Free music is easy to find nowadays. Just head over to YouTube and there are millions of tracks, including many of the most recent releases.

The music industry earns billions of dollars through associated advertising but doesn’t like the fact that some people download the tracks for offline use.

A blunt solution would be to remove all music from YouTube. That would be easy enough, but only if losing massive revenue wasn’t a problem either. Instead, record labels and industry groups are countering the piracy threat with DMCA notices, lawsuits, and website blocking requests.

Italy’s Stream-Ripping Problem

Last year, EU research revealed that the popularity of stream-ripping services is in decline, perhaps in part due to these enforcement efforts. In Italy, however, the opposite is happening.

According to FPM, Italy’s Federation Against Music and Multimedia Piracy, stream-ripping is now the top source of music piracy, and it’s growing.

“[Stream-ripping] is the most widespread form of infringement of musical copyright and it accounts for 30% of total musical piracy in Italy,” FPM reports.

“This is a suddenly growing phenomenon: with an average of 10 million accesses from Italy per month, the illegal practice grew by 10% in the first quarter of 2024 alone.”

New Blocking Push

The good news for local music companies is that there are countermeasures available. While the music industry isn’t part of the state-of-the-art “Piracy Shield” solution, rightsholders can still request old-fashioned site-blocking measures.

FPM reported significant progress this week after local telco regulator AGCOM approved its request to block 11 domain names linked to six prominent stream-ripping services.

FPM’s request was made on behalf of the major record labels and was granted as part of AGCOM’s regular procedures, which add dozens of new blockades every month. These blockades should be noticeable, the group suggests, as they were recently responsible for a large percentage of Italy’s monthly stream-ripper visits.

Targeted domains

The circulated press release doesn’t mention the sites by name, but FPM and Enzo Mazza, CEO of Italian music industry group FIMI, was kind enough to share them directly.

One order targets various domains that use the popular YTMP3 brand. These include the domains ytmp3.nu, lumieremusic.net, ytmp3.im, and projectspark.ca. For good measure, www.lumieremusic.net, www.ytmp3.im, www.projectspark.ca are listed as ‘additional’ domains.

The five other orders target downmp3.yt, y2meta.app, x2mate.com, ytmp3.nu, and yt5s.io. These sites operate under various stream-ripper brands that are repeatedly used by copycats.

According to FPM, the sites recently had as many as three million visits per week, which is well above the average number of Italian stream-ripper visits over the past year. This is one of the main reasons the blocks were requested urgently.

FPM is pleased with the new blocking orders and thanks AGCOM for its cooperation, stating that the results have a clear impact on illegal access to music in Italy.

While the effectiveness of the blocking measures has yet to show up in the data, a brief look at AGCOM’s website shows that the domains targeted in this round are just the tip of the iceberg.

Other recent music-related targets include m3.urbanomp3s.com, beemp3.In, arcadefire.net, keepvid.online, z3.mp3juice.tools/it, id.mp3juices.vin, mp3juice.za.com, thenerdmentality.com, yt2mp3.mobi, yt8s.com, mp3juice.za.com, emp3juice.cc, mp3cielo.org, and many, many others.

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After dragging on for years due to the complexity of the case, which was further complicated by a global pandemic, last month a Las Vegas jury convicted five men behind pirate streaming service Jetflicks.

Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber, generated millions of dollars in revenue through Jetflicks, a subscription platform that reportedly offered more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime.

All five men were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann was further convicted of two counts of money laundering by concealment and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement.

No sentencing date was announced but based on their convictions, Courson, Garcia, Jaurequi, and Huber face up to five years in prison, Dallmann considerably longer; a maximum of 48 years according to the Department of Justice.

Dallmann Seeks Acquittal

Having battled for every inch of ground running up to the trial, and continuing until its eventual conclusion, Dallmann is still refusing to go quietly. After first seeking acquittal during the trial, counsel for Dallmann submitted a new motion for acquittal after his conviction.

The motion states that the government’s evidence fell short of the required standard on all counts, including conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, copyright infringement by distribution, copyright infringement by public performance, and two counts in connection with money laundering.

One of Dallmann’s objections relates to an episode of the TV show Paradise. He claims that the government failed to prove that he downloaded a copy, much less distributed it to the public. Noting that the episode in question was published on December 16, 2016, Dallmann claims that a list of TV shows seized during a raid on his home showed no releases beyond December 15, 2016.

The 17-page motion leaves no stone unturned in its efforts to present both offending and evidence in completely new light. We don’t intend to detail all instances here but in the unlikely event that any gain enough traction, we will return to them later.

For now, a claim that there was insufficient evidence to show that the defendant knew that Jetflicks was unlawful, or that the retail value of infringement was more than $2,500, appear to face significant challenges.

Co-Defendants Also Seek Acquittal

Despite facing significantly lighter sentences, Dallmann’s co-defendants, Jaurequi, Courson, Huber and Garcia, have also filed for acquittal. According to the government’s omnibus response filed on Tuesday, this is the third time the men have asked the court to acquit. Having been denied on two previous occasions, counsel for the government urges the court to deny these motions “and let the jury’s sound verdict stand.”

“The evidence showed that Jetflicks generated millions of dollars in subscription income during its operation from 2007-2017, and that the site boasted the availability of more than 180,000 individual television episodes and more than 37,000 subscribers paying
between $9.99 and $16.97 on a monthly basis to access the Jetflicks collection of infringing television shows,” the response notes.

“The evidence further showed that the conspiracy successfully reproduced copyrighted television show episodes in numbers that dwarf the statutory requirements for proof of criminal copyright infringement in both numbers and value. The success in achieving the criminal goals of the conspiracy were presented in multiple ways, each of which would allow a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the conspiracy existed.”

“No Comparisons With Original Copies”

One of Dallmann’s arguments in support of his motion for acquittal is that reproduction of a copyright work (such as a TV show) can only be shown with reference to the ‘original copy’ filed at the United States Copyright Office. He states that none of the government’s witnesses viewed these reference copies but viewed “authorized copies” instead. That being the case, he believes the government fell short of the ‘best evidence’ rule.

As the government’s motion points out, this approach was tested during the trial, with the court explaining how content reproduced at Jetflicks could be compared with representative copies of the copyrighted work.

“Arguments by defendants that Jetflicks reproduced works that did not meet the substantial similarity test are not legally supported, and the jury was reasonable in determining that the conspirators intended to reproduce copyrighted episodes for streaming and downloading by Jetflicks subscribers,” the government’s response continues.

Was the Retail Value of Infringement More Than $2,500?

To support its criminal copyright infringement allegations, the government needed to show that the defendants reproduced 10 or more copies of one or more copyrighted works, with a retail value of more than $2,500 during a 180-day period. Dallmann’s motion for acquittal suggests that by failing to meet the rule on “best evidence” there is insufficient evidence to meet that standard.

The government states that based on the evidence presented, including testimony from representatives of the copyright holders “who identified copyrighted titles and conducted direct comparisons between Jetflicks’ reproductions and the legitimate broadcast works,” the jury was able to “reasonably determine that Jetflicks possessed reproductions of copyrighted works which subscribers could view.”

In respect of the scope of the content on offer, the government highlighted the following:

– The Jetflicks website claimed to have 183,285 episodes available for viewing
– An MPA/ACE scrape of the website revealed ~55,000 titles owned by studio members
– Evidence showed that ~89,000 files were processed by Sickrage/Sickbeard software.
– A list relating to a seized storage device ran to 30,000 video files

“Each of these snapshots show the sheer size of the Jetflicks library of infringing works at a single moment, spanning across all times each co-conspirator was involved, thus satisfying the 180-day time window for each defendant,” the government adds.

At 23 pages long, the government’s response is comprehensive. It further states that since there was sufficient evidence to convince the jury that the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, all calls for acquittal should be denied.

Dallmann’s motion for judgment of acquittal (pdf)
The U.S. Government’s omnibus response to the motions for acquittal (pdf)

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Founded in 2010, Hikari-no-Akari (HnA) positioned itself as the go-to site for fans of Japanese music.

With anime booming across the globe, HnA’s audience didn’t stop at the border. And with over a million visits per month, rightsholders started to take notice.

HnA Targeted in Subpoena

Hoping to stop the infringing activities, the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) and IFPI repeatedly reached out to HnA’s operator, without result. Similar inquiries, sent to the cyberlocker where the pirated music was stored, didn’t help either.

Faced with the status quo, the music industry groups, though Sony Music Japan, went to a U.S. federal court. There, they obtained a DMCA subpoena, requiring Cloudflare to share all information they have on the customer associated with hikarinoakari.com.

Additionally, the subpoena targeted the associated cyberlocker; hnadownloads.co. The latter domain received the bulk of its traffic from HnA and, according to music industry insiders, is operated by the same people.

Sony works listed in the subpoena exhibits
 

Through the subpoena, the music company hoped to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites, including their names, IP addresses, and payment details. Any information obtained could then be used for follow-up copyright enforcement actions.

HnA Shuts Down

Cloudflare typically requires some time to respond to subpoenas, and it hasn’t done so yet. However, the HnA operators decided not to wait for any follow-up action, and reportedly shut down the site of their own accord.

Indeed, at the time of writing, hikarinoakari.com is not resolving, and the hnadownloads.co domain is listed as suspended.

According to a press release from RIAJ, there is no agreement or settlement. In fact, the music group still doesn’t know who’s behind the site. If they find out more, they will take appropriate steps.

“[T]he operator voluntarily closed the website immediately after the disclosure order. Based on the information to be disclosed by ‘Cloudflare’ in the future, our association plans to continue to hold the operator accountable and take legal action against similar illegal sites,” RIAJ writes.

Sharing Culture?

RIAJ estimates that HnA had more than 15 million visitors in 2024, of which roughly 75% were from outside of Japan. According to data from SimilarWeb, the U.S. was the runner-up in terms of traffic, followed by Chile.

HnA, a few days ago

While HnA and its users might have been under the impression that they were sharing culture, the music group sees things differently. The unauthorized sharing practices resulted in lower revenues for rightsholders, which is counterproductive, RIAJ explains.

“Going forward, our association will continue to work on ongoing anti-illegal measures to eradicate pirate sites in order to contribute to the development of music culture,” the group adds.

No concrete follow-up action is mentioned but, as an extra warning to the public at large, RIAJ notes that knowingly downloading pirated music is a criminal offense in Japan, even if it’s for personal use.

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The positions of Apple and Google are very clear when it comes to piracy app availability in their respective stores. Whether created for iOS or Android, they are not allowed. Period.

With the theory neatly wrapped up, reality tends to take over and at that point, the bright lines become a little blurred. Right now there are apps on the App Store and Google Play which offer TV schedule/EPG-type functionality out of the box, exactly as advertised. However, a tap here and an adjustment there reveals new functionality mentioned nowhere in official product descriptions.

Stealth Piracy

A report late last week revealed that an iOS app called “Collect Cards: Store Box” which claimed to manage photos and videos, had hidden its true potential away for more than a year.

This wolf in sheep’s clothing was reportedly a full-blown pirate streaming app offering content from Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, even Apple TV+ according to the report. Such was the app’s success, it made it the top #2 slot on the App Store in Brazil; through the use of geo-blocking, users of the app in the United States weren’t shown the illegal features, which limited the chances of being quickly shut down.

Tactics like these aren’t new. Piracy functionality has been hidden inside puzzle games and Shazam-like audio recognition apps, on both the App Store and Google Play. The music industry has complained that apps that don’t make any real effort to hide have also been able to evade vetting.

Apps and App Stores Discussion Paper

These issues and more are addressed in a new discussion paper released this month. Titled Apps and App Stores, the paper is based on the work of the EU’s Intellectual Property Office Observatory’s Expert Group on Cooperation with Intermediaries. The paper doesn’t represent the official position of the EUIPO but does provide an interesting overview of piracy-related problems in connection with mobile apps.

Mainstream app stores have systems in place to screen apps and their updates. In part this is to prevent infringing apps from being offered to the public, but developers can employ various evasion techniques to undermine that.

Evasion Techniques

As well as disguising piracy apps as something more benign, malicious code and/or infringing functionality can be hidden from the review process using encryption or delays. Additional code can be installed after the initial review, or following a subsequent update.

The paper also touches on apps behaving differently depending on the region and by changing when an app is made available. The report says that developers have been observed “hiding the app from their account and subsequently on the app store during certain days of the week to avoid detection from right holders.”

Rather than using encryption or other techniques that provide an element of stealth, other apps are said to operate right out in the open by simply claiming to be a legitimate service.

“(s)ome apps, purportedly disguised in a false appearance of legality, dissociate themselves from the illegal sharing of protected content they support, which is the core of their activities. These apps have terms and conditions highlighting their neutral nature with regard to the content used through their services, which do not reflect on the reality of the service provided,” the paper explains.

“This may lead app stores to require additional information and proof of the illegal nature of the app from right holders before making a decision on whether to block or remove the app in question.”

Third-Party App Stores

From the perspective of the average user, iPhone and iPad devices running iOS are restricted to content available from their respective app stores. For Android users, however, the app landscape is much more open. It’s likely that most users will be satisfied with Google Play, but on Android it’s trivial to allow apps not obtained from the official store to be installed on a device.

As the ‘stealth’ app issue demonstrates only too well, app store review processes are not bulletproof. However, users who ‘sideload’ apps using alternative app stores, or even randomly from anywhere else on the internet, expose themselves to apps (APK) that in many cases undergo no review whatsoever. While that doesn’t automatically make these apps unsafe, there’s nothing in place to ensure the opposite either.

The discussion paper notes that software is available from official app stores that may be able to identify potentially malicious apps and alert users to prevent installation. The paper also cites an article published by TF in 2023 in which we offered some basic tips on how to use beginner-friendly tools to reduce exposure to malicious Android software.

Don’t Install Any Mobile App Before Testing It

When users are 100% confident that the source of the app they wish to sideload is safe, there is almost nothing anyone can do to convince them otherwise. Other users may be more on the fence; while they may generally trust the source, a little persuasion wouldn’t hurt.

If reassurance arrives in the form of a VirusTotal report which declares that dozens of security companies tested the app and found nothing wrong, that’s merely a good start. The reality is that these companies are looking for certain types of behavior that piracy-focused apps tend not to display.

Since the topic offers the opportunity, today we’d like to mention a single piece of software that’s extremely easy to use, doesn’t cost a penny, and provides enough information to allow even a beginner to make an informed choice.

MobSF: Free and Easy to Use

Mobile Security Framework (or simply ‘MobSF’) is an all-in-one application that scans Android and iOS apps and provides a detailed security/malware analysis. If one has an APK file to hand, it’s simply a case of dragging the file into MobSF and waiting for the analysis to finish. That’s the first step and also the last, other than reading the generated report.

Installation instructions are available in MobSF’s GitHub repo for both Linux and Windows users, and for those without either, MobSF provides a live demo accessible via a web browser.

After scanning the app, a generated report begins with three or four pages of straightforward information, a few pieces of which we’ve quickly edited together in the image below. Item 3 actually appears first in the report and amounts to an overall score out of 100. A total of 37 means that the streaming app we tested has pretty big issues.

Item 2 provides basic information about the app including its name, filesize and hashes, while item 1 shows where the app had its most significant failings.

The reasons why the app failed are in the report and since even the most technical details receive a clear explanation, overall the report is pretty accessible, even if the exact terms aren’t immediately understood. More often that not, however, learning that an app can obtain the user’s GPS location, telephone number, contacts information, and for some reason has the ability to turn on the phone’s camera and microphone, is clear enough.

Even if very little is understood on the technical side, the report also supplies information about piracy apps unrelated to security, that most people never see but will definitely be intrigued to read.

For those already familiar with this type of report, MobSF also supports dynamic analysis with the assistance of an Android VM.

The discussion paper can be found here on the EUIPO website.

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Offering pirate streaming services is a serious offense in the UK, where several people have received multi-year prison sentences in recent history.

These sentences haven’t deterred others from following in their footsteps. Illegal access to paid sports and TV content remains readily available, with vendors and operators profiting from these unauthorized subscriptions.

There has been no shortage of news reports covering IPTV piracy enforcement actions in the UK. These interventions range from remote warnings to house visits, and arrests are no rarity either.

Today, anti-piracy group FACT announced that it has successfully completed yet another sweep. In collaboration with rightsholders, including Sky, the group helped police to identity various ‘sellers’ of so-called pirate streaming devices.

The targets reportedly offered ‘fully loaded’ smart TV devices or Firesticks, which can be used in combination with pirate IPTV subscriptions.

FACT and the 40 IPTV Operators

FACT mentions that 40 illegal ‘IPTV operators’ were served with official warnings. They were either notified via mail by FACT and police, or visited at their home, where a cease-and-desist notice was delivered personally.

The term ‘IPTV operator’ isn’t explained in detail but since the 40 seemingly got off with a warning, it’s unlikely that they played a central part in the broader IPTV piracy ecosystem.

These interventions took place across the UK, including in London, South East England, West Midlands, North West, North East, North Wales and Scotland. According to FACT, it’s part of a larger campaign that aims to disrupt piracy operations.

Three Arrests

In addition to the warnings, police also executed three warrants, resulting in three arrests and house searches. All three suspects have since been released, but investigations remain ongoing.

“Three warrants were also served leading to the arrest of a 42-year-old man in Nottingham, a 51-year-old man from Widnes and a 52-year-old man in Stockton-on-Tees,” FACT reports.

FACT and Police visit one of the suspects
 

The men were arrested on various grounds ranging from fraud offenses, to violations of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, possession of criminal property and possession of Class A drugs.

Several items were seized during the operation, including IPTV streaming devices which will be investigated further.

“Digital devices and ‘fully loaded’ smart TV devices or Firesticks were also seized from the addresses and are currently undergoing forensic examination by FACT,” the group adds.

Seized items
 

For those keeping track of law enforcement action in the UK, including arrests and seizures, it’s worth pointing out that the arrests mentioned above have already been heavily publicized. Each arrest appeared in its own press release, around the time they were carried out early to mid-June.

Social Media Purge

Besides targeting suspects, Sky has been busy removing advertisements and social media posts that offer illegal IPTV subscriptions and ‘loaded’ Firesticks to customers in the UK and Ireland.

Since June, the media company reportedly removed over 3,000 listings from various social media platforms. Various ads were removed from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X, while associated accounts were suspended.

FACT and Sky are happy with the results and thank the police for their cooperation. Both hope that this latest enforcement round will send a deterrent message, but it’s unlikely to be the last.

“The action taken by FACT, police and Sky across the country sends a strong message to those involved in illegal streaming operations that they will be identified, and they will face consequences,” Sky’s Matt Hibbert comments.

According to FACT CEO Kieron Sharp, the recent actions are only the beginning.

“FACT and our partners are steadfast in our commitment to disrupt these criminal operations. This is just the start of our enforcement efforts, with more actions planned,” Sharp concludes.

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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. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is the most downloaded title.

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

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

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Pirate sites tend to come and go but in recent months it’s been challenging to keep up with all the changes.

Earlier this year, several popular pirate sites including Zorox, Upmovies, Animeflix, and Vegamovies lost their domains due to legal action. These sites relaunched under new domains, but more confusion lay ahead.

In June, Fmovies switched to a new domain name, Fmovies24.to, after trading Fmovies.to for Fmoviesz.to a few months earlier. These mystery changes have never been explained, but domain-related issues related to site blocking and search engine demotion measures may have played a role.

Fmovies wasn’t the only site to adopt a new domain name; many related streaming portals including Bflix.to, Soap2dayx.to, and Sflixhd.to followed suit. These pirate streaming portals simultaneously redirected their users to new domains and kept running.

While Fmovies initially continued to operate as usual, things started to fall apart towards the end of June. Without explanation, the site stopped adding new movies and TV shows and then last week, things took a turn for the worse. Fmovies completely went offline and remains offline today.

There’s still no official explanation for the shutdown. However, as we highlighted in detail this weekend, ongoing enforcement efforts alongside political and diplomatic pressure may have played a role. The fact that the MPA visited Fmovies’ alleged home country, Vietnam, right when the trouble started, is definitely noteworthy.

More Pirate Streaming Sites Shut Down

In a similar vein, there are more ‘coincidences’ that are worth pointing out. This weekend, more than a dozen pirate streaming portals suddenly shut down at the same moment. This includes websites with millions of monthly visitors, including flixtorz.to, movies7.to, and swatchseries.mx.

Visitors who access these sites today are greeted with a brief message, informing them that the site has closed. Instead, they are conveniently redirected to a new pirate streaming site, as shown below.

Some of the redirects
 

“The site has been closed. To continue watching free movies, you will be redirected to other site [insert domain here] (managed by other team),” the brief message on these domains reads.

The redirection technique is similar to the one we saw when Fmovies and others switched to new domain names in June. The main difference now, is the statement that the ‘redirecting’ domains are operated by a new team. Why this is happening now is not mentioned.

The New Anonymous

Apparently, the sites’ former operators believe it’s important to stress that the new sites are managed by new people. That should be fine for most users, as the initial owners were anonymous anyway. Whether a site is operated by X or Y, shouldn’t matter to them.

Perhaps this message isn’t meant for users, but for the MPA, ACE, and others who are trying to bring the operation down? The recent shutdown of Fmovies suggests that enforcement efforts are paying off; rightsholders previously signaled that they had identified some of the people involved.

Whether this redirection strategy will be effective has yet to be seen. In a way, however, it’s quite telling.

The fact that identical messages appeared on all sites suggests that they are managed by the same group. At minimum, there is some coordination going on. This is also supported by the overlapping Google Tag Manager on these sites, which is installed for advertising purposes. Publicly available information confirms this.

The same line of code was also connected to Fmovies, which explains why these other sites are taking action now. With Fmovies offline, and all other sites down as well, the trouble should be over now, right?

The MPA and ACE are unlikely to walk away since they’re all too familiar with sites ‘changing’ ownership. Last year, anime streaming portal Zoro.to was acquired by Aniwatch.to, which later rebranded to HiAnime. These new sites are just as big of a target as the original.

—

Below is a list of domains that had a redirection notice in place at the time of writing. There might be more.

– flixtorz.to
– movies7.to
– hdtodaytv.nl
– hdtoday.la
– flixer.ac
– flixer.mx
– swatchseries.mx
– putlocker.ph
– flixhq.bz
– flixtortv.to
– watch32.id
– yeahmovies.to
– watchserieshd.mx
– flixtor.one
– movies2watch.mx
– watchmovieshd.bz

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It’s Tuesday, April 24, 2007, and other than Beyoncé & Shakira singing Beautiful Liar on the radio, nothing much is happening.

For someone called haroldlky, whose real identity is currently unknown, at least part of that day was spent opening a channel on YouTube, a video site that was yet to celebrate its second birthday.

On that day more than 17 years ago, the fledgling YouTuber uploaded three videos that appear to have an engineering theme. The total running time for the trio, a modest 42 seconds.

Whether ‘haroldlky’ was content with less than 400 views in total over the next 17 years, or whether he even visited YouTube ever again, is completely unknown. If he visited today, he might be a little surprised.

After suddenly bursting back to life two weeks ago, three new videos were uploaded to his channel. All of these uploads were movies (Eragon, The King, and The Green Knight) dubbed in Hindi, and have since been viewed 376,000 times.

No Isolated Incident

After receiving a tip this morning that something unusual may be playing out on YouTube, we took a closer look. Similar events to that outlined above may have happened before but, roughly two weeks ago, the pace appears to have quickened and may have further increased during the past few days.

Many of the channels currently offering pirated movies appear to be personal accounts that may have been compromised. That’s unlikely to mean an issue at YouTube but rather some kind of data breach on another platform, which typically lead to exploitation of users’ duplication of login credentials across various services.

(Note: where channels relate to regular citizens and have been used recently, or contain home movies with families and friends, we have redacted information to limit identification of these potential victims)

We have no specific knowledge of the mechanism through which credentials may have been obtained, if indeed that’s the case here. However, if we look at events from the opposite direction, it seems unlikely that a YouTuber uploading math tutorials receiving a few hundred views (above) would suddenly switch to Hollywood blockbusters overnight.

In less than two weeks, these rogue uploads have already been viewed 917K times.

Bigger Movies, Bigger Numbers

It would be impossible for us to document every channel affected, but there are a few that catch the eye. Some channels may have been created in advance for use in nefarious activities. In most cases, however, it’s difficult to determine intent based on scant information. Out of caution, screenshots are partly redacted.

The pair of images below show that channel creation dates can differ wildly. On the left is a channel with 117K subscribers and just seven videos, displaying a join date of September 17, 2023. The pirated films uploaded to the channel are responsible for most of the 7.4 million views generated in the last 10 days.

On the right is a channel with just three videos, 6.1K subscribers, and an ancient join date of March 31, 2007. Just one pirated movie, Fate of the Furious, has already been viewed 582K times since it was uploaded yesterday.

Who, Why, and How is It Possible?

Who might be behind such a significant effort to spread so many movies is too early to say. We assume there’s no way of making money from these uploads, at least not on YouTube, so at least potentially, money may not be a factor.

Judging purely on outward impressions, various presentational factors, and the nature of those commenting on these movies, it seems likely that there’s at least some connection to India. Inbound links to the movies may be of interest to YouTube, but at least initially, a bigger question may be the focus.

For reasons unknown and with no outward indication of video tampering, these movie uploads appear to have completely circumvented Content ID, YouTube’s anti-piracy fingerprinting system. While that can happen for older titles or those already in the system, one would assume every angle would be covered for new and recent movies.

It’s feasible that fingerprints aren’t being supplied or maybe some glitch in the matrix is responsible. Interestingly, an upload of the Netflix series ‘The Gentlemen’ (every episode, running time 6h 23m) shows something that suggests it may have been subjected to scanning.

As seen in the image below, a music track by ‘Zoxer’ titled ‘Forward’ is listed as making an appearance in the series.

If this was indeed a content match and not something manually entered by the uploader, it seems unusual that the rest of the tracks in the series weren’t identified in the same way. Our searches found no record of ‘Forward’ by Zoxer appearing in the series; it may have done, we’ve just had no luck finding it.

The same can’t be said of those enjoying the uploaded movies, who appear to have had no problem finding them while racking up millions of views. It’s hard to say exactly how many millions of views overall, but it’s a significant number, especially when in normal circumstances the figure wouldn’t be worth reporting.

There’s no requirement for YouTube to be proactive in these circumstances, but why nobody has reported the haul below, which represents just a few of the movies uploaded, is certainly interesting.

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After much legal wrangling, in May 2015 the Stockholm District Court ordered the Pirate Bay’s .SE domains to be handed over to the Swedish state.

While the loss of thepiratebay.se and the lesser known piratebay.se had important symbolic value, the Punkt SE registry – which defeated rightsholders’ attempts to hold it liable for Pirate Bay’s infringements – warned that domain seizures would prove ineffective in the fight against piracy.

The Pirate Bay’s response was to spawn a domain name ‘hydra’, with each head of the mythical beast representing a new domain with a lesser known extension. Variants such as thepiratebay.gs, thepiratebay.la, thepiratebay.am, thepiratebay.mn, and thepiratebay.gd, were incorporated into a new TPB logo but very quickly, those domains began to fall too.

Domain Seizures Are Effective When Suspects Can’t Buy More

Deploying multiple domain names, that made no effort to hide affiliation with a specific site, was relatively rare nine years ago. Suspensions and law enforcement seizures weren’t completely unheard of, but were usually reserved for more significant targets such as EliteTorrents, Ninjavideo, and Megaupload.

Nevertheless, scores of seizures have peppered the last two decades, including a notable wave during the last World Cup. However, unlike the examples given above, these lacked a key component in a vital area. All platforms mentioned above were physically shut down and their operators arrested. Many of the sports streaming sites targeted during the World Cup simply shifted to new domains. With no arrests having been made, there was no way of stopping them.

At least in theory, the FBI investigation and Department of Justice action against Z-Library and its alleged operators, should’ve been enough to prevent the site making a comeback.

Yet after seizing at least ten times more domains from Z-Library than the Pirate Bay burned through in a lifetime, the site made its comeback and always seemed to have more.

The Mother of All Hydras

After waving goodbye to at least 140 domains in the initial wave, and then saying Пока, не скучай to many more, Z-Library was subjected to another wave of seizures in May 2023, and another round in November that same year.

The prospect of domain seizures carrying on indefinitely ultimately lay in the hands of Z-Library; the feds can only seize domains for as long as there are domains registered for Z-Library use.

In May 2024, Z-Library announced that it had lost one of its “primary login domains” but that wasn’t the full extent of the damage, and wouldn’t mark the end of the seizures either.

After many Swedish .SE domains were apparently bulk registered, in a consistent format indicating country-specific use, domains including zlibrary-dk.se (Denmark), zlibrary-es.se (Spain), zlibrary-fr.se (France), and dozens more covering most of the planet, the feds bagged themselves another sizeable haul. At the same time, a significant number of .SE domains with a language theme, including japanese-books.se, korean-books.se, latvian-books.se, and bulgarian-books.se, also found themselves under new ownership.

Many of these domains likely had little opportunity to fully perform their intended function. How they were all identified isn’t clear but with zone data freely available, they were always vulnerable to seizure.

More Domains Seized Than Any Other Pirate Site in History

As far as we can determine, the most recent domain seizures are zlib-notifier.info, zlib-notifier.org, go-to-zlibrary.se, singlelogin.se and z-lib.se. For roughly a month, there have been no fresh seizures, but the odds of a resumption seem overwhelmingly high.

What we can say with absolute confidence is whether seizures resume, or whether they don’t, Z-Library’s place in the domain seizure history books, in all its dubious glory, is already chiseled in stone. Scratched underneath, a couple of interesting footnotes.

Having lost around 110 .org domains to seizure, the theory that .org domains may be safer than others, has been completely destroyed. Yet against seemingly insurmountable odds, The Pirate Bay’s .org domain remains completely intact.

While it took a full two years to place The Pirate Bay’s .se domain under the control of the state, Z-Library’s loss of around 96 .se domains appears to have gone remarkable smoothly in Sweden. At the other end of the scale, Z-Library’s avoidance of .com domains, presumably as an anti-seizure tactic, means that in total they lost only six.

Using the tools available, that leads to a grand total of ~350 domains seized from Z-Library since November 2022. It’s possible that additional seizures took place that we know nothing about, but by any standard, that figure is huge in its own right.

That Z-Library is still standing even after all of that, is nothing short of remarkable. The likelihood that two alleged Z-Library operators under house arrest in Argentina, somehow managed to escape and then disappear around May this year, even more so.

Reports that the authorities are working on the assumption that the pair remain in Argentina, provide an interesting counterpoint to the belief that the United States has zero interest in the pair beyond pirating books.

The list of seized domains reads as follows:

1lib.app | 1lib.cloud | 1lib.domains | 1lib.education | 1lib.in | 1lib.limited | 1lib.mx | 1lib.net | 1lib.org | 1lib.site | 1lib.vip | 1lib.world | 2lib.org | 3lib.net | ae1lib.club | ae1lib.org | ae1lib.vip | africa1lib.club | africa1lib.vip | afrikaans-books.org | afrikaans-books.se | ar1lib.club | ar1lib.org | ar1lib.vip | arabic-books.org | arabic-books.se | art1lib.com | art1lib.org | asia1lib.club | asia1lib.vip | at1lib.club | at1lib.vip | au1lib.club | au1lib.org | au1lib.vip | azerbaijani-books.org | b-ok.asia | b-ok.cc | b-ok.com | b-ok.global | b-ok.lat | b-ok.org | b-ok.xyz | be1lib.club | be1lib.org | be1lib.vip | belarusian-books.org | bengali-books.org | bengali-books.se | bg1lib.club | bg1lib.org | bg1lib.vip | book4you.org | booklist.zone | bookmail.org | bookos-z1.org | booksc.org | booksc.xyz | bookscatalog.com | bookshome.app | bookshome.info | bookshome.net | bookshome.org | bookshome.world | br1lib.club | br1lib.org | br1lib.vip | bulgarian-books.org | bulgarian-books.se | by1lib.club | by1lib.org | by1lib.vip | ca1lib.club | ca1lib.org | ca1lib.vip | catalan-books.org | catalan-books.se | cc1lib.club | cc1lib.vip | ch1lib.club | ch1lib.vip | chamorro-books.org | cl1lib.club | cl1lib.org | cl1lib.vip | cn1lib.club | cn1lib.org | cn1lib.vip | croatian-books.org | croatian-books.se | cz1lib.club | cz1lib.vip | czechbooks.org | czechbooks.se | danish-books.org | de1lib.club | de1lib.org | de1lib.vip | dk1lib.club | dk1lib.org | dk1lib.vip | dutchbooks.org | dutchbooks.se | eg1lib.club | eg1lib.org | eg1lib.vip | es1lib.club | es1lib.org | es1lib.vip | et1lib.club | et1lib.org | et1lib.vip | eu1lib.club | eu1lib.org | eu1lib.vip | finnish-books.org | fr-books.org | fr1lib.club | fr1lib.org | fr1lib.vip | frenchbooks.se | georgian-books.org | german-books.org | german-books.se | go-to-zlibrary.se | gr1lib.club | gr1lib.org | gr1lib.vip | greek-books.org | greek-books.se | hebrew-books.org | hebrew-books.se | hindi-books.org | hindi-books.se | hk1lib.club | hk1lib.org | hk1lib.vip | hu1lib.club | hu1lib.org | hu1lib.vip | hungarian-books.org | hungarian-books.se | id1lib.org | ids1lib.club | ids1lib.vip | in1lib.club | in1lib.vip | indonesian-books.org | indonesian-books.se | ipfs.cat | ir1lib.club | ir1lib.org | ir1lib.vip | it1lib.club | it1lib.org | it1lib.vip | italian-books.org | italian-books.se | japanese-books.org | japanese-books.se | jp1lib.club | jp1lib.org | jp1lib.vip | kazakh-books.org | korean-books.org | korean-books.se | kp1lib.club | kp1lib.vip | kr1lib.club | kr1lib.org | kr1lib.vip | kyrgyz-books.org | lat1lib.club | lat1lib.vip | latin-books.org | latvian-books.org | latvian-books.se | libsolutions.app | libsolutions.art | libsolutions.domains | libsolutions.net | lithuanian-books.org | lithuanian-books.se | lk1lib.club | lk1lib.org | lk1lib.vip | ma1lib.club | ma1lib.org | ma1lib.vip | malayalam-books.org | marathi-books.org | mongolian-books.org | mx1lib.club | mx1lib.vip | my1lib.club | my1lib.org | my1lib.vip | ng1lib.club | ng1lib.org | ng1lib.vip | nl1lib.club | nl1lib.org | nl1lib.vip | norwegian-books.org | nz1lib.club | nz1lib.org | nz1lib.vip | pashto-books.org | pb1lib.org | persian-books.org | ph1lib.vip | pk1lib.club | pk1lib.org | pk1lib.vip | polish-books.org | polish-books.se | portuguese-books.org | portuguese-books.se | pt1lib.org | ru1lib.org | ru1lib.vip | russian-books.org | russian-books.se | sa1lib.org | serbian-books.org | serbian-books.se | sg1lib.org | sg1lib.vip | singlelogin.app | singlelogin.asia | singlelogin.click | singlelogin.se | singlelogin.site | slovak-books.org | slovenian-books.org | sng1lib.org | sng1lib.vip | spanish-books.org | spanish-books.se | swedish-books.org | swedish-books.se | tamil-books.org | th1lib.org | th1lib.vip | thai-books.org | tr1lib.club | tr1lib.org | tr1lib.vip | turkish-books.org | turkish-books.se | tw1lib.vip | u1lib.club | u1lib.org | u1lib.vip | ua1lib.org | ug1lib.club | ug1lib.org | uk1lib.org | uk1lib.vip | ukrainian-books.org | ukrainian-books.se | urdu-books.org | usa1lib.org | usa1lib.vip | uzbek-books.org | vietnamese-books.org | vn1lib.org | vn1lib.vip | webbookskeeping.app | webbooksnow.art | webbooksnow.how | z-lib.org | z-lib.se | z-library.se | za1lib.org | za1lib.vip | zlib-articles.se | zlib-domains.se | zlib-notifier.info | zlib-notifier.org | zlib.se | zlibcdn.com | zlibcdn2.com | zlibcdn3.com | zlibrary-access.se | zlibrary-ae.se | zlibrary-africa.se | zlibrary-ar.se | zlibrary-asia.se | zlibrary-at.se | zlibrary-au.se | zlibrary-be.se | zlibrary-bei.se | zlibrary-bg.se | zlibrary-bl.se | zlibrary-br.se | zlibrary-by.se | zlibrary-ca.se | zlibrary-ch.se | zlibrary-china.se | zlibrary-cl.se | zlibrary-cn.se | zlibrary-cz.se | zlibrary-de.se | zlibrary-dk.se | zlibrary-east.se | zlibrary-eg.se | zlibrary-es.se | zlibrary-et.se | zlibrary-fr.se | zlibrary-global.se | zlibrary-gr.se | zlibrary-hk.se | zlibrary-hu.se | zlibrary-id.se | zlibrary-in.se | zlibrary-ir.se | zlibrary-it.se | zlibrary-jp.se | zlibrary-kp.se | zlibrary-kr.se | zlibrary-lk.se | zlibrary-ma.se | zlibrary-mx.se | zlibrary-my.se | zlibrary-ng.se | zlibrary-nl.se | zlibrary-nz.se | zlibrary-pb.se | zlibrary-ph.se | zlibrary-pk.se | zlibrary-pl.se | zlibrary-pt.se | zlibrary-redirect.se | zlibrary-ru.se | zlibrary-sa.se | zlibrary-sg.se | zlibrary-sk.se | zlibrary-sng.se | zlibrary-th.se | zlibrary-tr.se | zlibrary-tw.se | zlibrary-ua.se | zlibrary-vn.se | zlibrary-za.se | zlibrary.org |

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It’s no secret that online piracy presents a major challenge to copyright holders. With owners of pirate sites largely unresponsive, search engines and other online intermediaries are often asked to intervene.

In most cases, these takedown efforts are outsourced to third-party companies. These outfits scour the web for links to infringing material and subsequently ask the operators of these sites and services to take action.

Google processes more takedown requests than any other company. This includes infringing content stored on Drive and YouTube, as well as links to pirated content indexed by Google. We recently reported that the total number of takedowns processed by the search engine is nearing 10 billion.

Busting a Billion URLs

Google Search officially began reporting these numbers publicly in 2012. Initially, the takedown efforts were largely driven by music and movie industry companies, with the adult entertainment outfits taking over after that. Today, however, the publishing category stands out.

This week, anti-piracy outfit Link-Busters sent its one billionth DMCA takedown request to Google. At the time of writing, the counter is at 1,015,949,711, but that could easily be dozens of millions higher by next week.

Link-Busters is the first reporting company to reach the billion takedowns mark for Google Search. It beat Aylo subsidiary MG Premium to the punch, and leaves many others behind at considerable distance.

The takedown company, which is domiciled in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has been in business for more than a decade. When sending a few million takedowns per year just a few years ago, it barely stood out. It can now reach those numbers in a single day.

Publisher-Driven

Looking at Link-Busters’ record-breaking numbers, we see that they are largely driven by 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.

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, legally or not. To prevent this, publishers try to make these sites unfindable in Google.

Looking at Link-Busters’ ten most-targeted domains, we see three Anna’s Archive domains on top, followed by a series of Z-Library domains. These ten alone are already good for over 220 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 clearly standing out, with over a quarter billion takedowns. Other request senders include HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Hachette.

Takedowns in Perspective

The publishers seem content with the Link-Busters service, according to the various testimonials we’ve read. However, it’s worth stressing that one billion takedowns doesn’t equate to one billion removals from Google search.

As shown below, roughly 75% of the reported URLs were removed. Other URLs were not in Google’s index (21%) but were blacklisted instead. The remaining links were sent in more than once (2%), or were not removed for other reasons (1%).

Actions Taken by Google (Link-Busters)

The fact that shadow libraries have many millions of URLs, which are duplicated across dozens of domains, helped Link-Busters reach these record numbers. And since the targeted sites remain resilient, we can expect these numbers to increase further.

In the past, we have noticed that Link-Busters wasn’t always with the times. For example, it targeted stale Megaupload URLs, several years after the site was taken down. The same happened with Rapidshare links a few years later.

Nowadays, the list of targeted domains appears to be managed better. For example, the company reported links for the seized Z-Library domain z-lib.org on November 27, 2022, not long after it was seized by the U.S. Government.

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Some may measure the importance of Fmovies by highlighting its popularity. With an estimated 190 million visits in March 2024, the argument sits on solid ground.

Others may point towards the site’s presentation; glossy, informational, responsive, and arguably even better presented than platforms operated by its legal competitors. Or maybe the site’s almost flawless uptime record was its most impressive feature; if a site is offline, nothing else matters.

The truth is that all of these things contributed to the importance of Fmovies; but most important of all was its ability to maintain such high standards under well-documented adverse conditions. When the MPA chose Fmovies to be the focal point, the prime example, the poster boy to show why the United States must implement site-blocking, that arguably made Fmovies the most important pirate site of recent times.

Hollywood, In the Dining Room, With the Lead Pipe

As things stand today, Fmovies appears to be dead. The site first showed signs of distress around June 22/23 when it stopped updating with new content. Around noon on July 16, everything went black, and that was that.

Based purely on motive, many would consider Hollywood the prime suspect. The major studios have wanted Fmovies gone for a very long time, everyone knows that. But with the site on the cusp of playing the starring role in the MPA’s site-blocking drive, hand-picked for displaying every quality the studios have been warning about, doesn’t the timing seem at least a little premature?

That brings us to the second point on the triad. According to most public statements, including testimony before Congress in 2023, for geographical and political reasons, the MPA had not yet acquired the means to shut Fmovies down. The main complication was understood to be the site’s operator(s) being located in Vietnam. Last year, the MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, Karyn Temple, visited Vietnam and personally asked law enforcement to intervene.

While that didn’t happen, it’s not difficult to see how that strengthened the MPA’s case for site-blocking; a tool of last resort, for tackling the most egregious foreign sites, that respond to no other measures, while stealing from Americans and laundering the money. Yet despite all that, somehow Fmovies is already dead, no site-blocking needed.

Did Opportunity Knock?

In the wake of RARBG’s unexpected shutdown, we published a report highlighting a series of political events that, when combined, offered a plausible explanation of factors that likely contributed to the site’s demise. A link to our report appeared in an MPA document; it wasn’t an endorsement but seemed to imply that we were at least on the right track.

The Fmovies situation is more complex, more political, and much less predictable; all good reasons to continue regardless.

With a focus on enforcing copyright in the digital age, the International Symposium on Copyright Enforcement took place in Hanoi over four days starting June 17. Those present included the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and Vietnam’s Copyright Office under the Ministry of Culture.

Also in attendance, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), featuring the major movie studios and Netflix. The MPA was joined by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), a venture featuring a who’s-who of major rightsholders and specialist anti-piracy companies.

MPA Chairman/CEO Charles H. Rivkin (left) alongside

Nguyen Quoc Dzung, Vietnam’s Ambassador to the

United States.

“Vietnam’s dynamic streaming market is an increasingly important one for MPA members,” Rivkin said.

“Had a great lunch with @AmbassadorDzung discussing how to strengthen the bonds between our creative economies and protect the livelihoods of the creative workforce driving this shared growth.”

The copyright enforcement symposium ended on June 21 and purely for reference purposes, Fmovies reportedly stopped updating June 22/23.

The post featuring the image above is dated June 24, three days after the symposium ended. The timing could be purely coincidental.

Things get a little more tricky when trying to imagine a discussion on how to protect livelihoods to drive shared growth, without mentioning the Fmovies-sized elephant sat at the table, helping itself to food from everyone’s plates.

If Fmovies wasn’t mentioned as a problem in need of a solution, perhaps the site’s sudden maintenance problems were mentioned in passing? We don’t know but on the balance of probabilities, something must’ve been mentioned.

Developing Vietnam’s Movie Business

On July 5, at the Da Nang Asian Film Festival held in the central city of Da Nang, the Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) held a seminar aiming to enhance international co-production and development of the local film industry.

VFDA President Ngo Phuong Lan spoke of the importance of film to the local economy, noting that Vietnam needs to gain experience from countries with a well-developed film industry. Who could possibly help?

Jared Dougherty is Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Vice Chairman and Head of Asia Pacific for Public Policy and Foreign Affairs. According to VietnamPlus, “Dougherty shared several solutions that are applicable in Vietnam, ranging from getting funding for films to capitalizing on the values of films’ intellectual property.”

Since Sony is a member of the MPA, Dougherty has seen the elephant pilfering from his plate too. Maybe its demise wasn’t mentioned as a quid pro quo in respect of the films in need of funding. Maybe that’s already understood.

Other information seems to suggest an entirely different set of problems at Fmovies.

Fmovies May Have Been Compromised

If we combine the qualities mentioned earlier, most people would likely agree that Fmovies’ security wasn’t seen as especially problematic. That being said, the MPA seem confident in their claim to have identified the site’s owner, and we see no reason to dispute that. The MPA has also shared additional pieces of information; nothing especially groundbreaking but enough to wonder exactly how much more they know.

The answer to that question is probably “much more” but having reviewed information pertaining to Fmovies just this week, the potential for others knowing a lot too seems wide open. We will take a lot more time to verify the finer details, but we suspect that sensitive details relating to Fmovies infrastructure shouldn’t have appeared online.

The MPA stated publicly that the site was hosted in Bulgaria and that appears to be true, at least from the list of IP addresses out in the open. Presumably the same applies to around two dozen IP addresses that, at least far as we can determine, acted as Fmovies proxy servers, at least in part.

Also exposed are the domains of several third party file-hosting platforms which provided Fmovies’ content libraries, and what seems to be the means to obtain that content without Fmovies’ involvement.

All of that being said, perhaps the biggest eye-opener is a list of domain names that allegedly form the Fmovies ’empire’. It’s no secret that Fmovies has connections to other, broadly similar streaming sites. Certainly, the MPA has mentioned it several times and based on common knowledge, a few have been mentioned here too.

Until we’ve tested every single one, we won’t report any here. Suffice to say, taking out Fmovies permanently could have a dramatic effect on many other sites operating under very familiar branding.

Anything being discussed in Vietnam, to the extent that Fmovies was under discussion, by default isn’t just about Fmovies. The big question is whether Fmovies’ death and the resulting gap in the market, will be seen as a warning to others or simply a golden opportunity.

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In recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have repeatedly complained that piracy of live sports is getting out of hand.

Ideally, they would like to see updates to the current legislative frameworks, so the problem can be targeted more efficiently.

Most of the discussion is focused on tighter enforcement and more restrictions, including site blocking and automated takedowns. However, there are other roads that lead to Rome, or Athens for that matter.

Affordable Access to Beat Piracy?

In Greece, two of the larger sports streaming services came up with an experimental idea. Rather than using sticks to tackle online pirates, they’re trying carrots instead. While most rightsholders wouldn’t immediately consider this option, on paper it makes sense.

This week, Cosmote TV and Nova signed a new deal designed to provide customers with access to more sports for less money. Starting on August 23, subscribers of one service can get content from the other, for a minimal extra charge.

Under the new agreement, Cosmote TV subscribers will pay just three euros extra for access to Nova’s content. At the same time, Nova subscribers can view Cosmote’s sports offerings for just one extra euro. In both cases, the price for the total package starts at less than 20 euros (USD$22).

While the services may have some overlap in their regular programming, both have several unique sports licensing deals in place that can soon be accessed for a fraction of the costs.

Nova has content from the Premier League and various other football leagues, the Grand Slams for tennis fans, Masters golf tournaments, and the European basketball league. Cosmote TV, meanwhile, has the UEFA Champions League, NBA, MotoGP, NFL and UFC, among others.

Fighting Pirates with Pricing

The sports streaming services are not secretive about the reason for this unique partnership. They’re explicitly advertising it as a way to compete with pirate streaming services, hoping to take back market share.

“This agreement is a decisive step both for dealing with piracy that is constantly spreading, and for the development of the pay-TV market,” Cosmote’s announcement reads.

“By offering all premium sports content at competitive prices and on a single platform, Nova is taking an important step in the fight against content piracy,” Nova adds, in a separate press release.

Other streaming platforms are interested in joining the action too, with Vodafone TV and ANT1+ being mentioned as potential candidates in local news reports.

A New Trend?

The partnership doesn’t mean that Greece will abandon its traditional enforcement options, which include site blocking. But, a more affordable subscription will certainly make legal alternatives more appealing than ‘unreliable’ pirate streams.

Euro2day reports that Greece has an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 illegal IPTV subscriptions, for a total population of just over 10 million, so it should be possible to convert some pirates into paying customers.

Many existing pirates are avid sports fans who already pay for legitimate subscriptions, but pirate on the side. If they only have to pay a euro extra to access everything hassle-free, that might be an offer too good to refuse.

Whether this ‘revolutionary’ idea will pay off has yet to be seen, but it’s not difficult to imagine that it could work elsewhere too. Perhaps Netflix, Disney, Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Apple TV, Fubo, plus Peacock and friends, can give it a try, some day.

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While movie and TV show piracy is increasingly attracting for-profit piracy operations, pirate libraries continue to wave an ideological flag.

Portals such as Sci-Hub, LibGen, and Z-Library say they strive to collect and preserve as much written content as possible. That includes books, academic papers, and magazines.

This preservation drift has awakened book publishers and other rightsholders. In recent years, we’ve seen several high-profile enforcement efforts and civil lawsuits. In addition, the U.S. Government also launched a criminal prosecution of two alleged Z-Library operators.

While all eyes were on Z-Library in late 2022, a new shadow library search engine opened its doors. With its non-nonsense website, Anna’s Archive swiftly became a daily visit for many, and that remains the case today.

Anna’s Archive Domain Suspension

This rising star didn’t go unnoticed. In its relatively short existence, Anna’s Archive has already been blocked by ISPs in several countries and sued in the U.S. for scraping and publishing OCLC’s WorldCat database.

The OCLC lawsuit, which remains ongoing, has the potential to put Anna’s Archive’s domain names at risk. Perhaps in part triggered by the legal problems, the site recently switched from its .org domain to a .gs alternative. As a precaution, we were told.

This domain change didn’t work out as planned, however. Not long after the site switched to the new domain name, it was forced to retrace its steps. Apparently, the .GS domain registry quickly decided to suspend the domain.

The annas-archive.gs domain now has the ‘server hold’ status, but it’s not clear why. The domain registry operator, Atlantis North Ltd, didn’t respond to our request for comment. The most likely explanation, of course, is that a copyright holder complained.

Domain Names Are Replaceable

The prompt domain suspension doesn’t come as a surprise. When The Pirate Bay switched to the South Georgian TLD many years ago, it only took the .GS registry a few days to take it offline.

The Pirate Bay wasn’t fazed, as it had several backup domains available. The same now applies to Anna’s Archive, which reverted to annas-archive.org and also has annas-archive.li and annas-archive.se as alternatives.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the Anna’s Archive team says that it doesn’t know that happened to their domain, as they weren’t informed. However, it does see more domain troubles ahead.

“We don’t know what happened, the registry didn’t communicate with us. Presumably they responded to some enforcement action, or perhaps they acted on their own. This will continue to happen and is the reason we have multiple domains and communication channels,” they say.

The Mission Continues

Despite the recent setbacks and legal pressure, Anna’s Archive shows no sign of retreat, quite the opposite in fact. In a new detailed blog post the team reiterates that it will continue to gather as much human ‘knowledge’ as possible.

Interestingly, the choice to focus on textual content is more pragmatic than ideology-driven. Fundamentally, Anna’s Archive would like to preserve all media, including video, but books and papers are simply easier to store in its digital archive.

“So why papers and books specifically? The answer is simple: information density. Per megabyte of storage, written text stores the most information out of all media. While we care about both knowledge and culture, we do care more about the former,” the team explains.

Preservation though Multiplication

Currently, the archive is nearing 1 million gigabytes, or 1 petabyte, which is a massive amount for text-based data. All these works are indexed and searchable, but they are also distributed by the site though large torrent files.

“We can collect papers, books, magazines, and more, and distribute them in bulk. We currently do this through torrents, but the exact technologies don’t matter and will change over time. The important part is getting many copies distributed across the world.”

Making all of this, often copyrighted, data available to the public puts the site at risk of civil and criminal lawsuits. However, Anna’s Archive believes that this risk is worth taking, to preserve as much knowledge as possible.

In its blog post, the site quotes the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, who illustrated the importance of preservation though multiplication more than 200 years ago.

“The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” _{— Thomas Jefferson, 1791}

Anna’s Archive also has a fundamental belief in preservation. This goal runs contrary to the interests of rightsholders, who want to control access to their works. This battle is nearing a peak now and could get worse going forward.

Lower Costs, Smaller Files

Instead of dwelling on legal troubles, Anna’s Archive remains focused on its preservation goal. The site doesn’t deny there are challenges. However, multiplication is about to get easier too.

The site has already collected a massive amount of data. Archiving this information will become cheaper in the near future, as digital storage costs go down exponentially. In addition, information density will improve through technology, such as OCR.

For example, an old scanned book copy has a much larger file size than a properly optimized copy that’s mostly text-based. This means that, even if the archive expands, file-sizes and costs will decrease significantly.

“Overall it’s not unrealistic to expect at least a 5-10x reduction in total file size, perhaps even more. Even with a conservative 5x reduction, we’d be looking at $1,000–$3,000 in 10 years even if our library triples in size.”

“If these forecasts are accurate, we just need to wait a couple of years before our entire collection will be widely mirrored. Thus, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, ‘placed beyond the reach of accident’.”

‘The Lost Cannot Be Recovered’

According to Anna’s Archive, we are ‘on the eve of a revolution’ but things can still go both ways. If rightsholders win this battle in the coming years, successfully shutting down all shadow libraries, all work would be for nothing.

To make its point, Anna’s Archive cites Thomas Jefferson once more, noting that “the lost cannot be recovered”.

“We have a critical window of about 5-10 years during which it’s still fairly expensive to operate a shadow library and create many mirrors around the world, and during which access has not been completely shut down yet.

“If we can bridge this window, then we’ll indeed have preserved humanity’s knowledge and culture in perpetuity. We should not let this time go to waste. We should not let this critical window close on us.”

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Decades of experience supports the theory that intellectual property infringement is often viewed by China as a problem to be solved by those complaining of violations on home territory.

That the loudest voices continue to import mountains of Chinese-manufactured goods, including items that in some cases violate copyright and trademark laws, serves to illustrate why differences on IP enforcement are likely to continue.

Other conundrums, including IP rights owned by U.S. companies being strategically infringed by Chinese citizens, in ways that avoid liability in China itself, has led to limited enforcement opportunities and in some cases, rampant piracy.

Early March we reported on the work of Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA. After formulating an impressive strategy and demonstrating significant patience, the company now benefits from having its own office in Beijing.

From there, big things are playing out, including collaboration with Chinese authorities which led to three people behind pirate anime site B9Good being convicted earlier this year.

CODA Files Criminal Complaints Against Pirate Services

New information published by CODA on Wednesday reveals success in two other cases relating to pirate streaming. The services offered mainstream movies and TV shows owned by companies in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, among others.

Since a library of more than 30,000 anime episodes were also available for viewing, CODA’s Beijing office was prompted to file criminal copyright complaints with the Public Security Bureau of Jiangsu Province.

11 Arrests, Servers and Other Hardware Seized

In the first case, CODA reports that the Public Security Bureau of Taizhou City sent 54 investigators and other personnel to the Chongqing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai, Hebei, and Anhui provinces to conduct simultaneous searches of multiple suspects in various locations.

“The searches revealed that a subscription-style website called Shenlan had been established and operated, which copied a large amount of Japanese content, mainly anime, without permission from the rights holders, and uploaded it to a personal media server, which is a legal service, to enable streaming playback from various devices,” the anti-piracy group reports.

“As a result of the investigation, a total of 10 people, including the main culprit A (36 years old), a man living in Chongqing, who operated Shenlan and sold account information for accessing ‘Shenlan’ from the website and app on his own website, were arrested on suspicion of copyright law violations.

“In addition, nine laptops, two desktops, two servers, 11 mobile phones, and multiple storage devices were seized during the search, and the administrative accounts and passwords were obtained, and all data on the servers was preserved as evidence,” CODA reports.

Another suspect was arrested in Hubei Province on January 24th, making a total of 11 arrests in connection with the now shuttered service.

Intelligence Obtained, Police Target Second Pirate Operation

On June 5, 2024, the Public Security Bureau of Yangzhou City sent a total of eleven investigators and cybersecurity experts to the home and workplace of two other men. Information about the suspected brothers was obtained via another suspect’s testimony following the raids in January.

During the searches investigators identified a subscription piracy service called COCO operating in similar fashion to the Shenlan service previously taken down. Even greater volumes of pirated content were accessible via COCO, however; around 100,000 TV episodes were available for streaming which included 20,000 episodes of Japanese content, mostly anime.

“COCO was opened by male B in May 2021, and male B was mainly responsible for its operation and maintenance. He operated the site from December 2023 until his arrest in June 2024, recruiting his older brother, male C, as a member of the operation,” CODA reports.

“During the search, PCs, server equipment, etc. were seized, and the administrative account and password of COCO were obtained, and all data on the server was preserved as evidence.”

China Prosecutes More Pirates Than Outsiders May Think

Research on the CODA cases led to an unexpected discovery. In contrast to reports implying a lax approach to infringement, Chinese authorities seem remarkably busy when it comes to prosecuting operators of pirate sites.

An article published on a government website late February, titled: “I just wanted to release pirated movies to earn some advertising fees, but I didn’t expect to be convicted and sentenced…” tells the story of a person identified as ‘Ke’ who chose piracy as an easy way to make money.

The report notes that since Ke majored in computer science, he figured that running a piracy service would be a low-cost, high-return business model that would generate some much-needed cash. Details aren’t specific but Ke reportedly began by “buying a website and the services it contained” which may suggest some kind of streaming template and content derived from a third-party source.

Whatever it was, Ke reportedly became more adventurous, soon deploying web crawlers to identify movies and TV shows available elsewhere on the web before storing them on his own server. He ended up running his own pirate streaming site and a ‘cinema app’ which attracted attention from advertisers in early 2022.

In May that same year, authorities received a complaint from rightsholders. At this point, Ke had a library of more than 50,000 movies and TV shows and after an investigation, he was sentenced in April 2023 to three years in prison, suspended, and fined 400,000 yuan, around US$55,000

More Prosecutions Recently Than the United States?

A February 2024 report in local media is just one of many detailing the prosecution of pirate site operators in China. This particular case was supervised by five government departments, including the Copyright Bureau and Intellectual Property Office.

A man identified as ‘Deng’ was the operator of a website where “video enthusiasts” could view movies, TV shows, and documentaries. Authorities say the plan was to attract people prepared to pay for ultra-high definition content to be delivered to their homes. When police raided Deng’s home, they found more than 317,000 pirated films and TV series, 17 computers, and 200 large capacity hard drives.

Investigators later revealed that between December 2019 and February 2023, Deng had purchased over 30,000 master discs from multiple suppliers in China, and used those as a basis for a wholesale piracy business supplying other groups around the country. At trial, the court sentenced Deng to three years and two months in prison, fined him 150,000 yuan (~US$20,600), and confiscated his illegal gains.

As recently as this April, authorities were reporting another crackdown against sites illegally offering Spring Festival films, plus an additional 200,000 movies and TV shows obtained from various platforms.

Seven suspects were arrested and 20 websites were reportedly shut down. Following a recent trial, a court sentenced three men to prison for copyright infringement, with terms ranging from ten months to four years, plus fines. Two other men received suspended prison sentences.

While China’s priorities differ from those of the United States, there appears to be consensus on the need to clamp down on movie and TV show piracy. Whose movies and TV shows should receive priority protection remains an argument for another day.

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When Fmovies first appeared on the scene in 2016, it quickly gained popularity among streaming piracy fans.

Copyright holders were less pleased. They swiftly recognized the new threat and just months after the site was launched, Fmovies found itself being sued in a U.S. Court.

The copyright infringement lawsuit and the $210,000 damages award were casually ignored by the site’s owners. Instead, Fmovies continued to focus on providing free entertainment to the masses, profiting from this activity through advertisements.

In recent years, rightsholder representatives, including the MPA, worked hard to maintain the pressure. They pinpointed the site’s operators in Vietnam and teamed up with local authorities to address the threat. In addition, U.S. authorities and lawmakers were repeatedly warned about the site.

Last fall, lawmakers in Congress got a demonstration of the site from MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, Karyn Temple. This showed how easy it is to stream the latest movies and TV shows inside one of the best secured buildings in the country. The site didn’t budge, however.

Fmovies in Trouble

After years of operating seemingly undeterred, Fmovies started to show cracks earlier this month when the site stopped releasing new content. No reason was provided for this sudden change, which left users wondering if more trouble lay on the horizon.

This week the troubles increased and yesterday Fmovies became totally unreachable. Instead of the regular homepage, people were greeted with a Cloudflare error, notifying users that the connection had timed out.

“The initial connection between Cloudflare’s network and the origin web server timed out. As a result, the web page can not be displayed,” the error message reads.

In isolation, a temporary stretch of downtime could be a minor issue. However, since the site had yet to start posting new content again, it suggests the operators may have quietly abandoned ship.

Fmovies Shuts Down?

There is no word from the Fmovies team but through an indirect source, TorrentFreak heard that the site faces “legal issues”. However, that’s nothing new, and doesn’t explain why the site went offline this time.

With more than a quarter billion site visits in three months, Fmovies is (or was) one of the most popular pirate sites on the Internet, so the stakes are high.

As far as we can see, the site doesn’t have any immediate domain name problems and hosting setbacks can’t explain the lack of new content in recent weeks. So there must be a more concrete reason for recent events.

The big question now is whether the site is destined to go off offline permanently. This will be answered as more time passes, but we can be certain that, in the interim, many new ‘Fmovies’ clones will try to scoop up the site’s regular users.

But… could that even be part of the plan?

If we have to come up with a possible explanation, we would hypothesize that the site’s operators might want to abandon the tainted Fmovies brand. Being the poster child of streaming piracy comes with immense pressure, as highlighted earlier. Stepping away from that, intentionally, might make sense.

The people running the site are presumably connected to several other large pirate streaming sites. Those pirate sites remain online but are not in the headlines, at least not as much. Time will tell, anything beyond that is speculation at this point.

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At the start of the 2010s, Movie2k was one of the most visited sites on the web.

The site was an early adopter of pirate streaming and at its peak, secured a spot among the twenty most-visited websites in Germany, beating Twitter and Amazon.

Movie2k’s success generated a healthy revenue stream which its operators converted to a new and exciting ‘currency’ called Bitcoin. It’s assumed that the goal was to keep the haul hidden from prying eyes. That initially appeared to work well, but it didn’t last.

The Movie2k reign came to an end in 2013, when the site mysteriously went offline. The site’s closure fueled suspicion of legal issues, which was eventually confirmed years later when German police announced several arrests.

Arrests and Bitcoin Seizures

The arrests resulted in numerous convictions over the years and in 2020 the authorities also seized 2,700 bitcoins. However, this number pales in comparison to the amount that was confiscated earlier this year as part of an ongoing prosecution.

Following an investigation carried out by the Dresden General Prosecutor’s Office, the Saxony State Criminal Police, together with the local tax authority (INES), in January nearly 50,000 bitcoins were seized. At today’s exchange rate the haul is worth more than $3 billion.

Never before has this much Bitcoin been secured by German authorities; it was also one of the largest crypto hauls worldwide. According to the police report, the defendant agreed to voluntarily hand over the cryptocurrency.

Saxony Moves all Seized Bitcoin

Legally, and from a risk perspective, the German state of Saxony can’t hold the Bitcoin indefinitely. The coins had to start moving by the end of June, and that’s when the first outward transfers were recorded.

The Bitcoin transfers have been closely tracked by Arkham which provided updates of all notable transactions. While it’s clear that the funds were moving, it doesn’t automatically mean they were instantly sold.

Over the past couple of weeks, the state of Saxony moved all of its Bitcoin to external parties. The latest transfers were completed a few days ago, bringing the wallet balance to zero.

The authorities haven’t commented on the transfers and alleged selling. The coins went to various third-parties including exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp, as well as Flow Traders and Cumberland, which operate as market makers.

Bitcoin Storytelling and Donations

As is often the case on financial markets, these types of events are often used to explain price movements. So, when the Bitcoin price started to drop, several reports hinted that the German ‘selloff’ could be responsible.

It’s impossible to confirm a link between the two events without further information. However, the Bitcoin price rebounded over the past week while Saxony was moving out more and more Bitcoin; that’s the opposite effect for a similar ‘selloff’.

At this point, it’s clear that the German state is liquidating the Bitcoin assets seized from the former operator of Movie2k. Interestingly, however, the wallet’s assets are not completely zero, as some people decided to donate a few extra Satoshi to the account, which currently holds $421.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin haul’s previous owner is likely to have witnessed recent events in disbelief; the value of the ‘coins’ when first stashed away was just a few dollars each.

In April this year, the defendant heard the charges he’s facing, which include unauthorized commercial exploitation of copyrighted works and commercial money laundering. He will be sentenced at a later date.

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The double threat of some of the world’s largest pirate sites operating from Vietnam, yet limited opportunity to conduct robust enforcement actions to turn that situation around, remains a constant source of frustration for overseas rightsholders.

Hollywood’s opinion on what needs to be done wouldn’t be any more clear if its submissions to the USTR were written in all caps then underlined. In light of a criminal complaint against the operator of Phimmoi.net, that after much work simply vanished into the ether, overall progress has fallen well short of expectations.

Anime and manga producers based in Japan face similar challenges but with relatively few resources, at least when compared to those at Hollywood’s disposal, they hope that collaborating with partners will eventually break the impasse. News of a rapid conclusion to a rare online piracy investigation will likely be considered a plus.

Pirate Streaming Site Operators Targeted in January

News in January that police in Vietnam had arrested three men behind an illegal streaming operation was unexpected.

Information provided by the Quang Binh Provincial Police Department was soon confirmed by state-controlled media. The report said that 30-year-old Phan Ngoc Tuan, a resident of Quang Binh province, had been arrested on suspicion of operating the pirate sites bilutvt.net, tvhayh.org and animefull.net. The arrest later featured on national TV.

Authorities claimed that Tuan recruited two men, 24-year-old Ngo Quang Huy and 25-year-old Nguyen Thanh Nhan, both of Ho Chi Minh City. The men never met in person, since all duties were carried out via Telegram.

These apparently proactive arrests didn’t just lead to the men being prosecuted. Authorities demonstrated the type of speed and efficiency Hollywood has been requesting for many years. It seems that when the stars align, all things are possible.

Trio on Trial

The men faced trial at the People’s Court of Quang Binh province starting July 11, with local media confirming charges of “Infringement of copyright and related rights” under Article 225 of the Penal Code.

Information relating to the alleged crimes, outlined by the authorities back in January, featured almost identically during the trial.

The Court heard how 30-year-old Tuan began work on the sites back in 2019, aiming to distribute movies to the public, without permission from rightsholders, for the purpose of generating illegal profits from advertising. To avoid detection, Tuan reportedly bought domain names, rented virtual servers, and utilized hosting space, outside Vietnam.

Tuan went on to recruit Ngo Quang Huy and Nguyen Thanh Nhan, who were tasked with downloading, editing and distributing movies. The men were also responsible for increasing user engagement to attract advertising revenue.

Scale of Infringement

At the time of the arrests in January, police reported that Tuan had a library of 188,322 movie files, amounting to roughly 40TB of data.

During their trial, the men were accused of illegally broadcasting 57 Vietnamese and 14 ‘foreign’ films, which through advertising generated almost 2.7 billion VND (~US$106,500) over the course of the offending, slightly less than the 3 billion VND estimate from January.

After reviewing the evidence, the court sentenced the men as follows:

• Phan Ngoc Tuan: 24 months (suspended) + 2 billion VND (~US$78,800) fine.
• Ngo Quang Huy: 15 months (suspended) + 490 million VND (~US$19,300) fine.
• Nguyen Thanh Nhan: 9 months (suspended) + 184 million VND (~$US7,250) fine.

According to local media, this was the first case accepted and resolved by the Provincial People’s Court where a defendant was accused of copyright crimes.

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Three years ago, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal upheld the first pirate site-blocking order in the country.

The landmark decision opened the door to additional and more advanced blocking requests. Indeed, it didn’t take long before NHL broadcasters asked the court for a pirate streaming blocking order of their own.

This NHL blocking action was followed by a FIFA World Cup blocking order, which was also granted without further hassle. Following up on these successes, sports rightsholders added MLB pirates to their list of targets.

The blocking injunctions were not standalone requests. Instead, the interlocutory orders are part of lawsuits against the operators of the pirate streaming servers. On paper, the goal of the lawsuits is to pursue claims against these defendants and the blockades are a temporary measure to limit the damage these services cause.

This approach made sense, as filing a lawsuit simply for blocking purposes wasn’t common. However, after several injunctions were granted over the past three years, in April rightsholders streamlined their tactics by expanding the coverage of their blocking efforts.

New NHL, NBA and Premier League Piracy Blockade

Instead of pursuing blocking requests separately, rightsholders including Bell, Fubo TV, Rogers, and The Sports Network filed a request that covered multiple sports. The organizations sought to secure a blocking order for new NBA, NHL and Premier League games, identifying three “John Doe” defendants.

The defendants were not named but several IP addresses were identified. These appear to have been used by several piracy operations, including the publicly available pirate streaming site ‘epllive.net’ and paid subscription platforms including ‘TVSmarters’, which are mentioned by name.

From the blocking application
 

Canada’s Federal Court granted the joint blocking request last Tuesday. A publicly available copy of the order has all IP addresses redacted, resulting in numerous blacked out pages.

Dynamic and Expanding

The ‘dynamic’ blocking order allows rightsholders to go back to court, to expand the list of blocked IP addresses. This helps to keep the injunction up-to-date, in the event that pirate streaming services try to circumvent the blocking measures.

Unlike the IP addresses, the ‘game windows’ and targeted games are not a secret. They cover upcoming NBA, NHL, and Premier League games, with the length varying per sport.

The NBA order remains valid until the 2025-2026 season. Coverage for pre-season and regular season games is limited to the only Canadian NBA team, the Toronto Raptors, likely due to rights issues. For the playoffs, non-Raptors games should be blocked too.

The Premier League order has no restrictions and applies to the 2023-2024 season, which has already ended, and the upcoming 2024-2025 season, yet to get underway.

The NHL blocking order appears to have come too late. According to the court documents, it covers the 2023-2024 season and the 2024 Stanley Cup. These ended before the court approved the court order.

The early expiration can be addressed, as the court order also includes the option to submit amendments to the scope of the order, without intervention from the court. This means that the NHL games for the upcoming season can be added, provided that the rights are secured.

The rightsholders requested this ‘expansion’ option because that would be more efficient than having to go back to court again and launch a separate proceeding. If a rightsholder needs more than two amendments, however, the court has to review the matter again.

Updates are not limited to NBA, NHL, or Premier League content. They can also cover different leagues or entirely different sports, as long as the requesting party has the appropriate rights.

Last-Minute Euro 2024 Piracy Blockade

The new amendment option was swiftly put to use. Just a few days after the court granted the order, an amendment request sought to expand the blocking order to cover the Euro 2024 football final, which took place yesterday.

This amendment was granted last Friday and, assuming that the targeted ISPs responded in time, were implemented before the broadcast started.

All in all, the recent orders show that rightsholders in Canada continue to optimize and streamline their blocking measures. This will undoubtedly frustrate some piracy services operating locally. That said, successfully defeating piracy remains a challenge.

—

A copy of the latest orders, as requested by the NBA, NHL, and Premier League is available here (pdf), courtesy of Teksavvy, which shared it publicly in the interests of transparency

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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. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is the most downloaded title.

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

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

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At a time when many pirate sites seem increasingly elusive, oftentimes almost transient as domains, identities, and branding, come and go, static enforcement targets are in limited supply.

The same can’t be said for internet service providers and over the past few years, several have paid a very steep price. Not for engaging in piracy per se, but for not responding aggressively enough against subscribers mostly accused of repeatedly pirating movies and music.

Just before the weekend, dozens of record labels including UMG, Warner, and Sony, filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon at a New York federal court. In common with previous lawsuits that accused rivals of similar inaction, Verizon Communications Inc., Verizon Services Corp., and Cellco Partnership (dba Verizon Wireless), stand accused of assisting subscribers to download and share pirated music, by not doing enough to stop them.

Can You Hear Me Now?

The labels’ complaint introduces Verizon as one of the largest ISPs in the country, one that “knowingly provides its high-speed service to a massive community of online pirates.”

Knowledge of infringement, the labels say, was established at Verizon over a period of several years during which it received “hundreds of thousands” of copyright notices, referencing instances of infringement allegedly carried out by its subscribers. The complaint cites Verizon subscribers’ persistent use of BitTorrent networks to download and share pirated music, with Verizon allegedly failing to curtail their activity.

“While Verizon is famous for its ‘Can you hear me now?’ advertising campaign, it has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners. Instead of taking action in response to those infringement notices as the law requires, Verizon ignored Plaintiffs’ notices and buried its head in the sand,” the labels write.

“Undeterred, infringing subscribers identified in Plaintiffs’ notices continued to use Verizon’s services to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights with impunity. Meanwhile, Verizon continued to provide its high-speed service to thousands of known repeat infringers so it could continue to collect millions of dollars from them.”

Through this lawsuit, which references piracy of songs recorded by artists including The Rolling Stones, Ariana Grande, Bob Dylan, Bruno Mars, Elvis Presley, Dua Lipa, Drake, and others, the labels suggest that Verizon will have no choice but to hear them now.

“Scope of Repeat Infringement on Verizon’s Network is Staggering”

The labels claim that since early 2020, their representatives have sent more than 340,000 infringement notices to Verizon. These notifications “clearly and unambiguously” advised the ISP of its subscribers’ “blatant and systematic use of Verizon’s Internet service” to download, copy, and share the plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings via BitTorrent networks.

“The scope of repeat infringement on Verizon’s network is staggering. Thousands of Verizon subscribers were the subject of 20 or more notices from Plaintiffs, and more than 500 subscribers were the subject of 100 or more notices,” the complaint claims.

“One particularly egregious Verizon subscriber was single-handedly the subject of 4,450 infringement notices from Plaintiffs alone.”

Egregious infringers

The plaintiffs state that Verizon acknowledged receipt of the notices, sent by third party vendor OpSec Online LLC, but in terms of response, chose to ignore them, “willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations.”

The complaint makes it clear that if Verizon wanted to avoid being held liable for subscribers’ violations, termination of repeat infringers’ accounts or similar meaningful action would’ve been appropriate steps to take. Instead, it’s alleged that Verizon “routinely thumbed its nose” in response to complaints, while continuing to provide service to subscribers known to be serial infringers.

“In reality, Verizon operated its service as an attractive tool and safe haven for infringement,” the plaintiffs add, noting that Verizon derived a direct financial benefit from subscribers’ repeated infringements, by failing to take action as part of an effective repeat infringer program.

Repeat Infringer Program is Ineffective

The plaintiffs note that Verizon’s published “Copyright Infringement/Repeat Infringer Policy” prohibits subscribers from using the ISP’s systems or servers in a manner that infringes third party intellectual property rights. The policy further states that under Section 512 of the DMCA, Verizon terminates repeat infringers in “appropriate circumstances.”

One of the problems, the labels claim, is that Verizon actively attempts to thwart copyright holders’ efforts to inform the ISP of infringement.

The complaint describes Verizon’s Anti-Piracy Cooperation Program as having “onerous conditions” that require participants to pay burdensome fees for automated processes such as IP address lookups and notice forwarding. Rightsholders are further required to waive their copyright claims, indemnify Verizon, while keeping the terms of the program confidential, the labels say.

Rightsholders who prefer not to utilize this program are required to send notices via email. The labels claim these notices aren’t reviewed, processed, forwarded to subscribers, or even tracked to ensure that repeat infringers are handled in line with Verizon policy.

Given that Verizon’s response to infringement notices falls short of what the labels consider to be the threshold for avoiding liability, they predict that the consequences of the ISP’s “support of and profit from infringement are obvious and stark.”

Claims For Contributory and Vicarious copyright Infringement

Attached to the complaint, Exhibit A contains a non-exhaustive list of the plaintiffs’ copyright works allegedly infringed by Verizon’s subscribers. The document is over 400 pages long, with each track listed representing potential liability for Verizon as a willful, intentional, and purposeful contributory infringer, the complaint notes.

This inevitably leads to claims based on maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per copyrighted work infringed on Count I (contributory infringement). The statutory maximum of $150,000 per infringed work is also applied to Count II (vicarious infringement), based on the labels’ claim that Verizon derived a direct financial benefit from the direct infringements of its subscribers.

The labels’ complaint, filed at a New York federal court last Friday, can be found here (pdf)

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When Argentina won the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the entire country was watching. Many people tuned in to legal broadcasts and, at the same time, illegal streams were buzzing too.

With an audience of many millions, piracy is unquestionably popular in Argentina. Rightsholders are happy with that, but they’ve also complained about a lack of enforcement against pirate streaming services.

The tide appears to have turned recently, in part because site blocking tools are improving. Last year, local anti-piracy outfit Alianza obtained the country’s first dynamic site blocking order, requiring local ISPs to restrict access to thirty sports streaming sites.

While the blocking order had an effect, plenty of piracy alternatives remained available. This prompted Alianza to refer more sites to the local authorities, including a person of interest, who is believed to play a pivotal role.

50+ New Site Blocks, One Arrest

The Argentine Justice Department followed up on this lead and this week ordered local Internet providers to block access to more than 50 pirate sites. The sites use the popular sports streaming brands “Futbol Libre” and “Megadeportes”.

A full list of domain names hasn’t been published, but it would make sense that the most visited ones, including futbollibretv.fr, futbollibretv.pe, futbollibre.futbol and megadeportestv2.online are included.

The Megadeportes domains are of particular interest. The alleged founder and operator of a ‘ring’ of these sites was arrested in the province of Mendoza by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrimes, then transported 1,200 kilometers to Buenos Aires for questioning.

‘The Consultant’

The arrest is part of a criminal case and also involved a raid, during which computers and other evidence related to the crimes was seized. The unnamed suspect stands accused of violating copyright law for his part in the sports streaming operations.

The allegations against the suspect go further than simply operating streaming sites. According to Alianza President Jorge Bacaloni, the man also consulted for others, providing them with the necessary information to run their own pirate sports streaming portals.

“The defendant was engaged in supplying content and programming tools to other pirate operators, such as access codes to violate the security mechanisms implemented by the companies, used to feed their services.

“He was a kind of consultant for the administration of illegal streaming services,” Bacaloni adds in his commentary on the case.

“Kahsad’s Traces”

According to a local report from Infobae, the authorities mentioned that the suspect used the alias “Kahsad”, under which he apparently founded the “Megadeportes” pirate sites.

Somewhat unusual is the prominent mention of a free Google-hosted blog, kahsadtvonline.blogspot.com, where “illegal access” to sports streams including “Futbol Libre” was offered.

From the local report (translated)
 

At the time of writing, this outdated blog is still online, although it doesn’t look all that advanced. In fact, there’s no sign of any new updates in recent years. The only links we see are a few basic non-functioning embeds, which could have been wiped out by Google through a takedown notice.

In our search for information we found some other “Kahsad” and “Megadeportes” traces, but these don’t provide additional clarity.

Google searches indeed link the two names together. For example, they point to a GitHub profile with 5 followers and a GitHub-hosted sports streaming site with over a million monthly visits that’s currently offline. Whether these are indeed connected to the suspect is unknown.

Perhaps more information will become available when the prosecution progresses. Local authorities are taking the piracy problem seriously and appear willing to act. Whether the effort will be sufficient to make a serious dent in pirate streaming numbers remains to be seen.

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The name ‘Aylo’ may not sound immediately familiar but hundreds of millions of people visit its sites every month.

Formerly known as MindGeek, and Manwin before that, the company conquered the online adult market over the past decade by offering free porn to the masses.

Aylo is also the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as PornHub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

Over the years, the company has built an impressive library of over 40,000 registered copyright works. The company’s enforcement arm MG Premium protects this content by various means; it sends millions of takedown requests per week and full-blown lawsuits often enter the equation.

The Goodporn Lawsuit

MG Premium fought a lengthy court battle against DaftSex, which it won, and earlier this year a rather bizarre lawsuit against Goodporn swung in its favor.

The Goodporn case has many interesting twists and turns, with defendants claiming to be the victims, accusing Pornhub of being the infringing party. However, after the facades fell, MG Premium came out on top, so to speak.

In February, the court awarded MG Premium $2.1 million in damages. Injunctive relief was denied, however, which meant that domain takeovers or site-blocking orders were not an option. According to the court, there was no evidence of ‘irreparable harm’.

MG Premium Wanted More

MG Premium welcomed its win over Goodporn but was disappointed by the lack of a permanent injunction. Soon after the court released its order, the adult entertainment company filed a motion to amend the default judgment, urging the court to reconsider its initial decision.

MG Premium asked the court to consider a more significant award for damages. Instead of $1,500 for each of the 1,438 works in suit, it felt that $15,000 per work would be appropriate, for a total of $21.6 million in damages.

The company also stressed that damages alone would not act as a sufficient deterrent. In fact, damages may have little impact on the defendant at all.

“Monetary damages are not an adequate remedy in this matter. Defendants have been ordered to pay fees or sanctions to Plaintiff multiple times, and have never done so,” the adult entertainment company explained.

To have the best chance of stopping the infringing activities, MG Premium asked the court to issue a permanent injunction. According to the company, there certainly is irreparable harm, as Goodporn’s domain names remained online after the judgment was issued.

Court Greenlights Domain Seizures and Site Blocking

Presented with this request for an amendment, and the defendant’s subsequent opposition to it, U.S. District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi issued a new order this week, granting a permanent injunction.

Upon reconsideration, the Judge now acknowledges that there is indeed ‘irreparable harm’ as thousands of works continue to be shared without permission. In fact, all relevant factors weigh in MG Premium’s favor.

“Plaintiff’s evidence shows infringement of more than 50,000 videos either owned or licensed by Plaintiff,” Judge Scarsi writes.

“The scope of the injunctive relief requested in the instant motion is consistent with the injunctive relief prayed for in the first amended complaint, unlike the proposed order upon the motion for default judgment.”

This conclusion paves the way for a broad injunction that restrains the defendants from engaging in any copyright infringing activity going forward. More importantly, however, it also directs domain registrars to transfer the domains Goodporn.to and Goodporn.se domains to Aylo’s subsidiary.

The injunction also requires third-party services to block any related infringing activity for U.S. users. Those services include search engines, hosting companies, and Internet providers, as detailed below (emphasis added).

“Defendants, their agents, servants, officers, directors, employees, attorneys, privies, representatives, successors and assigns and parent and subsidiary corporations or other related entities, and any or all persons or entity acting in concert or participation with any of them, or under their direction or control, including any internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, domain name registries and other service or software providers are ordered, within five business days from Plaintiff’s service of the Judgment on those parties to block or use reasonable efforts to attempt to block access by United States users of the Goodporn Websites by blocking or attempting to block access to all domains, subdomains, URLs, and/or IP addresses that have as its sole or predominant purpose to enable to facilitate access to the Goodporn Websites.”

Site Blocking?

The permanent injunction is powerful and should ensure that the affected domains are no longer used to infringe. It may also come as a surprise to some, as pirate site blocking by U.S. Internet providers is rare to nonexistent.

A few months ago, there were new calls from major entertainment companies hoping to establish site blocking measures in the United States. However, those refer to non-existing ‘no-fault’ injunctions where third-party services face no liability. The Goodporn injunction, on the other hand, is targeted at services that “act in concert” with the infringing parties.

Residential Internet providers seem unlikely to welcome the injunction as it stands, but it’s still not clear that Aylo will ask for their cooperation. When we asked the company about it, we received an indirect answer.

“We take any infringement of our content and brands seriously and remain committed to protecting our intellectual property rights. We believe this amended judgment will contribute to deterring piracy and will help ensure consumers find our content through legitimate channels,” an Aylo spokesperson said.

It would make sense for Aylo to focus on taking down the domain names first, and that already appears to be happening. Goodporn.to is offline at the time of writing, and Goodporn.se will be inactive soon.

GPStatus Remains Online

The Court didn’t grant all amendments proposed by MG Premium. The damages remain unchanged at $2.1 million and the request to include the GPStatus.org domain, which broadcasts the most recent Goodporn domains, was denied as well.

“[N]either the declarations supporting the instant motion nor the broader record as the Court perceives it refer to GPStatus.org. As such, the Court declines to include the specific language regarding GPStatus.org to the extent that the website is not already covered by the injunction’s broader language,” the Court concludes.

Indeed, GPStatus.org remains online and reports that Goodporn will move to Sincity.is going forward, urging people to update their bookmarks.

“We have been informed by the Goodporn admin that their address has changed. The former addresses, Goodporn.to and Goodporn.se, will stop working soon. According to the admin, the new address is Sincity.is. Videos will fix in next 24-48 hours,” the site explains.

Obtaining an injunction as powerful as this amounts to a significant victory for Aylo and MG Premium. The measures are designed to make Goodporn more difficult to operate but it’s already clear that the ‘pirate’ site has no intention of throwing in the towel.

—

A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi’s order to amend the default judgment against the Goodporn defendants, including the injunction relief, is available here (pdf).

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For less demanding pirates, a free movie, TV show, or live stream amounts to nothing more than the base media. In common with users of legal platforms, how that content made it to their screens is mostly of no concern.

Yet if ‘How It’s Made’ had an episode revealing what goes on behind the scenes to keep sites online, in the face of constant efforts to shut them down, that might be an eye-opener.

In some respects setting up a site is easier today than ever before. On the downside, pirates routinely expect more; some have become openly aggressive critics, treating pirate sites no differently than they would an underperforming retailer or airline. It’s not unusual to hear comments suggesting they will vote with their feet (but not necessarily with their wallets) should standards and overall quality fall below acceptable levels.

The fact that behind the scenes anti-piracy companies are using all available tools, to make running a site as unrewarding, frustrating, and oftentimes as unprofitable as possible, means almost nothing to the general masses. At least until everything suddenly stops working, most commonly due to some kind of blocking. At that point, nothing is more important.

Really? Haven’t these people got anything better to do? ™ (some pirates, every week, since 1999)

Getting Paid to Watch Pirate Streams At Work?

A job listing that appeared on LinkedIn and several other sites this week offers a glimpse into pirate life from the opposing direction. The potential employer is listed as ‘Legal Forensic Tech’ which under the circumstances is probably a reference to SP Tech, the company tasked with running Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking system.

The position of ‘Super Junior Developer’ will see the successful candidate join the team to “continue the fight” against IPTV providers and web-based streaming services, offering pirated Serie A and Serie B football matches.

“During the week, [Super Junior] will be responsible for monitoring pirate streaming networks, and during the matches on weekends (3/4 weekends per month required, for a total of one hour per day, not for the whole weekend), to take them down using Piracy Shield,” the listing explains.

Getting paid to watch pirate networks all week might sound like easy money, but the importance of monitoring streams when matches aren’t being aired shouldn’t underestimated. It’s during these periods that most pirate services and their servers are logged as suppliers of infringing content and therefore subject to blocking measures.

There’s also the not insignificant task of identifying services that were previously blocked but due to circumvention, need to be blocked again.

No Special Skills or Experience Needed

There’s no question this is an important job, but information in the listing doesn’t always seem to reflect that.

The position pays a gross annual salary (known as RAL) of €24,000 (~$26,000), considerably less than the national average of €32,500. It’s also offered on a so-called co.co.co. basis, meaning that the successful candidate won’t be considered a full employee or even self-employed, but will get to decide when work gets done.

Also of note is the employer’s emphasis on the level of experience required; specifically, it’s fine if the applicant has none whatsoever. Then, to a background of some serious blocking blunders involving Cloudflare earlier this year, there’s the matter of matching the applicant’s skill set to the expectations of their potential employer.

“We are ready and willing to teach everything there is to know about our world, all we need is someone with the grit and passion,” the listing adds.

“This experience is preparatory to becoming part of the development team of our products that automate these projects. The stack we work in is mainly Golang, Python and React, on which we will train you.”

100s of Millions At Stake vs. Piracy Shield’s Pittance?

The listing confirms that the specific project being worked on is anti-piracy software for the football league, although Piracy Shield gets a specific mention elsewhere. As a result, the company works closely with DAZN, Sky, and others involved in football match broadcasting.

“We are a very small team, very close-knit and very helpful to each other,” the listing notes, reporting a two-member ops team, two junior staff, and a coordinator.

At the head of the company there’s a CEO and two “super-seniors.” One is a forensics expert, investigator, and an expert witness. The other “deals with the development part in Go and is a former pirate.”

It’s often claimed that pirates make huge sums of money but, in the end, being a pirate doesn’t pay. Hopefully that isn’t the case here, not least since working on Piracy Shield is just part of the company’s overall business.

Interestingly, relying solely on the revenue generated by the Piracy Shield contract might not even be sustainable.

For the “adapative and evolutionary maintenance services of the Piracy Shield Platform” for a period of 12 months ending December 2024, SP TECH S.R.L. will receive roughly the same amount of money Juventus pays Dušan Vlahović for a single day’s work.

The Piracy Shield job listing can be found here

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During an Italian Senate Committee on the future of football this week, discussions inevitably turned to the thorny issue of IPTV piracy and the first clear signs that controlling it is beyond current capabilities.

Given the rhetoric leading up to the launch of the Piracy Shield system, piracy in Italy should either be extinct or at the very least, gasping for air right now.

With neither of those scenarios playing out today, nor likely to play out anytime soon, it was only a matter of time before Europe’s “most advanced” anti-piracy system needed an upgrade. With the public purse picking up the bill, Piracy Shield 2.0 seems likely to be ready by the end of the year, but it doesn’t really matter what upgrades the system receives.

Pirates will route around it, provide it with false information, and in general, treat every attempt at denying service as an occupational hazard. Romano Righetti, Director of External and Public Affairs for DAZN, spoke about the challenges during the hearing this week and offered some detail on the company’s plan to fight back.

Attracting More Customers At the Expense of Piracy

Most large companies see benefit in attracting more customers and, for DAZN, more subscribers raises the possibility of returning a share of its revenue back into the football ecosystem. Righetti cited recent figures published by anti-piracy group FAPAV indicating that 285 million euros escapes from Serie A each year due to piracy.

“Some estimate that the number of illegal viewers could be in the order of two or three million, but it’s obviously very difficult to detect as they are illegal,” he said.

“However, it’s clear that strong action against piracy would not only benefit the treasury; obviously, revenues received under a legal regime are treated differently to those generated under an illegal one. The mechanism we have introduced could activate a virtuous circle whereby football would enjoy greater financial resources from us, although I cannot speak on behalf of our competitors, the other broadcasters.”

Righetti said that the anti-piracy legislation passed last August was a step forward, as was the launch of the new IPTV blocking system launched this year and overseen by AGCOM. Nevertheless, DAZN sees opportunities for improvement.

“The work carried out by AGCOM, through the adoption of the regulation and then the implementation of the so-called Piracy Shield platform, was another important step. However, we must take note that pirates are very sophisticated operators who know how to circumvent blocking, so for us we’re looking for the Piracy Shield platform to function more effectively,” Righetti added.

The Solution Lies Across The Atlantic

Righetti informed the Senate Committee that, at times, it may have appeared that Piracy Shield was ineffective due to malfunctions, but that assessment would be incorrect. Not only are pirates sophisticated operators, they also have access to sophisticated tools, mostly provided by American internet intermediaries.

Cloudflare wasn’t mentioned directly, but it’s been common knowledge for a while that Piracy Shield has no answer for the technical challenges posed by the company’s services. Statements from AGCOM have at times bristled with criticism, most likely due to the limitations of a system that was developed in full knowledge of what it was up against, promised the earth, yet was never likely to deliver.

Hoping to remedy the situation, Serie A took legal action against Cloudflare in May. Now DAZN outlines its own solution.

“Another important step would be to make it mandatory for so-called intermediaries of electronic communication services, which allow pirates to hide from the Piracy Shield platform through their services, to be obliged to register with this platform,” he explained.

“This would be a very important step because the services provided by these mainly American companies, have created situations where the platform becomes ineffective. Not because of the malfunctioning of the platform, but due to the level of sophistication of the services that these companies offer to pirates.”

Hit Intermediaries and Then Hit Pirate Football Fans

The proposal stated above implies that Cloudflare should be compelled, possibly by AGCOM, to participate in the Piracy Shield platform in the same way that local ISPs currently do. After plugging itself into the system, Cloudflare would be required to make itself permanently available, to receive lists of IP addresses and domains, and then block each one within 30 mins, to ensure that no Italian can access them.

As a business proposition, albeit completely one-sided, it’s difficult to imagine Cloudflare augmenting its connectivity-focused mission with a huge project that runs entirely counter to that. Presumably that’s why DAZN’s proposal suggests that participation should be mandatory – effectively the use of force.

The same approach also features in DAZN’s proposal for luring currently-pirating football fans back to the legal viewing market. Righetti says the company hopes that a memorandum of understanding, between AGCOM, the Guardia di Finanza (financial police) and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, can be signed as soon as possible, “because another very important step would be to put the Public Prosecutor’s Office in a position to prosecute not just those who offer piracy but those who buy piracy services.”

Righetti describes prosecuting pirating members of the public as “an absolutely fundamental step” towards tackling the piracy problem. To have any meaningful deterrent effect, that might need to involve the prosecution of a significant number of people, the same people who make up the pool of people from where broadcasters see great potential for growth.

Details of testimony from Sky Sport and Mediaset available here and here (digital-news.it)

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The Internet is littered with shady IPTV services that offer a lot, for very little money.

These deals often seem too good to be true and in most cases they are; at least for those who prefer to stay on the right side of the law.

Anti-piracy groups around the world are actively trying to shut down these illicit operations. In Europe, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is at the forefront of the battle.

Catching IPTV Pirates

In 2017, BREIN booked a prominent victory at the European Court of Justice, which ruled that it’s illegal to sell devices that are pre-configured to access copyright-infringing content. This “Filmspeler” decision ended all theories that sellers of pirate streaming boxes somehow operated in a gray area.

Combined with the earlier GS Media ruling, which held that companies with a for-profit motive can’t knowingly link to copyright-infringing material, rightsholders could rely on a powerful enforcement tool.

These legal aspects are just one part of the equation. To shut down a pirate IPTV operation, one also has to know who the opponent is. And with operators often trying hard to remain anonymous, that’s not always easy.

BREIN Shuts Down and Settles with IPTVpremium

This also applied to a local IPTV vendor, IPTVpremium (presumably this one), which sold subscriptions that enabled access to a broad selection of TV channels, sports, and content from all major streaming platforms for just €70 annually.

The IPTV vendor tried to mask his identity but with help from anti-piracy and cybercrime outfit Irdeto, BREIN managed to identify its target. With that information in hand, BREIN chose to confront the man.

Without an intervention from the court, BREIN compelled the operator to cease his IPTV selling activities, which he did. The man also agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement fee and 7,500 euros per day if any future infringements occur.

This type of takedown is exemplary for BREIN. Instead of initiating a lengthy court case for high damages, it prefers swift action. Key in this process is that the message gets through to consumers as well.

In its press release, BREIN highlights the fact that the service was terminated effective immediately. Obviously, existing subscribers are not reimbursed, even if they bought their €70 subscription just days ago.

“Purchasing a set-top box with an illegal IPTV subscription is comparable to fencing. Every time the user turns on the box and starts watching a movie or TV series, they engage in copyright infringement and act unlawfully,” BREIN director Bastiaan van Ramshorst says.

Subscribers Notified

TorrentFreak reached out to BREIN for more details but, due to the confidential nature of the settlement, the group can’t confirm the scale of the damages or the number of active subscribers the service had.

BREIN agreed with the IPTV vendor that all subscribers, who ordered and communicated via WhatsApp, had to be notified about the shutdown and the illegal nature of the service.

The message, translated from Dutch, reads as follows:

You have an IPTV package subscription with us that provides access to evidently illegally offered television channels, movies and series.

 

It is established in case law that the sales of these types of IPTV packages is not allowed, and that you, the customer, violate copyright law each time you use it.

 

For this reason we have been summoned by BREIN to stop the sales of these illegal IPTV Packages immediately and to inform you about it.

The message doesn’t directly suggest that any users are in trouble, and we don’t expect them to be. However, BREIN likely hopes that if losing access to a paid subscription isn’t bad enough, the message will serve as an additional deterrent.

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