Operating a pirate site is not without risk. Those who get caught risk millions of dollars in damages, multi-year prison sentences, or even both.

 

To avoid that fate, many sites prefer not to poke the proverbial bear. With dozens of high-profile shutdowns in recent years, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is the biggest bear there is in the piracy landscape.

DonTorrent Stands Out

ACE is well aware of all large pirate sites, so hiding isn’t really an option. Instead, most sites simply try to stand out less than the rest, a strategy that doesn’t apply to one of Spain’s most popular torrent sites, DonTorrent.

 

With millions of visitors, DonTorrent is one of the larger pirate sites in the region but getting users to the site isn’t always easy. Spanish ISPs are required to block DonTorrent, so the site regularly rotates to fresh domains.

 

DonTorrent currently has over 100 registered domains and also offers a censorship-free Tor version. To inform followers about its most recent new home, it uses a dedicated Telegram channel, which pops up for all new visitors.

 

Taunting the Anti-Piracy ‘Don’

The photo that accompanies the Telegram invite link may not immediately ring a bell with everyone, but those in the know recognize Jan Van Voorn’s likeness. Van Voorn is the head of ACE and MPA’s Chief of Global Content Protection.

 

Van Voorn’s photo, with an added pirate hat and crossbones, is also present in the site’s official logo now. Apparently, the site is not afraid of drawing attention, even though this type of mockery is likely to make ACE even more determined to find its operators.

 

This isn’t the first time that DonTorrent has openly featured the ACE chief. The torrent site previously listed Van Voorn as the site’s owner and is now upping the ante.

 

Needless to say, ACE is working behind the scenes to find those responsible for the site. For example, a few weeks ago the coalition obtained a subpoena that required Cloudflare to hand over the details of the admin behind Dontorrent.cat, and there have been similar attempts in the past.

 

Thus far this hasn’t resulted in any effective enforcement actions, suggesting that the torrent site doesn’t have any sensitive data at Cloudflare. But ACE is not an outfit that gives up easily. According to Van Voorn, DonTorrent is indeed on its radar but the group didn’t have much more to add at the moment.

Messing With OSINT Investigators

DonTorrent is well aware of the potential risks involved but seems unfazed by it all. Speaking with TorrentFreak, one of the people involved with the site notes that OSINT investigators are circling the site as well.

 

For example, an IP crime investigator from a Belgian company, located close to one of MPA’s branches, sent money to DotTorrent’s Paypal address, presumably fishing for information. Whether MPA or ACE were involved in this is unknown, but the torrent site laughed it off.

 

 

DonTorrent also shared an example of a Spanish investigator who apparently tried to obtain IP-address details via email. When DonTorrent privately confronted the person via social media, the OSINT expert blamed it on an infected server.

For the Lulz (and Some ‘Netflix’ Money)

Needless to say, the site is playing a high-stakes game that has an asynchronous payout. It can only be lost once.

 

In addition to taunting anti-piracy forces for fun, the site also generates revenue through advertisements. These are not the nasty popups found on some pirate sites. Instead, the income is ironically generated indirectly through legal streaming platforms.

 

DonTorrent is an affiliate for StartGaming, a service where users can purchase shared accounts for legal streaming services. Whether Netflix, Disney and HBO are happy with this is doubtful.

 

 

It’s not clear how password-sharing crackdowns will affect this business model but, for now, it helps the torrent site to pay its bills.

 

“We don’t make money through popups, malware, or pushing intrusive advertising. What we have is a deal with an external store that we take a percentage of the user’s purchase in their store,” our DonTorrent contact says.

 

The revenue helps to pay the server bills but it’s not the site’s goal to make big bucks. Instead, DonTorrent says that it is mostly a hobby project. While that may be true, it certainly is a risky one.

 

Two years ago, Bungie filed a complaint at a federal court in Seattle, accusing AimJunkies.com of copyright and trademark infringement, among other things.

 

The same accusations were also made against Phoenix Digital Group, the alleged creators of the ‘Destiny 2’ cheating software.

 

AimJunkies denied the claims and argued that cheating isn’t against the law. In addition, it refuted the copyright infringement allegations; these lacked substance because some of the referenced copyrights were registered well after the cheats were first made available, AimJunkies said.

AimJunkies Won Fist Battle

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly handed an early and partial win to AimJunkies. The original complaint didn’t provide sufficient evidence for a plausible claim that the ‘Destiny 2 Hacks’ infringed any copyrights, the Judge concluded.

 

This was a setback for Bungie, but the court allowed the game developer to amend its complaint, which it promptly did. As a result, the copyright infringement dispute is currently ongoing and progressing through the legal process.

 

During 2022, Judge Zilly referred several of the non-copyright-related complaints to arbitration, including allegations that AimJunkies’ cheats violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision and were illegally sold to third parties.

Arbitration Judge Sides with Bungie

The arbitration process was conducted behind the scenes and resulted in a resounding win for the game developer; Bungie was awarded a total of nearly $4.4 million in damages and fees.

 

The bulk of the award was DMCA-related damages. According to arbitration Judge Ronald Cox, the evidence made it clear that AimJunkies and third-party developer James May bypassed Bungie’s technical protection measures in violation of the DMCA.

 

In addition to breaching the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, the defendants were also found liable for trafficking in circumvention devices. Or, put differently, selling and shipping the cheats.

 

The DMCA circumvention and trafficking violations total nearly $3.6 million in damages with the remainder of the $4.4 million consisting of fees and costs.

Aimjunkies Files Appeal

AimJunkies opposed the arbitration outcome but U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ultimately denied these objections and confirmed the arbitration order last month.

 

That could have been the end of the road for this part of the lawsuit, but the cheat seller is not quick to concede. It recently filed an appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping for a better outcome.

 

“Defendants Aimjunkies.com, Phoenix Digital Group LLC, Jeffrey Conway, David Schaefer, Jordan Green and James May hereby appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,” attorney Philip Mann writes.

 

 

In addition to the confirmation of the arbitration order, the defendants also appeal the associated permanent injunction that prevents them from creating and selling similar hacks and cheats in the future.

Battles on Multiple Fronts

AimJunkies has yet to file its opening brief at the Court of Appeal. The deadline to do so is in October, so the matter won’t be resolved anytime soon. Meanwhile, there are other battles to fight as well.

 

Bungie’s copyright and trademark infringement claims remain pending and the countersuit, where third-party cheat developer James May accuses Bungie of ‘hacking,’ theft, and DMCA violations, also remains outstanding.

 

These issues are expected to be resolved during a multi-day trial, currently expected to take place later this year.

 

Over the past several years, adult entertainment company Strike 3 Holdings has filed thousands of copyright cases in U.S. federal courts.

 

These lawsuits target people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent.

Rare File-Sharing Trial

Many of these cases result in private settlements and are never heard of again. On occasion, however, a defendant decides to push back. A case that was initially filed against a “John Doe” in Florida, made it all the way to the final trial preparations.

 

It’s unusual for such a file-sharing case to be so heavily litigated since that’s quite costly for both sides. The prospect of a potential jury trial is even rarer, but neither Strike 3 nor the defendant, who was later named as John Adaire, wanted to give in.

 

The case has plenty of nuances but, in essence, the main question was whether Adaire downloaded and shared 36 of Strike 3’s porn videos without permission. According to the adult company, the evidence was clear as day.

Opposing Views

Strike 3 previously informed the court that it repeatedly found an IP address, assigned to the defendant, sharing pirated movies. This was backed up by technical evidence as well as other expert testimony.

 

The adult company further accused the defendant of destroying evidence by wiping data from his desktop computer, mishandling a hard drive, and reinstalling the operating system on his laptop.

 

For his part, the defendant drew the court’s attention to Strike 3’s piracy evidence, suggesting that it was below par.

 

The adult company uses tracking software to monitor the IP addresses in BitTorrent swarms. Similar to other rightsholders, this is then recorded in ‘PCAP’ evidence files. However, Strike 3 developed its “VXN” tracking technology in-house, which makes it little more than ‘circumstantial’ evidence.

No Trial

The case was scheduled to go to trial this week, and attorneys and jurors were all getting ready for several days of court action. On Sunday evening, however, there was a sudden breakthrough after the parties reached a confidential settlement.

 

“Parties have finalized and executed, by way of written agreement, a final settlement resolving all claims raised in this case. Based on such resolution, the Parties notify the Court that a trial would be moot,” they informed the court.

 

Due to the confidential nature of the settlement, it’s not clear if either party agreed to pay compensation. And the fact that both sides are content with the outcome doesn’t give anything away either.

Everybody Happy?

Defense attorney Curt Edmondson informs us that the dispute was amicably resolved to the satisfaction of all. Strike 3’s lawyer Christian Waugh is also content with how the lawsuit was resolved.

 

Strike 3 sees the outcome as “historic”, in part due to the permanent injunction agreed as part of the settlement deal.

 

A case like this, where my client obtained summary judgment on Defendant’s counterclaim and the judge actually found that the Defendant spoliated evidence, is not one that is appropriate for wasting a judge or jury’s time in trial.

 

This injunction, which has yet to be signed by the Florida court, stipulates that the defendant will have to pay $125,000 in damages if they infringe any of Strike 3’s copyrights in the future.

 

“The injunction itself is a historic result for content creators and owners like my client,” Waugh tells TorrentFreak. “There are extraordinary penalties, including contempt, if Defendant ever violates the injunction imposed by the Court,”

 

 

The defense attorney adds some nuance to the injunction by pointing out that his client never downloaded any of Strike 3’s movies and has no plans to do so. This means that the massive penalty for any future infringements should never come into play.

 

“An injunction is for future acts. As the defendant did not download Strike 3’s movies, he has no desire or interest to do so in the future,” Edmondson notes.

 

“I was surprised that Strike 3 wanted to settle,” he adds, noting that earlier this year Strike 3 seemed determined to prove that their evidence was reliable. The defense, however, had a different take.

 

“The reality was that the raw PCAP data was extremely weak and closed to non-existent. We mapped the PCAPs and recreated .MP4 files from the PCAP data and nothing was playable. Strike 3 could have taken us to trial and they chose not to.”

 

The fact that improperly accused defendants cannot claim massive damages awards like copyright holders can, settling the matter made the most sense. Especially since one never knows what a Jury will decide.

More Lawsuits Pending

Now that the trial is out of the way, Strike 3 can focus on the many hundreds of open lawsuits filed at U.S. federal courts. The company is currently on track to set a new all-time record for the number of complaints filed in a year.

 

While some have labeled this activity as copyright trolling, Strike 3 points out that it’s a legitimate copyright holder, merely protecting its rights.

 

“The point of my client’s litigation is not personal or to harm any defendant, it is to protect its rights under the Copyright Act, which has been done in this case,” Strike 3’s attorney concludes.

 

—

 

A copy of the joint notice of resolution is available here (pdf) and the permanent injunction that’s referenced above can be found here (pdf)

 

Three-ish plus decades ago, telecoms companies were best known for installing analog telephones in people’s homes and sending paper bills through the mail to be paid by check.

 

Many later branched out into the lucrative mobile phone market, but as operators of wired telephone networks, major phone companies all over the world would soon become the gatekeepers of a brave new world – the internet. While that was exciting for a while, with little opportunity for added value, selling a commodity product like bandwidth can be a race to the bottom.

 

By providing bandwidth and profiting from the content that consumes lots of it, telecom companies today are able to add value to their base products and generate much more profit. In 2024, telephone company Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España will celebrate its 100th birthday. Under its modern-day branding, Telefónica is a telecoms and media empire with assets worth around $110 billion, significant interests in the pay-TV market, and lots of valuable content to protect from pirates.

Telefónica and NAGRA Boost Partnership

Anti-piracy company NAGRA has also undergone a transformation. From the 1950s onwards, NAGRA produced high-end portable tape-recording devices but is better known for the video scrambling system Nagravision, which aimed to prevent unauthorized reception of pay-TV signals and any subsequent recording. In that sense, NAGRA hasn’t changed its core market but thanks to the internet, content protection now faces significant challenges from increasingly sophisticated pirates.

 

This week Telefónica and NAGRA announced an expansion of their existing relationship as the former works to counter the threat from pirate IPTV services. As it expands its anti-piracy operations in Latin America, Telefónica said its fraud prevention team sought access to advanced anti-piracy technologies and case file histories. While Telefónica has its own intelligence sources, a solution offered by NAGRA proved attractive.

Pirate IPTV: Identify and Disrupt

A statement from Telefónica says that NAGRA’s product provides “innovative ways to identify, monitor and display pirate activity.” The system is supported by AI-powered analytics which will alert Telefónica to “illicit patterns of activity.”

 

Madrid-based Delia Álvarez, manager of Global Fraud Prevention at Telefónica, says the relationship with NAGRA will provide vital intelligence as it seeks to identify and disrupt global piracy networks.

 

“Content piracy is a major concern with a direct impact on our performance. To increase our effectiveness in this ongoing battle, we chose to expand our existing relationship with NAGRA,” Álvarez says.

 

“They have a proven, global capacity to identify and remediate pirate activity. Their threat intelligence provides further value to our Fraud Prevention teams as they seek to identify and disrupt large-scale piracy networks.”

 

NAGRA’s Active Streaming Protection framework (pdf) is already deployed at Telefónica and will supplement other content protection mechanisms such as watermarking.

 

“We are proud to extend our partnership with Telefónica to now include more anti-piracy services.” said Pascal Metral, VP Anti-Piracy Intelligence, Investigation & Litigation, NAGRA. “Helping our customers tackle one of the biggest threats to both their revenues and their significant investments in content is our core focus and we look forward to our services unseating pirates across the Telefónica ecosystem.”

Telefónica Developers

Those with an interest in software development will find Telefónica’s official source code platform on GitHub with an impressive 261 repositories to trawl for interesting gems.

 

These include GoSwiftyM3U8, a framework for parsing and handling .m3u8 playlist files that also happen to be popular among IPTV pirates. There are many reasons why the company might be interested in App Logger for Android but seemingly fewer uses for its fork of CLA-Videodownloader, a web/REST interface for downloading YouTube videos onto a server.

 

Telefónica’s developers are also the creators of HomePwn, billed as a Swiss Army Knife for Pentesting of IoT Devices. VpnHood, meanwhile, is an “undetectable VPN for ordinary users and experts” that’s able to bypass firewalls and circumvent Deep Packet Inspection.

 

Finally, a big thanks to the ElevenPaths team at Telefonica Tech for FOCA (Fingerprinting Organizations with Collected Archives), a tool that regularly makes document metadata a more interesting read than the documents themselves.

 

In recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have complained that current legislative frameworks fail to provide efficient tools to tackle live streaming piracy.

 

This problem was highlighted repeatedly last year as the European Commission drafted its plans to tackle ‘live piracy’ going forward.

End the Live Piracy Plague

A group of more than a hundred stakeholders, including several of the largest sports organizations, called on the Commission to propose new legislation to effectively deal with the problem. Their motto: “End Live Piracy Now“.

 

“We call on the European Commission to deliver a legislative instrument to tackle live content piracy as a firm commitment from the European Executive branch to address this issue with adequate measures.

 

“Notably, guaranteeing that notified illegal content is taken down immediately and blocked before the live event terminates,” the organizations added.

 

The plan eventually unveiled by the EU was mostly seen as a disappointment to rightsholders as it lacked support from new legislation. A subsequent ‘battle plan’ published by the Commission failed to propose concrete changes to the law and hammered on voluntary cooperation instead.

 

 

Amidst these legislative lobbying efforts, sports events continued, and so did live piracy. Recent surveys and studies have shown that the problem is growing globally. This increases the frustrations of rightsholders, who feel that more advanced tools and enforcement methods are required to properly deal with the problem.

IBCAP Books ‘Live’ Anti-Piracy Success

In this standoff, there are also positive signs, however. This week, the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) reports that its enforcement efforts in Europe and elsewhere are proving highly successful.

 

A few weeks ago, the coalition expanded its anti-piracy coverage to include Europe and the Middle East, adding Times Internet, India’s largest digital network, to its list of clients. This was timed well, as the network owns Cricbuzz, which was about to broadcast the Indian Premier League which attracts millions of viewers.

 

Cricbuzz has the broadcasting rights to the popular cricket event and IBCAP was tasked with protecting its live streams. At a time when other rightsholders mostly complain about the efficacy of existing anti-piracy measures, IBCAP has a more positive story.

100%

According to IBCAP, its worldwide efforts resulted in a “significant piracy takedown success” causing a “major disruption” of Indian Premier League piracy. This includes an impeccable “100%” takedown rate on social media and mobile applications.

 

“The team was able to disrupt nearly 9,000 streams over the course of the tournament, with more than 3.6 million views being disrupted on Facebook Live streams. The IBCAP team achieved an impressive 100% takedown rate for social media and mobile applications, constituting a significant portion of the infringing content,” the coalition reports.

 

While we can’t independently verify that all IBCAP takedowns were successful, it’s not hard to find evidence of IPL clips being taken down from Twitter and other services. Apparently, this was possible without any additional legislation.

 

From Pirates to Paying Subscribers?

In addition to its work for Cricbuzz, IBCAP also monitored piracy for the TV channel Willow. These efforts combined not only reduced piracy but presumably convinced some pirates to go legal.

 

“The impact of early and frequent takedowns throughout the IPL 2023 tournament undoubtedly led to frustration for pirates, increased legal viewership of the matches by consumers, and resulted in the acquisition of new paying customers for IBCAP members.

 

“The data once again shows that early action and consistent takedowns, particularly for cricket tournaments and other live sports coverage, result in a poor experience for users of pirate services and cause many of those users to switch to legal providers,” IBCAP adds.

 

Again, the information made available lacks hard data to verify these statements, but they are an interesting contrast to the complaints we have seen from sports organizations and rightsholders over the years.

 

Apparently, it’s also possible to effectively act against live-streaming piracy without additional legislation. According to Chintan Udani, Product and Business Lead for Cricbuzz, this can lead to impressive results.

 

“We are highly impressed by IBCAP’s monitoring capabilities in Europe and the Middle East. Their methods and tools are effective,” Udani concludes.

In common with content created in other fields, photographs generally enjoy protection under copyright law, allowing photographers to determine who can duplicate and/or distribute their work.

 

Photographers Alexis Hunley and Matthew Brauer posted several of their copyrighted works on Instagram. In January 2016, Time published an article titled ‘These Photographers Are Covering the Presidential Campaign on Instagram.’ Within that article, Time embedded one of Brauer’s Instagram posts, which contained a copyrighted photograph of Hillary Clinton to which Brauer owned the copyright.

 

In June 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, BuzzFeed News published an article titled “17 Powerful Pictures Of The Protests Through The Eyes of Black Photographers.” Within that article was a photograph taken by Alexis Hunley, displayed via an embedded post from Hunley’s Instagram page.

 

Time did not seek permission from Brauer or Instagram to embed the photograph of Hillary Clinton. BuzzFeed News did not seek permission or attempt to license Hunley’s photograph taken during the protests. Outraged at losing control over where their works appeared, Hunley and Brauer filed a class action lawsuit against Instagram for allowing their images to be displayed on third-party sites without permission from the copyright holder.

Copyright Claims Against Instagram

The photographers’ main target was Instagram, which Hunley accused of “intentionally and brazenly” encouraging and assisting third-party sites to display copyrighted works, while making no effort to stop the “rampant infringement”.

 

The complaint accused Instagram of inducement of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and vicarious copyright infringement. Time and BuzzFeed News stood accused of violating Hunley’s right of display. Hunley sought damages for the alleged infringement and an injunction to prevent further violations.

 

At the district court, the complaint was found to have fundamental flaws, which Instagram laid bare in its motion to dismiss. At BuzzFeed News, the location where Hunley’s image was displayed, there could be no violation of Hunley’s exclusive display right under the Copyright Act. To be found liable, an alleged infringer must display a copy of a copyrighted work; in this case, the photographs were embedded and were always stored on Instagram’s servers. The district court commented as follows:

 

“[BuzzFeed and Time] do not violate Instagram users’ exclusive display rights. Because they do not store the images and videos, they do not ‘fix’ the copyrighted work in any ‘tangible medium of expression.’ Therefore, when they embed the images and videos, they do not display ‘copies’ of the copyrighted work.”

 

All of Hunley’s copyright claims alleged secondary liability but such claims cannot exist when there is no direct infringement. Hunley’s original and first amended complaints both stated that Instagram hosted the images; that proved terminal as far as the district court was concerned. In February 2022, Hunley was denied leave to amend the complaint because the deficiencies were simply too great. The case was dismissed and Hunley appealed.

Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

In an opinion published on Monday, the Court references its own decision in the Perfect 10 v. Amazon, Inc. (pdf) case in 2007.

 

Perfect 10, a publisher of copyrighted nude images, alleged that Amazon and Google infringed its rights when they displayed thumbnail images of Perfect 10’s photographic works. Google did not host or store the main images that appeared in users’ web browsers, they were embedded from the source servers, just like the photographers’ posts were on Instagram.

 

“Applying the Server Test to the facts, we concluded that Google’s in-line linking (what we now call embedding) did not display a ‘copy’ of Perfect 10’s copyrighted images as that term is defined in the Copyright Act,” the opinion reads. “Although ‘Google may [have] facilitate[d] the user’s access to infringing images,’ we concluded that ‘such assistance . . . does not constitute direct infringement.”

 

Hunley argued that the ‘Server Test’ should not apply to social media platforms but since “Perfect 10 states the rule for infringing the public display right using embedding” the argument was not considered. The opinion does rule out both direct and secondary infringement, however.

 

By posting photographs to her public Instagram profile, Hunley stored a copy of those images on Instagram’s servers. By displaying Hunley’s images, Instagram did not directly infringe Hunley’s exclusive display right because Instagram had a nonexclusive sublicense to display these photos.

 

Because BuzzFeed and Time embedded — but did not store — the underlying copyrighted photographs, they are not guilty of direct infringement. Without direct infringement, Hunley cannot prevail on any theory of secondary liability.

 

“For the foregoing reasons, we find no error in the judgment of the district court,” the opinion concludes (pdf)

 

In February 2022, U.S. broadcaster DISH Network filed a $32.5m lawsuit against DataCamp, claiming that the UK-based CDN company failed to take action against copyright-infringing customers.

 

The complaint, filed in an Illinois district court, alleged that pirate IPTV services Banjo TV, Bollywood IPTV, Comstar TV, Express IPTV, Gennie TV, Gold TV, IPGuys, Istar, Red IPTV, Sky IPTV, and Zumm TV, were all customers of DataCamp.

 

DISH informed the court that despite sending “hundreds of notices” requesting the removal of content under the DMCA, plus copies of lawsuits and judgments relating to pirate IPTV services, DataCamp failed to “adopt and reasonably implement” a repeat infringer policy.

 

In an August 2022 motion to dismiss, DataCamp countered that it forwarded takedown notices to the relevant customers while encryption meant it had zero knowledge of its customers’ activities.

New Motion to Dismiss

The parties later confirmed that DISH had served requests for production on DataCamp, which included copies of invoices and support tickets for the pirate IPTV services named in the complaint. Amid ongoing settlement discussions, the Court dismissed DataCamp’s motion to dismiss late March 2023, without prejudice to later refiling.

 

Fact discovery deadlines were extended but with no settlement reached, DataCamp again filed a motion to dismiss, leading to further extensions of time being granted by the Court. On July 12, 2023, DISH was granted permission to depose Tomas Bacik, DataCamp’s Head of Sales & Client Solutions, DataCamp director Simon Rybisar, and DataCamp chief Zdenek Cendra. Two days later, the Court ruled on DataCamp’s motion to dismiss.

Memorandum Opinion and Order

DataCamp’s motion argued that allegations in the complaint of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 501 failed to state a claim.

 

DISH alleged that DataCamp ignored or turned a blind eye to its pirate IPTV customers’ “willful and repeated infringement” despite “having knowledge” of the infringement and the ability to prevent it. DISH believes that DataCamp is therefore both contributorily and vicariously liable since it profited from infringement while having the ability to prevent it.

Knowledge of Infringement, Failure to Prevent

A defendant like DataCamp can be held liable for contributory infringement when it has knowledge of the infringing activities of a third party, and induces, causes, or materially contributes to it.

 

According to DISH, 400 DMCA notices detailing the name of the pirate IPTV services, the channels allegedly infringed, plus the IP addresses, domain names, URLs used to transmit the works, and packet capture logs, were sufficient to establish knowledge.

 

DataCamp said the infringement notices provided “at most” a “general knowledge” that future infringement is likely, meaning that it had no duty to prevent it.

 

In his memorandum opinion and order dated July 12, 2023, United States District Judge John F. Kness says the hundreds of notices sent by DISH contained “ample information” that would have allowed DataCamp to prevent infringement.

 

“The notices named the Pirate Service, the infringing Works being broadcasted, and the IP addresses, URLs, and domain names being used to transmit the infringing works. This information provided Defendant with sufficient knowledge to act against the infringing Pirate Services—in other words, with knowledge of specific infringing uses,” the order reads.

 

Judge Kness also rejects the argument that encryption prevented DataCamp from viewing the infringing materials; the infringement notices themselves provided DataCamp with knowledge of the infringement. The Judge also notes additional evidence to support the allegation that DataCamp knew about the infringement.

 

In its complaint, DISH alleged that it had previously served DataCamp with a court order requiring it to disable IP addresses associated with pirate IPTV services, yet DataCamp failed to do so promptly. The Judge also cites comments from DataCamp’s CEO in 2019, which appeared to acknowledge that the company needed to be “more strict” with its customers.

 

Coupled with DISH’s allegations that DataCamp only forwarded some of the infringement notices, and in any event, the pirate IPTV services continued to infringe, DataCamp’s motion to dismiss the contributory infringement claims was denied.

Vicarious Infringement

A defendant like DataCamp can be held liable for vicarious infringement when it has the right and ability to supervise infringing activity and has a direct financial interest in it. In its motion to dismiss, DataCamp claimed that the allegations in the complaint fail to meet that standard.

 

Highlighting terms in DataCamp’s service agreement, DISH said that DataCamp could have terminated its business with the pirate IPTV providers for any reason. Alternative options could have seen DataCamp verify the services’ rights to distribute the copyrighted works, ensure compliance with the infringement notices, implement a repeat infringer policy, or implement a geo-blocking system to prevent access to the streams in the United States.

 

DataCamp did not argue that it lacked the right to supervise the infringing activity. The company said it lacked the ability and the plaintiff’s proposals to prevent infringement were either “impossible” or “far too overbroad.” Judge Kness found no need to consider any of the alternatives proposed by DISH.

 

“Defendant could directly stop the infringement by terminating access to the CDN,” the Judge writes.

 

“None of the authorities cited by Defendant support the proposition that terminating access is an overbroad remedy. Accordingly, the Court need not consider Plaintiff’s alternative proposed remedies. The complaint adequately alleges that Defendant had the ability to stop the infringement.”

Direct Financial Interest

DISH’s complaint alleges that the pirate IPTV services offer its channels at an artificially low price, which encourages end users to subscribe to the services. In turn, this increases the bandwidth consumed at DataCamp and the scale of the payments received by the CDN company. Due to DataCamp’s “lax policy” towards infringement, pirate IPTV services are motivated to sign up and continue to do business with DataCamp, meaning that bandwidth consumption increases, while payments for that bandwidth increase too.

 

DataCamp’s position is that “attracting users” and “increasing the value of its business” are “too far removed from the alleged infringement to be considered a ‘direct’ financial interest.” According to Judge Ness, everything boils down to whether there is “a causal relationship between the infringing activity and any financial benefit a defendant reaps, regardless of how substantial that benefit is.”

 

Noting that DataCamp is paid directly by the pirate IPTV services and that payments received are related to the amount of bandwidth consumed by the pirate services’ customers, the infringing activity induces end users to consume more bandwidth, Judge Ness notes. He, therefore, concludes that DataCamp obtained a direct financial benefit and that the allegations in the complaint establish a causal relationship between infringement and profit.

 

“The profits reaped from infringement also attracts new Pirate Services to Defendant’s CDN and incentives current Pirate Services to remain with the CDN, meaning more profit for Defendant. Accordingly, Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s claim for vicarious infringement is denied,” Judge Kness concludes.

 

With that, DataCamp’s motion to dismiss was denied in full.

 

The memorandum opinion and order is available here (pdf)

 

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 three newcomers on the list. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 17 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Transformers: Rise of the Beasts	6.3 / trailer
2	(1)	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3	8.2 / trailer
3	(2)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.0 / trailer
4	(…)	Asteroid City	6.9 / trailer
5	(4)	Fast X	6.1 / trailer
6	(5)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
7	(7)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
8	(10)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer
9	(3)	The Out-Laws	5.5 / trailer
10	(6)	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	6.9 / trailer

 

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

 

To the global audience Ulož.to may not be well-known internationally but in the Czech Republic, it is huge.

 

The file-sharing and hosting service has millions of users and is listed as the 51st most-visited website in the country. In addition, its mobile apps are frequently used as well.

 

Like many other file storage platforms, Ulož can be used to share a wide variety of files. Copyright holders complain that many people abuse the platform to share pirated music, movies, and TV shows.

Piracy Battles in Court

Like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, Uloz removes infringing content when it receives takedown notices. However, Czech rightsholders are not happy with the status quo and have sued the company on several occasions, demanding damages and tougher anti-piracy measures.

 

In 2020, the Municipal Court in Prague ruled that Ulož must filter and block files that reference the word “Šarlatán” (‘Charlatan’) which corresponds to the name of a Czech movie.

 

The order, requested by movie distributor CineMart, was set to remain in place until August 2030, but the file-sharing site immediately appealed. According to Ulož, the filtering obligation was too broad and could impact files that have nothing to do with the film, violating freedom of speech.

 

The appeal was successful and the High Court in Prague sided with Uloz and overturned the preliminary filtering requirement. This was welcomed as a big win by the site but it did not mark the end of its legal troubles.

$46,000 in Damages

CineMart went on to accuse Uloz of sharing unlicensed copies of its movie without permission and demanded compensation. Last week, Prague’s Municipal Court ruled on the dispute, ordering the operator of the file-sharing service to pay 976,000 Czech Koruna ($46,000) in damages.

 

“It was proven that it’s possible to download the work, to which the plaintiff has the rights, on the Uloz.to website from at least December 9, 2020 to February 2023,” Judge Jana Přibylová concluded.

 

The Court further clarified that the operator of the site, the company Petacloud, has to pay the damages within three days, HN reports. This money won’t go to the copyright holder directly but will be held in escrow until the case is finalized.

 

Uloz has already announced that it will appeal the preliminary verdict, which it characterizes as ‘absurd’.

 

“Due to the numerous defects in the judgment, we expect their return of the funds of course,” Uloz states, commenting on the verdict. “The judgment shows a number of errors and misunderstandings of the issue, which we unfortunately regularly encounter in courts of first instance.”

Safe Harbor?

The file-sharing service notes that it previously enjoyed success when appealing lower court decisions and it firmly believes this judgment won’t hold up either.

 

The company warns that when online platforms that rely on user-generated content are held liable for user uploads, services such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Wikipedia won’t be able to function.

 

“It would be a completely absurd conclusion that the operator must pay for unjustified enrichment if user-generated content that infringes on someone’s copyright appears on its commercial platform.

 

“This would, of course, completely negate the safe harbor principles and effectively make it impossible to operate any platform that’s built on user content,” Uloz adds.

 

Uloz has no problem with removing infringing content when it’s flagged by rightsholders, but categorically refuses to implement filtering technologies that are prone to overblocking.

 

These filtering tools are also quite costly. Hellspy, another Czech file-sharing service, shut down earlier this year when it turned out that implementing filtering technology was too burdensome.

CineMart is Happy

Film distributor CineMart is understandably pleased with the verdict. The company’s legal representative Rudolf Leška notes that this is the first time that a platform has been ordered to pay damages for copyright infringement in Czechia.

 

“It is the first lawsuit for monetary compensation against the repository operator that was successful,” Leška says.

 

Leška also pointed out that the authorities launched an investigation into the operators of the file-sharing platform. Uloz doesn’t deny this but notes that this ‘speculation’ is related to financial statements, which has nothing to do with CineMart or copyright.

 

Meanwhile, other rightsholders are keeping an eye on the legal battle, as they consider similar ‘unjust enrichment’ claims against the file-sharing platform.

 

Three years ago, Danish law enforcement carried out a series of raids and arrests, effectively dismantling several popular torrent trackers.

 

These actions were supported by the local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, which eventually declared victory, noting that all notable pirate sites with Danish roots had reportedly shut down.

 

Such statements can be dangerous since pirates can be quite resilient, but there is no doubt that the law enforcement actions and subsequence convictions left a mark. So does that mean online piracy lost its appeal too? According to a recent survey, that isn’t the case.

Study: Pirates are Stubborn

The Danish Chamber of Commerce conducts a bi-annual study to track the piracy habits of locals. The most recent results for 2022 were just released and show that illegal streaming and downloading remain prevalent.

 

Roughly a third of the respondents (33%) admit to having downloaded or streamed something in the past and 15% did so over the past year. The last figure is up from 12% during the previous survey in 2020, and in 2018 it was only 10%.

 

These figures suggest that, if anything, the number of people who download or stream pirated content is increasing. It should be noted, however, that in the most recent version, people between the ages of 15 and 17 were included too, while earlier samples started at 18 years.

 

 

Age certainly matters when it comes to online piracy. Younger people typically pirate more and that’s also reflected in the Danish survey.

56% of Respondents Have Piracy Experience

More than half (56%) of the 15-29 year-olds admit they have downloaded or streamed pirated content in the past. For the 30-39 year-olds, this figure is still relatively high at 52%, but in the higher 50-74 year category, it drops to just 14%.

 

Younger Danes don’t just pirate more than their older counterparts, piracy prevalence also grows within the group. In 2020, fewer young Danes said they had downloaded or streamed pirated content.

 

There are also substantial differences between men and women. Men are twice as likely to have pirated something over the past year than women. For some categories, the difference is even more pronounced. For example, men are five times more likely to pirate music.

 

Social Media

In recent years, the authorities have managed to crack down on local file-sharing communities but that ‘distribution’ role now seems to have shifted to social media platforms.

 

“In the last two years, police have handed out more [file-sharing] sanctions and investigated more in the area. However, the consequence has been that Danish pirates have moved their illegal behavior on the internet to a new platform, social media,” the survey notes.

 

Of the 15% who admit to having pirated something over the past year, more than half used social media. YouTube is the most cited piracy gateway, followed by Facebook, TikTok, messenger services, Instagram, and Snapchat. As expected, the use of social media is most prevalent in the youngest age cohort.

 

Commenting on these findings, Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund calls on social media platforms to take more responsibility, or else.

 

“Now that the police’s [Special Crime Unit] has stopped the dedicated Danish file-sharing services, it is a real shame that illegal consumption is moving to legal social media,” Fredenslund says.

 

“This calls for increased efforts from these platforms both in terms of informing users and stopping the distribution of illegal content. It requires the platforms to take an active role, and if there are platforms that do not live up to that responsibility, it may be necessary to involve the authorities.”

You Wouldn’t Steal…

Casper Klynge, Deputy Director of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, notes that streaming piracy presents a huge problem. He believes that it deserves more attention from the authorities, as the unbridled ‘stealing’ threatens the production of future content.

 

“Streaming digital content without paying for it is basically the same as walking past a store and grabbing items to take home without paying for them,” Klynge says.

 

This isn’t the first time that piracy is compared to stealing. Interestingly, however, the Chamber of Commerce study shows that many people do see a difference between piracy and shoplifting.

 

Of all people who participated in the survey, 89% believe that it’s unacceptable to steal candy from a store, while ‘only’ 63% see sharing digital content without permission from rightsholders as unacceptable.

 

Based on readily available information and data provided by the entertainment industries through various studies, online piracy is rampant and in some areas, more prolific than at any point in history.

 

On a day-to-day basis, based on news of pirate site closures, arrests, lawsuits, and various investigations, it could also be argued that the tide is turning and has been for some time. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, shifting one way and then the other, according to the ebb and flow of dozens of complex factors, subject to change at a moment’s notice.

 

One constant is the enforcement work of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). According to an interview published in Vietnam at the end of June, ACE identified 1,400 pirate sites and services in the United States in 2018. After five years of enforcement operations, with the assistance of the Department of Justice and U.S. prosecutors, the number reported as still in existence today is just 36.

 

The overseas picture of a few hundred torrent sites and thousands of streaming-related platforms presents an epic challenge that may never be won but won’t be given up on either. Recent action in Vietnam and Latin America show mixed fortunes but that is just part of a much bigger picture.

More Domain Takeovers This Week

The recent closure of a Cuevana3 variant in Peru will see ACE (via the Motion Picture Association) take over 22 domains that were good for more than 100 million visits between March and May of this year. Some have already been handed over.

 

As previously reported by TF but not yet reported by ACE, the domains of Zoro.to and Goku.to are now under MPA/ACE control. On Friday, those .to domains were joined on the MPA’s DNS servers by Zorotv.to and ZoroNetwork.ru, presumably handed over by the site’s operator.

 

Considering the volume of similar domains still in use and now pointing to Zoro.to replacement Aniwatch.to, the loss of a couple of extra domains is unlikely to make much of a dent in traffic heading to the anime piracy giant. That being said, this battle is not over yet, and ACE/MPA won’t give up until it is.

CableKill Tried to Kill Cable, ACE Killed It

One domain that won’t be receiving (or distributing) any more infringing traffic is CableKill.us. Founded around five years ago, CableKill offered tutorials that informed people how to ‘kill cable’ by dumping their provider and using pirate apps instead.

 

“Kick giant companies to the curb and control your own TV! How does being able to watch ANY movie or TV show whenever you want sound? How does watching ANY sporting event that’s live no matter your location sound? On top of all that little to ZERO monthly fees. Well that’s exactly what we do here at CableKill,” the site advised.

 

 

With the benefit of hindsight, some of the logos above should’ve been avoided. Sports streaming app Mobdro went down in a ball of flames in 2021, Area51 was shut down by ACE in 2020 and later ordered to pay $272k in damages, and the people behind Gears TV had to pay back millions and are now in prison.

 

Precisely what offenses led to ACE/MPA taking over the CableKill.us domain on Friday isn’t clear. The same is true for the affiliated domain CKhosting.org, which did business under CK Servers branding, and also under MPA/ACE control as of Friday.

 

 

Likely candidates include hosting many of the world’s most popular free pirate apps, selling set-top boxes ready configured for piracy, and the promotion, sale and/or hosting of premium IPTV services. The specifics aren’t public but even in isolation, any of the above would’ve been enough for ACE.

 

The public availability of both email and physical addresses, linked directly to the operator of CableKill and CK Hosting, would’ve been the icing on the cake.

Anime Kaizoku Calls it Quits Early

Last week we reported the details of DMCA subpoenas recently obtained by MPA/ACE in the United States. Among the targets were three anime sites; animedao.to, animet.site, and animekaizoku.com.

 

While the first pair continue business as usual, animekaizoku.com appears to have taken the existence of a subpoena as a signal to throw in the towel.

 

We aren’t in a position to verify that the communication we received was sent by one of the site’s operators, but it does align with the fact that the site went offline this week. The message begins with a link to our report and continues with assurances that the site is gone for good.

 

“Just figured i’ll notify you that animekaizoku.com has been taken down for good, including the data and website code has been wiped. The domain won’t be up ever again. We are fully out of the piracy side of things. You can visit the site and see for yourself,” it reads.

 

Domains mentioned in other DMCA subpoenas that have also gone dark recently include the following: tvzon.tv, moviehdapkdownload.com, megacamais.com, and filmisub.com.

 

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

 

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

 

Today, IA has more than 800 billion pages in its archive and offers a broad collection of digital media, including books. Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, IA patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house, with technical restrictions that prevent copying. At least, that’s the idea.

 

The self-scanning service is different from the licensing deals other libraries enter into. Not all publishers are happy with this scheme and when IA lifted its ‘one-digital-copy-per-patron’ policy at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a massive lawsuit ensued.

 

Publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House sued IA, equating the Open Library’s lending operation to copyright infringement. Earlier this year a New York Federal court concluded that the library is indeed liable for copyright infringement.

IA Sends DMCA Notice to Stop Book Piracy

The scale of the damages in that case are yet to be determined but in light of the legal battle, we noticed an interesting DMCA takedown notice this week through which IA tries to protect the publishers.

 

The Internet Archive sent a takedown request to GitHub, requesting the developer platform to remove a tool that circumvents industry-standard technical protection mechanisms for digital libraries. This “DeGouRou” software effectively allows patrons to save DRM-free copies of the books they borrow.

 

 

“This DMCA complaint is about a tool made available on github which purports to circumvent technical protections in violation of the copyright act section 1201,” the notice reads.

 

“I am reporting a Git which provides a tool specifically used to circumvent industry standard library TPMs which are used by Internet Archive, and other libraries, to permit patrons to borrow an encrypted book, read the encrypted book, and return an encrypted book.”

Not Authorized

Interestingly, an IA representative states that they are “not authorized by the copyright owners” to submit this takedown notice. Instead, IA is acting on its duty to prevent the unauthorized downloading of copyright-protected books.

 

 

It’s quite unusual to see a party sending takedown notices without permission from the actual rightsholders. However, given the copyright liabilities IA faces, it makes sense that the organization is doing what it can to prevent more legal trouble.

 

Permission or not, GitHub honored the takedown request. It removed all the DeGourou repositories that were flagged and took the code offline.

DeGourou is ‘Archived’ Elsewhere

The publishers are likely pleased to see IA acting in their interests. However, as we often see on a free and open Internet, taking something completely offline isn’t always straightforward. After GitHub removed the code, it soon popped up elsewhere.

 

Apparently, some people are relentlessly trying to maintain an archive of the code in other places.

 

A Reddit thread that was initially posted five months ago linked to DeGourou’s GitHub page. After that was taken down it moved to Replit instead, but that instance was also targeted with a DMCA notice. DeGourou has now moved to GitLab, for as long as it lasts.

 

IA is clearly concerned about the potential copyright infringement implications of its library. The organization is currently finalizing a consent judgment with the publishers to establish the damages it owes in the earlier mentioned legal battle, while also leaving the door open for an appeal.

 

Millions of passionate Italian football fans, gorging on limitless top-tier matches for the price of a beer each week, was never likely to end well. It was only a question of how badly and when.

 

In common with similar businesses elsewhere in Europe, powerful Italian football clubs, broadcasters, and their powerful business associates in government, concluded long ago that only a draconian internet-blocking system supported by tough new law could force fans away from wallet-friendly pirate IPTV services and towards legal platforms.

 

During the summer of 2022, support for radical action against live-streaming piracy gathered momentum. New powers for telecoms regulator AGCOM would underpin an enhanced national ISP blocking system capable of taking down pirate IPTV streams in a matter of minutes. United as one against the ‘digital mafias‘ sucking the life out of the beautiful game, all that stood between an exclusive, tightly-controlled, piracy-free market was the Italian parliament.

Unanimous Approval from Both Houses

On March 22, 2023, the new bill was unanimously approved by the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian Parliament. If subsequently passed by the upper house, the Senate of the Republic, telecoms regulator AGCOM would receive new powers to begin more intensive internet blocking, while football clubs and broadcasters could get back to selling their product to Italian football fans, minus the disruptive forces acting as competition in a market where very little tends to exist.

 

Proponents of the new law need not have worried. This week the Senate gave the bill a unanimous green light and welcomed its ‘provisions for the prevention and suppression of the unlawful dissemination of content protected by copyright via electronic communications networks.’

Key Points From The Bill

– The Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education, telecoms regulator AGCOM, and “representative” trade organizations, will deliver public awareness campaigns on social media, TV, and radio. These will “counter the unauthorized use, illicit dissemination and piracy of content protected by copyright, involving artists, writers and sportsmen.” Similar initiatives will also be conducted in Italy’s secondary schools.

 

– AGCOM will be given powers to order service providers, including network access providers, to disable access to content distributed illegally online, by “blocking the resolution of domain names using the domain name system (DNS) and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses uniquely intended for illicit activities.”

 

– AGCOM will have the power to order the blocking of any other future domain names, subdomains, or IP addresses, which allow access to the same content previously blocked.

IPTV: Live Event Blocking

– In cases of “seriousness and urgency” involving content being made available related to live broadcasts, first-run movies, sports events, or those of social or public interest, AGCOM will have the power to order service providers to block domain names and IP addresses without a hearing.

 

This will only be permissible when the affected rightsholders use protection entities with “particular capabilities and expertise in the fight against the abusive dissemination of content” who are able to carry out their activities “in a diligent, accurate and objective manner.”

 

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IPTV Blocking Protocol (machine translated

 

– Taken together, the disabling provision and the term ‘service provider’ mean huge powers for AGCOM. The telecoms regulator can instruct network access providers, search engines, and any online entity involved in the accessibility of any infringing website or service in any capacity, to “execute its blocking instructions without any delay and, in any case, within the maximum term of 30 minutes from the notification, by disabling the DNS resolution of the domain names and the routing of network traffic to the IP addresses.”

 

– In the event that an IP address or domain name subject to DNS blocking is located within the European Union, AGCOM can use “partnerships with counterparts on a voluntary basis to combat more effectively the distribution of illegally distributed content in the territory of the European Union.”

 

Information gathered as a result of blocking requests and subsequent blocking will be sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Rome with a view to identifying the suppliers of pirated content.

Certainty Over What Must Be Done, But Not How

The above represents a summary of the first 11 pages of a 202-page document, the remainder of which we will report on in due course. In the meantime, it’s worth highlighting that while there is certainty over the blocking instructions to be handed out and to whom, it’s far from clear that everyone involved knows how that will be achieved from a technical perspective.

 

Within 30 days of the law entering into force, AGCOM and various government ministries, in collaboration with the National Cybersecurity Agency and the Agency for Digital Italy, will reportedly convene a “technical table” with the participation of service providers, internet access providers, rightsholders, content providers, audiovisual media service providers, and the “most representative” anti-piracy groups.

 

The purpose will be to “define the requirements and the necessary technical and operational tools to allow the disabling of domain names or IP addresses..”

 

According to the text, blocking will be actioned through a “single technical platform with automated operation for all recipients of disabling instructions.” While that sounds impressive, the system doesn’t exist, at least not yet. The requirement is that the system will be built within six months from the convening of the technical table.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Fears that such an ambitious system could cause collateral damage via unjustified or erroneous blocking were mostly brushed aside. As recently as April, the Association of Italian Internet Providers spoke of the creation of a “mega-firewall” and warned that the blocking proposals were being pushed through too quickly.

 

Concerns over a potential imbalance between the protection of intellectual property on one hand, and the protection of the internet ecosystem on the other, were entirely justified but always destined to be crowded out by competing interests.

Eyes on the Goal, Only the Goal

Throughout the whole process, the contribution of football clubs to Italian society appeared to outweigh fears of a draconian internet blocking system, with alleged losses to piracy always being pushed to the foreground as justification. Every single time Italy’s football clubs came out on top, even when financial facts put them firmly at the bottom.

 

Losses in VAT, income tax, and corporation tax to piracy were valued at 319 million euros when widely publicized in March 2022. The fact that Italian football clubs still owed the state nearly half a billion euros in unpaid taxes from 2020 felt like a footnote referencing a small cash flow issue.

 

The fact that top-tier league Serie A itself was sponsored by a piracy-supporting online gambling company, at exactly the same time it complained about the Italian public using IPTV, received very little coverage. When that gambling company went bankrupt (and didn’t pay its taxes), the news barely moved the needle.

 

The fact that some of the top clubs in Italy are owned by businessmen who are also politicians, was obviously coincidental to the recent deal that allows tax debts to be paid back over five years, with none of the complicated penalties usually levied when companies spend all of their own money and then spend all of that owed to the state too.

 

If all goes to plan, Italian football fans will soon have no other choice than to spend their money with legitimate providers, who will no doubt reduce their prices to make content more affordable for regular people, because business will be booming.

 

The blocking system will be completed on time as well, obviously.

 

With more than 13 million books available for download, Z-Library is one of the largest repositories of pirated books on the Internet.

 

The site has millions of regular readers who find a wealth of free knowledge and entertainment at their fingertips.

 

Z-Library’s very existence was put to the test last November when U.S. law enforcement agencies seized over 200 domain names connected to the site. The site survived this initial crackdown and a new round of domain name seizures in May also failed to take it permanently offline.

Alleged Operators Arrested and Indicted

While the shadow library remains operational, two alleged operators of the site are in serious trouble. Following an FBI investigation, the authorities identified Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova as prime suspects. The pair were arrested in Argentina last year and now face potential extradition to the United States.

 

According to the U.S., the Russian duo amassed over a million dollars a year through donations, while engaging in criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering,

 

The extradition proceedings are still underway but the defendants don’t want things to get that far. They have retained U.S. attorneys who asked the New York federal court this week to dismiss the criminal indictment.

 

Motion to Dismiss the Indictment

The defendants are represented by attorneys Maria Temkin and Anna V. Brown, two American lawyers who both speak Russian. They submitted a motion to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the allegations are not sufficient to support a criminal prosecution in New York.

 

“Defendants are two Russian nationals that have neither resided in the United States nor visited the United States during the time relevant to the Indictment. While traveling as tourists in Argentina, Napolsky and Ermakova were detained pursuant to an arrest warrant issued in this case.

 

“No facts were presented in the Indictment or any supporting court documents that either Defendant’s conduct took place in this district,” the defense attorneys add in their preamble.

Deficient Copyright Infringement Claims

The indictment lists five counts and charges Napolsky and Ermakova with criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. These claims are all deficient, according to the defense, but here we’ll zoom in on the copyright allegations.

 

The motion to dismiss doesn’t deny allegations the pair were involved with Z-Library, nor does it refute that there are copyright-infringing books on the site. Instead, it argues that the defendants can’t be held accountable for copyright infringement in the United States.

 

“There is no such thing as an international copyright that automatically protects an author’s writings throughout the world. Protection against unauthorized use in any country is within the national justice system of each country,” the motion reads.

 

“There are no facts in the charging documents to support the legal conclusion that Defendants reproduced or distributed copyrighted materials within the United States. Defendants neither resided nor traveled to the United States during the time relevant to the Indictment.”

 

Copyright-infringing books on Z-Library were accessible from American IP addresses, but that doesn’t mean that Napolsky and Ermakova ‘reproduced’ or ‘distributed’ books in the United States.

 

 

The defense also responds to the allegation that an FBI agent was able to request and received copyrighted books through Z-Library’s ‘send by email’ function. While that may be true, this isn’t conduct that can be ascribed to the defendants, the lawyers argue.

 

“There is no allegation Defendants knew the location of the undercover FBI agents and willfully directed the materials to the United States.”

 

The alleged financial benefit is not directly tied to the U.S. either, the defense notes. Z-Library received many donations in Amazon gift cards but they could be spent in Russia too, before the Ukraine-related sanctions.

What Copyrights?

In addition to failing to state offenses, the indictment also lacks specificity with regard to these same offenses. For example, it’s not clear which specific works were infringed and who holds the copyright to those books.

 

“The Indictment fails to identify any book titles that Defendants had allegedly distributed in this district without the permission of a copyright holder. Nor does the Indictment identify any valid copyrights in existence at the times alleged in the Indictment.

 

“The dates or circumstances of such reproduction and distribution are also missing. It is also unclear what specific acts Defendants undertook ‘to infringe copyright’,” the motion adds.

 

In addition to the copyright issues, the defense further argues that the fraud and money laundering claims are not sufficient to establish jurisdiction in the United States. Based on these and other arguments, it believes that the indictment should be dismissed.

 

This is the first time that Napolsky and Ermakova have responded to the criminal claims in a U.S. court. The prosecution will likely oppose the motion to dismiss, after which the court will decide whether the case can move forward.

 

—

 

A copy of the motion to dismiss the indictment, submitted at the federal court for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York is available here (pdf)

For at least five years, major rightsholders in the United States have issued regular warnings that Vietnam represents an emerging piracy threat.

 

Pirate site brands, including 123movies, Putlocker, Kisscartoon, 123movieshub, and GoMovies, were suddenly recognized all over the world, despite in many cases having been copied from ‘pirate’ brands already in existence. After the US Ambassador to Vietnam got involved in 2018, calling on government officials to launch criminal prosecutions, several persistent sites suddenly shut down.

 

Over time, several hundred domains reappeared online with similar branding, but none were as relevant or persistent as those previously removed from the market. Instead, a series of soon-to-be ‘mega brands’ were gaining a foothold, some on their way to 100 million, 150 million, then 200+ million visits per month – each.

Hollywood Visits Vietnam

Despite important legal developments in Vietnam earlier this year, it was still unclear whether the government would begin to take action against local pirate platforms.

 

On June 29, 2023, Deputy Minister of Public Security Lieutenant General Le Quoc Hung welcomed to Vietnam two important guests from the United States; Jan van Voorn, Head of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and Chief of Global Content Protection at the MPA, and Karyn Temple, the Hollywood industry group’s Executive Vice President and Global Chief Counsel.

 

The Ministry of Public Security described the visit as an opportunity for the two sides to have “open, substantive and effective exchanges” on the protection of content online. Vietnamese authorities offered assurances that the fight against intellectual property crime would be stepped up; for their part, ACE and the MPA were asked to share information to strengthen cooperation between the parties.

 

On the same day, local media published an interview with van Voorn, during which he took the unusual step of calling one pirate site by name; Zoro.to.

 

Zoro.to

 

With over 205 million monthly visits, ACE had a clear goal in mind for the giant pirate site. “To close the website completely, avoiding the situation of it closing and then opening,” a local news outlet reported.

Momentus Week in Vietnam

On Monday, July 4, we were able to confirm that ACE had already booked a significant win in Vietnam. The recent closure of 2Embed, a site that acted as a video library for hundreds of other sites, was the result of the anti-piracy group’s work.

 

“[T]he service was shut down through direct operator outreach,” ACE chief Jan van Voorn informed TorrentFreak, a possible reference to the “Knock-and-Talk” strategy now closely linked with the anti-piracy coalition.

 

Running in parallel, news began to emerge of big changes at Zoro.to. For reasons not immediately made clear, the site suddenly abandoned its Zoro.to domain and then reemerged at Aniwatch.to, sporting a brand new coat of paint and according to site staff, a new set of people at the helm.

 

Aniwatch.to is the new Zoro.to

 

“Everyone calm down, Zoro is acquired by a new dev team, they will now handle the whole website and social network accounts,” an announcement on the site declared. “Do not worry, all the data will remain the same, the old staff will keep supporting the server.”

Big Sites Never Switch Domain on a Whim

The suggestion that Zoro.to had rebranded simply because it had grown tired of its old domain and liked the idea of a fresh design, was implausible at best. Seizing a pirate site’s domain is one of the most punishing enforcement techniques, and sites don’t inflict that on themselves for no reason.

 

Soon after the switch, a site admin on the rebranded site – Animewatch.to – was a little more candid, although a DMCA issue seemed unlikely to dictate a change of theme.

 

 

That message was posted eight days ago, and in the past few hours, more information came to light supporting the theory that Zoro.to was probably under pressure from ACE/MPA directly, or maybe indirectly via local authorities.

 

As the image below shows, Zoro.to’s nameserver records have now been updated to point to ns3 and ns4.films.org. These nameservers are operated by the MPA and when site operators hand over their domains as part of a settlement, most of the time they are updated with these details.

 

 

To ensure that these records are indeed correct, we conducted a domain lookup directly at the Tonga Network Information Center (Tonic), the domain registration authority in control of the .to TLD. Those records confirm the details above and also provide a domain ‘edited’ time of 07:14 on July 13, 2023.

 

Domains offered by Tonic carry no personally identifying WHOIS records. Tonic says that maintaining that type of database would reveal registrant information, something that many of its customers consider “invasive of their privacy.”

 

This means that we cannot confirm that the Zoro.to domain has been transferred to MPA ownership already, whether it will ever be transferred, or indeed whether the addition of MPA nameserver details is intended to be permanent.

 

What we can confirm is that Zoro.to isn’t the only pirate site domain displaying these kinds of changes today. Pirate movie streaming site Goku.to displays similar domain records after enjoying around 32 million visits back in April and then slowly drifting away.

 

 

A similar domain, Goku.sx, on a very similar-looking site, made its first appearance in April and now receives almost 43 million visits per month.

 

Another domain, gokutv.me, is just getting started. Visitors from the United States are up 94% in a month, the United Kingdom 185%, and India 216%. Just another day at the office for pirates.

 

Some people believe that the early internet received a welcome uptake boost when the adult industry began to move online. Three decades later, many countries believe the internet – and children especially – would be better off if adult content was heavily restricted online.

 

The main problem is readily accessible ‘tube’ sites. Once hated by the adult industry because they were filled with pirated content that was never paid for, big-name tube sites like Pornhub are today owned by corporations which finance, produce, and distribute their own adult entertainment content.

 

As a result, these ‘legal’ tube sites now find themselves trying to rid the internet of ‘illegal’ tube sites, which prefer the original model where sites don’t pay for any content at all.

PornEZ Doing Business in the United States

On January 18, 2023, MG Premium, the adult entertainment giant behind brands including Reality Kings, Brazzers, MOFOS, Babes.com, and Twistys, filed a copyright complaint at a California federal court. The MindGeek subsidiary targeted pirate tube site PornEZ.net, its alleged operator Nguyen Hoi, and Does 1-20.

 

According to the complaint, PornEZ.net received an average of 27.6 million visits per month in the last quarter of 2022, with almost 22% of its visitors hailing from the United States. Building on the site’s U.S. connections, the complaint notes that visitors to U.S. social media platforms such as YouTube, came predominantly from the United States, with Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter users adding to the total. Those that didn’t arrive at PornEZ via U.S. social media platforms did so via U.S.-based search engines like Google.

 

Anyone in doubt that PornEZ was doing business in the United States could look at its domain name registrar (Namecheap) and its delivery network provider (Cloudflare), the plaintiffs continued. The site’s popups were geo-located to the United States “on the city level” and the site claimed to be in compliance with 18 U.S.C. 2257, a U.S. law focused on the adult industry,

Claimed Commitment to the DMCA

It’s common for certain types of pirate sites to claim compliance with 17 U.S.C. § 512 of the DMCA, which under appropriate circumstances can limit liability for the existence of infringing content on a platform. PornEZ claimed similar compliance and noted that it would take down infringing content in response to DMCA notices. MG Premium’s experience told a different story.

 

“[D]efendants systematically refuse to comply with proper and compliant DMCA takedown notices against their own terms and conditions and displayed instructions,” the company informed the court.

 

MG Premium said that in December 2022, 7,818 of its copyrighted works were available on PornEZ via 51,375 URLs. A more recent accounting reveals that the company submitted 19,586 DMCA notices in an attempt to remove 116,757 infringements.

 

Aside from non-compliance with takedown requests, PornEZ failed to register as a service provider at the United States Copyright Office, meaning that in the event of a lawsuit, the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA would not apply.

 

The complaint concluded with a request for a broad injunction and statutory damages for willful copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, and vicarious and/or contributory copyright infringement, in the amount of $150,000 for each work infringed.

Defendants Served But Did Not Appear

In August 2022, a DMCA subpoena obtained by MG Premium resulted in Cloudflare handing over information about the operator of PornEZ.

 

“In response, Cloudflare provided customer profile, billing and payment data, and user login information that shows the operator logging into Cloudflare’s US servers to control certain site operations,” MG Premium informed the court.

 

“Cloudflare production showed that the billing listed the ‘Responsible Party’ as customer ID 351754. The name provided was Nguyen Hoi with an email address. No physical address was provided. Through the email address, a total of 11 payments have been made to Cloudflare since August 7, 2021.”

 

While the payments were made via PayPal, these were tokenized payments, meaning that the operator obtained unique tokens or card account numbers from a third-party vendor, and used these to pay Cloudflare, instead of using their own account. It appears that left the plaintiffs with just a name and email addresses.

 

In February 2022, the defendants were served with PDF copies of the complaint and a court order, via email. Fairly predictably, they did not answer the complaint or appear in any way, so a default was entered against Nguyen Hoi on April 11, 2023.

Massive Claim For Damages

This week MG Premium filed a 33-page motion for default judgment against Nguyen Hoi, supported by 10 pages of declarations from Jason Tucker of anti-piracy company Battleship Stance and Andreas Alkiviades Andreou, a Cyprus-based director of MG Premium.

 

“The sale of memberships to MG Premium Ltd.’s paid membership websites where MG Premium Ltd. offers its copyrighted works is directly damaged by Defendant’s display of its works for free. Simply stated, potential MG Premium Ltd. customers will not pay monthly rates for the right to access and view content that is available for free,” the motion notes.

 

Sales lost to piracy are notoriously difficult to calculate, as unintentionally demonstrated below.

 

 

While over $275 billion would indeed be a lot of sales to lose every month, even the $275 million suggested as potential monthly revenue in the motion is optimistic. MG Premium admits that “not all 27.6M monthly visitors” of PornEZ would have been MG Premium customers, but that’s the purpose of statutory damages; precise calculation of loss isn’t required.

 

“Infringements here were and are willful and malicious. Defendant knew that his conduct was unlawful and acted without the slightest pretense of a justification. Defendant uploaded MG Premium, Ltd.’s copyrighted works onto PornEZ.net. At a minimum, Defendant was made aware of the infringements upon takedown notices sent by MG Premium Ltd. Defendant’s objective was to unlawfully display Plaintiff’s property for financial gain. There is no other plausible objective,” the motion states.

 

“Defendants’ illegal actions were not a momentary lapse, but part of a sustained commercial enterprise. To deter others from the same temptation, a large award is appropriate. Defendants willfully infringed 7,818 of Plaintiff’s works on 51,375 separate and distinct webpages resulting in millions of views. The sheer volume of infringements indicates the willfulness of Defendant’s actions and the value of using Plaintiffs content.”

 

For willful copyright infringement, MG Premium requests a total of $117,270,000 in statutory damages plus $4,670.47 in attorney’s fees and costs. The company also seeks a permanent injunction against the defendant and anyone acting on their behalf from infringing any of its copyrighted works moving forward.

 

Verisign should also hand over the PornEZ.net domain, while Cloudflare and Namecheap should be enjoined from continuing any service contracts or services to the defendant. It’s unclear whether that should also apply to any future business, but without being able to identify the defendant more positively, that could prove impossible.

 

The complaint, motion for default, declarations, and proposed order can be found here (1,2,3,4,5, pdf)

 

Most large torrent sites target a global audience, but there are many local favorites as well.

 

YggTorrent, for example, is one of the largest French-language torrent sites on the Internet, serving millions of users per month.

 

The French site is not the typical torrent indexer. YggTorrent sees itself as a community instead, one with a dedicated tracker, something that’s quite rare these days. The site was founded in 2017, to fill the gap left behind when T411 closed shop.

 

Like any other site of its stature, YggTorrent faces constant pressure from anti-piracy forces. The site is blocked by French Internet providers following a court order and rightsholders are doing all they can to expose the identities of its operators.

YggTorrent Domain Name Troubles

Thus far, these efforts haven’t brought down the site. YggTorrent sees the blocking efforts as ‘fair game’ and trusts that users will find their way around any obstacles. However, a recent intervention goes a step too far, the site believes.

 

Earlier this week, the Yggtorrent.do domain was rendered inaccessible. The domain name was registered through Njalla (1337 Services) and pointed to Cloudflare nameservers. An ‘unknown’ third party then updated these to HOLD.NETIM.NET nameservers, effectively rendering the site inaccessible.

 

 

According to a YggTorrent operator, it’s not clear who took this action or why. Njalla doesn’t seem to be involved as all information is listed correctly there. The company instead told YggTorrent that the .do registry may have something to do with it.

Registry / Registrar?

While we can’t confirm anything at this time, the NETIM.NET nameservers suggest that the domain registrar Netim could be involved. Njalla typically uses a third-party registrar for its domains and Netim may be one of them.

 

We asked Njalla to confirm that it works with Netim but the company didn’t immediately reply. Netim didn’t respond to our request for comment either and the same applies to the NIC.do registry.

 

Whoever is responsible for this domain takeover, YggTorrent is not happy with the lack of due process and transparency.

 

“Frankly, we don’t find it normal that someone can hijack a domain name as they wish. Website blocking, ok, but outright taking control of a domain calls into question a lot of things like freedom of expression on the Internet,” one of YggTorrent’s operators tells us.

Down, Not Out

Needless to say, the domain takeover immediately stopped all traffic to the site, albeit with a slight delay due to DNS caching. YggTorrent shared a screenshot of its traffic stats on the day that this happened.

 

 

YggTorrent has no plans to throw in the towel. This isn’t the first time that one of its domains has been suspended, and it likely won’t be the last time either.

 

The torrent site previously lost its .com domain following a complaint from the French anti-piracy outfit SACEM. The .ws registry later took action against Yggtorrent.ws, following a complaint from an unknown party.

 

With the .do ‘suspension’ yet another domain name bites the dust. The torrent site swiftly moved to a .wtf domain, for as long as it lasts, and remains online at the time of writing.

 

Few countries welcomed pirate site blocking measures as they spread across the world over the past 15 years. Australian citizens were as vocal in opposition as expected but in common with their overseas counterparts, eventually accepted that blocking is here to stay.

 

The Australian government recently released the 2022 edition of its Consumer Survey on Online Copyright Infringement. According to the study, 17% of Aussie consumers encountered a blocked site in the previous three months.

 

Six out of ten “simply gave up” trying to access any content at all, regardless of the source. Of the remainder, 16% bypassed the block, 14% sought lawful access to the content, while a persistent 6% persevered hoping they could find another pirate site that rightsholders had not yet blocked.

 

In reality there are always new ways to access even freshly blocked sites. Unencumbered by the rule of law or the restrictions of a tightly governed legal process, pirates can bypass a block in minutes, safe in the knowledge that rightsholders will have to catch up, and the legal system will also have to catch up with them.

 

The Australian system is particularly thorough and at times, blocking decisions have taken a very long time to hand down. If a new blocking injunction handed down late last week is any barometer, the tide may have already turned.

Movie Studios File Statement of Claim at Federal Court

The studios filed their statement of claim at the Federal Court on June 2, 2023. Netflix, Disney, Columbia, Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros., Village Roadshow, and several affiliated companies informed the Court that 22 overseas streaming platforms were infringing their copyrights.

 

Since those platforms have the “primary purpose or the primary effect of infringing, or facilitating an infringement,” the entertainment companies said that a blocking injunction was warranted under Section 115A of the Copyright Act.

 

Most of the nominated domain names belong to streaming sites specializing in mainstream movies, TV shows, and the ubiquitously-popular content of the moment, Japanese anime. Popular platforms on the list include 9anime, Onionplay, and EZTV. (full list below)

 

Domains Listed in Blocking Injunction

 

The blocking application listed more than four dozen respondents, including internet service providers Telstra, Optus, Vocus, Vodafone and TPG. After gaining several years’ worth of experience handling these applications, the time from statement of claim to an award of an injunction has been improving. In most cases, however, the gap could still be measured in months, far from satisfactory in a rapidly-shifting piracy market.

Blocking Injunction Awarded in Record Time

As the screenshot above shows, at least three of the domains requested for blocking are already dead and up for sale, a position likely to worsen in the weeks and months ahead. While that’s not a problem as far as the injunction goes, there are signs that Australia’s blocking machine is being optimized.

 

Following a statement of claim filed in early June, the final documents were submitted by Netflix on July 7.

 

NSD509/2023 – Timeline/Documents Filed

 

The Federal Court handed down the requested order on the very same day, instructing the 49 ISPs to disable access to the sites’ domain names, IP addresses, or URLs, within 15 days of service of the instructions. If pirate site operators believe they have a genuine reason to oppose blocking, they have a limited time to make a complaint.

 

“The owner or operator of any of the Target Online Locations and the owner or operator of any website who claims to be affected by these Orders may apply on 3 days’ written notice, including notice to all parties, to vary or discharge these Orders,” the Federal Court order reads.

 

With that scenario extremely unlikely to play out, the site operators will have to commit to a game of cat-and-mouse if they want Australian users to retain direct access to their websites. The injunction is dynamic, which means that any alternative domains, URLs, or IP addresses deployed to undermine blocking, will also be subject to the same injunction and therefore immediate candidates for blocking.

 

Blocking will remain in place for three years and in the event the platforms still “have the primary purpose or the primary effect” of infringing or facilitating infringement, a short administrative process will extend blocking for a further three years.

 

The Federal Court order is available here (pdf) and the full list of domains reads as follows:

 

new.iyf.tv
flyv.tv
www.movieswatch.com.pk
kokoatv.net
kokoa.tv
bingewatch.to
wcostream.net
goku.to
goku.sx
koreanz.xyz
www.divicast.co
bt4g.org
5movierulz.sh
5movierulz.ws
5movierulz.lv
moviestowatch.t
ridomovies.com
ridomovies.pw
eztvstatus.com
eztv.re
eztv1.xyz
eztv.wf
eztv.tf
eztv.yt
jexmovie.com
9anime.gs
9anime.pl
9anime.id
9anime.me
animesuge.to
animension.to
animetake.tv
duboku.one
movie4kto.net
onionplay.se

 

If we didn’t know better, we might conclude that ‘Cuevana’ is Spanish for ‘mole’.

 

The popular streaming piracy brand first appeared on the radar in 2009 and anti-piracy forces have been trying to ‘whack’ it ever since.

 

The original Cuevana site was founded by Tomas Escobar, at the time an engineering student in Cordoba, Argentina. By offering a Netflix-type streaming experience, with a bigger catalog and without any subscription fees, the pirate service quickly took off.

Taking Down Cuevana

It didn’t take long before rightsholders started to take notice of the millions of users flocking to the site. That marked the start of a series of enforcement campaigns that continues to this day.

 

Rightsholders and their anti-piracy representatives are no longer battling Escobar. The original founder moved on many years ago, and with an unrelated innovator accolade from MIT Technology Review, he now builds a career as an entrepreneur.

 

Escobar’s change of plans opened the doors for aspiring pirate tycoons, of which there were many. Over the past decade, many dozens of new Cuevana variants have launched, using creative domain name variations such as Cuevanahd, Cuevana2, and Cuevana3.

 

It is not always clear if and how these new variations are linked, but Cuevana remained a thorn in the site of Hollywood and was repeatedly featured on the U.S. Trade Representative’s list of notorious pirate sites.

 

“Cuevana is the most popular piracy site in the Spanish-speaking part of Latin America, offering more than 7,000 unlicensed television and movie titles,” the USTR wrote in its most recent overview.

ACE’s 2021 Breakthrough

Two years ago, the Alliance of Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) appeared to have made a breakthrough. The coalition announced that it had sent a cease and desist letter to the streaming portal’s Chilean operators, who decided to throw the towel.

 

This shutdown was legitimate and notable as it affected millions of users, but it didn’t shut down the Cuevana brand. In fact, Cuevana3.io, the leading domain at the time, remained online.

 

 

Earlier this year, we reported how Hollywood’s relentless pursuit of several Cuevana3 domains had failed to shut down the site. Cuevana3.io switched domains to Cuevana3.me and then Cuevana3.be. More recently, it was serving millions of monthly visits from Cuevana3.ai.

ACE Shuts Down ‘Another’ Cuevana

In an announcement yesterday, ACE said that this seemingly endless battle had come to an end. After tracking down the operator of Cuevana3.ai in the Piura District of Peru, the site was effectively pulled offline.

 

People who visit Cuevana3.ai, Cuevana3.me, Cuevana3.be, or any of the other domains run by this operator, are now directed to ACE’s “Watch Legally” page.

 

 

ACE informs TorrentFreak that it took control of 22 domain names in total, which were good for more than 100 million visits between March and May of this year. Some of these domains didn’t get any traffic but were kept as a backup, just in case.

 

“The largest Spanish-language piracy streamer in Latin America is no more, thanks to a tireless, global effort involving law enforcement and judicial authorities in several LATAM countries and ACE’s global teams in LATAM and other parts of the world,” says ACE boss Jan van Voorn.

Whac-a-Mole

An ACE spokesperson says that, according to their knowledge, no criminal charges will be filed against the operator. As long as the site stays offline, the main objective has been fulfilled.

 

There is indeed no doubt that this is a big score for ACE. However, history appears to be repeating itself once again. When the group reported that it took Cuevana offline two years ago, Cuevana3.io remained online.

 

Now that this Cuevana3.io threat has finally been dealt with, another Cuevana is filling the void. With over 110 million visits over the past three months, Cuevana3.ch is now in pole position, meaning that the whac-a-mole continues.

 

The Signal Association (Stowarzyszenie Sygnał) is Poland’s leading audiovisual sector anti-piracy group.

 

Among the group’s stated objectives are protecting film and musical works from piracy and promoting intellectual property standards found in Europe and the United States.

 

Many Signal members are well known outside Poland, with the majority also members of other anti-piracy groups, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA).

 

 

Coinciding with the publication of a Deloitte report on how to tackle piracy more effectively in the region, Signal representatives have appeared in Polish news reports and given several interviews in recent days.

Anti-Piracy Groups Follow Same Playbook

Given the international movement to align piracy with malware, identity theft and fraud, driven by Signal’s international members Disney, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, and Viacom/Paramount, the Polish approach in the media is predictably identical.

 

“First, it’s a safety issue. Piracy is often associated with fraud and extortion,” says Teresa Wierzbowska, president of the Signal Association.

 

“Secondly, it’s a matter of quality. No one likes watching a sports stream that stutters or pops up with unwanted ads. After all, it is also a matter of legal responsibility and moral judgment. By paying pirates, you deprive producers of revenue. Lower income from activities means a lower quality spectacle, lower state budget revenues, damage to the economy and to the development of culture, sport and entertainment.”

 

According to Polish Chamber of Information data, Wierzbowska’s standing across the entertainment, communications, and anti-piracy sectors is very impressive. In addition to her role as president of Signal, Wierzbowska is chair of the board at the Intellectual Property Protection Section of KIGEiT, the Polish Chamber of Commerce for Electronics and Telecommunications.

 

Wierzbowska is also on the board of Creative Poland Association and the president of Lewiatan, an organization with 4,100 member companies employing over a million employees. Two other positions useful to copyright holders include a position on the board of the Advertising Ethics Committee at the Advertising Council, and a vice-presidency of the Supervisory Board at the Association of Internet Industry Employers.

Social Media Advertising Fuels IPTV Piracy

Signal colleague Adam Jankowski has also appeared in the media over the last few days, highlighting “a plague” of pirate IPTV adverts appearing on Facebook and pirate apps appearing on official stores including Google Play.

 

“We don’t know what is actually going on under the GUI that the user sees. If there are any hidden functionalities, only the author of the application knows about it. It is through such careless installation of programs that users’ passwords are stolen,” Jankowski told wirtualnemedia.pl.

 

Jankowski acknowledged the game of “cat-and-mouse” associated with attempting to shut down pirate services but said the aim is to wear providers down financially through persistence. “We educate policemen and prosecutors in this area, and soon also judges,” he said of the piracy scene generally, adding that Signal can’t reveal too many details on enforcement for operational reasons.

ACE/MPA Targets Popular Poland-Focused IPTV Service

Just days before Signal’s representatives began giving interviews, ACE – via the Motion Picture Association – went to court in the United States hoping to compel Cloudflare to hand over the personal details of several piracy platforms.

 

Among them is PlanetaPL, a pirate IPTV service that claims to offer 150 of the most popular Polish channels and a VOD library of 5000+ movies and TV shows.

 

 

MPA/ACE cited two movies allegedly infringed by the service, one owned by Disney and the other by Paramount, and requested the “identities, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account histories of the users.”

 

PlanetaPL has official apps listed on Google Play and Amazon and its terms and conditions point to Planeta Media, Inc. in Florida as its corporate entity.

 

The website of PlanetaPL states that “We a not a TV Provider. We are not responsible for the content of television programs. We provide equipment rental services.” The company’s promotional YouTube video below doesn’t mention which equipment is available to rent.

 

 

Whether Cloudflare has anything useful to hand over will remain to be seen, but it seems likely that ACE already knows a little about PlanetaPL’s setup due to a series of SSL issues that expose parts of its infrastructure. Somewhat ironically, especially given its warnings to others about security, Signal’s SSL broke last week after its certificate expired and it still hasn’t been fixed.

 

The DMCA subpoena application (pdf)

Major Sites in Hungary Under Investigation

While there is less anti-piracy action in Poland when compared to some other EU countries (Poland still has no site-blocking program), until recently both Hungary and Bulgaria had even less. Activity in the United States indicates that domains targeting the Hungarian market and enjoying dozens of millions of monthly visits are firmly on the radar.

 

New Target: online-filmek.me
Content: Movies, TV Shows (Hungarian)
Recent Traffic: Apr 14.8m / May 14.9m / June 14.1m
Most Popular: Hungary (80% of overall traffic)
SimilarWeb Rank: #32 most popular site in Hungary

 

New Target: mozinet.me
Content: Movies, TV Shows (Hungarian)
Recent Traffic: Apr 12.4m / May 13.4m / June 13.1m
Most Popular: Hungary (78%)
SimilarWeb Rank: #60 most popular site in Hungary

 

New Target: filmvilag.me (used by above)
Content: Movies, TV Shows (Hungarian)
Recent Traffic: Apr 13.8m / May 14.5m / June 14.5m
Most Popular: Hungary (78% of overall traffic)
SimilarWeb Rank: #37 most popular site in Hungary

 

 

Without drawing too many conclusions on the possible relationships between the sites/domains, all three have very similar levels of traffic, despite three distinct designs. As the image above shows, two clearly draw on the same content library.

 

The final site of interest to the studios is nu6i-bg-net.com. Offering TV shows and focused on the Bulgarian market, the platform received an average of 1.6 million visits per month between April and June, with 80% of that traffic attributable to Bulgaria.

 

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 three newcomers on the list. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 10 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3	8.2 / trailer
2	(1)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.0 / trailer
3	(…)	The Out-Laws	5.5 / trailer
4	(3)	Fast X	6.1 / trailer
5	(4)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
6	(…)	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	6.9 / trailer
7	(5)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
8	(2)	Knights of the Zodiac	4.4 / trailer
9	(7)	Kandahar	6.0 / trailer
10	(8)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer

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

 

To protect copyright holders, YouTube regularly removes, disables, or demonetizes videos that allegedly contain infringing content.

 

While anyone can send a DMCA notice to the platform, most copyright actions come from the Content ID system that can only be used by a select group of copyright holders.

 

For many years the number of claims rightsholders made on YouTube was unknown. That changed two years ago when the video platform launched its first-ever transparency report. Since then, the number of claims has steadily continued to rise.

826 Million

YouTube’s latest transparency report reveals that during the second half of last year, rightsholders claimed more than 826 million videos on YouTube. This is the highest figure since YouTube started reporting these figures and a 9% uplift over the same period last year when 759 million videos were flagged.

 

 

This increase in claims happened even though fewer copyright holders actively used the Content ID system. Entities utilizing the system dropped from 4,840 in the second half of 2021 to 4,646 during the same period last year.

 

Applying some basic math to these figures reveals that copyright holders who actively used Content ID claimed over 177,000 videos on average over the six-month period.

Money Machine

While rightsholders are typically unhappy when people use their content without permission, YouTube has managed to reframe this problem as an opportunity. Instead of using the Content ID system to take videos offline, there’s also an option to monetize them instead.

 

The concept of ‘monetizing’ piracy initially sounded a bit odd but the system has transformed into a healthy revenue stream opportunity. During the most recent reporting period, rightsholders chose to monetize over 90% of all Content ID claims.

 

This positive take on tackling infringement seems to be quite profitable as well. During 2022, copyright holders were paid around $1.5 billion as a direct result of their Content ID claims. Since the Content ID system was launched several years ago, $9 billion in ‘claimed’ revenue was paid out to copyright holders.

Million Dollar Abuse

The revenue opportunities also come with a downside – scammers. In one recent case, two men set up a company to find and claim unmonetized music. Through a third-party partner with access to the Content ID system, the pair generated over $24 million in revenue from YouTube by falsely claiming ownership.

 

The abuse didn’t go unnoticed and the repercussions were severe. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted the duo and last week the first defendant was sentenced to more than five years in prison.

 

Intentional abuse schemes of this magnitude are relatively rare for Copyright ID claims. Across YouTube’s broader set of copyright tools, we see that YouTube regularly takes action against abusers.

 

“We take abuse of our tools seriously — we terminate tens of thousands of accounts each year that attempt to abuse our copyright tools,” the company explains.

 

In addition to money-driven schemes, copyright takedown abuse can also have a political or competitive angle.

 

“Sometimes this takes the form of political actors attempting to censor political speech or companies stifling criticism of their products or practices. Other times individuals try to use our copyright processes to bully other creators or to remove videos they see as competing for the same audience.”

99.5% Automated

Aside from intentional abuse, errors can also be triggered by automation. Nearly all Content ID claims (99.5%) are processed automatically through fingerprinting technology. In these cases, potentially-infringing content is flagged by technology with limited human oversight.

 

 

Automation saves YouTube and rightsholders a lot of resources but can also be a potential source of abuse and errors. This is one of the reasons why just a small group of verified and responsible rightsholders can join the program.

 

Despite this hurdle, mistakes happen. YouTube specifically highlights an example where videos of the historic landing of NASA’s Curiosity on Mars were taken down globally. A TV company claimed the public domain footage as their own.

 

“In Content ID the impact is multiplied due to its automated nature; one bad reference file can impact hundreds or even thousands of videos across the site.

 

“In one highly publicized instance, a news channel uploaded public domain footage from NASA of a Mars rover and ended up making inappropriate claims against all other news channels and creators using the same footage, even against the NASA channel itself.”

 

These mistakes are not caused by the automated processes themselves but are triggered when bad reference files are added to the Content ID database.

 

YouTube notes that on the whole, manual Content ID claims are more than twice as likely to be disputed than automated ones (0.94% vs. 0.43%). Since there are 200 times more automated claims, these still account for the bulk of all disputes.

 

—-

 

A copy of YouTube’s latest transparency report, covering the second half of 2022, is available here (pdf)

 

Over the past couple of decades, thousands of people have leveraged the masses of pirated content available online to make a few bucks here and there.

 

Others have thrown caution to the wind and set out in search of the big money. Launching full-blown pirate platforms or platforms that claim to be legitimate (but were actually full-blown pirate platforms), many believed that one day it would either be free drinks at the bar, or many years behind them. Could go either way, you never know.

 

Today’s pirate entrepreneurs have never had it so easy. Using pre-built sites and content APIs, committing to go full-pirate in the morning can mean running a site the same day. From there on, it’s just a simple case of keeping everything running, dealing with the whims of thousands of users, quashing a moderator mutiny three times a year, and the timeless classic, not getting sued or arrested. Simple.

 

Yet when all of that is completely under control, someone still comes along and starts issuing DMCA notices to Google, web hosts, and domain registrars. And guess what? Some are making a whole lot of money in the process, working from home, risk-free.

Making a Living: DMCA Freelancing

DMCA notices listed on the Lumen Database are an invaluable source of information when investigating instances of copyright abuse. Companies including Google and Twitter submit notices constantly and the overwhelming majority carry enough useful information.

 

Some information is redacted for privacy reasons, often when the notice includes the name of a private individual, for example. What stands out here is that there are many questionable notices that have the copyright holder and the submitter’s names redacted, meaning that it becomes extremely difficult to identify who is behind malicious behavior.

 

When disappearing down the rabbit hole recently, an accidental turn led to the freelancer site Kwork where it’s possible to hire someone to send DMCA notices to have content removed from Google, Bing, and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

 

 

Through various means it was possible to link some of the freelancers on Kwork with redacted notices on the Lumen Database, not necessarily dubious notices in every case, but at least the reasons for the redactions became more clear. These freelance takedown agents act in an individual capacity while working for individuals, not companies.

 

Dozens of listings on Upwork offer similar services and one claiming to have “100% Job Success” immediately caught the eye due to the amount earned on the platform: £100K (US$128,340).

 

For perspective, the average salary in Pakistan is 81,800 PKR (Pakistani Rupee) per month, or around USD 287 (£223) according to May 2023 figures. To earn £100K, the average Pakistani would need to work for 37 years.

 

 

While we have no idea whether the services provided offer value for money, a claim on the listing (“My success rate is 100%”) implies, if not directly states, that online platforms always remove all links submitted by the agent. Multi-national anti-piracy corporations would certainly beg to differ and if deindexing whole websites is possible via Upwork, someone knows something about DMCA notices that nobody else does.

 

Taking Content Down – Send $20

The listings reveal that a disproportionate number of takedown agents report being based in Pakistan. One listing offers to remove up to 10 links for $20. The concerning thing here is the suggestion that DMCA takedown notices can target copyright-infringing content and also “malicious and defaming” posts.

 

 

The reference to becoming the client’s “legal attorney” may also generate confusion; in the unlikely event that does mean a qualified lawyer, hiring one who understands what the DMCA is for might be a better option. The listing also advises that “there is no screening process for this service” which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Sounds Complicated, Better Hire an Expert

Additional alarm is raised by other items in sales pitches. “I have Removed DMCA Copyright Violations of my Clients content, the result was very stunning and effectively removed all the false DMCA claims and counter Claims Notices,” one reads. “And same as if you receive the false DMCA I will submit the counter notice also,” it continues.

 

One can only imagine what is going on here but there are signs that some of these agents are battling against each other, sending DMCA notices that are potentially wrongful and then being counterclaimed. It appears that counterclaims are thrown around with little respect for the fact that clients are effectively agreeing to be sued in the United States, if it ever came to that.

Copyright Blunders

Implausibly, respect for other people’s copyrights is also called into question. While it’s not really acceptable to use an OnlyFans logo to promote another business, the image below reveals that the ‘DMCA expert’ in question may have ripped off the logo owned by DMCA.com.

 

 

Criticism aside, there are listings on both sites that suggest some amateur DMCA agents might really know what they’re doing and could be of help to other self-employed people, especially those who work OnlyFans.

 

Interestingly, the image below from Twitter suggests that OnlyFans users can have content removed for copyright infringement too. We haven’t redacted anything here because the Kwork agent mentioned working for the client on his page and the part we did remove at the top was far more revealing. The important part is the withheld tweet.

 

 

The assumption here is that the OnlyFans user breached someone’s copyright and the tweet was removed. The reality is that she hired someone from Kwork, an apparent specialist in both DMCA notices and counternotices, and they took it down in error and then failed to correct their blunder.

 

 

The important lesson here is that there’s decent money to be made taking down content, and it doesn’t matter how many mistakes get made, or even if the law is abused, nobody is ever held to account. No qualifications necessary and no screening. Essential requirements? $20 should do it.

 

Image credit: pixabay/geralt

 

Traditionally, when copyright holders go after pirate sites, their main mission is to shut them down permanently.

 

This strategy has resulted in the demise of thousands of websites over the past two decades.

 

In some cases these shutdowns are easy, only requiring a cease and desist order to be delivered to the owner’s home address. In others, disputes can escalate into prolonged legal battles where judges or juries have the final say.

YTS Lawsuits and Settlements

As one of the most iconic piracy brands, YTS.mx has also been targeted in court. In 2019, the popular torrent site and its operator were accused of facilitating mass copyright infringement in multiple U.S. lawsuits, filed by independent movie companies, including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures.

 

While lawsuits against torrent sites are not new, these cases stood out due to the manner in which they were resolved. Instead of shutting the site down, the film companies reached settlement agreements with the operator in 2020, which allowed the site to continue operating.

 

In order to survive, YTS had to hand over some user details, while promising to pay over $1 million in piracy damages, on paper. In addition, the notorious torrent site agreed to remove torrents linking to the movie companies’ content and prevent them from being reuploaded.

 

This unprecedented deal caused quite the stir when YTS user data was put to work in other lawsuits against individual file sharers and Internet providers. In a very pragmatic sense, the settlement was a great deal for the movie companies. At least, for as long as it lasted.

YTS Uploads ‘Prohibited’ Films

Today, YTS no longer appears restricted by the terms of the agreement. While older Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures titles, such as The Hitman’s Bodyguard and The Expendables, are still not listed on the site, many newer releases are.

 

A simple search reveals that YTS distributes pirated copies of more recent films, including “Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife”, “The Offering”, “The Protege”, “Shut In” and “Last Seen Alive.”

 

 

The settlement agreement requires YTS to keep these films off the site, but that didn’t happen here. The filmmakers’ attorney, Kerry Culpepper, informs TorrentFreak that YTS complied with follow-up takedowns in the past, but he adds that recent requests were ineffective.

 

“It is unfortunate and disappointing that YTS is not complying with the permanent injunction/agreement of the 2020 Hawaii lawsuits requiring it to keep my clients’ movies removed from the website. We will consider the next steps,” Culpepper says.

 

What these ‘next steps’ are is not clear. In any case, the filmmakers can’t rely on the Hawaii court to enforce the settlement agreement, as the court’s jurisdiction over the matter expired at the end of 2021.

 

The most likely option appears to be to reinvigorate the legal battle in some way or another. Whether the filmmakers are open to another settlement is doubtful though, as there are some trust issues now.

 

Dozens of times each year, global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment files DMCA subpoena applications at a court in California.

 

Once obtained, these are served on service providers, mostly Cloudflare, requesting personal information on pirate site operators. While the quality of supplied information varies, the number of applications suggests that the world’s largest entertainment companies do indeed obtain valuable intelligence from the process.

 

Under the banner of Hollywood’s MPA, ACE returned to court again this week, seeking information on a number of platforms, mostly dealing in movies and TV shows. The presence of yet more anime piracy platforms is probably a sign of things to come, with ACE members Disney and Paramount gaining a firmer foothold in the anime market.

Anime Sites in the Crosshairs

New Target: Animedao.to
Recent Traffic: Apr 19.1m / May 18.1m / June 16.9m

 

 

When sites like Zoro.to (which rebranded to Animewatch.to this week due to copyright issues) receive more than 200 million visits per month, it’s tempting to describe sites with tens of millions as ‘small’. We’ll refrain from doing that, especially when yearly visits to Animedao.to exceed the quarter-billion mark.

 

 

While the site’s traffic is in a slight decline, Animedao remains popular, especially in the United States. More than a third of the platform’s overall traffic hails from the U.S., the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

 

Animedao.to is just one of many hundreds of sites that exist through the use of a site template. These sites are easy to identify using a number of methods but one of the most straightforward is a Google search for the term “anime” and the text of the standard disclaimer that appears at the bottom of most homepages.

 

 

In case anyone still believes that pirate site disclaimers are kryptonite to entertainment industry attorneys, they aren’t. The remaining pair of sites on the ACE list, along with summary details, are as follows:

 

New Target: animekaizoku.com
Recent Traffic: Apr 837k / May 637k / June 599k
Most Popular: India, Philippines, Japan

 

 

New Target: Animet.site
Recent Traffic: Apr 2.3k / May 2.2k / June 3.3k
Feature: Members Only, must sign in with Google/Discord account
Fun fact: Domain records state: “DNS points to prohibited IP stream server”

Latin American Targets

Working with local anti-piracy groups, ACE continues to take a keen interest in sites popular in Brazil and neighboring countries. Legal action to obtain site operators’ identities may take place in the United States, but any information obtained has the potential to be useful anywhere.

 

New Target: baixarseriesmp4.eu (baixar is ‘download’ in Portuguese)
Content: Movies, TV Shows, Anime
Recent Traffic: Apr 0k / May 1.4m / June 4m

 

 

Around 80% of Baixarseriesmp4’s traffic comes from Brazil, with Portugal following in a distant second place. The SimilarWeb figures listed above show the site’s traffic on a rapid upwards trend, which is probably one of the reasons ACE wants to take action before things get out of hand.

 

With that in mind, how does a site grow from nothing to four million visits in three months? The answer is simple: they don’t start from nothing.

 

Baixarseriesmp4.eu is a domain-hopping site that already had traction. Its current .eu domain is just the latest in use after having burned through baixarseriesmp4.xyz, .club, and .top. A message on those domains warns that they will be “decommissioned soon.”

 

It’s possible that ISPs may have blocked Baixarseries at some point. The main page provides instructions on how to unblock the platform by changing DNS settings in popular browsers.

 

New Target: 2now.tv
Content: Movies, TV Shows
Recent Traffic: Apr 13k / May 35k / June 233k

 

 

The request for information relating to 2now.tv is interesting. This is a new platform that did indeed launch from a standing start; information received by TorrentFreak suggests that 2now.tv is intended to be the English language version of Latin American streaming giant, Cuevana.

 

We haven’t been able to confirm that claim but attempts to boost the site’s traffic are very evident on social media. Around 75% of the site’s traffic (up 550% in the United States compared to the previous month) comes from social media referrals, 92% of that from links on Reddit.

 

There’s even a 2now.tv promotional video floating around, but since it uses clips from Hollywood movies – to promote piracy of Hollywood movies – we won’t link to it here.

 

The DMCA subpoena application can be found here (pdf)