The wheels of justice in the Megaupload case may have moved at a glacial pace over the last 11 years but there’s no doubt they continue to move.

 

After entering into a plea deal with New Zealand authorities, last week former Megaupload coders Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk were sentenced at the High Court in Auckland to a total of five years in prison, to be served in New Zealand.

 

Kim Dotcom is still wanted in the United States but seems more comfortable fighting extradition than cutting a deal that requires him to admit guilt. Ortmann and van der Kolk had held out for many years, but the prospect of not being imprisoned in the United States was too good to refuse.

 

Whether former Megaupload programmer Andrus Nomm negotiated his fate is still unknown. After being indicted along with the others in 2012, the Estonian was reported as living in the Netherlands. In February 2015, Nomm suddenly surfaced in Alexandria, Virginia, the district where the Megaupload indictment had been filed three years earlier. Within days he was serving a one-year prison sentence but was a free man within months.

Julius Bencko, Graphic Designer

In the United States government’s superseding indictment dated February 16, 2012, Julius Bencko is described as a citizen and resident of Slovakia. A talented graphic designer, Bencko was responsible for Megaupload’s logo and ensuring that other sites in the group looked good and accommodated advertising properly.

 

 

According to the United States government, this work earned Bencko more than $1 million in 2010 alone. Even for the guy responsible for integrating Megaupload’s Flash player, that was still pretty good money.

 

The important context here is that Bencko was the director and sole shareholder of Basemax International Limited and through that entity, he effectively held 2.5% of Megaupload’s shares. For someone who supposedly played a key role in the most significant piracy conspiracy of all time, the allegations against Bencko were underwhelming and, at times, borderline comical.

 

Around October 4, 2007, Bencko sent an email to van der Kolk asking for a favor. “Can u pls get me some links to the series called ‘Seinfeld’ from MU?” Less than two weeks later an apologetic Bencko emailed again. “Sorry to bother but if you would have a second to find me some links for the ‘Grand Archives’ band i’d be very happy.”

 

If being polite was a crime, Bencko had been caught in the act at least twice but the indictment offered even more. In at least two emails sent by Dotcom to Bencko and his colleagues, all were roundly criticized for deleting too much content in response to copyright holder complaints.

 

“I told you many times not to delete links that are reported in batches of thousands from insignificant sources,” Dotcom wrote, according to the indictment. “I would say that those infringement reports from MEXICO of ‘14,000’ links would fall into that category. And the fact that we lost significant revenue because of it justifies my reaction.”

Fugitive on the Run?

Unlike his colleagues, Bencko didn’t fly to New Zealand to celebrate Dotcom’s birthday in January 2012. That meant he also missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be targeted by dozens of armed officers from the Special Tactics Group, New Zealand’s elite anti-terror force.

 

With his former colleagues’ names rarely out of the media for long, Bencko spent much of 2012 and early 2013 retweeting news about the Megaupload case. “I miss my MEGA friends / colleagues,” he declared in a rare personal tweet in July 2013. A year later, Bencko was posting videos of car restorations under his Pixelhood brand, but showing no obvious concerns about his fate in the Megaupload case.

 

 

At this point, various explanations seemed potentially reasonable. Had designing logos and making websites look pretty begun to look less attractive to prosecuting authorities than they had done a couple of years earlier? Maybe Bencko had agreed to sing like a canary in exchange for the ‘freedom’ depicted in this January 2016 tweet?

 

 

While that seemed unlikely, almost anything seemed more likely than the Slovakian freely walking around Europe being polite to people, because nobody cared about the indictment anymore.

 

It was more than 11 years in the making but earlier this month, authorities in Europe organized a smaller armed raid just for Bencko.

Czech Police Executed International Arrest Warrant

The announcement on the Czech police website does not name Julius Bencko as the person of interest but supporting information makes it extremely unlikely it could be anyone else.

 

The statement reveals that after obtaining information relating to the movements of a wanted man, officers from the Department of Foreign Police (which handles illegal migration, crimes involving foreigners, and cross-border crime) arrested a 46-year-old man in Prague.

 

Police report that the man was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued in Virginia, United States, after being “convicted of several crimes such as extortion, copyright infringement, or money laundering.”

Police Arrest Bencko at Prague Hotel

The authorities say that police received information that their target was staying at a hotel in the Prague 1 district. Bodycam footage shows armed police approaching a hotel room marked ’43’ at 01:19 on June 7, 2023. A man responds to a quiet knock on the door before the officers immediately push inside to restrain him.

 

 

“A sleepy man opened the door for [officers] in the middle of the night, and the police immediately arrested him,” the official report reads. Police say the man “was armed with several knives” but thanks to the “very quick intervention of the police, he was unable to put up any resistance.”

 

Nothing in the video indicates that Bencko was armed with a knife or that he even considered any kind of struggle. At one point the officers ask Bencko for documents, but at least 13 minutes pass before the graphic designer is handcuffed and led outside to a waiting police car.

 

 

“After the arrest, the forty-six-year-old foreigner was taken to the police station, from where he was escorted to the issuing custody after all police actions had been performed,” Czech police continue.

 

“Upon request, he will travel back to the United States, where he will serve out his many-year sentence.”

 

The full video can be downloaded here (.mp4)

 

With over 142k members, the ‘AI Hub’ Discord server is a thriving community that opens the door to lots of AI-related content.

 

There’s a wide variety of information available, including voice models of major musicians such as Bruno Mars, Frank Sinatra, Rihanna, and Stevie Wonder.

 

All of this information can be used to make homebrew AI tracks that mimic the sound of one’s favorite artists. This is a highly controversial topic in the music industry, with many insiders suggesting that commercial use of these models could breach copyright law.

 

Exactly what is allowed and what isn’t is a topic of legislative debate. In the United States, for example, Congress is actively looking into the matter through a series of hearings.

RIAA Targets ‘AI Hub’ Discord Server

The RIAA, which represents the rights of American music companies, is keeping a very close eye on the AI landscape. In a letter sent earlier this month, the anti-piracy group effectively asked Discord to shut down the AI Hub server.

 

Whether the voice models are the main issue here is unclear. It’s certainly possible that the music group views the complete datasets of music posted by some users as more problematic.

 

The letter to Discord simply states that AI Hub is dedicated to copyright infringement of its members’ works.

 

“We have learned that Discord is operating and/or hosting the below-referenced Discord server(s) on its network. This server(s) is/are dedicated to infringing our members’ copyrighted sound recordings by offering, selling, linking to, hosting, streaming, and/or distributing files containing our members’ sound recordings without authorization.”

 

Shut Down Server, Ban Repeat Infringers

The anti-piracy group wants the server taken offline and warnings issued to its operators. Specifically, the RIAA asks Discord to take the following steps:

 

(i) remove and/or disable access to this Discord server
(ii) remove the files or links from your system, including any mirrored or duplicate copies of those files or links, and/or that you disable all access to the infringing files and associated links
(iii) inform the server operator/s and the uploader/ to that server(s), as applicable, of the illegality of their conduct.

 

In addition, repeat-infringers should be permanently booted from the platform, the group notes, which would be in line with Discord’s copyright policy.

 

This strongly worded letter is a follow-up to a similar request sent in late May. At the time, the AI Hub server had 82k users but in the space of just a few weeks, that number has grown to a massive 143k and counting.

Infringing Voice models?

Discord hasn’t taken the complete server offline, as the RIAA requested, but several messages have since disappeared. The letter came with a list of URLs that are going nowhere now.

 

 

The reported links don’t reveal the nature of the content. TorrentFreak asked the RIAA for more detail on their takedown notice and whether it sees voice models as copyright infringements, but the group couldn’t go into detail citing “pending litigation”. More on that later.

 

We can’t independently confirm that voice models were targeted but some suggest that this could be the case. A few hours ago, Discord user StakenS reuploaded a Frank Sinatra model, which was originally posted by another user.

 

“Reupload because I am not scared to go to jail,” they write, adding that the takedown request likely came from a Frank Sinatra rightsholder that doesn’t appreciate the AI model.

 

 

It’s easy to jump to conclusions based on this post, but it’s likely that this voice model, and others, were removed because they included links to full datasets. This is what AI Hub admin “.tea” believes is what happened.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, .tea notes that despite RIAA’s takedown letters, Discord didn’t reach out to the server’s operators directly.

 

“The admins were informed about [RIAA’s takedown letter], not through Discord though, we heard from the people who actually got the letter. Discord has not contacted us as of yet,” .tea says.

 

The admin hasn’t seen voice models being targeted in isolation either and believes that datasets with infringing tracks from RIAA members are the real problem. This content isn’t allowed on the AI Hub server, so the operators don’t mind seeing that removed.

 

As for the users who posted the content, there’s nothing to suggest that prison sentences are on the horizon. That being said, the RIAA did go to court a few days ago hoping to learn more about the alleged infringers.

DMCA Subpoena Targets AI Hub Users

At the federal court for the District of Columbia, the anti-piracy group obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Discord to identify the alleged infringers. The subpoena was sent to Discord on June 14th with an accompanying letter.

 

“[Y]ou are required to disclose to the RIAA information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history, as available,” the letter reads.

 

Discord has until the end of the month to comply with the request, if it doesn’t formally oppose it.

 

 

In response to our questions, RIAA didn’t go into detail on the potential repercussions of this action. However, it stresses that AI itself isn’t the problem. Their enforcement efforts are focused on those who exploit the work of artists without consent.

 

“The creative community supports AI that is ethical, follows the law and respects creators’ rights. But when those who seek to profit from AI train their systems on unauthorized content, it undermines the entire music ecosystem – harming creators, fans, and responsible developers alike.”

 

“This action seeks to help ensure that lawless systems that exploit the life’s work of artists without consent cannot and do not become the future of AI,” the RIAA spokesperson added.

 

Meanwhile, the AI Hub server remains online. In a public announcement, the admins reiterated that uploading entire datasets containing copyrighted content directly to Discord is not allowed.

 

“Please do not upload datasets to the server or any copyrighted material. We have 0 tolerance for this kind of stuff”,” the announcement reads.

 

 

—-

 

A copy of all the documentation referenced in this post, which was obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf)

 

Under U.S. copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”

 

Many ISPs have been reluctant to take such drastic measures, which triggered a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits in recent years.

 

The driving force behind a series of these lawsuits is a group of independent film companies, including the makers of the movies The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, London Has Fallen, Rambo V, and Hellboy. Represented by attorney Kerry Culpepper they sued several Internet providers including RCN and Grande.

 

The movie companies claim that the providers haven’t done enough to stop subscribers from pirating on their networks. Instead of terminating the accounts of persistent pirates, the Internet providers looked away, the complaints alleged.

Reddit Users as Evidence

Earlier this year, the filmmakers turned to Reddit after they found public comments by site users that could help their case. As part of the RCN lawsuit, they identified several potentially relevant comments 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.

Filmmakers Subpoena Reddit Again

The court’s denial was a setback for the film companies, but they are not letting all Redditors off the hook. As part of their evidence gathering in the related Grande lawsuit, they filed a motion to compel Reddit to comply with a subpoena that again targets a group of anonymous users.

 

The comments in question are several years old and were posted by “robowiener”, “SquirtyBottoms”, “Aikidi”, “kelsoATX”, “xBROKEx”, and “Schadenfreude_Taco”. The Grande references appear in the images below.

 

Some of the comments

 

The subpoena was filed in late April, a week before the court denied the previous motion to compel. On May 8th, Reddit responded, again refusing to hand over the requested information, citing the right to anonymous speech.

 

While this places the camps back in their previous positions, this time around the filmmakers believe they have a stronger case supporting their motion to compel.

Other Ways to Get Information Failed

In its objection, Reddit pointed out that the anonymous speech rights of its users shouldn’t be violated, as long as the filmmakers have other ways to obtain the information. This was also highlighted by the court as a reason to deny the earlier motion to compel.

 

Responding to this critique, the new motion mentions that the documents provided by Grande during discovery haven’t resulted in any usable documents that discuss the motivation of its subscribers to use its service for piracy.

 

Also, following an earlier legal procedure, the plaintiffs were able to contact several Grande subscribers whose IP-addresses were frequently showing up in piracy-related BitTorrent swarms. However, they don’t believe this will result in any “substantive response” that can be used as evidence.

 

“Plaintiffs have sent letters to most of the subscribers of the 118 IP addresses but have had limited success establishing dialogue with most of them due to time constraints and refusals to respond to Plaintiffs’ counsel’s communications,” the motion reads.

Directly and Materially Relevant

In the earlier dispute, the court found that most comments from the targeted Redditors were not directly and materially relevant to the underlying lawsuit. This was particularly true because they didn’t always mention which Internet provider they referred to.

 

In this case, the comments respond to “Grande” threads and repeatedly mention the ISP by name. As such, the filmmakers believe that the balance tips in their favor.

 

“[T]here is no question that the comments are referring to Defendant as they directly mention Defendant’s name and are comments to a thread discussing Defendant,” the motion to compel reads.

 

The filmmakers say the comments are relevant to the Grande lawsuit because they show that the ISP failed to implement a proper repeat infringer policy. In addition, the apparent lack of piracy repercussions acted as a draw to potential subscribers.

 

“Reddit commentators ‘Aikidi’; ‘kelsoATX’; ‘xBROKEx’; and ‘Schadenfreude_Taco’ make comments emphatically stating that they prefer Defendant because they can use Defendant’s service to pirate copyright protected content without any consequences.

 

“‘Schadenfreude_Taco’ admits to having ‘downloaded about 1tb…from torrents and uploaded just under 2tb…’. Aikido states that ‘I have torrented like a motherf*cker all over grande and never seen anything’,” the filing adds.

 

Piracy Admission?

Adding to these arguments, the motion also highlights a 12-year-old comment from the user “xBROKEx”, who specifically mentions that they pirated the movie Expendables. This admission is valuable in itself, the filmmakers argue.

 

“Plaintiffs do not have any other reasonable way to prove that Defendant’s subscriber pirated Expendables because the data provider that provided the evidence did not track this film,” the motion reads.

 

 

The fact that this activity took place more than a decade ago may explain why it wasn’t tracked. In any case, it’s quite unique to see that comments on Reddit can come back to haunt people, even after all these years.

 

Whether the filmmakers will have their way has yet to be seen. It is ultimately up to the court to decide whether these arguments are sufficient to unmask the anonymous Redditors, or if their right to anonymous speech remains protected.

 

—

 

A copy of the motion to compel, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf)

 

While nothing stands in the way of a single rightsholder taking on one or more pirate sites, in recent years there has been a noticeable shift towards pooling resources.

 

For the Hollywood studio members of the MPA, anti-piracy teamwork is nothing new, but for other members of the highly successful Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, collaborating with rival companies is likely to be a relatively new concept. In light of the growing threat posed by online piracy and few better options, it’s clearly one they’re happy to explore.

 

In March, South Korean broadcasters, including KBS, MBC and JTBC, the Korea Film and Video Copyright Association (film producers and distributors), plus streaming platforms TVING and Wavve, announced the formation of a similar anti-piracy coalition dedicated to protecting local content. Its connections with ACE are likely to prove invaluable.

Noonoo TV in the Crosshairs

Under Video Copyright Protection Council (이하 영보협) branding, the coalition’s immediate target was Noonoo TV, a hugely successful pirate streaming site receiving dozens of millions of visits from Koreans every month. At least in theory, an ISP blocking program should’ve prevented that from happening, but Noonoo’s deployment of dozens of new domains meant the campaign couldn’t keep up.

 

Surprisingly, Noonoo’s successful circumvention program was eventually self-terminated – along with the site itself – just a few weeks later. In an April announcement, the site’s operator said that the “outrageous” cost of bandwidth and “pressure on the site from all directions” had culminated in a decision to shut Noonoo down. Around April 14, Noonoo said nighty night for the last time and gave one last piece of advice before turning off the lights.

“Please be careful of impersonation sites…”

Left in no doubt that any remaining value in the Noonoo brand would be immediately extracted by opportunists, we began monitoring fresh domain registrations when the site went down. These included noonoo.app, noonootv.live, noonoo2023.xyz and noonootorrent.com in April, a whole bunch ending in .click in May, and then a couple more in early June – noonoo.art and noonoo.lol.

 

Initially, just one of these domains showed signs of picking up the baton but then noonoo.lol stepped on the gas and surged into the lead.

 

 

The site introduced itself as ‘Noonoo TV Season2’ on June 12. It had the same layout, most likely the same or similar content library, but more importantly, the same set of ads that appeared on the original site (screenshot) featuring exactly the same gambling companies.

 

After just four days online, the site was subjected to a large-scale DDOS attack. That was reportedly handled in 30 mins, but the site still wanted to clear something up.

 

“Noonoo TV Season 2 has no connection to the original Noonoo TV,” the site announced. A business address in the site’s footer claimed that a company called Digisn Mowanda was now running the site from an office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Whether anyone plans to pay a personal visit anytime soon is unknown, but it might be best to call ahead first, just in case.

Korean Government Not Thrilled By The Resurrection

In an announcement dated June 18, the Ministry of Science and ICT said the appearance of ‘Season 2’ warranted a “strong response.”

 

“As the damage caused to the domestic online video service (OTT) industry and others due to the [original] illegal free streaming site ‘Noonoo Tv’ grew day by day, last year the Ministry of Science and ICT, together with the domestic online video service industry, ISPs, and the Radio Association of Korea (RAPA), persistently blocked the illegal service by shortening the frequency; such as once a week, twice a week, and once a day, leading to the termination of Noonoo TV’s service in April,” the statement reads.

 

“The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to actively respond to illegal online video service (OTT) distribution sites such as ‘Noonoo TV Season 2’ based on its experience and capabilities in blocking access to Noonoo TV.”

 

The Ministry says it has already asked the Korea Communications Commission to expedite its decision on the “illegality and copyright infringement of Noonoo TV Season 2” and once that has been received, enhanced blocking measures will be put in place to disrupt the service.

 

“During the response [to the original site], we were able to block access once a day, but this time, we will streamline the response system so that we can block multiple times a day,” the Ministry says.

Piracy vs. Artificial Intelligence

Alongside a promise to work closely with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Communications Commission, and the National Security Agency to protect ‘K’ content from unlawful distribution, the Ministry of Science says the time is right to enhance manual work carried out by humans with automated systems better suited to the job.

 

“Since the detection and response to illegal sites is currently centered on manual work based on human resources, to overcome this limitation, we plan to develop technology that can automatically detect and verify new versions and substitute sites,” the Ministry said.

 

“Online video service (OTT) content is a precious asset created with the blood and sweat of many people. It’s a growth engine that will be responsible for the future of our country, so it is very important for mature citizens to refrain from using these illegal sites.”

Season 2 Ends Prematurely

Calls for citizens to act responsibly are not unusual in South Korea and in the right circumstances, can be highly effective too. However, on this occasion a national boycott of ‘Season 2’ will not be required after the following announcement (translated from original).

 

 

On the Season 2 Telegram channel, the shutdown is yet to be mentioned.

 

Last year, the US Copyright Claims Board went live. Through this Copyright Office-hosted venue, copyright holders can try to recoup alleged damages outside the federal court system.

 

The board aims to make it cheaper for creators to resolve disputes. There’s no attorney required and the filing fee is limited to $100 per claim. Accused parties also benefit as the potential damages are capped at $30,000. Those who prefer traditional lawsuits can choose to opt-out.

 

The benefits of the board are clear to many rightsholders. Opponents, however, feared that the system could be used by opportunistic rightsholders to extract ‘easy money’ from less law-savvy individuals.

One Year Anniversary

The CCB celebrates its one-year anniversary this month so that presents a good opportunity to take stock of the results achieved thus far. From June 2022 to the end of last year, 281 claims were filed at the CCB, with a further 221 cases filed in the first half of 2023.

 

That means 502 claims were submitted to the Copyright Claims Board in the first twelve months of operation. That’s a significant number, but it doesn’t mean that all of these cases ended with an award for damages. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

 

Recent CCB Claims

 

Our review of CCB dockets indicates just one case where a final verdict was handed down. In February, the board awarded $1,000 to a photographer who discovered that his work was being used on the website of a California-based law practice. The award was significantly lower than the $30,000 initially requested.

Dismissals and Opt Outs

The vast majority of all cases at the CCB are dismissed or resolved without damages, often due to deficiencies in the filings. A claim against Cloudflare, for example, was not a proper copyright complaint according to the board.

 

Meanwhile, UFC distributor Joe Hand Promotions settled several of its copyright infringement claims against bars and restaurants. These cases were taken off the dockets as well.

 

At the time of writing, 305 cases have been closed. This includes 40 claims where the defendant chose to opt out. A total of 197 cases are pending and yet to be resolved. This includes several where default judgments are on the horizon after defendants failed to respond.

Where are the Trolls?

When the Copyright Claims Board was first introduced, there was quite a lot of pushback. Several opponents feared that “copyright trolls” would abuse the system to launch a wave of claims against alleged online pirates. That fear didn’t materialize.

 

While there are many types of copyright trolls, there hasn’t been a single file-sharing piracy case submitted to the CCB. This makes sense, as the board is not meant to issue third-party subpoenas, meaning that rightsholders can’t file a case against a John Doe who’s only known by an IP address.

 

In theory, rightsholders could try to use a traditional DMCA subpoena to obtain the personal details of an alleged pirate and then go to the CCB. However, this hasn’t happened yet and if it ever did, the CCB has a cap on the number of cases that can be filed per year.

 

With 20 claims, Joe Hand Promotions is the most prolific filer. The company requests damages from establishments that stream UFC content without permission. The company also files cases in federal courts but the small claims board is a cheaper option, also for defendants.

 

Thus far, trolling behavior is noticeably absent. Instead, many claims come from smaller creators and rightsholders, who often accuse larger companies such as Instagram, Amazon, UMG, Sony Music, Warner Music, and YouTube of copyright infringement. Whether any of these claims will ultimately result in damages has yet to be seen.

 

Straight answers in response to straight questions is far from the default position in Hollywood where piracy is concerned. The topic is always controversial, and most of the interesting questions have answers that have the potential to make it even more so.

 

Whether the details will ever see the light of day is unclear, but the discussions that led to Hollywood ending theatrical releases in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine must’ve been fascinating.

 

Corporations are rarely considered worthy recipients of sympathy votes, but tearing down a patiently-built market that had overcome many piracy challenges over the previous decade won’t have been easy, even if it was necessary.

Can’t Buy It Legally? Someone Will Sell It Illegally

The developing legal content market in Russia has always faced stiff competition from pirates. Improvement in content availability gave consumers choice beyond the ‘piracy’ default, but with no new Hollywood content available to buy, there was never any doubt that pirates would attempt to pick up the slack.

 

That some Russian cinemas were able to screen major Hollywood movies in perfect quality still came as a surprise. By December 2022, alongside the screenings of Avatar: The Way of Water, people spoke of major movies being supplied complete with Russian dubbing by sources in Kazakhstan.

 

While welcomed by Russian movie fans, these releases faced inevitable and immediate competition from pirates. A high-quality telesync copy of Avatar 2, presumably recorded from an unlicensed screening in Russia, was among other titles that exploited the growing theatrical pirate market in Russia, or at least for as long as it lasted.

WesternRus: Russia’s Hollywood Movie Supplier

After being referenced in the media regularly but rarely by name, last week an announcement made by Kazakhstan-based company ‘WesternRus’ leaked from its private Telegram channel and into the hands of journalists. Cinema industry publication ProfiCinema identified WesternRus as the main supplier of Western movies to Russian theaters.

 

ProfiCinema said that WesternRus had been supplying new Hollywood releases that had already undergone localization. Transactions took place on WesternRus’ Telegram channel, where the company would hand out keys to theatrical distributors for use in cinemas for a limited number of days.

 

“The cost of such keys averaged 100 thousand rubles during the ‘premiere’ period. From week to week, the price proportionally decreased depending on the relevance and freshness of the content,” ProfiCinema revealed.

 

It appears that price-cutting and piracy quickly took their toll on a collapsing market.

WesternRus: Too Much Piracy, We’re done

In a message posted to its Telegram account obtained by ProfiCinema, last week WesternRus announced the end of its theatrical venture.

 

“We are suspending the release of all previously announced releases,” WesternRus’ message reads. According to the company, the main reason for closing down is that too many groups are illegally recording (camming) ‘WesternRus’ releases and distributing them online. The company says that the main culprits are domestic cinema chains and other third-party companies.

 

“An anonymous source in the cinema community confirmed that the struggle of pirates for the ‘treasure island’ – the Russian film market – has been going on for more than one month. In particular, the domestic dubbing studio Red Head Sound was in serious competition with the Kazakh company, and their first step was dumping. WesternRus supported this game by offering a flexible system of discounts for regular customers, but, nevertheless, could not stand it,” ProfiCinema reports.

 

With little to no new Western content being made available in Russia legally, demand for pristine copies of movies is only likely to increase. Whether WesternRus will reemerge as a supplier is unknown.

 

At least for now, it appears that despite having zero production costs, WesternRus cannot make piracy pay because too many pirates give content away for free. It’s a claim as old as piracy itself.

 

Image credit: Pixabay/Conmongt

 

Over the past decade, mobile applications have become the standard platform for most people to consume content online.

 

Whether it’s for shopping, news, or entertainment, there is an app available for any type of content.

 

This shift in consumption patterns is not limited to legal content; movie and TV piracy has gone mobile as well. In some cases, these pirate streaming apps can be found in official app stores, reaching an audience of millions of users.

The App Piracy Problem

Copyright holders are not happy with these ‘unauthorized’ apps, which are big business. In a recent publication by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), NOS‘ Head of Content Protection Pedro Bravo provides a detailed overview of the problem.

 

App piracy includes legitimate apps that are copied but we reserve our reporting to those that are advertised as a gateway to pirated content or live streams. While these apps lure users with free stuff, they don’t necessarily offer pirated content.

 

The ultimate goal of the developers is the same though. They want to convert users into a revenue stream, one way or another. Some apps may monetize user data, for example, but for the vast majority advertising is the income stream of choice.

Stealing Ad Dollars

That can be quite a lucrative business model and poses yet another problem for legitimate content creators. In addition to ‘stealing’ content, these pirate apps ‘steal’ their potential advertising revenue too.

 

“Ad words campaigns are the most lucrative for Pirates. Yes, not only are rights holders losing money from the lack of legitimate App downloads, but Pirates steal what should be their ad revenue as well,” Bravo notes.

 

In the past, some pirate sites and services have embraced the Robin Hood image, in the sense that they distribute content from wealthy corporations to the public at large. However, the AAPA piece notes that it is naïve to think that pirates are well-intended folk heroes.

 

“[Pirates] are not charities, handing out access to content to ease the economic pressures. Quite the opposite. Pirates are in it for the money. They are often large, international organizations spread across different jurisdictions, with IT infrastructure and sizeable resources.”

 

Free and Unlimited

 

This sentiment is not new. While pirate sites and services exist in all shapes and forms, these operations have to make money; they wouldn’t survive otherwise. And for many shady piracy operations, money is the main driver, which can come at the expense of privacy or security.

How to Tackle Piracy Apps

The big question is how piracy apps can be tackled. Here, the AAPA article lists some concrete suggestions, starting with closer cooperation between rightsholders and the operators of app stores, such as Apple and Google.

 

These platforms already remove copyright-infringing apps if they’re reported but rightsholders say they could be more proactive, sharing research and information that can help to detect apps early on. For example, by pointing out known identifiers such as pirate logos and names, so associated apps can be recognized more easily.

 

This implies that app stores should do more than simply respond to takedown notices. On this front, Bravo suggests that it’s key to ensure that piracy apps don’t simply resurface. Verifying the identities of app publishers could be a good start.

 

“From an App Store perspective, implementing a robust process around the Digital Services Act ‘Know Your Business Customer’ could eliminate a lot of Pirate organizations slipping through.”

 

App stores could also collaborate with “trusted flaggers” to set up faster and more streamlined removal procedures while ensuring that repeat infringers are permanently banned.

 

Finally, proactive filtering might also go a long way to address app piracy. While hash filtering isn’t suited for unique apps, Apple and Google could use automated detection tools to flag piracy-related keywords, to spot potentially problematic content.

 

“Another way for App stores to remove Pirate Apps could be to leverage automatic detection, using defined keywords, such as Free IPTV or Free football, to highlight the illegal Apps quickly,” Bravo writes in his AAPA piece.

 

All in all, Bravo calls for more collaboration between stakeholders. That includes rightsholders, who can bundle their knowledge, but app stores also have a crucial role in solving the piracy puzzle.

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “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 19 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Extraction 2	7.2 / trailer
2	(1)	Fast X	6.1 / trailer
3	(…)	Kandahar	6.0 / trailer
4	(2)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.0 / trailer
5	(3)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
6	(6)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
7	(7)	Transformers: Rise of the Beasts	6.6 / trailer
8	(4)	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	9.0 / trailer
9	(…)	Beau is Afraid	7.0 / trailer
10	(7)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer

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

 

The World Cup only takes place every four years so when the opportunity to see the world’s best players arrived again last year, an estimated 1.5 billion eventually tuned in to see the elite square off in the final.

 

Millions cheered on the French national team as the defending champions pursued glory against Argentina. After the French lost in a dramatic penalty shoot-out, for some it became a tournament to forget. For French telecoms regulator Arcom, the end of the competition signaled the start of research to determine how citizens consumed World Cup 2022 and how France benefited from it financially.

World Cup 2022 – Audiovisual Broadcasting Review

Published this week, Arcom’s study reveals that more than six out of 10 French people watched or listened to at least one live match during the World Cup, a figure that rose to 73% in respect of all content, including replays, match analysis, and behind-the-scenes reporting.

 

Of those who watched live matches, 90% did so from home, with television the medium of choice for 96% of respondents. Around one in five football fans watched at least one match on a smartphone, with 14% and 7% viewing on computers and tablets, respectively.

 

Most Fans Watched Matches for Free

Football is traditionally seen as a sport of the people, with national teams serving their countries and citizens rather than their usual corporate paymasters. For these and similar reasons, some countries have laws or regulations in place that prevent the whole of the World Cup from being locked away behind TV subscription packages.

 

In France, all matches played by the national team must be broadcast on a widely accessible system, at no charge to the public. The same applies to the opening match, semi-finals, and the final, regardless of which teams are playing.

 

Free TV broadcaster TF1 won the rights to air these games in 2022 and, as a result, 87% of those who watched live World Cup matches did so on TF1, legally and for free.

Paywalls Guarantee Piracy

Of the 64 matches played in the tournament, 36 matches were broadcast exclusively by beIN Sports. Since users of beIN must have a subscription, piracy of World Cup matches was effectively guaranteed when more than half the matches in the tournament were placed behind a paywall.

 

According to the study, 18% of live match consumers said they’d watched matches using a paid service. Of all live match consumers, 8% reported watching games using illegal platforms, with 5% using live sports streaming platforms or pirate IPTV applications, and 4% using social media, a figure roughly on par with illicit consumption during the rest of the year.

 

 

The conundrum for Arcom is that if it decided to crack down on the most prolific football pirates by demographic, it would also be cracking down on the fans most likely to spend money on legal content.

 

“The 15-34 age group, the leading group of illegal users (12%), are also the most inclined to use a pay option (26%),” Arcom reports.

 

Numerous studies have drawn similar conclusions over the years after finding links between the most engaged consumers and their consumption of content from both legal and illegal sources. A report from the EU last week found that 60% of pirates also buy content legally.

Paywalls = Profit

In the short term, the answer may lie in site-blocking measures. During the World Cup alone, France ordered the blocking of 83 domains in connection with football piracy.

 

Arcom hasn’t indicated if that had any effect on piracy levels but a small observation might be that if half the games weren’t behind a paywall, site blocking wouldn’t even be necessary. The flip side is that 15% of people who watched live matches took out paid subscriptions to do so and beIN Sports did very nicely out of that.

 

“Entirely dedicated to the 2022 World Cup, with daily coverage from 10 a.m. to midnight and all matches broadcast live, beIN Sports 1 benefited strongly from the competition from an advertising point of view. Total gross daily investment for the channel on match broadcast days amounted to around 16.1 million euros,” Arcom reports.

 

Arcom’s report can be found here (1,2, pdf)

 

Copyright holders send out millions of takedown notices a day, hoping to remove pirated content or make it harder to find.

 

The efficacy of the DMCA takedown process is open for debate, but it certainly doesn’t help when companies flag legal websites as copyright-infringing.

 

It is particularly ironic when these mistakenly targeted sites are supposed to help the public find their way to the right streaming service. This is exactly what happened recently.

Netflix and Amazon Target Reelgood

Anti-piracy company Marketly, which handles DMCA takedown requests for many reputable rightsholders, repeatedly targeted URLs from the streaming search engine Reelgood. This Webby-award-winning service has nothing to do with piracy. Instead, it helps people to find sources to stream movies and series online legally.

 

Apparently, this rather important nuance wasn’t picked up by the takedown software. As a result, several Reelgood pages have been removed from Google’s search results.

 

One of the notices in question was sent in on behalf of Netflix. It lists a few hundred URLs that allegedly point to pirated copies of titles such as DAHMER, Cable Girls, Cursed, and Bridgerton.

 

In most cases the links indeed point to problematic sites but Reelgood is also thrown into the mix. Not just that; Google has also removed this page from its search results.

 

 

Another DMCA notice, sent by the same takedown outfit, aims to protect Amazon content. This includes URLs that point to pirated copies of Clarkson’s Farm, Britannia, and Bosch: Legacy. Again, Reelgood was erroneously included and removed from Google search.

 

 

Looking at Google’s transparency report we see that Amazon and Netflix are not alone. Reelgood has been targeted repeatedly over the years. In some cases, Google decided not to take action in response but in the aforementioned cases, both URLs were removed.

Counterproductive

We’re aware of the fact that these are cherry-picked mistakes we’re reporting here. The overwhelming majority of all the links reported to Google indeed point to infringing content. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not preventable.

 

There are just a few major legal search engines such as Reelgood on the web. How hard can it be to add these URLs to a whitelist when it’s your job to find and report pirated URLs?

 

Right now, these takedowns have the opposite effect. By removing one of the few legal gateways from search results, a spot opens up for a scam-laden pirate site to take its place. That’s not real good.

 

Rightsholders consider piracy of live TV channels as one of the most serious threats to their business.

 

Subscription channels often end up in IPTV subscription packages, sold to the public at a fraction of the cost after being obtained by pirates using both legal and illegal means. In some cases streams are obtained directly from broadcasters’ official source servers, something that is surprisingly common and, with the right tools, not especially difficult either.

 

Early this week, TorrentFreak was contacted by an anonymous source who explained how, in their words, “one of the biggest broadcasters in Europe (and in the world) completely ignores how people can watch all of its live channels (in the UK, Germany and Italy) without even having an account.”

Telegram Groups Selling NOW TV Decryption Keys

NOW TV is a subscription OTT TV service operated by Sky Group. Launched in the UK back in 2012, NOW TV is also available elsewhere in Europe, including Italy and Germany. In January 2023, a researcher by the name ‘Mark K’ says he came across Telegram groups offering to sell decryption keys granting free access to the NOW TV service.

 

This piqued the researcher’s interest since Microsoft’s PlayReady DRM protects NOW TV streams in Italy and Germany.

 

“[T]here was absolutely no interest for me in buying the mentioned decryption keys just to test them, plus I didn’t know if there was a sort of scam going on. But since I am a security enthusiast, I really wanted to know what happened behind a possible PlayReady leakage, so I decided to have a chat with the owner of the channel with the interest of getting technical details,” the researcher explained.

 

“I tried to question how the keys were getting grabbed – if PlayReady was proven to be broken. He didn’t want to tell me any detail regarding this matter, he just wanted to hard-sell the decryption keys making me a few offers; that until as a last chance, he provided me a URL, a key identifier, and a decryption key for an Italian channel: Sky Sport 24.”

 

The researcher said he tested the key, and it worked. Further research led to other sellers offering decryption keys for Sky services not only in Italy, but also Germany and the UK. “So basically all the Sky OTT packages available, for not more than $2000,” the researcher added.

Researcher Says He Quickly Warned Sky

‘Mark K’ claims to have taken a number of steps to warn Sky of the security breach. In the first instance, he says he reached out to a Sky developer on LinkedIn back in January.

 

 

After receiving no immediate response, the researcher began posting issues on BSkyB GitHub repos and, via a Twitter account, contacted Sky developers. (edited for clarity/brevity)

 

“The day after this, I finally got a response. I got followed by an account named ‘Sky Anti-Piracy Intel’ (a freshly made one), which then afterward tweeted me saying to get onto DM to have a talk. Since the account was fresh, I was kind of skeptical in giving this information to a random. But then they confirmed to legitly be a division of Sky taking care of intelligence information regarding anti-piracy.”

 

 

The researcher said that Sky’s immediate request was for him to remove the information he’d posted to GitHub, information he claims to have posted for the purposes of attracting Sky’s attention. He says he immediately complied.

 

 

After removing the information in question, an email from Sky thanked ‘Mark K’ for responding and advised that the information needed to be referred to the relevant departments. “Please be patient with us and we will get back to you shortly,” an email received from ContentProtection@sky[dot]uk reads.

 

In a follow-up email dated January 27, the ‘Sky Anti-Piracy Intel Team’ said, “We appreciate the removal Of the posts regarding the matter and hope you have a good weekend. We Will be in touch soon.”

More Contact With Sky

In another email supplied by the researcher, this time dated February 23, roughly a month after the initial communications with Sky, ‘Mark K’ appears to have offered more information to the broadcaster.

 

“All Sky Go platforms using Widevine are compromised, there are panels as well accessible for free around the internet setting up the streams. I’d like to mention again that I am available for consulting. I didn’t [receive any response] from you since my last report. So unless you guys are interested in getting updated on the matter, I won’t message you anymore,” the email reads. (edited for clarity/brevity)

 

“Thank you for your intelligence,” Sky’s response reads. “We’re unable to take you on as a consultant at this time however if the circumstances change, we will reach out to you.”

 

‘Mark K’ says that Sky misunderstood his offer to work for Sky as a consultant; in an email dated March 14, he informed the company that he didn’t want to be hired or get paid. He also informed Sky that when he carried out checks on March 13, none of the exposed decryption keys had been changed.

Mark K Appears to Run Out of Patience

In a follow-up email dated March 27, sent to a new correspondence address following a request from Sky, ‘Mark K’ provided more information and aired his frustrations.

 

“As I’ve warned you around 2 months ago, situation now is completely out of control. Looks like you’re not caring at all in solving your piracy issues. Both satellite and NOW streaming platform of every country are broken and so far you haven’t changed the decryption keys, makes me wonder in what way you’re fighting piracy as you advertise,” he wrote.

 

“This will be my last email, if in future I ever see you moving a finger to fix current issues then perhaps (if I have other information) I will update you.”

 

This week the data Sky wanted to keep out of the public eye appeared very publicly on GitHub, along with clickable links that claimed to allow NOW TV channels to be viewed without a subscription, using only Microsoft Edge and a third-party website.

 

 

Within hours the information was removed from GitHub. As far as we can see, the removal wasn’t actioned in response to a regular DMCA notice, but that may become more clear in the hours to come.

 

TorrentFreak contacted Sky’s anti-piracy team and received a response from the company’s communications team. Sky confirmed the links and encryption keys had been removed from GitHub but declined to comment any further on the emails, the researcher, or the alleged security holes.

 

Legal video streaming services such as Amazon, Disney, and Netflix are booming. At the same time, there’s a flourishing dark market of pirate streaming tools.

 

These unauthorized alternatives increasingly use slick designs and easy-to-use apps to appeal to a broad audience. And unlike the legal options, they offer all popular titles under the same roof, without charging a penny.

 

Cloudstream is one of the apps that made its mark in recent years. The Android-based software can aggregate pirated content from several third-party streaming sources and is fully customizable through open-source extensions.

 

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by rightsholders. Sky UK targeted the software last year, and a few months ago, Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association (MPA) took action against the app.

MPA Targets Cloudstream

The MPA represents the major Hollywood studios and Netflix, and the weight of these massive corporations had the required effect. Following a takedown notice in March, Cloudstream developer “Lag” took the Cloudstream.cf website and some code offline voluntarily.

 

“Having the absolute worst anti-piracy coalition on our asses is not preferable. They will undoubtedly fuck us legally if they have to. Think what you want but I do not want all of Hollywood after me because of some hobby project,” Lag wrote.

 

In addition to the website, MPA’s initial notice also listed various files from third-party Cloudstream code repositories, most of which related to extensions. These files were taken offline by GitHub but the repositories all stayed online.

 

 

A screenshot from the main repository shows that the bare app code doesn’t include any extensions. This means that by default, it can’t be used to stream pirated content. This is likely why the repository is still on GitHub today and actively being developed.

MPA Fires Another Round

The MPA hasn’t completely forgotten about Cloudstream though. This week, it sent another takedown notice to GitHub asking the developer platform to take down two code repositories, in their entirety.

 

“We are writing to notify you of, and request your assistance in addressing, the extensive copyright infringement of motion pictures and television shows that is occurring by virtue of the operation of the APK software, CloudStream.

 

“[T]he Repository hosts and offers for download the APK, which in turn is used to engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows,” MPA adds in its notice.

 

 

The reported “CloudStream-2” repositories, including one from developer “Lag”, have been removed by GitHub. People who try to access the respective URLs will see a “Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown” notice instead.

The Extension Escape

Interestingly, the CloudStream-2 code is far from new. It’s an older release that has been on GitHub for several years and was no longer actively supported. Unlike the newer versions, it didn’t rely on extensions, which means that it likely still worked as a pirate streaming app out of the box.

 

Also, the repository included screenshots that displayed how the APK could be used to stream pirated content. This likely didn’t work in their favor either.

 

 

The difference between the ‘fully-loaded’ and ‘bare’ versions of Cloudstream is worth highlighting. As mentioned earlier, MPA’s earlier takedown notice targeted extension files, not the entire Cloudstream repository.

 

We don’t want to draw strong conclusions based on these actions, but the MPA appears willing to leave the extension-based app untouched on GitHub for a reason. At least for now; there are certainly no guarantees that this won’t change in the future.

 

In November 2018, DISH Network filed a copyright complaint against Jadoo TV, a distributor of self-branded set-top IPTV boxes and later various software apps. DISH also sued Jadoo TV CEO, Sajid Sohail.

 

The complaint described Jadoo TV’s operation as a “wide-ranging, deliberate, multi-year effort” to distribute the plaintiffs’ exclusively-licensed TV channels without authorization. Alleging violations of 17 U.S.C. Section 501, DISH filed claims for direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement.

 

DISH took the position that Sohail could be held personally liable because he authorized, directed, or participated in Jadoo TV’s copyright-infringing activities.

 

In their answer filed in February 2019, Jadoo TV and Sohail denied the allegations, and in July 2020, DISH filed an amended complaint. A month later, Sohail filed his answer and a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

 

Jadoo TV’s CEO insisted that DISH could not hold him personally liable, but in September 2020, the court found that allegations in the amended complaint raised a “plausible inference” that Sohail “authorized, directed, or participated in the alleged infringement” so denied his motion to dismiss.

Motions for Summary Judgment

Four-and-a-half years after filing its original complaint, on March 13, 2023, DISH filed a motion for summary judgment. On the same day, Sohail also filed a motion for summary judgment. An order handed down this week by District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer granted DISH’s motion and denied Sohail’s.

 

In respect of direct infringement, the court found that there is “no genuine dispute that DISH owned the copyrighted material, that Defendants violated DISH’s exclusive right, that Defendants acted with volition, and that Sohail was personally liable as Jadoo’s director.”

 

On the contributory infringement front, Jadoo TV fared no better.

 

“There is no genuine dispute that Jadoo knew about the infringement and could have implemented several simple measures to prevent it,” the order finding in favor of DISH reads. “Accordingly, Jadoo materially contributed to the infringement, and thus is liable for contributory infringement.”

 

DISH’s claim for vicarious infringement, that Jadoo TV received a direct financial benefit from the infringement and declined to exercise a right and ability to control it, also went in the broadcaster’s favor.

 

“Defendants do not contest that the infringement provided some financial benefit, which is all that is needed to find Defendants liable for vicarious infringement,” the order reads, adding that “the only evidence offered — including evidence from Defendants’ expert —unequivocally demonstrates that Jadoo profited from the infringement.”

DISH Wins Summary Judgment

After granting DISH’s motion for summary judgment, the court ordered the parties to submit a joint filing on the subject of what relief the court should provide to DISH within 45 days. DISH says it is entitled to statutory damages, Jadoo’s profits, attorneys’ fees, and a permanent injunction.

 

If the maximum of $150,000 per work is accepted by the court, statutory damages could reach $14.5 million for the 97 works in suit, with damages or profits for works published outside the United States to go on top. The final amount is yet to be determined, but it seems there will be no escape for Sohail.

 

As a result of the DISH lawsuit, which was coordinated by the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), Jadoo TV previously filed for bankruptcy, but after Sohail was found personally liable, options for recovery remain open.

 

“This ruling goes further than many other copyright cases coordinated by IBCAP. Here, the owner and CEO of one of the most popular South Asian services offering infringing content will not be permitted to hide behind a corporate shield and has been found personally liable for the damages caused by his and his company’s copyright infringement,” said Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP.

 

“IBCAP and its members will not tolerate piracy, and the U.S. courts have once again not only sided with us by handing down a judgment against an infringing service, but also holding an owner personally accountable.”

 

The order granting summary judgment is available here (pdf)

 

Faced with extradition to the United States to face copyright infringement, racketeering, and money laundering charges, last year Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk made a big decision.

 

In May 2022, the former Megaupload executives revealed that they had signed a deal to avoid extradition and would be charged with crimes in New Zealand instead. One month later, the men pleaded guilty to a raft of crimes, safe in the knowledge that any sentence would be served in New Zealand, not in a U.S. prison cell. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was not part of the deal.

 

The summary of charging facts stated that Ortmann was a 25% shareholder of Megaupload Limited and made around US$19 million from Megaupload. Colleague van der Kolk had a 2.5% share of the company and received approximately US$3 million.

 

“The defendants’ technical knowledge was indispensable to the creation and growth of Megaupload. Mr Dotcom ultimately determined matters of policy and direction but lacked the practical expertise to carry his wishes into effect,” the statement of facts noted.

 

Bram van der Kolk’s Coding Journey

 

“[Dotcom] relied on the defendants to set up and run the technical infrastructure of Megaupload. The offending would not have been possible without their involvement.”

Charges and Convictions

In June 2022, Ortmann and van der Kolk were convicted on four charges in total. Charges 1 and 2 related to offenses contrary to sections 98A and 7A of the Crimes Act 1961.

 

Section 98A of the Crimes Act 1961 states that a person is liable to imprisonment for participating in an organized criminal group; three or more people with an objective to obtain material benefits from the “commission of offenses” that are locally punishable by a four-year prison term. Section 7A of the Crimes Act 1961 relates to offenses that occurred wholly outside New Zealand but can be prosecuted locally.

 

The first charge related to offenses under 98A and 7A which carry a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. The second charge was identical but carries a ten-year maximum sentence. The third charge related to offenses contrary to section 240(1)(d) and section 310 of the Crimes Act 1961. The fourth related to offenses contrary to sections 228 and 310 of the Crimes Act 1961.

Prison Sentences Handed Down at the High Court

At the High Court in Auckland today, Justice Sally Fitzgerald sentenced Mathias Ortmann to two years and seven months in prison. Bram van der Kolk received a prison sentence of two years and six months. Both will begin their sentences at Mt Eden Corrections Facility (MECF) is in the central Auckland suburb of Mt Eden.

 

Ortmann had faced a prison sentence of up to 10 years and six months, van der Kolk up to ten years, but their guilty pleas, cooperation – including with the FBI, rehabilitation, and an agreement to surrender NZ$10 million in overseas bank accounts, all played a part in reducing their sentences.

 

 

Since 2009, Bram has been married to Junelyn Alexis “Asia” Unana Agcaoili, a Filipina actress, television host, and model who previously appeared on the cover of FHM. Together they have a son, who was born and raised in New Zealand.

 

Through her company Cloud Innovations Limited, Agcaoili is a shareholder in Mega, the company built by the pair after the collapse of Megaupload. A trust in the name of Kim Dotcom’s wife, Elizabeth Donnelly, also retains shares in Mega.

 

According to a report from New Zealand Herald earlier this week, Bram and Mathias were hoping that the reputation ‘Mega’ had built inside the New Zealand government as a good corporate citizen would stand them in good stead.

 

The men were not immediately sent to serve their sentences today. Justice Sally Fitzgerald deferred imprisonment until August 1 to allow Ortmann to be present at the birth of his second child and for van der Kolk to spend time with his mother, who is in poor health.

 

Both men remain targets in civil lawsuits filed in the United States by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) related to their work on Megaupload.

So What About Kim Dotcom?

During sentencing today, Crown lawyer David Boldt suggested that had Dotcom been in court today, he would’ve been facing a possible sentence of 16 years in prison.

 

To date, Dotcom has chosen to fight back against all charges, something that may now prove more difficult after Ortmann and van der Kolk, who haven’t spoken with Dotcom for close to a decade, agreed to testify against him.

 

After the Supreme Court ruled that Kim Dotcom can indeed be extradited to face a laundry list of criminal charges in the United States, the decision to send Dotcom northeast across the Pacific lies with Minister of Justice Kiri Allan.

 

The extradition warrant requires her signature, but even after pen is eventually put to paper, it’s likely that Dotcom would seek a judicial review to buy more time in New Zealand.

 

“I have received detailed submissions from Mr Dotcom. In due course I will receive further advice on those matters before making any decision,” Allen told New Zealand Herald this week. “Unfortunately, I cannot say how long that will take.”

Dotcom Reacts to Sentencing

On Twitter this morning, Dotcom said that the US Department of Justice charged members of the so-called “Megaupload conspiracy” with 185 years in jail.

 

“They raided us with 72 cops and dragged us though NZ Courts for 12 yrs. Today my co-defendants got 2.6 and 2.5 yrs. This could be converted to home detention in a few months?” Dotcom questioned.

 

“That’s why my former partners took the deal. Not because they actually believe that they are criminals. They are not. But they were tired of fighting and gave up in exchange for a 98.5% discount of the 185 yrs we were charged with. I don’t blame them. They have been through hell.”

 

 

After earlier criticism of his former colleagues, this morning Dotcom paused to congratulate them.

 

“My legal team says that my co-defendants in the Megaupload case are eligible for parole after 10 months and will likely get parole as part of the deal they made with the US Govt. They will serve less than a year instead of the 185 years we were charged with. Good for them,” Dotcom wrote.

 

Dotcom is the only remaining Megaupload executive still facing extradition to the United States. Megaupload marketing man Finn Batato passed away last year after succumbing to cancer.

 

Under U.S. law, online service providers need to respond to takedown notices and implement a meaningful policy to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

 

Many of the large social media platforms stick to these rules, but according to a lawsuit filed this week by several prominent music companies, Twitter is not among them.

‘Breeding Mass Copyright Infringement’

Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others filed a complaint at a federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, accusing Twitter’s parent company X Corp of “breeding” mass copyright infringement. The company allegedly fails to respond properly to takedown notices and lacks a proper termination policy.

 

As a result, Twitter is reportedly rife with music piracy. This activity generates many millions of views which are monetized by the social media platform, while rightsholders are not compensated.

 

“Twitter fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers’ and others’ exclusive rights under copyright law,” the complaint reads.

 

“While numerous Twitter competitors recognize the need for proper licenses and agreements for the use of musical compositions on their platforms, Twitter does not, and instead breeds massive copyright infringement that harms music creators.”

 

The music companies say that while many online platforms have agreed to licensing deals, Twitter has shown little interest in compensating musicians. This hasn’t changed since Elon Musk took over. Instead, the attitude towards rightsholders seems to have worsened.

 

The lawsuit specifically mentions a tweet from Musk which described the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a “plague on humanity.”

 

“This statement and others like it exert pressure on Twitter employees, including those in its trust and safety team, on issues relating to copyright and infringement,” the music companies note.

 

 

The same DMCA provides the ammunition for this multi-million dollar lawsuit. With a provisional list of over 1,600 musical works, the potential damages run to hundreds of millions of dollars.

‘Music Piracy Fuels Revenue’

Twitter’s revenue partly relies on advertising which, in turn, is boosted by additional views. According to the music companies, these advertisements are also clearly visible around infringing content.

 

The complaint lists several examples of infringing tweets with advertisements and promoted users surrounding them, each with many thousands of views.

 

In many cases, users upload infringing music videos to the platform. These tend to be quite popular and engaging, but unlike other platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, rightsholders are not compensated.

 

According to the music companies, these tweets are the kind of quintessential copyright infringement explicitly prohibited by U.S. copyright law. They are quite popular, however, and can collect hundreds of thousands of views, as is the case with the Rihanna tweet below.

 

“The tweet, which simply states, ’15 years ago, rihanna [sic] released ‘umbrella’ [sic]’, contains over two minutes of the official music video for Rihanna’s performance of ‘Umbrella.’ The infringing tweet garnered over 221,000 views and nearly 15k ‘likes’,” the music companies write.

 

 

These numbers don’t mean that the platform itself is doing anything wrong. Under the DMCA, which Musk referred to as a plague, services such as Twitter are shielded from liability under certain conditions. But this safe harbor doesn’t apply here, the music companies suggest.

DMCA Takedowns & Repeat Infringers

The complaint alleges that Twitter’s response to DMCA takedown notices is sub-par. Since December 2021, the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) has sent over 300,000 formal infringement notices, many of which didn’t lead to immediate removals.

 

“Despite claiming to take down tweets in response to an infringement notice within hours or minutes, Twitter routinely waits much longer before acting, if it acts at all.”

 

“Twitter’s incentive not to act expeditiously is clear. Twitter wants to maximize the benefit it receives from the infringing content on its platform before the tweet is deleted. As a general proposition, the value to Twitter of a tweet decreases over time.”

 

Under the DMCA, online platforms are required to implement a repeat infringer policy that allows for the termination of accounts that persistently share copyrighted content without permission.

 

The music companies note that Twitter used to have the term “terminate” in its copyright policy but in 2018 that wording was changed to “suspend.” These suspensions are not always permanent, the labels say.

 

“Even on the rare occasions where Twitter suspends an account used to infringe repeatedly, Twitter often reactivates that account after a short period of time. Twitter has suspended and reactivated certain accounts multiple times,” the complaint reads.

 

When accounts come back online, Twitter is more lenient to accounts with larger follower counts according to the music companies. The suggestion is that these accounts are more valuable to Twitter’s business model.

Hundreds of Millions

Based on these and other arguments, the complaint holds Twitter liable for both direct and contributory copyright infringement. Twitter’s actions cause substantial irreparable harm and the rightsholders seek compensation in return.

 

The complaint comes with a provisional list of over 1,600 musical works. For each of these, the rightsholders demand the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, which means that there is roughly a quarter of a billion dollars at stake.

 

Interestingly, this isn’t the first lawsuit of this size against Twitter. Earlier this year, celebrity photo agency Backgrid filed a similar case against Twitter, demanding $229 million in damages.

 

—

 

A copy of the music publishers’ complaint against Twitter, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in Nashville is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

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

Early Win for AimJunkies

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

 

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

 

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

Arbitration Judge Sides with Bungie

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Court Denies Objections, Confirms Damages Award

Shortly after the arbitration result, Bungie asked the federal court to have it confirmed. This was met with protests from the cheat seller, which asked the court to vacate the damages award.

 

According to AimJunkies, the arbitrator denied them a fair hearing by sustaining an objection. This prevented AimJunkies to use a prior deposition of Bungie’s witness for impeachment purposes. On top of that, they argue that the arbitrator was evidentially partial toward Bungie.

 

After reviewing the relevant submissions, District Court Judge Thomas Zilly denied AimJunkies’ objections and confirmed the arbitration order.

 

According to the court, AimJunkies could have tried other ways to bring up the impeachment. In addition, there’s no evidence that the arbitrator was evidentially partial to Bungie.

 

 

The final award totals $4,396,222 and consists of $3,657,500 in damages, $598,641 in attorneys’ fees, $101,800 in expert witness fees, and $38,281 in other expenses.

Legal Battle Continues

The court’s approval of the judgment is good news for Bungie. In addition to the financial aspect, it also comes with a permanent injunction that prevents the defendants from creating and selling similar hacks and cheats in the future.

 

That said, the legal battle is far from over. Bungie’s copyright and trademark infringement claims remain pending and both sides are expending significant legal resources to make their case.

 

In addition to Bungie’s claims, the countersuit in which third-party cheat developer James May accuses Bungie of ‘hacking,’ theft, and DMCA violations, has yet to be decided as well.

 

These remaining issues are expected to be resolved at a multi-day trial, which is scheduled to take place later this year.

 

—

 

A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly’s order confirming the arbitration judgment is available here (pdf)

 

Soap2Day, one of the most popular movie and TV show pirate streaming sites on the Internet, says it has closed down ‘forever’

 

Official domains including soap2day.to, soap2day.ac, soap2day.sh, soap2day.mx, s2dfree.to, s2dfree.cc, s2dfree.de, s2dfree.is, s2dfree.nl, plus the site’s domain uptime advisory pages at soapgate.org and soapgate.cc, all display the same shutdown message.

 

Hello guys: We have decided to close soap2day forever. We are very sorry Bye – Soap2day Team

 

 

Other than the message above, the Soap2Day team has provided no additional details on the site’s sudden demise. Whatever the reasons, issues with traffic levels and visitor numbers seem unlikely to be part of that equation.

Soap2Day Was a Pirate Success Story

Despite web blocking, domain downranking in search engines, and other anti-piracy measures, Soap2Day was one of the big ‘pirate streaming’ success stories of recent years, with traffic trending upwards and massive visitor numbers every single month.

 

Traffic has been improving all year; 84.2m visits in January, 93.6m in February, with figures for March and beyond even more impressive.

 

SimilarWeb data for single domain: soap2day.to

 

To put these traffic levels into perspective, Soap2Day received more traffic than the recently closed RARBG, 30 million more monthly visits than leading torrent site YTS (and by extension every torrent site in the top 10 most-visited sites list), and around 10 million visits more each month than streaming giant FMovies.

 

Given the above, it seems relatively safe to conclude that Soap2Day did not shut down due to a lack of popularity. Two domains used by the platform to notify users of official URLs (soapgate.org and soapgate.cc) received 12 million visits per month combined, yet neither offered any content for streaming.

So What Killed Soap2Day?

Soap2Day and similar large streaming sites face continuous pressure from global anti-piracy groups exerting pressure using various means, internationally and locally.

 

Late 2021, Hollywood and Netflix obtained a High Court injunction to block Soap2Day domains in the UK along with a similar order early February 2022 in Australia and an expansion a few months later.

 

 

The Motion Picture Association and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment obtained a subpoena in the United States that aimed to unmask the site’s operators in March 2022.

 

As data from SimilarWeb shows, Soap2Day’s traffic in the United States made it a go-to location for movie and TV show fans, potentially at the expense of licensed platforms operating in the same market.

 

In October 2022, Hollywood reported Soap2Day to the United States government. The higher traffic levels reported at the time were due to the MPA combining various Soap2Day domains but perhaps the most interesting comment is the linking of Soap2Day with operators in China.

 

 

Soap2Day also found its way onto the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s ‘Infringing Website List’ last October and just weeks later, was again targeted in a DMCA subpoena obtained by Hollywood.

Beware of Strangers Bearing Gifts

In common with RARBG, copycat sites claiming to be Soap2Day already exist in huge numbers and that volume is only likely to increase in the days and weeks to come. At the time of writing, based on loose calculations, there are at least 480 ‘Soap2Day’ branded domains in circulation.

 

Random tests on 50 of those domains in the past few hours revealed more than 20 attempts to dump malware. Anyone looking for Soap2Day alternatives should therefore be aware that movies and TV shows aren’t the only gifts on offer from would-be Soap2Day replacements.

 

Strike 3 Holdings has been a familiar name in U.S. federal courts for a while now.

 

Last year, the adult entertainment company filed a record-breaking number of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates.

 

The company is keeping up this pace in 2023, averaging dozens of lawsuits per week. Most of these are never mentioned in the press and a large number are settled behind closed doors.

 

Every now and then, an accused Internet subscriber objects, but these cases rarely go to trial. According to some, the lawsuits’ main objective is to collect settlement payments and default judgments.

Motion to Quash

This line of reasoning was also brought up by a “John Doe” defendant whose IP address was targeted in a recent complaint. The defendant submitted a motion to quash, hoping to prevent Comcast from revealing their identity.

 

“Considering the thousands of John Does being sued by Plaintiff, it is highly likely that Plaintiff has no intention of pursuing an actual trial on the merits in the thousands of copyright infringement cases filed by Plaintiff Strike 3,” Doe’s attorney writes.

 

“[Strike 3] instead hopes to profit from settlements with small and relatively resource limited individual defendants as well as default judgments against individual defendants who are unsure of how to, or feel they are financially unable to, defend themselves through the full course of a copyright infringement trial.”

 

Based on these and other arguments, the defendant tried to stop the lawsuit in its tracks. However, as we have seen before in these types of cases, the colourado federal court denied the request.

 

According to U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty, who handles all the Strike 3 cases in the district, subpoenas to identify Internet subscribers can only be quashed if there’s a valid claim of privilege or if a privacy issue is implicated. That’s not the case here.

Reliability of the Evidence

The accused pirate’s motion raised questions about the accuracy of the evidence and whether it can accurately detect infringers. For example, if a subscriber has an open wifi network, others including neighbors might use it as well.

 

Judge Hegarty doesn’t deny this, but notes that this argument is not sufficient to quash the subpoena. Instead, the defendant can bring it up at a later stage.

 

“Defendant’s arguments challenging Plaintiff’s investigation methods and concerning the accessibility of a Wireless Firewall/Router are premature at this stage of the litigation and more properly raised during adjudication of the merits of this case,” Judge Hegarty writes.

 

If the case wasn’t allowed to go forward, rightsholders couldn’t possibly enforce their copyrights against alleged BitTorrent pirates, the order adds.

 

“In fact, Plaintiff’s attempt to obtain information from the ISP is a necessary first step in Plaintiff’s process of discovering the identity of the alleged infringer for the purpose of enforcing its copyright.”

No Troll

The argument that the company simply pursues these cases to collect settlements isn’t sufficient either. On top of that, the court refutes the suggestion that Strike 3 is a copyright troll.

 

“[T]he Court has neither observed nor been made aware of any particular Defendant in the cases before this Court who has experienced ‘coercive’ settlement tactics by Plaintiff,” Judge Hegarty writes.

 

“[T]his Court has handled over a hundred similar cases and consistently found these plaintiffs are not copyright trolls but rather actual producers of adult films whose works are infringed.”

 

 

Whether the term “troll” applies is a matter of semantics. A few weeks ago, a Florida court allowed the term to be used during a rare trial, which is scheduled to take place later this year.

Embarrassment and Undue Burden

Finally, the motion to quash highlighted the Doe defendant’s fears that exposing their identity could lead to undue embarrassment and all sorts of related problems.

 

Specifically, it “would be highly embarrassing to Defendant, unjustifiably stigmatizing to Defendant, injurious to Defendant’s character and reputation, and potentially jeopardizing to Defendant’s employment.”

 

Judge Hegarty admitted that these are serious concerns. However, since the defendants in these cases can request a protective order to proceed anonymously, it is no reason to quash the subpoena and end the case before it even gets started.

 

“The Court finds that Defendant has not met his or her burden of showing that the subpoena served on Comcast must be quashed. Therefore, the Court denies Defendant John Doe’s Motion to Quash,” Judge Hegarty concludes.

 

This outcome doesn’t come as a surprise as similar efforts in colourado’s federal court have failed as well. However, it is important to highlight that these cases continue to make their way through the courts.

 

Since all Strike 3 cases in colourado end up at Judge Hegarty’s desk, this order suggests that it will be very hard to submit a successful motion to quash in this district.

 

—

 

A copy of U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty’s order on the motion to quash the Comcast subpoena is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Fast X”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on June 12 are:

 

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(9)	Fast X	6.1 / trailer
2	(1)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.0 / trailer
3	(3)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
4	(…)	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	9.0 / trailer
5	(4)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer
6	(5)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
7	(…)	Transformers: Rise of the Beasts	6.6 / trailer
8	(7)	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	6.4 / trailer
9	(2)	Hypnotic	5.4 / trailer
10	(8)	The Covenant	7.6 / trailer

 

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

 

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has published the findings of its 2023 study on ‘European Citizens and Intellectual Property: Perception, Awareness and Behavior.’

 

The study aims to gain a better understanding of European consumers’ attitudes toward intellectual property and covers physical counterfeit goods and online digital content; our focus here will be on the latter.

Most Europeans Oppose Use of Illegal Content Sources

Given the entertainment industries’ regular and urgent calls to tackle online piracy, the EUIPO study paints a more positive picture in respect of attitudes towards illegal content.

 

“In general, most Europeans do not support obtaining digital content from illegal sources. The majority disagree with a variety of reasons that are sometimes used to justify this behavior, such as that it is OK if only for personal use (65 % disagree or tend to disagree with this), if the price of the content is too high (72 %), or if the content is not available via a legal source (74 %),” the report notes.

 

 

In line with most, if not all, studies in recent years, acceptance of piracy decreases with age. While 19% of citizens aged 55-64, and 18% of those aged 65 and over, believe that its acceptable to access content via illegal sources if the price is too high, acceptance rates jump to 41% and 46% in the 25-34 and 15-24 groups, respectively.

 

Piracy acceptance rates are also higher in the younger age groups when content isn’t available from legal sources, reaching 44% among 15 to 24-year-olds. However, the majority of Europeans (80%) say that they prefer to obtain content from legal sources, if an affordable legal option is available.

 

In that respect, a surprising 69% of respondents consider the quality and range of content to be better than that currently available from illegal platforms.

14% of EU Citizens Pirate, But Not Exclusively

The study found that 43% of Europeans paid to access online content from a legal service in the past 12 months. Just 14% admitted to having used illegal sources during the same period but these aren’t all hardcore pirates. Of this group, six in every 10 citizens (60%) also purchased content from legal sources, leaving a small minority overall who only consume content from illegal sources.

 

 

Among those who used exclusively legal sources, the main reason cited for not using illegal sources is that the content they want is available on legal platforms (44%), with 40% stating that they prefer not to use illegal platforms because of the harm this could cause to content creators.

 

Avoidance due to perceived dangers of pirate sites affecting either themselves or someone else was relatively low, 13% and 19%, respectively. Fear of being caught and/or fined was higher at 24%.

 

 

Overall, 82% of those surveyed agreed that obtaining content illegally carries a risk of exposure to some kind of harmful content, such as scams or content inappropriate for minors. This belief is held more among those who don’t access content online (85%) than those who do (75%).

Sports Content Popular With Pirates

While 14% of Europeans report that they accessed content from illegal sources in the previous 12 months, one type of content proved to be the biggest draw.

 

Sports content was obtained from illegal sources by 12% of Europeans, with 11% saying that they used a set-top box or downloaded apps. Once again, the younger the pirate, the more likely they are to access content illegally.

 

“Accessing content from illegal sources is considerably more common than average among younger Europeans. In the 15-24 age group, 33 % report using illegal online sources intentionally, 27 % say they have streamed content from illegal sources to watch sports, and 25 % say that they have used illicit streaming devices to access content illegally – all more than double the EU average,” the study notes.

Where Europeans Access Illegal Content

Just over four in ten Europeans (43%) who access content illegally online say they do so via dedicated websites. Roughly a third (32%) say they acquire content using social media with just under a quarter mentioning apps (23%). Peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent and dedicated IPTV services are used less often.

 

 

“There are no marked differences between age groups or Member States when it comes to preferred channels,” the study notes.

Uploading, Sharing, Providing Content to Others

In light of the 14% of Europeans who accessed content from unlicensed sources in the preceding 12 months, that 11% overall uploaded/shared content with others seems relatively high.

 

In common with those who download or stream from illegal platforms, uploading is much more common among younger people. The researchers note that in the 15-24 and 25-34 groups, 25% and 21% uploaded/shared content in the preceding 12 months, a figure that drops to less than 10% among those aged 44 and above.

 

“There is a very strong correlation between accessing content illegally and making protected content illegally accessible by uploading it: 42 % of those who have also accessed online content from illegal sources have also uploaded protected content, while only 6 % of those who have not accessed content illegally have uploaded protected content,” the researchers add.

Justifications & Reasons to Stop Pirating Content

According to the study, those who access content online using illegal sources are more likely to believe that there are reasons to justify this behavior than those who do not. Leading justifications for accessing content illegally include ‘personal use’ (71%), legal content being too expensive (68%), and the content being unavailable on a legal service already purchased (65%).

 

“The impact of price and availability of offers is mirrored in the fact that a better affordability of content from legal sources and a larger offer of such are the most important reasons that users of illegal sources would stop using them (for 43 % and 37 % of Europeans, respectively),” the researchers note.

 

“A better understanding of the harm caused by using pirated content to the content producers or to jobs and the European economy (22 % and 21 %, respectively) are much less likely to keep people from using illegal sources.”

 

The full report is available here here (pdf)

 

For several decades, The Scene has been the main source of all pirated content made available on the Internet.

 

Technically, release groups operate in a closed ecosystem, but the reality is different. The vast majority of the files published on private Scene servers eventually find their way to public pirate sites.

 

The secretive nature of The Scene has been a major challenge for law enforcement but in the summer of 2020, the US Department of Justice made a major breakthrough. Following a thorough investigation, three members of the illustrious SPARKS group were indicted.

The Rose That Grew from Concrete

The raids and the criminal investigation sent shockwaves around The Scene. Some groups stopped releasing entirely and others significantly slowed down their output, which was felt in many parts of the public piracy ecosystem too.

 

Amid this turmoil, a new TV release group going by the name of CAKES emerged. The group published its first release “The 100 S07E16” on October 1, 2020, and many more would follow.

 

During the next few years, CAKES built its reputation as a steady release group, one that eventually covered 7,000 titles. That’s an impressive average of more than 50 new releases per week.

 

Aside from the massive output, CAKES was also known for including four lines from Drake’s track “Pound Cake” in its release notes. These same lines are also at the start of its farewell message.

 

Overly focused, it’s far from the time to rest now
Debates growin’ ’bout who they think is the best now
Took a while, got the jokers out of the deck now
I’m holdin’ all the cards and dudes wanna play chess now

 

Goodbye.Its.Been.Fun.S01E01.READNFO.1080p.WEB.H264-CAKES

Do For Love

The message explains that when CAKES started out, the team made an internal promise to pull the plug when “the love” is gone. Without going into further details, that time has apparently arrived.

 

While some people may be disappointed with this decision, CAKES has clearly made up its mind. The group prefers to highlight the achievements and experiences instead, referring to the past few years as a “crazy journey.”

 

“If you had told us how the last few years would go, we wouldn’t have believed you. The skills learnt, the massive lows, the euphoric highs, it couldn’t have happened with a better group of people.”

 

“I couldn’t be prouder of our team, not just for what was achieved but knowing the right moment to call time. As sad as this is, goodbye from team CAKES,” the group adds.

GLHF!

While the notice doesn’t spell it out, CAKES is likely not the only group to shut down. There seems to be a connection with another group, GLHF, which is also mentioned in the farewell message.

 

GLHF stopped releasing new titles over a week ago, which is highly atypical. The group originally started in December 2020, shortly after CAKES became active, and has released more than 6,500 titles since.

 

With CAKES and potentially GLHF affected, two steady suppliers of TV releases have disappeared. This doesn’t mean that all piracy will end; other groups typically appear, just like CAKES did earlier.

 

Or could there be more going on behind the scenes, perhaps?

 

CAKES ends its farewell with a final musical reference that is quite fitting, considering all the drama and uncertainty. The quote from Jay Z’s track “What More Can I Say” leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

 

We’re supposed to be number one on everybody list
We’ll see what happens when I no longer exist

 

 

According to the original complaint filed July 2, 2020, this was a case about “copyright piracy” and how YouTube, the largest video-sharing website in the world, plays host to huge numbers of videos infringing on the rights of copyright holders.

 

It was a case about how YouTube facilitates and induces a “hotbed of copyright infringement” through its development and implementation of a copyright enforcement system called Content ID, a system that protects powerful copyright owners yet denies ordinary creators any “meaningful opportunity” to enforce their rights.

 

It was a case about how this system maximizes YouTube’s profits but bars the platform from claiming safe harbor protection under the Copyright Act. Rather than terminating repeat infringers, the system provides them with cover, the lawsuit claimed.

11th Hour Issues Prompt Weekend Filings

Starting today, these claims would’ve been heard before a jury at trial in California.

 

On Saturday, plaintiffs Maria Schneider, Uniglobe Entertainment, and AST Publishing moved the Court for leave to dismiss without prejudice all of AST Publishing’s claims against YouTube, Uniglobe Entertainment’s claims based on foreign works, and Maria Schneider’s claims relating to Copyright Management Information (CMI).

 

The plaintiffs had hoped to pursue the litigation as a class action, but on May 22, the Court denied class certification. In their motion filed Saturday, the plaintiffs say this changed their views about how best to prosecute the case; YouTube’s repositioning was on display May 25 when it withdrew its safe harbor defense.

 

The plaintiffs say they reached an agreement with YouTube for a stipulated dismissal of claims without prejudice, but last Friday, YouTube reversed course.

 

“Through the good-faith efforts of Plaintiffs, and guided by the advice of the Court, the parties came to an agreement to significantly narrow the issues remaining to be tried before the jury. Defendants should not now be allowed to renege on the agreement that they made with Plaintiffs and that was the basis of the trial plan submitted to and adopted by the Court,” their motion reads.

Jury Trial Scheduled To Begin Today

Following earlier events plus those on Friday, Saturday and finally Sunday, the claims in this lawsuit won’t be heard today, tomorrow, or any other day in the future. After almost three years of litigation, it is all over.

 

“Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), Plaintiffs Maria Schneider, Uniglobe Entertainment, LLC, and AST Publishing, LTD, and Defendants YouTube, LLC and Google LLC, hereby stipulate to the dismissal of the action,” the parties’ stipulation of dismissal dated Sunday reads.

 

“All claims that Plaintiffs raised or could have raised in this action are dismissed WITH PREJUDICE. Each Party will bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees.”

 

 

Related documents can be found here (1,2,3, pdf)

 

In the wake of the 30+ year prison sentences handed down to the people behind Flawless IPTV, we’ve been exploring various aspects of the service’s operations and the extraordinary effort expended by the Premier League to bring Flawless down.

 

While no single facet of Flawless’ operations can explain why such punitive sentences were considered appropriate, the emphasis on the service’s efforts to undermine the Premier League’s ISP blocking program played no small part.

 

One of the key aims of the blocking program is to prevent football fans in the UK from watching games played in the UK at 3:00pm on Saturday. This ‘blackout’ only affects viewers in the UK; the plan at Flawless was to enable UK football fans to enjoy these games by offering 3:00pm games played in the UK yet only available legally in other countries.

ISP Blocking Program

By offering access to 3:00pm kick-off games, Flawless had a product that wasn’t available to buy in the UK. Fans loved the service but in the background, the Premier League was pulling out all the stops to prevent fans from accessing it.

 

Birmingham-based anti-piracy company Friend MTS was tasked with monitoring the internet for pirated Premier League streams. However, just like anyone else, the company needed to access the services offering those streams so that server locations could be identified and sent to ISPs Sky, Virgin, BT, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet for subsequent blocking.

 

Using covertly purchased Flawless subscriptions supported by watermarking technology, in 2017 Friend MTS was able to identify specific Sky viewing cards used by Flawless and trace those cards directly to Flawless kingpin Mark Gould. Sky responded by canceling the cards, but the cat-and-mouse game would continue.

A Mole Inside Friend MTS

Our 2019 article provided significant detail on the blocking program, including that information was being leaked from inside an anti-piracy company. We knew that company was Friend MTS, but only more recently did it become clear why the company rejected our requests for comment.

 

In April 2018, a person who identified themselves as ‘Bill’ opened a support ticket at Flawless. Claiming to work at Friend MTS, ‘Bill’ said that in return for payment via bitcoin, he would provide information from inside the company that would allow Flawless to identify the usernames and passwords of accounts used to obtain information on their service.

 

It later emerged that ‘Bill’ was Zak Smith, a Friend MTS employee who went on to supply Flawless with crucial information on the blocking system and other sensitive material from inside the company. Information handed over included a list of covert subscriptions and the payment methods used by the anti-piracy company to acquire them – PayPal accounts and scans/photographs of credit/debit cards, among others.

Blocking the Blockers

Using information already in Flawless’ possession, enhanced by the information detailed above, the IPTV provider was able to turn the tables by blocking Friend MTS IP addresses from the Flawless service. Not that the anti-piracy company was initially aware of that.

 

Through the development and use of a custom script, when the anti-piracy company attempted to access the Flawless service, to obtain IP addresses to be forwarded to ISPs for subsequent blocking, Flawless diverted those requests to servers operated by rival pirate IPTV services.

 

That meant that any IP address and related server/hosting information obtained during the sweep was actually related to services other than Flawless. When IP addresses were forwarded to the ISPs for blocking, rival IPTV providers were blocked, not Flawless itself.

The Beginning of the End

When arrests of those behind Flawless began in May 2018, information obtained from seized devices revealed the existence of ‘Bill’ and the information he’d supplied to Flawless. Knowing the information had come from inside Friend MTS, the company launched an investigation.

 

Comparisons were made between the times that data was leaked to Flawless and the company’s security systems which logged people in and out of the building, recording times and dates. With suspicion mounting that Bill was Zak Smith, attention turned to photographs ‘Bill’ had sent to Flawless.

 

In addition to confidential information, these photographs accidentally captured details of equipment and the office itself. ‘Bill’ was arrested under his real name on August 7, 2018, and pleaded guilty in February 2020. He was not sentenced with the others late last month, with reports indicating that a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

 

The success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT inspired Microsoft to add more AI features to its Bing search engine.

 

The idea is that this will allow users to receive more elaborate answers compared to an ordinary list of links.

 

Whether this strategy will pay off has yet to be seen, but in our tests, something else stood out. People are not the only ones asking questions. Bing itself is quite interested to hear what its users think too.

Bing’s Pirate Bay Poll

As expected, a regular keyword search for “Pirate Bay” returns a lot of information about the site. In addition to the correct URL, which was previously absent, Bing also lists an intriguing poll. Specifically, it wants to know how people effectively protect themselves while using The Pirate Bay.

 

Poll is in the bottom right corner

 

Bing provides its users with four options to choose from, including the use of a VPN, a proxy, the Tor browser, or a dedicated IP address. Depending on one’s definition of ‘safe’ a VPN is the most obvious answer, which is also reflected in the results.

 

This poll has little to do with ChatGPT of course but it is possible that Bing somehow uses the results to improve its general search functionality. Or perhaps these questions are generated by AI?

 

As a small experiment, we decided to ask Bing the same question it asked us (What is the most effective way to protect yourself while using The Pirate Bay?). And indeed, a VPN does up as the answer in a massive font.

 

Torrent Clients, Fmovies, RARBG, and The Dark Web

User polls aren’t exclusive to The Pirate Bay. There are several other file-sharing and piracy-related topics where other polls appear. When we type BitTorrent, for example, we’re asked about our favorite torrent client.

 

The options are rather limited but with 57%, uTorrent is the clear winner, followed by qBitTorrent with nearly a quarter of the votes.

 

 

When we search for Fmovies, one of the most popular pirate streaming sites, Bing suddenly wants to know what movie genres we watch most often on the site. Here, ‘action’ is the public’s favorite with nearly half of the votes.

 

 

Meanwhile, RARBG’s demise has yet to be reflected in Bing’s data. The search engine mentions a copycat site as the top result and still asks whether people think that a VPN is necessary to access RARBG.

 

Finally, there’s also a poll about the dark web, but perhaps it’s best if we don’t mention that explicitly.

 

Under US copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”

 

Historically, Internet providers rarely applied such a drastic measure, but under pressure from lawsuits, many ISPs are now acutely aware of their obligations.

Music Companies sued RCN

Internet provider RCN is one of the providers targeted by this legal campaign. Four years ago, the company was sued by several major music industry companies including Arista Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, and Warner Records.

 

The music companies alleged that RCN wasn’t doing enough to stop subscribers from pirating on its network. Instead of terminating the accounts of persistent pirates, the Internet provider looked away, they argued.

 

The stakes in these liability lawsuits are high. Internet providers face hundreds of millions of dollars in damages claims, while tens of thousands of Internet subscribers are at risk of having their accounts terminated.

Exploring a Potential Settlement

RCN initially responded to the allegations with a counterattack. The company accused the RIAA and its anti-piracy partner of sending ‘false and fraudulent’ DMCA notices, arguing they shouldn’t serve as evidence for disconnections.

 

This countersuit ultimately failed. In two instances, a New Jersey federal court concluded that RCN failed to show that it was financially hurt by any incorrect or incomplete DMCA notices. As such, the case moved forward.

 

These cases can lead to a high-profile trial, but it appears that both parties are exploring options to end the matter before it gets that far. Specifically, they are considering a potential settlement.

 

“More recently, the Parties have communicated directly about the possibility of settlement but are not currently engaged in settlement discussions. The Parties are open to discussing potential settlement avenues with the Court,” they wrote in a status report to the court last week.

 

The settlement option is serious, both parties reiterated in a court hearing this week. And to help the process, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hirsch appointed a mediator yesterday.

 

“Counsel and the parties (including individuals with settlement authority) shall attend mediation sessions as requested by the Mediator,” Judge Hirsch writes.

 

 

While we don’t know the positions of both parties, rightsholders have won similar lawsuits in the past which puts the music companies at an advantage. However, with a settlement, RCN is likely to avoid a Cox-style billion-dollar verdict.

Filmmaker Suit ‘Expands’

An eventual settlement won’t end all piracy-related trouble at RCN. The provider is also involved in a similar lawsuit with several movie companies; they recently tried to involve Reddit users in their evidence-gathering efforts.

 

This lawsuit continues, and a few days ago the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in which they demand millions of dollars in damages. The complaint also calls for a site-blocking injunction targeting popular pirate site domains such as YTS, The Pirate Bay, and 1337x.

 

The amended complaint now lists high-profile law firm Foley and Lardner among the plaintiffs’ attorneys and adds new piracy evidence from Facterra. The evidence-gathering company, owned by American Films, was also added to a similar lawsuit against Internet provider WOW.

 

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A copy of the status update in the lawsuit between the music companies and RCN is available here (pdf). The proposed amended complaint of the filmmakers against RCN can be found here (pdf)