In recent months, Movie-Web has quickly gained popularity among a particular group of movie aficionados.

 

The open source software, which is still available on GitHub, allows anyone to set up a movie search engine capable of streaming content from third-party sources. These external sources tend to have large libraries of pirated entertainment.

Like Google

Movie-Web’s developers are not oblivious to the legal ramifications but since they don’t host any files, they hoped to avoid legal trouble. The software just provides a search engine for third-party content, they argued.

 

“Think of it like Google, we search the Internet for videos, but we don’t own the sites, nor the content. We merely link to them,” Movie-Web explained in its FAQ.

 

 

That ‘Google’ argument has previously been used by torrent sites. However, history has shown that this doesn’t make such projects immune to legal issues. And as Movie-Web grew, Hollywood started to take notice, and action.

Movie-Web Domain Shutdown

Yesterday, the movie-web.app domain was suddenly taken down. According to a message posted on the official Discord server, this is the result of a “court action” from several movie companies including Warner Bros. Netflix, Paramount, Universal, and Disney.

 

Movie-Web announcement
 

TorrentFreak is not aware of any lawsuit, but it appears that action was taken against the movie-web.app domain. It seems likely that registrar Namecheap suspended the domain after receiving a complaint from the aforementioned Hollywood companies.

 

Namecheap updated the domain’s status to clientHold, which effectively rendered the domain inaccessible. The measure is often used to suspend pirate site domains following copyright holder complaints.

No Comeback

The surprise takedown only affects Movie-Web’s publicly hosted ‘demo’ instance. On Discord, the Movie-Web team says that it has no plans to bring this website back in any shape or form.

 

“As a team, we always said that if we were taken down, we would go down without a fight and we have decided to stick to that. We have zero interest in getting involved with legal matters, and so we will not be trying to circumvent this takedown in any way,” developer ‘BinaryOverload’ writes.

 

While this is the end of the popular movie-web.app site, the project isn’t dead yet. The code remains available on GitHub and people can still use it to run their own self-hosted instances.

 

In fact, the Movie-Web team points to several of these third-party instances, which were not targeted in the same takedown effort.

 

Shutdown FAQ

More Targets…

TorrentFreak reached out to the Movie-Web team requesting more details about the takedown action but, at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

 

Looking through the discussions, we found a comment from user ‘chaos,’ one of the project leads, who confirms that the domain name takedown happened through Namecheap. This also suggests that Movie-Web wasn’t the only target.

 

“This wasn’t just targeting movie-web, it was a blanket attack on a lot of other domains/sites as well. I doubt they actually have any grounds, but Namecheap isn’t going to go to court to defend piracy,” ‘chaos’ wrote.

 

The Movie-Web team says that it will continue to support people who want to self-host instances of the app, when possible. In addition, it will also maintain the list of “official mirrors” that they trust and recommend. Whether Hollywood will approve remains to be seen.

 

For many people, Google is the go-to starting point when they need to find something on the web. With just a few keystrokes, the search engine can find virtually anything.

 

This is generally good, but copyright holders are not happy with all content that can be discovered. Pirates sites, for example, should remain hidden when possible.

 

In recent years Google has tweaked its algorithms to address this issue. At the same time, it continues to process DMCA takedown notices which allow rightsholders to ‘remove’ problematic content, even when it’s yet to be indexed.

Takedown Transparency

In the spring of 2012, Google expanded its Transparency Report by publishing all DMCA requests the company receives, including the targeted links and their senders. For the first time, outsiders were able to see the URLs copyright holders targeted and in what quantity.

 

Here at TorrentFreak, we’ve also paid considerable attention to how the volume of these requests has evolved. In the early years, there was a rapid rise in DMCA takedowns, reaching a peak around 2017 and then dropping off afterward.

 

Surprisingly, this trend reversal was only temporary. Last year it became clear that Google search DMCA notices had picked up again. And this second surge continues to this day.

8 Billion Reported URLs

A few days ago, Google processed its eight billionth takedown request, measured by individual reported URLs. This follows a little over six months after the seven billionth request, establishing a record-breaking pace.

 

For comparison, between 2019 and 2021, it took almost two full years to add a billion new takedowns.

 

 

As highlighted previously, the recent surge is partly caused by an increase in activity from the takedown outfits Link-Busters.com and Comeso. Together, they now submit the vast majority of all takedown requests.

 

These companies work with a variety of rightsholders. Link-Busters, for example, mostly works with major publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Hachette.

Active Senders

To give an indication of the volume, Link-Busters.com flagged an average of more than two million URLs per day recently. If that pace continues, it will report more than 700 million URLs a year.

 

Comeso currently averages around 1.2 million reported URLs per week, which translates to well over 400 million yearly takedowns.

 

A large number of Comeso takedowns were sent on behalf of Kakao Entertainment, a major webtoon publisher. Earlier this week the Korean media giant released a whitepaper celebrating a record number of 208 million “takedown operations” between June to December 2023. The majority of these relate to Google takedown requests, the company confirmed to us, but other search engines and services were targeted as well.

 

While hundreds of millions of removals sure sound impressive, some nuance is warranted, as not all URLs are deindexed by Google. For example, only 36% of Comeso’s requests resulted in content being removed. Most URLs, about 58%, were not indexed by Google and put on a blacklist instead. The remaining URLs were not removed for other reasons.

 

Whether these efforts will put a significant dent in publishing piracy has yet to be seen, but the two takedown companies are certainly doing their best.

10 Billion?

If this trend continues, we could be at 10 billion takedowns by this time this year. That sounds like a lot and it certainly is. However, pirate sites are not oblivious to this tactic and actively switch to new domains, so there can always be more.

 

To offer some context, there are thousands of “Z-Library” related domains online, each with millions of URLs. That adds up quickly.

 

In the grander scheme of things, the eight billion figure might represent just a tiny speck. It’s less than 0.007% of the 130 trillion webpages Google search reportedly had indexed years ago.

 

The InterPlanetary File System, more broadly known as IPFS, has been around for nearly a decade.

 

While the name may sound alien to the general public, the peer-to-peer file storage network has a growing user base among the tech-savvy.

 

In short, IPFS is a decentralized network where users make files available to each other. The system makes websites and files censorship-resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages; as long as at least one user in the network continues to share.

 

These advantages allow archivists, content creators, researchers, and others to reliably distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. Many developers support the project and some do so actively, by running an IPFS gateway that the public can freely use to access IPFS-stored content.

IPFS DMCA Notices

The operators of these gateways are not aware of how people use them; they simply enable the technology. However, that hasn’t stopped copyright holders from sending complaints that urge operators to prevent alleged copyright infringements.

 

In recent years, several gateway operators have received DMCA takedown requests for content available through, but not stored on, their service. These complaints are not only lodged against small players. Cloudflare has also received thousands of takedown requests.

 

While Cloudflare has in-house legal experts to rely on, these notices can be a challenge for smaller developers who tend to run IPFS gateways as hobby projects. This also applies to computer scientist Mike Damm, who operates the Hardbin.com service.

IPFS & JetBrains Keys

Hardbin is an encrypted pastebin that enables users to share text, such as this message we just posted. The service relies on IPFS for storing content and offers a gateway through which it can be viewed publicly.

 

Technically, Hardbin doesn’t store any third-party material but it can be published and accessed through the site. Not all rightsholders are happy with this and the Czech software company JetBrains shared its concerns with the operator last October.

 

JetBrains sent a takedown notice to the site, asking for the content to be removed. In response, Mr. Damm explained that Hardbin.com is an IPFS gateway that doesn’t store content, hoping that would resolve the matter. It didn’t.

 

While JetBrains now understands that IPFS gateways don’t store content, the company suggested disabling the Hardbin.com URL through which the software keys can be accessed. If not, the operator could be liable for copyright infringement under the DMCA, the software company warned.

 

“By knowingly facilitating the access to the cracks, activation codes, or other methods that aim to circumvent measures for protecting JetBrains’ products from unauthorized use, you are directly liable, even if you did not directly engage in software piracy activities.”

 

“Further, by knowingly inducing or providing links to the tools which are then employed in unauthorized access of JetBrains’ software, you may be liable for contributory copyright infringement,” JetBrains added.

 

EFF Steps Up

Faced with this legal conundrum, Mr. Damm reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who stepped up to help. EFF replied to JetBrains on behalf of the Hardbin.com operator, stressing that the service is not legally responsible for the alleged availability of the pirated software keys.

 

“That suggestion is baseless. As Mr. Damm has explained, an IPFS gateway is a conduit similar to VPNs, internet access services, or Tor nodes,” the letter from EFF attorney Kit Walsh reads.

 

“Mr. Damm is not presenting the complained-of link to the public; the link is only generated when a user provides the hash that identifies the file they wish to retrieve. This step is analogous to providing a domain name to an ISP’s DNS server in order to obtain the IP address corresponding to that domain..,” Walsh adds.

 

JetBrains’s suggestion that Hardbin violates the DMCA is not accurate, according to EFF. The letter points out that the IPFS gateway is not a hosting service, but a general-purpose conduit for information, which should not be held liable.

 

The software company sent its letter under Section 1201 of the DMCA, which applies to trafficking in circumvention technology. This is different from the traditional Section 512 takedowns. However, EFF sees no reason why liability should apply in this case.

 

“It would be absurd to suggest that Congress granted conduits special immunity for copyright claims based on third party activity but then, in the same statute, made them liable for pseudo-copyright Section 1201 claims,” Walsh writes.

Liability is Complex

EFF’s response doesn’t necessarily suggest that all IPFS gateways are immune to liability. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Walsh explains that there are several aspects operators may want to consider before sending a similarly styled response.

 

This includes whether they make money by offering the gateway service to users with accounts, whether they have made any statements encouraging people to use their service for infringement, and whether they host the complained-of files.

 

Thus far, the responses from IPFS operators have been mixed. Cloudflare, for example, has disabled access to thousands of externally stored files through its IPFS gateway, and other gateways have responded similarly in the past.

 

UK-based programmer James Stanley, who previously operated Hardbin.com, temporarily took the entire service offline when he received requests to take down thousands of links. Legal threats and uncertainties make it less fun to run these projects, he noted at the time.

 

Hardbin’s current operator sought help from EFF and the site remains online. To hear the other side of the story we also reached out to JetBrains but the company has yet to reply.

 

While IPFS gateway operators can feel strengthened by the position EFF takes in its response, legal uncertainties always remain. EFF’s Kit Walsh informs us that she will consider writing a FAQ to address these legal aspects and nuances, similar to the legal FAQ for TOR relay operators.

 

—

 

A copy of the second takedown notice Jetbrains sent to Mr. Damm is available here (pdf) and EFF’s response letter can be found here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

IA’s Motion to Dismiss

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

 

The motion is centered around the statute of limitations but IA also stressed the importance of their archiving efforts, hinting that it would be eligible for a fair use defense.

 

Specifically, the motion explained that the ‘Great 78 Project’ aims to systematically archive these old records, including the hisses, crackles and pops, to preserve them for future generations.

 

“The specific quality of the sound, including the peculiar and distinct crackles and other imperfections that are a hallmark of this antiquated medium formed an indelible part of American culture for many decades,” the motion reads.

Record Labels Respond

The record labels responded to this motion a few days ago, letting the court know that they see no reason to dismiss any claims at this stage. The RIAA letter that IA relied on didn’t mention any dates and shouldn’t be construed as knowledge of any specific infringements, they counter.

 

“[T]he letter cannot demonstrate that Plaintiffs were aware, or should have been aware, that Defendants infringed any of the particular works in suit at the time the letter was sent,” their reply reads.

 

The labels listed a total of 2,749 musical works, which are good for a potential statutory damages award of more than $400 million. None of these claims should be dismissed at this stage, they argue, as discovery could show that they are timely.

 

“Later in the case, discovery will adduce the multitude of dates pivotal to the statute of limitations analysis, including: all of the dates Defendants created copies of the sound recordings at issue […] and the dates that the Defendants distributed and/or transmitted the sound recordings at issue to others.”

 

The Archive’s motion to dismiss is limited to the statute of limitation argument but the record labels also picked up on the “hisses and crackles” references, which they couldn’t ignore.

‘Hisses and Crackles’

The music companies are convinced that IA’s archiving of obsolete records is illegal, equating it to a massive pirate streaming library.

 

“Defendants have created a massive online storefront providing digital copies of thousands of these protected sound recordings to anyone to stream or download for free. The Great 78 Project is illegal,” they state.

 

The labels further believe that the defendants are “dreaming up baseless arguments” to justify their activity. This includes the value placed on the unique sound of old records, which the music companies label the ‘Rice Krispies’ argument.

 

‘Rice Krispies’
 

These sounds are not a feature, but a bug, the music companies counter. They are audible imperfections, a sign of decaying physical records, which were never intended to be heard.

 

“When these recordings were released, they did not have all of the same hisses, crackles, and pops they have today. Many of those flaws result from the brittle discs’ many decades of age,” the labels note.

 

“Contrary to Defendants’ arguments, recording the hisses and crackles does not preserve how the records sounded on release. Instead, it anachronistically captures how an older format behaves after more than seventy years of aging.”

Fair Use?

Today, many people have come to appreciate these unique sounds. IA stressed that, without digitizing them, they may be soon lost forever. As such, its archiving effort should be able to rely on a fair use defense.

 

While the court is not yet being asked to consider the fair use aspect, the labels reject IA’s line of reasoning.

 

“Fair use cannot be perverted into forfeiting a sound recording’s protection under copyright law just because the recording is copied, distributed, and performed in something other than its cleanest sound. If ever there were a theory of fair use invented for litigation, this is it,” they write.

 

All in all, it’s clear that both parties have a very different take on the ‘Great 78 Project‘. First, the court has to decide whether any claims will be dismissed based on the statute of limitations argument. After that, we will likely see more ‘fair use’ fireworks.

 

The music companies also responded to a separate motion to dismiss from the Kahle-Austin Foundation. The foundation argued that there are no grounds to include it in the lawsuit, as it only helped to fund the Internet Archive, but the labels argue that as a named sponsor it knew of the infringements.

 

—-

 

A copy of the record labels’ response to IA’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf). The response to the Kahle-Austin Foundation can be found here (pdf)

 

The action in Canada this week is being described as the second phase of an operation that began last year.

 

Events were triggered when rightsholders led by Bell Media filed a criminal complaint against pirate IPTV service, Arubox TV.

 

Following an investigation by the Quebec Provincial Police, in 2023 the Office of Criminal Assets Recovery and Money Laundering carried out five searches; a condo in Laval and premises in Saint-Eustache and Brownsburg-Chatham were among the targets.

 

When some of those locations were targeted again this week, police may have returned to finish the job.

At Least Five Arrested For Links to Arubox TV and Stocker IPTV

During Tuesday’s raids, conducted by the Quebec Provincial Police at locations in Gatineau, Longueuil, Saint-Eustache, and Brownsburg-Chatham, at least five people were detained for suspected links to Arubox TV and Stocker IPTV.

 

The suspects were arrested on suspicion of various crimes including theft of telecommunications services, fraud, and money laundering. According to a local media report, Videotron, Bell, and Rogers are among the TV companies affected. Police say that more arrests are likely to follow.

 

 

Police claim that Arubox and Stocker packages provided access to more than 3,000 channels and in four years attracted over 7,000 subscribers. During the period 2020 to date, that reportedly generated around CA$2 million (US$1.5 million) for their operators, with sales over the past few months presumably taking place under the eye of the authorities.

Court Appearances via Videoconference

Following their arrests, the suspects appeared by videolink at the Trois-Rivières courthouse in Québec, accused of the crimes mentioned earlier plus another, mischief in relation to data.

 

Section 430(1.1) of the Criminal Code describes the offense as knowingly and intentionally destroying or altering data, to the extent it becomes useless or ineffective, or lawful use of the data is obstructed.

 

In respect of damage to the cable companies, the suspects stand accused of depriving them of an amount in excess of CA$500,000 using deception and fraudulent means.

Suspects Identified

The suspects were identified in court as follows: Éric Grenier (who is yet to be arrested) and Danick Rouleau, plus alleged accomplices Sarah-Maude Grenier, Christian Sabourin, Marie-Ève Poliquin Karaguioules, Daniel Perreault-Marcotte, Patrick Cyr and Éric Laforge.

 

Éric Grenier is the alleged operator of Arubox.tv and per our 2023 report, he made no secret of his involvement in the IPTV market. Over several years, Canadian news reports have repeatedly linked Grenier to a local chapter of the Hells Angels and in that respect, police aren’t yet ruling anything out.

 

Danick Rouleau is the alleged operator of Stocker IPTV. The nature of the Stocker service isn’t made clear, something that also holds true for the Arubox service. The ‘signal theft’ allegations against the men imply a video capturing operation but thus far we’ve seen little to support that theory, at least in respect of Arubox.TV

 

Descriptions of the other suspects are currently limited to their names, but it seems likely that as the case develops, so will the media’s interest. It seems unlikely to be boring, let’s put it that way.

Were The Pirate Services Taken Down?

One curious aspect of the case is that for reasons that remain unclear, the portal through which Arubox customers watched the service seems to be at least partially operational. Attempting to access it via a web browser obviously produces an error but remains online nonetheless.

 

 

Determining whether it’s fully operational requires a subscription but in the current environment, that’s obviously best avoided. There is a way to obtain usable MAC addresses to access some portals of this type without handing over cash, but that’s most likely illegal, regardless of the nature of the service.

 

Fortunately, and regardless of its use of Cloudflare, Arubox’s setup allows for the identification of an IPTV server that seems to be still alive; that’s despite the raids this week and despite the action in May 2023.

 

That raises the question of why it hasn’t been shut down like servers in other cases involving Bell. We have no idea but the eight-minute walk from Bell HQ in Montreal to the server location probably rules out distance.

Are Subscribers Facing Arrest?

Police say that IPTV subscribers are not a target in the current action, which should put some minds at rest. However, they are advising people to return their set-top boxes to an official drop-off point at the Quebec Electronic Products Recycling Program.

 

Whether handing in close to top-of-the-range set-top boxes for dismantling sounds attractive will be a personal choice but the devices in themselves are not illegal. That’s good news for those who want to be kind to the environment; if there’s one thing better than recycling, it’s getting the most use out of a device before that’s even necessary.

 

Formuler Z10/11 devices sold by Arubox recently can be returned to factory settings in just a few seconds, leaving owners to install whatever legal apps they like from Google’s Play Store. They also outperform most smart TVs and won’t spy on your viewing habits nearly as much.

 

 

Late 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels, including Sony and Universal.

 

Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages.

 

Heavily disappointed by the decision, Cox later asked the court to set the jury verdict aside and decide the issue directly, arguing that the “shockingly excessive” damages should be lowered. Both requests were denied by the court, which upheld the original damages award.

 

Despite the setbacks, Cox didn’t give up. The company believes the district court’s ruling is a disaster for Internet providers. If it stands, the verdict will also have dramatic consequences for the general public, the company warned.

Cox Appealed

In 2021, the Internet provider took the matter to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, hoping to reverse the lower court’s judgment. According to the company’s lawyers, “the music industry is waging war on the internet” with these lawsuits.

 

The entire dispute revolves around the legal obligations of Internet providers when it comes to pirating subscribers. According to the law, ISPs must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that allows them to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

 

The music companies argued that Cox failed to do so. As a result, the ISP should be held liable for vicarious and contributory copyright infringement.

 

While a jury previously found Cox liable for both types of secondary copyright infringement, Cox believes this was in error. It argued that some issues, including vicarious liability, should have been decided in its favor before they were sent to the jury.

Court of Appeals Reverses Vicarious Liability Ruling

After taking a fresh look at the case and weighing the evidence, the Court of Appeals partly ruled in favor of Cox in a decision handed down yesterday. The court concludes that Cox is not vicariously liable for piracy carried out by subscribers, as it didn’t directly profit from the activity.

 

The district court previously ruled that Cox was liable, concluding that it profited from not terminating the accounts of repeat infringers, which allowed the company to keep collecting monthly subscription fees. The Court of Appeals reaches a different conclusion.

 

To establish liability, there should be evidence to show the ISP had a direct financial benefit from the reported copyright infringements. That’s not the case here, according to the court.

 

“To prove vicarious liability, therefore, Sony had to show that Cox profited from its subscribers’ infringing download and distribution of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted songs. It did not,” the Court of Appeals notes.

Court of Appeals Reverses Vicarious Liability Ruling

The district court previously ruled that Cox could be held liable for failing to terminate subscribers who paid monthly fees. Cox was aware of that and considered the monthly payments when deciding whether to terminate an account or not.

 

According to the Court of Appeals, this is not enough, as the direct connection between the infringing activity and financial gain is absent.

 

“The continued payment of monthly fees for internet service, even by repeat infringers, was not a financial benefit flowing directly from the copyright infringement itself,” the decision reads.

 

“As Cox points out, subscribers paid a flat monthly fee for their internet access no matter what they did online. Indeed, Cox would receive the same monthly fees even if all of its subscribers stopped infringing.”

Piracy Draw and Payment Tiers

The music companies also argued that the ability to pirate through Cox acted as a draw to potential pirates, as evidence showed more than 10% of all traffic on the network was likely piracy-related.

 

That didn’t convince the appeals court; it notes that people don’t exclusively use their Internet connections to pirate and there’s no evidence to show subscribers favoring Cox over other providers.

 

“No one disputes that Cox’s subscribers need the internet for countless reasons, whether or not they can infringe. Sony has not identified evidence that any infringing subscribers purchased internet access because it enabled them to infringe copyrighted music.

 

“Nor does any evidence suggest that customers chose Cox’s internet service, as opposed to a competitor’s, because of any knowledge or expectation about Cox’s lenient response to infringement,” the ruling adds.

 

From the Ruling
 

Similarly, the music companies’ argument that pirates paid for higher bandwidth tiers that are more expensive, was also rejected.

 

“Sony has not identified any evidence that customers were attracted to Cox’s internet service or paid higher monthly fees because of the opportunity to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

Contributory Infringement Remains

The second liability theory deals with contributory copyright infringement. Here, the music companies had to show that Cox ‘knew’ that piracy would likely occur if it continued to provide its Internet services to particular subscribers.

 

According to the Court of Appeals, there was sufficient evidence to reach this conclusion. As such, the contributory copyright infringement ruling remains intact.

 

“The jury saw evidence that Cox knew of specific instances of repeat copyright infringement occurring on its network, that Cox traced those instances to specific users, and that Cox chose to continue providing monthly internet access to those users despite believing the online infringement would continue because it wanted to avoid losing revenue.”

Court Vacates $1 Billion Damages Order

The Court of Appeals’ conclusions are a mixed bag, which may trigger further appeals while having an effect on previously established damages.

 

Given these new findings, the Court of Appeals concludes that the $1 billion damages award issued by the jury cannot stand. Instead, it is vacated, and a new trial will have to determine the scale of the damages.

 

Cox is still liable in part and the number of infringed works is unchanged. However, the court feels that, given the new situation, the jury could have reached a different conclusion.

 

“We have reversed the vicarious liability verdict because Cox did not directly profit from its subscribers’ infringement. Without that legally erroneous finding, the jury’s assessment of at least these damages factors may be different.”

 

“We therefore vacate the damages award and remand for a new trial on damages,” the court concludes.

 

—-

 

A copy of The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals order and associated ruling are available here (1, 2)

 

A few hours ago a TorrentFreak reader linked us to a list of almost 200 domains with several things in common.

 

The vast majority have naming conventions that almost certainly point to some type of piracy activity. No shortage of the word ‘streams’ for example, along with other familiar pirate terms such as HD, cine, film, movie, plus the likes of buff, cric and crack.

 

Sites with ‘anime’ in their domain names also stand out; they include the popular Animebytes, a platform that above most seemed to be generating significant panic. A gloomy discussion on Reddit spoke of the site having just hours to live, a fate that may have since been suspended but with a root cause that remains unresolved.

The Sun Doesn’t Shine on .TV

The sites on the list have other things in common too. All operate from .TV domains that were registered at Finnish registrar Sarek Oy. As things stand, none have any functioning DNS and that means all are completely inaccessible, at least as far as site users are concerned.

 

The list can be viewed here and given its size and the platforms on it, it feels safe to conclude that this blackout is currently affecting millions of pirates. It’s probably fraying the nerves of many site operators too, albeit some more than others.

 

As far as we know, information and explanations for the unprecedented failure are in short supply, at least those announced directly from Sarek Oy. It’s the middle of the night in Finland, so it may be a few hours before any official announcement arrives.

Domain Status: serverHold

After checking a few dozen WHOIS records for domains on the list, all display a domain status of ‘serverHold’. ICANN’s official description notes that the status is set by domain registries to indicate that a domain is not activated in the Domain Name System (DNS).

 

Given the way the current problem manifests itself, the explanation is accurate but not especially helpful.

 

The bigger question is why hundreds of domains were suddenly placed on serverHold and why did that have to be done so urgently that there was no time to inform the domain owners? That will likely become evident during the next few hours, but we can confirm that sites operating .TV domains with other registrars remain functional.

 

 

That may suggest an issue specific to the registrar. Some type of issue between the registry and registrar seems most likely, but it’s hard to imagine either party simply deciding to render so many domains inoperable, seemingly all at once, without any kind of warning.

 

So at least for now, beads of perspiration will have to persist while soaking up the irony. Perhaps more than any other registrar in operation right now, Sarek Oy’s reputation for keeping sites online is extremely well known. That it’s currently at the center of one of the largest blackouts in recent history is unexpected, to say the least.

 

Press releases announcing the shutdown of yet another pirate site, more arrests, and what that means for the entertainment industry, are nothing out of the ordinary. In particularly busy periods, simply determining where one batch ends and another begins can present challenges.

 

Yet in many cases, even the most straightforward reports have much more going on just below the surface. An announcement published Monday by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is clear, quite detailed, but also conservative in respect of reporting events behind the scenes.

 

The matter involves the oldest and most likely the largest torrent site in Thailand, a platform described by the most powerful rightsholders in the United States as a priority enforcement target for at least seven years. Yet only now, 18 years after the site first launched, have local authorities taken any visible action.

 

If policy recently changed in Thailand, there’s no obvious indication of when that took place or what it might be. The official page to provide tips about illegal services on the police website still doesn’t work and known complications simmering in this particular case haven’t been mentioned either.

ACE Outlines The Main Facts

The key details, as reported by ACE on Monday, read as follows:

 

The Royal Thai Police’s Economic Crimes Department (ECD), with support from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), has raided four locations in Bangkok, Surin Province and Surat Thani. Four Thai nationals have been taken into custody and are expected to be formally charged with copyright offenses in the coming days.

 

Siambit.me was the largest torrent tracker site in Thailand with average monthly visits of 5.5 million, and which provided access to a huge range of Hollywood, international and Thai content.

 

The site had been in operation since 2005 and is known to regularly change its domain to avoid detection. According to statements by the Royal Thai Police, Siambit.me had over 100,000 VIP members and the operators were making an estimated 1.5 million baht (USD $41,000) on a monthly basis.

The 5.5 million visits reported here align exactly with data reported by SimilarWeb, so we’ll put that aside for now. The reference to 100,000 VIP members indicates those paying a fee each month. The lowest monthly fee reported recently was just 99 baht with the highest at 499 baht, so roughly $2.70 to almost $14.00 per month.

 

The higher monthly rate of $14.00 makes little to no sense in any context while the claim that 1.5 million baht was generated each month could in theory suggest around 15,000 members paying 99 baht each. If 100,000 members paid even the minimum rate each month, no figures from any source combine to produce a sensible total, so perhaps more information will emerge to clarify the situation.

Images of Police Action Emerge

Images that began circulating late last week seem to confirm that the authorities had good intelligence. Photographs such as the one featuring a server room below appear to have been taken at the home of the main suspect.

 

 

When trying to establish a timeline for the events reported a few days ago a confusing picture emerged. In fact, to make any sense of these events we needed to go back, not just days, but several weeks.

Thai Police & ACE Took Sites Down in January

On January 19, 2024, we provided background on an ACE announcement detailing the shutdown of 27 Thai-focused sites, each reliant on a common infrastructure provided as a service by the website IAMTHEME.com.

 

Around January 17, officers from the Central Investigation Bureau were preparing an operation to enforce the country’s strict pornography laws; in Thailand it’s illegal to distribute porn, possess it, or produce it.

 

The bureau’s target was the suspected operator of numerous sites including xxxporn678.com, 037movie-hd.com, dooball678.com, movie678.com, and 678-hd.com. The first domain seems to have majored on illegal adult content while the rest appeared to focus on pirated movies and pirated live football streams.

 

 

The common denominator for all sites was a) a reliance on services offered by IAMTHEME.com and b) offering porn illegally and/or generating revenue illegally from online gambling advertising.

 

Combinations like these are an effective way to attract Thai authorities, who will shut sites down and arrest their operators. And that’s exactly what happened here. Items seized included four computers, eight mobile phones, and more than a dozen bank accounts.

Dominoes Start to Fall

Not long after the operator of xxxporn678 and the other sites was arrested, police began investigating the operator of IAMTHEME. On or around February 2, he too was placed under arrest, most likely for similar reasons.

 

At some point, police determined that their latest suspect was either sourcing his porn and pirated movies from SiamBit or was otherwise connected to the site and/or its operator. That triggered a series of events that led to Thailand’s largest torrent site becoming the focus of the ACE announcement published on Monday.

 

A source who asked not to be identified said that police initially expanded their investigation to identify the person in charge at SiamBit. Armed with a search warrant dated February 7 issued by a local court, on February 9 they targeted the home of a man in his late thirties* suspected of running the group that controls the site.
*the suspect is believed to be either 38 or 40

 

 

According to the authorities, SiamBit had 10,000 VIP members, together paying around 1.5 million baht to its operators every month. For balance, we have also seen references to ‘100,000 members’ but without any mention of money. SiamBits’ tracker data obtained by TF shows a peak of almost a million peers while reporting over 200,000 members.

 

It’s possible that the focus will end up being a monetary value, but whether that will be linked to porn and gambling, copyright infringement, or both, is still unclear.

 

At least initially, police focused on suspected crimes under Section 287 of the Thai Penal Code. Section 287 makes it beyond clear that any kind of dealing in pornographic content is a criminal offense, punishable by a fine, a prison sentence, or both.

While we were able to positively identify all four main suspects by name and home address, details here are limited to their initials, arrest location, alleged role, and reported age.

 

CW: Sai Mai District. SiamBit operator and famous professional racing driver (38/40)
PB: Chatuchak District. Financial controller (54)
WNK: Surin Province. Website/systems administrator (42)
NSWW: Surat Thani Province. Administrator, community manager (53)

 

Several images made available by the authorities allegedly feature the suspected operator of SiamBits but whether all show the same person isn’t entirely clear.

 

On the top row, images one and two show the same person at the same location, dressed in a light blue t-shirt, face blurred. However, the person with his face obscured in image three at the bottom seems to more closely match press images of the racing driver named as the main suspect.

 

That raises the question of why the person in image three is wearing completely different clothes than those worn by the suspect in one and two.

 

 

Other apparent anomalies include the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment referencing the domain Siambit.me, which as far as we can establish is indeed the site’s main domain.

 

Locally there appears to be greater interest in Siambit.io, which at the time of writing redirects to Google. Meanwhile, the .me variant currently redirects to a Telegram channel with over 18,700 members.

 

Thai authorities confirm that their interest in SiamBit was raised due to complaints from companies in the movie industry. In its statement published yesterday, the anti-piracy group said that copyright infringement charges are expected in the next few days.

 

Early last year, a group of filmmakers obtained a subpoena which required Reddit to reveal the identities of users who commented on piracy-related topics.

 

The movie companies said they were not planning to go after these people in court but wanted to use their comments as evidence in an ongoing piracy lawsuit against Internet provider RCN.

 

Reddit wasn’t willing to go along with the request, at least not in full. The company objected, arguing that handing over the requested information would violate its users’ right to anonymous speech. Reddit later responded similarly to a second and third subpoena request.

Reddit Shared IP Address

Recent legal activity shows that Reddit doesn’t intend to automatically comply with all user information requests. Early last year, it did share some information (including IP address logs) related to user ‘ben125125’. Since the comment mentioned RCN, Reddit felt that was the appropriate response.

 

 

After this initial disclosure in March last year, no new information surfaced in 2023. However, a recent court filing shows that the movie companies, including Voltage Holdings and Millennium Media, actively tried to track down the commenter.

 

The IP address handed over by Reddit was linked to a T-Mobile account. Responding to a subpoena, the provider shared information related to subscriber ‘Mr. S’. According to the filmmakers, the Redditor used this connection to post on the platform.

 

When Mr. S failed to respond to their letter, the filmmakers obtained a subpoena from the District of New Jersey to compel a response last December. The filmmakers were contacted by phone in early January, supposedly by Mr. S’ family attorney, who promised to send information over email. According to the film companies, a response never arrived.

Movie Companies Seek ‘Torrenting History’

To move the case forward, a few days ago the filmmakers asked the Illinois federal court to compel Mr. S to comply with the subpoena. The request reveals what type of information these companies are looking for.

 

The plaintiffs have always maintained that they don’t intend to pursue legal action against the targeted Redditors. Instead, they’re seeking information to support their lawsuits against RCN and other Internet providers.

 

The motion to compel shows that the movie companies are seeking the following information from Mr. S, who is not necessarily the Redditor:

 

1. All written communications with RCN concerning piracy from Oct. 1, 2017 to the present.

 

2. Payment records to RCN from Oct. 1, 2017 to present.

 

3. All personal computing records pertaining to usage of BitTorrent from Oct. 1, 2017 to the present.

 

4. All social media account usernames used including for Reddit, Twitter and Facebook January 1, 2016 to present.

 

5. All Reddit posts and messages from Jan. 1, 2016 to the present

 

6. Records of all movie piracy websites (including but not limited to YTS, 1337x, RARBG, Torrent Galaxy, The PirateBay) that were used at your Internet service.

The above shows that the movie companies would like to see comprehensive details of the subscriber’s torrenting history, including records of visits to The Pirate Bay. In addition, it seeks information on other social media profiles, where more relevant information might be found.

Direct Infringement

The movie companies argue that the requested information is relevant and proportional to the needs of the case. For example, Bittorrent activity will help to show direct copyright infringement by an RCN subscriber.

 

“[The responses] will prove direct infringement and thus Plaintiffs’ allegation that Defendant’s subscribers directly infringe Plaintiffs’ exclusive rights (and that Defendant is liable for its subscribers’ piracy),” they argue.

 

At the time of writing, the court has yet to respond to the motion and no objections have been received. The filing is very insightful, though, as it sheds some extra light on what type of information the movie companies are after.

 

—

 

A copy of the movie companies’ motion to compel, submitted at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “The Iron Claw” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on February 19 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	The Iron Claw	7.9 / trailer
2	(1)	The Beekeeper	6.5 / trailer
3	(2)	Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom	6.7 / trailer
4	(3)	The Marvels	5.7 / trailer
5	(…)	Land of Bad	6.5 / trailer
6	(4)	Wonka	7.3 / trailer
7	(7)	Oppenheimer	8.5 / trailer
8	(5)	Anyone But You	6.5 / trailer
9	(…)	Air Force One Down	4.3 / trailer
10	(9)	American Fiction	7.7 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Thanks to a global pooling of knowledge and intelligence, answers to our most difficult questions are just a few clicks away on the internet today.

 

Since in many cases those answers aren’t necessarily right, or even right at all, that might explain why some seek advice from outer space. For a fee, astrologer Vaneet Sharma and his company Astro Vastu Solutions (AVS) reportedly supply all kinds of advice.

 

However, when DISH offered AVS some advice for free, the cease-and-desist notice got lost in the ether and the inexorable march towards conflict began.

Sharma IPTV Receives All The Wrong Signals

In a lawsuit filed at a California court late last week, DISH describes Sharma and his company AVS as traffickers in an illegal streaming service called Sharma IPTV.

 

How DISH managed to link Sharma and Sharma IPTV is unclear but according to the complaint, flyers distributed in the Bay Area led to its investigators handing over $135 in exchange for an annual subscription.

“The Service is advertised on the flyer as a subscription-based service providing more than 10,000 live channels, sports programs, movies, and pay-per-view events, among other content, all for a low price ranging from approximately $10 to $15 per month,” the lawsuit claims.

 

“Users can access the Service with their own hardware or purchase a set-top box from Defendants for an extra fee. Defendants’ advertising emphasizes attracting users that may otherwise purchase legitimate television services such as the satellite-based services that DISH offers, stating for example, ‘NO Cable/Dish Needed’.”

 

DISH says that after signing up for 12 months, Sharma got in touch to say that the package had been activated. The company claims that it’s “the most sought after IPTV service provider” because its “data centers are strategically located in Danville [where Defendants reside] and across the USA and Canada to bring the live streaming without any delay or freeze.”

Who Supplies Your Content?

Whether the statement above enjoys alignment with the truth is unknown, but answering a key DISH question well in advance of a lawsuit even being filed could be helpful.

 

No such information was provided proactively in respect of Sharma IPTV’s streaming sources, but you don’t have to be David Blane to see that at least some of its content originated from Sling.

“Plaintiffs’ Channels are retransmitted to users of the Service by circumventing the DRM technology that Plaintiffs use to protect the Channels from unauthorized access and copying. Upon information and belief, the circumvention targets at least the Widevine DRM,” the lawsuit notes.

 

“The Widevine DRM and the copy protection that it affords is circumvented using a specially developed computer program that emulates the behavior of a reverse engineered hardware device.”

Plaintiffs Predicted The Future

Having had a vision of what might happen in the absence of cooperation, the plaintiffs say they shared their prediction with Sharma in the form of a cease-and-desist, which he appears to have found unconvincing. How DISH and Sling managed to channel Sharma’s comments isn’t explained, but they shared them with the court nonetheless.

Despite the plan, certain actions with the potential to negatively unbalance the future were discontinued anyway.

 

DISH says that Sharma stopped accepting PayPal payments because “Dish and some other companies have been catching people” and requested online reviews to be deleted because the service “is not legal.” Subscribers were asked not to mention the IPTV service when paying for it, and in some cases were told to reference an astrology consultation instead.

 

DISH and Sling say Sharma and Astro Vastu Solutions willfully violated 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2) and 17 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(1) when they manufactured, offered to the public, provided, or otherwise trafficked in their infringing service.

 

Somewhat predictably they demand an injunction under 17 U.S.C. § 1203(b)(1) plus actual or statutory damages of up to $2,500 for each infringement under § 1201.
(The stars predict a settlement, however)

 

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

When Bram Cohen released the first version of BitTorrent in 2002, it sparked a file-sharing revolution.

 

At the time bandwidth was a scarce resource, making it impossible to simultaneously share large files with millions of people over the Internet. BitTorrent not only thrived in that environment, the protocol remains effective even to this day.

 

BitTorrent transfers rely on peer-to-peer file-sharing without a central storage location. With updated additions to the protocol, such as the BitTorrent Distributed Hash Table (DHT), torrent files no longer require a tracker server either, making it decentralized by nature.

 

In theory, it doesn’t always work like that though. People who use BitTorrent, for research purposes or to grab the latest Linux distros, often use centralized search engines or indexes. If these go offline, the .torrent files they offer go offline too.

Decentralizing Torrents

This problem isn’t new and solutions have been around for quite a few years. There’s the University-sponsored Tribler torrent client, for example, and the BitTorrent protocol extension (BEP51), developed by ‘The 8472’, that also helps to tackle this exact problem.

 

BEP51 makes it possible to discover and collect infohashes through DHT, without the need for a central tracker. These infohashes can be converted to magnet links and when paired with relevant metadata, it’s possible to create a full BitTorrent index that easily rivals most centralized torrent sites.

 

Some centralized torrent sites, such as BTDigg, have already done just that. However, the beauty of the proposition involving DHT is that centralized sites are not required to act as search engines. With the right code, anyone can set up their own personalized and private DHT crawler, torrent index, and search engine.

Bitmagnet: A Private Decentralized Torrent Index

Bitmagnet is a relatively new self-hosted tool that does exactly that. The software, which is still in an early stage of development, was launched publicly a few months ago.

 

“The project aims to reduce reliance on public torrent sites that are prone to takedown and expose users to ads and malware,” Mike, the lead developer, tells us.

 

Those who know how to create a Docker container can have an instance up and running in minutes and for the privacy conscious, the docker-compose file on GitHub supports VPNs via Gluetun. Once Bitmagnet is up and running, it starts collecting torrent data from DHT, neatly classifies what it finds, and makes everything discoverable through its own search engine.

 

Bitmagnet UI
 

Decentralization is just one of the stated advantages. The developer was also positively surprised by the sheer amount of content that was discovered and categorized through Bitmagnet. This easily exceeds the libraries of most traditional torrent sites.

 

“Run it for a month and you’ll have a personal index and search engine that dwarfs the popular torrent websites, and includes much content that can often only be found on difficult-to-join private trackers,” Mike tells us.

 

After running the software for four months, the developer now has more than 12 million indexed torrents. However, other users with more bandwidth and better connections have many more already. This also brings us to one of the main drawbacks; a lack of curation.

Curation

Unlike well-moderated torrent sites, Bitmagnet adds almost any torrent it finds to its database. This includes mislabeled files, malware-ridden releases, and potentially illegal content. The software tries to limit abuse by filtering metadata for CSAM content, however.

 

There are plans to add more curation by adding support for manual postings and federation. That would allow people with similar interests to connect, acting more like a trusted community. However, this is still work in progress.

 

Another downside is that it could take longer to index rare content, as it has to be discovered first. Widely shared torrents tend to distribute quickly over DHT, but rare releases will take much longer to be picked up. In addition, users may occasionally stumble upon dead or incomplete torrents.

 

Thus far, these drawbacks are not stopping people from trying the software.

 

While Bitmagnet is only out as an “alpha” release it’s getting plenty of interest. The Docker image has been downloaded nearly 25k times and the repository has been starred by more than a thousand other developers so far.

Caution is Advised!

Mike doesn’t know how many people are running an instance or how they’re using them. Bitmagnet is designed and intended for people to run on their own computer and network, but people could turn it into a public-facing search engine as well.

 

Running a public search engine comes with legal risks of course. Once there’s serious traffic, that will undoubtedly alert anti-piracy groups.

 

Even those who use the software privately to download legitimate content might receive complaints. By crawling the DHT, the software presents itself as a torrent client. While it doesn’t download any content automatically, some rudimentary anti-piracy tracking tools might still (incorrectly) flag this activity.

 

There are no examples of this happening at the moment, but the potential risk is why Bitmagnet advises users to opt for VPN routing.

Impossible to Shut Down

All in all, Bitmagnet is an interesting tool that uses some of BitTorrent’s underutilized powers, which have become increasingly rare in recent years.

 

The idea behind Bitmagnet is similar to Magnetico, which first came out in 2017. While that no longer appears to be actively maintained, it remains available on GitHub. During these years, we haven’t seen any takedown notices targeting the software.

 

Mike hopes that his project will be spared from copyright complaints too. The developer sees it simply as a content-neutral tool, much like a web browser.

 

“I hope that the project is immune from such issues, because the source code contains no copyright infringing material. How people choose to use the app is up to them – if you access copyrighted content using a web browser or BitTorrent client, that does not make the vendors of those apps liable.”

 

“Bitmagnet cannot be ‘taken down’ – even if the GitHub repository were threatened by an illegitimate takedown request, the code can easily be hosted elsewhere,” Mike concludes.

 

Lawsuits filed in the United States targeting pirate sites usually focus on breaches of copyright law, typically direct and secondary infringement, or violations of the DMCA, depending on individual circumstances.

 

Allegations of copyright infringement also featured in a complaint filed at an Arizona court in 2023, which hoped to quickly shut down a popular pirate site. Somewhat unusually, however, federal trademark infringement and cybersquatting allegations also played a key role, alongside other claims including unfair competition.

Complaint Targets Kokoa TV

Plaintiff Wavve Americas Inc. (wA) describes itself as a joint partnership between SK Telecom and the top three Korean Broadcast Networks –KBS, MBC, and SBS. According to the company’s website, wA’s mission is to use its open video streaming platform Kocowa (Korean Content Wave) to generate value for its content partners while providing an exceptional user experience.

 

The company’s complaint filed last year targeted the unknown domain registrant of kokoatv.net, kokoa.tv, and vidground.com. All three domains were registered at Namecheap which requires registrants to consent to personal jurisdiction in Arizona when in dispute with a third party.

 

The complaint alleged that Kokoa TV provided access to Korean-based TV shows and movies, including those exclusively licensed to wA for distribution in the United States. The site targeted both Korean and English-speaking audiences, the complaint added, with video content sourced from platforms including vidground.com.

 

Trading Off Kocowa’s Goodwill (and its content)

Kokoa TV’s choice of branding was called out for its similarity to the plaintiffs’ service Kocowa, for which they hold a trademark. The aim, the complaint added, was to trade off the goodwill of Kocowa while cybersquatting a deliberately similar domain, to confuse users into believing that the defendant’s platform had links to the official service.

 

Once presented with official content without having to pay for any of it, users of the unlicensed service Kokoa would be deterred from using the official platform offered by the plaintiffs, the complaint added.

 

Kocowa holds an exclusive license to distribute around 1,100 shows in the United States, content created by the three major Korean networks. The sites operated by the defendant offered that content for free, leading to allegations of copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement.

 

All three domains had their ownership hidden by a WHOIS protection service so when Namecheap refused to disable the domains or hand over the identity of the domains’ operator, Wavve Americas Inc. filed its complaint.

 

The company demanded a permanent injunction, an award sufficient to cover the costs of corrective advertising, an award of Kokoa’s profits, the transfer of its domain names, damages for both trademark and copyright infringement, plus attorneys’ fees and costs.

Plaintiff Prevails

Discovery directed at Namecheap revealed the same name behind all three domains – Tumi Max of Bangkok, Thailand – who was named in the plaintiff’s first amended complaint. The defendant was served September 22, 2023, but after failing to appear, the court’s entry of default was followed by a motion for default judgment.

 

Judge Michael T. Liburdi handed down his order on February 6, 2024. Since the defendant had accepted Namecheap’s terms and conditions, the Judge found that personal jurisdiction had been established. Since the websites were accessible in the district and likely to cause confusion there, venue was considered proper.

 

Since Tubi Max decided not to appear, he failed to produce rebuttal evidence related to the distribution of the plaintiff’s content. While the Judge found Kocowa a “conceptually strong mark” he noted that the complaint failed to demonstrate it was a “commercially strong” mark. However, after weighing several factors including the defendants’ absence, the broadcasters prevailed on their trademark, cybersquatting, and copyright infringement claims.

 

A permanent injunction followed soon after, comprehensively restraining Tubi Max from unlawful use of the plaintiff’s trademarks (image below) and any unlicensed use of its copyrighted works. It appears that the focus of the complaint was to shut the site down since the injunction notes that “wA does not seek monetary damages.”

 

As the above shows, Namecheap was instructed to hand over the domains to prevent any further infringement of the plaintiff’s rights. Visitors to those domains today will find themselves redirected to the plaintiff’s streaming platform where they will be able to compensate the rightful owners when consuming their copyrighted content.

 

In theory, at least.

The complaint and other filings cited above are available here

In recent years, website blocking has become one of the most widely-used anti-piracy enforcement mechanisms in the world.

 

ISPs in several dozen countries prevent subscribers from accessing a variety of ‘pirate’ sites. New blocks are added every month and rightsholders are actively lobbying to expand the measure to the United States.

 

While site blocking is by no means a panacea, copyright holders are convinced that it has a notable effect and have research to back this up.

Piracy Blocking Research

One of the earliest pieces of peer-reviewed academic research, based on UK data, showed that the local Pirate Bay blockade had little effect on legal consumption. Instead, pirates turned to alternative pirate sites, proxies, or VPNs to bypass the virtual restrictions.

 

A follow-up study added more color and brought good news for rightsholders. The research found that once a large number of sites were blocked in the UK, overall pirate site traffic decreased. At the same time, the researchers observed an increase in traffic to legal services such as Netflix.

 

The latter findings are frequently cited in policy discussions around site blocking. While the results are solid, they are limited too. They only apply to the UK situation, for example, and the long-term effects of site-blocking efforts on piracy and legal consumption are missing.

New Findings: India

A new non-peer-reviewed working paper published by Chapman University and Carnegie Mellon University researchers aims to fill the first gap. Using similar methodology to that seen in the earlier UK study, the researchers studied the effects of blocking in India and Brazil.

 

The working paper
 

In India, the researchers studied two separate blocking waves. The first took place in December 2019, when 380 piracy websites were blocked. The second wave was implemented in September 2020, when Indian ISPs blocked 173 additional piracy sites.

 

The researchers checked browsing data to see if the blocks were effective and whether pirates switched to unblocked sites. Visits to legal video entertainment services, including Netflix and Hotstar, were monitored as well.

 

The results of these studies largely replicate the UK findings. The first Indian blocking wave triggered an 8.1% increase in visits to legal sites, and the second wave led to a 3.1% increase. There was no statistically significant increase in visits to unblocked pirate sites.

 

Overall, the Indian findings suggest that site blocking can increase legal consumption without driving traffic to other, unblocked pirate sites.

New Findings: Brazil

Next, the researchers turned their attention to Brazil, where 174 piracy sites were blocked in July 2021. Using a similar research design, they found that these pirate site blocks resulted in a 5.2% increase in visits to paid streaming websites.

 

Unlike in India, there was a significant increase in traffic to unblocked pirate sites in Brazil. This is similar to the ‘dispersion’ effect that was previously found in response to UK blockades.

 

(i)n Brazil we found that blocking 174 piracy sites caused a statistically significant increase in visits to unblocked piracy sites, in essence dispersing some piracy,” the researchers write.

‘Pirate Site Blocking Works’

These findings suggest that the positive effects of pirate site blocking are not limited to the UK. This will be music to the ears of rightsholders who wish to expand pirate site blocking globally, with the US as the ‘holy grail’.

 

“[The research] provides evidence that website blocking in Brazil and India in 2019, 2020, and 2021 has a similar effect as it did in the UK in 2013 and 2014, despite the fact that during that intervening time the landscape of piracy and legal consumption has changed significantly.

 

“In short, our results suggest that piracy website blocking remains an effective strategy for increasing legal consumption of copyrighted content,” the researchers add.

 

While the latest study isn’t peer-reviewed separately, it indeed confirms the earlier findings. That said, piracy research is dynamic and never complete, so many questions remain unanswered.

More (Lasting) Conclusions?

One question that remains concerns the lasting effect on behavior. The studies above only measure consumption patterns in the span of a few months, and it’s possible that some pirates eventually relapse.

 

Brett Danaher of Chapman University, the lead author of the paper, recognizes this shortcoming. Ideally, he would like to do more longitudinal research but obtaining that type of data is not easy.

 

“The biggest challenge there is finding a panel company that tracks a consistent set of users for longer periods of time,” Danaher tells TorrentFreak.

 

“With the companies we’ve been working with, the size of the panel shrinks exponentially as we ask for longer panels. It’s a real challenge.”

 

The researcher mentions that there is a study that found that the effects of blocking measures are short-lived, but that only applies to a single site, Kino.to. This ‘relapse’ finding was later supported by an Italian study, that included over two dozen sites.

 

Danaher further explained that the latest study wasn’t peer-reviewed because it’s a replication study. The research uses the same methodology as the previously published UK study, which was peer-reviewed and published in MIS Quarterly.

 

“Our thought was that there was useful information in this study and the methodology itself has already undergone peer review, but the peer review process for this paper would have taken a lot of time with little probability of landing in a premier journal.”

MPA Funding

Finally, it should be noted that this new India/Brazil study, like previous ones, is carried out as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics (IDEA). The initiative is partly funded by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) which is the driving force behind many global site blocking efforts.

 

The MPA has sent unrestricted gifts to IDEA center since 2012, totaling several million dollars. In recent years, the gift amounted to $1 million annually.

 

There is no evidence that the research findings are in any way influenced by this funding, of course. The connected researchers have repeatedly pointed out that they operate completely independently, which Danaher confirms.

 

“To me, the top value of the center is that it allows me to sometimes access data to which I otherwise would not have access but protects me from outside influences,” Danaher notes, using the movie industry sales figures that were used in a Megaupload study as an example

 

“In other words, once I get studio data through the IDEA Center for a particular project, I am guaranteed the ability to publish my results for that paper regardless of what they say,” he adds.

 

—

 

Danaher, Brett and Sivan, Liron and Smith, Michael D. and Telang, Rahul, The Impact of Online Piracy Website Blocking on Consumer Choices (February 12, 2024). Available at SSRN.

 

There’s no shortage of reasonable arguments that support the existence of a comprehensive anti-piracy system in Italy, capable of returning revenue to broadcasters, local football clubs, and rightsholders in general.

 

On the other side of the debate, consumers of pirate IPTV services argue that a virtual monopoly, in which competition isn’t allowed to exist, is the very reason pirate IPTV services became so popular in the first place.

 

In the middle of this chasm of differences are those who warned that the supposed solution to piracy of live sports – the much heralded Piracy Shield system – could end up causing collateral damage without proper checks and balances. However, a soft launch in December passed without incident and following Piracy Shield’s full launch late January, no significant controversies marred the automated blocking system’s first two weeks on the frontlines.

Rightsholders Open The Firehose

After a sensibly tentative start, last weekend saw Piracy Shield put through its toughest test yet, DDAY.it reported Monday. After previously being asked to block just a handful of IP addresses, over 400 IP addresses were requested last Saturday.

 

Why Piracy Shield crashed in response isn’t especially clear. DDAY.it, which appears to have an insider somewhere in the system, believes that thousands of simultaneous requests may have been too much for an underpowered server. That’s not impossible or even unlikely but for rightsholders who claim to be losing hundreds of millions of euros every year to piracy, failing to commit enough resources is completely avoidable.

 

Of more concern was a claim that the IP address of an unnamed CDN company in the UK had been added to the blocklist. Since CDN IP addresses may be in use by more than one service at a time, the risk of overblocking is obviously a concern. In this case, however, the block reportedly did its job without any collateral damage. The same may not be true for new blocks reported this morning.

Zenlayer CDN IP Addresses Reportedly Blocked

One of the notable aspects of the first Piracy Shield actions reported by regulator AGCOM, was the targeting of web-based pirate services rather than the less visible IPTV platforms causing most disruption in Italy. After so many IP addresses were targeted last weekend, it seems likely that recent targets were indeed IPTV streams and related infrastructure.

 

According to DDAY, however, blocks that targeted web-based movie streaming sites were also placed on the platform in recent days and that may not have gone exactly as planned.

 

“About ten IP addresses belonging to the Zenlayer CDN thus ended up among the blocks and this caused the blocking of absolutely legitimate services and sites that were distributed by the CDN itself,” the publication notes. “Cloud4C, a cloud provider, is unreachable from Italy and the same goes for the control panel of the [Zenlayer] CDN itself, which is also blocked.”

 

Establishing the existence of localized blocking from outside the affected territory isn’t always straightforward. However, an Italian user on Twitter soon confirmed that cloud4c.com could not be accessed from his connection.

A TorrentFreak source also confirmed the domain was inaccessible from a connection supplied by Telecom Italia, Italy’s largest internet service provider. Checking local DNS server responses for the domain cloud4c.com produced inconsistent results during tests carried out earlier on Thursday.

Italy Downgrades Transparency

For years, AGCOM has published every rightsholder blocking request and then once a decision has been made, published the official response on its website for public scrutiny. It’s a transparent system that may ultimately help to hide entire websites but does so while opening up administrative aspects for public scrutiny.

 

With the introduction of Piracy Shield, decisions are still published, but it seems fairly obvious that information made available to the public represents a mere fraction of action behind the scenes. The image below (translated) shows every blocking order published thus far. Each contains a single domain, so it’s clear that at a minimum, hundreds of IP addresses are going unreported, with last weekend a prime example.

 

 

The biggest problem is that IP addresses make up the bulk of the blocking while also producing the most errors. These errors can be devastating for innocent parties that unwittingly end up as collateral damage. Yet with no open reporting, holding perpetrators to account – if only to improve the system – could prove all but impossible.

 

Any argument in favor of secrecy necessarily fails, since IPTV providers know before anyone else that their IP addresses are being blocked. That means those privy to the details of IP address blocking include AGCOM, rightsholders, ISPs, and pirate IPTV providers.

 

The only people kept in the dark are those who become collateral damage through no fault of their own.

 

Given the ongoing shift in the TV market away from terrestrial and satellite delivery in favor of IP-based services, cloud recording services are no longer the big deal they once were.

 

When TVkaista launched in Finland way back in 2007, storing video in the cloud certainly wasn’t taken for granted as it is now. The service came with a program guide and allowed users to record and store TV shows from 15 local channels. TVkaista said video would be retained for a month, allowing users to watch their recordings at a time of their choosing.

 

At the time, similar services were also being offered by several of Finland’s internet service providers but for the members of the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC, also known as TTVK), this was a serious breach of copyright law. In letters sent to around 20 companies, TTVK warned that without proper licensing, these services were illegal and must be shut down.

TVkaista Faces Legal Action

In advance of TTVK’s letters being sent out, TVkaista’s CEO, technical director, and legal advisor, faced legal action for criminal copyright infringement and aggravated fraud. Claims that recording amounted to fair use were brushed aside, not least since the service actually recorded everything behind the scenes, contrary to customers’ belief that any recordings played back via the service were unique to them.

 

TVkaista said that since its service was similar to a VCR or a DVR, that would be legal under Finnish law since private copying is permitted for personal use. The TV companies whose content was being recorded and fed back to subscribers of TVkaista disagreed, arguing that no permission was granted for this type of use.

 

The broadcasters claimed that the TVkaista service effectively rebroadcast their content without a license. Copyright holders weren’t being paid for the use of their content and TVkaista wasn’t offering to share any revenue.

Service Deemed Illegal

The TV companies took TVkaista to court in 2012 and, in 2015, the Helsinki District Court deemed the service illegal, a decision confirmed by the Court of Appeal in 2017.

 

The CEO of TVkaista was convicted of criminal copyright infringement and embezzlement, and together with the service’s technical director and the company itself, was found jointly and severally liable for damages suffered by rightsholders. Financial issues would soon complicate the case, however.

 

In a statement issued by TTVK this week, the anti-piracy group says that after TVkaista was declared bankrupt in February 2014, the service actually continued, first through its Finnish .fi domain and later through a .com variant. The platform eventually shut down in 2015, but the bankruptcy estate had no funds available to pay the compensation owed.

 

“The trustee made a request to the police for an investigation into the ambiguities related to the bankruptcy estate. The suspect was the CEO of TVkaista Oy, who, however, could not be reached for prosecution before November 2023,” TTVK reveals.

Finally Held to Account

After the matter returned to court, it was determined that since 2011, customer payments to TVkaista totaling 1.8 million euros, including 380,000 euros after bankruptcy proceedings began, had been “diverted past” TVkaista’s accounting.

 

“The money had been transferred to the account of a company called Charm Noble Ltd in Hong Kong. However, since the contact person for all payment arrangements was the accused CEO, the court did not find credible his claim that the company’s business had actually been sold to a foreign person already in 2011,” TTVK reports.

 

“In support of its argument, the defense presented a deed of sale dated 2011, which had not been presented in previous TVkaista trials; however, they claimed that the business was sold already in 2009.”

 

On February 12, the district court of Länsi-Uusimaa found the former CEO guilty of all charges and sentenced him to serve three years in prison for gross accounting crime, gross dishonesty, and gross fraud as a debtor. He was also ordered to pay 409,600 euros (plus interest) to rights holders, plus 59,554 euros (plus interest) to other parties.

 

“The verdict confirms that copyright piracy is a planned and ruthless economic crime, the sole purpose of which is to collect as much money as possible for its creators,” says Jaana Pihkala, executive director of TTVK.

 

“Ever since the copyright infringement process started, the users of the TVkaista service paid large sums of money for the maintenance of content, while the authors, producers or legal intermediaries of which, have not been paid a single cent. This kind of activity weakens the opportunities to develop legal services and invest in new content, which is harmful not only to the rights holders but also to society as a whole.”

 

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment regularly announces site closures following enforcement action. Over the past seven years, hundreds of sites have fallen, but the supply of new threats currently seems inexhaustible.

 

The level of detail ACE makes available to the public varies, but it appears to be affected by several variables. Details of settlements are rare, as one might expect. Names of site operators even more so. In many cases, even the domain names of shuttered platforms receive no specific mention, at least beyond recognizable branding.

 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of information that ACE doesn’t officially release is the scale of presumably successful enforcement actions that receive no mention at all. The reasons for that are open for speculation but, since the complexity of the piracy landscape has grown out of all proportion in the last few years, there’s no shortage of options.

Yet Another New Batch Arrives

If ACE maintained a single public list of domains directly taken over, redirected, or otherwise commandeered, tracking them would be straightforward. As things stand the whole process is fragmented and, at any one point, the full picture isn’t always available from DNS, WHOIS, or similar records.

 

For example, a series of domains that recently began redirecting to the ACE portal don’t currently list the MPA as the domain owner. They include watchgameofthrones.co, watchfriendshd.com, watchhowimetyourmother.co, watchthesimpsons.co, and watchparksandrecreation.co.

 

 

At the time of writing, none of these domains use the MPA’s DNS servers either, which may (or may not) change in the days and weeks ahead. Indeed, it’s not unheard of for sites to redirect themselves to ACE for no obvious reason. In any event, visitors to these domains are currently redirected to the ACE portal, with an interesting anti-piracy side effect observed elsewhere.

 

People who visit Google hoping to ‘watch parks and recreation’ or ‘watch how I met your mother’ find themselves overwhelmed with former pirate links, all leading to ACE. In some cases, the links even outrank legal platforms like Amazon.

 

 

Other domains provably taken over in the past few days include typhoonlabs.tv and typhoonlabs.net. Both list the MPA as owner and both use the movie industry group’s DNS servers. However, back in November, the MPA was listed as the new owner of the domains when they were still assigned to the former owner’s DNS servers.

 

We can’t explain why that was the case and we don’t know why there hasn’t been an announcement regarding these seizures. One possibility is the existence of around 30 typhoonlabs and typhoonlabsiptv-branded domains still in rotation which may (or indeed may not) be connected to a similar service.

 

Since announcing the demise of one platform risks driving traffic to another with a similar name. In some cases, making no announcement at all may be the best option. Situations like this can’t be uncommon when attempting to tackle piracy on a global scale and may explain why so many cases go unreported.

MPA’s Domain Collection

Thanks to record numbers of domains being handed over to the MPA, the Hollywood group’s domain portfolio is larger today than ever before. The prospect of the collection growing exponentially isn’t off the table either.

 

While many pirate sites previously operated without issues from a single domain, today it’s not unusual for sites to have dozens, for reasons that include redundancy, obfuscation, and circumvention of measures such as ISP blocking and search engine downranking.

 

In contrast, some of the most iconic domains under MPA control, such as isohunt.com and hotfile.com, stand out in their own right, each with their own place in history. Spotting them among the other 3,100+ domains, reported by a Whoxy reverse WHOIS search, is still relatively easy. It’s unlikely to remain that way for long.

 

Apple is known to have a rigorous app-review policy that aims to keep piracy at bay. In the past, several BitTorrent apps have been rejected from the App Store, for example.

 

Despite these efforts, problematic apps slip through the cracks occasionally. We’ve seen piracy apps disguised as other tools getting approval and a recent report from The Verge shows that this trick still works today.

 

Apple was swift to patch this recent leak after it hit the newswire. The company booted the ‘vision testing’ app “Kimi” from the iOS store, disappointing many pirates in the process.

Apple’s App Store Isn’t Piracy Free Yet

Those determined to find a Kimi alternative still don’t have to look far. In less than a minute, we were able to spot another pirate streaming app that’s not concealed at all. The app in question uses popular piracy brands such as “Gomovies” and “123movies” in its name, and lives up to expectations.

 

Users who manage to crawl through a web of advertisements eventually have access to a wide range of popular movies and TV-shows. This includes blockbuster movies, Disney shows, and Apple exclusives such as the hit series Silo, shown in action below.

 

Pirate iOS App streaming Silo
 

Apparently, Apple still has some work to do on the screening front. This includes fixing the link on its website through which people can report software piracy, as that currently goes to a 404-error page.

 

The app we found has been around since May last year and has more than 1,600 reviews. We don’t know whether it always functioned as a pirate tool and Apple didn’t immediately return our request for comment.

 

Apple generally has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to piracy. The company wants complete control over all installed apps and it previously noted that the ban on sideloading helps to prevent piracy as well. It’s clearly not perfect, however.

Piracy Brands (Legally) in Apple’s App Store

Our search also revealed that not all piracy ‘associations’ are off-limits at Apple. In fact, one could argue that piracy-related terms are actively used to promote some non-pirate apps in the official iOS store. Whether all users are happy with that is questionable.

 

Let’s look at a few examples, searching the app store for well-known piracy brands such as 123movies, Fmovies, Cuevana, and ShowBox. All these terms return apps that offer access to a large library of movies and TV-shows, much like their pirate counterparts.

 

Fmovies Results ^{(doesn’t include the ‘piracy’ app)}
 

These brands and logos may look exciting to prospective pirates, but those who install the apps will soon realize that entertainment is limited to trailers. The lucky ones may get links to legal streaming platforms as well.

 

No pirated movies here either
 

In some cases, the apps allow users to keep track of what they’ve watched, which can be useful. However, most are riddled with ads. As such, it doesn’t take a genius to find out why their names, and in some cases logos, are similar to pirate streaming brands.

 

Unlike the real piracy apps, many of these ‘mockoffs’ have been in the App Store for years. That makes sense, of course, as they are not breaking the law. That said, it can lead to disappointing reviews.

 

 

Apple doesn’t seem to mind, or perhaps it isn’t privy to the problem. We assume that some anti-piracy groups are aware of these apps, but they should be fine with it. After all, it’s a great way to frustrate and annoy pirates.

 

Needless to say, real pirate streaming apps are a completely different thing…

 

The name ‘Aylo’ might not ring a bell with many people but it is one of the leading players in the adult entertainment industry.

 

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

 

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

 

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

Bizarre Goodporn Lawsuit

One stand-out lawsuit targeted the tube site, Goodporn. MG Premium sued the platform for widespread copyright infringement, hoping to shut it down, but after two years that had proven elusive.

 

Instead, Goodporn owner Amrit Kumar fought back hard. Among other things, he allegedly signed a contract to obtain the rights to MG Premium’s content in 2019, leading him to accuse his accusers of copyright infringement. Kumar went as far as ‘going after’ the pornhub.com domain.

 

It’s almost impossible to summarize this bizarre case, which comprises hundreds of filings. For example, it also includes Lizette Lundberg and Emile Brunn as defendants, who stood accused of working with Kumar and submitting inaccurate DMCA counternotices.

 

Ultimately, however, the court entered summary judgment and a default, for inducement of copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement against all Goodporn defendants.

Millions in Damages and a Broad Injunction

Last December MG Premium asked a California federal court to issue a default judgment in the amount of $21.6 million. That was based on a $15,000 damages award for each of the 2,433 works in the lawsuit.

 

The $15,000 figure was reasonable, the company argued, as it’s just a tenth of the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work.

 

MG Premium also requested a permanent injunction that would order domain registries and registrars to sign over all infringing Goodporn domain names.

 

While these targeted requests are not uncommon, the proposed injunction went much further than that. Search engines, hosting and Internet service providers, domain registrars, domain registries and other service providers should be required to block the site’s domain names, MG Premium said.

 

“[The companies should] block or use reasonable efforts to attempt to block access by United States users of the Goodporn Websites by blocking or attempting to block access to all domains, subdomains, URLs, and/or IP Addresses that have as its sole or predominant purpose to enable to facilitate access to the Goodporn Websites.”

Court Limits Damages, Denies Injunction

After reviewing all relevant factors, the court agreed that a default judgment is appropriate. However, MG Premium won’t get everything it requested. The court settled on a substantially lower damages award, decimating the original request.

 

“Plaintiff has not adduced any evidence justifying why an award of $15,000 per infringement is reasonable and appropriate in this case,” the order reads.

 

“Weighing the authorities and arguments presented in Plaintiff’s brief, though unmoored by evidence substantiating Plaintiff’s position, the Court exercises its discretion to award statutory damages of $1,500 per infringement, that is, twice the minimum statutory damages available for willful infringement.”

 

The damages award, to be paid by Kumar, is substantially lower than the amount MG Premium hoped to get, but still adds up to $2,157,000. On top, $46,740 in attorneys’ fees, to be paid by all defendants.

 

The Judgment
 

The court further declared that MG Premium is the rightful owner of all works identified in the complaint but declined to award the requested injunction. This means that the domains will be neither seized nor blocked.

 

“Without any evidence to support the remedy, particularly evidence toward irreparable harm and the inadequacy of monetary remedies, the Court declines to find Plaintiff is entitled to the injunctions it seeks,” the order reads.

 

Despite the win, MG Premium likely hoped for much more than it got. That could mean this isn’t the last we hear of this case.

More to Come?

TorrentFreak spoke with Jason Tucker of Battleship Stance, who worked for MG Premium on this case. He is pleased that this important hurdle was taken but expects that there is more to come.

 

“This is one of the most bizarre cases I have ever consulted on and it is not over,” Tucker informs TorrentFreak.

 

“The Defendant displayed full-length movies with no license and completely ignored takedown notices. In response to a lawsuit, a person purportedly named Amrit Kumar claimed to own all of MG Premium’s past and future library of movies and images. His basis was a forged agreement.”

 

Whether MG Premium will fully recoup the damages remains to be seen. The fact that there are doubts about the identities of the defendants suggests that this might not be straightforward. That said, Tucker tells us that he is committed to helping his client enforce the judgment, while putting an end to the copyright-infringing activity.

 

—

 

A copy of the order is available here (pdf) and the associated judgment can be found here (pdf)

 

In recent months, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

 

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

 

Several of the lawsuits filed by book authors include a piracy component. The cases allege that tech companies, including Meta and OpenAI, used the controversial Books3 dataset to train their models.

 

The Books3 dataset was created by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, who scraped the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik. The general vision was that the plaintext collection of more than 195,000 books, which is nearly 37GB in size, could help AI enthusiasts build better models.

 

The vision wasn’t wrong; large text archives are great training material for Large Language Models, but many authors disapprove of their works being used in this manner, without permission or compensation.

Authors Sue, OpenAI Responds

In a lawsuit filed last June, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad accused OpenAI of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, among other things. Soon after, writer/comedian Sarah Silverman teamed up with authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey in an identical suit.

 

The complaints allege that the authors’ books were sourced from pirate sites. They specifically mention the controversial Books3 dataset, as well as data from other shadow libraries such as LibGen, Z-Library, and Sci-Hub.

 

“The books aggregated by these websites have also been available in bulk via torrent systems. These flagrantly illegal shadow libraries have long been of interest to the AI-training community..,” the authors wrote.

 

OpenAI didn’t deny these allegations directly but nevertheless disagreed that using books to train AI amounts to vicarious copyright infringement or violations of the DMCA.

 

In a motion to dismiss, OpenAI asked the California federal court to ‘trim’ the scope of the case. The only claim that should be able to survive is direct copyright infringement, but OpenAI said it expects to defeat that at a later stage.

Court Dismisses Copyright and DMCA Claims

After reviewing input from both sides, California District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled on the matter. In her order, she largely sides with OpenAI.

 

The vicarious copyright infringement claim fails because the court doesn’t agree that all output produced by OpenAI’s models can be seen as a derivative work. To survive, the infringement claim has to be more concrete.

 

“Plaintiffs’ allegation that ‘every output of the OpenAI Language Models is an infringing derivative work’ is insufficient. Plaintiffs fail to explain what the outputs entail or allege that any particular output is substantially similar – or similar at all – to their books,” the order reads,

 

 

In addition to copyright infringement, the authors accused OpenAI of violating the DMCA by intentionally altering the copyright management information (CMI). Details such as the title, the author, and the copyright owner, were allegedly stripped to “enable” or “conceal” infringement.

 

Judge Martínez-Olguín sees no evidence for the intentional removal of this copyright information. And, even if these allegations are true, there’s no evidence that it was done for nefarious reasons.

 

“Plaintiffs argue that OpenAI’s failure to state which internet books it uses to train ChatGPT shows that it knowingly enabled infringement, because ChatGPT users will not know if any output is infringing.

 

“However, Plaintiffs do not point to any caselaw to suggest that failure to reveal such information has any bearing on whether the alleged removal of CMI in an internal database will knowingly enable infringement.”

 

The authors further claimed that OpenAI distributed its works without CMI, which would also violate the DMCA. This argument fails too, the court ruled, as OpenAI didn’t distribute full copies of books.

 

“Instead, [the authors] have alleged that ‘every output from the OpenAI Language Models is an infringing derivative work’ without providing any indication as to what such outputs entail – i.e., whether they are the copyrighted books or copies of the books,” the order reads.

Direct Copyright Infringement Claim Remains

In addition to the vicarious copyright infringement and the DMCA violations, Judge Martínez-Olguín also dismissed the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL) claims for ‘unlawful business practice’, ‘fraudulent conduct’, ‘negligence’, and ‘unjust enrichment’. The UCL claim for ‘unfair practices’ can proceed.

 

This isn’t the end of the legal battle. The authors have the chance to file an amended complaint to correct any shortcomings, should they wish to proceed with the dismissed claims.

 

Finally, it’s worth reiterating that the direct copyright infringement claim wasn’t covered by OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, so that will move forward as well. As will many of the other AI copyright lawsuits.

 

—

 

A copy of California District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín’s order on the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf).

 

While anti-piracy enforcement actions are likely to be at the highest level ever seen, there’s no shortage of sites and services surging to millions of monthly visits before appearing to attract negative attention.

 

Piracy services slipping through the net may not have actually done so completely unnoticed, however. Finite anti-piracy resources or strategy may play a role in services staying online, and not every platform warrants immediate attention.

 

That being said, when piracy-focused apps appear on Google Play and somehow manage to grow huge audiences for month, that can be puzzling. Google will take down obviously infringing apps in response to a DMCA takedown notice and since major rightsholders can file those in an instant, it’s difficult to know why popular apps don’t get taken down.

Pirate Streaming Apps on Google Play

As part of its coverage of the new Piracy Shield IPTV blocking system recently deployed in Italy, local tech news outlet DDAY.it recently highlighted pirate streaming apps on Google Play, some with hundreds of thousands of downloads. Those mentioned in the article focus on live football streams, the same priority content Piracy Shield is supposed to wipe out.

 

While that lofty goal was never likely to be achieved in two weeks, DDAY asked Google why the apps hadn’t been delisted and, from Google’s response, the question seems likely to have mentioned Piracy Shield.

 

The platform built by AGCOM, Piracy Shield, is used to notify providers who provide access to sites hosting infringing content with orders to disable such access. However, hosting service providers such as the Google Play Store are not subject to these orders.

 

In any case and regardless of the legislation in question, it is always possible for authorities and users to report apps that allow activities in violation of the law or platform rules as described here. (Response from Google)

As a statement of fact, Google’s response is non-controversial. In contrast, a subsequent comment from AGCOM significantly muddies the waters.

Comply With The Law, But Do More

Google accepts DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders and those authorized to act on their behalf, as the provided link demonstrates. That tends to suggest that takedown notices to remove the apps from Google Play may not have been sent by the relevant rightsholders.

 

In his response, AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitano doesn’t address the possibility that an existing anti-piracy option wasn’t used. Instead, he says that others simply need to do more.

 

In this historical moment we need an alliance for legality, which passes through respect for the rules but also through autonomous initiatives by private entities inspired by ethics and self-regulation. Nobody asks for an ex ante filter, nor to wear blindfolds. (Response from AGCOM Commissioner Capitano)

If “respect for the rules” means compliance with the law, the law says that if Google receives a proper complaint, those apps would have to come down. If “autonomous initiatives” is a reference to private deals that go beyond the strict requirements of the law, Google would still need to know which content to remove and why.

 

Since only the relevant rightsholders have that information, having them supply it in a takedown notice seems like a clear and efficient option.

Law 93/2023, Article 2, Paragraph 5

After suggesting that Google should ethically remove content without rightsholder involvement, Commissioner Capitano goes on to claim that the new law passed last year does indeed apply to the Play Store, contrary to Google’s earlier statement.

 

(i) would like to remind you that law 93/2023 following the amendments prepared by the Caivano Decree, paragraph 5 of article 2 expressly provides that search engines and other sites, even if they are not directly involved in accessibility of Pirate sites subject to Agcom investigation, must adopt all technical measures useful to hinder the visibility of illicit content. (AGCOM Commissioner Capitano)

The relevant section of the law (art. 2, para 5), states that network access service providers, search engine operators and information society service providers “involved in any capacity in the accessibility of the website or illegal services” must within 30 minutes, disable DNS resolution of domain names and traffic routing to the notified IP addresses.

Google Can’t Comply With The Above

While AGCOM and Google argue over whether Google Play qualifies under the law, it’s beyond clear that Google’s ability to comply with the above terms in respect of an app is all but impossible.

 

Any app providing access to pirated streams will do so using IP addresses and DNS servers of which Google Play has no knowledge. Even if it had knowledge, Google Play could do nothing about that; it doesn’t supply internet connectivity and doesn’t control DNS. In the event the app relied on Google DNS, then Google DNS should be served with a blocking order, not Google Play.

Google Play Could Do ‘Something’

The law does provide a catch-all clause that requires platforms, “in any case…to adopt technological measures or the organizational measures necessary to prevent access to content disseminated illegally.”

 

That could logically mean the removal of an app from Google Play. However, regardless of what action is eventually taken, the targets are first identified by rightsholders and then placed in a list, which is subsequently made available to the service providers to take action. Without that list, no action can be taken because, ethically or not, guesses are no match for facts.

 

That leads to the conclusion that as well as likely receiving no takedown notices, Google Play has received no lists of targets to take action against under the new law, regardless of whether the law applies to it or not.

 

Furthermore, the only reason those pirate streaming apps remain useful is purely down to the availability of streams accessible within the app. Since it’s Piracy Shield’s job to render those inaccessible, that might be a good place to start.

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “The Beekeeper” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on February 12 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	The Beekeeper	6.5 / trailer
2	(2)	Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom	6.7 / trailer
3	(4)	The Marvels	5.7 / trailer
4	(3)	Wonka	7.3 / trailer
5	(…)	Anyone But You	6.5 / trailer
6	(6)	Ferrari	6.7 / trailer
7	(8)	Oppenheimer	8.5 / trailer
8	(…)	I.S.S.	5.3 / trailer
9	(…)	American Fiction	7.7 / trailer
10	(7)	Migration	6.7 / trailer

 

 

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

Despite the growing availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites and services are used by millions of people worldwide.

 

New data released by UK-based piracy tracking company MUSO shows that pirate sites remain very relevant. And people have no trouble finding them either.

229 Billion Pirate Site Visits

A few weeks ago it was revealed that video piracy continued to grow in 2023. A new report shows this uptrend is visible across all other content categories, reaching 229 billion platform visits in 2023, a 6.7% increase compared to a year earlier.

 

Music and software piracy are by far the smallest categories, but these saw the largest relative piracy increases. The number of visits to music and software piracy sites grew 13.4% and 14.1% respectively over the past year.

 

TV piracy remains the most popular among consumers, however, accounting for almost half of all piracy traffic with 103.9 billion visits in 2023. The publishing category takes second place with 63.6 billion visits, followed by 29.6 billion film piracy visits.

 

Pirate Site Visits per Category (2023)

 

Category	Visits	Market Share	Growth YoY
Data: Muso.com
TV	103.9 billion	45.4%	4.2%
Publishing	63.3 billion	27.6%	7.4%
Film	29.6 billion	12.9%	6.5%
Music	17.1 billion	7.5%	13.4%
Software	15.2 billion	6.6%	14.1%

Manga

In recent years, the publishing category has seen a sharp traffic increase. This rise is mostly driven by manga comics, which have drawn more pirate site visits than film piracy in recent years.

 

“The global phenomenon of Manga, Japanese comic book and graphic novels, has driven publishing piracy to new heights in recent years, overtaking film piracy and the second most pirated medium in 2020,” MUSO writes.

 

Manga now dominates the publishing category. While traditional book publishers have been very active on the anti-piracy front recently, more than two-thirds of all ‘publishing’ pirates (69.2%) are drawn to manga sites.

 

The United States is in the lead as the main source of traffic to manga sites. With 13% of all visits, it leaves all other countries, including Japan, trailing behind.

TV Piracy

Looking at the TV category, we see that the United States remains the top traffic driver overall. With more than 14 billion visits it puts runner-up Russia in distant second place.

 

Top TV Piracy Sources
 

The TV category also includes anime content which, unlike our yearly overview, is included in MUSO’s top 10 list of most viewed TV series. The Last of Us remains the winner, however.

 

In recent years TV piracy has been dominated by streaming sites, which represent direct competition for Netflix and other authorized platforms. These pirate streaming sites now make up 96.3% of all traffic, marginalizing torrent sites and download portals.

Iran, India and Russia

It’s no surprise that the United States is leading in the TV and Publishing categories due to the sheer size of the population and readily available broadband access. However, this dominance doesn’t apply to all categories.

 

Looking at movie piracy, India is the clear winner by a wide margin (30%!), according to MUSO’s data. Interestingly, visits to this category declined sharply in the second half of 2023 for reasons that are not immediately clear.

 

In the music category, Iran is the surprising leader with 11.8% of music piracy visits, followed by India and the U.S. as runners-up. This includes traffic to stream-ripping sites, download portals, and streaming sites.

 

Finally, MUSO attributes most software piracy to Russia, with the U.S. and China closely behind. This includes traffic to app piracy sites. Needless to say, all software piracy takes place through direct download portals.