In recent years copyright holders have tried many things to dissuade the public from visiting pirate websites.

 

Simply stating that piracy is illegal doesn’t appear to work very well, so this type of messaging often tries to appeal to other emotions.

 

For example, anti-piracy campaigns frequently stress that piracy hurts normal workers as it costs the entertainment industry thousands of jobs. Another strategy is to scare the public directly, by pointing out the ills people may encounter on pirate sites.

‘Holiday’ Piracy PSAs

This latter strategy continues to gain traction and it’s also the main focus of a new public service announcement (PSA) campaign launched by the U.S. Government’s Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) and Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association (MPA).

 

There are two videos, both set to appear in a short and longer version. The shorter 15-second clips are intended for social media, where they will be circulated in the coming weeks.

 

The gist of the PSAs is that people who use pirate sites and services to watch online entertainment risk running into malware, identity theft, and credit card fraud. This is illustrated quite dramatically, by burglars who raid the home of a happy couple enjoying an unreleased film from a pirate source.

 

Burglars Rob a Pirate

 

Interestingly, the video specifically (yet indirectly) suggests that a VPN service can’t do much to protect against these risks. Here’s the relevant dialog.

Man: Check this out. (starts film)
Woman: I didn’t even know this was out yet.
Man: It’s not, but I have my ways.
Woman: Are you sure that’s safe?
Man: I have a VPN, we’re good.

The VPN doesn’t stop people from physically entering your home, as the PSA depicts. And if we follow this analogy, it’s also true that VPNs can’t stop identity theft or malware, although some offer separate protection tools against the latter.

 

The second PSA is a message from IPR Center director Jim Mancuso, who issues a straightforward warning, again focusing on malware and fraud.

 

“If you watch pirated films or TV shows you could be exposing yourself to credit card fraud, malware or worse. Why deal with that when you could be watching your favorite series and films on legitimate platforms? Don’t let anyone ruin your screen time,” Mancuso says.

 

Stream Safely

 

Both PSAs point people to the Stream Safely campaign site which guides people to legal sources. In addition, the site provides additional information on piracy and file-sharing technologies.

Torrenting Isn’t Illegal

The Stream Safely site points out the potential risks of piracy but it doesn’t condemn file-sharing outright. For example, it acknowledges that downloading torrents isn’t by definition illegal, it depends on what people share.

 

Legal torrenting can be a good way to get large legitimate files, the website reads, adding that “generally speaking, sharing files across an internet connection is legal, so long as the files being shared aren’t themselves illegal and/or copyright law isn’t being violated.”

 

This language is paired with obligatory malware warnings and highlighted legal risks, including “copyright trolls” who sue people for allegedly downloading pirated films.

 

“[L]egal trouble is becoming more common for those who are torrenting illegal content, as internet service providers (ISPs) and copyright trolls get more and more aggressive in tracking down and prosecuting illegal torrents,” the website warns.

Beware of Trolls!

 

In summary, the campaign aims to point out that piracy isn’t risk-free. It appears to be aimed at casual pirates, who may not be as tech-savvy and therefore more at risk of running into trouble.

 

“Many consumers remain unaware of the risks involved in streaming or downloading pirated films. There are piracy sites that appear legitimate and safe, but most are operated by global crime syndicates,” says Jan van Voorn, MPA’s Chief of Global Content Protection and head of ACE.

Nuance

The main message of the PSAs is that “watching pirated content is never safe”. This is a conclusion we have seen in many industry reports over the years and while it’s certainly true there are elevated risks, there have been more nuanced voices too.

 

For example, we previously heard from anti-virus experts, who pointed out that email is likely a higher risk factor than pirate streaming sites. In addition, research from the EU Intellectual Property Office previously concluded that not all pirate sites are malware-ridden.

 

“At present, suspected copyright-infringing websites and streaming services are not normally considered to be dominant sources of malware or otherwise unwanted software distribution,” the research found.

 

That research may be dated by now, of course, and there are thousands of pirate sites, all with a unique risk profile. However, this nuance, understandably, didn’t make it into the Holiday anti-piracy PSAs.

 

In summary, there is at least one conclusion we can safely draw. Those who use legal streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and HBO are less likely to run into trouble than those who use pirate sites and services.

 

No matter where people live or how much knowledge and experience they’ve accumulated, governments and corporations rarely shy away from an opportunity to offer behavioral advice.

 

Delivered via TV, radio and the internet, public service announcements enlighten the masses on topics seemingly so complex, they’re only fully understood by the few. Even if that was the case, 30 seconds of theatrics followed by what amounts to a blind order may have worked 40 years ago; today, people expect more than that and when it comes to anti-piracy PSAs, magnitudes more.

 

For the last few years the global anti-piracy message hasn’t wavered for a moment. There’s no memorable slogan to recall, but the message couldn’t be clearer: If people pirate content, using IPTV services in particular, more likely than not they will become infected with malware, have their identities stolen, credit cards maxed-out, and/or bank accounts emptied.

 

It’s one of the strongest and most united messages ever sent, and with multiple and significant caveats, even has some basis in truth. It appears to have done little to suppress demand, however.

 

Whether events unfolding in South Korea will dampen local demand remains to be seen, but the narrative playing out on national news could hardly be worse for pirate sites.

Piracy and Illegal Gambling Start Sharing a Cell

Before the advent of various international schemes that prevent gambling companies from advertising on pirate sites or contain an abstention agreement, gambling ads and pirate site were commonly seen together.

 

In South Korea, the government is no fan of piracy, but it tolerates illegal gambling even less. Online gambling within South Korea is outlawed, and government control in the rest of the market effectively amounts to a lucrative monopoly. When pressure mounted on former local piracy site Noonoo TV, the existence of ads promoting illegal gambling on the site receive dozens of mentions in the media.

 

 

While Noonoo seems to be dead, the local piracy/gambling nexus is reportedly in full swing. With black market gambling reportedly worth up to $80 billion, national TV news channel KBS has run dozens of stories over the past couple of months, all with a common theme.

Enjoy the Movie, Stay For the Gambling

The story at the heart of the current controversy dates back to September; KBS published a video report (below, English translation via subtitle) in which the presenter explains (around the one-minute mark) that the channel’s reporters tested out an illegal streaming site offering Netflix content for free. When a reporter clicked on one of the ads, it led to a surprisingly open criminal who confirmed the channel’s suspicions, apparently with no hesitation.

 

“When I click on the advertising banner on the screen, I am taken directly to an online gambling site. On other illegal streaming sites, similar advertisements appear on the screen,” the presenter says.

 

“After checking them one by one, most of them were the same company. A reporter contacted the online gambling operator and asked if he had anything to do with the streaming site, and he answered ‘yes’. So, it appears that they are making money by offering free OTT services and luring users who are misled by them to gambling sites,”

 

 

Commenting on the allegations, police confirmed an investigation into the connections between gambling sites and pirate streaming portals, adding that accounts linked to five sites had been frozen, with two sites shut down.

 

“The problem with these illegal OTTs and the gambling sites connected to them,” the presenter adds, “is that even teenagers are exposed to them without protection.”

Teenage Gambling Addicts

How KBS identified and then obtained permission to interview school kids who used these sites isn’t clear. The channel disguised their voices and blurred out their faces, but there’s little to hide their naivety. One of the opening statements appears to show a lack of understanding, if not complete ignorance, of exactly the type of disclosure that can ruin people’s lives.

 

“Even though I was a minor, I signed up immediately after entering my name, date of birth, and phone number, and that’s how I started ‘gambling’,” a student revealed.

 

“I was trying to watch it for free, but a lot of windows appeared at the bottom and a window at the top,” added another.

 

“While watching a free movie on an illegal OTT site, I inadvertently saw an advertisement. I clicked and entered the gambling site,” the interviewer was told.

 

 

“At first, out of curiosity, I went to the gambling site. The money I sent later grew out of control, and I even resorted to private loans.”

 

The final horror story manages to sound even more miserable than the others.

 

“This year I earned about 10 million won [US7,600],” the student said. “I originally saved up the money by doing a part-time job. But my mother and her parents had to give luxury goods and gold, and I took all of the collateral, because the interest rates on the losses jumped 100% in three days.”

Video From Inside an Alleged Gambling/Pirate Site Operation

KBS News doesn’t reveal who provided the video, but it was allegedly recorded inside an office where a gambling operation was based. The channel says it shows both the gambling platform and the pirate site being operated from the same room, enough evidence for the channel to conclude direct links between pirate movies and TV shows, and illegal gambling.

 

 

“There are adult sites and drama-watching sites. Those are the ones that work best,” a company official explained.

 

“These days, [gambling] sites don’t work without kids.”

 

⦿ Guy Owes $117m After pornEZ Suddenly Got Hard ⦿ “No Fees Ever” Tanggula TV Trafficking Targeted ⦿ Z-Library’s Domains Just Keep on Disappearing… ⦿ Anna’s Archive’s Sudden X / Twitter Vanishing Act ⦿ Sci-Hub Meets 24/7/365 UK Block Party

 

Mid-January 2023, MindGeek subsidiary MG Premium sued Nguyen Hoi, the alleged operator of unlicensed adult streaming site, Pornez.net. (2:23-cv-00349-CBM-PVC – MG Premium Ltd v. Nguyen Hoi)

 

Data from Google’s Transparency portal reveals that MG filed over 5.6 million DMCA takedown notices hoping to make the site less visible. On November 6, 2023, a California district court handed down a permanent injunction and ordered the defendant to pay MG Premium a cool $117,270,000 in statutory copyright damages.

 

 

Pornez.net is no longer online but sites with similar domains and extensions appear keen to emulate their namesake, not including the damages award, obviously.

 

Extracting massive damages awards from pirates is something DISH Network also enjoys. A DISH/Sling lawsuit filed last month in a Carolina district court targets Sentry Inc. and alleged owner, Michael Graziano. The complaint claims that the defendants “provide and profit from the sale of an illicit streaming service known as Tanggula” through which it’s possible to watch DISH/Sling programming without authorization.

 

Tanggula set-top boxes are advertised on social media platforms, sold via various affiliate and reseller schemes, and ‘reviewed’ regularly on YouTube.

 

According to the Black Friday offers currently being advertised on Twitter, $299 is the ‘bargain’ rate for a black and red Android-based device. However, DISH doesn’t appear too concerned about Tanggula boxes per ser, its focus is the software that runs on these devices and the thousands of live TV channels on offer. Indeed, after shelling out the initial sum, Tanggula says buyers can look forward to paying “no fees ever”.

 

DISH claims that the defendants sell access to packages via the websites www.alltvboxes.com and www.elitetv2023.com. Both websites were operational when the lawsuit was filed but are now offline. DISH investigators made undercover purchases according to the complaint (9:23-cv-05074 DISH Network LLC et al v. Sentry, Inc. et al, pdf), which seeks damages for alleged violations of the DMCA’s anti-trafficking provisions (17 U.S.C. S 1201).

 

Z-Library had dozens of domains seized last week, presumably some type of gift to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the initial law enforcement crackdown. During this wave the United States teamed up with Austrian law enforcement agencies (more detail in our Nov 8 report).

 

Z-Library confirmed the seizures late last week, noting that the domains were connected to Z-Library sub-projects. Since our initial report, an additional main/backup domain has also been seized.

 

Z-Library is still in control of its main domain (singlelogin.re) but lost singlelogin.asia in the recent round of seizures. It joins singlelogin.app, singlelogin.site, singlelogin.click, and a couple of hundred additional domains now under the control of U.S. authorities.

 

On a related note, Anna’s Archive appears to be still going strong but as a reader pointed out to us on Monday, the @AnnaArchivist account on X/Twitter was wiped out last week and no longer exists.

 

 

Finally, Sci-Hub and its mirrors/proxies will soon become less accessible for customers of the UK’s largest ISPs. As part of a High Court-sanctioned blocking campaign, Elsevier & Springer Nature recently added around a dozen new entries to the blocklist.

 

Sci-hub.pk and various subdomains of scihubtw.tw, sci-hub.se, sci-hub.st and unblockit.zip, join hundreds of previous blocklist entries targeting Sci-Hub and Libgen.

 

While all non-compliant DMCA takedown notices are invalid by default, there’s a huge difference between those sent in error and others crafted for purely malicious purposes.

 

Bogus DMCA takedown notices are nothing new, but the rise of organized groups using malicious DMCA notices as a business tool has been apparent in recent years.

 

Since the vast majority of culprits facing zero consequences, that may have acted as motivation to send more. Through a lawsuit filed at a California court on Monday, Google appears to be sending the message that enough is enough.

Defendants Weaponized DMCA Takedowns

Google’s complaint targets Nguyen Van Duc and Pham Van Thien, both said to be residents of Vietnam and the leaders of up to 20 Doe defendants. Google says the defendants systematically abused accounts “to submit a barrage” of fraudulent copyright takedown requests aimed at removing their competitors’ website URLs from Google Search results.

 

“Defendants have weaponized copyright law’s notice-and-takedown process and used it not for its intended purpose of expeditiously removing infringing content, but instead to have the legitimate content of their competitors removed based on false allegations. Defendants’ illegal, fraudulent scheme harms consumers, third-party businesses, and Google; stifles competition; and threatens to tarnish Google’s trusted brand.”

 

Over the past few years, Nguyen, Pham and those working with them, are said to have created at least 65 Google accounts to send confirmed bogus notices targeting 117,000 URLs, plus another 500,000 URLs via notices that Google suspects are fraudulent too.

 

“Defendants appear to be connected with websites selling printed t-shirts, and their unlawful conduct aims to remove competing third-party sellers from Google Search results. Defendants have maliciously and illegally exploited Google’s policies and procedures under the DMCA to sabotage and harm their competitors,” the complaint adds.

Google Aims to Put an End to Abuse, Hold Defendants Accountable

Google goes on to highlight its position as a major intermediary that processes DMCA notices targeting 600 million URLs every year, and the requirement under the DMCA to remove or disable content notified as allegedly infringing. If the company fails to act expeditiously once in receipt of a DMCA notice that complies with the statutory requirements, the company risks losing its safe harbor protection, Google notes.

 

Since Google must often rely on the accuracy of statements made in DMCA notices, fraudulent notices can result in content being wrongfully taken down. That damages the company’s search engine advertising business, and the business Google’s customers hoped to attract. In this matter, the defendants’ embarked on a campaign that exploited Google’s systems and the DMCA takedown process to undermine their competitors.

Fake Names, Fraudulent Representations

The misrepresentations in notices sent to Google were potentially damaging to other parties too. Under fake names, the defendants falsely claimed to represent large companies such as Amazon, Twitter, and NBC News, plus sports teams including the Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Lakers, San Diego Padres.

 

In similarly false notices, they claimed to represent famous individuals including Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, LeVar Burton, and Kanye West.

 

The complaint notes that some notices were submitted under company names that do not exist in the United States, at addresses where innocent families and businesses can be found. Google says that despite these claims, the defendants can be found in Vietnam from where they proudly advertise their ‘SEO’ scheme to others, including via YouTube.

 

 

“Bad actors like Defendants use this tactic to attack and fraudulently suppress competitors’ websites and products in Google Search results, making consumers more likely to buy the same or similar products from the bad actors or their affiliates,” the complaint continues.

 

“Such bad actors know that a fraudulent takedown request often has the same effect as a legitimate one; if a takedown request contains all the elements required under Section 512(c)(3)(A), it likely will trigger removal by Google.

 

“Unfortunately, to ensure compliance with the DMCA and in reliance on the information submitted in Defendants’ takedown requests, Google’s system removed a significant number of thirdparty website URLs targeted by Defendants for a period of time before Google and/or the websites’ owners figured out what was going on and took appropriate steps to reinstate the URLs.”

 

A particularly damaging batch of fraudulent notices targeted more than 35,000 URLs operated by a Google customer that spends tens of millions of dollars per year on Google search ads. The effect was a significant drop in traffic during the holiday season, revenue losses for the customer and its sellers of $5 million, and a loss to Google of between $2 and $3 million.

Holding Defendants Accountable

Those who knowingly make false statements in a DMCA notice can be held liable for damages, costs, and attorneys’ fees. In this matter the defendants’ conduct is said to have caused Google to suffer economic harm due to lost advertising revenue, damage to business relations, and the allocation of significant resources to investigate their wrongdoing.

 

Google seeks attorneys’ fees and damages under 17 U.S.C. §512(f), in an amount to be determined at trial.

 

The complaint adds that when the defendants created dozens of Google accounts, each time they entered into enforceable agreements with Google. While Google says it has “performed all its obligations” under those contracts, the actions of the defendants amount to breaches of their contractual obligations to Google and intentional interference in contractual relationships between Google and its advertising customers.

 

Google says the defendants should be required to pay all general, special, and actual damages that Google “has sustained or will sustain” due to the fraudulent notices.

 

Google further requests an order to restrain the defendants (and anyone working in concert with them), from submitting any further fraudulent takedown notices and/or creating any Gmail accounts. Google also wants a ban on the defendants using any of its products or services to advertise their websites or products.

 

The complaint is available here (pdf)

 

 

Given the sheer scale and reach of pirate sites either operated from Vietnam, or with direct connections to Vietnam, describing the country as a global piracy problem wouldn’t be a stretch.

 

After being briefed by Hollywood for the umpteenth time, that’s certainly the view of the United States government. Yet despite reported progress, including an overhaul of Vietnam’s copyright laws and promises to crack down on piracy, including the formation of a specialist anti-piracy unit, nothing has had any visible effect.

 

However, turn off a few legal TV channels inside Vietnam and suddenly piracy is a real concern.

International Pay TV Channels Withdraw

Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, a media outlet owned by the Communist Party of Vietnam, published a report yesterday claiming that during October and November, TV channels “disappeared” from pay TV subscription packages. National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild were named specifically along with their owner, Disney.

 

Other channels under the same ownership including Fox Movies, Fox Sports, Disney Channel and Disney Junior, were previously withdrawn, the paper reported.

 

To explain the exodus, the article cites Nguyen Thanh Lam, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Information and Communications. He says that film companies and other entertainment content businesses, Disney included, believe that traditional television has run its course and video-on-demand services are the future.

 

Since launching the Disney+ service, the article continues, Disney has begun to put everything it has onto the platform; it even had a message during the service’s launch ceremony: “Goodbye cable TV.”

 

Disney+ is indeed widely available; Aladdin and Anastasia can be viewed in Algeria and Albania, Bambi and Bagheera in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately nothing for Vietnam, though, since Disney+ isn’t available there.

 

The article stresses the entire Southeast Asian market has seen international TV companies withdraw content but according to recent data, Disney+ is available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

 

As things stand, there’s no real option to view the lost channels in Vietnam anymore, at least not legally.

Vietnam’s Government Voices Piracy Concerns

The theory that making content legally available is the only way to ensure legal sales appears clear to Vietnam’s government. The last thing a market needs is a gap opening up for pirates to exploit, as the article explains:

 

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, although the withdrawal from the pay cable TV market in Vietnam is due to a change in the business orientation of the above channels, this also raises many concerns about the gap that these channels will leave behind. What is left is an opportunity for pirates, pirated websites, and illegal profits to run rampant when people’s need to watch sports, watch movies, listen to music….is very large

To show the scale of the demand, the article cites figures compiled by the Ministry of Information and Communications. As of October 2023, the number of pay TV subscribers in Vietnam reached 18.7 million, an increase of 12.3% over the same period last year. Pay TV revenue as of the third quarter of 2023 had reached VND 7,500 billion ($307.5 million), up 1.4% over the same period in 2022.

 

The government is apparently seeking recommendations on which companies can step in to fill the pay TV gap; it also appears to be painting the loss as an opportunity.

 

“From a positive perspective, the withdrawal of international television channels is also an opportunity for domestic television channels to have more customers,” the Communist Party-owned publication notes. “Besides, if people continue to support pirated websites, businesses providing official services will no longer buy copyrighted content at high costs – something that happened in the past. At that time, people will also be disadvantaged.”

If Only Someone Could Do Something

Regardless of the overt or underlying reasons for withdrawing the channels, entertainment companies have a primary mission to generate profit and if a business is profitable in certain regions or product areas, those are only discarded for exceptional reasons. There are significant problems in Vietnam regarding the country’s Cinema Law (report, page 10 (pdf)) but the piracy problem never gets any better.

 

When Vietnam did conduct some kind of crackdown, the focus wasn’t on U.S. content being pirated and then distributed all over the world, it was on pirated sports content from overseas being consumed inside the country. Blocking a reported 1,000 sites presented few problems for the authorities then.

 

Yet according to the U.S. Department of Trade, despite Vietnam being host to the world’s “most egregious piracy sites” there is no clear or effective enforcement path available against these sites or their operators.”

 

 

A study published in September by the European Union Intellectual Property Office found that by late 2022, each internet user in the EU accessed websites offering pirated content at a rate of around 10 times per month.

 

Estonia and Latvia were called out as Europe’s most prolific infringers with around 25 accesses per user per month. German citizens and their Italian counterparts were highlighted as among the best behaved; 7.5 accesses per user per month, or roughly one pirate site visit every four days.

 

Yet when it comes to overall piracy rates and movie piracy in particular, no country in Europe can match the level of restraint shown in Poland. Not only do the Poles pirate less overall than any other country in the bloc, its citizens lead Europe on exposure to legal services.

 

The European average for buying from the internet or a pay TV platform in 2022 was just over four people in every ten (pdf). Poland managed almost six in ten (59%), the best in Europe. All France had to show after 15 of years of monitoring, fining, and trying to reeducate pirates, was just three out of ten, the worst rate in Europe.

Poland Steps Up Piracy Crackdown

Last November, officers from Poland’s Central Bureau for Combatting Cybercrime (CBZC) arrested a then-28-year-old man on suspicion of connections to local platform, Zaukaj.vip. In January 2023, a 33-year-old believed to be the site’s founder was arrested and charged with fraud offenses dating back to February 2020.

 

A separate investigation began in May 2020 and ran until June 2023. The Department for Combating Economic Crime in Kraków, under the supervision of the District Prosecutor’s Office in Lublin, targeted the operators of Ogladaj.to (Watch.to) for illegally distributing movies and TV shows online.

 

According to information provided by police this week, the service was well organized and utilized content obtained from suppliers in Russia and Ukraine. Ogladaj’s outward appearance was somewhat typical of a web-based streaming service and the content itself appears to have been embedded in a YouTube-style player.

 

With just 25,000 visits per month, on face value Ogladaj’s traffic levels seem a little low to warrant three years’ worth of investigation resources, at least when compared to other locally-significant platforms.

 

 

For perspective, Poland-focused streaming site CDA-HD.cc receives around 1.7 million visits per month while Filman.cc, a site that claims to be registered as a legal business in Poland (1), receives over 10 million.

Huge Losses to Rights Holders

Despite what appears to be a somewhat limited audience, police claim that Ogladaj caused losses to rightsholders in the region of PLN 15 million ($3,615,777).

 

Customers reportedly paid for subscriptions by redeeming vouchers bought online, although just days after police wrapped up their investigation (and seemingly before any arrests were made) customer complaints about an inaccessible service had already begun to appear online.

 

Interestingly, the streaming service also accepted cryptocurrency payments. Police say these were processed through a crypto exchange office allegedly operated by one of the suspects.

 

In October police arrested a 36-year-old man, described as the founder of Ogladaj, at an apartment in Gdynia, northern Poland. On the same day, a 38-year-old IT specialist was detained in Lower Silesia. Both men were subsequently charged with crimes in connection with the unlawful distribution of copyrighted content.

 

There was some other stuff too.

“Internet portal with erotic advertising”

The report released by Małopolska police says that officers became aware that the alleged founder of Ogladaj was also responsible for creating an “internet portal with erotic advertising.” The arrested 38-year-old provided technical support for both websites, police say.

 

“During a search of the suspects’ places of residence, the electronic equipment they used was seized. In addition, money in various currencies, funds in accounts, luxury cars, as well as high-quality sports equipment, silver bars and gold collector coins were seized from the suspects for future fines,” the report reads.

 

The total value of the seized property is estimated at PLN 1,000,000, around $240,700, but whether all of that is attributable to the piracy operation becomes unclear when other potential crimes enter the equation.

 

“[The suspects] will also be held responsible for deriving financial benefits from prostitution,” police add, with no further detail.

Suspects Must Not Flee

A third suspect in the case is described as a 30-year-old man who sold Ogladaj vouchers on his own website. If found guilty, police says the suspects face up to five years in prison.

 

The men were released and placed under police supervision, which includes a ban on them leaving the country. Given the rather unusual events of 2020, which saw one of the world’s most wanted pirates suddenly vanish into thin air, that doesn’t come as a surprise.

 

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the United States government’s crackdown on Z-Library, one of the world’s largest shadow libraries.

 

With legal proceedings underway in the United States, authorities have not given up trying to take Z-Library down. One of the site’s primary login domains, singlelogin.me, was seized alongside other domains early May this year.

 

Users were encouraged to switch to singlelogin.re, which remains operational today. The domain is supported by a laundry list of additional domains, subdomains, nameservers, and a maze of physical and virtual network infrastructure designed to keep the site alive in the event of new seizures.

 

It’s possible those new systems are being put to the test at this very moment.

New Domain Seizures With Overseas Assistance

In a move that coincides with the one-year anniversary of 2022’s tumultuous events, a few hours ago nameservers controlled by the US Department of Justice began handling queries for two new domains. According to the seizure notice, Singlelogin.click and IPFS.cat were both connected to Z-Library.

 

The image below shows how the domains transitioned from nameservers determined by their owners, to nameservers run by law enforcement authorities in the United States.

 

Singlelogin.click / IPFS.cat (seizedservers) / Click to Enlarge

 

Visitors to those domains today are greeted by the FBI seizure banner in the image below. The white graphic to the right reveals the involvement of the Bundeskriminalamt, Austria’s Criminal Intelligence Service, which serves as a national and international contact point for police cooperation in criminal matters.

 

 

The blue and red logo to the left is a reference to C4, Austria’s Cybercrime Competence Center in Vienna.

It Started With Two Domain Seizures, Dozens More On the Way

To our knowledge, the first domain – Singlelogin.click – hadn’t been widely or obviously publicized. However, with similar structure, functionality and an almost identical technical profile to other singlelogin.* variants, including those still in operation, the FBI appears to have had no problems scooping it up.

 

Singlelogin.click No Longer Functions Like This

 

At this point we originally intended to offer some detail on the IPFS.cat domain, but bigger news is literally breaking right now.

 

We’re supplying the following list of domains on the basis we believe they have already been seized or are about to be seized. Normally we would check each one to be absolutely sure, but the list is growing by the minute and we have no immediate prospect of keeping up.

 

The most significant seizure thus far is another singlelogin variant, singlelogin.site. Z-Library’s main domain, singlelogin.re, is currently intact but that could change at any moment.

 

We’ll continue to update this article for the rest of the day.

 

List of likely Z-Library linked domain seizures (TBC)

 

singlelogin.click
singlelogin.site
ipfs.cat
resist.tel
vietnamese-books.org
uzbek-books.org
urdu-books.org
ukrainian-books.org
turkish-books.org
thai-books.org
tamil-books.org
swedish-books.org
spanish-books.org
slovenian-books.org
slovak-books.org
serbian-books.org
russian-books.org
portuguese-books.org
polish-books.org
persian-books.org
pashto-books.org
norwegian-books.org
mongolian-books.org
marathi-books.org
malayalam-books.org
lithuanian-books.org
latvian-books.org
latin-books.org
kyrgyz-books.org
korean-books.org
kazakh-books.org
japanese-books.org
italian-books.org
indonesian-books.org
hungarian-books.org
hindi-books.org
hebrew-books.org
greek-books.org
german-books.org
georgian-books.org
fr-books.org
finnish-books.org
dutchbooks.org
danish-books.org
czechbooks.org
croatian-books.org
chamorro-books.org
catalan-books.org
bulgarian-books.org
bengali-books.org
belarusian-books.org
azerbaijani-books.org
arabic-books.org
afrikaans-books.org

 

Early November 2022, at first dozens then eventually hundreds of Z-Library domains were seized by the Department of Justice. With two alleged Z-Library operators already detained in Argentina, rendering Z-Library inoperable was a primary goal. The question now is whether the United States government has returned to finish the job.

 

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. “A Haunting in Venice” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on November 06 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	A Haunting in Venice	6.6 / trailer
2	(1)	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	7.9 / trailer
3	(4)	Five Nights at Freddy’s	5.6 / trailer
4	(7)	The Equalizer 3	7.0 / trailer
5	(5)	Expend4bles	5.0 / trailer
6	(5)	Barbie	7.3 / trailer
7	(3)	Saw X	6.9 / trailer
8	(10)	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	6.7 / trailer
9	(2)	The Exorcist: Believer	5.0 / trailer
10	(back)	Blue Beetle	6.1 / trailer

 

 

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

 

New figures published by CharlieIntel predict that free-to-play, action role-playing game Genshin Impact, will have 63 million players in November alone.

 

These impressive figures suggest that the game’s developers give gamers want they want but for a significant subset of Genshin Impact players with specific needs, that itch has to be scratched elsewhere.

 

The overwhelming urge to obtain or merely catch a glimpse of videogame content before its official release is a condition as old as gaming itself. In today’s social media-powered arena, those with access to leaked content can build huge audiences by putting it on display; when that content relates to Genshin Impact, publisher Cognosphere regularly calls in the lawyers.

New DMCA Subpoena Against X/Twitter

A new DMCA subpoena application was filed at a California district court on Monday. Attorneys acting for Cognosphere inform the court that the company is the exclusive licensee of Genshin Impact in the United States and other territories, which includes any artwork, gameplay footage, and related audiovisual content.

 

Following the now-familiar formula, Cognosphere says that since it needs to take action against alleged infringers, Twitter must “disclose the identity, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail addresses(es)” connected to four Twitter accounts: @HutaoLoverGI, @GIHutaoLover, @HutaoLover77, and @FurinaaLover.

 

“Cognosphere has reason to believe [the accounts] are operated or have been operated by the same individual and/or under common control,” the application notes. “The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of the user(s) operating the Twitter Accounts who have posted the infringing content appearing thereon.”

Leaked Content Redacted in DMCA Takedown Notices

The locations of the allegedly-infringing content are laid out in eight-pages of DMCA takedown notices sent to Twitter on Sunday by anti-piracy company Remove Your Media.

 

Each contains links where the content could be found along with an identifying screenshot, all of which are redacted in court documents. The URLs relating to @HutaoLoverGI are still up (1,2) but the images in both tweets have been taken down.

 

 

For those not fully immersed in the Genshin Impact world, determining the nature of the leaked content is less than straightforward. The tweets themselves contain a Japanese-language hashtag (#原神リーク) which may provide clues elsewhere on Twitter, but regardless, the popularity of the tweets isn’t in question. One tweet was viewed 71,700 times, the other 191,300 times.

 

Cognosphere obviously considers the leaked content a problem, but importantly, a problem it can deal with under copyright law.

Notices Targeting Other Accounts

Other DMCA takedown notices sent to Twitter target content posted by three additional accounts; @GIHutaoLover, @HutaoLover77, and @FurinaaLover. Copies of the notices sent in support of the DMCA subpoena application are similarly redacted.

 

Unlike the @HutaoLoverGI account, these three accounts are no longer accessible; two appear to have been suspended for breaking X/Twitter’s rules and in the case of @Furinaalover, because the account no longer exists.

 

 

The small white text on the right of each image are the allegedly-infringing URLs, so at least by volume, the @HutaoLover77 account is clearly the most problematic.

What Happens Next…

After obtaining DMCA subpoenas at courts in the United States, alleged leakers like the above (and others like Ubatcha and many others) face Twitter, Discord, or any other platforms they use, handing over their personal details to Cognosphere.

 

Whether those details eventually prove useful depends on the quality of information provided or left behind on X/Twitter by the account holders. What happens after useful information is handed over is rarely discussed in public.

 

The law says that any information obtained as part of a DMCA subpoena may only be used by the copyright holders for the purposes of enforcing their rights. The scope is narrowly defined for a reason but content protection is a broad field and Cognosphere is unlikely to feel restricted.

 

The DMCA subpoena application is available here (pdf)

 

DMCA subpoena applications filed at courts in the United States provide a relatively inexpensive mechanism for compelling intermediaries to hand over the personal details of allegedly-infringing users.

 

Since Cloudflare offers reverse proxy services to websites as part of its free tier, most subpoena applications filed in the United States target the company. They typically seek disclosure of pirate site operators’ personal details, and it’s not uncommon to see a dozen domains feature in one application or more in a bundle filed at the same time.

 

As revealed in our report last month, South Korea’s Naver Webtoon filed a single application containing over 350 ‘pirate’ domains, easily the highest number we’ve seen in recent years, possibly the most ever.

 

After remaining silent for several months, late last week Naver Webtoon issued a press release. It claimed that after obtaining the subpoena and taking unspecified action, the company “halted the activities of 150 overseas illegal sites.”

 

That’s an eye-catching figure because in many cases Cloudflare has little useful information to pass on. It also represents a level of success currently enjoyed by no other rightsholders using the same process, which is highly unusual. That alone warrants a closer look but first, a brief summary of key statements in the release.

Naver Webtoon’s Key Statements

– After three months of hard work by Naver Webtoon, about 150 overseas illegal sites stopped operating. This is the result of Naver Webtoon’s action to issue a ‘Subpoena’ through a U.S. court, the first in the webtoon industry.

 

– Illegal site operator information, such as address, email, and payment details, is essential information for tracking and arrest. Subpoenas also have the effect of discouraging the activities of illegal site operators.

 

– According to the traffic statistics site ‘Similar Web’, the annual user traffic to about 150 illegal sites affected by Naver Webtoon’s action is approximately 2.5 billion.

 

– Naver Webtoon plans to share the information on illegal site operators obtained this time with investigative agencies and respond strictly with a zero-tolerance policy.

 

Right off the bat it’s worth highlighting that the subpoena listed 360 domain names, not 360 sites. To illustrate why that’s so important, one of the sites targeted appears to have begun life as ‘Newtoki’ but then registered subsequent domains that also include a number; newtoki1, newtoki2, newtoki3, etc.

 

A total of 19 of these variants appeared in the subpoena, as low as newtoki17.org and as high as newtoki310.com. There appears to be at least another 100 domains in a similar format, hundreds in total (some apparently owned by an anti-piracy company), but none functioning as a pirate site. Persistence may have paid off here, but there are nearly always more domains than sites and that can significantly distort perceived outcomes.

 

That being said, a bigger and perhaps more straightforward win may justify the campaign in its own right.

Closure of Just One Site Suggests Campaign Paid Off

Aquamanga.com was one of two sites mentioned specifically by Naver Webtoon following its press release last week.

 

Traffic to Aquamanga was significant to say the least. SimilarWeb data reveals a site receiving considerable traffic on an upwards trajectory; 61 million visits in September, up from 52.6m in July.

 

 

We’ve seen no evidence to show the site has reappeared under a different domain, and information suggests that the deterrent effect mentioned by Naver Webtoon may have done its job in this case. Overall, the closure of Aquamanga seems to be the highlight of the campaign and since it accounts for three quarters of a billion visits, understandably so.

Another Big Closure But Less Satisfactory Outcome

Another site that received a direct mention from Naver was Flamescans.org. The popular scanlation site was also doing well; SimilarWeb data for August and September shows between 18.1m and 18.7m visits per month, progress that was halted when the site suddenly went offline.

 

“Thank you to all of our community members for their continued support. Unfortunately, this site has discontinued all services related to the function and content hosted as of October 19, 2023. We appreciate your steadfast engagement and commitment to us through the years,” a notice on the homepage reads.

 

While the quality of the ‘artwork’ accompanying the goodbye message won’t keep Webtoon’s artists up at night, it strongly implies that things might not be over just yet.

 

 

The image above shows Flamescans to the left of the goodbye message and Flame-Comics to the right. They appear identical and show that while domains are important, they’re not as important as sites.

 

Interestingly, a bitcoin address on the Flamescans.org domain marked “Anonymous Donations” has received a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00) thus far. It’s possible that pirate frugality and relatively complicated crypto transactions aren’t the best mix.

 

Also listed in the subpoena but still online are five ‘Agitoon’ .xyz domains beginning agit571 and ending agit577.xyz. They carry the same epilepsy-inducing gambling advertising previously seen on the now-shuttered Noonoo TV.

 

 

Naver Webtoon says that in addition to sending direct warnings to “selected” illegal sites, it also works to undermine their ability to do business. Domain registrars, hosting companies, ISPs, social media platforms and payment services are among the potential targets.

 

Due to these efforts, 23 unnamed sites witnessed a 30% fall in traffic in October when compared to July, the company reports.

‘Good News’ For the Entire Webtoon Industry

Summing up, Naver Webtoon says that its anti-piracy work isn’t just good for the company, it’s good for everyone involved in webtoons.

 

“This achievement is helpful not only to Naver Webtoon but also to the entire webtoon industry, which is suffering damage from illegal webtoon sites,” says Kim Gyu-nam, Naver Webtoon’s legal affairs chief and anti-piracy task force leader.

 

“The platform will do its best to eradicate illegal webtoons. We will continue to actively take all possible measures.”

 

Given the constantly shifting nature of many pirate sites, especially those that operate multiple domains and/or move to new ones hoping to evade various measures, it’s difficult to determine whether Naver Webtoon really did shut down 150 sites. In its press release it actually notes that “about 150 sites were completely deleted or temporarily suspended operations” which does change things somewhat.

 

Still, if putting domains out of action was part of the mission, that seems to have been quite effective. The image below shows a screenshot/preview image of every domain in the subpoena. In the majority of cases, those with no image are out of action.

 

 

Whether any have moved to new domains is another question, but none will have welcomed the disruption and won’t welcome the future disruption Naver Webtoon is already promising.

 

With more than a billion impressions per month and over 30,000 active advertisers, PropellerAds is a serious player in the online advertising industry.

 

The Cyprus-based company works with advertisers and publishers from all over the world and while many are legitimate companies, Hollywood believes there are some bad apples too.

MPA’s List of Notorious Markets

Last month, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) nominated PropellerAds for inclusion on the US Trade Representative‘s annual list of “notorious markets”. In the overview, the advertising outfit is flanked by traditional pirate sites such as The Pirate Bay, Fmovies, and YTS.

 

According to the MPA, PropellerAds is used by many pirate sites to generate millions of dollars in revenue.

 

“Although primarily based in Cyprus, Propeller Ads is an ad network operated by Russian individuals that has subsidiary offices in the Czech Republic, the Isle of Man, and the United Arab Emirates. The company is a significant ad provider to streaming cyberlockers,” MPA wrote.

 

The movie industry group added weight to its claim by referencing reports from the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), which show that illicit actors use pirate sites to display dubious or even harmful ads.

 

“According to DCA, Propeller Ads is among the biggest facilitators of malvertising on piracy sites, accounting for a quarter of their malvertising. Propeller Ads has been offering its services to dozens of illegal and infringing sites such as French-Stream.gg, Supervideo.tv, Vidlox.me, and Filmpertutti.lat, helping those sites generate significant revenues through advertising,” MPA writes.

MPA’s nomination

 

This isn’t the first time that PropellerAds has been nominated for an appearance in the “notorious markets” overview; the MPA previously submitted almost identical recommendations to the USTR. These claims are a thorn in the side of the advertising company which has just responded with a scathing rebuttal in which it openly criticizes the MPA.

PropellerAds Responds

In a letter to the USTR, PropellerAds, represented by Boston Law Group’s Val Gurvits, describes the MPA’s characterization as baseless and libelous.

 

“In short, there is no basis to claim that Propeller Ads can be or should be alleged to be taking part in piracy. The assertions by the MPA that Propeller Ads is willfully funding piracy websites are not only factually wrong, but also legally baseless and libelous,” the letter reads.

 

The advertising company sees itself as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers, who use its platform to show billions of ads. It has no control over what’s offered on its clients’ websites, nor does it endorse or support any of the content.

 

In this intermediary role, the company believes that it’s not responsible for potentially problematic content. That’s in line with how courts in the US have ruled on this matter, the response notes, citing various legal precedents.

 

“In stark contrast to the MPA’s suggestion that advertising services somehow make Propeller Ads complicit in copyright piracy occurring on certain Internet websites, United States courts have explicitly found that an advertising network like Propeller Ads is not responsible for the infringing activities of its publishers.”

Reckless, Baseless, Inaccurate, and Misleading

As the rebuttal continues, the wording gets stronger. PropellerAds openly discredits the DCA research the MPA relies on, describing it as “reckless, baseless, inaccurate, and misleading.”

 

“The DCA Report not only fails to include Propeller Ads, but it does not even allege that any online advertisers or ad networks, in general, are responsible for illicit acts of piracy, credit card fraud, malware nor for any other potential risk to the health and safety to American consumers,” PropellerAds insists.

 

The MPA’s reliance on the DCA research to back up their “attacks” is “reprehensible and self-interested,” the advertising company notes. It stresses that there are close ties and financial links between the film industry and DCA, as previously reported by Vox.

 

PropellerAds indirectly suggests that DCA’s reports are used as ammunition for lobbying efforts. For example, the research is often referenced in legislative and policy commentary, without proper attribution and unbiased data.

 

“Indeed, all evidence demonstrates that the DCA created the DCA Report simply by relying on the unsubstantiated allegations of self-interested parties without conducting any reasonable independent research, with the clear intention of reaching a predetermined conclusion, defaming Propeller Ads,” the company adds.

 

“The DCA Report and all information therein about Propeller Ads is based on unconfirmed, farfetched, and false allegations without any actual evidence or justification whatsoever.

 

“The DCA Report provides no statistics or other real evidence proving that advertising intermediaries are in any way responsible for these bad actors. Therefore, all declarations, data, and numbers in the DCA Report as it relates to Propeller Ads are nothing more than mere speculations, expressions of malevolent opinions, and invalid assumptions.”

Harassment and Defamation

Propeller Ads says the MPA uses the USTR process to put pressure on third-party intermediaries, which can be seen as harassment and defamation.

 

“While the MPA holds itself out as a party eager to combat illegal activities on the internet, in reality, the MPA is using its platform and influence to baselessly harass and defame Propeller Ads and other major industry participants.”

 

If the MPA truly believes that PropellerAds is breaking the law it can take the matter to court; thus far, however, that’s yet to happen. While the MPA may not like some of the sites the company works with, that doesn’t make it liable.

 

For this reason, the USTR should not list the advertising company as a notorious market in its final report, the letter concludes.

 

“Propeller Ads respectfully cautions USTR to not adopt the MPA’s unfounded allegations and manufacture of evidence. The MPA’s cynical strategy is quite clear. The MPA is attempting to launder their own allegations through the USTR to advance the MPA’s own interest against Propeller Ads and other online advertisers.”

 

—

 

A copy of PropellerAds full response, submitted to the US Trade Representative, is available here (pdf)

 

India’s Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill was first introduced in 2019 with the aim of updating the Cinematograph Act, 1952, to better protect filmmakers.

 

In April 2023, India’s Union Cabinet gave the bill a green light and during July it was passed by both Houses of Parliament. The primary goal of these amendments is to reduce rampant online movie piracy, but also contains measures related to the certification of films. This ultimately determines the content that citizens are allowed to view and under what circumstances, and the content they must not view at all.

 

This process is handled by India’s powerful Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), a body within the government’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B). An announcement from the latter on Friday reveals new anti-piracy powers for the CBFC under the recently passed legislation.

CBFC Empowered to Order Intermediaries to Stop Piracy

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting begins by drawing attention to section 6AB of the amended Cinematograph Act.

 

6AB. No person shall use or abet the use of an infringing copy of any film to exhibit to the public for profit— (a) at a place of exhibition which has not been licensed under this Act or the rules made thereunder; or (b) in a manner that amounts to the infringement of copyright under the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957 or any other law for the time being in force

 

With that established, the Ministry notes that since a newly-inserted amendment allows the government to get involved to ensure compliance with the above, that’s exactly what it intends to do.

 

“Further, the newly inserted section 7(1B)(ii) in the Cinematograph Act provides that the Government may take suitable action for removing/disabling access to such an infringing copy exhibited/hosted on an intermediary platform in a manner in contravention to the section 6AB referred to above,” the announcement adds.

Suitable Action As Follows

Tackling the distribution of pirated movies in India takes place under the Copyright Act, as one might expect. However, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting notes that since there is no “institutional mechanism” to “directly take action” against pirated movies, section 7(1B)(ii) mentioned above will now provide one.

 

The Ministry says it has “established an institutional mechanism of Nodal Officers to receive complaints against piracy and direct the intermediaries to take down pirated content on digital platforms.”

 

Appointed by the Ministry, the ‘Nodal Officers’ will be found at the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) headquarters in Mumbai and at various regional offices in major film production centers. From there they will receive complaints about piracy taking place online and then instruct platforms to take offending content down.

Which Platforms Are Affected and Who Can File a Complaint?

In a statement on Friday, officials mentioned YouTube and Telegram directly but there seems no obvious barrier to content being taken down from any social media or video hosting platform.

 

“As per the amended Cinematograph Act, regional officers in CBFC have been empowered to issue orders to remove pirated films from any source such as Telegram and YouTube following a complaint. The platforms will need to act and remove the unlawfully reproduced content within 48 hours,” an official said.

 

In respect of who is able to file a complaint, original copyright holders or those authorized to act on their behalf are clearly defined, as one might expect. However, the government announcement states that non-copyright holders may also file complaints, with the same applying to those who have no authorization from copyright holders to take infringing content down.

 

 

 

The offer to consider complaints, filed by non-copyright holders that have no authorization from copyright holders, is certainly interesting. While not everyone involved in movies is a copyright holder (some will be licensed, for example), having no authorization to act sounds a lot like having no permission, but there may be some exceptions.

Lots of Complaints May Cause a Few Issues

Since the ‘Nodal Officers’ may consider a hearing to handle such complaints on a case-to-case basis, the numbers will need to be extremely low so as not to outstretch capacity. For the whole of India, just 12 members of staff have been allocated to deal with complaints filed under this initiative. To put that into perspective, there are anti-piracy companies in India filing complaints with Google at a rate that exceeds 300K per week.

 

It’s unclear whether complaints will be accepted online but the official announcement on Friday was accompanied by a sample complaint form which seems like it’s intended to be filled in manually, presumably with a pen. One can only imagine the chaos if that remains the case but at least the lists are likely to be quite short, if ‘enclosing’ an Excel spreadsheet isn’t an option.

 

 

Friday’s announcement is available here (pdf)

 

The DMCA takedown process allows copyright holders to report infringing content and have it removed or taken down.

 

It’s a powerful tool that takes millions of URLs and links offline every day. In most cases, this happens for a good reason, but some takedown efforts are more questionable.

 

Fraudsters occasionally use false DMCA notices to target competitors. The strategy can be particularly effective when notices are sent to Google, as the search engine actively downranks domains that are frequently mentioned in takedown requests.

YTMP3.nu Takedowns

YTMP3.nu is one of the sites regularly targeted by takedown requests. The YouTube download portal has more than 40 million monthly visits but believes this figure would muc: higher today if Google hadn’t removed many of its search results.

 

The site is regularly targeted by legitimate music industry groups, including the RIAA and BPI, who allege that the site violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. However, the stream-ripping service also views itself as a victim due to the bogus takedown notices sent by one or more competitors.

 

YTMP3.nu and sister site Y2mate.nu are operated by CreativeCode Ltd, a company incorporated in Anguilla. In an attempt to curtail the abuse, the site sent a cease and desist letter to Google in April, asking the search engine to begin verifying senders of DMCA notices. In addition, YTMP3.nu also asked for a litigation hold in anticipation of future legal action.

Fraudster Lawsuit

This cease and desist notice was followed up by a lawsuit in August, where the company sued several “John Doe” competitors for sending false or fraudulent DMCA notices to Google.

 

Filed at a federal court in California, the complaint accuses one or more CreativeCode competitors of sending fraudulent takedown notices. This includes one that was sent by “End Of YouTube Converter,” claiming to protect the Rick Astley track “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

 

The unknown senders stand accused of violating the DMCA, Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage, and breaching California’s Unfair Competition Law. Through the lawsuit, the YouTube rippers hope to recoup at least $500,000 in damages.

 

While YTMP3.nu’s parent company may have a valid claim, there’s a key problem; the senders of these allegedly bogus takedown notices are unknown. To find out who they are, the company now seeks help from Google.

Help from Google?

A few days ago, CreativeCode submitted an ex parte application for immediate and limited discovery to the court, requesting Google to share all identifying information it has on the senders of these DMCA notices.

 

The takedown requests are already shared publicly by Google through the Lumen Database, but these public listings omit privacy-sensitive data. This is exactly the type of information that the YouTube rippers need to expose the fraudsters.

 

“Plaintiff anticipates that Google, as the recipient of the DMCA Notices, will have sufficient additional information regarding the Senders of the DMCA Notices that will be the only way that Plaintiffs can identify the Defendants in this matter,” CreativeCode writes.

 

Indeed, when people use Google’s DMCA webform, they have to provide an email address, signature, and other pieces of information. The fraudsters likely used fake data, but Google may also have IP-addresses, linked YouTube accounts, and other metadata that could prove useful.

 

“With this information, Plaintiffs can further subpoena an ISP, email provider, or other technology provider who may have further identifying information regarding the sender, such as a physical address.”

 

 

According to CreativeCode, the requested information is vital, as the company has no other options to find out who the DMCA takedown senders are.

 

“As Doe Defendants cannot be identified, this lawsuit cannot proceed unless this Court grants Plaintiffs application to take early discovery,” the company writes in its request, asking the court to grant the application.

Content Neutral

As mentioned earlier, the RIAA and BPI regularly ask Google to remove YTMP3.nu and Y2mate.nu URLs as well. The music companies classify YouTube rippers as anti-circumvention tools under the DMCA and Google typically honors their requests.

 

The music companies’ takedown notices are not covered by this lawsuit but CreativeCode rejects the notion that its sites break the law.

 

“The functionality of the Websites is content neutral and there are substantial non-infringing reasons why users use the Websites, such as the fact that many publishers put out videos free from copyright and invite users to freely download and copy their work and a number of other non-infringing and fair uses,” CreativeCode writes.

 

Whether the YouTube rippers have plans to challenge this in court, like Yout.com is doing, is unknown. For now, they prefer to take on one battle at a time.

 

—

 

A copy of the CreativeCode’s request, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf)

 

Update: the request has been approved with some small amendments.

 

An announcement by Spain’s National Police (Policía Nacional) this morning was in many respects nothing out of the ordinary.

 

In common with almost every country with a movie and TV show market to protect, Spain regularly conducts operations to shut down or disrupt local pirate IPTV services. The operation detailed in a press release this morning, distributed via official police website Policia.es and the Ministry of the Interior’s website at Interior.gob.es, seems significant.

Investigation Began Last Year

The authorities say they began investigating the “criminal organization” in February 2022. From operations centers in Alicante and Seville, the suspects allegedly provided “fraudulent multimedia content” via IPTV by installing “fraudulent applications” on customers’ devices, including set-top boxes, smart TVs, and mobile phones. As a result, movies, TV shows, and live sporting events, were available at a rate much lower than the legitimate market price.

 

 

“The organization offered illegal services through a telecommunications consulting company that had a solid marketing structure at its service,” police explained.

 

“The members of the criminal network were in the provinces of Alicante, Malaga, and Valladolid, and their function was to market fraudulent services, maximizing the number of potential clients to be obtained while causing serious economic damage to the main victims of this type of illegal activity.”

 

Police carried out raids on four locations in Spain and a total of eight people were arrested; Valladolid (3), Alicante (3), Málaga (1) and Seville (1). All stand accused of serious crimes including membership of a criminal organization and intellectual property offenses.

 

Police say the suspects had a “high degree of technological specialization” which allowed them to remotely manage clients who subscribed to sports audiovisual content. The suspects’ “entire IT infrastructure” was dismantled, police report.

Massive Damage to Rightsholders

Before revealing the financial losses suffered by legitimate rightsholders, the police statement notes that while the criminal organization has been dismantled, those who subscribe to pirate services “are an active party in causing damage to the main victims of these activities through well-known loss of profits.”

 

In other words, members of the public who subscribed are partly responsible for the losses incurred by rightsholders. By any standard, the scale of the losses reported by police this morning are considerable.

 

“[W]ell-known loss of profits…refers to the profits that the injured parties no longer receive as a consequence of the criminal activities investigated, which can be estimated at 366,250,000 euros.”

Anyone familiar with copyright-related losses will be aware that major rightsholders always go big on potential losses. They certainly look good in headlines like this one.

 

 

Any figure can be justified with the right approach and since the numbers are hypothetical, the best a sensible argument to the contrary will ever achieve is the production of a smaller, more boring number.

Calming Calculations

Whether €366m in losses sounded reasonable or simply got everyone very, very excited this morning is unclear. According to dozens of local media outlets and increasingly those further afield, that number was reported by police and the government so needs no further scrutiny.

 

 

According to police the-now dismantled service had 18,300 subscribers. So, if the total losses are €366 million, each individual subscriber to the service caused losses to rightsholders of €20,000. Inflation strikes again?

On Second Thoughts….

Visitors to the press release made available on Policia.es this morning saw the text as it appears in the image below. Those who visit the site right now will notice that small but pretty important edits have taken place, as confirmed by the current text at this URL vs the copy from this morning as it appears in Google’s cache.

 

 

If this was a sudden recalculation at the last minute, that raises the question of why the new figure is actually unreasonably low. If it was a plain error, that’s a human trait that none of us can avoid; what we can do is take it on the chin and publish a transparent correction.

 

That doesn’t appear to have happened here and that is already causing significant problems. As things standard, the truth can only be found buried away in an invisible edit. The media, on the other hand, simply printed what they were given, presumably based at least partly on trust (1,2,3)

 

If the big loss claim isn’t a fact on Wikipedia already, it will be soon. From there, anything can happen, and probably will. The Ministry of the Interior, meanwhile, is yet to change its mind.

 

 

For Georgia’s 3.7 million citizens, the European mainland lies just over the Black Sea. For the determined, EU membership is also visible on the western horizon; those who look to the north see little except Russia.

 

The European Union’s preparations to welcome Georgia into the bloc are both meticulous and extraordinarily complicated. Several dedicated websites detail various aspects of vision and planning, yet barely manage to scratch the surface of the challenges ahead.

 

These include the monumental task of managing the withdrawal symptoms of a nation almost totally reliant on pirated media for their daily entertainment fix.

Pressure From Both the United States and EU

Among hundreds of other conditions and caveats spanning almost every aspect of life in Georgia, EU membership and a headline piracy rate of 90%+ complement each other like oil and water. Something will have to give and for the United States, that day can’t arrive soon enough.

 

In a 2019 letter sent from the other side of the Atlantic, the Motion Picture Association politely suggested that Georgia needed to take piracy a little more seriously. Two of the country’s largest pirate sites, Adjaranet.com and iMovies.cc, were called out by name as particularly problematic.

 

 

It would take another three years but in August 2022, seemingly out of nowhere, local media began reporting the sudden demise of both sites. With Adjaranet and iMovies simultaneously offline “due to maintenance” the finger of blame quickly pointed towards the European Union.

 

On August 24, 2022, Georgia’s Communications Commission (ComCom) suggested that warnings from the United States were the driving force behind recent events.

 

“The Motion Picture Association of America, whose members include Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Sony, Paramount Pictures and Netflix, expressed concerns about Georgian sites hosting pirated movies and warned that failure to eliminate the problem could lead to sanctions against the country, which would include delays or complete cancellation of world premieres of movies and TV shows in Georgia,” ComCom announced.

 

“The American film studios expressed their hope that the Communications Commission would soon help clear the Georgian online space from pirated movies and TV shows,” the Commission added.

Two Years of Negotiations With Pirates

Whether Hollywood envisioned Georgia’s somewhat unorthodox response to its warnings is unclear. In its August 2022 announcement, ComCom revealed that for more than two years, in the wake of the MPA’s letter, it had been “intensively communicating” with websites offering pirated audiovisual content.

 

The owners of those sites were given precisely two years to bring content displayed on their platforms “in line with legislation” and when some failed to respond, ComCom says it reminded their hosting providers of their obligations.

 

After blame fell on the EU and then Hollywood following ComCom’s announcement, another potential culprit entered the frame, one much closer to home. Just a week before the shutdowns, local cinema chain Cavea launched Cavea Plus, Georgia’s first and only legal streaming service. Its initially limited catalog reportedly included content supplied by Warner and HBO.

Streaming Pioneer, Hollywood Partner

The pioneering launch of Cavea Plus was an incredibly brave move in a piracy-saturated market, something acknowledged by Cavea Plus manager Salome Kuprashvili in the weeks leading up to the launch. The “harsh reality” in Georgia, Kuprashvili said, is that piracy accounts for “100% of the market.” With the benefit of hindsight, her follow-on comment takes on new light.

 

“We cannot solve this problem with our own resources, but we are in active cooperation with international as well as local governmental and non-governmental organizations,” Kuprashvili added.

 

Three months after the launch of Cavea Plus, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment welcomed its latest member, the 42nd to date.

 

“Cavea Plus shares ACE’s deep understanding that piracy poses a direct threat to the media and entertainment industry, and we are pleased to welcome them to our global network,” said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPA and chairman of ACE.

 

The announcement also revealed that ACE and Cavea had a “long history” of working together to fight piracy in Georgia. Adjaranet.com and iMovies.cc weren’t mentioned by name but ACE did refer to one in the past tense; “The biggest piracy site drew about 11 million monthly visits,” ACE noted.

Adjaranet.com and iMovies.cc Get Officially Shut Down

In an announcement Wednesday, ACE said that after working closely with Georgia’s Ministry of Finance, the two largest illegal streaming sites in the country have now been shut down.

 

“Over the past two years, adjaranet.com has amassed 140 million visits. During the same period, imovies.cc has attracted nearly 64 million visits,” ACE revealed.

 

Jan van Voorn, head of ACE and the MPA’s Global Content Protection Chief, thanked Georgian authorities and acknowledged the assistance of one of its own members.

 

“ACE appreciates the hard work of the Georgian Ministry of Finance and the Anti-Piracy Center of Georgia in the successful closure of these two criminal operations that undermine jobs and growth throughout the Georgian creative sector. Our partnership with Cavea Plus, a key member of ACE in the Caucasus region, has helped ensure a coordinated approach to protecting copyright.”

More Work Needed to Beat Georgia’s Pirates

Within two days of Adjaranet.com’s claimed shutdown in 2022, a similar site with similar domain had already appeared to take up the slack, at least until Adjaranet.com apparently came back from the dead.

 

With around 6.7 million visits per month, Adjaranet.to does a fairly convincing impression of Adjaranet.com, as it appeared in the weeks before its initial disappearance last year. Others, including Adjaranet.bet, and several iMovies.cc clones receive less traffic, but even 180k visits per month is significant in a country of less than four million.

 

 

The “harsh reality” mentioned by Cavea Plus manager Salome Kuprashvili may have been eased by the double shutdowns of Adjaranet and iMovies but in more general terms, the overall picture in Georgia can only be truly appreciated after viewing the list of most-visited entertainment websites.

 

Such a list is available from Semrush and it reveals a market almost completely dominated by pirate sites, with only a few notable legal outliers.

 

That’s not only terrible for development of a domestic market crying out for local movies and TV shows, but also a potentially significant roadblock to EU membership.

 

 

Two years ago, several movie production companies, including the makers of Hellboy, Rambo V, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, and Dallas Buyer’s Club, sued Internet provider Grande Communications.

 

The filmmakers accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

 

In addition to millions of dollars in damages, the plaintiffs asked the court to impose strict anti-piracy measures. The requests included a three-strikes termination policy against alleged pirates and an outright block of various pirate sites including the notorious Pirate Bay.

Millions At Stake

There have been several of these types of ‘repeat infringer’ cases in the US, filed by both movie and music companies. Previous lawsuits have made it crystal clear that the stakes are high, with a billion-dollar damages award against Cox as the prime example.

 

Grande Communications can draw from personal experience. Last fall, a federal jury found the Texas-based provider liable for willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered the ISP to pay $47 million in damages to a group of record labels.

 

With that judgment under appeal, the ISP hoped to prevent a similar outcome in the movie company case. Grande submitted a motion to dismiss, which was denied, but it continued to push back against the piracy liability allegations, pointing out that there’s nothing wrong with its repeat infringer policy.

 

When the film companies tried to amend the complaint by adding additional rightsholders and piracy detection company Irdeto, Grande successfully objected. The original copyright claims remained intact, however, and the same was true for the trial scheduled for next year.

Film Companies Drop Lawsuit

Today, that trial is off the table. In a surprising turn of events, both parties filed a stipulation to dismiss the case. There is no settlement agreement and both parties will pay their own costs.

 

Stipulation of Dismissal
 

The legal paperwork doesn’t explain why the lawsuit was dismissed but Grande’s parent company Astound is celebrating it as a clear win. According to the Internet provider, it shows that there is nothing wrong with its DMCA policy.

 

“This completely vindicates our DMCA program. The plaintiffs had an opportunity to vet our program, and after doing so they decided the case was not worth pursuing,” Astound’s General Counsel Jeff Kramp explains.

 

To be clear, we did not pay a cent to resolve this case because we believe strongly in the effectiveness of our DMCA policy,” Kramp added.

But Why?

To find out more, we reached out to the filmmakers’ attorney who declined to comment at this time. We can only speculate on the reasons.

 

While it’s possible the filmmakers prefer to focus their efforts elsewhere, dropping a case doesn’t make much sense if you believe that you’re ahead, so that may factor into it as well.

 

Whatever the reasons, Astound isn’t completely free of the film companies just yet. Many of the same outfits filed a repeat infringer lawsuit against Astound subsidiary RCN, which remains pending.

 

The ‘Korean Wave’ cultural phenomenon, boosted by movies and TV shows such as Parasite and Squid Game, and once in a generation musical mega-groups like BTS, has captivated audiences thousands of miles beyond South Korea’s borders.

 

These cultural exports have overcome language barriers, generated huge sums of money, and further boosted South Korea’s image on the world stage. These are impressive accomplishments for the country’s entertainment sector but having hit the big time, the downsides of success are apparent too.

 

While global recognition and escalating riches are supported by healthy increases in media consumption, that attracts piracy rates typically associated with the most successful entertainment content. Not that the government or rightsholders have simply allowed that to happen, of course.

 

South Korea’s efforts to seriously reduce piracy were evident in 2009 when a revision of the Korean Copyright Act introduced a “three strikes” administrative program to disconnect repeat infringers from the internet. However, for the next few years, authorities focused on hosts and facilitators of infringing content instead.

Internationalized Piracy, Internationalized Response

Over the decade-and-a-half that followed, South Korea and indeed the rest of the world discovered that making content widely available at a fair price is one of the best ways to increase revenue. Yet to date, and despite increased consumption of legal content, almost nothing has been truly effective at permanently reducing headline piracy rates.

 

To tackle an increasingly professional and internationalized piracy market, rightsholders have been forming coalitions to fight piracy as one, with the huge Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment providing the most obvious example.

 

Earlier this year, South Korean rightsholders were said to be working with ACE and government officials as part of a sustained effort to take down Noonoo TV, a giant illegal streaming platform said to be particularly damaging to the local market.

 

The site’s collapse just weeks later may be a sign that when everyone pushes in the same direction, progress can be made against even the most difficult targets. It appears the South Korean government intends to maintain the pressure.

Determined to Protect K-Content

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) says it has launched two new entities to strengthen the investigative capabilities of the Copyright Special Judicial Police (CSJP) to tackle the illegal distribution of K-Content.

 

The Copyright Crime Scientific Investigation Team reorganizes existing investigation resources into four teams, together responsible for planning and investigations, international cooperation, domestic crime, and investigation support. The Ministry says this establishes a scientific investigation system based on digital forensics to specialize and streamline investigative capabilities.

 

Roles and Responsibilities (translated, original Korean

 

The Ministry said it will also operate a new Copyright Crime Analysis Center to investigate the illegal and increasingly sophisticated and internationalized distribution of K-Content. The center will use the latest digital forensics software, evidence replication and analysis tools, plus other equipment for “advanced criminal investigations.”

 

One of the goals of the new center is to overcome a reliance on previously seized materials, by developing the ability to analyze illegal sites and their distribution routes in advance. The Ministry says this will enable “rapid and dense investigations, forensic analysis, and the safety of digital evidence management.”

 

The center will also be used for international cooperation meetings between domestic and foreign investigative agencies and law enforcement.

Progress to Report

Over the past 12 months, the Ministry of Culture says that piracy investigations led to the arrest of four site operators and eight uploaders linked to three eBook piracy platforms. Action against streaming service BeeTV also gets a mention.

 

“In addition, the ministry has been stepping up its efforts to arrest copyright infringement criminals, including the arrest of three workers who operated BeeTV, an illegal IPTV piracy service, and transmitted broadcasts without authorization,” the report notes.

 

Other successes include the arrest of “a heavy uploader who shared domestic broadcasts and online video service (OTT) videos as torrents to mine BitTorrent coins,” and the arrest of another major uploader who earned over $101,000 by by sharing TV shows and anime on 17 local file-hosting platforms.

 

Over the years we have seen dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Initially, many of these tried to appeal to people’s morals.

 

You wouldn’t steal a car, right?

 

This type of messaging doesn’t work for everyone, so more direct tactics have also been explored. These often focus on the risks associated with piracy, running into legal trouble, for example. However, due to the perception that exposure to these types of issues is relatively unlikely, the overall deterrent effect can be quite limited.

Malware and Other Threats

A more ‘common’ threat that people face is malware and other types of scams. This may help to explain why many recent studies and reports have linked malware to pirate sites. These findings are backed by rightsholders and anti-piracy groups, who seem very concerned about the digital safety of pirates.

 

The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), which has close ties to the content industries, has highlighted these types of piracy threats for years. The group has released a variety of reports pointing out that pirate sites are a hotbed for malware, credit card theft, ransomware and other evils.

 

Earlier this year, a DCA mystery shopper experiment revealed that handing over credit card details to sellers of shady IPTV subscriptions isn’t a good idea. Several unknown charges popped up on some accounts, suggesting that cards had been compromised.

 

In addition, an accompanying study among American consumers found that 72 percent of those who used a credit card to pay for an IPTV subscription experienced a credit card breach. Of those who never visited pirate sites, ‘only’ 18 percent reported similar issues.

Attorneys General Warn Pirates

DCA says that these findings should send a warning to the public that pirate sites are unsafe so, to add some extra weight, today DCA launched a new series of public service announcements. They feature attorneys general in 19 states and the District of Columbia warning the public about these threats.

 

Participating law enforcers include California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, and Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr. All read from exactly the same script in their PSAs.

 

The PSA

 

 

“Some very bad actors have found a way into our homes through the entertainment we watch, so-called piracy operators lure us with the offer of free or cheap access to our favorite programs and then spread viruses such as ransomware,” they warn

 

“They also offer low-cost piracy subscription services to watch pirated programs and live sports then steal your credit card information.

 

“Don’t let hackers or credit card thieves into your house. Be careful with the websites you visit and warn your children and other family members about how to stay safe online,” the message concludes.

Spreading The Message

DCA funded the campaign which will be promoted through social media. In addition, the messages have been submitted for airing on local TV stations, hoping to dissuade people from using pirate sites and services.

 

According to DCA’s executive director Tom Galvin, pirated content is often used as bait to exploit naive Internet users seeking cheap access to online entertainment.

 

“Piracy operators dangle free content. But what they don’t tell you is that the content is bait designed to infect users’ devices and enable criminals to abuse their credit cards,” Galvin says.

 

TorrentFreak asked DCA whether any other attorneys general were asked to participate, but we didn’t receive a direct answer. The Alliance did inform us that a standard script was used to ease video production. The same was done a few years ago, when a similar campaign was launched.

 

Attorneys general are tasked with keeping their citizens safe, so the campaign fits that goal. That said, the malware problem can be more nuanced than it’s portrayed in this campaign, but that would likely take away from the deterrent effect.

 

Finally, it’s worth highlighting that the PSAs make no mention of the fact that online piracy is linked to copyright infringement, which also has consequences. That doesn’t have priority, at least not in this campaign.

 

—

 

The attorneys general participating in the campaign are listed below. At the time of writing, not all videos are available online.

 

Attorney General Rob Bonta (California)
Attorney General William Tong (Connecticut)
Attorney General Brian Schwalb (District of Columbia)
Attorney General Chris Carr (Georgia)
Attorney General Brenna Byrd (Iowa)
Attorney General Kris Kobach (Kansas)
Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (Maryland)
Attorney General Dana Nessel (Michigan)
Attorney General Keith Ellison (Minnesota)
Attorney General Lynn Fitch (Mississippi)
Attorney General Aaron D. Ford (Nevada)
Attorney General Letitia A. James (New York)
Attorney General Josh Stein (North Carolina)
Attorney General Dave Yost (Ohio)
Attorney General Michelle Henry (Pennsylvania)
Attorney General Alan Wilson (South Carolina)
Attorney General Marty Jackley (South Dakota)
Attorney General Sean Reyes (Utah)
Attorney General Charity R. Clark (Vermont)
Attorney General Jason Miyares (Virginia)

 

Across the globe, law enforcement and copyright holder groups are teaming up to tackle online piracy of all shapes and sizes.

 

Cooperation is seen as essential to tackling the endemic piracy problem and the key players regularly meet up to discuss progress and emerging problems.

 

Last week, Europol hosted its annual IP Crime Conference in Lisbon where stakeholders came together to exchange information and ideas. The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance was also present and seized the opportunity to announce its annual Anti-Piracy Award on stage.

The Anti-Piracy Award Goes to FIOD

The 2023 award goes to the Dutch fiscal police (FIOD), which shut down one of Europe’s largest IPTV operations in May. The illicit operation presumably offered its services to countless smaller IPTV sellers, together serving over a million subscribers according to official reports.

 

Large IPTV raids are not new, but this enforcement effort took place on a scale that we haven’t seen before. 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.

 

The raids, which also inflicted some collateral damage, caused hundreds of thousands of screens to go dark. Several people were arrested and the prosecution is ongoing.

 

Commenting on the award, AAPA’s Executive Vice President Sheila Cassells notes that FIOD’s action shows how vital law enforcement efforts are against these types of illicit piracy operations.

 

“The scale of this operation illustrates clearly why law enforcement must continue to act against illegal IPTV services,” Cassells says.

 

“And the inclusion and closure of a major hosting provider reinforces the need for a clear and robust regulatory regime, including, for example, know your customer requirements, to be imposed on such actors,” she adds.

 

In recent years, illicit IPTV services have become a billion-dollar industry as people look for alternatives to costly official streaming subscriptions. AAPA and other copyright holders hope that by keeping the pressure on, this trend can eventually be reversed.

New ‘Host’ Anti-Piracy Award

AAPA also presented a new award this year for an agency operating in the conference’s host country, which is Portugal this year. This went to the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), which helped to implement the country’s pirate site blocking framework.

 

The Award (via)
 

The award was handed to General Inspector Luis Silveira Botelho and AAPA Co-President Mark Mulready hopes the Portuguese model will serve as an example for other countries.

 

“In presenting this award, we are pleased to acknowledge the steps taken in Portugal to implement an efficient and dynamic system for blocking orders,” Mulready says.

 

“We have seen from other countries how helpful such blocking orders can be and we hope that countries who have not yet introduced the possibility of blocking orders will take note of the system applied here,” he adds.

Anti-Piracy Commendations

The anti-piracy coalition also handed out a certificate of commendation to Marcin Cyganek of the Polish Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime, who helped to prioritize IP crime and was instrumental in the shutdown of polsharing.com.

 

Certificates of commendation were also handed to Bulgaria, Italy, and Spain, for various enforcement actions. Bulgaria, for example, carried out a variety of anti-piracy operations in recent months, resulting in the shutdown of several widely-used piracy services.

 

Italy, meanwhile, was lauded for “Operation Gotha“, which hit an unnamed IPTV operation that reportedly serviced 900,000 subscribers. This action took over where “Operation Blackout” left off and involved dozens of raids in 23 provinces across the country.

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. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 30 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	7.9 / trailer
2	(…)	The Exorcist: Believer	5.0 / trailer
3	(2)	Saw X	6.9 / trailer
4	(…)	Five Nights at Freddy’s	5.6 / trailer
5	(3)	Expend4bles	5.0 / trailer
6	(5)	Barbie	7.3 / trailer
7	(4)	The Equalizer 3	7.0 / trailer
8	(…)	Five Royal Hotel	6.0 / trailer
9	(…)	Pain Hustlers	6.4 / trailer
10	(8)	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	6.7 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Authorities and rightsholders in Brazil appear determined to disrupt, restrict, or completely deny access to the illegal TV market enjoyed by millions of local citizens.

 

From taking on pirate IPTV services to the outlawing of non-certified set-top boxes, to blocking illegal streaming websites and the removal of pirate apps, no target is off limits. One of the agencies at the forefront of this anti-piracy activity is the National Telecommunications Agency, better known as Anatel.

 

Earlier his year, Anatel and Brazil’s National Film Agency (Ancine) announced a new anti-piracy partnership. In addition to mass seizures of non-certified Android-type devices, Anatel said that blocking would continue to play a key role in the fight against seven million pirate set-top devices (local term ‘TV Box’) said to be active in the country.

New Anti-Piracy Lab Unveiled

Early September saw the official unveiling of Anatel’s brand new Anti-Piracy Laboratory in Brasília. Capable of conducting technical analysis of equipment and the methods used to distribute pirated content, the lab boasts 12 large screens for monitoring purposes, six workstations for in-house use, and remote access for workers elsewhere.

 

The New Lab (Image credit: Anatel)

 

During the inauguration ceremony last month, Anatel revealed that 29 operations had resulted in the seizure of 1.4 million uncertified devices. The telecoms agency added that 1,400 IP addresses that “enabled the operation of pirate TV Boxes” were subjected to blocking.

Anatel Claims Massive Progress

According to an Anatel announcement last Thursday (October 26), over 3,000 servers enabling millions of pirate ‘TV Boxes’ have been blocked in Brazil since the start of 2023. That’s more than double the figure Anatel reported last month, but an even bigger surprise came via reports of an Anatel operation carried out on Thursday.

 

Based on data supplied by the agency, local media reports (1,2,3) stated that Anatel had somehow managed to either block 80% of all TV boxes currently active in Brazil, or had blocked servers supplying 80% of TV boxes.

 

Big Claim: A paragraph from just one of many publications

 

Whatever the approach, if Anatel had somehow managed to prevent 80% of all TV boxes receiving pirated content in the space of a year, that would be an extraordinary achievement. Even a week would be astonishing but the claim of millions in a day seems either incredible, non-credible, or entirely dependent on more important information or nuance that isn’t being reported.

 

Another angle is that disruption on a large scale tends to register in search results and Google data on various related search terms doesn’t seem to reflect millions of TV boxes suddenly going dark in Brazil last week. At least, not for any significant length of time.

Google & Cisco Are “Obstacles” in Fight Against Piracy

On the first day of the PAYTV Forum in São Paulo early August, Anatel’s Moisés Moreira strongly suggested that in order for blocking to be more effective, ‘tech giants’ (including one starting with ‘G’) should assist in the fight against piracy.

 

“I have already determined a period of one week for them to manifest themselves and if that does not happen, we will escalate the enforcement, even judicialization by the agency,” Moreira said.

 

A media report dated September 22 described both Google and Cisco as thorns in Anatel’s side and accused them of turning a blind eye to piracy. It was alleged that when the companies receive blocking requests from rightsholders, the companies ignore them.

 

While both companies declined to comment, it’s still unclear what they’re being asked to do. On the one hand the dispute appears to focus on the companies’ public DNS services, the use of which enables users to circumvent local DNS blockades when domains are subjected to blocking. On the other, Anatel’s Moisés Moreira also spoke about the importance of blocking IP addresses.

 

That leads back to Anatel’s apparent ability to block 3,000 servers thus far in 2023, the claimed blocking of 80% of all TV boxes last week (and what that really amounted to in practical terms), and whether Anatel is now receiving help, and if so, from whom.

 

Certainly not the clearest of pictures, unlike those of the new lab, which are pretty impressive.