Last Friday, we reported on two Freedom of Information Act requests directed at two regional police forces in the UK.

 

In almost identical requests, which appear to have been filed by the same person, Wiltshire Police and West Yorkshire Police were asked eight questions relating to enforcement measures taken against suppliers, distributors, and consumers of illegal streaming services.

 

Both police forces said that no information was readily accessible, adding that it would take so long to retrieve information manually that the estimated costs rendered both requests ineligible for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. That was disappointing.

 

A key component of an ongoing anti-piracy campaign in the UK includes sensitizing the public to the risk of being convicted for fraud offenses carrying prison sentences of up to 10 years. Not for getting involved in the supply or sale of pirate streams, but for simply watching them.

 

Certainly, legal theory doesn’t rule out the possibility, but in a campaign that relies almost entirely on fear, hard independent facts would’ve been a welcome addition.

Information Accessible, Reasonably Priced

During the weekend, we learned that the eight questions covering the five-year period 2019-2023, rejected by Wiltshire Police and West Yorkshire Police for being too costly to answer, were also sent to Greater Manchester Police (GMP). With just one exception (question 7 relating to the supply of illegal streams, see earlier article) GMP answered every question.

 

GMP reports that two people received a police caution for distributing or supplying illegal streaming services in 2021. During the same year, a total of two people were arrested for distributing or supplying illegal streaming services.

 

There’s insufficient information in the response to determine whether the two people arrested in 2021 were the same people who received cautions in 2021. In 2022, one person was arrested for distributing or supplying illegal streaming services.

Distribution, Supply, & Viewing

Since GMP declined to answer question seven (which relates exclusively to the supply of illegal streams) but were happy respond to question six (which mentions both distribution and supply) it seems likely that all figures released here relate to distribution.

 

Overall then, a maximum of three arrests and two cautions in a five-year period doesn’t sound like a lot, even accounting for the possibility of additional arrests/cautions/fines relating to action under question 7.

 

Based on how many members of the public could be affected by the purported fraud prosecutions publicized in the media, we now turn to the most important disclosures by GMP with government figures for context.

 

The most recent data published by the Intellectual Property Office estimates that in 2022 alone, 3.9 million people in the UK watched live sports via illegal streams.

How many of the 3.9 million live in GMP’s area is unknown but, with almost 500 square miles of mostly urban conurbation and a population of 2.8 million, it accounts for 5% of the overall UK population.

 

In its response to the FOIA request, Greater Manchester Police reveal that the number of people cautioned, fined and/or arrested for simply watching illegal streams in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 combined, was…..zero.

Inconvenient Facts Are Still Facts

GMP’s disclosure doesn’t come as a surprise but seeing the zero figure in black and white confirms our suspicions. Had there been a single arrest anywhere in the UK, purely for watching illegal streams, no effort would’ve been spared to ensure everyone heard about it.

 

Whether similar disclosures will appear in the days and weeks ahead is unknown but thanks to GMP’s ability to accurately retrieve information, at least some facts have entered the public domain. If West Midlands Police or Leicestershire Police receive similar requests, their record retrieval skills shouldn’t disappoint.

 

For a six-week period early 2023, West Midlands Police were able to report that four crimes were linked to Prime Energy drink, (pdf) including assault, harassment, criminal damage, and theft from a machine. None of the offenses related to the extortionate price of the drink, however.

 

In response to a FOIA request to disclose caller logs that featured terms including ‘UFO’, ‘Alien’, ‘UAP’ and ‘spaceship’, Leicestershire Police went to considerable lengths to protect caller privacy (pdf).

 

After being provided with an example of appropriate redaction (“Male caller named (REDACTED) reports seeing four flashing lights hovering above his property in (REDACTED) street before a female was beamed into the sky”) the force published a spreadsheet. It lists 65 calls but no information that could identify any particular caller.

 

West Yorkshire Police received the same request (pdf) and was able to confirm that the words ‘UFO’, ‘UAP’, ‘ALIEN’ or ‘SPACESHIP’ appeared in log text 1805 times.

 

GMP’s response to the FOIA request related to streaming is available here (pdf)

 

Almost half a decade ago, eight Las Vegas men were indicted by a grand jury for conspiring to violate criminal copyright law.

 

The U.S. government labeled Jetflicks and iStreamitAll as two of the largest pirate streaming platforms in the United States.

 

Disguised as an aviation service, Jetflicks allegedly offered a library of 183,285 pirated TV episodes. iStreamitAll allegedly made available more than 118,479 TV shows and 10,980 movies to its customers; at the time more content than Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime could muster.

Some Plead Guilty, Others Dig in

Early on, Jetflicks programmer and iStreamitAll founder Darryl Julius Polo (aka djppimp) pled guilty to copyright infringement and money laundering; that earned him a 57-month sentence and a $1m forfeiture order.

 

Fellow Jetflicks programmer Luis Angel Villarino pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and was sentenced to one year and a day in prison.

 

The remainder, Kristopher Lee Dallmann, Douglas M. Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Edward Jaurequi, Peter H. Huber, and Yoany Vaillant Fajardo, dug in for the long haul. And what a haul that turned out to be.

COVID-19 Chaos

Why this case has dragged on for so long isn’t easily explained. To say that personal issues played a role would be an understatement. COVID-19 played a role too, and also provided cover for numerous pre-trial release violations that led the government to conclude that at least one defendant, “may as well not be under any supervision at all.”

 

One defendant refused court-ordered drug tests, informing a pretrial services officer that nothing could be done to enforce compliance. Another found out that wasn’t actually the case and was detained at least twice for violations.

 

Then there were the allegations of illegal searches, effective denial of Miranda and Fifth Amendment rights, infliction of psychological stress due to the coercive tactics of the FBI, and motions to suppress evidence. Yet this barely scratches the surface when viewed from a whole case perspective.

Trial Scheduled for March 2024

While it would be foolish to completely rule out the possibility of yet more drama unfolding between now and then, as things stand the case is scheduled for trial in Las Vegas starting March 4, 2024.

 

Due to the “nature of the case” and “the difficulties it presents” counsel for at least two defendants have filed motions seeking the appointment of co-counsel. An earlier filing on behalf of Dallmann provides context on the scale of what lies ahead.

 

“This case includes a voluminous amount of discovery and a lengthy docket sheet (i.e over 700 filings) in the Eastern District of Virginia. On April 15, 2022, the government provided defense counsel with approximately 423 gigabytes of data including at least 175,000 pages of print discovery (i.e. reports, photos, and spreadsheets),” it reads.

Heavyweight Discovery

For theoretical scale, a single sheet of regular office paper weighs around 5 grams, so 175,000 sheets represents 1,929lb (875kg) of print discovery. Other material in the 423GB haul includes FD-302s (FBI interview report forms), investigation reports, bank records, imaging reports, merchant transactions, emails from six different full Google accounts, search warrants, subpoena materials, audio and video recordings, and web page images.

 

“Besides this data, the government provided another 18.68 terabytes of data including images of various electronics such as servers, phones, tablets, drives, and evidence obtained from Canada pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request,” the filing adds.

 

As previously reported, the U.S. requested access to this data in March 2018 under the US-Canada Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT). The data was eventually handed over to the Department of Justice some 21 months later. It reportedly included reports from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, subscriber information documents, a list of tickets and messages pertaining to subscribers, plus five forensic images of servers located at OVH, a hosting provider in Canada.

 

Last September, Dallmann’s defense team reported that additional discovery-related requests were filed with the government in early 2023. A request made in February that year required the defense to supply their own hard drives in order to receive copies of the data.

 

“The government estimates it will take at least a couple of months to copy the data. The data requested contains 63.2 TB of storage.”

 

With more ways to stream online video than ever before, protecting video continues to be a key issue for copyright holders.

 

This is often achieved through Digital Rights Management, better known as DRM; an anti-piracy tool that dictates when and where digital content can be accessed.

 

Widevine DRM is one of the leading players in the field. The Google-owned technology is used by many of the largest streaming services including Amazon, Netflix, Disney+ and others. As such, keeping it secure is vital.

 

Unfortunately for rightsholders, most protection measures have their weak spots. Widevine DRM comes in different security levels and pirates have repeatedly shown that the lower specifications are not exactly watertight.

Lawsuit Against ‘DRM-Bypassing IPTV Pirates’

As a result of these and other weaknesses, pirate IPTV services are booming. This is a thorn in the side of Sling TV and parent company Dish Network, which sued one of these operations in a U.S. court this week.

 

The complaint, filed at the federal court in Atlanta, targets “Channel Wala”, “Doordarshan,” and several related individuals and companies, all from Georgia. They stand accused of selling set-top boxes (STBs) through their websites and Amazon stores.

 

One of the stores
 

While the hardware itself is not illegal, the sellers also promoted free trials and paid subscriptions through stickers on these streaming boxes. These were more problematic, according to the undercover agents who purchased them.

 

“An investigator purchased a STB from Defendants through Channelwala.com. Upon receipt of the STB, the investigator messaged Defendants at the WhatsApp number on the sticker on the box and requested a free trial of the Services.”

 

The Whatsapp conversation below shows that the investigator did get the promised free trial. This allowed them to access Dish and Sling channels, as well as those of many other media companies. According to the complainants, this is all done without permission from rightsholders.

 

Undercover WhatsApp (large)

Stickers and Flyers

In addition to the free trial, the investigator also discovered boxes with other stickers through Channelwala.com and the “MAG Box store” on Amazon. These versions directed buyers to visit Tvplususa.com, where they could get setup instructions and a streaming subscription for $6.99 per month.

 

All of these offers are unauthorized, Dish and Sling say. Besides the sticker promos, the plaintiffs also ran into several advertisements on Facebook and even flyers in physical stores throughout Atlanta.

 

“Defendants market the Services by distributing flyers and business cards in Indian grocery, liquor, and retail stores, gas stations, and other locations in the Atlanta metropolitan area,” the complaint reads.

 

Flyers
 

As shown above, these flyers advertised the IPTV streaming service as an “Authorized Retailer” for Dish and Sling, which people could “WATCH FOR $7/mo.” This amounts to false advertising and misuse of the Dish and Sling trademarks, the complaint notes.

Circumventing Widevine DRM

Thus far, the allegations are pretty straightforward. The people and companies involved, including Channel Wala LLC and Parshva Distributor LLC, sold set-top boxes that were linked to pirate IPTV services. However, it doesn’t stop there.

 

The complaint adds several DMCA violations, accusing the defendants of circumventing Widevine DRM. This is not the first time that Dish and Sling have brought DRM-related claims before a court, but here they are rather specific about what happened.

 

“The Widevine DRM […] is circumvented using a specially developed computer program that emulates the behavior of a reverse engineered hardware device,” the complaint explains.

 

“The computer program tricks Sling’s Widevine DRM server to grant access and provide a channel decryption key by making the server believe the request originated from a legitimate Widevine supported device that would keep the channel decryption key secured.”

 

The reverse-engineered hardware doesn’t keep Sling’s programming secure, of course, as it can easily be copied now.

 

“The unencrypted Channel can be uploaded to a server outside of the Sling platform and retransmitted to any number of users that can receive the Channel without purchasing a legitimate subscription from Plaintiffs,” the complaint notes.

Cease and Desist

The DRM circumvention technique is described in detail but it’s not immediately clear if the defendants had a hand in coding it. They are accused of using it, however, to pass on a variety of protected channels, also from many other rightsholders who use Widevine.

 

Last summer, Dish reportedly warned the defendant about their presumed illegal activities. The company sent a cease and desist notice in June, asking them to stop, but without result.

 

According to the complaint, some sites were taken down but the IPTV operation kept working with resellers. Defendant Abhishek Shah allegedly runs a $20+ million business, while encouraging resellers to ignore the legal threat and keep going.

 

“Abhishek Shah forwarded an image of Plaintiffs’ cease and desist letter to numerous resellers that purchase the STBs and Services from Defendants stating he has made more than $20 million, ‘continue business as usual,’ ‘DISH can’t stop us,’ ‘I am putting down my website but it does not impact you in any way,..,” the complaint reads.

Injunction and Damages

Through the lawsuit, Dish and Sling hope to recoup damages, which could easily run into many millions of dollars. Besides the DMCA violations, where every subscription sold is seen as an individual offense, the rightsholders also request damages for trademark infringement.

 

Finally, they seek a permanent injunction to shut down the IPTV operation and have all infringing products destroyed.

 

At the time of writing, the Channelwala.com, Thegreatiptvsub.com, and Tvplususa.com websites are all offline. However, the resellers may still be in business, as the defendants instructed.

 

—

 

A copy of the complaint Dish and Sling filed at the federal count in Atlanta, Georgia, is available here (pdf)

 

For the past few years, regional police forces in the UK have shown a growing interest in cracking down on those involved in the supply of illegal streams.

 

With regional organized crime units now part of the mix, joint press releases featuring police, the Premier League, Sky, and the Federation Against Copyright Theft, report enforcement action on a fairly regular basis. The importance of protecting copyright holders from criminal groups is the overriding message but for the last 12 months in particular, emphasis has shifted to include those who consume pirated content too.

 

A see-saw of deterrent messaging warns consumers not to become a victim of crime, through malware, fraud, and identity theft, for example. As that pushes pirates down on one side, the journey back up sees the same people warned of potential convictions for fraud, in this case for obtaining services dishonestly.

Baseless Threats or Genuine Intent?

Recent coordinated amplification of these threats in the tabloids has certainly raised awareness. Unfortunately, however, massive revving of the engine not only came too soon, but has left deterrent messaging with almost nowhere to go. Casual pirates are asking more questions than they did before. That may be considered a plus but, when it comes to weighing up risk, the lack of information weighs in favor of pirates, not against.

 

The big question, then, is whether there’s any real intent behind the stark warnings. Since history has a habit of predicting the future, knowing what has been happening on the enforcement front could prove informative. Two Freedom of Information requests published this week asked two regional police forces to fill in the gaps.

 

The first, dated December 19, 2023, was directed at Wiltshire Police. It asked the following questions, all related to live sports streaming piracy, for the years 2019 to 2023 inclusive. (Questions edited to remove repetition)

1. How many people were cautioned for viewing illegal streams?
2. ….. were given penalty notices for viewing illegal streams?
3. ….. were arrested for viewing illegal streams?
4. ….. were cautioned for distributing / supplying illegal streaming services?
5. ….. were given penalty notices for distributing / supplying illegal streaming services?
6. ….. were arrested for distributing / supplying illegal streaming services?
7. For questions 4, 5 & 6, how many were supplying illegal streams digitally?
8. For questions 4, 5, & 6, were supplying illegal streams through dodgy boxes/firesticks?

Since any convictions of note are extremely well-publicized for deterrent purposes, ballpark figures are more readily available for distribution-related offenses. Question 7 appears somewhat redundant and only the person who asked the question would know the purpose of number eight.

 

It would be interesting to know the specific figures for 3, 4 and 5, while the answer to 6 would be much more valuable if placed against the number people actually prosecuted, rather than simply arrested.

No Information Provided, Too Expensive to Process

Of most interest, in our opinion, are the questions relating to those who faced action for simply viewing streams. The answers to those might inform those who remain undecided about the nature of recent warnings. Unfortunately, Wiltshire Police provided nothing of value.

 

The key points from the Force Disclosure Decision Maker’s response read as follows:

 

The information that you are requesting is not stored in a way which permits easy retrieval. This is because illegal streaming does not have a specific crime code on our system. Therefore, in order to ascertain whether a caution was given due to illegal sports streaming, we would have to go into each individual occurrence on our system to determine whether this is related to the matter in question.

 

Under the circumstances I am absolutely confident that to locate, retrieve and extract the information you seek would by far exceed the time obligations upon this authority to comply, and in so doing would exceed the fees limits. This is set at £450 calculated at a flat rate of £25 per hour for those work activities comprising of confirming the information is held, locating it, retrieving it and extracting it.

 

Ordinarily under our Section 16 duty to provide advice and assistance, we would advise you how to refine your request to a more manageable level. However, due to the difficulties outlined above, I cannot see how this can be achieved in this particular case.

The questions sent to West Yorkshire police were broadly similar. This time, however, the decision to suggest specific keyword searches such as ‘set-top box’, ‘top box piracy’, ‘Kodi’, ‘IPTV’, ‘firestick’, ‘dodgy box’ & ‘internet TV media box’, plus ‘sports streaming’, ‘sports piracy’, ‘illegal streaming’, and ‘football streaming’, may have unintentionally captured other offenses.

 

“Between 01/01/2019 and 18/12/2023 there were 1,287 crimes recorded based on the offenses and/or keywords provided. In order to provide a response to the full question set would involve a manual review of each crime. At an estimate of 1 minute per record this would take 22 hours to provide. In addition to this there were 1,939 arrests for the aforementioned offenses taking a further 65 hours at 2 minutes each,” the response reads.

 

“Unfortunately, West Yorkshire Police are unable to provide you with the information requested.”

 

Yorkshire Police note that a revised request may be considered but even then, reasons exist for not providing the requested information.

 

“We may be able to provide you with information based on crimes classified as an offense under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and specifically related to illegal streaming. Please note however any information held is subject to exemptions under the Freedom of information Act,” the rejection notice adds.

 

It’s worth noting that viewers of illegal streams have been advised of a potential offense under the Fraud Act.

Lack of Access to Information

That the requests were unsuccessful doesn’t come as an especially big surprise. We’ve had our own narrow requests rejected in the past, and we’ve seen other requests handled in the same way. What does seem remarkable is that scant police resources are being deployed to tackle a very specific type of crime, as part of a national campaign that has government support, yet readily accessible figures are simply unavailable.

 

That raises the question of whether deterrent and enforcement measures undergo evaluation for efficacy within the force, or if rightsholders supply that information for the guidance of the police. If that’s the case, even in part, history shows that the problem is perpetual, rarely improves for very long, and only responds to changes in the market that are non-reliant on force.

Avon & Somerset Police Has Its Own Pirate Website

While trying to determine whether additional FOIA requests had been filed with other forces in the UK, something rather bizarre caught our attention.

 

The website of Avon & Somerset Police is usually available at avonandsomerset.police.uk and indeed still is, as the image below (left) shows.

 

On the right is the website as it appears on the ‘opcc-maintenance’ subdomain of avonandsomerset.police.uk. The small text on the left, whatever it means, was enlarged by us. That doesn’t look like a standard police-issue font.

 

 

More significant concerns appear in search engines where at least hundreds of police URLs containing the ‘rogue’ subdomain now advertise pirate streams of live sporting events.

 

It’s possible the subdomain started life as a staging area for web development but as the image below shows, the current situation goes way beyond that.

 

 

On the left of the image is a small sample of the modified URLs as listed in search engines. In the middle, a small selection of the hundreds or thousands of links claiming to offer pirated live streams. On the right is a screenshot of where people end up after clicking any of the police links containing the subdomain.

 

Mindful of all the malware stories lately, we progressed no further, even though the Australian Open was apparently on offer. Those visiting that portal via the links in search engines proceed at their own risk; anyone with the nerve to do this to a police website wouldn’t think twice about doing almost anything else, to anyone else, should the opportunity arise.

 

 

Avon & Somerset Police have been informed via the regular ‘report a crime’ system, but this may have been going on for quite some time already. There are no URLs listed on the Wayback Machine, but publicly-listed subdomain scans show that the problematic subdomain existed back in the summer of 2020.

 

The Freedom of Information requests can be found here and here (pdf)

 

Crime reported, delays expected

 

The Oscars are the most anticipated movie awards show of the year, as the elusive statue is widely regarded as Hollywood’s highest accolade.

 

The winners are selected by Academy members following extensive screening sessions. In the past, copies of advance screeners leaked en masse, creating an annual bounty hunt for online pirates.

OscarTorrents…

The troubling relationship between the Oscars and pirates reached a peak in 2007 when The Pirate Bay promoted an alternative voting process. Through Oscartorrents.com, pirates could download the nominated films, review them, and vote for their favorite.

 

This rogue Oscars alternative taunted Hollywood by attracting over 100,000 ‘pirate’ votes and many more illegal downloads. In the end, both pirates and Academy members picked The Departed as the Best Picture, with Martin Scorsese voted the best director.

 

After its first award show, OscarTorrents never returned, but that doesn’t mean that pirates have lost their interest in the annual event. While Oscar screeners no longer leak online today, most contenders are already available on pirate sites.

Piracy Boost for Oscar Contenders

Looking at the download numbers for all ‘Best Picture’ contenders, we can see that the annual nominations boost is still intact. An extensive dataset of BitTorrent downloads shows that ‘smaller’ films enjoy the relatively largest piracy spikes.

 

“Poor Things” has a 124% increase in downloads if we compare the numbers this Tuesday and Wednesday, to the same days last week. “Anatomy of a Fall” saw a 71% spike in downloads, followed by “Maestro” and “Past Lives” respectively.

 

Estimated torrent downloads (Jan 15 – 24)

 

Below is an overview of all findings. This includes all Best Picture nominees except “The Zone of Interest” and “American Fiction,” which either aren’t available yet or had small download numbers.

 

Movie	Increase (Jan 16/17 vs. 23/24)
Anatomy of a Fall	71%
Barbie	4%
The Holdovers	18%
Killers of the Flower Moon	30%
Maestro	53%
Oppenheimer	3%
Past Lives	48%
Poor Things	124%

 

Overall, we can see that relatively smaller films get a bigger piracy boost. For Oppenheimer and Barbie, the nomination effect is minimal and likely not statistically significant. These movies do have more downloads and streams on pirate sites overall, of course.

Pirates are People Too

This spike in interest for lesser-known films likely isn’t limited to pirate sites. The extra exposure from the Oscar nominations generally boosts interest in the films through legal channels as well. This shows that, in addition to prestige, an Oscar can also bring in revenue.

 

The numbers reported here once again illustrate that pirates are not dissimilar to their non-pirating counterparts. They are just as susceptible to advertising and media attention as everyone else.

 

With this in mind, we can confidently predict a massive piracy spike if one of the smaller films wins the Best Picture Award in March. A win for Oppenheimer, on the other hand, is not expected to move the needle much.

 

To a background of seemingly unstoppable corporate and political momentum, challenging the introduction of Italy’s much-heralded pirate IPTV blocking system was always a long shot.

 

In April 2023, months before the legal foundations were finally set in stone, a trade group that represents the interests of small to medium-sized ISPs, sent a memorandum to the authorities detailing its concerns.

 

President of Assoprovider, Giovanni Zorzoni, said he feared the proposed blocking system would introduce a single susceptible ‘point of failure’ with the potential to undermine national infrastructure.

 

The ‘Mega-Firewall‘ of Italy, as he described it, could also expose ISPs to liability and that would mean end users picking up the bill. When the proposals became law, Zorzoni raised the alarm once again on behalf of smaller ISPs, warning that ‘Piracy Shield’ implementation costs could reach 300,000 euros per year, per ISP.

Assoprovider’s Legal Challenge

With Zorzoni’s warnings of potential job losses in the sector falling on deaf ears, last October Assoprovider launched a legal challenge against the regulations underpinning the introduction of the Piracy Shield system and their implementation by telecoms regulator AGCOM.

 

The Regional Administrative Court for Lazio published its 47-page judgment this week. Assoprovider was always likely to face an uphill battle and those that came out in opposition ensured that was the case, and then some.

 

The ISP organization knew it had to take on AGCOM but then came the interventions; local anti-piracy group FAPAV backed by powerful international entertainment industries, top tier football league Serie A, and Serie B for good measure.

Court Rejects Challenge

In broad terms, the court found that the regulations were put in place for the protection of copyright and since that goal is in the public interest, the Piracy Shield system will indeed go ahead. Concerns that mistakes will inevitably get made as rightsholders scramble to block pirate platforms within 30 minutes, were dismissed.

 

The court said that the 30-minute deadline had been put in place for a reason; football matches and other sporting events are relatively short, so any violations of intellectual property rights must be tackled quickly to ensure the system is effective.

 

The fact that the Piracy Shield system was donated to AGCOM by Serie A, the football league likely to benefit most from the new anti-piracy regime, wasn’t considered an issue either. Serie A’s ‘donation’ of the platform will ultimately benefit everyone according to the league; the Court found no grounds to disagree on that matter or indeed any of the objections raised in Assoprovider’s challenge.

Court “Demolished” The Appeal

Anti-piracy group FAPAV welcomed the Court’s decision, describing it as “an important step for the protection of copyright and the fight against online piracy, especially for live content.” FAPAV said the judgment reinforces the legitimacy of the anti-piracy system, which is “fully compatible” with the constitutional and European legislative frameworks.

 

“Assoprovider’s appeal had no grounds as there are no real dangers for providers in carrying out the new procedure, furthermore the platform has been positively tested in the previous months,” FAPAV added.

 

Luigi De Siervo, CEO of Serie A, said the judgment “demolishes Assoprovider’s appeal” and shows that Serie A’s donation of Piracy Shield was “perfectly legitimate and will act to the benefit of the entire system.” Piracy Shield will block pirate streams within 30 minutes as planned, De Siervo said, despite this detour through the Court.

 

“We have also thwarted the latest attempt by the ‘usual crafty people’ to block the entry into action of the anti-piracy platform. We expect that, after months of waiting, the ‘machine to machine’ system will finally come into operation in February, which will allow pirate sites reported by rights holders to be quickly interrupted,” the Serie A chief added.

 

The judgment of the Lazio court is available here (pdf)

 

Early last year, a group of filmmakers obtained a subpoena, requesting 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. Instead, the company objected, arguing that handing over the requested information would violate their users’ right to anonymous speech.

Reddit I, II and III

A California federal court eventually agreed with this defense, concluding that Redditors’ First Amendment rights outweigh the interests of rightsholders. According to Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler, the filmmakers have other options to obtain this type of information, including through RCN itself.

 

A few weeks after this setback, the rightsholders filed another request, seeking similar information for use in their lawsuit against ISP Grande. This second attempt wasn’t successful either, and Redditors’ right to anonymous speech prevailed once again.

 

Attorney Kerry Culpepper, who represented different line-ups of filmmakers in these cases, wasn’t prepared to give up on this route to evidence quite so easily. Earlier this month he was back in court with a similar, but tweaked, request. This time it relates to a lawsuit targeting Internet provider Frontier Communications.

IP addresses & Anonymity

In general terms, this case is comparable to the others. The film companies, Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures, want to use comments made by six Redditors to show that the ISP didn’t take proper action against repeat infringers, or that ‘lax’ enforcement acted as a draw to potential pirates.

 

Reddit, again, refused to hand over information, arguing it would violate their users’ right to anonymous speech. This prompted the filmmakers to return to court for a third time.

 

In their latest motion to compel, the rightsholders introduce a new angle. They are no longer looking for any names or email addresses, only the applicable IP address logs. This would allow the commenters to remain anonymous, they argue.

 

“Reddit asserts that the information Movants request is not permissible under the First Amendment. However, Movants’ subpoena does not request anonymous users’ identities. Rather, the subpoena is limited to requesting the Reddit users’ IP address logs,” they write.

Reddit Opposes in Court

In a response to the motion this week, Reddit counters that disclosing IP addresses would still violate users’ rights to anonymous speech, adding that no court has ever ruled otherwise.

 

According to Reddit, users’ IP addresses would be useless as evidence if they didn’t identify the targets in any shape of form.

 

“First, and most obviously, Movants’ subpoena exclusively seeks the IP addresses of the targeted Reddit users. Were IP addresses not identifying information, they would hold no evidentiary value to Movants whatsoever and the subpoena would be pointless.”

 

 

Secondly, since Reddit doesn’t require users to verify their identities, IP addresses are sensitive information. They can be used to obtain the targets’ personal information, for example, by serving a subpoena on their Internet provider.

 

“Movants know, the process of unmasking a Reddit user turns on Reddit’s disclosure of an IP address because Reddit does not require its users to provide their real names or addresses. For that reason, provision of an IP address is unmasking subject to First Amendment scrutiny.

 

“After learning an IP address, the Movants need only subpoena the ISP for the subscriber information associated with that IP address, and the ISP does not share Reddit’s interest in protecting the anonymity of that user,” Reddit adds.

Other Options Preferred

In their motion, the filmmakers haven’t explained what value the IP addresses offer in addition to the anonymous comments that are already publicly available. According to Reddit, there are other and ‘less invasive’ options for the filmmakers to get what they want.

 

The film companies already have IP addresses of pirating Frontier subscribers, Reddit argues. These can be used to obtain the identities of account holders, so they can be questioned for evidence.

 

The rightsholders previously noted that Frontier is not willing to share the identities of users, but Reddit points out that this is an outdated stance from the ISP which has since changed.

 

“Here, Movants again admit that they already have ‘pirating [IP] addresses’. And, as described above, Frontier has already indicated that it will provide Movants with identifying information for those IP addresses upon receipt of a subpoena,” Reddit’s opposition reads.

 

If allegedly pirating subscribers can be targeted directly, Reddit believes that putting the anonymity of its users at risk by exposing their IP addresses is unnecessary.

 

The filmmakers further argued that, unlike the ISPs’ ‘pirating IP addresses’, the Reddit comments specifically serve as evidence that lack of enforcement against repeat infringers served as a draw to potential Frontier customers.

 

Once again, Reddit doesn’t believe that disclosing the IP addresses of its users adds anything to the publicly available comments.

 

“[T]o the extent Movants are suggesting that the Reddit posts themselves are ‘documented evidence,’ Movants need not unmask the Reddit users to admit that documented evidence; Movants could lay the evidentiary foundation for, and authenticate, those posts themselves,” Reddit writes.

 

The response from Reddit shows that once again, it will be for the court to decide whether the company has to hand over any information. That will happen after the matter is discussed at a hearing in a few weeks.

 

In addition to the main question, there’s also a request pending from film companies Killing Link Distribution, Family of the Year Productions, and Laundry Films, who want to join the rightsholder’s motion.

 

—

 

A copy of Reddit’s opposition to the motion to compel, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf)

 

Perhaps more than any other broadcaster, beIN Sports understands the potential for piracy to spin out of control.

 

When a diplomatic crisis between Qatar and other Arab countries led to Saudi Arabia blocking the beIN service in 2017, beoutQ – a full-blown piracy platform – stepped in as a comprehensive but illegal beIN replacement.

 

Over the next two years, the political fallout spread beyond the Middle East to the United States and European Union, leading to a World Trade Organization report and ultimately the closure of beoutQ’s satellite service in August 2019.

Protecting the Africa Cup of Nations

Over four years later, beIN is still battling commercial-scale piracy. After obtaining exclusive broadcasting rights to Africa’s most prestigious football tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), tackling piracy of the month-long event would necessarily become a key component of the company’s overall strategy.

 

According to a report published by L’Informé this week (paywall), beIN’s plan to curtail piracy of AFCON in France had been in the planning for some time.

 

Early 2022, the broadcaster became the first rightsholder to take action under Article L. 333-10 of the Sports Code, legislation introduced by the French government that provided accelerated access to anti-piracy measures such as site blocking.

 

According to L’Informé, on December 15 under the same system, beIN served a writ of summons on the main ISPs in France – Bouygues Télécom, Free, Orange, Outremer-Télécom, Société Réunionnaise du radiotéléphone (SFR), and SFR Fibre. On January 9, 2024, the Paris judicial court upheld beIN’s application for blocking measures against 56 illegal streaming sites, to be implemented by the ISPs, to protect the AFCON tournament.

Pirate Sites Were Likely to Air AFCON Matches

To support the blocking application, beIN presented evidence showing that the pirate sites had systematically infringed its rights in the past.

 

Last November, one of the domains on the list – Ishunter.net – was illegally broadcasting matches from Germany’s Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, and Serie A matches from Italy to which beIN holds French broadcasting rights. At the time of writing, the domain returns a parking page rather than live football streams; as a result, takedown notices filed with Google are mostly attempting to take down content that doesn’t exist, at least at the specific URLs listed.

 

Three other domains – ipcover.tv, maxsmart.pro and pythonlived.com – reportedly service pirate IPTV apps. Maxsmart.pro is the only domain obviously functional today, serving pearls of wisdom from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi rather than football matches, however.

Current Status of Domains

While ISP blocking measures can be evaded when injunctions are static (i.e. targets are fixed) the order obtained by beIN Sports is dynamic. This means that if the listed pirate sites use subdomains, entirely new ones, or any other measures, if beIN is confident the new locations relate to the old ones, blocking can go ahead.

 

Speaking with L’Informé, Caroline Guenneteau, Deputy General Secretary of beIN Media Group and Legal Director of beIN Sports France, said that 70 domains have already been blocked to protect this competition alone

 

“It’s very important to be proactive at the start of the competition, when there are a maximum number of illicit streams,” Guenneteau added.

 

Even though the blocking measures shouldn’t affect those who visit the sites from outside France, tests carried out by TorrentFreak on the specific domains as they appear in the order (full list below) suggest some have made changes.

 

Around 25 are still operational from their previous locations while a small number redirect to their own subdomains or new/alternative domains. Others display ‘domain parking’ style pages while others prefer to offer up their own blend of humor instead.

 

 

One of the pirate domains currently suggests involvement with the insurance and travel business, another claims to be a fitness promotion platform. At least two redirect to new domains before asking for money to keep things going.

 

 

A handful of others show Cloudflare error messages but as these above show, perhaps not all messages appearing on these domains are authentic.

 

In any event, finding alternatives through search engines may be more difficult than it was before. The order obtained by beIN allows it to serve court orders on companies such as Google, requiring the domains to be delisted from search results.

 

The domains listed in an order published on the Lumen Database are broadly similar to those present in the original order, but additional notices will likely be sent as new domains are reported.

 

The blocking action in France complements the action we reported here on Monday. Dozens of domains linked to sites previously showing live football matches, to which beIN owns the rights, began redirecting to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

 

Among those domains were 7kora.mpokora-online.com and 7koora.mpokora-online.com, both of which currently show the ACE domain seizure banner.

 

Since they’re also on beIN’s ISP blocking list, visitors to those domains in France shouldn’t be able to access the sites, so in theory will be spared the bad news.

 

The domains/URLs to be blocked by ISPs in France:

 

Kooora4lives.net
Ishunter.net
Sportp2P.com
Rojadirect1.pro
Aflam4you.org
Kora-star.online
Yallalive.id
360kora.net
Live-koora.live
Yalla-live-tv.io
Sporttv123.xyz
Wholewellnesswhirl.live
Sporttvls.com
Top.crackstreamfree.com
Top2.crackstreamfree.com
Top3.crackstreamfree.com
Top4.crackstreamfree.com
Top6.crackstreamfree.com
Stad.livehd7s.live
V3.sportonline.so
Shoot.yallashoote.com
W1.yalla-shoot-tv.io
Futbolandres.xyz
360kora.tvem.net
Aleexsportz.online
Yalla-live.org
Sa.yalla-live.com
Lkooora.live
Livehd72.com
Kora-yallashoot.com
Kora.live-kooora.io
Goalarab.org
Go.livehd72.livve
Ar.new-yallashoot.com
10koora.livekooora.online
Totalsportek.pro
Kooralivs.com
7kora.mpokora-online.com
7koora.mpokora-online.com
Tv.yalla-shoot2day.com
Tv.yacine-tv.app
Spie.livehd7.io
Dotsport1.com
Yala-shoot.live
Streams.lc
Beinmatch1.com
Beinmatch.motorcycles
365kora.com
Ma.360kora-live.com
Kora.live-koora.net
Gogolion.xyz
Ipcover.tv
Maxsmart.pro
Megahdtv.xyz
Pythonlived.com
Smart-prott.xyz

 

Action role-playing game Genshin Impact is enjoyed by tens of millions of players each month. Fans are engaged and always hungry for new content so when an opportunity arises to get a sneak peek, there’s no shortage of takers.

 

For Genshin Impact publisher Cognosphere, pre-release leaks are unacceptable. To suppress current leaks and to deter others from leaking content in the future, the company uses the DMCA’s takedown provisions and DMCA subpoenas respectively.

 

Cognosphere obtains the latter to compel online platforms, typically social media companies, to hand over whatever information they hold on alleged infringers. What happens when that information is handed over to Cognosphere is mostly unknown.

 

According to law, the company may only use the information to protect its copyrights, but that leaves plenty of scope for a range of actions, up to and including multi-million dollar lawsuits in appropriate circumstances. The ease with which DMCA subpoenas are obtained and executed remains controversial; a signature from the clerk of a court is usually the only requirement. There are rare exceptions, however.

Cognosphere Targets Alleged Leakers on X/Twitter

Last November, Cognosphere filed an application for a DMCA subpoena at a California district court. The aim was to compel X/Twitter to “disclose the identity, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail addresses(es)” connected to four accounts: @HutaoLoverGI, @GIHutaoLover, @HutaoLover77, and @FurinaaLover.

 

Cognosphere said it had reason to believe that the accounts were operated by a single person, or were under common control. The bottom line was to identify the alleged infringer or infringers, to prevent leaked content being made available online.

 

The DMCA subpoena was issued on November 7, 2023. It required X Corp. to hand over the information detailed below by November 22, 2023.

On November 21, 2023, one day before X Corp. was expected to hand over the personal details behind the accounts, the company responded to the subpoena with written objections. Specifically, it would not be handing over the user information behind any of the accounts listed in the subpoena.

Basis for Dispute: Cognosphere

Following X Corp.’s initial objections, the parties attempted to iron out their differences, including during an in-person meeting on December 28, 2023. When that concluded without resolution, the parties agreed that their dispute should be put before the Court.

 

In a joint letter to Magistrate Judge Peter H. Kang at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the parties explain their positions. Cognosphere essentially outlines its compliance with the DMCA subpoena process, noting that for the purposes of the letter, it has offered to focus on two of the four accounts listed in the subpoena; @HutaoLover77 and @FurinaaLover.

 

Cognosphere asserts that leaked, copyright-infringing artwork and game visuals were posted to these accounts and to the best of its knowledge, no DMCA counter-notifications were filed by the operator(s) in response to its initial DMCA takedown notices. One of the accounts, @HutaoLover77, has been suspended by X for violation of unspecified rules, however.

 

According to the publisher, its request, “…complied with requirements for obtaining a DMCA subpoena under 17 U.S.C. §512(h). It included [a sworn declaration] and copies of DMCA notifications asserting under penalty of perjury that each was being submitted on the good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of was not authorized by the copyright owner, their agent, or the law. 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3)(A)(v).”

Basis for Dispute: X Corp.

X Corp.’s position is both straightforward and complex. The primary reason for its non-compliance with the DMCA subpoena strikes at the very heart of the process through which they’re obtained; a signature from a clerk in response to a valid application, with no requirement for a judge to get involved.

 

“Cognosphere is attempting to unmask third party, anonymous speakers via a subpoena issued under the DMCA,” X Corp. informs the court.

 

“X Corp., however, is not in a position to determine whether Cognosphere has made the required constitutional and evidentiary showings to unmask those speakers, and has thus stood on its timely free speech objections, such that the parties can obtain a determination from the Court.”

MrMoneyBags: Preventing DMCA Subpoena Abuse

Protecting its users’ right to anonymous speech is important to X / Twitter. In 2020, a DMCA subpoena targeted a Twitter user known only as ‘MrMoneyBags’ with the aim of obtaining their identity based on allegations of copyright infringement. Suspicion that copyright was being abused to prevent ‘MrMoneyBags’ from continuing with unflattering commentary against certain third parties led to Twitter mounting a vigorous and successful defense on its user’s behalf.

 

X Corp. says the ‘MrMoneyBags’ case recognized that First Amendment safeguards apply in the context of a DMCA subpoena. Before it complies here, the company would like the Court to assess whether Cognosphere’s copyright claim is “sufficient to satisfy any First Amendment free speech safeguards applicable to the anonymous speakers” before balancing Cognosphere’s purported need for discovery against the anonymous users’ privacy rights.

 

“X Corp. cannot be required to perform those judicial functions upon mere receipt of a DMCA subpoena, and thus asks the Court to engage in the relevant analyses and decide these issues,” the company adds.

 

“[C]ognosphere must establish it has a compelling need for the user data it seeks, which could thereby unmask users’ identities. X Corp. does not take a position on whether Cognosphere has satisfied this requirement, and respectfully leaves it to the Court to analyze.”

Cognosphere: X Corp. Undermines the DMCA

The polarized opinions in this dispute stem from the very nature of DMCA subpoenas. Through the provision of a streamlined process, copyright holders have the ability to address online infringement through the rapid identification of alleged infringers, without filing a formal lawsuit that authorizes discovery based on the merits.

 

For X Corp., a process that grants subpoenas without safeguards, in particular the balancing of discovery requests against anonymous users’ privacy rights, risks violating those rights.

 

Cognosphere says that a “protracted balancing exercise” is not constitutionally required, describing X Corp.’s position as “extraordinary” and contrary to the intentions of Congress when it passed the DMCA.

 

The joint Cognosphere / X Corp. letter to Judge Kang is available here (pdf)

 

 

Legal video streaming platforms such as Amazon, Disney, and Netflix have gained massive userbases in recent years.

 

Not everyone is willing or able to pay for multiple subscriptions, however, which in turn has helped to create a flourishing market for pirate streaming tools.

 

These pirate services often use slick designs and easy-to-use apps that appeal to a broad audience. And unlike the legal options, they offer all popular titles under the same roof, without charging a subscription fee. Needless to say, rightsholders are not happy with this competition.

VancedFlix

VancedFlix is one of many unlicensed apps available today and in common with the others, it’s a thorn in the side of rightsholders. The official website has over 100,000 monthly visits and, since the app is available through a variety of other download portals, the total userbase could be well over a million.

 

 

The app openly promotes the availability of free content from paid services such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+, although the operators suggest that legal responsibility for the streamed content lies with third-party services.

 

“VancedFlix functions just like any other as a search engine, such as Google. VancedFlix does not host, upload or manage any videos, films or content on it’s servers [sic],” the site reads.

 

“Any legal issues regarding the content on this application should be taken up with the actual file hosts and providers themselves as we are not affiliated with them. In case of copyright infringement, please directly contact the responsible parties or the streaming websites.”

Sky Italia Takes Action

Copyright holders tend to see the legalities quite differently. They argue that since these types of streaming apps are specifically designed for piracy purposes, their operators are liable for copyright infringement.

 

This week, anti-piracy outfit Kopjra took action against VancedFlix. On behalf of Sky Italia, it requested developer platform GitHub to remove several related APK files.

 

“The VancedFlix app, an app that allows you to watch movies and TV series totally for free. In this application you can see all the tv series of our client Sky Italia Srl, including all Italian tv series,” the takedown notice explains.

 

“The developer of the application is not in possession of any type of license for the transmission of the Sky Italia Srl contents, therefore this application is considered illegal.”

 

 

Following this request, GitHub disabled access to the files, replacing them with a DMCA removal notice. The entire github.com/VancedFlix/Apps/ repository is now unavailable, and the same applies to github.com/ysnlek/st/.

Download Link Stops Working

While these removals are a success for Sky Italia, these types of app developers are not always easy to defeat. The VancedFlix.com website remains available, for example, although it’s been temporarily decapitated.

 

One of the targeted APK files on the official website was linked under the official “download” button, which now redirects to GitHub’s DMCA removal notice.

 

The download link will probably be updated soon enough with a new one. The developers still have the option to file a counter-notice but simply reuploading the file on GitHub probably won’t work, unless they want to see more of this.

 

 

Despite MPA/ACE having enough investigators to field both teams in a football match, while players argue with an in-house referee in multiple languages, the state of piracy in North Africa and the Middle East presents a considerable challenge.

 

At the time of writing, over 150 deliberately confusing domains and subdomains, linked to around three dozen illicit football streaming sites, are redirecting to the ACE anti-piracy portal. The domains started to redirect on Saturday, still hadn’t finished on Sunday, and may not even be finished now.

No Announcement From ACE Just Yet

Faced with a risk of sudden domain suspensions, ISP blocking, or domains being penalized in search results due to persistent copyright complaints, it’s common for pirate sites to have a few domains at their disposal. There’s also a growing trend of sites with common ownership operating from dozens of confusingly-similar domains by design.

 

This strategy has the potential to complicate enforcement, including a not-insignificant chance of sites continuing under the guise of different ownership, even when on paper an entire operation has already been shut down. There are signs that some overseas site operators are finding opportunities by generating chaos on the surface, while remaining completely organized behind the scenes.

 

None of this provides immunity from enforcement measures, but confirming compliance becomes more complex.

The Football Piracy Ring

For the sake of clarity, subdomains and other distractions have been stripped from this sample of domains currently redirecting to the ACE portal.

 

livehd7.club, livekooora.tv, livekoora.io, live-koora-online.tv, live-kooora-tv.com, live-kooora-tv.net, live-koora.tv, kingshoot.club, kingfoot.live, kooora4.us, kooragoal.club, koora4live.club, koora2day.net, kora365.online, kooralive.io, kooora365.live, kora-tv.online, kora-online-tv.com, koraextra.club, koratvonline.net, kora-live.plus, kora-star-tv.live, kora-goal.net

One of the above domains, kooora4.us, shows how small changes can help to muddy the waters. The word ‘kura’ is Arabic for ball while ‘koora’ is broadly understood as relating to football; in this case, an extra ‘o’ appears in the mix while other domains contain one or two.

SimilarWeb data shows that traffic increased for kooora4.us during October at a time when traffic for a similarly-named domain was in steep decline.

 

Similar behavior can be seen across dozens of similar domains, although not always under common ownership or even in direct response to enforcement measures. Now redirecting to ACE, kooora4.us received 277.6K visits in December 2023, a peak now unlikely to return.

 

Kooragoal.club, another domain that began redirecting over the weekend, also increased its traffic in October before a decline set in the following month.

 

A quarter of kooragoal.club’s traffic came from Egypt, which along with Saudi Arabia and UAE, appears regularly in traffic reports for similar domains.

 

 

Most also receive traffic from countries including the United States, but the clear focus is North Africa and the Middle East, putting the sites firmly the crosshairs of ACE member, beIN Sport.

 

In November 2022, ACE settled with the operator of a series of websites with similar names, appearance, and functionality, to those that began redirecting this weekend.

 

While their operator agreed to shut them down, ACE acknowledged the existence of additional sites, noting that enforcement actions would continue.

Mirrored Fortunes & Those That Can Slip Away

At the time of writing, kooragoal.club (above) and kora-goal.net (below, right) are both redirecting to the ACE portal, having generated 1.16 million and 120.5K visits respectively during the period Oct 2023 to Dec 2023.

 

The chart also includes kora-goal.com, which is currently operational and showing progress that closely mirrors the decline of kooragoal.club.

 

Both domains display a shift in fortune in early November before meeting in traffic terms in December, with kora-goal.com taking over as kooragoal.club prepared itself for redirection to ACE. Whether kora-goal.com is destined for new anti-piracy ownership or will go on to further boost its traffic is unclear.

Kooralive.io Had Significant Traffic

Between October and December 2023, kooralive.io received almost 2.1 million visits, so ACE will be pleased that its growth has already been curtailed. The interesting thing here is that kooralive.io had around 250K visits in October and then, almost if someone had simply flicked a switch, in November its traffic suddenly skyrocketed to around 1.8 million visits.

 

In at least some cases, this was achieved by redirecting traffic from other domains/subdomains operated by the same owner, to other domains/subdomains also owned by the same owner, which then redirected to subdomains on kooralive.io. Similar behavior can be observed on other domains which, unsurprisingly, are also operated by the same owner.

Getting Rid of the Roots

In addition to the domains listed as redirecting at the start of this article, it remained a question whether other domains with common ownership would also suffer the same fate, even if some had fallen out of use.

 

While ultimately it could prove impossible to weed out every last domain, showing links between the domains was surprisingly straightforward, and as far as we can see (a handful of outliers aside) all currently redirect to ACE.

Whether any agreement reached with the operator of the sites has enough teeth to prevent a resurgence is unknown.

 

At least for now, however, the removal of dozens of domains seems significant enough for a quick celebration before getting back to the job, which apparently never ends.

 

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 Marvels” is the most downloaded title.

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

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	The Marvels	5.7 / trailer
2	(1)	Napoleon	6.5 / trailer
3	(…)	Wonka	7.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Oppenheimer	8.5 / trailer
5	(…)	Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom	6.7 / trailer
6	(6)	Killers of the Flower Moon	7.9 / trailer
7	(3)	Lift	5.5 / trailer
8	(4)	The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes	7.1 / trailer
9	(8)	Barbie	6.9 / trailer
10	(5)	Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire	5.8 / trailer

 

 

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

 

In 1988, then 29-year-old movie director Tim Burton was widely praised for the iconic comedy horror “Beetlejuice”.

 

The movie went on to win an Oscar and Burton’s career was well underway, with “Batman” and “Edward Scissorhands” his next movie projects.

 

More than 35 years after the Beetlejuice debut, a sequel is about to be released. The upcoming “Beetlejuice 2”, brings back old cast members including Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton, paired with new stars such as Jenna Ortega. It is scheduled for release in September this year.

 

To warm up fans, distributor Warner Bros. has already released a trailer and teaser, which are widely available online. At the same time, however, an unidentified source has leaked previously unseen material from the film online.

 

In a post on Tumblr, someone using the name ‘polly-p9’ posted an alleged ‘on set’ photo from the upcoming film last November. The post didn’t include any other information but came with tags such as #beetlejuice, #timburton, #leak and #warner bros, an archived copy reveals.

 

The post with part of the image (pixelated by us)
 

The image, which has since been removed, doesn’t give away too much. However. Warner Bros. is clearly alarmed by the leak. The movie studio has a history of cracking down on the unauthorized distribution of leaked material and this is no exception.

Warner Bros. Goes to Court

Warner Bros. recently requested a DMCA subpoena at a California federal court, requiring Tumblr to share identifying information on the person behind the account. The request includes a declaration from Michael Bentkover, Director of Worldwide Online Enforcement Operations at Warner Bros., explaining the situation.

 

“The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of the Tumblr user @polly-p9, who posted infringing content that appeared on the Tumblr account. Specifically, without permission, Tumblr user @polly-p9 posted access to Requester’s unpublished, copyrighted image from its forthcoming theatrical film to the Tumblr account, thus infringing Requester’s copyright.”

 

The declaration doesn’t mention “Beetlejuice 2” directly but an accompanying copy of a takedown request, sent by Warner Bros. to Tumblr, leaves no room for uncertainty.

 

Subpoena Targets Tumblr

DMCA subpoenas don’t require a review from a judge and a week after the request was filed, it was signed off by a court clerk. Afterward, the movie studio sent a copy to Tumblr, requesting it to hand over the information.

 

The paperwork requires Tumblr to share information that would make it possible to identify the user who, according to Warner Bros., posted the ‘copyrighted’ image that was taken ‘on set’.

 

“Such information would include, but is not limited to, the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history,” the subpoena clarifies.

 

 

The image may be a photo of another image displayed on a laptop or similar device, but we couldn’t verify this independently. While the photo itself isn’t copyrighted, the “Beetlejuice 2” movie is.

Tumblr Responds?

Warner Bros. stresses that any information obtained will only be used to protect the studio’s copyright interests. What that entails exactly, was not made clear.

 

Tumblr confirmed to us that it received the subpoena and chose not to object. This suggests that, if any usable information was available, it was handed over to Warner Bros., with the affected user also notified.

 

“While we can’t discuss the specifics of the case, we can confirm that we did receive the subpoena in question, and after assessment of the facts available to us, did not file an objection.

 

“If a user account was identified, we will have notified the impacted account holder with more details – including whether or not information was provided,” a Tumblr spokesperson adds.

 

Tumblr, which is owned by WordPress parent company Automattic, further points out that it’s very critical of potential DMCA abuse. As highlighted in the past, it rejects a large percentage of the takedown notices it receives.

 

“As you know, it is our policy to review every bit of legal process we receive. In addition, we are particularly sensitive to abuse of the DMCA to curtail freedom of speech, and we have regularly pushed back on overreaching DMCA takedown demands,” the company notes.

 

What this means for the current situation is unclear. At the time of writing the @polly-p9 account no longer exists. Interestingly, however, the leaked image hasn’t disappeared from the web completely.

Leak Still Floats Around

A reverse image search shows that copies of the leaked “Beetlejuice 2” image are still available online through various social media platforms. This includes a copy that was posted on Tumblr before Warner Bros. requested its subpoena.

 

These other leaks are not hard to find but Warner Bros. apparently hasn’t taken action in response.

 

A logical explanation could be that the movie studio isn’t overly concerned about the leaked image, but more about the person who leaked it. After all, this person could leak more sensitive information in the future.

 

TorrentFreak requested a comment from Warner Bros. on the motivation behind the subpoena, but the company didn’t immediately reply. If a response comes in later, this article will be updated accordingly.

 

—

 

A copy of the subpoena, issued at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is available here (pdf). The associated declaration from Warner Bros. Director of Worldwide Online Enforcement Operations can be found here (pdf).

 

– Note: the unpixelated film footage used in this article is taken from publicly available movie trailers.

 

Last week, new data published by piracy tracking firm MUSO and consulting firm Kearney showed that video piracy is growing globally.

 

With over 141 billion annual visits worldwide, there’s a massive audience outside of legal channels.

 

The full report was yet to be made available at the time of our initial report. While that doesn’t change any of the overall conclusions, there are some extra details worth highlighting.

Classifying Countries by Piracy Volume and Growth

The full report includes a rather insightful graph that ranks countries based on the number of visits to pirate sites per citizen, and how the rate has changed between 2018 and 2023. This allows for an intuitive comparison and highlights where piracy presents the biggest threat.

 

These two data points make it possible to classify countries into four buckets:

 

– Hotspots: Pirate site visits per capita are high and growing
– Recovering: Pirate site visits per capita are high but declining
– Growth Risk: Pirate site visits per capita are low but growing
– Positive Sign: Pirate site visits per capita are low and declining

 

In graph form the results look like this, with the piracy hotspots in the top right quadrant, and the growth risks in the top left.

 

Piracy volume vs. growth rate (large)

Canada vs. Brazil

Based on the presented data, Canada is classified as one of the piracy hotspots. The country has a relatively high number of pirate site visits per capita (+90) and that number also grew roughly 50% between 2018 and 2023.

 

Other hotspots include Sweden, Hong Kong and Qatar. Meanwhile, Singapore has by far the largest number of pirate site visits per capita, but with a relatively low growth rate compared to the other hotspots.

 

On the other end of the graph (bottom left), we find Japan where the piracy frequency is low and declining. The same also applies to Brazil to a lesser degree, which may be in part the result of the broad and frequent piracy crackdowns in the Latin American country.

Growth Risks (including the U.S.)

The bottom right of the graph is mostly empty but countries such as New Zealand and Portugal appear to be ‘recovering’. This means that they have relatively high piracy numbers, but those have declined over the past years.

 

Finally, there are the “growth risks”. These include countries where the piracy volume is relatively low, but growing rapidly.

 

This quadrant logically includes countries where broadband access has grown significantly over the past years. India, Nigeria, and Ghana are the top contenders here, all with a growth rate of more than 100%.

 

Interestingly, the United States is also classified as a growth risk. While it has dominated in absolute piracy traffic for years, the number of visits per capita were relatively low. However, the piracy rate is rising in the U.S. too.

 

All in all, the graph provides an easy-to-understand overview of how visits to video pirate sites are developing in various countries. It will be interesting to see how these trends develop over time.

 

In the final days of 2023 as people were preparing to welcome in the new year, yet more pirate domains were being redirected or transferred into the hands of the MPA, presumably as part of a settlement agreement.

 

Among them were uhuseries.com, owlserieshd.com, and ahaseries.com, relatively popular streaming platforms targeting the Thai market. We gave the news a brief mention at the time but since MPA/ACE have certain procedures to follow, the official announcement was published yesterday.

 

It reveals that in addition to the above, several other domains were also rendered inoperable including Iamtheme.com, nunghub.com and aplayer.xyz, described by ACE as a back-end domain that hosted a “vast collection of U.S. and international TV shows and movies” estimated to contain around 78,000 titles.

ACE Partners With TrueVisions

According to ACE, the Uhuseries.com network of sites had been running since 2019, attracting an average of 1.3 million visitors per month, with most traffic originating in Thailand, the United States and the United Kingdom.

 

“Another successful ACE and TrueVisions collaboration has resulted in the shutdown of two of Thailand’s most notorious illegal streaming services,” said ACE anti-piracy chief, Jan van Voorn.

 

Sompan Charumilinda, Executive Vice Chairman of TrueVisions, expressed gratitude for the invaluable support of Thai law enforcement.

 

“We would like to thank the Economic Crime Suppression Division of the Royal Thai Police for their steadfast commitment to protecting intellectual property rights. Thailand can produce and distribute world-class local content, but we must protect content rights if the benefits are to be realized by the creative economy and the country as a whole,” Charumilinda added.

Don’t Forget to Mention Malware

In the current environment, no anti-piracy press release can be considered complete without an obligatory malware warning and, thankfully, this one didn’t buck the trend.

 

“Piracy sites such as Uhuseries.com and Iamtheme.com put consumers at risk of malware, undermine investment in the Thai content industry, and reduce tax contributions to the local government,” van Voorn added, describing the closures as a “win-win for all.”

 

Despite being all-inclusive, it’s difficult to disagree with that statement.

Instant Pirate Site Service

ACE says that 27 pirate sites that relied on Iamtheme.com for content and infrastructure are now offline. Given there’s little to suggest that security of operators or users was considered a priority, that might be a good thing.

 

Through ads on various online discussion platforms, people with little relevant experience were encouraged to buy a website template for the equivalent of $225. Once installed, the script would make them a pirate site owner/operator almost instantly.

As the image shows, TrueVisions content was available via an API which according to the ads, could be purchased on a subscription basis. The headline price of $225 is therefor less of a bargain than it first appears. However, the most concerning aspect (copyright infringement aside) is the promotion of these scripts to people with little to no relevant experience.

 

A key website selling the scripts offers to install the software on a server for people who don’t know how, but insists that if any changes are made to the script whatsoever, all customer support ends there and then. For someone with no technical skills, that’s a pretty clear invitation to leave everything well alone, including any attempt to apply any security fixes, in the unlikely event any are issued at all.

Advertising Eyesore

Assuming new pirate site owners aren’t concerned that a third party probably has root access to their server even after installation, it’s time to get the site ready for visitors. The first couple of lines in ads promoting these scripts link two key features; 1) Online movie-watching website script. 2) Responsive Design with VIP membership system.

 

There’s also a section on how to set up advertising to generate more revenue: “Can manage and edit website page details like advertising contact information, member payment notifications, advertising space rates, website information through the web page. There is no need to have knowledge of programming.”

 

Indeed, attempting to change any code means the end of customer support, so having no knowledge is presumably a big plus. However, if all goes to plan with the installation, script buyers could end up with a website looking like the one on the left below.

With a more-is-always-better approach towards intrusive, suspect advertising, the finished product on the right shows what can be achieved if site owners are prepared to put in the time and effort.

 

While anything that limits exposure to insecure platforms run by novices should be considered a plus, Thai internet users still appear to have options if they want to launch an insecure template site of their own.

 

Meanwhile, site users in search of the latest movies and TV shows are probably oblivious or at least indifferent to the security situation, despite epilepsy-inducing gambling advertising on the front page telling them everything they need to know.

 

 

In recent years, Hollywood has played close attention to major pirate sites and services with connections to Vietnam.

 

Representing rightsholders, MPA and ACE visited Vietnam last year to discuss piracy-related challenges with local authorities.

 

The focus on Vietnam resulted in some progress. Anti-piracy coalition ACE previously shut down popular video piracy library 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator. Anime piracy giant Zoro.to fell too, although that one continues under new branding, supposedly with a fresh team of operators.

 

It’s clear, however, that Vietnam has Hollywood’s full attention. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is aware of the challenges too, as made clear in the most recent Special 301 Report.

 

“In particular, online piracy, including the use of illicit streaming devices and associated piracy applications to access unauthorized audiovisual content, remains a significant concern,” USTR wrote.

Vietnam’s Blocking Efforts

While some believe that Vietnam’s copyright enforcement arsenal is below par, the country does have a weapon the U.S. lacks. Site blocking is commonplace and widespread in the south-Asian country.

 

The Vietnamese authorities are actively ordering site-blocking measures of varying degrees. Best known, perhaps, is the government’s crackdown on gambling sites, which are deemed illegal in the country.

 

More recently, however, sites have also been blocked for copyright infringement. A few months ago we highlighted that 1,000 domains were blocked for this reason in just 12 months.

 

Interestingly, many of the larger movie and TV show streaming sites escaped this early wave. Blocking efforts mostly targeted live sports streaming sites, while other categories were left untouched. At least, for the time being.

More Pirate Site Blockades

Earlier this month, the Vietnamese authorities, in ‘coordination’ with ISPs, appear to have broadened their scope. There are reports of multiple torrent sites being blocked now, which TorrentFreak confirmed with a local resident.

 

Names that are mentioned include anime site NYAA.si, torrent indexers TorrentGalaxy and 1337x, as well as the game release site FitGirl-Repacks.

 

While results may vary between ISPs, our information suggests that a blocking notification isn’t always shown. Sites simply become unreachable, with the DNS for some pointing to 127.0.0.1; effectively null routing the connection attempt.

 

 

There is no mention of these new blocking efforts in local media that we’re aware of. However, several people are discussing these and other problems on the Vietnamese forum VOZ.

 

“Can anyone download on Fitgirl without having to turn on VPN? Even when I get the 1337x link, it won’t let me download it, it’s completely blocked,” one user writes, with others confirming the problem.

 

In other threads, similar blocking problems are discussed by VOZ users, all fairly recently.

Recognized Threat

To find out more, we reached out to Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication, requesting more details on this apparent new blocking wave. Unfortunately, however, we didn’t hear back.

 

Jan van Voorn, head of the anti-piracy group ACE, has experience with Vietnam and informs us that the authorities have blocked quite a few sites over the past several months.

 

Van Voorn further notes that ISPs have a commercial interest in blocking pirate sites and calls on the government to tackle local piracy syndicates

 

“Content is becoming an important business model for the major ISPs in Vietnam. From our numerous meetings with them, it is apparent that they recognize the need to protect that content,” Van Voorn tells us.

 

“It is hoped that the Vietnamese government will also recognize the need to protect both local and international content rather than allow Vietnamese piracy syndicates to enrich themselves from this illegal act.”

 

These syndicates would include Fmovies, according to ACE’s definitions. Interestingly, however, that popular movie streaming site isn’t blocked by Vietnamese ISPs, according to our source.

Transparency and Overblocking

Unfortunately, there’s not much transparency around the current pirate site blocking efforts in Vietnam. This makes it hard to get confirmation or provide an overview of all the sites that are blocked.

 

The lack of transparency also makes it hard for the public at large to know what’s going on. If a site is inaccessible, without a blocking notice, it remains guesswork whether it’s downtime, technical problems, or an ISP blockade. Needless to say, this also makes it harder to spot overblocking incidents.

 

For the gambling-related blocks, blocking is easier to spot. Visitors will see a banner, such as the one that’s shown below, which includes the following warning.

 

“Participating in gambling is a violation of the law. […] The police will save this access log for collection and processing! All information is sent to the relevant crime organization.”

 

 

This is a stark warning that should make prospective gamblers rethink their options. And not just gamblers either. Zooming in on the banner above shows that visitors to the popular GameFAQs website are blocked too.

 

We would like to say that targeting GameFAQs can be classified as overblocking but, then again, that’s a gamble.

 

—

 

Flag image credit.

 

With more than 14 million digital books in its archive, Z-Library is one of the largest shadow libraries on the Internet.

 

Two of its alleged operators were arrested as part of a criminal crackdown by the United States, but the site seems largely unaffected.

 

The Russian defendants are currently fighting an extradition battle. While their involvement with Z-Library is apparent to U.S. law enforcement, they don’t appear to be crucial to the operation, since Z-Library continues to thrive.

 

The feds are not standing idly by and have seized hundreds of domain names belonging to the site. This first happened in November 2022, shortly before the criminal case was made public. Last spring this was followed by another round, and a third wave came two months ago.

 

Despite these continued crackdowns, Z-Library doesn’t intend to throw the towel. Instead, it has relocated to new domains, of which there’s an infinite supply.

 

Helped by dedicated apps and browser extensions, many users manage to find their way back to the site. Popular search engines help too, as these typically return the site’s active domain in search results. However, publishers are actively trying to put a halt to that too.

Targeting Z-Library’s Google Results

Earlier this month, we already indicated that publishers are now responsible for the bulk of the DMCA takedown requests Google receives. These notices come in at a rate of millions per day.

 

Looking more closely at the data, we see that this recent surge in publisher activity is largely driven by Z-Library. This suggests that the publishers are trying to make sure that the shadow library is hard to find through the search engine.

 

While publishers have had to deal with piracy for many years, the Z-Library case seems to have struck a nerve. The takedown campaign isn’t just limited to a handful of publishers either. There is broad participation, including the names below which have all sent millions of takedowns.

 

Hachette, Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins Publishers, Taylor & Francis, Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, Editis, Madrigal, and Pearson Education.

Many Millions of URLs

Hachette, for example, targeted over 3 million domains during the first week of 2024, mostly targeting, Z-Library domains. This includes familiar including Z-Library.se, but also country-specific ones such as Ukrainian-books.se.

 

The publisher started sending takedowns around the time Z-Library was raided, and it reported more than 30 million URLs since.

 

Looking at all publishers’ requests, we see that Zlibrary-global.se and Zlibrary-asia.se were targeted most often. Both domains have more than 8 million URLs flagged as copyright-infringing. This happened in just a few months, with the first requests coming in June last year.

 

 

At the moment, Z-Library.se is promoted as Z-Library’s main domain. While it has only been active for a few weeks, rightsholders have already reported over 2 million of its URLs.

 

 

With a total of hundreds, if not thousands of Z-Library domain names, it’s easy to see how the number of reported URLs could easily exceed a hundred million.

 

This recent action is a clear departure from the relatively mild takedown action visible before the U.S. crackdown. At that time, the main Z-Library domains such as the now-seized z-lib.org and b-ok.org were flagged considerably less.

Effective?

The effectiveness of the Google-oriented takedown action remains to be seen. The search engine typically hides frequently targeted domains from search results, which indeed makes them harder to find.

 

That said, a search for Z-Library does return the Wikipedia entry in the top results, which provides information on how the site can be accessed.

 

In addition, go-to-zlibrary.se, which provides info on how to access the site, remains in the top results too. Since this domain doesn’t link to infringing material directly, it is harder to take down.

 

All in all, it is safe to conclude that the DMCA surge will make it less likely that people will accidentally stumble upon Z-Library through Google searches. However, those who are determined to access the site usually find a way.

 

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. is one of the most interesting cases in history to rely on a fair use defense, arguing that the alleged infringement qualifies as a parody.

 

Acuff-Rose sued members of hip hop group 2 Live Crew, claiming that their track “Pretty Woman” infringed the label’s copyright in the Roy Orbison song, “Oh, Pretty Woman.” 2 Live Crew had previously sought to license the track from Acuff-Rose to be used as a parody; Acuff-Rose refused and 2 Live Crew used it anyway.

 

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court where 2 Live Crew prevailed; their parody was ruled fair use, despite being a commercial product. Still, some believed 2 Live Crew’s music shouldn’t have been on sale at all. Three members were previously arrested for alleged obscenity violations but were eventually acquitted after the men received support from freedom of speech activists.

Free Speech Has Limits

A criminal copyright infringement trial that concluded in Finland this week also saw the defendant rely on a fair use-style parody defense. It involved the use of copyrighted content to create an alleged ‘parody’ (one that many people would find offensive), the distribution of that content to the public via Twitter, and a defendant claiming immunity under copyright law. Not that other routes hadn’t already been tested, however.

 

Former Oulu city councilor Junes Lokka and controversy are rarely far apart. He regularly voices his opinions on ethnic minorities, including what they represent, and what should be done with them. In 2022, Lokka faced Finland’s Supreme Court over videos of a 2016 protest published to his YouTube channel, to which Lokka added subtitles in various languages.

 

While the words in those videos were not Lokka’s, his claim to be acting as a journalist when he added subtitles was rejected by the court. Upholding the decision of a lower court the Supreme Court concluded that, since the videos contained hate speech and Lokka was responsible for them appearing on his YouTube channel, his conviction for incitement to ethnic hatred must stand.

Subtitle Defense 2.0: The Parody

In the spring of 2020, as the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to take hold, Finland’s national public broadcaster Yleisradio Oy (Finnish Broadcasting Company) aired a news broadcast in Somali. Without obtaining permission, Lokka made a copy of the report, added his own subtitles, and then retransmitted the new version to the public via Twitter.

 

In the opinion of Yleisradio, the subtitles added by Lokka were both racist and degrading. When he copied and then rebroadcast the news report, that was copyright infringement.

 

Lokka claimed there was no requirement to obtain permission from Yleisradio. New law that came into force in April 2023 allows the free use of copyright works for parody, pastiche, and caricature.

 

Lokka chose parody but under the circumstances, that underperformed.

Parody Under Copyright Law

Yleisradio was represented by the Copyright Information and Control Center (TTVK) and as the Finnish anti-piracy group revealed this week, the nature of the subtitles added to the news report proved fatal to Lokka’s defense.

 

“[Th]e court determined that this could not be considered a parody as referenced in Section 23a of the Copyright Act, but a prohibited modification of the work,” TTVK explains.

 

“The use of the recording in the manner outlined in the case was not justified under copyright exceptions. The court considered that the edited video contained a discriminatory message, and in its reasoning referred to the interpretation guidelines provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union.”

Freedom of Speech vs. Prohibiting Discrimination

Those guidelines reference a legal opinion in C-201/13 – Deckmyn and Vrijheidsfonds VZW v Vandersteen and Others which found that in order for a derivative work to be considered a parody, certain conditions must be met (pdf).

 

In the Finnish matter, compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights, which upholds freedom of expression but prohibits discrimination on grounds of race or religion, proved crucial.

 

“Accordingly, an act containing a discriminatory message cannot be considered a permitted parody,” TTVK reports.

 

With parody status unavailable, the content posted to Twitter was confirmed as an unauthorized derivative work, distributed by Lokka, in breach of copyright.

 

“The court found the defendant guilty of a copyright crime and sentenced him to a fine,” TTVK reports.

 

“The court sentenced him to pay EUR 640 in compensation for the use of the work in accordance with the Copyright Act, and EUR 2,260 in compensation. In addition, the court prohibited the person from continuing or repeating the act.”

 

Comments posted to Lokka’s X/Twitter account suggest that to the extent any deterrent effect was intended, it may be quite limited.

 

Dubbed “Nollywood,” Nigeria has a flourishing film industry which generates billions of dollars in revenues while creating new stars in the process.

 

In tandem, a flourishing piracy market serves parts of the population that either can’t or won’t pay for films.

 

Local authorities and anti-piracy organizations are trying to get a grip on the problem, but that’s not easy. Aside from investigative challenges, there’s also a shortage of basic enforcement resources.

Laptops, Electricity, and Internet Access

These issues were previously recognized by the U.S. embassy in Nigeria, which generously donated 50 laptops and other gadgets to the Nigerian Copyright Commission in 2020. This equipment should help to aid the local fight against online piracy, it reasoned.

 

The equipment was certainly welcome but the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) recently indicated that the Nigerian Copyright Commission also lacks reliable access to electricity and the Internet. Without these necessities, the laptops are useless.

 

“Provide more resources, including critical resources such as electricity and Internet access, for the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC) online enforcement unit to adequately engage in and sustain efforts to combat piracy in the country,” IIPA urged Nigeria’s government

Police Take Action Against Pirate Sites

It’s clear that tackling online piracy is a challenge in Nigeria. However, according to local media reports, police recently busted several key suspects in one of the largest enforcement actions thus far.

 

Officers from the Force Criminal Investigations Department (FCID) in Alagbon, Lagos, arrested five alleged operators and accomplices with ties to local pirate sites, including noregret.com.ng, 36vibes.com.ng and naijajoy.com.ng.

 

The police action follows a complaint from actress and filmmaker Toyin Abraham, who discovered that her latest film ‘Malaika’ was illegally distributed through these pirate sites.

 

 

Commenting on the news, Lagos police chief Idowu Owohunwa said that an investigation into the alleged crimes eventually led to the five suspects.

 

“Through these initiatives, the websites of origin of the crime were narrowed down to www.noregret.com.ng which was registered, owned and operated by one Lagos-based Kehinde Iyanda and www.naijajoy.com.ng owned and maintained by one Ogun State -based Adekunle Segun,” Owohunwa said.

 

The police investigation identified Kehinde Iyanda as a main suspect and the alleged operator of noregret.com.ng. The man was arrested and reportedly admitted that the website was used for online piracy.

 

“He additionally acknowledged that the website was, as alleged, utilized to pirate several movies including the ‘Malaika’ movie as alleged by the complainants,” the police boss added.

Panic Attacks and Hospital Visits

The police action must come as a relief for Toyin Abraham, who reportedly suffered panic attacks as the result of online piracy, which led her to be hospitalized several times.

 

Abraham said that she’s committed to taking up the fight against online piracy, not just for herself, but also in the broader interest of the Nigerian entertainment industry.

 

While Kehinde was seen as the main suspect at noregret.com.ng, he didn’t act alone. The operator identified Adebiyi Sodiq and Sodiq Oseni Akano as co-conspirators, which prompted a follow-up investigation.

More Arrests and a Fugitive

The police eventually located Adebiyi Sodiq in Osun State, where he was arrested. The suspect conspired with his mother to hide evidence, including a laptop, but this was eventually uncovered by the police.

 

In addition, Sodiq also stands accused of running yet another streaming platform, 36vibes.com.ng, which distributed films including ‘Malaika’ and ‘A Tribe Called Judah.’ The makers of the latter had also filed a complaint in the past.

 

The third suspect, Sodiq Oseni Akano, received help from his girlfriend to evade the police. This was successful, as he is still on the run. His girlfriend and the mother of Adebiyi Sodiq were arrested, however.

Sites Remain Available

In addition to the two alleged site operators and their female accomplices, the police apprehended Adekunle Segun, the alleged operator of yet another pirate site; naijajoy.com.ng. This site also had a link to the ‘Malaika’ movie, according to the authorities.

 

Overall, three men were arrested for operating pirate sites. The two women were arrested for allegedly acting as accomplices by helping their son/boyfriend to evade prosecution.

 

All in all, the Nigerian police managed to pull off one of the largest anti-piracy swoops in recent history, at least locally.

 

While rightsholders are pleased with the action, it’s not yet clear whether it will have a lasting effect. At the time of writing, all three sites remain online, apparently offering a wide range of pirated content.

 

—

 

36Vibes today
 

JW Player was born around 2005 as an open source project, taking its name from the initials of main developer, Jeroen Wijering.

 

During the mid to late 2,000s, most people who consumed video online encountered JW Player at least once; before Google bought YouTube, JW Player was YouTube’s video player of choice.

 

According to the GitHub repo for the non-commercial version of JW Player, it can now be found on two million sites with a combined 1.3 billion plays per month.

 

On the commercial side, the New York-based company says it works with over 40,000 broadcasters, publishers, and other video-driven brands, which together generate 8 billion video impressions/month and 5 billion minutes of video watched/month.

 

The company’s clients include the likes of Fox, Sky, and Eurosport but thanks to a blunder that never should’ve happened, JW Player was labeled a “rogue site” last September and 2,700 Indian ISPs were ordered to immediately block it.

ISP Blocking Requested to Protect Cricket Tournament

Star India, Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, Hotstar, and Disney+ Hotstar, are affiliated companies with a joint interest in broadcasts of major cricket tournament, World Cup 2023. The event ran from October 5 to November 19, 2023, but before it even began, preparations were being made to deal with the inevitable – rampant piracy.

 

Saying that courts have developed an understanding of the companies’ plight would significantly underplay the power made available to them under so-called dynamic+ injunctions. That includes the ex parte injunction issued by the Delhi High Court on September 27, 2023, to protect World Cup 2023.

 

The application listed nine pirate site defendants, and the subsequent order described them as “various rogue websites which are stated to be primarily hosting illegal and pirated content.” However, the plaintiffs have experience dating back years which shows that since pirates are happy to switch domains at any given moment, injunctions need to be flexible enough to allow new domains to be blocked extremely quickly.

Dynamic+ Injunction Issued

Several injunctions obtained by the plaintiffs in 2021, 2022, and 2023, began life listing between 7 and 20 domains. At their conclusion, one outlier blocked a total of 87 domains while the others blocked between 120 and 164.

 

More recently, dynamic injunctions are now giving way to dynamic+ injunctions, which are not just dynamic in respect of the targets to be blocked, but also in respect of the plaintiffs’ content, whether existing or yet to be made. To get things rolling the Delhi High Court tackled the named platforms before moving on to then-unknown domains with the potential to appear later.

 

– Defendant Nos.1 to 9 are restrained by an ad-interim order from communicating, screening, making available or disseminating any part of the ICC World Cup Cricket matches on any electronic or digital platform in any manner whatsoever.

 

– Domain Name Registrars are directed to lock and suspend the said websites within 72 hours after being communicated a copy of this order….

 

– (i)f any further websites are discovered which are illegally streaming and communicating content over which the Plaintiffs have rights, the Plaintiffs are given liberty to communicate the details of these websites to both DoT and MeitY for issuance of blocking orders and simultaneously to the ISPs for blocking the said websites so as to ensure that these websites can be blocked on a real time basis [so] there is no considerable delay.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong

On November 5, 2023, the plaintiffs emailed various government departments, domain entities, and sundry other recipients, to announce the discovery of new domains that according to the injunction, must be immediately blocked. The title of the email suggests that this notification was one of many.

 

URGENT | Forty Fourth List of Additional Websites for Real – Time Blocking of in Compliance of the Order dated 27.09.2023 passed by the Hon’ble Delhi High Court in Star India Private Limited & Anr. v. jiolive.tv & Ors. CS(COMM)- 688/2023.

 

The images below represent the main evidence supplied in support of the blocking instruction. The first, a screenshot of a cricket match playing in a browser with a JW Player URL in the address bar, suggests that a match was being streamed via the platform, presumably by a JW Player user. The second screenshot shows the domain names to be blocked in this particular request, while indicating that someone researched the JWPlayer.com domain on SimilarWeb.

 

 

The third screenshot shows that the plaintiffs looked up contact information for JW Player’s official DMCA agent, something that pirate sites tend not to have, but then submitted the domain for blocking regardless.

Traffic to JW Player’s Website From India Plummets

There’s no way to show whether any of the recipients of the blocking notification email did anything with the paperwork, much less double-checked to ensure there were no obvious blunders. At least three recipients of the notification had email addresses ending @disney.com but whether they could’ve done much at this stage is unclear. The judge’s orders are extremely clear.

The instructions appear to have considered that an innocent third-party might find its online business blocked in India but on balance, the rightsholders’ interests appear to take priority. Since the application and order was issued without the defendants being present, it’s unclear how or even if JW Player was notified that its domain had been blocked.

Without that information to hand, being permitted by the court to file a request to have the injunction modified means almost nothing. Given that JW Player is not a rogue site, processes DMCA takedown notices, and has no relationship with any of the domains listed in the injunction, it’s arguable that it should never have been blocked in the first place.

 

Regardless, the image above suggests that it was some time before any action was taken to remedy the situation. According to SimilarWeb data, between October 2023 and December 2023, traffic to JWPlayer.com from India tanked by 53%. That the domain continued to be blocked after the tournament ended last November suggests that this type of thing could happen to almost any business. The only plus is that the company didn’t have its domain suspended.

 

After months of blocking, the Indian government’s Ministry of Communications issued instructions for the country’s ISPs to stop blocking jwplayer.com on January 9, 2024. The text suggests that the subdomain cdn.jwplayer.com may have been subjected to blocking instructions, although may or indeed may not have been actually blocked.

 

 

The additional documents referenced in the notice above were not attached. If we obtain them, we’ll post an update here.

 

Back in 2004, when LimeWire was the file-sharing client of choice for millions of users, FrostWire appeared as the new kid on the block.

 

The application began life as a LimeWire fork but underwent several changes over the years. In 2016, it added support for torrents and, five years later, it completely dropped its Gnutella base in favor of BitTorrent.

 

Today, FrostWire is a well-established torrent client that’s available across the most popular platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. While it’s not the most used torrent client, it has built an impressive userbase of 10 million installs and nearly a quarter million reviews in the Google Play Store alone.

 

The application is content-neutral and nothing is stored in the client. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s immune to complaints from rightsholders. These are relatively rare but when they arrive they can do a lot of damage, as was illustrated recently.

Play Store Takes Down FrostWire

At the end of November last year, Google informed the FrostWire team that its app had been suspended from Google Play due to alleged copyright infringement. While the software doesn’t host or feature infringing content, the Indian Music Industry (IMI) reached a different conclusion.

 

 

IMI represents the interests of local music companies and record labels, including familiar names such as Universal Music India, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music India. According to the takedown notice, FrostWire infringed the rights of the song “Genda Phool,” released by Indian rapper Badshah.

 

The YouTube clip of the track went viral around the globe, which was good news for the artists and the label, Sony Music India. This naturally meant that some people were trying to pirate it, which triggered IMI to send takedown notices.

 

IMI’s actions make sense as far as they apply to sites that host or link to pirated copies of the track. However, FrostWire sees itself as a content-neutral app, more akin to a web browser.

Counternotice

After Google suspended the app on November 27, FrostWire developer Angel Leon swiftly sent a reinstatement request along the following lines;

 

“It’s important to clarify that our app functions as a BitTorrent client, providing a platform for users to share and download legal content.

 

We unequivocally condemn copyright infringement. Our platform is designed to respect and uphold the rights of content creators while promoting open and legal digital sharing. We believe that the recent copyright claim against our application stems from a misunderstanding of its purpose and functionality.”

 

If developers file a counternotice, rightsholders have 10 days to respond with a formal legal complaint. In the event non arrive, the app should in theory be restored. According to FrostWire’s developer, that didn’t happen here.

 

“Then we didn’t hear back from anyone until December 28th, when the app changed status from ‘Suspended’ to ‘Removed’, and we had to follow a process of reinstatement that was absolutely retarded,” Leon says.

 

Google flagged several issues that weren’t linked to copyright infringement but required multiple code updates. This included changes to old installers that no longer affected newer versions.

Reinstated After More than a Month

After submitting multiple new updates, Google eventually gave the green light to add the app back into the Play Store.

 

 

The question remains whether IMI’s takedown notice was indeed a misunderstanding, or if the music group has a real problem with the software. We approached the group for a comment and further context but have yet to hear back.

 

For now, FrostWire is happy to move on and has just released an update which celebrates its rise from the ashes.

 

“This update is particularly special as it comes just after FrostWire’s reinstatement on the Google Play Store. It’s not just an update; it’s a celebration of persistence, innovation, and community spirit.”

Troubled Past, Uncertain Future

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that FrostWire has been booted from the Play Store. A similar incident happened several years ago. At the time, Google initially refused to reinstate the app, which was a major setback.

 

Most of FrostWire’s users are on Android and in a dramatic move, the torrent client decided to call it quits. The decision was eventually reversed after Google changed course and reinstated the app.

 

This time, FrostWire didn’t make any drastic decisions, but the removal still had a significant impact on its operation.

 

While all is good for now, there’s no certainty that the app will remain safe. Another rightsholder could come along and ask for it to be removed, which will start the same process all over again.

 

Ideally, FrostWire would like to see repercussions for inaccurate takedowns, as every time this happens, the app loses some users.

 

“Both times this happened, we lost a lot of our active userbase, lost subscribers, and revenue, and as you can imagine it can happen again. All it takes is an accusation from anybody and they don’t have any repercussions for doing so,” Leon tells us.

 

While this is a grim outlook, FrostWire seems to have a fighting spirit these days. In a recent blog post, it likens itself to an “Ice Phoenix”.

 

“As we celebrate this rebirth, imagine an ‘Ice Phoenix’ rising majestically from a frosty terrain. This mythical creature, with its crystalline feathers and a shimmering aura, soars upwards amidst swirling snowflakes.

 

“This Ice Phoenix is not just a fantasy; it embodies the spirit of FrostWire – ever resilient, ever evolving.”