For more than a decade, copyright holders have been able to file an application for High Court injunctions that compel Internet service providers to block infringing sites in the UK.

 

Early targets for the movie and music industries were leading platforms such as the infamous Pirate Bay but, over time, the scale of the task has expanded to include hundreds, perhaps thousands of domains.

 

Additional copyright holders have also blocked sites that offer live sports and publishing content such as scientific papers and books. These include proxy and mirror sites that re-enable access to previously blocked domains.

New Hollywood Domain Blocks Reported

Under the banner of the Motion Picture Association, Hollywood is perhaps the most prolific when it comes to these types of injunctions and this week ISP TalkTalk reported that a new wave of blocks has been implemented on behalf of these movie and TV show companies.

 

The first site on their list is project123movies.com, which sports Project Free TV branding but is unlikely to be connected to the original site of the same name. This streaming platform is currently offering all of the latest movies and TV shows, including copies of No Time To Die, which received its theatrical debut just a couple of weeks ago.

 

With TheWatchSeries branding, gowatchseries.online is a similar operation. In addition to offering a huge selection of movies, the site also offers TV shows, including the Netflix hit Squid Game. WatchMovie.cc, which is bannered WatchSeries 2.0, also offers a wide range of content including a large anime section, a genre increasingly popular in the UK and indeed around the world.

 

Yesmovies.org, yesmovies.id, and vidembed.cc (which operates under VidCloud branding) follow a similar pattern but perhaps the most significant addition is that of bflix.to, an extremely popular platform with more than 20 million monthly visits. In the UK, bflix is close to becoming the country’s 1000th most-visited site in any category, so shutting down access is an obvious choice for the MPA.

 

As reported yesterday, GitHub recently removed the repository and mirror website of Unblockit, a proxy service that allows people to access blocked sites.

 

The main website of the service used to operate from a .ws domain, which has also drawn the attention of the MPA’s members which include Netflix. As a result, additional domains to be blocked in the UK include eztv.unblockit.ws, pw.unblockit.ws, solarmovie.unblockit.ws, icefilms.unblockit.ws, and scnsrc.unblockit.ws.

 

Unblockit has already moved to a new domain, unblockit.kim, so it’s unclear how effective these new blocks will be. In any event, the MPA also targets fmovies.proxybit.me, which in common with Unblockit is also a blocked site proxying service.

Publishers Maintain the Pressure

The Publishers Association, a UK organization supporting members producing digital and print books, research journals and educational resources, obtained its first blocking injunction in 2015, breaking new ground for the sector. In the same year it expanded the number of targeted sites and in September increased its reach once again.

 

It can now add another handful of domains to its list including ebookee.unblockit.ws, freebookspot.unblockit.ws, and libgen.unblockit.ws. Again, these are domains operated by the Unblockit proxy service which, as mentioned earlier, has already moved to a new domain.

 

Finally, publishers Elsevier and Springer Nature are maintaining their pressure on Sci-Hub and tools that attempt to circumvent earlier blocking. By blocking scihub.unblockit.ws they hope to limit access to scientific papers and boost existing blocking measures first reported in February this year.

 

In response to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has submitted a list of so-called ‘Notorious Markets’ to the US government.

 

Representing some of the biggest names in video gaming, from Activision, EA, Nintendo, and Ubisoft, to Capcom, Microsoft, Konami, and Square Enix, the ESA acts as a voice for companies producing billions of dollars worth of content. According to the trade group, all are under threat from a wide range of piracy-focused or piracy facilitating platforms.

 

“As the U.S. association that represents companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers, and the Internet, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) regards the review of notorious markets as an important opportunity to shed light on markets that facilitate mass infringement or counterfeiting of industry products and services and that remain either sheltered from, or impervious to, the deterrent effects of enforcement actions,” the ESA’s submission begins.

Hyperlinking Websites

In line with previous submissions to the USTR, the ESA first highlights the threat posed by sites that don’t host any infringing content themselves but link to third-party storage sites (file-hosting/cyberlockers).

 

These link sites typically generate revenue from user donations, advertising, or both, and the ESA selects a number due to their high levels of traffic and the volume of infringing links on offer. A key factor for a platform’s inclusion is the claim that it is also non-responsive to notices sent by rightsholders to have infringing links removed.

 

At the top of the list is OceanofGames.com, which was found to have links leading to 5,100 pirated titles belonging to ESA members following an analysis carried out in August 2021.

 

According to the trade group, the site is now hosted in Ukraine having departed France last year, which perhaps explains why the site removed just 1% of the content listed in ESA member copyright infringement notices. OceanofGames is presented in a release blog format and can deliver sizeable games in just a single click, providing ease of use for visitors but irritation for the ESA’s members.

 

Nsw2u.xyz (previously branded Switch-xci) offers links to pirated games for most platforms including PC. However, the ESA highlights the importance of the site to the Nintendo Switch piracy market. In September 2021, the site carried 5,500 posts carrying links to game downloads for the popular console, which include its most recently launched titles.

 

The ESA complains that the site uses various techniques to stymie anti-piracy enforcement, including by utilizing alternative .com and .org domains. The website reportedly ignores all ESA takedown notices and uses an unnamed “U.S.-based content delivery network” to conceal the identities of its operators. A cursory search reveals that CDN provider is Cloudflare.

 

Finally, the ESA calls out Darkw.pl for indexing more than 65,000 links to its members’ titles to service more than 187,000 registered users. This site also uses Cloudflare and according to the ESA, blocks US IP addresses “in an effort to appear offline.” At the time of writing, the site returns a 404 message when accessed from IP addresses inside or outside the United States.

Hosting Sites / Cyberlockers

In common with many anti-piracy groups, the ESA uses the pejorative term ‘cyberlockers’ to describe file-hosting platforms that carry a large amount of infringing content. These cyberlockers usually have no search facility themselves so work in tandem with the types of linking sites listed above in order to deliver content to users.

 

After making an appearance in earlier reports, the main thorn in the ESA’s side remains 1fichier.com. At the time of writing, this huge platform enjoys around 35 million visits per month and in August was reportedly hosting at least 1,156 copies of ESA member video game titles. Takedown notices are sent to the platform but they are overwhelmingly ignored, with just 0.71% of notices receiving a response.

 

“1fichier’s extremely low compliance rate for the removal of infringing content attracts more unauthorized uploaders to the platform due to the fact that the content will remain active on the platform for longer periods of time,” the ESA’s submission reads.

 

“Linking websites that index and manage the links to content hosted on 1fichier also benefit from the platform’s low compliance rate as these websites derive greater advertising revenue from users clicking on the links to pirate content hosted on 1fichier.”

 

The ESA is clearly frustrated by the lack of cooperation and highlights that despite losing criminal and civil cases in 2021, the French-based company behind 1fichier hasn’t changed the way it operates.

 

In an April decision handed down by the Nancy Criminal Court, the company was convicted for not removing pirated content from its servers and ordered to pay a fine of 1.3 million euros (US$1.5 million). Its chairman was also handed a one-year suspended prison sentence. In May, a Paris court ruled against 1fichier in a civil case involving Nintendo, which also resulted in a million-dollar fine.

 

“Although the Court ordered provisional enforcement of its decision, which should have resulted in immediate compliance by the company, the company operating the 1fichier platform has failed to do so,” the ESA notes.

 

Finally, file-hosting platform Rapidu.net is also called out for hosting 10,600 ESA members’ games, while also using the services of Cloudflare.

Torrent Sites

Just two torrent sites are listed in the ESA’s submission – TorrentFunk.com and TorrentDownloads.pro. They stand accused of hosting .torrent files (3,300 and 3,200 respectively) that link to ESA member game titles, according to analysis carried out in August. The sites are reportedly not responsive to takedown notices and in common with other platforms in the list, both utilize the services of Cloudflare.

Cheating and Digital Goods Platforms

Finally, the ESA highlights the problems it has with the unauthorized sale of in-game digital items on third-party platforms and the nuisance of services designed to help users cheat in multiplayer games.

 

On the cheating front, the ESA calls out unknowncheats.me for offering cheats and tutorials for 100+ games, and se7ensins.com for providing access to mods, boosting services, and support for reversing bans handed down by game publishers. Other sites include mpgh.net, iwantcheats.net and engineowning.com, which are all reported for similar behavior.

 

In respect of unauthorized marketplaces that allow users to list and sell digital items such as in-game currency and items, game accounts, and unlicensed game keys, the ESA reports threats from g2a.com, playerauctions.com, and g2g.com.

 

The ESA hopes that the USTR will designate all of the above as ‘notorious markets’ in its final report so that they can be held to account overseas.

 

“The resulting Notorious Markets List provides important insights that allow national and local policymakers, as well as law enforcement officials, in other countries to evaluate and fairly demand accountability from these markets and the services that support them, including through appropriate enforcement actions,” the ESA concludes.

 

The ESA submission to the USTR can be found here (pdf)

 

With 40 million users and over 100 million code repositories, GitHub is the largest online developer platform of its kind.

 

The site is used by individual coders and large organizations to host virtually any piece of code imaginable. In addition, GitHub pages can also be used as a hosting service for websites.

GitHub Removes Unblockit Repo

The vast majority of GitHub’s users showcase their work without issues, but not everything is allowed. A few hours ago, the company removed the repository of Unblockit, a popular proxy service that provides access to blocked ‘pirate’ sites.

 

In addition to the repo, GitHub also removed a mirror of the Unblockit website which was hosted on a dedicated GitHub page.

 

While GitHub regularly removes content in response to DMCA takedown requests, this incident is different. There is no mention of a takedown notice and GitHub informs visitors that the repo was removed due to a violation of its terms of service.

 

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, a GitHub spokesperson clarifies that the company investigated the repo after a violation was reported. This eventually led to the conclusion that Unblockit should be taken offline.

 

“We removed the content following an investigation into a report that it was in violation of our Acceptable Use Policies and Additional Terms for GitHub Pages, which is intended for showcasing personal and organizational projects and not for promoting unrelated sites or services,” GitHub tells us.

 

The Unblockit repo (archived) was mainly used to track issues and inform people about domain names changes. This is likely seen as some type of external promotion.

Reported Violations

The takedown came as a surprise to Unblockit’s operator, who tells us that they initially weren’t informed about the reason for the removal. After reaching out to the platform, GitHub said that the reported violations included ‘directing traffic to third-party sites’.

 

This type of activity violates GitHub’s guidelines and, as such, the repository won’t be restored.

 

“Specifically, the content or conduct that was reported included using GitHub Pages solely to direct traffic to third party sites, which we found to be against our guidelines. We will not be reinstating your repository at this time,” GitHub informed Unblockit.

 

We specifically asked the platform whether the repo was flagged by a third party. While we didn’t receive a direct answer, GitHub repeatedly states that it investigated ‘a report,’ which may refer to an external tip.

 

There is no mention of any copyright issues or violations but, needless to say, copyright holders will be happy to see this blocking circumvention service being partially taken down.

Unblockit Responds

The takedown doesn’t affect the main Unblockit service, which remains available through Unblockit.kim. The GitHub repo did make it easier for some people to spot domain changes, however, which will no longer be an option now.

 

“Going forward, these users will simply have to switch to using the main Unblockit domain and use our other social media channels such as Reddit, Telegram, Twitter to stay up to date on updates,” Unblockit informs TF.

 

 

One advantage of the Unblockit mirror site hosted by GitHub was that it never changed its URL. However, only a relatively small number of people used this, so the service doesn’t expect it to have a major impact.

 

“We don’t expect there to be much impact on Unblockit since the traffic from the Github URL was not significant. Furthermore, since the launch of the subreddit, we started receiving fewer issue reports to the Github repository as people found it easier to submit issues on the subreddit.”

 

At this time, Unblockit has no plans to relaunch the repository elsewhere. It will focus on the main service instead which, unsurprisingly, is a major target of pirate site blocking efforts itself.

 

As far back as 2012, Adobe was planning for the eventual demise of its iconic Flash Player. Gradually superceded by new technologies, the importance Flash diminished over time and as dawn broke on 2021, Adobe ceased to develop and support it.

 

Well, sort of.

 

While Adobe has indeed stopped shipping new global versions of Flash, the technology is still supported in two markets – Enterprise and China via Flash.cn – a site managed by Zhong Cheng Network, the only authorized distributor of Flash in China.

 

This was a significant move for local companies that still rely on Flash Player but also provided a limited opportunity to keep Flash alive, something of importance to those who don’t want historic Flash content to be rendered useless.

Flash Content Consigned to History?

By effectively abandoning Flash, Adobe consigned huge volumes of reliant content to the history books, including games and other interactive content. For many of today’s internet users looking only for the next big thing, that isn’t much of an issue but there are those who view Flash’s contribution to the web as worthy of preservation.

 

The problem, however, is obtaining a working copy of Flash outside China that is also secured by frequent updates and isn’t a risk to users’ machines.

Clean Flash Installer

The Chinese version of Flash receives one security update per month and can be freely downloaded from Flash.cn but also has significant strings attached. It comes preinstalled with an adware program called Flash Helper which, according to security sources, exhibits malicious behavior. Developed by ‘darktohka’ and previously located on Github, Clean Flash Installer solves these problems and more.

 

“Clean Flash Installer installs this up-to-date freely available version of Flash, but it comes WITHOUT the adware program,” darktohka informs TorrentFreak.

 

“As such Clean Flash Installer can be used by anyone to use a relatively secure version of Flash Player after the support for Flash ended.”

 

The developer says that he was inspired to create his tool to keep Flash content alive, something which he says was a huge part of his childhood. Adobe appears to be less enthusiastic about his work and following a DMCA notice filed with Github, the developer platform has nuked the project.

DMCA Takedown Notice

In a DMCA complaint filed with Github on October 4, 2021, a legal representative acting for Adobe explains that the Clean Flash Installer project breaches copyright law.

 

“Adobe Inc. is the copyright owner and I am authorized to act on its behalf. Our Adobe Flash Player software has been infringed. The files in question contain our proprietary Adobe Inc. owned copyrighted materials (software code),” it reads, adding that the project must be removed.

 

 

Needless to say, darktohka is very unhappy that Adobe has taken his project down.

Developer Rejects Claims of Copyright Infringement

“As this is my passion project, I am deeply disappointed with Adobe’s action. The repository in question only hosts the installer code for the project, which was written by myself and does not contain any infringing code,” he explains.

 

“Adobe Flash was a huge part of our childhood, and it’s gut-wrecking that Adobe would rather have everyone use super out-of-date versions of the software when versions with security updates are freely available. It makes no sense for them to DMCA an installer that was written independently and makes use of the freely available and downloadable version of the project.”

 

To find out why Adobe took the project down and learn the basis for its copyright complaint, TorrentFreak reached out to Adobe. The software company did not respond to our requests for comment so that leaves us with the developer’s explanation of how Clean Flash Installer works and why the repository wasn’t infringing.

 

According to darktohka, the repo did not include any Adobe code and the Adobe DMCA complaint clearly states that there were no anti-circumvention issues. The installer is a .NET framework project that was written from scratch, without using any Adobe assets.

 

It’s simply a tool to install Flash without the Flash Helper system service, he insists, noting that security companies consider it to be malicious.

Flash Helper Has Other Issues

Another reason cited by darktohka for disposing of Flash Helper is that it contains a killswitch that can be activated by Adobe at any time to deactivate newer versions of Flash.

 

“The reason why Flash Helper is a separate application is because Adobe Flash is signed by Adobe itself, but they presumably do not want to sign malware. Therefore, Flash Helper is a completely separate entity that Adobe Flash only communicates with,” he says.

 

“By default, if Flash Helper is not installed, Flash will cease to work after 3 seconds (and will show that Flash Helper must be installed).”

 

Overall, darktohka is disappointed with Adobe’s takedown notice since all he hoped to achieve with his project was the effective preservation of Flash content to be played in a safe and secure environment. Whether that will be possible moving forward is unclear but in the meantime, the project is still available on Gitlab.

 

For more than seven years, Popcorn Time has been a thorn in the side of movie studios large and small.

 

The ‘Netflix for Pirates’ offers an easy-to-use application that opens the door to a library of thousands of streamable movies and TV shows.

Popcorn Time Crackdown

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) recognized this threat early on and pressured the original developers to throw in the towel. That worked, but it came too late as the open-source project was swiftly revived by others.

 

Over the past several years, Popcorn Time has lived on through many project forks. One of the most popular, Popcorntime.app, was targeted in a lawsuit filed by a group of independent movie companies, including the makers of “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” and “London Has Fallen.”

 

The filmmakers sued the anonymous PopcornTime.app operator together with the VPN service VPN.ht. The VPN service formally settled the case a few days ago but the same can’t be said for the Popcorn Time fork.

 

Without a formal response from the app’s developer, the movie companies recently moved for a default judgment, asking for millions of dollars in piracy damages. In addition, the rightsholders also requested an injunction that would directly impact third-party intermediaries, including Google.

Domain Blocking and More

Popcorntime.app is no longer online and the proposed injunction would require third-party service providers, including Cloudflare and Google, to stop people from accessing alternative Popcorn Time domains such as popcorn-ru.tk. Those measures include the removal of all search engine results.

 

The proposed injunction would also compel regular ISPs to block subscribers’ access to Popcorn Time domain names. Thus far, no federal court has issued such a blocking order in a piracy case, but the filmmakers argue that this is an option under the DMCA.

 

Specifically, Section 512 of the DMCA allows for an order that required Internet providers “to block access, to a specific, identified, online location outside the United States.” The movie companies believe that such a blocking order is warranted in this case and proposed the following language.

 

It is ORDERED that, within 60 days receipt of this order, all Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) subject to personal jurisdiction of the United States use their best technical efforts to BLOCK access on their servers or servers under their control to the following Target Domain Names at which Defendant’s movie piracy app Popcorn Time is distributed: http://popcorn-ru.tk; https://popcorn-time.tw/; and https://popcorntime-online.ch/.

 

If granted, the broad language could affect a wide variety of Internet services including Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. It could apply to Google as well, which is specifically mentioned in the order as the .app domain registrar and operator of the Google App store.

Google Objects

Google is not a party to this lawsuit and the company wasn’t served with the legal paperwork. However, given the gravity of the potential measures, Google now informs the Virginia federal court that it would like to get involved.

 

“These provisions of Plaintiffs’ Proposed Default Judgment Order are sweeping, burdensome, and contrary to law,” Google writes, adding that it “could impact Google in its role as a domain name registry operator and online intermediary.”

 

The proposed injunction could compel Google to take drastic action. This includes the removal of a list of infringing Popcorn Time domains, which the filmmakers can update twice a year.

 

Google’s exact objections are not clear from the filing. The company simply asks for permission to share its concerns so more details will become available if this request is granted.

 

“Google seeks to file a brief to ensure that this Court understands why and to adequately protect its interests in the event that a default judgment is entered in this case,” Google informs the court.

 

Thus far, Google is the only third-party intermediary to request a hearing in this case but it’s not unlikely that other companies will follow in the near future, either before or after the final judgment comes in.

 

—

 

A copy of Google’s memorandum in support of its motion to object to certain provisions of the proposed default judgment order is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have two new entries in the list. “Free Guy” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 11 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Free Guy	7.4 / trailer
2	(4)	The Addams Family 2	5.4 / trailer
3	(…)	The Night House	6.6 / trailer
4	(…)	Old Henry	7.3 / trailer
5	(5)	Old	5.9 / trailer
6	(…)	The Many Saints of Newark	6.4 / trailer
7	(6)	The Suicide Squad	7.6 / trailer
8	(8)	Jungle Cruise	7.0 / trailer
9	(2)	The Card Counter	6.3 / trailer
10	(3)	Candyman	6.2 / trailer

 

 

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

 

In April 2020, members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment including Columbia, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, Warner, and Universal filed a lawsuit in the US against the operators of Nitro TV.

 

Together they alleged that the pirate platform, led by Alejandro “Alex” Galindo, engaged in “massive and blatant infringement” of their copyrighted works including hit TV show The Office and movies such as Joker.

 

A May 2020 injunction prevented the service from operating but Galindo was reportedly uncooperative in the discovery process and was accused of destroying evidence, for which the studios demanded monetary sanctions.

Nitro TV: Court Should Dismiss Case

Late last month, counsel for Galindo told the court that the reason his client had refused to answer questions is that he fears the endgame for the studios could be a criminal prosecution.

 

In the meantime, the studios are still trying to serve Martha Galindo (Alejandro Galindo’s mother) since she allegedly played a major role in the finances of the Nitro operation. The failure to serve Martha is clearly a key issue for the studios but the resulting delays in the case are also cited by Alejandro as a reason to dismiss the case entirely.

 

Unsurprisingly, the studios are now taking an entirely opposite stance.

Untimely, Frivolous Opposition Containing “Outright Lies”

In their quest to serve Martha with their second amended complaint, the studios sought permission from the court to serve by alternative means. Alejandro opposed the motion but according to the plaintiffs that submission is flawed, not least since among other things, it contains “outright lies”.

 

The studios say that Alejandro’s assertion that their work to serve Martha is slowing the case down is incorrect. In fact, if anyone is to blame for this hindrance, it is him.

 

“Defendant seems to be taking the position throughout his [opposition] that Plaintiffs’ request for leave to serve Martha Galindo by alternative means ‘causing an unreasonable delay.’ That is incorrect and frankly laughable given the record,” they inform the court.

 

“Defendant conveniently fails to acknowledge that Plaintiffs have sought Martha Galindo’s address from him through interrogatories in order to serve her, but he has refused to provide that information.”

 

In addition to holding this piece of information back, the studios say that Alejandro hasn’t produced a single document in response to requests, has failed to provide interrogatory responses, and later pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering their questions.

 

“If Defendant wants this case to move faster, he may provide all of the discovery Plaintiffs have requested,” they add.

The Importance of Serving Martha Galindo

While it appears that Alejandro was the person in charge of the Nitro TV service, the importance of serving Martha Galindo becomes apparent when reviewing the studios’ assessment of her role in the operation. In short, Martha managed the money and in common with any civil action of this type, the studios ultimately want to get their hands on it.

 

According to the movie and TV companies, third-party subpoenas allowed them to discover that over $7 million in sales of Nitro TV subscriptions and reseller credits were made through accounts held in Martha’s name. These accounts were also used to pay for streaming servers and other infrastructure necessary to operate the Nitro TV service.

 

Also of note is that the accounts were used to make payments to a company that earned significant sums to promote and market the Nitro TV service.

 

Firestream LLC is reportedly operated by Veronica Orellana, the wife of Raul Orellana, who is more commonly known online as YouTuber ‘Touchtone’. According to the plaintiffs, he received more than half a million dollars to market Nitro TV to the masses. Both Raul and Firestream LLC are named defendants in the ACE lawsuit.

Alejandro is Trying To Prevent Access to Millions

In summary, the studios believe that Alejandro’s refusal to cooperate is aimed, at least in part, at preventing the studios from accessing the money generated by Nitro TV.

 

“It is, thus, clear that Martha Galindo is not only deeply involved with Nitro TV but is also holding substantial amounts of revenues derived from the Nitro TV infringing enterprise in her accounts. Accordingly, for Plaintiffs to obtain full relief, they must be able to bring Martha Galindo into this case so that she is subject to the ultimate judgment entered by this Court,” they write.

 

“There can be no doubt that [Alejandro] is opposing Plaintiff’s Motion for this very reason so as to prevent Plaintiffs from accessing the Nitro TV monies. It is for that same reason that Defendant has not provided Martha Galindo’s address in response to Plaintiffs’ discovery requests.”

 

As a result, the studios ask the court to allow them to serve Martha by alternative means. There is a suggestion she may now be located in Mexico so the proposals include service via email, service via Alejandro Galindo’s counsel (who previously declined such a request), mail to an identified address in Texas, and via a Facebook message.

 

The studios’ reply to the court can be found here (pdf)

 

A group of movie production outfits, including affiliates of the film studios Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures, filed a lawsuit against VPN.ht in March.

 

The companies accused the VPN provider of promoting the piracy app Popcorn Time to its users, noting that a VPN.ht IP-address was repeatedly used to share pirated films.

 

After filing the original complaint, the copyright holders increased the pressure. They obtained a temporary restraining order that required PayPal to freeze the assets of VPN.ht’s operating company Wicked Technology Limited.

VPN.ht Fights, then Settles

This order was a major setback for Wicked Technology and its owner, an Algerian citizen named Mohamed Faouani, who hoped to turn things around. In a motion to dismiss filed in May, the defendants argued that they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Virginia federal court.

 

Wicked Technology and its owner are represented by attorney Benjamin Maskell, who stresses that VPN.ht didn’t specifically target people in the state. In fact, Faouani had never heard about Virginia before he was sued.

 

“Faouani has never traveled to the United States, and had never heard of the state of Virginia prior to this lawsuit. He does not have an interest in, use, or possess any real property in Virginia. He has not transacted any business in Virginia or contracted to supply services or things in Virginia.”

 

As the case appeared to head towards a ‘jurisdiction’ battle, both sides came together behind the scenes to resolve the matter out of court. In August, the parties already informed the court that they were working on a settlement, which has since been finalized.

Blocking BitTorrent and Keeping Logs?

The movie companies agreed to drop their claims against Wicked Technology, VPN.ht Limited, and Mr. Faouani in exchange for a far-reaching injunction. This proposed order and injunction was approved by Virginia District Court Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. recently.

 

The VPN service will, among other things, prevent its subscribers from using the BitTorrent protocol on its US-based servers. This blockade is independent of the nature of the traffic, which could also be non-infringing.

 

“Within 30 days of entry of this order, the Wicked Entities are ORDERED to use their best efforts to implement technological measures designed to prevent subscribers of the VPN.ht VPN service from using the BitTorrent protocol with Wicked’s VPN servers in the United States.”

 

In addition to blocking BitTorrent traffic, the defendants also agree to store IP-address logs of the IP-addresses that are linked to its US servers. These logs will have to be stored for at least a year and should be able to point to specific users.

 

“Said log records shall include the identification information of the subscriber as stored in the records for the Wicked Entities,” the injunction reads.

Disclosing Logs

While the above will already spook quite a few VPN subscribers, the injunction goes even further. VPN.ht also agreed to disclose the relevant logs when the movie companies notice that a VPN subscriber uses the service to pirate one of their films.

 

“In the event that Plaintiffs have confirmed infringement of the copyright protected works set forth in Exhibit 1 to the Amended Complaint (Dkt. 7) by a subscriber to Wicked’s VPN, and upon request by Plaintiffs, the Wicked Entities shall provide to Plaintiffs the log entries pertaining to such subscriber in respect of the claimed infringement.”

 

 

If VPN.ht accurately blocks all BitTorrent traffic on its US servers, the movie companies should not be able to identify any pirates in these log entries. That said, the agreement is a clear sign that VPN.ht’s no-log policy no longer applies to its entire network. Or does it?

 

Responding to the news, VPN.ht informs TorrentFreak that it will continue to keep its users private. While it agreed to the terms above, the company says that it will circumvent the measures by discontinuing its US servers.

 

“We do not intend to log our customers so we will stop offering US servers. We refused to share any information about our customers, which we don’t have anyway,” a VPN spokesperson informed TF.

 

“We are not big enough to keep fighting,” VPN.ht adds, stressing that it will continue to protect users.

PayPal Unfrozen

The order and injunction also come with some good news for VPN.ht and its owner. Their previously frozen PayPal accounts are now unlocked. In addition, all other restrictions that were part of a preliminary injunction are lifted as well.

 

Most importantly perhaps, all copyright infringement claims against Wicked Technology, VPN.ht Limited, and Mr. Faouani are dismissed. This means that the lawsuit now only lists the anonymous operators of Popcorntime.app as defendants.

 

A copy of the order and injunction, signed by Virginia District Court Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr., is available here.

 

VPN.ht is not the only VPN service to be targeted with a piracy lawsuit this year. Several others, including Surfshark, VPN Unlimited, Zenmate, PIA and ExpressVPN are targeted in similar cases. There is no indication that these other providers are considering a settlement.

 

—

 

Update: This article was updated after publication with a response from VPN.ht and clarification that VPN.ht will stop using US servers.

 

VPN.ht plans to publish a press release soon, we will add that to the article when it comes in.

 

Ten years ago, online streaming hadn’t fully caught on yet and Netflix still had dozens of active DVD-mailing locations throughout the United States.

 

Streaming piracy was relatively new as well with most ‘pirates’ still downloading movies from torrent sites or cyberlockers.

 

While cyberlockers have plenty of legal uses, copyright holders viewed most of these services as pirate portals. This included Megaupload, which was by far the largest platform in this business.

Dark Clouds Looming

In hindsight, the end of 2011 was a crucial period. Megaupload was more popular than ever, something highlighted in the “Megaupload Song“, an unprecedented PR campaign featuring P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, and other stars.

 

What Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom didn’t know was that, at the same time, U.S. law enforcement was gearing up to bring the site down. A few weeks later, hundreds of Megaupload servers were seized while Dotcom’s mansion in New Zealand was raided in a military-style operation.

Fierce Extradition Battle

The U.S. Department of Justice teamed up with New Zealand police and hoped that Dotcom and several other Megaupload defendants would be swiftly extradited. That was idle hope.

 

The Megaupload defendants fiercely contested the extradition request, which they are still doing to this day. After spending millions of dollars in legal fees, the end of this process is still nowhere in sight.

 

Without extraditions, the criminal proceeding in the U.S. remains pending and the latest update in the court docket dates back five years.

RIAA and MPA Cases Postponed

This delay also affects the civil cases filed by the RIAA and the MPAA, which plan to hold the Megaupload defendants liable for millions in music and movie piracy damages respectively.

 

Since the civil cases can potentially influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously asked to put these cases on hold, and last week they requested another extension, which was swiftly granted by the federal court in Virginia.

 

With no objections from the MPA and RIAA, it is no surprise that the stay until April 2022 was granted. If anything, these motions serve as a bi-annual reminder of the lack of progress in the Megaupload case.

 

The extradition process in New Zealand may very well continue for several more years. And in the event that the defendants are extradited, it will take much longer before the criminal case concludes. This means that 2022 may eventually become, 2023, 2025, 2032, and so on.

 

In 2019, a U.S. District Court in Minnesota sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release.

 

Hansmeier was a key player in the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent.

 

Hansmeier and fellow attorney John Steele went a step further though. Among other things they lied to the courts, committed identity theft, and concocted a scheme to upload their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

Appeal Fails

Both attorneys pleaded guilty but Hansmeier reserved the right to appeal his failed motion to dismiss. The former attorney hoped for a better outcome. However, earlier this year the United States Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling, including the $1.5 million in restitution for the victims of the piracy honeypot scheme.

 

This setback wasn’t the end of the road though. Hansmeier continued to push back and filed several lawsuits, listing several federal defendants including U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Anders Folk, among others.

 

With these cases, Hansmeier attempts to legitimize the honeypot scheme, which he actually restarted from prison to make his point. In addition, he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his appeal.

Supreme Court

Hansmeier petitioned the Supreme Court in July. According to the filing, there is a split among the lower courts on an important “materiality” issue that’s central to his mail fraud and wire fraud conviction.

 

While the former Prenda attorney doesn’t deny that he trapped copyright infringers and failed to disclose crucial information to courts, the petition questions whether this can be qualified as an actionable scheme to defraud.

 

This week, the Supreme Court decided not to take on the case. Hansmeier’s petition was denied without further comment, which effectively closes this appeal option.

 

 

The denial is another setback for Hansmeier, who continues to push back. In the civil cases, he accuses the authorities of actively hindering his legal efforts to challenge the criminal mail fraud, wire fraud, and extortion statutes

 

In several filings, written from prison, the former attorney accuses the federal defendants of retaliating by putting him in administrative detention.

 

Apparently, Hansmeier was thrown in “the hole” soon after he targeted several federal defendants in a series of lawsuits a few months ago. These restrictions prevent him from properly serving all defendants.

 

“Within one week, Bureau of Prison officials placed Hansmeier in administrative detention, a/k/a the ‘Hole’, while BOP officials ‘investigated’ the above-captioned cases. Hansmeier has remained in administrative detention of 96 days and counting, while this ‘investigation’ continues,” Hansmeier informed the court two weeks ago.

 

“As a result of the foregoing illegal retaliation, Hansmeier has been unable to further his service efforts. As an administrative detainee, Hansmeier has access to food, water, a legal pad, a 4-inch pen, and not much else.”

 

Hansmeier asks for more time to serve all defendants. At the time of writing, the court has yet to respond to this request. However, it’s clear that the convicted attorney is not giving up easily.

Steele Prepares for Release

The above stands in sharp contrast with how Hansmeier’s former colleague John Steele approached the matter. Steele cooperated with the authorities from the start and received a reduced prison sentence of five years.

 

According to recent court records, Steele is already planning for his release, which is less than three years away. His request for a supervised release in Arizona, where he will first be transferred to a halfway house when the time comes, was granted last month.

 

When torrent sites were gaining significant traction in the mid 2000s, discovering information about their infrastructure and even their operators could be a simple affair.

 

Even if domain WHOIS information was secured with an anonymity service, basic searches often revealed where sites were hosted, meaning that platforms could be put under immediate pressure, when the legal environment allowed. Today, things are much less straightforward.

 

Thousands of pirate sites now use Cloudflare to hide information about their platforms. Site IP addresses are obscured behind the service meaning that some investigations are more easily progressed when Cloudflare itself hands over crucial information. The company won’t do that without a court order but Hollywood in particular is very familiar with that process.

ACE/MPA Obtains DMCA Subpoenas To Unmask Pirate Operators

To compel Cloudflare to hand over details of allegedly infringing customers, copyright holders can go to court in the United States and file an application for a DMCA subpoena. Once granted, these compel the CDN provider to hand over requested personal information. It’s rare for these to be fought or declined and since they don’t need to be overseen by a judge, issuing them is a procedural matter in most cases.

 

Last week the Motion Picture Association acted on behalf of the members of the Alliance for Creativity to file two DMCA subpoena applications at a California court. They name around two dozen torrent and streaming site domains that ACE is clearly investigating and some have massive visitor numbers.

DMCA Subpoena 1 – A Mere Starter

As is always the case with ACE/MPA’s subpoena applications, statements are provided by Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the MPA. The first claim is that two pirate services are breaching Hollywood’s copyrights in the movies Jack Reacher and Fast and Furious 9.

 

The domains listed are vibetvapp.com and webplay.tv123.org and the application also references ‘backend’ link URLs where the movies are apparently hosted. What ACE/MPA are really after, however, are the identities of people behind iptvsubscription.org, a platform that offers pirate IPTV subscriptions plus reselling and restreaming services.

 

“The ACE Members (via the Motion Picture Association, Inc.) are requesting issuance of the attached proposed subpoena that would order Cloudflare, Inc. to disclose the identities, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account histories of the users operating iptvsubscription.org,” the application reads.

DMCA Subpoena 2 – The Main Course

The second DMCA subpoena application follows a similar format but is way more extensive, targeting sites with very significant traffic.

 

Pelisplushd.net is perhaps less well known in English-speaking regions but in Latin America it’s a true giant. Specializing in movies, TV shows and anime, this streaming platform pulls in an estimated 58 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb stats, making it Mexico’s 53rd most popular site. Even then only 33% of its visitors come from that country, with countries like Colombia and Argentina providing significant traffic.

 

Another major site in the list is Mrpiracy.top. Again, this won’t be a particularly familiar domain to English-speaking audiences but with more than 21 million visits per month, it dominates a specific region. At the time of writing, 94% of this site’s traffic comes from Portugal making it the 14th most popular site in the entire country. On Friday, MrPiracy announced that it had shut down with immediate effect, with the operators citing personal reasons.

 

 

Interestingly, SimilarWeb data also lists the site as 7th most popular gambling-related domain on the planet, although quite what is going on there remains unclear.

 

Another major player targeted in the subpoena is French torrent giant YGGTorrent. The site has endured domain problems over the years so tends to jump around. Nevertheless, ACE/MPA is interested in obtaining the details of its operators, specifically those behind yggtorrent.li, yggtorrent.si and its new domain, yggtorrent.nz. Just a few months ago this site was attracting more than 18 million monthly visits.

Smaller Players Still Have Considerable Traffic

Moving down the ACE/MPA targets reveals many other domains that can’t match the successes of the above but are still significant players. Watchtvseries.si, for example, enjoys around 5.2m visits per month, 25% from the US, 17% from the UK, followed by Canada with around 13%. Relatively unusually for a site of this size, Watchtvseries.si isn’t blocked by ISPs in the UK which makes it a likely candidate for appearance in a future MPA injunction.

 

Up next is Gnula.cc and Gnula.link, which appear to be part of the same streaming operation. Popular in Spanish-speaking countries, the former enjoys around five million monthly visits, with around 50% of users hailing from Spain followed by Argentina, Mexico and Chile.

 

Movieboxpro.app attracts around 4.8m visitors per month, with the majority coming from the United States. The site is also popular in Canada and like Watchtvseries.si, isn’t blocked by ISPs in the UK which explains its rapid growth there. The site also has an unusual login system that requires people to associate membership with their Google account.

 

 

With around four million visits per month, Emovies.io is another fairly large streaming site under the eye of ACE/MPA and the same can be said for sports streaming site Sports24.stream, which currently enjoys around 1.7 million visits per month.

 

Sports24 unexpectedly disappeared from the Internet this week and it’s certainly possible that the DMCA subpoena had something to do with that.

 

123movies.london has roughly the same levels of visitors to its streaming service (1.75m) with a quarter coming from the US. The site is rapidly on the rise in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Again, this service is not blocked in the UK so could attract an injunction in the future. Spanish torrent site Elitetorrent.com also makes an appearance with around a million visitors per month.

Other Less Popular Targets

Several other domains in the ACE/MPA list trigger severe malware warnings including topflix.vc, ymovies.to, pelisplus.so, and France-focused site Fandefilm.com. In common with waklov.com, bambip.com, jogiiasd.xyz, pornoman.cc and kinomax.to, site traffic is relatively low, making them interesting targets for copyright holders who probably wish to prevent their growth.

 

The subpoenas and supporting documents can be found here 1,2,3 (pdf)

 

In August 2019, US broadcaster DISH Network and partner NagraStar were maintaining their momentum against unlicensed streaming services.

 

Together they sued the alleged operators of pirate IPTV platform IPGuys, a popular TV streaming service that sold subscriptions through a network of resellers, which enabled illegal access to DISH satellite programming.

 

The complaint named Canada-based Tomasz Kaczmarek as the person acquiring DISH satellite broadcasts and retransmitting them via the IPGuys service. It further named New York-based husband and wife team John and Julia Defoe, who were accused of creating and maintaining DISH subscription accounts used to supply content to the IPGuys service.

 

Seven of the so-called “seeder accounts” (the official subscriptions that allegedly provided the content to IPGuys) shared one or more credit cards as the source of payment and all had either the same passwords or password hints, DISH claimed.

 

The same credit cards were also used to pay for at least twenty additional DISH subscriber accounts established with false information. One of the twenty accounts was held in the name of John Defoe, DISH said, adding that Kaczmarek sent Julia Defoe “tens of thousands of dollars”, while specifically mentioning DISH.

 

DISH demanded a broad injunction plus damages of between $10,000 and $100,000 for each breach of the Federal Communications Act carried out by the defendants. DISH said the number of violations was equal to the number of pirate subscriptions allegedly sold by IPGuys (estimated at 12,731) leading to a potentially massive damages award.

 

After nearly two years of litigation, things haven’t really gone DISH’s way.

Defoes Responded to Complaint, Kaczmarek Did Not

Early October 2019, the Defoes responded to the DISH lawsuit by broadly denying most of the allegations and claiming insufficient knowledge to answer the remainder. Subsequent attempts at mediation failed and in June 2020, the Defoes’ lawyer asked to withdraw from the case, citing irreconcilable differences with his clients.

 

Soon after, the case appeared to lose direction and in February 2021, DISH moved for a default judgment. The matter was referred to Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara and in June 2021, he recommended that the complaint against Kaczmarek should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction.

 

Judge Bulsara also recommended that a default judgment should be entered against the Defoes in the amount of $7,000 – a tiny fraction of DISH’s demands.

DISH Files an Objection

This July, DISH filed an objection against Judge Bulsara’s recommendations, arguing that he was wrong to find that the court lacked jurisdiction over Kaczmarek and that his statutory damages calculation was deficient.

 

In a memorandum and order, United States District Judge Eric Komitee has now sweetened things for DISH a little but nowhere near the level the broadcaster had hoped for.

Court Lacks Personal Jurisdiction Over Kaczmarek

Summarizing the findings of Judge Bulsara, Judge Komitee notes that the Defoes’ role in the operation was that of a supplier. They purchased DISH subscription ‘seeder accounts’ and resold access to that programming to Kaczmarek who “advertised, packaged, and sold it to customers.”

 

However, that begged the question of whether and how Kaczmarek exercised control over the Defoes. That’s a question that DISH has not answered satisfactorily.

 

DISH claimed that control was shown in the facts that IP addresses associated with Kaczmarek were used to make payments on the seeder accounts maintained by the Defoes and that the Defoes and Kaczmarek have a history of working together to facilitate the unauthorized reception of DISH programming. That didn’t go far with the Judge.

 

“Neither of these allegations suffice to establish agency: the fact that an ultimate purchaser makes direct payments on behalf of its supplier is evidence of cooperation, perhaps, but not control. And the same is surely true of the parties’ ‘long history’,” he notes.

 

As a result, Judge Komitee concludes that the Court lacks personal jurisdiction against Kaczmarek, a major blow to the damages award.

Question of Damages

47 U.S. Code § 605 (unauthorized publication or use of communications) provides for statutory damages of $1,000 to $10,000 for each violation. Judge Bulsara based his calculations not on the number of IPGuys subscriptions sold (12,731 according to DISH) but on the number of seeder accounts – seven in total.

 

DISH objected to Judge Bulsara’s methodology but Judge Komitee found that his colleague’s conclusion was correct. However, he did consider the $1,000 award per violation to be too low.

 

“[T]here are indications that the Defoes engaged in the infringement scheme for years. The seeder accounts, though just one part, was integral to the scheme’s success. The Defoes’ conduct also made it harder for Plaintiff to uncover and address. They created the seeder accounts using false contact information, and they did this business with an international partner, against whom it would be harder for the victim of the infringement to seek redress,” Judge Komitee writes.

 

“I therefore assess $2,000 per violation of 47 U.S.C. § 605(a). I do not, however, apply the $100,000 enhancement for willfulness under 47 U.S.C.§ 605(e)(3)(C)(ii) that DISH requests.”

Judgment in Favor of DISH, No Injunction

In conclusion, the Judge dismissed the case against Kaczmarek for lack of personal jurisdiction and found the Defoes liable for seven violations of the Federal Communications Act.

 

He ordered the pair to pay $14,000 in damages but refused to hand down a permanent injunction.

 

The memorandum and default judgment can be found here (pdf)

 

Hosting providers are generally seen as neutral intermediaries but some copyright holders believe that these companies should bear more responsibility.

 

This liability for online services is a hot topic on the political agenda and it’s at the center of several lawsuits in U.S. courts as well.

Lawsuits Target VPN Piracy

Over the past months, a group of independent movie companies filed a series of lawsuits against VPN providers and their hosting companies. The makers of films such as “Hunter Killer” and “Dallas Buyers Club” accuse these services of turning a blind eye to piracy.

 

One of the targeted companies is cloud hosting provider Sharktech, which counts several VPN providers among its customers. According to the rightsholders, the hosting provider indirectly contributed to the infringing activities of the VPNs’ subscribers.

 

The movie companies alerted Sharktech about this piracy activity through various copyright infringement notices, which allegedly had little impact.

 

“Sharktech failed to terminate the subscribers or the accounts associated with these IP addresses or take any meaningful action in response to these Notices,” the movie companies’ complaint read.

Sharktech’s Motion to Dismiss

The hosting company fired back at this complaint. In July, it filed a motion to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim. The filing described the filmmakers as “opportunistic litigants” that rely on “unsupported” liability theories.

 

Sharktech countered that it’s at least three steps removed from the actual pirates. The company merely offers a service to VPN providers which, in turn, have customers who may or may not be infringing.

 

“Plaintiffs’ theory is akin to demanding that a commercial airline that supplies FedEx with supplementary cargo space should be required to terminate FedEx as a customer because a few of FedEx’s individual customers may use FedEx’s services for illegal purposes,” Sharktech argued.

Settlement Reached

While it’s clear that both sides have an entirely different view on the matter, settlement negotiations began behind the scenes. Last month, they indicated to the court that an agreement was being finalized.

 

This week the movie companies and Sharktech filed a stipulation to dismiss the case. Both parties agreed on a confidential settlement agreement. This means that the exact details remain unknown, except for one crucial element.

 

In the original complaint, the filmmakers demanded that Sharktech should block access to several popular pirate sites available through its network. According to the legal paperwork, the hosting company agreed to do so.

Blocking Pirate Sites

Specifically, Sharktech will use commercially reasonable tools to block the IP-addresses of several pirate sites including Pirate Bay, YTS, RARBG, and 1337x.

 

“Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 512(j)(B)(ii) and a confidential settlement agreement, Plaintiffs have requested and Defendant Sharktech has agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to block the following alleged piracy websites located outside of the United States, by blocking their associated, currently-known IP addresses:”

 

(1) “YTS” (yts.mx; yts.movie)
(2) “PirateBay” (https://pirate-bay-proxy.org/eng/; piratebay.org)
(3) “RarBg” (https://rarbg.to/)
(4) “1337x” (https://www.1337x.tw/; https://www.1377x.is/).

 

 

Needless to say, this is a far-reaching measure when taking into consideration that pirate site blocking is not common in the U.S. The movie companies are trying to change this through several lawsuits and this is their first ‘victory’ thus far.

 

There are some things that stand out, however. The legal paperwork mentions pirate-bay-proxy.org and piratebay.org, while the official thepiratebay.org domain is not included. The same applies to 1337x, which doesn’t have its main domain listed.

Colateral Damage

The above doesn’t mean that the blocking efforts will have a limited effect. On the contrary, many of the domains are accessible through shared IP-addresses offered by Cloudflare. This opens the door to collateral damage.

 

For example, YTS.mx resolves to the IP-address 104.31.16.120, which it shares with hundreds of other ‘pirate’ domains such as IPTorrents.ru, Flixtor.to, Putlockers.fm, and Kickass1.to. With a simple IP-address blockade, these domains will be blocked as well.

 

Also, it’s not just ‘piracy’ related domain names that are at risk. The targeted YTS.movie domain uses a shared Cloudflare IP-address that’s linked to over 2,000 other domains. The majority of these domains have nothing to do with piracy.

 

For example, YTS.movie resolves to the same IP-address as Stechfordmobility.co.uk, which is a company that sells stairlifts & mobility equipment in the UK.

 

This wouldn’t be the first time that shared IP addresses have resulted in overblocking. The same has happened a few times in the past and Cloudflare previously stepped in to limit such collateral damage.

 

TorrentFreak reached out to Sharktech for further information on how the company plans to enforce the blocking agreement. At the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.

 

With the settlement agreement, all claims against the hosting provider are dropped. The same doesn’t apply to VPN provider PIA and several Doe defendants that are targeted by the same complaint.

 

—

 

A copy of the stipulation to dismiss the claims against defendant Sharktech is available here (pdf)

 

In May, Triller filed a lawsuit against the H3 Podcast, claiming that by showing a portion of the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren fight event on YouTube, the defendants breached the company’s rights.

 

Triller initially alleged two types of copyright infringement, violations of the Federal Communications Act (FCA), conversion, and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The company demanded $50m in damages after the “unauthorized broadcast” was allegedly viewed one million times. A first amended complaint named Ethan and Hila Klein as defendants and a second removed the fraud allegations.

 

Early September the defendants fired back with a motion to dismiss the “fatally defective” complaint, arguing that they only used a very small portion of the four-hour broadcast for the purposes of commentary and criticism, a key component of a fair use defense. Triller’s allegation, that Ethan Klein admitted that the copy of the fight he watched was pirated, does not amount to anything since viewing such content is not an offense, the defendants argued.

 

Considering these points and others formed along similar lines, Triller’s lawsuit should be dismissed, the defendants said. In an opposition to that motion, filed late Wednesday, Triller argues otherwise, shifting emphasis away from the podcast itself and onto the video clip used by H3, which was placed on YouTube as an ‘unlisted’ video.

‘Unlisted’ Video Was a “Bootlegged” Copy

In its opposition, Triller moves directly to the core of its new focus. The company says that Ethan Klein admitted online that he pirated the Jake Paul fight and uploaded “substantial portions” of that broadcast to YouTube in the form of an unlisted video. Third parties were allegedly able to view that video without paying Triller PPV fees.

 

“These are textbook violations of the Copyright Act, and Defendants should not be permitted to thumb their noses at the law or this Court,” Triller writes.

 

Triller’s initial stance was that the H3 Podcast episode that contained the fight clip was viewed a million times but they now state that the episode, which contained commentary and criticism, is not what this lawsuit is about.

 

“This lawsuit does not concern or seek to stifle Defendants’ commentary relating to the Broadcast. To the contrary, this lawsuit concerns Defendants’ creation and dissemination of the Unlisted Video,” its motion reads.

URL of Unlisted Video Was Displayed In Podcast

According to Triller, the “stolen” clip used in the H3 episode contained a piece of information that undermines the defendants’ case. By displaying the fight clip and its URL (location on YouTube), a breaches of copyright law took place.

 

“To the extent Defendants wanted to provide commentary concerning the Broadcast, Defendants could —and should— have done so without violating the Copyright Act by hiding, obstructing, or obscuring the URL for the Unlisted Video,” Triller’s opposition to the motion to dismiss reads.

 

“But, whether out of negligence, willfulness, or maliciousness, or some combination thereof, Defendants chose to not hide, obstruct, or obscure the URL for the Unlisted Video, and thereby unlawfully permitted at least 65 individuals to view the essential portions of the Broadcast without paying Plaintiff the required pay-per-view fee.”

 

Triller says that because each of these 65 individuals failed to pay Triller and the unlisted video was monetized, the defendants’ profited from their direct infringements. On the other hand, Triller notes that the defendants may not have earned anything at all (as the defendants have previously claimed) but want the opportunity to ascertain the facts during a discovery process.

Process of Viewing Pirated Broadcast “Was Illegal”

In respect of the defendants’ claim that simply viewing the event from a pirated copy wasn’t illegal, Triller suggests the whole process that facilitated that needs to be examined. The company says that the defendants not only viewed the broadcast without paying but also downloaded the broadcast and uploaded it to YouTube, where it was viewed by third parties.

 

“By unlawfully viewing and downloading the Broadcast, Defendants engaged in direct copyright infringement. By uploading the Broadcast to YouTube where other individuals could —and did— unlawfully view the Broadcast, Defendants engaged in vicarious copyright infringement,” Triller adds.

 

The company also addresses the defendants’ claim that the unlisted video was a “digital stream” and therefore inherently “transitory”, stating that the file was “fixed” on YouTube’s servers.

Defendants’ “Bad Faith” Rules Out Fair Use Protections

In their motion to dismiss, the Kleins stated that under the doctrine of “intermediate use” the preliminary step of copying a video for use in the creation of a fair use work also qualifies as fair use. However, Triller believes the way that video was obtained weighs in its favor.

 

“Defendants did not obtain the Broadcast lawfully; indeed, Defendants expressly proclaimed to the world that they stole the Broadcast,” Triller notes.

 

In respect of H3’s commentary and criticism podcast, Triller says the same effect could’ve been achieved without showing the broadcast at all, or by lawfully purchasing the broadcast like any other consumer.

 

“But Defendants did not do this. Instead, Defendants admittedly ‘pirated’ or ‘bootlegged’ the Broadcast, uploaded a copy to YouTube so others could —and did— similarly unlawfully pirate or bootleg the Broadcast, and profited therefrom.”

 

Further weighing in on the “intermediate use” defense, Triller says that case law only allows infringements that are “not ultimately used in any end product” and in this case, the H3 Podcast episode indisputably contains copyrighted material.

 

“Accordingly, the intermediate use doctrine does not apply to the Unlisted Video as a matter of law,” Triller adds.

Other Fair Use Factors Cannot Be Relied Upon

Again focusing on the ‘Unlisted Video’ rather than the H3 Podcast episode, Triller says that there was no comment or criticism in it. It was a “substantial portion” of the broadcast, in its original form, and was in no way transformative.

 

That source video was viewed at least 65 times without comment or critique and since those viewers were able to watch the Jake Paul fight in full, the video was a market substitute for the broadcast. This meant there was a substantial effect on and the market and value of the copyrighted work.

 

Finally, in the event that the court decides to dismiss any of Triller’s causes of action, the company requests permission to amend its complaint once again.

 

Triller’s opposition to the motion to dismiss the second amended complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

Popular CDN and DDoS protection service Cloudflare has come under a lot of pressure from copyright holders in recent years.

 

The company offers its services to millions of sites, some of which provide access to copyright-infringing material.

 

Cloudflare prefers to remain a neutral service provider and doesn’t terminate clients based on DMCA notices. Instead, it forwards these to the hosting providers of its customers, only taking action when it receives a court order.

Repeat Infringer Lawsuit

This stance is not appreciated by all rightsholders and in 2018 the service was taken to court over the issue. The case wasn’t filed by major entertainment companies but by two manufacturers and wholesalers of wedding dresses. Not a typical “piracy” lawsuit, but it’s a copyright case that could have broad implications.

 

In a complaint filed at a federal court in California, Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs argued that even after multiple warnings, Cloudflare failed to terminate sites operated by counterfeit vendors. This makes Cloudflare liable for the associated copyright infringements, they said.

 

After a thorough discovery process, both sides submitted motions for summary judgment at a California federal court a few weeks ago. The wedding dress manufacturers argued that Cloudflare should have done more to stop pirates, while the CDN provider positioned itself as a neutral service provider that simply passes on traffic.

Court sides with Cloudflare

This week, United States District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled on the motions, resulting in a clear win for Cloudflare. The Judge only needed three pages for a combined ruling on the motions from both sides.

 

The ruling clarifies that, in order to establish that a defendant is liable for contributory copyright infringement, several boxes must be ticked. This includes a finding that Cloudflare materially contributed to infringing activities.

 

While there is no disagreement that some of Cloudflare’s customers may have used copyright-infringing material, the court doesn’t believe that the CDN provider can be blamed for this.

Caching is Not Infringement

With regard to Cloudflare’s CDN service, where the company cached infringing material on its servers, Judge Chhabria concludes that mere copying is not sufficient to prove material contribution.

 

“For example, the plaintiffs have not offered any evidence that faster load times (assuming they were faster) would be likely to lead to significantly more infringement than would occur without Cloudflare.

 

“Without such evidence, no reasonable jury could find that Cloudflare ‘significantly magnif[ies]’ the underlying infringement,” Judge Chhabria adds.

 

 

The court further points out that even if Cloudflare did remove the infringing material from its servers, it would remain available on the original sites. This means that the infringement wouldn’t stop.

IP-Address Shielding is Fine

In addition to the catching feature of Cloudflare, the wedding dress manufacturers also argued that the CDN provider makes it harder to police copyright-infringing material as it shields the IP-address of copyright-infringing sites.

 

Again, the court was not convinced, noting that IP-address obfuscation doesn’t make a difference to people who visit the infringing sites.

 

Furthermore, Cloudflare forwards all infringing notices it receives to the appropriate hosting provider. As such, Judge Chhabria sees no evidence that Cloudflare makes it harder to go after pirate sites.

 

“If Cloudflare’s provision of these services made it more difficult for a third party to report incidents of infringement to the web host as part of an effort to get the underlying content taken down, perhaps it could be liable for contributory infringement.

 

“But here, the parties agree that Cloudflare informs complainants of the identity of the host in response to receiving a copyright complaint, in addition to forwarding the complaint along to the host provider,” the Judge notes.

 

The ruling is an important victory for Cloudflare. Although wedding dresses are a relatively niche topic, many of the arguments in this lawsuit also apply to traditional pirate sites, which Cloudflare serves as well.

 

—

 

A copy of United States District Judge Vince Chhabria’s ruling on the motions for summary judgment is available here (pdf)

 

Pirate IPTV and similar streaming services are considered one of the greatest threats to the global market for legitimate movie and TV show content. As a result, content companies of all kinds are going to extreme lengths to reduce unlicensed supply.

 

The most significant anti-piracy program by scale is operated by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a global coalition that counts the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and dozens more giants among its members. From Apple TV+ to the BBC, Bell Canada, and Canal+, ACE members want pirate streaming platforms out of business as quickly as possible.

Not Afraid of Court Action But ACE Prefers Compliance

One of the key ACE strategies is to use its momentum and sheer power to force pirates into submission. In a nutshell, ACE gathers evidence on pirate IPTV operators and then approaches them with an offer they may be unwise to refuse – shut down or face potentially dire consequences. And then have to shut down anyway.

 

Part of this process involves operators having to sign over their domains for use by the Motion Picture Association. Over the past few years, ACE has taken control of more than 200 domains in this fashion and in the past couple of weeks has been particularly busy. The group is yet to make any announcements but we can reveal the number of domains ‘seized’ has grown by more than three dozen.

Pirate IPTV Domains Seized in Their Dozens

The first set of domains appear to be connected to each other. In the past they have been advertised separately and together on platforms including Reddit and even Pintrest, making them relatively easy pickings for ACE.

 

Abon-sat.com, abon-iptv-ott.com, king-platinum-iptv.com, electrotv-sat.com, electro-tvsat.com, electro-tv-sat.com, electrotvsat.net, electro-tv-sat.net, king-premium-iptv.com, king-platinum-iptv.com and salah-sat.com have all been promoted by a single user on Reddit and now divert to ACE, presumably having been shut down.

 

King-platinum-iptv.com, which claimed to offer 17,000+ channels and VOD. It even had its own DMCA page noting that the service “DOES NOT! broadcast any TV channel from its servers, nor is in any way connected with the channel broadcasting” but that didn’t prevent it from being placed under ACE/MPA control with all of the others.

 

Other domains scooped up by Hollywood include volkatvpro2.com and volkatv-pro2.com after offering access to global TV at a cheap price, including live sports from Sky and Bein, and TV shows from Canal+. It too shows the familiar ACE seizure banner after presumably caving to legal pressure

 

 

And the list goes on.

Juice TV and Others Also Shuttered By ACE

Up until the summer Juice TV was being promoted as a great alternative to services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, offering channels from the United States and United Kingdom, plus PPV, movies and TV shows available across a wide range of devices for as little as $4.99 per month.

 

 

That and all other offers now appear to be over. In the past few days, many former Juice TV domains have been transferred over to the Motion Picture Association and now divert to the ACE ‘seizure’ banner.

 

They read as follows: juicetv.ca, jaccounting.ca, juiceaccounting.ca, juicepay.app, juicetv.plus, juicetv.org, juicetvmax.pro, juicetv.app, juicetv.in, juicetv.co, juicetv.app and juicetvmax.pro.

 

Other IPTV-related domains to fall to ACE control include the following: recepteur-iptv.com, orca-pro.com, ottrapid.com, smartstb-ott.com, ip-tv-ott.com, ott-premium-iptv.com, ott-tvbox.com, premium-kingott.com, ott-rapid.com, buyiptv-ott.com and akhbar-ma.com plus ezstreamtv.com, esiptv-pro.com and estilotv.pro.

ACE is Relentless

This global anti-piracy action by ACE is part of the MPA’s war on all kinds of unlicensed services, focused mainly on IPTV and similar streaming operations.

 

As reported yesterday, Hollywood still considers piracy to be its biggest threat so these seizures certainly won’t be the last. Indeed, the work of the MPA is being recognized at the highest levels, including by Spanish law enforcement which yesterday awarded the industry group with the Distinguished Cross of the Police Merit with Distinction for its anti-piracy efforts.

 

In part, recognized the MPA’s work in the shut down of streaming app Mobdro earlier this year.

 

The major record labels believe that YouTube rippers are the most significant piracy threat on the Internet.

 

These sites, which can serve a variety of purposes, are used by some to convert free YouTube videos into MP3s.

FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com Lawsuit

The RIAA and several of its members have taken legal action to curb this threat. They previously sued YouTube-MP3, the world’s largest ripping site at the time, which resulted in the site shutting down in 2017.

 

A year later, the music industry hoped to achieve the same with FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com. The sites’ Russian owner Tofig Kurbanov was taken to court in the United States in 2018, accused of facilitating mass copyright infringement.

 

Kurbanov was convinced that the sites operate legally and fought back in court. However, after several setbacks, including a discovery order that required the YouTube rippers to log user data, the Russian operator decided to back out of the US court process.

Default Judgment

Kurbanov’s failure to comply with the discovery order and his decision to step away from the US lawsuit cleared the path for the RIAA. And indeed, the music group was quick to request a default judgment.

 

This request doesn’t come out of the blue. The court had repeatedly warned Kurbanov that, if he failed to comply with the orders, a default judgment could follow. And indeed, that’s exactly what has happened.

 

Virginia District Court Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan has issued a report and recommendations, concluding that the default judgment should be granted as a discovery sanction. The court sees no other option, especially since the site operator stepped away from the lawsuit.

Need to Deter

“There is a clear need to deter Defendant’s behavior in this case. Despite being ordered to fully produce documents and web server data, Defendant failed to comply with this Court’s orders.

 

“A less drastic sanction is unlikely to salvage this case. Plaintiffs are unable to fairly move forward with this case without discovery. It is unclear what other sanction could make Defendant comply with this Court’s orders..,” Judge Buchanan said.

 

This recommendation was taken over by U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton, who handed down the default judgment last Friday.

 

 

The order means that the stream-rippers and their operator are liable for copyright infringement and violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. The only remaining issue is the scale of the damages and the potential injunctive measures.

Millions in Damages

A hearing on these remaining issues is scheduled for later this week and yesterday the RIAA shared its demands with the court.

 

The music industry group demands $50,000 in damages per willful infringement of 1,618 copyrighted sound recordings, which is $80,900,000 in total. In addition, it requests $1,250 for every circumvention of YouTube’s technological protection measures, which amounts to $2,022,500.

 

On top of the damages, the RIAA requests a permanent injunction that prohibits Mr. Kurbanov from engaging in copyright-infringing activity. The music group also wants to take over the FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com domains, either directly through the defendant, or via the domain registrar or registries.

 

At the time of writing, both FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com are still operating as usual. The sites closed their doors to traffic from the U.S. a few weeks ago, shortly after Mr. Kurbanov stepped away from the lawsuit.

 

—

 

A copy of the request for damages and a permanent injunction is available here (pdf)

 

While the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has built a reputation for shutting down pirate IPTV services by various means, US broadcaster DISH is more prolific when it comes to actual lawsuits.

 

Over the years DISH has filed large numbers of civil lawsuits, some based on copyright law and others the Federal Communications Act. Some of these complaints are met by defendants who wish to engage in court but there are others that are completely one-sided affairs, with DISH doing all the legal legwork and getting very little in response.

 

The case in question is an excellent example of the latter.

DISH Files Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against IPTV Provider

Initially filed in August 2020, the complaint targeted five ‘doe’ defendants, together doing business as Universe IPTV and Universe TV. The complaint alleged that the service’s business was carried out via several domains, including but not limited to World-Universeiptv.com and Uni-Update.com.

 

According to DISH, the pirate provider had not obtained a license to transmit any of DISH’s 400 channels in the United States, neither did it have permission to distribute copyrighted works for shows for which the company owns the copyrights. The Universe service transmitted and distributed DISH content regardless, utilizing a network of resellers to sell illicit subscriptions via Instagram and Facebook, in breach of DISH’s rights.

 

DISH went to some lengths to try and close Universe down including sending cease-and-desist letters directly to the platform and more than a dozen to CDN networks associated with the service. This proved fruitless, however, since Universe simply shifted to new locations and different providers.

DISH Identifies Universe IPTV Operators

In December 2020, DISH’s first amended complaint named three people as the alleged operators of Universe IPTV – Mohamed Omar, Hossam Abd Elghany, and Moustafa Maatouk. Together they were accused of direct and contributory copyright infringement. DISH also claimed to have identified their locations – United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Germany respectively.

 

The big question was whether DISH would be able to do anything to make the men participate in the lawsuit. The answer to that question was ultimately negative. Despite using established legal processes in all three countries, by April 2021 DISH was unable to confirm to the court that the defendants had been directly served.

 

So, in August 2021, DISH filed motions for default judgment against all three after serving the defendants via third parties including VeriSign, Donuts, and other service providers previously utilized by the platform. The court considered this to be acceptable to advance DISH’s claim for a default judgment.

Court Orders Universe IPTV Operators to Pay DISH $7m+

In a judgment handed down late last week, United States District Judge Sim Lake found that Universe IPTV had transmitted DISH’s protected channels (and the copyrighted works that aired on those channels) to users of the Universe service in the United States. By doing so, the defendants directly infringed DISH’s exclusive rights to distribute and publicly perform those works and, as a result, they are liable for direct copyright infringement.

 

In addition, the defendants also induced and materially contributed to the infringement of DISH’s rights by providing Universe IPTV’s users with access to DISH content, despite having the ability to prevent such access.

 

“Defendants are contributorily liable for copyright infringement because they served as the intermediary between third parties who directly infringe DISH’s exclusive distribution and public performance rights and users of the Universe Service, who became a necessary component of the infringement – the audience,” the judgment reads.

 

As a result, the Judge found the Universe defendants liable for inducing and materially contributing to copyright infringement, noting that the breaches were both malicious and willful.

 

Taking the 47 copyrighted works mentioned in the complaint, the Judge awarded DISH $150,000 in damages for each of them, to a total of $7,050,000, with the defendants held jointly and severally liable. Whether DISH will ever see a penny of this amount is in question but the Judge also handed down a broad injunction in an effort to hinder the defendants’ business moving forward.

Broad Injunction Against Universe IPTV

In addition to some broad measures designed to prevent Universe from doing business as before, including transmitting the DISH channels in the United States and/or marketing/selling subscriptions there, the injunction prevents non-party service providers from engaging in infringing activities with the Universe defendants in the future.

 

Website and domain hosting companies, proxy services, CDN providers, advertisers, social media services and email providers cannot provide services to support any infringing service offered by the defendants. In addition, Belize-based ISP Squitter Networks must disable a range of IP addresses used by Universe and any future ISPs served with the order must do the same, if their network is being used by Universe to breach DISH’s rights.

 

Finally, domain companies including VeriSign and Donuts are required to disable a large number of domains related to the Universe service and transfer them to DISH so that the broadcaster can fully control and use them.

 

The $7m default judgment can be found here (pdf)

Over the past two decades, online piracy has proven a massive challenge for the entertainment industries.

 

It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but various anti-piracy group are doing their best to fight back.

 

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has been at the forefront of this battle. The coalition is led by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) which represents the major Hollywood studios and Netflix.

Piracy = Single Greatest Threat

In a speech at CineEurope in Barcelona this week, MPA CEO and Chairman Charles Rivkin told the audience that piracy remains a massive threat to the film industry.

 

“[Piracy] is the single greatest threat to the global audiovisual community. It harms local and foreign films and businesses. It threatens jobs. It undermines investment. It reduces tax contributions to governments. And it stifles the very creativity that is the lifeblood of our industry,” Rivkin said.

 

While the piracy threat hasn’t gone away over the past decade, rightsholders have significantly stepped up their efforts to combat the problem. The ACE coalition played an important part in this.

Anti-Piracy Successes

In recent years ACE has had a hand in several high-profile anti-piracy initiatives throughout the world, and Rivkin noted that law enforcement in Europe has been a crucial partner.

 

“We have enjoyed great success everywhere,” Rivkin said, recalling several success stories, including the shutdown of the piracy app Mobdro, in which the Spanish police played a central role.

 

Spanish law enforcement has also been instrumental in dismantling several illegal IPTV services. The MPA’s boss said that he will personally thank the police for their efforts today.

 

“I am going to Madrid to meet with the leadership of the Spanish National Police to thank them for their outstanding cooperation and teamwork in this critical effort,” Rivkin added.

 

Update: The Spanish National Police is also pleased with the MPA’s efforts. After the publication of this article, the Police awarded the MPA with a Merit Cross with Distinction for its anti-piracy efforts.

Site Blocking Works

There are other ‘helpful’ developments in Europe as well, from a rightsholder’s perspective. This includes pirate site blocking. Countries including Spain, Italy, France, Denmark, Greece, and the Netherlands all have measures in place to prevent access to infringing sites.

 

“Europe also leads the world in blocking illegal websites – which makes an enormous difference,” Rivkin told the audience.

 

It is no secret that the MPA is also pushing for similar powers in the United States but, thus far, not much progress was made on that front.

Tackling Camcording Piracy

CineEurope is a trade show for the cinema industry. According to Rivkin, movie theaters can and have helped to combat online piracy as well by tracking down and reporting people who illegally ‘camcord’ films.

 

These anti-camcording measures help to decrease piracy and some successes were booked recently, also in Spain.

 

“Our work together, along with the Spanish National Police, resulted in the successful arrest of individuals in Madrid and Pamplona who were illegally filming premieres and uploading them to specialized, illegal sites,” Rivkin noted.

 

MPA’s boss is positive about the anti-piracy cooperation in Europe. Just recently, this led to the shutdown of Iconic Streams and Filelinked in Germany. These enforcement actions ultimately benefit theater owners as well.

 

There is little doubt that these anti-piracy sentiments will be broadly shared among the CineEurope audience. After all, piracy is a threat for everyone involved.

A Threat From Within?

Most recently, however, there has been some uproar within the movie industry as well. Many theater owners are not happy that some movies premiere on streaming services and at the box office simultaneously.

 

Rivkin acknowledged the concerns and the daunting and uncertain challenges ahead while adding that he can’t predict the future. However, he believes that the movie theater experience can’t easily be replaced.

 

“As I have said before, we are living in the golden age of content – for all of us to enjoy – wherever we choose to find it. But there is no substitute for going to the movies.”

 

These comments apply to the potential competition between legal streaming and the box office, but perhaps that can be expanded to piracy as well. If legal streaming is no replacement for the movie theatre experience, we doubt that piracy is. But that’s another discussion.

 

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. “Free Guy” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 4 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Free Guy	7.4 / trailer
2	(…)	The Card Counter	6.3 / trailer
3	(2)	Candyman	6.2 / trailer
4	(…)	The Addams Family 2	5.4 / trailer
5	(3)	Old	5.9 / trailer
6	(4)	The Suicide Squad	7.6 / trailer
7	(…)	Queenpins	6.1 / trailer
8	(8)	Jungle Cruise	7.0 / trailer
9	(5)	Black Widow	7.0 / trailer
10	(6)	F9: The Fast Saga	5.3 / trailer

 

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

 

YTS.mx is one one of the most-used torrent sites on the internet, serving millions of visitors every day.

 

The site can be used without registering an account. However, those who sign up get some extra features, such as an option to bookmark titles.

 

These added benefits can be handy but registering an account with a pirate site is not without risk. Early last year the operators of YTS signed a settlement agreement with several movies studios, which put many of the site’s users at risk.

YTS User Database

The settlement ensured that YTS could continue to operate. However, the operator agreed to share details from the YTS userbase, including IP-addresses, email addresses, and download histories. This provided the movie companies with evidence for follow-up lawsuits against these users.

 

The film companies, including the makers of “London Has Fallen”, “Rambo V”, and “Dallas Buyers Club”, didn’t stop there. Over the past months, they went after VPN providers and hosting companies as well.

 

These third-party services are directly or indirectly liable for piracy, the filmmakers argue, because their networks and infrastructure are used by people to pirate movies. And despite sending many copyright infringement notices, these services failed to take meaningful action in response.

Movie Companies Sue Datacamp

A few days ago the movie companies filed a new lawsuit at a federal court in Virginia, accusing UK-based company Datacamp Limited of copyright infringement. Datacamp operated under the CDN77 and DataPacket brands, and reportedly offers its services to several VPN providers.

 

The complaint lists ten unnamed VPN services and “Doe” defendants and the movie companies hope to find out their names through this lawsuit.

 

“DOE 1-10 promote their VPN service as a tool that can be used to pirate copyright protected content without getting caught,” the complaint reads, adding that the VPNs “partner with notorious movie piracy websites to promote their VPN service as an essential tool for movie piracy.”

 

Meanwhile, Datacamp is accused of contributory copyright infringement, as it failed to terminate the accounts of these VPN services after repeated warnings. These allegations are similar to the ones we have seen in cases against Leaseweb, Sharktech, and other hosting companies.

YTS Account with “Hacked’ Email

The YTS database also shows up as evidence again. And in this case, that leads to a noteworthy finding we haven’t seen before.

 

The movie companies previously sued Indiana resident Mr. Byranski after they found his email address in the YTS user database. The YTS database linked this user to an IP-address that’s registered to Datacamp, presumably through one of the company’s VPN customers.

 

Mr. Byranski, however, denied any wrongdoing and testified that he didn’t use a VPN service, nor did he download the pirated movies.

 

Apparently, Mr. Byranski’s email address was “hacked” around the same time and $12,000 was stolen from his PayPal account. This leads the movie studios to suggest that the hacker could have used the same email to sign up with YTS too.

 

“Some of these YTS users [use] the VPN service of DataCamp’s subscribers to unlawfully access ‘hack’ into the accounts of third parties, use their email addresses to register for an account with the YTS website and pirate movies, and unlawfully access bank accounts of the third parties,” the complaint reads.

No Hacking Skills Needed

In reality, there are no hacking skills required to use a third-party email address to sign up with YTS. Everyone can use a random email to register an account, as the YTS website doesn’t require users to verify their addresses.

 

The movie companies eventually dismissed their copyright infringement claims against Mr. Byranski, but not before securing a formal declaration that puts pressure on Datacamp.

 

Similar to the film companies, Mr. Byranski stated that it would have been better if Datacamp had taken action after receiving multiple copyright infringement notices.

 

“I wish Datacamp Limited had taken action against the subscriber at this IP address in response to those notices so that possibly the damages I have suffered from this hacking, including being accused of copyright infringement could have been prevented,” the declaration reads.

 

Mr. Byranski received a full refund from Paypal and the copyright infringement claims were dropped as well. Instead, the filmmakers now use his declaration as ammunition in the Datacamp lawsuit.

Damages, Blocking, and More

Datacamp has yet to respond to the allegations. The company stands accused of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, among other things, and faces over a million dollars in potential damages.

 

Similar to the other lawsuits against VPN services and hosting providers, the film companies also ask for far-reaching measures in the form of an injunction.

 

Among other things, they ask the court to issue an order requiring the hosting company to block ports 6881-6889, which are commonly used for BitTorrent traffic. In addition, the company should block its customers from accessing pirate sites such as YTS, The Pirate Bay, Rarbg, and 1337x.

 

—

 

A copy of the complaint the film companies filed against Datacamp Limited at the Eastern District of Virginia is available here (pdf).

 

Early 2021 a group of programmers and Grand Theft Auto enthusiasts released ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, a pair of reverse engineered releases of GTA 3 and Vice City.

 

The releases allowed fans of these much-loved titles to enjoy them with significant enhancements but the newly polished games weren’t well-received by Take-Two and Rockstar Games. They responded by filing a DMCA takedown notice with Gihub where the code was stored, demanding the removal of the ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ repositories.

 

Github fulfilled its requirements under the law by taking them both down but believing they could continue their work under the doctrine of fair use, the team behind ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ filed a DMCA counter-notice to have them restored.

Copyright Infringment Lawsuit

Take-Two could’ve prevented this from happening by quickly filing a lawsuit. Instead, after biding its time, the company eventually responded in early September with a full-blown copyright complaint targeting Angelo Papenhoff (aap), Theo Morra, Eray Orçunus, and Adrian Graber, plus Doe 1 ‘Ash R / Ash/735’ and nine other unnamed Does.

 

The complaint alleges that the defendants committed willful copyright infringement by “maliciously copying, adapting and distributing its source code and other content”, making them liable for $150,000 in damages for each infringed work. Take-Two also claims that three of the defendants (Orçunus, Morra, and Graber) sent DMCA counter-notices in bad faith.

Take-Two’s Lawyers Send New DMCA Notice

Just before the weekend, a new entry in Github’s DMCA repository revealed the existence of a letter sent to Github from Take-Two’s legal team. Dated September 9, 2021 (a week after the copyright lawsuit was filed) it informs Github that legal action is underway and it has come to the company’s attention that the contentious content (and numerous ‘fork’ repositories) continue to be made available on Github’s website.

 

“We request that Github take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the materials [in the attached exhibit], together with any other instances of the same materials available within the same primary ‘GTAmodding/re3’ fork network (e.g. in ‘private’ or newly-created repositories),” it reads.

 

 

In common with the first DMCA notice, Github has responded by taking the project’s repositories down. Given that the defendants in the case already stand accused of previously sending “bad faith” counter-notices, it seems unlikely that they will follow up with another set of similar responses that will soon be under the scrutiny of the court.

 

Take-Two also follows up with a line that is becoming more and more popular in copyright infringement matters, one that references so-called ‘repeat infringers’.

 

“Furthermore, it is requested that Github take appropriate measures to prevent further infringement by the parties responsible, including pursuant to any ‘repeat infringer’ policies maintained by Github.”

 

This means that if any of the contentious content is reposted to Github, Take-Two would like the code repository to implement its own ‘repeat infringer’ process. It states that “in appropriate circumstances and in its sole discretion, [Github will] disable and terminate the accounts of users who may infringe upon the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of GitHub or others.”

 

The letter also provides a laundry list of repository forks that, on the basis they are also infringing, should be removed. While Github appears to have complied in many cases, there are two notable exceptions. After being targeted by earlier DMCA takedowns, Github users ‘td512‘ and ‘erorcun‘ filed DMCA counter-notices to have their repositories restored.

 

The former previously informed TorrentFreak that he believed Take-Two’s infringement claims to be incorrect. At the time of writing, both repos are still online.

Latest Developments in the Take-Two Lawsuit

According to court filings, Papenhoff and Graber reside in Germany, Orçunus in Turkey, and Morra in New Zealand. After Take-Two filed its lawsuit, the gaming company filed a request with the court to serve Morra, Graber and Orçunus by alternative means, specifically Orçunus by post and email, and Defendants Graber and Morra by post.

 

Take-Two argued that this was appropriate because in their DMCA counter-notices, all of the defendants agreed to accept service by providing their postal and email addresses where they could be served outside of the United States. Days later, Judge Thomas S. Hixson granted the motion and thus far it appears that Orçunus and Graber have been served.

 

TorrentFreak has requested comment from Github regarding the processes and subsequent decision to remove the repositories listed in Github’s letter.

 

The Take-Two legal letter to Github can be found here (pdf)

 

The unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted content is a multi-billion dollar puzzle that entertainment industry companies are desperate to solve.

 

A lot of effort is going into blocking pirate sites and, occasionally, the operators of these services are taken to court.

 

The third enforcement option is to go after the people who actually pirate the content. Tracking down these sources isn’t always straightforward but there are a few commercial tools that can help.

 

One of these anti-piracy solutions is the NexGuard watermarking solution from the content security outfit NAGRA. This can be used by a variety of streaming platforms, including Pay-TV services and regular broadcasters.

Catching Pirates With Watermarks

NexGuard is used for Oscars screeners and AMC Networks also implemented the technology to protect its content. This week, NAGRA announced that the Italian broadcaster RAI has joined the platform as well. RAI is the first free-to-air service to use the watermarking system to track down pirates.

 

“Our watermarking-based anti-piracy solutions are essential for RAI to effectively monitor copyright infringements and secure the value of the content distributed over OTT/AVOD,” NAGRA’s Thierry Legrand says, commenting on the news.

 

Watermarking is part of NAGRA’s broader anti-piracy suite which also includes legal services. The company has plenty of experience on this front. It has helped law enforcement authorities to shut down pirate IPTV services and, together with Dish, has filed several lawsuits as well.

 

From NAGRA’s website

 

Watermarking has been around for decades and some online pirates have been quite successful at circumventing these types of roadblocks. However, NAGRA informs TorrentFreak that their solution is quite effective and approved by Hollywood.

Success Stories

The technology has already helped the Academy Awards to prevent Oscar screeners from leaking. And if there are leaks, the audio and video watermarks can help to trace these back to the source.

 

“We have many success stories showcasing how NAGRA’s NexGuard forensic watermarking has held online pirates accountable,” a NAGRA spokesperson says, adding that the company can’t provide more details without permission from its customers.

 

“When a leak is detected, the trail to find the perpetrator is immediately activated. It allows intelligence to be created that can assemble a view of how and where pirates are sourcing content and the types of devices they are using,” NAGRA adds.

 

In addition to holding pirates accountable, watermarks can also serve as a deterrent. While hardcore pirates aren’t easily deterred, these tracking options could scare off more casual infringers.

 

According to NAGRA, this is just the beginning of what is possible in protecting copyrighted content. The company is convinced that these and other technological measures will help rightsholders to successfully combat piracy.

 

Since around 2017, Danish law firm Njord Law has worked with movie companies to extract cash settlements from alleged pirates.

 

The system follows a familiar pattern – use an anti-piracy monitoring firm to collect IP addresses in BitTorrent swarms, obtain court orders compelling ISPs to hand over the personal details behind those IP addresses, and send letters asking for cash to make potential lawsuits go away.

 

In Denmark, thousands of Internet users have paid settlements to the law firm equivalent to around $1,200 each but with a rising number of lawsuits being kicked out of court when they dared to venture there, this attracted the attention of the authorities.

 

Following an investigation that began in 2020, in January it was revealed that the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime (SØIK) had charged Njord Law and partner lawyer Jeppe Brogaard Clausen with serious fraud offenses in connection with their settlement work.

State Prosecutor Finds No Wrongdoing

All along Njord Law has insisted that its work complied with the law and it now transpires that the authorities agree. As first reported by Danish publication Berlingske, SØIK has now dropped the case having found no wrongdoing at the firm.

 

“In 2020, SØIK reacted to a suspicion of one or more criminal acts in connection with a number of compensation cases conducted by a law firm,” a SØIK statement reads.

 

“The suspicion has led us to investigate the case thoroughly, and we have also had the opportunity to include the latest decisions from the European Court of Justice and the High Courts. On that basis, it is our assessment that nothing illegal has taken place, and therefore we have now closed the case.”

 

The decision was welcomed by Njord Law, with managing partner Lars Lokdam noting that they expected this outcome.

 

“We have always assumed that the charge would be dropped at some point, and I am very happy and relieved that SØIK has now dropped the charge so that we can move forward, and that it is justified on the grounds that the charge was unfounded,” Lokdam told Berlingske.

 

That may not give the copyright trolls freedom to continue their business unhindered, however.

Danish Consumer Ombudsman Gets Involved

In response to reports that people may have settled with Njord and its partners when they were not required to, the Danish Consumer Ombudsman is now encouraging those targeted to see if they are entitled to compensation.

 

“We are currently investigating whether to step into the file-sharing matter. We have not yet decided whether Njord’s clients have done anything illegal, but we are conducting an investigation now,” says Jeppe Due Hunsdahl.

 

News of the consumer group’s involvement came before SØIK dropped the criminal case but the initiative appears to be going ahead anyway. In the meantime, Professor of Law Frederik Waage from the University of Southern Denmark is calling for the government to set up a committee to look at the complexities of this type of litigation in order to provide guidance on how infringements should be handled in the future.

 

“Njord is no longer charged in a possible criminal case, but that does not mean an acquittal for the methods used by the law firm in this lawsuit. Irrespective of the fact that an indictment has been filed, the company has been in a procedural gray area for a number of years, and the waiver of the indictment hopefully does not mean that in the future we will see dubious pirate letters sent out to thousands again,” he says.

 

“Even if Njord had to abandon their dubious business model, there is always a risk that another law firm will start subscribing to the pirate letter concept,” he continues.

 

“That is why I believe that there must be a commission that can investigate what rights innocent citizens have in this area based on EU law and Danish civil procedural rules. The Commission should also be able to recommend legislative changes in this area, insofar as the current procedural rules do not apply.”

Issue Will Be Raised With Government Ministers

Peter Skaarup, legal spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, says he is interested in Waage’s proposal and is now promising to raise the matter with the government.

 

“I agree that from a political point of view, we must look at whether this is the type of case that the courts must prioritize, or whether the cases can be resolved in an efficient and uniform manner. That is why I am now raising the case in the Legal Affairs Committee with Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup,” Skaarup says.

 

Berlingske obtained a statement from Hækkerup who says that he does not wish to comment on live cases. However, he encourages those who feel they have been wronged to contact the appropriate legal authority.

 

“It should be noted that I can not and will not comment on pending cases before the courts for the sake of the independence of the courts. I would like to encourage citizens who feel that they have been treated unfairly by a lawyer to complain to the Bar Council, which is an independent complaints board that deals with cases concerning, among other things, good legal practice,” he concludes.

 

In April 2020, companies owned by Columbia, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, Warner, and Universal (all members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment) filed a lawsuit in the US against the operators of Nitro TV.

 

The complaint alleged that operator Alejandro “Alex” Galindo engaged in “massive and blatant infringement” of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. These included movie and TV show hits including The Office, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Toy Story 3, Star Trek Beyond, and Joker.

 

In May 2020 the studios obtained an injunction to shut Nitro down but as the case progressed, Galindo was accused of destroying evidence in an effort to hinder the plaintiffs.

 

The lawsuit later expanded to name other defendants including Galindo’s wife, Anna Galindo, and popular YouTuber ‘Touchtone’, who allegedly received $500,000 to promote and market Nitro TV.

Issues Over Destruction of Evidence

In response to the studios’ lawsuit, Alejandro Galindo asserted innocent copyright infringement and as his lawyer later explained, it was believed that there was no need for his client to plead the Fifth Amendment but during the discovery process, he did just that, to the displeasure of the plaintiffs.

 

According to Galindo, research on the MPA’s Jan Van Voorn (who is involved in the case) revealed that he “vigorously advocates” for criminal penalties for IPTV operators.

 

“(i)t became clear that Plaintiffs were looking at not only obtaining a judgment, but that they were accusing Defendant of a crime of destroying evidence. This theme has persisted through most of this litigation since,” a summer filing from the defense reads.

 

Galindo’s team cited a number of instances where the MPA indicated that criminal prosecutions were extremely important to them so, including aggressively lobbying in favor of the Covid-19 relief bill, which made streaming copyrighted content a felony subject to 10 years in prison. As a result, Galindo asserted his right not to self-incriminate, an act that his lawyer claims is not a discovery abuse worthy of sanctions.

Plaintiffs Refuse to Rule Out Criminal Prosecution

Galindo’s lawyer says that in the spirit of cooperating with discovery in good faith, counsel sought reassurances from the plaintiffs that no criminal referrals would be made. While it was confirmed that no referral had been made, the studios would not commit to not filing one in the future.

 

“For these reasons, it is not difficult to see the writing on the wall. The MPAA is looking for another conviction and they want Mr. Galindo to incriminate himself in every way possible, literally teeing up a potential case against him if they can find it,” Galindo’s lawyer informed the court.

 

On this basis, Galindo should not be subjected to monetary sanctions for his discovery strategy, his team says.

Studios Vigorously Disagree

Unsurprisingly, the plaintiffs took an altogether different stance.

 

“According to Defendant, he should be permitted to withhold all records of Nitro TV’s multimillion dollar operation in violation of this Court’s Order and destroy evidence, yet still be able to assert that his infringement was ‘innocent’ and he did not infringe the works alleged in the [second amended complaint] through his operation of Nitro TV,” they informed the court.

 

The studios said that the Fifth Amendment does not apply here and by engaging in massive copyright infringement, Galindo was always at risk of criminal prosecution.

 

“Defendants’ after-the-fact, conspiracy-driven excuses cannot change this fundamental fact. Neither can his purported belief that he could convince a trier of fact that his infringement was ‘innocent’ — notably, a position he asserted after he had already engaged in extensive email destruction and while (falsely) claiming no Nitro TV documents existed,” they added.

 

“In short, Defendant’s explanations do not add up; his assertion of the Fifth Amendment is simply a tactic for him to avoid his discovery obligations. The Court should not condone this conduct.”

 

Due to the lack of discovery cooperation and the spoilation of evidence, the plaintiffs said they should be awarded a default judgment. In the absence of that, the studios demanded imaging of electronic devices in Galindo’s possession.

Plaintiffs Demand Substantial Fees and Costs

In a follow-up filing, the plaintiffs filed an application for costs in connection with their motion for sanctions, noting that Galindo failed to abide by his discovery obligations, spoliated evidence, and violated the court’s order to provide documents and information. They noted that if it wasn’t for Galinddo’s conduct, extra costs could’ve been avoided.In the event, the filing of the motion for sanctions cost the plaintiffs in excess of $93,000, an amount they asked the court to award against Galindo. The details of what happened in the interim period aren’t clear since documents have been filed with the court under seal. However, this week the docket revealed an objection from the defense relating to another matter.

 

In the event, the filing of the motion for sanctions cost the plaintiffs in excess of $93,000, an amount they asked the court to award against Galindo. The details of what happened in the interim period aren’t clear since documents have been filed with the court under seal. However, this week the docket revealed an objection from the defense relating to another matter.

Galindo Asks Court to Dismiss Lawsuit

Martha Galindo (Alejandro Galindo’s mother), together with other defendants, stands accused of playing a key role in Nitro TV’s finances, including the processing of “millions of dollars” through payment processors and bank accounts. According to the defense, the plaintiffs now want extra time to serve her. This would mean yet another delay in the case constituting an unreasonable failure to prosecute the action, they say.

 

Galindo’s lawyer points out that the original complaint was filed more than 17 months ago and since then there has been “little activity” other than discovery against Alejandro, one settlement mediation, the serving of multiple subpoenas, and a motion to compel evidence. On this basis, a further delay would be unjustified.

 

“Plaintiff has had multiple attorneys working on this case for over 17 months. It seems the whole purpose has now become to drag on this case, respectfully,” the filing reads.

 

“Plaintiff, although being a top law firm in the country, with multiple attorneys billing on the case…they have not provided any valid reasons for their failure to serve Defendant Martha Galindo within a reasonable amount of time. Now, they want to extend the case even further to accomplish this many months later.

 

“It appears objectively obvious, that there is no real effort to prosecute this case within the parameters of what should be expected in [a] case that has had had very little opposition and assertions of the 5th amendment.”

 

Alejandro Galindo apparently agreed to withdraw his answer and accept a default judgment but that has not been accepted by the studios. The defense says that considering all of the above, the court should dismiss the case.

 

“Plaintiff has an unlimited budget and supply of legal team members and is not faithfully prosecuting this action, and instead seeks to unreasaonably extend and delay the case. The Court should dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice and deny the motion to extend time to serve summons,” Galindo’s lawyer concludes.

 

Supporting documents can be found here 1,2,3,4, pdf