In the wake of a global pandemic, an ongoing war in Europe, and a new U.S. president taking the world on a surprise mystery tour to somewhere, Season 7 of Black Mirror faces the show’s toughest test following its Netflix debut on Thursday.

Ensuring each episode has a provocative, meaningful impact is getting harder in a world where the highly improbable seems to happen much more frequently. Facing genuine competition from real world events, including some that don’t involve Greenland, desensitization is likely to be a factor already.

Block Mirror?

There’s a risk that a Spanish-themed episode, in which a powerful corporation blocks internet traffic to improve sales of an exclusive entertainment product, might be too much, too soon.

Starting around 2008 before reaching its climax in a dystopian future labeled 2025, it could reveal how ISP blocking measures that the public didn’t want, were presented as the only viable option for tackling pirate sites. The episode could place emphasis on assurances that site blocking would always respect fundamental rights, such as the right to receive and impart information.

After fast forwarding to the present day, the episode could show how site blocking has matured to the point where targeting hundreds of pirate sites, means blocking thousands of innocent sites at the same time. Delivered to camera with a completely straight face, the audience should be informed that blocking innocent websites is perfectly fine, because a judge says that it’s legal.

Given that websites in Spain contain material protected by copyright, not to mention information that EU citizens have a right to impart and receive, it does seem unfair that thousands of sites (some claim its millions) find themselves completely blacked out when football matches are broadcast in Spain.

Circumvent Site-Blocking

So, with no help from the authorities and no TV deal expected anytime soon, Spaniards are beginning to take matters into their own hands.

Pirates have always circumvented blocking measures, mostly to access pirated content that blocking measures are supposed to deny. Today, regular developers are coming up with solutions to thwart site blocking, for reasons that include running a business and feeding their families. All they want, and it’s really not much at all, is to put up a website and have people who’d like to pay a visit face no barriers while doing so.

Well, help is starting to arrive, at least unofficially. The developers of the tools below hope to improve a situation that has only deteriorated in recent weeks.

The tools listed below are available from GitHub. Usual security caveats apply, if in any doubt, do not install.

Cloudflare Status Monitor for LaLiga Blocks

GitHub repo: aitorroma/cloudflare-laliga-bypass

Summary of key features/benefits

• The script monitors check.aitorroma.com to verify if Cloudflare is active.
• When LaLiga implements blocks during football matches, the system automatically detects it.
• Automatically disables Cloudflare when blocks are detected
• Reactivates Cloudflare when the site is back online
• Uses webhooks to keep you informed about status changes

• Minimize downtime during football broadcasts
• Eliminates the need to manually manage Cloudflare blocks
• Provides an automated solution to keep the service available
• Ensures service continuity for legitimate websites

Cloudflare Status Monitor for LaLiga Blocks is available on GitHub

LaLiga Block Evasion Filter

GitHub repo: fdezsergio02/Anti-LaLiga

How does the filter work?

This filter leverages the benefits of major CDN servers, allowing you to replace the blocked IP address provided by the DNS server with an IP address from the affected CDN that is not blocked, allowing websites to load correctly.

For example, if the URL “example.com” is associated with the IP address “1.2.3.4,” which is blocked by carriers, this filter switches to an unblocked IP address, such as “1.2.3.5,” so that legitimate pages can load correctly. Depending on the situation, it rotates to the next IP address or chooses a different IP address belonging to the same CDN.

LaLiga Block Evasion Filter is available on GitHub

LaLiga Lock Checker

GitHub repo: GitHub repo: agustim/laliga-lock-checker

Summary of key features/benefits

• Go script to check if a set of domains are blocked and, if necessary, test them through a VPN. The results are saved in a CSV file with time, status and latency.
• Read domains from a JSON file ( sites.json).
• It makes HTTP requests and checks if they respond.
• If they don’t respond, activate a VPN connection (WireGuard) and try again.
• Write the results to a CSV file: hora,domini,estat,latencia_ms.
• It allows you to configure it via command line, environment variables or .env.

LaLiga Lock Checker is available on GitHub

LaLiga IP List

GitHub repo: GitHub repo: r4y7s/laliga-ip-list

Summary of key features/benefits

• This repository maintains a whitelist of legitimate IPs that have been unintentionally affected by judicial IP blocks in Spain ordered by LaLiga as part of its anti-piracy efforts, based on public data from hayahora.futbol.
• The file laliga_ip_list.txt is updated twice a day automatically.
• What’s inside? The laliga_ip_list.txt file includes legitimate IPs that were wrongly blocked during football match streams in Spain, affecting services like: RAE (Royal Spanish Academy), universities and research centers, news outlets, sponsor and club websites

———–

Whether the existence of these tools amounts to evidence of overblocking, remains to be seen. But one thing is certain.

Providing an environment that necessitates circumvention, so that people can go about their legal business, runs counter to the prevention of piracy and so much more.

It undermines the entire site-blocking movement, and provides new credibility and moral legitimacy to anything that stands in its way – or indeed, tunnels straight through it.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 In recent months, piracy-related overblocking concerns in Italy and Spain have reached new highs.

Rightsholders successfully advocated for broader blocking measures. While these may indeed be more effective, they have also resulted in a noticeable increase in overblocking reports.

For example, Italy’s “Piracy Shield” blocked access to Google Drive, CDN providers, and other legitimate sites and services. Meanwhile in Spain, overblocking is now the de facto standard, as the result of continued disagreement between football rightsholder LaLiga and Cloudflare.

Tensions remain high. Major tech companies have chimed in with calls for a more balanced approach, while some rightsholders see broader blocking action as the best way forward. Meanwhile, gestures to limit overblocking have reportedly found themselves stranded in a black hole.

.Cat Domain Registry

While it’s near impossible to cover all developments, our attention was recently drawn to a response from an organization that hasn’t raised its voice before; the Catalan domain name registry ‘PuntCAT foundation’, which manages the .cat TLD.

The PuntCAT registry allows organizations and individuals to associate with and promote the cultural Catalan identity. This includes the prominent football club Barcelona, which is currently leading the LaLiga championship.

The FCBarcelona.cat domain name doesn’t use Cloudflare and has not been inadvertently caught up in piracy blocking activities. However, other .cat domains have been affected, the registry recently confirmed.

Registry Alerts Customers and Tracks Abuse

PuntCAT reportedly heard from several customers whose websites were blocked by local ISPs, even though they have no association with football or piracy. In response, the registry alerted all customers who use Cloudflare to warn them about potential future problems.

“In recent weeks, some .cat domain holders have informed us that access to their pages, which have no connection to the broadcast of football matches, have been restricted during the broadcasts of La Liga matches,” the email begins.

Email sent to .cat Cloudflare users
 

PuntCAT launched an investigation following these reports and, with help from experts, found that 2,294 .cat domains use Cloudflare as a proxy to improve the security and accessibility of the associated websites.

All at-risk customers were sent an email notification and via its website, the registry informed the public that in February alone, sites with more than 400,000 visitors were affected.

Registry Doesn’t Rule Out a Legal Response

While the registry is not yet directly involved in the dispute, it decided to step up and actively monitor .cat domains for overblocking issues. This real-time monitoring allows it to take swift countermeasures if needed, potentially including legal action.

“If these undue blockages are confirmed, we commit to acting decisively to protect the quality of the service we offer our users, reserving the right to take legal action and to collectively represent the owners of the affected domains,” PuntCAT wrote in the email.

Thus far, the registry hasn’t taken action. However, the fact that core Internet services, including ICANN-accredited domain registries, are concerned about the escalating blocking measures shows that these issues impact the broader ecosystem.

Ironically, these problems come at the worst possible time, as the United States is currently considering its own site blocking legislation. Opponents of the U.S. plans, including EFF, will likely use these overblocking examples to show how site-blocking can spiral out of control.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Adult entertainment company Flava Works specializes in gay media, mostly pornographic films and magazines featuring Black and Latino men.

Over the years, the company has built a reputation for aggressively pursuing legal action against individuals accused of sharing its copyrighted content, often via private torrent sites specializing in gay content. Flava is known for identifying ordinary downloaders and those who leak their content, presumably through use of unique identifiers embedded in official videos.

Many hundreds of alleged pirates have been targeted in these legal actions, including a Hollywood executive who fought back in court. After a retaliatory lawsuit was dropped, the case was eventually settled on undisclosed terms.

In other lawsuits, Flava clearly came out on top, including a damages claim of $1.5 million against a defendant who shared seven films.

Flava’s lawsuits appeared to slow down in recent years, but a new complaint filed at an Illinois district court shows that the production company continues to monitor pirates, including those in private communities.

Lawsuit Targets Alleged Leaker & 47 File-Sharers

The complaint by Flava Works Entertainment and affiliate Blatino Media, lists Canadian resident Nicolas G. as the main defendant. Allegedly a paid subscriber to the plaintiffs’ official websites, the defendant is said to have downloaded several films and then shared some of them on private torrent tracker GayTorrent.ru, which is also accessible at GayTor.rent.

Flava accuses the Canadian defendant of downloading copyrighted videos and distributing them on the torrent platform, in violation of its terms of service.

“Defendant [Nicolas G.] downloaded copyrighted videos of Flava Works as part of his paid memberships and, in violation of the terms and conditions of the paid sites, posted and distributed the aforesaid videos on other websites, including websites with peer-to-peer sharing and torrent technology,” the complaint reads.

The complaint
 

The legal paperwork doesn’t specify how the main defendant was linked to the pirated videos, but it’s likely they contained embedded identifiers. Flava alleges that as a result of the unauthorized sharing, dozens of members of the private torrent site were able to download the pirated videos.

These downloaders, 47 in total, are listed as John Doe defendants. They’re currently identified only by their respective usernames, including ActorCA, Balloonboy82, Furiousd2023, TheMonitor72, and WarGod83. All face direct copyright infringement claims and a risk of substantial damages.

Millions in Damages

The complaint is brief and doesn’t include any details explaining how the defendants were tracked or identified. The main defendant likely had personal details linked to their paid Flava account, but what evidence exists to show that the alleged users of the site downloaded pirated films is unknown.

The scale of the damages claim is clear. For each of the 47 John Doe defendants the plaintiffs request $150,000 in statutory damages. The main defendant faces a significantly larger claim of $1,500,000, pushing the total damages claim to over $8 million.

Damages
 

Again, no reasons are provided to justify these amounts but $150,000 is the maximum available for copyright infringement of a single work. The lawsuit was filed with a list of 31 copyrighted works, but no details to show who shared what and when. It’s possible that more details will emerge as the case progresses.

All in all, the recent complaint shows that after more than a decade, Flava is still actively monitoring BitTorrent pirates. While new lawsuits are rare, they are not without consequence and should not be ignored. The fact that Flava’s name previously appeared in multiple bankruptcy proceedings says enough.

—

A copy of the complaint, filed by Flava Works Entertainment, Inc. and Blatino Media, Inc at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, is available here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Having listened to LaLiga chief Javier Tebas speak about piracy for almost an hour at a conference recently, several things become apparent.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with his stance on how to tackle piracy, in particular the blocking controversy that has dogged Spain since early February, at a time of crisis this would be the man to have fighting your corner. He’s passionate about his mission, knows exactly what needs to be done, and is as unmovable as he is uncompromising on how to get there.

For these reasons and many more like them, what some argue is a football business problem is already developing into a potential problem for everyone. Tebas believes the financial impact of piracy on Spanish football is currently between 600 and 700 million euros and with the recently confirmed authority awarded by a local court. LaLiga currently blocks 3,000 IP addresses every weekend to reduce the damage.

Empowered By the Judiciary, LaLiga Blocks in Line With the Mission

During the weekend, hunting pirates (Tebas prefers the term ‘martians’) starts at noon on Saturday and ends between eleven and midnight; rinse and repeat on Sunday. If it transpires that all 3,000 IP addresses belong to Cloudflare, LaLiga will block however many it sees fit.

Tebas acknowledges that each Cloudflare IP can in theory protect 1,000 to 2,000 non-pirate IP resources. It necessarily follows that, if blocking is effective, those ordinarily neutral web resources will be rendered inaccessible along with any offending pirate sites, for as long blocking remains in place. Tebas blames Cloudflare for using these innocent resources as ‘human shields’ and at the same time points to just a handful of cases he considers to be verified, genuine complaints.

Other complaints of overblocking are variously described as overblown or non-genuine, and collectively as just “noise.”

“Google has even paid communication agencies to say that there’s been a lot of noise, that there have been some barbaric outages,” Tebas alleged. “I’m convinced that when Google Drive was cut [by Piracy Shield] in Italy, it was with Google’s awareness. With real Google awareness, and I’m going to tell you why it’s like that.”

CDN77: Like Cloudflare But Smaller and Cooperative

CDN77 is a well-known CDN that specializes in live video and VOD. It may be smaller than Cloudflare but still claims to deliver 300 PB of video daily. Tebas doesn’t mention the circumstances that led to its cooperation with LaLiga, but he does seem satisfied with the arrangement.

“We have a company that’s much smaller than Cloudflare, but it provides the same services. It’s a Dutch company, it’s important, but it’s not. It’s called CDN77 and it does the same thing [as Cloudflare] it anonymizes [users]. Well, we have an agreement with them,” he explains.

“During the the game, when we detect CDN77 IP addresses, we don’t block them, we notify [CDN77]. They directly remove the IP address that is sharing the illegal content, and replace it with another IP and then cut it off, that’s it, it can be done technologically.”

LaLiga: No Large-Scale Overblocking

Since early February, fundamental disagreement has persisted over a) the scale of overblocking and b) whether LaLiga’s blocking can be described as indiscriminate.

To the extent that indiscriminate suggests a random, scattershot approach, LaLiga’s objections do seem reasonable. LaLiga says it targets specific IP addresses used by identified IPTV services; it’s well understood that other services may be present on the same IP, but if the judge who issued the order saw no problem, who can insist otherwise?

In the eyes of LaLiga, the scale of the overblocking isn’t significant, but the numbers do seem to lack clear definition. That being said, Tebas is very clear on what it is not.

“It’s not true that there are millions of [blocked] users, as Cloudflare put it. If there are millions of users, and the judge himself says, you haven’t proven it, and they have had the opportunity to prove it, we are the ones who have proven that it’s not true. In other words, they had to prove it, because it’s not true,” Tebas explained.

Opposing View – Overblocking is Massive

Regular updates posted to X by sysadmin @jaumepons aim to document overblocking in Spain. According to their research, the scale is enormous but given the numbers and technical issues involved, independent verification from outside the country presents challenges.

Claims on X from within Spain

From a base of almost no overblocking according to LaLiga, to the massive overblocking alleged in these reports, it’s clear that both extremes can’t exist at the same time.

According to Cloudflare, various experts, and people whose websites become inaccessible in Spain when football airs on TV, feel that the evidence is on public display. LaLiga’s position is that since evidence wasn’t produced to the standard required by the court, claims of overblocking remain unproven; presumably that also extends to the IP addresses in the image below.

All were reportedly blocked by LaLiga, all belong to CDN provider CDN77 whose cooperation may not have provided immunity from blocking as initially envisaged.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

The Internet Archive is widely known for its Wayback Machine, which preserves copies of the web for future generations.

These archiving efforts, which started decades ago, will become more valuable over time. The same could apply to IA’s other projects, including the digitization of old books and records.

Seven years ago, the Archive began archiving the sounds of 78rpm gramophone records, a format that is obsolete today. In addition to capturing their unique audio characteristics, including all ‘crackles and hisses’, this saves unique recordings for future generations before the vinyl or shellac disintegrates due to age.

The ‘Great 78 Project‘ received praise from curators, historians, and music fans but not all music industry insiders were happy with it. Several record labels including Sony and UMG, sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement in federal court in 2023.

Labels Seek $693 Million in Damages

Last year, IA responded to these allegations with a motion to dismiss. According to the Archive, many of the claims were simply too late, as they supposedly pointed to infringements that occurred over three years ago. The record labels claimed they were aware of this; the RIAA sent a cease and desist letter on their behalf but took no further action at the time.

The U.S. federal court in California disagreed. After reviewing the positions from both sides, Judge Maxine Chesney concluded that it wasn’t clear that the statute of limitations had expired for all works, as the RIAA’s letter didn’t mention any specific infringements.

The case moved forward and last month the music labels requested permission to file a second amended complaint, which significantly raises the stakes. This updated version includes 4,624 works that were allegedly infringed by the Great 78 Project, as opposed to the 2,749 recordings listed in the original complaint.

The music companies request the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work for each of these recordings, increasing potential damages to an astronomical $693 million.

Some of the recordings

Progress in Settlement Negotiations

The amended complaint has yet to be accepted by the court, but recent filings suggest that it may not get to that. Apparently, both camps have been engaged in settlement discussions that could potentially result in an alternative resolution.

In a joint filing, the parties asked the court to pause the lawsuit for thirty days so they can work on finalizing a deal. No terms are mentioned, but a resolution outside of court seems realistic.

Specifically, IA and the music labels state that they have “made significant progress in settlement discussions” and are “optimistic that settlement discussions may be successful and that this case can be dismissed.”

From the joint stipulation

The court granted the request and stayed the case for thirty days, canceling a hearing that was planned for Friday. If a settlement is reached, the case can be dismissed; if not, the parties will have to propose a new schedule.

At the time of writing, the Great 78 Project remains online. While several recordings have been removed since the lawsuit was filed, including a copy of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, many others remain accessible.

It’s not clear what type of settlement the parties have in mind, but the labels will likely insist that all allegedly infringing content is removed. The Internet Archive, in turn, will likely try to avoid any substantial damages.

—

A copy of the joint stipulation and the proposed order to stay the case for thirty days, granted on April 4th, is available here (pdf). A copy of the proposed amended complaint with the 4,624 works can be found here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 More than a year after its official debut in February 2024, Italy’s controversial Piracy Shield blocking system is yet to deliver on the key predictions justifying its launch.

Claims of piracy’s total elimination quickly evaporated, taking predictions of major economic benefits down with them. The pirate sites causing the issues are now rarely mentioned by the authorities. Instead, telecoms regulator AGCOM and major football rightsholders have sought to toughen up legislation, and through a current public consultation, amend copyright protection regulations.

Public Consultation

Proposals for new technical and operational changes were reported last month. Hampered by the veil of secrecy surrounding Piracy Shield and its operations, input from the public has little chance of being taken seriously. Fortunately, the most important issues won’t go unaddressed.

A submission dated April 3 by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is notable for the members it represents; global tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Google, and Meta, among others.

“Like many other operators in the digital sector – whether based in Italy, in other EU Member States, or outside of Europe, – we have been expressing serious concerns about Italy’s Piracy Shield, which AGCOM has chosen as a tool for issuing orders to block internet sites (i.e. within the very short time frame of 30 minutes),” CCIA’s submission reads.

“These requests are made by rightsholders without due process or possibility for recourse. Hence, we believe that the Piracy Shield poses significant risks to the principles of freedom of enterprise expression, as established by European and Italian law.”

Piracy Shield Risk Factors

The basic factors said to contribute to these risks are well known. The Piracy Shield system was developed by a company affiliated with football league Serie A, one of the few companies currently allowed to use it. The technical features of Piracy Shield have never been made public and participation in the technical committee was by invite only and few operators from the digital sector were invited.

Subsequent operational errors, including overblocking affecting Cloudflare and Google Drive, also feature in the submission, but the specifics can be found in the regulatory amendments proposed by CCIA.

(Note: Machine translations may lack nuance, original documents included below for reference)

Proposed Changes to Regulations

According to CCIA, Article 8, paragraph 3 of AGCOM’s draft, awards AGCOM the power to issue orders to remove content from servers hosted outside Italy (in other EU Member States), based on a reference to provisions in the Digital Services Act (DSA).

While the provision to which AGCOM refers is unknown, establishing the scope of AGCOM’s jurisdiction is important. To that end, CCIA calls on AGCOM to identify the provision “that you believe to establish this extra-territorial power.”

On the same theme, CCIA takes issue with paragraph 4 directly after.

The issue here begins with the assertion that AGCOM should be awarded powers to issue orders to remove content from servers hosted outside Italy. AGCOM currently has the authority to compel Italian ISPs to block access to servers, usually foreign, to prevent those servers being accessed by users in Italy.

Given the similar end result, CCIA notes that when it was previously envisaged that AGCOM should be awarded local blocking power, that was promoted “precisely with specific reference to the hypothesis of servers located beyond national borders, as a substitute for the direct order of removal.”

References to the Digital Services Act

That AGCOM intends to make use of provisions available under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is a complication, especially when the provisions aren’t made clear, as the ‘extra-territorial’ example above shows.

Further DSA-related issues quickly raise their heads too, specifically concerning Article 9, Orders to act against illegal content. The relevant sections below from the DSA (EU law) and AGCOM’s reference to that law, are followed by a comment from CCIA.

A second translation of CCIA’s comment (in yellow) reads as follows: “Provision should be made for compliance with the formal requirements for authority orders in Article 9 of the Digital Services Regulation, referred to in this same rule as the source of the information obligation.”

This statement may serve as a reminder that removal orders issued under Article 9 of the DSA impose a reporting obligation on intermediary recipients. However, for an order to be considered valid under Article 9, the issuer must ensure that takedown orders contain the following at minimum:

(i) the legal basis for the order under EU/national law (ii) a statement explaining why the information is illegal, (iii) information to identify the issuing authority, (iv) clear information enabling the intermediary to identify and locate the illegal content, (v) information about redress mechanisms available, (vi) details of the authority to receive information about the effect given to the orders.

Major Concerns Over Draft Regulations in Article 10

The real dispute takes place around Article 10, Precautionary proceedings for violations relating to audiovisual content broadcast. To appreciate the gulf between AGCOM’s stance and that of CCIA’s members, the first page of proposals tackle several fundamental issues that AGCOM has thus far refused to discuss.

Basics include the requirement that when AGCOM issues a blocking order, a timeframe of 30 mins to implement it safely isn’t realistic. Five days, on the other hand, is too short for those wrongfully blocked to file an appeal. Calls for improved transparency have also fallen on deaf ears, but the full list goes on…..and on.

A gulf of disagreement

CCIA concludes its submission with a request for a dedicated hearing but before that, the tech industry group urges AGCOM to reconsider its approach.

“We take the opportunity to encourage AGCOM to reconsider its blocking approach and instead focus its efforts on targeting the actual hosts and distributors of pirated content and on protecting content at the source,” CCIA’s submission adds.

“Network-level blocking does not remove content from the internet, can easily be circumvented and is ultimately ineffective in combating piracy, reducing infringing content, or deterring sophisticated piracy tactics.”

CCIA’s summary is available here (pdf), the full set of proposals here (docx, Italian)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

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

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “Mickey 17” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 07 are:

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

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 With the continued growth of pirate IPTV services in recent years, TV broadcasters and distributors have been ramping up their anti-piracy efforts.

The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) has been particularly active. It’s also the main driver behind a new lawsuit filed yesterday by DISH Network at a Texas federal court.

Lemo TV & Kemo IPTV

The American pay-TV provider accuses the operators of popular streaming services ‘Lemo TV’ and ‘Kemo IPTV’ of direct copyright infringement. These services, operating from Lemotv.com and Kemoiptv.com respectively, promise access to “over 18,000 live channels” and “over 8,400 shows” for a fraction of the price of legal subscriptions.

“Defendants offer United States Subscribers a 36-hour free trial to the Service and sell Service Subscriptions for one device for $28.50 for six months, $39 for one year, $59 for two years, and $100 for four years,” the complaint notes.

Lemo TV
 

In addition to selling direct to consumers, both services operate reseller programs. This allows third parties to launch their own custom-branded IPTV streaming sites and apps for under $200. Resellers purchase credits for use with their branded services which they can resell to their own customers at a significant markup.

In a footnote, DISH claims that resellers of Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV include the following: Xtremehdiptv.org, Bestusiptv.com, Slingtvbox.com, 1dollariptv.com, Fubo-iptv.com, Tv-wave.com, Kemoiptv.shop, Geministreamz.us, Honeybeetv.com, Honeybeeiptv.org, Honeybeeiptv.io, Dynastyiptv.shop, Dynastyiptv.com, Dynasty-iptv.com, Caliptostreams.com, and 4kliveiptv.com.

Reseller offer

Unveiling the John Doe Operators

The complaint alleges Lemo and Kemo use the services of Cloudflare and Namecheap, which are both based in the United States. However, the identities of the operators remain unknown. DISH hopes to uncover more information through this lawsuit so it can name the defendants in an amended complaint.

To gather more information, DISH filed a motion to expedite discovery. Specifically, it seeks permission to subpoena a wide variety of third-party intermediaries who may be able to help identify the defendants.

These include Cloudflare and Namecheap, but also other hosting companies, payment providers, and social media services such as 24 Shells, Des Equity, Hivelocity, Tucows, GoDaddy.com, DigitalOcean, Newfold Digital, Google, Coinbase, PayPal, Meta Platforms, and X Corp.

The discovery request is not limited to the main Lemo and Kemo domains, but also includes the alleged reseller services, as shown below.

Discovery Request

$25 Million in Damages

The lawsuit mentions that at least 171 registered copyrighted works were infringed and DISH seeks the maximum of $150,000 in statutory damages for each, totaling over $25 million. In addition, the complaint seeks an injunction to transfer the infringing domain names.

While their identities are currently unknown, DISH believes that the defendants acted willfully and on a massive scale, ignoring approximately 100 notices of infringement sent by IBCAP and DISH since February 2021.

IBCAP executive director Chris Kuelling says that their anti-piracy lab classifies Lemo and Kemo among the most egregious IPTV services. During the first quarter of 2025, the services accounted for nearly 30% of all unauthorized streams detected on set-top box and IPTV services.

Based on this data, IBCAP helps its members to select the prime candidates for legal action, which ultimately resulted in this week’s lawsuit.

“This lawsuit is the latest example of our lab’s ability to identify the pirate services that are significantly infringing our members’ content and stack-rank such services in order to target and remove the worst infringers.”

“This level of theft is unacceptable for our members, and we will put a swift stop to it—just as we have successfully done with numerous other pirate services through court-ordered injunctions,” Kuelling adds.

—

A copy of the DISH Network complaint, filed yesterday at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, is available here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Like many similar reports published most weeks by newspapers in Europe, an article published by Belgian media outlet L’Echo late Saturday evening pulled few punches.

The publication explained that after football broadcasters DAZN and 12th Player obtained authority from a local court for a new type of enforcement action, on Saturday Belgian ISPs blocked around 100 illegal streaming sites and five pirate IPTV providers. The measures were reportedly timed to take effect shortly before the start of the second day of the Belgian football championship play-offs, presumably to maximize the irritant effect of sudden pirate ssite blackouts.

“DAZN: First of Its Kind”

According to L’Echo, DAZN described the action as the “the first of its kind” and a “real step forward” in the fight against content piracy in Belgium. Comments like these are fairly standard in the anti-piracy arena, likewise claims that rightsholders have acquired a secret weapon capable of tipping the balance of power.

L’Echo’s report was much more balanced but if the various components came together as planned, major disruption of live match streams at a crucial point in the season seemed to have a real chance of success.

The groundwork was completed last month. An order issued by the Brussels Enterprise Court late March, authorized DAZN and 12th Player to engage in dynamic blocking boosted by a significant additional component.

While this would be its first use in Belgium, dynamic blocking is already used extensively elsewhere. The mechanism allows for speedy responses to blocking countermeasures, including domain changes and the appearance of proxies and mirrors, and there’s no requirement for a follow-up legal procedure.

Pirate sites are by now mostly familiar with dynamic blocking but in this case, the rightsholders also had an eye on spoiling a circumvention tactic popular with millions of users. Faced with blocking on Saturday, users in Belgium who switched from ISP-provided DNS to Cloudflare’s DNS wouldn’t have restored connectivity quite so easily. Moving to DNS provided by Google or Cisco may not have helped much either.

Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco Ordered to Block DNS Resolvers

Over the past several years, Cloudflare has faced several lawsuits that demanded pirate site blocking measures on its public DNS resolver. Rightsholders take the position that when ISPs implement DNS blocking, users shouldn’t be able to switch to a public DNS service like Cloudflare’s to regain access.

Those cases mostly focused on Cloudflare in Italy but a site-blocking case filed by Canal+ in 2023, concluded in 2024 with Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco ordered to prevent use of their DNS resolvers to access dozens of pirate sites.

In terms of platforms blocked in a single swoop, the order obtained by DAZN and 12th Player in Belgium may be even broader in scope.

New Law, New Blocking Momentum

New law passed in Belgium in 2022 aimed to strengthen rightsholders’ piracy-fighting capabilities. A new expedited judicial procedure at the Brussels Enterprise Court promised tougher measures such as dynamic blocking, and the creation of a new department within the Federal Public Service FPS Economy (SPF Économie).

Documents seen by TorrentFreak late last week include a notice penned by the Belgian Online Anti-Piracy & Illegal Gambling Office. The notice references a “regulatory order” to block public DNS resolvers, stemming from a court order concerning claims of copyright infringement against pirate streaming sites.

Domains For Blocking (public DNS resolvers) [dark square=domain unresponsive]

The notice does not mention DAZN or 12th Player by name but the nature of the domains (almost 140, all linked to illegal sports streaming sites) and the date of the notification (April 3, 2025) suggest a strong link to Saturday’s events. DAZN’s standing as a dominant rightsholder means the notice is unlikely to relate to anyone else.

Pro Site-Blocking ISPs

Site blocking has existed in Belgium for close to 15 years with The Pirate Bay an early target back in 2011. Until recently, however, site blocking measures have been quite patchy and lacked volume in general.

By the summer of 2024, DAZN and 12th Player were helping to push that trend in a different direction after obtaining an order to block around 90 pirate streaming sites offering content to which the companies own the rights.

Local ISPs Telenet NV, Proximus NV, Voo NV, and Orange Belgium NV were technically the defendants in that matter but the site blocking process in Belgium is completely non-adversarial. In February 2024, the CEOs of both Proximus and Orange openly spoke out in favor of site-blocking measures, with the former indicating they couldn’t come soon enough.

Resistance is Futile – and Expensive

Whether the Brussels Enterprise Court took the ISPs’ cooperation into account isn’t clear, but as far as we’re able to determine, the dynamic blocking order seems to have taken their compliance for granted. The same cannot be said of the operators of the public DNS resolvers, Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco.

The Court reportedly set penalties at €100,000 per day for non-compliance, a sharp turnaround from the status quo barely a year ago when public DNS resolvers mostly considered themselves too distant from infringement to be held liable. Given that the vast majority of the sites in the blocking order act as portals or indexes for content not even they host, links to direct infringement are distant indeed.

That raises the most important question of all: can blocking be considered successful if it doesn’t remove or even target the infringing streams that fuel the entire ecosystem?

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Most prevalent in the movie and TV show sectors, applications for DMCA subpoenas are regularly filed at courts in the United States.

Aside from their intended purpose, DMCA subpoenas can provide useful clues about future anti-piracy strategies. When subpoenas are contested by intermediaries, subpoena applications sometimes become copyright cases in their own right. From a rightsholders’ perspective, in some cases they may be the only potential source of information yet to be exhausted.

Getting Prepared

A few days ago, the UK’s Premier League asked a California federal court to issue a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare. The application identifies 38 target pirate streaming sites, many of which utilize multiple domains. Since the platforms all use Cloudflare, the Premier League hopes that information held by the company will help to unmask the sites’ currently anonymous operators.

Before filing an application under Section 512(h) of the DMCA, which allows copyright owners to obtain a subpoena and receive “information sufficient to identify an anonymous infringer,” applicants are first required to send DMCA takedown notices to the platform in question. The notices should identify the infringing content and state where the content can be found; in cases involving streaming sites, the right tools can prove helpful.

Recreating the Toolkit

The screenshot below shows a live match playing on a pirate streaming site. Culled from the Premier League’s application, it provides clues that allow us to start identifying the tools in use and the problems they’re likely to solve once combined with Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

At a basic level in this context, OSINT can be almost any information made available on the internet. The screenshot is our primary source; it will help us identify the tools to recreate the toolkit, which in turn will use other public information sources to satisfy the requirements of the application.

M3U8 Sniffer

 In this example it appears that when the Premier League visited the website sporttuna.pro, they were redirected to sporttuna.website and then to sporttuna.xyz (boxed in red).

Like most pirate sites, the ‘backend link’ or source of the stream (boxed in green) isn’t on public display. These links can be obtained in various ways but in this case, Chrome extension M3U8 Sniffer is the weapon of choice.

M3U8 Sniffer

From the developer’s website: The extension intercepts visited web page’s network requests and identifies all m3u8 video stream URLs. When a m3u8 URL request is found, it is displayed in a box that overlays the visited web page (see images above) from which you can copy the m3u8 URL or play the video stream. Also, you can open the extension’s popup window to view the first and last m3u8 URLs found for each site, as well as to set a variety of extension options.

M3U8 Sniffer is a free extension available from the Chrome Web Store. Further information is available from the developer at SnifferTV.com.

Identifying the Remaining Tools

 Identifying the remaining tools was a little time-consuming but if we said the method was advanced or complicated, that would be a lie.

We simply trawled through the browser evidence images and took screenshots of the toolbars. These contain the icons of the apps used to obtain the evidence.

After extracting the toolbar icons we put those we recognized to the side, then identified the remainder using reverse image search tools. Straightforward options include Google Images and Google Lens.

As an alternative, Chrome extension RevEye Reverse Image Search provides instant results from Google, Bing, Yandex, and TinEye.

(Note: Bad extensions exist, trust nobody, check the source)

Internet Download Manager

 Given that M3U8 Sniffer “does NOT provide functionality to download the actual video streams” another piece of software comes in handy. IDM is a popular choice in the niche and appears to be the downloader of choice in this particular toolkit.

From the official website: When you click on a download link in a browser, IDM will take over the download and accelerate it. You don’t need to do anything special, just browse the Internet as you usually do. IDM will catch your downloads and accelerate them. IDM supports HTTP, FTP, HTTPS and MMS protocols.

Unfortunately, IDM isn’t free but it is free to try via a 30-day trial. Some prefer JDownloader since the price is more predictable, but there are plenty of options in this niche.

Fiddler

 Our best guess at identifying this next tool comes with a small caveat that its icon was almost impossibly blurred and even when fresh it’s still pretty basic. Ultimately, a green diamond and a single white ‘F’ works here.

Fiddler and tools with similar functionality (web debugging proxy tools) are used extensively by developers and investigators when keeping a close eye on HTTP traffic is a must. For those who’ve never cared to take a closer look, it can be real eye-opener. Even the most innocuous websites can behave pretty badly until users notice, so there’s never a bad time to take a first look.

Fiddler Classic and Fiddler Everywhere are both available as free trials, and the same is true for Charles Proxy which appears regularly as evidence in Indian site-blocking cases.

Some prefer to monitor traffic with Wireshark but for others it can be too much. Open source and available on Linux, Windows (GUI), and macOS, MITM Proxy will scratch most itches for free.

At a pocket friendly price of $0.00, the open source MITM Proxy (man-in-the-middle) does exactly as its name suggests, making it a popular choice.

Instant Datascraper

 Scraping data from websites in a structured and usable format isn’t always easy and for big jobs, things can quickly descend into a time-wasting nightmare.

Instant Data Scraper hopes to eliminate the frustrations often associated with scraping and with over a million users, people seem happy with the results.

It’s impossible to say how the Premier League uses Instant Datascraper, but it could easily consume a visible members’ list in an instant or scrape a mountain of forum posts. The options are only limited by data becoming unavailable.

From the official site: Instant Data Scraper is an automated data extraction tool for any website. It uses AI to predict which data is most relevant on a HTML page and allows saving it to Excel or CSV file (XLS, XLSX, CSV). This tool does not require website specific scripts, instead it uses heuristic AI analysis of HTML structure to detect data for extraction. This means that our scraping method works just as well with small and lesser known websites, as it does with global giants like Amazon. Also, our users do not need to have any coding, json or xml skills

The software is free and available direct from webrobots.io and the Chrome Store.

IPNetInfo | Investigator

IPNetInfo describes itself a small utility that allows people to easily find all available information about an IP address. That includes the owner of the IP address and sundry other details. Hosted on Nirsoft.com and GitHub respectively, both also have a bit more to offer.

Investigator is actually a collection of useful tools, one of which is bound to come in useful sooner or later. Developed by Nirsoft, IPNetInfo is surrounded by dozens of other useful free tools at Nirsoft.net so still worth a quick visit.

Those with access to a Linux command line also have access to the best tools when investigating domains, IP addresses, and DNS. For Windows users or those who simply prefer the convenience of GUIs, the following perform well and look great too: Digger Tools, DNSViz, URLQuery, DMNSApp, URLScan, and WebCheck.

Finally, a pair of outliers to consider.

The End: Emulators

 Given that there are Android emulators that are less elaborate, more predictable, and therefore better suited to the assumed job in hand, the discovery of two fairly elaborate emulators in the toolkit initially seems a little puzzling.

There’s bound to be a good reason they’re installed but right now, those reasons will have to wait until another day.

Of course, the answers to these questions and others like them, are always out there. ‘Out there’ is a very, very big place but the answers usually give themselves up quite quickly once curiosity arrives.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

The frontline of online piracy liability keeps moving, and core internet infrastructure providers are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs.

In a significant ruling last week, the Paris Judicial Tribunal ordered Cloudflare to actively block access to pirate MotoGP streams, confirming that third-party intermediaries can be required to take responsibility.

The ruling follows a complaint from French entertainment powerhouse Société d’Edition de Canal Plus (SECP), which holds the rights to various sports broadcasts. In this case, the proceeding was filed to protect its interests in MotoGP events, which started a new season last month.

DNS Resolvers are Liable

The reasoning behind the blocking request is similar to a previous blocking order, which also targeted OpenDNS and Google DNS. It is grounded in Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, which empowers rightsholders to seek court orders against any outfit that can help to stop ‘serious and repeated’ sports piracy.  

This time, SECP’s demands are broader than DNS blocking alone. The rightsholder also requested blocking measures across Cloudflare’s other services, including its CDN and proxy services.

The 14 domain names
 

The legal paperwork cites 14 domain names, including motogpstream.me and livestreamhd247.live, but doesn’t stop there. SECP also pushed for dynamic blocking, asking Cloudflare to act against future infringing sites identified by French media regulator, ARCOM.

Cloudflare’s Failed Defense

Cloudflare put up a defense, arguing that unlike traditional ISPs, it isn’t the kind of intermediary that’s targeted by Article L. 333-10. The company said that its DNS, CDN, and reverse proxy services don’t “transmit” infringing content in the way envisioned by the law. Instead, they merely route traffic or cache content passively, so strict policing obligations are not appropriate.

Cloudflare also attacked the proportionality and effectiveness of the requested measures. For example, it said that DNS blocking would affect a “negligible” number of users and could be easily bypassed by VPNs or other DNS resolvers, rendering these restrictions futile.

Cloudflare also warned that due to technical challenges, it could be difficult to accurately geo-restrict blocking measures to France, introducing a new risk of global collateral damage.

Court Dismisses Pushback, Orders Blocking Measures

None of these defenses convinced the Paris court, which rejected all of Cloudflare’s arguments. For example, it disregarded the “passive” vs. “active” distinction, concluding that intermediaries such as Cloudflare play an integral role in accessing pirate streams. As a result, the company is required to block this content.

The potentially limited effect of the blocking order didn’t change the court’s view either. While Cloudflare’s blocking won’t put an end to piracy, it will have an impact, even if some people bypass the proposed blocking measures.

All in all, the Paris Court ordered Cloudflare to comply and block the listed pirate site domains within three days. The blockades should stay in place for the remainder of the 2025 MotoGP season, across all relevant services.

Future Pirate Site Domains are Covered

The order was issued last week and Cloudflare has already implemented it, with the court allowing Cloudflare to adopt its own technical measures. Visiting the blocked domain names from France will now result in an HTTP 451 error, indicating that they are now unavailable for legal reasons.

Error HTTP 451
 

Interestingly, the blockades may not stop at the 14 domain names mentioned in the original complaint. The ‘dynamic’ order allows SECP to request additional blockades from Cloudflare, if future pirate sites are flagged by French media regulator, ARCOM. Refusal to comply could see Cloudflare incur a €5,000 daily fine per site.

“[Cloudflare is ordered to implement] all measures likely to prevent, until the date of the last race in the MotoGP season 2025, currently set for November 16, 2025, access to the sites identified above, as well as to sites not yet identified at the date of the present decision,” the order reads.

From the order
 

This latest French ruling is part of broader efforts by rightsholders to co-opt core internet infrastructure into their enforcement efforts. Mandatory blocking requirements, once largely confined to ISPs, are now gradually expanding to other intermediaries. The expansion is not just a French or European phenomenon; a proposed U.S. site blocking bill also envisions a key role for DNS resolvers.

—

A copy of the Paris Court order, issued on March 28, 2025, is available here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 When rightsholders feel that conditions are optimal, site-blocking measures are presented to countries as a proportionate, precise, and entirely reasonable response to rampant piracy.

Should there be a need for new legislation, care should be taken to provide room for rightsholders to maneuver, to ensure that adaptive pirates are placed under maximum continuous pressure.

Under intense pressure itself by an impatient United States demanding that piracy needed to be taken more seriously, Spain spent years doing just that. The success story includes over a decade of site-blocking that generated zero controversy.

Piracy blocking applications even appeared to decline in 2024. A far cry from the days when a call-out on the USTR’s Priority Watch List seemed inevitable, but still light years adrift from the disaster playing out in Spain since February.

With Great Power Comes….Massive Blocking

In 2022 LaLiga and Telefonica, owner of broadcaster Movistar, found room for legal maneuver. Understandably frustrated that their premium live sports broadcasts were instantly pirated, the companies convinced a court that rapid, dynamic blocking would be a proportionate response to IPTV piracy.

These blocking orders presented new problems. The crisis currently playing out in Spain shows how easily circumvented technical restrictions can be rendered almost useless. This, in turn, triggered a disproportionate response leading to substantial collateral damage.

When enhanced privacy features at Cloudflare undermined blocking, the power of a new court order issued last December allowed LaLiga to block Cloudfare itself and by default, many thousands of innocent Cloudflare customers.

Block and Awe

After a court rejected appeals by Cloudflare and hacker collective RootedCON in March, LaLiga now appears to be blocking whatever it needs to block to get the job done. And it’s a big job, as updates from sysadmin @jaumepons on X reveal.

300 of 12382 domains behind 1 IP address

According to @jaumepons, Cloudflare IP addresses are currently being blocked by LaLiga at the rate of 3,000 every week. For perspective, Italy’s Piracy Shield caused uproar when it blocked less than a handful.

Each IP address serves thousands of innocent Cloudflare customers and whichever pirate streaming service happens to be taking cover among them.

Despite having no links to pirate sites, the number of domains said to be affected by IP address-based blocking appears to be disproportionate to the stated aim. The claim that many newspapers have been caught up in the dragnet is concerning; the claim below is more disconcerting than anything else.

????

Unsolicited Press Release

While we’re generally averse to parroting press releases without broader context, a communication received late Wednesday piqued our interest and then proved unusually puzzling. The author is the Spanish non-profit DigitalES and at the time of writing the release doesn’t appear on the group’s website. Its intentions, however, are made clear right off the bat:

DigitalES, the Spanish Association for Digitalization and the employers’ association for the telecommunications, technology, and digital innovation sectors, is calling for the cooperation of all Internet intermediaries to ensure compliance with the court order requiring the blocking of resources linked to pirated audiovisual content.

 

—-snip—-

 

This court ruling is based on the material impossibility of implementing DNS-level blocking as a measure against online piracy. The main reason is that websites with illegal content and the intermediary companies that connect them to the internet employ various techniques (such as ECH or Relay) to change their IP addresses and circumvent these restrictions. Therefore, the most viable solution is considered to be either directly blocking the IP addresses associated with pirated content, or a combined strategy that includes blocking domains, URLs, and IP addresses .

 

Despite the agreement reached with most of these web traffic intermediaries to implement this solution, some services are not implementing the court order.

Whether the overblocking situation is linked to lacking implementation at some providers isn’t clear. In fact, the press release doesn’t mention overblocking at all; it notes the failed legal actions by Cloudflare and RootedCON but says nothing about the controversial events that triggered them.

Other Relevant Details

It may be a coincidence that Telefonica, Vodafone, MásOrange, and DIGI, are directly linked to the blocking action in Spain, while also being members of DigitalES. That no mention is made of these companies in the DigitalES press release might be an oversight, but with vested interests in how the current situation plays out, a few extra details of their involvement may prove informative.

The blocking injunction obtained last December was a joint effort by LaLiga and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital (TAD), which operates the Telefonica-owned subscription digital TV platform known as Movistar Plus+. In January it was reported that Telefonica had retained the domestic rights to broadcast LaLiga matches until the end of 2026/27 season, in a deal worth €1.29bn (US$1.43bn).

The injunction protects this investment by providing the legal basis for blocking measures at four named ISPs;

• MásOrange: Operator of brands including Orange, Yoigo, Jazztel, Masmovil, Simyo, Pepephone, Lebara, Lyca, Llamaya, and Euskaltel. An agreement between Orange and Telefonica-owned Movistar and DAZN secured broadcasting rights for LaLiga matches.
• Vodafone: LaLiga matches are available on Vodafone TV through a deal with DAZN
• DIGI: Romanian telco sells access to LaLiga matches via its DIGI TV platform in Spain
• Movistar: Telefonica-owned telco (LaLiga shown on Movistar+)

The process through which blocking injunctions are obtained is typically non-adversarial. Ultimately signed-off by a judge, ISPs are indeed compelled to implement piracy blocking measures, albeit under pre-arranged terms to which they all agreed.

The theory is straightforward. LaLiga/Telefonica monitor the internet for pirate streams and send their IP addresses to the ISPs. Once the ISPs add those IP addressees to their internal blacklists, their own customers watching those streams can no longer do so.

The companies believe that with enough disruption, pirates will decide to go legal. How well that’s going right is unclear. The massive overblocking of Cloudflare denies access to legitimate platforms for pirates and non-pirates alike.

A Surprise Intervention

According to RootedCON, Vodafone surprised by intervening in its case.

One of the most controversial points in the development of the case has been Vodafone’s intervention: before the judge made a decision, it appeared to reject RootedCON’s presence in the legal process. The operator maintained, now with the support of the judge, that the only ones entitled to challenge the ruling were the operators that were sued at the time by LaLiga and Telefónica.

 

However, they themselves have not filed their own request for annulment. “What Vodafone is effectively saying is that operators are happy to be forced to block.”

And as distributors of LaLiga content, purchased at considerable expense, that makes complete sense. As internet service providers knowingly blocking legitimate resources and their own non-pirating customers? Not so much.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

More than a decade ago, Mojang Studios announced that it was working on a Minecraft movie together with Warner Bros.

The film had been scheduled for a 2022 release, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic among other factors.

Today, ‘A Minecraft Movie‘ will finally see its American box office premiere. While it’s too early to say whether it will be a blockbuster hit, the film already has the dubious honor of being linked to an extremely rare event; the leak of an unfinished copy of the movie which is now circulating on pirate sites.

It’s not uncommon for popular films to leak online during their theatrical windows. Pirated copies often appear as ‘cam’ or ‘telesync’ releases; both are recorded directly from cinema screens, with the latter’s direct audio the main difference. The Minecraft film is already available online in these formats, seemingly originating from countries where the film has already premiered, as the Ukrainian and French dubs suggest.

‘Workprint’ leak

Circulating alongside these typical pirate releases is a much more unusual leak; an unfinished workprint copy of the movie with its CGI at least partially missing. The copy has an English audio track and is clearly associated with a source with direct links to the movie production chain.

The differences between the unfinished and finished copies are obvious, as the examples below show.

‘Workprint’ leak
 

While Minecraft is not known for its real-life imagery, the final product – as shown in other leaked releases – is definitely more polished.

‘Finished’ leak
 

For anyone seriously interested in enjoying movies, these low-quality pirated copies are unwatchable. And that’s on top of the usual legal concerns associated with pirating movies.

Warner Bros. Takedowns

Poor quality or not, Warner Bros. will do whatever it can to limit the spread of these early leaks. The movie studio has sent out several DMCA takedown requests already, including the one below received by Google yesterday.

Takedown notice
 

The notice above contains various links to sites that posted copies of the leaked film, including cammed versions and the workprint. This list of links is just the tip of the iceberg, as the film is circulating across hundreds of websites now.

The unfinished leak isn’t expected to keep many people away from movie theaters, but it does raise another concern. How was it possible for a workprint to leak and then offered to the public for download? Could it even happen again?

The Wolverine Workprint

These are questions that have to be answered and given what’s at stake, the FBI may be involved already. The same happened when a workprint copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked in 2009.

The FBI eventually identified Gilberto Sanchez, a glass installer and musician from The Bronx, as a suspect. Sanchez had uploaded the film to Megaupload and pleaded guilty, resulting in a 12-month prison sentence.

Sanchez has always denied being the source of the workprint leak, however, insisting that he purchased a bootleg DVD of the workprint for $5 on the street in New York. The post-production studio from where the workprint copy leaked was never named.

Whether this time will be different is unknown, but the Wolverine case shows that those further down the ‘leak’ chain are far from safe when the stakes are high.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

After a decade of focusing efforts overseas, the push for website blocking has landed back on American shores.

The fierce backlash against SOPA effectively shelved domestic site blocking initiatives in the U.S., but that hesitation appears to have evaporated.

With Representative Zoe Lofgren’s introduction of the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) in February, the controversial mechanism of court-ordered blocking against foreign ‘pirate’ sites is no longer just a foreign issue; on The Hill it’s a hot topic once again.

Should the proposal become law, FADPA would enable rightsholders to restrict access to verified pirate sites, run by foreign operators. Site blocking orders would apply to both Internet providers and public DNS resolvers.

Lofgren’s bill received broad support from rightsholders and other lawmakers are showing interest as well. According to reports, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa is working on a second site blocking bill, which could increase political momentum.

EFF: Site Blocking is a Terrible Idea

When U.S. site blocking legislation was first introduced fourteen years ago, these measures were still a novelty. Since then, however, dozens of countries have implemented formal blocking procedures, some more strict than others.

That doesn’t mean that site blocking lacks opposition. In the United States, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says it will fight back against the renewed push in favor of blocking, decrying the proposals as a “terrible idea”.

“These new proposals would let rights holders get federal court orders forcing ISPs and DNS providers to block entire websites based on accusations of infringing copyright. Lawmakers claim they’re targeting “pirate” sites—but what they’re really doing is building an internet kill switch,” EFF’s Joe Mullin writes.

The EFF sees the site blocking proposals as a threat to the free and open internet. This critique is grounded in the risk that legitimate sites could find themselves blocked as collateral damage if they share IP-addresses or hosting with pirate sites.

These concerns are not hypothetical. Recent events have shown that site blocking measures still affect legitimate sites, such as when Google Drive and Cloudflare-linked sites were taken offline in response to Italian blocking demands.

Site Blocking Doesn’t Work

According to EFF, site blocking is both “dangerously blunt” and “trivially easy to evade”. People can use VPN services to evade blocking measures, for example, or switch to alternative DNS resolvers that are not subject to blocking restrictions.

The group doesn’t see site blocking as an effective tool to curb piracy, but as a broader effort to institute a censorship regime.

“Site-blocking legislation is an attempt to build a new American censorship system by letting private actors get dangerous infrastructure-level control over internet access,” Mullin warns.

At this stage, little is known about the technical implementation of the proposed site blocking efforts. Rightsholders know that it’s not going to solve their piracy problem, but they argue that it’s better than doing nothing.

Reviving the U.S. Site Blocking Protests

Pushback against the site blocking proposals was expected, but it will be difficult to equal the massive opposition against SOPA in 2012, which turned into a global Internet protest.

EFF is committed nonetheless and Mullin gladly reminds lawmakers of this ghost of the past.

“The question is whether lawmakers remember what happened the last time they tried to mess with the foundations of the open web. If they don’t, they’re going to find out the hard way. Again,” he says.

“Site-blocking laws are dangerous, unnecessary, and ineffective. Lawmakers need to hear—loud and clear—that Americans don’t support government-mandated internet censorship. Not for copyright enforcement. Not for anything.”

Similar to thirteen years ago, EFF has set up a dedicated page inviting members of the public to reach out to their representative in Congress, to share any concerns they may have.

EFF’s action page

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 In the race to build the most capable LLMs, several tech companies have sourced copyrighted content for use as training data, without obtaining permission from content owners.

Many of those companies are now being sued for alleged copyright infringement. The list includes Meta, which faces a class action lawsuit filed by authors Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, among others.

This case has a clear piracy angle, as Meta used BitTorrent to download archives of pirated books to use as training material. Notably, the authors argue that, in addition to copying pirated books from Anna’s Archive and Z-Library, in the same process Meta also uploaded pirated books to third parties.

Last month, both parties filed motions for summary judgment. Meta’s motion relied heavily on a fair use defense. Meanwhile, the authors argued that the downloading of millions of books cannot be classified as fair use, since the source of the books is clearly copyright infringing.

“The uncontroversial implication is that for fair use to apply, the work that was copied must have been lawfully acquired in the first place,” the authors wrote.

IP Professors Back Meta’s Fair Use Argument

This week, a group of IP Law Professors submitted a “friend of the court” or amicus brief, backing Meta’s fair use defense. The professors, including scholars from Harvard, Emory, Boston University, and Santa Clara University, have different views on the impact of AI but are united in their copyright stance.

The Profs
 

The brief stresses that Meta’s alleged use of pirated books as training data can be considered fair use. The source of the training data is not determinative, as long as it’s used to create a new and transformative product, they argue.

“The case law, including binding circuit precedent, holds that internal copying, made in the course of creating new knowledge, is a transformative use that is heavily favored by fair use doctrine,” the professors write.

Transformative Use: Piracy or Not

The professors’ argument is centered around the concept of “transformative use.” They note that using books outside their original ‘reading’ purpose to create an AI model, transforms the purpose of the use. This internal copying, they argue, falls into a category courts have consistently recognized as fair use, also known as “non-expressive use”.

The amicus brief cites several cases to back up their line of reasoning. This includes the Perfect 10 v. Amazon lawsuit, where the Ninth Circuit found that it was fair use when Google created thumbnails using images copied from unauthorized “pirate” sites, because the resulting image search tool was transformative.

Pirate thumbnails
 

The authors cited conflicting cases, but the professors note that cases where fair use was denied typically involved copyright infringement related to personal consumption, rather than use of content to create something new.

The brief distinguishes this case from those cited by the plaintiffs, which involved unauthorized copying for direct consumptive use (e.g., downloading for personal enjoyment). In contrast, Meta’s internal copies were allegedly not perceived by humans but used to build a new tool.

“Fair use, like copyright as a whole, ‘is not a privilege reserved for the well behaved’,” the brief notes. “Fair use doctrine should focus on the consequences of a ruling for knowledge and expression. Other considerations should be left for other legal regimes.”

The professors’ comments appear to relate to Meta’s internal use of the books, as training material for LLMs. It’s worth noting, however, that the authors also accuse Meta of uploading these books to other file-sharers while obtaining their own copies.

The amicus brief doesn’t address this issue directly, but previous back-and-forths in court showed that uploading is likely to be a central point of contention as the case moves forward.

‘Copyright Infringement Is Not the Answer’

The amicus brief is mostly targeted at the potential use of books as training input, which Meta and other companies publicly acknowledged. Whether this is fair use is a key question that this and other courts have to decide.

Other countries, including Japan, have reportedly crafted exceptions in their law to allow tech companies to train LLMs on copyrighted material, without permission.

The U.S. has no such exceptions, but the professors urge the court to consider fair use. As the VCR and other innovations showed, copyright shouldn’t stand in the way of new tools and developing technologies.

“Copyright owners have often predicted that new technologies, from photocopying to home VCRs to the internet, would create disasters for copyright owners and that fair use needed to be shrunk to protect them; instead, new technologies have routinely created
new markets,” they write.

“Whatever the risks of AI—and there may be many—condemning the act of creating large-scale training datasets as copyright infringement is not the answer.”

—

A copy of the proposed Amicus Curiae brief, which was granted by the court yesterday, is available here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

As England’s top football competition, the Premier League draws hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world.

Aside from the sportive stakes, the Premier League also has a vested interest in selling broadcast rights. These rights generate billions of pounds in revenue per year; a staggering amount unmatched by any other football league.

Yet, other leagues are not the main threat to these broadcast revenues. Instead, piracy has emerged as the Premier League’s main nemesis, as many football fans turn to cheaper pirate streaming services to watch ‘the people’s game’.

In recent years, the Premier League has tried several legal avenues to tackle the piracy problem. In addition to obtaining blocking orders in multiple countries, the organization has been a driving force behind several lawsuits, some of which resulted in prison sentences.

Cloudflare & Pirate Sites

While the football league typically finds the law on its side, identifying its ‘opponents’ isn’t always easy. Operators of streaming sites and services are typically aware of the legal risks and do their best to remain anonymous. Presumably as part of this strategy, they use services made available by Cloudflare.

Cloudflare doesn’t make the operators of piracy sites ‘anonymous’ but it does shield their hosting locations from public view. Rightsholders can overcome this barrier through formal complaints, after which Cloudflare identifies the hosting services. To obtain additional information, however, rightsholders have to go to court.

A few days ago, the Premier League took this follow-up step by asking a California federal court to issue a DMCA subpoena. The request identifies 38 target pirate streaming sites, many of which use multiple domains. Through the court the Premier League hopes to identify the persons connected to these domains.

Premier League Requests Action

Before going to court, the Premier League’s American law firm, Hagan Noll & Boyle, sent a takedown notice to Cloudflare, asking it to terminate a few dozen accounts that are deemed problematic.

“Cloudflare is asked to remove or disable access to Premier League’s copyrighted works, which, based on the infringement that has occurred to date through the websites and domain names identified above, will continue to be infringed in this same manner throughout the Premier League season,” the law firm wrote.

The letter identifies the streaming site domains, some of which redirect to other domains. In addition, there’s a ‘backend’ link pointing out where the pirated football streams for these sites are being sourced.

Letter to Cloudflare
 

Several of the targeted domains use the .CFD gTLD, which is targeted at clothing brands and fashion houses, but also seems popular among a subset of pirate site operators. Others use more generic .com, .org and .tv domains.

One of the streaming sites
 

At first glance, totalsportek.space appears to be the most popular domain name, with more than 17 million visits in February, according to SimilarWeb.

Cloudflare Must Identify Operators

The Premier League’s letter didn’t result in the termination of any Cloudflare accounts. Totalsportek.space and others remain online, using Cloudflare’s services, but the California federal court did sign off on the DMCA subpoena.

The subpoena requires Cloudflare to hand over information that can help to identify the associated account holders, including any names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information, account updates, and account histories.

Known to comply with these subpoenas, Cloudflare is required to hand over the requested information before April 3. Whether the Premier League will find any of the information usable is another matter. Many pirate site owners use inaccurate data, and financial trails can quickly reach a dead end.

—

The subpoena
 

A copy of the issued DMCA subpoena is available here (pdf) and the Premier League’s declaration can be found here (pdf). Below is a list of all the targeted domain names.

– 90phut2.info
– 310.tv —> 310002.tv
– 808fubo.com
– keelalive.com
– 926.tv —> 926002.tv
– ball24.tv
– banhkhuc37.info
– baygonhero.com
– cakhia34.xyz/cakhia54.xyz —> cakhia60.xyz
– dollarformergm3hp.shop/fightfloorwt4ea5l.shop —> singlevariousht1etk0.sbs
– freestreams-live.my —> freestreams-live.mp
– gavang.link/gavang4.tv/gavang5.tv/gavang6.tv —> gavang13.live
– gavang.org
– glisco.link —> coolrea.link
– jala1.cc —> jalaace2.cc
– livetv819.me —> livetv822.me
– mgviagrtoomuch.com
– sporttuna.pro —> sporttuna.website —> sporttuna.xyz
– propermirrorc6rrhjf.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– rbtv77.com —> howfruitsizmx.cfd
– rbtv77.ws —> rbtv77.my —> happenedought1tzn2s.cfd
– strugglesincetfp9ek.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– taraftarium.co
– taraftarium.me —> aleaquefootball.com
– thapcam53.buzz —> thapcam.pro —> thapcam53.fyi
– totalsportek.space —> xsportbox.com
– twentytemperature7jigpx.shop —> singlevariousht1etk0.sbs
– unusualscience6ezlg79.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– vachvoi.net —> vachvoi.tv
– vebo3.site
– watchsportnow.com
– wincanaldcocv1.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– wrongfoughtizki7zm.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– xoilac34.info
– zhiboche.tv —> zhiboche8.com —> 176001.tv
– zhibodou.com —> sportsteam356.com
– zonadeporteshd.pl
– zvision.link

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 The company Licensing IP International S.a.r.l. is not particularly well known, but over a billion people are familiar with its trademarks.

These marks include popular adult entertainment brands including Pornhub, Youporn, Brazzers and Reality Kings, which fall under the umbrella of Aylo, the empire formerly known as MindGeek.

Just one of Aylo’s many subsidiaries, Licensing IP owns and controls many popular trademarks. The company is not often in the news, but it’s a key player when it comes to protecting Aylo’s IP rights.

Pirate Site Domains Targeted in Cybersquatting Lawsuit

Aylo has a long history of taking action against pirate sites. Through its subsidiaries, Goodporn and Daftsex were previously targeted in U.S.courts, which largely ruled in favor of the adult entertainment company. However, permanently shutting down rogue sites has proven to be quite a challenge.

Traditionally, these types of lawsuits rely on copyright infringement claims but subsidiary Licensing IP recently tried a different approach, with success.

In a cybersquatting complaint filed at a California District Court last year, Licensing IP targeted ‘mydirtyhobby.to’ and several related domain names. These sites reportedly used Aylo’s copyrighted content without permission, as well as its trademarks, including MDH® and MY DIRTY HOBBY®.

Licensing IP alleged that the defendant intentionally registered these domains to profit from consumers’ brand recognition of these trademarks. This clearly violates the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which protects trademark owners against domain name abuse.

Rare ‘In Rem’ Lawsuit

Domain name trademark disputes are traditionally handled through ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) proceedings; Licensing IP took its cybersquatting claim to a U.S. federal court instead.

In this case, the complaint was filed in rem, meaning that the action proceeded against a property rather than a person. As a result, personal jurisdiction is not required, which makes it easier to go after domains operated by unknown ‘does’.

As the case progressed, the registrants of the domain names were contacted, but none made an appearance in court. This prompted Licensing IP to request a default judgment instructing the Tonic registry to transfer the trademark-infringing domain names.

Court Grants Domain Name Transfers

In February, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler issued a report and recommendations, siding with the adult entertainment company. The court confirmed it has jurisdiction over the case because the .to domain registrar, San Francisco company Tonic Corp, is located within the court’s district.

Since the complaint was filed in rem, personal jurisdiction over the foreign registrants was not required. After analyzing all the paperwork, Judge Beeler concluded that all factors in favor of granting a default judgment had been met.

As a result, she recommended issuing an order requiring the Tonic registrar to transfer mydirtyhobby.to, watchmdh.to, mdh.to and all other confusingly similar domain names to Licensing IP. The recommendation was adopted by District Court Judge Jon Tigar last week, finalizing the order.

The order
 

While the outcome of this case isn’t particularly surprising, the fact that it happened through a cybersquatting complaint is very rare.

Jason Tucker, president of Battleship Stance, an anti-piracy outfit that helps Aylo and other companies with their legal strategies, is pleased with the outcome. He sees it as an effective angle to target pirate sites that also abuse trademarks.

“This case shows there are still effective legal tools to take down pirate domains—especially when they target creators and misuse their names and content,” Tucker says.

Despite the favorable court order, several of the targeted domain names still appear to be online at the time of writing.

—

A copy of the order adopting the report and recommendations, which grants the default judgment, is available here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

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

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “The Monkey” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on March 31 are:

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

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Movies recorded directly from cinema screens are identifiable online by the tag ‘cam’ and for those prepared to download them, often notable for their poor quality.

As theatrical windows are now fairly short compared to those of just a few years ago, the prospect of ruining a movie for the sake of a few weeks has made cams less attractive than they once were. Yet in the summer of 2022, when at least four cam copies were spotted online and then traced back to two cinemas in the UK, this turned into a major incident.

The ‘cammed’ copies were some of the best to appear online in years so when a 24-year-old man was convicted in 2023 for fraud and copyright offenses, it’s likely that the UK cinema industry breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Film Content Protection Agency

Working alongside the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA), the Film Content Protection Agency (FCPA) is responsible for ensuring that when movies are shown in UK cinemas, nobody is able to walk away with a copy recorded from the big screen.

Given that copies have a tendency to end up on the internet, the stakes are very high indeed and could even affect day-and-date premieres in the UK. The good news for FDA/FCPA is that security is now holding up really well. Indeed, after the events of 2022, the remainder of that year through to the end 2023 was an all-round success with not a single leak from any cinema in the UK and Ireland.

Source: FCPA Newsletter

“The success of the FCPA program was very apparent during 2023, with all theatrical releases being protected across the territory over the year,” says Simon Brown, director at the Film Content Protection Agency.

Two Years of Excellent Results

With 2022 fading into history, data shows near flawless FCPA performance for both 2023 and 2024.

“The last high-impact case, identified by film-forensics, was back in August 2022 involving a series of incidents at two cinemas in Liverpool. The end of 2023 marked an incredible and unprecedented 16-month period of protection from piracy in cinemas.”

The image above appears in the Film Distributors’ Association’s 2024 Yearbook. It demonstrates that even if ‘cammers’ aren’t caught in the act, once recordings appear online it’s technically quite trivial to identify the source of the recording, including the exact screen and time of day.

CCTV and suspects’ general conduct – including booking online, paying for a ticket by credit card, or preference for certain seating, can all play a part in their demise.

Other persistent risks concern diligent cinema staff. In addition to specific training on how to spot potential cammers, cash rewards help to keep everyone alert in the event of a live security breach.

“One of the FCPA’s core objectives focuses on the development and delivery of anti-piracy awareness and vigilance amongst those who work in cinemas across the UK and Ireland,” FCPA/FDA reports.

“In 2024, FCPA delivered 48 training events to in excess of 1,500 cinema staff, and the impact of this was evident in the 105 incidents reported by sites where staff had successfully spotted and disrupted illegal recording activity.”

Film exhibitors reported 155 piracy-related security incidents in 2023 so that may suggest that at least some would-be pirates lost interest or were deterred in 2024. Of those prepared to shoulder the risk, from a total of 105 incidents seven people were arrested and five led to police cautions.

The One That Got Away

The only incident that led to a leak in 2024 was traced back to a cinema in Scotland. In May 2024, film forensics investigators discovered that the audio track of a movie recorded in Glasgow was being made available online having been synced with the video of the same movie ‘cammed’ at a cinema in Mexico.

Busted (source: FCPA)

“The availability of local-language soundtracks often enhance a pirated film’s potential value and desirability, and cases such as this demonstrate the organized nature of the criminal networks in this field, and often internationally,” FCPA/FDA continue.

“The attractiveness of an infringing English soundtrack in particular is an added threat for cinemas here due to this vulnerability. The subsequent FCPA investigation in Glasgow quickly identified two suspects and work is ongoing with Police Scotland to progress this early in 2025.

“The recent Glasgow case represents the only high-impact case (albeit audio-only) over the past 29 months. Much of this successful protection can be attributed to the robust anti-piracy work being done in cinemas,” the cinema groups conclude.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related sources.

The site launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of ‘free’ books and articles to the broader public.

In late 2023, Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making information from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online. The site’s operators took more than a year to scrape 2.2 terabytes of data and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

This ‘metadata’ heist was a massive breakthrough in the site’s quest to archive as much published content as possible. However, OCLC wasn’t pleased and responded with a lawsuit at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract.

The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna’s Archive’s alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn’t prevent the data from being released through a torrent.

“Defendants, through the Anna’s Archive domains, have made, and continue to make, all 2.2 TB of WorldCat® data available for public download through its torrents,” OCLC wrote in its complaint filed at an Ohio federal court.

Default Requested

Over the past year, the operators of Anna’s Archive haven’t responded in court. The only named defendant flat-out denied all connections to the site, and OCLC receive no response from any of the official Anna’s Archive email addresses previously served.

Meanwhile, the pirate library continued to offer the WorldCat® data, which is a major problem for the organization. With no prospect of a two-sided legal battle, OCLC therefore moved for a default judgment.

OCLC said that it is fighting an unknown defendant who is unwilling to show up in court. Therefore, a default judgment, with damages that could potentially run to millions of dollars, is the only option it has available.

Ohio Federal Court Slams on the Brakes

The matter was presented as a straightforward case, but in an order released last week, Judge Watson finds the path to judgment far from clear.

In a detailed “Opinion and Order” (pdf) Judge Watson shared his uncertainty about applying established Ohio legal principles in a data scraping context. He explicitly stated that the case poses “novel and unsettled” issues of Ohio law, noting that “no Ohio court has ever applied its law as OCLC would have this Court do.”  

The judge is concerned that a new state law could be created through a federal court. He systematically dismantled OCLC’s arguments for default judgment; not necessarily because they are wrong, but due to the lack of guiding Ohio precedent for each of its claims.

For example, the court questions whether OCLC’s contract claim, which relies on the Terms and Conditions that prohibit scraping, are enforceable. These terms are “browserwrap” available without an “I agree” button, which means that defendants may not have been privy to it.

The contract Terms and Conditions might also be preempted by copyright law, as is true for other claims, including the claim for unjust enrichment.

“As with OCLC’s contract claim, whether federal copyright law preempts its unjust enrichment claim depends on the state-law interests that claim serves. So the Court will invite OCLC and the Supreme Court of Ohio to elaborate on those interests,” Judge Watson writes.

Many Unanswered Questions

Judge Watson further questioned whether copying scraped data, especially publicly accessible data, can be considered legally “unjust”? Finding no guidance in Ohio law, he asked several hypothetical questions in response.

“Candidly, the Court does not know how to begin evaluating whether ‘unjust circumstances’ are present here. Is it ever unjust to retain publicly available data? If so, when?” Judge Watson writes.

“The Court presumes that it may sometimes be unjust to retain private data, but the Court imagines that the line between public and private data is not easy to draw. For example, is it unjust for someone with a properly obtained password to scrape data from the password-protected parts of a site? What if they terminate their subscription?”

Since Ohio law offers no guidelines on how to answer these questions, the Court decided to seek guidance from the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Bad Facts Can Make Bad Law

Based on the presented information, Judge Watson denied OCLC’s motion for default judgment. The same applies to the motion to dismiss, filed by the named defendant. These motions can be refiled later, once the Supreme Court of Ohio clarifies the legal questions.

While Judge Watson expressed sympathy for the problems faced by OCLC, he stressed the need to avoid creating ‘bad law’ based on potentially challenging facts.

“The Court is sympathetic to OCLC’s situation: a band of copyright scofflaws cloned WorldCat’s hard-earned data, gave it away for free, and then ignored OCLC when it sued them in this Court. But mindful that bad facts sometimes make bad law, the Court requests that an Ohio court intervene before this Court makes any new state tort, contract, property, or criminal law.

“The Court resolves to certify the novel Ohio-law issues identified above to the Supreme Court of Ohio,” Judge Watson adds, noting that the details of the questions have yet to be determined.

In practice, this means that there will likely be a significant delay before this matter is resolved. The court’s hesitation also highlights that web scraping remains a legal gray area that requires careful consideration. In the meantime, Anna’s Archive remains online, with all the scraped OCLC data intact.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Fans of Asian drama and anime with a preference for pirate sites were hit hard last November when Dramacool and several associated sites shut down.

The Dramacool team permanently closed its Asianc, Asianwiki, Watchasia, Dramanice and Runasian websites, citing pressure from copyright holders.

These streaming sites catered to a massive audience, as was exemplified by the shutdown message on X, which was viewed more than five million times. And while months have passed since, social media mentions show that many former fans still miss the sites today.

While Dramacool stepped away from offering pirated streams, the site’s X account is still active and thriving, posting regular updates on Korean drama and entertainment. However, this may soon come to an end, as the American-owned streaming platform Kocowa wants it taken offline, and then some.

Kocowa Behind Dramacool’s Troubles

While Dramacool never shared specifics on its legal issues, court records obtained by TorrentFreak show that Wavve Americas Inc. (wA) filed a lawsuit against the unknown operators of various Dramacool domains last October.

As shown below, the targeted domain names include Asianc, Watchasia, Dramanice, and Runasian, all of which offered pirated streams. The affiliated Asianwiki.co information portal, which frequently shared information concerning domain name updates, is listed as a defendant too.

The complaint
 

The complaint is not limited to the official domain names operated by Dramacool. It also includes popular copycat websites such as Dramacool.com.tr and Asianc.sh, naming their registrants in the complaint.

The same applies to Minh Van Ngoc Mym, the developer of the “Dramacool – Kdrama Video Movie” app, which was previously listed in Apple’s iOS store.

Wavve said that it tried to stop the defendants’ infringing conduct by reaching out to domain registrar Namecheap, Apple, and by contacting the websites through publicly listed email addresses, but there were no immediate results.

Restraining Order & Shutdown

Soon after filing the complaint at a federal court in Arizona, Kocowa’s owner requested an ex parte order, requiring all defendants to cease their infringing activity. In response, the court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) on November 4 last year, except for Asianwiki.

Wavve clarified that Asianwiki was likely linked to the same operators. The site offered information on how to access the streaming sites when domain names were shut down, and occasionally linked to infringing content itself, the company said. This was sufficient for the court to add Asianwiki to a follow-up TRO.

A few days after these orders were granted, Dramacool announced that its websites would shut down permanently. In hindsight, we can assume that the lawsuit filed by Kocowa was the source of the ‘legal pressure’ Dramacool mentioned at the time.

Kocowa+
 

While the restraining order did not require Namecheap to take action, the domain registrar appears to have stepped in. Several domains show the hallmarks of Namecheap suspensions which, again, are likely linked to the same lawsuit.

Social Media Targeted, Identities Sought

With the most popular Dramacool domains offline, Kocowa could already celebrate an early victory. Parent company Wavve Americas, however, is not done yet. Last week, the court granted its request for an injunction.

The injunction prohibits all parties from continuing their infringing activities. In addition to restraining use of domain names, the injunction also applies to various social media channels. Several Telegram channels and a Discord server must be disabled, plus Dramacool’s X account which is currently still online.

In an order dated March 17, 2025, the Arizona court converted the TROs into a preliminary injunction, ensuring that the restrictions remain in place for the duration of the lawsuit. In addition, Wavve is now allowed to serve several of the defendants via email, instead of in person.

Information previously revealed that the defendants may be scattered across Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, the Netherlands, and New Jersey. Since not all physical addresses appear to be complete or legitimate, the court permitted the company to use email instead.

However, the court drew a line for four specific defendants, including the app developer Minh Van Ngoc Mym and the unknown registrants of Dramacool.ba, Dramacool.com.tr, and Dramacool.com.vc. Since Wavve couldn’t show whether these defendants are located inside or outside the U.S., the court ruled that serving them via email wasn’t appropriate without sufficient legal justification.

To allow the case to proceed, the court ordered Wavve to update its complaint to formally name the responsible individuals that were connected to the Dramacool domains though discovery.

While writing this acticle, Wavve served all defendants via email. The company also filed an amended complaint, listing the alleged operators of the websites. This includes a person named “Tommy USA” who is linked to the dramanice.la, runasian.net, watchasia.to, and asianc.sh domains. Kocowa’s parent company requests significant damages from all defendants.

—

A copy of the Arizona federal court order, issued by U.S. District Judge Krissa Lanham, is available here (pdf). The amended complaint is available here (pdf).

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 When LaLiga claimed that Cloudflare’s refusal to enforce its terms against piracy made the company responsible for the unintended consequences of site blocking, legal action was all but inevitable.

According to Cloudflare, LaLiga knew that blocking a Cloudflare IP address used by a pirate service would also block innocent Cloudflare customers sharing the same IP. What mattered to LaLiga was the nature of the order it obtained last December, which reportedly authorized such blocking in the context of LaLiga’s escalating fight against piracy.

Under the claimed authority of the court, LaLiga’s subsequent blocking of Cloudflare IP addresses performed exactly as predicted. The ensuing collateral damage, which LaLiga insisted was both limited and Cloudflare’s responsibility, appeared to have little effect on LaLiga’s determination. Some commenters described the continued disruption as a threat to national security, but there was no visible government intervention.

Cloudflare and RootedCON Fail to Overturn Blocking Order

Hoping to bring the crisis to an end, Cloudflare and cybersecurity group RootedCON launched separate legal actions with the same goal. The precise details of their arguments remain unclear. At the core, any order lacking guardrails to protect the innocent, issued without allowing a company like Cloudflare to participate before it goes into effect, should be invalidated.

LaLiga predicted that these protests would be pointless, and indeed, the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona has dismissed both challenges.

The court affirmed that the purpose of the order was to authorize blocking of IP addresses used for the unlawful distribution of content belonging to LALIGA and distributed by Telefonica. According to a statement by LaLiga, the Court found no fault with the procedure; it was found to be in full compliance with the law, contrary to claims by RootedCON that the order violates fundamental rights and limits free access to information.

“The decision reaffirms that the [blocking] action is in accordance with the law and is protected by current legislation regarding intellectual property and information society services, ratifying the validity of the procedure,” LaLiga’s statement reads.

“In fact, it rules out that a ‘procedural device’ has occurred, as suggested by some applicants, and confirms the validity of the procedure followed, disregarding the court order that there is a procedure for indiscriminate blocking, expressly declaring that there was no ‘undermining of guarantees’.”

Those guarantees relate to text in the order stating that it was granted partly on the basis that the blocking measures requested were not considered “contrary to the law, public order or harmful to third parties.”

No Evidence of Any Harm or Damage

Directly citing the text in the Court’s decision, LaLiga notes that the Court dismissed all claims that LaLiga’s blocking was responsible for damage, due to the lack of any supporting evidence.

“[It] is not proven, from the arguments made by the various petitioners, that any damage has occurred, nor is such damage identified, nor quantified, nor is the taking of any evidence requested aimed at proving, directly or indirectly, the generation of damage as a constitutive element of the claim for annulment.”

A statement from Cloudflare expresses disappointment that the Court failed to recognize the negative effect on its business. However, Cloudflare suggests that the fight may continue, despite the Court indicating that there can be no appeal.

“Cloudflare is disappointed with the court ruling, which upholds an order LaLiga relied on to block large areas of the internet in Spain,” Cloudflare notes.

“The court order is based on the fact that Cloudflare was not the direct target of the order, and fails to address the significant interference with its services and the harm to innocent consumers, websites, and businesses caused by LaLiga’s blocks. Cloudflare is evaluating the next steps in this litigation and will continue to fight actions that threaten internet freedom.”

RootedCON: We Do Not Understand the Judge’s Decision

RootedCON’s statement seems to imply that the decision was made without full consideration of available information. In any event, the negative effect on innocent internet users seems to have been disregarded.

“The judge has surprisingly dismissed our request (and Cloudflare’s), allowing La Liga to continue blocking, at will, websites and IP addresses that have no connection to ‘piracy’,” the organization notes.

“RootedCON remains firmly committed to defending citizens and will pursue all necessary legal means. We do not understand the judge’s decision, as we assumed he had not been provided with all the information necessary to issue a ruling. Unfortunately, his role has now become clear.”

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 In Brazil, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security were scheduled to meet with National Telecommunications Agency Anatel this week to discuss a persistent piracy problem.

Known as Gatonet, these unlicensed and illegal TV networks seem to rely on their connections with organized crime.

Last week, the authorities said they’d shut down one such operation linked to a powerful drug trafficker known locally as Peixão. Sabotage of legitimate equipment and threats against engineers sent to repair it, allows illegal equipment operated by notorious criminal groups to take over local markets. Expansion beyond pirate TV into other commodity markets is common too.

“After exchanging intelligence information, it was possible to verify that the criminals were monopolizing the sales of gas and water cylinders in communities that are influenced by the criminal organization,” law enforcement officers reported last week.

Digital Threats

In addition to tackling piracy threats in physical form, Brazil also tackles infringement in the digital realm. In common with dozens of countries all around the world, site-blocking is the weapon of choice, and Brazil uses it almost continuously.

Brazil’s official blocklist is technically confidential, but practicalities dictate otherwise.

A lack of central control in a country with more than 20,000 ISPs, each left to determine how blocking is carried out (if at all in some cases), means that the list is usually available for review.

In our overview last November, we estimated that around 15,000 domains were being blocked, the majority for piracy but a significant number for links to illegal gambling.

The full list ebbs and flows as new domains are added and removed for various reasons. Right now the list contains close to 22,000 domains, which should not be interpreted as 22,000 blocked sites.

There are countless examples where single sites respond to blocking with a new domain, triggering another block and the deployment of another new domain, even several at once. The image above right spotted on a local discussion platform likens the challenge of blocking a site called Topflix to playing the game Guitar Hero; with 250 domains on the current blocklist, it’s not difficult to see why.

Brazil Reports Almost 8,000 Blocked Domains to WIPO

Operating under the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP), the National Council to Combat Piracy and Crimes Against Intellectual Property (CNCP) is reportedly stepping up its online anti-piracy efforts. Since Brazil participates in the WIPO ALERT program operated by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), CNCP recently submitted around 391 domains to the confidential WIPO ALERT program.

WIPO ALERT is described as a centralized list of pirate site domains submitted by participating countries, confirmed last year as 15 following the addition of Ukraine. The stated purpose of WIPO ALERT, to help advertisers avoid pirate sites, has remained substantially unchanged since its 2019 launch.

In an announcement this week, CNCP said it had submitted another 7,931 domains subject to local blocking orders to the central WIPO ALERT database. It also revealed WIPO ALERT to be much more than just an advertising ‘blacklist’.

Central Point For Global Site-Blocking Information

CNCP Executive Secretary, Andrey Corrêa, explained that WIPO ALERT plays an important role in global cybersecurity by preventing fraud and other crimes associated with pirate sites.

“This international collaboration mechanism is a clear example of how cooperation between countries and organizations strengthens the fight against criminal activities in the digital environment,” Corrêa said.

The announcement then continued with the following (emphasis ours):

The platform is essential for a unified global effort to combat digital piracy, with the exchange of information between governments and international organizations.

 

This sharing increases the effectiveness of copyright protection and online security measures, reducing the distribution of illegal content and benefiting both consumers and content creators.

 

The system also ensures that once a website is identified as an infringer in one country, it can be blocked and de-indexed in other nations.

How this works in practice isn’t explained. However, since there’s a general push towards administrative blocking programs rather than those authorized by court orders with judicial oversight, it wouldn’t be a surprise if WIPO ALERT-listed domains were eventually waved through locally on a ‘trusted submitter’ basis.

Coupled with WIPO ALERT-PAY, a pilot apparently launched last year to strangle access to payment service providers globally, WIPO ALERT appears to be focusing on the bigger picture and a globalized anti-piracy response.

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Over the past few years, AI technology has progressed at a rapid pace.

This includes large language models, which are typically trained on a broad datasets of texts; the more, the better.

When AI hit the mainstream, it became apparent that rightsholders were not always pleased that their works had been used to train AI. This applies to photographers, artists, music companies, journalists, and authors, some of whom formed groups to file copyright infringement lawsuits to protect their rights.

Music Companies vs. Anthropic

In one of these lawsuits, music publishers including Concord and Universal sued AI startup Anthropic. In a complaint filed last fall, they accused the company of “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics.”

Specifically, they argued that Anthropic used their lyrics as training data without obtaining permission. They also showed several examples of lyrics that were reproduced by the Claude chatbot when prompted. With hundreds of works in the lawsuit, potential damages run into the millions of dollars.

In response to the claims, Anthropic didn’t deny that it might have used lyrics to train its model but argued that’s permitted under fair use. Anthropic didn’t intend for its chatbot to reproduce lyrics in full; if it did, that was purely accidental, the company said.

“Anthropic has always had guardrails in place to try to prevent that result. If those measures failed in some instances in the past, that would have been a ‘bug,’ not a ‘feature’, of the product,” the company wrote earlier this year.

Music Industry Requests ‘Guardrail’ Injunction

The ‘guardrail’ comment was made in response to a request for injunctive relief by the music companies. They asked the court to issue an order that prevents the use of its copyrighted lyrics as output and training input going forward.

Before the court could rule on the request, both sides already agreed on a stipulation, with Anthropic agreeing to keep the already-implemented guardrails for the output of its current AI models in place. While that was a welcome assurance for the music companies, the input side remained unaddressed.

Anthropic argued that it would be complicated to prevent the use of current and future lyrics as training data, as these are available across the Internet. The AI company sees publicly available data as ‘fair use’ training inputs.

The music companies disagreed, and they found the music industry trade group RIAA on their side. The RIAA and others highlighted that the supposed choice between innovation and copyright protection had been used by ‘pirate’ services in the past, but courts rendered these services unlawful anyway.

Court Denies Injunction

After reviewing the arguments from both sides, California District Court Judge Eumi K. Lee denied the music companies’ request for a preliminary injunction yesterday. This means that Anthropic is not required to restrict its training data at this stage of the legal battle.

Judge Lee’s order (full pdf)
 

In her order, Judge Lee notes that a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy which, among other things, requires plaintiffs to show that they are suffering irreparable harm. The order focuses solely on the input side where lyrics are used as training data, as the output disagreements were previously solved in the joint stipulation.

One of the issues flagged by the court is the scope of the requested injunction. Which lyrics would be covered by the injunction was not clearly defined, and whether this includes works that have yet to be written. Anthropic complained that it would be “virtually impossible” to prevent the use of a library of lyrics that’s not clearly defined.

“The enormous and seemingly ever-expanding scope of Works included in the requested injunction raises significant concerns regarding enforceability and manageability,” Judge Lee writes, agreeing with Anthropic.

Ever-expanding scope

No Obvious Harm

Judge Lee also failed to see evidence that Anthropic’s use of lyrics as training data caused clear reputational harm. Rightsholders complained that the authors of the work might not be appropriately credited, or that the works could be used for AI mashups. However, these concerns mostly related to outputs.

“Publishers have not demonstrated reputational harm based on the use of the Works as training input. Publishers cite to several declarations, which are largely duplicative of each other. The declarations discuss the effect of unlicensed use of copyrighted works as “damaging” or “harmful” generally, but they fail to identify any specific harm.”

Reputational harm?
 

Similarly, the court saw no clear evidence for market harm either. The music companies argued that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted lyrics could negatively affect the emerging AI licensing market, where lyrics are officially licensed to AI companies. However, Judge Lee didn’t find this convincing.

“[The declarations] fail to provide details or specifics regarding how, if at all, Anthropic’s use of the Works to train Claude has affected their respective abilities to negotiate training licenses with other AI developers, or how it will inflict harm on the emerging licensing market,” Judge Lee writes.

Even if the music companies were to be harmed, this harm is not necessarily ‘irreparable,’ the court notes. Any harm could be addressed by a damages award in the future so there’s no need for extraordinary measures, such as a preliminary injunction, at this stage.

Since there is no irreparable harm, Judge Lee didn’t address any of the other factors that are required to rule on the request for preliminary injunction.

With the preliminary injunction denied, the case now moves forward, leaving the long-term implications of AI training on copyrighted material uncertain. As both sides prepare for the next phase of the legal battle, the tech and music industries will be watching closely.

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Over the past two years, rightsholders of all kinds have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

Most of these cases allege that AI developers used copyrighted works to train LLMs without first obtaining authorization.

Meta is among a long list of companies now being sued for this allegedly-infringing activity, including a class action lawsuit filed by authors Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden. This case has a clear piracy angle, as Meta used libraries of pirated books as training material.

Meta admitted the use of these unofficial sources early on. At the same time, however, the company denied the copyright infringement allegations, noting that it would rely on a fair use defense, at least in part.

Motions for Summary Judgment

Both parties have recently submitted motions for summary judgment to the California federal court, hoping to resolve key claims before trial. The rightsholders previously argued that there is no question that Meta downloaded works from various pirate libraries, including Z-Library, Libgen, and Anna’s Archive.

The authors said that the downloading of millions of books cannot be classified as fair use. Even if that were the case, the plaintiffs say that Meta torrented a minimum of 267.4 terabytes from known pirate resources. As part of this process, Meta uploaded data to other users via BitTorrent.

Yesterday, Meta countered the authors’ position based on the argument that its use of the contested books to train AI models is fair use. Meta discusses the various fair use factors and stresses, among other things, that Meta’s alleged infringements did not cause any harm, nor can they be seen as competition for the original works.

The fair use angle, which is more detailed and nuanced than can be described here, will play a central role in most copyright related AI-lawsuits. In this case, however, Meta is also accused of uploading copyrighted content to third parties.

Meta doesn’t dispute that it uploaded data via BitTorrent but notes that there is no evidence that any data shared with others amounted to full copies of the authors’ books.

“Plaintiffs have not asserted, much less put forth undisputed facts to prove, that Meta distributed any of their works. Indeed, the most they can muster is that at least some quantity of the data Meta downloaded via torrent must have been reuploaded.”

“That does not even suffice to raise a genuine issue as to whether any distribution of Plaintiffs’ works occurred, much less allow the Court to determine as a matter of law that Meta’s copying of Plaintiffs’ works was anything but fair,” Meta adds.

In addition to opposing the authors’ motion for summary judgment, Meta also requests summary judgment, primarily focusing on the copyright infringement claim and the fair use argument.

All About BitTorrent

Both motions are accompanied by a series of expert reports, explaining the technicalities of BitTorrent to the court.

The authors’ expert, Dr. Choffnes, pointed out Meta used a script to prevent pirated data from being ‘seeded’ after downloading was complete. However, there were apparently no upload restrictions while Meta was in the process of downloading, which is referred to as the ‘leeching’ phase.

Based on the available information, Dr. Choffnes reasoned that there is “a greater than 99.99999% chance that Meta uploaded at least one piece of the plaintiffs’ works.

These findings are rebutted by an expert report from Meta’s expert, Barabara Frederiksen-Cross, who notes that the statistical model used by Dr. Choffnes is not suited to estimating the probability here. According to Cross, it “grossly inflates the probability of distribution”.

Both reports delve deep into BitTorrent specifics, including the tit-for-tat strategy, choking and unchoking, blocks and pieces, and BitTorrent’s “hole-punch” feature.

As expected, the experts arrive at opposing conclusions. The authors’ expert sees near conclusive evidence that copyrighted data was shared, while Meta’s expert sees no solid evidence to support that.

Meta Uploaded ~30% of What it Downloaded

One of the most interesting new pieces of information comes from Meta’s expert, and is based on information that was handed over during discovery last week.

According to Frederiksen-Cross, Meta used Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its torrent activity. The cost and usage data of this AWS instance shows how much content was downloaded and uploaded respectively.

“This data […] indicates that, on average, the amount of data uploaded from these AWS instances to the Internet would not have exceeded approximately 30% of the amount of data that these AWS instances downloaded from the Internet in connection with the April to July 2024 torrent download for Internet Archive, ZLib, and LibGen,” Frederiksen-Cross writes.

Meta’s expert reasons that this imbalance shows that it’s unlikely that the company uploaded the plaintiffs’ works. At the same time, however, it indicates that the company did share many terabytes of data with third parties.

It is not difficult to see how the plaintiffs could use this same data point to argue that Meta helped other people to download pirated copies of their works.

Unusable Data Blocks and Meta’s Firewall

The experts essentially differ on what can be seen as evidence of copyright infringement. Meta’s expert, for example, stresses that data is broken down into “pieces” and further into “blocks” during BitTorrent transfers. It’s argued that, even if Meta shared small blocks of data, they would be unusable to the receiver.

While this description is correct, these pieces and blocks, combined with data from other people sharing the same torrent, eventually make up the full copies of the authors’ works.

Meta’s firewall is also a point of contention. While the company specifically blocked connections from unknown parties, the authors’ expert stresses that BitTorrent’s hole-punching feature might defeat this standard firewall feature. Meta’s expert countered that this is not necessarily true.

All in all, it is clear that this case is gearing up to be much more than a straightforward copyright infringement case. The technical BitTorrent discussions alone are some of the most advanced we have ever seen in a court case.

The motions for summary judgment make it clear that both sides want the court to rule in their favor based on the currently presented evidence. While that’s certainly possible, it wouldn’t be a surprise if, given all the technicalities involved, the court sees ‘genuine disputes of material fact’ that are better suited for trial.

—

A copy of the authors’ motion for summary judgment is available here (pdf). Meta’s opposition and motion for summary judgment can be found here (pdf).

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