 / trailer
8	(6)	No Time to Die	7.5 / trailer
9	(8)	Dune	8.3 / trailer
10	(10)	Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings	7.7 / trailer

 

 

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

 

Over the past couple of years a number of high-profile lawsuits have been filed against individuals and groups who create cheating software for videogames.

 

Companies including Bungie, Riot Games, and Take-Two have all taken cheat makers to court for undermining their gaming environments and business models, claiming that these tools violate the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

 

Gator Cheats, for example, agreed to pay Riot and Bungie $2m to settle their case but despite the risks, many cheat makers and sellers have continued their work regardless, resulting in yet more lawsuits, most of which are filed in the US.

 

But what if you’re a maker of cheating software and upset that someone is pirating your work? Turns out the DMCA can be quite effective in combating that threat too.

Cheat Maker Releases Genshin XYZ

UnKnoWnCheaTs.me is a discussion forum dedicated to hacking and cheating in multiplayer games. It claims to be the oldest such forum on the internet and stresses that it does not promote the illegal use of software.

 

Mid-December a new release appeared on the forum titled ‘Genshin XYZ’, a piece of software that works with open-world action role-playing game Genshin Impact. Despite a reported development and marketing budget in excess of $100m, Genshin Impact is free to play but is monetized via gacha game mechanics.

 

The wide feature range of Genshin XYZ appears designed to undermine that monetization since the tool allows players to cheat their way to progress instead. This is the type of behavior that has attracted copyright infringement lawsuits in the past but in this case, the makers of Genshin XYZ are using copyright law to prevent piracy of their product.

Cheat Maker Targets Software ‘Cracker’

When the Genshin XYZ team made their latest release in December they announced that, unlike their previous releases, this cheating tool would come with a “special loader” that would help players to use the product. However, it appears that someone removed this element and released a ‘cracked’ version of the cheat tool on Github along with their own loader.

 

This clearly didn’t go down well with the Genshin XYZ team who responded with a DMCA takedown notice claiming that the cracker was infringing on their intellectual property rights.

DMCA’s Anti-Circumvention Provisions

“GenshinXYZ / GenshinPublic is our software being illegal cracked and distributed by the user in mention [sic],” a DMCA takedown notice filed at Github reads.

 

“The original software is a DLL which we publish inside a DLL loader programmed by us in C# with VMProtection. It should prevent third parties from redistributing and selling the DLL as their own.”

 

Somewhat interestingly, the notice claims that the cracked version of the cheat tool breaches the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

 

“They have cracked the C# loader to get the DLL. Then they built the DLL into their own loader, which they now distribute as ‘GenshinPublic’. The repository is an illegal crack and upload of our software and should be removed,” the notice adds.

Github’s Analysis Results in Takedown

That the creators of a cheat that almost certainly violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA attempted to have a copy taken down based on the same law is both novel and pretty ironic, to say the least. However, Github wasn’t convinced that the crack ‘pirate’ committed any offenses in that respect.

 

“While GitHub did not find sufficient information to determine a valid anti-circumvention claim, we determined that this takedown notice contains other valid copyright claim(s),” its note reads.

 

As a result, Github honored the takedown request on broader copyright infringement grounds and disabled the repository, which probably satisfied the cheat makers.

 

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to observe that people who seem happy to violate the DMCA on the one hand are also prepared to seek redress using the same law on the other.

 

The “repeat infringer” issue remains a hot topic in US courts and several ISPs have been sued over the years.

 

These Internet providers stand accused of not doing enough to stop copyright infringers on their networks, even after receiving multiple ‘copyright infringement’ notifications.

 

The most prominent outcome thus far is the guilty verdict against Cox from late 2019. Following a jury trial, the company was ordered to pay a billion dollars in damages to a group of major record labels.

Record Labels vs. Grande

Following the verdict, several of the labels shifted their focus to the next targets, including ISP Grande Communications. This case was initially scheduled to start in early 2020 but, due to time constraints, was postponed for a few months.

 

Soon after this initial delay, the coronavirus pandemic hit causing the trial to be postponed even further until 2022. After a wait of nearly two years, it is now expected to start in a few weeks and the final preparations are in full swing.

 

This week both parties submitted their ‘voir dire’ questions for potential trial jurors. The jury consists of members of the public, but the legal teams from both sides are allowed to ask questions during the selection process, to ensure that jurors are unbiased.

Jury Selection Questions

Most of these questions make sense. Grande doesn’t want any former employees of the music companies or disgruntled subscribers in the jury. Similarly, the music companies prefer to keep people who have been sued by the RIAA off the bench.

 

However, the questions also touch on broader subjects. Two years ago we reported that the music companies were also interested in whether people read TorrentFreak and that hasn’t changed. Among the 52 voir dire questions there is also one about TorrentFreak and Ars Technica.

 

“Have you ever read or visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?” it reads.

 

This question is similar to the one that was submitted two years ago. However, the potential jurors will now have to explain what type of material they read on the two news sites.

 

The document doesn’t explain what the exact goal of this question is. TorrentFreak has a broad readership base with varying interests. These include rightsholders, legal experts, digital activists, and members of the public who like to follow piracy-related news.

EFF Supporter? VPN User?

TorrentFreak and Ars Technica are not the only outfits the labels are interested in. They also want to know if potential jury members have been contributing to or supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), or if they’re familiar with the piracy tracking from Rightscorp.

 

Interestingly, these questions could theoretically steer potential jurors in a certain direction. Even those who have never heard of TorrentFreak may be intrigued by the question and start reading it going forward. But that’s probably not the goal here.

 

Reading through the questions we also see some other ones that stand out. For example, the music companies want to know if potential jurors have ever visited The Pirate Bay or used a VPN for anything other than work. This VPN question is new.

More New Questions

Other new questions cover seemingly unrelated topics about how people spend their free time and whether they regularly go to church.

 

“How do you like to spend your free time, if you have any?” one question reads, while another one asks if potential jurors “are regularly involved with [their] church or any other house of worship.”

 

The music companies are not the only ones asking questions of course. Grande Communications has also prepared a list, hoping to signal bias or other disqualifying factors.

 

The ISP asks, for example, if the candidates are musicians or have ever worked at a record label. The company also asks whether they believe it’s an ISP’s responsibility to monitor and police online piracy.

 

“Does anyone here believe that it is the ISP’s responsibility to monitor and police online copyright infringement?” Grande asks.

 

The jury selection for the upcoming trial is scheduled to take place on January 21st and the trial will start a few days later. In the coming weeks, both parties will work on their final preparations.

 

—

 

A copy of the record labels’ proposed voir dire questions for potential jurors is available here (pdf) and Grande’s version can be found here (pdf)