Online piracy is a constant headache for copyright holders; one that’s particularly hard to beat.

Because those who run pirate sites often ignore takedown requests, copyright holders began targeting search engines and other online platforms that inadvertently help users to find pirated content.

Typically, copyright holders outsource this work to third-party companies that scan the web for links to pirated material. These companies then contact search engines, like Google, to request their removal.

Google has become a primary target for these requests, having recently processed its 10 billionth URL removal request.

Link-Busters: The Takedown Champion of 2024

These removal requests are not new. The process has been going on for well over a decade, fueled by reports from thousands of rightsholders. This year, however, one company stood out far beyond the rest in a way we’ve never witnessed before.

A few days ago, Link-Busters flagged its two billionth pirate URL to Google.

This comes less than half a year after it reached the one billion milestone, and currently it’s sending takedowns for more than 250 million URLs per month.

At this rate, it is no surprise that Link-Busters is the most prolific takedown sender at Google. In fact, it’s good for well over half of all takedown requests the search engine received since this summer. That’s something we’ve never seen before.

Publishers Fight Piracy

Link-Busters’ record-breaking numbers reveal that its notices are almost exclusively sent on behalf of publishing companies. The rise of shadow libraries, combined with the threat of AI scraping, has made these companies very active on the anti-piracy front.

Link-Busters clients (selection)
 

Websites such as Z-Library and Anna’s Archive allow the public to download free books. These books can also be used for AI training. To prevent this, publishers try to make these sites unfindable in search results.

Looking at Link-Busters’ most-targeted domains, we see three Anna’s Archive domains on top, followed by a series of localized Z-Library domains. These six domains are already good for over 340 million reported URLs.

Link-Busters Top Domains and Top Rightsholders
 

The table also shows the top rightsholders working with the anti-piracy company. These are all publishing companies, with Penguin Random House and HarperCollins clearly standing out, with a billion takedowns combined. Other popular request senders include Taylor & Francis, Simon and Schuster, and Hachette.

‘Better Than All The Rest’

It’s clear that Link-Busters is more ‘active’ than most competing takedown outfits, but this conclusion deserves some nuance. For one, many of the reported domains are mirrors, which show the same pirated books and articles duplicated across different URLs.

Additionally, shadow libraries generally have a larger amount of content indexed than pirate sites specializing in video content. That’s simply because there are more titles available.

However, various online testimonials suggest that publishing companies are quite satisfied with Link-Busters’ service.

“Benchmarked against the competition, Link-Busters were better at finding infringements, responded faster and did not suffer from ‘false positives’,” Penguin Random House notes.

Taylor & Francis, meanwhile, notices that Link-Busters helped to process “at least 400% more removals than previous years.”

Shadow Libraries Expand

It’s clear that Link-Busters is making an impact and that many publishers are content. While the billions of takedowns prevented some people from ending up at pirate sites, it didn’t stop them from operating.

Despite pressure from a U.S. criminal prosecution, Z-Library remains online. The site has just announced that it will close the book on a rather successful year. With over 36 million user profiles and 250 million daily reading recommendations, it continues to serve a massive audience.

Interestingly, the site continues to grow its presence off the web as well. Z-Library closes the year with 876,477 users of its desktop application, which more than doubled in a year.

Anna’s Archive, meanwhile, continued to grow as well. After ending last year with 25 million indexed books and 99 million academic papers, it now has access to more than 36 million books and over 106 million papers.

All in all, it’s safe to say that Link-Busters has a lot more link busting to do in the new year. At the current rate, it will send a few billion DMCA takedown requests to Google in 2025.

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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 three newcomers on the list. “Gladiator II” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 30 are:

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

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2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of November): 5,298 news posts

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 The global recording industry portrays itself as a dynamic and successful business that’s either fighting an existential crisis right now, or sounding the alarm for the next one looming on the horizon.

Considering the upheaval caused by Napster, its predecessors, and the demise of the lucrative album format, concerns of another technological surprise creating havoc aren’t entirely unreasonable.

Yet to a background of recovery and then impressive year-on-year growth since 2014, imagery of an industry teetering on the brink wouldn’t be the easiest sell.

Credit: IFPI Global Music Report 2024

IFPI certainly hasn’t forgotten about piracy but, compared to its video industry counterparts, the last two or three years have been relatively quiet. Looking towards the horizon, maybe it’s just the calm before the storm.

The current number one piracy threat according to IFPI is stream-ripping; on the horizon, abusive use of generative AI. No need for formal introductions, IFPI says they know each other already.

Piracy Wars: ‘Abusive’ Use of AI

The seminar Digital Music Piracy: New Trends and Practical Approaches took place before the holidays in Bulgaria. Organized by the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), in partnership with IFPI and the Cybercrime Directorate at the Directorate General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, discussion centered on the latest trends in digital investigation and evidence collection methods.

Those in attendance included Catherine Lloyd, senior legal advisor to IFPI. In a subsequent interview with BTA.bg, Lloyd cited abusive use of AI as a significant threat to the industry.

“Record labels and artists have been using AI for years as a tool to enhance the creative process and collaborate on unique and cutting-edge projects. When AI is used responsibly to enhance human artistry, it can bring incredible creative possibilities,” Lloyd said.

“However, the emergence of generative AI presents a new and rapidly evolving challenge. If generative AI developers can use music without permission in their models to create clones or products that compete directly with the original works, then this creates a fundamental problem for the music ecosystem and threatens its long-term sustainability.”

Voicing Concerns

Another major concern for IFPI is the rapid rise of voice cloning. In 2023, IFPI added ‘AI Vocal Cloning’ as a new category in its annual overview of ‘notorious’ piracy markets submitted to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

The focus was on Voicify.ai, an AI-powered service that enables users to create new versions of existing songs on YouTube accompanied by the cloned voices of stars including Bruno Mars, Eminem, and Taylor Swift. The USTR declined to include the service in its final report and in February 2024, affiliated UK music industry group BPI threatened the service – now renamed ‘Jammable’ – with legal action.

There has been no further news on that front and the site remains operational. In November, Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance forced ElevenLabs to remove a voice clone of David Bateson. The British/Danish actor appears in the game Hitman as the voice of Agent 47 who, somewhat ironically, is a clone himself.

Stream-Ripping and Generative AI

The roller-coaster of current and emerging piracy threats is nothing new for IFPI. As downloading of ‘physical’ MP3-based tracks from peer-to-peer networks finally began to subside, in no small part assisted by the rise of legal streaming platforms like Spotify, a new foe had already emerged.

The battle was long, complicated, and dragged on for years and years, but eventually YouTube and the music industry found common ground. Today, YouTube payments worth billions of dollars every year help to smooth things over.

Yet as predictably as night follows day, the world’s largest open repository of publicly accessible copyrighted music on YouTube, now acts as the main source of fuel for stream-ripping aficionados of all kinds.

“In addition to AI, stream-ripping sites remain a significant threat to piracy in the music industry and have become the most common way to illegally download music. The music industry has been fighting stream-ripping sites through legal action, including blocking access to such sites,” IFPI’s senior legal counsel explained.

ISP Blocking and Shunning a Fair Fight

Dozens of stream-ripping platforms are currently blocked by ISPs all around the world. Many use the open source ripping software youtube-dl to easily download music from YouTube. The platform has only minimal anti-piracy protection or, according to some, effectively no protection at all.

As far as we know the developers of youtube-dl have faced no legal action. The same holds true for YouTube, which may be as leaky as a sieve, but a multi-billion-dollar sieve nonetheless. There has been no legal action against GitHub either, the Microsoft owned developer platform where youtube-dl remains available for download, even today. Instead, IFPI sued German web-hosting company Uberspace from where youtube-dl was available for download.

In November, the Hamburg Court of Appeal ruled against youtube-dl’s former hosting provider, holding it liable for supposed violations of YouTube’s copyright protection measures, despite YouTube playing no part in the case.

“The software in question has enabled countless streaming ripping services to steal music from legitimate, licensed platforms and to take away revenue from artists and rights holders,” Lloyd added, noting that the stream-ripping threat of today is already complicit in the new AI threat looming on the horizon.

“Piracy via stream-ripping sites is a problem – not only for individual users who download content to their devices, but also in the context of AI, as these services are likely used to obtain training data and create cover versions.”

Who Controls The Market? Those Who Understand Music

It’s not difficult to see why IFPI is concerned. Restricting access or providing licenses to use music as training data may be its only chance of preventing unprecedented competition from which it earns no revenue, in a market where its members currently account for the majority of all business.

Interestingly, the arrival of significant competition can often have a depressant effect on pricing, as market participants jostle for market share. Yet even in the unlikely event that AI creations are able to compete with humans in a musical sense, a reminder; in today’s market consumers effectively pay the same regardless of whether a track is a world-class smash hit or an affront to the discount bins.

So with no competition on price, the fight against a tsunami of AI-generated music will boil down to quality, originality, and the ability to be seen and heard above more background noise than ever before. When the floodgates eventually open, music fans will be heard crying out for something they may have taken for granted but now need more than ever before: human curation.

Meet the new boss…

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 As one of the oldest sports live-streaming portals, Rojadirecta has been thorn in the side of sports organizations for well over a decade.

The linking site, operated by a Spanish company Puerto 80 Projects and its owner Igor Seoane, initially had a good track record when it came to legal battles.

Rojadirecta famously had its domain name returned after it was seized by the US Government years ago. In addition, the site successfully fought off copyright holders in court.

Rojadirecta tried to achieve an equally positive result when it challenged a Danish site blocking order. But that didn’t go as planned.

Rojadirecta Challenges Danish Site Blocking

In 2009, anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, in conjunction with LaLiga, obtained a site-blocking injunction against Rojadirecta in Denmark. While the site wasn’t sued directly, it did intervene in the case, which initially failed. The court ordered ISP Telenor to block access to the sports streaming site.

Rojadirecta didn’t give up easily and appealed the interim decision. The streaming site pointed out that it offered links to legally available streams. In addition, it stressed that users were required to tick a box, indicating that submitted streams were not infringing any copyrights.

The Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s preliminary ruling in 2020. According to the ruling, it is likely that Rojadirecta violates the rights of the Spanish football league. Citing jurisprudence from the European Court of Justice, including the Filmspeler case, site blocking is therefore warranted.

Are Live-Streams Copyrighted?

With the blocking measures firmly in place, the case was eventually heard on its merits. This wasn’t a straightforward matter, as copyright protection for live sports broadcasts is an area of copyright law that has not been extensively tested in court.

In 2022, the Frederiksberg court confirmed that LaLiga indeed holds copyright over the production and recording of the live football matches. In addition, the court confirmed that Rojadirecta infringed these copyrights.

By recognizing live sports broadcasts as copyrighted works in the first case of this kind in Europe, the court established that site blocking can be used as a legal tool to combat live sports piracy.

Rojadirecta also appealed this decision, but the company eventually failed to show up in court. Without a defense, the Eastern High Court therefore dismissed the appeal earlier this month, making the decision final.

Landmark Case

To outsiders, copyright eligibility for live sports may seem like a technicality. However, for rightsholders this was a vital decision, which effectively determined the effectiveness of their anti-piracy arsenal going forward. Understandably, they are pleased with the outcome.

Commenting on the outcome, Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund stresses that this is a great result. Not just for LaLiga, but also for other rightsholders of live sports streaming events.

“With a final verdict in the case, we have the court’s word that rights to show football are subject to copyright and can therefore be protected,” Fredenslund says.

“We therefore look forward to using the decision as a starting point to achieve better protection of live content in Denmark and also hope that the case can pave the way for similar initiatives in other European countries,” she adds.

Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga, hopes that this decision will resonate across other European countries. He encourages legislators, judges, and institutions to step up their efforts to protect rightsholders from live-streaming piracy.

“By adapting regulatory frameworks and fostering international alliances, we can ensure that the rights of all stakeholders in the sports ecosystem are respected and protected,” Tebas says.

TorrentFreak reached out to Rojadirecta’s operator to hear his side of the story. Seoane did not immediately respond.

This has been a rough month for the sports live-stream linking site on multiple fronts. After Spain’s Supreme Court previously held Seoane and his company liable for copyright infringement, a Spanish court ruled that they have to pay Mediapro 31.6 million euros in damages.

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 In the post-Napster, pre-YouTube world of 2004, a peculiar TV miniseries began to circulate online.

The main character in The Scene went by the nickname Drosan. He was a member of a piracy release group called CPX and soon found himself up to his neck in drama after selling leaked movies to contacts in Asia.

Blurred Lines: Fiction & Fact Combine

While entertained and intrigued by the storyline, the show’s target pirate audience became more suspicious with every passing episode. Conspiracy theories were shared back and forth, gaining traction thanks to the discovery of on-screen ‘evidence’ and perceived hints and clues.

Were The Scene’s video files acting as bait to identify pirates in the now-booming BitTorrent community? Was the storyline about to coincide with real world events, a major bust perhaps, with viewers somehow implicated in a forthcoming crackdown?

Perhaps more urgently, were some pirate sites actually honeypots set up by the feds and, if so, which ones were safe? In that paranoia-soaked, mostly VPN-less era, the honeypot theory made perfect sense. Two decades later, could the same hold true?

Bogus Pirate Portals

After constantly hearing about pirate IPTV providers in the media, it’s inevitable that some people will want to try things out for themselves. For those with no experience, search engine results are unpredictable at best and there’s always a risk of spending money and getting nothing in return.

Launched last year in the UK, the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign showed how regular people blindly handed over their names, addresses, and credit card details, for a streaming service that didn’t even exist. Yet, according to a Repubblica report published on Sunday, potential IPTV subscription buyers in Italy face something much worse.

“If you’re thinking of subscribing to a pirate site, if you dream of watching football matches, dramas, films, and TV shows for just a handful of euros a year, take into account that not everything will end smoothly,” the report begins.

“For a year, law enforcement has deployed a weapon capable of disrupting the plans of [pirate IPTV] customers. The pirate site that asks you to share your name and surname, including your personal credit card, could actually be the subject of investigators.”

Since the rest of what promises to be a big story sits behind a subscription paywall, once again it’s time to hand over credit card details to online strangers and then hope for the best.

Completely Indistinguishable Fakes

Experienced IPTV subscribers report that a good quality pirate service can be mistaken for the real thing. The article claims that bogus pirate IPTV portals operated by law enforcement are so perfect, they’re “completely indistinguishable” from real pirate sites. So with the initial deception a success, what now?

“For a year now, there have been decoy sites (created by law enforcement) on the Internet that have a specific goal: to attract ordinary users by acquiring proof of their illegitimate conduct,” the report notes.

“In the hands of investigators, there are thus hundreds of names of Italians who have tried to enjoy Serie A or the best fiction, but without subscribing legally to DAZN, Sky, Infinity.”

The report strongly implies that these sites exist to lure in unsuspecting customers, gather evidence of wrongdoing, then use self-provided names and addresses to issue fines. It doesn’t state that directly but most reasonable readers seem likely to draw that conclusion.

“The initiative by law enforcement is part of a specific strategy that is very popular with both DAZN and Serie A,” the piece continues, adding: “[T]hey are calling for fines – from 500 to 5,000 euros – for ordinary people who do not pay a regular subscription.”

Uphold The Law

The revelation that those employed to uphold the law are using deception to encourage new offenses, sounds like a pretty big story. A 2022 analysis (pdf) of so-called sting operations and entrapment defenses in Italy, Europe, and the United States, notes the following:

“Art. 55 of the Italian code of criminal procedure provides that the Judicial Police has the duty to ‘prevent crimes from being carried to further consequences, search for the perpetrators, carry out the necessary acts to secure evidence and collect whatever else may be useful under the law.’

“For this reason, without reform, there is no room in Art. 55 c.p.p. to include ‘inciting to committing a crime’ among public officials’ functions, as, under Italian law, a duty to prevent further consequences stands, and it forbids any kind of instigation conduct.”

More fundamentally, perhaps, is whether a crime has been committed at all. In two cases handled by different judges this year, 23 pirate IPTV subscribers were acquitted due to there being no evidence of a crime. The general principle that criminal law should not be invoked when another branch of law can be used to solve an issue was applied here; all defendants received small administrative fines of 150 euros instead.

No Source Stated or Implied

In summary, we have an unsourced claim that bogus pirate IPTV portals, designed to deceive “ordinary people” (the term is used twice in the article), have been operated by law enforcement in Italy for the last year. The alleged purpose is to gather evidence in support of an administrative offense punishable by a 150 euro fine, if indeed any offenses were even committed by the hundreds of people reportedly identified.

On the balance of probabilities, the scenario as portrayed seems unlikely at best. If the storyline had appeared in The Scene back in 2004, the conspiracy theorists may have struggled with the lack of substance, but that alone rules nothing out.

Incidentally, the creators of The Scene denied having an agenda; the idea that the show was “some kind of anti-piracy propaganda is truly silly,” director Mitchell Reichgut later said. Some still had their suspicions and not entirely without cause.

It later transpired that one of the people behind the show was Bruce Forest, a long-time member of the secretive piracy community known as The Scene, from where the show obtained its name. Forest, the self-styled Prince of Darknet, later admitted that for much of the time he’d also been working undercover for the entertainment industry.

“I guess you can call me a true double agent,” he said. “I lead a very comfortable double life.”

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 At the end of every year, we take a look at the most-downloaded TV shows among torrenting pirates.

For several years in a row, the list was headed by Game of Thrones, but that reign came to an after the final season.

In the years that followed, Disney+ releases stepped in to fill the void, with ‘Wandavision’ and ‘The Mandalorian’ taking wins in 2020 and 2021 respectively. This takeover didn’t last very long, however, as HBO Max’s ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel ‘House of the Dragon’ snatched the title in 2022.

With no dragon-themed series in the mix, HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama ‘The Last of Us’ snatched the title last year. That change didn’t last, however, as the Dragons came out on top again this year.

While ‘House of the Dragon’ faced stiff competition from ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ two years ago, it easily secured the top spot this year. Surprisingly, Amazon’s Tolkien-inspired series barely cracked the top 10.

Amazon did get an entry in the top three with The Boys in second place, followed by Disney’s historical drama series Shōgun.

Interestingly, all other entries in the top 10, including Netflix’s massively popular animated series Arcane, come from major streaming platforms. This marks a shift from last year when no Netflix shows made the list.

Last year, we theorized that, as the leading streaming service, Netflix was less susceptible to ‘complementary’ piracy than its competitors. That argument may still hold, but Netflix certainly isn’t immune to it.

In closing, we should note that the chart is based on BitTorrent traffic, which represents a small portion of the piracy landscape. Most people use streaming sites and services nowadays, which generally do not report viewing stats.

—

Below we have compiled a list of the most-torrented TV shows worldwide released in 2024 (per episode). The ranking is estimated based on sample data from several sources, including I Know. Anime series are not included.

The full list of all ‘most pirated’ shows is as follows:

– 2024: House of the Dragon
– 2023: The Last of Us
– 2022: House of The Dragon
– 2021: Wandavision
– 2020: The Mandalorian
– 2019: Game of Thrones
– 2018: The Walking Dead
– 2017: Game of Thrones
– 2016: Game of Thrones
– 2015: Game of Thrones
– 2014: Game of Thrones
– 2013: Game of Thrones
– 2012: Game of Thrones
– 2011: Dexter
– 2010: Lost
– 2009: Heroes
– 2008: Lost
– 2007: Heroes

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Rightsholders see Italy’s elaborate ‘Piracy Shield‘ system as the future of anti-piracy efforts.

The broad blocking powers it provides certainly made an impact this year but not all news was positive.

Multiple reports of overblocking included mishaps where the anti-piracy system blocked access to Google Drive and other legitimate sites and services. An incident just after launch saw a Cloudflare IP-address blocked which rendered many legitimate websites inaccessible.

Cloudflare’s Piracy Shield Responsibilities

Cloudflare wasn’t only targeted inadvertently. Earlier this year, football league Serie A filed a complaint against the company at the Court of Milan, an attempt to compel Cloudflare’s participation in the novel anti-piracy system.

Cloudflare was able to fend off this approach after the court concluded that it lacked authority to compel Cloudflare to join the Piracy Shield program. Serie A’s subsequent appeal turned things around, however.

On appeal, the Court of Milan concluded that Cloudflare’s services are instrumental in enabling the illegal streaming of football matches, since they allow users to bypass the Piracy Shield blocks imposed by AGCOM.

The court sees this as a “causal contribution” to copyright infringement, which is sufficient to establish legal responsibility and compel Cloudflare to take action.

“Both Cloudflare’s causal contribution to the reported offenses through its services, and its refusal to prevent the violations despite the warning issued by the rightsholders, are established,” the Court of Milan writes (loosely translated).

All Cloudflare Services

The Court of Milan’s decision prohibits Cloudflare from resolving domain names and routing internet traffic to IP addresses of all services present on the “Piracy Shield” system. This also applies to future domains and aliases used by these pirate services.

The order applies to Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN), DNS services, and reverse proxy services. The order also mentions Cloudflare’s free VPN among the targets, likely referring to the WARP service.

If any of the targeted pirate streaming providers use Cloudflare’s services to infringe on Serie A’s copyrights, the company Cloudflare must stop providing CDN, authoritative DNS, and reverse proxy services to these customers.

(Note: This is an Italian court order and Cloudflare previously used geotargeting to block sites only in Italy. It may respond similarly here, but terminating customer accounts only in Italy might be more complicated. )

Finally, the order further includes a data disclosure component, under which Cloudflare must identify customers who use Cloudflare’s services to offer pirated streams. This should help Serie A to track down those responsible.

The data disclosure section also covers information related to the ‘VPN’ and alternative public DNS services, where these relate to the IPTV platforms identified in the case. That covers traffic volume and connection logs, including IP-addresses and timestamps.

In theory, that could also cover data on people who accessed these services using Cloudflare’s VPN and DNS resolver.

‘Crucial Ruling’

Law firms Studio Previti and SPTech Legal, who represented Serie A and several intervening parties, are pleased with the outcome. In a press release, they state that the order highlights Cloudflare’s responsibility as a third-party intermediary and access provider.

“This decision represents a crucial step in the battle against digital piracy,” Lawyer Lorenzo Pinci writes in a detailed overview of the order.

“Not only because it constitutes the first interpretative ruling of Law 93/2023 and the functioning of the ‘Piracy Shield’ platform, but also because it established Cloudflare’s role as an intermediary and provider of network access services utilized to facilitate piracy.”

Cloudflare did not respond to our request for comment at the time of publication, but it’s clear that the order is a massive setback for the company, which sees itself mostly as a passive intermediary.

The court ordered Cloudflare to cover the costs of the proceeding and if it doesn’t implement the blocking requirements in time, an additional fine of €10,000 per day will apply.

—

A copy of the order, as issued by the Court of Milan, is available here (pdf, 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 two newcomers on the list. “Venom: The Last Dance” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 23 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  

The legal saga of News-Service Europe (NSE) and anti-piracy group BREIN has taken another dramatic turn.

Once a titan in the Usenet world, NSE was forced to shut down in 2011 after BREIN took legal action on behalf of the movie and music industries.

In its initial verdict, the Court of Amsterdam concluded that NSE willingly facilitated online piracy through its services. As a result, the company was ordered to remove all copyrighted content and filter future posts for possible copyright infringements.

According to the Usenet provider, this filtering requirement would’ve been too costly to implement so it shut down its service but appealed the case.

NSE Wins Appeal

After several more years of litigation, the Amsterdam appeals court ruled that NSE wasn’t liable for users’ pirating activities after all, but NSE was required to offer a responsive and effective notice and takedown procedure, possibly with additional measures.

Unhappy with the outcome, BREIN decided to take the matter to the Dutch Supreme Court. While NSE was no longer a threat, the case could prove crucial for many other Usenet providers.

Last year, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Usenet provider shouldn’t be held liable for pirating users. The fact that NSE had a decent takedown procedure and no apparent knowledge of infringement, weighed in its favor.

The Court also confirmed that NSE didn’t curate any content, nor did it specifically promote copyright infringement.

NSE Sues BREIN for Millions in Damages

NSE’s victory was bittersweet; its operation had long been shut down due to BREIN’s legal pressure. Now, after years of legal battles and a final vindication, NSE is back in court once again.

In a lawsuit filed today, NSE demands damages from BREIN that could potentially reach millions of euros.

According to NSE, BREIN’s lawsuit essentially forced the service to shut down, even though the case was appealed. As a result, the entire team lost their jobs and the company’s owners faced expensive legal bills.

Although the court’s requirements led to the shutdown, NSE sees BREIN as the main instigator, because the anti-piracy group didn’t want to wait for the appeal to play out.

“BREIN deliberately made it impossible for us to continue,” NSE co-founder and former CEO Patrick Schreurs says. “BREIN decided not to wait for the appeal and to force us to comply with the verdict immediately. That was completely unnecessary. We have always found that incomprehensible.”

NSE co-founder Wierd Bonthuis, who previously served as CFO, notes that the Supreme Court confirmed that BREIN was wrong. To fully set the record straight, the Usenet provider now seeks full compensation.

“The confirmation of the highest Dutch court is a great first step towards complete justice. This will happen if BREIN fully compensates us for the damage that its stubbornness has caused,” Bonthuis says.

“We look forward to the verdict in the case filed today with great confidence,” he adds.

BREIN Sheds a Different Light on the Case

BREIN has not yet seen the summons, but in an initial response it believes that NSE was never able to simply restart its original service. Instead, it should have taken measures against the enormous amount of unauthorized content on its servers.

The parties never finalized discussions on what an effective takedown policy would entail. Instead of engaging in court-mandated negotiations, BREIN director Bastiaan van Ramshorst says that NSE decided to shut down its service.

“BREIN awaits the summons in confidence. The fact remains that all that copyright-protected content, including films, TV series, books, games and software, made it attractive for consumers to take out a subscription with a commercial Usenet provider.

“The loss of profit by not being able to offer illegally offered protected content of others is of course no basis for a lawsuit,” Van Ramshorst adds.

All in all it’s clear that, after more than 15 years, the newly filed lawsuit adds yet another chapter to what is already one of the longest running piracy lawsuits in history.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Two years after its debut in 2005, Rojadirecta faced legal action in Spain for providing links to unlicensed sports streams. Rojadirecta was adamant that under existing law the site operated legally and steadfastly refused to shut down.

In 2009, that position was endorsed by a district court and then upheld by a provincial court after rightsholders filed an appeal.

Despite the losing streak, rightsholders subsequently convinced the Department of Homeland Security to seize two of Rojadirecta’s domain names; under mounting legal pressure, DHS eventually gave them back. A shifting legal landscape and unwavering rightsholder pressure ensured that successive wins like these would soon become a thing of the past.

Mediapro Delivers a Significant Blow

In 2016, Puerto 80 Projects SL – the Spanish company behind Rojadirecta – was found liable for violating the intellectual property rights of broadcaster Mediapro. Rojadirecta’s subsequent appeal failed in 2018, effectively ending the site’s ability to service any further visitors from Spain.

Despite landing a significant win, Mediapro wasn’t entirely happy with the outcome. The Commercial Court of A Coruña ruled that liability for Rojadirecta’s infringement lay with Puerto 80 Projects SL, a company run by Igor Seoane, the man who had operated Rojadirecta from the very beginning. With piracy battles becoming ever more bitter, Mediapro wanted to see Seoane personally on the hook.

Supreme Court Confirms Joint Liability

In 2022, Mediapro’s persistence paid off. Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that Puerto 80 Projects SL, and company owner/Rojadirecta operator Igor Seoane, could be held jointly liable.

Commercial Court No. 2 of A Coruña has now determined the amount of compensation to be paid to Mediapro, for infringement carried out a decade ago during the 2014/2015 football season.

With the commercial entity and its owner confirmed liable, on Friday the Court ordered Puerto 80 and owner Seoane to pay Mediapro 31.6 million euros (US$33m), with Puerto 80 and Seoane jointly liable for 15.6 million euros (US$16.3m) of the total award.

Believed to be the most significant award ever handed down in a Spanish case of its kind, the figure is said to represent how much it would’ve cost to obtain a license to show the content legally.

Mediapro Welcomes Decision

Rojadirecta has been facilitating access to unlicensed content in Spain for almost 20 years, primarily through links that allow users to watch live sports content that’s ordinarily available on pay TV platforms in exchange for a fee.

On the consumer side, Rojadirecta has always been available for free, something that undoubtedly plays a significant part in its enduring popularity even today. It’s alleged that Puerto 80’s business model has generated millions of euros from both regular advertising and affiliate commissions earned by diverting visitors to sports betting websites.

Criminal Prosecution For Same Conduct

In parallel, Puerto 80 and Igor Seoane are also fighting a criminal prosecution pursued by Mediapro and LaLiga. The companies claim that Seoane continues to unlawfully benefit from ongoing infringement by providing access to illegal streams via Rojadirecta.

The matter is still in its early stages but with a demand for a four-year prison sentence, the prosecutor clearly means business. Mediapro and LaLiga are demanding a six-year prison sentence, alleging that Rojadirecta continues to operate illegally outside Spain.

Puerto 80 and its owner should have deposited a bond of 4.15 million euros to cover future liabilities, the prosecutor said, noting the ‘special economic significance’ of the profits and damages alleged in the case.

Citing expert reports from 2022, ElMundo reports that in 2022, just one of the company’s accounts reportedly showed income of more than 11 million euros.

Rojadirecta Was Created to Solve a Problem

According to an ABC report (paywall), a then 21-year-old Seoane was inspired to launch Rojadirecta one afternoon; he wanted to watch his team (Barca) play but didn’t really feel like going to the bar where pay-per-view events are often shown. “There has to be another way to do it,” he thought.

Two decades later, ABC notes that Seoane – who speaks English, Portuguese, and Galician fluently, and is able to “get by” in French and Italian – is rarely seen in public, except during various Rojadirecta-related trials he has to attend.

“In some of them he has appeared disguised, with a showy curly wig and glasses. Thus, he has been described as the ‘Galician without a face’, an anonymity that gave rise to various myths about his place of residence, among some Internet users who considered him a kind of ‘Robin Hood’, capable of bringing football back to its fans.”

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Library Genesis (LibGen) is one of the oldest shadow libraries on the Internet, offering free access to millions of books and academic papers for which people would otherwise have to pay.

The site’s origins reportedly trace back to the Soviet Union’s underground publishing culture ‘samizdat,’ which was used to bypass state censorship in the last century.

LibGen launched around 2008 as a digital version of the same concept. In addition to bypassing ‘local’ censorship, it’s widely used to circumvent the paywalls of major international publishing companies, serving as a popular ‘pirate’ site for (text)books and academic works.

Rightsholders have attempted to take the site offline several times over the years, both through direct lawsuits and site blocking injunctions. While the site hasn’t thrown in the towel just yet, the site today is a shadow of its former glory.

Domain Name Seizures and Suspensions

In recent weeks, several LibGen domain names were taken offline. Some simply stopped resolving, while others were handed over to publishers and replaced by a notice explaining that the domains were seized as part of legal action.

For example, library.lol now shows the notice below. The same applies to libgen.fun, libgen.space, and booksdl.org.

“This website has been shut down and its domain name turned over to educational publishers by court order.”

Notice on Library.lol and other seized domains
 

Other domains are inaccessible because they were deactivated, or suspended by domain registries or registrars. This includes LibGen.rs, which previously served as one of the site’s main domains.

These seizures don’t come as a complete surprise. In September, a New York federal court ordered the operators of LibGen to pay $30 million in copyright infringement damages. This order came with an injunction, urging domain name services to hand over the site’s domain names.

The publishers, including Cengage, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Education, might have a hard time recouping the damages. However, the domain name seizures will certainly have an impact. This will be lasting too, as the injunction also targets all ‘future’ domains.

New Blocking Order in Germany

The U.S. court order is effective, but not all registrars and registries appear to have taken action, at least not yet. The popular libgen.li domain remains accessible, but the publishers are also taking action to address this and other remaining domains.

This week, Germany’s “Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet” (CUII) issued a new blocking order targeting LibGen. The order was requested by publishers whose names remain redacted. The domain names have not been published either, but they likely include the main ones.

According to data gathered by the third-party transparency portal CUIIListe, ISPs have started blocking Libgen.li, libgen.gs, and libgen.is, as well as the deactivated libgen.rs domain.

Blocked domains
 

CUII’s blocking order follows a familiar format. Under a voluntary agreement between rightsholders and ISPs, the clearing body carefully reviews whether a target site is indeed structurally infringing. That was the case here.

“The request for a recommendation to block the LIBGEN website is justified. The website is a structurally copyright infringing website. There is a clear copyright violation. The blocking is reasonable and proportionate,” CUII writes.

LibGen isn’t the first shadow library to be blocked in Germany. Earlier this year, Sci-Hub was blocked using the same procedure. The full German blocklist now contains 24 pirate sites.

What’s Next?

Pirate sites are ultimately expected to encounter these types of issues and many respond by registering new domain names. That said, LibGen’s owners have been rather quiet lately.

The lack of communication doesn’t come as a complete surprise. At the beginning of the year, the site already appeared to have some internal struggles, as the person in charge of the site’s coding had been ‘inactive’ for some time.

As far as we know, the site isn’t actively managed as it once was. The homepage still promotes a domain name that is no longer active, for example. Whether the site will eventually break down completely is unknown, but the publishers will do everything they can to frustrate its operation.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 As a TV broadcaster, Sky has an exceptional view of the legal subscription TV market and how the illegal IPTV market encroaches on that.

As an ISP that supplies 20% of the market, Sky’s view of its own customers using Sky Broadband to pirate Sky’s pay TV content is a persistent irritant that comes with the territory.

Sky’s involvement in ISP blocking orders has traditionally meant complying with injunctions obtained by groups including the MPA and RIAA. Along with its main ISP rivals including market leader BT (28%), roughly on-par competitor Virgin Media (20%), and TalkTalk (12.5%), over the years Sky has blocked thousands of domains to protect content owned by others.

Sky Tests Blocking to Protect Its Own Content

In the summer of 2023, Sky obtained a blocking injunction at the High Court to protect content it broadcasts on its own TV channels. Sky’s targets included BunnyStream, Enigma Streams, GenIPTV, CatIPTV, GoTVMix, and IPTVMain, none of which warmed to the idea of being blocked. Sky’s blocking measures faced pirate countermeasures, most visibly through the use of endless subdomains generated at will, which Sky also went on to block on an unprecedented scale, with a predictable response each time.

On November 12, 2024, Sky obtained an extension to its original order, the second since the summer of 2023. With BT, EE, Plusnet, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media listed once again, there was no change among the respondents. The list of targets, which includes static promotional/sales websites and underlying pirate IPTV services, reads as follows:

BunnyStream; CatIPTV; EnigmaStreams; GenIPTV; GoTVMix; IPTVMAIN; FastIP.tv; IP-TV.uk; IPTV-King.co.uk; IPTVSubscribe.uk; IPTV-UK.digital; KemoIPTV.tv; UKChannels.co.uk; UKIPTVMedia.co; TheSkyIPTV.shop; and Calmahub.live

All of Sky’s initial targets appear to have survived unprecedented levels of ISP blocking so are now appearing once again. Why that’s the case isn’t mentioned in the High Court order, and the same applies to other confidential aspects of the case to prevent circumvention. Fortunately, not everything is shrouded in darkness.

Dynamic and Static Blocking

The order allows Sky to conduct Dynamic Blocking of IP addresses associated with the IPTV platforms’ servers. Once Sky becomes aware of a server it needs to block, IP address information can be sent to the respondent ISPs for blocking in real-time.

Blocking takes place during specific Blocking Windows based on detection of unauthorized broadcasts of Sky Channels (table below), or various conditions listed in a confidential schedule.

The IP addresses are unblocked at the conclusion of each Blocking Window, the durations of which are confidential.

Non-Exclusive List of ‘Trigger’ Channels

Under the order, Static Blocking of URLs and Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) associated with the IPTV services’ websites is permanent.

Sky is authorized to detect and instantly notify the ISPs of IP addresses for Dynamic Blocking and URLs/FQDNs for Static Blocking if certain conditions are met. They include use of an IP address to broadcast public linear audiovisual footage of any Sky Channel during an unspecified Monitoring Period, or use that meets one or more detection conditions specified in a confidential schedule.

The order allows Sky to notify the ISPs of any URL or FQDN for Static Blocking if its “sole or predominant purpose is to enable or facilitate access to a Target Website.” Due to the confidentiality aspects of this and previous orders, specific examples aren’t provided.

However, this could be a measure to limit the usefulness of generating thousands of new subdomains to circumvent blocking. Previously the IPTV providers appeared to utilize wildcard certificates to generate FQDNs such as those shown below.

It may have been the case that if infringing activity only ever took place on subdomains, only those subdomains could be legally blocked. With an infinite supply of subdomains available at zero cost, generating more subdomains wasn’t a problem.

Here, however, a main domain would qualify as having the “sole or predominant purpose” of facilitating access to a pirate service. That means domains and subdomains could be blocked permanently, forcing the purchase of a whole new domain that when deployed would ultimately fare no better.

IP Blocking, URL Blocking, DNS Blocking, Deep Packet Inspection

Each ISP is required to implement blocking based on the type requested and the availability of existing specialist tools.

British Telecommunications (BT)

The section of the order detailing how blocking should be carried out is more complicated than one might expect, largely due to the unique position of British Telecommunications Plc and companies operating within the BT Group. These include the ISP most people know as BT, telecoms brand EE, and the ISP Plusnet, both of which are listed as separate respondents in the blocking order.

BT Group subsidiary Openreach Limited operates the Openreach digital network through which the ISP BT supplies internet connectivity to customers. The Openreach network is also used by over 680 other companies selling broadband and telecoms services, including Plusnet and EE. The blocking order lacks clarity, but it appears that BT’s residential-type customers are handled using BT’s Cleanfeed filtering/blocking system, while ‘wholesale’ customers have access to a lesser-known BT blocking/filtering system called RedCard.

When Dynamic Blocking is required by the order, ISP BT must block by IP address. Customers to which the RedCard system applies must also block by IP address. When applying Static Blocking, BT must apply Cleanfeed for customers using its fixed-line and mobile networks, using technical means including;

● IP address blocking and IP address re-routing at the core network level
● Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) based blocking utilizing at least summary analysis
● DNS blocking for customers using BT’s own DNS servers.

EE Limited

When applying Dynamic Blocking, EE must use IP address blocking for customers on their fixed line network (EE Home line) and mobile network, including hosted Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). This applies to customers using RedCard or any equivalent system EE may choose to deploy.

For Static Blocking, EE must use Cleanfeed for fixed line and mobile network customers (including MVNOs). Technical means include;

● IP address blocking and IP address re-routing for every address reported by Sky
● Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) based blocking utilizing at least summary analysis
● DNS blocking for customers using EE’s own DNS servers.

Plusnet

When applying Dynamic Blocking, Plusnet must use IP address blocking for customers to which RedCard applies.

When applying Static Blocking for customers to which Cleanfeed applies, the technical means include:

● IP address blocking and IP address re-routing for every address reported by Sky
● Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) based blocking utilizing at least summary analysis
● DNS blocking for customers using Plusnet’s own DNS servers.

TalkTalk

The instructions for TalkTalk make no references to static or dynamic blocking. The order instead mentions StreamShield, a blocking/filtering system operated by TalkTalk since ~2006. When StreamShield is applied the technical means is URL blocking for each and every URL notified by Sky. When ‘blackholing’ is applied, the technical means is IP address blocking for each IP address notified by Sky.

TalkTalk appears to be the only ISP where blocking measures are limited by volume. For all UK blocking orders that require TalkTalk to implement blocking, a limit of 10,000 simultaneous IP addresses applies.

Virgin Media, Sky, Google

Instructions for Virgin Media do not refer to static or dynamic blocking. The order instead mentions Web Blocker 3, a blocking/filtering system operated by Virgin. When Web Blocker 3 or blackholing is applied, the technical means is IP address blocking.

Sky is the applicant in this process, not a respondent, but appears to have volunteered for blocking duties on its own behalf. Sky will use its own Hawkeye system to carry out IP address blocking.

Google also receives no mention in the court order but TorrentFreak can confirm that the company is voluntarily removing IPTV providers’ domains from search results. That has already had the effect of ‘promoting’ sites publishing reviews of the IPTV providers’ services into the top slots, and will probably lead to scammers exploiting the vacuum to rip off unsuspecting consumers.

In general terms, however, this enhanced blocking order will make life more complex for providers. End users already using VPNs to access these services, on the other hand, will most likely remain completely unaffected.

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2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of November): 5,298 news posts

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 There are plenty of options for copyright holders to frustrate pirate site operations, but attacking their domain names is particularly effective.

In recent years, various entertainment industry groups have called on the domain name industry to help out on this front.

The MPA previously signed landmark agreements with registries, enabling the movie industry group to act as a “trusted notifier” of “pirate” domains. Other players in the domain name market have been more reserved.

EU and NL Registries Tackle Pirate Domains

The Public Interest Registry (PIR), for example, which oversees the .org gTLD, previously denied requests to take action against The Pirate Bay. According to PIR, caution is advised to ensure a “free, open, safe and secure internet”.

In recent years, rightsholder pressure hasn’t abated. Domain name registries that fail to take action are now listed as “notorious piracy markets” themselves, as recent reports against the .cc, .io, and .tv domain extensions have shown.

Politics also play a part. For example, U.S. lawmakers previously asked domain name registry VeriSign, known for managing the .com domain, to help tackle online piracy.

EU and NL Registries Tackle Pirate Domains

Despite these developments, there’s little public discussion about new agreements between domain registries and rightsholders. Given the sensitivities involved, not all collaboration needs a spotlight.

This week, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN reported that it had booked new success with its previously unknown ‘registry strategy‘.

Following a notice from BREIN, the SIDN (.nl) and EURid (.eu) registries took several pirate site domains offline. SIDN’s actions targeted IPTV-related domains, such as streamdeal.nl, iptvproviders.nl, omniptv.nl and iptvstreamplus.nl.

Streamdeal Quarantined
 

EURid reportedly removed seven domain names after BREIN reached out. These domains, which were used to provide access to pirated films, music, books and games, were registered though domain proxy services that shield the identity of the owners.

The .eu domain names are not publicized as those sites use alternative gTLDs that remain active. Mentioning these domains in public could therefore serve as an unwanted advertisement.

Reporting Illegal Content?

BREIN says that these registries take responsibility by helping to shut down illegal activity. On what grounds these companies take action isn’t immediately clear.

“Pirates like to use trustworthy top-level domains such as .nl and .eu for their illegal websites. The organizations responsible for this, SIDN and EURid, know this and take their responsibility by helping to combat illegality,” BREIN writes.

The anti-piracy group goes on to mention that pirate IPTV services infringe copyrights. That violates the terms and conditions of the domain registries, so they can be terminated on these grounds. But were they?

TorrentFreak reached out to both SIDN and EURid, requesting more information and both registries say that the domain name terminations referenced by BREIN were not copyright related.

Inaccurate WHOIS Information

SIDN spokesperson Marnie van Duijnhoven explains that the domain name registrations were canceled, because the owners didn’t provide or confirm the correct WHOIS registration data.

“This is a standard procedure at SIDN that we apply if there is reason to doubt the correctness of the registrant’s data. The reason may be a report from a third party such as Stichting Brein, but also, for example, the Police,” Van Duijnhoven says.

While these verification procedures were initiated in response to BREIN’s notifications, the decision to cancel the domain names was not directly related to the content on the sites. Instead, the cancellations were made under Articles 16 and 18 of SIDN’s terms and conditions, which cover inaccurate WHOIS information

EURid spokesperson Reelika Kirna confirmed that inaccurate registrant data also triggered their response. This is a terms of service violation, but not one related to copyright.

“Following the request from BREIN regarding seven .eu domain names, we carried out our standard procedure for registration data validation and subsequently suspended these domain names due to a breach of Articles 3(b) and 4(d) and (e) of our Terms and Conditions,” Kirna informed us.

Roads to Rome

BREIN’s director Bastiaan van Ramshorst informs us that SIDN and EURid are indeed correct. In these instances, copyright wasn’t the reason to report the domains, at least on paper.

The anti-piracy group previously reported domains to SIDN on the basis of copyright infringement. These complaints are handled under the separate notice and takedown procedure. That wasn’t the case here, but the aim is the same.

“BREIN’s goal is the same: to take the domain offline because copyright and related rights are being violated on a large scale. The grounds on which SIDN takes action does not matter to us.”

“Both roads lead to Rome. Obviously illegal websites almost always have incorrect WHOIS data because infringers want to remain anonymous. BREIN can and does use both grounds,” Van Ramshorst adds.

Whether any of these roads is easier than the other is unknown, but SIDN’s latest transparency report shows that notice and takedown (NTD) reports are rare. The registry received 39 NTD requests in the first three quarters of the year.

During the same period, SIDN launched over 5,000 procedures under article 16 and 18 of its terms and conditions, which includes claims concerning inaccurate WHOIS information.

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2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of November): 5,298 news posts

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 For those who enjoy reading professional reports filled with statistics and detailed analysis, the piracy landscape has an endless supply.

Many reports are highly informative and, regardless of underlying political aims, few get things completely wrong.

Yet, even the most detailed studies and elaborate industry reports can at times leave the reader feeling puzzled. On the one hand, multi-billion dollar companies have more piracy data and intelligence than anyone else, period. On the other, nobody needs a meteorologist’s report to determine whether it’s raining outside.

In no other area is this more evident than in the promotion of reportedly effective site-blocking measures; and in no other country has site-blocking been adopted so comprehensively than in Italy. Bur even with very few guardrails and direct access to every tool available, the last year has seen tens of thousands of IP addresses and domains blocked by rightsholders, despite an obvious decline in the availability of pirated content.

Targeting The Source

By definition, site-blocking doesn’t remove pirated content from the internet. That’s why removing suppliers from the ecosystem is seen as a much better response than putting up endless, easily circumvented roadblocks. Late November, an investigation led by the Italians came to fruition with an enforcement operation billed as the largest to ever target a pirate IPTV network.

Operation Takendown reportedly took place on November 26/27 and according to authorities in Italy and several other countries in Europe, it “dismantled” an international pirate IPTV network serving 22 million users and generating an estimated €3 billion per year. At least 11 suspects were detained and around 100 others were said to be under investigation. Meanwhile, there were reports of subscribers all over Europe losing access to channels and in some cases their entire service.

At the time, this certainly sounded like a very big deal. Law enforcement seized 29 servers, 270 pieces of IPTV equipment, searched 112 private homes, identified close to 600 IPTV subscription resellers, and seized EUR 1.6 million in cryptocurrency plus EUR 40,000 in cash. Since the pirate IPTV provider in question was seen as a significant threat to the Italian live sports and broadcasting sectors, its reported demise was enthusiastically celebrated in the media.

Eliminating such a massive supplier should in theory restrict availability of illegal streams in Italy, even if only temporarily. After all, that was the entire point of the operation. By extension then, demand for ISP blocking in Italy should be reduced too, even if only for a short time.

Three Weeks Before, Three Weeks After

While keeping an open mind, we expected a sizeable albeit temporary dip in blocking tickets filed at Piracy Shield, followed by a relatively short recovery as the pirate IPTV market repaired itself and everything returned to normal.

Using Piracy Shield blocking data unofficially made available at piracyshield.iperv.it, we took the raid dates of November 26/27 as the central point. From there we examined every blocking ticket filed by rightsholders in the three weeks preceding Operation Takendown, and for comparison every ticket filed in the three weeks after.

A typical Piracy Shield ticket (credit: piracyshield.iperv.it)

During that six-week period, rightsholders filed around 186 Piracy Shield tickets similar to the one above, containing instructions for local ISPs to block a total of 527 IP addresses and 3,322 fully qualified domain names.

The chart below shows domain name blocking in blue, IP address blocking in red, and the approximate dates of the operation in green in the center.

click to enlarge

The data reveals that in the three-week period leading up to the enforcement action, rightsholders’ tickets required ISPs to block 204 IP addresses after they were observed providing access to pirate IPTV.

In the three weeks following the claimed “dismantling” of the 22 million-user service, rightsholders’ tickets required ISPs to block 323 IP addresses, up 50%+ on the preceding three weeks.

In respect of domain name blocking, the 1,322 FQDNs requested in the three weeks before the takedown, were easily eclipsed by 2,000 domains listed for blocking in the three-week period afterward.

Apparently, there were still plenty of piracy threats. And indeed, reports from a number of sources indicate that subscribers who lost service around November 26/27 had their channels restored within 48/72 hours.

Meanwhile, tickets like the one below are being filed almost daily and on some days, several at a time. It’s a perpetual workload that somehow seems to increase when massive providers get shut down or ‘dismantled’.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 In the fall of 2002, Suprnova.org launched as one of the first sites dedicated to sharing ‘torrents’.

At the time, Napster has just shut down, leaving a void in the file-sharing landscape. A Slovenian teenager named Andrej Preston has just discovered the new BitTorrent protocol at the time and decided to embrace it.

Andrej, commonly known under the nickname ‘Sloncek’, started Suprnova as a fun project to show off to friends on IRC. Like many of these early hobby projects, it started as a very primitive setup, hosted on a Linux box at Peston’s home.

In the weeks that followed, word of the “Universal BitTorrent Source” spread like wildfire, maxing out the meager 16kb/s upload capacity of the residential internet connection. Faced with this explosive growth, Suprnova was moved to an external hosting company, with many mirror sites later helping to distribute the traffic.

December 19, 2004: Suprnova.org Shuts Down

In record time, Suprnova became one of the most visited websites on the Internet. It became the go-to site for pirates who had discovered the unlimited sharing capacity of BitTorrent and the community that came with it. It also served as inspiration for other torrent sites that launched later, The Pirate Bay included.

20+ Years Ago…
 

Just as quickly as it rose to stardom, exactly twenty years ago today on December 19, 2004, Suprnova went dark. Initially, not much was known about the circumstances, but Andrej later said that he pulled the plug after he started reading about himself in the newspapers. Something didn’t feel right.

In hindsight, this was likely a pivotal decision. A month after the shutdown, police raided Andrej’s home, taking equipment and media as part of a criminal investigation. The case was closed a month later, but it’s not hard to see how things may have ended differently if the site had been active.

Not all decisions made at the time were great. Following the demise of Suprnova, Andrej became the spokesperson for the ambitious file-sharing software startup eXeem, which failed miserably. The same can be said for the relaunch of Suprnova in 2009 by The Pirate Bay, which Andrej wasn’t actively involved in. That never really took off.

Academy of Art University

Instead of focusing on new file-sharing ventures, Andrej explored his creative side. He dreamed of being in the film and TV business and wanted to study in the United States, close to LA. Eventually, he was admitted to Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Ironically, the funds he earned from Suprnova helped him pursue this dream, but the money eventually dried up and Andrej worked as a Resident Assistant to get free room and board. Together with funds scraped together by his parents, he made it though school.

During this time, Andrej also gained experience at an online video production company, working for free. He was also the driving power and creative mind behind TorrentFreak TV, which offered more room to improve his skills between 2008 and 2010. While that project stopped after two seasons, the passion for online video certainly wasn’t over.

A YouTube Star…

Today, Andrej is the owner of “The Infographics Show” a YouTube channel with more than 14 million subscribers. The first videos were posted on Suprnova’s video portal back in 2011. There are still traces of Suprnova.org on YouTube today, as the channel’s oldest videos display its logo in their intro.

Video Portal (2011)
 

With more than a decade of YouTube experience, six billion video views, and a team that consists of nearly 200 people, Suprnova’s founder has come a long way. But what was this journey like? About time to hear his thoughts again, twenty years after he pulled the plug.

We typically don’t post interviews in full, but we gladly make an exception here for what is a truly authentic story, with remarkable depth and detail tracing back to the early days of torrents. In addition, it offers a unique perspective on copyright, online entertainment, and life in general.

——

TF: Looking back 20 years, what’s your overriding feeling about Suprnova.org? Pride, regret, something else?

Andrej: Honestly I feel like I’ve lived quite a few lives. Do I look at it with a particular feeling? It’s kind of hard to put into words. I’d say for most of my adult life, I saw it as just something that happened. It’s the only life I know.

As I’m quickly approaching 40, I view the past with quite different eyes. I am proud of myself and the size of the project I ran starting at the age of 15. Is my view of copyrights and business in general as naive as it was back then? Absolutely no, and I wouldn’t risk doing something like that today.

But overall, in short, yeah, I am proud. I am proud of the project and who it made me today. I also feel so lucky for the life long friends I made because of it.

TF: The profits generated though Suprnova allowed you to study in the United States. Why did you choose the Academy of Arts in San Francisco? How did that go?

Andrej: I used all the money I made to put myself through school. I loved film & tv and I felt that, the only way to do it at the scale I dreamt of, required me move to the states. But I was never a great student.

My grades through school were pretty much between a C and a D. I attended a Waldorf school through all my school years but even that felt like it wasn’t right for me in terms of education. So, I had to choose a school that offered a TV Producing major that had open enrollment and I really wanted to be close to LA.

I worked through the whole school process. I was a Resident Assistant for 3 out of 4 years to get room and board for free and I worked for almost two years for free as an intern at an online video production company to gain additional skills and experience.

I also ran out of money to continue paying for my school and had to have my parents take out a loan against their property they lived in and I grew up in. Having to study and my homework be something I was so passionate about made it really easy to get good grades. It was the first time in my life that I felt school came easy.

TF: After handing over the Suprnova.org domain to The Pirate Bay briefly, you later regained control. In 2011 you relaunched is as a video portal, briefly showing TorrentFreak TV episodes and a new project called the “Infographics Show”. Where did the idea for the Infographics Show come from?

Andrej: I realized that I really loved everything internet and as much as I felt hurt by being torn to pieces online by people for launching eXeem – which was also a financial debacle – I needed to embrace what I really loved.

I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity by you to record some TorrentFreak episodes, which actually helped me learn a lot more about the online video streaming landscape.

I was also a huge fan of statistics, data and visual representations of them. I had an idea that if I just took a static infographic and made it animated people would for sure want to watch it, as that’s something I’d want to watch. The show has evolved a lot since then and is an ‘infographic’ only in its name.

TF: It’s been over a decade since you launched The Infographics Show on YouTube, which now has millions of subscribers. How do you look back on the past years? Any milestones you can share?

Andrej: The weird part about milestones is that the bigger they are, the less they mean. The Infographics Show now sits at around 14.7 million subscribers with over 6 billion views and over 5 thousand videos made.

The Infographics Show (2024)
 

I believe I made about 25 videos between 2011 and 2016 and had a few thousand subscribers. It was the video ‘North Korea vs United States – Who Would Win The War‘ that started getting some views after a year of publishing, that made me look at my YouTube channel again.

North Korea vs United States
 

There was also a comment by the best friend of my spouse who at the time expressed doubt about my earning potential by making a comment “but does the lightning really strike twice”, suggesting that I had luck with SuprNova and that was it. I felt like I had something to prove to myself at that point and decided to make a few more videos.

My biggest memorable milestone was when I made another video with a similar theme and it received 10,000 views in a day. That was the time I felt I can do this and I am on to something.

Of course the million subscribers milestone and then the 10 million were special (I made sure I invited the person who made the comment about having luck to my 10 million subscribers celebration, but they have no idea how their comment ever affected me or that I even knew about it).

The milestones are different now, there isn’t just The Infographics Show (even though that’s what people mostly know about). There are many other channels, including SCP Explained. It’s also not just me. The team is large, close to 200 people. I am lucky I get to work with my best friends and I am lucky to once again have my brother working with me.

And while a lot of people look at The Infographics Show and see that it’s generating smaller numbers than even a few years ago, the amount of watch time has never been higher.

Between all the channels, we’ve generated over 300 million watch time hours and, when putting that in perspective, that’s a lot more than a lot of my favorite TV shows that inspired me ever did. Yet of course it still feels like it’s not enough.

300 Million Watch Hours
 

TF: Did any specific aspects of your experience with Suprnova influence your approach to creating and sharing content on The Infographics Show?

Andrej: I think SuprNova taught me at a very young age how to project manage and delegate. At the time I had no idea what I was learning but it made me the producer I am today. I also believed from the start that the way I’d like to make money is by making content available to everyone and I’ll make the money against the ads shown to them.

I believe there are so many ways to make money from popular content. Even views that aren’t directly monetized today can still contribute to revenue I make in the future. Whether that’s via the person watching more of my content but seeing ads, telling their friends about it, or maybe just showing the algorithm that it’s worth watching and spreading the reach.

TF: 20 years ago you were worrying about cease and desist letters from copyright holders. Today, you’re an established ‘creator’ yourself. Has this changed your outlook in any way?

Andrej: Ha, this is a funny one. I honestly have no real recollection of receiving cease and desist letters, maybe my brain just erased those memories. But I do often ask myself if I’m a hypocrite as I send a takedown notice.

I have to explain this part a little. I generally ‘copyright claim’ reuploads of my content on YouTube. This means other people will upload it and I will earn the money based on the ads shown on those videos.

I will sometimes copyright strike videos, where you can see somebody is just downloading my videos and reuploading them, without even editing them or giving them any new value. It’s rare but I do.

This is where you might call me a hypocrite but let me explain myself. I believe that all media (entertainment and the rest) has a significant impact on who we are and how it shapes us. I believe that there should be a way for everyone to have access to it, via different sources.

I think people who want a better experience should pay for those experiences, but I think those who would otherwise be deprived of ever having the opportunity to see it in any way, should have a chance to see it.

I feel that if I hadn’t had a chance to use certain applications as a kid, due to being in a country where access was limited, and coming from a family that was not well off, I would have not had a chance to compete on a global market at the same level as someone who had the privilege from a young age to have access to all of it. The same goes for media and entertainment. Those experiences show a person what is possible.

Since my videos are already completely free on YouTube, I don’t think there is a reason for somebody to be uploading to the exact same platform where I already provide everything, and try to collect money from it. If people were putting my videos somewhere where I could not put them myself, and that was the only way for people to see them, I would have absolutely no problem with that.

TF: Suprnova existed in a different era. How do you view the current state of online entertainment and piracy, and what are your thoughts on how the industry can adapt?

Andrej: SuprNova existed because it needed to exist. This was a time that old school business models met new emerging technologies. The world needed to change and adapt to how people consume all sorts of media. If SuprNova didn’t exist, you would be talking with a different person right now but the questions would have been the same.

The current state of online entertainment is something I am trying to predict as it will affect me massively.

I think the golden age of streaming is already over. Every legacy media empire was forced to come up with an online streaming platform. They all competed for subscribers so we saw the lowest prices we will ever see. We were also able to pick what kind of content we preferred and paid only for those platforms. I believe this is now over and we are moving into a rapid consolidation of media into what we will soon see as old school TV packages.

Streaming platforms will be more expensive and if you want to have access to all the content available, it will cost you A LOT. TV ad dollars are moving online. Sadly I believe we will eventually get to the point where even the most premium and most expensive option will be ad supported and there will not be a way to pay for services without ads.

While I don’t follow much of what is happening in the piracy world nowadays, I think once we get there, you will see a lot more people resorting to piracy, once again.

One thing we shouldn’t leave unmentioned is the advancement of AI and video generation. My prediction is that platforms like YouTube and others will be flooded within the next few years with auto generated content.

While it’s scary to think how it will affect my bottom line, I just have to accept that I was a part of technological revolution at some point and I can’t fight it. I have to see how I can adapt and embrace it and understand that nothing stays the same for long.

—

TF: We want to thank Andrej for his openness and insight he provided over the years. Looking back at more than two decades of following the piracy scene, this is one of the stories that stands out most. We’ll check in again in another decade.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 According to an infamous anti-piracy PSA that just recently celebrated its 20th birthday, downloading a copy of a movie is the same as stealing a physical disc from a regular store, stealing a handbag, or even stealing a car.

These claims remain factually incorrect but at the time the PSA was released, rightsholders needed to drive a simple message home. While the act of stealing is instantly recognized by billions all over the world, two decades ago downloading a movie was still relatively new, mostly invisible, and didn’t even require physical media to exist.

Conflating a crime people understood with the act of downloading a movie may have helped some understand a new concept, but that still didn’t make the stealing claims true. In this context the unforgettable campaign slogan ‘Piracy is a Crime’ wasn’t the universal fit it claimed to be either. Nevertheless, twenty years later similar tactics are still in use, despite piracy itself being much more broadly understood.

Piracy Isn’t Always a Crime, Even When Dressed Up as Something Else

As telecoms regulator AGCOM warns that people who simply use pirate IPTV subscriptions risk having their details forwarded for prosecution, a case with alleged offenses dating back to January 2017 has been progressing in the background.

In summary, a man from Gallarate in northern Italy operated a website where pirate IPTV subscriptions were sold. After making payment via Postepay accounts that don’t provide anonymity, customers gained illegal access to streaming content owned by companies including Mediaset, Sky, DAZN, and Disney, but paid them nothing for the privilege.

In 2017, Europe’s highest court confirmed that simply streaming pirate content is illegal under copyright law, but prosecutors in Italy had a different idea. All 23 pirate IPTV subscription buyers were prosecuted for the crime of receiving stolen goods. It didn’t go well.

Two Different Case Tracks, Same Outome

Thirteen of the defendants opted to be heard under an abbreviated procedure which was heard recently, with the remaining nine defendants appearing before Judge Bianca Maria Todaro at the Court of Lecce in April this year.

The prosecutor argued that the defendants effectively profited from the cheap subscriptions and knew they were illegal. The company now known as Mediaset Premium spiced up the criminal procedure with an €80,000 civil claim for compensation.

Lawyers for the defendants argued that a decision dating back to 2005 clearly shows that, since violations were exclusively of an administrative nature, all of their clients should be acquitted of the alleged crime.

In her decision, Judge Todaro noted that the defendants had indeed purchased the pirate IPTV subscriptions, but had done so for strictly personal use. With no aggravating factors suggesting anything other than private consumption, the Judge said no crime had been committed. And since an administrative sanction was applicable, criminal convictions for receiving stolen goods were ruled out.

The administrative sanction for each defendant was €154, with a 33% discount available for those who settled their account within 60 days.

Thirteen IPTV Pirates Acquitted

The remaining 13 defendants appeared before Judge Roberta Maggio last week, charged with exactly the same crime of receiving stolen goods.

Judge Maggio acknowledged the purchase of the illicit subscriptions but said there was no evidence to show that any of the defendants sold, distributed, or held subscriptions for resale purposes.

Indeed, the decision states that the defendants’ possession of the subscriptions was for “purely personal purposes.” Since that is an administrative matter to be settled with a payment of €154 (minus 33% discount for prompt settlement), no crime of receiving stolen goods ever took place.

Under Italian legislation passed in 2023, those who simply use or view copyrighted content without permission face an administrative fine of between €154 and €5,000. The decisions handed down by both judges indicate that a first time offense of possessing an illegal IPTV subscription for personal use is €154, an amount only likely to increase for subsequent offenses.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Last week, Canada’s original site blocking order against pirate IPTV provider GoldTV expired, after rightsholders decided not to ask for any further extensions.

Overall interest in site blocking hasn’t waned, however. There are still several live-streaming orders in place, protecting sports content including football, hockey, and rugby.

Soap2Day Lawsuit

Meanwhile, Netflix, Bell, and several major Hollywood studios including Disney and Universal, prepared the first blocking order against a traditional pirate streaming site, Soap2Day. That request was granted by Canada’s Federal Court yesterday.

As is typical in Canada, the case started as a lawsuit against the “John Doe” operator of Soap2Day. In a statement of claim filed in May 2023, the rightsholders accused the site of flagrant copyright infringement.

The owner was served via email and this had an immediate impact. Instead of ignoring the matter or fighting back in court, Soap2Day.to and various related domains were shut down by their operator. The lawsuit wasn’t mentioned as a reason, but the timing was evident.

Soap2Day Judgment

With the initial goal already achieved, one might assume that the plaintiffs were satisfied, but that certainly wasn’t the case. While the main Soap2Day threat was gone, sites using the same name remained active.

Soap2Day is a popular pirate ‘brand’ that’s often used to lure visitors. The Fmovies piracy ring, for example, used Soap2dayx.to until it was shut down a few months ago. Others, including Soap2day.day and Soap2day.rs remain active today.

Netflix, Disney and the other rightsholders filed a motion for default judgement against the operators of Soap2day.to, Soap2dayX.to, Soap2day.day, and Soap2day.rs, which was granted yesterday.

Judge Simon Fothergill concludes that the “John Doe” defendants engaged in blatant, notorious and intentional misconduct. As punishment, and to deter further copyright infringement, each defendant was ordered to pay millions of Canadian dollars in damages.

– John Doe 1: $6,080,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 2: $5,820,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 3: $5,840,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 4: $4,520,000 as statutory damages

In addition, the defendants were ordered to pay $1,000,000 as punitive and exemplary damages, as well as $400,000 for which they are held jointly liable.

The Site Blocking Order

These damages are substantial but since the operators remain unidentified, the plaintiffs may be unable to collect. The rightsholders are aware of this so to ensure that their efforts have impact, they also requested a site blocking order.

Justice Fothergill of the Federal Court approved this request yesterday and issued a blocking order similar to that against GoldTV. This effectively means that all major Canadian ISPs must block access to specified Soap2Day domains.

The order specifically lists Soap2day.day and Soap2day.pe, but new domains may be added in the future, as the blocking order broadly targets platforms that use the ‘Soap2Day brand’.

If new Soap2Day domains appear online in the future, rightsholders can request an update to the blocklist. This will then be reviewed by the court which can grant the amendment, when appropriate.

The blocking-related costs incurred by ISPs must be paid by the rightsholders and the blocking measures will remain active for two years. After that, Netflix and the other plaintiffs can request an extension.

As far as we know, none of the parties involved has issued a press release on this blocking order. Whether there are plans to target other pirate sites in the future is unknown but since additional blockades are typically more effective, that would make sense.

—

A copy of the default judgment and the blocking order, both issues by the Honorable Mr. Justice Fothergill, are available here (1 & 2).

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 When mainstream rightsholders say they don’t want to sue end users for consuming their content illegally, most actually mean it.

The recording industry famously tested the waters 20 years ago, learned from the experience, and never did it again. The major Hollywood studios have never done it and most likely never will.

The risk of targeting an innocent person has never gone away but simply targeting the ‘wrong’ person has the potential to transform a company’s carefully crafted social media interactions into a toxic hellscape overnight.

In their ongoing war against pirate IPTV, some sports rightsholders seem willing to give it a go anyway.

The Gamble For Top-Tier Football

The most popular football leagues in Europe are approaching the same issue in different ways. The richest, England’s Premier League, receives support from a public awareness and media campaign that by design or fortunate accident, gives the impression that pirate viewers face a constant threat of being held to account. Premier League takes no option off the table but to date hasn’t sued regular consumers of pirate streams.

Serie A’s controversial anti-piracy activities are well documented but Italy’s top league hasn’t sued or ‘fined’ pirate viewers either. Fines are often described as ‘imminent’, but even when they eventually arrive in the mail, any fine will be payable to the Italian authorities, not Serie A. A useful reputational firewall, at least for as long as it holds.

Spain’s LaLiga started mailing out ‘fines’ to supposed viewers of pirate IPTV streams earlier this year. As far as we’re aware, there’s no major awareness campaign or government involvement to provide cover in the event that everything goes horribly south. Indeed, LaLiga chief Javier Tebas doesn’t seem concerned by theories of reputational risk at all, but that shouldn’t be mistaken for not caring about what pirates think.

‘Users Are Under Constant Threat’

As previously reported, LaLiga wants pirate viewers to consider themselves a major part of the piracy problem. Where pirate IPTV providers and resellers face peril, pirate viewers should feel that anxiety too and for good reason; LaLiga will come for them too.

Clarity on the specifics was the first notable casualty of LaLiga’s looming war on pirate IPTV end users announced earlier this year. Yet despite everything, Spain’s top football league did indeed begin sending out legal threats in the summer that informed alleged IPTV pirates that a payment of hundreds of euros could prevent cases going to court.

Settlement letters posted in public are disconcertingly vague. They state that the recipient was identified by their IP address because records at their ISP showed that “connections have been made to the pirate platform” from where access [to illegal content] was provided.”

The suggestion in the settlement letters is that the recipient consumed content offered by a pirate site. However, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia publicly announced that those who simply viewed pirated streams would not be targeted by LaLiga.

A new batch of LaLiga settlement letters being reported in Spain seem to show that these apparently conflicting statements can not only co-exist, but actually make perfect sense.

Reduced Demands For Cash, More Detail on Alleged Offenses

A copy of a newer LaLiga settlement letter was recently uploaded by a user of Forocoches and shared by Xataka. Once again it’s made clear that payment of a cash settlement will prevent the recipient from ending up in court.

This letter proposes a settlement of €261.65, around €200 less than amounts proposed in previous letters. The most interesting aspect is how LaLiga managed to target someone who ‘watched a pirate IPTV stream’ when the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia promised that mere viewers would not be targeted.

LaLiga Had an Ace Up Its Sleeve

According to LaLiga’s letter, the recipient used a piece of software called Ace Stream to watch illegal streams of football matches. The significance of this cannot be understated; rather than streaming content directly from a pirate IPTV server, Ace Stream uses BitTorrent-like peer-to-peer transfers to share content among other users.

At the same time as viewing illegal streams, Ace Stream users become part of the distribution network. As an Ace Stream client downloads streams for viewing, it simultaneously uploads those streams to other Ace Stream users, whose clients download and upload to other Ace Stream clients as part of a larger swarm.

As a result, Ace Stream users are not “mere viewers” of pirate streams, they’re suppliers of pirate streams too. The fact that Ace Stream was placed on Spain’s piracy blocklist two years ago may even add a little more weight to LaLiga’s threats.

Javier Prenafeta, a lawyer at 451.legal, acknowledges that Ace Stream brings new challenges.

“In these cases, LaLiga has obtained the data of the users behind the IP addresses under the justification that they are not merely good-faith consumers without profit motive, because when they access the content they also share it, which implies a benefit,” Prenafeta told Xataka.

Those tempted to settle (at what actually appears to be a reasonable rate) are encouraged to consider the implications of signing the accompanying LaLiga declaration before doing anything.

“It would be acknowledging that they are giving access to illegal content, which could fall under the penal code. So the most advisable thing is that they consult with a lawyer.”

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 It’s been three years since we last checked in on The Pirate Bay’s Bitcoin wallet.

While the torrent site may not be raking in the digital dough like it used to, the donations keep trickling in.

Back in 2021, we estimated that TPB was receiving around $10 per day in Bitcoin donations. Our latest analysis shows that this figure remains surprisingly consistent.

Over the past three years, the site has added approximately 0.196 BTC to its latest donation address. That’s a little over $20,000 now, averaging $15 per day since the last update.

This amount isn’t enough to sustain the site, obviously, and the tiny amounts of Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero donations don’t offer any help on this front. The real spectacle is revealed when we go more than a decade back in time, adding up all donations over the years.

Silk Road & BitcoinTorrentz

In 2011, Bitcoin was mostly used on the dark web, where “Dread Pirate Roberts” popularized it through Silk Road. This direct payment option outside the traditional banking system also appealed to venues where added privacy was welcome.

The torrent download service BitCoinTorrentz.com was the first platform to combine BitTorrent and Bitcoin. The remote download service offered high-speed downloads at the modest price of 0.08 BTC per gigabyte. That was $0.25 at the time, but over $8,000 at today’s rates.

BitCoinTorrentz was a niche service. By July 2012, it had 422 registered users, who downloaded a modest number of files. At the time, it wasn’t seen as a spectacular success, but the 16.5 BTC it made in bandwidth fees that month would be a fortune today.

The Pirate Bay: Five Bitcoin in a single day

With Bitcoin’s spectacular price increase over the years, hindsight is a recurring theme. Paying 10,000 BTC for two pizzas was reasonable at the time, but with today’s price of ~$103,000 per bitcoin, that’s a billion dollar feast.

On a different level, earnings from The Pirate Bay’s early donation efforts also look quite spectacular.

In April 2013, The Pirate Bay quietly added a Bitcoin address to the site’s footer. This update didn’t come with an announcement or instructions, but those who were familiar with it started sending ‘donations’ right away.

The silent donation drive was quite successful. In 24 hours, 73 transactions were transferred into Pirate Bay’s wallet, adding up to a healthy 5.56 BTC. At the time, the exchange rate was roughly $125, so this $700 bonus was more than welcome.

$14 million

After this initial boom, incoming donations started to slow down but Pirate Bay supporters continued to tip the site in the years that followed.

Custos Media Technologies estimated that the torrent site earned a massive 126.64 in Bitcoin donations between 2013 and 2015, and a year later we reported that another 8.21 had been added. From 2017 onwards the Bitcoin price rose quickly, adding a little over one bitcoin in seven years.

Of course, the real story is what could have been. If The Pirate Bay had held onto all the Bitcoin it received since 2013, that stash would now be worth around $14 million. However, it’s highly unlikely the team resisted the urge to cash out at some point, or use the funds to pay for expenses.

Crypto Mining & Token

The Pirate Bay’s crypto experiments were not limited to Bitcoin. In 2017, many of the site’s users complained that their CPU usage increased dramatically when they browsed certain Pirate Bay pages. It was later revealed that the site had implemented a Monero cryptocurrency miner provided by Coinhive.

While using user resources isn’t chic, the potential monthly payout of $12,000 was certainly appealing. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that many other pirate sites, mostly the dubious ones, followed suit.

The Pirate Bay’s most recent crypto experiment came in 2021, when the site launched its own PirateToken, also known as ‘TPB’. Skeptics suggested that this could be a setup for a ‘rugpull’, but the site indirectly denied this.

According to an official statement, the token was launched to unlock new featured in the future. For example, it could be used to donate to uploaders and moderators, as well as unlock VIP content. These plans never came to fruition.

Instead, the PirateToken slowly faded into oblivion, with the rest of the ‘dead’ token projects. Apparently, not everything crypto-related turns into a goldmine.

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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. “Red One” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 16 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  

 Anime and manga producers in Japan are pressing ahead with work that aims to disrupt or render inaccessible pirate sites operated by individuals based overseas.

These enforcement efforts are spearheaded by the Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), an anti-piracy group which counts major local rightsholders and international groups including the Motion Picture Association (MPA) among its members.

As MPA member Sony attracts attention for its continued expansion into both the manga and anime markets, including its recent interest in the acquisition of publishing giant Kadokawa, synergies between the companies will likely be in focus as the weeks unfold.

Knock-and-Talk

Earlier this month, action by CODA in Brazil deployed anti-piracy enforcement tactics used regularly by the MPA and the ACE coalition.

So-called ‘knock-and-talk’ operations begin with the not inconsiderable task of positively identifying pirate site operators and then confronting them directly, usually at their home addresses. When compared to a mailed cease-and-desist notice, similar documents served in person are designed to have a personal impact, and are often credited with presenting a tangible reality more likely to yield results.

Acting on behalf of members Toei Animation Co., Ltd., Toho Co., Ltd., and Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., CODA’s knock-and-talk aimed to disrupt 15 pirate sites that offered Japanese content to consumers outside Japan, and deployed various measures to limit exposure to enforcement operations.

“They blocked access from Japanese IP addresses and took measures (geo-blocking) to prevent infringement from being discovered by Japanese rights holders, and released Japanese anime to Brazilian viewers with subtitles in Portuguese, the local language, and earned advertising revenue from each site,” CODA explains.

15 Sites Closed, Including 3rd Most Popular in Brazil

CODA reports that the December 4 ‘knock-and-talk’ operation resulted in the closure of 15 sites, including bakashi.tv, the third most-visited pirate anime site in Brazil. SimilarWeb traffic data indicates that in September, October, and November 2024, bakashi.tv received 6.43 million, 9.3 million, and 8.34 million visits respectively. CODA’s figures relate to the traffic of all 15 sites combined.

“The average monthly number of visits to these 15 sites over the past three months (August to October 2024) is approximately 7.95 million,” the anti-piracy group reports.

Unreported Details

While Bakashi.tv is presumably mentioned by name due to its significance, a site apparently attempting to replace it (same name, different TLD) is claiming that the site’s videos were deleted by the site’s former owner “out of spite.”

With no obvious reference to the sudden appearance of lawyers at the former owner’s home, it’s unclear whether the new site’s users have the full picture. In any event, another supposed replacement using a .to extension is being declared a fake, but what constitutes a fake these days is far from clear.

The names of the other 14 sites have not been released to the public, so it’s not possible to say whether there are 14 individual sites or 14 domains relating to an unspecified number of sites. How many operators were engaged via ‘knock-and-talk’ is also uncertain.

The table below lists all domains officially reported as ‘closed’ by CODA plus any domains we have independently confirmed as redirecting to CODA’s ‘closed’ page in recent months.

The list is likely to be incomplete and since it’s unclear what type of control CODA exercises over these domains, redirections may be subject to change.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

In 2018, Canada’s Federal Court approved the country’s first pirate site-blocking order.

Following a complaint from major media companies Rogers, Bell and TVA, the Court ordered several major ISPs to block access to the domains and IP-addresses of pirate IPTV service GoldTV.

Site Blocking Appeals

There was little opposition from Internet providers, except for TekSavvy, which quickly announced an appeal. According to the ISP, the blocking injunction threatened the open Internet, just to advance the interests of a few powerful media conglomerates.

Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal disagreed and in 2021 it concluded that the blocking order can stay in place. According to the Court, site-blocking injunctions are an available option under the Copyright Act and they don’t violate freedom of speech or net neutrality.

Hoping to turn the tide, TekSavvy petitioned the Supreme Court to review the impact of site blocking on the open internet. However, Canada’s highest court declined to hear the case, effectively establishing Canada’s judicial site blocking route.

Blockade Evolves and Expands

The initial GoldTV blocking order was valid for two years. After that, rightsholders had to go back to court to request an extension. That happened indeed, and as time went on the blocking targets have evolved quite a bit.

After two years, none of the original domains were included in the blocking order. This is no surprise, as the original target domains were discontinued and replaced by new ones.

In 2022, the Federal Court approved the latest update, which included the domains destv.me, 905iptv.com, firtio.club, jiocdn.cc, new4k.co and zkat.me, as well as dozens of related subdomains. Most of these domains are still online today, linking to IPTV stalker portals.

Rightsholders Let Blocking Order Expire

While the blocking measures were still effective earlier this month, rightsholders Bell, Rogers, and TVA have decided not to request any further extensions. This effectively means that the blocking measures expired last weekend.

In a letter to the court, the plaintiffs state that they do not intend to further extend the duration of blocking the order. In addition, they have decided to discontinue the underlying lawsuit against the ‘unknown’ GoldTV defendants.

No further extensions
 

The media companies provide no further details on the decision, but it’s possible that the costs of keeping the blocking order intact weigh stronger than the perceived benefit. Unlike in some other countries, the rightsholders must compensate ISPs for the costs incurred.

While the GoldTV blocking measures are now discontinued, most of the targeted domains still appear to be up and running. These specific IPTV portals are not particularly popular today, but they were certainly not eradicated.

New Blocking Targets Take Priority

Rightsholders haven’t been sitting still, of course. The GoldTV case was the first test case; broader and more dynamic blocking efforts have followed since. These affect live streams of popular sporting events.

This summer, rightsholders including Bell, Fubo TV, Rogers, and The Sports Network obtained a blocking order that covers multiple sports. The organizations sought to secure a blocking order for new NBA, NHL and Premier League games, identifying three “John Doe” defendants.

Meanwhile, there is an ongoing proceeding in Canada against popular streaming site Soap2Day. The site officially shut down last year after a complaint was filed, but rightsholders could still try to obtain a blocking order to target its ‘copycats’.

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 Under U.S. law, rightsholders have an option to identify alleged copyright infringers, without directly having to file a lawsuit.

Instead, they can request a DMCA subpoena. These documents are typically signed by a court clerk and don’t require any judicial oversight.

Specifically, they allow rightsholders to obtain the personal details of anonymous alleged infringers through third-party internet services where the infringing material is shared or stored. That includes hosting companies and social media platforms.

DMCA Shortcut?

The DMCA specifies that these subpoenas don’t apply to all online services. Mere conduit providers that simply pass on bytes are typically excluded, for example. However, that didn’t stop some rightsholders from using this shortcut to request information from residential ISPs.

Drawing inspiration from the RIAA’s early efforts to identify music pirates in the early 2000s, they once again used the DMCA subpoena process to obtain the personal details of suspected copyright infringers.

While several courts effectively ruled out this option two decades ago, the more recent attempts cite fresh interpretations and conflicting case law to support the requests.

Many court clerks granted these new subpoena requests, requiring Internet providers to identify hundreds, if not thousands of alleged pirates.

Cox Successfully Intervened

Following numerous successful attempts in courts around the U.S., Internet provider Cox Communications intervened in one of these cases, defending a subscriber who objected to the handover of their information.

The ISP decided to challenge the use of DMCA subpoenas, as detailed in DMCA §512(h). Similar to the earlier opposition against the RIAA’s attempts, the ISP argued that DMCA subpoenas don’t apply to mere conduit providers, as defined under § 512(a).

Earlier this year, a district court judge in Hawaii sided with Cox. The court ruled that DMCA subpoenas don’t apply to mere conduit services, but do apply to other providers that store or link to infringing content directly. As such, the movie companies’ request for a subpoena was denied.

The rightsholders in this matter, film companies Voltage Holdings, Millennium Funding, and Capstone Studios, swiftly submitted a motion for reconsideration. This was denied as well, which prompted the filmmakers to file an appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Filmmakers Appeal

Filed this summer, the appeal argued that the district court’s interpretation relies on dated precedents, which don’t reflect the realities of the modern Internet. The movie companies noted that ISPs do play a role in facilitating piracy, even if indirectly, and should be subject to DMCA subpoenas.

“A careful reading of the full text of 17 U.S.C. §512 leads to the unquestionable conclusion that Congress intended for DMCA subpoenas to apply to §512(a) service providers despite the contrary conclusions of Verizon and Charter,” their petition read.

Alternatively, the appeal argues that residential ISPs could also be seen as information location tools under the DMCA. These fall under §512(d), which could make an ISP subject to DMCA subpoenas.

“Cox can use measures to disable the link to the infringing material such as null routing the IP addresses, blocking the ports associated with BitTorrent activity from the subscribers’ endpoint, or filtering the BitTorrent content from the subscriber’s endpoint,” the movie companies wrote.

Cox: DMCA Subpoenas Don’t Apply, Period

This week, Cox filed its answering brief. In an 84-page-long response, the company rejects the movie companies’ theories. According to the ISP, the language of the law is clear, as Congress intended it.

Cox argues that the DMCA is complex, but it clearly states that the subpoena provision is tied to the larger “notice-and-takedown” framework. These takedowns don’t apply to conduit ISPs, therefore the DMCA subpoenas shouldn’t either.

“When it comes to conduit ISPs, there is no such thing as a DMCA-compliant notification. That is because Congress decided not to subject such ISPs to the notice-and-takedown framework at all. No DMCA notice, no DMCA subpoena.”

The movie companies may disagree with this, and can take their concerns to Congress if they wish the law to change, Cox adds.

“If Capstone thinks conduit ISPs should be subject to the notice-and-takedown framework — and are therefore proper recipients of DMCA notifications and subpoenas — it can push for that legislative change. But Congress made a different judgment when it enacted the DMCA,” the brief reads.

Information Location Tools §512(d)?

The answering brief also rejects the argument that conduit ISPs can fall under §512(d), which applies to information locations services such as search engines. ISPs can also locate information through their networks, and can potentially block or filter infringing content on their end, the argument goes.

According to Cox, this argument is completely unsupported by any DMCA-related cases that went before courts over the past decades.

“Capstone cites no case, no treatise or commentary, no snippet of legislative history that has ever even hinted at this reading of the DMCA. And the implications of sweeping conduit ISPs into subsection (d), thus subjecting them to notice-and-takedown requirements, are staggering.”

If a court decided that conduit ISPs can be subject to takedown notices, it would send shockwaves across the ISP industry. These companies would then have to block and filter content en masse, based on third-party piracy allegations.

This would effectively “upend decades of settled understanding, sending conduit ISPs across the country scrambling to create takedown-based DMCA programs that require swift denials of internet access based on a mere allegation of infringement,” Cox writes.

Going Forward

This doomsday scenario isn’t needed for copyright holders to enforce their rights, Cox notes, as they can file regular lawsuits in federal courts to obtain the identities of alleged file-sharers. This might be a more expensive route, but it’s the right path according to the ISP.

The above is just a brief overview of some of the arguments laid out in the answering brief. Much of it goes into great detail on the various aspects of the DMCA, how these apply to ISPs, and what that means for the present case.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will now review the arguments from both sides to decide if how the DMCA should be interpreted in this case. It’s clear, however, that the stakes are significant for all parties involved.

—

A copy of COXCOM LLC’s answering brief, filed at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, is available here (pdf)

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In May, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to several pirate websites by poisoning their DNS.

The order compelled the tech giants to prevent users from accessing unauthorized streams of Champions League and Premier League matches.

Applicant Canal+ argued that the alternative DNS resolvers allowed people to bypass the “regular” blocking measures implemented by internet providers. In their view, DNS blocking is proportionate and necessary to prevent piracy.

Canal+ didn’t stop at this initial order. As reported last month, several follow-up orders were issued to target yet more domains, gradually expanding the scope. While that was ongoing, new proceedings against other DNS resolvers were launched as well.

Canal+ Targets Quad9 & Vercara

In a series of new court orders issued last week (full list below), Canal+ adds Quad9 and Vercara to the list of targeted DNS resolvers.

The first two orders aim to protect soccer matches from the UEFA Champions League and the English Premier League. The third is centered around the French professional rugby union league; Top 14. This also lists Quad9 and Vercara as the main defendants, but this time alongside Google.

The Top 14 order
 

The recent orders were issued by the Paris Judicial Court under Article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code and mark a broadening of Canal+’s legal strategy. Despite fierce criticism from major tech companies, the French media company isn’t holding back.

Quad9 Responds to DNS Censorship

These types of blocking requests are not new to Quad9. The Swiss non-profit DNS service was previously ordered to block piracy related domains in Germany, following an order obtained by Sony Music. Quad9 successfully appealed this blocking effort at a higher court last year.

Commenting on the French action, Quad9 describes the latest blocking order as yet more “DNS censorship”. The company believes that the ruling is based on an “absurd” application of copyright law, which has far-reaching consequences.

Tampering with DNS makes the internet less secure, the company argues. DNS providers should be seen as neutral location services, and Quad9 likens itself to a map publisher, which has no control over any of the locations it shows.

“Quad9 has no relationship with the sites listed. They are not customers, do not pay Quad9, and do not have any contractual or formal relationship with Quad9. Quad9 does not have any interaction with them other than resolving their domain names as we do with every other name on the Internet,” the company notes.

Blocks Affect Consumers Worldwide

In response to the legal pressure, Cisco decided to discontinue its OpenDNS service in France altogether. Quad9 doesn’t want to go that far, but its implementation has broad consequences, as the targeted domain names will be blocked for all customers globally.

Quad9 says its system is designed to treat every user in every country the same way. For privacy reasons, Quad9 also has no precise information about the location of its users. This is in line with European and Swiss privacy laws. Therefore, to remain in compliance, the blocking measures must be global.

“Therefore, to remain in compliance, we have to block these sites for all users, in all areas. This amounts to French law being applied globally, but if Quad9 is not in compliance it is possible for Canal+ and the French courts to seek financial penalties against Quad9.

“We will appeal this ruling, but until the courts find in favor of our arguments we must maintain the list of blocked sites,” the company adds.

Quad9 Seeks Help for Appeal

This legal battle certainly isn’t over yet. Quad9 is determined to fight against “DNS censorship” and, since it’s a non-profit organization, it requests help from the public to fund this quest.

“Quad9 needs your help if you believe that an open Internet is a worthy goal. We are a non-profit and subsist on donations and sponsorships,” the company explains.

On appeal, DNS providers will likely argue that Article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code does not apply to DNS resolvers, as they do not have a “transmission function.” Therefore, they should not be considered “intermediaries” under EU law

The Paris Court previously disagreed with this interpretation of the law, but higher courts may see things differently.

The outcome of this legal challenge could have significant implications for the future of piracy-related DNS blocking. As Canal+ continues its aggressive pursuit of DNS blocking measures, the global debate surrounding these issues is likely to intensify.

—

Copies of the three orders, released last week, are available below. We’ve included a list of all domain names included in each of these orders.

Premier League Order targeting Quad9 and Vercara (pdf)

aliezstream.pro, antenasport.shop, antenasports.ru, antenasports.shop, antenatv.online, antenatv.store, antennasport.ru, asportv.shop, livetv802.me, toparena.store, emb.ap1357.me, embx224539.ap1357.me, Iqwebplay.xyz, livetv807.me, cdn.livetv807.me, boxtv60.com, infinityott.com, vbn123.com.

Champions League Order targeting Quad9 and Vercara (pdf)

livetv806.me, rojadirectahdenvivo.com, streamsthunder.tv, rojadirectenvivo.me, methstreams.me, antenasports.ru, asportv.shop, toparena.store, Ishunter.net, tv1337.buzz, livetv.sx, sporttuna.pro, livetv807.me, embx224539.ap1366.me, cdn.livetv807.me, locatedinfain.com, tvhd.tutvlive.info, stream 24.net, speci4leagle.com, vi.methstreams.me, klubsports.fun, weblivehdplay.ru, buddycenters.shop, olalivehdplay.ru, lqwebplay.xyz., sporttvls.com, euro2024direct.ru, librarywhispering.com, cdn.livetv808.me, watch.sporttuna.pro, sporttuna.sx, sporttuna.online, lewblivehdplay.ru.

Top 14 Rugby order targeting Google, Quad9 and Vercara (pdf)

thesports1.org, livetv813.me, sportp2p.com, directatvhd.me, lshunter.net, antenasport.shop, antenasports.ru, antenasports.shop, ilovetoplay.xyz, hoca2.com, livetv814.me, cdn.livetv814.me, streamingon.org, emb.ap1357.me, livetv815.me, cdn.livetv815.me, noblockaabbddxcktb.xyz, embx222304.ap!357.me, tutvlive.info, sporttvls.com, quest4play.xyz, antenasport.online, wfzrbhp.luxevpn.xyz, smart.lionsmart.cc.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 After a series of completely avoidable incidents that have seen countless innocent sites blocked by Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking system, at this point is it appropriate to keep calling them ‘blunders’?

Continuing to do so might suggest acceptance that incompetence is always to blame. In reality, recent legal amendments addressed the issue of overblocking by dramatically weakening what little protection innocent sites had against becoming collateral damage.

In practical terms, rightsholders can now knowingly block innocent sites in many circumstances, with the full support of Italian law.

Piracy Shield Blocks Another CDN IP Address

In what appears to have been an attempt to prevent people from watching pirate streams of Serie A match Monza vs Udinese, a blocking ticket was filed last night at 21:19 targeting the IP address 84.17.59.117.

The ‘winning’ ticket (credit: Matteo Contrini)

It is beyond trivial to determine who operates that IP address, it takes less than seconds to check.

Even those with rudimentary experience and knowledge of leading providers should’ve suspected that blocking was likely to lead to collateral damage.

Targeting an IP address operated by CDN provider Datacamp and by extension BunnyCDN was almost certainly likely to lead to overblocking. Here, however, the nature of the network means an accurate assessment of how far the collateral damage might extend would not have been possible; whichever rightsholder filed the ticket, decided to block it anyway.

Blocking Hit Tech News Site DDaY.it

In the early hours of Tuesday, Italian tech news site DDaY.it revealed that the blocking of 84.17.59.117 had disrupted its ability to operate. DDaY explained that the IP address is used by the CDN service that keeps its site online and by blocking it, readers were facing timeouts and other issues.

As shown in the short clip below posted to X.com, some visitors to DDaY were redirected to a page operated by telecoms regulator AGCOM which explained the blocking by effectively branding DDaY a pirate site.

Confermo… pic.twitter.com/TGGMkwyxtz

 

— Andrea Mennillo (@handymenny) December 9, 2024

“It happens that the good guys, in order to play the good guys with martial conviction (hey, they are the good guys…), by slinging a flamethrower called Piracy Shield, end up becoming the bad guys. And “fin di bene” [greater good] cannot suffice to justify so-called collateral damage,” the news platform reported in a response this morning.

“Obviously DDAY is not the target of the block ordered by Piracy Shield and the blocked IP address is not even the main one of our site. But evidently our CDN provider has a load balancing management system that makes sure that some sessions are directed to the blocked IP, thus leading to the connection errors.”

DDay is a Long-Time Critic of Piracy Shield

As a long-time critic of the Piracy Shield system, DDaY finds itself in an inconvenient position. In Italy, opponents of Piracy Shield are often portrayed as siding with pirates, which the publication certainly does not. That the site’s voice has been silenced by the same mechanisms it has been calling out since its launch earlier this year, is not a great look.

The publication says that the IP address has now been removed from the blocklist but once again, the big question of why it was added in the first place will go unanswered. DDaY would like an apology, but history shows us they probably shouldn’t hold their breath.

“The fact that (perhaps) the reported pirate site was also blocked, cannot console us for the fact that we were hit by the provision, probably together with many other innocent sites. By doing so, those who operate under the flag of good to stop piracy, end up behaving like those pirates who dedicate themselves to taking down other people’s sites.”

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend