Every day, millions of people from all over the world submit posts, comments, and other content to Reddit.

 

Most discussions are relatively harmless but, every now and then, users unwittingly incriminate themselves, totally unaware of the potential ramifications their writings can have offline.

 

When something’s clearly wrong, the authorities can take action. Last year, governments and law enforcement sent more than 1,000 information requests to Reddit, seeking user details. In addition, Reddit was served with 277 search warrants and 582 subpoenas targeted at users of the platform.

 

Reddit complies with most of these information requests, but not all. Earlier this year the company objected when a group of filmmakers requested the personal details of several users as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Internet provider RCN.

Filmmakers vs. Reddit

The filmmakers turned to Reddit after they found public comments that could help their case. As part of the RCN lawsuit, they identified several potentially relevant threads and requested a DMCA subpoena, ordering Reddit to identify the anonymous users.

 

The Redditors in question discussed issues such as RCN’s handling of copyright infringement emails. The filmmakers could use this information to their advantage, but only if they could obtain the identities of the commenters first.

 

Reddit was unhappy with the subpoena, characterizing it as overbroad and more akin to a fishing expedition than regular evidence gathering. Reddit only handed over the details of one user whose comment mentioned RCN, denying other ‘less relevant’ ones, while citing the users’ First Amendment right to anonymous speech.

 

The court eventually agreed with this defense, concluding that Redditors’ First Amendment right to anonymous speech outweighs the interest of rightsholders. According to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler, the filmmakers have other options to obtain this type of information, including through RCN itself.

Another ISP, Another Reddit Subpoena

Judge Beeler’s ruling was a setback for the filmmakers but a few weeks ago they went to court again over a similar request. This time the request is part of their piracy liability lawsuit against Internet provider Grande, and singles out a new group of Redditors.

 

Reddit refused to hand over the information directly which prompted another motion to compel that, once again, landed on Judge Beeler’s desk. According to the filmmakers, they have no other options to secure the evidence which, among other things, includes comments on Grande’s handling of copyright notices.

 

The filmmakers stated that they already requested and received the personal details of 118 frequently pirating subscribers from Grande. However, contacting these people didn’t yield the desired results. Facing a deadline, they chose to go after the Reddit users instead.

Reddit Objects

In a replay of moves, Reddit has just responded in court, pointing out that their users’ right to anonymous speech should be protected. The company argues that the filmmakers still fail to make a convincing argument. As in the earlier case, Reddit users are not an “irreplaceable source” of evidence.

 

“Weeks ago, this Court denied a nearly identical motion by these same Plaintiffs,” Reddit writes in its opposition brief.

 

[R]ather than returning with better facts capable of meeting the applicable First Amendment standard, Plaintiffs here offer worse facts–expressly acknowledging that they have no need to identify these Reddit users at all.”

 

 

The filmmakers seek information to show that Grande failed to properly implement a repeat infringer policy and that this failure acted as a draw to potential subscribers. In the earlier RCN case, Reddit and the court noted that the rightsholders could obtain this information directly from RCN subscribers.

 

This is also the case in the Grande lawsuit, Reddit argues. In fact, the company notes that the filmmakers’ statements to the court show that this is possible.

 

“[U]nlike in RCN, the Plaintiffs here have already successfully done exactly what Reddit suggested Plaintiffs do there. Plaintiffs have already obtained from Grande identifying information for 118 of Grande’s ‘top 125 pirating IP addresses’.

 

“That concession dooms the Motion; Plaintiffs cannot possibly establish that unmasking these six Reddit users is the only way for Plaintiffs to generate evidence necessary for their claims when they have already succeeded in pursuing an alternative and better way,” Reddit adds.

 

In their motion to compel, the filmmakers said that they already contacted some Grande subscribers, which didn’t result in the desired information. However, these subscribers were not subpoenaed, which is a step the filmmakers could take before going after Redditors.

 

“While Plaintiffs claim to have ‘been sending letters to most of the subscribers of the 118 IP addresses,’ Plaintiffs conspicuously fail to state that they have subpoenaed those subscribers,” Reddit writes in a footnote.

Potential Defendant?

In addition to five Reddit ‘witnesses’ who made general piracy-related comments about Grande, the filmmakers also singled out a 12-year-old comment from the user “xBROKEx”, who is a potential defendant because they specifically mentioned having pirated the movie The Expendables.

 

This comment could, in theory, provide evidence for a direct copyright infringement lawsuit. However, Reddit believes that without arguing a proper claim against the defendant, this user should not be unmasked either.

 

“Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate a prima facie case of copyright infringement against xBROKEx based on their mention of ‘the expendables’ over twelve years ago when the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years,” Reddit notes.

 

All in all, Reddit believes that the filmmakers have an even worse case this time around so the company asks Judge Beeler to protect anonymous speech as it did before.

 

—

 

A copy of Reddit’s opposition brief in response to the filmmakers’ motion to compel is available here (pdf)

 

For millions of people around the world, subtitles are the only way to enjoy media in foreign languages. For the deaf and hard of hearing, they are absolutely essential.

 

Nowadays, most large streaming platforms and broadcasters are aware of the importance of offering a range of subtitle options to their viewers.

 

On pirate sites, the situation is no different. There’s a decades-long tradition of fansubbing which sees volunteers work together to supply homebrew subtitles to the masses. In many cases, these volunteers beat official channels, especially for non-mainstream content.

 

There are licensed and official sources for subtitles, but every now and then, we see fan-made subtitles appear on legal platforms. This is exactly what happened a few days ago, in a rare encounter between two of the largest cinephile platforms.

TCM Meets Karagarga

As part of its programming, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) recently broadcast the 1970 Spanish drama film “El Jardín de las Delicias,” also known as “The Garden of Delights” in English. The film is widely regarded as a top classic, which TCM viewers expect to see on the “national treasure“.

 

What viewers didn’t expect to see, however, were ‘pirated’ subtitles and a reference to a BitTorrent tracker during the credits roll.

 

“Subtitles: Supersoft and Scalisto for KG,” an inserted subtitles credits line reads, as spotted by movie archivist ‘Jon’ on Twitter.

 

 

To the average viewer, this might not ring any bells. However, those in the know immediately recognize these as fansubs. Quite interesting ones too, considering the “KG” reference.

Invaluable Film Archive

KG stands for Karagarga, an illustrious BitTorrent tracker that’s been around for more than 18 years. Becoming a member of the private community isn’t easy but those inside gain access to a wealth of film obscurities.

 

The site focuses on archiving rare classic and cult movies, as well as other film-related content. Blockbusters and other popular Hollywood releases can’t be found on the site as uploading them is strictly forbidden.

 

This policy has helped the tracker to stay off the radar, as far as that’s possible. This allowed the community of tens of thousands of film fans to build an irreplaceable archive of the world cinema. This isn’t an exaggeration, the site has unique copies of films that are simply not available elsewhere.

 

While the tracker operates without permission from rightsholders, filmmakers, cinema researchers, and cinephiles have recognized the important role it plays to safeguard film history. Or as the National Post put it a few years ago;

 

“Movies of unflagging historical merit are otherwise lost to changes in technology and time every year: film prints are damaged or lost, musty VHS tapes aren’t upgraded, DVDs fall out of print without reissue, back catalogs never make the transition to digital.

 

“But should even a single copy of the film exist, however tenuously, it can survive on Karagarga: one person uploads a rarity and dozens more continue to share.”

Source?

The subtitles that appeared on Turner Classic Movies were made for a Karagarga release, too but weren’t necessarily sourced through the site. The fansubs may be available through other subtitle repositories as well.

 

TorrentFreak contacted TCM to find out if the company has any idea how the subtitles ended up on the official broadcast, but the company didn’t immediately reply (see update below). The problem may lie with a third party, as the Criterion streaming service reportedly shows the same subtitles.

 

The source and whatever reason these subtitles appeared on the official TCM broadcast is irrelevant. The true cinephiles will appreciate the mention.

 

Of course, this is not the first time that we have seen ‘pirated’ subtitles appear on legitimate platforms. Sky, for example, displayed unofficial subs on a Chernobyl episode and Netflix also had similar issues on several occasions in the past.

 

Update: A TCM spokesperson informed us that, according to Janus Films, the subtitles were supplied by the worldwide rights holder, which is the Spanish distributer Video Mercury.

 

In a lawsuit, filed in the U.S. early January 2022, videogame giant Activision targeted German companies EngineOwning UG and CMN Holdings S.A, plus various individuals connected with their operation.

 

Running along similar lines as several other lawsuits filed by competitor Bungie, Activision claimed that the defendants trafficked in circumvention devices, in violation of the DMCA. The company aimed to hold the alleged cheat makers to account while sending a deterrent message to others considering the same conduct.

 

For more than a year, the EngineOwning defendants and their United States-based attorneys put up quite a fight. Characterizing the lawsuit as a battle between a $50 billion dollar company and mostly overseas defendants with limited resources to fight back, the defendants argued that being dragged all the way to the United States would be unfair, not to mention unnecessary; two of them are already being sued by Activision in a German case, they claimed.

 

These complaints appeared to have little effect on Activision. In February 2023, two of the defendants – Ignacio Gayduchenko (1) and Manuel Santiago (2) – broke ranks and settled with the plaintiffs for $2m and $1m, respectively. Court documents suggest that money wasn’t the first thing to be handed over.

Motion to Dismiss

This January some of the defendants (Valentin Rick, Alex Kleeman, Bennet Huch, Leon Frisch, Leon Schlender, Leonard Bugla, Marc-Alexander Richts, Pascal Claβen, Remo Löffler) filed a lengthy motion to dismiss in response to Activision’s amended complaint which had added new claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and two further counts of racketeering (RICO).

 

In brief, the German defendants predicted the lawsuit would face difficulties. Evidentiary problems and the physical attendance of the defendants at a trial in California, for example. There was also the question of whether unwilling witnesses could even be compelled to travel. Beyond that, it might even prove difficult to enforce any judgment, they added.

Activision Pulls No Punches

Activision’s response was robust. The “disingenuous” representations of the defendants to avoid appearing in a U.S. court failed to take into account their “hugely profitable online business” which had generated millions of dollars in revenue from 400,000 mostly U.S.-based customers, at Activision’s expense. But more was to follow.

 

With help from two former EngineOwning participants, Activision had gained access to internal and private correspondence in which the defendants “routinely trade detailed instructions on how best to illegally launder” their shared profits, “engage in fraudulent tax-dodging schemes” and “concoct a story that EngineOwning had been sold to unknown buyers in 2018.

 

As for the objections against traveling to the United States, the defendants shouldn’t have profited from illegal activities there, Activision informed the court. And besides, traveling hadn’t been a problem in the past.

 

“Defendant Rick used [EngineOwning] profits to fund far more substantial international travel costs than those contemplated in his declaration, including rental of a ‘presidential suite in a hotel in Zurich’ for several weeks,” the company added.

 

In January 2022, not long after Activision filed its lawsuit, the company’s legal team at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp claimed that the defendants had trolled and harassed them online, including making Steam groups called ‘suck my d***, Activision’ and using the initials of the law firm, ‘MSK Crime’.

 

That was always likely to act as a motivator, even over a year later.

 

“Elsewhere, Defendant [Marc-Alexander Richts] sneeringly ponders whether it is better to spend [EngineOwning] earnings on ‘a random lawyer in the US’ or ’10k cocaine,’ before he admits the real reason he would like to avoid U.S. travel. He simply does not ‘plan visiting (sic) that shithole country’.”

 

Claims that Activision is already suing the defendants in Germany along broadly the same lines were also dismissed.

 

“The actual complaint asserts wholly different claims under German law, by a different entity. The German lawsuit is focused on the European market, does not address U.S. distribution or damages, does not assert claims for trafficking in circumvention technology, does not include most of the defendants in this action, and will not resolve the issues presented here,” the company informed the court (pdf).

Can’t Take Attorneys’ Calls Anymore

The Court subsequently issued an order denying in part and granting in part the motion to dismiss filed by defendants Rick, Bugla, Frisch, Richts, Kleeman, Schlender, Huch, Classen, Loffler, and EngineOwning UG (‘foreign defendants’). Activision was given the opportunity to file a second amended complaint, which it did not. After agreement was reached on a series of extensions, the defendants were given time to file their answer to the first amended complaint.

 

In the wake of several lengthy filings (pdf) and a lawsuit that now names more than 25 defendants (pdf) plus a company in Belize, Activision has been serving defendants in Europe under the Hague Convention (pdf). In the background, however, the relationship between the ‘foreign defendants’ and their U.S. attorneys appears to have collapsed.

 

Court records describe a “breakdown in communications.” Due to the difference in time zones, contact between the parties had taken place over email and text messages. That had worked for well over a year, until the Court allowed the lawsuit to continue.

 

“Despite the Firm’s efforts in attempting to communicate with the Foreign Defendants on more than a dozen occasions, including reaching out to Markus Kompa, EngineOwning’s and Mr. Rick’s attorney in the German litigation, this breakdown in communication has not been resolved,” the defendants’ attorneys informed the Court.

Not All Defendants Maintain Silence

The law firm advised the defendants by email, text message, and letter, that they intended to withdraw, and because there was no response, the company concluded that meant there would be no opposition (1,2).

 

The defendants were advised to inform the Court if they have retained new counsel and file a status report by June 2023. Since EngineOwning cannot proceed pro se, failure to appoint new counsel would result in an entry of default on the first amended complaint.

 

 

The Court extended the deadline to file an answer until July 17, 2023, but for up to four of the defendants, the end of this dispute may come a little sooner.

 

In a letter to the Court dated July 4, Marc-Alexander Richts confirmed he would be defending himself moving forward (pdf). However, a letter dated late June reveals that new levels of cooperation may be the way forward.

 

 

In the meantime, it appears to be business as usual for EngineOwning.

 

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

 

The company, known for its Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen brands, targets people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent.

Track, Sue and Settle

These efforts, often referred to as so-called ‘copyright-trolling’, are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders track down a ‘pirating’ IP-address and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data.

 

Many of these lawsuits result in private settlements, which can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rightsholders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant.

 

Other rightsholders have deployed similar strategies over the years but Strike 3 is the only major player still involved today. That doesn’t mean that the company is scaling down its business, quite the opposite in fact.

1,660 Lawsuits in 2023

Strike 3 has increased its enforcement efforts in 2023. Looking at the number of new lawsuits filed in the first six months of the year, we see that 1,660 complaints have been filed across various federal courts in the United States.

 

This figure is a 57% increase compared to the first half of 2022, suggesting that the adult company continues to increase its productivity. At the current rate, it will break the record number of piracy cases it filed last year.

 

A few of the 1,600 lawsuits

 

With this level of workload, it’s no surprise that most cases are resolved relatively swiftly. Of all lawsuits filed in the first half of the year, more than a third have already been closed. This typically happens when the parties reach an out-of-court settlement.

 

Strike 3 can also drop a complaint for other reasons and occasionally it obtains a default judgment due to a lack of response from a defendant. Rarely ever, do we see one of these cases go to trial.

A Trial is Coming

While rare, there is currently a trial in preparation at the Middle District of Florida. This proceeding is scheduled to start later this month and both Strike 3 and the accused pirate will get four days to present their arguments.

 

In the leadup to this legal battle, Strike 3 asked the court to ban the term “copyright troll” at trial. The company argued that this language is “derogatory” and “prejudicial” but Judge District Court Judge Mary Scriven denied the request.

 

The trial itself won’t be about semantics. Among other things, the defense seems intent on attacking Strike 3’s evidence-gathering technology, while the adult company will counter by pointing out that the defendant destroyed important evidence on his computer.

 

Whether the trial will keep Strike 3 busy enough to prevent a new piracy case record has yet to be seen. To reach this milestone, the company ‘only’ has to file 1,129 complaints in the second half of the year.

 

In recent years, pirate streaming platforms have surpassed torrent sites and direct download portals in terms of popularity.

 

These portals offer the ‘on-demand’ convenience many people have grown accustomed to. For site operators, the streaming business also has its advantages.

Piracy as a Service

The streaming boom has created a new branch of pirate entrepreneurs that offer “piracy as a service”. This includes platforms that provide access to a library of pirated content, which streaming sites can subsequently use to embed movies and TV shows.

 

This means that site owners no longer have to source and store content. They simply connect an API to the backend of their public-facing streaming portal. Front-ends can also be bought in the form of pre-packaged scripts and templates, if needed.

 

2Embed is one of the pirate libraries that has taken the pirate streaming world by storm. The site offered access to a catalog of pirate streaming links for 300,000 movies and TV shows, which could easily be embedded in any website using an IMDb ID for reference.

 

2embed.to embeds

 

The service has long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has repeatedly reported 2Embed to the U.S. Trade Representative. In its most recent filing, the MPA wrote that hundreds of streaming sites relied on 2Embed, a service that it had linked to Vietnam,

 

“Pirate site operators can either use 2embed’s service for free, in which case 2embed remunerates itself by inserting ads, or use its paid service that allows them to insert their own ads. MPA has evidence of the site’s connection to Vietnam.”

 

Hollywood’s concerns didn’t go unheard. Both the U.S. Trade Representative and the European Commission highlighted 2Embed as a notorious piracy source. Vietnamese authorities started to take an interest in the problem as well.

2Embed Shuts Down

Last week, representatives from the MPA and the affiliated anti-piracy group ACE visited Vietnam, speaking with local government officials. Around the same time, ACE booked a major success by shutting down 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator.

 

“[T]he service was shut down through direct operator outreach,” ACE chief Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak, noting that the action directly impacted hundreds of streaming sites.

 

“Of the 457 streaming sites identified by ACE as using 2Embed as their exclusive source of content, 302 are now unavailable, offline or devoid of content since ACE took the service down. These 302 sites received a combined 2.756 billion visits in the past two years.”

Domino Effect

According to ACE, Fmoviesto.site was the largest site hit by the shutdown. The streaming portal had nearly 15 million visits in May. At the time of writing, Fmoviesto.site appears to be streaming pirated content again, but others still display an error message, as seen below.

 

Refused to connect

 

The 2Embed takedown is a significant blow to the pirate streaming ecosystem. Many of the affected streaming portals may eventually recover using alternative video libraries, such as the copycat service 2embed.cc, but other sites are threatened more directly.

 

Van Voorn explains that the 2Embed operator is also behind other popular sites. This includes Zoro.to, which has over 200 million monthly visits and is currently the 180th most visited website in the world. ACE is in discussions with the Vietnamese operator to shut this site down as well.

 

These negotiations ran into complications earlier today when Zoro.to announced that the site had been “acquired” by a new dev team. The domain now redirects to Aniwatch.to, which is probably not the resolution ACE was aiming for.

Vietnamese Connections

MPA and ACE are not likely to let this issue go easily, though, especially at a time when they’re strengthening their relationships with Vietnamese authorities. A few days ago, the anti-piracy group met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), to discuss future cooperation.

 

ACE/MPA meeting with Vietnamese officials (photo)

 

Through this meeting, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Public Security, Le Quoc Hung, asked MPA and ACE to share intelligence going forward so that both sides can cooperate in their efforts to curb online piracy and copyright infringement.

 

According to Van Voorn, who was present in Vietnam, the job is not done yet.

 

“There is much to do in Vietnam, which has become a major global source and exporter of pirated content. But engagement with the government, particularly the Ministry of Public Security, is progressing,” Van Voorn tells us.

 

It’s unclear which ‘Vietnamese’ sites and services are next on the list to be targeted. However, the MPA previously linked Fmovies.to, Myflixer.to, BestBuyIPTV.store, Abyss.to and Fembed.com to the Asian country.

 

Here’s a curious conundrum: given its extraordinary traffic and likely position as the world’s largest pirate site, why does Zoro.to feature so rarely in rightsholders’ public complaints over piracy?

 

One explanation could be the site’s age; at just over two years old, it’s possible that established sites are considered more of a priority.

 

Another factor could be that Zoro.to focuses on Japanese anime rather than mainstream Hollywood movies. But with over 205 million visits per month, all mainstream movie piracy sites are left behind in a cloud of dust double their size.

 

Zoro.to – Gone for good….

 

Based on average traffic levels reported by SimilarWeb, Zoro.to should receive over six million visits today alone. Those visitors are in for a surprise because starting a few hours ago, Zoro.to unexpectedly ceased to exist.

Zoro.to is Dead, Aniwatch.to Takes Over

Visitors to the Zoro.to domain are currently redirected to a new one; Aniwatch.to. The transition is seamless via a redirect, but the culture shock shouldn’t be too great for former Zoro.to users. Old logins appear to work on the new domain and apart from a new colour scheme, the design is very familiar indeed.

 

Aniwatch.to is the new Zoro.to

 

User reactions to the sudden change range from “nooooo what did they do to my boy zoro” to “WHAT THE **** IS ANIWATCH????” The most predictable center around a common theme: “why zoro turn into aniwatch?”

 

As questions go, that’s a good one.

Zoro.to Was “Acquired” By a New Dev Team

Pirate sites are known for moving to new domains. Domain seizures or suspensions can often play a part in sudden changes, but domain jumping has served two additional purposes more recently. Anti-piracy groups have spoken of the difficulties domain jumping can cause during investigations, but the second relates to search engine visibility.

 

Receiving too many DMCA notices can cause Google to derank sites from search results, but in this case it appears that the Zoro.to domain hasn’t yet reached the threshold. At the time of writing, Google reports the removal of around 43,700 URLs and it’s rumored that 50,000 may be the limit. A new domain may have been required shortly anyway but the reasons for today’s switch are reportedly different.

 

In response to some Zoro.to users having a meltdown over the domain and palette changes, a staff member explained that there is no need to panic over a management issue.

 

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

There Are Things Users Don’t Need to Know

On the basis that telling users anything about internal site operations is always a terrible idea, a couple of decades of history show that announcements like this one aren’t intended to provide useful updates to pirates. More likely than not, this is a message intended for those who would prefer to see Zoro.to consigned to history and already had a plan in place for that to happen.

 

Whether the cosmetic changes on display here will make much difference to the future of Aniwatch.to will remain to be seen, but it’s certainly possible that this move hasn’t been at the serious planning stage for very long. Activity on the new domain dates back around three months but development work related to the new domain/site that wasn’t secured from public view only dates back around 72 hours.

Tip of the Iceberg

The final factor worth mentioning is the large number of sites in operation today that look very much like zoro/aniwatch and have broadly the same functionality. These operate from separate domains but as a sample of just four shows, originality appears to be a problem.

 

 

The reason that so many of these similar-looking sites exist is pretty straightforward. The days of having to make your own site and obtain content from somewhere are well and truly gone.

 

Today it’s simply a case of buying a template, installing the script on a server, and waiting for thousands of movies to be pumped through as part of the package.

 

 

Of course, it’s not ideal for lots of sites to rely on a third party to supply all of the content; if that entity bites the dust, it’s game over.

 

But while it was game over for Zoro.to this morning, the appearance of Aniwatch.to shows that when a situation requires creativity, solutions are never too far away. That also applies to advertising; Zoro reportedly didn’t have too many ads but complaints about the rebranded platform are already coming in.

 

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 two newcomers on the list. “John Wick: Chapter 4”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 3 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(3)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.0 / trailer
2	(…)	Knights of the Zodiac	4.4 / trailer
3	(2)	Fast X	6.1 / trailer
4	(6)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
5	(6)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
6	(1)	Extraction 2	7.2 / trailer
7	(4)	Kandahar	6.0 / trailer
8	(8)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer
9	(…)	Nimona	7.7 / trailer
10	(9)	Transformers: Rise of the Beasts	6.6 / trailer

 

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

 

Many pirate sites have attracted large volumes of traffic over the years but a relatively new breed of streaming portals have taken things to a whole new level.

 

Excellent traffic levels a few years ago were measured in tens of millions of visits per month, but when Soap2Day suddenly threw in the towel around June 12/13, the site was receiving at least 108 million visits. Given that traffic levels were trending up and the site had no obvious technical issues, a zero-notice termination of a hugely successful platform prompts a single question: why now?

Legal Action in Canada

Dozens of reasons lie behind the closure of hundreds of sites over the years, but it’s extremely rare for highly successful sites to throw in the towel for minor reasons. A catastrophic team issue was a possible explanation when Soap2Day shut itself down, but the safer money was always on legal problems.

 

We can’t confirm the reasons from a direct source, but the following facts appear to leave very little doubt that Soap2Day shut down under massive legal pressure.

 

On May 31, 2023, major entertainment companies Bell Media, Netflix, Disney, Columbia, Universal, Warner, and Paramount, plus Get Er Done Productions and Spinner Productions, launched legal action at the Federal Court in Canada. The named parties were Soap2Day and a presumed operator of the platform listed only as ‘John Doe’.

 

The plaintiffs immediately sought an interim confidentiality order and on June 7, the Court obliged. The studios requested an interlocutory injunction pursuant to section 44 of the Federal Court Act and Rule 373 of the Federal Court Rules; the latter allows the Court to issue an injunction where there is a strong case to support copyright infringement and the plaintiffs face irreparable harm.

 

In short, the Court ordered the site to shut down and that’s exactly what it did.

Plaintiffs Seek Norwich Order

In Canada and the United Kingdom, the Norwich Pharmacal Order is often the discovery weapon of choice in cases involving online copyright infringement. First acquired in a case back in 1973/74, Norwich orders allow plaintiffs to obtain information regarding infringements from parties who may not themselves be involved in the alleged infringement. In this case, two service providers.

 

Court documents reveal that on June 12, 2023, Exclusive Technologies Inc. (doing business as domain registrar Register.to) was served with the statement of claim, letters from the plaintiffs, a confidential version of the plaintiffs’ motion, and a court order. OVH Hosting Inc. was served on the same day.

 

Soap2Day operated a .to domain and was known to utilize OVH servers. The Norwich order, which hasn’t been made public, will require the companies to hand over any information held on Soap2Day and its operator(s).

Shutdown Coincided With Operator(s) Being Served

Along with the site’s domain registrar and hosting company, Soap2Day’s ‘John Doe’ was served with various documents and a court order on June 12, via email.

 

 

The image below shows how Soap2Day’s landing page appeared on June 11, the day before Soap2Day was served.

 

 

This second image shows the site’s appearance on June 13, the day after ‘John Doe’ was electronically served and ordered to shut down the streaming platform.

 

 

How the case will progress from here is unknown. Whether Soap2Day’s operators have any direct connections to Canada other than retaining a domain with Register.to and server hosting with OVH is unclear.

 

A Zoom conference is scheduled for Tuesday and the defendants were instructed to file their response by June 29, but that doesn’t appear to have happened.

 

More than forty years ago in the early eighties, Texas Instruments home computers were all the rage.

 

The world wide web didn’t exist yet and most people interested in these new devices saw themselves as tinkerers or hackers.

 

These original ‘hackers’ tried to put the hardware to use in ways that others hadn’t envisaged. This was also the case for a Canadian teenager named Gary Bowser, who founded the company “Oasis Pensive Abacutors” (OPA) in March of 1985, a few months before the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in America.

 

These Oasis Pensive Abacutors had absolutely nothing to do with the successful gaming console, but Bowser would later become one of Nintendo’s largest threats. Under the nickname GaryOPA, Bowser was affiliated with the infamous Team-Xecutor, a group that Nintendo claimed had caused millions of dollars in losses.

 

Decades after launching his first computer company, Gary was living in the Dominican Republic, serving as a webmaster and news writer for the hacking group Team-Xecuter. This job netted between $500 to $1,500 per month, but it also led to a 40-month prison sentence following his arrest in 2020. It was a heavy price to pay.

 

Today, the former hacker is a free man again, looking for a job and seeking support through a GoFundMe campaign, hoping to build back his life piece by piece.

 

To understand where Gary came from and for much-needed context, decades of important history must be unpacked. The background is by no means an excuse, but it does add a much-needed human element to the Bowser jokes and million-dollar headlines produced by the press in recent years.

 

After his release from prison, Nick Moses helped to connect us with Gary, who kindly agreed to tell his side of the story, in his own words. This isn’t a tale of a typical criminal career; GaryOPA gradually slid into the business, which was far from his dream job or passion.

1983: OPA is Born

Gary’s venture into the world of computers became serious in his early teens. As an early adopter of technology and electronics, he taught himself how to code. The TI-99 home computer, released by Texas Instruments in the early ’80s, offered a welcome playground.

 

“I started out building hardware and software for the Texas Instruments Home Computers,” Gary notes, pointing us to some examples of the products on his new website GaryOPA.com.

 

At the age of sixteen (1985), this hobby grew into a company, launched with help from an inheritance from his mother who had just passed away. The name of the company, Oasis Pensive Abacutors, also explains the GaryOPA nickname he still goes by today.

 

Oasis Pensive Abacutors was a term Gary came up with to describe his goal of building a thinking (pensive) abacus computer (abacutor). This all happened after his family left the desert of Arizona and moved to Canada, which explains the final oasis reference.

 

OPA’s BOOK-KEEPER software

 

Gary’s company made hardware and software for other computer-minded people. This includes the BOOK-KEEPER software featured above. This program could be used to store a large volume of accounting data while supporting basic sorting and editing functions.

1993: Interactive Kiosks

This initial business venture went relatively well and continued under the OPA flag for roughly a decade. In 1993, Gary eventually moved on to run another company, New & Improved Technologies (NIT), using his knowledge to build interactive kiosks.

 

NIT eventually came up with the ‘GMTA System‘ that, among other things, was able to replace traditional advertising posters with digital versions displayed on a plasma screen. That was revolutionary at the time, as the promo text below shows, and some of this technology remains in use today.

 

GMTA promo text

 

For a while, the startup was destined for a great future, but the timing was horrible. GMTA relied on its own operating system and was incompatible with Windows, which was already taking over. As a result, the government permanently suspended its funding and shareholders pulled out, eventually leading to NIT’s demise.

1998: The Internet Starts Brewing

Gary didn’t stop tinkering with hard- and software after this setback. Computers remained his true passion and when the World Wide Web started to take off in 1998, he started the Ontario company “Gen-X Computers”; a PC building shop, Internet café, and gaming arcade in one.

 

This sounds like a geek’s dream job but the gaming element eventually opened the door to a darker side of technology that would dominate Gary’s life for the next two decades.

 

“It started with repairing gaming consoles, such as the Dreamcast, Xbox, and PS1, and then it was learning how to mod them,” Gary recalls. “On the computer side, I started learning about CD burners and such, it was a slow slide down the rabbit hole as they say.”

 

These activities were not limited to the offline world. By 2003, “GaryOPA” was a household name on various hacking-related gaming forums. First as a relative newbie, but it didn’t take long before he became the resident expert.

 

“Because of my advanced skills in designing hardware and coding on early computers, I quickly found out that working on modchips was basically just good old low-level coding. Soon after, I was building up my reputation on early scene sites including XboxHacker BBS, PSX-Scene, and Xbox-Scene.”

 

 

These sites, which are no longer around in their original form, also introduced Gary to various new contacts in the game hacking scene. That included XiaNaiX, the owner of PSX-Scene, who asked him to help manage and host the website.

 

At the end of the 2000s, the Canadian operated a thriving game and computer ‘repair’ business with multiple stores. The Internet café was still running as well and with one of the best Internet connections in Toronto, it became a good hosting location too.

2008 Criminal Investigation

While Gary enjoyed business success and his growing online reputation, he was suddenly introduced to the downsides. The Canadian authorities, likely tipped off by the gaming industry, started looking into the consoles and blank DVDs that passed through one of his stores. They suspected that it was hiding a massive modding operation.

 

It transpired that the store in question didn’t have any modded consoles or pirated games. However, pirated movies were sold as a side hustle at a flea market, where one of the investigators convinced an employee to sell a home arcade based on a modded Xbox.

 

The employee also agreed to sell two burned discs to the investigator. These homebrew discs were sold at the store, which implicated Gary, and these allegations were eventually brought before the court.

 

Fearing the worst, Gary and the employee committed to voluntary community service, even before a judgment was handed down. That paid off as the court agreed to issue a suspended sentence, while the company was allowed to continue doing business.

 

“I was not doing anything with pirated games, or modding consoles, just replacing Blu-ray lenses and DVD drives, re-balling, and replacing broken screens and cases on Nintendo DSs at the time,” Gary recalls.

Geohot

Despite the reminder that there can be consequences for tinkering ‘too much’ with consoles, GaryOPA continued to lecture on the subject online. And when George Hotz, aka Geohot, posted a copy of the PlayStation 3’s private key online, traffic to game hacking sites blew up.

 

This was also the case for PSX-Scene, which Gary was hosting, managing, and posting on at the time. With rivalry growing between game hacking sites, he suddenly had to advance his security skills. Meanwhile, legal pressure was building, especially after Geohot was sued by Sony.

 

Faced with growing turmoil, the owner of PSX-Scene wanted out. In 2011, he eventually sold the site to a third party, which aimed to unite several gaming sites. GaryOPA could stay on for a monthly salary of $500 if he promised to publish there exclusively, but he declined that offer.

 

“I decided that it was not worth the money, and my reputation and name were worth more than just $500 per month, Gary recalls.

 

This seemingly random decision seemed wise, but it was also the start of what would turn into one of the darkest periods of his life. After waving PSX-Scene goodbye, the site’s former owner referred him to someone else who needed help with gaming sites; Max.

 

Max ran a bunch of operations such as PS3Crunch and 360Crunch, which eventually merged into MaxConsole. Along with Gary, the same Max would later be named as a co-conspirator in a United States government indictment. Unlike Gary, however, Max is still on the run today.

 

Team-Xecuter

The shift from being a coder and builder who shared tips through online forums, to becoming part of Team-Xecuter – one of the largest hacking groups Nintendo has ever faced – happened before Gary could fully grasp what was going on.

 

At the end of the 2000s, Gary sold his Canadian business and moved to the Dominican Republic to work on real estate projects with a friend. That business failed after the 2008 crisis and his savings quickly vanished.

 

While managing and posting news on hacking-related sites wasn’t a dream job, Gary was happy to take it at the time.

 

Working on MaxConsole in the Dominican Republic

 

GaryOPA was put in charge of maintaining MaxConsole and earned a basic salary of $500 per month. As part of this deal, he had to post updates on modding devices and the Team-Xecuter suite of products. In addition, he was allowed to keep the site’s advertising revenue, pushing his overall income to somewhere around $1,000 per month.

 

This isn’t the scale of income one might associate with a ‘criminal’ but Gary never saw himself that way. As an original hacker, his main interest was to unlock the power of hardware for homebrew projects and to emulate old systems.

Millions?

The fact that Team-Xecuter wasn’t operating completely within the boundaries of the law wasn’t news, of course. Gary never actually met other Team-Xecuter people in person and only spoke to Max over the phone occasionally.

 

Gary didn’t see the millions of dollars being made either. On the contrary, he lived a pretty modest life in the Caribbean.

 

“I was not hosting the websites directly, nor was I profiting in the actual sales of devices and such. All that money went towards the actual developers and resellers,” he notes.

 

Gary’s main role was to post news and updates on the releases. This would then be picked up by other sources. He also acted as a middleman between testers and developers, ensured the sites were secure, and occasionally dealt with resellers.

 

With a hosting business on the side, Gary earned roughly $3,000 per month. That was plenty of money to get around, especially in a Caribbean country where an average lawyer earns around $1,200 per month.

 

While having enough money is great, the work wasn’t all that appealing. When we asked Gary to recall some of the best memories he has from that time, nothing in particular came to mind.

 

“I can not think of anything, it was just a daily grind of doing things, in some ways maddening, and not really my passion for making actual hardware and software. That is my first love, so between posting news on websites, keeping them running, and chatting with people, nothing really stands out.”

Arrest and Conviction

What did stand out was his turbulent arrest in 2020, which came as a complete shock, right around the time when the first Covid lockdown was ending in the Dominican Republic.

 

“It was a total surprise to me. I never thought they would go to the trouble of coming to the Dominican Republic. It’s not like I was running drugs or guns, or running away from murder,” Gary notes.

 

The evening before the arrest, Gary was looking forward to going out again for the first time in months. He loved going to the beach or driving around the island. He didn’t get the chance to do any of that.

 

“Instead, I woke up with guns pointed at my head, and me yelling at them, both in English and Spanish. Yet, they acted like I was speaking German or Russian, not answering my questions or telling me what was going on.”

 

Eventually, Gary found out that he was being taken to the Interpol office where his papers would be checked. If these were not valid, he would be kicked out of the country, which is what eventually happened.

 

INTERPOL Office in Santa Domingo

 

It was three days before Gary heard any news. In the meantime, he was locked in a metal case in the pouring rain, without any food.

 

“After three days they promised to buy me a Burger King meal and take me to the Canadian consulate. Instead, they drove me to the airport. There, I started yelling and screaming, demanding to speak to the Canadian consulate.”

 

Gary never arrived at the consulate but he did get a plane ticket to Toronto, Canada. While he boarded the plane, he never reached that destination either. Instead, U.S. authorities took him into custody during a mandatory refueling in New Jersey.

 

The arrest was the start of a trip to several jails around the country before he finally ended up in the Federal Detention Center, SeaTac, in Seattle. By then, months had passed and he could finally work with a lawyer to prepare his defense.

 

This is where history begins to meet court records, which we have reported on in detail over the past two years.

 

After pleading guilty, Gary was eventually sentenced to 40 months in prison for his role in the criminal enterprise. The sentence was significant but lower than the five-year prison term requested by the government. In part due to good behavior, he was released on May 25 this year, also known as Towel Day among nerds.

Getting Back on His Feet

Life in prison wasn’t easy but as a ‘people person’, Gary managed to get around, staying far away from trouble. Being a free man again today is a huge relief, but getting his life back on track isn’t easy.

 

“It hasn’t been easy trying to get things going again. It’s a daily struggle just to survive another day, basically being homeless, jobless, friendless, familyless,” Gary says.

 

“With just pure luck and a couple of good friends, I have been able to arrange a cellphone, laptop, and partial roof over my head, if you can call sofa-surfing a home. But I’m a strong-minded person, always stay positive, and plan things out; so my outlook on the future is good.”

 

Gary is hoping to get fully back up on his feet in the near future and he’s dreaming of a simple and legitimate job in the IT field. Ideally a remote job, due to his health problems.

 

Gary suffers from Lymphedema in his left leg, starting just below the kneecap down to the ankle. Wearing shoes is still possible, but long walks are a real and painful challenge.

 

A cane and wheelchair have been helpful to get around and Gary is also hoping that Canada’s public health care system can improve his condition. However, that requires a lot of paperwork and there are no guarantees that everything is covered.

 

“Hopefully I can get disability coverage and then proper treatment, but it’s not been easy without coverage,” Gary says.

Hopes and Dreams

Gary is grateful for the help he has received from friends over the past several weeks, but after everything that’s happened, plenty of people want nothing to do with him anymore.

 

“I will forever be remembered as a criminal, so there are a lot of people that will no longer talk to me. That includes people who were part of my actual family, including my half-sister and brother, who believe that I’ve tainted the Bowser family’s name.”

 

On the family side, Gary still has hopes and dreams as well. Having reached the respectable age of 54, he wouldn’t mind becoming a father again, if that opportunity presents itself.

 

“That’s a part of life I enjoy as well. I have raised a few sons over the decades. Sadly one of them, my adopted stepson, passed away in his early twenties in the Dominican Republic from vaping in 2019, just a year before my arrest.

 

“I have always been a father figure to people in their lives, and as such would not mind raising another kid,” Gary says.

 

Finally, there’s the passion that started it all. The tinkering, the hacking, and the TI99s. These are still in his future plans as well.

 

“My dream, once I have done the hard part of finding a job and a place to live, is to get back to my original passion for building retro hardware and software,” Gary notes.

 

“It all started with the Texas Instruments systems, and there’s currently a strong rebirth of hobbyists who produced some amazing new products for the over-40-year-old system.”

 

Gary demoing his OPA TI99 products at a TI Chicago Fair (early 90s)

 

Gary says that he wouldn’t mind sharing his retro ‘hacking’ knowledge in the gaming scene but from now on, he will make 100% sure that everything he does is completely legitimate.

 

—

 

People who want to learn more about Gary can check out his official website at GaryOPA.com as well as his GoFundMe page. Gary owes millions of dollars to Nintendo which he has to repay starting in December. He believes that these donations are separate from that.

 

The information shared in this article is filtered from an unchecked reflection of Gary’s memories.

 

The most dependable things in life tend to be the things most easily taken for granted. In the piracy ecosystem, that certainly applied to torrent site RARBG.

 

RARBG was never likely to win any prizes for being the best-looking site with bleeding-edge features. Nor would its operators hope to win any. What the site did was what any indexer of any content should strive for; plenty of well-organized and readily searchable content, all of it supported by ancillary sources of complementary data, with very little downtime and zero drama.

 

Until the site threw in the towel in May, RARBG met all of these requirements and made it look easy. The decision to shut down obviously came as a shock, but the complete lack of notice took everyone by surprise. There would be no closing down event, and no last few days to grab whatever people had taken for granted would always be available.

Backups Are Boring

As computing tasks go, backups are indeed pretty boring. The same can’t be said about not having a backup when you absolutely need one. A split-second decision to backup The Pirate Bay in 2006 saved the site and thanks to the silent work of archivists over several years, RARBG’s massive magnet link database didn’t die along with the site.

 

Following the RARBG shutdown, magnet link databases appeared on forums, file-hosting sites, even packaged up as torrents themselves. One early upload of more than 270,000 links appeared on GitHub and then took on a life of its own as contributors added to the database and created their own forks.

 

A subsequent readme file suggests that the archive later contained over six million magnet links, possibly one of the largest collections ever seen.

 

 

But just as RARBG gave no notice of its demise, these backups of backups also abruptly disappeared this week, removed by GitHub in response to a copyright complaint.

Entire Repositories Declared Infringing

Given the sheer volume of magnet links in the original repository, the chances of being hit with a DMCA takedown notice from one or more rightsholders from a pool of thousands were always relatively high. A mainstream rightsholder in the movie or music industry would’ve been a relatively safe prediction but would’ve been wide of the mark in this case.

 

“This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in 512(c) of the U.S. Copyright Law,” the DMCA notice reads.

 

“I am the copyright owner of the works and the following is true and accurate. I own full rights to these videos. I also have 2257’s, ID’s and model releases for them. I also have signed documents from the original producer(s) certifying I own them.”

 

Unusually, the DMCA notice published by GitHub lists no original works whatsoever. Presumably, they were present in the original notice and for some reason GitHub made a decision to redact. What we can deduce from the above is that the mention of ‘2257’ is a reference to 18 U.S.C §§ 2257 and the legal requirement to keep name and age verification records relating to performers in adult movies.

 

 

The DMCA notice initially lists four repositories (1,2,3,4) along with a request to remove them in their entirety.

 

“These entire repositories are infringing as they shares multiple links to content for which I own copyrights to. They also shares and provide ways to facilitate piracy of said content [sic],” the notice adds.

 

GitHub removed them but the end result was much more comprehensive.

It’s Over 900!

In addition to the first four named repos, the complaint demanded the removal of forks. Lots and lots of forks.

 

A note from GitHub states that because the reported network containing the allegedly infringing content was larger than 100 repos, and the submitter alleged that the forks were “infringing to the same extent” as the parent repository, the notice was actioned against the entire network.

 

What began as a takedown of a network of 45 repositories, ended up as a comprehensive takedown of 900 repositories, parent repository included.

Identity of DMCA Notice Sender: Unknown

In the interests of privacy, GitHub quite rightly redacts personal information from DMCA notices, but only rarely does it completely redact all information that would enable the identification of the sender. In this case, all information has indeed been redacted.

 

We can only speculate why GitHub made this decision, but one option is that the sender represented in a personal capacity (rather than under a corporate entity). It’s possible that they have a personal interest in the content beyond simply owning it, but those are the kind of details the redaction is designed to cloak.

 

The final question relates to the magnet links and the allegedly infringing content claimed to be connected to them. RARBG has been offline for more than a month, plenty long enough for there to be zero seeds or peers left in any number of swarms.

 

So, on one hand the magnet links referenced in the notice could be considered as facilitating infringement, if they still work. On the other, if the swarm has already died, those magnets are just strings of text and of use to no one. If anyone has a backup of the backup of the backup, over six million magnets need to be checked, just to be sure.

 

The DMCA takedown notice can be found here

 

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is the most active anti-piracy coalition, assisting enforcement efforts around the world.

 

The group is backed by prominent rightsholders such as Apple, BBC, beIN, Canal+, Disney, Sky, Netflix, and Warner Bros, as it systematically hunts down key piracy players.

 

Through new partnerships and connections, ACE expanded its work in the MENA region last year. This includes Egypt, where the coalition teamed up with local law enforcement to tackle several large streaming portals over the past months.

Movizland

This week, another casualty was added to this growing list. ACE announced that it assisted the authorities in taking down Movizland, a popular pirate streaming site that has been in business for over a decade.

 

As part of the enforcement action, the alleged owner was arrested. The site originally launched in 2012 by an Egyptian national, who operated it out of the Egyptian capital Cairo.

 

Movizland provided access to a library of roughly 34,000 movies and series and had roughly 12 million monthly visitors, spread across several domain names.

 

 

The streaming site was popular in the Middle East, with Egypt being the top traffic source. In recent months, Movizland was among the top 100 most visited websites in the country.

Taking Out Major Players

ACE boss Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak that his organization brought this case to the attention of the authorities after it identified the operator. This person was located through an in-house investigation by ACE, where third-party subpoenas also proved useful.

 

The anti-piracy group regularly targets third-party intermediaries, including domain name registries and CDN provider Cloudflare, with subpoenas that request information on pirate sites. This occasionally leads to useful information.

 

The takedown of Movizland follows after earlier successes against various sports streaming sites in Egypt, as well as other popular pirate streaming portals such as MyCima and Shahed4U.

 

“We are thankful for the continuous hard work of the Egyptian authorities to address these criminal networks,” Van Voorn tells TorrentFreak, adding that there is “more to come.”

Persistent Pirates

These enforcement efforts undoubtedly have an effect, and not just on the operators. Based on the responses on social media, many people are disappointed to see their favorite pirate streaming site offline.

 

Whether they will do much to eliminate piracy in the region is another question. For now, we have seen that pirate brands such as Egybest, MyCima, Shahed4U, Yalla-Shoot and Yallakora live on, presumably under different operators.

 

These alternatives typically start as clones and copycats but can eventually become just as popular as the original.

 

ACE hopes, however, that by continuing to apply pressure, most pirate site operators will eventually give up. That may work, but there’s plenty of work left to do; despite the takedowns, Egypt’s top 100 most visited websites list still features dubious streaming sites.

 

Generative AI models such as ChatGPT have captured the imagination of millions of people, offering a glimpse of what an AI-assisted future might look like.

 

The new technology also brings up novel copyright questions. Several rightsholders are worried that their work is being used to train AI without any form of compensation, for example.

 

How these and other copyright questions will be dealt with is not entirely clear. Governments around the world are taking different approaches, with U.S. Congress recently stating that it doesn’t plan to overreact. Meanwhile, rightsholders don’t intend to stand idly by.

Authors Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement

This week, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing ChatGPT’s parent company of copyright infringement and violating the DMCA, among other things. According to the authors, ChatGPT was partly trained on their copyrighted works, without permission.

 

The proof for this claim is seemingly simple. The authors never gave OpenAI permission to use their works, yet ChatGPT can provide accurate summaries of their writings. This information must have come from somewhere.

 

“Indeed, when ChatGPT is prompted, ChatGPT generates summaries of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works—something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,” the complaint reads.

Pirate Training

While these types of claims are not new, this week’s lawsuit alleges that OpenAI used pirate websites as training input. This potentially includes Z-Library, a shadow library of millions of pirated books that’s at the center of a criminal prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

OpenAI hasn’t disclosed the datasets that ChatGPT is trained on, but in an older paper two databases are referenced; “Books1” and “Books2”. The first one contains roughly 63,000 titles and the latter around 294,000 titles.

 

These numbers are meaningless in isolation. However, the authors note that OpenAI must have used pirated resources, as legitimate databases with that many books don’t exist.

 

“The only ‘internet-based books corpora’ that have ever offered that much material are notorious ‘shadow library’ websites like Library Genesis (aka LibGen), Z-Library (aka Bok), Sci-Hub, and Bibliotik. The books aggregated by these websites have also been available in bulk via torrent systems.”

 

 

Based on these data points, the complaint concludes that OpenAI committed copyright infringement. As compensation, the plaintiffs demand statutory damages, which can reach $150,000 per work. Additional damages for the alleged removal of copyright management information, in violation of the DMCA, are also on the table.

AI, Piracy and Copyright

There is no direct evidence that OpenAI used pirate sites to train ChatGPT. That said, it is no secret that some AI projects have trained on pirated material in the past, as an excellent summary from Search Engine Journal highlights.

 

The mainstream media has picked up this issue too. The Washington Post previously reported that the “C4 data set,” which Google and Facebook used to train their AI models, included Z-Library and various other pirate sites.

 

“At least 27 other sites identified by the U.S. government as markets for piracy and counterfeits were present in the data set,” the article added.

 

The present lawsuit will be closely watched by AI enthusiasts and rightsholders. It may result in OpenAI having to disclose some of its training data, which would be interesting in its own right

 

Even if it transpires that ChatGPT was trained with pirated books, the court would still have to decide whether that amounted to copyright infringement. Some experts believe that this type of AI training can be considered fair use.

 

Fair use protects transformative uses of copyrighted works that don’t compete with the original content. According to several experts, that defense could likely apply to AI training cases.

 

—

 

A copy of the complaint filed against OpenAI at the federal court for the Northern District of California is available here (pdf)

 

For responsible adults with decades of experience from which to draw their own conclusions, the idea that adults we have never met have the power to govern our online activities is a borderline insult.

 

Of course, governments have a responsibility to protect all, so for every person who gets upset at politicians poking around in their private business, theory suggests there should be others who stand to benefit from whatever intervention is currently under discussion. And as responsible adults, that is taken into consideration.

 

The looming problem is that once ‘protection measures’ are put in place for even the most well-intentioned reasons, they are usually there to stay and always vulnerable to mission creep. If the wrong government somehow gains power, outright abuse can never be ruled out. In the meantime, others may claim entitlement to protection too, through the courts if necessary.

 

Developed by UK ISP BT at an estimated cost of £500,000, the Cleanfeed content-blocking system was launched in 2004 with the stated aim of preventing access to child abuse material. For most people in society, that was considered a positive move but just a few years later, the very existence of Cleanfeed was seen as an opportunity.

 

In an effort to suppress Usenet indexer Newzbin, Hollywood studios sought and won an injunction that compelled BT to use Cleanfeed to block the site, with the studios admitting that the company was targeted because it had the tools in place to implement blocking. In June 2023 alone, over 850 new entries appeared on UK ISPs’ blocklists.

French Government Says it Wants to Protect

The French government’s drive to prevent children from accessing pornographic content online is well-documented. Few disagree that widely available and openly accessible ‘tube’ sites are unsuitable for minors, but in a world where parental responsibility is considered old-fashioned, not to mention ineffective, France believes that legislation is the only way to protect the country’s children.

 

In parallel the government is on the verge of passing new law that aims to protect adults from the dangers of online fraud. Given the scale of the problem and law enforcement’s lacking response globally, what could possibly be wrong with that? According to Mozilla, the people behind the Firefox browser, almost nothing – if it’s done properly, at least.

France Demands “Dystopian Technical Capability”

“In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability,” Mozilla reported this week.

 

“Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill [below, translated] would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.”

 

 

“While motivated by a legitimate concern, this move to block websites directly within the browser would be disastrous for the open internet and disproportionate to the goals of the legal proposal – fighting fraud,” Mozilla continued.

 

“It will also set a worrying precedent and create technical capabilities that other regimes will leverage for far more nefarious purposes. Leveraging existing malware and phishing protection offerings rather than replacing them with government provided, device level block-lists is a far better route to achieve the goals of the legislation.”

 

Of course, major browsers currently make use of Google’s Safe Browsing system, which alerts visitors to flagged sites that there could be trouble ahead. Users can continue to those sites if they so wish, but Mozilla warns that the language in the current proposal is focused on website blocking and contains nothing to ensure privacy or prevent the blocking system being used for other purposes.

 

“Forcing browsers to create capabilities that enable website blocking at the browser level is a slippery slope. While it might be leveraged only for malware and phishing in France today, it will set a precedent and create the technical capability within browsers for whatever a government might want to restrict or criminalize in a given jurisdiction forever,” Mozilla warns.

 

“If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments,” the not-for-profit foundation concludes.

 

And not just requests from governments either. In 2023, it seems like everyone wants something blocked. Having a system already in place won’t make that any more difficult, nor will it deal with the source of the problem.

 

Image credit: pixabay/geralt

 

Rightsholders operating business models that attempt to turn piracy into revenue are always looking for ways to streamline their work to reduce costs and maximize profits. Identifying infringers in bulk is one of the favored options.

 

In 2016, a group of movie companies known for their pursuit of alleged BitTorrent pirates attempted something rare in Canada. Voltage Pictures, Cobbler Nevada, Ptg Nevada, Clear Skies Nevada, and several other companies filed an application at Federal Court requesting certification of a reverse class action.

 

Their targets were an unspecified number of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared movies, including The Cobbler, Pay the Ghost, Good Kill, Fathers and Daughters, and American Heist.

Building a Case Around Single Defendant

The plaintiffs (collectively ‘Voltage’) built their case around a single customer of ISP Rogers, initially known only as John Doe #1. Voltage claimed the subscriber had uploaded all five movies and after obtaining his personal details via a so-called Norwich disclosure order (which included a trip to the Supreme Court), Robert Salna became the plaintiffs’ point of focus.

 

Salna owns several rental properties and provides internet access to his tenants. Salna said that they must be responsible for the alleged infringements, something they denied. Voltage subsequently added the tenants to the case but then discontinued the action against them.

Significant Opposition, Federal Court Denies Certification

Schemes targeting large numbers of internet subscribers are fraught with difficulties and rarely popular beyond the plaintiffs. Interveners in the case included Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Bell Canada, Cogeco Connexion, Rogers Communications, Sasktel, Telus Communications, Videotron, and Xplore.

 

All opposed the class action approach and in November 2019, the Federal Court supported their position. The Court found that since a file-sharing case involving many alleged infringers would require multiple individual fact-findings for each class member, class certification would be denied on all grounds.

Voltage’s Successful Appeal

Voltage and related plaintiffs have a reputation for exhausting every option before conceding defeat, a track record maintained in Canada. In 2021 at the Federal Court of Appeal, Justice Rennie set aside the 2019 Federal Court ruling, reversing it on all grounds.

 

The Court noted that while a reverse class action could benefit the plaintiffs, those accused of infringement could also take advantage by pooling their resources. The case was then referred back to the Federal Court with two questions: was a reverse class action the preferable procedure in this case, and did Voltage have a workable litigation plan?

 

In deciding the latter, the Federal Court would be required to revisit Voltage’s proposal to use Canada’s ‘notice-and-notice’ infringement warning program to communicate with alleged infringers. The system was put in place to allow rightsholders to notify subscribers, via their ISPs, that their connections had been monitored sharing copyrighted content.

 

The Federal Court previously ruled that the system could not be used to facilitate communication in a class action, a point on which the Court of Appeal subsequently disagreed.

Federal Court Again Weighs Arguments

In a process over six years old, Voltage’s goal of targeting more than 55,000 subscribers in a class action has faced deterioration over time. As of September 16, 2022, potential class members (internet account subscribers who allegedly infringed Voltage’s copyrights during the previous six months) had been reduced to less than 1,000.

 

According to the Federal Court’s estimate in its order handed down June 26, the figure is now ‘just’ 874 subscribers. Justice Fothergill said that even if the class comprised 874 members, he was satisfied that Voltage had demonstrated “some basis in fact” for the conclusion that a class proceeding is indeed the preferable procedure in this matter.

 

“A class proceeding will permit the determination of common issues based upon a single set of pleadings. The common issues will be decided on the basis of common evidence, including expert evidence. Respondent Class Members may pool resources to fund the defense, and may advance a coordinated position with the assistance of Class Counsel. This in turn alleviates the risk of inconsistent judgments,” his order reads

 

“A class proceeding may permit Respondents to benefit from a higher degree of anonymity. They may choose to identify themselves only to Class Counsel. By contrast, individual applications, including those commenced against multiple respondents, will require identification of each respondent by name unless the Court grants a confidentiality order.

 

“Another major advantage of a reverse class proceeding is that any settlement must be approved by the Court. This is an important safeguard against ‘copyright trolling’, where respondents are pressured to settle unmeritorious claims under threat of significant litigation costs.”

ISP Interveners Object

As is often the case when rightsholders target large numbers of internet users, ISPs are expected to assist in processes that involve their subscribers and their data. In this case the ISPs objected to Voltage’s plan, which would require them to send a class action “Certification Notice” to the alleged infringers and “retain data on identities of their subscribers until following final determination of the hearing on the merits (including any appeals).”

 

The ISPs said that retaining subscriber data would mean the unrealistic proposition of storing all data for all customers for years, redesigning their software and databases to automatically preserve only data retroactively selected by Voltage, or manually saving data for potentially tens of thousands of customers.

 

Inevitably the ISPs would face other subscriber-related issues, including customers calling for legal advice and the need to train staff to deal with these sensitive discussions. Some customers may choose to complain or blame their ISP for their predicament, or even leave to join another ISP. Others may be tempted to sign up with bogus contact information to avoid legal liability, preventing ISPs from contacting their own customers in relation to their accounts or developing business with them.

 

More fundamentally, the ISPs said that using the “notice-and-notice” system to communicate with class members would be illegal under Canadian law. The Federal Court agreed and said that would not happen.

 

“[V]oltage’s proposed use of the notice-and-notice regime to advance this class proceeding is inconsistent with the Copyright Act, and is contrary to law,” Justice Fothergill’s order reads. “It is therefore unnecessary to reach definitive conclusions regarding the ISPs’ concerns about cost, inconvenience and the potential disruption of their relationships with their subscribers.”

Federal Court Again Denies Class Certification

In conclusion, the Federal Court found enough deficiencies in Voltage’s litigation plan to deny class certification, at least for now.

 

“Voltage remains at liberty to present a revised litigation plan that does not depend on the notice-and-notice regime in the Copyright Act to identify and communicate with Class Members, and that makes adequate provision for the funding of Class Counsel,” the order reads.

 

How the case will progress from here is unclear. In very basic terms, the settlement model favored by Voltage is no different from any other business; costs of doing business are weighed against anticipated revenue (via settlements) and if the difference represents an acceptable return, there’s a reason to press ahead.

 

Since free use of the notice-and-notice has now been ruled out, costs appear to be going in the wrong direction, something particularly problematic in Canada. Unlike most other regions where Voltage is active, Canada places a $5,000 cap on non-commercial infringement, something that significantly dampens the psychological pressure to settle “or else”.

 

Justice Fothergill’s order can be found here (pdf)

 

YouTube’s Content ID system helps rightsholders and content creators prevent copyright infringement.

 

Copyright holders can either remove problematic content from the video platform, or they can choose to monetize it.

 

Monetization is preferred in many cases and can be quite lucrative. Over the years, the Content ID platform has generated more than $9 billion in ‘claimed’ advertising revenue.

Criminal Content ID Scam

This option isn’t just utilized by legitimate owners, scammers have been making use of it too. While it’s unknown how often the system is abused, an indictment published by the Department of Justice in late 2021 showed that a U.S. company run by two men built a multi-million dollar business on this scheme.

 

A criminal investigation had uncovered a massive YouTube Content ID scam. By falsely claiming to own the rights to more than 50,000 songs, the pair generated more than $24 million in revenue.

 

The scammers’ company, MediaMuv LLC., wasn’t a direct member of the Content ID program. Instead, it operated through a trusted third-party company, which had access to the platform,

 

Last year, one of the defendants confessed to his part in the ‘MediaMuv’ copyright swindle by pleading guilty. Webster Batista Fernandez described it as a relatively simple scheme: find Latin American music that wasn’t yet monetized on YouTube and claim the content as their own.

 

The ‘number two’ of the operation, Jose Teran, signed a plea agreement this February. While he wasn’t the driving force, Teran participated in the criminal conspiracy and plead guilty to money laundering and wire fraud.

Appropriate Sentence?

This week, Teran was the first to be sentenced for his role in the operation. The defense requested a mild probation or home confinement sentence, which would allow the defendant to continue to care for his family.

 

“[Mr. Teran] respectfully asks that the Court exercise its discretion to sentence him in a manner that allows him to continue supporting his family while working to make the victims whole,” the attorney wrote.

 

The prosecution, on the other hand, argued that a multi-year prison sentence would be more appropriate, to deter Mr. Teran and other scammers from abusing the Content ID system in future.

 

“Teran personally obtained more than $6 million in personal profit, which he used to sustain a lavish lifestyle. In addition to the harm Mr. Teran caused and the exorbitant profits that he reaped; a significant sentence is warranted to deter future conduct,” the Government argued.

Court Issues 70-Month Prison Sentence

After reviewing these two opposing positions, U.S. District Court Judge Douglas L. Rayes sided with the Government’s take, sentencing the defendant to 70 months in prison followed by three years of probation.

 

 

In addition to the prison sentence, Mr. Teran will forfeit various properties. These include a house in Phoenix, a Tesla Model C, a BMW i8, and bank accounts containing over a million dollars.

 

This is the first sentencing in this criminal Content ID case. The second defendant, who is seen as the leader of the operation, is expected to be sentenced later this year.

 

The scale of this scam was unprecedented but abuse of YouTube’s broader set of copyright tools certainly isn’t. Google previously went on the record stating that tens of thousands of accounts are terminated each year due to dubious copyright infringement claims.

 

Following a piracy crackdown in Denmark and the closure of the largest torrent sites as part of a joint Rights Alliance and police operation, content-hungry pirates dispersed to find new homes.

 

With DanishBits and NordicBits consigned to history, many ended up at Asgaard, a relatively young private members site happy to take on new members.

 

Opening up under these circumstances was a bold but risky move. Within weeks the site’s operators belatedly arrived at the same conclusion and decided to shut down before things got out of hand. They were already too late; multiple arrests, a string of prosecutions, and several convictions followed.

 

Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance is now reporting the details of yet another Asgaard-related conviction.

Sharing Pirated eBooks & Paywalled Articles

Asgaard announced its closure in mid-December 2020 but that didn’t stop at least one of the site’s staff spending Christmas in prison.

 

The announcement also failed to prevent Rights Alliance and Danish police from investigating offenses that took place months before Asgaard offered to take in new members. Or indeed, offenses that took place even after Asgaard shut down.

 

According to Rights Alliance, a member of Asgaard was also part of a piracy release group known as ‘Xoro6’. Between July and December 2020, the now 41-year-old man from Funen illegally copied and shared over 1,000 eBooks, audiobooks, newspaper articles and magazines with other Asgaard users.

 

Around 85 of the articles were obtained from a paywalled service operated by Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet. The anti-piracy group says that the man gained access to the platform using credentials belonging to legitimate subscribers to the service.

Six-Month Suspended Prison Sentence

On June 22, 2023, at the Court of Odense, the former Asgaard member was handed a six-month suspended sentence for sharing the eBooks and the paywalled articles obtained using the credentials of unsuspecting Ekstra Bladet+ subscribers. But that wasn’t all.

 

“The 41-year-old was also convicted of eight counts of fraud in online shopping,” a statement from Denmark’s National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) adds.

 

“Here, he had falsely claimed to the sellers that he had either not received the goods or had returned them. Therefore, he unjustifiably got his money back.”

 

Rights Alliance says the man defrauded online stores to the tune of DKK 17,229 ($2,524) but his offending didn’t stop there.

Plex Server Subscriptions

The man was reported to the authorities in January 2021 for the eBook and article-sharing offenses but despite the shutdown of Asgaard, infringement of other types of media continued.

 

“He then became involved in running a Plex server where at least 3,468 movies and series were made available to paying customers. A relationship for which he was also convicted in court,” Rights Alliance notes.

 

“Here he was responsible for advertising the Plex server on platforms such as Discord and also for registration, payment and guidance of the service’s customers, who could buy access to the server for DKK 100 [US$15] per month.”

The Slippery Slope

“It is not the first time that we see cases like this, where illegal sharing of creative content easily becomes a criminal slippery slope to more serious offenses,” says Rights Alliance director, Maria Fredenslund.

 

“It is therefore important to intervene early, so that we avoid rights holders as well as general consumers and companies being exposed to a wide range of criminal acts.”

 

On top of his suspended sentence, the man was also ordered to pay DKK 41,715 (US$6,111) compensation to Rights Alliance. Given the level of offending and the aggravating factors, that’s not much compared to similar cases elsewhere. Nevertheless, NSK deputy prosecutor Brian Borgstrøm says the outcome is acceptable.

 

“I am satisfied with the verdict, which emphasizes that organized and systematic infringement of copyright is a form of crime which the authorities take seriously,” Borgstrøm concludes.

 

When The Pirate Bay launched nearly 20 years ago, its main goal was to become a bastion of free and uncensored information.

 

The site categorically rejects takedown requests from copyright holders and allows anyone to upload almost anything.

 

Since its early days, The Pirate Bay has always been free to use and open to the public at large. Those who wanted to share files only had to register an account, which was easy enough.

Registrations Closed to Stop Spam

The last sentence is in the past tense, as user registrations were effectively disabled four years ago. The last ‘new’ user was added to the torrent site on May 22, 2019, and, after that, there were no signs that registrations would reopen anytime soon.

 

The TPB team initially said that registrations had been closed to stop floods of malware torrents. This type of abuse was a major problem for the site’s moderators who asked the main operator to temporarily disable registrations.

 

The plan was to address the problem by putting a limit on the number of torrents users could upload in a given timeframe. That would prevent hundreds of spam torrents from being uploaded at once, so TPB could accept new users again and continue business as usual.

 

This temporary fix stayed in place for four years but this week, registrations were opened once again. The recent closure of ‘rival’ torrent site RARBG played a major role in this development.

 

RARBG’s demise took out a major supplier of new torrents. There are currently only a few public torrent sites where users can register, so the TPB moderators were concerned that a generation of potential uploaders would be lost.

Manually Approved Registrations

The team shared their concerns with TPB operator “Winston” who came up with a solution that was officially deployed a few hours ago.

 

New Pirate Bay registrations are not completely automated. TPB administrator Spud17 informs TorrentFreak that new users must apply for an account at the official SuprBay forums, where moderators will manually create accounts using a new tool.

 

This hands-on approach will help to prevent scammers and spammers from flooding the site. Users will be able to register directly in future but all accounts will still have to be approved before they are activated.

 

“For those who have waited years to upload, they now have the chance to get an account,” Spud17 says, pointing to the SuprBay thread.

 

“Whether they want to upload niche stuff every now and again, or be one of the next big scene uploaders – all are welcome. Except for the nitwits who flood the site with crap, but we’ll just nuke their arses.”

Limited # Uploads

The Pirate Bay has shown signs of deterioration in recent years. In addition to closed registrations, the comment sections under each torrent have been disabled for years and are not expected to come back anytime soon.

 

Whether new users will trigger an inflow of more content has yet to be seen. New accounts are limited to 50 uploads per day but those who plan to be more active than that can request an exception.

 

“Should anyone have designs on becoming a prolific scene uploader, you can request the limit be lifted once your account is established,” Spud17 writes.

 

After years of legal trouble, it appears that The Pirate Bay has entered calmer waters. There haven’t been any prolonged outages like we have seen in the past. That said, the site will always remain a top target for law enforcement and rightsholders, so a sudden storm is not unthinkable.

 

On the surface there’s a world of difference between the crisp-suited executives of international corporations and the internet-dwelling swashbucklers intent on reappropriating their copyrighted content as swiftly as possible.

 

In reality, the closer one gets to the piracy front lines, the more difficult it is to tell the factions apart. They use similar tools and obfuscation techniques, need to innovate to stay ahead of the game, and even participate in the same discussions. Earlier this year a group of ‘pirates’ on Reddit obtained all kinds of information on at least a dozen pirate apps using ancient lost arts; opening accounts months earlier, pretending to be almost clueless, and then just blatantly asking.

 

Totally unsurprisingly, there was zero shortage of helpful pirates willing to answer, but these kinds of efforts are only useful in limited circumstances and can only yield so much useful intelligence. Technical information needs to be obtained methodically before being meticulously documented, potentially for use in future legal action against pirates themselves or intermediaries – or both.

IFPI – Content Protection & Enforcement

Global recording industry trade group IFPI has a sophisticated anti-piracy team tasked with mitigating threats, gathering evidence for use in legal action, and staying on top of the latest piracy trends.

 

In a job listing posted Monday, the group called out for a new technical investigator to join the team at IFPI’s impressive headquarters in London.

 

“The ideal candidate will have well-rounded technical knowledge and be capable of analyzing and testing infringing services and producing written reports in a clear and concise manner. The candidate will work closely with the technical investigators and analysts within the team, developers, operational staff, and lawyers, as well as law enforcement professionals,” the listing reads.

Responsibilities

While prosecutions are still carried out in the UK, most music pirates have moved on from selling pirate CDs at the local market. The role at IFPI seems to be a thoroughly digital affair, with investigations focused on pirate apps, social media platforms, and online streaming services.

 

The successful candidate will also have knowledge of ancillary technologies, including blockchain, decentralization, metaverse and gaming platforms, and of course, Artificial Intelligence. They will also have a blemish-free past, which IFPI will confirm via an enhanced background check. These checks go beyond convictions and include any information the police may have on record that’s considered in some way relevant.

OSINT & Technical Investigations

While techniques and tool availability have developed significantly in recent years, the basic questions requiring answers in any piracy investigation remain the same; how does the infringing service or platform deliver content to end users, where does that content come from, what type of infrastructure supports it, and who are the humans involved and what roles do they play.

 

Investigations can be triggered when a new app appears online. Whether iOS or Android (mostly the latter), the process is the same; find out how the app functions, and then determine where the content comes from and how. The IFPI job listing gives little away on the specifics but does state that the successful candidate will have experience with three specific tools – Wireshark, Charles, Postman.

In Your App, Sniffing Your Traffic

There’s no doubt that Wireshark is the best-known tool of the three. Launched in the late 1990s and originally called Ethereal, Wireshark is the leading network protocol analyzer by far and is used by millions of people worldwide.

 

Wireshark is also completely free of charge but for most novices, completely overwhelming too, at least in the beginning.

 

For those who persevere, Wireshark offers a window into the hidden world of protocols, packets and networking, and is as proficient at monitoring the communications behavior of a regular browser accessing YouTube, as it is monitoring a mobile piracy app, or sniffing out unauthorized BitTorrent traffic on a network.

 

 

Wireshark is an extremely powerful tool and as likely to appear in a pirate’s toolbox as it is an anti-pirate’s. In most aspects Wireshark is more powerful than Charles, or Charles Proxy as it’s often known, but sometimes a more focused piece of software is preferable to all-out overkill. Charles has some interesting tricks up its sleeve.

 

Charles cited in a piracy investigation

 

While Charles also monitors traffic, it’s a web-debugging tool rather than a packet analyzer. In a typical scenario where an investigator wants to know how a new Android music streaming app works, the smartphone running the app (or an emulator) can be made to connect to Charles before it goes about connecting to external sources to stream music or obtain covers etc.

 

Meanwhile, Charles acts as a ‘man-in-the-middle’ silently listening and logging all activity, even when pirate app traffic is otherwise ‘protected’ by encryption. Charles can decrypt SSL/TLS connections, obtain cookies and grab passwords.

 

 

It sounds like the kind of behavior pirates might enjoy but on the piracy war frontlines, the sides have more in common than either would like to admit.

 

IFPI’s job listing can be found here

 

Artificial intelligence has the potential to make our lives more efficient, entertaining, and productive. There are potential downsides as well.

 

Major recording label Sony Music is taking this advancing technology very seriously and has created a new executive position dedicated to AI and hired a familiar name.

 

According to a recent article by Billboard, Geoff Taylor takes the top position as the new Executive Vice President of AI. The news was announced in an internal memo sent by Sony Music’s COO Kevin Kelleher.

From Anti-Piracy to AI

These types of appointments rarely apply to our reporting niche, but in this case there is a relevant piracy tie-in. Taylor previously headed UK music industry group BPI, which has been at the forefront of the anti-piracy battle for several decades.

 

In his 15-year tenure at BPI, Taylor was a strong advocate of new anti-piracy measures. This includes website blocking, where The Pirate Bay was one of the early targets.

 

“The Pirate Bay is no more than a huge scam on the global creative sector. It defrauds musicians and other creators of their wages, and it destroys UK jobs,” Taylor said in 2011, urging UK Internet providers to block the site voluntarily.

 

This voluntary blockade never came to pass but lawsuits initiated by BPI members eventually got the notorious pirate site, and many others, blocked across all major ISPs.

Taking on Google

After this success the music industry applied pressure to search engines, asking them to demote or completely remove known pirate sites from their search results. Again, Taylor didn’t shy away from making the matter personal.

 

“[Google] know very well what sites are illegal, because we send them notices, a million a week, yet coming on to search, very often those sites appear at the top of search results,” he said in 2013.

 

Google initially refused to downrank pirate sites, arguing that this would only lead to a game of Whack-a-Mole. However, a few months later the search engine officially announced pirate site demotion as a new anti-piracy strategy.

AI Challenges

The examples above are just a small selection of achievements that were booked under Taylor’s lead. While this says little about Sony Music’s AI strategy, there are certainly plenty of challenges there too.

 

Dennis Kooker, Sony Music’s President of Global Digital Business, previously noted that AI is a potential tool to work smarter and gain new insights. However, he stressed that this shouldn’t happen at the expense of copyrights.

 

“In particular we have serious concerns about the potential for AI-synthesized voice technology to be used at scale to cover songs and attempt to replace artists. This is something that we need to watch very closely,” Kooker noted.

 

These AI voice models are a major concern for Taylor and his new AI team, which will work closely with Sony’s Digital Business & Legal Affairs divisions. In a sense, artificial intelligence may prove to be a new ‘Napster moment‘ for the music industry.

A Napster Moment?

While some music industry insiders would like to erase AI for good, a more balanced approach may be more fitting going forward. In this regard, it’s worth revisiting Taylor’s reflections on the Napster battle, which were originally published fourteen years ago.

 

In an op-ed, Taylor admitted that embracing Napster might have been a better option than treating it as an adversary.

 

“That’s probably true, and I, for one, regret that we weren’t faster in figuring out how to create a sustainable model for music on the internet,” he wrote.

 

“In 1999 Napster developed a great digital service, but did so at the expense of music, while the music business protected music at the expense of progressing online digital services.

 

“The invention of Napster and all that has followed may soon deliver its greatest legacy – a renaissance in artistic creativity for the digital age,” Taylor added.

 

Indeed, Napster paved the way for unlimited music streaming services that are common today. When Taylor wrote these words years ago, streaming revenue was virtually nonexistent. Today, it represents more than two-thirds of total global recorded music revenue.

 

If and how AI will drive change in the music industry is unknown at this point, but Taylor’s own Napster reflections show that it might be wise not to dismiss a technology outright.

 

Over the years, Z-Library established itself as a premier source of pirated books, serving an audience of millions of users.

 

Up until a few months ago, this all happened relatively quietly but everything changed when the United States launched a criminal case against two of its alleged operators.

 

Z-Library lost access to over 200 domain names late last year and, a few weeks ago, the authorities carried out a new domain seizure round. Despite these enforcement actions and the pending criminal case, the remaining Z-Library team has no plans to throw in the towel.

Bots and Scams

Besides the long arm of U.S. law enforcement, Z-Library also faces pressure from other angles. The lost domain names drove a lot of traffic to scammy Z-Library knockoffs, for example, which still enjoy millions of visitors a month.

 

The shadow library was also challenged by a massive attack by ‘bots’ earlier this month, which caused various technical issues. Among other things, registrations weren’t working properly and email delivery was interrupted too.

 

The site nonetheless managed to stay afloat and a few days ago its operators released new software that aims to make the site more resilient and easier to access.

Z-Library Desktop Launcher

Over the past few months, Z-Library users accessed the site through a dedicated URL, which redirected them to a ‘personal’ domain that provided access to the library. This worked well but the entire operation could easily be wiped out by yet another round of domain seizures.

 

The new desktop launcher, which is available on the Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, will automatically redirect users to the right place, without being tied to a single domain name.

 

“This launcher will save you the trouble of searching for a working website link, as it will handle everything for you,” the Z-Library team announced a few days ago.

 

Z-Library Launcher

 

In addition to simplifying access, the new Z-Library launcher software is able to connect over the Tor network. This can help to evade blocking efforts while adding an extra privacy layer.

 

The software may trigger a warning noting that it’s from an unverified developer. According to Z-Library, this is a standard notice but, aside from the copyright infringement angle, people should always treat third-party applications with caution.

Supporting Copyright Law?

It’s not often that we see a service going full steam ahead in the face of an active criminal case against two of its alleged operators. In that respect the situation with Z-Library is reminiscent of how The Pirate Bay positioned itself years ago.

 

The Z-Library team itself sees “free access to literature” as its main driver.

 

“The goal of Z-Library is to provide free access to literature to as many people in need as possible. Books are the scientific and cultural heritage of all humankind, and we strive to preserve this legacy and use its power for the benefit of our society.”

 

Perhaps somewhat confusing, the shadow library also stresses that it’s not advocating in favor of piracy.

 

“We don’t promote piracy. The work of authors and publishers should be paid for and valued,” the Z-Library team explains, adding that it supports copyright legislation and doesn’t aim to change any laws.

 

Do’s and Don’ts

 

Interestingly, the U.S. Government used the same copyright law to seize Z-Library’s domains and arrest two of its alleged operators. The authorities highlighted that the service isn’t merely a non-profit outfit, suggesting that donations were also used to enrich the people involved.

 

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 one newcomer on the list. “Extraction 2”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on June 26 are:

 

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Extraction 2	7.2 / trailer
2	(2)	Fast X	6.1 / trailer
3	(4)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.0 / trailer
4	(3)	Kandahar	6.0 / trailer
5	(6)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
6	(5)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
7	(…)	The Machine	6.1 / trailer
8	(10)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer
9	(7)	Transformers: Rise of the Beasts	6.6 / trailer
10	(8)	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	9.0 / trailer

 

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

 

IPFS is a decentralized network that makes it possible to efficiently distribute high volumes of data between peers while avoiding downtime associated with regular hosting outages.

 

The IPFS project describes the system as a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to preserve and grow humanity’s knowledge by making the web upgradeable, resilient, and more open. Anyone who values these qualities is invited to come along for the ride using free, open source tools.

IPFS Gateways

For those who prefer not to install software but would still like to access content stored on IPFS, web gateways provide streamlined access to IPFS with zero fuss. IPFS gateways tend to be run by supporters and enthusiasts who charge nothing for their time and usually pay all of the bills.

 

Examples can be found here but in broad terms, public gateways aren’t particularly numerous. As reported in March, Cloudflare offers a free IPFS gateway yet despite having nothing to do with the content hosted in the network, still received over 1,000 copyright complaints in the first half of 2022.

 

Figures for the second half are yet to be published but if recent events are anything to go by, those numbers could be significantly higher in the next report.

Avalanche of Copyright Complaints

UK-based programmer James Stanley has a project page to make any geek smile. It begins with SCAMP, a homemade 16-bit CPU with a homemade programming language, before moving on to a robotic chessboard (accessible via API), and a footwear-based chess computer that allows Stanley to cheat at chess “hands-free and without any third-party assistance.”

 

Stanley is also the brains behind Hardbin.com, an encrypted pastebin-type service that utilizes IPFS. Unfortunately, Stanley took Hardbin down this week after being targeted by an anti-piracy entity demanding the removal of thousands of allegedly-infringing URLs.

 

“I received 3 DMCA takedown emails today, covering 7350 URLs on my hardbin.com IPFS gateway. The URLs were allegedly serving infringing copies of books,” his blog post reads.

 

Heavily truncated sample notice

 

Stanley posted the complaints to GitHub, with all three following a similar format; a demand for the immediate takedown of thousands of pieces of content that have nothing to do with the programmer, that he has no ability to take down, even if he wanted to.

Who’s Behind The Takedown Demands?

All three complaints (1,2,3) were sent from “notice@ciu-online.net” but as Stanley points out, it’s hard to say who is behind the notices.

 

Each notice claims to have been sent by ‘Gareth Young – Internet Investigator’ but where Young works isn’t made clear. Instead, the notices carry the names and addresses of three publishing companies; Wolters Kluwer Health (New York), Knovel, a subsidiary of Elsevier, Inc. (New York), and IEEE (new Jersey).

 

Stanley’s research turned up a ‘Gareth Young’ who apparently worked for law firm Covington & Burling LLP. Young is also the author of a slideshow that describes methods and tactics for taking infringing content down and making people’s lives more difficult.

 

 

The page above contains numerous options, and just as Mr Young suggested, the 5th option did indeed prove effective.

 

“I have now taken hardbin.com down completely because dealing with this sort of thing makes it less fun to run and more like hard work,” Stanley says.

IPFS: Technical Resilience Against Censorship

That Stanley’s work on Hardbin can’t be enjoyed by him or anyone else shows that it’s still possible to have a chilling effect on IPFS, despite its technical resilience to censorship.

 

It’s also worth noting that the DMCA takedown notices were sent directly to abuse addresses at the programmer’s host, rather than to him directly. It’s the kind of tactic that’s easily justified when dealing with an uncooperative pirate site but entirely unhelpful when dealing with innocent parties.

 

And then there’s the interesting evidence uncovered by Stanley when cross-referencing the 7,350 URLs against his reverse proxy logs.

 

“I did some bash-fu to extract the IPFS hashes from the emails and grep for them in my nginx logs, and was surprised to find not a single match,” Stanley explains. “None of them have ever been accessed, and of the ones that I checked, none even worked.”

Other IPFS Users Targeted

Sean Lang has been keeping records on the DMCA notices he’s received related to his gateway since February 2022.

 

“I currently operate an IPFS gateway on ipfs.slang.cx. I don’t publish or pin any content there, it’s only a resolver for content that’s available on the rest of the IPFS network,” Lang writes on GitHub.

 

“I get a lot of DMCA requests from running this. Currently I’m blocking 12367 files. They’re almost all books, although I don’t have nearly enough time to go through them manually.”

 

Lang says that the takedown notices are usually sent by a guy called Gareth Young and have at least one familiar quality.

 

“The weird thing is, [the system used] doesn’t actually verify that a given file is available through my server before sending a DMCA request. I’ve looked through the traffic logs, and the vast majority of the files listed in these takedown requests have never been requested in the history of my gateway. I haven’t checked all of them, but I’ve checked a lot,” Lang says.

 

In recent years, many people have canceled their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper Internet TV instead.

 

While there are plenty of legal streaming options available, there’s also a broad offer of IPTV services that are specifically set up to deliver content without permission from rightsholders.

 

These pirate IPTV services are often accessed through relatively cheap subscriptions. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no money to be made. According to a recent report, income surpassed €1 billion in Europe alone.

Giving Pirate IPTV Operators Credit

This industry isn’t just run by digital vigilantes in dark attics. The money that’s at stake attracts and breeds criminal elements of all sorts. According to a new report from the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), some operators are even ‘stealing’ from their customers.

 

The report, titled “Giving Piracy Operators Credit”, details how taking out pirate IPTV subscriptions led to surprise charges from all over the world.

 

The starting point of the research was a clean credit card. DCA investigators used this to sign up for 20 IPTV services to see what would happen. The names and URLs of all the platforms were shared in the report.

 

 

A few weeks after making these payments, unknown charges from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Lithuania started to show up. While it’s not clear which service(s) abused the credit card details, it suggests that not all were safe.

 

“Within weeks of signing up for piracy subscription services, Digital Citizens investigators’ credit card was targeted for $1,495 in illicit purchases – purportedly for grocery delivery, women’s apparel, computer software, a cash advance, and a large mystery charge of $850 that, fortunately, wasn’t processed.”

Mysterious Charges

Below is an example of a $17.21 charge from “Affectioni”, which DCA links to a woman’s apparel store in Qingdao City, China. Other fraudulent payments ranged from a few dollars to over $200. The $850 charge was blocked by the Capital One bank, which requested additional approval.

 

 

These findings suggest that it’s not a great idea to hand over one’s credit card to a shady IPTV service. That’s not rocket science, but it’s worth reiterating. However, it doesn’t mean that all IPTV providers are piggybacking on subscribers’ credit cards.

 

Generally speaking, it isn’t a great business model to steal from customers, if you’re looking to keep subscribers for the long run. However, some services apparently prefer instant gratification over a long-term relationship.

Call for Action

DCA understandably cautions people to stay away from these services. That may be a good idea for all services that operate illegally. In addition, the group urges consumer groups, online intermediaries, and the U.S. Government to step up.

 

Payment providers, for example, shouldn’t do business with pirate IPTV services and consumer groups must warn the public about the dangers involved. These warnings can also be issued by the Federal Trade Commission, to carry extra weight.

 

Last but not least, DCA urges U.S. law enforcement to use the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act (PLSA), which passed at the end of 2020, to bring more cases against criminal IPTV streaming services.

 

“Given that the piracy ecosystem is now a $2 billion industry, the Department of Justice should use that authority to target piracy operators. Doing so would be consistent with the DOJ’s prioritization of cracking down on ransomware schemes,” the report reads.

Survey Confirms Credit Card Trouble

In addition to the IPTV mystery shopping results, DCA also commissioned a survey among 2,330 Americans which found that roughly one in three admits to consuming pirated content at least once over the past year. Of these self-proclaimed pirates, 10% paid for a subscription.

 

The survey results suggest that those who visited pirate sites are at least four times more likely to experience identity theft or issues with malware. While there might be other factors at play that can partly explain this difference – such as the frequency of Internet use – the report suggests a connection to piracy.

 

Adding to the credit card fraud angle, the survey also found that 72 percent of those who used a credit card to pay for an IPTV subscription experienced a credit card breach. Of those who never visit pirate sites, 18 percent reported similar issues.

 

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A copy of the DCA report titled Giving Piracy Operators Credit is available here (pdf)

 

In 2021, the US Department of Justice launched a criminal proceeding against two men suspected of running a massive YouTube Content ID scam.

 

By falsely claiming to own the rights to more than 50,000 songs, the pair generated more than $23 million in revenue.

 

Last year, one of the defendants confessed to his part in the copyright swindle by pleading guilty. Webster Batista admitted it was a simple scheme: find Latin American music that wasn’t yet monetized on YouTube and claim the content as their own.

Guilty Pleas

In February of this year, the second defendant pleaded guilty. Jose Teran signed a plea agreement admitting that he was part of the conspiracy, engaging in wire fraud and money laundering.

 

As part of the deal, the defendant forfeited a house in Phoenix, several cars, and bank accounts totaling over a million dollars.

 

 

The Content ID scam was straightforward, Teran’s plea agreement revealed. The defendants simply identified unmonetized music and uploaded those songs to YouTube.

 

[W]e discovered there were recorded songs of musicians and bands on the internet that were not being monetized. We began searching and downloading these songs. Once songs were downloaded, Batista would then upload them to Y.T. as mp3 files.”

 

“We falsely claimed legal ownership over these songs to receive royalty payments,” Teran adds, noting that the scheme brought in millions.

 

To collect these payments Batista launched the company MediaMuv, which became a trusted YouTube Content ID member through a third-party company referred to by the initials A.R. As the scheme grew, more employees were hired and tasked with finding more unmonetized tracks.

Sentencing

Despite pleading guilty, both defendants face a multi-year stint in prison. Teran will be the first to be sentenced and this week, the defendant and the prosecution announced their respective positions.

 

According to the defense, Teran wasn’t the lead of the operation. As an aspiring musician he looked up to his co-defendant, who is portrayed as the brains behind the operation.

 

“While Mr. Teran admits to his involvement in the relevant criminal activity, Mr. Batista was the mastermind of the fraud scheme,” Teran’s attorney writes.

 

“Mr. Teran believed Mr. Batista to be a successful businessman in the music field with whom he could realize his dream of producing music, movies and music videos. Believing the co-conspirator to be a close friend, Mr. Teran was excited to be the recipient of the co-conspirator’s advice and partnership.”

 

This advice didn’t help Teran succeed in the music industry. Instead, it led him into a criminal conspiracy. This was clearly wrong but Teran believes that he will be a productive citizen going forward, so is asking the court for a lenient sentence.

70-Months in Prison

The U.S. Government also shared its sentencing position this week. The prosecution recognizes that Teran wasn’t the initiator of the scheme, but stresses that his role was significant.

 

Teran and Batista at one point had between five and eight people working for them. These employees used special software to find unmonetized music which they would then add to their catalog, to exploit YouTube’s Content ID system.

 

“Defendant, Jose Teran, engaged in a concerted effort—over nearly five years—to steal royalty proceeds from approximately 50,000 song titles, causing a loss of more than $23,000,000.00,” the prosecution writes.

 

“Teran personally obtained more than $6 million in personal profit, which he used to sustain a lavish lifestyle. In addition to the harm Mr. Teran caused and the exorbitant profits that he reaped; a significant sentence is warranted to deter future conduct.”

 

According to the sentencing recommendation, Teran continued to obtain fraudulent royalty payments after he was indicted. To send a clear message to others considering similar schemes, a serious prison term is warranted.

 

“A 70-month sentence is undoubtedly substantial but given Mr. Teran’s conduct and the need to deter future fraud, it is entirely warranted,” the Government’s sentencing memorandum concludes.

 

Jose Teran is scheduled to be sentenced later this month and Webster Batista will follow in August.

 

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A copy of the U.S. government’s sentencing memorandum is available here (pdf) and the defendant’s memorandum can be found here (pdf)

 

Italian authorities are reporting that officers of the Special Privacy Protection and Technological Fraud Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome have carried out a new operation against pirate IPTV.

 

Acting on a decree issued by the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Milan, 12 Italian nationals and one person of Albanian origins, living in several regions of Italy and Germany, were targeted on suspicion of operating social media channels dedicated to pirate IPTV subscription sales/resales.

 

While the announcement itself offers no specifics in respect of the suspects’ locations, a police video published today contains a slide showing maps of Italy and Germany and various marked locations.

 

 

“In Frankfurt, Germany, the operations were conducted against two Italian subjects, through international judicial cooperation channels coordinated by Eurojust with the collaboration of the State Police of Hesse – Police Headquarters of Frankfurt – through a European Investigation Order issued by the Judicial Authority of Milan,” the announcement reads.

620K Euros in Cash/Crypto Seized, 60 Telegram Channels Shut Down

Police say that the decree issued by the Public Prosecutor allowed them to shut down 60 resources/channels on Telegram and a website used to sell the subscriptions. None of these channels were mentioned by name, so trying to confirm shutdowns or otherwise is impossible.

 

 

However, police did reveal that the organizers used a Telegram channel called ‘Impero IPTV’ (Empire IPTV) as a meeting point.

 

While we can’t rule out the police having another channel in mind, as far as we can see the Impero IPTV channel hasn’t been shut down and still has almost 250 members. Whether any have any cash to hand is up for debate.

 

Police say that a detailed investigation allowed financial experts to identify accounts opened by the suspects on digital payment portals, money transfer services, and cryptocurrency exchanges. As a result they were able to seize assets worth over 620,000 euros.

 

“It should be noted that the criminal proceedings still concern the preliminary investigation phase and that the responsibility of the suspects will be definitively ascertained only in the event of an irrevocable sentence of conviction,” police conclude.