In the face of legislation designed to thwart its growth, seizures, prosecutions, dozens of arrests and countless prison sentences have done little to prevent piracy.

 

Anti-piracy enforcement actions, including dozens by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, have taken hundreds of sites out of the game. That’s a solid base for arguing that piracy volumes could’ve been much worse without so much enforcement.

 

The reality is that sites continue to emerge with some notable examples generating extraordinary levels of traffic, at a scale never seen before. History tells us that won’t continue indefinitely; pirate sites may come and go but Hollywood is in for the long haul – and then some.

9anime: Huge, Successful, and a Prime Target

One of the current batch of piracy behemoths is 9anime, a free streaming platform dedicated to Japanese cartoons. It currently receives in excess of 214 million visits per month, an incredible 2.5+ billion per year.

 

A DMCA subpoena application filed at a California court on Thursday shows that ACE has not given up on its plan to reduce 9anime’s traffic to zero. Like many times before, ACE – via the MPA – wants Cloudflare to give up information on its customers, 9anime included.

 

This information typically includes names, physical addresses, IP addresses,
telephone numbers, email addresses, and payment information. However, ACE also seeks additional information relating to account updates and histories, which could help to fill in some crucial blanks when combined with intelligence obtained elsewhere.

 

There’s no doubt that 9anime will remain a priority enforcement target. At the time of writing the 9animetv.to domain is ranked #164 globally and with over 30% of that traffic coming from inside the United States, it represents one of the squeakiest wheels in the entire online piracy market.

Sites Under The Spotlight

Also mentioned in Thursday’s applications is allanime.to, a site offering anime, manga (Japanese comics) and associated music. The domain became popular in February and since then traffic has increased considerably, to a current level of around 4.7 million visits per month. In common with 9anime, over a third of allanime’s traffic comes from the United States, assisted by social media referrals, the majority on YouTube.

 

Two other anime-focused domains – animefreak.site and animet.site – also get a mention. The former receives under half a million visits per month according to SimilarWeb, with the latter apparently receiving just a couple of thousand.

 

With no obvious public web presence and a domain that won’t resolve, Anifastcdn.info receives no traffic at all by most accounts, but that’s certainly not the case. While the platform uses Cloudflare in the United States, its servers appear to be on the other side of the Atlantic and not that difficult to find either, certainly for an operation like ACE.

Cloud Storage

Two other platforms attracting ACE interest have more visible levels of traffic. Ninjashare.to heads the list as a growing platform; after pulling in 11.8m monthly visits in February, the cloud storage platform received 15.8 million in April.

 

Also mentioned in the DMCA subpoena application is rapid-cloud.co, a storage platform sporting Vidcloud branding and around 4.5 million monthly visits. According to ACE, specific content accessed via rapid-cloud actually came from betterstream.cc, which also has no obvious public web presence but does have significant traffic.

 

When Cloudflare hands over information to ACE, it may prove informative but there’s a reasonable chance the data won’t amount to some big reveal. But it might eventually, so as long as these and similar sites are in business, ACE can return to court again and again to obtain subpoenas just like this one, for less than $50 a pop.

 

It will probably continue to do that, for as long as it takes.

 

Image Credit: Pixabay/geralt

 

Similar to any other online platform that deals with user-generated content, Instagram processes copyright complaints on a daily basis.

 

Most of these arrive in the form of DMCA notices, in which rightsholders requests the removal of a specific image, video, or URL.

 

The number of removals runs in the hundreds of thousands during a typical month, without getting noticed by the public at large, but if Instagram users continue to post copyright infringing content, they risk losing their accounts.

Takedown Trouble Triggers Lawsuit

This takedown policy is widely accepted as the standard for social media services but every now and then, disputes can arise. In India, one such dispute turned into a legal battle in which the Bombay High Court issued a broad injunction earlier this month.

 

The lawsuit in question was filed by Applause Entertainment, the Indian company behind the TV-series “Scam 1992”. The series covers the 1992 Indian stock market scam, adapted from Debashis Basu’s book The Scam.

 

The TV production is licensed to Sony LIV and was a huge success. However, as often happens with popular media, pirated footage was readily available too. Not just on pirate sites, but also on otherwise legitimate social media platforms.

 

Applause Entertainment wasn’t happy with this pirate activity so it approached several platforms to take down infringing clips and snippets of the show. Instagram was one of the recipients but, instead of taking immediate action, the platform asked for proof of ownership.

 

The company responded to this correspondence with relevant ownership documents but, apparently, Instagram still wasn’t convinced. This standoff prompted Applause to take the matter to the Bombay High Court, where it requested an ex-parte injunction.

Court Issues Broad Injunction

The High Court concluded, after reviewing the evidence, that the studio does own the rights so Instagram must take action. This isn’t out of the ordinary but the court went further than simply asking the infringing posts to be removed.

 

As highlighted by the law blog SpicyIP, the court issued a so-called dynamic injunction, which goes much further than a simple takedown request.

 

In addition to removing the pirated clips, Instagram must also terminate the accounts of 33 affected users, while handing over their personal details including email addresses, phone numbers, and physical locations.

 

Specifically, Instagram must disclose personal user data, “including but not limited to the contact details, mobile numbers, email addresses, IP addresses and physical locations / addresses of Defendant Nos. 2 to 34.”

 

The injunction’s scope doesn’t stop there. In addition to removing the reported posts, Instagram must also remove other infringing URLs from its platform. This implies broader filtering and could affect other users who shared similar links. The same applies to other “rogue handles” that the users potentially used.

A Blunt Anti-Piracy Tool?

According to SpicyIP, the court appears to put Instagram users in the same category as pirate websites. Previously, the court ordered flagrantly infringing pirate sites and their ‘mirrors’ to be blocked, but social media accounts might require a different treatment.

 

There are no signs that the court investigated the user accounts, so it’s possible that some posts were relatively innocent. Alternatively, they may be classified as fair use.

 

“There is the possibility that of these defendants a few of could have been genuine social media handles that have several legitimate pieces of content, and that there was a ‘mere re-sharing’ of the content in question in one shared reel or post.

 

“There is also the possibility that the handles, used the ‘short audio-visual’ clippings to make Instagram reels. This could have included licensed content from other sources, or fair dealing uses,” SpicyIP adds.

 

The court order doesn’t go onto detail on the nature of the posts, so it’s hard to draw any strong conclusions. In any case, the High Court has shown once again that copyright infringement matters are taken rather seriously in India.

 

Whether Instagram plans to challenge the injunction is unknown. Telegram previously did so when it was ordered to expose alleged copyright infringers, but that challenge failed.

 

—

 

A copy of the order issued by the Bombay High Court is available here (pdf)

 

The US Chamber of Commerce 2023 International IP Index report is a pretty big read at 213 pages, but for those interested in intellectual property matters, it’s an interesting one too.

 

The report benchmarks the IP frameworks in 55 major economies and rates them based on how effectively they protect all kinds of intellectual property. Countries and regions with a reputation for cracking down on infringement tend to gravitate towards the top of the index but that doesn’t prevent the Chamber of Commerce from offering criticism.

European Union Criticized For Complexity

For the last two years, the European Commission has expended significant resources on two new pieces of legislation known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). Their overall goal is to improve online safety and protect citizens’ fundamental rights, while ensuring that digital markets are both fair and open.

 

Time will tell how that all works out but for now, over-complication appears to have led to a level of frustration in the United States. The Chamber introduces the DSA as a “sprawling piece of legislation granting vast regulatory and monitoring powers” before noting the plethora of categorizations that hope to encompass all kinds of online platforms.

 

“The law is full of definitions and categorizations of different providers of online ‘intermediary services,’ including ‘caching, mere conduit, hosting, online platforms, very large online platforms, and very large online search engines. Some of these categories are transplanted from preexisting definitions under the E-Commerce Directive, whereas others are new,” the report notes.

 

“[T]hese categories are fluid, and entities may, at different moments, be one or another or a combination of these categories with differing levels of accompanying compliance and reporting responsibilities. Consequently, an entity’s legal obligation and responsibilities may change rather significantly depending on what category of service provider the entity was at a given moment.”

Trusted Flaggers Fail to Impress

Major rightsholders and some governments have been promoting the use of so-called ‘trusted flaggers’ to help tackle infringement. These entities could be companies, organizations or even an individual, but the key element is that they are trusted to make good decisions on the takedown, removal or blocking of content, directly on the platforms where content is found.

 

The concepts around this tend to vary, but a basic example might include a third-party acting on behalf of a rightsholder having direct access to a video platform’s panel and being allowed to flag content for deletion themselves. Trusted flaggers have been mentioned as potentially useful in rapid site-blocking actions and live stream takedowns, through to the removal of listings on social media advertising sundry infringing goods.

 

As the Chamber of Commerce points out, such takedown notices must be “processed and decided upon with priority and without undue delay,” but not all rightsholders have the resources to employ a trusted flagger to do their work. So what about their rights?

 

“[G]iven the sheer scale and volume of illegal and IP-infringing content on the internet, what will happen with notifications filed by non-trusted flaggers? Will such notices be addressed in an expeditious fashion or deprioritized by intermediaries in favor of notices filed solely by trusted flaggers?” the report asks.

 

“As currently drafted, that is a logical and not unlikely outcome. Furthermore, although the creation of the trusted flagger concept may help standardize and professionalize the notification process, it may also prove to be largely ineffective and, in fact, act as a barrier to effective enforcement.

 

“The creation of what is, in effect, an online enforcement gatekeeper adds a hurdle and layer of bureaucracy to an already elaborate enforcement process,” the report concludes.

 

The 2023 International IP Index report is available here

 

The Internet is littered with shady IPTV services that offer a lot, for very little money.

 

These deals often seem too good to be true and in most cases they are; at least for those who prefer to stay on the right side of the law.

Pirate IPTV Raid

This week, Dutch fiscal police (FIOD) landed a major success in the battle against this type of piracy by shutting down one of Europe’s largest IPTV operations. This wasn’t just a random target either. The operation presumably offered its services to countless smaller IPTV sellers, which served over a million subscribers.

 

Little detail was released about the main defendants but authorities report that four people were arrested. The available information also suggests that GLOBE Datacenter was a key target. This makes sense as its website and network have been offline for two days now, downtime matched by the company’s Twitter feed.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, FIOD confirmed that it won’t release any names of suspects at this point. However, police say that 1,200 servers were intentionally taken offline at a data center, which was allegedly operated by one of the main suspects.

 

While IPTV raids are not rare, we seldom see an entire commercial data center taken offline in the process. This would suggest that police had information that the hardware and network were almost exclusively used to facilitate the alleged criminal activity.

Legitimate Businesses go Offline

Looking at the sites that were hosted on GLOBE’s autonomous system number (AS212708), we indeed see many IPTV-related domains and IP-addresses. These include nextiptv.org, iptvextrema.com, mercuryiptv.com and many others.

 

There are some clear outliers too, including local businesses such as a vacation rental park, painters, a dentist, a pedicure salon, a crane company, and a typically Dutch flower bulbs seller. These and many other sites became unreachable and are still offline today.

 

Needless to say, these businesses are not suspects in any way. The sites were hosted on a shared IP-address – assigned to a smaller ‘local’ hosting company – that happened to use GLOBE’s infrastructure. Unfortunately, the damage is real.

Real Companies, Real Trouble

TorrentFreak spoke to a representative of one of the companies involved, who confirmed that its website was taken down in the raid. This understandably caused a lot of issues, as customers and clients often visit a company’s website to get in touch or make a booking.

 

From what we can see, the fallout is relatively contained to a few dozen domains. That said, those who are affected still have to deal with the fallout. For several companies, email accounts stopped working as well, causing more issues.

 

When confronted with this collateral damage, a FIOD spokesperson initially told us that unrelated sites were not supposed to be hit. We were asked us to compile a list of affected websites which we sent via email yesterday. This list actually wasn’t hard to find using public information.

 

One of the affected companies informed us today that they were approached by FIOD after the raid, but it’s unclear if and how the situation will be resolved. We approached FIOD for comment and received a response shortly before publication.

Fiscal Police Responds

FIOD and the prosecution service (OM) confirmed that the data center was in large part used for illegal purposes. It appears that one of the employees, a suspect in this case, also operated a hosting company for small and mid-sized companies (SMEs).

 

“The decision to shut down the data center in question was prompted by the fact that our investigation showed that the majority of the data center consisted of illegal (video streaming) services. On-site investigations confirmed this,” FIOD’s spokesperson says.

 

“One of the employees of the data center, also a suspect in the investigation, apparently had the additional function of providing IT services to SMEs. These companies are the victims of the aforementioned illegal main function of the data center, on which FIOD and OM had to act.”

 

The data of the innocent companies has not been seized and FIOD encourages the GLOBE employee who operated their hosting company to assist in the recovery of the affected websites.

 

“FIOD and OM do their best to ensure that the relevant SMEs have access to their data. The servers on which this data is stored are not seized. FIOD and OM also encourage the aforementioned employee from the data center to represent the interests of these companies,” the FIOD spokesperson said.

 

When hundreds of servers are taken offline it is hard to completely rule out collateral damage. The same happened when The Pirate Bay and Megaupload were raided. In this case, however, it seems that more research could have potentially prevented some of the fallout.

 

Mediavision has been tracking citizens’ piracy habits across the Nordic countries since 2010. The company’s annual report for Spring 2023, based on a survey conducted in March, has just been released.

 

With Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway under the spotlight once again, Mediavision’s pan-Nordic consumer survey aims to measure unlicensed content consumption among 15 to 74-year-old respondents, across categories including movies and TV shows, and access to both via pirate IPTV services.

Overall Piracy Rates Increase

With no obviously positive news to distract, poor figures across all four countries take center stage.

 

Denmark, a country with an overall movie and TV show piracy rate of 11% in 2014, now has an overall rate of 20%, up from the 13% reported in Mediavision’s survey in 2022.

 

With an overall rate of just 8% in 2014, increases over the years led to a 13% overall rate for Finland in 2022. A four point rise over the past 12 months pushes Finland’s overall movie and TV show piracy rate to 17%.

 

Since 2014, overall unlicensed consumption of movies and TV shows, in both Norway and Sweden, adopted a broadly U-shaped curve. With reducing piracy rates indicating signs of progress in the middle, high rates of piracy seen in 2014 are back on display in 2022, and then some.

 

Overall movie and TV show piracy rates for Norway now stand at 22% versus 18% last year, with Sweden at 25% and 20% respectively. Mediavision reports that in all four countries, the usual suspects are driving the increases.

Young People Push Up Piracy

Technologically adept and hungry for content, young people often make a disproportionate contribution to piracy rates. Through various programs, rightsholders have reached out to kids of all ages, hoping to encourage negative attitudes towards piracy from an early stage.

 

From kindergarten copyright classes in the United States, to a current project in Denmark that will pay teens to assist with piracy research, most things have been tried.

 

Mediavision’s latest study reveals that piracy increases are being driven by young people in the 15 to 24-year-old group, across all four countries. The concern for rightsholders lies in piracy’s monthly reach, which was unacceptably high last year and is now considerably worse.

 

According to last year’s report, 29% of young Danes engaged in movie and/or TV show piracy. The latest figures show a leap to 46%, a figure that puts Denmark on equal footing with Finland, where rates rose to 46% from the 27% reported last year.

 

Norway’s increase, from 38% last year to 51% this year, is slightly less steep, leaving Sweden with the surprise upper hand.

 

The eight percentage point increase attributed to young Swedes in this year’s survey is less than any of its regional neighbours. Unfortunately, Sweden’s last set of results in 2022 indicated that 45% of its young people engaged with piracy, a figure that has now risen to 53%. That suggests that every second young person in Sweden today is a pirate

Access to Pirate IPTV Services

Mediavision’s Spring 2022 survey found that across Sweden, Denmark, Finland & Norway, just under 0.9 million households subscribed to an illegal IPTV service.

 

With the largest population, Sweden accounted for more than 40% (380,000) of IPTV-equipped households across the region. With 230,000 subscribed homes, Norway was runner-up, with Finland (155,000) and Denmark (125,000) taking the remaining spots. Taking population into account, Norway’s 10% share beat Sweden’s 9% into second place.

 

Following the release of these figures last year, entertainment companies warned that use of pirate IPTV services was on the increase in the Nordic region. According to the latest survey, the prediction was spot on.

 

The latest figure of 1,150,000 households represents a 29% increase over the 890,000 households reported in 2022. With 490,000 and 255,000 households respectively, Sweden and Norway are the leading consumers of IPTV by volume, pushing Denmark (220,000) and Finland (190,000) into third and fourth place. By share, Sweden and Norway tie with 11% each, leaving Denmark (9%) and Finland (7%) to complete the set.

And Now The Good News

In contrast to the gloomy picture painted by the latest survey, other recent reports published by Mediavision signal positive trends in legal content consumption.

 

“Online video in Finland is on the rise. During this spring, subscribing SVOD households have passed 1.5 million, corresponding to a penetration of 61 percent. This equals an annual growth of 8 percent in subscribing households,” the company notes.

 

In Sweden, where piracy habits are on the rise, legal consumption is going in the same direction.

 

“Today, over 90 percent of households in Sweden pay for some form of media subscription,” another Mediavision report begins. Despite rising interest rates, inflation and increased financial anxiety, there is no sign of a slowdown in paid media.

 

“On the contrary, Mediavision’s latest analysis measures a new record level for households’ total media expenditure. Households pay the most for TV and streaming subscriptions,” Mediavision reports.

 

Denmark’s situation also appears less gloomy than its piracy rates suggest. After adding half a million in 2022, there are now over four million paid VOD subscriptions in Denmark, from a total population of less than six million.

 

Mediavision also notes that around three million subscriptions in the Nordics are shared accounts, paid for by the subscriber but enjoyed for free by others. With further sharing crackdowns looming on the horizon, the question is whether legal platforms or pirate sites stand to reap the most benefits.

 

Mediavision’s Nordic Piracy Report 2023 is available from TTVK (pdf)

 

In recent years, website blocking has become one of the most widely-used anti-piracy enforcement mechanisms in the world.

 

ISPs in several dozen countries prevent subscribers from accessing a variety of ‘pirate’ sites, either through court processes or as part of government-backed administrative blocking regimes.

 

Europe has been at the forefront of this blocking wave. The first case was launched in Denmark and dates back to 2006. In the years since, similar measures were taken in other EU countries, with the ultimate approval of the European Union’s highest court.

 

Research on the effectiveness of site-blocking interventions is scarce but the overall indication is that while the measures are far from perfect, they’re effective nonetheless. They are particularly effective at stopping casual pirates when multiple sites are blocked simultaneously.

European Commission Flags Foreign Countries

The European Commission is also convinced that this enforcement tool can make a difference. A few days ago, the EU governing body released its biennial report on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries, in which site blocking is repeatedly mentioned.

 

The report is the EU’s equivalent of the US Trade Representative’s “Special 301” review. Its main aim is to identify ‘priority’ countries with lacking copyright and trademark protections, hoping to elicit improvements in the years to come.

 

In addition to counterfeiting, piracy remains one of the key problems in the targeted countries. While some progress has been made in recent years, more can be done.

 

“Copyright piracy […] remains a major issue for European creative sectors. The problem remains widespread and rampant in countries such as China, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Vietnam, as well as Brazil despite the positive developments set out in this report,” the report reads.

 

The report lists thirteen countries in total, with China singled out as the highest priority concern.

 

Priority 1: China
Priority 2: India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine
Priority 3: Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, China doesn’t appear to have any trouble blocking citizens’ access to websites but in statements about several other countries, blocking measures are regularly mentioned.

‘Site Blocking Would be Useful’

In Vietnam, a country called out by the U.S. recently for its lacking piracy response, online copyright infringement remains a major concern. To combat this problem, site blocking would be useful, the EU suggests.

 

“Enforcement, both as regards online and physical marketplaces, remains of the highest concern. EU stakeholders raise ineffective copyright enforcement as one of the main concerns, in particular in the online environment, including as regards site-blocking,” the report reads.

 

Argentina continues to struggle with piracy as well. Piracy has increased in recent times, the EU explains, in part due to a lack of awareness of the negative impact piracy has on the economy and society. The country does allow blocking injunctions, including dynamic ones, but rightsholders say that more can be done.

 

“Some stakeholders refer to the lack of effective measures at administrative or criminal level to block infringing sites and report that injunctions against intermediaries are not easily available,” the EU Commission report reads.

 

There are also countries that have made significant progress on the blocking front in recent years. The Indonesian Government, for example, has ordered local Internet providers to block more than 3,500 problematic domain names.

‘Please Address Domain Hopping’

Increased blocking in Indonesia is viewed as a positive development but the EU believes that the country should be wary of sites that continue to offer pirated content by simply ‘hopping’ to new domain names. In many EU countries this problem is tackled with regular updates to existing blocking orders.

 

“Effective remedies and closing existing gaps in protection are needed to combat online infringements [in Indonesia]. This in particular concerns site-blocking injunctions and measures to prevent ‘domainhopping’,” the report reads.

 

India is one of the countries with a long and extensive site blocking record. Local courts have blocked tens of thousands of sites, tackled domain hopping, and even issued preemptive blocking orders.

 

These anti-piracy achievements haven’t gone unnoticed by rightsholders and the EU Commission. While many copyright related challenges remain, India passes the blocking requirements with flying colours.

 

“IPR enforcement remains a source of serious concern. EU stakeholders report improvements on judicial enforcement in the last two years, particularly blocking piracy sites,” the report reads.

No U.S. Mention

Overall, the European Commission report gives the impression that pirate site blocking is a globally accepted standard. Countries that fail to facilitate this type of enforcement are urged to make progress, a view also shared by many major rightsholders.

 

Interestingly, however, the EU report doesn’t mention the United States in this regard. While U.S. rightsholders obtain site blocking orders throughout the world, these types of no-fault blocking measures are unavailable on home turf, where online piracy volumes are largest globally.

 

The omission isn’t problematic enough to warrant a ‘priority’ listing in the EU report. That’s not entirely unexpected, as the U.S. generally has excellent copyright enforcement and policies, but it stands out nonetheless.

 

In recent years there have been calls to make site blocking measures available in the U.S. but, thus far, this hasn’t resulted in concrete action.

 

All in all, the European Commission’s report has a lot of overlap with the U.S. equivalent, which was published a few weeks ago. That said, one notable difference is that the latter doesn’t include a single mention of site blocking.

 

—

 

A copy of the European Commission’s Report on the Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in third countries is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

Those who choose the cheapest plans often end up at pirate services. These may work flawlessly for years, until they don’t.

Fiscal Police Raid IPTV Service

Today, one of the largest pirate IPTV services was taken offline by the Dutch fiscal police (FIOD). Four people were arrested while searches were carried out at various business and residential addresses, where cars, computers, bank accounts and large sums of cash were confiscated.

 

The raids and searches were carried out in multiple cities throughout the Netherlands including Amsterdam, Almere, Enschede, The Hague, and Den Helder.

 

The name of the IPTV operation is not mentioned by the authorities but it appears to be massive. Local anti-piracy group BREIN reports that TVs in hundreds of thousands of homes went dark due to the raids. Europol, which also assisted in the operation, mentions that the service had over a million users across Europe.

Criminal Case

BREIN applauds the action and notes that it will file criminal charges on behalf of several major rightsholders, several of which have already indicated that they want to join the case.

 

The IPTV service, which charged a monthly subscription fee of roughly 10 euros, carried more than 10,000 TV channels. It also offered access to 15,000 on-demand movies and TV series from popular services such as Disney+ and Netflix, causing substantial damages.

 

“This is the largest criminal investigation by the Dutch fiscal police FIOD and the Dutch prosecution into digital piracy in the Netherlands ever,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik commenting on the news.

 

“Illegal IPTV is the most serious threat to legal offerings of movies, series, television and sports broadcasts. This case concerns a criminal organization behind the large-scale sale of illegal IPTV subscriptions in the Netherlands and elsewhere. It involves tens of millions of euros in damages in the Netherlands alone.”

 

Kuik informs TorrentFreak that he prefers not to name any of the persons or companies involved. However, hr confirms that the targeted organization supplied third-party sellers, both online and through physical shops.

Data Center Offline?

Dutch police highlight that the IPTV service was distributed from a data center in Den Helder. While we can only speculate, this could be GLOBE DataCenter, whose office is located there. The data center’s website is unreachable at the time of writing so the entire network could be offline.

 

TorrentFreak reached out to GLOBE for a comment but the company didn’t immediately reply. However, these suspicions are strengthened (not confirmed) by a photo of the police action in a Dutch news report, which features the office of GLOBE.

 

Further details will likely come out as the investigation and the potential prosecution progresses.

 

This certainly isn’t the first large-scale IPTV takedown in Europe. We have seen several of these operations in other countries, including Spain where an ‘unnamed’ IPTV service with two million users was pulled offline.

 

Apparently, other IPTV services continue to step up to fill the void. This is no surprise; to some people, a potential revenue stream of one billion euros per year sounds like an opportunity, rather than a threat. However, today’s action shows that the risk isn’t just hypothetical.

 

Update: Additional research shows that hundreds of IPTV related domains/brands and IP-addresses have indeed gone dark. We’ll continue to investigate the fallout and people who have additional information can reach out here.

 

If the best ideas are always the simplest, in 2016 software developer Elias Saba hit the jackpot.

 

Two years after Amazon launched its first generation Fire TV, there was still no easy way to transfer files to the device. Released on the Amazon Appstore in November 2016, Saba’s ‘Downloader’ app offered users just two things; an empty URL field and a download button. It was basic yet functional, and in time, extraordinarily successful.

 

The Amazon Appstore and Google Play currently account for more than 50 million installs of Downloader, underpinned by Saba’s decision not to charge a single penny for the software. At the time of writing, Downloader has 664,605 customer ratings on Amazon, averaging 4.3 stars out of a possible five. For several TV companies from Israel, Saba’s work, success and generosity are of no consequence; Downloader is in their way and has to go.

Google Kicks Downloader Out of the Play Store

In a notification sent to Sabas last Friday, Google informs the developer that “after a recent review,” Downloader was found to contain content that “doesn’t comply with the Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Content policy” operated on the Play Store.

 

The review was prompted by a copyright complaint from Israel-based TV companies HOT Communications Systems Ltd, DBS Satellite Services (1998) Ltd, United King Distribution Videos (1990) Ltd, and Charlton Ltd.

 

“We have received an infringement notice that your app contains copyrighted content,” Google’s notice explains. “Your app has been suspended and removed due to alleged copyright infringement (according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act).”

 

Google’s notification reveals that the TV companies supplied no details of specific original content or details of content allegedly infringed. As a DMCA takedown notice, it arguably fails at the very first hurdle. Instead, the notice draws Google’s attention to a feature added to Downloader more than six years ago.

 

The companies claim that this feature violates an injunction the TV companies obtained from a New York court in 2022. Neither the injunction, nor the process that led to its issuance, have anything to do with Saba or his software.

 

Since the TV companies claim otherwise, a little background may help.

Users Demand More, Get More

Within weeks of its launch, Downloader’s users were already requesting new features. For Saba, a former Fire TV Product Manager at Amazon, that didn’t come as a surprise. As a developer, it wasn’t a problem either.

 

“I added basic file management and a web browser to Downloader in February 2017 because users complained that it was too tedious to enter long URLs using a remote control and the on-screen keyboard,” Saba informs TorrentFreak.

 

The addition of a web browser didn’t just consign long URLs to history; for Downloader and its users, a little history was being made. While Downloader users happily searched Google and navigated to files displayed on a TV, bigger players in the software market were still playing catch up.

TV Surfing Pioneer Taken Offline on a Whim

When Downloader fueled free, accessible web browsing via TV sets, Saba says that filling another gap in the market was an accident, an “unintended side-effect” of the new feature.

 

“My app predated nearly all stand-alone web browsers on streaming devices, including Amazon’s own Silk browser and Firefox, which arrived on TV streaming devices six months after my app gained a web browser,” Saba recalls.

 

While popular in its own right, Downloader was about to get a huge boost. Popular open source media player Kodi was previously available from Amazon’s Appstore but after the company removed it, only unofficial installation methods remained.

 

In an April 2017 tweet, the people behind Kodi described Downloader as ‘The only correct way of installing Kodi on Amazon devices.” Over the years, millions of people followed that advice.

 

Saba estimates that over 45 million Fire TV users installed Downloader at some point. At the time of writing, Downloader has at least five million active installs on Android TV devices through Google Play. Downloader is free and the nearest thing it has to an advert is Saba’s blog, AFTVNews.com, loading as the browser’s default homepage.

 

Downloader’s browser feature is the start, middle and end of the TV companies’ complaint to Google.

Browser Can Access a Pirate Streaming Site

The bones of the complaint fit neatly into a single paragraph. Sent to Google by Eran Presenti, a partner at M. Firon & Co., one of Israel’s largest law firms, it reads as follows:

 

“[T]his app which can be downloaded to any Android based device including smart TV – allows users to view the infamous copyright infringing website known as SDAROT (www.sdarot.tw) against which the are 2 Isareli court and a NY Federal court judgments issuing permanent injunction against the saus website [sic].”

 

Google Chrome, an app that arrives pre-installed on millions of Android devices, also allows users to view the infamous Sdarot. The same is true for Safari, Edge and Firefox. All of them show an image similar to the one below in response to input featuring Sdarot’s URL.

 

Evidence that Downloader’s browser displays websites in response to user input is reportedly contained in eight screenshots listed by Google. Saba actually received eight filenames ending in .jpg, but no actual images.

 

A link to a website in the notice claims to provide a copy of an ‘Amended Default Judgment & Injunction’ dated July 6, 2022. The link was supposed to lead to sdarot.tv, a domain previously owned by Sdarot but later seized by the TV companies. A copy of the injunction isn’t available because the domain itself is completely broken.

 

Despite acting as the evidence behind Downloader’s removal from Google Play, Saba informs us that the screenshots and injunction remain a mystery to him. Fortunately, we know all about the underlying case and injunction; more interestingly, Google knows all about it too.

TV Companies Fight a War They Can’t Win

HOT Communications, DBS Satellite, United King and Charlton Ltd are on a mission to destroy Sdarot, Israel’s largest pirate site. The subscription streaming platform has been targeted in at least three lawsuits, all of them decided in favor of the plaintiffs, yet still refuses to die.

 

In May 2022, we broke the news that the companies had obtained an injunction from a New York court that required every ISP in the United States to block Sdarot and two other pirate sites.

 

What happened next remains shrouded in mystery but the record shows that after winning the injunction, the TV companies decided they didn’t want U.S. ISPs to block the sites after all.

 

The scope of the injunction remained a concern. It began with consumer ISPs but also prohibited any webhost, CDN provider, DNS provider, domain company, advertising service, financial institution, or payment processor from doing business with the sites’ operators moving forward. Cloudflare, Google, EFF, and industry group CCIA felt strongly enough to intervene in the lawsuit.

 

With no means to protect itself from an injunction that failed to narrowly target specific, identified defendants and their agents, and/or third parties in active concert or participation with them, Cloudflare refused to comply with its terms and the TV companies’ “blatant attempt at a power grab.”

 

The TV companies unwisely moved to hold Cloudflare in contempt but in the weeks that followed, the injunction was amended and the TV companies went after Sdarot instead.

Sdarot Remains Online, Downloader Targeted

For reasons that currently make little sense, the TV companies seem to have cited an injunction that appears to have nothing to do with Saba or Downloader, to convince Google that displaying the Sdarot website, after someone keys Sdarot.tw into Downloader’s browser, is a breach of its terms.

 

Since Saba’s initial appeal to Google was rejected, he’s since filed a DMCA counternotice to have Downloader reinstated. That’s currently listed as pending but at least in theory, Google should reinstate the software unless the TV companies file a lawsuit against Saba.

 

Thus far, however, legal action against intermediaries has failed to achieve its primary goal. A review of the position on the ground today suggests a situation that’s arguably worse than before.

 

Sdarot now operates from a Taiwan .tw domain which present its own legal challenges. As for the site’s hosting, Sdarot now spreads its infrastructure across several countries including Moldova and Russia, utilizing a number of hosts that are well-known for filing DMCA complaints in the cabinet marked ‘TRASH’.

 

 

Z-Library has become the go-to site for many readers in recent years by providing access to millions of books, without charging a penny.

 

The site’s continued ability to do so was put to the test late last year when U.S. law enforcement seized over 200 domain names connected to the site. Two alleged Z-Library operators were arrested as part of a criminal investigation.

 

Despite being in the crosshairs of law enforcement, Z-Library has no intention of throwing in the towel. The site remained accessible through the dark web and later made a full comeback. When the U.S. authorities seized more domains earlier this month, it still didn’t budge.

Serving Students and Teachers

Z-Library instead doubled down on its mission to provide free books to the public at large, including educational material and textbooks. This makes the site a popular repository for students all around the world, as statistics from Z-Library’s user database now reveal.

 

“It’s no secret that the most active users of our library are students and staff from various universities. We wanted to learn more about this and have collected statistics showing which educational institutions use Z-Library,” Z-Library writes on Telegram.

 

The team analyzed its user database to check how many user email-addresses are linked to universities, colleges and schools. This gives an impression of how many students and employees use the site but it’s likely a low estimate, as students may very well use their personal email addresses to sign up.

 

Still, the overall outcome and the global distribution of users is worth highlighting. China is the top country in absolute numbers, followed by India and Indonesia. This is no surprise, perhaps, as these countries also have the largest populations.

 

Looking at the full database, Z-Library linked 600,000 email addresses to a total of 30,000 educational institutions around the world.

United States and Australia

The only country missing from the top list, population-wise, is the United States. Z-Library notes that it intentionally excluded the country due to the criminal prosecution of two of the site’s alleged operators.

 

“It should be noted that when compiling statistics, we excluded all data related to the United States due to illegal arrest of two Russian citizens on suspicion of involvement in Z-Library,” the shadow library writes on Telegram.

 

There are also some relatively smaller countries in the top list, such as Australia. With a population of just over 25 million, Z-Library is relatively popular there, beating Brazil and Vietnam, which both have much larger populations.

 

The Australian Monash University also gets a special mention. Apparently, it is the educational institution where users have created the most public booklists. These lists are personal book collections that can be focused on any theme, including educational topics.

Friends and Foes

Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, is the runner-up based on the number of created booklists. It’s worth a separate mention, however, as it also appears in universities that donated to Z-Library.

 

The list of most avid Z-Library supported is led by the top Chinese universities, which are grouped for the purpose of this analysis.

 

The reported data clearly show that Z-Library is a valuable resource for many students. Comments from users also reflect that, since people from all over the world thank the site for saving them money on books, including textbooks.

 

That said, public appreciation doesn’t shield the site from legal trouble or the U.S. authorities’ continuing crack down. For now, however, attention only seems to make the current operators more determined to continue.

 

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. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on May 22 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(9)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
2	(…)	Sisu	7.0 / trailer
3	(3)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer
4	(1)	The Covenant	7.6 / trailer
5	(7)	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	6.4 / trailer
6	(5)	Evil Dead Rise	6.9 / trailer
7	(6)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
8	(2)	Air	7.6 / trailer
9	(…)	To Catch a Killer	6.6 / trailer
10	(4)	Renfield	6.4 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium and Brazil; just two letters of the alphabet and that’s already five countries that have implemented ISP blocking against The Pirate Bay.

 

The growing list, which continues with Denmark and persists through Finland, France and Germany, doesn’t stop until it reaches the United Arab Emirates and finally, the UK.

 

That’s around 30 countries overall, give or take, that have resorted to ISP blocking because no matter what’s thrown at it, The Pirate Bay simply refuses to die.

 

At least in part, the site is still alive after more than a decade of widespread blocking due to the existence of proxy sites. These sites tend to look and feel like The Pirate Bay but operate from different domain names that aren’t yet on ISP blocklists.

 

This means that otherwise blocked internet users get to enjoy broadly the same Pirate Bay experience as they did before. At least for a while.

Rightsholders Also Block Pirate Bay Proxies

As reported yesterday, one of the most popular Pirate Bay proxy indexing sites recently disappeared from GitHub.

 

ProxyBay was a significant player, one that had helped dozens of millions of users gain access to The Pirate Bay by directing them to active Pirate Bay proxy sites. However, in common with The Pirate Bay itself, proxy sites are also subjected to ISP blocking, which can render some of them redundant, not to mention inaccessible.

 

Given that proxy sites and proxy indexes contribute to the overall health of the Pirate Bay ‘hydra’, that got us thinking: Is the hydra alive and well? Or has it lost a few too many heads over the years?

Data Sources Used

While we’re aware that proxy sites face blocking in several countries, until today we’d never drilled into the details. It quickly became apparent that a complete overview would require significant time and resources but our short report today should help set the tone.

 

To weigh rightsholders’ responses to strictly Pirate Bay proxy sites, we obtained domain blocking lists used by ISPs in the UK, Denmark and Italy. The original plan was to include Portugal, India and a handful of other countries but the volume of data was soon overwhelming.

 

Instead of including those additional countries, we used data from the Infringing Website List (IWL) operated by the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit.

Proxies Face Massive Blocking

After merging data from all four sources, we removed any duplicate proxy domains, any domains that weren’t clearly dedicated or directed at the Pirate Bay, plus any domains where their key role could not be identified due to downtime or other reasons.

 

The final total of Pirate Bay proxies, all of which are subjected to blocking and/or restrictions on business due to their appearance on the IWL, is 670 to 690 domains, give or take. While that remains a large number, including other countries’ blocklists would’ve inflated that number considerably.

 

The big question is whether all of those domains are live, in business, and helping to unblock The Pirate Bay. The simple answer to that is ‘no’. While we were able to test whether sites were active in some way, we couldn’t determine exactly what they were doing, unless we visited every last one and took a screenshot for proof.

…..So That’s What We Did

The image below is comprised of roughly 670 screenshots featuring obviously live proxies (mostly white), a lot of seemingly dead proxies (dark), and a surprising number of domains up for sale (mostly blue). (click to enlarge)

 

It’s not possible to determine the exact reasons why so many proxies appear to have thrown in the towel, in some cases on multiple domains. That being said, it’s highly likely that ISP blocking played an important role in dampening enthusiasm for spending more money on yet another domain.

 

Since the data was at hand, we decided to throw all of the live domains at their DNS and then wait for a list of IP addresses to come out. We fed those into an IP location service which produced the map in the image below.

 

The large blue blob on the left, representing the location where most Pirate Bay proxies point, is the home of Cloudflare and another kind of proxy – a reverse proxy.

 

That means that in all likelihood, the Pirate Bay proxies are hosted somewhere else entirely, not unlike The Pirate Bay itself. At least for now.

 

As one of the most notorious torrent sites, The Pirate Bay has been blocked by ISPs around the world.

 

In response to these digital roadblocks, several proxy sites have sprung up to bypass these restrictions. Besides that, there are dedicated sites that help people to find these backdoors.

The Proxy Bay

“The Proxy Bay” has long been one of the leading information portals. The site didn’t offer an official proxy itself but provided an overview of available options. As such, it proved to be quite useful in countries where site blockades are active.

 

In the UK, for example, where TPB has been blocked for over a decade, the site was particularly popular.

 

Since the blocking orders often allow rightsholders to add newly appearing proxies, this has turned into a game of whack-a-mole. When proxies are blocked, new domains are launched, which are then picked up by pirates through information portals such as The Proxy Bay.

GitHub Takedown Saga

This routine has been a major source of frustration for rightsholders. It reached the point where some of these linking sites were banned, and when City of London Police got involved in the matter earlier this year, it was clear that things were getting more serious.

 

It’s quite something when the police actively get involved in a copyright matter. In this case, it was particularly salient since “The Proxy Bay” was hosted at GitHub.

 

The developer platform swiftly complied with the takedown request, which wasn’t unexpected. However, after someone representing the proxy information site sent a counter notice, the domain was restored.

 

The brief takedown in January hurt the site’s traffic but, when it came back a month later, business resumed as usual. According to SimilarWeb, the site had 1.5 million visits again in March, which is quite a lot for a GitHub hosted page.

Mystery Disappearance(s)

The GitHub restoral was a significant victory for The Proxy Bay. Ironically, City of London Police’s takedown efforts may have actually raised the site’s profile, running contrary to the initial goal.

 

There was no celebration, however; quite the opposite in fact. A few weeks after its comeback the site quietly disappeared. Those who try to access the domain today will get a 404 error. This means that the site is gone, but why remains a mystery.

 

In theory, there could have been another takedown request but since there isn’t one documented by GitHub, that seems unlikely. The other option is that the owner of the page voluntarily removed it, perhaps spooked by the police taking an interest.

 

The latter explanation would run contrary to the counternotice sent earlier. However, it’s not clear if that was actually sent by the operator, especially since the notice referenced the incorrect .com domain name, instead of the .io one that GitHub pages use.

Rinse… and Repeat

Interestingly, all proxy domains that were previously promoted on The Proxy Bay have gone offline as well. These domains include unlockedtpb.org, thepiratebayone.com, and tpbproxy.info. The same is true for thepirateproxybay.com, which hosted the information on the same page as The Proxy Bay.

 

All these mystery disappearances, taking place shortly after the police takedown request, are at least unusual.

 

This doesn’t mean that there’s a shortage of proxies, though, new ones pop up all the time; also on GitHub (1, 2, 3, etc). This game of whack-a-mole has been ongoing for more than a decade and it’s unlikely to end anytime soon.

 

With over half a billion active users around the globe, Telegram is one of the most used messaging services.

 

The communication platform helps to connect people from all over the world, with end-to-end encryption providing improved security when compared to some other players in the market.

 

Telegram can also be an excellent medium to broadcast messages to a wider audience. Through dedicated one-way channels, people can share news, status updates, and emergency alerts, for example.

Telegram on the Anti-Piracy Agenda

Like all technology, these broadcast channels are not only used for legitimate purposes. Pirates use them too, as evidenced by regular mentions in piracy discussions. Not too long ago, the European Commission placed the Telegram app on its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List.

 

The app was also mentioned in recommendations to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) this year, with the International Intellectual Property Alliance calling for stricter policies on Telegram’s part, including the addition of Know Your Business Customer (KYBC) rules.

 

“Telegram should be more accountable in relation to infringements occurring or being facilitated over its service,” the recommendation advised.

 

“IIPA recommends that more be done to encourage KYBC disciplines on intermediaries like Telegram and to encourage operators like them to responsibly cooperate.”

Courts Get Involved

Piracy concerns and policy musings like these haven’t been restricted to lobbying and policy efforts. Telegram has also been taken to court on several occasions.

 

In Portugal, for example, a local court ordered Telegram to block access to more than a dozen piracy-related channels. Similar measures were also taken in Israel and Italy. In India, Telegram a court order required Telegram to disclose the identities of several pirating users.

 

By now, Telegram is well aware of the piracy challenges but that hasn’t put an end to the problem.

 

While doing research this week, we randomly stumbled upon a Telegram bot that directed us to a channel sharing pirated movies. This wasn’t just some fringe channel; with over a quarter million subscribers it has a massive reach.

Takedown… And Repeat

This isn’t an isolated incident. Those who know where to look find no short of dedicated piracy channels and bots, some of which have massive audiences. That is, until they’re pulled offline.

 

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of a popular channel, who prefers to remain unnamed. They note that Telegram takes down links and channels all the time but that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem.

 

Just as websites can easily switch to new domain names if they’re targeted, Telegram channels can rotate to new names as well. The operator we spoke with remained rather vague, but we get the impression that landing pages and bots are used to spread traffic and anticipate these takedown efforts.

130,000 Enforcements

We reached out to Telegram asking for some statistics and further detail on their takedown and enforcement efforts. However, the company did not respond to our request.

 

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was willing to share its experiences. The anti-piracy group, which represents Hollywood’s major movies studios and Netflix, has dealt with Telegram for a few years now.

 

“Initially, Telegram did not respond to notice and takedown requests,” says Jan van Voorn, Head of ACE and Chief of Global Content Protection at the MPA.

 

Since then, Telegram has improved its effectiveness and as things stand today the majority of all takedown requests are processed within a day.

 

“We have been focused on improving their [takedown notice] compliance and now have over 130,000 enforcements on Telegram with over a 90% removal rate, including many infringements removed within 24 hours,” van Voorn says.

 

ACE also notes, however, that results are inconsistent and there’s still a lot of progress to be made in order to successfully crack down on piracy channels, bots, and repeat infringers.

Active Collaboration

This progress is in the making. The prevalence of piracy abuse on Telegram has resulted in more direct cooperation between ACE and Telegram, which aims to tackle the issue head-on.

 

“ACE has established cooperation to address urgent escalations and has continued outreach to seek further improvements in removing infringing channels, disrupting piracy bots, and terminating services to repeat infringers,” Van Voorn explains.

 

If this cooperation is successful, it may eventually become harder for pirate channels to survive. At least the ones with hundreds of thousands of members.

 

That’s not the case today, however. While we were writing this article, thousands of new members flooded to the piracy channel we referenced earlier, which now has 271,720, 274,006, 277,169, 280,339 members.

 

Meanwhile, YTS, one of the largest torrent sites out there, also officially joined Telegram a few days ago. For now, it just uses the channel to share status updates, but you never know what will happen next.

 

When the French government formed a new anti-piracy agency called Hadopi, the mission was to significantly disrupt BitTorrent and similar peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

 

Hadopi was a pioneer of the so-called “graduated response” scheme which consists of monitoring a file-sharer’s internet activities and following up with a warning notice to deter their behavior. Any future incidents attract escalating responses including fines and internet disconnections. Between 2010 and 2020, Hadopi issued 12.7 million warning notices at a cost to French taxpayers of 82 million euros.

 

The program’s effect on overall piracy rates remains up for debate but according to French internet rights groups, Hadopi doesn’t just take citizens’ money. When it monitors citizens’ internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses to prevent behavior that isn’t a “serious crime,” Hadopi violates fundamental rights.

Protecting Rights

Despite its authorization under the new law, the official launch of the Hadopi agency in 2009 met with significant opposition. File-sharers had issues with the program for obvious reasons but for digital rights group La Quadrature du Net, massive internet surveillance to protect copying rights had arrived at the expense of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy.

 

La Quadrature’s opposition to the Hadopi anti-piracy program focuses on the law crafted to support it. One of the implementing decrees authorizes the creation of files containing internet users’ IP addresses plus personal identification data obtained from their internet service providers.

 

According to the digital rights group’s interpretation of EU law, that is unlawful.

Legal Challenge in France

With support from the Federation of Associative Internet Service Providers, French Data Network, and Franciliens.net, in 2019 La Quadrature filed an appeal before the Council of State (Conseil d’État), requesting a repeal of the decree that authorizes the processing of personal information.

 

The Council of State referred the matter to the Constitutional Council and its subsequent decision gave La Quadrature the impression that Hadopi’s position was untenable. For their part, Hadopi and the government reached the opposite conclusion.

Legal Challenge Reaches CJEU

The Council of State heard La Quadrature’s appeal and then referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for interpretation under EU law.

 

EU member states cannot pass national laws that allow for the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data. As a “preventative measure” on a targeted basis, retention of traffic and location data is permitted, but only when the purpose of retaining the data is to fight “serious crime.”

 

In CJEU Advocate General Szpunar’s non-binding opinion issued last October, friction between privacy rights and the ability to enforce copyrights were on full display.

Hadopi vs. Fundamental Rights

AG Szpunar described Hadopi’s access to personal data corresponding to an IP address as a “serious interference with fundamental rights.” These data points may not be sensitive in isolation but when combined, a person’s identity finds itself attached to the IP address and the content that was accessed behind it.

 

However, in common with criminal cases where retention is permitted when an IP address is the only means of investigation, the AG concluded that the same should apply in Hadopi’s case, “short of accepting general impunity for offenses committed exclusively online.”

 

Faced with an opinion that recognizes difficulties faced by rightsholders but runs up against case-law, AG Szpunar proposed “readjustment of the case-law of the Court.” This would ensure that rightsholders retain the ability to enforce their rights, when an IP address is the only means by which an infringer can be identified (CJEU, pdf).

 

The first hearing in the case took place on Tuesday with another legal opinion expected late September 2023.

 

The CJEU is expected to hand down its ruling before the end of the year.

 

Just three short months ago, Spanish pirate site users were still coming to terms with bad news.

 

Private torrent sites Pixelados/HD-Spain were fan favorites in Spain, with localized HD movies and TV shows in plentiful supply. Then suddenly, they were gone.

 

It was later revealed that pressure applied by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, which included a credible threat of legal action, persuaded the sites’ operator to throw in the towel. It’s a story that’s played out many times in recent years and led to the closure of hundreds of sites.

 

ACE revealed another blow for Spanish pirates earlier today.

AtomoHD Splits Under ACE Pressure

AtomoHD (Atom HD in English) appeared as a newcomer in 2020 but in less than three years, ACE says the platform received 235 million visits, averaging 9.7 million visits per month. Less than 10% of the site’s visitors were located outside Spain so its recent disappearance will be felt most acutely in the local market. The site’s operators reportedly live elsewhere.

 

“AtomoHD was launched in 2020 by a group of individuals, some of whom had prior convictions in Spain for intellectual property infringement and to evade justice, fled to Andorra,” ACE reports.

 

“AtomoHD enabled users to illegally stream and download content from a VOD library of more than 13,000 movies and 4,500 TV series in Spanish and other languages. The pirated content impacts all ACE members.”

Precise Terms of Shutdown Unclear

For the governing board members of ACE, currently Amazon, Apple TV+, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Sony, Paramount, Disney, and Warner Bros, the shutdown of AtomoHD represents another success, one shared with the 50+ companies that make up the coalition’s general membership.

 

“This takedown represents yet another major victory by ACE over illegal content distributors,” says Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Global Content Protection Chief of the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE. “It is increasingly clear that major criminal operators like AtomoHD are not immune from ACE’s enforcement actions.”

 

The precise terms of the AtomoHD shutdown are unknown but domain transfers are definitely involved. ACE says the platform has around 60 domains and as far as we can tell, the following domains are already under new ownership:

 

atomohd.nl, atomohd.care, atomixhq.xyz, atomixhq.club, atomohd.vip, atomohd.win, atomohd.vet, atomohd.yt, atomohd.ninja, atomohd.surf, atomohd.fans, atomohd.live, atomtt.com, atomohd.tw

 

Visitors to AtomoHD’s Telegram channel are greeted by a long list of alternative or replacement AtomoHD domains, with new ones posted on an irregular weekly/biweekly basis. The final announcement was made on April 28, with no new domains announced since then – on Telegram at least.

 

Multi-point, ongoing collisions between rightsholders, pirate sites, pirates and copyright law, are what fuel our daily reporting. The pumps rarely run dry for long in these wars.

 

The polarized nature of the debate, which regularly pits decent law-abiding content creators against shadowy thieves hiding in the recesses of the web, is good for headlines but a hopeless anti-piracy tool.

 

Casual pirates, who represent the majority, routinely dismiss this type of messaging as either completely untrue or blatant propaganda. Yet when unfiltered piracy information leaks out unexpectedly, people suddenly develop an interest in what anti-piracy groups have to say.

Redacted Document Wasn’t Redacted

Many months ago, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs published a document which contained a list of pirate manga sites generating high levels of traffic from within Japan. As the image below shows, the names of the sites were considered sensitive enough to completely redact. The redaction wasn’t effective.

 

Hovering a cursor over the blacked-out area revealed what should’ve been hidden and click led directly to the site considered most damaging to the home market in Japan.

 

That’s highly relevant information but when the Agency of Cultural Affairs was alerted to the buzz on social media, the information was immediately taken down.

The Case for Sharing More Information, Not Less

There’s a theory in anti-piracy circles that mentioning pirate sites by name makes them more popular. If we assume that’s the case, let’s see how that’s working out.

 

The slide with the unredacted text above covers the period June-July 2022. The slide below is from a more recent report covering September-October 2022. This time the names of the sites are properly redacted but we can still see data related to the site in the top spot.

 

In September 2022 the site had very little traffic but then a 23,642% surge over the next few weeks led to the site pulling in 61 million visits in October 2023 alone.

 

These massive figures may be linked to a site switching domains/brands but with these kinds of numbers, sites don’t stay secret for long. Simply mentioning a site’s name would have no effect but it would help people to understand the bigger picture.

Japan Sets The Standard on Transparency

Minor redaction issue aside, when it comes to sharing information, Japan deserves zero criticism. From anti-piracy strategies in operation today to those it hopes to develop in the future, the various companies and anti-piracy groups involved publish incredibly detailed reports, all available to the public on sites like bunka.go.jp.

 

Japan’s public yet understated reporting offers regular insight into a significant anti-piracy program that faces huge challenges but continues to progress. Open documents catalog progress to date, plans for the future, details of any setbacks, and concerns over looming threats.

 

Equally importantly, Japan’s reporting feels real; there’s no drama, and information isn’t put out selectively in a way that distorts the facts. In that respect these reports feel more like an education than a puzzle to unpack, after first discarding the marketing.

Overseas Players Dominate Local Market

The reports are compelling, including those that reveal that at any one point, seven of the top ten pirate sites targeting the Japanese market are believed to either have links or are based in Vietnam. Each month, citizens of Japan visit those sites at least 200 million times and recent reports reveal growing concern at this persistent overseas threat.

 

“Sites often drastically increase their traffic in just a short period of time. There is a sense of urgency that at any moment, access to these sites could explode and we could be back to the worst,” one reads.

 

“The reason for this is a sense of crisis, problems are piling up. The Vietnamese system…still no arrests have been made. Therefore, new sites from Vietnam are appearing one after another.”

 

Whether the situation will improve in Vietnam is unclear but anyone who wants a relatively unfiltered window into the action moving forward, the link is [redacted].

 

Two years ago, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo sued YouTube at a Florida federal court over various piracy-related claims.

 

The actor and producer own the rights to the world’s largest collection of Mexican and Latin American movies, many of which are illegally shared on YouTube.

 

The lawsuit accused YouTube of not doing enough to stop people from uploading pirated content. Those allegations aren’t new, but the movie tycoon also said that YouTube would not allow him to join the Content ID copyright protection program unless he agreed to specific terms, including a revenue share agreement.

 

Vasallo refused these terms and chose to send standard DMCA notices instead. YouTube processed them, as it should, but the movie tycoon complained that this did little to stop pirates. New copies were constantly uploaded and banned users reportedly returned under new aliases.

Motions of Summary Judgment

YouTube and Google vehemently disagreed with the copyright infringement allegations and filed a motion to dismiss. This was partially successful as the Florida federal court dropped the antitrust claims, but the infringement allegations remained.

 

As the case progressed, both parties submitted motions for summary judgment, which were filed under seal.

 

The movie tycoon alleged that, because YouTube only took down reported videos and failed to use its piracy filtering technology to find and voluntarily remove similar videos, the platform is liable for direct and secondary copyright infringement.

 

YouTube also submitted a motion for summary judgment to establish that it does nothing wrong. According to the company, the DMCA doesn’t require platforms to proactively monitor uploads, on the contrary. Also, the movie tycoon failed to provide any evidence that YouTube was aware of ‘non reported’ infringing videos.

 

Both motions for summary judgment landed on the desk of Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres, who issued a detailed report and recommendations yesterday. The Judge sides with YouTube and concludes that since the movie tycoon has no triable case, the lawsuit should be closed.

Monitoring Uploads

Under the DMCA, platforms such as YouTube are required to respond to takedown requests. In this case, there is little doubt that the video platform did so. However, the movie tycoon argued that it should have used its piracy filtering technology to find similar videos and remove these as well.

 

This piracy detection technology, as used by the Content ID system, is separate from the DMCA takedown process. According to Vasallo, however, YouTube can and should have deployed this to remove videos that were similar to the ones he reported though DMCA notices.

 

In other words, the film tycoon argues that YouTube was required to voluntarily find pirated videos on its platform. Because it failed to do so, the company should be held liable for copyright infringement.

 

This conclusion goes too far, according to Judge Torres, who notes that courts have repeatedly rejected the theory that online platforms have “red flag knowledge” of infringing content because they use filtering or monitoring tools. In fact, this argument goes directly against the DMCA.

 

“As multiple rulings have put it, requiring ISPs to use their technologies to identify infringing items out of their own initiative would be a violation of the DMCA’s non-monitoring and copyright policing principles.”

 

Online platforms are allowed to use monitoring tools, as YouTube does with its Content-ID system. However, this doesn’t mean that this automatically makes it aware of all potential copyright infringements on its platform.

 

“Thus, we find that Athos’ theory that specific knowledge of non-noticed infringing clips can be ascribed to Defendants by virtue of YouTube’s copyright management tools fails as a matter of law,” Judge Torres adds.

A Brick DMCA Wall

No matter how the movie tycoon puts it, he eventually runs “headlong against a brick wall erected by the DMCA,” according to Judge Torres. The DMCA simply doesn’t require YouTube to remove content that isn’t specifically identified.

 

“[C]harging YouTube with the affirmative obligation of going beyond the specific URLs identified in Plaintiff’s DMCA takedown requests would in effect shift from the copyright owner to the ISP the burdens of policing and identifying infringement on its systems.”

 

Interestingly, the situation in Europe is different. Local law requires large platforms to do more than just process takedown notices. However, Judge Torres doesn’t mention Europe, and focuses on the law his court is required to enforce.

 

While copyright holders may feel that online platforms should do more, that’s not a requirement under the DMCA.

 

“The question before this court is not what YouTube or other ISPs should be required to do, but whether YouTube’s acts are consistent with the statutory scheme set forth by the DMCA as currently enacted.

 

“And while Plaintiff would like for this court to substitute the existing DMCA ‘notice and take-down’ regime for an amorphous “notice and stay-down” mandate, we cannot do this just because it makes sense from a copyright holder’s perspective,” Judge Torres adds.

No Evidence, No Case

In addition to the finding that YouTube didn’t have red flag knowledge, the Judge also finds that the evidence lacking. Nothing on the record even suggests that YouTube or its employees were aware of any non-reported infringing activity.

 

“Here, Athos has failed to present any tangible evidence to establish that, had YouTube used its video-detection technology as it suggests, the software would have identified, blocked, or removed any of the specific clips-in-suit in dispute in this case. This evidentiary deficit is fatal to Athos’ case.”

 

To top things off, Judge Torres doesn’t see any evidence that YouTube could control the infringing activity it wasn’t aware of, or that it specifically profited from the alleged infringements.

 

The recommendation concludes that the court should grant YouTube and Google’s motion for summary judgment, establishing that it’s protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor. At the same time, the movie tycoon’s motion for summary judgment is denied.

 

In closing, it’s important to note that yesterday’s report and recommendation have yet to be taken over by the court and while that often happens, there are no guarantees. In any case, YouTube will surely see this as a preemptive victory.

 

—

 

A copy of the report and recommendation, issued by Florida federal court’s Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres, is available here (pdf)

 

Orders for ISPs to block sites on copyright infringement grounds used to be rare and controversial. Any imposition of ‘internet police’ duties angered ISPs; blocking wouldn’t end with pirate sites, some warned.

Court Orders ISPs to Block Uptobox

The launch of regulator ARCOM in early 2022 allowed France to block pirate sites on an industrial scale, and it wasted no time in doing so. Self-reported results hailed site-blocking measures as extremely effective and therefore totally justified.

 

ISPs now partner with rightsholders to ensure blocking goes smoothly, meaning the friction and fears of the past remain there. We’re informed that ISPs blocked 1,299 domain names under this system in 2022 but in common with the websites themselves, their names aren’t for public consumption.

 

Court processes leading to blocking are more open, a recent case against Z-Library, for example. Thanks to a report by French journalist Marc Rees this week, customers of local ISP Orange discovered why popular file-hosting site Uptobox was no longer accessible.

Movie Industry Targets Uptobox

According to SimilarWeb data, last month Uptobox received 10 million visits from French users. Give or take, that accounts for roughly a third of its 34 million visits in April. The site has been around since 2011 and gained popularity by making it easy for users to upload, store, and share files with others.

 

Uptobox has no search feature on the site but there’s no denying its popularity among pirates. There’s no money to be earned directly but users can earn points according to the popularity of their files. When they have accumulated enough, points can be exchanged for access to premium features, such as derestricted access to the site’s comprehensive API.

 

Almost inevitably, Uptobox became a candidate for blocking. On behalf of industry groups including National Federation of Film Distributors (FNEF) and several others, an investigation conducted by local anti-piracy group ALPA found 25,500 active download links on Uptobox, the majority offering unauthorized access to protected audiovisual works.

 

Access to that content was reportedly provided by “no less” than 113 third-party indexing sites, including Filmoflix, FilmGratuit, Wawacity and Zone-Téléchargement. All of these sites had previously been deemed infringing by the Tribunal de Paris, and responses to takedown notices issued by ALPA were described as “neither credible nor effective.”

Another Judgment, More Blocking

On March 29, 2023, five major ISPs – Orange, Bouygues Télécom, Free, SFR and SFR fibre – were informed of the blocking application. The court handed down a judgment in favor of the movie groups on May 11 and Orange became the first ISP to implement the blocks, linforme reports.

 

The four remaining ISPs are expected to implement similar blocking in the coming days and maintain it for 18 months. Any costs incurred while blocking the domains listed below are not recoverable from the movie companies.

 

1. Uptobox.com
2. Uptostream.com
3. Uptobox.fr
4. Uptostream.com
5. Beta-uptobox.com
6. Uptostream.net

 

Whether the blocking order can be modified to include additional domains isn’t yet clear. Dynamic injunctions are becoming more common as rightsholders adapt to blocking countermeasures, so it’s highly likely rightsholders will seek to include additional domains. Blocking these six domains alone won’t hinder the site at all since DNS blocking is defeated in seconds.

Blocking Never Goes Wrong, Mostly

ARCOM’s blocking decisions are not for public consumption, so broader oversight and general accountability remain lacking. That has some people worried, especially after events reported last weekend.

 

According to a Le Monde report, Telegram’s ‘t.me’ domain was suddenly rendered inaccessible on Saturday after most ISPs in France were issued with blocking instructions.

 

The exact circumstances remain unclear but it appears that instead of requesting a block against a specific URL (https://t.me/specific-content-here), “human error” led to the blocking of t.me and everything behind it. As a result, all of Telegram remained inaccessible for several hours until the error was rectified.

 

A technical analysis of the blocking mechanism reveals that the aim of the blocking was to prevent serious crime. Due to the blunder, visitors who attempted to visit t.me were diverted to a government website which recorded their visit and linked it the crime in question.

 

Japanese manga comics have always been popular on pirate sites but, where other categories have seen stalled growth, manga piracy boomed.

 

This unauthorized activity has not gone unnoticed by publishers, who’ve made it clear that piracy will not be tolerated, wherever it takes place in the world.

 

Japan’s largest publisher Shueisha finds itself at the frontline of this battle. The company has taken a variety of legal actions, also in a U.S. court, where it hoped to find evidence against the operators of Manganato.com; thus far without result.

 

With more than 122 million monthly visits, Manganato is one of the largest piracy sites of its kind. In Japan, however, there are other sites that take the top spots. Several of these local favorites were targeted by a legal request filed at a U.S. court last week.

Shueisha Target ‘Pirate’ Sites

Shueisha obtained a DMCA subpoena at a California federal court which requires CDN provider Cloudflare to share all personal information it holds on the people who maintain the accounts of 13dl.to, takefile.link, novafile.org, wupfile.com, hexupload.net, and manga-zip.is.

 

These sites are all most popular in Japan and they have millions of monthly visitors. Earlier this month the publisher already asked Cloudflare to disable infringing copies of the Grand Jump magazine made available through these sites.

 

“We demand that you immediately disable access to the Infringing Work and cease any use, reproduction, and distribution of the Original Work. Specifically, we request that you remove or disable the Infringing Work from [the sites] or any of your system or services.”

 

Cloudflare typically doesn’t remove cached CDN content and that didn’t happen here either. Instead, Shueisha is now trying to identify the sites’ operators directly through the DMCA subpoena, which was swiftly signed off by a court clerk.

Cloudflare Must Share Customer Details

The subpoena requires Cloudflare to share the personal details of customers associated with these domains. This includes addresses, phone numbers, emails, payment details, hosting providers, IP-addresses, and various related activity timestamps.

 

Cloudflare typically complies with these types of requests but whether that will help Shueisha address its piracy problem depends on how useful the information is. After all, many pirate site operators do all they can to conceal their personal information.

 

These efforts can provide results, however. Three years ago, popular pirate site Mangastream disappeared after being targeted by a DMCA subpoena obtained by Shueisha.

 

At the time of writing all of the targeted sites remain online. That said, some progress has been made, as the infringing Grand Jump copies are no longer available on wupfile.com, hexupload.net, and manga-zip.is.

 

—

 

A copy of the subpoena request and all associated information, as filed by Shueisha, 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 five newcomers on the list. “The Covenant”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on May 15 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	The Covenant	7.6 / trailer
2	(…)	Air	7.6 / trailer
3	(1)	Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves	7.4 / trailer
4	(2)	Renfield	6.4 / trailer
5	(…)	Evil Dead Rise	6.9 / trailer
6	(4)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
7	(5)	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	6.4 / trailer
8	(3)	The Pope’s Exorcist	6.1 / trailer
9	(back)	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	7.3 / trailer
10	(…)	The Mother	5.6 / trailer

 

 

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

 

The use of lawsuits to solve complex commercial disputes suggests that no amount of talking will ever produce the desired results.

 

For musician Maria Schneider, whose class action lawsuit against YouTube will head to a jury trial next month, the status quo and its alleged facilitator have been a constant topic of discussion for well over a decade.

What Do Whore Houses, Meth Labs, and YouTube Have in Common?

The riddle in the heading is almost seven years old, yet the closest answer to date is “you always end up paying for it.” That wasn’t what Maria Schneider had in mind, according to her 2016 Music Tech Policy piece, which begins with a surprise apology.

 

“OK, I know: that title really hits below the belt. I apologize. After all, it’s not fair to legal whorehouses that pay their share of taxes to lump them with meth labs and YouTube,” Schneider wrote.

 

“When a nail salon or spa has a back room for illegal prostitution, we shut down the business. When a dry cleaning plant is a front for a crystal meth lab, the government comes in with guns ablazing.

 

“Businesses that cover for illegal activity get boarded up and their owners thrown in the slammer. Just because a business carries on facade of legal activity — even offering us a good value from the facade — doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to the criminality going on.”

Laundering Pirate Content or Solving Problems?

Schneider has never shied away from criticizing YouTube’s business model or that of its owner, Google/Alphabet. In a submission to the U.S. Copyright Office in 2016, the seven-time Grammy winner accused YouTube of “fermenting a veritable pirate orgy” among its users while “dismantling copyright from the inside, like a flesh-eating virus.”

 

Using less colourful terminology, the major recording labels and hundreds of artists expressed similar sentiments. “At its worst, the DMCA safe harbors have become a business plan for profiting off of stolen content,” they wrote. “At best, the system is a de facto government subsidy enriching some digital services at the expense of creators.”

 

Some subsidy. Between July 2021 and June 2022, YouTube paid over $6 billion to the music industry, using a system that’s hardly changed since being labeled as “criminal.”

 

Official content creator uploads aside, regular users of YouTube upload content they’re supposed to own, and from there, YouTube monetizes it within the boundaries of licensing agreements and broader law. When copyright holders report uploaded content as infringing, YouTube follows the DMCA and takes the content down.

 

This method meets the requirements of copyright law but generates no money for rightsholders. An alternative process does, however.

 

When rightsholders use YouTube’s Content ID, the system identifies unlicensed uploads, with removal just one of several options. Monetizing content is another, and as a result, many rightsholders today have stopped sending takedown notices and receive checks from YouTube instead.

Access Denied

Schneider’s 2020 class action lawsuit claims that when smaller artists ask for permission to use Content ID, YouTube rejects their applications and denies access to associated anti-piracy tools. Meanwhile, alleged infringers arguably benefit from Content ID matches.

 

The complaint alleges that YouTube users who repeatedly upload infringing content are ‘repeat infringers’ who should have their YouTube accounts terminated. Instead, YouTube’s Content ID system allegedly provides them with cover. According to the plaintiffs, YouTube’s failure to terminate these repeat infringers disqualifies the company from safe harbor protection under the DMCA.

 

Viewed differently, Content ID immediately licenses uploaded content and funnels revenue to the rightsholder based on pre-agreed terms. In 2021, 98% of all copyright complaints handled by YouTube were processed by Content ID.

 

Major recording labels’ criticism of YouTube has been less evident in recent years, broadly coinciding with increased YouTube revenue. No recording labels or artists joined Schneider’s lawsuit, despite being those most likely to benefit from a favorable outcome.

 

As Content ID users already, the lawsuit wasn’t a great fit for the labels. YouTube’s revelation – that Schneider had also benefited from Content ID via a deal with her publisher – was unexpected. In a controversial case that has exposed strengths, weaknesses and cynical tactics on both sides, it didn’t come as a surprise.

Gearing Up For Trial

The trial will play out at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, from 09:00 on June 12, 2023. A joint pre-trial statement and individual trial briefs reflect the extraordinary legal resources expended by the parties over the last three years.

 

The plaintiffs assert claims against YouTube for violations of the Copyright Act (direct, contributory and vicarious infringement) and violations of 17 U.S.C. § 1202, which prohibits the removal of Copyright Management Information.

 

YouTube’s brief states that the plaintiffs contend they will prove “317 separate acts of infringement” before the jury. YouTube says that despite its requests, the plaintiffs are playing “hide-the-ball” by refusing to identify any of them. YouTube also provides a downbeat assessment of what the case amounts to.

 

“Liability issues aside, it is also important to highlight what remains in dispute regarding Plaintiffs’ damages claims. Plaintiffs are seeking roughly $23 in revenue per work, so even if they prevail on every one of their 317 infringement claims, they would be seeking roughly $7,300 in total gross revenue…,” YouTube notes.

 

YouTube says it has defenses for all claims, including protection under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA, through fair use, express licenses, and time-barred claims.

 

Interestingly, YouTube says that it won’t pursue a DMCA safe harbor defense if the court denies a pending class-certification motion and the matter proceeds as an individual action instead. If YouTube does attempt a safe harbor defense, the plaintiffs insist that YouTube will fail. One of the requirements for protection is the reasonable implementation of a repeat infringer policy; not the case here, the plaintiffs claim.

 

“[YouTube’s] exclusion of private and unlisted videos and search result de-duplication prevents copyright owners from gathering information necessary to submit takedown requests; it fails to issue copyright strikes for the billions of infringements identified by Content ID; it assesses strikes against channels, not users, even though one user can have multiple channels,” their brief reads.

Don’t Forget the Bogus DMCA Notices

Roughly a year into what is now a three-year litigation project, the plaintiffs were still alleging mass copyright infringement on YouTube but noting that without access to Content ID, precise identification of infringement would remain problematic.

 

When the lawsuit was first filed in June 2020, an entity called Pirate Monitor Ltd appeared alongside Schneider, claiming that it owned the copyright to several movies illegally uploaded to YouTube. The company claimed that after being denied access to Content ID, it was forced into a “cumbersome, inaccurate, and flawed ‘manual’ process” that benefited YouTube’s “money-making machine.”

 

A YouTube investigation later alleged that Pirate Monitor used bogus accounts to upload its own videos and then used DMCA notices to take them down, claiming infringement of its rights. YouTube said this was a ploy to gain fraudulent access to Content ID management tools.

More Complexity, More Denial

YouTube continued to produce additional evidence to back up its fraud allegations and then followed up with a counterclaim against Pirate Monitor Ltd and alleged sole-owner, Gábor Csupó.

 

Mr. Csupó is a five-time Emmy award-winning producer and director, and the creator of the animated series Rugrats. He denies being involved in the submission of 1,975 bogus notices sent to YouTube. Csupó says that Pirate Monitor Ltd was dormant then, so he can’t be held liable.

 

Agents or sub-agents of another company, Intellectual Property LLC, allegedly sent the notices. Alternatively, it may have been agents or sub-agents of another company called MegaFilm. As a matter of law, Csupó insists he’s not responsible for the companies or their agents. Csupó further insists that since YouTube “encourages infringement,” the company has “unclean hands.”

Proposed Jury Instructions

Highly competent intellectual property attorneys have examined every detail of this complex case for almost three years. They remain fundamentally opposed.

 

If the plaintiffs’ proposal succeeds, a jury of ordinary citizens will hear 50 hours of evidence, split equally between the parties. If YouTube’s proposal is preferred, they will listen to just 24 hours of evidence overall before rendering their verdict.

 

The jury will receive guidance from District Judge James Donato, who will begin by informing the jury of their duty, as detailed in the proposed jury instructions.

 

“It is your duty to find the facts from all the evidence in the case. To those facts you will apply the law as I give it to you. You must follow the law as I give it to you whether you agree with it or not. And you must not be influenced by any personal likes or dislikes, opinions, prejudices, or sympathy. That means that you must decide the case solely on the evidence before you. You will recall that you took an oath to do so,” the Judge will say.

 

Several pages of undisputed standard instructions will follow the above. From page 17 onwards the majority of the proposed jury instructions on the docket are still marked as disputed, which remains the case right to the very end, on page 243.

The Stakes Are High

YouTube believes it will prevail but in the event it does not, the plaintiffs say they are entitled to actual or statutory damages for each infringed work, in the range of $750 to $150,000 per work. More ominously, the plaintiffs will also seek the following:

 

– An order enjoining YouTube from withholding any known [content] match of 10 seconds or more in length, for any reference file generated from a video that was the subject of a successful DMCA takedown notice from the copyright claimants identified in such notices

 

– An order directing YouTube to provide, to any copyright owner who provides YouTube with a reference file, all matches longer than 10 seconds in length to any pre-existing video on YouTube and any video subsequently uploaded to YouTube

 

The plaintiffs may not get what they’re asking for, even if their lawsuit is successful. But if they do, the requests above may amount to a game-changing event underpinning the Holy Grail – a takedown and staydown regime.

 

Documents referenced above are available here (1,2,3,4, pdf)

 

Most artists and music labels share their music with the public on YouTube, free of charge.

 

The popular video platform has become an important promotional channel that brings in billions of dollars of advertising revenue every year.

 

The success story has a downside, however. Millions of people use so-called stream-ripping websites to download music tracks from YouTube, without permission. YouTube’s terms and service prohibit this activity but there are hundreds of online tools through which people can easily ‘rip’ and download content from the site.

 

Music companies, often represented by the RIAA, are actively cracking down on what they see as major piracy threat. Some operators of these stream-ripping tools disagree, pointing at the variety of legal use cases instead.

Yout vs. RIAA

At the end of 2020, the operator of one of the largest stream-rippers took matters into his own hands. Instead of hiding in the shadows like some of his competitors, Yout.com owner Johnathan Nader sued the RIAA, asking a federal court in Connecticut to declare his service non-infringing.

 

Last fall, the district court decided to dismiss the matter, handing a win to the RIAA. Judge Stefan Underhill ultimately concluded that Yout had failed to show that it doesn’t circumvent YouTube’s technological protection measures. This also rendered the associated defamation and business disparagement claims moot.

 

Yout did not give up on the case. Nader opted to appeal the verdict as he believes that YouTube rippers don’t violate the DMCA. After the RIAA’s request for legal fees was denied, Yout’s attorneys filed their opening brief at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in February.

Key Questions

This case essentially revolves around two questions, to which both parties have completely different answers. These questions will ultimately determine whether Yout and similar stream-ripping services operate legally.

 

– Does YouTube employ a technological measure that effectively controls access to copyrighted works?

 

– If the answer is yes, does the Yout service circumvent these controls?

 

In its opening brief, Yout previously went into great detail to show that YouTube doesn’t have any effective protection measures. The stream-ripper wasn’t alone in this assessment; the site received support from both GitHub and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who filed supportive Amicus Curiae briefs.

Copyright Alliance Backs RIAA

Earlier this month, the RIAA replied to these arguments in a detailed answering brief. According to the music industry group, Yout is an “illicit stream-ripping service” that effectively allows people to “bypass YouTube’s technological restrictions” that prevent downloading of works streamed through YouTube.

 

The RIAA is not alone in this assessment. Late last week, the Copyright Alliance submitted an amicus curiae brief in support, asking the Court of Appeals not to change the lower court’s verdict.

 

The Copyright Alliance is a non-profit that represents rightsholders across the board and has strong connections with industry groups. In its amicus brief, the public interest group warns that reversing the current court ruling will have devastating consequences.

 

“Yout’s illegal, stream-ripping software is a significant threat to copyright holders and ultimately the public. If this Court adopts the arguments of Yout and its amici, protection for numerous business models will be devastated, resulting in less, not more, public access to copyrighted works,” the Copyright Alliance writes.

Free Expression

The Copyright Alliance provides a detailed overview of the DMCA’s legal history and says that Congress intended Section 1201’s ‘circumvention’ safeguards to protect free expression, not to harm it.

 

Supporters of YouTube downloading tools may argue that the technology can foster creativity, but the Copyright Alliance argues the opposite. They believe that unbridled access to copyrighted content will ultimately lead to less output from creators, hurting free expression.

 

“Massive infringement impedes free expression in several ways. Deprived of a fair return, copyright owners have less incentive to create and to disseminate expressive works, especially in digital formats.

 

“Moreover, the specter of rampant piracy inhibits copyright holders from creating or partnering with new platforms and services that can offer the consuming public broader access to creative works,” the Alliance adds.

‘Rube Goldberg-like Process’

The brief stresses that Yout clearly violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision and that all counterarguments fall flat. This includes the notion that YouTube’s technical protection measures are not at all effective.

 

The stream-ripper backed up this point by showing that anyone can easily download YouTube audio and video through a regular browser, without the need for special tools. However, this ‘Rube Goldberg-like‘ multi-step process doesn’t help its argument, the Copyright Alliance notes.

 

“Yout’s contrived attempt to show that YouTube users already have access to copyrighted works via a convoluted, Rube Goldberg-like process actually refutes the ‘lack of effectiveness’ argument.

 

“Without question, Yout’s service flouts the express terms and the crucial purpose of Section 1201, all to the ultimate detriment of the consumer,” the brief adds.

‘Rehashing Stale Arguments’

Yout and the amicus brief from EFF also stressed that stream-ripper tools have many legal and fair use purposes. For example, they are vital for some reporters and useful to creatives who use them for future work.

 

The stream-ripper argued that its service can be equated to a video recorder, citing the Betamax case. Downloading content from YouTube is nothing more than “time shifting”.

 

The Copyright Alliance refutes these arguments as well, pointing out that they fall flat as these lines of reasoning have been repeatedly defeated in courts.

 

“The position of Yout and EFF in this lawsuit is nothing more than another in a decades-long pattern of raising legally baseless court challenges to the DMCA,” the Alliance writes. “These arguments merely rehash stale, erroneous arguments that courts have rejected for decades.”

 

Whether the appellate court will agree with these arguments has yet to be seen. While circumvention cases are not new, none of these U.S.-based cases have looked at Youtube-ripping in detail.

 

—

 

A copy of the Copyright Alliance’s Amicus Curiae brief calling for an affirmation of the lower court’s decision in favor of the RIAA is available here (pdf)

 

There’s no denying that the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has been rather successful over the past few years.

 

The anti-piracy group, which represents prominent rightsholders such as Apple, the BBC, Canal+, Disney, Sky, Netflix, and Warner Bros, systematically hunts down key piracy players and works to shut them down.

 

ACE expanded its reach once again this week when it added sports streaming service DAZN to its roster. This new member increases the group’s focus on sites and services that offer pirated live sports.

Millions of Views

The expansion will likely lead to more shutdowns and domain name seizures going forward. ACE typically redirects these domains to its dedicated “Watch Legally” page, which advises visitors where they can access licensed services.

 

This redirect strategy is quite successful as the ACE website enjoys millions of visits per month. A large percentage of this audience consists of people who were expecting to visit a pirate site, but were redirected to ACE instead.

 

In addition to the free traffic, Google has also rewarded the alliance with a top ranking in search results, meaning that the ‘Watch Legally’ page would show up in the top results for relevant search queries.

Rival Takedown

As things stand today, that’s no longer the case. After the “Watch Legally” page was removed from Google search, visitors see the following note at the bottom of the results.

 

In response to a recent takedown notice, Google removed ACE’s “Watch Legally” page for alleged copyright infringement. This action was taken at the behest of Indian anti-piracy outfit AiPlex.

 

The ACE page was repeatedly flagged by AiPlex in recent weeks. In this notice, for example, it’s accused of distributing a pirated copy of the film ‘Virgin Bhanupriya,’ together with sites such as foumovies.pw, afilmyhit.cafe, and yomovies.bid.

Redirected Trouble

Why AiPlex flagged a page that’s designed to drive traffic to legal services is unclear. The company didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment but we have a hunch that might explain the series of inaccurate takedown notices.

 

As we mentioned earlier, ACE has a habit of redirecting seized pirate domain names to its own website. If AiPlex found an older piracy link that redirected to ACE, and then reported the ACE site to Google without carrying out any checks, that could explain the erroneous removal.

 

Whatever the reason, AiPlex may want to update its systems to prevent similar trouble going forward. At the same time, ACE could send a DMCA counternotice to Google if it wants to be relisted.

 

Of course, this isn’t the first time that legal streaming options have been flagged as infringing; it happens more often than you’d think. For example, justwatch.com has been flagged more than 53,000 times. Luckily, Google identified most of these inaccurate notices.

 

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the availability of unlicensed music “remains an issue for the
whole music ecosystem.”

 

In its 2022 ‘Engaging With Music’ report, IFPI estimates that almost a third of people say they have used illegal or unlicensed methods to download and listen to music. The major threat in today’s market has been growing for many years, mainly because it’s so quick and easy.

What is Stream-Ripping and How Does it Work?

The official explanation from IFPI reads as follows: Stream ripping is the illegal practice of creating a downloadable file from content that is available to stream online. It is now the most prevalent form of online music copyright infringement.

 

While the industry group’s definition is broad enough to encompass all streaming services offering licensed content, a more specific description for the lion’s share of related piracy is carried out by people using YouTube-ripping tools.

 

These are available in software form for local use but the most simple and popular option is to visit a website set up for the job. Given their number and popularity, a basic Google search usually throws up plenty of options, but not always.

Legal Action

Users in some regions may find that their ISP blocks access to some YouTube-ripping platforms. This is the result of legal action taken by the major recording labels in several countries, where courts had to determine the legality of the platforms based on functionality, technical issues, conduct, and the likelihood that most visitors use them to infringe copyright.

 

Denmark was the first country in the world to declare stream-ripping illegal and currently blocks sites with flvto, ytmp3, yt1s y2mate, and savefrom branding, among others. Similar brands appear in legal documents relating to a High Court ruling in the UK.

 

The same is broadly true for blocking action in Australia while a more recent blocking injunction in India targets 18 sets of domains, with each set consisting of often multiple domains linked to the same platform or perceived ownership.

Small Domain Names, Extraordinary Traffic

Given that domain hopping and multiple domains pointing to the same infrastructure is common, traffic to sites can be more difficult to calculate than usual. YouTube-ripping site yt1s operates from several domains but on its own, the .com variant is good for 15 million visits per month. 15% of the site’s traffic comes from India, where it’s supposed to be blocked.

 

Y2mate is much, much bigger. Just one of its domains received more than 117 million visits last month. Another y2mate-branded domain receives almost 40% of its 3 million visits each month from India, where some y2mate domains are blocked – but not this one.

 

Another y2mate variant currently enjoying 22 million visits per month now gets 15% of its traffic from the UK where other rippers are blocked, but not this one.

 

Other ripping site brands, which in some cases are linked to other popular brands, also enjoy huge traffic. Savefrom, for example, which received 113 million visits last month alone. And then there’s this monster, a ripping platform that receives almost four times more visits than Fmovies, which in itself is no slouch at almost 92 million per month.

 

Traffic aside, the ssyoutube.com domain is interesting for other reasons too.

SSYoutube Evades Takedown Notices

While the music industry considers YouTube-ripping sites illegal, ssyoutube gets almost zero attention in Google’s Transparency Report due to its setup. The domain has been targeted in just seven requests with just eight of its URLs removed since 2018.

 

As the image above shows, ssyoutube has an aversion to visitors from the UK; it appears to deliberately block them. Y2mate took similar action in 2021, possibly due to music industry legal pressure but nothing was confirmed officially in public.

 

While few regular DMCA notices target ssyoutube, the UK’s BPI has filed many DMCA anti-circumvention notices against the platform, including some that show links with savefrom, a platform mentioned earlier. But does any of this time, effort and money amount to any more than a sticking plaster?

So Who is To Blame and What Can Be Done?

The fact that the music industry has made virtually all of its content available at a fair price (or free) means that the ripping phenomenon cannot be attributed to the labels failing to read the market. Bluntly, it’s difficult to see what more could’ve been done.

 

This is also costing the labels a lot of money. In addition to effort already expended on general anti-piracy work such as DMCA notifications, per-country site-blocking injunctions are very expensive. When treading new ground on the circumvention issues surrounding YouTube-ripping platforms, even more so. But the legal costs don’t stop there.

 

Seemingly with no options left, the major labels are taking legal action against DNS providers like Quad9 and Cloudflare, insisting that somehow they’re to blame for extraordinary levels of piracy carried out by stream-ripping sites and their users.

 

A hosting provider in Germany also faces legal pressure for simply linking to youtube-dl, the software coincidentally used by many ripping sites today. Will pushing the blame onto yet another intermediary solve this problem?

So What About YouTube?

When huge ‘pirate’ platforms are discussed along with the legalities of stream-ripping and associated circumvention of technological measures, only rarely is YouTube suggested as a party to a widening conflict prepared to suck in any and all intermediaries.

 

If DNS providers or hosting companies “aren’t doing enough” to tackle piracy carried out by people they have nothing to do with, does that mean that YouTube is next? Despite all the talk about systems that “effectively control access” to a copyrighted work, YouTube’s ‘rolling cipher’ is by no means effective.

 

Pragmatically speaking, legal interpretations that attempt to redefine the original meaning of the word “effective” to mean something else under the DMCA, are all well and good, and may win a case here and there. But does wordplay stop people from ripping billions of tracks from YouTube and copying them to their machines?

 

It’s unlikely that the reasons for this current situation will find themselves aired in public but in effect – effectively – YouTube hosts almost every song in the world, on a platform that has no useful copy protection mechanism, and is actually licensed to do so.

 

A third of a billion visits to one site in one month is pretty wild, but nowhere near as wild as chasing down DNS providers and hosts while claiming they aren’t doing their bit to prevent piracy.

 

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

 

District Court Judge David Ezra confirmed the judgment in January. This was a clear mistake, according to Grande, which hoped to have it overturned.

ISP Wants a Do-Over

In March, the Internet provider filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. Put simply, Grande wanted the Judge to overrule the jury. This is warranted if the evidence clearly weighs in favor of the requesting party but when a jury finds otherwise.

 

If that is not an option, the ISP asked the court for a new trial to allow the piracy liability issues to be raised again before a new jury.

 

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra ruled on the motion, denying both requests. According to the order, there is nothing wrong with the jury verdict and the court didn’t make any clear errors either.

Request Denied

To make its case, the ISP raised a wide variety of issues, including the argument that there was a lack of copyright infringement evidence at trial.

 

For example, there were no copies of the 1,403 original copyrighted works to compare against the allegedly pirated music tracks. In addition, it was unclear if the infringers were actually Grande subscribers, instead of unauthorized network users such as wifi-stealing neighbors.

 

Judge Ezra sees things differently. In his order, he writes that the evidence included a hard drive of download files and detailed testimony showing that the downloads matched the copyrighted sound recordings.

Self-Undermining Admission

The notion that strangers could have used Grande subscribers’ connections didn’t make an impact either. According to the order, Grande itself argued at trial that subscribers are liable for everything that takes place through their connection.

 

“Grande undermined its theory about unauthorized users conducting infringement by admitting at trial that it holds its subscribers fully responsible for all conduct occurring on their accounts, whether they are authorized users or not,” Judge Ezra writes.

 

The ISP also argued that the evidence failed to show that Grande users actually uploaded the pirated tracks to others. Again, the court found the argument unconvincing.

 

Judge Ezra stresses that “actual dissemination” of pirated content is not required to prove direct infringement on a distribution theory; showing that it was “made available” suffices.

Sufficient ‘Distribution’ Evidence

In this case, the court believes that there was sufficient direct and circumstantial evidence that Grande users uploaded pirated content. Part of this evidence comes from the music company’s piracy-tracking partner Rightscorp.

 

“Plaintiffs provided evidence of actual uploads by Grande users, and downloads by Rightscorp: Rightscorp reapproached Grande users who had previously offered the work for copying and downloaded at least one complete copy of the work,” Judge Ezra writes.

 

All in all, the court concludes that Grande fails to make a proper case for a new judgment or trial.

 

“Neither Grande’s legal nor evidentiary arguments warrant judgment as a matter of law or a new trial. Accordingly, the Court DENIES Grande’s Renewed Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law or a New Trial,” the final order reads.

Appeal Forthcoming

This effectively means that the $47 million music piracy verdict stands. However, this still isn’t the end of the legal dispute, as there are more options to challenge the outcome.

 

The ISP previously indicated it would appeal the jury verdict at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit if its motion was denied. We therefore expect an appeal to be filed in the near future.

 

Grande hasn’t been able to catch a break in court recently. In addition to the multi-million dollar verdict and this week’s rejection, its motion to dismiss in a separate piracy liability lawsuit against filmmakers was also denied.

 

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra’s order denying Grande’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial, is available here (pdf)