Last year, a Texas federal jury found Grande Communications liable for willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered the ISP to pay $47 million in damages to a group of record labels.

 

The ISP was held liable for infringing 1,403 copyrighted songs, as it failed to terminate persistent pirates’ internet access.

 

District Court Judge David Ezra confirmed the judgment in January. This prompted the ISP to request a do-over but that motion was ultimately declined. As a result, Grande took the matter to the appeals court.

Grande Appeals

Last month, Grande filed its opening brief in which it again argued that the lower court reached the wrong conclusion. Internet providers shouldn’t be held liable for pirating customers based on third-party allegations, the company argues.

 

“This appeal presents important questions of first impression in this Circuit about whether, and in what circumstances, an internet service provider may be held secondarily liable for the conduct of users of its service,” the ISP writes.

 

The ISP believes that it shouldn’t have to terminate Internet access this easily. This view is bolstered by a recent Supreme Court decision in favor of Twitter and other social media platforms, which held that they’re not liable for terrorist messages.

 

Grande is not alone in this appeal. The company is supported by several telecoms organizations, through a joint amicus curiae brief submitted by broadband association USTelecom and the the CTIA, which represents wireless providers.

Terminating Internet Access a Basic Measure?

According to Grande, the District Court went too far when it informed the jury that a provider can be found liable for contributory infringement if it didn’t take “basic measures” to terminate accounts of repeat infringers. According to Grande, this strong language lacks nuance.

 

The ISP notes that the ‘basic measures’ theory first emerged more than two decades ago in the Napster lawsuit. In that case, however, Napster failed to remove pirated tracks from its servers, while ISPs only pass on bits and bytes.

 

“The ‘simple measures’ or ‘basic measures’ theory has its roots in the Labels’ case against Napster. […] Before filing suit, the Labels notified Napster of specific infringing files available on Napster’s service, but Napster declined to remove them.”

 

The common feature of these cases is that the ‘simple measures’ standard has only been applied to defendants who directly control online content. That is because those defendants can readily remove or disable access to specific infringing content.

 

 

The amici support this argument while going into more detail on how Internet terminations can affect the public. They believe that Internet terminations should not be taken lightly.

‘Drastic and Overbroad’

USTelecom and CTIA point out that terminating Internet access can have a negative impact beyond the alleged wrongdoers. It could impact entire households, coffee shops, offices, schools, libraries, or hospitals. That doesn’t qualify as a “basic measure”.

 

“Termination thus prevents everyone — in a household, coffee shop, office, school, library, or hospital — who relies on a shared internet connection from using the internet for any purpose, whether remote work, accessing educational or health resources, seeking news or other information, or for entertainment.

 

“It is instead a drastic and overbroad remedy, with severe consequences for non-infringers. Yet the district court’s approach could compel internet service providers to engage in wide-scale terminations to avoid facing crippling damages, like the $1 billion judgment entered against Cox Communications,” the amici add.

 

These terminations take place with no judicial oversight and run contrary to the initiatives of lawmakers, who freed up billions of dollars to invest in American broadband infrastructure.

 

“It would also create massive disincentives for providers to invest in the new broadband networks that Congress recognizes are needed to close the digital divide,” the telecoms groups note.

Supreme Court’s Terrorist Ruling

Grande’s appeal also draws heavily on the aforementioned Twitter vs. Taamneh ruling, in which the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the social media platforms aren’t liable for ISIS terrorists, who used their services to recruit and raise funds.

 

The Supreme Court rejected the claim that Twitter and others aided and abetted terrorist activity, because it didn’t “consciously and culpably” participate in the illegal activity. According to Grande, Internet providers are even further distanced from any wrongdoing.

 

“The pleaded allegations in Twitter are illuminating. There, the plaintiffs alleged that Twitter, Facebook, and Google allowed ISIS to upload videos and messages for public display, and that they actively delivered ISIS’s posts to other users based on those users’ information and use history.

 

“The social media companies failed to remove known ISIS accounts, instead letting ISIS benefit from the companies’ recommendation algorithms…”

 

The Supreme Court ultimately concluded that the social media companies didn’t engage in purposeful, culpable conduct. Instead, they simply offered their “infrastructure” to the parties. In addition, the Supreme Court suggested that ISPs are even further removed.

 

“[W]e generally do not think that internet or cell service providers incur culpability merely for providing their services to the public writ large,” the Supreme Court wrote.

 

 

The telecoms groups bring up the same case and stress that the Supreme Court ruling suggests that it was an error by the court to hold Grande liable for pirating subscribers. As such, the appeal court should overturn it.

 

Needless to say, the music companies will have a different take on the matter. They also made this clear when Cox brought up the Twitter ruling a few weeks ago and will likely do the same here.

 

—

 

A copy of Grande’s appeal brief can be found here (pdf) and the amicus curiae submission from USTelecom, The Broadband Association and CTIA is available here (pdf)

The InterPlanetary File System, more broadly known as IPFS, has been around for the past eight years.

 

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

 

In short, IPFS is a decentralized network where users make files available to each other. The system makes websites censorship resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages.

 

These advantages allow archivists, content creators, researchers, and many others to reliably distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. These same features also appeal to pirate sites, and several have actively started to embrace the technology to bypass censors.

Publishers Share IPFS Concerns

This week, IPFS was repeatedly mentioned by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) in its overview of the most notorious piracy markets submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative. The list includes the usual suspects, such as Z-Library, Sci-Hub and Libgen.

 

In addition to these main threats, the publishers say they are “increasingly concerned” with how these shadow libraries exploit IPFS to host and distribute pirated books and articles.

 

While it’s difficult to the stop distribution of content once it’s on IPFS, many people use gateway sites to access the content. These gateways serve as an intermediary and allow anyone to access IPFS-hosted sites without having to install dedicated software.

 

These gateways are helpful for those who only access IPFS content occasionally. The publishers see them as a threat, as they make the piracy angle easier too.

 

“Notorious piracy networks such as Libgen and Z-Library are already exploiting public gateways within the Interplanetary File System to host and distribute copyright protected content in a decentralized manner,” AAP informs the USTR.

 

IPFS Gateway Takedowns

The publishers recognize that IPFS technology has legal uses and that it’s intended to provide a resilient and more secure infrastructure. However, they hope that gateways are willing to address the piracy problem.

 

Most gateways accept copyright infringement notices. This includes Cloudflare’s version, which is one of the examples mentioned by the publishers. According to Cloudflare’s most recently published transparency report, it took more than 1,000 IPFS abuse ‘actions’ in six months.

 

More recent information suggests that IPFS gateways are flooded by DMCA takedown notices, which caused at least one operator to shut down their ‘fun’ project. Other gateways have disappeared recently as well, perhaps in part due to similar copyright troubles.

 

The publishers don’t blame the gateways directly and recognize that they accept takedown notices. Ideally, they should do more than that by preventing pirated content from being distributed through their platforms, they argue.

 

“While IPFS gateways are responsive to individual reports of infringement, preventing notorious piracy networks, such as Libgen, from exploiting their services would greatly improve enforcement efforts,” the publishers write.

Slippery Slope

AAP doesn’t offer any concrete suggestions but it would likely want to see these gateways actively blocking pirate sites. That might be an easy way to address the issue, but it’s also a slippery slope, particularly for a network that’s ultimately intended to be censorship-resistant.

 

TorrentFreak reached out to IPFS for a comment on the publishers’ remarks but the project didn’t immediately respond.

 

In the grander scheme, the publishers still have bigger problems to worry about for now. Many of the sites AAP flagged as “notorious markets” are still available on the open web, distributed through regular web browsers. Perhaps these will also pose a problem some day.

 

—

 

A copy of the Association of American Publishers’ notorious markets recommendation is available here (pdf). Below, we list an overview of all the sites and services that it mentions.

 

Notorious Markets

 

– Afkebooks.com
– Alibaba (Taobao and Goofish)
– Anna’s Archive
– Avaxhome
– Libgen.rs (also libgen.is; libgen.st; library.lol; library.bz; libgen.fun – for IPFS content)
– Nitroflare.com
– Rapidgator.net
– Sci-hub.se
– Shopee
– Uploadgig.com

 

Other Services

 

Lunwenxiazai.com
Read Online Sites (e.g. Idoc.pub / full-english-books.net)
Telegram
1337 Services (Njalla)
Rogue Hosting Providers (e.g. Contabo.com / Incognet.io)

 

When Italy passed new law on July 14, authorizing widespread internet blocking and harsher punishments for pirates who supply or even consume illegal streams, football clubs and broadcasters breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Strong proponents of the law believe that Italy’s ‘Piracy Shield‘ blocking system will be a game changer when it arrives. Some appear completely convinced that almost no illegal content will be able to get through.

 

Others have heaped praise on the introduction of fines up to €5,000 for people who simply buy and/or consume pirate IPTV streams. That’s on the assumption any survive the ‘blocking system‘ set to “solve piracy” once its switched on.

Pirates Tend to Adapt

Those with a more pragmatic approach have likely considered how the internet works and appreciate the inherent limitations of blocking. The practicalities of hitting millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens with €5,000 fines suggests that on the balance of probabilities, that’s unlikely to happen at scale. That being said, a combination of semi-effective blocking and a few strategic high-profile fines could still reduce piracy by a few percentage points, providing nothing goes terribly wrong.

 

In stark contrast to those who believe blocking is the best long-term solution, hardcore pirates at both the supply and consumption ends of the market will simply declare the new anti-piracy dream dead, before it even starts. Armed with pirate IPTV subscriptions and cheap VPNs costing a couple of euros per month, a subset of Italian pirates already elude existing blocking measures and are highly likely to keep doing so.

Mandatory VPNs For Pirates

While not even AGCOM can do much about circumvention (at least not yet), up until now any decision to use a VPN has been a personal one. In countries where aggressive live blocking is already in place, notably the UK, VPN use is increasing but not necessarily due to personal choice. It’s now common for IPTV-configured set-top devices to arrive with a VPN as part of the deal; they not only defeat blocking but also prevent pirate sellers and support staff from being overwhelmed with blocking-related complaints.

 

This Thursday, Studio Previti linked to an article from Il Sole 24 Ore. It begins with a quote from a message sent by a pirate service to subscribers which acknowledges the new legal environment and imposes a solution.

 

“Dear customers, I wanted to inform you that from October 1, the Agcom action will come into effect. Therefore, it is mandatory to use a VPN,” the message reads.

Opportunities and Challenges

The VPN message came up during a technical workshop on Tuesday, organized by local anti-piracy group FAPAV to discuss the new legislation and related opportunities and challenges.

 

How the message was obtained isn’t made clear, but it was shared with attendees by Massimiliano Capitanio, head of telecoms regulator AGCOM and commander-in-chief of piracy blocking in Italy.

 

The next day, Capitanio addressed colleagues in a post on LinkedIn which references the ‘mandatory VPN’ message before flipping expectations on their head. Pirates may view VPNs as opportunities for them but with a little creative thinking, Capitanio believes the opposite is true.

“Positive News”

“On Tuesday I participated with great interest in the discussion on #copyright and #piracy promoted by FAPAV – Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Content Industries together with Studio Previti Associazione Professionale,” Capitanio begins.

 

“The fact that criminal organizations, which run the piracy business, are inviting their ‘customers’ to hide behind #vpn systems is positive news. First: law 93/2023 hits the mark.”

 

According to the text, Law 93/2023 (pdf) empowers AGCOM to take “urgent and precautionary measures” to disable access to content distributed illegally. Under orders from AGCOM, ISPs must block DNS resolution of identified domain names and block routing of network traffic to IP addresses “uniquely intended for illicit activities.”

 

If the same content reappears on any future domain, subdomain, or IP address, no matter who operates them, additional blocking is authorized. In respect of live sports broadcasts (initially only Serie A football matches), preemptive blocking is available under an “abbreviated procedure without cross-examination” based on rightsholder or “trusted flagger” reports.

Pirates Advising Pirates How to Pirate ‘Safely’

How any of this might play out in the real world is left to the imagination but in short, AGCOM believes that VPN use in connection with pirated content damages a suspected pirate’s already limited chances of success as an uninformed ‘innocent’ infringer.

 

“Second: anyone who uses a VPN is not an unaware user but knows they are committing a crime,” Capitanio continues. “And therefore they risk a fine of up to 5,000 euros. And I have a feeling we’re going to read about some good ones.”

 

The law passed in the summer lists aspects of copying, distribution, and “making use of tools capable of eluding the technological measures of protection” as offenses punishable by a €5,000 fine. Herein lies the dilemma.

 

If the new blocking system lives up to the hype, nobody with a standard setup using an Italian ISP should be able to access pirate IPTV services. Changing DNS might work for websites but that’s no use for blocked IP addresses. Other than convoluted workarounds, that leaves VPNs as the most viable option to evade blockades and pirate content; unfortunately that’s still punishable by a €5,000 fine because piracy over a VPN is still piracy.

 

So, whichever way you cut it, pirates and/or pirating VPN users violate Italian law and the potential consequences include a €5,000 fine. Or rather that would be the case, if the anonymity provided by VPNs wasn’t actually the most important part of the overall technical equation.

 

Last Thursday, a Danish court sentenced a 24-year old programmer from Silkeborg to 60 days probation for his role in operating the torrent tracker ShareUniversity.

 

The sentencing is the latest in Denmark following an unprecedented crackdown on local torrent trackers that has already resulted in more than a dozen prosecutions, with more yet to come.

 

The National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) reports that it’s happy with the conviction. In addition to serving the suspended prison sentence, the man must also pay 20,000 Danish kroner ($2,800) to the Rights Alliance, which represents the copyright holders.

 

“I am satisfied with the verdict, which rests on a thorough investigative work. The judgment emphasizes that copyright infringement is a crime that is taken seriously by the legal system,” NSK’s prosecutor Jan Østergaard says.

 

Thus far, the Danish courts have mostly handed down suspended prison sentences, which makes the associated press releases a little repetitive. However, the Rights Alliance, which was a driving force in the early investigations, recently decided to share additional background.

Undercover Operation

Thomas Heldrup, the anti-piracy group’s Head of Content Protection & Enforcement, has been running an undercover operation for more than half a decade. This helped the police to pinpoint many of the targets and also played a role in the most recent prosecution.

 

“We were undercover at ShareUniversity and based on what we gathered from this work the authorities filed the case which led to last week’s sentence,” Heldrup tells TorrentFreak.

 

As detailed in the Danish podcast Zetland, it all started when the Rights Alliance went undercover at the private DanishBits tracker in 2016.

 

Heldrup initially registered as a regular user of the tracker seven years ago. He wasn’t interested in downloading movies or music. Instead, he tried to map and follow the site’s lead figures, with the ultimate goal of identifying the main boss, MrDB.

 

The undercover operation meticulously followed public discussions, taking notes on the tracker’s key figures. Occasionally, some comments would reveal people’s ages or occupations, but progress was slow. It eventually took a financial problem to really get the ball rolling.

 

MrDB was particularly cautious and didn’t share personal details. However, when there was an issue with the site’s Bitcoin donations he swiftly put up a new payment option, so users could pay directly in Danish kroner. This patch allowed the lawyer to follow the money, which was routed to a bank in Belize.

From the Caribbean to Africa

While it’s fitting for a pirate to bank in the Caribbean, the paper trail eventually led to the tracker’s downfall. The real breakthrough came when Heldrup’s constant monitoring revealed MrDB’s real name.

 

It’s not clear where the name surfaced but, according to Zetland’s writeup, it was mentioned during online arguments between Danish trackers, which had a long-running rivalry. That name, combined with the information from Belize, ultimately led to the operator, who was neither in the Caribbean nor in Denmark.

 

In the fall of 2020, Danish authorities eventually located the then 33-year-old DanishBits operator in Morocco, where he was arrested and eventually extradited to Denmark.

Tracker Domino

The arrest marked the end of the popular tracker and the start of a crackdown, which also hit a rival tracker around the same time. In that investigation, police identified the 69-year-old operator of NordicBits, who was living in Spain.

 

Under questioning, the NordicBits operator admitted his involvement in the site and agreed to shut it down voluntarily. Danish authorities intended to take the operator to court, but the man was seriously ill and passed away before being prosecuted.

 

The prosecution of MrDB continued and he eventually received a one-year prison sentence, of which nine months were conditional. Meanwhile, other targets were lining up as well.

 

After DanishBits and NordicBits shut down, two smaller trackers – Asgaard and ShareUniversity – took over. These sites accepted a lot of new members but also attracted the attention of the Rights Alliance and the police, which kept up the pressure.

 

With help from undercover work and follow-up investigations from the authorities, the trackers folded after a few weeks, effectively decimating the local torrent tracker scene.

Asgaard Shuts Down

 

Several people involved with these sites, including uploaders and users, were prosecuted, with many receiving suspended prison sentences.

Undercover Lawyer Speaks

Looking back at the past few years, Thomas Heldrup is proud of what was achieved. While the undercover work was important, the active collaboration between rightsholders and the dedicated IP crime unit of the Danish police, proved to be the key to success.

 

“Our work usually needs to be backed up with the investigation tools that the police have at their disposal to track and disclose information about the citizens,” Heldrup tells us.

 

The Right Alliance could have opted to file civil cases, but that wouldn’t have been as successful. The investigative tools of the authorities are broader and the anti-piracy group also believes that it’s more appropriate for the official authorities to bring these cases to justice.

 

Heldrup was sometimes surprised to see how much personal information staffers and uploaders shared online. At times, they were simply too eager to share, which eventually allowed both Rights Alliance and the police to connect the dots.

 

“I can say that our undercover work put us in a position to map what profiles were the crucial players in running the sites and where resources at the police were best spent to bring down the sites.

 

“We spent a long time collecting info that, when looked at as a whole, could lead to the identification of the people who have been arrested in these cases. And yes it did come as a surprise to what extent people are willing to share info about themselves on these platforms,” Heldrup concludes.

 

—

 

An overview of the cases prosecuted thus far can be found below. The trial against several alleged operators of the Asgaard tracker is scheduled for February next year. Danish readers can hear more about the undercover operation through the Zetland podcast.

 

Targets	Service	Date of judgement
ringleader	ShareUniversity	05.10.2023
users and uploaders	DanishBytes, Notor, SuperBits	13.09.2023
users and uploaders	Asgaard	22.06.2023
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	24.04.2023
ringleader(s)	Seedbox	28.02.2023
users and uploaders	DanishBytes	25.11.2022
ringleader(s)	DanishBytes	14.11.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	03.11.2022
users and uploaders	SuperBits / Nielsen Networks	01.09.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.03.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.03.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	04.02.2022
ringleader(s)	Asgaard	15.06.2021
ringleader(s)	DanishBits	27.04.2021
users and uploaders	DanishBits	23.03.2021
ringleader(s)	Plex-server	03.03.2021
ringleader(s)	NextGen	07.05.2020
users and uploaders	DanishBits	12.02.2020
users and uploaders	DanishBits	25.06.2019
ringleader(s)	Movielocker	01.11.2018

The theory that “nobody likes a snitch” depends heavily on individual circumstances, motivation, and who stands to benefit. Whistleblowers, on the other hand, are often portrayed in more sympathetic light.

 

What prompted an anonymous tip to anti-piracy group Nordic Content Protection (NCP) in 2019 isn’t clear. But for NCP members including pay-TV company C More (previously Canal+), Warner Bros. Discovery and streaming service Viaplay, it signaled the start of an investigation and subsequent prosecution that wouldn’t conclude for another four years.

Police Also Received Tips

The anonymous tip reported an illegal IPTV network in the city of Gävle. Then in 2020, NCP reportedly received another tip, this time from police in Gävle, who in turn had received similar tips about a similar operation.

 

Whether NCP took any action isn’t clear but, a year after being tipped off by the police, the anti-piracy group received yet another tip about the same service. According to GD.se (paywall), the person offering the information had bought an IPTV device from the service for roughly $260, but if NCP was interested, he was prepared to sell it to them.

Investigation, Surveillance, Wiretapping

An investigation into the service, which still hasn’t been publicly named, included work both on and offline. GD notes that a period of surveillance carried out by the police included wiretapping, before several house searches were executed in October 2021.

 

At the homes of two suspected operators, one in Gävle and the other in Sandviken, police found computers that established links to the IPTV device purchased from the anonymous tipster. Police were also able to show that the man from Sandviken had rented servers, while the man from Gävle had taken care of software the service ran on.

IPTV Service Ran From September 2017 to October 2021

Evidence showed that the police raids in October 2021 shut down an IPTV service that had operated for almost four years since September 2017. The provider reportedly serviced more than 12,000 customers and appears to have generated considerable income while doing so.

 

During the search of the Sandviken man’s home, police discovered 47 gold bars. A whiskey collection reportedly worth SEK 1,000,000 ($91,600) was uncovered at the other suspect’s home in Gävle. All told, police discovered SEK 270,000 in cash ($24,700) plus another SEK 450,000 ($41,200) in bitcoin.

Sentenced at Sweden’s Patent and Market Court

The men were sentenced last week at the Patent and Markets Court, a specialist court dealing with intellectual property matters at the Stockholm District Court. The Court found that with so many customers, the men had operated the service as a business which likely provided their main source of income.

 

Along with a third defendant, who was subsequently found not guilty, the alleged operators of the service denied committing any crimes. According to reports, the pair declined to speak during the investigation or during the trial; that failed to pay off.

 

Both were found guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced to serve 36 months in prison. Then came the award for damages.

 

The former partners were held jointly and severally liable for damages totaling SEK 196,247,000 ($18 million), payable to C More, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Viaplay, with the latter picking up the lion’s share.

 

For perspective, three men behind The Pirate Bay were ordered to pay a total of $6.5 million following an unsuccessful appeal of their 2009 convictions. The Pirate Bay trio received prison sentences of 22 months combined, a far cry from the 72 months handed down against the two IPTV operators last week.

 

Over the past two decades, online piracy has proven a massive challenge for the entertainment industries.

 

It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but various anti-piracy group are doing their best to fight back.

 

There’s a seemingly perpetual stream of takedowns, as evidenced by press releases that come out every week. However, some targets are particularly resistant to enforcement action and much harder to take offline.

 

A few days ago, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) submitted an overview of some of the most problematic pirate sites and services to the U.S. Trade Representative. The entertainment industry group, which represents the major Hollywood studios and Netflix, also urges other players in the online ecosystem to help out.

Stakeholders Unite

The call to fellow stakeholders appears in the MPA’s recommendations for the USTR’s annual overview of notorious piracy markets.

 

“All stakeholders in the Internet ecosystem — including hosting providers, DNS providers, content delivery networks, reverse-proxy and other anonymization services, registrars, registries, cloud services, advertising networks, payment processors, social networks, and search engines — should actively seek to reduce support for notoriously infringing sites,” MPA writes

 

One key problem is that pirate sites use third-party intermediaries to ‘hide’ the true location of their servers, which complicates enforcement efforts.

 

The MPA mentions proxy services and CDN providers as the main culprits. While the USTR is mainly interested in foreign companies, the American company Cloudflare is singled out specifically. Apparently, the Internet infrastructure company is used by many pirate sites.

 

“Cloudflare’s customers include some of the most notorious, longstanding pirate websites in the world, including the massively popular streaming sites vegamovies.im, cuevana3.ch, and The Pirate Bay.”

 

“An analysis of 1,386 unique and currently active piracy domains found that 65 percent use Cloudflare’s services,” MPA adds.

 

This isn’t a groundbreaking finding. The MPA and other rightsholders have shared this critique many times in the past. In fact, Cloudflare previously responded to it through the USTR, explaining that it shares information with rightsholders, both voluntarily and through the courts.

Priority Threats

The above remarks appear as an introduction and handily serve as an indirect lobbying effort. The USTR is mostly interested in the actual notorious markets, however, which are also described in detail in the MPA’s submission.

 

In previous years the MPA didn’t specifically rank identified threats, but there is a novelty in the latest submission. For several categories, the movie industry group specifies “priority targets” that ideally should be dealt with as soon as possible.

 

In the streaming and linking category, Fmovies is listed as the top priority. The site, which is purportedly operated from Vietnam, has roughly a hundred million monthly users.

 

Fmovies faced some setbacks earlier this year. First, the MPA-affiliated group ACE took down its streaming partner 2Embed. The site responded by using an alternative provider and recently rebranded to Fmoviesz.

 

“With its former primary source for streaming video files 2embed taken down in July 2023, Fmovies.to now uses video streaming API vidsrc.to. It is likely that Fmovies.to has a close association with vidsrc.to,” MPA writes.

 

Other priority streaming sites include Vegamovies and Cuevana3.ch, while Aniwatch.to, Dizibox.tv, KatmovieHD and others are marked as less urgent.

 

 

MPA continues with the cyberlocker and video streaming/hosting category, where DoodStream.com is listed as the main problem. The ad-free video hosting platform is believed to be operated from India and is embedded on various streaming portals.

 

“DoodStream and known associate domains had 43.5 million visits in July 2023, according to SimilarWeb and is mainly hosted by OVH SAS in France, but also uses Online S.A.S., Hetzner Online GmbH, Interkvm Host10 SRL, among others.”

 

Mixdrop.co and Streamtape.com are also considered key targets while more general services such as Telegram, Baidu Pan, and VK are seen as lower priority.

Torrent sites, IPTV services & Apps

The MPA goes on to list a variety of problematic sites and services, which are all listed in full at the bottom of this article. This includes the usual torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and 1337x.

 

MPA also mentions the shutdown of RARBG, which it indirectly associates with ACE’s anti-piracy efforts and increased enforcement activity in Bulgaria.

 

“Following a series of ACE actions, a spate of U.S. IP workshops with Bulgarian officials, and international law enforcement cooperation, the Bulgarian P2P network, and major content release16 hub, RARBG ended its operations at the end of May 2023,” MPA writes, referring to our earlier reporting.

 

There are no priority categories for torrent sites, and these are also absent for the IPTV and apps categories, which include Bestbuyiptv.biz, GenIPTV, EVPAD, LokLok, PikaShow and others.

Piracy as a Service (PaaS)

The MPA goes on to discuss various platforms that supply off-the-shelf services, making it easy for would-be pirates to easily get into the game. These include simple setup piracy content systems, pirate content libraries, and IPTV dashboards.

 

One of Hollywood’s greatest anti-piracy achievements this year was the shutdown of the Vietnamese video CMS 2embed.to, which had more than a billion monthly visits. However, plenty of other targets remain.

 

The IPTV turnkey solution ‘WHMCS Smarters’ is seen as the priority target in this category. Operated from India, it offers a software solution that allows third parties to administer IPTV services.

 

 

Other, lower-priority PaaS threats include the familiarly-named 2embed.me, pirate video libraries such as Collaps.org and Pelisplus.icu, as well as the domain privacy service Njal.la.

Intermediaries

The rest of the MPA’s submission mostly highlights third-party intermediaries, including hosting providers, advertising services, and domain name registries. These are not the source of any piracy activity but play a crucial role in keeping services afloat, the anti-piracy group argues.

 

For example, the .CC, .IO, .ME, .RU and .TO domain registries continue to provide their services to pirate sites “despite notification and outreach.”

 

“A registry — directly or via its contractual relationship with its registrars — can withdraw or disable domain names used by websites engaged in massive copyright infringement,” MPA clarifies.

 

The same reasoning could also apply to the more high-profile .com and .org registries, but they are not mentioned. The Public Internet Registry (.org) previously declined to cut off The Pirate Bay, as it prefers not to act as piracy police.

 

—

 

Instant update: ACE/MPA just reported that they shut down two of Latin America’s “most notorious” piracy things; Futbolparatodos.online and Pelisplus.Lat. These are not mentioned in the USTR notorious markets recommendation.

 

—

 

A list of all sites and services highlighted and categorized in the MPA’s notorious markets submission (pdf) can be found below. For additional context, we highlight the new entries, while also indicating those from the 2022 report that have since been removed.

 

Linking and Streaming Websites

 

Priority sites

– Fmovies.to
– Vegamovies (new)
– Cuevana3.ch (new)

 

Additional sites

– Aniwatch.to (new)
– Cda.pl
– Dizibox.tv (new)
– Dytt8.net, Dy2018.com, dygod.net, and Ygdy8.com
– Futemax.app (currently, Futemax.to) and Futebolplayhd.com (new)
– Indoxxi Network (new)
– KatmovieHD
– Librefutboltv.com (new)
– Myflixer.to
– Rezka.ag
– Tamilblasters / Streamblasters /
– Cuevana3.me
– Cuevana.pro
– Egy.best
– Fullhdizlesene
– Gimy.app
– Gnula.se/Gnula.nu
– Hesgoal.com
– NooNoo.tv
– Soap2Day
– Streaming Community
– TheNetNaija

 

Direct Download Cyberlockers and Streaming Video Hosting Services

 

Priority sites

 

– DoodStream.com
– Mixdrop.co
– Streamtape.com

 

Additional sites

 

– HQQ/WaaW/Netu (new)
– Baidu Pan and Baidu Search
– Telegram
– Uloz.to (new)
– VK.com
– 1fichier.com
– Uptobox.com

 

Illegal IPTV Services

 

– Apollo Group TV
– BestBuyIPTV.biz
– GenIPTV
– MagisTV
– Iptv.casa
– Spider Receiver
– TheKing365tv.site
– IcutCord.net
– King-IPTV.net
– SatCon Africa
 

Piracy Devices and Apps

 

– EVPAD
– LokLok
– Movie Box (new)
– PikaShow
– Shabakaty
– SVI Cloud
– TVMob
– Unblock Tech (unblocktech.com & ub1818.com)

 

Peer-to-Peer Networks & BitTorrent Portals

 

– 1337x.to
– DonTorrent.com (new)
– Rutracker.org
– ThePirateBay.org
– Ygg/Yggtorrent.wtf (new)
– Yts.mx
– Zamunda.net
– Rarbg.to

 

Hosting Providers

 

– Amaratu/KoDDos
– Ddos-Guard.net
– Mnogobyte
– Squitter.eu (ABC Consultancy)
– Veesp (new)

 

Registries

 

– .IO Registry
– .CC Registry
– .ME Registry
– .RU Registry
– .TO Registry
– .CH Registry

 

Payment Processors

 

– Wise (new)
– VoguePay

 

Ad Networks and Online Advertisers

 

– Propeller Ads
– 1XBET

 

Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS)

 

Priority

– WHMCS Smarters

 

Additional

 

– 2embed.me (new)
– Collaps.org
– GDrivePlayer
– HDVB (new)
– Njalla
– Pelisplus.icu
– XFileSharing/XVideoSharing
– Fembed.com
– Abyss.to

 

With millions of monthly users, BitTorrent’s reign at the top of the file-sharing seemed unstoppable in 2007, but the French government had other plans.

 

Presented to the Senate in June 2008, what would later become France’s Hadopi law envisioned a crackdown on peer-to-peer file-sharing via a ‘graduated response’ mechanism, with around eight million local BitTorrent users the primary targets. The Hadopi agency created to administer the new law was initially kept busy but in the background, file-hosting and video streaming platforms were providing a taste of things to come.

 

By 2011, once-dominant BitTorrent indexing sites found themselves suddenly outnumbered by ‘one-click’ hosting and similar sites including 4shared, Megaupload, Mediafire, Rapidshare and Hotfile. As the threat grew, rightsholders deployed the pejorative term ‘cyberlocker’ to describe ‘rogue’ file-hosting services, while BitTorrent-focused anti-piracy outfits found their peer-to-peer monitoring tools somewhat less relevant.

 

The inherent technical genius of the BitTorrent protocol means it continues today, silently moving around large files to millions of users. At the same time, the way internet users consume content has been transformed. Three years after BitTorrent traffic hit an all-time low in 2015, pirate streaming platform Openload was generating more traffic than Hulu and HBO Go.

 

Meanwhile, dedicated pirate IPTV services were hitting the mainstream, shifting the market once again and leaving Hadopi and successor Arcom with a decreasing pool of pirates they could monitor directly. Consisting mostly of those still using BitTorrent, the pool excluded users of streaming sites, illegal IPTV providers, file-hosting platforms, and VPN services.

Arcom Credited for BitTorrent Slump

In official documents published as part of the French 2024 budget bill, Arcom’s twin role as both audiovisual/telecoms regulator and anti-piracy agency accompanies accounts of recent achievements and those attributable to the infamous “graduated response” program.

 

“The graduated response, for its part, makes it possible to fight against illicit practices on a peer-to-peer basis,” reports Clair Landais, the government’s secretary general with responsibility for the protection of rights and freedoms.

 

“If, in 2010, more than 8 million Internet users used peer-to-peer for criminal purposes, the efforts of Hadopi and now Arcom to put an end to these practices have made it possible to reduce them by almost by 75%. In 2022, 2 million Internet users have illicitly consumed peer-to-peer content, or 22% of Internet users engaging in illicit practices.”

 

While the history books provide much-needed nuance, Hadopi and now Arcom’s efforts to reduce piracy go beyond enforcement. The regulator aims to educate the public on the importance of supporting legal services while encouraging the availability of those platforms in the marketplace.

 

“Building on these encouraging results, due to the constant progression of the legal offer, in particular subscription video on demand (VOD) services and music streaming offers, combined with the anti-piracy policy led by the public authorities and rights holders, the latter adjust their actions in the fight against peer-to-peer,” Landais notes.

 

This version of events suggests the massive reduction in BitTorrent piracy led to the creation of legal video platforms. In reality, the availability of attractive legal content also played a key role in the reduction of piracy rates and continues to do so.

Arcom’s Piracy Blocking Program

Referrals to the ‘graduated response’ scheme have been trending down since 2016, with an 11% decline in 2022 alone. The report predicts the trend will continue, with another 10% reduction in 2023 followed by a modest 5% annual reduction from 2024.

 

The earlier highlighted shifts in consumption leave Arcom with plenty of work to do. The threat posed by illicit IPTV services means the fight against live sports piracy is a priority, along with Arcom’s site blocking work and its ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with domain-hopping mirror sites.

 

According to Arcom data, during the whole of 2022 the regulator received 85 referrals from four sports rights holders (two publishers of audiovisual programs and two sports leagues), covering ten sports competitions, which led to the subsequent blocking of 767 domain names by local ISPs. That was merely a warm-up.

 

“During the period January-July 2023, the use of this system increased. Arcom thus received 85 referrals— but in only seven months – from the same four sports rights holders (two publishers of audiovisual programs and two sports leagues), covering ten sports competitions, for a total of 1,318 domain names effectively blocked by ISPs,” the report continues.

 

“Given the effectiveness of the system and its high use by rights holders, a maintenance, or even an increase in the number of blocked domain names, would bring the total to around 700 number of domain names blocked for the last quarter — approximately 2,000 domain names blocked for the whole of 2023,” the report predicts.

 

Arcom says that on average the processing time for sports rightsholders’ referrals is currently 3 to 5 days, but that may decrease beginning in autumn 2023 and more widely in 2024, following the effective implementation of automation tools.

Tackling Mirror Sites

So-called mirror sites (blocked platforms that subsequently reappear online) are handled under Article L. 331-27 of the Intellectual Property Code introduced in October 2022. During the last quarter of 2022, Arcom received 22 referrals from four rights holders, covering 45 domain names.

 

Between January and July 2023, Arcom received 32 referrals from three rights holders, covering a total of 182 domain names. The administrative rules for blocking mirror sites are more complex, generating a two-month delay before they can be reported to Arcom.

 

The regulator says it usually processes files in eight or nine days but since blocking of IPTV services requires advanced verification, some requests may take longer to handle. Overall, current mirror site processing time is approximately 14 days.

 

“This is the reason why the average time for notification of blocking measures for sites illicitly broadcasting sporting events and competitions or mirror sites was set, provisionally, at 10 days for 2023 with an overall trend towards a reduction in this deadline over the period 2024-2026 with a target of 7 days,” the report concludes.

 

The full report, first reported by NextInpact, is available here (French, pdf)

 

With over 60 million players every month, Genshin Impact is one of the greatest success stories in videogames.

 

The game stepped over the 60 million threshold in March 2022, and just over a year later hit a record 66.5 million. Since August, however, interest in the game has declined.

 

The situation is hardly catastrophic but from a second 66.5m peak two months ago, player numbers in September returned to levels last seen in March 2022.

 

Whether this is a concern for developer Cognosphere is unclear but after taking legal action against both leakers (1,2,3) and in-game cheaters (4), Cognosphere has a new target in its sights.

Private Servers Upset Business Model

On a base level, Genshin Impact is free-to-play but through so-called ‘gatcha game’ mechanics, players are encouraged to spend virtual currency earned in-game or purchased outside the digital realm using real money. For those in the know, however, unofficial private servers provide an attractive third option.

 

These servers have the ability to set their own rules, meaning a potential fast track to virtual riches for players short on time, patience, or money. The fact that the required software is easily obtained and mostly easy to set up, means there’s no shortage of servers. That’s not to say all can be used for free, but it’s not uncommon for donation models to thrive in a world where time and money are already at a premium.

Cognosphere Targets Private Server Developer

Last Friday, Cognosphere’s attorneys filed applications for three DMCA subpoenas at a district court in California. Each application claims that Cognosphere’s copyrights have been infringed by a third party and as a result, service providers are required to hand over the personal details of the alleged infringer.

 

The first application targets GitHub and claims that a user called “casksteven” infringed Cognosphere’s exclusive rights in Genshin Impact. In an email to GitHub dated October 6, Cognosphere’s attorneys advised GitHub that “without limitation” the infringing content included material posted to the ‘Sweaty-Launcher‘ repo.

 

Sweaty-Launcher is a piece of software that allows users to connect to two types of private servers, GrassCutter and Weedwacker.

 

“The Content infringes Cognosphere’s exclusive rights under copyright law. Specifically, it infringes Cognosphere’s rights in its popular video game Genshin Impact,” the DMCA application reads.

 

The repository URL receives a prominent mention in the application and the screenshot below shows what appears there. However, for reasons that will become clear, we’ve blurred out a section depicting a character from Genshin Impact.

 

 

Cognosphere is demanding “Information, including name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), e-mail address(es), and IP address(es), or other information within your possession, custody or control, sufficient to identify the user(s) responsible for making available for distribution and/or otherwise controlling the materials currently or formerly available at the following Uniform Resource Locator (URL’):”

 

Surprisingly, “the materials” do not relate to Sweaty-Launcher at all, but merely the image included in the ‘readme’ section of the free software.

 

 

The corresponding DMCA takedown notice sent to GitHub requests “expeditious action to remove or disable access to the Genshin Impact Artwork as referenced above. Furthermore, it is requested that GitHub take appropriate measures to prevent further infringements by the party responsible, including pursuant to any ‘repeat infringer’ policies maintained by GitHub.”

Second DMCA Subpoena Application

In a second DMCA subpoena application targeting web hosting company Spartan Host LLC, Cognosphere again outlines its exclusive rights in Genshin Impact before demanding the identity of an alleged infringer, including their name, address, telephone numbers, and email address. According to the filing, the user in question maintains the website www.casks.me. While that domain no longer exists, the service itself is operating from a new domain.

 

“Tianli China is one of the largest Genshin servers in China, and we have close to a million register player, with thousands online at anytime. We are experienced with Genshin and handling mass players,” the service’s promotional material reads.

 

This invitation to the 35,500-member TianLi Community on Discord arrives courtesy of casksteven himself while other connections to the casks.me website are easily found elsewhere. Surprisingly, Cognosphere shows no specific interest in the private server here either, despite some site announcements receiving over 780,000 views in their own right.

 

 

In common with the complaint and subsequent DMCA subpoena application at GitHub, the application targeting Spartan Host also concerns allegedly infringing images, four in total, most likely screenshots. By examining an archived copy of the website we managed to find one example; it features a login screen with a HoYoverse logo, within the frame of a mobile phone.

 

 

Since Cognosphere is prepared to spend significant sums protecting these images, it raises the question of why they’re so special. They represent a tiny piece of what is obviously a more logical target, one that probably uses other Genshin Impact assets without appropriate licensing, in much more significant ways.

Third DMCA Subpoena Application

In its third DMCA subpoena application, Cognosphere targets Google LLC, doing business as YouTube. This time the allegedly-infringing material is contained in a total of eight YouTube videos, but how they violated Cognosphere’s rights is unclear.

 

The application and DMCA notice sent to YouTube states that Cognosphere owns the rights to the “gameplay and audiovisual elements” of Genshin Impact but no specifics regarding infringing video content are mentioned. The videos have already been removed, not by YouTube itself, but by the channel owner – casksteven.

 

At the time of writing, GitHub is yet to take action against the image on the casksteven repo.

 

The DMCA subpoena applications are available here: Github (1,2), Spartan Host (1) and YouTube (1,2) – (all pdf)

 

Over the past 18 years, we’ve seen our fair share of piracy studies and research, but a finding presented this week ‘obviously’ stands out.

 

Piracy research firm MUSO looked into the link between movie piracy volume and box office revenues.

 

With piracy data on hundreds of films, the UK firm sits on a research goldmine. The company decided to put this to work by calculating the correlation between movie piracy and box office attendance.

Piracy vs. Box Office Demand

MUSO predicted that the demand for films through legal and illegal channels might be similar. Put differently, the demand for films at the box office follows the interest in these titles on pirate sites, especially when they have just been released.

 

Indeed, the data didn’t disappoint; that is exactly what the research found.

 

The research compares the daily piracy numbers of 98 film releases with their official revenues at the box office. This data sample includes popular films such as “The Lion King” (2019), “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (2021) and “Spider-man: No Way Home” (2021).

 

Consumption of both legal and pirate versions was measured starting on the day of their respective releases until the film was no longer in theater or when a VOD version came out.

Strong Correlation

The results reveal that both authorized and unauthorized demand follow a similar pattern. Demand for films is greatest when they have just been released, and interest typically drops off after that, with occasional peaks during weekends.

 

With a Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient of 0.85, the connection between pirate and box office demand is quite strong. According to MUSO, one can be used as a proxy for the other.

 

“[T]here is a very strong, statistically significant, positive correlation between Box Office revenue and unlicensed consumption. Therefore unlicensed consumption data can be used as a proxy for Box Office data and vice versa,” MUSO writes.

 

 

This overall conclusion makes sense. New releases tend to be most popular, both at the box office and on pirate sites. It isn’t exactly an earth-shattering finding but does this research actually show that piracy is a good proxy for legal consumption and vice versa?

Questions Remain

It’s important to note that correlation is not causation; here it shows is that both types of consumption follow a similar pattern. The correlation may simply show that there’s a higher demand for something just after it’s released. That same logic might apply to book sales too.

 

Secondly, it’s worth highlighting that this particular correlation test is a rank comparison, which means that the magnitude of the changes may be quite different between piracy volume and box-office revenue. That doesn’t make it an ideal proxy measurement.

 

Finally, it’s worth stressing that the researchers compared the (ranked) total piracy volume vs. the total box office revenue for all films combined. This means that popular films will have a much higher effect on the correlation.

 

Summarizing the data for all films means a lot of information gets lost. Even if there’s no correlation at all for some smaller titles, that could get lost in the pile of data.

 

It would be interesting to see a follow-up analysis to see if there are different patterns for some films, to gain additional insights. There could be specific conditions where piracy volume is less, or even negatively correlated with box office revenues. That could be interesting to learn from.

 

All in all, however, the overall conclusions make sense. People’s interest in new releases typically peaks early and drops off after that. Similarly, films that are popular at the box office tend to do well on pirate sites, and the other way around.

 

MUSO will likely cite the finding to help rightsholders use piracy data to their advantage. MUSO can show movie companies that if a title does well on pirate sites in a specific region, they better make sure that it’s available legally as well.

 

Back in August, users of Reddit and similar platforms lamented the sudden disappearance of two music piracy platforms.

 

Somewhat predictably, Jpopmix.com specialized in J-pop, a form of Japanese popular music that first gained popularity in the 1990s. Kpoptap, a sister site almost identical in appearance to Jpopmix, specialized in South Korean K-pop. Around August 20, both disappeared offline with only the latter leaving a message: “GOOD BYE!”

 

Sites can cease to exist for all kinds of reasons but the demise of Jpopmix (and most likely Kpoptap too) is now officially confirmed as the work of the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).

Jpopmix Non-Responsive to Takedowns

RIAJ currently has around 65 members including Sony, Universal, and Warner, and is seen as the Japanese equivalent of the RIAA. An RIAJ statement notes that Jpopmix offered for download a catalog of music owned by its member companies, without obtaining any type of permission.

 

Goodbye Jpopmix

 

In partnership with global music group IFPI, RIAJ said the operator of Jpopmix was repeatedly asked to remove infringing music from their website. When those requests were ignored, the labels went to court in the United States where they obtained a DMCA subpoena to identify the site’s operator.

 

“In response to this situation, we obtained an information disclosure order in the United States against CloudFlare, the content delivery network (CDN) used by the website, with the aim of identifying the site administrator in order to pursue liability for illegal activities,” RIAJ reveals.

Site Shut Down, Warning For Similar Sites

The Japanese music industry group hasn’t revealed whether the information obtained from Cloudflare led to direct contact with Jpopmix’s operator, and the subsequent shutdown of the site. That leaves open the possibility that the platform was voluntarily closed once its owner learned of the subpoena in the United States.

 

Whatever the mechanism, the RIAJ got the result it was looking for; the fact that Jpopmix’s sister site folded too can be chalked up as a bonus. It’s clear, however, that the RIAJ intends to keep up the pressure on pirate site operators, whether they operate locally or overseas.

 

“Our association plans to continue to hold the operators responsible and take legal action against similar illegal sites,” the RIAJ continues.

Users Warned About Downloading Pirated Music

An interesting aspect of enforcement activity against pirate sites is how threats are characterized in public. Few, if indeed any countries claim that they have a local problem with pirate sites, so most find themselves pointing overseas to the perceived source of the problem.

 

The RIAJ says that while Jpopmix was also operating from a server outside Japan, the platform targeted the local market which accounted for 80% of its traffic. While downloading from an illegal source is technically an offense in many countries due to the creation of an unlicensed copy, it’s been a criminal offense in Japan for over a decade.

 

In a warning to both operators and users of unlicensed download sites, the RIAJ sets out the law while also appealing for people to do the right thing.

 

“If you knowingly download music that has been uploaded illegally, even for personal listening purposes, you may be subject to criminal penalties. Furthermore, illegal actors are depriving artists and record companies who spend a huge amount of time and effort to produce music for which compensation should be received, which could lead to the decline of music culture itself,” the industry group notes.

 

“In order to contribute to the development of music culture, our association will continue to work on illegal countermeasures to eradicate pirated sites.”

 

Current RIAJ members

 

(Full Members)

 

Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd.
Jvckenwood Victor Entertainment Corp.
King Record Co., Ltd.
Teichiku Entertainment, Inc.
Universal Music Llc
Nippon Crown Co., Ltd.
Tokuma Japan Communications Co,.
Sony Music Labels Inc.
Pony Canyon Inc.
Warner Music Japan Inc.
Vap Inc.
B Zone, Inc.
Avex Entertainment Inc.
For Life Music Entertainment, Inc.
Yamaha Music Communications Co., Ltd.
Dreamusic Inc.
Yoshimoto Music Co., Ltd.
Bandai Namco Music Live Inc.
Associate Members
Nbcuniversal Entertainment Japan Llc
Pryaid Records Inc.
Johnny’S Entertainment Inc.
Ld&K Inc.
Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd.
J Storm Inc.
Venus Records Inc.
Hats Unlimited Co., Ltd.
Naxos Japan, Inc.
A-Sketch Inc.
Village Again Association Co., Ltd.
Space Shower Networks Inc.
Warner Bros. Japan Llc
Rambling Records Inc.
Toho Co., Ltd.
Sdr Inc.
Kiss Entertainment Inc.
Croix Co.,Ltd.
P-Vine, Inc.
Toy’S Factory Inc.
Gifted Co., Ltd
Tanipromotion Co.,Ltd.

 

(Supporting Members)

 

Aniplex Inc.
T-Toc Records.
Ward Records, Inc.
Free Board Co., Ltd.
Holiday Japan Co., Ltd.
Tv Asahi Music Co., Ltd.
Nppdevelop Co., Ltd.
A-Force Entertainment. Inc.
Kino Music Co., Ltd
Spro Entertainment Inc.
Johnny’S Music Company Inc.
Be Bee Next Co., Ltd.
Ldh Japan Inc.
Ment Recording Inc.
Tv Tokyo Music, Inc.
King International Inc.
Bellwood Records Co., Ltd.
Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), Inc.
Sony Music Solutions Inc.
Avex Digital Inc.
Flyingdog, Inc.
Sony Music Artists Inc.
Columbia Marketing Co.,Ltd.
Avex Pictures Inc.
JIJIINC.

 

Total members: 65 (RIAJ data, April 2023)

 

When companies want to increase sales of their products, marketing teams work extremely hard to ensure that the target audience receives exactly the right message at precisely the right time.

 

Anti-piracy campaigns may feel a little different due to messaging that deters sales; those relating to piracy services or devices, for example. However, at their heart anti-piracy campaigns are simply marketing campaigns tailored to a specific audience, using messaging that aims to uproot deeply entrenched consumption habits by focusing on the negatives of a rival (and illegal) product.

 

When sent out to dozens of news publications, many of which are happy to deliver that messaging almost verbatim, campaign press releases can enjoy significant exposure. That’s exactly what happened again on Thursday and Friday following news that yet another man from the UK will be spending a considerable time behind bars; marketing cost to the Premier League: £0.00.

36 Months in Prison For IPTV Pirate

“The individual behind a sophisticated illegal streaming service which showed Premier League matches has been jailed today for two and a half years,” the Premier League’s statement begins.

 

“The conviction and sentencing of Steven Mills, aged 58 from Shrewsbury, follows a joint investigation by the Premier League, West Mercia Police, and anti-piracy organization FACT.”

 

While the press release is fairly light on background, Mills was arrested in his home town in the summer of 2021. Police reported the arrest of a man in connection with an illegal streaming service offering premium TV channels, noting they were able to deliver an on-screen message to users of the service stating it was likely unlawful.

 

Items Seized During the Raid (Image: West Mercia Police)

 

Police also seized a considerable number of devices. Websites operated by Mills carried statements that insisted only hardware was for sale, definitely no pirate subscriptions, but evidence suggesting otherwise isn’t in short supply.

 

Indeed, marketing and promotion of products and services under Mills’ Pikabox UK and Eyepeeteevee brands leave no doubt as to what was on offer. The YouTube video below may date back five years when the mainstream was less savvy, but it’s unlikely there would’ve been widespread confusion.

 

 

Whether the video was used by the prosecution isn’t clear but the formation of the company Pikabox UK Ltd in September 2017 provides suitable grounds for alleging several years worth of offending.

‘Illegal Firestick’ Organization

Beyond the details of Mills’ sentencing, the Premier League’s press release makes for interesting reading, particularly in light of the new UK anti-piracy campaign launched recently. There’s no doubt that a lot of thought went into the release and reading between the lines, the Premier League has a few specific threats on its mind.

 

Mills, who ran the organization which sold so-called “Firesticks” via a closed Facebook group and claimed to have more than 30,000 subscribers, pleaded guilty in June earlier this year to multiple fraud offenses at Shrewsbury Crown Court.

Sorry, no Firesticks

 

We could begin by highlighting the use of the word “claimed” in respect of a Facebook group with a supposed 30,000 members, because if it really did have 30,000 members and that could be shown after a criminal prosecution, the word probably wouldn’t be there.

 

However, it’s the direct reference to “Firesticks” that draws the most interest.

 

 

Despite being legal hardware, the brand appears prominently in the headline and another three times in the press release, including in places where the device is clearly singled out above all other devices sold by Mills.

 

 

That’s followed up with a comment from Kevin Plumb, Premier League General Counsel, who said: “It is vital that the public continue to be made aware of the dangers and criminality associated with using illegal streaming services,” as a lead up to the following:

 

 

While observations are obviously subjective, the terms ‘Firesticks’, ‘hacked Firesticks’, ‘chipped Firesticks’ and others, are now well-recognized by the general public as piracy devices.

 

More savvy individuals will likely understand that the device type is largely irrelevant, so that might be an indication of the demographic the Premier League hopes to reach with its campaign.

Other Matters in Focus

Interestingly, the Premier League’s press release shines light on reports in January that police and FACT were conducting home visits to around 1,000 users of a pirate IPTV service. In reality, the number of actual home visits was much lower but the Premier League has confirmed those targeted were customers of Mills.

 

“The enquiry and subsequent raids by police provided intelligence which identified more than 1,000 of his customers. In January this year police and FACT officials visited a number of those individuals, serving notices to cease illegal streaming activities with immediate effect,” the Premier League adds, noting that resellers of Mills’ services are “currently under investigation.”

 

The final pieces of messaging woven into the release are as follows:

 

[Mills] was also convicted of a separate offense for watching the illegal content that he was supplying to others, with the court recognizing that his own use of the unauthorized service was a distinct crime in itself. Mills received a separate prison sentence for this offense

This seems to suggest that when people get caught simply watching pirate streams, this is the potential outcome. Clearly, if anyone is running a pirate IPTV operation over a period of five years and is then accused of watching pirate streams on top, the risk is very real indeed. In fact, it’s happened before.

 

In his sentencing remarks the judge in the case commented on the sophistication of the operation. The judge highlighted the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and recorded tutorial videos which supported his customers to access the illegal content

ISP blocking is of vital importance to the Premier League, so it comes as no surprise that VPN technology gets a mention here. There’s no doubt that with enough mentions, published by dozens of news websites, the notion that VPNs are either illegal or simply linked to things that are illegal, will eventually seep into the mainstream consciousness.

 

Whether that will make any difference is another matter.

 

With millions of daily users, Reddit is without a doubt one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

 

The community-oriented platform has “subreddits” dedicated to pretty much every topic one can think of, including several that are linked to online piracy and related issues.

 

A few years ago copyright holders paid little attention to these discussions. In 2017, the site removed ‘just’ 4,352 pieces of content in response to copyright holders’ complaints. Fast-forward to today, and the site removes well over a million items each year for the same reason.

 

Reddit celebrated its 18th anniversary this summer amidst a massive controversy over its decision to charge for API access. This triggered a subreddit blackout protest in which thousands of communities went private and some decided to throw in the towel for good.

 

These actions undoubtedly had an impact on the community, but most parts of the site continued to operate. Copyright complaints kept coming in and increased in volume compared to the same period last year, the site’s latest mid-year transparency report shows.

1169% Increase in User Access Requests

Before, going into the copyright infringement report it is worth pointing out a statistic that was directly triggered by the new API policy. User access requests, which allow users to ask for a copy of their account information, skyrocketed in the first half of 2023.

 

The number of access requests increased from 11,321 during the last six months of 2022, to 144,306 in the first six months of 2023. According to Reddit, much of that 1169.3% increase was the result of moderators asking subreddit members to flood Reddit with work.

 

“This dramatic surge in access requests was driven predominately by Redditor protests staged in response to Reddit’s API policy change,” Reddit writes in its transparency report.

 

“A number of moderators and users encouraged members of their communities to request their account information for user data mobility, and to create a compliance burden for Reddit.”

Copyright Takedown Notices Peak

There were no dramatic increases related to Reddit’s copyright policies. While the volume continued to rise slightly, all increases are in the single digits now.

 

During the first months of the year, copyright holders asked Reddit to remove a record-setting 949,208 pieces of content. This includes images and videos, along with links that point to infringing content shared elsewhere.

 

The majority of these flagged items, 71%, were eventually removed by Reddit. This means that 676,982 pieces of content were taken off the platform.

 

 

Compared to the second half of last year, there was a 2% increase in items reported, a new record for Reddit. However, the number of items removed actually dropped slightly, because the actionability rate decreased.

Snarking and Fair Use

In addition, there were also thousands of invalid takedown requests for which Reddit took no action. That includes cases of obvious fair use, URLs that failed to identify specific content, and instances where Reddit ruled that the reported content isn’t infringing.

 

 

One of the rejected notices was sent by someone who tried to have a post removed from a subreddit dedicated to “snarking” social media influencers. Apparently, the sender was the one being snarked, but since that’s not copyright infringement, Reddit left the post up.

 

“The reported content was a text post that criticized the reporter’s Instagram account. None of the reporter’s copyrighted works from their Instagram account appeared in the reported content, so we declined to process the notice,” Reddit explains.

User and Subreddit Bans

Links and posts are not the only things at risk; users and subreddits can also be banned for repeat copyright infringements. Over the past several years we have seen a clear increase in copyright-related bans, but that’s coming to a halt now, at least temporarily.

 

During the first half of 2023, Reddit permanently suspended the accounts of 221 users and banned 571 subreddits for excessive copyright violations. For comparison, during the same months last year, 3,859 users lost their accounts while 1,543 subreddits were banned.

 

These bans are in part the result of legal obligations. Under the DMCA, Reddit is required to implement a reasonable policy to deal with repeat copyright infringers on its platform.

 

According to Reddit, the sharp drop can in part be explained by the fact that the offending accounts and users were already booted from the platform due to other policy violations.

 

“The significant decrease in user and subreddit copyright bans occurred because many of these users and subreddits were already temporarily or permanently suspended for other content policy violations at the time of review.”

 

All in all, Reddit’s latest transparency report shows that while takedowns are still going up slightly, the tide may turn someday soon.

 

 

Website blocking has become the go-to anti-piracy measure for the entertainment industries when tackling pirate sites on the internet.

 

The practice has been around for well over 15 years and has gradually expanded to more than forty countries around the world.

 

The actual blocking is done by Internet providers, often following a court order. These measures can range from simple DNS blocks to more elaborate schemes involving Server Name Indication (SNI) eavesdropping, or a combination of both.

 

Thus far, the more thorough blocking efforts have worked relatively well. However, as privacy concerns grew, new interfering technologies have emerged. Encrypted DNS and SNI, for example, made blocking efforts much harder, although not impossible.

Encrypted Client Hello

A few days ago, Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare implemented widespread support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a privacy technology that aims to render web traffic surveillance futile. This means that site blocking implemented by ISPs will be rendered useless in most, if not all cases.

 

ECH is a newly proposed privacy standard that’s been in the making for a few years. The goal is to increase privacy for Internet users and it has already gained support from Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and other browsers. Users can enable it in the settings, which may still be experimental in some cases.

Cloudflare Browser Test

 

The main barrier to widespread adoption is that this privacy technology is a two-way street. This means that websites have to support it as well. Cloudflare has made a huge leap forward on that front by enabling it by default on all free plans, which currently serve millions of sites. Other subscribers can apply to have it enabled.

 

“Cloudflare is a big proponent of privacy for everyone and is excited about the prospects of bringing this technology to life,” Cloudflare writes in its announcement

 

“Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) is a successor to ESNI and masks the Server Name Indication (SNI) that is used to negotiate a TLS handshake. This means that whenever a user visits a website on Cloudflare that has ECH enabled, no one except for the user, Cloudflare, and the website owner will be able to determine which website was visited.”

ECH Defeats Site Blocking

The push for increased piracy is well-intended but for rightsholders it represents a major drawback too; when correctly configured ECH defeats site-blocking efforts. Tests conducted by TorrentFreak show that ISP blocking measures in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain were rendered ineffective.

 

This doesn’t automatically apply to all blocked sites, as the sites must have ECH enabled too. We have seen mixed results for The Pirate Bay, perhaps because it has a paid Cloudflare plan, but other pirate sites are easily unblocked.

 

This new privacy feature hasn’t gone unnoticed by pirate site operators. The people behind the Spanish torrent site DonTorrent, which had dozens of domains blocked locally, are encouraging users to try ECH.

 

“Before ECH, your online privacy was like a secret whispered in the wind, easily picked up by prying ears. But now, with ECH by your side, your data is like hidden treasure on a remote island, inaccessible to anyone trying to get there without the right key,” DonTorrent notes.

 

“This feature encrypts your data so that neither ISPs nor organizations like ACE and MPA [can] censor, persecute and intimidate websites that they consider ‘illegal’, the site adds in a fairly satirical blog post.

Privacy vs. Piracy

Cloudflare and other tech companies are not supporting ECH to make site-blocking efforts obsolete. However, this privacy progress likely won’t be welcomed by rightsholders, who’ve repeatedly criticized Cloudflare for hiding the hosting locations of pirate sites.

 

TorrentFreak reached out to a major anti-piracy organization for a comment on these new developments, but we have yet to receive an on-the-record response. It wouldn’t be unthinkable, however, that we will see more blocking lawsuits against Cloudflare in the future.

 

For now, Cloudflare isn’t mentioning blocking at all. Instead, it is simply excited about making the Internet more private and secure for everyone.

 

“If you’re a website, and you care about users visiting your website in a fashion that doesn’t allow any intermediary to see what users are doing, enable ECH today on Cloudflare,” the company writes.

 

“Over time, we hope others will follow our footsteps, leading to a more private Internet for everyone. The more providers that offer ECH, the harder it becomes for anyone to listen in on what users are doing on the Internet. Heck, we might even solve privacy for good.”

 

—

 

* Note: We initially had trouble getting ECH to work. As it turns out, some ‘web shield’ functionalities in anti-virus software can cause issues.

 

In a press release published on Thursday, global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment celebrated action by Taiwanese Police after they carried out a raid against distributors of pirate set-top boxes.

 

“Taiwanese Police officials announced Sept. 27 in Taipei that they had completed a successful raid against the distributors of SVICLOUD ISDs, seizing more than 1,000 ISDs and equipment including mobile devices and computers. Seven suspects were arrested,” ACE reported.

 

ACE chief, Jan van Voorn, who also leads Global Content Protection at the MPA, offered his personal congratulations.

 

“The intellectual property rights of various ACE members were infringed upon by these criminals, but this recent action reinforces how valuable our partnerships are with law enforcement agencies around the world. Partnerships such as this are vital to the success of our global campaign to combat piracy and protect legal content platforms.”

Light Sabers, Goggles, Commitment

On the date mentioned by ACE, September 27, the Criminal Investigation Bureau of Taiwan’s National Police Agency, government departments, broadcasters, and a who’s-who of anti-piracy groups (local and overseas) held a joint press conference.

 

Led by Taiwan’s top cop, Police Commissioner Huang Mingzhao, the conference delivered a unified message: A Joint Declaration to Combat Illegal Infringement.

 

Mingzhao said that to implement the government’s policy of protecting intellectual property, police are actively investigating piracy cases. With the slogan ‘Technology Fights Illegality’ front and center, those on stage put on luminous goggles and used lightsabers to drive the point home.

 

“Technology Fights Illegality” (Image credit: CIB Taiwan)

 

Between January 2019 and July 2023, the Criminal Bureau says it investigated 19 illegal streaming cases. The conference also heard that a new set-top box had attracted police attention; the Xiaoyun TV Box (小云机上盒) from SVICLOUD, the company described as ‘criminal’ in the ACE press release.

SVI Cloud: Piracy, Polished to Perfection

SVICLOUD devices are already well known in Asia, largely thanks to extremely effective distributor/reseller schemes. When someone rents out a five-bedroom apartment on Airbnb, complete with swimming pool, gym, TV and an SVICLOUD device for entertainment, it could simply be an attractive feature, but it might be a promotion, it’s hard to tell.

 

When ‘internet celebrities’ review SVICLOUD devices on YouTube, or publish blog posts featuring stunning imagery, any remaining doubt over the marketing system is clarified, just in time for the dealer network and distributor franchise to do their work – once certification has been obtained, of course.

 

 

Since content available via SVICLOUD devices caters to speakers of several languages, English included, it’s no surprise that these set-top devices are already being made available outside Asia, on Amazon in the United States, for example. Or Canada.

 

 

There are dozens of sites selling SVICLOUD devices all around the world, promising something for everyone; TV channels from Taiwan, Malaysia, United States, Canada, UK, Italy, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and India, the list goes on and on.

 

A site claiming to represent SVICLOUD directly puts additional meat on the bones. In addition to live TV and a VOD library, customers can expect live broadcasts of most major sports, including NBA, MBL, NFL, soccer (English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Chinese Super League, UEFA Champions League, AFC Champions League, etc.), plus golf and snooker.

The MPA Has Already Reported SVICLOUD to the USTR

Given the above, it’s no surprise that Taiwan’s recent work received praise from ACE; the SVICLOUD problem has been getting steadily worse for the past several years and has been mentioned repeatedly by the MPA and IIPA in their reports to the USTR.

 

“SVI Cloud is an IPTV service which includes an Android device manufactured in China and an application called SVI GO/MO offering access to pirated VOD and live TV channel content. SVI Cloud has a large pool of resellers worldwide and a userbase that is global but particularly strong in the Asia-Pacific region,” the MPA informed the USTR last year (pdf).

 

“The piracy ecosystem around piracy devices and related apps, including illegal IPTV services such as ‘SVI Cloud,’ continues to proliferate in Malaysia,” the MPA added in a submission to the 2022 Trade Barriers report (pdf).

Malaysia and China Meet Western Trademarks

The MPA reference to Malaysia rather than Taiwan is interesting. Back in 2021, a report compiled by anti-piracy group Alianza claimed that the official SVICLOUD site operated from a Malaysian domain – svicloud.com.my.

 

Furthermore, official registration documents made available in Hong Kong (1), state that the SVICLOUD trademark is also registered to an address in Malaysia. The same is true for a trademark registered in Indonesia.

 

At the United States Patent and Trademark Office, however, records show that the SVICLOUD trademark is registered to an individual in China.

 

Records at the Intellectual Property Office in the UK indicate that a trademark application for SVICLOUD was received on August 23, 2022. After being published on September 8, 2022, in October the name and address details on the application were amended.

 

A month later, a ‘Notice of Threatened Opposition’ was filed and this March the trademark application was completely withdrawn.

 

The reasons for that remain unclear but with trademarks already registered in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and the United States, perhaps that was considered enough – especially when backed up by trademarks registered in Japan, China, and Australia.

 

 

Artificial intelligence is booming. Dozens of companies are enthusiastic about its potential and many regular people are tinkering with it too.

 

The ‘AI Hub’ Discord server was the place to be for true AI enthusiasts. In just a matter of months, it grew from zero to a thriving community of more than 500,000 members.

 

Through the server, people shared the latest tips and tricks, new developments, but also complete models. They included voice models of popular musicians including Bruno Mars, Frank Sinatra, Rihanna, and Stevie Wonder.

 

Whether the models themselves are infringing is a question yet to be answered in court. However, the models are trained using commercial music, and openly sharing a library of copyrighted tracks is a clear no-go.

RIAA Targeted “AI Hub” Users

AI Hub was well aware of these sensitivities and didn’t allow members to post copyrighted content. The message apparently didn’t reach all members, which prompted the RIAA to step in earlier this year.

 

The RIAA represents the rights of American music companies and keeps a very close eye on the AI landscape. When it discovered copyright-infringing content being shared on the AI Hub server, the industry group took the matter to court.

 

RIAA obtained a DMCA subpoena to obtain the identities of several members who allegedly shared infringing content. Whether this also included voice models wasn’t clear, but the shared datasets with copyrighted music were definitely problematic.

RIAA’s Letter

 

As part of its legal efforts, the RIAA also asked Discord to shut down the AI Hub server, which at the time had just over 80k members. Discord didn’t take action against the server at the time, but the RIAA actively reminded the company to appropriately deal with repeat infringers.

“AI Hub” Shut Down

Following the RIAA’s enforcement effort the server continued to grow. While most members obeyed the rules, there were some outliers. This week, AI Hub was taken down completely, presumably in response to repeat copyright allegations.

 

It’s not clear whether the RIAA had anything to do with the server’s downfall. A new server, which snatched the .gg/aihub invite link, now welcomes former members and provides more context.

 

“AI Hub was banned because of copyright, apparently someone did the trick of editing posts and added several links with copyrighted content, which left Discord with no option but to DMCA the server,” the new server explains.

DMCA?

 

This backup server has nothing to do with the original AI Hub, and we obviously can’t verify any of its claims. TorrentFreak reached out to our contact at the original server but they didn’t immediately reply.

Whack an AI-Mole

Based on the information available, it does indeed seem likely that AI Hub was taken down in response to repeat copyright complaints. Despite its size, Discord only processes a few hundred DMCA takedowns per month, and a subset of these complained about content on AI Hub.

 

While Discord has to comply with the DMCA – which includes taking action against repeat infringers – it is sad to see such a thriving community disappear due to the actions of a small minority. Discord didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment.

 

This likely isn’t the end of it though. Given the success of AI Hub, there are several new servers lined up to take its place. Many of these might face similar problems in the future if they continue to grow. After all, it’s virtually impossible to control everything posted by 500k+ members.

 

This means that we will continue to see an AI whack-a-mole. But perhaps AI can fix that problem eventually, if it’s allowed to.

 

Live TV, sports, and movie fans in Greece enjoy their entertainment as much as their fellow Europeans. They also complain about similar issues, including the high cost of official subscription TV packages offered by local broadcasters.

 

For many consumers, the solution to these persistent problems can be found in cheap but illicit pirate IPTV subscriptions. Greece does what it can to block illegal streaming services, so that TV companies including Nova and Cosmote are able to conduct business and make a return on their investment.

 

Sometimes, however, the only solution is to focus on human targets in the hope that services don’t make an immediate comeback.

€100 in Losses For TV Companies

Following an investigation by the Patras Security Sub-Directorate, the Hellenic Police say they have dismantled an organization behind a major illegal IPTV operation. The service, which is yet to be named by the authorities, is alleged to have caused upwards of €100m in losses to TV companies, including Cosmote, Nova, and Vodafone. Details of how those losses were calculated are yet to be reported.

 

In a series of coordinated raids late last week, police officers arrested ten men, nine locals and one described as foreign; possibly Ukranian, according to unconfirmed reports. Police say that among those arrested were the boss of the group, his second in command, an individual alleged to control the money, plus an unspecified number of subscription sellers.

 

Police say that a criminal case was launched against the defendants on various grounds. They include founding and participating in a criminal organization, crimes against intellectual property, and money laundering offenses.

Eight years and €25m Profit For Pirates

According to police, a preliminary investigation established that the organization had been in the business for eight years. Currently serving around 13,000 local subscribers, the group reportedly generated over €25m in profit, although no supporting calculations were made available.

 

“In terms of the criminal organization’s modus operandi, the members operated an illegal online platform (portal), in which, depending on their leadership position and role, they acted as managers or dealers of the provided services and relay devices,” a police statement reads.

 

“To collect the profits, the defendants chose manual collection, collection through digital banks based abroad, as well as through payments into their own and their family members’ bank accounts. In addition, in order to have full awareness and control of their clientele, the leading members of the criminal organization for each portal used a special subscriber management program (panel), which they installed on a computer or mobile phone.”

 

The packages sold to customers reportedly included access to a VOD (video-on-demand) library containing films and TV series, none of which were distributed with permission from rightsholders.

Follow The Money

Police say that the group “legalized their criminal income” through real estate purchases, the establishment of individual companies, and through unnamed betting companies.

 

Authorities make no mention of bank account seizures but the police didn’t leave empty-handed. Their haul included €93,500 and £6,400 in cash, “a multitude” of IPTV devices, mobile phones, various computers, and documents related to customers and sales.

 

Officers also seized six luxury cars and six motorcycles, promising that those arrested would face the competent prosecuting authority.

 

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

 

The company was founded in 2009 and today boasts 16 million active monthly streaming users, making Plex a serious market player.

 

Most people use the service for perfectly legitimate purposes. On the fringes, however, some users abuse the software to share pirate libraries publicly, a considerable thorn in the side for rightsholders.

 

A few weeks ago Plex announced that it would take action against abusive practices. In an apparent attempt to stop widespread copyright infringement, the service announced that it would ban servers hosted at Hetzner, as these are frequently linked to terms of service violations.

 

Plex never confirmed that copyright infringement concerns were behind this decision, but that would be the most logical explanation. The company is focusing more and more on offering legal streaming media and would like to shake off copyright infringement associations.

ZUMA Press Sues Plex

Although Plex hasn’t been sued by any major Hollywood players, the company is currently involved in a peculiar copyright infringement lawsuit.

 

A few weeks ago, ZUMA Press filed a complaint at a federal court in California, accusing Plex of using a photo of actress Cuca Escribano on its website, without permission. The photo was shot by Jose Perez Gegundez who typically licenses it to third parties for a fee.

 

 

Plex allegedly used the photo without permission, which the photographer’s licensing partner ZUMA Press discovered in April of last year.

 

“Without permission or authorization from Plaintiff, Defendant volitionally copied and/or displayed Plaintiff’s copyright protected Photograph on the Website,” the complaint reads.

Photo Removed

At the time of writing the photo is no longer hosted on Plex’s website or server but an exhibit shared by the plaintiffs shows that this was the case previously. The same photo is still in use by The Movie DB, one of Plex’s data suppliers.

 

 

ZUMA Press alerted Plex to the alleged copyright infringement on March 2 this year. Whether that was a simple takedown notice or whether there were further demands attached isn’t clear, but the press agency wasn’t happy.

 

“Plaintiff, via counsel, served a letter by electronic mail to Defendant seeking to address the complaints contained herein concerning Defendant’s infringement of Plaintiff’s rights-protected works, to no avail,” the complaint reads.

 

Plex has yet to respond to the complaint but it seems likely that the company would like to resolve this matter without much fanfare. As the Hetzner ban shows, the company has little interest in copyright controversies.

 

—

 

A copy of the complaint is available here (pdf). Plex is expected to file a response later this month. There is just one photo mentioned in the lawsuit, which means that the potential damages are limited

 

A few years ago, book piracy was considered a fringe activity that rarely made the news, but times have changed.

 

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice targeted popular shadow library Z-Library, accusing it of mass copyright infringement. Two of the site’s alleged operators were arrested and their prosecution is still pending.

 

In recent months, shadow libraries have also been named in other lawsuits. Publishers sued Libgen over “staggering” levels of infringement, for example. At the same time, several lawsuits accused OpenAI of using Libgen and other unauthorized libraries to train their large language models.

 

These legal efforts have put the operators of shadow libraries under serious pressure, but they remain online, at least for now. In fact, the crackdown on Z-Library propelled a new player into the mix last year; Anna’s Archive.

Anna’s Archive Expands

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for book piracy sources and shadow libraries. The site launched days after Z-Library was targeted last November, to ensure and facilitate the availability of books and articles to the broader public.

 

 

With more than 20 million indexed books and nearly 100 million papers – many of which are shared without permission – Anna’s Archive has come a long way already. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the public at large, as the meta-search engine has more than 12 million monthly visits according to recent traffic estimates.

 

For Anna’s Archive, this is all just the beginning. The people behind the site aim to play a crucial role in preserving all available books in the world, even if that means being at odds with copyright law.

Scraping WorldCat’s Billion+ Records

This week, the search engine announced a new milestone that should help it reach this ultimate goal. Over the past several months, Anna’s Archive has been secretly scraping WorldCat, the world’s largest book metadata database..

 

WorldCat is run by the non-profit organization OCLC and works with tens of thousands of libraries globally. Its database is proprietary and not freely available but Anna’s Archive managed to bypass the restrictions, to make their own copy freely available.

 

“Even though OCLC is a non-profit, their business model requires protecting their database. Well, we’re sorry to say, friends at OCLC, we’re giving it all away,” Anna’s Archive notes.

 

The meta-search engine says it managed to scrape a staggering three terabytes of metadata. The dataset includes 1.3 billion unique IDs that, after removing duplicates and other noise, equate to 700 million unique records.

Superior Goal

The average user is probably not especially interested in downloading metadata; they want books. However, Anna’s Archive believes that these records will help to achieve its ultimate goal.

 

“We think this release marks a major milestone in mapping out all the books in the world. We can now work on making a TODO list of all the books that still need to be preserved.

 

“That is a massive undertaking that requires a lot of people and institutions working on it, both legal and shadow libraries, and we hope to be a cornerstone in this effort,” Anna informs TorrentFreak.

 

Scraping WorldCat is just the first step. The next is to put this information to work and figure out how complete the current library offerings are.

Making Sense of The Data

The WorldCat data isn’t just limited to books but also includes music, video, and online articles. This has to be cleaned up and deduplicated, which requires some advanced data science skills.

 

“This is why we’re looking to get the community involved, and why we’re hosting the mini-competition for data scientists. It’s a massive dataset, and we need some help,” Anna says.

 

 

In a blog post announcing the new changes and competition, the meta-search engine also notes that AI researchers have shown an interest in the project. This makes sense, as large libraries are ideal for training LLM’s.

AI and Legal Risks

Many commercial AI tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are believed to have been trained on books from shadow libraries. This triggered a flurry of copyright infringement lawsuits that are ongoing.

 

Right now, there is still a lot of uncertainty about what data can be used and under what conditions but courts and lawmakers will offer more guidance on that front in the years to come.

 

The uncertainty hasn’t stopped AI groups from reaching out to Anna’s Archive, which receives emails from LLM creators every day and is actively working with several unnamed parties.

 

Needless to say, running the largest shadow library search engines is not without risk. Publishers and authors likely see Anna’s Archive as a massive piracy operation and legal threats are constantly looming.

 

Anna’s Archive is well aware of these risks and is “obviously very worried”. However, the team behind the site believes that these risks are worth taking in the grander scheme of things.

 

“We believe that efforts like ours to preserve the legacy of humanity should be fully legal, and that copyright is way too strict. But alas, this is not to be. We take every precaution. This mission is so important that it’s worth the risks,” Anna concludes.

 

Dozens of large anti-piracy awareness campaigns have come and gone over the years and while approaches have differed, there’s no confusion when it comes to their common goal.

 

With serious heavyweight backing, the new ‘BeStreamWise’ anti-piracy campaign aims to deter the use of pirate IPTV services in the UK. It deploys familiar techniques to shape public perception but right off the bat there’s an elephant in the room.

 

At least as far as we can determine, there have been no press releases heralding BeStreamWise, or indeed any other mainstream media efforts that could ensure maximum penetration for what is obviously an awareness campaign.

 

That being said, there are some indications that a short video produced by BeStreamWise has already been seen by hundreds of thousands of people. With a running time of just 15 seconds it’s certainly short, but if a campaign wanted to target social media and/or search engine users looking for something in particular, dropping in something like this would make perfect sense.

 

 

Uploaded to YouTube on September 12, the clip above already has over 484,000 views but not even one person was moved to leave a comment. The BeStreamWise channel itself has only six subscribers, but it appears that the campaign didn’t begin online.

People Love Offers Too Good to Be True

To demonstrate how easily people will hand over their personal details, BeStreamWise hired Jenny Radcliffe, aka ‘The People Hacker’.

 

Radcliffe lectures on topics including social engineering, frauds and con artistry. Here she plays a salesperson for a new streaming service called MalStreams, offering free lifetime subscriptions from a pop-up stand in London’s Paddington Station.

 

 

The ‘con’ strategy deployed here is simple; First, commuters’ faith in the judgment of the management team behind one of the most famous stations in the country probably precluded the possibility of a brazen, broad daylight scam.

 

Couple that with the unlikely scenario that scammers accepted the considerable expense and risk of selling an illegal product in a high-footfall location, the targets’ preconceptions most likely ruled an illegal product completely out. As a result, at least a handful of people liked the idea of ‘free streaming for life’ and went on to sign up to the bogus MalStreams service.

 

Unsurprisingly, the number of people who rejected the too-good-to-be-true offer isn’t revealed; it’s a campaign to shape public perceptions after all, not a peer-reviewed study. Those who did fill in their personal details were subjected to a clip depicting some kind of hacker attack, followed by the message: “You’ve Just Let Criminals In.”

 

 

“Streaming services offering free content from other platforms can be too good to be true and aren’t always legal. Illegal streaming can let criminals into your devices and network. Giving them access to your personal and financial information, exposing you to scams, fraud and even identity theft,” ‘subscribers’ were informed after the dust settled.

 

“BeStreamWise and recognize the personal dangers of illegal streaming. Find safer ways to enjoy your favorite content on BeStreamWise.com.”

The BeStreamWise Portal

The campaign portal rigidly follows current anti-piracy messaging by focusing on the four pillars of danger established over the past few years (cited verbatim).

 

Viruses and Malware: When accessing illegal streams, whether through free streaming sites or via apps, add-ons or devices, you are at risk of receiving malicious software. This gives criminals access to your network or your device compromising your personal data.

 

 

ID Theft, Scams, Fraud: Streaming via illegal methods puts you at risk of being exposed to fraud and data theft. This risk increases significantly when users exchange credit or debit card information to view content on unregulated and illicit websites.

 

Inappropriate Content: Watching content via an illicit source can expose younger viewers to age-inappropriate content. These unauthorized websites, devices, apps, add-ons, and the content they can access have no parental controls.

 

Funding Wider Criminality: When you use illegal streams, you risk letting criminals in. Illegal streaming services are increasingly operated by sophisticated criminal networks, often involved in other types of crime.

Who Wants Brits to BeStreamWise?

The campaign portal presents BeStreamWise as an organization made up of eight named members and possibly more. In the order they appear: Federation Against Copyright Theft, the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office, the CrimeStoppers charity, British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE), Sky, Premier League, and free-to-air broadcaster, ITV.

 

While Sky, Premier League and ITV are well known in their own right, BASE (which used to be a member of FACT) is particularly worthy of mention.

 

BASE members include Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, StudioCanal, Sky Store, Virgin Media, BT TV, CrunchyRoll, Kaleidoscope, Lionsgate, Mattel, Freemantle Media, and Spirit Entertainment, the largest independent home entertainment sales and distribution company handling content for the BBC, Film4, and ITV Studios.

 

 

Members of the Irish Industry Trust For IP Awareness include Sky, Warner Bros., and Sony Pictures, and it appears the BeStreamWise campaign has already taken to the streets of Belfast. The billboard in the image above was snapped by a Reddit user in the past few days.

 

While there are a number of campaign participants, Sky’s involvement stands out in a number of ways.

 

Links in the footer of the BeStreamWise website link to terms and conditions and privacy pages on Sky websites, while the bestreamwise.com domain’s security certificate is directly linked to other Sky domains.

 

This could simply mean that the broadcaster’s contribution includes technical assistance but Sky UK Limited is also listed as the owner of trademark application UK00003955720. Dated September 2023, the BeStreamWise trademark covers the categories listed below.

 

Facts From Studies Unavailable to the Public

As one might expect, the portal also features claims from various studies, including 90% of Illegal Streaming Sites Are Classified as Risky, 32% of People Have Been Victims of Fraud, and 2.7 Million Devices Have Been Infected With Viruses.

 

The names of the studies are cited but beyond the curated soundbites previously offered by the industry groups that commissioned the research, the studies aren’t openly published or even made fully available on request. As previously reported, requests to see underlying research have met with obstruction, which by default casts doubt on all claims, at least until properly evidenced.

 

That doesn’t imply that threats don’t exist, they certainly do, but if an entire campaign is based on the existence of specific, ubiquitous threats, there can be zero harm in linking to the full studies, including the methodology.

 

Until then, many of the companies listed above are facing the prospect of a new round of website blocking, this time featuring their own domain. Following an allegation of spreading misinformation, bestreamwise.com has been placed on a popular DNS blocklist which aims to “keep the internet clean.”

 

Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” hasn’t had the easiest path to the silver screen.

 

The film’s production started right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the planned theatrical release was pushed back several times, to eventually premiere in June 2023.

 

With well over half a billion dollars in global box office revenues, the film has been quite a success. The mission is not complete though, as the digital release, scheduled for October 10, has not yet rolled out.

 

With anticipation just starting to build again, the film has suffered yet another setback. A few days ago, high-quality pirated copies of the new Mission Impossible film began circulating on pirate sites. The fact that it leaked ahead of the official digital release makes it even worse.

Mission Impossible Leaks

These types of leaks are common enough not to make the news but, in this case, something stands out. In common with the COVID-19 pandemic, all signs suggest that the leak originated from China, as evidenced by this full-screen mention of the China Film Administration that prominently appears in the leak before the movie begins.

From the pirated release

 

The China Film Administration (CFA) is led by the communist party of China. Among other things, it issues film screening licenses, which are displayed through an animated dragon logo at the start of films, as is the case here.

 

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the Administration itself has anything to do with the leak. However, the Dragon logo does indicate that the leak is linked to China in some way or another.

Chinese Subtitles

In addition to the Film Administration’s pre-roll, the release comes with hardcoded Chinese and English subtitles. Although several pirate releases are tagged “KORSUB,” the captions represent another Chinese connection.

 

Hardcoded subtitles

 

Needless to say, Paramount Pictures and director Tom Cruise won’t be happy with this early leak. However, stopping it from spreading further is literally an impossible mission now that it’s widely circulating through hundreds of pirate sites all over the world.

 

Interestingly, the leak appeared shortly after the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) sent a submission to the US Trade Representative, suggesting that China could do more to combat piracy.

Rightsholders Raise Chinese Piracy Concerns

The IIPA mentioned that the film industry has signaled numerous piracy issues in China. They include the problem of illegal recording or ‘camming’ in movie theaters, a concern that was previously shared with Chinese government agencies, including the China Film Administration.

 

“Unauthorized camcording of movies in theaters—a key source for online audiovisual infringements—remains a significant problem in China for the film industry. Also fueling the growing camcording problem is the increasing problem of people in Chinese movie theaters using cameras, including those on handheld mobile devices, to live-stream theatrical broadcasts of films online.

 

“The motion picture industry has raised the camcording issue with relevant Chinese government agencies, e.g., China Film Administration (CFA), NCAC, and the China Film Distribution and Exhibition Association (CFDEA),” IIPA added.

 

The good news is that “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” didn’t leak from China in a cammed version. However, this high-quality release ahead of the digital premiere might be just as bad.

 

Thus far, the advance pirate release hasn’t broken any records. While hundreds of thousands of people have already downloaded or streamed a copy, it appears that the hardcoded subtitles put off at least part of the potential audience.

 

“Two sets of subtitles that’s just silly, PASS!,” one commenter notes on a popular pirate site, with another adding that they will wait for the digital release because the subtitles are “too distracting.”

 

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

 

These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

 

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “Gran Turismo” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 02 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Gran Turismo	7.3 / trailer
2	(…)	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	7.9 / trailer
3	(1)	Blue Beetle	6.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Barbie	7.3 / trailer
5	(3)	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	6.7 / trailer
6	(…)	Reptile	6.9 / trailer
7	(6)	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3	8.2 / trailer
8	(…)	57 Seconds	5.2 / trailer
9	(7)	Meg 2: The Trench	5.3 / trailer
10	(8)	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	8.8 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Voltage Holdings is one of many mostly American movie companies that have attempted to turn piracy into profit over the last 15 years. A lawsuit the company filed in Canada is broadly the same as others filed elsewhere but the same cannot be said about the outcome.

Background

In 2017, piracy monitoring company Maverickeye collected IP addresses of BitTorrent users sharing the Voltage-owned sci-fi movie ‘Revolt’. Canada operates a so-called ‘notice-and-notice’ regime so Voltage identified the ISPs related to the IP addresses and warning notices were sent to the relevant subscribers. Second notices were sent after Maverickeye found the same IP addresses sharing the same work a week or more later.

 

In March 2018, Voltage filed a statement of claim against 110 ‘Doe’ defendants, identified only by their IP addresses. Voltage later obtained a so-called Norwich order which compelled the ISPs to disclose the names and addresses of the subscribers.

 

Voltage labeled a subset of those subscribers “the worst of the worst” and since they failed to respond, the company requested default judgment at Canada’s Federal Court.

 

Justice Angela Furlanetto agreed the defendants were in default but since Voltage only presented IP address-based evidence, questions remained over who had actually shared the movie.

 

The Judge said that there wasn’t enough evidence to show a direct link to the subscriber or draw an adverse inference. Voltage argued that if the subscriber wasn’t the infringer, the fact that they had already received warnings under Canada’s ‘notice-and-notice’ regime, among other things, meant that they should be held liable for ‘authorizing’ infringement carried out by others.

 

In June 2022, Justice Furlanetto declined default judgment but also refused to dismiss the case. Voltage was given more time to present evidence to support direct infringement or authorization but the company took its case to the Federal Court of Appeal instead.

Basis for Voltage’s Appeal

In its 36-page memorandum filed in November 2022, Voltage outlined two legal theories; either the billpayers pirated the movie themselves (direct infringement), or they authorized someone else’s direct infringement by allowing them to continue pirating Voltage’s movie, despite receiving warning notices from their ISPs.

 

Arguments were heard on March 28, 2023, and three appeal court judges (Justices Donald J. Rennie, David W. Stratas, Wyman W. Webb) handed down their judgment last week.

 

The judgment says that the appeal engages two issues: the jurisprudence on what constitutes direct infringement and authorizing infringement, and the burden of proof and circumstances under which an adverse inference can be drawn.

 

“These issues are closely interrelated. The jurisprudence with respect to the law of copyright determines the minimum evidentiary requirements to establish the asserted types of infringement; in other words, the jurisprudence constrains the extent to which an adverse inference may be drawn in the context of online copyright infringement,” the judgment reads.

Judgment Guided By Supreme Court Ruling in 2022

According to Voltage, once it had presented all “technologically available” evidence to the Court, a “tactical burden of proof” shifted to the internet subscribers. This effectively meant they had to show they were not the infringers. In respect of its authorization claims, Voltage said that Justice Furlanetto was wrong to insist on more evidence; the fact that the subscribers received notices yet failed to control their internet connections was sufficient.

 

The judgment deals with the authorization claims first, guided by a Supreme Court decision handed down in 2022 in Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Entertainment Software Association.

 

“The Supreme Court endorsed the Copyright Board’s determination that ‘it is the act of posting [the work] that constitutes authorization’ because the person who makes the work available ‘either controls or purports to control the right to communicate it’ and ‘invites anyone with Internet access to have the work communicated to them. The authorizer is the individual directly engaging with the copyrighted material,” the judgment clarifies.

 

As a result, the Court of Appeal says that whoever used the subscribers’ internet connections to make Voltage’s movie available for download, authorized the infringement. The Supreme Court found that an authorizer permits reproduction but Voltage claims that an authorizer is someone who permits someone to permit reproduction.

 

The difference in opinion would prove fatal.

Collisions in Copyright Law

Justice Rennie says the Voltage appeal fails to show “any reversible error” in the Federal Court’s decision. Furthermore, Voltage’s arguments on authorization are “inconsistent” with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision. Voltage’s claims of direct infringement also run into trouble.

 

“Although it accepted that individuals using each respondents’ IP address had infringed the appellant’s copyright by uploading the Work, the Federal Court found that it could not conclude at this time that the respondents were themselves those particular
individuals. I agree,” Justice Rennie writes.

 

On the question of a subscriber’s failure to defend, the Judge agrees that can lead to an adverse inference. However, just because a defendant is found to be in default at an early stage, it does not necessarily follow that an adverse inference should be drawn at the same stage.

 

“If the fact that a defendant was in default automatically allowed for adverse inferences at the second stage of the test for motions for default judgment, plaintiffs on ex parte motions for default judgment would need to present no evidence to the court in order to be successful. Some evidence is required,” Justice Rennie continues.

 

Indeed, the Federal Court held that “something more is needed than the bare assertion that a subscriber is, by default, the user responsible for infringement.” Voltage failed to provide sufficient evidence, the Court of Appeal notes, so no adverse inference could be drawn.

Court of Appeal Tightens the Noose

Voltage’s reliance on infringement warnings to show subscribers’ failure to exercise control – over internet connections and connected devices – fails.

 

As clarified in the Supreme Court decision, authorization depends on the alleged authorizer’s control over the person who committed the resulting infringement; it does not depend on the alleged authorizer’s control over the supply of their technology.

 

Furthermore, to establish an infringing activity, there must be evidence to show what the activity does to the work in question.

 

“Posting a work online and inviting others to view it engages the author’s authorization right; however, sharing internet access after receiving notices of alleged infringement does nothing to the work in question, and does not therefore engage any copyright interest granted to the author exclusively,” the Court of Appeal notes.

Conclusion: Voltage’s Appeal is Dismissed

From the judgment: “In the factual matrix of this case and at this relatively early stage of this case, the defendants’ lack of participation in litigation does not offset the plaintiff’s lack of evidence.

 

“The Federal Court was not obligated to draw an adverse inference at this stage of the litigation merely because the respondents had, by their silence, not put forward sufficient evidence to rebut the appellant’s allegations,” Justice Rennie concludes.

 

For these reasons, Justices Rennie, Stratas, and Webb, dismissed the appeal.

 

The full judgment is available here (pdf)