Any content creator who sees their work being used by unauthorized third-parties can file DMCA notices against platforms communicating that content to the public.

 

Platforms should respond by taking allegedly-infringing content down but in practice, some do and some don’t.

 

Full-blown pirate sites may not respond to notices at all for obvious reasons but some entirely legitimate platforms also refuse to comply in appropriate circumstances.

 

Google is one of those platforms and without the diligence of the Google Search team, at least 150 articles published on TorrentFreak.com would’ve been disappeared over the years due to bogus DMCA notices. We very much appreciate that first line of defense; since we don’t have to commit resources towards countering wrongful complaints, we can concentrate on our reporting.

 

To that end, today we can report that DMCA notices continued to be filed against us at Google, all of them demanding the deindexing of links to our news reports in Google search. We also received a few direct to us via email, more than usual in 2023. All complaints/takedown notices had something in common; 100% bogus, right across the board, and a complete waste of resources for everyone involved.

New Year 2023: Peaceful for 19 Days

By January 19, 2023, things were looking quite promising. No direct DMCA notices sent by email and no complaints sent to Google either, at least as far as we’re aware. On January 20, Google received a takedown demand to deindex from search results an article published just four days earlier.

 

Due to the popularity of the software, we believed that the alleged operator of pirate app PikaShow being arrested in India was newsworthy. Sadly, India-based anti-piracy outfit Markscan (on behalf of Hotstar and/or rightsholder Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt. Ltd) decided that Google should deindex our work, as the notice on Lumen Database reveals.

 

One of these is not like the others

 

Google’s transparency report indicates that the notice, which demanded the removal of 47 URLs, was rejected in its entirety but because we mentioned PikaShow by name, the takedown notices kept on coming.

 

On January 21, Markscan sent a substantially similar DMCA takedown notice to Google, this time on behalf of the Disney+ Hotstar “over-the-top streaming service owned by Novi Digital Entertainment of Disney Star and operated by Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, both divisions of The Walt Disney Company.”

 

Once again, the complaint demanded the removal of our article. The next day, January 22, Novi Digital Entertainment tried its hand with a similar takedown notice which targeted the same article once again. It enjoyed the same level of success as the first.

 

Inexplicably, on the very same day yet another anti-piracy company tried to remove exactly the same article but for different reasons. Working on behalf of Cricket Australia, India-based Copyright Integrity International claimed our article was in direct violation of its client’s rights in content relating to cricket matches of the KFC Big Bash League.

 

There were no violations, obviously, but in the cut-and-thrust world of bulk URL disappearance, no one sends notices demanding that content stays up.

Writing About House of the Dragon Infringes Warner Bros’ Rights

On October 22, 2022, we reported that the season finale of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” had leaked online, two days ahead of its official premiere.

 

After almost two weeks of DMCA silence following the PikaShow debacle, the calm was interrupted by a new complaint from Markscan. Alongside demands to take down links to House of the Dragon episodes and season packs on various pirate sites, this notice informed Google that our report on the months-old leak infringed Warner’s copyrights. It didn’t in any way.

 

And then, adding insult to injury, Hotstar sent another DMCA takedown notice to Google, this time targeting a different article that also mentioned PikaShow; or ƿᵻꝄɅ§ƕɵꟺ for those who don’t want to be targeted by bogus notices seemingly reliant on basic keyword searches.

Hey DMCA Bot:

When anti-piracy companies target a platform directly, Google’s diligence doesn’t enter the equation. Any DMCA notices received must be treated as legal documents and responses must be governed accordingly. On April 3, 2023, we received an email from Turkey-based anti-piracy outfit DigiGuardians Inc. and since the title contained the words ‘Copyright Claim’ we immediately gave it our full attention.

 

This is a notice in accordance with the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) a part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requesting the service providers to be held strictly liable for the acts of their users & immediately cease the access to copyrighted material. We have found an infringing material in your website which indeed is our movie ‘Güneşin Kızları’ released worldwide in 2015

The notice listed three URLs which needed to be “disabled immediately” along with a statement that the “information in the notification is accurate.” Unfortunately, we were unable to comply with the takedown demands because the URLs provided were not for TorrentFreak.com but an entirely different domain that we’d never heard of, under someone else’s control.

 

We aren’t publishing the domain name here since it’s flagged as malicious by several security vendors and blocked by a laundry list of DNS providers. What we can confirm is that graphics from TF were used on this bogus platform to make it look like a news site, albeit one with our logo, authors’ names, and sundry other pieces of information removed.

 

Sixty-two minutes after receiving the takedown notice, a detailed report containing all necessary information to show why the notice shouldn’t have been sent to us, was sent back to DigiGuardians. We even included a screenshot and explanatory text using the most sophisticated font available today.

 

Ruthlessly ignored artwork

 

We received no response to our detailed response addressing the bogus notice, which was also sent to a file-hosting platform that we’d never heard of, an email address listed in WHOIS records, and hosting company LeaseWeb, apparently.

More DMCA Notices For Another Site

On April 4, 2023, DigiGuardians sent another substantially similar DMCA takedown notice, with the domain name of the malicious site in the title, this time demanding the removal of 50 allegedly infringing URLs. Just seconds later we received yet another takedown notice demanding the removal of an additional 50 URLs, followed by another seconds after that containing a further 10 URLs.

 

“The information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed,” the complaints added, pointlessly.

 

Then in the middle of October, DigiGuardians unexpectedly reached out, indicating they were interested in working with us to publish news on products or services, that type of thing. Nothing wrong with that of course but since TorrentFreak is a news site, we politely declined and said we’d happily take a look at anything newsworthy, should anything come up.

 

We also asked about the problematic takedown notices and noted that we’d be grateful if someone could fix the problem. Hard to say with 100% certainty that a bot responded, but the text seemed to assume we were interested in the offer. Sadly, it mentioned nothing about the copyright claims.

Give That Bot a Slap

After largely forgetting about the earlier run of nuisance, erroneous notices, on December 14 we started receiving them again. This time we were instructed to remove five allegedly infringing URLs pointing to the movie ‘Muhteşem İkili’ but once again a fundamental problem got in the way.

 

The infringing URLs listed in the notice were for a completely different and new domain, also nothing to do with us.

 

On December 29, when we received not one but two ‘Copyright Claims’ demanding the removal of over 50 URLs on someone else’s domain, after our communications about these issues were ignored yet again, inclusion in today’s list of bogus takedown notices was sealed.

 

In closing, we must acknowledge that these companies face massive challenges in their line of work and as such, mistakes will inevitably get made. We’re not unsympathetic either but when the same mistakes get made over and over again against the same site, one that is more likely to mention these disasters in public than any other online today, you do start to wonder.

 

For writers and readers, the news often passes by, with major headlines swiftly fading into the background.

 

At times like these, it’s good to realize that for people who are featured or closely involved, those events are often life-altering. But perhaps i’m getting sentimental.

 

Below is a compilation of some of the key stories this year. It’s by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, but a decent reflection of what can happen in a year. And it never stops.

RARBG Shuts Down

Pirate sites come and go, often without being noticed by the public at large. That was certainly not the case when RARBG said its goodbyes in late June.

 

The popular torrent site had millions of daily users spread across several domain names. This included the flagship .to domain, where the usual torrent index was replaced by a farewell message.

 

 

The surprise shutdown of RARBG and its tracker was made worse by the fact that RARBG was also one of the most used torrent distribution groups, which secured a steady stream of movie and TV-show releases across the broader piracy ecosystem.

 

As is often the case, others tried to hijack or take over the RARBG brand in the months that followed, but none come close to the original. Other torrent sites did notice a big traffic spike though.

Flawless IPTV Prosecution

In May, five men behind pirate IPTV service ‘Flawless’ were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, the result of a private prosecution by the Premier League.

 

Operating from 2016 until 2018, the Flawless IPTV service served over 50,000 UK households while generating millions in revenue by selling cheap subscriptions.

 

Follow-up reports revealed that the service itself costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to run. It further showed that Flawless invested significant resources to circumvent the Premier League’s blocking program.

Z-Library’s Resilience

Z-Library’s very existence was put to the test last year when U.S. law enforcement seized over 200 domain names connected to the site. Two alleged Z-Library operators from Russia were arrested in Argentina as part of a criminal investigation.

 

The shadow library continued to operate from the dark web and made a full comeback on the clearnet in February. Since then, the site has launched a variety of new features and initiatives, including a dedicated desktop application.

 

 

The legal problems are not over though. The U.S. Government continued to seize Z-Library domain names through the year. Meanwhile, the two arrested suspects continue to fight the criminal copyright infringement allegations and their requested extradition.

IPTV Scaremongering

The past year has seen no shortage of IPTV-related news. All over the world sellers and operators of pirate IPTV services were arrested, signaling that this activity is not without risk.

 

Meanwhile, users are put on notice as well. This includes obligatory warnings that people may not get what they paid for. But there are more direct threats as well, some of which border on the ridiculous.

 

Several UK newspapers warned that police were knocking on the doors of 1,000 suspected pirate IPTV subscribers earlier this year. This massive exaggeration, paired with the suggestion that police used special pirate stream detector cars, falls firmly in the scaremongering camp.

 

 

While watching pirate IPTV streams in the UK is definitely unauthorized, the suggestion that offenders will be prosecuted and jailed en masse, was a bit much.

AI Copyright Troubles

Over the past year, artificial intelligence enjoyed its mainstream breakthrough. The instant success of ChatGPT and follow-up releases of other large language model-based tools kick-started what many believe is a new revolution.

 

The AI boom also triggered a host of copyright issues. Several lawsuits were filed against OpenAI, Meta, Google, and others who used copyrighted materials to build their AI models. In some cases, these companies stand accused of using libraries from pirate sites as training materials.

 

Meanwhile, lawmakers around the world are trying to figure out how to handle this rapidly evolving technology from a copyright perspective. These efforts, and the associated lobbying, will continue in the new year.

 

In addition to lawsuits and lobbying, rightsholders are also keeping an eye on individuals who tinker with artificial intelligence. This included a widely popular AI Hub server on Discord which was pulled offline after repeated copyright complaints.

Pikashow Stunt

In January, rightsholders pulled out all the stops to take down the popular piracy app PikaShow. This happened a few weeks after its operators pulled one of the biggest stunts in piracy history.

 

During Asia Cup 2022, a cricket tournament watched by hundreds of millions of people, PikaShow was the official sponsor of Afghanistan’s national cricket team. This resulted in hours of primetime pirate advertising, marketing the brand to a massive TV audience of millions.

 

 

Fast forward nearly a year and PikaShow remains a problem today. According to the MPA, the application has been downloaded 10 million times across various app stores and Telegram.

IPTV Datacenter Raid

IPTV raids and arrests are nothing new but, last May, Dutch fiscal police (FIOD) was the first enforcement authority to shut down an entire datacenter.

 

Information obtained by FIOD showed that the pirate IPTV operation was run from the GLOBE Datacenter in Den Helder, where more than 1,200 servers were taken offline. Several people were arrested and the main suspect remains in custody according to the latest reports.

 

The authorities didn’t mention any specific IPTV services but the operation was massive. Local anti-piracy group BREIN reported that TVs in hundreds of thousands of homes went dark due to the raids. Europol, which also assisted in the operation, said that the service had over a million users across Europe.

 

 

Faced with an operation of this size, law enforcement initially failed to see that the websites of innocent companies were also taken down in the process. The problem was addressed after TorrentFreak requested clarification.

Zoro.to ‘Takedown’

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) shut down numerous sites and services this year. Their biggest victory came in July when it took over the domain name of piracy giant Zoro.to.

 

The anime streaming site was arguably the largest pirate site on the Internet at that time, with over 200 million monthly visits. However, ACE would soon learn that they secured little more than a domain name.

 

A few days before ACE stepped in, Zoro.to had been ‘acquired’ by an unknown party that rebranded the operation to Aniwatch. Unsurprisingly, that site is now one of the most visited pirate sites on the Internet.

Omi, EVO, Mega

We’ll end this brief and selective overview with a few key cases that started earlier, but saw some (preliminary) conclusions in 2023.

 

In March, Bill Omar Carrasquillo, better known online as Omi in a Hellcat, was sentenced to 66 months in prison for several crimes related to his now-defunct pirate IPTV services. In addition, he was ordered to pay $11m in restitution while $30 million in possessions were forfeited.

 

 

As mentioned earlier, this year we also learned that the alleged operator of piracy release group EVO was arrested in Portugal. This action is likely one of the main reasons why we haven’t seen any leaked movie screeners this year.

 

Finally, 2023 also brought closure for two of the Megaupload defendants; Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk. The High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, handed down prison sentences of 31 and 30 months respectively. The pair avoided extradition to the United States by pleading guilty, which didn’t help Kim Dotcom’s position.

 

The music industry obtained a pioneering injunction to compel Danish ISPs to implement site-blocking measures back in 2006.

 

The goal was to limit access to unlicensed Russian music download platform AllofMP3, but the action also represented the thin end of a site-blocking wedge still being tapped in today.

 

Broadcaster and site-blocking proponent Canal+ believes that when service providers implement technical measures to prevent access to pirate sites, that helps to reduce piracy rates. Unfortunately, online roadblocks reliant on technical tweaks always run up against other technical tweaks designed to circumvent them.

Protecting Live Sports

A report from the French news outlet l’Informé outlines a fairly typical framework adopted by rightsholders in Europe. To limit access to pirated live sports streams, this year Canal+ went to court in France arguing that local ISPs should prevent customers from accessing several pirate streaming sites.

 

Through Footybite.co, Streamcheck.link, SportBay.sx, TVFutbol.info, and Catchystream.com, internet users were able to watch Premier League and Champions League football, plus matches from the Top 14 rugby union club competition, without paying Canal+, the local rightsholder.

 

After the decisions went in favor of Canal+, ISPs including Orange, SFR, OutreMer Télécom, Free, and Bouygues Télécom, were required to implement blocking measures. This meant that when the ISPs’ customers attempted to visit any of the above domains, the ISPs’ respective DNS resolvers provided non-authentic responses, thereby denying customers access to the sites.

Circumvention and New Legal Action

The response to ISP blocking by increasingly savvy customers was to change their network settings to replace their ISPs’ DNS servers with those offered by unaffected third-party providers. By switching to DNS servers offered by Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco (OpenDNS), the domains functioned as expected. This entirely predictable response is now being countered by another.

 

After tapping in the wedge just far enough to obtain the initial blocking orders, Canal+ has now returned to court hoping to resolve the blocking orders’ shortcomings. After failing to achieve voluntary cooperation, l’Informé reports (paywall) that Canal+ is now suing Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco at the Paris judicial court, to compel similar DNS blocking measures.

Legal Basis: Article L333-10

According to Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code (active Jan 2022), when there are “serious and repeated violations” by an “online public communication service” whose main objective is the unauthorized broadcasting of sporting competitions, rightsholders can go to court to demand “all proportionate measures likely to prevent or put an end to this infringement, against any person likely to contribute to remedying it.”

 

Proportionate measures include blocking, deleting or deindexing communication services (in this case pirate streaming sites) when they meet the above criteria.

 

The judicial court may order these measures to be implemented “for each of the days appearing in the official calendar of the competition or sporting event, within the limit of a period of twelve months.” In respect of the competitions Canal+ hopes to protect, that means until May 19, 2024, for the Premier League, until June 1, 2024, for the Champions League, and until June 29, 2024, for Top 14.

How Serious is the Circumvention Situation?

According to detailed reports published by telecoms regulator Arcom, ISP-only DNS blocking measures have enjoyed massive success in France.

 

Published in May 2023, Arcom’s report for 2022 noted that the overall audience for illicit sports broadcasts decreased by 41% between 2021 and 2022, down from 2.8 million internet users on average to 1.6 million.

 

 

On circumvention of blocking measures, in May 2023 Arcom reported that when confronted with a blocked site, almost half of all infringing Internet users (46%) completely abandoned the idea of watching the content.

 

Of all infringing users, just 6% attempted to circumvent blocking measures using an alternative DNS, VPN or similar method.

 

 

While circumvention of blocking measures doesn’t seem to be an especially big problem in France right now, Arcom notes that it will remain vigilant moving forward.

 

For the sake of curiosity, we searched for signs of blocking in France using data supplied by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). The system appears to detect pirate site blocking in France as an ‘anomaly’ (yellow) rather than confirmed, outright blocking (red).

 

 

The green sections may indicate that a relatively small number of users are managing to access domains well-known for their links to piracy. Whether that volume warrants dragging third-party DNS providers to court is another matter.

 

However, it can’t be ruled out that there’s also a strategic element to the Canal+ complaint; another tap of the wedge, more incremental progress, and then ever-expanding DNS blocking in preparation for whatever comes next.

 

At the end of the year, movie industry insiders traditionally receive their screener copies, which they use to vote on the Oscars and other awards.

 

Historically, many of these screeners leaked on pirate sites, where they would be shared among millions of unauthorized viewers.

 

This ‘screener season‘ was highly anticipated but nothing stays the same forever. Since last year, these holiday gifts are a thing of the past.

The End of the Screener Disc

While it’s always tricky to assume causal links, there are a few changes in the film industry that contributed to this turnaround, some more than others.

 

In the early 2000s, it was pretty common to see screeners of nearly all Oscar contenders leak online before the winners were announced. At the time, physical screeners were sent out on discs through a massive logistics operation, where weaknesses could be exploited by bad actors.

 

In recent years, many contenders have come from streaming services that don’t require advance copies. This automatically decreases the leak potential. When the Academy moved away from discs to online screeners in 2021, that part of the distribution chain could be better controlled as well.

 

When screeners increasingly moved online, the screener leaks didn’t stop. There was one group in particular that kept pushing out new leaks year after year. Pirate release group EVO, short for EVOLUTiON, didn’t see digital screeners as more secure.

 

“We had access to digital screeners and they are indeed easy to leak. The DRM on it is a joke. We had an account last year with three screeners on it and they were pretty much MP4 ready to encode,” the group told TorrentFreak a few years ago.

EVO Bust and Arrest

EVO wasn’t just boasting. The group released more screeners than any other source in 2020 and 2021. However, in 2022 that suddenly stopped, marking the first year in which not a single screener leaked in advance.

 

The lack of screeners coincided with a sudden stop in new content being pushed by EVO. The group typically posted a wide range of releases every week; when none appeared, it was clear that something was up.

 

From the get-go, there were rumors that the notorious group had been busted. These suspicions were eventually confirmed in March this year and a month later, Portuguese police shared additional details on the crackdown which the authorities dubbed “Operation EVO 1.2”.

 

 

Police acted on intelligence provided by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and also collaborated with INTERPOL. ACE had identified several persons of interest and the suspected leader of the group was arrested.

Screeners Off Limits?

Following the EVO bust, not a single screener of note has leaked online. This suggests that the enforcement action sent a deterrent message. Indeed, ACE boss Jan Van Voorn likes to believe that there’s a direct link.

 

“[EVO was] a major source for illegally released screeners in P2P schemes, and the shutdown cut off the pipeline for other piracy sites that picked up the screeners from EVO,” Van Voorn informs TorrentFreak.

 

“I’d like to think that the takedown of EVO served as a deterrent to anyone else considering running an illegal screener scheme, given the arrest and potential severity of the punishment,” he adds.

 

The bust happened at a time when screeners were already becoming less common due to the aforementioned changes in the film industry. That said, the bust of one of the most prominent release groups likely served as a direct warning too.

Teamwork

The EVO bust was possible due to teamwork. ACE identified the targets based on information from various sources. In addition, cooperation with Portuguese police, specifically the cybercrime unit (UNC3T), was critical.

 

“Through a combination of shared resources and intelligence, we were able to identify the operators and facilitate the arrest by the Portuguese authorities,” van Voorn says, looking back on their achievement.

 

While pirates were looking forward to ‘screener season’, movie industry insiders saw it as a threat that negatively impacts the creative economy, including a wide variety of jobs. Although the EVO bust didn’t stop piracy, ACE believes that it made a positive mark.

 

Whether the new year will be another without any leaked screeners has yet to be seen. However, with the EVO prosecution and investigation still ongoing, ACE warns those tempted to come out of the woodwork.

 

“The investigation is ongoing and other EVO members around the world are still under investigation,” van Voorn concludes.

 

 

During the past few hours, users of streaming site ahaseries.com hoping to access their favorite site would’ve met with disappointment.

 

The same also goes for those who attempted to access uhuseries.com and owlserieshd.com.

 

All three domains are now under the control of the Motion Picture Association, which in turn is directing visitors to the web portal of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). There they will be greeted by a message from ACE on behalf of the anti-piracy coalition’s members.

 

“WATCH LEGALLY,” the message reads. “There are more than 140 content providers/platforms around the world that offer legal access to your favorite movies and TV shows across a wide variety of devices.”

 

How much choice there is in Thailand may have influenced the choices made by visitors to the three sites mentioned above, but no matter where pirate sites are located, ACE is likely to be aware of their existence.

 

At a California district court last week, the signature of MPA and ACE content protection chief Jan van Voorn could be found on several DMCA subpoena applications. When signed off, they will compel third-party companies to hand over whatever information they hold on around 40 pirate sites. One of those listed, a popular multi-content site in South America, says that after a 13-year run online, it has already thrown in the towel.

 

How the rest will respond is unknown but as their traffic data suggests, the platforms in the spotlight are servicing dozens of millions of visits every month. There’s little doubt that ACE wants to turn that around.

 

The tables below show the domains listed in the MPA’s DMCA subpoenas and the allegedly infringing content. Also included is a general category (such as streaming or torrent) for the sites targeted, their traffic data for the most recent available month, and the third-party platform instructed to hand over user data to the MPA/ACE.

 

Domain	Content	Platform	Traffic*	Provider	Provider Type
MPA DMCA Subpoena Application (2:23-mc-00182)			*SimilarWeb Traffic Data (Visits per Month)
filmize.tv	Fast & Furious 9	Streaming	4.3m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
hinatasoul.com	Tokyo Revengers	Streaming	1.9m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
anitube.vip	Tokyo Revengers	Streaming	3.0m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy

Total Traffic Per Month: 9.2 million visits

 

Domain	Content	Platform	Traffic*	Provider	Provider Type
MPA DMCA Subpoena Application (2:23-mc-00184)			*SimilarWeb Traffic Data (Visits per Month)
mixdrop.lol	Fast & Furious 9	Streaming	713K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
mixdrop.club	Fast & Furious 9	Streaming	3.4m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
uqload.com	Minions 2	Streaming	275.6K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
uqload.io	Minions 2	Streaming	2.5m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
uupbom.com	Cruella	Streaming	2.4m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
upbam.org	Cruella	Streaming	210.5K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy

Total Traffic Per Month: 9.5 million visits

 

Domain	Content	Platform	Traffic*	Provider	Provider Type
MPA DMCA Subpoena Application (2:23-mc-00185)			*SimilarWeb Traffic Data (Visits per Month) ** Denotes ‘back-end’ domains
futemax.la sathoshinamoto.com**	It Chapter Two	Streaming	5.3m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
futemax.re sinalpublico.com**	Supernatural	Streaming	12.2m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
futemax.ink playertv.net**	Justice League	Streaming	874K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
canales.online	Big Bang Theory	Streaming	5.5m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
uupbom.com	Cruella	Streaming	2.4m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
upbam.org	Cruella	Streaming	210.5K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy

Total Traffic Per Month: 26.5 million visits

 

Domain	Content	Platform	Traffic*	Provider	Provider Type
MPA DMCA Subpoena Application (2:23-mc-00186) MPA DMCA Subpoena Application (2:23-mc-00188			*SimilarWeb Traffic Data (Visits per Month) ** Denotes ‘back-end’ domains
iptv-sharing.org ipfr.tv (M3U)**	The Lion King	IPTV	No Data	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
autoembed.to	A Quiet Place	Video Host	24.3K (N/A)	Tonic.to	Registry
animension.to	Spirited Away	Streaming	8.5m	Tonic.to	Registry
adjaranet.to	Frozen II	Streaming	3.7m	Tonic.to	Registry

Total Traffic Per Month: 12.2 million visits (accounted for in other subpoenas)

 

Domain	Content	Platform	Traffic*	Provider	Provider Type
MPA DMCA Subpoena Application (2:23-mc-00187)			*SimilarWeb Traffic Data (Visits per Month) ** Denotes ‘back-end’ domains
comando.la	The Batman	Torrent/Index	2.1m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
filmesmega.co	The Batman	Index/DDL	1.6m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
filmeviatorrents.org	The Batman	Torrent/Index	692K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
autoembed.to	A Quiet Place	Video Host	24.3K (N/A)	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
bombuj.si	A Quiet Place	Streaming	7.1m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
watchgameofthrones.co	Game of Thrones	Streaming	NoData	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
animefire.vip	Food Wars!	Streaming	6.8m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
gdrivelatino.net	The Batman	Index/Pay	301.8K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
animesonline.in	Tokyo Revengers	Streaming	258.4K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
cuevana-3.id	The Batman	Streaming	6.5m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
compucalitv.org	Elvis	Multi-Content	3.9m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
cinecalidad.com.mx	Encanto	Streaming	5.3m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
redecanais.zip	Encanto	Streaming	22.4m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
megatorrentsx.com.br	Encanto	Torrent/Index	348.9K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
megatorrentsx.com	Encanto	Torrent/Index	#visits	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
limontorrents.com limontorrent.com**	Encanto	Torrent/Index	92.8K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
mmfilmes.me	Encanto	Streaming/Pay	682.3K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
gogoanime2.org	Romantic Killer	Streaming	19.3M	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
9anime2.com	Romantic Killer/small>	Streaming	314.4K	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
animepahe.ru	Batman Ninja	Streaming	21.9m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
animeflix.live	Yasuke	Streaming	6.1m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
bstsrs.one	Big Bang Theory	Streaming	9.6m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
kickassanime.am	JoJo Advent.	Streaming	#visits	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
gozofinder.com	The Batman	Search Engine	9.9m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy
adjaranet.to	Frozen II	Streaming	3.7m	Cloudflare	CDN/Proxy

Total Traffic Per Month: 51.5 million visits

 

CompucaliTV.org has already informed its users that after a 13-year run online, it has thrown in the towel. According to a report from La Republica, a since-removed message on the homepage read, “This is not a goodbye, but a thank you. We regret to inform that the CompucaliTV site has closed.”

 

Former users have been saying their goodbyes on social media, with one perfectly encapsulating why the site was great – and why it was under pressure to shut down – in the same sentence.

 

“I downloaded Disney and Dreamworks movies in 1080p quality and with dual audio for the last 2 years, I’m going to miss this one, guys. RIP.”

 

 

On the back of reports that some users can still access the site depending on region, it’s worth noting that at least four Compucalitv look-a-like domains were registered in December, on top of another dozen or so already in existence.

Domain-Hopping, Compliance

This is just one small example of the complications faced by ACE on a daily basis. So-called domain-hopping has escalated to become almost an artform in some parts of the world, with a report from Japan earlier this year noting that some sites operated from Vietnam actually grow their traffic when jumping to new domains. That’s hardly the kind of news coalitions like ACE want to hear.

 

There are also signs that some platforms contacted by ACE are indicating some level of compliance and then acting in a way that suggests the complete opposite. If that’s indeed the case, history says there will be a price to pay for that at some point; maybe not this year, maybe not next, but it will come.

 

Eventually, all site operators get tired, sick, start a family, find other things more exciting or simply get bored. When it comes to piracy, the MPA never, ever get bored, and never get tired of setting an example when one is required.

 

Today, it’s common knowledge that IP-addresses and downloads of BitTorrent users can be easily monitored by tracking outfits.

 

This inherent transparency has fueled thousands of lawsuits against alleged video pirates, both in the U.S. and around the world.

 

In the United States, Strike 3 Holdings established itself as the absolute frontrunner in recent years. The company produces adult entertainment videos published under the brands ‘Blacked’, ‘Tushy’, and ‘Vixen’ made available from its own websites. If any of these videos are shared on pirate sites, Strike 3 takes action.

 

These lawsuits can be a lucrative business, especially when targeted defendants opt to swiftly settle the action for a few thousand dollars. The money comes on top of the deterrent factor, which is often cited by copyright holders as one of the main reasons to take action.

 

Legal pressure can deter the accused pirates and, perhaps, some of their neighbors too. On the whole, however, the copyright infringement problem is rather persistent, which is exemplified by Strike 3’s track record.

Raising the Bar

With the year in its final week, we decided to take a look at the number of file-sharing lawsuits filed in the United States in 2023. The data shows that Strike 3 Holdings has set a new record yet again.

 

 

From January 1 to today, Strike 3 submitted 3,465 complaints in various courts around the U.S., targeting “John Doe” subscribers. This is a new milestone; never before has a copyright holder filed this many lawsuits against alleged file-sharers in a single year.

 

For comparison, in 2017 all rightsholders combined filed 1,019 file-sharing cases. In the following years, this number increased mostly thanks to Strike 3, which set the previous record of 2,878 in 2022.

12,500+

Strike 3 filed its first case in 2017 and since then has submitted over 12,500 complaints at federal courts.

 

Strike 3 lawsuits filed per year
 

Strike 3 is currently responsible for most legal action against file-sharers in the United States. Other independent movie studios also file piracy-related lawsuits, but these are limited to a few dozen at most.

 

With this level of workload, it’s no surprise that most cases are resolved relatively swiftly. Of all lawsuits filed in the first half of the year, more than 2,000 have already been closed; that’s more than half. This happens when the parties reach an out-of-court settlement or if Strike 3 drops a complaint for other reasons.

Trial Canceled

Earlier this year there was some ‘excitement’ when one of Strike 3’s lawsuits appeared to be headed to trial. That was canceled after the adult entertainment company and the defendant settled their differences at the eleventh hour.

 

There was no clear winner in that case, but both sides were ultimately happy with the outcome. According to Strike 3’s attorney Christian Waugh, the goal of these cases isn’t to damage individual defendants. The company wants to protect its rights.

 

“The point of my client’s litigation is not personal or to harm any defendant, it is to protect its rights under the Copyright Act, which has been done in this case,” Waugh told us at the time.

 

Courts have also issued judgments in these cases in the past. This has resulted in a windfall for Strike 3 in some cases but, when Strike 3 filed a lawsuit against a 70+-year-old retired police officer, the tables were turned.

 

Overall, however, it seems likely that there’s a financial benefit to Strike 3’s rights protection efforts. If the lawsuits generated losses, they probably wouldn’t file thousands of complaints every year.

 

 

There’s no question that content creators should have the ability and means to protect their work.

 

Those who rely on easily copied images to generate income face a stark choice; allow third-parties to illegally profit from illicit copies that may even outrank the originals in Google search, or spend time and money fighting back.

 

For an increasing number of OnlyFans and Instagram models, hiring companies that offer cut-price DMCA takedown services may seem like the perfect solution. The reality is that cheap can come at a cost.

 

Reckless takedown practices, with creators’ names necessarily associated with them, are punishing other innocent creators by demanding that all record of their work is deindexed from Google search.

 

[NSFW] The takedown notices below contain explicit language

Artemis: Goddess of the Moon

As the crew of Artemis 2 prepare to become the first humans to fly to the moon since 1972, the possibilities of space travel are once again igniting imaginations globally. More than 92% of internet users who want to learn more about this historic mission and the program in general are statistically likely to use Google search.

 

Behind the scenes, however, the ability to find relevant content is under attack. Blundering DMCA takedown notices sent by a company calling itself DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. claim to protect the rights of an OnlyFans/Instagram model working under the name ‘Artemis’.

 

Instead, keyword-based systems that fail to discriminate between copyright-infringing content and that referencing the word Artemis in any other context, are flooding towards Google. They contain demands to completely deindex non-infringing, unrelated content, produced by innocent third parties all over the world.

A Typically Abusive Google Deindexing Demand

A recent deindexing demand dated December 13, 2022, lists DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. of Canada as the sender. The name of the content owner is redacted but the notice itself states that the company represents a content creator performing under the name Artemis.

The notice demands the removal of 3,617 URLs from Google search. If successful, those URLs would be completely unfindable by more than 92% of the world’s population who use that search engine. We don’t have the resources to check every URL so let’s begin by looking at a sample of the first 20 URLs in the notice and the content they relate to.

 

• Artemis 1 is (probably) a go on Saturday, 3 September (link)
• Light Start: Artemis 1 delayed (link)
• Light Start: Darth Vader retires, Artemis 1 (still) grounded (link)
• LEGO puts the Artemis space program in the spotlight in its latest sets (link)
• Spazio Tutto pronto per il “primo viaggio” del razzo lunare Artemis (link)
• SLS verso la rampa di lancio, si avvicina Artemis I (link)

 

At least 9 of the first 20 URLs in the notice demand the removal of non-infringing articles and news reports referencing the Artemis space program. None have anything to do with the content the sender claims to protect.

 

 

From a human perspective the demand for Google to deindex the third URL in the list is almost beyond words.

 

Published by The Villanova Law Institute, the article reports on Project Artemis, a Microsoft AI initiative that aims to prevent the grooming and exploitation of vulnerable children.

 

Other Abusive Takedowns

Sadly, the blunders detailed above just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Other publications also wrongfully targeted in this single notice include very well-known ones. Arguably, most if not all of these domains should be whitelisted; none are ever likely to publish images of an adult performer.

 

The BBC, Clubic, Coinmarket, AvaxGFX, Le Monde, El Pais, The Verge, The Star, The Street, La Presse, Rappler, Zeit, Globo, ORF, Astro Space, UK Government (gov.uk), YLE, Hackaday, Golem, CP24, Iowa College, Mars Society, New Atlas, and Global Fairs.

 

After a while, long lists of URLs can lose some of their impact so to demonstrate that real articles are being targeted for deindexing, a small visual sample of the articles published under the URLs in the takedown notice can be seen below.

 

 

Even more worrying is that the above examples were taken from the first 600 URLs in a single notice, leaving another 3,000 URLs to go in that notice alone. (Link to the notice courtesy of Lumen Database here)

DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc.

Theories as to who might own and/or operate DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. aren’t hard to find but the company does exist and is registered as a corporate entity in Canada.

 

Registered at the same address is a company with remarkably similar details. BranditScan is a corporate entity operating in exactly the same market offering similar if not identical services.

BranditScan has sent DMCA takedown notices to Google under three different notifier accounts.

 

One account sent takedown notices that requested the removal of 33,875 URLs, across 1,452 domains, on behalf of 53 copyright holders. A second account, 30,781, 1,328, and 28 respectively. A third account requested removal of 8,153 URLs, across 662 domains, on behalf of 28 copyright holders.

 

DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc., on the other hand, is listed under at least 60 accounts in Google’s transparency report, with most accounts sending between 1,000 and 4,500 takedown notices each. The main account for the company has sent massively more; over 51.6 million URLs requested for removal, across 58,431 domains, on behalf of 7,179 copyright holders.

No Lessons Learned

As reported in November 2023, DMCA Piracy Prevention began sending takedown notices to Tumblr at the beginning of the year and has since submitted over 300 complaints.

 

Unable to differentiate between copyright-infringing images of a model using the name ‘La Sirena’ and anything else using that name, the monitoring company demanded the removal of 90 Tumblr posts that matched a keyword search of “la sirena.” All of those posts were non-infringing and completely unrelated to the original content.

 

Tumblr’s takedown team rejected the notices, kept all the posts online, and added DMCA Piracy Protection to its ‘Hall of Shame’ instead.

 

“Copyright monitoring services should not flippantly report content entirely irrelevant to their clients’ content; that is an abuse of the DMCA,” Automattic noted at the time.

 

Unfortunately, DMCA abuse rarely has consequences for those behind it.

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

With no dragon-themed series in the mix, it was hard to predict this year’s winner. However, the data leave little room for doubt. HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ is the most pirated TV show of 2023.

 

Competition for the remaining slots was fierce, with several Disney+ series in contention. “The Mandalorian” eventually settled for second place, one spot higher than “Loki”, with newcomer “Ahsoka” not far behind.

 

What stands out most is that video subscription service content dominates the top ten. With the current streaming landscape being so fragmented, it appears that many people prefer to pirate instead of paying for ‘another’ subscription.

 

Interestingly, Netflix releases are noticeably absent. Without speculating too much, it seems likely that Netflix users are less likely to give up their subscriptions, as it’s the dominant streaming platform in most parts of the world.

 

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

 

—

 

Below we have compiled a list of the most-torrented TV shows worldwide released in 2023 (per episode). The ranking is estimated based on sample data from several sources, including I Know.

 

Most downloaded TV-shows on BitTorrent, 2023

rank	last year	show	network
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	The Last of Us	HBO
2	(…)	The Mandalorian	Disney+
3	(…)	Loki	Disney+
4	(…)	Ahsoka	Disney+
5	(…)	Secret Invasion	Disney+
6	(…)	Silo	Apple TV
7	(…)	Monarch: Legacy of Monsters	Apple TV
8	(…)	Tulsa King	Paramount+
9	(…)	Gen V	Amazon Prime
10	(…)	Ted Lasso	Apple TV

 

The exact nature of ‘Partners Against Piracy’ (PAP) can be a little disorientating at times.

 

In March 2020, the Kenya Copyright Board announced that it had launched the ‘Partners Against Piracy Campaign’ describing it as a “multi-stakeholder” awareness program.

 

The Copyright Board said that pirates “don’t pay for the goods or services that they utilize” and “hardly pay taxes and/or employ staff.” Broadly speaking, pirates were having a detrimental effect on the economy and that needed to change.

 

With legislation being tightened up, the campaign’s initial goal was to “sensitize the public on the changes in the law that support enforcement in the online environment.”

 

The sensitization program was supported by several PSA-style videos, including the one embedded directly below. “This is a collaboration of like minded corporate Industry associations and individual right holders to help fight piracy,” the Copyright Board added.

 

 

In 2022, after fighting unfavorable amendments to copyright law, then introducing site-blocking to Kenya to protect MultiChoice and indirectly the Premier League, some elements of Kenyan media were calling PAP a “lobby group” instead.

 

Given the alleged multi-billion annual losses to piracy, it’s hardly surprising that every possible tool was on the table.

 

PAP Targets Local ISP

PAP describes itself on social media platforms as a “multi-sectoral Coalition, of local and international Associations, Societies & Companies, representing Thousands of Creatives in Kenya and the World.” In common with its international counterparts – other anti-piracy groups fighting the same enemy – physically cracking down on illegal content suppliers is part of the overall strategy in Kenya.

 

According to local media reports, this week an operation headed by PAP, with assistance from the Kenya Police Cybercrime and Crime Scene Forensic Units, targeted a local internet service provider.

 

“This intervention has disrupted the illegal services provided to approximately 3,000 subscribers in the Kasarani-Mwiki- Santon areas, who were illegally accessing premium content, such as English Premier League (EPL), WWC and La Liga live sports through the WeCast App,” PAP said in a statement.

 

“The investigations revealed that the WeCast App is installed on the client’s mobile phone or digital television upon subscription to Lime fibre internet, where login details are provided by the perpetrators.”

What’s the WeCast App and What Does it Do?

The term ‘WeCast’ is often associated with Chromecast/Miracast-style HDMI dongles, which allow users to cast images and videos from phones and tablets to bigger screens. Media statements and reports this week offer no further detail beyond ‘WeCast App’ but a WeCast-branded product does exist that could be an ideal fit for the described scenario.

 

WeCast for Android is described as a companion app for the WeCast Media content server API and on Google Play is helpfully named WeCastKe, KE being the country code for Kenya. On its own the app is legal but useless; couple it with a remote server configured to provide content, it’s ideal for receiving IPTV streams and VOD library playback.

 

 

This WeCast product was marketed towards the hotel market at some point but regardless of location or content, functionality doesn’t change. Whether it’s the product referenced in the Lime fibre case remains to be seen, but software isn’t the key issue. Copyrighted content being distributed without a license appears to be the root of the allegations facing Lime fibre.

Two People Arrested

According to a statement released to the media, two people “linked” to Lime fibre were arrested at its Nairobi County office on suspicion of providing illicit streams.

 

Citing Kenya’s Copyright Act, one publication notes that copyright infringement can be a criminal offense punishable by a fine of up to 800,000 Kenyan Shillings (around US$5,100) and up to 10 years in prison.

 

In a statement published Thursday, Lime fibre said there had been “some confusion” regarding its association with the WeCast App. The ISP said it is “not directly involved in providing content through the WeCast App” and it does not “control or manage” content available on third-party applications.

 

Coincidences

A company called Lime Emerging Solutions operates Lime fibre and public records (including domain name records) link a person called Kahenya Kamunyu to both.

 

Whether there are one, two, or more people who share the same name in Kenya’s developing internet space, a specific Kahenya Kamunyu stands out as particularly interesting.

 

A publicly identifiable figure for over a decade, his internet development work – and what can only be described as a mission to disrupt the pay-TV market – has resulted in one Kahenya Kamunyu attracting a lot of attention.

 

In 2022, an article described him as a techpreneur who had successfully carved out a niche in the pay-TV sector. CNN listed him as one of Africa’s ’15 tech entrepreneurs to watch in 2014′ for his internet-based content streaming startup, Able Wireless.

 

Described as a “home-grown Netflix” it’s reported that the service was accessed via a Raspberry Pi-powered TV box. That’s a little different from the system allegedly offered by Lime fibre but nevertheless, it appears that the Mr. Kamunya at Able Wireless wanted to bring a streaming service to Kenya a little more quickly than some had anticipated.

 

While a few years old by now, an interview with Mr. Kamunya about his Able Wireless business plan is available on YouTube. In brief, the idea was to go ahead with the streaming service regardless of content licensing, to prove to the content companies that a market they didn’t believe existed, actually did exist.

 

“We are already putting money aside for content so if anybody wants to come suing us we’ll tell them that their money is sitting in an account somewhere. We have an open platform for open statistics, they can come get the money,” he said.

 

 

There’s little doubt that many entertainment industry insiders see online piracy as an existential threat.

 

The film business has been hit particularly hard, with movies still the most pirated entertainment category.

 

Several anti-piracy forces are working hard to address the challenge. This involves concrete actions to shut down piracy sites and services, for example, while stakeholders lobby for stricter legislation and harsher enforcement.

 

Luckily, some progress is being made as well. For example, earlier this year the UK-based Film Content Protection Agency (FCPA) handed out 25 awards to people who helped prevent film piracy incidents in movie theaters.

90% Pirated in Movie Theaters

According to FCPA Director Simon Brown, the sharp eyes of cinema staff prevented several piracy incidents. In fact, not a single leaked film could be traced back to UK or Irish movie theaters.

 

This makes UK cinemas a relative safe haven when compared to the rest of the world, where piracy is reportedly rampant. “90% of films pirated worldwide are sourced from cinemas,” FCPA reported.

 

It’s easy to gloss over these kinds of statistics but, in this instance, a few alarm bells could be heard. With a streaming-dominated movie industry, only a fraction of new films are shown on the silver screen. So how could it possibly be true that 90% of all pirated films come from theaters?

 

A short review of several pirate sites reveals that camcorded films are relatively rare today. The 90% figure is therefore grossly inaccurate, with the real number probably (just a guess) closer to 9%. That applies both to the number of releases and the volume of pirated downloads and streams.

 

To understand where this mistake originated we asked FCPA’s parent organization, FDA, for their source. Unfortunately, the group didn’t respond and another UK-based anti-piracy group was not able to provide more context either.

 

The MPA, meanwhile, said that it’s keeping an eye on the camcording problem but doesn’t have any recent data on the percentage of pirated films recorded in movie theaters.

Not a New Claim

Without an official response, we searched for other clues that might signal the origins of the claim. Luckily we didn’t have to look far to find relevant references as the “90%” statistic is regularly cited by rightsholders.

 

For example, UK anti-piracy group FACT mentioned it in a news release in 2016.

 

“With 90% of pirated films sourced directly from cinemas around the world, the Fight Film Theft programme is a vital element in protecting the UK film industry,” the group wrote.

 

 

That press release didn’t mention a source either. FACT’s statement was made in conjunction with the FDA, which frequently repeats the same statistic without further context.

2023, 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004…

The 90% figure didn’t suddenly appear in 2016 either. Follow-up searches took us back much further, including this reference from two years prior, where The Hollywood Reporter noted that, “MPAA president Bob Pisano said 90% of pirated films worldwide are the result of camcording.”

 

Again, it’s not clear where this number originates, but we’re getting closer. Back in 2004, the Motion Picture Association’s Regional Director, Dara MacGreevy, reportedly said that 90% of online films come from camcorder copies.

 

 

MacGreevy headed the European branch of the MPA and most 90% of references seem to point to the UK, which may be where the fire is. While we can’t reveal a specific source, it’s clear that statistics from two decades ago are no longer relevant today.

Chinese Whispers

And it gets more confusing too….

 

One of the earlier reports from 2004 is more specific than others. That statement, which comes from UK anti-piracy group FACT, doesn’t reference the 90% figure in the context of online piracy. It mentions it as a percentage of seized counterfeit DVDs instead.

 

“According to the Federation Against Copyright Theft, 90% of all pirate pre-release DVDs seized this year were filmed with a camcorder from the back of a cinema,” The Guardian reported.

 

 

Needless to say, “seized DVDs” is entirely different from “all pirated movies online”. Yet, both versions appeared in the media two decades ago, and the second one is still cited as an accurate statistic today.

 

Chinese whispers anyone?

 

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

 

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

 

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

Publishers vs. Internet Archive

The self-scanning service is different from the licensing deals other libraries enter into. Not all publishers are happy with IA’s approach which triggered a massive legal battle two years ago.

 

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

 

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

Support from Authors Alliance

IA doesn’t stand alone in this legal battle. As the week progressed, several parties submitted amicus curiae briefs to the court supporting IA’s library. This includes the Authors Alliance.

 

The Authors Alliance represents thousands of members, including two Nobel Laureates, a Poet Laureate of the United States, and three MacArthur Fellows. All benefit from making their work available to a broad public.

 

If IA’s lending operation is outlawed, the authors fear that their books would become less accessible, allowing the major publishers to increase their power and control.

 

The Alliance argues that the federal court failed to take the position of authors into account, focusing heavily on the publishers instead. However, the interests of these groups are not always aligned.

 

“Many authors strongly oppose the actions of the publishers in bringing this suit because they support libraries and their ability to innovate. Authors rely on libraries to reach readers and many are proud to have their works preserved and made available through libraries in service of the public.

 

“Because these publishers have such concentrated market power […], authors that want to reach wide audiences rarely have the negotiating power to retain sufficient control from publishers to independently authorize public access like that at issue here,” the Alliance adds.

 

This critique from the authors is not new. Hundreds of writers came out in support of IA’s digital book library at an earlier stage of this lawsuit, urging the publishers to drop their case.

 

 

The publishers didn’t listen to these concerns. They believe that IA’s library is disrupting the “ecosystem” and “market equilibrium” of ebook sales. However, the Authors Alliance now counters that the system is already out of whack, as publishers enjoy too much power.

 

“That ecosystem has long been out of balance, due not to the IA’s activities, but to these publishers’ leveraging of their power to insist on a marketplace in which they exercise almost absolute control over access, preservation, and research,” the Alliance notes.

 

According to the Authors Alliance, IA’s digital ebook library is a prime example of a service that should be permitted to operate as fair use, as it benefits both writers and readers.

Copyright Scholars Back IA

In a separate amicus brief, several prominent legal and copyright scholars, many of whom hold professor titles, raise similar arguments. They believe that IA’s lending system is not that different from the physical libraries that are an integral part of culture.

 

“Libraries have always been free under copyright law to lend materials they own as they see fit. This is a feature of copyright law, not a bug,” the brief reads.

 

What is new here, is that publishers now assert full control over how their digital books are treated. Instead of allowing libraries to own copies, they have to license them, which makes it impossible to add them to the permanent archive.

 

“The major publishers refuse to sell digital books to libraries, forcing them to settle for restrictive licenses of digital content rather than genuine ownership. Moreover, publishers insist they can prevent libraries from scanning their lawfully purchased physical books and lending the resulting digital copies.”

 

Some of the names included
 

The scholars see IA’s library as fair use and note that the lower court ignored the long history of nonprofit library lending. It placed too much emphasis on the interests of publishers, largely ignoring the public benefits.

More Support Comes In

Thus far, the Court of Appeals has received four amicus briefs in support of IA’s library. In addition to the two mentioned above, others include a joint submission from the Center for Democracy & Technology, Library Freedom Project and Public Knowledge.

 

These groups also stress that the court focused too heavily on the publishers’ bottom line, while failing to properly take the rights of consumers into account.

 

“The district court should have more carefully considered the socially beneficial purposes of library-led CDL, which include protecting patrons’ ability to access digital materials privately, and the harm to copyright’s public benefit of disallowing libraries from using CDL.”

 

This sentiment is shared in the fourth amicus brief from information scholars and historians Kevin L. Smith and Will Cross, who also argue that publishers have too much power as it is.

 

The scholars believe that IA’s scan-and-lend library is a prime example of fair use, placing the interests of all stakeholders more closely into balance.

 

“Here, market failure is evident: one side (the publishers) has such a dominant position that they control all the terms of any sale, without any countervailing forces to balance the market.

 

“Fair use was designed to address precisely this type of market failure. Thus, CDL should be upheld under fair use. Otherwise, a decision against CDL would harm the public mission of libraries and perpetuate the existing market failure,” they add.

 

With no shortage of support for the Internet Archive, the stakes of this legal battle are clear. Thus far, the publishers have yet to file their response, but it’s likely that they will also receive support from third parties.

 

—

 

The amicus briefs cited in this article are all available below (pdf)

 

– Authors Alliance
– Copyright scholars
– CDT, Library Freedom Project, and Public Knowledge
– Kevin L. Smith and Will Cross

 

Those who stream content illegally online are regularly portrayed as generating huge profits at the expense of legitimate content owners. In broad terms it’s an accurate summary; pirates invest nothing in the creative process and therefore risk none of their own time or money.

 

What pirates do risk, in some cases for surprisingly little profit, is legal action in both civil and criminal courts. It’s a roll of the dice a surprising number are still prepared to take, a French farmworker from Vienne, for example. Between 2019 and 2020, the man illegally streamed content owned by Canal+ which attracted 1.495 million visits, the broadcaster claimed.

Criminal Conviction, Civil Action

In May 2023, these streaming activities (mainly live football matches) earned the man a three-month suspended prison sentence in a criminal case. Suspension meant the defendant didn’t lose his freedom but with a civil case to answer, still faced losing money, probably on a massive scale.

 

Canal+ didn’t disappoint predictions. Maintaining a long tradition of filing a telephone number-sized claim, the broadcaster took the estimated 1.495 million visits to the platform, multiplied by a monthly legitimate subscription cost of €109, then weighted by 15%, the estimated audience penetration rate of Canal+.

 

Arriving at an amount just over €7,177,000, the broadcaster tacked moral damages on top and demanded all advertising revenue generated by the man during the 2019-2020 period; roughly €29,900, give or take.

French Court Hands Down its Decision

This week the Poitiers Judicial Court (Tribunal judiciaire de Poitiers) handed down its decision.

 

According to La Nouvelle Republique, the court awarded Canal+ just €56,500, comprised of €50,000 compensation for loss, the requested moral damages amount divided by ten, plus just €5,000 of the €29,937 generated from advertising.

 

A note in the judgment indicates that formulating an accurate potential losses claim was unachievable.

 

“It appears that carrying out a mathematical calculation of SA Canal Plus’s loss of opportunity proves impossible,” the judgment notes.

More Risk: To Appeal or Not

The only remaining question is whether either party will appeal. On balance, an appeal by the defendant would make little sense. For Canal+ there’s a deterrent component to consider, hence the huge initial claim.

 

In practical terms, if a €60,000 award doesn’t deter would-be pirates, double the amount probably won’t either. Nobody ever goes into these things expecting to get caught.

 

However, if an appeal went on to uphold the €60,000 award, some might consider that helpful. After being scrutinized twice, the amount could be seen as a more predictable guideline, rather than the unpredictable outlier one-off it currently is.

 

People who pirate movies may be more likely to show psychopath traits; they are not immune to seasonal traditions.

 

As the days get shorter, downloads of specific pirated movies start to increase. This includes Christmas classics such as Home Alone, The Grinch, and Elf.

 

In 2022 we revealed that Home Alone is by far the most pirated Christmas classic and a year later, that hasn’t changed. As a follow-up, we now take a closer look at the seasonal download, reaching an unexpected conclusion.

Hark! The Downloads Spike

After sifting through weeks of torrent download data with help from Iknow, we can conclude that interest in Home Alone starts to pick up in mid-November. By early December, the average downloads per day in our sample had already doubled.

 

The chart below shows a gradual increase with temporary download peaks during the weekend, when people typically pirate more content overall. The seasonal uptrend doesn’t apply to classic movies without a Christmas theme, however.

 

Home Alone downloads increase (2023)
 

The recent sample includes data up to December 20, before the real peak in downloads takes place. To get a more complete picture we also look at last year’s stats around Christmas.

Last Christmas

In 2022, a similar seasonal spike could be observed, with an initial peak on Christmas Day, as expected. But that wasn’t the end of it; after the 25th downloads picked up again, reaching a new high on the last day of the year.

 

Home Alone downloads last year
 

These types of trends are relatively stable. Home Alone downloads through torrent sites also peaked on the 31st of December in 2021 and 2020, and they are expected to do the same this year. Pirates are also creatures of habit it seems.

 

That also means that Home Alone is unlikely to be replaced as the ultimate Christmas pirate classic. The Grinch is this year’s runner-up but, with less than half of the downloads, it doesn’t come close.

 

New film releases tend to draw more downloads than classics, with “Silent Night” being in the lead in that department. However, that doesn’t last and 2022’s favorite “Spirited” already loses out to Home Alone by a wide margin this year.

 

—

 

All data reported here are estimated based on a large sample of millions of global daily BitTorrent connections. These numbers are not exact nor do they include other forms of piracy, such as pirate streaming sites and direct downloads.

 

 

Developing copyright law tends to go in one direction and with most social media platforms today showing less willingness to fight, some types of user-generated content may be in for a more restricted ride.

 

On Wednesday, NASCAR fanatic and popular YouTuber Brock Beard sounded dejected in a post published on X. Two screenshots, featuring copyright claims against a long list of his older videos, were headed by, “I’m getting too old for this.”

 

By the end of the day, he probably felt 21 again.

“NASCAR Community in Shock”

An article on Essentially Sports reporting on the complaints begins by stressing the importance of the NASCAR community. Whether at the track itself or discussing the sport online, fans are an integral part of the experience. When they’re happy, everyone is happy, and when Brock Beard suffers hard times, his fans are right there with him.

 

So what was Brock Beard too old for exactly, and why were his fans in shock?

 

According to the report, the YouTube copyright claims threaten Beard’s social media presence. While Beard is also the founder and editor of NASCAR fan-site Lastcar.info, a social media exodus could damage his ability to stay close to his fans while doing what he loves; putting out popular videos, one of which reportedly attracted a million views.

Popular Content vs. Copyright Claims

Copyright claims come in all shapes and sizes but in general terms, genuine claims and blatantly bogus claims can often be verified in a few seconds, at least to the standard required by the DMCA. That should provide fairly clear guidance on whether content should’ve been taken down or left online.

 

The broad space between these two extremes is an entirely different matter and on YouTube, things can become even more complicated. Content ID, for example, can allow infringing content to stay online, when previously a claim would’ve seen the content taken down. As reproduced in the image below, all claims posted to Twitter show that the allegedly infringing videos were considered unsuitable for monetization.

At least as far as the truncated titles are useful, the videos for which monetization isn’t allowed were not taken down from YouTube. Why Sears Point Is Awesome, Johnny and The Fast White Car, and Darrell Waltrip’s Victory Tour 2000, are among those most easily identified. All three were uploaded over three years ago and judging by Beard’s reaction, the monetization ban was probably something new.

Nature of the Videos

With running times of 45 to 56 minutes, these videos are essentially fan-made documentaries that clearly involved significant effort, not to mention expert knowledge. Importantly, NASCAR fans find them engaging and entertaining; they actually enhance their enjoyment of the sport.

 

The videos feature original NASCAR race footage, obtained from official broadcasts or recordings of those broadcasts, accompanied by a running commentary, presumably provided by Brock Beard himself. In the descriptions of the videos are detailed credits, with some linking to spreadsheets crediting dozens of sources on YouTube from where the clips used in the documentaries were obtained.

 

Why the documentaries were left alone for three years is typically a matter for the copyright owner. However, a thread on Twitter suggests that NASCAR’s copyright claims are affecting others too, with one user suggesting that the claims may be linked to NASCAR Productions’ new state-of-the-art facility which is dedicated to content creation.

 

Ultimately, the reasons for the claims are unimportant; copyright owners have the right to take action against unauthorized use of their content whenever they like, albeit with a few exceptions.

What About Fair Use?

Whether the use of the NASCAR copyrighted content enjoys protection under the doctrine of fair use is a matter for a court to decide and for hardcore gamblers to speculate on.

 

Google’s copying of 11,500 lines of Oracle’s code ultimately concluded in favor of the former while Donald Trump has managed to stretch out his fair use defense, concerning 40 seconds of the song Electric Avenue, for more than three years.

 

That being said, the first factor of fair use – the purpose and character of the use – balances various facts, including whether there was a commercial component to the use. While not conclusive in its own right, a commercial component tends to weigh against a finding of fair use.

Could’ve Been So Much Worse

So to sum up, the copyright claims filed against the numerous videos didn’t cost Brock Beard his YouTube account, they simply notified him that the videos wouldn’t generate revenue moving forward. While that wasn’t well-received, the all-important videos are alive and well.

 

From the perspective of a regular fan simply passing by on YouTube, nothing has been lost. If there are concerns about revenue being denied moving forward, that raises questions of whether commercial use of content requires an official license, or whether gambling on a fair use defense is a reliable option when things go wrong.

 

In light of some other rightsholders deleting videos resulting in immediate strikes, and entire accounts being shut down as a result, things could’ve been so much worse. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, things could hardly get much better.

Such a positive outcome will be welcomed by fans of the sport and if NASCAR is happy too, what’s not to like?

 

Errors, potentially. But everyone makes those.

 

The UFC has promoted mixed martial arts fights for three decades. Today, however, the company is also fighting a battle of its own against online piracy.

 

Unauthorized views of UFC events have taken off in recent years. The organization is trying to put a stop to these pirated livestreams, but that’s proving to be a drawn-out battle.

 

Last week, General Counsel Riché McKnight shared UFC’s concerns with lawmakers during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing. While site-blocking discussions dominated the hearing, UFC’s comments are worth highlighting separately.

“Watch UFC Free”

McKnight’s testimony describes the piracy problem as widespread and costly. Pirated livestreams can get millions of views and these free alternatives result in lower subscriptions revenues.

 

The problem isn’t limited to people who record or stream UFC events on their phones. It regularly involves organized crime groups that tap into source signals and rebroadcasts them to profit from the advertising views they generate.

 

“Watch UFC Free”

 

These people also brazenly advertise on social media platforms to attract viewers to their pirate websites, with slogans on social media sites such as “Watch UFC Free,” McKnight notes.

 

“[T]hey will then post those livestreams and recorded videos to those sites, and those videos will often collect hundreds of thousands or millions of views before they are taken down.”

“Expeditious”

According to UFC, several legislative hurdles prevent the company from being more efficient on the takedown front. They include the relatively ‘slow’ response time to DMCA takedown notices.

 

Under U.S. copyright law, online services are required to “expeditiously” respond to takedown notices if they want to keep their safe harbor protections. However, the law doesn’t define what the term expeditious entails.

 

“[Online services] often will claim to us that they are removing content expeditiously even when they allow a livestream to stay up for the entirety of a UFC event or remove recorded content days later,” Knight explains.

 

It can sometimes take hours or days before online services take action. This is a problem, since the value of UFC recordings and live streams diminishes quickly after the event is over.

 

The UFC calculated that for each event, it sends an average of 1,173 takedown requests for pirated livestreams and an additional 2,246 takedown requests for recorded content. 26% of the pirated livestreams remained online an hour after the takedown was sent. For recorded UFC content, 74% was still up after an hour.

Instant Takedowns

UFC suggests updating the legislative language to clarify the term “expeditious” as that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

 

“This issue can be easily remedied by adding a statutory definition to clarify what ‘expeditiously’ means for the purposes of determining whether OSPs are eligible for a safe harbor from liability based on the infringing conduct of their users.

 

“Specifically, we believe the law should be clear that, for live events specifically, ‘expeditiously’ means ‘instantaneously’ or ‘near instantaneously’,” McKnight adds.

 

 

Replacing it with ‘near instantaneously’ still doesn’t set a specific time limit, of course. But it does suggest that taking more than a day to process a livestreaming takedown notice is too long.

Repeat Infringers

UFC’s General Counsel points out that more clarifications are welcome. The DMCA currently requires online services to terminate accounts of “repeat infringers” in “appropriate circumstances”. Neither of these terms are specified.

 

McKnight doesn’t offer a concrete definition but stresses that online services can take stricter actions against people who repeatedly post infringing content. That includes those who register new accounts.

 

“This could involve more stringent account verification measures, which some OSPs have already successfully implemented to reduce the prevalence of spam accounts,” he notes.

 

“Future legislation could make clear that it is not enough to simply terminate a specific account and then turn a blind eye when the same user creates one or more additional accounts.”

Site Blocking

The aforementioned suggestions all rely on the assumption that online services are complying with U.S. law, but that’s not a given. The most notorious streaming platforms are designed to ignore copyright concerns.

 

For that group, site blocking would be a solution. UFC supports the calls from other rightsholders who believe that U.S. law should be updated to allow courts to issue “no fault” injunctions. These would make it possible to compel ISPs to block pirate sites, without making them liable.

 

“Under this sort of ‘site-blocking’ framework, copyright owners like UFC could address the harm caused by these websites—enabling U.S.-based users to easily view pirated content—without the existing hurdles to effective enforcement actions against such sites,” McKnight concludes.

 

These suggestions are all noted by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. Combined with input from other stakeholders, it will then decide whether legislative changes are needed.

 

—

 

A copy of the full written testimony from UFC General Counsel Riché McKnight is available here (pdf)

 

Pirate IPTV services are a major cause for concern among broadcasters globally. In Italy, illegal streaming has grown in relevance to become part of a nationwide conversation.

 

Fueled by a national passion for top-tier football matches, viewable only by those who can afford a subscription, pirate IPTV services and other illegal streaming platforms found fertile ground in Italy.

 

New law passed during the summer, which increased penalties for piracy while supporting a new automated blocking system, sent the clearest possible message. Regardless of cost, fans will find money for legal subscriptions, but only when illicit access no longer exists.

Police Announce Major Action Against IPTV Operation

Law enforcement agencies shared information with the press on Tuesday revealing a “vast operation” against audiovisual piracy in Italy. State Police, on the orders of the Anti-Mafia Directorate at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Catania, executed nationwide search and seizure actions against members of a “transnational criminal organization.”

 

Investigations directed by the Prosecutor’s Office in Catania, and initiated by the Catania Cyber Security Operations Center in coordination with the Postal Police of Rome, are said to have confirmed the existence of a criminal organization involved in the illicit supply of premium TV and on-demand video.

 

By offering illegal access to content owned by Sky, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, and Netflix, Postal Police say the group generated profits (not turnover) of several million euros per month.

 

The operation revealed yesterday targeted 21 suspected members of the organization active in Catania, Messina, Siracusa, Cosenza, Alessandria, Napoli, Salerno, Reggio Emilia, Pisa, Lucca, and Livorno e Bari. The Prosecutor’s Office accuses these individuals of various offenses, including transnational criminal association, damage/corruption of information (anyone who destroys, deteriorates, erases, alters or suppresses data or computer programs), unauthorized access to an IT system, and computer fraud.

IPTV Piracy Pyramid

Police say the organization was found to be organized in a ‘hierarchical manner’ with members fulfilling “distinct and very precise” roles. Promotors of the service were stationed throughout Italy and abroad.

 

“In order to evade investigations, the suspects made use of encrypted messaging applications, fictitious identities and false documents; the latter were also used for the registration of telephone accounts, credit cards, television subscriptions and server rental,” an announcement from the Postal Police reads.

 

“The presence on various social platforms of channels, groups, accounts, forums, blogs and profiles, were found to advertise the sale, on the national territory, of streams, panels and monthly subscriptions for the illegal viewing of audiovisual content which can also be used through numerous illegal ‘live streaming’ sites.”

Broadcasters, Anti-Piracy Groups, Welcome the Action

Broadcaster Sky Italia congratulated Italy’s Postal Police on a “new and important” anti-piracy operation.

 

“The police have our full support in their law enforcement activity, which over the years has become increasingly valuable to guarantee legality, to protect all those who legitimately use their favorite content,” said CEO Andrea Duilio.

 

“Countering this criminal phenomenon is a commitment that involves us all and now, thanks to the new anti-piracy law, we can do it even more effectively.”

 

Federico Bagnoli Rossi, President of anti-piracy group FAPAV, also welcomed a “very important” operation, describing it as a “hard blow towards those criminal mentalities that manage illegal IPTV and illicit live streaming platforms, whose revenues finance criminal acts of various types.”

What Wasn’t Announced

For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, press releases issued by various police forces made no mention of any arrests Tuesday. The only thing reported in respect of the 21 people allegedly targeted is that they’re currently under investigation. For comparison, a Postal Police statement following an unrelated operation clearly reported 28 arrests in that matter.

 

Among the information that was made available to the public, police noted that the group used false documents to rent servers. Other than that, however, there are no reports of servers or any other devices being seized. While it’s possible that for operational reasons details are being withheld, based on the available information it seems more likely that the 21 ‘under investigation’ are subscription sellers and/or resellers, rather than those actually running a pirate IPTV service.

“Inhibiting the Flow of Illegal Streams”

Claims that the authorities were reportedly able to block or “inhibit the flow” of illegal streams are further detailed in a La Sicilia report. The publication says that officers of the Postal Police were able to “seize 13 control panels” servicing “over 50 thousand users”. This appears to be a reference to reseller panels and would explain how police were able to disconnect subscribers serviced through those interfaces.

 

Finally, it’s worth highlighting how the group’s earnings are being reported. La Sicilia reports that given the vast audience serviced by the platform, this “guaranteed ‘six-figure’ earnings to the managers of the illegal online piracy network.” In a statement issued by the Postal Police, it’s alleged that the group generated profits (not turnover) of “several million euros per month.”

 

However, a separate statement published on the website of the State Police (Polizia di Stato) claims an even bigger amount. According to that report, the group generated monthly profits of tens of millions of euros.

 

In July 2022, popular IPTV service provider SmoothStreams suddenly went offline in somewhat unusual circumstances.

 

In the weeks that followed, evidence emerged that the Canada-based service had been targeted after Bell Media, Rogers Media, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and Warner Bros. filed a copyright infringement complaint at Canada’s Federal Court.

 

On July 14, 2022, after obtaining an injunction and an Anton Piller order, which authorized the plaintiffs to search and seize evidence from premises linked to the defendants, dozens of receivers, encoders, and rows of servers were seized from three locations.

 

Other aspects of the Anton Piller order, which granted the plaintiffs extraordinary powers and threatened serious consequences for any non-compliant defendant, faced considerable resistance.

 

SmoothStreams before being dismantled

 

Among other things, the alleged operators of SmoothStreams, Marshall Macciacchera and Antonio Macciacchera (son and father respectively), were required to disclose specific technical and financial information about the service’s operations. Marshall failed to fully comply with the order; Antonio simply refused to read it.

 

From the beginning, Antonio denied any involvement in the SmoothStreams operation, a position he maintains today.

Contempt of Court

While both defendants faced contempt of court proceedings, Antonio’s case progressed more quickly than his co-defendant’s.

 

An order issued by Associate Judge Benoit Duchesne on July 21, 2022, concerned ten charges pertaining to alleged breaches of the Anton Piller order issued by Justice Rochester on June 28, 2022. Chief Justice Paul S. Crampton subsequently found that Antonio was in contempt of four of the ten charges in that order. The final six all faced issues.

 

In respect of five charges, Chief Justice Crampton found that while the plaintiffs had previously tendered evidence in the proceeding before Justice Rochester, no evidence was presented in this particular hearing to connect Antonio to any of the technical and financial information listed in Judge Duchesne’s order.

 

The final charge also failed after no evidence was produced to show that Antonio concealed anything described in Justice Rochester’s interim order.

 

While logic suggests that four charges must be better than ten, contempt of court can be expensive, especially since this proceeding relates to an amount to be awarded to the plaintiffs, with the Court to impose additional penalties later.

Bell, Rogers, and Hollywood Studios Demand Big Money

As detailed in an order handed down by Chief Justice Crampton on Friday, the plaintiffs demanded an immediate payment of CAD$121,124.74 (US$90,440), comprised of $100,038.55 (US$74,695) in legal fees (100% of those incurred), HST (sales tax) of CAD$8,670 (US$6,473), and disbursements of CAD$12,416.19 (US$9,270).

 

Antonio’s legal team proposed a much lower amount of CAD$10,000 (US$7,466) in total, arguing that the amount was appropriate in light of the six failed charges and any subsequent amount to be imposed by the Court.

 

In his order, Chief Justice Crampton notes that Antonio continues to insist he had no role in SmoothStreams. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs and the Court still had to “come to grips with a complex record” and an allegedly illegal business Justice Lafrenière previously described as “highly sophisticated” and “lucrative.”

 

While agreeing that the plaintiffs’ failure to present evidence amounted to a “misstep” weighing in favor of a reduced award, a pro rata 60% reduction would not be appropriate since persistent refusals to cooperate “completely frustrated” the execution of the order.

“Flagrantly Disobeyed” and “Defied the Court”

“[B]y steadfastly refusing to permit the Independent Supervising Solicitor (ISS) […] to enter his home and execute the Rochester Interim Order, Antonio flagrantly disobeyed that Order and defied the Court.

 

“He also completely frustrated an important purpose of that Order, which was to prevent the circumvention of the Court’s processes by pre-empting the destruction or removal of evidence, or the shifting of funds beyond the Court’s reach,” Chief Justice Crampton’s order reads.

 

“In these circumstances, he ought not to be able to indirectly and fully benefit from the fact that his blatant defiance of the Rochester Interim Order entirely prevented [the ISS] from establishing the nexus between Antonio and the six charges.”

 

After weighing the factors for and against, including that Antonio “deliberately deprived the plaintiffs of the element of surprise,” the Judge found that a 25% reduction would be appropriate.

 

“The public interest in fostering compliance with court orders provides a strong rationale for the ‘customary practice in contempt cases to impose costs on a solicitor-client basis’. This consideration weighs in favor of awarding the Plaintiffs their full costs, less the adjustments discussed above.”

 

As per Chief Justice Crampton’s order (in Canadian dollars) handed down on December 15, 2023:

 

The Defendant Antonio Macciacchera shall pay to the Plaintiffs, forthwith, lump sum costs of $94,906.19, comprising reasonable legal fees of $73,000, plus HST of $6,326.67 on those legal fees, plus reasonable disbursements of $12,416.19.

Conversion: Lump sum US$70,863, legal fees US$54,506, HST US$4,723, disbursements US$12,416

 

In 2020, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House sued the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement, equating its ‘Open Library’ to a pirate site.

 

IA’s library is a non-profit operation that scans physical books, which can then be lent out to patrons in an ebook format. Patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house, with technical restrictions that prevent copying.

 

Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, only one patron at a time can rent a digital copy of a physical book for a limited period.

Mass Copyright Infringement or Fair Use?

Not all rightsholders are happy with IA’s scanning and lending activities. The publishers are not against libraries per se, nor do they object to ebook lending, but ‘authorized’ libraries typically obtain an official license or negotiate specific terms. The Internet Archive has no license.

 

The publishers see IA’s library as a rogue operation that engages in willful mass copyright infringement, directly damaging their bottom line. As such, they want it taken down permanently.

 

The Internet Archive wholeheartedly disagreed with the copyright infringement allegations; it offers a vital service to the public, the Archive said, as it built its legal defense on protected fair use.

 

After weighing the arguments from both sides, New York District Court Judge John Koeltl sided with the publishers. In March, the court granted their motion for summary judgment, which effectively means that the library is indeed liable for copyright infringement.

 

The judgment and associated permanent injunction effectively barred the library from reproducing or distributing digital copies of the ‘covered books’ without permission from rightsholders. These restrictions were subject to an eventual appeal, which was announced shortly thereafter.

Internet Archive Files Appeal Brief

Late last week, IA filed its opening brief at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to reverse the lower court’s judgment. The library argues that the court erred by rejecting its fair use defense.

 

Whether IA has a fair use defense depends on how the four relevant factors are weighed. According to the lower court, these favor the publishers but the library vehemently disagrees. On the contrary, it believes that its service promotes the creation and sharing of knowledge, which is a core purpose of copyright.

 

“This Court should reverse and hold that IA’s controlled digital lending is fair use. This practice, like traditional library lending, furthers copyright’s goal of promoting public availability of knowledge without harming authors or publishers,” the brief reads.

 

A fair use analysis has to weigh the interests of both sides. The lower court did so, but IA argues that it reached the wrong conclusions, failing to properly account for the “tremendous public benefits” controlled digital lending offers.

No Competition

One of the key fair use factors at stake is whether IA’s lending program affects (i.e., threatens) the traditional ebook lending market. IA uses expert witnesses to argue that there’s no financial harm and further argues that its service is substantially different from the ebook licensing market.

 

IA offers access to digital copies of books, which is similar to licensed libraries. However, the non-profit organization argues that its lending program is not a substitute as it offers a fundamentally different service.

 

“For example, libraries cannot use ebook licenses to build permanent collections. But they can use licensing to easily change the selection of ebooks they offer to adapt to changing interests,” IA writes.

 

The licensing models make these libraries more flexible. However, they have to rely on the books offered by commercial aggregators and can’t add these digital copies to their archives.

 

“Controlled digital lending, by contrast, allows libraries to lend only books from their own permanent collections. They can preserve and lend older editions, maintaining an accurate historical record of books as they were printed.

 

“They can also provide access that does not depend on what Publishers choose to make available. But libraries must own a copy of each book they lend, so they cannot easily swap one book for another when interest or trends change,” IA adds.

Stakes are High

The arguments highlighted here are just a fraction of the 74-page opening brief, which goes into much more detail and ultimately concludes that the district court’s judgment should be reversed.

 

In a recent blog post, IA founder Brewster Kahle writes that if the lower court’s verdict stands, books can’t be preserved for future generations in digital form, in the same way that paper versions have been archived for centuries.

 

“This lawsuit is about more than the Internet Archive; it is about the role of all libraries in our digital age. This lawsuit is an attack on a well-established practice used by hundreds of libraries to provide public access to their collections.

 

“The disastrous lower court decision in this case holds implications far beyond our organization, shaping the future of all libraries in the United States and unfortunately, around the world,” Kahle concludes.

 

—

 

A copy of the Internet Archive’s opening brief, filed at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “The Family Plan” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 18 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	The Family Plan	6.3 / trailer
2	(…)	Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour	8.2 / trailer
3	(1)	Killers of the Flower Moon	7.9 / trailer
4	(2)	Oppenheimer	8.5 / trailer
5	(…)	Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget	6.5 / trailer
6	(4)	The Marvels	5.9 / trailer
7	(…)	The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes	7.1 / trailer
8	(3)	The Creator	6.6 / trailer
9	(6)	Leave The World Behind	6.7 / trailer
10	(5)	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	7.9 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Early December the English Premier League announced a new broadcasting rights deal worth a staggering £6.7 billion (US$8.5 billion).

 

Running for four seasons from the 2025-26 campaign, the deal will see broadcasters Sky and TNT take the live games and the BBC continue with its popular highlights package.

 

Amazon, which has been licensing Premier League games since 2019, hoping to drive customers towards its Prime service, wasn’t awarded a single match. In parallel, UK tabloid Daily Mail has taken a sudden and unusual interest in Amazon Firestick devices during the last two weeks.

 

Published every few days with a similar theme, the goal appears one of piracy deterrence. Unfortunately, regularly associating a legitimate brand with negative imagery is unlikely to have much effect on the pirate market and won’t boost sales of legitimate products either.

 

Since piracy rarely responds to negativity but loses market share as legal offers become more attractive, the Premier League’s decision to allow transmission of 270 fixtures in the new package instead of the current 200, is a step in the right direction. Still no matches available during the ‘3pm blackout’ or adjustments to pricing in the consumer direction, but the BBC now has a license to show highlights for all 380 matches.

 

Other ‘broadcasters’ will show all 380 matches in full, with no license at all.

All Matches, No Licenses: Premier League Targets Pirate Sites

Sky’s deal with the Premier League means the broadcaster now pays £5.95 million per match. Pirate streaming sites, meanwhile, pay the Premier League absolutely nothing and since that has a devaluing effect on the matches already sold, enforcement is the inevitable outcome.

 

In a letter dated December 14, 2023, Texas law firm Hagan Noll & Boyle informed Cloudflare that users of its “system or network” are infringing the Premier League’s copyrighted works, through dozens of websites, using an even greater number of domain names. Where relevant, the list also includes ‘backend URLs’ from where actual streams may (or may not) be served.

A small sample of the pirate domains

 

The list includes the popular crackstreams.me, which according to SimilarWeb data enjoyed 8.6 million visitors in the three-month period of September, October and November 2023.

 

In common with many other domains in the list, a second domain is listed alongside crackstreams.me, indicating that visitors are redirected after visiting the initial domain.

 

For crackstreams.me, the secondary ‘redirect’ domain is ronaldo7.io, which had around 750,000 visits during the same three-month period. While that’s significantly lower than crackstreams.me, visitors from the UK account for 75% of ronaldo7.io’s traffic, versus 25% for its redirection ‘partner’.

 

Screenshots similar to those shown below form part of the evidence presented to Cloudflare, 103 pages in total.

 

crackstreams.me (left), ronaldo7.io (right)

 

Judging by the volume of gambling advertising on some domains, coupled with signs that sites are targeting countries including Thailand and China, the Premier League clearly has challenges ahead. Some may even be solvable in the United States, if it gets lucky with Cloudflare.

Notification Under 17 U.S.C. § 512

There are two reasons for sending a notification to Cloudflare under 17 U.S.C. § 512. As a first step, the Premier League would like Cloudflare to take the infringing content down.

 

“Cloudflare is asked to remove or disable access to Premier League’s copyrighted works, which, based on the infringement that has occurred to date through the websites and domain names identified above, will continue to be infringed in this same manner throughout the Premier League season,” the letter reads.

 

Whether Cloudflare can or will comply in some or all cases is unclear. However, until Cloudflare is sent a compliant DMCA takedown notice, Premier League can’t follow up with the next step.

DMCA Subpoena Application Filed at U.S. Court

Through the same Texas law firm, on December 14 the Premier League filed an application for a DMCA subpoena. This allows a copyright owner (or a person authorized to act on their behalf) to request a clerk of any United States district court to issue a subpoena to a service provider (in this case Cloudflare) for the purpose of identifying an alleged infringer.

 

The notification sent to Cloudflare identifying the alleged infringers and locations of the infringing content, a proposed subpoena, and a sworn declaration that the subpoena will only be used to protect Premier League’s rights, is usually enough for the clerk to sign off on a request.

 

Kids’ presents and turkey or gambling with strangers?

 

When that happens, Cloudflare will be required to hand over the following information for the domains listed below, and/or the ‘backend URLs’ listed in the notification to Cloudflare (not listed below).

 

Information sufficient to identify the alleged infringers of the matches described in the attached notification, which would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information, account updates, and account history.

 

The deadline in the proposed subpoena is December 29, 2023

 

The list of domains and redirection domains reads as follows:

 

88zhibo.me
222live.net
720pstream.me
720pstream.nu
7mscorethai.live
bestsolaris.com
bgibola5.xyz
bgibola77.live
cakhia51.tv
cakhia22.live
crackstreams.me
ronaldo7.io
dooball168-hd.com
dooball2you.com
dooballx.com
duball356.com
futebolplayhd.com
futemax.app
futemax.la
livenettvapk.live/android/
livehd7.cc
as.livehd72.live
mmfootballgroup.com
mmfootball.cryptken.com
multicanais.fans
pawastreams.top
pawastreams.info
rakhoi4.tv
rapidstreamz.tv
rojadirectaenvivo.club
rojadirectaenvivo.nl
soccerlive.app
nbastreamlinks.net
soccerstreamlinks.com
soccertv4k.com
socolive.news
socolive.fan
sportsurge.club
streamonsport.ru
strims.top
tvmob.net
tvron.net
tvtap-pro.net
vertvenvivo.net
weakstream.org
weakspell.org
xn--l3clbuukk5c4d8a3e5d.com
crichdplayer.xyz
crichd.com
hd.cricfree.io

 

Website blocking is the entertainment industry’s preferred anti-piracy strategy in dozens of countries.

 

Targeting domain names of pirate sites can be an effective way to deter casual pirates. When a site can no longer be easily located, some users may give up, especially since Google now deindexes blocked domains as well.

 

Popular pirate sites have been familiar with these measures for years now. While some simply ignore the issue, hoping that users will find a way around it, others are actively pushing back. Spanish torrent site DonTorrent falls in the latter category.

 

With millions of monthly visitors, DonTorrent is a force to be reckoned with. The site is particularly popular in Spain and offers links to a curated selection of torrents.

 

Following complaints from rightsholders, the torrent site is blocked by Spanish Internet providers. While this is a nuisance for the site’s operator and users, it hasn’t exactly decimated DonTorrent’s traffic or tempered its attitude.

Traffic Unchanged

Instead of laying low, DonTorrent typically chooses a more offensive route. The site’s operators are openly playing with the likeness of Jan van Voorn, the head of the influential anti-piracy alliance ACE, for example.

 

In addition, the site does all it can to fight back against the blocking efforts. DonTorrent shared several unblocking tips with its users, and also added a .onion domain to make the site accessible on the Tor network.

 

A DonTorrent spokesperson informs us that these efforts paid off as traffic remains stable. There are seasonal variations, but those are not blocking-related. If anything, the torrent site sees traffic boosts when streaming services raise their prices.

 

We can’t independently verify these traffic trends but it’s clear that the site still has a sizable community. The official Telegram channel currently has nearly 80,000 users, who are regularly updated about domain name changes.

Domain Name Whack-a-Mole

The communication channel is much needed as the torrent site doesn’t exactly have a stable home. Spanish ISPs are regularly instructed to block new DonTorrent domains, which has already happened 39 times this year.

 

 

Every time a new domain is blocked, DonTorrent quickly registers and launches an alternative, so its users can get around these measures for a while.

 

“We don’t have any domain names parked and ready to use, what we do is register it that same day when we see the block,” DonTorrent informs us, explaining that this is a conscious strategy.

 

“In the past, we did reserve some domain names and pointed these to our Cloudflare account, but we discovered that [Jan van Voorn] or one of his henchmen were checking the new ‘dontorrent’ TLD registrations.”

 

Whether ACE was checking the domains or another rightsholder representative isn’t clear, but someone was keeping a close eye on the backup domains. They were blocked before becoming active, rendering preparations futile.

 

The last domain name change took place earlier this week, typically at a rate of one domain per week. In some cases, there’s a slightly longer delay, which often coincides with public holidays.

Scammers Galore

Besides ISP blockades, the torrent site also has trouble with some anti-virus companies that block its new domains, seemingly without reason.

 

“The funny thing is that they apologize when we complain about these false positives, but they can’t explain what happened. They remove the blocks, but only if we notify them,” DonTorrent says.

 

It’s possible that a sudden surge in traffic for newly registered domains may set off some algorithmic alarm bells. Ironically, however, copycat pirate sites that scam people by requesting their credit card details, can often operate freely.

 

These scam websites typically use the brands of popular pirate sites to exploit the fact that these sites are regularly blocked or shut down. The more effective anti-piracy efforts are, the bigger this problem gets.

 

DonTorrent says it wouldn’t be surprised if anti-piracy forces were behind these dodgy schemes. While there is no evidence for that at all, rightsholders certainly use the phenomenon in their messaging.

 

In recent months, various anti-piracy campaigns and lobbying efforts have highlighted the potential for scams and credit card fraud. These campaigns effectively bring things full circle.

 

Scammers or not, DonTorrent doesn’t seem intent on stopping anytime soon. The site’s deviant actions have turned it into a big anti-piracy trophy, but one that seems out of reach, at least for the time being.

 

Having networked computers at home used to be called…well, having networked computers at home. As a description, it’s both accurate and boring, something that cannot be said about having a ‘homelab’.

 

“A home lab, or simply lab,’ is a personal space where technology enthusiasts, professionals, and hobbyists can experiment with various hardware and software. From virtual machines to your own server, a home lab offers endless possibilities,” says Brandon Lee of VirtualizationHowto, one of many sites publishing tutorials aimed at the surging homelab scene.

 

David Burgess runs the DB Tech channel on YouTube, where he publishes tutorials on technologies relevant to homelabs and self-hosting in general, such as Docker, Portainer, Proxmox, and Pi-Hole, to name just a few. The almost universal common denominator among channels like David’s is the absence of piracy, because you can’t pirate software that developers happily give away for free.

 

To that background, a new video published on the channel was immediately puzzling.

Years-Old Videos Considered Non-Compliant

This week David received a notification from YouTube; unusual considering he’d turned off notifications two years ago when the frequency became overwhelming. Still, the communication from YouTube was important, since it referred to a community guideline strike on one of his videos.

 

Given that David has had a community strike on his account since March 29, 2021, he initially thought the message was about that. It wasn’t.

The background to the first strike is almost ancient history. On March 20, 2020, David uploaded a video about a Docker container for youtube-dl, software that allows people to download videos from YouTube and other platforms. Notably, the upload preceded the RIAA’s failed efforts to have youtube-dl removed from GitHub by six months.

 

While youtube-dl remains on GitHub today for anyone to download, on March 29, 2021, a year after its initial upload, YouTube notified David that his docker/youtube-dl video had been removed for violating YouTube’s Terms of Service. David filed appeals with YouTube, noting that he hadn’t promoted the tool for infringing purposes, but was ultimately informed that it would not be restored.

 

No specific reasons were given but YouTube’s terms of service state that downloading from the platform is not allowed. Even if YouTube had other issues in mind, the TOS violation can’t be avoided, despite David’s record of good conduct.

Disappointed to Receive a Strike

After speaking with David and reviewing his videos, it’s clear that YouTube and similar platforms aren’t focused on people like him when making the rules. He presents himself well, refrains from mindless hype, and produces clear educational videos that add value to the YouTube platform. The community strike is an obvious disappointment to him, beyond just getting a strike.

 

Since countless other videos remained up when his had been taken down, including many that blatantly promoted youtube-dl for infringing purposes, David still feels the deletion was somewhat unfair. As always, the context of the video is important, so while mindful of YouTube’s rule against downloading, we watched the whole thing in search of anything egregious.

No Obvious Crimes, Anti-Malware, Pro-Irony

What we found was a tutorial video in which David went out of his way to insist on careful use; certainly not by pirates downloading the latest music videos or people pilfering content for their own channels.

The video also devotes time to alternative tools that promise to download videos from YouTube, with the primary aim of giving users malware instead. As David explains, for YouTube creators who need to show a clip of another video within theirs for context, using youtube-dl is a safer option.

Even at this point, with context shining in David’s favor, downloading videos that aren’t already configured for download still isn’t allowed by YouTube. The RIAA firmly believes that using youtube-dl to obtain YouTube videos amounts to a violation of the DMCA, which disallows the circumvention of digital locks, including YouTube’s rolling cipher.

 

Under YouTube’s current terms of service, content that “shows viewers how to get unauthorized access to content, software, or services that usually require payment” is disallowed under to the ‘Digital security content’ section. That doesn’t seem to apply to YouTube directly in this case.

 

Anti-circumvention and the prevention of unauthorized access are the key principles overall. This makes the content that David downloaded from YouTube, as a demonstration in his now-removed video, much more than just a little ironic.

That brings us back to the community guidelines strike issued this week.

Arr..Arr..Arr..Agggh

On February 5, 2021, David uploaded several tutorial videos on how to create the ultimate home media server using Emby, Sonarr, Radarr and Jackett. One of those videos explained how to configure these pieces of software, especially how to get the Docker containers to communicate with each other; it was a technical tutorial about networking, nothing beyond that.

 

This week David discovered that specific video (but none of the others) had been removed for breaching YouTube’s terms of service. Once again, dozens of similar tutorials that go much further remain live on YouTube, for no immediately obvious reason. David’s video was uploaded over three years ago and had accrued 114,000 views, a figure that will never go up and never again earn him revenue on YouTube.

 

Some channels specialize in this kind of content for obvious reasons, yet somehow remain live. David says that causes confusion when trying to assess YouTube’s interpretation of the rules, and how other videos posted to his channel may be affected.

New Rules Present New Concerns

Over the years, YouTube’s approach to content has certainly become more restrictive. It’s generally not excessive but, as new rules are implemented, the chances of older content made under different rulesets falling foul only look set to increase. David believes that creators will have to adhere to today’s rules and then consider how future rules may step in to render previously acceptable content a TOS violation down the line.

 

“Now I have to put myself into a very conservative mindset about what might be misconstrued by the wrong content mod as a violation and take corrective action in the future because, again, who knows when something like this will happen again?” he says.

Guidelines, Rules, Laws

As societies react to new technologies, the shifting sands of social norms, and the effect of government efforts to legislate, regulate, or even frustrate online behavior, large online platforms like YouTube are being forced to change. New rules governing conduct are inevitable and can often provide clues on how a company hopes to be perceived among licensing partners and advertisers. As we recently suggested, personal moderation at scale is already an impossibility and with new rules come new problems.

 

David doesn’t have any plans to abandon YouTube but seems less inclined to rely on it exclusively moving forward. He’s hoping to continue building an audience on Patreon where $1 per month gets things started, and also on Rumble, according to a new post on X, where a lack of coherence on rules in general makes the place almost insufferable.

 

On the flip side, too many new rules have a tendency to breed even more rules of increasing complexity; read by the few and fully understood by almost nobody.

 

Reports this week published by Ars Technica and Techcrunch detailed new content policy at Twitch, implemented to make old policies on nudity less confusing.

 

The end result could give Monty Python’s Meaning of Life a run for its money.

 

 

Artificial intelligence has the potential to make our lives more efficient, entertaining, and productive.

 

On the flip side, it also presents several threats. This ranges from complex existential worries to concerns about AI-related copyright infringement, which is already widespread.

 

Tthese copyright concerns will be discussed next month at a meeting of WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement, where several stakeholders will present their thoughts. This includes Universal Music Group (UMG), which sees both the good and bad aspects of this rapidly developing technology.

 

UMG’s Vice President of Global Content Protection, Graeme Grant, lays out the music company’s perspective in a detailed contribution sent to WIPO in advance.

 

According to Grant, UMG broadly embraces AI technology and has already obtained several patents in this area. Among other things, the company uses AI to fuel the creative process, optimize production, and as a marketing tool. At the same time, it also presents new challenges.

 

“While AI holds great potential for innovation and expansion, generative AI also poses great risks – not only to creators but to broader society, as well,” Grant notes.

AI Generated Tracks are Booming

AI is increasingly used to copy music and generate tracks based on the likeness of popular artists, such as Drake vs The Weeknd’s ‘Heart on my Sleeve‘. These tracks are created using models trained on copyrighted music, which can be a problem if these datasets and models are shared.

 

“[O]ne online community has created a spreadsheet containing over 100 pre-trained vocal models, relating to specific artists, that have been uploaded to services like Megaupload and Google Drive and can be downloaded and used by anyone of their 15,000 members,” Grant writes.

 

While UMG might not get too upset when people experiment purely for personal use, the company believes that a line is crossed when AI-synthesized tracks are made available to the public, especially when that includes a commercial element.

 

In the past few months, the number of AI-generated tracks uploaded to online music platforms such as Spotify increased by 175%, UMG found, and this trend could very well continue in the future.

 

In some cases, people use artist-inspired names such as “Juice AI” and “Drake AI” to share the tracks on legitimate music services. These uploads generate royalties for every play, which don’t go to the original artist and label.

 

 

These fake ‘pre-release’ sales have been going on for a while. Vice previously highlighted a scammer who reportedly made thousands of dollars by selling AI-generated Frank Ocean tracks. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Fraudsters Scam Pirates

UMG is protecting its bottom line with these comments, but the company notes that prospective pirates can be harmed as well. There’s a lively market for leaked pre-release music and scammers are exploiting the demand to generate profit.

 

Through the use of AI technology, the scammers create musical snippets that impersonate popular artists. These are then sold through pre-release forums as the real deal, supported by claims that the tracks were obtained through hacking or phishing.

 

Some people apparently fall for this scam, paying thousands of dollars to get their hands on fresh tracks, not knowing that they’re actually faked.

 

“Believing these tracks to be authentic, users often engage in ‘group buys’, pooling their resources to meet the fraudster’s inflated asking price, which can range from USD5,000 to 30,000.

 

“The users are often unaware that the track in question was not created by the artist, but rather by AI technology,” Grant adds.

Good AI

Luckily it’s not all doom and gloom. UMG also shares many examples of how it uses AI to its advantage. This includes the creation of the new Beatles recording “Now and Then” released last month.

 

AI technology is also used to help the company detect potential infringements, and to stave off cybersecurity threats.

 

“The UMG security team uses AI to protect the employees, artists and stakeholders against cybersecurity threats which are vast in number and growing in sophistication,” Grant writes.

 

The music company’s overview makes it clear that, like many technologies before it, AI can be used for good and bad. At the moment, UMG doesn’t believe that copyright regulation needs to be updated. That said, all stakeholders have to remain vigilant to prevent potential problems.

 

—

 

A copy of the WIPO contribution, prepared by UMG’s Vice President of Global Content Protection, Graeme Grant, is available here (pdf)

 

When U.S. broadcaster DISH Network files another new lawsuit in the U.S., targeting various players in the IPTV ecosystem, the company maintains a long tradition of legal action that aims high and goes in hard.

 

While DISH headlines all of these lawsuits with various appearances from Nagra and subsidiary Sling TV, behind the scenes DISH receives support from fellow members of IBCAP, the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy. From monitoring and detection, content watermarking, DMCA takedown notices, to full-blown investigations, many tasks are handled under the anti-piracy group’s umbrella – and inside the IBCAP lab.

 

We’ll take two, no need to erase any drives

Retailer, Wholesaler, ‘Manufacturer’, DISH Likes to Meet Them All

A legal tactic less commonly seen elsewhere sees DISH target U.S.-based retail outlets that resell pirate IPTV subscriptions (and/or pre-configured set-top boxes) offering content to which DISH holds U.S. rights. Small or large, these entities receive the same treatment in original complaints, with a minimum seven-figure damages claims to ponder.

 

As DISH works to track down anonymous operators, of mostly overseas IPTV services being resold in the U.S., offers of information from various parties are rumored to put the plaintiffs in a better mood. Whether that will apply to defendants Massive Wireless, Inc., Khaled Akhtar, Rays IPTV LLC, and Mumyazur Rehman Daud, as DISH strives to identify Does 1-10, currently d/b/a as Glo TV, is unknown and likely to stay that way.

Lawsuit Filed In New York District Court

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Wednesday, the complaint speaks of a global pirate IPTV service variously branded as Glo TV, Rays IPTV, and Rays TV. Does 1-10 are described as the infringing IPTV service’s operators, who knowingly and unlawfully transmit, and publicly perform in the United States, TV channels for which DISH holds or held an exclusive license.

 

“Illegal streaming services are able to offer consumers thousands of television channels at a fraction of the cost of legal providers such as DISH, because they do not pay fees to license the content they deliver,” the complaint notes.

 

“For example, Defendants Rays IPTV LLC and Daud market the Infringing Service to the public by promising ‘No More Expensive Cable Bills,’ and targeting consumers ‘tired of paying too many bills for too little channels.’”

 

DISH says the ‘direct infringers’ behind the service deliver it via servers located all around the world, which are regularly moved to avoid enforcement measures. DISH is yet to identify the direct infringers but believes they’re located overseas.

Relationship Between Direct and Secondary Infringers

“Without authorization from DISH, the Direct Infringers take broadcasts of these copyrighted works soon after the original, authorized transmissions, transfer them to one or more computer servers under their control, and then transmit them to Service Users through the Infringing Service using OTT delivery,” DISH explains.

 

“The Direct Infringers carry and market the Infringing Service in two ways: by making the Infringing Service available to retail stores for resale to Service Users; and directly to individual Service Users. In other words, the Direct Infringers are both wholesalers and retailers of the Infringing Service.”

 

DISH alleges that New York resident Khaled Akhtar is the CEO of Massive Wireless, Inc., a company doing business at an address in Jackson Heights, New York. California resident Mumyazur Rehman Daud is described as the CEO of Rays IPTV LLC, a company doing business in Ramona, California.

 

“Defendants Daud and Rays IPTV LLC (together ‘Rays’) sell and market the Infringing Service directly to Service Users through websites and by telephone. Rays also sells [set-top boxes] preloaded with the Infringing Service to other retailers (including Massive Wireless).

 

“Rays markets and brands the Infringing Service as, alternatively, Glo TV, Rays IPTV, and Rays TV. Though Rays sometimes rebrands the Infringing Service using different names, testing conducted by DISH investigators confirms that, since Glo TV and Rays IPTV/TV
direct to the same authentication/authorization server, they are simply different brand names for the exact same service: the Infringing Service.”

 

The complaint alleges that Rays sold access to the IPTV service via Raysiptv.com, with a one-month subscription costing roughly $65 and a 12-month subscription around $305. The same service was also promoted on Dauditl.com

Warnings Ignored

In August 2017, a DISH investigator is said to have visited Massive Wireless’s retail store to confirm sales of other infringing services carrying DISH content. DISH followed up with an infringement notice on August 23, 2017, supported by copies of judgments and permanent injunctions previously obtained by the company.

 

A second infringement notice was sent on July 27, 2021, in broadly similar circumstances. In both cases DISH instructed Massive Wireless to cease-and-desist and both times DISH was ignored.

 

In March 2023, a DISH investigator visited the same Massive Wireless store and when offered a 12-month subscription for $240, purchased one, and was given a receipt.

 

A third infringement notice sent to Massive Wireless on May 5, 2023, performed as well as the two sent previously. Another visit to the retail store in June 2023 allowed the investigator to confirm continued sales of the infringing service through the purchase of a pre-loaded Rays TV-branded set-top box for $260, for which a receipt was also supplied. Three further infringement notices were ignored in July and August 2023, and sales continued in September.

Copyright Infringement Claims

In respect of Does 1-10, DISH alleges willful, malicious, intentional, and purposeful direct infringement and asks the Court to issue an injunction to curtail ongoing infringement. DISH says the secondary infringers’ conduct amounts to willful, malicious, intentional, and purposeful contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement. The direct infringers and secondary infringers should be similarly restrained, the complaint adds.

 

A statement issued by IBCAP lays out the potential consequences for the defendants and the scope of the requested injunction.

 

• An award of the defendants’ profits attributable to the infringement of the unregistered works
• An injunction prohibiting any hosting company from supporting Glo TV or any other service used to access channels exclusively licensed to the rightsholder
• An injunction prohibiting the defendants from distributing, providing, promoting, or selling set-top boxes and services that contain the relevant channels listed in the lawsuit
• An injunction prohibiting the defendants from distributing, providing, promoting, or selling set-top boxes and services that contain the subject channels
• An order permanently transferring each domain name that the defendants used in connection with the infringement to the plaintiff
• Prejudgment interest and post judgment interest
• Reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs
• Statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for the willful infringement of 170 registered works – up to $25,500,000 total

 

Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP, says the lawsuit sends a “direct message” to the entire business chain involved in piracy.

 

“From those who operate pirate services, to the distributors who wholesale pirate subscriptions, to the retailers who purchase and resell pirate subscriptions to consumers, the sale of pirate services will not be tolerated,” Kuelling says.

 

“As with other cases coordinated by IBCAP, we fully expect these defendants will be held accountable, and the Court will enjoin retailers, wholesalers, and others from supporting the Glo TV service.”

 

The complaint is available here (pdf)