The site was launched in 2003 under the wings of the now-disbanded pro-culture organization “Piratbyrån”, which is Swedish for Bureau of Piracy.

 

The group was formed by political activists and hackers in the same year. By then, many of the members had already launched other web projects challenging political, moral, and power structures. The Pirate Bay fitted this category and became a synonym for file-sharing in the following years.

 

The site remains online today but it’s not without scars. Swedish police tried to shut the site down twice, raiding dozens of servers. This ultimate goal failed but local authorities did prosecute the site’s three co-founders, who all served time in prison for their involvement.

 

This week the Swedish news site M3 ran a piece on TPB, bringing together some key players from the Pirate Bay trial. On one side there’s entertainment industry lawyer Monique Wadsted, who represented Hollywood, and Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde chimed in as well.

No Regrets

The piece doesn’t go deep into detail but it shows that the entertainment industry lawyer doesn’t regret going after the site and its founders, despite the mixed result. When Wadsted was asked whether it was worth the time and money, she replied with “Absolutely!”

 

“Even though it was the American film companies that paid for my work, that work benefited all the authors and copyright holders. This is a very important but often forgotten aspect,” Wadsted told M3.

 

Reading between the lines it’s clear that Wadsted hasn’t developed any sympathy for the pirate movement over the years. While companies such as Spotify and Netflix have publicly admitted that piracy was seen as both competition and inspiration, the lawyer doesn’t believe TPB should get much credit.

 

“It is a cultivated myth that we would not have any streaming services for music, film and TV series if Pirate Bay did not exist. Those who claim it do not understand how technology development works. For example, it was not a pirate movement that forced the development of smartphones,” Wadsted noted.

 

That last comment is a bit confusing as streaming services were around before smartphones. When Spotify and Netflix launched, smartphones were not a thing yet, and the iPhone had yet to launch.

 

That said, The Pirate Bay can’t be credited for all technological revolutions but many people believe that piracy has helped to speed up the development of legal services. Spotify reportedly built its first content library with pirated music, and Napster’s rise motivated the music industry to team up with iTunes.

Paving The Way

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde also believes that file-sharing paved the way for legal streaming services.

 

“File-sharing has definitely helped the rise of services like Spotify and Netflix,” Sunde told M3, noting that this wasn’t what the Pirate Bay team envisioned. Instead, they wanted to move the power back from large companies to individual artists.

 

Today, creators arguably have more control, but the entertainment industry is still dominated by major media companies. With the rise of legal options, piracy is less of an issue in the Western world, but it remains very relevant elsewhere.

 

“I constantly meet people all over the world who tell me how important it has been (and is) for them to have access to materials. People who otherwise could not have the profession they have or who have learned the language and culture,” Sunde said.

 

The fight to ‘free’ culture came at a steep price for Pirate Bay’s former spokesman, who distanced himself from the site many years ago. Following the trial, he was sentenced to an 8-month prison sentence of which five were served.

Stopping The Pirate Bay?

After more than two decades have passed The Pirate Bay still remains the go-to pirate site for many people. This also means that efforts to stop it will continue.

 

Wadsted highlights that a lot of progress has already been made. Site-blocking efforts make the site harder to reach in many countries, and advertising blocklists make it more difficult for the current operators to monetize it. And with a lack of revenue, some site operators will eventually choose to abandon ship.

 

For now, however, The Pirate Bay remains online and Peter Sunde doesn’t expect that the copyright lobby can bring it to its knees. “Pirate Bay has a life of its own and can not be stopped,” he said.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak Sunde clarifies that the site may eventually go away. He previously argued that shutting it down may be for the best. However, it won’t be outsiders that take it down.

 

“The only way for it to die is if people running it grow tired and try to kill it off. There’s no power from the movie or tech companies that can affect that,” Sunde tells us.

 

It’s impossible to predict The Pirate Bay’s future but history has indeed shown that it’s quite resilient. That said, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the site is pushed further into the dark web during the years to come.

 

https://torrentfreak.com/images/fitgirl-1.png

 

Where games of a few kilobytes once ruled the waves, these days files reaching tens of gigabytes are not unusual. Even now, not everyone has the bandwidth or time available to dedicate to grabbing these releases. Perhaps unsurprisingly though, people always step in to provide a way.

 

FitGirl is arguably the most famous videogame “repacker” in the world today. Of Russian origins and using the likeness of Amélie, FitGirl releases typically offer everything the average videogame pirate needs – games with protections removed (or bypassed), delivered via torrents, in a much smaller file size than the original.

 

With tens of millions of visits per month, FitGirl’s torrent index is one of the most popular around and is only growing in popularity. In part, that’s due to FitGirl’s popularity but also the quality of their releases. What isn’t mentioned often, however, is the sheer number of releases made by what is believed to be a single-person operation.

The Amelie Report October 2021

In what will hopefully become a regular feature detailing FitGirl’s work, in recent days the ‘Amelie Report’ for October 2021 was published on FitGirl’s site. It provides a unique insight not only into FitGirl’s releases but what appears to be an almost unhealthy dedication to the art of repacking and releasing.

 

In the month of October alone, FitGirl repacked an astonishing 157 games, which averages out to about five games every single day. An impressive 82% of those repacks (128) were of new games while 29 were updated titles.

 

“The source size of all releases, most of which are scene ISOs, is equal to 1370 GB (1.33 TB), which unpack to a size of 1905 GB (1.86 TB). The average unpacked size of the game comes to about 8.7 GB, while the median size is only 5.1 GB. Median here means that half of the games are larger than 5.1 GB and the rest half are smaller,” FitGirl reveals.

 

“When packed, those games take up from 698 GB to 808 GB, depending on selected components, which is basically half of the scene release sizes. The minimum average repack size comes to about 4.5 GB, while the median size is only 1.9 GB.”

In short and in broad terms, after pirated games are released by the original pirate groups, FitGirl’s repacking skills mean that they are redistributed to the masses more quickly and efficiently.

Repack Release Examples

The largest game repack released by FitGirl in October was Conan Exiles: Complete Edition, which began life as a 105GB file but after processing was cut down to just 45.5GB. The smallest was CADE PRIME which from a lofty 730MB was crunched down to 220MB. The size difference between games and their repacks can differ wildly though.

 

“The worst compression ratio recorded is for Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (9.5 GB –> 7.8 GB, only 17.9% saved), while the best result recorded is for Boomerang X (10.8 GB –> 859 MB), with a whopping amount of 92% traffic saved,” FitGirl reports.

Compression / Decompression

When FitGirl obtains releases and goes about the packing processes, plenty of things need to be done. Original ISOs have to be unpacked, analyzed, prepared and compressed, for example. FItGirl says that the overall processing speed is carried out at a rate of 63.5GB of data per day with compression writing speed taking place at roughly half that.

 

Importantly, when FitGirl releases are obtained by users, work has to be carried out on that end too. All of the compression has to be reversed on the users’ machines (similar to an automated unZIPping) and the overall time spent can be significant and heavily dependant on the hardware available.

“(s)tats show that the average repack installation time on a 16-threaded PC [with at least 16GB RAM] is 4 minutes 20 seconds with median timing being even lower, that is only 2 minutes. For slower machines [4-threaded CPU with 8GB of RAM], those numbers are 9 and 3 minutes respectively. Of course, there are slow installations (Killing Floor 2 will be killing your PC for two hours on a 4-threaded CPU), but average numbers are pretty low,” FitGirl explains.

 

Also, if users have a laptop rather than a desktop machine, FitGirl says that the installation time can be increased by a factor of 2 but that isn’t the only bottleneck.

 

“If you have an active antivirus, then multiply it by a factor of 1.2-2, but if you have an aggressive antivirus which checks ALL read/write data on the fly, then multiply it by a factor of 2-4. Yes, you guessed it right, being dumb is costly in 2021,” FitGirl adds.

 

While running an antivirus might slow down FitGirl repack game installations, turning off security tools isn’t generally advised for the average user. Then again, FitGirl is certainly not the average user, not by a long shot.

 

‘Amélie’ is probably the busiest and most productive gaming pirate online today and as things stand, there are no signs of a slowdown.

 

The full list of games released by FitGirl in October can be found here

 

YouTube doesn’t have a download functionality but there are numerous ‘stream-ripping’ services available on the web that offer just that.

 

These tools have legal uses but they are also a thorn in the side of music industry outfits, who see them as a major piracy threat.

 

This concern was illustrated last year when an RIAA takedown notice wiped youtube-dl off GitHub, a decision that was eventually reversed. In addition, the music industry has taken legal action against several stream-ripping platforms, with some success.

 

Yout.com is one of the sites at the center of this battle. The site’s operator, Johnathan Nader, has appealed blocking requests with mixed results. At the same time, the developer sued the RIAA in a US federal court seeking a declaration that Yout does not violate the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

Criminal Complaint in Brazil

The legal battle with the RIAA is still ongoing but there’s a more pressing concern too. This week, Nader learned that the Public Prosecutor’s Office of São Paulo, Brazil, has filed a criminal complaint against him. As a result, Yout.com is now blocked by Brazilian ISPs.

 

This isn’t the first time that Yout has been blocked in Brazil. The site was previously blocked last fall pending a criminal investigation. However, Yout’s lawyers managed to get the site unblocked in court as no official indictment was filed at the time.

 

While there is now a detailed criminal complaint, there is no conviction. This means that Yout is being preemptively blocked before the case is fully prosecuted. This “guilty until proven innocent” approach was confirmed by Nader’s legal team in Brazil after which he shared a new insight on Twitter.

 

https://torrentfreak.com/images/nadertweet.jpg

 

Blocking or seizing sites that are targeted in a criminal investigation is not new. The same has happened in the US, where Megaupload and KickassTorrents were effectively shut down based on a criminal complaint.

 

Nader tells us that, as a result of the new measures, Brazilian traffic has tanked, again. In the span of a year, the site has lost a significant portion of its traffic due to the blocking efforts.

Prison Sentence?

What’s perhaps more concerning is the looming criminal sentence. Nader obviously doesn’t believe that his site is illegal but if the Brazilian criminal court decides otherwise, criminal copyright infringement can result in a prison sentence of up to four years.

 

However, that means that the developer, who’s an American citizen, has to be extradited to Brazil which isn’t straightforward. Another option could be that both sides come to some form of agreement, under which the site remains unavailable in Brazil without a prison sentence.

 

In any case, history has shown that Nader is willing to stand up for Yout and he will most likely fight this latest blocking ‘order’ as well.

 

Yout’s legal team in Brazil assured the developer that there are good grounds to mount a defense. However, there are certainly no guarantees, and lawyers are generally not cheap either.

 

While China needs little prompting to shut down or block any websites that don’t fit a locally-approved profile, sometimes it needs encouragement from overseas.

 

In 2014 the MPAA highlighted the activities of China-based YYeTs.com, a site known locally as Renren Yingshi. The platform was described as the most popular download site for copyrighted content in China, providing links in various formats, including for the popular Xunlei and BitTorrent clients. By this time the site had already been in operation for more than a decade.

 

Hollywood’s problem was that the platform offered Chinese subtitles for Western content, something that helped boost infringement of US-made movies and TV shows. That also presented a problem for the Chinese government which tends to control what content is made available to local audiences, oftentimes with crucial edits to remove references and material deemed to be offensive.

Enforcement Actions

The site and the individuals behind Renren Yingshi have weathered a number of issues over the years, many of them copyright-related. In 2020 it was revealed that an associated group was being investigated by the authorities in China and in early January 2021, a “clean up” of the service was announced

 

However, that was quickly followed by the arrest of 14 people connected to Renren Yingshi carried out under the supervision of the National Copyright Administration, National Anti-Pornography Office, Ministry of Public Security, and the Supreme Procuratorate.

 

Local media reported that those arrested were under suspicion of systematically downloading movies and TV shows from pirate websites located outside China, adding subtitles, and distributing the captioned videos from their own servers in breach of copyright. At the time it was estimated that the platform had tens of thousands of pirated movies and TV shows and serviced millions of users.

Site Founder Sentenced in China

In an announcement made by Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court via social network platform Weibo on Monday, it was revealed that after pleading guilty, the founder of Renren Yingshi has now been sentenced for his crimes.

 

Liang Yongping was handed a 3.5-year prison sentence for copyright infringement and a fine of 1.5 million yuan, around US$235,000.

 

During his trial it was determined that Renren Yingshi and related services offered 32,824 unauthorized film and television works to an estimated 6.83 million members. For some years the platform was believed to operate as a volunteer project but according to authorities, that wasn’t the case in its recent history.

 

Shanghai Third Intermediate Court (via WeChat account)

 

Since 2018, Liang Yongping established companies (Wuhan Chain World Technology Co., Ltd. and Wuhan Kuaiyixing Technology Co., Ltd) and hired individuals to develop the website plus Android, iOS and TV apps for the ‘Renren Film and Television Subtitle Group’. Others were brought in to organize translations and upload them to the operation’s servers.

 

In the same period, Liang Yongping collected membership/subscription fees (“donations”) while money was also generated through advertising and the sale of hard disks containing unauthorized movies and TV shows.

 

“Upon audit, from January 2018 through the above channels the total amount of illegal business operations amounted to more than RMB 12 million [US$1.87m],” the Court’s statement reads.

 

Several other individuals referenced by the Court in connection with the Renren Yingshi operation will either be sentenced separately or dealt with in other cases.

 

At the time of writing the YYeTs.com website is still live but accessing content is hit and miss. Some third-party links work but others prompt users to create a VIP account on an external service.

 

With over a quarter billion active users, Telegram is one on the most used messaging apps.

 

In addition to direct chats, the application also allows people to create channels through which they can broadcast messages to unlimited audiences. This feature is regularly abused by pirates.

 

These Telegram troubles were pointed out by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) just recently. The Hollywood group sees copyright infringement as one of Telegram’s growth drivers and it urged the US Trade Representative to put the service on the annual list of notorious piracy markets.

 

“One of its growth drivers is the presence of copyrighted content on the platform, core features that support the sharing and discoverability of unauthorized files, protect anonymity of uploaders, and make consumption easy and convenient supercharging the circulation of infringing content, whether deliberate or accidental,” MPA wrote.

 

The movie industry group notes that Telegram has made some improvements on the compliance front, but it lacks a streamlined takedown process. Further improvements may come in the future, but not all rightsholders are willing to wait. This has made Telegram the subject of several court actions.

Telegram Blocking Injunction

A few days ago copyright holders scored a win at the Intellectual Property Court in Lisbon, Portugal. The case was brought by Visapress, which acts on behalf of several newspaper and magazine publishers, and the film industry association GEDIPE.

 

The groups complained about 17 channels that are publicly available through Telegram. Together, these channels reportedly have more than 10 million members who have access to a wide range of movies, TV shows, newspapers, and magazines.

 

 

The complaint notes that Telegram allows users to store large files which makes sharing of pirated content relatively easy. This resulted in widespread copyright infringement of a wide variety of content, including Disney’s “Mulan” and Netflix’s “Elona Holmes,” as well as local print publications.

 

Since some channels have more than a million users, who come from all over the world, this type of sharing activity can’t be characterized as personal use. The rightsholders, therefore, argue that Telegram should block the channels.

 

After reviewing all arguments the Lisbon court decided to grant the blocking injunction. The court recognized that freedom of expression on the Internet is important but it sees this injunction as appropriate and proportionate.

Blocking Measures are Not Perfect

This doesn’t mean that blocking measures are perfect. The court recognized that the effectiveness will be limited. Channels owners can simply change their brand or start a new group altogether. However, doing something is better than doing nothing at all.

 

“I understand that although the requested blocking may not be fully effective, it is an adequate and proportionate means to at least try to ensure respect for intellectual property rights, leading to the deterrence of sharing and availability of such contents,” the order reads.

 

The injunction was issued without Telegram being heard. The Lisbon court was not able to reach the company through its address in Dubai, despite help from the local embassy. Telegram will be able to appeal the injunction if it chooses to, however.

 

It’s unclear whether Telegram has already taken action. The channels in question are only identified by their names, which are easy to change. This could make it easy to bypass the blocking injunction.

 

For example, the most popular channel, “Netflix HD Movies Series,” reportedly had close to four million members. When we search for it today, we are directed to a channel with a new name but the same member count.

 

We also checked another channel titled “Portal Filmes™ Play,” which is no longer available. Instead, a Telegram popup message informs us that it is “unavailable due to copyright infringement.”

 

 

More Legal Action Could Follow

Carlos Eugénio, Executive Director of Visapress, informs TorrentFreak that the injunction is seen as an important victory in the battle against online piracy. But it’s just the first step and similar orders could follow.

 

Visapress also recognizes that blocking measures can be circumvented. However, Eugénio believes that if the Telegram channels change their name, Telegram should be aware, and take action against these new ‘brands.’

 

“Changing the name of the groups and chats is a simple way that their administrators have to bypass the court order but Telegram knows this. In my opinion, this decision obliges them to remove or block access to these groups and chats.”

 

While Telegram didn’t defend itself in court, Visapress hopes that the company will comply with the injunction. If not, the organization could try to have Telegram blocked entirely, which will have far-reaching consequences for all users.

 

“If they do not comply, we will have to make a stronger case that could result in a request to block access to the Telegram application as a whole,” Eugénio tells TorrentFreak.

 

—

 

A copy of the injunction issued by the Intellectual Property Court in Lisbon is available here (in Portuguese)

 

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 three new entries in the list. “No Time to Die” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on November 22 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(2)	No Time to Die	7.5 / trailer
2	(1)	Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings	7.7 / trailer
3	(…)	Last Night in Soho	7.3 / trailer
4	(3)	Red Notice	6.5 / trailer
5	(5)	Dune	8.3 / trailer
6	(4)	Finch	7.0 / trailer
7	(…)	King Richard	7.6 / trailer
8	(7)	Venom: Let There Be Carnage	6.3 / trailer
9	(8)	Free Guy	7.4 / trailer
10	(…)	Zeros and Ones	3.3 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Online piracy remains the single largest threat for Hollywood’s movie studios.

 

Most companies have entire departments dedicated to spotting infringing content, understanding the changing landscape, and figuring out how to respond.

 

This is also true for Disney, which has a long track record when it comes to anti-piracy enforcement. With the launch of Disney+ a few years ago, the need for in-house piracy experts has only increased.

Disney Seeks Piracy Analyst

A few days ago the entertainment giant posted a new job opening through which it plans to strengthen its anti-piracy team. In a new job listing, Disney is looking for a Digital Media Antipiracy Analyst, who will help to understand and tackle the latest online piracy trends.

 

“This position will be part of a team that is responsible for providing antipiracy services with a focus on combating online piracy,” the job opening reads.

 

“Duties of this position include supporting enforcement of films, television shows and live events, researching piracy technologies, websites, and apps, tracking piracy data, providing regular reports on piracy trends, evaluating prospective providers of antipiracy services and managing existing providers,” Disney adds.

Monitoring the Piracy Landscape

One of the primary responsibilities of this position is to analyze and write regular reports on the piracy ecosystem. This includes monitoring the latest piracy technologies, websites, and apps.

 

These reports will help Disney and its clients to get a better understanding of looming threats and how to combat these with enforcement efforts.

 

 

In addition to researching piracy trends, the job also involved more hands-on anti-piracy work. This includes the use of monitoring services and enforcement tools to assist in anti-piracy operations.

Evaluating External Anti-Piracy Partners

Finally, the prospective anti-piracy specialist will also help to seek out external anti-piracy partners and monitor their performance. That likely includes the various DMCA takedown services Disney uses.

 

“Assist in the evaluation and implementation of new antipiracy vendor programs, and provide day-to-day supervision to efforts of current antipiracy vendors if applicable,” Disney writes.

 

Prospective candidates will need a bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience. In addition, a solid understanding of the online piracy landscape, including streaming sites, is also welcome.

 

It’s not publicly known how many people are working at Disney’s anti-piracy team, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the team has expanded quite a bit over the years. And with the company’s exclusive Disney+ releases, which are widely pirated, anti-piracy efforts are probably more important than ever.

 

Most mainstream music is available on commercial services, for streaming or download, on the same date in dozens of countries around the world. Among other things, the coordinated Friday release scheme was designed to reduce piracy.

 

While for the vast majority of legitimate consumers this is sufficient to level the playing field, there is a smaller but significant subsection of music fans who not only prefer to have content more quickly, but also at zero cost.

 

This was one of the functions of the ‘RipRequests’ Discord server and corresponding community on Reddit. People keen to get the latest releases a few hours, days, or even weeks ahead of schedule were sometimes able to obtain them from dedicated bots. But while this has operated well for some time, the thirst for Adele’s new album appears to have been a step too far for the record labels.

Adele’s ’30’ Brings the Heat

’30’ is the fourth studio album by English singer-songwriter Adele. In line with the current releasing schedule, it appeared on official sites on Friday 19 November 2021 courtesy of Melted Stone and Columbia Records. However, at least one day before (and most likely two) at least one copy was being shared within piracy communities.

 

One of those communities appears to have included RipRequests and while this type of activity is nothing new for these types of platforms, this time the RIAA (of which Columbia and also Adele are listed as members) quickly waded into the action.

 

 

As the image above shows, in an announcement posted to Reddit the team revealed that the RipRequests Discord server had been taken down by the RIAA. The post is now inaccessible since the team, apparently of its own free will, has temporarily locked the sub-Reddit.

Discord Server Was Removed “By Force”

In most cases, copyright complaints filed by the RIAA against online services such as Reddit and indeed Discord are actioned under the DMCA’s notice and takedown provisions. A notice is sent and when received, such platforms have to remove the content to avoid liability.

 

When an account holder runs into trouble on Discord, the company’s repeat infringer policy can come into play. No specific parameters are published by Discord (such as two or three ‘strikes’) and indeed, the company reserves the right to take action immediately, even if there is no repeat infringement.

Whether that was part of the reason for Discord banning the channel is unclear but other things could be at play here.

 

A copy of a copyright complaint / cease-and-desist notice shared with TorrentFreak (as far as we know sent by the RIAA as early as November 17) warns that distributing copyrighted tracks in advance of their commercial release is illegal.

 

“We have learned that, without the authority of the relevant copyright owners, you have engaged in the unauthorized reproduction, distribution and/or streaming of sound recordings that have not yet been commercially released, the rights to which are owned by one of more of our members,” it reads.

 

“More specifically, it has come to our attention that you are responsible for leaking sound recordings from the upcoming Adele album ’30’ set for commercial release on November 19, 2021. Such activity is illegal, and these actions must stop at once.”

The Complaint Cites Criminal Law

The message is framed as a “cease-and-desist” but has an interesting element. Most types of copyright infringements have civil penalties attached but in this case, the RIAA also cites criminal law in its takedown notice.

 

“Such pre-release piracy is prohibited by law. In particular, the willful authorized distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, is prohibited by 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1)(C),” it reads.

 

The relevant section of law can be found here and is clear that if the infringer knew (or should have known) that the work was intended for commercial distribution, then liability follows. Depending on circumstances, punishments are increasingly severe, from a maximum of three years imprisonment up to an exceptional ten years.

 

The cease-and-desist notice also references 17 U.S.C. § 106, which entitles copyright owners to damages of up to $150,000 per work and attorneys’ fees.

 

The UK piracy tracking firm MUSO has quite a balanced view on the piracy problem, framing it as an opportunity rather than a threat.

 

MUSO believes that by understanding what motivates pirates, copyright holders can gain great insights that will ultimately help to generate new revenue streams.

 

At the same time, however, the company offers classic anti-piracy services. This includes sending DMCA notices to Google for potentially infringing links that appear in the popular search engine.

 

Working on behalf of prominent rightsholders, MUSO has reported more than 100 million infringing URLs to Google over the years. This usually goes quite smoothly but this week we were alerted to a concerning pattern.

Non-existing URLs

In a series of quite unusual DMCA notices the company reported more than 100,000 URLs that flagged non-existing links on pirate sites. These URLs pointed to hundreds of domains and often used repetitive keyword strings, such as the examples shown below.

 

When we attempted to load these pages they nearly all resulted in 404-type errors. In some cases that’s not really a surprise, including the questionable example below.

 

 

These takedowns don’t really harm the targeted sites since the content doesn’t exist. However, more flagged links on a domain could be that these sites are further demoted in Google’s search results. That’s a serious concern.

Takedowns Target Legitimate sites

The issue is not limited to pirate sites either. Tucked away in the long lists of ‘pirate’ links we also find several legitimate websites. These include ABC News, Amazon, Billboard, Redfin, Variety, the Red Cross, and the UK National Archives.

 

Below are a few examples from a single notice, but there are many more.

http://amazon.co.uk/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html
http://www.abcnews.go.com/search-movies/Heart of Champions 2021.html
http://billboard.com/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html
http://huffingtonpost.com/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html
http://globalnews.ca/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html
http://redcrossblood.org/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html
http://redfin.com/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/3253571-after-we-fell-2021-720p-webrip-x264-xbet.html

Misconfiguration

We reported our findings to MUSO earlier this week and the company informed us that these URLs should not have been targeted. Apparently, a batch of incorrect listings were sent out as the result of a misconfiguration

 

“These delistings are part of a batch of incorrect delistings sent out due to a misconfiguration within our service. We have identified the incorrect delistings and issued retractions with Google to have these incorrect delisting requests voided,” a spokesperson said.

 

Following up on this answer we requested a full overview of the incorrect delistings. In addition, we asked whether MUSO checks whether a URL is responding properly before a notice is sent.

 

While we didn’t get a direct answer to these questions, MUSO said that there are multiple processes and checks in place to identify mistakes. The company also reaffirmed that all mistakes will be retracted.

 

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of one of the affected sites. He didn’t immediately notice a negative effect from the takedown notices. However, he points out that Google’s transparency report sometimes suggests that the URLs are indexed by the search engine, which isn’t the case.

Prevous Issues

From what we can gather, the takedown system wrongfully matched keyword strings to the wrong base URLs. This can work for some proxy sites that use the same URL structure but, in this case, something clearly went wrong.

 

 

This reminds us of a similar issue that popped up a few years ago. At the time, keyword string takedowns targeted many non-existing URLs as well but legitimate sites were not hit at the time.

 

While these types of mistakes should be avoided, we have to applaud MUSO for being open and transparent about it. Mistakes can happen and it’s always better to focus on a fix rather than a cover-up.

When local courts first grant copyright holders permission to block a pirate site, it is almost guaranteed that will be the first of many similar requests.

 

In the UK, copyright holders have been blocking pirate sites for more than a decade and every month additional sites are added to the ever-growing list. Actioned under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, blocking injunctions are executed by the major ISPs, who together control the vast majority of the market.

 

A site or domain blocked on one ISP will be blocked by all of the others, meaning that domains either become permanently inaccessible or users are forced to turn to circumvention tools such as VPNs. These types of workarounds don’t deter Hollywood studios, however, which continue to add domains to the UK’s unofficial blacklist.

New Additions to the Pirate Site Blocklist

Following many similar requests over the years, the Motion Picture Association has now been granted permission to block yet more domains. Published by ISP TalkTalk, the latest additions are mostly pirate streaming platforms, with the direct domains/URLs detailed as follows:

 

flixtor.gy, flixtor.nu, putlockernew.site, couchtuner.rocks, couchtuner.show, couchtuner.cloud, ww1.123moviesfree.net, 123movies-one.com, www5.bflix.to, ww1.fmoviefree.net, myflixerhd.ru, myflixer.it, myflixer.pw, myflixer.to, soap2day.cx,, europixhd.net, europixhd.pro, europixhd.io, 123movies.online, 123moviesto.ch, 123moviesfun.ch, 123moviess.online, ww1.123movies.online, watch123movies.ch/home.html, levidia.ch, www.levidia.ch, www1.levidia.ch, levidia-ch.303.si, tinyzonetv.to, tinyzone.tv, tinyzonetv.cc, watchserieshd.tv, www1.watchserieshd.tv, www2.watchserieshd.tv, www3.watchserieshd.tv, www4.watchserieshd.tv, watchserieshd.io, and watchserieshd.co

MPA Also Targets ‘Workaround’ Domains

When pirate domains are blocked by way of injunction in the UK and elsewhere, services often configure themselves to reenable access to those domains. Some simply act as mirror sites but proxy services are also popular. In many cases, these facilitate access to major players such as torrent sites RARBG and EZTV or release blogs such as SCNSRC. This batch continues the trend and reads as follows:

 

eztv.unblockit.kim, pw.unblockit.kim, solarmovie.unblockit.kim, solarmovies.movie, www1.solarmovies.movie,, icefilms.unblockit.kim, scnsrc.unblockit.kim, losmovies.top, rarbg.unblockninja.com, rarbg.torrentbay.to

 

Blocking domains at the ISP level is just one of the tools available to groups like the MPA. Much more permanent is the seizure (or technically a takeover) of ‘pirate’ domains, which are often handed over as part of a settlement agreement.

ACE ‘Seizes’ Yet More Pirate IPTV Domains

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the global anti-piracy coalition of which the MPA is a member, has been particularly successful in recent years. The group has taken control of more than 200 domains and every month adds yet more to its growing list.

 

Precisely when action against particular services takes place is hard to pinpoint but sometime after ACE contacts a service, provider or supplier, there is a period where the platform either ignores the anti-piracy group’s demands and carries on regardless, or agrees to shut down and hand over their domains.

 

Over the past couple of weeks, ACE/MPA have added more to their collection.

 

Smart 5G TV (smart5gtv.com) recently announced that it was expanding its server capacity to decrease buffering in the United States. However, as this post on Reddit reveals, subscribing to the service didn’t always go to plan. One user reports that after paying money, the service went down – no surprises for guessing what happened.

 

Using similar graphics and domains, efiretv.net and efiretvglobal.com appear to have been connected.

 

“Cut the cord with the best service on the market, eFire. With the new SOPlayer app, you will get the best viewing experience on the market. Sign up today!” the platform recently urged on its homepage.

 

That offer now appears to have been discontinued as both domains now show the familiar ACE seizure banner before redirecting to the ACE anti-piracy portal.

Similar circumstances can be applied to Dynasty TV, which according to a Troypoint report went down in September. It’s now confirmed that the IPTV service, which operated from dynasty-tv.com and dynastytvrepair.com, received an approach from ACE and subsequently handed its domains over to the anti-piracy group.

 

Finally, streaming site cinemaqualidade.li, which seems to have specialized in Portuguese-dubbed content, has also fallen to ACE. It doesn’t appear to have generated lots of traffic but taking the site down adds to the momentum of the anti-piracy coalition, which shows little sign of slowing.

 

Eleven months ago, academic publishers Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society filed a lawsuit in India demanding that local ISPs should block subscriber access to Sci-Hub and Libgen.

 

In common with similar injunction applications in other regions, the companies accused Sci-Hub and founder Alexandra Elbakyan of engaging in massive infringement due to the making available of copyrighted content without their permission.

 

Since tackling the platforms directly has proven fruitless, ISP blocking is the only real option to protect their rights, they argued.

 

Early January 2021, scientists, academics, teachers and students came out in opposition to the blocking application. As a result, Justice JR Midha at the Delhi High Court said that dissenting voices would be heard before a final decision is made, adding that the case and its implications were a matter of “public importance“.

Group of Academics Join The Legal Battle

Assisted and represented by the Delhi-based Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a group of social science researchers affiliated with universities across Delhi has now filed an intervention application that aims to educate the High Court on the negative implications of ordering local ISPs to block the platforms.

 

“In the application, they have demonstrated the importance of the LibGen and Sci-Hub in enabling them to continue with research and discharge professional obligations,” IFF explains.

 

“They have submitted that they cannot access countless essays/books/articles because of the exorbitant rates the publishers charge for them and that these publishers own more than 50% of the total output in social science research. The only way in which they can access these resources is by relying upon LibGen and Sci-Hub. Moreover, LibGen and Sci-Hub offer access to up-to-date research which is unavailable elsewhere.”

Intervention Application

The seven social science researchers behind the application are Tejaswi Chhatwal, Jagannath Kumar Yadav, Madhurima Kundu, Chitrangada Sharma, Piyush Chhabra, Rini Dasgupta and Srishti Walia. All study human society and human behavior and as such their work contributes to policymaking and the development of India.

 

Unfortunately, their research isn’t always straightforward. Despite being affiliated with prestigious universities which provide access to scholarly resources, they remain without access to countless essays, books and articles that are behind the paywalled gateways of the publishers.

 

Sci-Hub and Libgen, on the other hand, make access so much easier by providing the publishers’ articles (as well as non-protected content) in an easy-to-consume format.

 

“The Applicants’ reliance on [Sci-Hub and Libgen] has incomparably increased during the pandemic where, on account of the indefinite closure of university premises, they lost access to library resources and, in many cases, also to the institutional access to research databases,” the intervention application reads.

 

“The Applicants submit that they were only able to continue their research due to the existence of Defendant Websites, since [the publishers] have exorbitantly priced access to works for which they hold copyright licenses such that it is practically impossible for individuals to make use of the same.”

 

The researchers describe Libgen as one of the “primary sources” for the development of social sciences in India and say that if the Court rules that it should be blocked, researchers will not be able to continue with their work. That means an end to meaningful engagement with scientists from other countries and the ability to contribute to policy building.

 

In short, limited access to knowledge and the ability to share it with others will be severely compromised.

 

“[L]ib-Gen, being a free digital library, has democratized access to knowledge resources not only by eliminating paywalls but also providing access from any physical location as long as the person has access to the internet,” they add.

Use of Sci-Hub and Libgen Doesn’t Hurt Publishers’ Profits

The social science researchers also draw attention to the publishers’ “prohibitive pricing” models that place a serious burden on the publicly-funded academic institutions where they conduct their research. They further note that, to the best of their knowledge, individual users who rely on Sci-Hub and Libgen have not dented the profits of the publishers.

 

“The profit margins of the [publishers] are much higher than those of enterprises in other industries such as oil, medicines and technology. Thus, the Plaintiffs’ plea of blocking [Sci-Hub and Libgen] only serves their self-interest of increasing their coffers without benefitting society,” their application reads.

 

“In fact, granting the Plaintiffs’ reliefs will have a detrimental impact on the social science research undertaken in India and the careers of the Applicants and those they represent before this Hon’ble Court. The unavailability of the Defendant Websites will also stunt the academic growth of the nation.”

Blocking Would be Against The Law

After highlighting the risks to society should the Court authorize blocking, the researchers turn to the legality of doing so. They believe that while the publishers own the copyrights to the articles, the use of those articles is allowed under India’s Copyright Act, at least under certain conditions.

 

“The [researchers’] use of and [Sci-Hub and Libgen’s] making available the material owned by the Plaintiffs is permissible under inter alia Section 52(1)(a)(i) of the Copyright Act,” they write.

 

“According to this provision, ‘fair dealing with any work’ shall not constitute an infringement of copyright if it is for ‘private or personal use, including research’. Providing access to material by the Defendant Websites constitutes ‘fair dealing’ since it complies with the conditions recognized by this Hon’ble Court in Division Bench in India TV Independent News Service Pvt. Ltd. and Ors. v. Yashraj Films Pvt. Ltd.”

 

Finally, the researchers say they are contesting any blocking injunction on the basis that it would be overbroad. They note that the publishers are not seeking the removal of specific infringing content but the blocking of entire websites in perpetuity. They argue that there are less restrictive measures available and these should have been sought first, rather than going directly for complete blocking of Sci-Hub and Libgen.

 

Before issuing any blocking order, they also ask the court to consider Article 19(1) that recognizes the fundamental right to access information. According to IFF, the publishers are required to file their reply to the intervention application within four weeks.

 

The full application can be found here (via IFF)

 

For several decades, The Scene has been the main source of all pirated content made available on the Internet.

 

Technically, release groups operate in a closed ecosystem, but the reality is different. The vast majority of the files published on private Scene servers eventually find their way to public pirate sites.

Feds Bust SPARKS Group

The secretive nature of the Scene has been a major challenge for law enforcement but last summer the US Department of Justice had a major breakthrough. Following a thorough investigation, three men connected to the illustrious SPARKS group were indicted.

 

One of the defendants, a British man named George Bridi, was arrested in Cyprus on an Interpol Red Notice. After an extradition process that took nearly a year, he was eventually extradited to the United States to face criminal charges.

Bridi Pleads Guilty

During a hearing before Judge Richard M. Berman yesterday, the 52-year-old pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement for his role in the SPARKS conspiracy. This could result in a maximum prison sentence of five years, as well as a hefty monetary fine.

 

Among other things, Bridi admitted to conspiring with a member of the SPARKS group. He obtained pre-release Blu-ray discs from a distributors in New York, several weeks before their retail release dates.

 

Before the court, Bridi stated that he only had contact with one member of the SPARKS group. He didn’t see himself as being part of the group. During the hearing, his attorney Louis Freeman further stressed that there was no profit motive involved.

 

Initially, Bridi didn’t realize that he was engaging in illegal activities. However, during his involvement, which began in 2013, this eventually became clear.

Winning the Race

During the hearing, there was some confusion about the motivation behind the piracy scheme. Bridi said that he initially got involved when he was out of a job. The work he did for SPARKS relieved the boredom and made him feel important. He didn’t care about the movies at all, it was all about the battle with other Scene groups

 

“It became like a race, we had to win because there were other groups buying from the same distributor,” Bridi said, explaining his involvement.

 

For outsiders, this “race” appears to be an alien concept, especially when there are crimes involved. However, the now 52-year-old Brit kept going and said he bought roughly 500 pre-release films, noting that not all these these “won” races.

iCloud and other Evidence

The prosecution noted that if the case would have gone to trial, there is sufficient evidence for a conviction. This includes witness testimony, evidence from Bridi’s Apple iCloud account, and purchase records from a distributor that listed his real name.

 

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams is pleased with the guilty plea. In a press statement, he notes that the SPARKS conspiracy caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to film production studios.

 

“As he admitted in court today, George Bridi participated in an international video piracy ring that illegally distributed worldwide on the Internet nearly every movie released by major production studios, as well as television shows.

 

“Bridi circumvented copyright protections on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs to illegally share movies online, but he and his crew could not evade law enforcement scrutiny, and Bridi now awaits sentencing for his crime,” U.S. Attorney Williams added.

Sentence Early Next Year

Bridi is scheduled to be sentenced in January 2022. While there are no guarantees, his cooperative stance will likely result in a lower sentence than the five-year maximum. The plea agreement lists a guideline of 23 to 37 months.

 

This is the second guilty plea in the SPARKS case. Previously, Kansas resident Jonatan Correa did the same, which resulted in a sentence of time served and 27 months of supervised release.

 

The third defendant, Norway resident Umar Ahmad a.k.a. “Artist”, has yet to appear in court. Whether he’s been located yet is unclear.

 

NFTs have been booming over the past year. People are willing to pay millions of dollars just to prove that they “own” a digital item that was worthless before.

 

These digital entries, stored on a blockchain, allow the buyers to prove that they are legitimate owners. While it’s different from a copyright, NFTs owners are rightsholders in a sense.

The NFT Bay

However, that doesn’t mean that other people can’t copy the associated files, which are often widely available. This is made pretty clear by The NFT Bay, which launched just a few hours ago. The site, which is clearly inspired by The Pirate Bay, shares a torrent with “pirated” versions of NFTs.

 

“The Billion Dollar Torrent,” as it’s called, reportedly includes all the NFTs on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. These files are bundled in a massive torrent that points to roughly 15 terabytes of data. Unpacked, this adds up to almost 20 terabytes.

 

 

Australian developer Geoff is the brains behind the platform, which he describes as an art project. Speaking with TorrentFreak, he says that The Pirate Bay was used as inspiration for nostalgic reasons, which needs further explanation.

Too Much for PRQ

The NFT Bay itself lists a few examples of “pirated” NFT images but these uploads point to the same massive torrent file. Downloading the torrent can be a challenge as it requires quite a bit of disk space. In fact, finding a hosting solution for the seedbox wasn’t straightforward either.

 

“For authenticity I was going to host at PRQ but unfortunately they don’t offer servers with enough disk space,” Geoff notes.

 

This comment may not mean much to the general public. However, veteran followers of file-sharing news will recognize PRQ as the former hosting partner of The Pirate Bay, launched by the site’s founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij.

 

The developer eventually hosted the torrented NFT archive elsewhere. And despite the massive size and the attention it’s getting, both the site and seedbox are running smoothly.

 

“The seedbox hosting the torrent has 4 x 10TB SATA drives configured in RAID0 and the website is humming along just fine even though the website is going insanely viral,” Geoff says.

Wake-Up Call

The NFT Bay is not just any random art project. It does come with a message, perhaps a wake-up call, for people who jump on the NFT bandwagon without fully realizing what they’re spending their crypto profits on.

 

“Purchasing NFT art right now is nothing more than directions on how to access or download an image. The image is not stored on the blockchain and the majority of images I’ve seen are hosted on Web 2.0 storage which is likely to end up as 404 meaning the NFT has even less value.”

 

The same warning is more sharply articulated in the torrent’s release notes which are styled in true pirate fashion.

 

“[T]his handy torrent contains all of the NFT’s so that future generations can study this generation’s tulip mania and collectively go…” it reads.

 

 

Fifteen years ago this would have been a project The Pirate Bay could have come up with. It’s a thought-provoking piece of art that shows that ownership can be a trivial concept, especially in the digital realm.

Greed and Scams

This is not to say that all NFTs are useless and have no future. Some will probably remain very valuable. However, people who aspire to own them should understand how they work and what they represent. And making a personal copy of is probably a good start.

 

Geoff himself appears to be quite critical of the NFT hype. While the software developer believes in the possibilities that Web 3.0 can offer, today’s implementations often result in greed and scamming, which he describes as sickening.

 

He doesn’t own a CryptoPunk, obviously.

 

In the summer we reported on an unusual situation in Japan where copyright holders felt that the rise of so-called ‘fast movies’ represented a threat to their business.

 

‘Fast movies’ are essentially heavily edited copies of feature-length films that tell the entire story in just a few minutes. However, unlike most official trailers they also tend to come with commentary, in addition to an abundance of spoilers. Available on dedicated YouTube channels they became a roaring success but in Japan, this is a risky business.

 

With no broad ‘fair use’ style exceptions to lean on in a crisis, channels generating millions of views were seen as a major threat to the movie business. In response, rights holders vowed to do something about them and soon after, three suspects were arrested under suspicion of uploading ‘fast movies’ to YouTube.

 

“Fast movies are clear copyright infringement and serious crime that goes beyond the scope of legally permitted citation, however minor each act may seem,” anti-piracy group CODA told TorrentFreak at the time.

 

“Fast movies including spoilers would discourage viewers from watching the original films and thus have a serious adverse effect on the right holders.”

First Hearing: Suspects Go On Trial

Early this month the suspects, who have yet to be named, went on trial in Japan. The investigation by the Police and the Prosecutors office found that the defendants had systematically uploaded local films in ‘fast movie’ format to YouTube for monetary gain.

 

“The three defendants had been accused of violating the Copyright Act by editing ‘I Am a Hero’ and two other works copyrighted by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as ‘Cold Fish’ and another work copyrighted by Nikkatsu Co., Ltd., cutting the films down to 10 minutes without permission, adding narration and then uploading to YouTube from June to July 2020,” CODA informs TorrentFreak.

 

All three pleaded guilty to the charges in the indictment with potentially serious consequences, including immediate prison sentences and fines. The prosecution requested the following:

 

– Defendant A: 2 years in prison + fine of 2,000,000 yen (US$17,472)

– Defendant B: 18 months in prison + fine of 1,000,000 yen (US$8,736)

– Defendant C : 18 months in prison + fine of 500,000 yen (US$4,368)

 

Citing the “remorseful attitude” of their clients, the defendants’ lawyers argued that suspended sentences would be appropriate in this case, not the immediate custodial sentences sought by the prosecution.

Second Hearing: Sentencing

During the second hearing which took place this week at the Sendai District Court in Miyagi Prefecture, the judgment against the defendants was handed down. CODA says that due to the earlier guilty pleas and the existence of “lots of hard evidence”, the matter was relatively straightforward.

 

The lawyers’ request for relative leniency was taken into consideration and the sentences were as follows:

 

– Defendant A: 2 years in prison (suspended for 4 years) + 2,000,000 yen fine

– Defendant B: 18 months in prison (suspended for 3 years) + 1,000,000 yen fine

– Defendant C : 18 months in prison (suspended for 3 years) + 500,000 yen fine

CODA Welcomes the Decision

In a statement, CODA says that it finds the judgment a fair one and trusts it will act as a deterrent message to others thinking of uploading ‘fast movies’ to platforms such as YouTube.

 

“It is never permissible to use works that were created by many creative talents who devoted their time, labor and resources into their works without permission and earn enormous amount of advertising revenues,” the anti-piracy group says.

 

“CODA shall continue to eliminate illegal use of Japanese content, including but not limited to, ‘fast movies’ and to protect copyright.”

 

The fines issued to the defendants are payable to the state so if the rightsholders wish to recover damages for themselves, a civil case will have to be filed.

 

As reported by TF back in March, DISH Network filed a huge lawsuit against pirate IPTV provider ChitramTV.

 

The complaint also named Dinesh Vigneswaran, the alleged owner of ChitramTV Canada, who allegedly does business from the Chitram.ca website. DISH claimed that ChitramTV obtained its broadcasts and streams, transferred them to its own servers, and then rebroadcasted them to subscribers of the Chitram service.

 

ChitramTV was accused of distributing, selling and promoting ‘Chitram’ set-top boxes and subscription packages containing more than 500 live TV channels and 10,000 movies, both directly to users and through a network of resellers, including Vigneswaran.

 

In an effort to shut the service down, DISH said it sent at least 134 copyright infringement notices to Chitram between July 2014 and November 2015. In December 2015, Chitram reportedly “temporarily ceased” transmitting DISH content but by December 2017, it was back online.

 

All direct complaints were ignored so DISH sent copyright notices to the service’s CDN providers too but according to the broadcaster, Chitram simply moved its business elsewhere.

Demands for Massive Statutory Damages

In its complaint, DISH demanded $150,000 in statutory damages for more than 200 registered works – around $31 million in total damages. The broadcaster also sought to take over the service’s domains as part of a broad injunction. The case would not be straightforward, however.

 

While DISH had managed to identify Dinesh Vigneswaran from the beginning, finding out the identities and physical locations of those actually behind the main ChitramTV service (Does 1-10) proved impossible. Ultimately, the court allowed DISH to serve a summons to the names ChitramTV and Chitram.tv via two email addresses, one linked to a Chitram domain and another registered to Google. DISH later filed motions for default judgment against Vigneswaran and Does 1-10.

DISH Wins $31m Judgment

This week District Judge Lynn N. Hughes handed down a default judgment in the case noting that after being served on August 20, 2021, the unknown individuals behind ChitramTV had not answered or otherwise appeared.

 

“DISH Network, L.L.C., will take $31,050,000 from ChitramTV, plus 0.15% post-judgment interest. This reflects the statutory damages of $150,000 for ChitramTV’s willful infringement of 207 of DISH’s registered copyrighted works,” the Judge wrote.

 

While the $31m win makes for good headlines, the question of whether DISH will ever recover a penny remains unanswered for now. However, the Judge also issued a broad injunction that should make it much more difficult for ChitramTV to operate and sell its services in the United States.

Broad Injunction

In response to DISH’s requests, Judge Hughes’ order requires ChitramTV to stop distributing the broadcaster’s channels (or the works airing on those channels) in the United States. ChitranTV is also enjoined from distributing, selling, or promoting set-top boxes, subscriptions or services that provide access to DISH content. Importantly, the same also applies to its resellers, meaning that if anyone pops their head above the parapet on ChitramTV’s behalf, DISH is likely to be right there.

 

The injunction also covers third-party service providers that have (or may in the future) allow ChitramTV to operate in the United States.

 

Several are named – Private Layer, IP Volume, Cooperative Investments, Owl Protect, Virtual Systems, Alkar0AS and FDCServers – but the list can be expanded to encompass other providers too. None are allowed to assist ChitramTV to distribute DISH content in the United States and are required to comply within 48 hours of receiving the order.

 

The injunction also covers registries and registrars that currently (or may in future) control ChitramTV-related domains including but not limited to Thulsi.tv, Chitram.tv, Chitram.ca, Oranthservice.site, and Newmembership.net. The .TV Corporation, Verisign, Canadian Internet Registration Authority and Radix FZC (and any future entities) are required to disable and then transfer to DISH any infringing domains. They too have 48 hours to comply with the order.

IBCAP Welcomes The Judgment

The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), of which DISH is a member, welcomes the decision as it will allow them to shut ChitramTV down and target any resellers that may appear.

 

“We are very pleased with this legal victory as it will enable us and our members to shut down one of the most popular South Asian pirate services operating in the U.S. The injunctions imposed, along with the transfer of current and future domains associated with ChitramTV, will have a devastating effect on ChitramTV and any dealer selling ChitramTV,” said Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP.

 

“A dealer that continues to sell ChitramTV after receiving notice of the injunction will be in contempt of the Court’s order and liable for further damages. Dealers should be aware that it’s not worth risking their business by selling pirate IPTV services.”

 

While the judgement stands, immediately after it was issued Judge Hughes withdrew the entry of default against Dinesh Vigneswaran, the only individual to be personally identified by DISH. The reason is that Vigneswaran did indeed answer the complaint and according to our monitoring of the case, that actually happened in late October. This means that the case is not over just yet.

 

Vigneswaran Answers Complaint

In a letter accompanying his answer, Vigneswaran says that a summons dated March was dropped off at the porch of his home in May, with another document following up in October. He says that the original documents confused him, in part because the envelope was unmarked, had no stamp, and was sent from the United States.

 

“It has become common these days that you get calls and mails trying to victimize for fraudulent scam. So I thought this is some false letter and I ignored it. Moreover I didn’t have the time to think or investigate on this [sic],” he told the court.

 

Vigneswaran went on to explain that he used to work as head of sales for Lycatel’s Lyca TV and during that tenure was approached by someone to promote Chitram TV. At the time he refused but after Lyca lost a few of its channels and customers began asking for refunds, he felt a responsibility to compensate family and friends who had bought the service from him.

 

What followed was a relationship with ChitramTV, ostensibly to provide a compensatory service to aggrieved customers. Vigneswaran denied that the mentioned websites were ever owned or maintained by him and insisted that he wasn’t an owner of ChitramTV.

 

“I was forced in this situation because I wanted to safe guard my name and reputation from family and friends and move along for the betterment of my family,” he concluded.

 

Whether any of this will have a bearing on his fate remains to be seen but by filing an answer and having his reasons for not doing so sooner accepted by the judge, he remains in play. That was confirmed in an email from IBCAP to TorrentFreak stating it is their understanding that the case against Vigneswaran will proceed.

 

A conference has been scheduled for February 3, 2022.

 

The answer, letter, judgment and withdrawal order can be found here (1,2,3,4, pdf)

 

With the NFT craze reaching new heights, Quentin Tarantino finds himself at the receiving end of a copyright infringement battle.

 

The director of movie classics such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill plans to sell NFTs to the public. These NFTs will unlock handwritten scripts and exclusive custom commentary from Tarantino, which could be worth millions of dollars.

 

Tarantino is collaborating with the Secret Network, a.k.a. SCRT Labs. They officially announced the planned sale a few weeks ago and launched a dedicated website where interested parties can join a waiting list.

 

While there are undoubtedly some die-hard fans willing to pay big money for these exclusive blockchain records and their associated perks, not everyone is happy with the plan. Movie studio Miramax, which owns most of the rights to the film, sees it as a contract breach and copyright infringement.

‘Eager to Cah In’

In a lawsuit filed at a federal court in California yesterday, the movie company accuses the director of wanting to cash in on something he doesn’t own the full rights to.

 

“Eager to cash in on the non-fungible token (‘NFT’) boom, as widely reported in the media, Quentin Tarantino recently announced plans to auction off seven ‘exclusive scenes’ from the 1994 motion picture Pulp Fiction in the form of NFTs,” the complaint reads.

 

Earlier this month Miramax sent a cease and desist notice to Tarantino urging him to halt the upcoming sale. However, the director’s attorney replied that his client was acting within his “reserved rights.” As such, the sale is still scheduled to go through next month.

Miramax Claims NFT Rights

Faced with this refusal, the movie company saw no other option than to take the matter to court. Not just to stop Tarantino but also as a warning to others and to affirm that they hold the rights to sell Pulp Fiction NFTs.

 

“Left unchecked, Tarantino’s conduct could mislead others into believing Miramax is involved in his venture. And it 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,” Miramax writes.

 

The lawsuit will have to determine what Tarantino can and can’t do under his reserved rights, which include the right to “screenplay publication.” Miramax argues that selling NFT’s doesn’t fall under this heading as it is a one-time transaction.

‘Copyright Infringing Marketing’

In addition to a contract breach, Tarantino is also accused of copyright and trademark infringement. Among other things, the TarantinoNFTs.com website and marketing campaign uses copyrighted footage and the Pulp Fiction trademark without permission, the complaint alleges.

 

 

As an example, Miramax mentions several tweets with unauthorized content from Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, including a fake Pulp Fiction VHS tape with unauthorized imagery from the film.

 

“In short, Defendants seek to capitalize, unilaterally, on Miramax’s rights to Pulp Fiction,” Miramax writes.

 

Through the lawsuit, Miramax hopes to stop the NFT sales. In addition, the movie company demands damages for copyright and trademark infringements, to be determined at trial.

‘Massive Step Back’

The Tarantino NFT Twitter handle responded to a Variety article on the lawsuit, characterizing it as a massive step back.

 

“NFTs are meant to empower creators, connecting them directly with their audiences and communities. Secret NFTs on @SecretNetwork take this potential a step further. Now some in the media world want to take a massive step back,” the tweet reads.

 

Since NFT’s are relatively new, the lawsuit could potentially set an important precedent. At the time of writing, there are no signs that Tarantino and his team will back off as the NFT website remains online.

 

—

 

A copy of the complaint Miramax filed against Quentin Tarantino at the US District Court for the Central District of California is available here (pdf)

 

Earlier this year a group of programmers and Grand Theft Auto enthusiasts released ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, a pair of reverse engineered modifications for GTA 3 and Vice City.

 

The projects allowed fans to enjoy these dated games with significant enhancements and were a hit with fans.

 

However, Take-Two and Rockstar Games took exception and responded with a DMCA takedown filed at Github to have the repositories removed. The team fired back using the DMCA counternotice system and ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ were restored.

 

Early September, Take-Two filed a lawsuit against the team, arguing that the aim of the projects was to create and distribute pirated versions GTA 3 and Vice City. The company demanded damages under copyright law claiming that the team “willfully and maliciously” copied, adapted and distributed its source code and other content without permission.

 

Take-Two also demanded damages for alleged misrepresentations in the defendants’ DMCA counternotices.

Team Behind ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ Fights Back

Through their attorneys, Angelo Papenhoff (aap), Theo Morra, Eray Orçunus, and Adrian Graber have now responded to the complaint. They address each of the plaintiff’s allegations, largely denying them but in some cases stating insufficient knowledge to form a response.

 

Broadly, however, they insist that they did not commit any type of copyright infringement, something they expand upon in a shortlist of affirmative defenses, i.e defenses based on facts other than those that support the plaintiff’s claim.

Affirmative Defense – Fair Use

Right off the bat, the defendants assert that anything they did in connection with their GTA 3 and Vice City projects were actions protected by fair use under the Copyright Act. If any copying of copyright-protected material did occur, that was undertaken to allow for interoperability of software and fixing bugs present in the original titles.

 

As a result, any alleged ‘reverse engineering’ of original code represents a transformative use of that content, i.e it added something new, with a further purpose or different character, and did not substitute for the original use of the work.

 

To the extent that copying of copyrighted material did occur, if any, this was necessary to allow for the interoperability of software and was kept to the minimally required amount.

 

The answer further points out that the original games were released over 15 years ago and the plaintiff stopped releasing patches and bug fixes several years before any of the alleged actions of the defendants took place.

 

Another important fact highlighted in the answer to the complaint is that the defendants’ modifications are useless in their own right. In fact, anyone who wished to make use of ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ could not do so without already possessing copies of GTA 3 and Vice City, games that Take-Two stopped making available for purchase on its online stores.

 

This leads to the question of whether the alleged conduct of the defendants affected the market for those games and if so, in what way. According to the answer, the mods did not affect the market but to the extent they did, any shift would’ve been positive since people needed to purchase the games to use the mods.

 

“Any complained of copying of copyright protected material that did occur, if any, was not undertaken for profit or commercial purposes. The doctrine of fair use bars the relief sought by Plaintiff,” the response adds.

Plaintiff Actually Encouraged Game Mods

Despite now aggressively suing the creators of ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, Take-Two has previously allowed third parties to develop mods of its software (including for GTA 3 and Vice City) without any adverse action in response. That’s according to the answer which states that Take-Two (or its “subsidiaries or predecessors interest”) have “showcased” mods and even released portions of its software to the Multi Theft Auto (MTA) mod project.

 

“These supported, encouraged, or allowed ‘mod’ projects, upon information and belief, required the reverse engineering of software just as Defendants are alleged to have undertaken. Upon information and belief, Defendants had an implied license to undertake any complained of actions or Plaintiff abandoned is copyright,” the answer reads.

Extraterritorial Application of US Law

Take-Two’s complaint alleges that Angelo Papenhoff is a resident of Germany and the response admits that. However, the claim that Theo Morra is an individual located in New Zealand is denied. Similarly, it is denied that Eray Orçunus is located in Turkey and Adrian Graber is located in Germany.

 

While these factors aren’t expressly cited in the defendants’ third affirmative defense (the extraterritorial application of US law), the complaint alleges that the copying of copyrighted material was undertaken outside the United States. As such, US copyright law lacks reach, the defendants say.

 

“The United States Copyright Act should not be applied outside the United States and its territories. To the extent Plaintiff seeks to extend the application of the United States Copyright Act to cover activities outside the United States, its claims should be barred,” the answer concludes.

“Bug Fixes and Enhancements” Come At a Bad Time For Take-Two

For months there has been speculation that the real reason behind Take-Two’s legal action against the ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ developers is that they were planning to officially release enhanced versions of their old games. The latter component was confirmed with the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, which includes remastered versions of GTA III, GTA Vice City, and GTA San Andreas.

 

Unfortunately, that has been nothing short of a disaster. As reported by Eurogamer, the Definitive Edition was unplayable due to software problems and is only now available again for purchase after three days of downtime. Refund requests have been coming in thick and fast and the title has been review bombed down to an aggregate score of 0.5 on Metacritic.

 

The answer to Take-Two’s complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

It’s commonly known that copyright holders regularly send takedown notices to pirate sites, asking the operators to remove pirated content.

 

These notices are typically sent after pirated content appears online. However, the Polish branch of media giant CANAL+ is being a bit more proactive and is asking sites to prevent copies of a yet-to-be-released TV-show from being shared.

 

The operator of a large pirate site, who prefers not to be named, shared a copy of the preemptive warning that was received from the CANAL+ Anti-Piracy Department. In the notice, that was also sent to several other sites, the media giant alerts the operators to the upcoming premiere of the new TV show.

Preemptive Takedown

The show, titled Planeta Singli. Osiem Historii (Singles planet. Eight Stories), is scheduled to be released this coming Friday. With the warning letter, CANAL+ puts the site operators on notice, urging them to prevent the series from being shared through their sites.

 

“(i)t is undisputed that the Company has not given the right to disseminate Series by you and/or the users of your site (‘Website’) by, among others, uploading the files containing the episodes of the Series on the Website,” CANAL+ writes.

 

“Thus, this letter gives you actual knowledge of illegal activity or information […] and its receipt obliges you to act expeditiously and remove or to disable access to any of the above-mentioned files from the Website.”

Legal Threat

If the operators fail to take action they may be held liable for the unauthorized distributions that take place through their sites. If copies of the shows are shared nonetheless, CANAL+ says it’s ready to defend its rights in court.

 

 

The letter is sent by Piotr Wójtów who confirms that this is one of the strategies CANAL+ Polska S.A. uses to protect its content. The company has a dedicated anti-piracy department that keeps a close eye on the piracy landscape and takes action when needed.

 

“Such an approach includes, without limitations, sending notifications to the operators of web services before the premiere of the TV series of our production. The list of websites includes those against which we have a reasonable belief that could disseminate our content,” Wójtów informs TorrentFreak.

Part of a Broader Anti-Piracy Toolbox

While these preemptive takedowns are unusual, CANAL+ has sent similar requests in the past. The repeated use of these warnings suggests that the company believes that this strategy is at least somewhat effective.

 

Technically it is impossible to remove or disable content that’s not being shared yet. One option could be to implement upload filters to prevent the show from being shared, but we’re not aware of any pirate sites that have gone this far.

 

The Polish branch of CANAL+ understands that these notices won’t eliminate piracy completely. Instead, they’re seen as part of a much larger anti-piracy toolbox which, in combination, help to deter piracy.

 

“There is no ‘silver bullet’ in terms of being effective in fighting online piracy. Only the combination of many factors, means, and tools will achieve results. Sending notifications you referred to, is only one of the measures we take to be effective in the protection of CANAL+ Polska S.A. content,” Wójtów concludes.

 

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 four new entries in the list. “Finch” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on November 15 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings	7.7 / trailer
2	(…)	No Time to Die	7.5 / trailer
3	(…)	Red Notice	6.5 / trailer
4	(1)	Finch	7.0 / trailer
5	(2)	Dune	8.3 / trailer
6	(…)	Clifford the Big Red Dog	5.1 / trailer
7	(8)	Venom: Let There Be Carnage	6.3 / trailer
8	(3)	Free Guy	7.4 / trailer
9	(4)	Army of Thieves	6.4 / trailer
10	(9)	Black Widow	6.8 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Applinked is one of the apps/services that stepped in to fill the gap after the popular Filelinked tool was taken down by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

 

The software, which already has hundreds of thousands of users, acts as an unofficial free marketplace for mainly piracy-focused apps, none of which are allowed on Google’s Play Store for exactly that reason. Of course, there are many who would prefer not to have Google curating every piece of software with a rod of iron but in some situations, that can prove advantageous.

 

Early October the developer of Applinked, Inside4Android, announced that as of the 21st of that month, he would no longer own the code to the tool.

 

Veterans of the file-sharing world will recognize that these types of announcements are usually linked to just a handful of basic events. For example, developers can get tired of the workload or can’t spare the necessary resources. Oftentimes they’re quietly dreading some kind of legal action. In other cases, people step in and make an offer that’s too good to refuse.

 

In Applinked’s case, the developer said he simply couldn’t cope with the volume of work. That said, his announcement suggested that he also wanted to put some distance between himself and the app. This might be primarily viewed as him doing the right thing by his trusted users. After all, they came on board because of his reputation and if he isn’t going to be in charge anymore, things might change.

Things Did Change, But Not For Good

Last week we discovered that after apparently being transferred to its new owners, Applinked suddenly grew from a small ~4MB app to a weighty ~34MB mystery package, one that triggered more than 15 virus and malware alerts, some of them serious.

 

As we suggested at the time, this is rarely a sign of anything good from the user’s perspective so if the Applinked developer could publicly explain what had happened, that might help. After all, he previously claimed he would be working on the app for another six months after the handover so if anyone should know, he should.

 

That didn’t immediately happen but last week a new statement was posted on Twitter, one that didn’t clear anything up especially but did appear to acknowledge that things might not be going according to plan.

 

 

Passing on projects isn’t unusual in the file-sharing world, especially when the alternative is for them to die. That would be a big deal according to the developer since hundreds of thousands of people are reportedly using the app. That said, apps with this type of following have considerable value when monetized. Nothing has been said about that in public but the original developer has admitted that an unnamed “company” took Applinked on.

Another Update, More Malware Warnings

Last week yet another Applinked update was pushed out. The new version still continues to throw up 15 or more malware warnings when scanned and has also grown further in size. The burning question, of course, is what all of this extra code is for and why it is suddenly needed. So, to clear this up once and for all, we asked several anti-virus vendors to carry out a detailed analysis.

 

While many vendors did not respond, cybersecurity company Group-IB said it would ask one of its cyber threat researchers to carry out an analysis. We supplied links to the old APK, the new one, and asked Group-IB to determine whether the latter acts maliciously given its massive increase in size and if so, exactly what it does.

 

While that task was being carried out, the developer gave an unexpected interview on YouTube. Would this shine more light on the situation?

YouTube Interview

The interview took place last Thursday on the Streaming Matters YouTube channel over the space of 55 minutes. In the main it provided some decent background on the app, the developer, and how Applinked became successful much too quickly, something that took a toll on the developer’s business and private life.

 

Around the 19 minute mark, Inside4Android revealed that a company made an approach and offered “take all of the problems away.” That proved attractive but since doing that, Inside4Android said he’d had “nothing but hassle” from people dissatisfied with the way things have gone.

 

The developer noted that this isn’t really fair, since when he was in charge he’d made no effort to monetize the app in any way, and from what we’ve seen at least, there is no reason to doubt that claim.

 

He went on to confirm that he’s now operating in a consulting role for the new owner, receiving code and giving it the thumbs up (or down), which suggests he is aware of what direction the app is going. So, at this point, all that remained was to explain all of the extra bloat in the app that appears to be causing the malware alerts. When that explanation came, it was pretty unusual, to say the least.

 

After the interviewer raised the issue of the massively increased file size, he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he immediately proceeded to paint his own hypothesis, seemingly out of nowhere, which against the odds was apparently 100% correct.

 

Interviewer: “Another flag for a lot of people was when they saw the size increase. It could be the images, does the new APK have a lot of thumb images and stuff like that? Because a lot of times applications grow if you add art or you add images in there.”

 

Inside4Android: “That’s 100% correct. It’s all about cache. You build up the cache by using an application because every image that it pulls….and loads into a thumbnail or whatever, it stores that so it’s quicker to load next time. That’s basically what it does.”

 

After hearing this, there was more than a little bit of concern that we’d asked a cyber threat expert to spend valuable time looking at a bunch of boring images. However, when the analysis was provided by Feixiang He, Group-IB Adversary Intelligence Research Lead at Group-IB, images weren’t the main reason for the size increase at all.

Group-IB Threat Analysis

“The major increase in the app’s size is caused by an additional Linux native code module ‘libfrpc.so’. This module contributes 56MB to the app’s [extracted] size in total,” Feixiang He revealed.

 

“It uses an open-source reverse proxy project frp (https://github.com/fatedier/frp), which is the main reason that the new version of the app triggers VirusTotal detections such as ‘RiskWare:Linux/Fatedier.76937499’ and ‘Riskware.Frp.B’.

 

According to the analysis, the ‘libfrpc’ module is used by a new app monetization feature dubbed ‘Linda’ which continuously sends some basic device information to the server domain ‘monetizeweb.io’. The Group-IB researcher says that the exact purpose for exporting this information is unclear but he became “a bit suspicious” from several perspectives.

 

“It is normal to see Android apps try to fingerprint mobile devices by sending some information to an advertisement server. But there is very little public information of Linda’s service or the domain,” he explained.

 

“It is strange to use a reverse proxy to connect to ads servers. A normal HTTP or HTTPS connection is enough for such a purpose. A reverse proxy could be used to breach through corporate firewalls from the side. It is very concerning.”

 

A JoeSandBox analysis of Applinked shows this and other serious threats in a visual format.

 

 

According to the sandbox analysis, the app checks to see if devices are rooted (checks for superuser.apk) and then requests root access. The app tries to access GPS location data and also seeks information from SIM cards. Further tests reveal that users’ IP addresses are sent to a third-party server.

Conclusion

Apps with hundreds of thousands of users are very valuable assets and are ripe to be monetized. No one should be surprised to learn that any app – especially those attractive to pirates – exist in many cases to make money. In this case, all the signs indicate that the developer didn’t originally set out with a commercial venture in mind but it appears that the new owners have different ideas.

 

Again, this is no surprise but the way this has been handled certainly is. If the earlier announcement would’ve at least acknowledged that monetization was the plan moving forward, most users wouldn’t have blinked or even cared. However, the red flags here on almost all fronts following the latest updates are too numerous to ignore and appear to go way beyond making a few dollars.

 

Online piracy exists in many shapes and forms. Torrent sites were dominant a decade ago, but these have long been eclipsed by streaming portals.

 

In addition to pirate streaming sites that can be accessed through web browsers, dedicated streaming boxes have grown in popularity as well. These boxes can be easily connected to TVs for a relatively seamless experience, as long as they work.

eBay IPTV Box Seller

In recent years various rightsholders have clamped down on these pirate boxes and IPTV services. In the UK, this has resulted in legal action on several occasions. One of these cases, spearheaded by Westminster City Council’s Trading Standards team, came to a conclusion this month.

 

The Trading Standards team started its investigation in 2017. With help from UK anti-piracy group FACT, it discovered that 57-year-old Westminster resident Fuaad Al-Saegh was selling IPTV devices on eBay.

 

Using two separate accounts, the man sold the boxes for prices ranging from £150 to £250. When properly connected, the devices allowed buyers to access sports streams including those of beIN, as well as other content that would normally require a paid subscription.

 

Trading Standards officers bought three devices that worked as advertised. This resulted in a raid on the man’s house where more boxes were found. With assistance from eBay, it was eventually determined that the defendant had sold 628 devices, which generated more than £82,000 in proceeds.

Guilty

Mr. Al-Saegh was confronted with the evidence at the City of London Magistrates Court this summer, where he pleaded guilty to multiple violations of the Fraud Act 2006. Earlier this month, Southwark Crown Court concluded that a two-year suspended prison sentence is appropriate.

 

This is the first prosecution of its kind by Westminster City Council’s Trading Standards and Councillor Heather Acton is happy with the outcome and thanks FACT for its assistance.

 

“This investigation into illegal IPTV devices was a first for our Trading Standards service and demonstrates the expertise of our officers,” Acton commented on the news.

 

“The proceeds of crimes such as this are often used by organized crime groups to fund more serious criminal activity, so I am pleased that our investigation, with assistance from FACT, resulted in a successful prosecution.”

Serious Risks

The suspended prison sentence means that Mr. Al-Saegh won’t have to serve time in prison. However, it confirms that sellers of pirate devices face severe risks in the UK.

 

This isn’t the first time that someone has been prosecuted for selling pirate devices. We have seen several other suspended sentences in the UK over the years and a few actual jail sentences as well. And with new sellers continuing to pop up, this probably won’t be the last prosecution either.

 

FACT CEO Kieron Sharp indirectly warns sellers and says that it will continue to monitor the IPTV piracy landscape. If they spot new targets, these will undoubtedly be reported to the appropriate authorities.

 

“FACT will continue to monitor platforms used to advertise, market, sell and distribute apps, devices and streams, to take action against suppliers, operators and consumers,” Sharp says.

 

Day in and day out, dozens of new movies and TV shows leak online. This is something most pirates simply take for granted.

 

Only a few people know who the suppliers are. This secrecy is much needed, as members of release groups risk criminal prosecution and multi-year prison sentences.

The Piracy Supply Chain

When we take a closer look at this supply chain there are broadly two groups. On one side there’s ‘The Scene’, a conglomerate of often intertwined groups that release ‘their’ content on private topsites. Rules and security are key in The Scene, but last year’s raids have shown that it’s not impenetrable.

 

These Scene releases eventually appear on the wider internet through third parties, but there are also groups that upload their content straight to the public. These are known as P2P groups.

 

Unlike The Scene, P2P groups don’t have any written rules they have to abide to. They can release whatever and whenever they want. And by doing so, they have stolen some of The Scene’s thunder.

EVO Stands Out

EVO, short for EVOLUTiON is one of these P2P groups. The group has been around for years and has built up quite a reputation. Not only does it provide a steady stream of new movie and TV show releases, it has also leaked many screeners way ahead of their official premieres.

 

Over the past three years, EVO opened the “screener season” by releasing leaked copies of upcoming films. This included Oscar contenders, but also several Netflix titles that originated from festival screenings.

 

EVO was also the first to release a high-quality copy of the blockbuster “Dune” a few weeks ago, ahead of its official premiere in the United States.

 

Needless to say, the group is seen as a major threat by movie industry insiders. There is little doubt that rightsholders are doing everything in their power to track down the group. Thus far, however, without result.

“For Fun”

Reaching out to EVO is relatively easy as the group publishes a contact address in its release notes. And while questions are not always answered, the group was willing to explain some of its motivations to us this week.

 

To begin, EVO wants to counter the suggestion that its work is in any way motivated by money. The group says that “fun” is the main driver instead.

 

“We don’t get any profit at all from this ‘hobby’. We do it for fun,” EVO informed us, adding that they like to help people.

 

“We know we are helping lots of people that can’t afford to go to theaters or it’s not even possible due to COVID, since the world is not as we used to know.”

Pointing The Finger at Hollywood

If money plays any role, it’s that pirated movies help the public to keep entertainment affordable. EVO suggests that the increased fragmentation of the streaming landscape, with every service pushing its own exclusive releases, is keeping piracy relevant.

 

“Maybe, if studios would care a bit more about the consumer, there wouldn’t be much piracy on the internet. But they don’t care anymore, what matters is profit, profit and profit.

 

“If you are an average person these days, basically, either you are rich or you are fucked. It’s Disney+, its Netflix, its Prime, its Paramount+. God knows what else they come up with,” EVO adds.

The Subscription Dilemma

While EVO was already around before the major subscription boom started, the trend appears to be extra motivation, or justification, for the group to keep going.

 

Initially, streaming services were seen as the solution to piracy. Making movies and TV-shows available on demand for a fixed price was something pirates have always called for. However, too many subscription offers seem to be counterproductive.

 

While some people may be able to afford more than a handful of monthly subscriptions, not everyone can. And when services start to demand extra money for “premier” access, it gets even worse.

 

“You already pay for a subscription and, on top of that, you have to pay to access a movie that you should get for free? And not only that, you have to pay around 30$ for a movie that will come on Disney+ for free in 1-2 months? What’s this?” EVO asks.

 

These complaints are often heard among pirates. In fact, many pirates also pay for legal streaming services, just not all. In a way, one could argue that the fragmented streaming landscape keeps piracy relevant.

 

A question remains, however. Why one would take the immense risk of multi-year jail sentences for fun? EVO didn’t go into detail when we addressed the risk part, so that remains unanswered for now.

 

It is extremely common for internet service providers to prevent their customers from accessing pirate sites. Often they are required to do so by after being ordered by a court but in the United States this is almost unknown.

 

That’s why in the summer it was a surprise to see reports flooding in from Verizon customers alleging they could no longer access a number of pirate sites including MangaDex, NYAA and Kemono.party.

 

These sites have a few things in common. They all operate in the manga niche, they all have issues with copyright holders, and they all use (or have used) DDoS-Guard, a Russian CDN provider that’s considered a safe haven for pirate sites.

 

That raised the question of whether the nature of the sites themselves was behind Verizon’s decision to block (or more accurately, null-route), or whether the use of DDoS-Guard was the key factor.

Verizon Fails to Unblock MangaDex

With Verizon failing to fix or even acknowledge the issues, subscribers of the ISP have not been able to access MangaDex by ordinary means. VPNs still worked, of course, but as the image of MangaDex’s network map shows, when Verizon interferes with user connections to DDoS-Guard (the straight line pointing down from ‘Users’), none of the infrastructure behind it can be accessed.

 

 

Of course, MangaDex could’ve told Verizon subscribers to use a VPN or even cast them aside completely. However, that clearly isn’t the platform’s style. Finding some way to bypass Verizon’s blocking appears to have become a challenge so, over the past several months, the team has been working on it.

MangaDex Nullifies Verizon’s Null-Route

In a recent announcement, MangaDex revealed that its team has been successful. How they achieved this is being kept a secret for now but the site confirms that its solution works and they received zero help from Verizon.

 

“To eliminate some misinformation we’ve seen circulate, we would very much like to not thank [Verizon] as they didn’t lift the ban on their end to this day. However, we are really glad to have found a workaround and happy to welcome their users back on the platform,” the team writes.

 

While this will be a cause for celebration for some Verizon users, MangaDex says that it doesn’t know if the fix will be a permanent one. The best solution, then, would be to switch to an ISP that doesn’t quietly block sites and then offer no explanation.

 

“We also must mention that there is absolutely no guarantee that our current workaround will last forever, so you might want to consider switching to an ISP that doesn’t censor your internet access at some point. That means pretty much any other one in the world,” the team concludes.

 

The above image is courtesy of MangaDex which recently published an intriguing overview of its operations

 

While pirated Hollywood blockbusters often score the big headlines, there are several other industries that have been battling piracy over the years. This includes sports organizations.

 

Sports piracy often comes with the added challenge that it mostly affects live events. This means that takedowns and other disruption efforts have to be near to instant.

 

In recent years many sports leagues have lobbied for stronger enforcement options and have already booked some successes. For example, the EU Parliament recently adopted a report that calls for new rules that require online services to take down unauthorized live streams within 30 minutes.

Mapping The Sports Piracy Landscape

Aside from the enforcement angle, it can also be helpful to research why people turn to sports piracy to begin with. This is a gap that the streaming video provider and protection service Synamedia is trying to fill with a series of reports.

 

Previous reports already revealed that more than half of all sports fans frequently turn to unauthorized services. These pirates are typically more engaged than regular sports fans and are worth billions of dollars in extra revenue if they can be converted.

 

Synamedia’s latest report looks at the individual consumption patterns of pirates. What do they watch illegally and why? And what can rightsholders learn from this?

Piracy Gateways

The research specifically looks at which sports serve as the gateway to sports piracy. In other words, what caused people to pirate in the first place. These “gateway” sports are often the start of people’s piracy habits.

 

The report is based on an extensive survey of over 6,000 respondents in ten countries – Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, UK and the United States.

 

One of the main findings shows that soccer is the top gateway sport for pirates. This is even true in the US where it has a relatively small following. The only exception is India, where cricket comes out on top.

 

“Soccer is the planet’s most-pirated sport across every demographic and nearly every territory, and it’s the biggest gateway into other illegal sports streaming. But moving the goalposts beyond the football field is key to tackling piracy.”

 

Piracy Gateways Around the World (image: Synamedia)  

 

The research finds that nearly half of all sports pirates globally (48%) started out by pirating soccer. That’s no surprise given the worldwide appeal. But focusing enforcement efforts solely on the biggest sports isn’t enough.

The Camel Racing Threat

Synamedia points out that niche sports are a major gateway threat too. In fact, fans of these sports are more likely to use illegal services, through which they can go on to pirate other content.

 

“[F]ans of more niche sports in any given market are somewhat more likely to seek them out from unofficial sources. In turn, this leads on to these viewers discovering a broader range of illicit content to consume.”

 

Take camel racing, for example. This isn’t a popular sport on a global scale but Synamedia’s research discovered an intriguing connection between camel racing and the FIFA World Cup.

 

“(i)n the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, viewers who are most interested in camel racing are more likely to watch the FIFA World Cup illegally than fans who say they like soccer best.”

 

The data also reveal some other noteworthy connections. Italian Formula 1 pirates, for example, are highly likely to have Tour de France cycling as their main sport of choice. That’s not a link most people would have guessed.

How to Stop Piracy

While these gateways are intriguing, it’s just as important to understand why people are pirating. The research shows that the vast majority have a financial motive. In other words, they can’t or don’t want to pay for legitimate streaming options.

 

Availability of legal options remains a problem as well. When fans have no option to watch a sport legally they try to find pirated alternatives. These “availability black holes” then act as a gateway to pirating other sports as well.

 

The solution is to make piracy less appealing by cutting off pirated streams, while also making sure that people have affordable legal alternatives. This is a potential $28 billion opportunity.

 

“Regardless of which sports initially trigger piracy consumption, and which ones fans go on to watch illicitly, it’s a combination of the legal and social consequences plus the practical fear of a stream cutting out mid-game that is most likely to deter fans from watching illegal sources,” Synamedia reports.

 

“Coupled with providing ready legitimate access to paid-for sports on a range of screens and subscription models, a proportion of that illegal viewing can be converted to new revenue.”

 

While this sounds simple on paper, it requires cooperation across the various sports industries. After all, just one weak link can already be a gateway that drives people towards pirated alternatives. Yes, that also applies to camel racing.

 

—

 

A copy of Synamedia’s latest report titled: “Pirate gateways: assessing the triggers for sports piracy” is available here

 

Books and scientific papers are considered some of the most valuable sources of knowledge on the planet. Millions rely on them for education and insight but while information wants to be free, this content comes with a price tag.

 

Publishers are therefore desperate to prevent people from accessing their premium content from pirate sites. A key weapon of choice to achieve this in the UK is the site-blocking injunction. Obtainable from the High Court, these court orders require internet service providers to prevent their users from accessing specific domains and over the years dozens have been granted.

The Publishers Association

In 2015, The Publishers Association, an organization supporting members producing digital and print books, research journals and educational resources, broke new ground by becoming the first publishing entity to use Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to obtain blocking measures.

 

This campaign has continued for years and now encompasses not only pirate site domains, but also proxy and mirror domains that have the purpose of circumventing earlier orders. This September the list was expanded and a month later, expanded again.

 

The usual targets of The Publishers Association include domains that facilitate access to the popular Libgen library and eBook portals eBookee and FreeBookSpot. The trend was maintained this week when ISP TalkTalk revealed that more domains had been blocked in the UK. The new additions are as follows:

 

ebookee.unblockit.kim, ebookee.123unblock.world, ebookee.mrunblock.bar, ebookee.nocensor.biz, ebookee.unbl4you.cyou, ebookee.unbl0ck.icu, ebookee.unblockproject.top, ebookee.proxybit.sbs, freebookspot.unblockit.kim, libgen.unblockit.kim, libgen.123unblock.world, libgen.mrunblock.bar, libgen.nocensor.biz, libgen.unbl4you.cyou,, libgen.unbl0ck.icu, libgen.unblockproject.top, libgen.proxybit.sbs

 

The Publishers Association is not the only group of its type utilizing blocking orders in the UK. Other key players are major publishers Elsevier and Springer Nature who, over the years, have turned notorious academic papers platform Sci-Hub into their nemesis.

New Blocks Target Sci-Hub

Along with publisher Wiley, Elsevier and Springer Nature have engaged in numerous legal battles against Sci-Hub and founder Alexandra Elbakyan (1,2,3,4) but to date, little has prevented Sci-Hub from operating.

 

As a result, the publishers have resorted to site-blocking injunctions. They obtained one in the UK back in February and then expanded on that with new blocks in September.

 

This week they added two more domains – sci-hub.ru and scihub.unblockit.kim. All of the major UK ISPs will have to prevent their customers from accessing them but whether that will have any serious or long-term effect is harder to gauge.

 

At least for now, we have to presume that the publishers believe the strategy works but it seems counterintuitive that people who want to seek out knowledge in complex scientific papers are incapable of spending five minutes on Google to find out just how easily these blocks are circumvented.