For the best part of 15 years, maybe more, Sweden was rarely out of the piracy headlines. Kept busy by the endless antics of The Pirate Bay, there was always some type of chaos to contend with, and that kept everyone very busy.

 

With an entire generation exposed to piracy thanks to the most notorious pirates of them all, there was always a question mark over Sweden’s ability to turn its back on The Pirate Bay in favor of legitimate services. Spotify, another local phenomenon, played a key role when it specifically targeted pirates; its product is still vastly superior to any music-focused piracy service available anywhere.

 

While still not averse to dabbling around the main brace of The Pirate Bay, towards the middle of the last decade, Swedes were increasingly turning to an old pirate friend sporting a new coat of paint. Video streaming had been around for years but when packaged up as a consumer-like product, accessed via a living-room set-top box rather than a PC, Swedes had their collective heads turned. They weren’t alone.

Swedes and the New Piracy Boogeyman

Starting around 2016, give or take depending on region, pirate IPTV services exploded globally. Acting as a direct replacement, for some even an antidote to runaway expensive TV subscription packages, the IPTV boom most likely had entertainment companies reluctantly nostalgic for The Pirate Bay.

 

A study published by the EU Intellectual Property Office in November 2019 revealed (pdf) that Sweden and the Netherlands were the most prolific consumers of pirate IPTV services in the entire bloc, with 9% of each population already exposed.

 

At the same time, legal consumption was trending up but with an overall piracy rate of around 20%, rightsholders could still see potential profit slipping away.

Pressure Increases on Players in the Illicit Market

In common with its counterparts in Europe, Sweden had already been paying more attention to those involved in the supply and sale of pirate IPTV subscriptions. Most investigations fell to local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance which represents the interests of large local broadcasters and film companies, plus those of the majors in Hollywood.

 

In 2022, a then 23-year-old was criminally convicted and ordered to pay around $230,000 in damages to local rightsholders. Soon after a subscription reseller received a six-month sentence, a step up from the community sentences seen earlier. Other cases came and went, mostly ending in success for the plaintiffs.

Anticipation Following Lengthy Investigation

In 2019, the same year that Sweden and the Netherlands were dueling for top spot on the EU’s IPTV piracy list, Rights Alliance referred an IPTV piracy case to local police. The group believed the man was behind Dreamhost, one of the more popular pirate IPTV brands in Sweden and therefore a priority target.

 

Regardless of the target, no investigation of this type is ever straightforward. As Rights Alliance reported in 2023, the cross-border nature of the offending can require evidence to be obtained from overseas, meaning that cases can drag on for quite some time. In this case, already four years.

 

Nevertheless, Rights Alliance described the evidence as extensive. A resident of southern Sweden, the man was the alleged registrant of the service’s domain name. He moderated the service’s chats, for which the logs had been obtained, and he answered questions posed by customers.

 

On top of IP address tracking evidence and email address data, a financial investigation reportedly identified two bitcoin wallets linked to the suspect, and data revealing that almost SEK 2,000,000 was received in 2020 alone, roughly $189,000 at today’s rates. Police also found payments between the suspect’s accounts and an account linked to Dreamhost.

Sales to Friends and Family, Fear, Remote Control

Last September in advance of his trial, Rights Alliance revealed that under questioning, the man admitted doing some technical work for Dreamhost and selling subscriptions to family and friends. He also claimed that he didn’t know who was behind Dreamhost and at times, since he felt threatened, allowed his computer to be controlled remotely, by a person he couldn’t identify.

 

Whether the claims had any substance is unclear but the rightsholders behind the prosecution would be requesting serious compensation for damage caused by the service, Rights Alliance said.

Guilty Verdict

In an October 2023 announcement, Rights Alliance revealed that the man had been found guilty. The extensive evidence was noted once again and reference was made to the SEK 2,000,000 the man received in 2020. The sentence itself appeared to come as a disappointment, however.

 

“The penalty was determined to be a suspended sentence and 100 daily fines,” Rights Alliance reported, a reference to the Swedish system where fines are calculated based on a person’s daily income. The number of ‘day fines’ imposed is meant to mirror the amount lost had the convicted been imprisoned without earnings.

 

Noting that the man had avoided being sentenced under the much tougher regime now in place, Rights Alliance said little else.

Decision Went to Appeal

A Rights Alliance statement published Thursday summarizes a verdict also handed down yesterdayby the Patent and Market Appeal Court. Rights Alliance didn’t post a copy of the decision and the court is yet to make it public, but it seems likely that the rightsholders appealed against the relatively light sentence handed down last October.

 

The verdict as reported suggests that the conditional sentence and 100 day fines stands. However, the SEK 2,000,000 in damages payable to rightsholders is now being reported as SEK 1,700,000. A SEK 300,000 reduction transforms the $189,000 award to one just shy of $160,000.

 

“The verdict shows that it takes a long time from report to verdict, but that despite everything, it is not possible to avoid the long arm of the law,” Rights Alliance concludes.

 

When searching fruitlessly for a copy of the decision handed down Thursday, we stumbled across another case that appears to challenge the assertion that the long arm of the law is inevitable.

Details Matter

The case involves an appeal of a judgment handed down by the Patent and Market Court in June 2022 and a person named only as L.K., who was accused of copyright infringement in connection with the website swedeniptv.se.

 

“According to the indictment, L.K.’s involvement in the offense primarily consisted of paying for the domain and administering the website, charging customers, and marketing the website. Secondly, he is alleged to have promoted others’ illegal distribution of the films, which occurred via the website swedeniptv.se,” a decision by the court of appeal reads.

 

“The Patent and Market Court of Appeal assesses that it is already evident from L.K.’s own statements that he had the primary role concerning the website swedeniptv.se. However, his main objections to the indictment are that the films in question were not available via the website and that he acted as a so-called ‘gatekeeper’ for other individuals who remotely controlled his computers.”

 

It appears that when L.K. was on trial, the prosecutor (acting for movie company plaintiffs Swedish Film Industry, Nordisk Film, Disney, Universal, and Sony) alleged that the movies were made available to the public via the website swedeniptv.se. In reality, people purchased subscriptions from swedeniptv.se and then received a link via email which linked to servers in the Netherlands.

 

The court of appeal found that films being made available via an email link to a Dutch website was something “not apparent from the description of the act” provided by the prosecution. As a result it had not been shown beyond reasonable doubt that L.K. committed the act the prosecutor alleged.

 

 

The panel did not reach a unanimous decision. In light of the facts presented during case, including the defendant’s admissions, an objective view of the arguments of those who dissented reveals reasonable conclusions that could’ve prevailed anywhere else on a different day.

 

They appear to have been thwarted on a technicality, one that seems like it should’ve been completely avoidable

 

Plex is a multifunctional media software and service that allows users to easily access all of their entertainment in one place.

 

The company was founded in 2009 and today boasts more than 25 million users globally, making Plex a serious player in the streaming market.

Plex Pirates

Most people use the service to access streaming content legitimately. On the fringes, however, some users abuse the software to share pirate libraries publicly, a considerable thorn in the side for rightsholders.

 

Plex is not oblivious to the ‘piracy’ threat. The company is actively working with rightsholders to offer legal entertainment and abuse of its platform only stands in the way. To address this problem, it’s taking countermeasures.

 

Last summer Plex surprised users by actively blocking media servers hosted at the large German company Hetzner. These were, purportedly, often used to share pirated material and an outright ban would end this unauthorized activity.

Plex Takes Down “Plex-reshare” Repo

This week, Plex took another step to deter potential copyright infringement. The Swiss company, which is headquartered in the U.S., asked GitHub to remove a “Plex Reshare” repository, alleging that it may contribute to its piracy problem.

 

“Plex Reshare” doesn’t host any copyright-infringing material and, as far as we’ve seen, it doesn’t reference any either. Its main purpose is to allow Plex users to make shared Plex directories browsable on the web, which allows people to “reshare” them without being the original owner.

 

“The reason behind this project is to make available your PLEX shares to other friends unrelated to the person who owns the original library,” Plex Reshare developer Peter explains.

 

Plex-reshare (now taken down)
 

While the repository doesn’t host or link to copyright-infringing material, Plex argues that it can be used to ‘grow’ piracy.

 

“We have found infringing material in your website which indeed is OTHER ‘Plex Server’. The material that is claimed to be infringing is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled immediately and avoid the growth of piracy,” the takedown notice reads.

 

The first part of the sentence is somewhat confusing. Plex-reshare is not a Plex server but the company may use “OTHER Plex Server” as an internal classification category. In any case, Plex alleges that the repository can contribute to the growth of piracy on its platform.

Liability for?

Citing the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, Plex urges GitHub to take immediate action, or else it may be held liable. It’s not clear what this liability claim rests on, as there are no actual copyright infringements mentioned in the takedown notice.

 

Plex Takedown Request
 

Despite the broad nature of this claim, GitHub has indeed taken the repository offline, replacing it with a DMCA takedown reference. This likely wasn’t a straightforward decision as GitHub is known to put developers first with these types of issues.

 

In this case, it took more than three weeks before GitHub took action, which is much longer than usual. This suggests that GitHub allowed the developer to respond and may have sought legal advice from in-house lawyers, to ensure that the rights of all parties are properly considered.

 

GitHub doesn’t provide any context on its takedown decision, so it remains guesswork as to what grounds GitHub complied. The end result, however, is the removal of the repository from GitHub.

 

Plex might not be done yet though. The Plex-reshare code isn’t just available on GitHub, the same project is listed on Docker Hub as well, where it remains available at the time of writing.

 

The global popularity of the English Premier League signals huge potential for growth, at least when local complications can be overcome.

 

The Premier League has a reputation for tackling challenges head on but, after breaking into the Russia market and signing a TV rights deal worth £43 million, a full-blown invasion of Ukraine was unlikely to have been part of the plan. The Premier League condemned the violence and announced it would donate £1m to the Disasters Emergency Committee to deliver humanitarian aid directly to those who needed it.

 

In any event, the deal with Match TV, a broadcaster owned by Gazprom Media, in turn owned by Gazprombank, had nowhere to go that didn’t risk a collision course with sanctions. A deal with over-the-top platform Okko Sport, owned by Rambler, in turn owned by state bank Sberbank, was over too.

The Game Goes On

When legal access to Premier League matches dried up, there would’ve been little panic among fans. While the piracy situation in Russia had noticeably improved during the previous decade, no content is immune to being cloned; it’s simply a question of choosing a new supplier and deciding whether content should be ridiculously cheap or completely free.

 

An intriguing interview published this week by local news outlet Vedomosti charts the resurgence of Sportscast, a group that began illegally streaming NBA in 2016 using its own Russian commentators but has since amassed a team of 50, covering Premier League, NHL, tennis, and Formula 1.

 

Sportscast operates its own website but also has a major presence on social networking platform VK. On VK Video, the group archives matches so that they are viewable on demand. The most recent video, last night’s 4-1 defeat of Aston Villa at the hands of Manchester City, currently has almost 49,000 replay views.

 

 

Anton Kuzmichev, head of Sportcast, told Vedomosti that he feels no guilt showing Premier League matches; as soon as the league returns to Russia, Sportcast will stop its broadcasts for legal reasons.

 

“I have a legal education, and I can say for sure that we are not violating any Russian laws,” Kuzmichev said.

 

The belief is that since the broadcasting deal between the Premier League and Match TV is not in effect, nobody has a license to show Premier League games in Russia, so in theory nobody can sue.

 

Matches from Spain’s LaLiga are not shown for the opposite reason; apparently happy to accumulate rubles, LaLiga’s deal with Okko remains in place, meaning that if the company files a complaint in Russia, pirates could find their websites blocked.

Pirating the Pirates

Behind the scenes of these pirate broadcasts, keeping costs under control is a key objective. Match streams are sourced from other pirates, with $3 sufficient to buy an IPTV package for a month with match commentary arriving in Portuguese (most likely sourced from Brazil), Polish, or Arabic (usual sources). As expected, streams can break up at times but judging purely on the replay videos uploaded as part of Sportcast’s VOD service, quality is very good indeed.

 

Commentators work from home using OBS Studio, adding their own graphics, suppressing the original commentary, before adding their own via a $50 mic. Through a donation model, can earn between $30 and $45 per match but some see the gig as a stepping stone to bigger things.

 

Ivan Kazakov, who works as a commentator on the ‘Goat Sport’ group on VK, says he took a three-month summer course in journalism and is now doing an internship with Match TV where he commentates on matches from Italy’s Serie A.

Business Matters

For the operator of SportsCast, generating revenue is a requirement to keep the project going. Gambling ads are not allowed on VK so the video player embedded in the SportsCast website is used to deliver gambling ads while Sports.ru provides sponsorship.

 

 

The overall audience is estimated at around 300,000 viewers, averaging between 30,000 and 40,000 per match, but nothing lasts forever. When serious competition returns to the market, offering football to the masses at a reasonable price people can actually afford, everything will come crashing down.

 

“As soon as [Premier League] returns to Russia, our market will collapse,” Kuzmichev concludes.

 

The U.S. Foreign Trade Barriers Report is an annual publication by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).

 

The report aims to draw attention to matters that represent “significant foreign barriers” to U.S. exports, investment, and commerce.

 

These barriers typically revolve around copyright infringement and other intellectual property matters, data privacy, and handling of trade secrets, but there’s no shortage of problems in other areas that fall outside our reporting niche here.

Piracy Problems Worldwide

In common with the Special 301 Report, the Foreign Trade Barriers Report is published by the USTR. As such there is some crossover, with many countries appearing on both lists for one reason or another.

 

On piracy, copyright, and closely related matters, this year’s report begins fairly predictably; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica, then over to Asia for criticism of China and Cambodia, among others.

 

That U.S. standards are not being met in other countries doesn’t come as a surprise. Russia’s relationship with the United States over Ukraine is certainly strained, with the USTR highlighting ‘Decree 322’, a new measure that restricts the ability of foreign right holders from “unfriendly” states to collect license payments for most types of intellectual property.

Vietnam: World Streaming Piracy Epicenter

Then there’s the section dedicated to Vietnam, home of the world’s most popular pirate sites, dedicated to piracy of mostly US-produced movie and TV show content, but with zero qualms about offering other content, to a massive global audience.

 

Yet despite Vietnam-based/operated pirate sites being responsible for billions and billions of illegal views, the report remarkably mentions not a single one. There’s not even a nod towards them collectively, or even a short note that they exist at all.

 

That is remarkable, bordering on incredible, but Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Lê Minh Khái did have a meeting with United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai in Boston on April 2, so that may provide an explanation of sorts.

No Such Pass For EU Member States

The one-year anniversary of RARBG’s sudden demise is just a few weeks away. Closely linked to Bulgaria, RARBG was one of the most reliable public torrent sites to ever exist yet if the Bulgarian government had any hand in its closure, it’s yet to claim any credit.

 

The Trade Barriers report makes no mention of the disappearance of RARBG but does note that the USTR has “enforcement concerns” including “inadequate prosecution efforts, lengthy procedures, and insufficient criminal penalties, particularly in the area of online piracy.”

 

In August 2023, Bulgaria amended its Criminal Code which should make investigations of pirate sites more straightforward; the United States says it will monitor whether the changes make any difference to the rate of criminal prosecutions in Bulgaria.

Germany: Upload Filters Aren’t Aggressive Enough

Germany also receives criticism from the United States due to its implementation of the pro-copyright yet much-criticized EU Copyright Directive.

 

“When Germany implemented the Copyright Directive in 2021, it introduced new requirements for online platforms regarding the filtering of user uploads to prevent the automatic blocking of potentially copyright-protected content for uses that are presumably authorized by law,” the Trade Barriers Report begins.

 

“Some U.S. stakeholders are concerned that Germany also introduced an overly broad copyright presumption that makes it difficult for creators to enforce their copyrights in music and videos that are used in the background of short-form content that is often posted on social media.”

 

The Trade Barriers Report elaborates no further but, in broad terms, U.S. rightsholders seem unsettled by Germany’s focus on implementing upload filters (which have the potential to restrict freedom of expression) in a way that respects fundamental rights and acknowledges exceptions to copyright law. These exceptions include caricature, parody, pastiche, and quotation, and by considering these factors, the right to freedom of expression and the right to communicate are preserved.

 

U.S. stakeholders are also concerned that that Germany’s legal framework for technological protection measures “remains inadequate.” Whether that includes the 2023 ruling of a German court that held hosting company Uberspace liable for hosting the website of youtube-dl, because the open-source tool allows people to download content from YouTube, isn’t made clear.

Poland and Romania

Concerns over the situation in Poland read as follows: “Stakeholders continue to identify copyright piracy online as a significant concern in Poland and noted inconsistent enforcement on the part of law enforcement and backlogs in the Polish courts. Stakeholders also are concerned about illegal camcording and easy access to counterfeit products.”

 

In isolation these statements seem relatively unremarkable yet when compared to reporting directly from Poland, by the anti-piracy group that represents U.S. rightsholders’ interests in Poland, there’s a difference of opinion. In a ceremony last month, the Sygnal anti-piracy group handed out ‘Golden Plate’ awards to Polish police officers for their excellence in fighting piracy.

 

“The most difficult cases often end up in the hands of the best officers, who are not only perfectly versed in the legal and technological aspects related to economic crime on the Internet, but also stand out for their commitment, and this year especially – for their extraordinary diligence in handling cases. As a result, several dozen pirate websites and services related to them were closed last year,” said Teresa Wierzbowska, President of the Sygnał Association.

 

Finally, criticism of Romania follows the same pattern of the last 10 to 15 years. Low penalties for IP-related crimes combined with excellent internet infrastructure has always been a potent mix. The report claims that “some notorious online pirate sites” operate from Romania and since IP penalties are low, law enforcement bundle significant cases under tax evasion files.

 

“Romania lacks an effective and timely mechanism for rights holders to submit takedown requests against online markets and hosting platforms for infringing material. Adequate resources, including additional training for law enforcement, are needed to enhance enforcement quality,” the report concludes.

 

Romania, just like any other EU country, must abide by applicable EU law. Once intermediaries are made aware of infringing content, the law says they must take it down or risk incurring liability (pdf).

 

The 2024 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers is available here (pdf)

 

There are thousands of pirate sites on the Internet but only a few will receive a permanent entry in the history books. Sci-Hub will certainly be among them.

 

Founded by Kazakhstani computer programmer Alexandria Elbakyan, Sci-Hub provides free access to millions of academic publications. As such, it’s an essential tool for less privileged students and researchers worldwide.

 

There is no denying that Sci-Hub facilitates access to otherwise paywalled research, which is often partly funded by public money. At the same time, however, it’s a threat to major publishers who rely on those same paywalls to generate revenue and subsequent profits.

 

The publishers have the law on their side. Previously, Sci-Hub and Elbakyan were sued in U.S. federal court, which resulted in multi-million dollar judgments. That did little to stop the site from operating, however, so rightsholders had to resort to other, less direct means.

Sci-Hub Blockades

When direct lawsuits are unable to provide the desired results, going after third-party intermediaries is often the next step. This includes site blocking measures, where ISPs are required to block their subscribers’ access to pirate sites.

 

Russia was one of the first countries to order a Sci-Hub blockade in 2018 but it certainly didn’t stop there. In recent years, similar measures have followed in France, Denmark, Austria, the UK and, most recently, The Netherlands.

 

Despite the U.S. court orders, the site has yet to be blocked there, as site blocking isn’t a viable option due to the lack of no-fault injunctions. However, the U.S. Trade Representative recently branded the shadow library a “notorious market“.

Germany Blocks Sci-Hub

Thus far, the Sci-Hub blockades have been mostly centered around Europe and Germany continues this trend. As part of a voluntary agreement between rightsholders and ISPs, the “Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet” (CUII) regularly issues new blocking orders and Sci-Hub is the latest target.

 

The process doesn’t involve any judicial oversight but CUII relies on a thorough review process to check if a blocking request is warranted. The previous orders have all centered around film and music pirate sites but the latest comes at the request of a publisher.

 

CUII’s order is heavily redacted and doesn’t mention the applicant by name, only that it’s a member of the “International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers” (STM). What’s clear, however, is that Sci-Hub is seen as a structurally infringing website and that blocking measures are warranted.

 

“The request for a recommendation to block the SCI-HUB website is justified. The website is a structural copyright infringing website (SUW). There is a clear infringement of copyright. The blocking is reasonable and proportionate,” CUII’s order reads.

Other Options Exhausted

Before a site can be blocked, rightsholders have to pursue other options to take the site offline. The publisher did so by hiring a private investigator to contact the site directly and track down various intermediaries, including the domain registrars, but without the desired result.

 

“The private investigator identified ***** in ***** and ***** in ***** as registrars. The requests for information to the registrars under the identified email addresses were not answered in terms of content,” CUII writes.

 

To confirm that Sci-Hub is mostly dedicated to sharing copyright-infringing material the publisher cited several claims from the website itself, as shown below.

 

From the order (translated)
 

In addition, the publisher investigated a random sample of content from Sci-Hub to conclude that between 92.15% and 95.56% is copyright infringing. That’s sufficient to characterize the shadow library as a structurally infringing website and have it blocked.

 

The final CUII order only mentions the sci-hub.st domain by name, but the redacted paperwork suggests that four other domains have to be blocked by German Internet providers.

 

 

The German news site Tarnkappe, which covered the recent order, informs TorrentFreak that, in addition to sci-hub-st, sci-hub.ru and sci-hub.se are also blocked by T-Mobile. This likely applies to other ISPs too.

 

While this new blockade will make it harder for Germans to access Sci-Hub, those who are determined to bypass paywalls generally find a way. The shadow library currently gets most of its traffic from China, India and the United States; where the site isn’t blocked, yet.

 

Online piracy continues to present massive challenges for the entertainment industries.

 

It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but the major U.S. record labels and several movie companies believe that Internet providers can offer a helping hand.

 

For roughly a quarter-century, rightsholders have sent copyright infringement notices to ISPs, informing them about alleged copyright infringements carried out by subscribers. While many providers forwarded these notices to their customers, they rarely led to follow-up action.

 

This is a problem according to some rightsholders, who want ISPs to terminate the connections of subscribers repeatedly linked to pirating activity. They point to the DMCA, which states that online service providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”

 

In an earlier case, Internet provider Cox was ordered to pay a billion dollars in damages after a jury found the ISP liable for copyright infringement. This damages award was recently reversed but the liability finding remains. Meanwhile, other ISPs are fighting similar legal battles.

Frontier vs. Music and Movie Companies

Most of these lawsuits take place in federal courts, but the New York bankruptcy court is dealing with a similar dispute. In two separate cases, one filed by several movie companies and the other by record labels, Internet provider Frontier Communications stands accused of failing to terminate repeat infringers.

 

The financially challenged Internet provider emerged from bankruptcy and is trying to rebuild its business. However, ghosts of the past continue to follow the company, including piracy liability allegations.

 

Last December, Frontier hoped to sway both cases in its favor. The ISP submitted a motion for judgment on the pleadings, asking the court to dismiss the claims from the movie and music companies, noting that these fail “as a matter of law.”

 

The motion’s central argument stems from the ‘Twitter vs. Taamneh‘ Supreme Court decision, where it was determined that social media platforms were not responsible for ISIS terrorists who used their services to recruit and raise funds. In a similar vein, Frontier believes that it shouldn’t be held liable for subscribers who pirate content.

 

Based on these and other arguments, Frontier asked the bankruptcy court to dismiss all piracy liability claims. Needless to say, the movie and music companies disagreed and both filed objections, urging the court to keep the claims intact.

Court Denies Dismissal Request

A few days ago, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn ruled on the motion, which brought bad news for Frontier. After reviewing the matter, Judge Glenn saw no reason to dismiss the copyright liability claims at this stage.

 

In a detailed memorandum opinion, the court concludes that the Supreme Court ruling in the social media case doesn’t directly translate to the matter at hand. While both deal with third-party liability, terrorism and copyright infringement are certainly not the same thing.

 

The Supreme Court ruling made it clear that secondary liability for online services doesn’t always apply. However, the court believes that decades of copyright infringement liability jurisprudence can’t be overlooked.

 

“The Court declines to graft an analysis of secondary criminal liability for aiding and abetting terrorism onto the well-established branch of law governing secondary liability for copyright infringement. Under the relevant standard, Claimants have alleged facts sufficient to state a claim,” Judge Glenn writes.

Pirates vs. Terrorists

The court notes that Internet providers are not automatically liable for everything that happens through their service. Even general knowledge of potentially illegal activity doesn’t automatically lead to a liability finding; context is key.

 

In the ‘Twitter vs. Taamneh‘ case, the terrorist attacks happened outside of the platform, at a nightclub in Istanbul. While the terrorists may have used Twitter and other social media platforms to facilitate their operations, there was no direct connection to the attack.

 

The movie and music companies alleged a more direct connection (nexus) between Frontier and the alleged copyright infringement in their case and the bankruptcy court agreed.

 

“The Reina attack was not carried out on or through a social media platform, but rather in Istanbul by terrorists who had maintained accounts on the platforms; in contrast, the copyright infringement alleged here took place via Frontier’s network itself. Twitter is thus distinguishable and does not compel dismissal,” Judge Glenn notes.

 

The court further clarifies that this doesn’t mean that ISPs are automatically liable for everything subscribers do through their connections. The DMCA has set clear guidelines Internet providers must adhere to if they want to rely on safe harbor protection.

 

In addition to simply providing an Internet connection, contributory copyright infringement also involves specific knowledge of infringement and the continued provision of the means to infringe. These issues play a role here too and, based on the pleadings, a dismissal is premature.

 

All in all, the court denies Frontier’s request to dismiss all the movie and music companies’ piracy liability claims. This is important for the present dispute, but it may also foreshadow what other courts may conclude in similar cases going forward.

 

 

—

 

A copy of Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn’s order is available here (pdf). Frontier’s originating motion can be found here (pdf) and the music and movie company responses are available here (1, 2)

 

To say that Italy’s much-heralded pirate IPTV blocking scheme got off to a controversial start would significantly underplay events of the past two months. And yet pretty everyone knew it was coming.

 

A TorrentFreak source familiar with the scheme’s development, introduction, and current operations, warned us in 2023 that the system and the ideas that underpin it are fundamentally flawed. We were even shown how the system could be subverted, the only surprise today is that it still hasn’t happened.

 

Other technical details showed how over-blocking was always inevitable but could’ve been mitigated to an extent with a pragmatic approach to matters such as blocking duration and the rapid rectification of blocking errors. Yet, interest in these and similar proposals was brushed aside in favor of what Italy has now.

Excluding the Experts

The entities best placed to advise on these issues, Italy’s 300+ Internet service providers, were not invited to the discussions. Interlocutor status was granted to just four ISPs, all of which were (and still are) neck-deep in other complex matters, including merger and restructuring talks. Almost everyone else was summarily ignored.

 

The end result is a substandard system that ISPs are mandated by law to use, purely for the benefit of other companies, but at their own expense. That same law carries financial penalties for ISPs who fail to block, yet carries no penalties whatsoever for those who overblock. The law does include provisions that allow overblocking victims to complain, yet is being executed in a manner that makes complaining impossible.

 

These complaints and many more have been delivered to telecoms regulator AGCOM via several mechanisms, including letters, emails, FOIA requests, and countless times via the media. Yet despite the protection of citizens’ fundamental rights being one of its main tasks, and a mandate that includes dispute resolution, the authority has mostly shown a preference for one-way communication; an appearance at a recent hearing, for example.

National Consumers Union Demands Answers from AGCOM

Founded in the 1955, Italy’s Unione Nazionale Consumatori is a non-profit organization whose exclusive statutory purpose is to safeguard and defend the interests of consumers. Today that includes aspects of ecommerce and with a seat on the National Council of Consumers and Users (CNCU) at the Ministry of Economic Development, the government’s ear is never too far away.

 

In a letter to AGCOM, titled ‘FOOTBALL: Does Piracy Shield Work?’ UNC seeks clarification on the functioning of the Piracy Shield platform and its intended purpose, i.e. blocking infringing streams.

 

“As a consumer association we are on the front line against piracy, but it is obvious that only the culprits must be intercepted and obscured, i.e. the IP addresses intended exclusively and univocally for the illicit diffusion of protected content, not the innocent ones which have nothing to do with online piracy and who only have the misfortune of sharing the IP address with the sites targeted by AGCOM,” writes Massimiliano Dona, lawyer and president of the National Consumers Union.

 

“As they say, better to have a guilty person free than an innocent person in prison,” Dona continues, highlighting the ambitious aim of blocking illicit streams within 30 minutes of being reported.

 

“However, since it is one thing to design an instrument and another to put it into action, we ask AGCOM to report on how many innocent people have ended up in these traps, given the conflicting data that has emerged so far.”

Why is it Impossible to Complain?

As previously reported, those negatively affected by overblocking can file a complaint within five days of the blocked IP addresses being published on the AGCOM site. Thus far, however, AGCOM hasn’t published any IP addresses, rendering the complaint process impossible.

 

UNC would like to know why AGCOM doesn’t publish the IP addresses in the same way that Consob (financial scams) and Ivass (insurance) do, after first taking a swipe at the lack of due process.

 

“We ask AGCOM why it doesn’t do as Consob and Ivass do. When they block an illegal site they also issue a press release with the list of blocked sites […] which allows a possible right of defense to the interested parties, from which this law instead seems to derogate, given that in cases of seriousness and urgency, which concern live broadcast content, first viewings of cinematographic works, the precautionary measure can be adopted without any cross-examination,” the letter reads.

 

“This could also be acceptable, if the right of defense were allowed at least ex post. Instead, the complaint against the blockades carried out must be presented within just five days, yet not from the notification to the direct interested party of the blockage, as happens for any type of other sanction, from fines of the Highway Code to tax bills, but, as AGCOM writes on its website: from the publication of the list of blocks carried out on this internet page.

 

“It’s a shame that on that page there is no list of blocks carried out, but only the number of blocks day by day,” UNC’s lawyer concludes.

AGCOM Has Been Rejecting Complaints From Cloudflare Customers

After initially dismissing the wrongful blocking of Cloudflare as ‘fake news’, AGCOM eventually admitted that Cloudflare had indeed been blocked in error.

 

Last month Cloudflare wrote to all of its customers affected by the rogue blocking urging them to file an official complaint with AGCOM. Some people had already complained but no matter how their complaints were presented, AGCOM used rules (known and unknown) to reject every single one.

 

In this example, AGCOM claimed that since the block was removed “shortly after its blocking” (around four or five hours) there are no grounds for a complaint. Furthermore, people only have five days after the IP address is published to make a complaint; the response makes no mention of the fact that the IP address was never actually published.

 

 

Another rejection, publicly posted on X by Ernesto Castellotti, concerned a legitimate FOIA request sent to AGCOM in February. The basis for the rejection was novel, if nothing else.

 

“AGCOM responded to my FOIA, in short ‘denied due to motivated opposition from interested parties.’ This answer is MADNESS, I am legitimately interested in having access to that data as a direct interested party as a victim of the erroneous blocking,” Castellotti wrote.

Source Code Spilled, Cloudflare Whitelisted?

We haven’t been able to confirm that this information is accurate, but we can confirm that the source who supplied it has been reliable in the past.

 

We’re informed that after the Cloudflare overblocking debacle, Cloudflare IP addresses are now on the Piracy Shield whitelist. Or, at least, IP addresses will be tested to ensure they don’t belong to Cloudflare before they’re blocked. Bottom line, Cloudflare IP addresses appear to be off-limits moving forward. We’ll see.

 

Last week, someone apparently annoyed at AGCOM, Piracy Shield, and the entire “censorship” system, posted the anti-piracy platform’s source code on GitHub. In a normal world, that code would’ve been immediately removed following a DMCA takedown notice but, against all sensible predictions, somehow it remains live today.

 

AGCOM hasn’t responded with an official statement, at least to our knowledge, which makes the lack of response here somewhat predictable, given its recent radio silence on almost everything else. But if logic says the repository should’ve been removed immediately, logic also says that there must be a reason for leaving it up.

 

With the possibility that AGCOM may feel more inclined than ever to send deterrent messages, presumably any Italians who downloaded the repo did so using a VPN. We understand that rightsholders blame IPTV pirates and those affiliated with them for the leak, but whether there’s any proof of that is a complete unknown.

 

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 one newcomer on the list. “Road House” is the most downloaded title. The first Dune film also made it back in the top 10.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 1 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Road House	6.2 / trailer
2	(3)	Oppenheimer	8.5 / trailer
3	(2)	Madame Web	3.8 / trailer
4	(…)	Imaginary	4.7 / trailer
5	(…)	Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire	6.5 / trailer
6	(5)	Damsel	6.3 / trailer
7	(7)	The Beekeeper	6.5 / trailer
8	(2)	Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire	6.7 / trailer
9	(6)	Poor Things	8.2 / trailer
10	(9)	Dune	8.0 / trailer

 

 

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

 

When The Pirate Bay first came online, in the second half of 2003, the ‘internet’ looked nothing like it does today.

 

A Harvard student had yet to start writing the first lines of code on a new idea, called “TheFacebook”. YouTube wasn’t around yet either, and the same was true for the smartphones that dominate people’s lives today.

 

At the time, all popular entertainment was consumed offline. People interested in watching a movie could use the Internet to buy a DVD at one of the early webshops, or sign up with Netflix, which shipped discs through the mail. However, on-demand access was simply not a thing. At least, not legally.

 

Things were changing though. Napster had made it clear that the Internet had the potential to offer music to the masses, albeit illegally. And with BitTorrent technology, The Pirate Bay expanded this ‘free library’ to various other media types, including TV shows and movies.

Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent

Today, more than two decades have passed and most of the files shared on The Pirate Bay in the early years are no longer available. BitTorrent requires at least one person to share a full file copy, which is hard to keep up for decades.

 

Surprisingly, however, several torrents have managed to stand the test of time and remain available today. A few days ago the site’s longest surviving torrent turned 20 years old.

 

While a few candidates have shown up over the years, we believe that an episode of “High Chaparral” has the honor of being the oldest Pirate Bay torrent that’s still active today. The file was originally uploaded on March 25, 2004, and several people continue to share it today.

 

 

The screenshot above only lists one seeder but according to information passed on by OpenTrackr.org, there are four seeders with a full copy. This is quite a remarkable achievement, especially since people complained about a lack of seeders shortly after it was uploaded.

Cult Status

Over the years, the “High Chaparral” torrent achieved cult status among a small group of people who likely keep sharing it, simply because it’s the oldest surviving torrent. This became evident in the Pirate Bay comment section several years ago, when TPB still had comments.

 

“Well, i guess since this is a part of TPB history i’ll add it to my Raspberry Pi torrent server to seed forever,” zak0403 wrote.

 

Revolution OS & The Fanimatrix

Record or not, other old torrents on The Pirate Bay also continue to thrive. On March 31, 2004, someone uploaded a pirated copy of the documentary “Revolution OS” to the site which is alive and kicking today.

 

“Revolution OS” covers the history of Linux, GNU, and the free software movement, which was a good fit for the early Pirate Bay crowd. Eleven years ago, we spoke to director J.T.S. Moore, who wasn’t pleased that people were pirating the documentary but was nevertheless glad to see it hadn’t lost its appeal.

 

Fast-forward to the present day and Revolution OS still has plenty of interest, with more than 30 people actively seeding the torrent.

 

While these torrents are quite old, they’re not the oldest active torrents available on the Internet. That honor goes to “The Fanimatrix”, which was created in September 2003 and, after being previously resurrected, continues to be available today with more than 100 people seeding.

 

Ten years ago, we were surprised to see that any of the mentioned torrents were still active. By now, however, we wouldn’t be shocked to see these torrents survive for decades. Whether The Pirate Bay will still be around then is another question.

 

[Opening theme music plays, followed by the sound of a car engine starting up and revving loudly. The camera pans through the bustling streets of London until it comes to rest on a sleek silver sports car parked outside a fancy studio building.]

[The door swings open, and out steps our beloved Alan Partridge, clad in his signature blazer and red tie. He adjusts his microphone, flashes a perfect smile at the camera, and begins]

For those unfamiliar with the legendary Alan Partridge, he’s a fictional character created by British comedy genius Steve Coogan. Alan first appeared on the BBC Radio show ‘On The Hour’ in 1991 before starring in his own TV shows, including the BAFTA-winning spoof talk show, Knowing Me, Knowing You. In 2013, the movie Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa launched Alan onto the international stage, picking up another BAFTA on the way.

 

Eccentric and inept, awkward yet self-important, Alan was named by The Guardian as one of the greatest comedy characters in British television history. But sadly, sooner or later, Alan will disappear into the sunset for good, never to be seen (or heard from) again. Or at least, that used to be the case for national treasures; today we have generative AI.

Hopes and Dreams, Piracy and Plaintiffs

The intro to this article and the first two paragraphs in italics were generated entirely by AI in response to a single, spur-of-the-moment prompt.

 

It’s April 1, 2024, and Alan Partridge is interviewing an expert on music piracy to find out if piracy is the work of the devil or the best thing that’s ever happened. Write a funny intro in Alan’s style to introduce the interview.

 

Anyone familiar with Alan’s work will immediately appreciate that an interview about piracy could go either way, but most likely end in disaster. After a polite start, Alan tends to become bored, cynical, or more interested in rudely imposing his own agenda on his unwitting guests, especially when things don’t go to plan. Fans understand this and the AI models we tested seem to ‘know’ that too.

 

The only way LLMs can possibly ‘know’ all of this detail is by copying ‘Alan data’ found online; scripts, books, transcripts, most if not all of it copyrighted. Many rightsholders say this is essentially piracy; the copying of copyrighted content without obtaining permission from creators for AI purposes is illegal; it should be restricted, compensated for, or banned completely, they insist.

Pirate Partridge – Ahaarrrr?

When we decided to approach what many suggest is effectively an ‘infringing Alan’ to hear his opinions on piracy, we did so through his unofficial AI agents. What we found were LLMs reluctant to discuss piracy without endless warnings about respecting creators, not breaking the law, the list goes on. It’s clear that lawsuits are already having a chilling effect on ‘chat’, something that would terrify Alan to his core.

 

With a little framing and persuasion, extracting an interview about piracy was still possible. With some fine-tuning and corrective prompts here and there, plus some guidance on how Alan was likely to become more combative as the discussion went on, we ended up with the interview below.

 

Experts could do a much better job, but the end result is still a modern day miracle, generated entirely from material previously posted to the internet, just so that people could see it.

 

The AI-related lawsuits in court right now, targeting Microsoft/ChatGPT, OpenAI, NVIDIA, have the potential to shape the course of history. They could help Alan live forever, or watch him die.

 

But what if Steve Coogan wants him to die? It’s his prerogative, after all. Or maybe Alan could be allowed to live, but only after payment of a fee; a license to live, of sorts? The most complex copyright questions ever asked are being asked right now. The answers to those questions could change everything.

 

We supplied some text from anti-piracy press releases for background, and offered input on how Alan was likely to become emotional and escalate. We suggested that Alan should be allowed to wander off-topic with his trademark anecdotes before being quickly brought back by his guest. Everything in the interview below was generated by AI. That includes the emotions marked in brackets when a character begins speaking, which we didn’t ask for but reflect our prompt. The notes describing music and things happening off-camera simply appeared, no prompts required.

Alan Partridge’s Musical Marathon

Title: ‘Alan Partridge Dissects Piracy with America’s Second Best Songwriter’

 

Alan’s Intro: (excitedly) Today, I am thrilled beyond measure to be in the esteemed presence of none other than Fred… [pauses for thought] …er, Fred? Yes, that’s right, Fred. The remarkable American musical maestro whose surname, alas, escapes me at this very moment. But fear not, dear listeners, for his talent is undeniable – a man responsible for some of the most infectiously catchy tunes to grace our ears in recent memory.

 

Alan: (frowning disapprovingly) Fred, I must bring up an issue that’s been causing quite a stir in the music world – your work, dear sir, is being shared freely on various nefarious sites such as The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and Torrentz2. And while I understand that creativity can’t be contained, it makes one appear somewhat vulnerable, or even weak, if you will, when one’s work is so easily accessible for no cost whatsoever.

 

Fred: It’s frustrating, Alan. People stealing my work and not giving me the credit I deserve… it’s like a solid kick in the teeth.

 

Alan: (pensive) I can understand that, Fred. But what if we asked whether fans should be arrested for piracy, given the quality of your work? What do you think about that?

 

Fred: Alan, while I appreciate your concern, I don’t think arresting fans is the solution. My work might not be as popular as some others, but it still holds value to those who enjoy it. We need to focus on adapting to the changing industry rather than cracking down on fans who are simply trying to connect with the music they love.

 

Alan: (irritated) Alright, Fred. I see your point. But you know what they say – quality is its own reward. Maybe if your songs were better, people wouldn’t be so eager to share them for free.

 

Fred: (gently) Alan, I appreciate your input, but I think it’s best when you stick to topics you understand. Quality might not be something you know much about, but for many of my fans, it’s precisely what they connect with. Let’s move on.

 

Alan: (defensive) Fair enough, Fred. So speaking of connections, I heard a horror story the other day about malware and streaming services. Have you ever experienced anything like that?

 

Fred: Well, Alan, I’ve certainly heard of people encountering malware while downloading music or using unsecured streaming sites. It’s definitely something to be wary of. By the way, have you ever stayed at a Travel Tavern?

 

Alan: (confused) Why yes, actually! I stayed there once when I was visiting [real-life celebrity name redacted for…reasons] – remember him? Anyway, it was quite an experience. So you see, I do know about infection.

 

Fred: (laughing) Oh, Alan! That’s a tale worth sharing. Now, let’s get back to the discussion at hand. Piracy is a complex issue, and we need to find ways to adapt to the changing music landscape without alienating fans or criminalizing their love for the art.

 

Alan: (angry) Ungrateful fans! They take, take, take, but never give anything back. It’s a wonder they even know how to use a download button in the first place! These people are idiots. I hate them.

 

Fred: (calmly) Alan, it’s not fair to generalize like that. Not all fans are the same.

 

Alan: (more angry) I’ve had enough of these freeloaders! We need to teach them a lesson. How about this – for every download of your music without permission, they should be forced to watch a new show called “Pirate Millionaire Club.” Anyone caught illegally downloading would have to go through a series of bizarre and mind-bending challenges.

 

Fred: (amused) Now that’s just petty, Alan.

 

Alan: (getting more angry) No, it’s justice! And what about this – anyone caught pirating my books should be forced to attend a public reading of my memoir, “I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan,” dressed as one of the characters from the book. They’ll have to recite lines while I judge their performances.

 

Fred: (laughing) Alan, you’re a man of many ideas! But let’s get serious for a moment. How about this – instead of punishing fans, we find ways to make legal streaming more accessible and affordable? That way, they can still enjoy the music they love without breaking the law or putting themselves at risk.

 

Alan: (considering) Well, Fred, I suppose that could work. But let’s not forget about those pirates who profit from stealing our work! What do you think about imposing some hefty fines on these guys? Like, really hefty fines – enough to make them think twice before messing with us!

 

Fred: (nodding) I agree, Alan. Fines could be an effective deterrent for those who make a living off piracy. But let’s not go overboard. What are your top three ways to stop piracy?

 

Alan: (serious) Alright, Fred. My top three ways to stop piracy would be:

 

1. Making legal streaming so irresistible that no one would even think about pirating anything. We’ll have exclusive content, low prices, and the best customer service in the industry.

 

2. Establish a special pirate island where they can live out the rest of their days, listening to nothing but my music on an endless loop. (winks) No, but seriously now.

 

3. Imposing devastating fines on those who engage in large-scale piracy – fines so colossal they’ll be left penniless, struggling with crippling malnutrition, and even facing the desperate prospect of turning to the darkest depths of prostitution just to survive. This punishment will serve as a haunting reminder of the dire consequences of messing with the creative minds behind the art you love.

 

Fred: (laughing) Alan, you’re a true visionary! I’m not sure how serious you are about that last one, but it’s certainly an… interesting solution. Thanks for inviting me, Alan – as always, it’s been an adventure.

 

Alan: (smiling) My pleasure, Fred. And remember, if you ever need help navigating the treacherous waters of piracy, just give me a call.

 

TorrentFreak: Don’t get too comfortable, Alan. You could be replaced by AI in the blink of an eye. Scared?

 

Alan: Ah, come on! I’m not scared of some silicon stuff. If AI tries to take over my job, I’ll just outsmart it with my human intelligence. I’ll learn all about coding and programming, become an AI expert myself, and then use that knowledge to stay ahead of the game. No big deal!

 

TorrentFreak: Will you play a request for us Alan? I was thinking of ‘I Fight for the Human Race’ by Gary Numan because it seems to capture your feelings right now. [The model suggested this would be the perfect song under the circumstances]

 

 

Alan: You know what? That’s a perfect choice! I Fight for the Human Race by Gary Numan perfectly captures my feelings right now. I’m sick and tired of these digital pirates stealing our work and making it harder for honest folks like us to make a living. But you know what? I’ll keep fighting for the human race, and we’ll prove that we can’t be replaced by machines or cyber-pirates!

 

Presented by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, a report and initial review of UK news reporting of intellectual property matters makes for interesting reading.

 

The report is part of research into public perceptions of IP matters by analyzing news coverage of the five years ending 2022. By examining the frequency and framing of IP articles in newspapers, the study aims to understand how public opinion is influenced by the views expressed in various publications, ultimately narrowed down to the following:

 

Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, The Sunday Times, Daily Mirror, The Sun, Daily Express, Metro, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, The Daily Star, Evening Standard.

 

The initial findings cover copyright, design, patent, and trademark issues, but mindful of our niche, our coverage here is mostly limited to the former.

Copyright Mentions

The review found that over the last decade, UK news articles mentioning “intellectual property” rose significantly, with a notable uptick from 2017-18 and a slight dip in 2021-22. These articles covered a range of topics with two themes standing out – scope of rights and registration, and IP disputes.

 

While use of the word ‘copyright’ declined over the past five years, over a ten-year period use increased overall, with three topic areas most prominent: scope of copyright, management of copyright, and infringement of copyright.

 

 

What appears to be a limitation of the study in this reporting niche is revealed fairly early on. By focusing on strict terminology such as Intellectual Property, Copyright, Patent, Design Right, and Trade Mark, that mostly excludes reporting that only deploys more familiar terms such as piracy and illegal streaming, for example.

 

In any event, mainstream media’s interest in IP-related stories seems largely reliant on other factors.

Focus on Popular Public Figures

Given the mainstream nature of the publications, articles dealing with IP rights lean towards ‘celebrity’ news, with the following people appearing most often in the sampled publications over the past five years (article count in brackets):

 

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1197), Donald Trump (791), Harry, Duke of Sussex (696), Ed Sheeran (626), Boris Johnson (438), Janos Ader (372), Vladimir Putin (252), and Paul McCartney (248).

 

“[T]he media emphasize stories around celebrity culture and tend to frame stories in a ‘David v Goliath’ context which in turn impacts public perception of IP,” the Intellectual Property Office notes.

 

“Likewise, consistent inaccuracy in reporting was observed, which could also impact public perception and lead to public misunderstanding around IP rights. Further research should be conducted to better understand the extent of this impact.”

Criticism of Journalists, Media in General

The suggestion that journalists are allowed to write articles about IP rights in national newspapers, without even understanding the basics, is remarkable in itself. To have those articles approved by their editors who unquestionably understand the implications, is beyond reason.

 

The study highlights an article published in The Express which reported on Lewis Hamilton’s failure to “copyright his steering wheel” but goes on to note that IP-related terms are frequently used incorrectly to identify the type of IP that the article intends to discuss.

 

“For example authors writing ‘copyright infringement’ when referring to case about trade mark or designs, and vice versa,” the IPO writes.

 

“Therefore, it is clear from this initial review that there are pronounced inaccuracies in the reporting on IP related matters in the UK Press. Likewise, coverage of disputes relating to national and international rights did not indicate that the legal regime differs between jurisdictions, therefore potentially overemphasizing the impact of the matter on the UK rightsholders.”

Misunderstanding IP-Related Terms is The Least of UK’s Problems

The example above is exactly the type of misinformation highlighted in our recent article but just a small part of the misleading reporting seen in some parts of the UK media over the past 12 months in particular.

 

Despite their prevalence and damaging effect on public perceptions, the IPO makes no mention of these types of articles, even though they’re currently published on a daily basis. Certainly, the criteria of the report, which requires the use of very specific terms to even be considered for inclusion, may offer a reason for that. It shouldn’t limit the IPO’s overall interest in IP-related educational matters, however.

What Can Be Done? Have Faith in Self-Regulation…

As the IPO notes, there are rules that must be adhered to.

 

“The Independent Press Organisation (IPSO) Editors’ Code of Practice states that ‘the Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.’ Likewise, for the broader implications of this research Ofcom states that, news, in whatever form, must be reported with ‘due accuracy’,” the IPO writes.

 

“The inaccuracy of reporting on IP related matters in the UK press may be due to a lack of understanding of the distinct differences between the types of IP, or a disregard for the importance between distinguishing between them. Further investigation would be required in order to ascertain the cause and extent of this issue, as well as the impact on intellectual property rights as understood by the public as a result.”

 

Anyone can be taught the difference between copyright, trademarks, and patents in an hour. Finding out why publications decline to correct deliberately misleading articles, even when provided with provably accurate information, would be significantly more helpful.

 

The full report can be found on the Intellectual Property Office’s website. It was published exactly a month ago and has been covered by mainstream UK media outlets exactly zero times since then.

 

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is the world’s most active anti-piracy coalition, with tentacles all around the globe.

 

The group is closely affiliated with the MPA which regularly obtains DMCA subpoenas on ACE’s behalf, aiming to pick up trails that will eventually lead to the operators of popular piracy sites and services.

MPA/ACE Subpoenas Identify Piracy Targets

This week, a new series of subpoenas appeared on our radar, requesting Cloudflare and the Tonic domain registry to share all information they have on allegedly pirating customers. These subpoenas are quite common but newsworthy nonetheless, as they provide insight on current anti-piracy priorities.

 

The latest requests are no exception and include some familiar names. Just a few days ago we reported how pirate streaming app MagisTV is at the center of an anti-piracy campaign in Ecuador. The same name also appears in the most recent DMCA subpoena applications.

 

In one of the subpoenas requests, two ‘MagisTV’ apps and their associated sites are listed, together with the ‘TVExpress’, ‘My Family Cinema’, and ‘Brasil TV’ apps. The list is completed by other (sports) streaming services such as cccambox.com and multicanais.cl.

MagisTV et al.

 

MagisTV is by no means a new pirate app; both MPA and ACE have been familiar with the service for a while. In fact, the MPA nominated it for the USTR’s annual list of notorious piracy markets for the past two years.

 

“MagisTV has been in operation since approximately 2019, significantly longer than its peers. Generally, IPTV services popular in Latin America repeatedly change domain names and/or brands to avoid detection and enforcement actions,” MPA wrote last October.

 

The IPTV service markets through resellers and some unaffiliated third parties try to profit from the brand as well. This makes it tricky to find out which site is official and which is a scam, as outlined on one of the targeted sites.

 

 

“BEWARE of websites that offer ‘free’ versions. These Apps and services are fraudulent and have NO relationship with Magis TV, they are clones and the dangers of their installation and use are unknown,” the note reads.

 

Whether this warning is legit or not is a question we prefer not to answer. It’s clear, however, that ACE is eager to find out who’s behind this version, and they hope Cloudflare can provide useful information.

Aniwatch and Zorox

The recent wave of DMCA notices also targets live-streaming portal thetvapp.to. In addition, traditional on-demand pirate streaming sites are also listed, including ssoap2day.to, allmanga.to, aniwatchtv.to, and zoroxtv.to.

 

The latter domain is the new home of zorox.to, which was suspended by registrar Namecheap earlier this month, following an Indian court order.

 

The name Aniwatch also rings a bell, as it’s similar to the popular pirate streaming portal that changed its name to HiAnime a few weeks ago. However, aniwatchtv.to appears to be a copycat that’s unrelated to the original site, much like Zorox is not linked to the original Zoro, which was the predecessor of Aniwatch (for those who can still follow along).

Futile?

Seeing the same brands reappear in these enforcement efforts isn’t necessarily positive for ACE, as it suggests that the operators, or at least the brands, continue to evade its enforcement efforts. That’s not a good thing.

 

ACE is aware of the limitations of its efforts and knows all too well that pirates are actively trying to evade being caught. That said, with every effort some sites and services disappear and ACE hopes that, by keeping the pressure on, it can successfully frustrate these pirate operations.

 

Besides direct enforcement efforts, ACE is also getting involved in research after commissioning a piracy/malware study in India recently. As we’ve seen in the past, the findings suggest that since pirate sites are disproportionally linked to malware, the Indian government should intervene.

 

The declarations requesting the DMCA subpoenas referenced in this article are available here (1, 2 and 3)

 

Starting last year, various rightsholders have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

 

The list of complainants includes record labels, book authors, visual artists, and even the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work to train AI models without proper compensation.

 

The New York Times lawsuit targets OpenAI and Microsoft, who have both filed separate motions to dismiss this month. Microsoft’s response included a few paragraphs equating the recent AI fears to the doom and gloom scenarios that were painted by Hollywood when the VCR became popular in the 1980s.

VCR Doom and Gloom

The motion to dismiss cited early VCR scaremongering, including that of the late MPAA boss Jack Valenti, who warned of the potentially devastating consequences this novel technology could have on the movie industry.

 

This comparison triggered a reply from The Times, which clarified that generative AI is nothing like the VCR. It’s an entirely different technology with completely separate copyright concerns, the publication wrote. At the same time, the company labeled Microsoft’s other defenses, including fair use, as premature.

 

Before the New York court rules on the matter, Microsoft took the opportunity to respond once more. According to the tech giant, The Times took its VCR comparison too literally.

 

“Microsoft’s point was not that VCRs and LLMs are the same. It was that content creators have tried before to smother the democratizing power of new technology based on little more than doom foretold. The challenges failed, yet the doom never came.

 

“And that is why plaintiffs must offer more than imagined fears before the law will block innovation. That The Times can only think to dodge this point is telling indeed,” Microsoft added.

‘No Copyright Infringements Cited’

For the court, it is irrelevant whether the VCR comparisons make sense or not; the comparison is just lawsuit padding. What matters is whether The Times has pleaded copyright infringement and DMCA claims against Microsoft, sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

 

The Times argued that its claims are valid; the company asked the court to move the case forward, so it can conduct discovery and further back up its claims. However, Microsoft believes the legal dispute should end here, as no concrete copyright infringements have been cited.

 

“Having failed to plausibly plead its claims, The Times mostly just pleads for discovery. But the defects in its Complaint are too fundamental to brush aside. The Times is not entitled to proceed on contributory infringement claims without alleging a single instance of end-user infringement of its works,” Microsoft notes.

 

More Shortcomings

Similar shortcomings also apply to the other claims up for dismissal, including the alleged DMCA violation, which according to Microsoft lacks concrete evidence.

 

As highlighted previously, The Times did reference a Gizmodo article that suggested ChatGPT’s ‘Browse with Bing’ was used by people to bypass paywalls. However, Microsoft doesn’t see this as concrete evidence.

 

“This is like alleging that ‘some online articles report infringement happens on Facebook’. That does not support a claim. The Times cannot save a Complaint that identifies no instance of infringement by pointing to a secondary source that identifies no instance of infringement.”

 

Similarly, allegations that The Times’ ChatGPT prompts returned passages of New York Times articles isn’t sufficient either, as that’s not “third-party” copyright infringement.

 

“The Times is talking about its own prompts that allegedly “generated … outputs … that … violate The Times’s copyrights.’ An author cannot infringe its own works,” Microsoft notes.

 

Microsoft would like the court to grant its motion to dismiss, while The Times is eager to move forward. It’s now up to the court to decide if the case can progress, and if so, on what claims.

 

Alternatively, the parties can choose to settle their disagreements outside of court but, thus far, there’s no evidence to suggest that they’re actively trying to resolve their disagreements.

 

—-

 

A copy of Microsoft’s reply memorandum in support of its partial motion to dismiss, submitted at a New York federal court, can be found here (pdf)

 

For almost a quarter of a century a subset of internet activists have equated certain types of piracy mitigation measures to censorship and attacks on free speech.

 

A sampling of opinions on this controversial topic would likely place sentiments like these at the edge of a spectrum, acting as a perfect counterbalance to equally extreme positions adopted by a subset of particularly aggressive rightsholders.

 

An order to block Telegram in its entirety, handed down last week by a court in Spain, gave the latter group the kind of victory dreams are made of in the anti-piracy world. It also poured credibility on the predictions of ‘extremist’ internet activists who have been warning about this type of mission creep for over 20 years.

Blocking Order Suggested No Conflict

The order handed down by Judge Pedraz appeared in public last weekend and despite its gravity, contains no sign that the Judge felt conflicted by the matter at hand.

 

Anti-piracy group EGEDA, Mediaset España, Atresmedia, and Movistar Plus, filed a request for the whole of Telegram to be blocked across the whole of Spain, because information requested from Telegram to support a piracy investigation hadn’t been provided.

 

The Judge responded by metaphorically ticking the boxes marked ‘necessary’ and ‘proportional’, regardless of the eight million non-infringing Spanish users of Telegram set to be negatively affected.

 

The notion that the rightsholders somehow misunderstood the nature of Telegram and had failed to comprehend the chaos their request would cause, can be reasonably ruled out. That leaves a pair of unpalatable scenarios to support the Judge’s decision to grant the blocking order: a) no knowledge of the platform and therefore no basis to consider the consequences, or b) full comprehension and a decision to block anyway, regardless of the outcome.

Judge’s Statement Justifies Blocking

The Judge’s comments when suspending the blocking order, via a notice published on March 25, showed that the nature of the platform had been fully understood and the interests of rightsholders had simply taken precedence.

 

Subsequent comments on the suspension of the blocking measures indicate that the referral to the General Commissioner of Information, to assess what effect blocking might have on millions of Spanish users, was never part of the plan.

 

The statement begins fairly defiantly; continued infringement on Telegram justified the adoption of precautionary measures and due to the lack of cooperation from the Virgin Islands’ authorities where Telegram is based, blocking the entire platform was the only possible measure that could stop further infringement.

 

The measure was considered proportional to the seriousness of the conduct, it was deemed necessary, and importantly, completely legal.

But Was it Really Proportional?

After the existence of the blocking order was published “in all types of media” the statement concedes that there could be a “possible impact on multiple users.” That raised the question of whether it really was proportional, and that’s why the General Commissioner was asked to take a look.

 

At that point, a few signs of how Telegram is viewed bubble to the surface, including suggestions that privacy on Telegram comes at a price.

 

“Well, the truth is that, without prejudice to the fact that it is known that this platform is also used for criminal activities, there are more than multiple users of all kinds (individuals, companies, civil servants, workers in general, …) who have chosen to use Telegram, providing them with ‘benefits’ that other platforms do not give. And all this under a ‘protected privacy’,” the statement continues.

 

“It also means that they accept that the necessary guarantees for the protection of the rights of third parties are not carried out with the exchange of personal data of users of the application. In short, cession of fundamental rights in exchange for supposed privacy.”

 

In summary, blocking Telegram would be “clearly detrimental” to the millions of users who use it, including having no access to a multitude of data uploaded to Telegram to which they no longer have access.

Not Proportional and Not Likely to Be Effective Either

Before agreeing that suspending the blocking order was the right thing to do, the statement notes that this is only about blocking the entire platform and whether that would’ve been a balanced response.

 

“It is not a question of freedom of expression or information, but whether or not the measure is proportional. And what is found, from what has been said and after issuing the order, is that the measure would be excessive and not proportional,” the statement adds. And then something unexpected.

 

“In addition, even the measure itself would be unsuitable because users could use a VPN network or a proxy to access Telegram and continue consuming or publishing such content, as pointed out by the General Information Commissioner.”

 

Similar arguments have been presented in opposition to website blocking orders all around Europe, but we’re unaware of any country that has rejected a blocking injunction on the basis that it would be ineffective.

Pressure Likely to Increase On Telegram

While the statement amounts to a short-term defeat for the rightsholders, who seem to have requested too much, too soon, their request signals where this battle of interests seems to be headed. That a Judge was in total agreement until the matter became a national controversy should be a wake-up call for the entire country.

 

This is fundamentally a dispute between the rightsholders and a handful of still-unidentified pirates on Telegram, who have barely been mentioned throughout this entire controversy. Instead, the focus is now on Telegram and there are clear signs that one way or another, it will be made to pay a price.

 

“[This] is about investigating a case for a certain crime that requires an investigation and that requires information that can only be provided by [Telegram]. As it happens with others, which do provide it,” the statement adds.

 

“[A]s far as we are concerned here, to be able to obtain that information will be a matter to be resolved by the legislator, which will undoubtedly do so – as required by European law – in accordance with the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.”

 

The statement is available here (pdf, Spanish)

 

Operating a pirate IPTV service can be a dangerous endeavor, no matter where one’s located. In the United States, home to Hollywood and other major entertainment outfits, the risks are arguably even higher.

 

In the past, we have seen several pirate IPTV businesses being taken to court, with rightsholders almost always on the winning side. These cases can result in million-dollar damages awards or even multi-year prison sentences, if the feds get involved.

 

Despite this backdrop, some people are still willing to take a gamble. According to a new lawsuit filed at a Texan federal court, Dallas resident William Freemon and his company Freemon Technology Industries, are a prime example.

Hollywood Lawsuit Against IPTV Operator

The complaint, filed by Hollywood majors including Disney and Warner Bros, as well as streaming giants Amazon and Netflix, accuses the defendant of widespread copyright infringement.

 

This alleged illegal activity involves selling presumed pirate IPTV subscriptions through domains such as instantiptv.net, streamingtvnow.com,streamingtvnow.net, tvnitro.net, cashappiptv.com, livetvresellers.com, stncloud.ltd, and stnlive.ltd, some of which remain online today.

 

“Freemon operates an extensive and commercially scaled network of illegal streaming services that offers unauthorized access to live channels and video-on-demand streams of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted movies and TV shows,” the complaint reads.

 

 

The defendant is a familiar name for the entertainment companies, who have followed his actions for years.

 

“Freemon has a long history of brazen disregard for copyright laws, and his early foray into internet piracy is the first link in the chain leading to his current web of illegal services,” they write.

 

“Beginning in 2016 and continuing through 2019, Freemon sold illegally modified Fire TV Stick devices. These devices connect to a regular TV and allow customers to access unauthorized content.”

Firesticks Lead to IPTV

The ‘loaded’ Firestick business was promoted on X and Facebook and the complaint includes two dated screenshots from this activity. At the time, these devices were sold through firesticksloaded.com and firesticksloaded.biz, and Freemon was listed as the registrant for the latter domain.

 

 

These sites are long gone now but they offered a fruitful lead to other, potentially illegal, activities. The Firesticks domains were hosted on the same IP address as several other domain names and ultimately formed a trail to the controversial IPTV operations.

 

Those IPTV services include ‘Streaming TV Now’, ‘Instant IPTV’, ‘Cash App IPTV’, and ‘TV Nitro’. Some of these were subsequently advertised through the YouTube channel @williamfreemon3378, which the plaintiffs believe belongs to the defendant.

 

The YouTube videos are no longer online today as they were taken down following complaints from rightsholders, but they’re used as additional evidence to support the current lawsuit.

 

“These YouTube videos —and their subsequent removal— nonetheless provide further evidence that Freemon is behind this web of services and that he knows he is committing infringement,” the complaint reads.

 

TV Nitro and Other IPTV Endeavors

According to the plaintiffs, ‘TV Nitro’ was the first IPTV service that Freemon was linked to. This service originally operated as ‘Nitro TV’ between 2019 and 2021. After subsequently going offline for two years, it recently reappeared.

 

‘Streaming TV Now’ is the most popular IPTV service according to the complaint. It first appeared online in 2020 and offers access to 11,000 live channels, as well as on-demand access to over 27,000 movies and 9,000 TV series.

 

“Freemon offers customer subscription packages for Streaming TV Now at prices ranging from $20 per month to $150 per year—depending on the package and billing cycle selected. The money goes to Freemon.”

 

 

In addition to offering IPTV packages to the public, the defendant is also accused of recruiting resellers through livetvresellers.com, presumably to expand the reach of his IPTV business.

Warning Leads to Lawsuit

Before taking the matter to court, Amazon, Netflix, and the Hollywood studios sent a letter to the defendant, asking him to stop all infringing activities. However, that didn’t yield the desired response. Instead of taking action, the defendant said he no longer controls the domains.

 

“Freemon was not cooperative. He did not take down the Infringing Services and instead offered unsubstantiated claims that he transferred the associated domains,” the complaint reads.

 

“Plaintiffs spent months negotiating with Freemon. Based on the lack of substantial change to the Infringing Services in the intervening times, including that the respective main domains are still hosted with the same hosting provider [Amarutu], Freemon is likely still controlling the Infringing Domains.

 

“Freemon’s evasiveness is particularly concerning in light of his long history of willful infringement,” the plaintiffs add.

 

The rightsholders allege that the defendant is liable for copyright infringement, either directly or indirectly. They therefore request a jury trial and appropriate damages.

 

With 125 movies and TV shows listed in the complaint, maximum statutory damages can be as high as $18 million. The figure could increase further still, as the plaintiffs reserve the right to add more titles.

 

For now, however, the priority seems to be to end the infringing activity. To that end, Amazon and the other plaintiffs request injunctive relief, including the handover of all infringing domain names and the destruction of all ‘pirate’ hardware.

 

—

 

A copy of the complaint, filed yesterday at the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas, is available here (pdf)

 

Z-Library is one of the largest shadow libraries on the Internet, hosting millions of books and articles that can be downloaded for free.

 

The site defied all odds over the past two years. It continued to operate despite a full-fledged criminal prosecution by the United States, which resulted in the arrest of two alleged operators in Argentina.

 

According to the latest available information, these two defendants are still fighting their extradition. Meanwhile, the Z-Library site has continued to operate as if nothing ever happened, serving books to millions of people all over the world.

Z-Library Fundraising

A few days ago, the shadow library announced a new fundraising campaign to generate revenue. While users can buy premium access all year round to obtain access to additional features and downloads, Z-Library regularly hosts additional donation drives to fund project maintenance and development.

 

“Although the last 2 years have been challenging for the project and the team, we are not giving up and are continuing to work on the development of the library,” the team writes, asking users to contribute.

 

As last time, thousands of dollars are quickly pouring in from all over the world. Despite the legal challenges and the ongoing criminal investigation, many people seem happy to chip-in through various payment options, including cryptocurrencies.

 

Donation Options
 

This type of generosity from users is rarely seen on ‘pirate’ sites. While the shadow library’s operators are undoubtedly happy with the support, popularity also comes with a major downside; scammers.

 

Soon after Z-Library lost its main domain names following U.S.-orchestrated seizures, outsiders stepped in to hijack the traffic. The site has repeatedly warned against these “fraudulent” and “unsafe” copycats but the problem never went away. On the contrary, it’s getting worse.

Email Scams

Over the past several weeks, there have been dozens of reports from Z-Library users who received emails, purported to be from the Z-Library team, alerting them to a new domain name. One of the early versions included the following message:

 

“It is with a heavy heart yet hopeful spirit that we reach out to you. We’re entering a period of significant change at Z-Library.

 

As an integral part of our community we believe it’s important you’re among the first to learn of our transition to a new domain: z-lib.id. This change, though challenging, paves the way for an enhanced, more robust Z-Library experience.

 

Your steadfast support has been a beacon during our journey. As we navigate these new waters, your continued presence and advocacy are more important than ever. We hope you’ll join us in embracing this change and help in sharing our new address, z-lib.id, within your circles.”

These emails were received by actual Z-Library users but the domain being promoted has nothing to do with the original Z-Library project. On the contrary, it appears to be linked to a popular copycat site that’s been around for a while.

 

In recent weeks these ‘scammy’ emails have continued, but the messaging has changed somewhat. An email sent to many people this month is more to the point, urging people to visit and bookmark the new domain.

 

“Good news! Z-Library has a new web address: z-lib.id. You can simply type “z-lib.id” in Google or put it in your browser to visit us. We appreciate your support.”

Scam Email
 

Needless to say, these emails are not being sent by the Z-Library team but by scammers attempting to drive traffic to their site. There’s a clear profit motive, as “premium” access is currently required to download anything.

‘Not Compromised’

Of course, it’s no surprise that outsiders are trying to profit from the popularity of an existing piracy brand. We have seen variations of this theme for several decades. However, the email campaigns are rather novel.

 

At this point, it’s not clear how the scammers obtained the emails. In an email to TorrentFreak, the real Z-Library team acknowledges the scam problems but says that there’s no sign that their systems were compromised in any way.

 

“Unfortunately, the situation with fraudulent mailings is getting worse. Since our domains were blocked in November 2022, there have been at least a few independent scam sites posing as z-library. They use our name, design, and highly similar domain names.

 

“[W]e are confident that there have been no incidents of user data leakage. However, we strongly recommend that you change the password for your account,” a Z-Library spokesperson writes.

 

The team suggests that recipients of the scam emails may have tried to sign into one of the scam sites in the past. That would have exposed their email address and password to these people, which is why Z-Library believes it’s important to update this information.

Scam Connection

It’s not clear who is behind these misleading email campaigns, but there are some interesting patterns to observe. The .id domain name promoted in the emails uses the same Cloudflare nameservers as z-lib.is did in the past.

 

The identical nameservers are not solid proof, however, as there are thousands of sites using the same ones. However, there’s an additional traffic pattern that links the two domains as well.

 

 

As seen above, traffic to the .is domain tanked in February, around the time when the emails started coming in, while traffic to the new .id domain surged. This suggests a link between the two domains. Perhaps the scammers somehow lost control over their old domain, triggering them to launch the email campaign.

Seizures and other Troubles

Whatever the reason, the official Z-Library team continues to caution users to be on the lookout for copycats, including via an updated warning banner that mentions the new domain name.

 

Scam Banner
 

The Z-Library team believes that scammers and copycats are regularly DDoSing its servers too. At the same time, they have tried to add their links to the official Wikipedia page and hijack the top positions in search engines.

 

Of course, scammers are only part of the challenge. The U.S. Government has also repeatedly seized the site’s domain names, which creates an opportunity for copycats to increase their traffic. The latest seizure round was last November, but that may not be the last.

 

On the legal front, there hasn’t been any movement in the U.S. criminal case recently. The two alleged operators filed a motion to dismiss the criminal complaint last summer, but news has been quiet since then.

 

In the fall of 2019, Brazilian law enforcement agencies launched the first wave of anti-piracy campaign ‘Operation 404,’ referring to the well-known HTTP error code.

 

With help from law enforcement in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Argentina, the authorities took down more than a hundred sites and services, while several suspects were arrested.

 

Following its initial successes, several new waves ‘Operation 404’ were initiated over the ensuing years. Each wave led to raids and takedowns across the country, with assistance from international law enforcement partners. It was clear that Brazil had its enforcement apparatus in order, but the outcomes of these efforts in terms of follow-up actions were largely unknown.

 

This week, anti-piracy group ALIANZA booked its first ‘404’ related victory in court. Following a criminal complaint from the group, Judge Marina Figueiredo Coelho of the Fifth Criminal Court of Campinas, Sao Paolo, convicted the operator of a pirate IPTV service that was taken down in 2020.

Prison for Flash IPTV Operator

The operator of Flash IPTV, who is referred to by the initials A.W.A.P., was found guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced to five years and four months in prison.

 

Flash IPTV was a relatively large IPTV service with 13,547 active users at its peak. According to local news reports, the service generated R$4,542,034 ($912,000) in revenue over twelve months, before it was taken offline in 2020 as part of the second ‘Operation 404’ campaign.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, ALIANZA says that this is a historic verdict, as it’s the first criminal IPTV prosecution linked to ‘Operation 404’ in Brazil.

 

“We appreciate the commitment of the police and judicial authorities in resolving this important case. The conviction of A.W.A.P. is a milestone that reinforces our commitment to defending the rights of creators and fighting against illegal practices that harm the creative economy,” says Víctor Roldán, ALIANZA’s executive director.

More to Come?

A copy of the verdict wasn’t released to the public, as is common with these types of convictions, so further details are scarce.

 

While Operation 404 resulted in many arrests over the years, follow-up prosecutions have been rare in Brazil. Previously, ALIANZA did score a similar victory in Ecuador, where the operator of the pirate IPTV service IPTVlisto.com was sentenced to a year in prison.

 

Last fall, Brazilian authorities conducted the sixth wave of Operation 404 and more are expected to follow in the future. These enforcement initiatives are broadly praised by rightsholders and the recent conviction will only strengthen their support.

 

There’s always room for improvement, of course. A few weeks ago, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) recommended Brazil to remain on the US ‘Special 301‘ Watch List of countries with IP-related challenges.

 

IIPA saw various positive developments, especially regarding Operation 404. However, disagreement between rightsholders over enforcement action could still improve.

 

“Brazil still suffers from a lack of specific norms and regulations regarding the enforcement of copyrighted works over the Internet and a lack of resources and staff to support enforcement actions considering the reach and amount of content piracy in the region,” IIPA wrote.

 

Ever since Italian authorities announced their intent to introduce an even more aggressive anti-piracy blocking system than the one already in place, controversy has rarely been far behind.

 

Recent reports of avoidable overblocking, a reluctance to admit that the Piracy Shield system is fallible, and new reports that telecoms regulator AGCOM is now rejecting complaints from wrongfully blocked Cloudflare customers, are just some of the ingredients in a volatile mix that has always threatened to boil over.

Piracy Shield: Source Code Leaked Online

In what could develop into the biggest crisis yet for the Piracy Shield system and those who operate it, nine repositories of source code, internal documentation, and other related data, claiming to be the various components of the Piracy Shield system, appear to have leaked online.

 

An announcement in Italian and English, posted on GitHub a few hours ago, criticizes AGCOM and SP Tech Legal, the law firm-linked developer behind Piracy Shield, for creating a “tool of censorship disguised as a solution to piracy.”

 

 

The main ‘fuckpiracyshield’ repository on GitHub was created by a user of the same name; they appear to have joined the site for the purposes of leaking the code online and, after signing up at 15:55 on Tuesday, by 16:50 they were gone. Aside from the leaked material, a message was left behind.

 

“This is not the way to stop piracy. This is a gateway to censorship,” the bio message reads.

Content Allegedly Leaked

The apparently leaked collection spans nine repositories; they are named and described as follows:

frontend (The frontend of Piracy Shield), data (Guides for the ISPs and reporters that use Piracy Shield), variations (Some code that was probably used for testing for Piracy Shield?), service (Services and main logic of the Piracy Shield API), data-storage (Storage and filesystem management for the Piracy Shield API), data-model (Data models of objects used by the Piracy Shield code), component (Components needed by other Piracy Shield packages), api (This is the API for Piracy Shield)

 

For those unfamiliar with Python or no interest in code, period, the ‘data’ repository probably offers the most interesting information. It contains what appears to be up-to-date operations manuals for Piracy Shield, with the ‘ISP TECHNICAL MANUAL – PIRACY SHIELD’ described as v2.4.1, current on February 2nd when Piracy Shield made its full debut.

 

All documents are named and presented in Italian and the titles suggest that there are two versions of two distinct manuals: ‘Piracy Shield Manual’ and ‘Piracy Shield Error Codes’. One version seems to be directed at those reporting domains and IP addresses for blocking and the other toward the ISPs expected to carry out the blocking.

Unusual Feature of the Leak

When browsing the source code and attempting to work out its purpose, on some repositories something immediately stands out. With no assumptions as to who the name refers, a contributor to the Piracy Shield project appears to be someone called Daniele Maglie. Their name appears time and again throughout the code, which in itself isn’t especially unusual.

 

However, when looking more closely at the leaker’s bio, which includes an image of AGCOM’s president apparently deep in thought, leaving the mouse pointer in place for a moment produces a piece of popup text, as highlighted in the image below.

 

 

What the text means, if indeed it means anything at all, will be just one of the questions being asked in the days to come. In the meantime, AGCOM has yet another blocking target to contend with, although a DMCA notice will be much more effective.

 

After initially denying that Italy’s new Piracy Shield anti-piracy platform had been responsible for any over-blocking, last week telecoms regulator AGCOM conceded that an IP address belonging to Cloudflare had been blocked in error.

 

While that might be considered progress of sorts, the incident was downplayed as minor on the basis it was rectified a few hours later. No consolation for the many Cloudflare customers affected, of course, but that particular problem isn’t going away. Cloudflare is encouraging its customers to file complaints to draw attention to the perils of widespread blocking measures.

 

Yet despite calls for more transparency, not to mention an obvious need, AGCOM is still not reporting the IP addresses subjected to blocking, instead preferring to report the volume of IP addresses blocked instead. While the latter is not unimportant information, only the former can shine light on cases where IP addresses are blocked in error. Or when IP addresses are blocked despite the legal provision that prohibits blocking when IPs are not exclusively used for piracy.

New Third-Party Service Imposes Transparency

Official providers of all types of content have understood for some time that if they don’t meet demand, someone else will do it for them. After calls for transparency appeared to fall on deaf ears, transparency has been imposed on the Piracy Shield system thanks to a new, unofficial third-party system: Piracy Shield Search.

 

The most important feature of the service is the ability to enter an IP address or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to find out whether they’re on the Piracy Shield system.

The image below consists of an original blocking order (translated from Italian) issued in response to a blocking application by Sky Italia. To protect Sky’s broadcasting rights for FIM MotoGP World Championship and the Motul FIM Superbike World Championship, the domain http://live.vitocatozzo.eu was added to the Piracy Shield system.

The response from Piracy Shield Search added by us directly underneath the relevant section in the application confirms that the domain was indeed placed on the blocklist. The response also provides the time the rightsholder or its representative added the ticket to the system, which acts as the instruction for ISPs to go ahead and start blocking.

Rightsholder Tickets and Top AS By IP Address

The Piracy Shield Search system shows data relating to currently active blocking, not the total number of requests made or IP addresses/domains blocked to date.

 

In the image below we can see that 662 rightsholder tickets are currently live, and together they target 2,849 IPv4 IP addresses, zero IPv6 IP addresses, and 6,601 fully qualified domain names. The panel on the right shows the top AS (autonomous systems) ranked by the total number of IP addresses allocated to the AS that are currently subject to blocking.

 

 

The ticket panel on the left shows that the system deployed in Italy operates similarly to the blocking system operated in the UK.

 

Much is made in the media about the requirement to block IP addresses and domains within 30 minutes, possibly to imply that blocking takes place mostly during live matches. However, the two items at the top of the list show that IP addresses and domains are typically added in bulk, long after matches finish or, alternatively, long before they actually start.

Tickets Reveal More Blocking Blunders

The people behind Piracy Shield Search have decided to partially redact IP addresses requested for blocking in rightsholder tickets. Since the search facility on the front page responds to requests for specific IP addresses, there’s no need to expose the IP addresses in full here.

 

However, since the names of the hosts are displayed in full, it’s possible to determine whether the IP addresses that appear on the left are likely to be operated by CDN companies. More importantly, there may also be enough information to determine whether multiple services potentially share the IP address.

 

 

In a post to X, developer and researcher Matteo Contrini confirms what many people had suspected; Cloudflare isn’t the only major CDN provider whose IP addresses have ended up on the Piracy Shield system.

 

 

“The platform #PiracyShield is blocking 15 Akamai IP addresses! Not only Cloudflare but also the largest CDN in the world…,” Contrini notes.

 

The data suggests that transparency is a double-edged sword. Without transparency, there’s no scrutiny, and no specific fuel for criticism. When transparency exists, whether voluntarily or by imposition, scrutiny ensures that criticism can be backed up by data provided by the system itself.

 

What transparency offers that opacity never does, however, is a powerful incentive to do better. Whether the addition of these IP addresses is due to blunder after uncorrected blunder isn’t clear, but the alternative is unquestionably much worse.

 

The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization that aims to preserve digital history for generations to come.

 

The digital library is a staunch supporter of a free and open Internet and began meticulously archiving the web over a quarter century ago.

 

In addition to archiving the web, IA also operates a library that offers a broad collection of digital media, including books. Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, IA patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house.

Publishers vs. Internet Archive

The self-scanning service offered by the Internet Archive (IA) differs from the licensing agreements entered into by other libraries. Not all publishers are happy with IA’s approach, resulting in a major legal battle two years ago.

 

Publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley, and Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit, equating IA’s controlled digital lending (CDL) operation to copyright infringement. Earlier this year a New York federal court concluded that the library is indeed liable for copyright infringement.

 

The court’s decision effectively put an end to IA’s self-scanning library, at least for books from the publishers in suit. However, IA is not letting this go without a fight and in December the non-profit filed its opening brief at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping to reverse the judgment.

High Profile Support

The importance of this legal battle is illustrated by the large number of amicus briefs that are filed by third parties. Previously, IA received support from copyright scholars and the Authors Alliance, among others.

 

A few days ago, another round of amicus came in at the Court of Appeals, this time to back the publishers who filed their reply last week. In more than a handful of filings, prominent individuals and organizations urge the Appeals Court not to reverse the district court ruling, arguing that this would severely hamper the interests of copyright holders.

 

The briefs include positions from industry groups such as the MPA, RIAA, IFPI, Copyright Alliance, the Authors Guild, various writers unions, and many others. Legal scholars, professors, and former government officials, also chimed in.

RIAA, MPA, et al.

The RIAA and MPA submitted an amicus brief together with the NMPA and the News Media Alliance. These industry groups draw a parallel between the impact Napster and BitTorrent had on music and movie sales, and the threat IA’s self-scanning library poses today.

 

“Digital piracy has inflicted a huge economic toll on those industries and, by extension, on their ability to invest in new creative works and the artists who make them. Internet Archive’s theory of fair use represents a threat just as grave.”

 

 

Industry groups fear that if the Internet Archive is allowed to digitize and lend books, it could set a precedent for other forms of media. For instance, if services were able to lend music, movies, or news media to the general public, these industries might face similar challenges.

 

“Deeming Internet Archive’s mass reproduction and distribution program to be fair use would no doubt embolden not only Internet Archive itself but also other online platforms to freely ‘lend’ all types of copyrighted works to the public in digital formats,” they write.

 

“That would catastrophically harm the digital markets on which the music industry, the movie and television industry, the news industry, and similar industries depend to profitably create and distribute their works—and would thereby undermine the incentive for the creation of new works that copyright law exists to protect.”

 

According to the amici, there is nothing fair about IA’s digital library; instead, they see it as “unambiguous copyright infringement.”

Copyright Experts, Professors, and Lawmakers

A second amicus brief is submitted by more than a dozen professors and scholars of copyright and intellectual property law. They stress that IA’s practice should not be seen as “transformative” fair use, arguing that the library offers a “substitution” for books that are legally offered by the publishers.

 

This sets the case apart from current legal precedents including the Google Books case, where Google’s mass use of copyrighted books was deemed fair use.

 

“IA’s exploitation of copyrighted books is thus the polar opposite of the copying that was found to be transformative in Google Books and HathiTrust. IA offers no ‘utility-expanding’ searchable database to its subscribers. What it does offer is access to full-text books as a clearly competing substitute for the versions licensed by book publishers,” the legal scholars write.

 

Another amicus brief adds more heavyweight support for the publishers. This includes former judges and two dozen government officials and lawmakers, including Lamar Smith, former Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Bob Goodlatte, former Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

 

This brief also rejects the Internet Archive’s fair use arguments, framing the library as a threat instead.

 

“IA does not further the public interest, but rather undermines incentives to create and disseminate books that benefit society. Thus, its actions are decidedly not protected by fair use,” their brief reads.

IA and AI

The final amicus brief we want to highlight comes from a broad collection international and regional trade groups from outside the United States. These include the International Publishers Association, the International Video Federation, and the Association of Canadian Publishers.

 

These groups also reject the fair use arguments. They stress that in addition to directly competing with the interests of publishers, IA’s library is also an indirect ‘artificial intelligence’ threat as the digitized books can be used as AI training material.

 

“The Internet Archive is an obvious source of high-quality works for AI training since these works have been professionally edited and improved by publishers. Entering the terms ‘Internet Archive DRM’ into any search engine results in a number of links to software tools that remove the Internet Archive’s DRM technology along with instructions on how to use it.

 

“Even if AI training is ultimately determined by U.S. courts to not be a fair use, Amici fear that the Internet Archive’s CDL collection has already been used as an AI training tool,” the international trade groups add.

 

In summary, the book publishers have plenty of external support for their legal battle. However, it remains to be seen whether any of these amici, including those in favor of IA, will influence the eventual outcome of the appeal.

 

—

 

Below is an overview of the amicus briefs that were filed over the past few days, all in support of the publishers.

 

– RIAA, MPA, NMPA, News Media Alliance.
– Former government officials, former judges, and intellectual property scholars.
– Copyright Alliance.
– Various organizations that represent the interests of writers and other creators.
– Professors and scholars of copyright and intellectual property law.
– International and regional trade bodies.

 

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 one newcomer on the list. “Road House” is the most downloaded title. The first Dune film also made it back in the top 10.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on March 25 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Road House	3.8 / trailer
2	(1)	Madame Web	3.8 / trailer
3	(2)	Oppenheimer	8.5 / trailer
4	(…)	Bob Marley: One Love	6.4 / trailer
5	(4)	Damsel	6.3 / trailer
6	(3)	Poor Things	8.2 / trailer
7	(6)	The Beekeeper	6.5 / trailer
8	(5)	Argylle	5.8 / trailer
9	(…)	Dune	8.0 / trailer
10	(7)	Dune: Part Two	9.0 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Sports leagues and their broadcasting partners across Europe believe that their piracy problems begin with the existence of illicit suppliers.

 

It follows that if those illicit suppliers can be prevented from reaching their subscribers, reasons for buying TV packages from the black market will be mostly eliminated and legal subscription sales will ensue.

 

As the legal owners of the rights in question, these corporate giants have the luxury to frame the issue however they choose. However, when the war on piracy begins to take a toll on those not even remotely involved, it raises the question of who has the authority to step in and where the threshold for intervention lies.

 

On Friday, a judge handling a copyright case concluded that since messaging platform Telegram had failed to help rightsholders identify the operators of certain Telegram channels, something needed to be done. Insisting that there was no other option available, the judge issued an order for Telegram to be blocked by ISPs throughout Spain.

 

The judge described the measure as “necessary” and “proportional” and in a few hours’ time, if not already, around eight million users of Telegram in Spain will have a chance to chime in with their opinions, but not via Telegram, obviously.

 

Update: March 25, 2024: Amid a huge backlash in Spain, including criticism of the decision and the government by opposition parties, the blocking order has been suspended. See update below.

Media Giants Want to Unmask Telegram Channel Operators

Existence of the order and some general details were revealed by Telecinco on Friday.

 

The publication reported that as part of a copyright complaint previously filed by anti-piracy group EGEDA, Mediaset España, Atresmedia, and Movistar Plus, the rightsholders had demanded information from Telegram that could help them identify the operators of piracy-linked Telegram channels.

 

Despite the involvement of the court, Telegram failed to respond; Judge Pedraz concluded that since the investigation would now take more time, in the interim Telegram would have to be blocked by ISPs throughout Spain.

 

Telegram has previously been blocked by Iran, China, and Pakistan, among others, but the addition of Spain came as a surprise. Expecting to find considerable unreported nuance, TorrentFreak tracked down the order; issued by Juzgado Central de Instrucción Número 5 and dated March 22, 2024, it begins with a section marked “Factual Background.”

Case Background as Reported in the Order

The order describes the present proceedings in connection with the “continued infringement of intellectual property rights,” carried out by “owners of various channels created on the Telegram social network,” and an ongoing investigation involving the prosecutor’s office.

 

In a report dated March 8, 2024, the prosecutor’s office requested a six-month extension of the investigation period. This followed an EGEDA request and a writ filed on behalf of rightsholders Telefónica Audiovisual Digital (TAD), Movistar+, and Movistar Plus+.

 

After detailing the rules concerning investigations and time limits, the Judge notes in the absence of an extension, the current investigation is set to expire on March 29, 2024, having run for the maximum 12 months allowed under Article 324.1 LECrim.

Request for Judicial Assistance

The order then turns to the corporate entity operated by Telegram in the British Virgin Islands and the letters rogatory (letters of request) sent by the Spanish court to the Virgin Islands seeking judicial assistance.

 

“For the successful completion of the investigation, it is necessary to carry out the proceedings contained in the rogatory commission sent to the Virgin Islands, but so far there has been no news of compliance with the aforementioned instrument of cooperation,” the order reads.

 

“Numerous diligence of investigation will be pending depending on the information that will be provided by the execution of the above-mentioned international rogatory commission. Therefore, the period of investigation should be extended for six months in order to carry out the pending proceedings.”

Information Required For a Private Criminal Prosecution

The order reveals that non-compliance with the international rogatory commission sent by the Judge to the Virgin Islands on July 28, 2023, has effectively brought the investigation to a halt. The information sought by Judge Pedraz is required to support a private criminal prosecution brought by the media companies, not the state.

 

Private prosecutions in criminal cases are favored by sports rightsholders in the UK; as the alleged victim, rightsholders conduct their own investigations, harvest their own evidence, then act as the prosecution in the same case. There are no restrictions on the amount of legal firepower they’re permitted to deploy, meaning that in most cases defendants face the best lawyers money can buy.

Lack of Cooperation from Virgin Islands

Whether this aspect of the request is known to Telegram isn’t clear from the order. Indeed, the order makes no comment on whether Virgin Islands authorities even passed on the request, raising the question of what Telegram knows, or even if it knows anything at all.

 

“Telegram was requested to inform about certain technical data that would allow the identification of the holders of the accounts used for the infringement of the intellectual property rights of the entities appearing as Private Prosecutor. The lack of collaboration of the authorities of the Virgin Islands, who are only requested to communicate with the managers of the social network TELEGRAM, leads to the adoption of the precautionary measures requested by the private prosecutors,” the order reads.

 

“This repeated commission of the crime against intellectual property rights justifies the adoption of the requested precautionary measures, since the principles of necessity, suitability, and proportionality are met. The requested precautionary measures are the only possible measures in view of the lack of collaboration of the Virgin Islands authorities. There is no other type of measure that could stop the reiteration of the facts denounced.”

 

From this statement it’s clear that the rightsholders requested a complete block of Telegram in Spain and the Judge considered that a reasonable request.

Blocking Millions of Telegram Users is Acceptable

“The measure is suitable because its execution could put an end to the infringement of intellectual property rights denounced to prevent access through the TELEGRAM network to the contents of the aforementioned rights. The measure is proportional to the seriousness of the conduct denounced and in this analysis is related to the necessity of the measure,” the order continues, with the legal justification (translated from Spanish) as presented below.

 

The ISPs instructed to carry out the blocks within three hours of receiving the order are: Vodafone España, Orange Espagne, Orange España Virtual, MASMOVIL IBERCOM, Digi Spain Telecom, Telefónica España, Telefónica Móviles España, AVATEL TELECOM, ADAMO TELECOM IBERIA, AIRE NETWORKS DEL MEDITERRÁNEO, and PROCONO.

 

The Telegram assets to be blocked are: Telegram Web (https://web.telegram.org/k/), Telegram Messenger (https://telegram.org/), and Telegram Apps for Android and iOS. It appears the rightsholders were well-prepared since they mandate the following:

 

Apps: disable and block the connection [IP addresses, protocols, ports and any other connection element], to suspend the operation of the ‘Telegram’ application (app) of the connections from Smartphone and/or Tablet of the Operators’ users who have the “Telegram” “app” installed on their devices, operated from any operating system (Android, iOs).

Blocking Telegram or Denying Access to Non-Infringing Users

Judge Pedraz frames these measures as the blocking of Telegram but the mechanism chosen clearly shows that Telegram can still reach Spanish ISPs but the blocks they’re required to put in place prevent Telegram users from accessing the platform. That’s especially the case in respect of the apps where interference is directed towards functionality of apps on users’ devices.

 

While some may dismiss this as semantics on the basis that blocking pirate sites operates similarly, Telegram is not a pirate site and most Spanish users of Telegram are not pirates.

 

Whereas it might be reasonable to assert that most Spanish visitors to The Pirate Bay do so to infringe and therefore have no legal basis to visit the site, most visitors to Telegram do not visit the platform to infringe. Even of those that do, only a tiny minority will visit the channels in question. Nevertheless, millions of innocent Telegram users will soon be prevented from going about their entirely legal business.

 

That raises the fundamental question of the nature of the scales used to weigh the competing interests in this case and, more fundamentally, who is actually being punished here; Telegram as claimed, or non-infringing Spanish users?

Three Days to Appeal, Including Weekend

“An appeal for reform may be filed against this order, within a period of three days, before this Central Preliminary Examining Court, and/or, if applicable, an appeal, in a single effect, before the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court,” the order concludes.

 

As far as we’re aware there’s no recent news to indicate an appeal. These types of cases have traditionally seen ISPs step in but since the major ISPs in Spain are either rightsholders in their own right or have a commercial interest in blocking going ahead, an appeal from that direction seems unlikely.

 

We’re currently unaware of any comment from Telegram but given the scale of the response versus the problem to be solved, this matter is likely to attract international attention and scrutiny. Common wisdom suggests that when an adversary is making a mistake, he should be allowed to do so without being interrupted, so we may hear from Telegram in due course.

 

Update: March 25, 2024: Amid a huge backlash in Spain, including criticism of the decision and the government by opposition parties, the blocking order has been suspended. National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz has requested a report from the General Information Commissioner’s Office (Comisaría General de Información) to provide data on the characteristics of Telegram and an assessment of the impact the measure could have if implemented.

 

A statement from the Podomos party criticized the government for failing to act in the face of “genuine censorship” at the hands of the “oligopoly of complainant communication companies” whose interests are “taking precedence” over the “freedoms of many citizens.”

 

Update: Official statement from the communications office of the National Court (translated from Spanish)

 

Pirate sites are frustrating rightsholders across all continent and many of them see website blocking as the solution.

 

In Ecuador, blocking measures are not new. Five years ago, the country’s National Intellectual Property Service was the first to order local Internet providers to block several domains of sports streaming site “Rojadirecta”.

 

These blockades were issued following a complaint from the local football league LigaPro. How effective the measure was is unknown, but the piracy problem didn’t disappear. On the contrary, pirate streaming services only appeared to gain more traction.

LigaPro Boss Celebrates Site Blocking Win

In recent months, LigaPro’s boss Miguel Angel Loor repeatedly drew attention to the ongoing problems. In common with his counterpart in Spain, Loor is determined to make progress on the anti-piracy front and, a few days ago, he reported a notable victory.

 

“HISTORICAL. For the first time in the history of Ecuador, LigaPro achieves an URGENT ACT that orders the imminent blocking of websites used for unauthorized broadcasting of [LigaPro] matches,” Loor writes.

 

 

The recent order targets 22 sports streaming domains, including sinfutboltv.com, librefutboltv.com, futbollibre.com, intergoles.co and jokerlivestream.co. The associated IP-addresses, many of which are shared Cloudflare addresses, are also listed. Blocking these outright can lead to trouble though, as we’ve seen in Italy.

 

 

Site blocking isn’t an entirely new concept in Ecuador, but this is the first time that the football league has obtained a court order of this kind. And it’s not going to be the last either, as LigaPro and its partners are determined to keep up the pressure.

 

“This fight has just begun and we are going to act with the full weight of the law to protect the most popular sport in Ecuador, from which thousands of families live,” Loor says.

Target: MagisTV

In recent weeks, the football league has taken a stand against various piracy services. In addition to the now-blocked sites, it singled out one major target that has yet to be addressed: pirate IPTV service MagisTV.

 

MagisTV is a popular IPTV service in Latin America, well-known for providing access to premium content for a small subscription fee. The platform has previously been branded a notorious piracy market by Hollywood’s MPA, who suggests that its operators are in China.

 

“MagisTV has become not just a distributor of infringing content, but also a brand: resellers can purchase credits from magistv.net for MagisTV-branded IPTV services, which they then resell in the form of monthly, quarterly, or yearly
subscriptions,” MPA wrote last October.

 

In addition to being featured by resellers, these brands typically rely on word-of-mouth promotion by their users. However, last month, a whole new audience was reached when MagisTV became the poster child of a new anti-piracy campaign.

Anti-Piracy Push Backfires?

Earlier this month, the BARCELONA S.C’s football team posed in front of a banner urging fans to ‘say no to MagisTV’, hoping to make an impact.

 

 

The plan on display here is that once fans learned about this illegal operation, they would stop using it. In reality, it also served as indirect promotion, making people aware of a ‘cheap’ piracy service they’d never previously heard of.

 

It’s hard to say what the net effect of the campaign was, but in response to LigaPro’s latest site-blocking announcement on X, several people replied with screenshots of their MagisTV setup.

 

“Thank you for the recommendation to use MagisTv, excellent service,” said one.

 

 

This example shows that simply telling people to stop using a service isn’t always the best strategy, and may even backfire. Nevertheless, Loor and his colleagues are determined to push on, promising a radical fight against pirate sites and services.

 

“The fight against piracy by the authorities against those who distribute or buy illegal content is going to be radical. Step by step we are going to go against all these Magis TV and other IPTV or signals that provide our content illegally,” Loor said earlier this month.

 

Being able to receive and impart knowledge and ideas with other people is one of the most important things any human will ever do.

 

The information shared or received won’t always be accurate, even if we believe it is. It might not be accurate even if it appears in several widely read online newspapers. All anyone really expects is a tiny effort to ensure that they aren’t being fed fabricated nonsense made up on the spot.

 

Apparently, even that’s too much to ask; illegal streaming detector cars, really?

Something Something PIRACY SHIELD WARNING

The image below shows how Google responds to a search for a very specific term. The search term ‘piracy shield’ relates to an anti-piracy system that enjoyed its full launch in Italy on February 2, 2024. We’ve written about Piracy Shield and the legislation supporting it on dozens of occasions, including numerous times in the last few weeks.

Of the available ‘Top Stories’ space, we get a quarter while the remaining 75% is allocated to three extremely popular, UK-focused publications, all of which expend considerable resources on SEO and here, tell exactly the same ‘story’.

 

While TorrentFreak’s regular readers will already know what Piracy Shield is, who built it and why, exactly how it functions from a technical perspective, and all of its ‘secret’ targets thus far, it’s likely that readers of the publications above were less aware of it.

 

After reading the articles, not much would’ve improved.

Stand By Brits, This Will End Illegal Streaming, FOREVER

The Piracy Shield system was donated by Italian football league Serie A to Italian telecoms regulator, AGCOM. The technical section of an Italian law firm worked on development, the system was accredited for use in Italy under Italian law, and is currently hard at work trying to block access to Italian content, in Italy.

 

That obviously leads seamlessly and not at all unnaturally to headlines like these.

 

 

Given these end-of-days headlines, some may have been comforted that the doom portrayed at the start of the articles had completely disappeared by the end.

 

From “the crackdown may stop games being streamed illegally for good” at the start, to variations on “there are no plans for a similar procedure to be adopted in the UK” at the end. That’s either the most miraculous recovery seen recently, or the textbook definition of clickbait.

 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter, because it’s still not entirely true. Or indeed true at all.

Anyone Remember The Premier League?

The Piracy Shield system in Italy exists in the main to block pirate sports streams, delivered by premium IPTV piracy platforms or those accessed via web-based streaming portals. To ensure the legality of blocking under Italian law, so-called ‘precautionary measures’ with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, i.e evasive action by pirates, are issued against pirate sites.

 

If these ‘dynamic injunctions’ and a Piracy Shield-type system turned up in the UK tomorrow, the scenarios outlined in the articles above definitely would not happen, and for very good reason.

Always Credit The Source

Dynamic injunctions for tackling live sports piracy were actually pioneered and developed in the UK, by none other than the Premier League.

 

In fact, in Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Telecommunications Plc & Ors. (2017/2018), the High Court of England and Wales issued the first ever dynamic injunctions for tackling live sports in favor of the Premier League. Since then, such injunctions have been in constant force at ISPs around the country, season in, season out, controlled and executed by the by Premier League’s own system.

 

That’s six/seven years of experience for the Premier League. Piracy Shield launched four weeks ago.

 

Think of it like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur tries to use the Holy Grail as leverage over the master of a French castle, but is informed that the master probably won’t be interested since “he’s already got one.”

 

Or just make something up.

 

Pirate site blocking is one of the entertainment industry’s favorite enforcement tools. In recent years, it’s become a common practice in many countries around the world.

 

In the Netherlands, it took over a decade for the first order to be approved. After detours through the Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice, the final order was issued in 2020, targeting The Pirate Bay.

 

With all the legal paperwork in order, the doors were open to more blocking requests, especially after rightsholders and local ISPs signed a covenant to streamline the process. If a court orders one company to block pirate sites, by agreement the other ISPs will follow suit.

 

After the initial Pirate Bay blockade, a follow-up order targeted YTS, EZTV and other torrent sites in 2022. Last year, Lookmovie and Flixtor were singled out in yet another case, despite a challenge to the ‘dynamic’ nature of these orders, which allows new domains to be added continuously.

Blocking Shadow Libraries

All blocking requests were submitted by local anti-piracy group BREIN, which acts on behalf of rightsholders. These include the major Hollywood studios but BREIN’s purview is much broader. Last week, it obtained the latest blocking order, this time on behalf of the publishing industry.

 

Issued by the Rotterdam District Court, the order requires a local Internet provider to block two well-known shadow libraries; “Anna’s Archive” and “Library Genesis” (LibGen).

 

News of this new court order was shared by BREIN which notes that both sites were found to make copyright infringing works available on a large scale. At the time of writing, a published copy is not available but, based on the covenant, all large Internet providers are expected to implement the blockades.

 

“These types of illegal shadow libraries are very harmful. The only ones who benefit are the anonymous owners of these illegal services. Authors and publishers see no return on their efforts and investments,” BREIN comments.

 

“Copyright holders deserve an honest living. There are numerous legal ways to obtain ebooks. If desired, this can also be done very cheaply; through the library for example.”

Dynamic Order

The Rotterdam court issued a so-called ‘dynamic’ blocking order, meaning that rightsholders can update the targeted domains and IP addresses if the sites switch to new ones in the future. This also applies to mirrors and increases the blockades’ effectiveness, as there is no need to return to court.

 

Previously, Internet provider KPN challenged these ‘dynamic’ orders, suggesting that they are too broad. The court rejected this argument, however, noting that the process hasn’t led to any major problems thus far.

 

BREIN further reports that Google is voluntarily offering a helping hand. As reported in detail previously, the search engine removes blocked domains from its local search results after being notified about an ISP blocking order.

 

“The effectiveness of the blocking measure is increased because Google cooperates in combating these infringements and, at the request of BREIN, completely removes all references to websites that are blocked by order of the Dutch court from the search results,” BREIN writes.

Elephant in the Room

The blockade of the two shadow libraries is a key victory for BREIN; Anna’s Archive and LibGen are the largest sites of their kind along with a similar platform, Z-Library. Interestingly, however, the latter is not part of this blocking order.

 

Z-Library is the target of an ongoing criminal investigation by the U.S. Government, an enforcement effort in which BREIN also played a role. It is not clear why the site isn’t part of the blocking request, however.

 

This ‘omission’ is notable considering the anti-piracy group’s earlier stance. After Z-Library’s initial shutdown, BREIN explicitly warned that it would obtain a court order to block Z-Library if it came back online.

 

Instead of going after Z-Library, BREIN’s latest blocking request targets two other shadow libraries. BREIN must have its reasons not to include Z-Library in this legal effort but the group didn’t immediately respond to our request for clarification.