In the fall of 2020, the U.S. Government indicted three members of the infamous Team Xecuter group, the masterminds behind various Nintendo hacks.

 

The group allegedly made millions of dollars through its operation, which effectively shut down shortly after the criminal proceedings started.

 

The authorities arrested Canadian Gary Bowser in the Dominican Republic and Frenchman Max Louarn was detained in Tanzania. The latter, a notorious hacker, miraculously managed to avoid extradition to the United States. The same can’t be said for Bowser.

40 Months Prison for ‘Salesperson’

As the purported salesperson of Team-Xecuter, Bowser wasn’t a leading figure in the operation. Most people knew him as “GaryOPA”, the operator of “MaxConsole”, a website that regularly reviewed Team-Xecuter hardware and other hacking tools.

 

Financially, Bowser’s role was also rather limited. From all the millions of dollars in revenue that were generated by Team-Xecuter, Bowser was paid ‘only’ $500 to $1000 a month, his attorney previously said. He didn’t deny involvement, however.

 

Following his arrest, Bowser was deported to the United States where he pleaded guilty. Last February, Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his role in the criminal enterprise. The sentence is significant but lower than the five-year prison term the Government had requested.

 

During sentencing, Judge Lasnik said that it was important ‘to send a message’ but agreed that a reduction was warranted as Bowser played the smallest role of the three defendants.

Early Release

Bowser was later incarcerated at Federal Detention Center SeaTac in Seattle. A few weeks ago his attorney put in a request for an early release, citing the time credits earned by his client to date. That request was denied as moot earlier this month, as the Bureau of Prisons had pushed Bowser’s release date forward.

 

In a recent video interview with Nick Moses, Bowser explains that he was released from federal prison on March 28th. He is currently in processing at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, to prepare for his return to Canada.

 

Most of the paperwork has been arranged and Bowser expects to travel to Canada in roughly a week, with a newly issued passport in his pocket. Initially, the 50+ year-old feared that he would be left stranded at the border, but ICE agreed to send him to Toronto instead.

 

“Because of my medical condition, my age, and the fact that I was born in Canada and have family back in Toronto […] ICE is working on getting me back directly to Toronto,” Bowser says, adding that the method of transportation remains unclear.

$10 Million Damages, $175 Paid

For the time being, the Northwest Detention Center already offers much more freedom. Bowser is no longer restricted to a cell but stays in a dorm, has more flexibility, access to decent coffee, and better food options than at the federal prison.

 

What his life will look like in Canada remains uncertain. However, in federal prison, Bowser has shown that he doesn’t shy away from putting in work and helping other people in need. Aside from his prison job, he spent several nightly hours on suicide watch.

 

The prison job brought in some meager income, a large part of which went to pay for the outstanding restitution he has to pay, which is $14.5 million in total. Thus far, less than $200 has been paid off.

 

“I’ve been making payments of $25 per month, which they’ve been taking from my income because I had a job in federal prison. So far I paid $175,” Bowser tells Nick Moses.

 

If Bowser manages to find a stable source of income in Canada, Nintendo will get a chunk of that as well. As part of a consent judgment, he agreed to pay $10 million to Nintendo, which is the main restitution priority.

 

“The agreement with them is that the maximum they can take is 25 to 30 percent of your gross monthly income. And I have up to six months before I have to start making payments,” Bowser notes.

 

At that rate, it is unlikely that Nintendo will ever see the full amount. Or put differently, Bowser will carry the financial consequences of his Team-Xecuter involvement for the rest of his life.

 

Upcoming first-person shooter game Dark and Darker is scheduled to launch later this year, but even at this early stage it’s causing controversy.

 

Last month, police in South Korea raided the offices of local game studio Ironmace. According to reports, the developers allegedly stole assets from their former employer, game publisher Nexon, which is allegedly working on a similar project too.

 

A few days later, Nexon sent a DMCA takedown notice to Valve, asking it to remove the Dark and Darker project from Steam. The detailed takedown notices accused Ironmace of copyright infringement and stealing trade secrets.

 

“This letter is to inform you of Ironmace’s misconduct, constituting misappropriation of Nexon’s trade secrets and copyright infringement and to request that Valve take down all versions of Dark and Darker from Steam,” the company wrote (pdf).

 

Steam swiftly complied, but the enforcement action and follow-up legal pressure didn’t stop ‘Dark and Darker’ development. Ironmace refuted the accusations in detail and continued to work on the game.

 

This weekend, Ironmace was ready to share the latest Alpha release with its fans. Without Steam access, Ironmace had to choose a different distribution method and after some internal deliberation, opted to go “old school” with a BitTorrent release.

 

“Unfortunately, due to the complexities of our situation, especially across international lines, it is taking time to resolve the Steam situation. In order for us to keep our promise to our fans we’ve had to go old school this time,” Ironmace wrote.

 

The developers typically share these types of announcements with their large Discord following. In this case, however, users had to go to Twitter for the actual magnet torrent link, as Discord apparently doesn’t support torrents.

 

Twitter has no torrent restrictions so the magnet link was posted there. The torrent link also made its way to Steam, where the developers provided additional background information, as well as a recommendation to use the qBitTorrent client.

 

In the hours that followed, tens of thousands of fans used the torrent link to download a copy of the playtest release. At the time of writing, the release still has close to 20,000 people actively seeding it. This is a massive success in terms of distribution but not without controversy.

 

Shortly after the torrent link was posted to Twitter, ‘someone’ sent a DMCA notice to the social media platform, requesting its removal. The notice hasn’t been published yet, but it seems reasonable to assume that Nexon may be behind it.

 

Instead of the magnet link, people now see ‘tweet withheld’ in Ironmace’s Twitter timeline. In addition, a follow-up Twitlonger post with a magnet link for a hotfix was also removed.

 

Since the torrent release itself is immensely popular, the Dark and Darker team is not giving up. After their tweet was removed, the magnet link was posted on Discord in a base64 encoded message.

 

“Thank you for your patience! To download the playtest please follow these instructions,” Ironmace’s Garysun writes, pointing people to a public base64 decoder.

 

At the time of publication, the Discord message is still online, but given Nexon’s stance on the matter, that may not be the case for long.

 

The torrent swarm is impossible to take down, however. At least in theory, Nexon could ask trackers to blacklist the hash, but that’s never going to happen. Even if they did manage to pull off the impossible, the files can still be shared – old school – through DHT and PEX.

 

Faced with millions of instances of copyright infringement every day, many rightsholders use anti-piracy companies to help stem the tide.

 

More often than not, that involves sending DMCA takedown notices on an industrial scale, in the hope that Google and Bing delist infringing URLs from search results before the cycle begins again.

 

Huge volumes of DMCA notices and similar requests are handled directly by companies including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And that’s just a part of a very large iceberg, much of it completely and permanently hidden, and almost all of it automated.

Trust the Machines

For years TorrentFreak has documented the most newsworthy takedown demands from the billions of notices sent to Google and other platforms with transparency programs.

 

Our focus is usually on the most egregious examples of wrongful and damaging takedowns, especially those that could’ve been avoided by taking basic steps guided by common sense. Programmed by humans yet blamed on machines, the robo-blunderers’ mistakes are rarely even acknowledged by those ultimately responsible.

 

Our own experience shows that URLs on this very website have been wrongfully reported to Google almost 150 times by 65 reporting organizations and rightsholders. We were targeted again in February for referring to a piracy app by name in an article reporting that its alleged creator had been arrested.

 

RoboCop: Book him!
Sgt. Reed: What’s the charge?
RoboCop: He writes about pirates

 

A full 7% of all wrongful DMCA notices filed against the torrentfreak.com domain are duplicate attempts to take down the same non-existent infringing content that caused the first set of notices to be rejected. “We have a good faith belief” means almost nothing the first time; after another futile attempt expecting a different outcome, it’s at best sarcastic, at worst a flat-out lie.

The Personal Touch Via Email

Rather than complaining directly to Google about infringements that don’t exist, sometimes anti-piracy companies communicate with us directly instead. More accurately, we receive emails from DMCA robocops (minor redactions, matter ongoing) that present as human but cannot complete rudimentary tasks.

 

Of course, there was no infringement, and in this case, that was made extremely clear by the sender’s own notice. It listed three URLs with domain names that are not torrentfreak.com and have nothing to do with us.

 

Despite that, DMCA robocop told us upfront that the legal document before us was accurate. “We hereby declare that the information in the notification is accurate to the best of our knowledge & belief,” the notice declared.

 

Now read that again in Robocop’s voice with “Stay Out of Trouble” tagged on the end.

I’m What You Call A Repeat Offender

This wasn’t a one-off; we’ve received these notices several times before. We’ve responded with emails explaining that their notices are wrong and also sent lengthy responses (complete with diagrams) explaining exactly why they are wrong and why we now need written confirmation that their legal complaints have been retracted.

 

No responses are ever received, but there is no question that resources were available for the same bots to keep sending out even more notices. “I Have To Go. Somewhere There Is A Crime Happening,” bots probably said as they clumped off into the distance.

Who Cares if it Worked or Not?

Obviously, our multiple cases are not isolated examples. Erroneous robo DMCA notices are reported daily, with some users having to report problems that originated on YouTube, to YouTube’s account on Twitter.

 

Why? Because the companies sending the notices simply walk away and refuse to listen to the people whose lives have just been turned upside down. In some cases, targets no longer have an account on YouTube as a direct result of the complaints yet are instructed to contact the claimant directly to resolve the dispute.

 

In our experience, mass senders of DMCA notices do not answer the people they target, whether they’re contacted on YouTube or directly by email. We know that because we sometimes try to get companies to respond to complaints by sending questions to the same designated email addresses.

Complaints Are Deliberately Impeded

We can’t go into real detail for legal reasons, but recent DMCA complaints took down an entire channel on Spotify yet the notice sent to the channel owners didn’t list an artist or an identifiable reporting group; basically, ‘robocop_enforcement’ was responsible, whoever they were. Worst still, the notice didn’t even explain whose copyrights were allegedly infringed or how.

 

Five days were given to contest the claim based on the information above, or those targeted were to be considered as consenting to the takedown. In the meantime, the flimsiest of DMCA-style takedowns was considered authoritative because someone’s DMCA robocop walked in, and when Spotify asked about the charge, it said: “Aiding and abetting a known felon.”

 

This is not “just a glitch” this how copyright law plays out on a daily basis. Nobody is accountable except for the machines and just to be clear, those machines are completely deaf, disinterested and unaccountable. The humans behind the machines are few, distant, and massively reluctant to have a sensible conversation about the damage they’re doing on a regular basis.

 

A personal theory is that since these companies deal with so much infringement, every individual, site or service they come into contact with is considered guilty by default. That is very convenient when an entire operation has been built around sending DMCA notices, but has no appropriate infrastructure to discuss the damage they’re causing.

 

I appear to have suffered an emotional shock. I will refer myself to a copyright crisis center

 

Image credits: Pixabay/SponciaHassan

 

Smash hit movies and TV shows such as Parasite and Squid Game, coupled with the unprecedented success of boy band BTS, have helped to cement South Korea as a major player on the global entertainment map.

 

Success for Korean entertainment companies carries the same pros and cons as it does for those in the West. More exposure, more sales, greater opportunities and, somewhat inevitably, more piracy.

 

That led to an announcement last month that broadcasters, including KBS, MBC and JTBC, the Korea Film and Video Copyright Association (film producers and distributors), plus streaming platforms TVING and Wavve, were forming a coalition to fight piracy. These companies took on board the ‘stronger together’ philosophy of the global anti-piracy coalition ACE, and reports suggested that ACE itself would also be a part of the Korean program.

Noonoo TV in the Spotlight

The Korean anti-piracy coalition’s first public target was revealed at the same time. With tens of millions of visitors per month, movie and TV show streaming giant Noonoo TV was a fairly predictable target.

 

Blamed for racking up 1.5 billion views of pirated movies and TV shows and allegedly causing billions of dollars worth of losses to legitimate platforms, aggressive site-blocking measures had failed to dull the site’s popularity.

 

After regularly obtaining circumvention domains in a sequence that began with noonoo1.tv and progressed to noonoo2.tv and beyond, when we reported on the site last month noonoo32.tv was the height of fashion.

 

At the time of writing, noonoo46.tv is responsible for circumventing ISP blockades, but a message placed on the site this morning also suggests it could be the last domain the site will ever need.

Studiouniversal Calls it Quits

“Hello, this is the Studiouniversal team,” the announcement begins. “It is with a heavy heart that we deliver unfortunate news to everyone who has used Noonoo up until now.”

 

“Since the official launch of the service in June 2021, we have been able to stay together with the love of many people. After careful consideration based on the outrageous traffic charge problem and the pressure on the site from all directions, we have made a decision to end the service at 00:00 on April 14, 2023.”

 

The reference to traffic charges may be a general complaint about South Korea’s “sender pays” policies.

 

These require ISPs to charge for the traffic they receive from each other rather than utilize settlement-free peering as they did in the past. There are indications that these costs are being pushed toward video platforms that host and supply content.

 

“We can’t dare to count the loss that many users must have suffered with this news of the end of service, but we, too, are also very sorry and we share this news with a very heavy heart,” Noonoo TV continues.

 

“We would like to express our sincere gratitude to each and every one of you who believed in and used us, and we wish you all the best in everything you do. Once again, thank you very much for using our service.”

Massive Legal Pressure

While the Noonoo TV announcement cites “pressure” as the second most prominent reason for the shutdown, it is this component rather than bandwidth costs that has shifted most during the past few weeks.

 

In addition to the founding of a major anti-piracy coalition with global reach, rightsholders also announced a US$3.78 billion criminal copyright complaint against Noonoo TV while condemning its use of gambling adverts to generate revenue.

 

 

The TV report above aired a few hours ago suggests that Noonoo TV may have been operated by a gambling company but even if that was indeed the case, further business opportunities now appear somewhat limited.

Clones Probably Incoming

The inevitable response to the closure of a platform as significant as Noonoo TV will be the influx of clone and copy sites. Noonoo TV’s shutdown notice warns about this directly.

 

“Please be careful of impersonation sites derived after the end of the service,” the platform says.

 

There hasn’t been a flood of mass registrations in the past few hours but dozens of domains with noonoo and noonooTV branding already exist so their owners may see an opportunity to fill a pretty big gap in the market. The big question is whether the gap will be filled with movies and TV shows, or perhaps unexpected extras with the potential to ruin a visitor’s day.

 

The remaining possibility is that Noonoo will make some kind of return, potentially under different branding. At this stage, those kinds of conversations are entirely normal and may or may not be grounded in fact. Having said that, a site that has persistently linked to new and official Noonoo TV domains seems fairly optimistic that some kind of return is already being planned.

 

Last summer, the US Copyright Claims Board (CCB) officially launched. Through this Copyright Office-hosted venue, rightsholders can try to recoup alleged damages outside the federal court system.

 

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

 

Many of the cases that have been submitted thus far are filed against direct infringers. This includes sites and services that use copyrighted material, such as photos, without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

 

There are also cases where claimants argue that defendants are liable for the acts of a third party. A claim filed by popular reading app AnyStories against CDN provider Cloudflare last September is one such example.

AnyStories vs. Cloudflare

AnyStories allows independent authors to earn revenue from sharing their writings in public. However, these stories are easily copied and posted on pirate sites, much to the frustration of READ ASAP, AnyStories’ Singapore-based parent company.

 

The Singapore company had some success with sending DMCA notices but one site in particular, infobagh.com, proved to be unresponsive.

 

Hoping for a breakthrough, AnyStories sent DMCA notices to Cloudflare, calling out Infobagh.com as a pirate site. While Cloudflare provides CDN services for that site, it’s not the hosting company. This means that Cloudflare generally doesn’t intervene.

 

Indeed, Cloudflare didn’t take action against its customer. Instead, it shared the contact information of Infobagh.com’s hosting company, urging AnyStories to follow the issue up with them.

 

AnyStories tried to do so, but since the hosting company’s contact information was reportedly inaccurate, it decided to file a claim against Cloudflare at the CCB instead.

Vague Claim, No Damages

The initial claim was rather vague and didn’t really pinpoint alleged wrongdoing at Cloudflare. AnyStories said it hoped that the pirated content would be removed and that Infobagh.com would apologize.

 

There were no copyright infringement allegations against Cloudflare and no request for monetary damages either.

 

The Board reviewed the complaint but decided that it couldn’t do much with it as it doesn’t comply with the CASE Act requirements. This was pointed out to AnyStories, and the company was given the opportunity to amend its claim, but it didn’t help.

 

“Your amended claim does not provide enough facts about allegedly infringing activity by the respondent, Cloudflare Inc,” the CCB wrote, concluding that the amended claim was still non-compliant.

 

“By contrast, your allegations about Cloudflare do not show how it committed infringement. Instead, you appear to describe responses that Cloudflare made, which you found unsatisfactory, to your inquiries about the allegedly infringing ‘pirated website’.”

Third Claim Fails as Well

In January, the CCB provided detailed information and pointers on how AnyStories could fix these shortcomings. Most importantly, it stressed that the claim should include a direct, contributory, or vicarious copyright infringement allegation.

 

Despite these detailed instructions, the third claim was again rather brief. While it included a $15,000 damages demand, a concrete copyright infringement allegation against Cloudflare was still absent.

 

“We tried to communicate with the service provider called CLOUDFLARE, INC., but the service provider provided us with an incorrect contact, which led us to still be unable to contact the actual operator of the pirated website,” it reads, adding that the infringing content remains online.

 

This was the third and final try for AnyStories, and the Board again concludes that the allegations are insufficient. The main claim that Cloudflare failed to provide accurate contact information for the pirate site’s host has nothing to do with copyright infringement.

 

“Providing incorrect contact information is not an infringing act, and the claimant has not explained how Cloudfare contributed to the alleged infringement here,” the Board writes.

 

“The claimant has not described any actions by Cloudflare that would constitute copyright infringement, nor has it described any service that Cloudflare provides to infobagh.com or identified grounds to hold Cloudflare liable for infringement on that site.”

Refile and Repeat?

This isn’t the decision AnyStories was looking for but the CCB is actually quite helpful and points out, again, how the company can lodge a proper contributory infringement claim against Cloudflare.

 

If the company wants to refile its claim, it should at least show that Cloudflare knew about the infringing activity and induced or caused it (contributory infringement). Alternatively, it can show that Cloudflare had the ability to control the infringing activity and financially benefited from it (vicarious infringement).

 

The present case stops here, however, and READ ASAP’s complaint is dismissed. These types of dismissals are actually quite common for CCB cases. As Plagiarism Today points out, many filings turn out to be defective.

 

Thus far, the Copyright Claims Board hasn’t led to a wave of rulings. On the contrary, of the 415 cases file to date, only one has resulted in a full decision. In that case, the board awarded $1,000 to a photographer who discovered that his work was used on the website of a California-based law practice.

 

Last month a bill crafted to crack down on pirate IPTV services was unanimously approved by Italy’s Chamber of Deputies.

 

If passed by the Senate, broadcasters through telecoms regulator AGCOM will have new powers to compel internet service providers to block pirate streams in a matter of minutes, potentially seconds. Site-blocking measures to deal with piracy are nothing new in Italy, but by narrowing the blocking window, the window for correcting errors is narrowed too.

Italy’s ‘Mega-Firewall’

The Association of Italian Internet Providers (AIIP) represents the interests of small to medium-sized ISPs in Italy. Given that ISPs are already required to implement AGCOM’s blocking instructions under the current regime, it follows that they will also have key responsibilities under the proposed rapid blocking system.

 

AIIP recently revealed that it had sent a memorandum to the authorities detailing its concerns over the current proposals, which are already in the final stages before becoming law.

 

President of AIIP, Giovanni Zorzoni, says that the objective appears to be the creation of a “mega-firewall” managed by AGCOM which will have the legal authority to compel internet service providers to implement it, regardless of the inherent risks.

 

“The creation of a homogeneous infrastructure based on a synchronous filtering system, capable of interfacing simultaneously with the operators offering access to the Internet, with the CDNs and with the Cloud operators, constitutes a single susceptible ‘point of failure’ to undermine the security and resilience of national networks,” Zorzoni warns.

Critical Need to Protect Critical Infrastructure

AIIP says it has always been in favor of copyright protection but says the speed at which the blocking proposals are being pushed through is a cause for concern. AIIP says that in advance of the Senate’s forthcoming examination, it is seeking a reassessment to ensure an adequate balance between the protection of intellectual property on one hand, and the protection of the internet ecosystem on the other.

 

AIIP reports progress in the form of a government commitment to evaluate the preparation of a “whitelist” of IP addresses and servers for the root zone of the Domain Name System (DNS) that can not be included in the blocking program. Since this would minimize the risks of “erroneously disabling critical systems,” AIIP hopes the government will fully implement the proposal.

Who Pays to Enforce Copyrights?

According to AIIP, internet service providers will be required to implement the new blocking system. It will entail “significant costs” that will fall first on ISPs, but ultimately trickle down to their customers.

 

“Precisely with respect to costs, the association highlights the unreasonableness of downloading them to access operators, third parties without any responsibility for the offenses, and therefore indirectly to Italian users, rather than to the subjects who will directly benefit from the new tool, i.e the rights holders,” AIIP says.

 

Not only are ISPs concerned that their customers will end up footing the bill for blocking, they’re also worried about who pays when it all goes wrong.

 

“We have asked the politicians to add an article to the text of the provision which excludes the legal liability of service providers in the event that they find themselves slavishly executing the Authority’s order,” Zorzoni says.

 

“Let’s imagine, for example, that while executing the filtering operation, the operator blocks IP addresses that carry not only illegal traffic but also legal traffic; or that what had been indicated as illegal in reality is not; here, in all these cases, it could be the service operators who get involved, for which we ask for the necessary protections.”

Precise Blocking to Date Doesn’t Eliminate Future Disasters

As reported last month, Italy’s blocking program currently covers more than 3,200 domains. Our analysis of those domains reveals legitimate reasons for blocking, all of which can be cross-referenced with transparency reports published by AGCOM.

 

The big question is what happens to that methodical and transparent system when decisions are made on the fly in an attempt to block access to more mobile pirated streams of live events.

 

Will AGCOM commit to publishing the details of servers and IP addresses that are subjected to blocking in the way that it currently does for domains? Will it publish the names of the companies who requested those online locations to be blocked so there’s complete transparency when something goes wrong?

 

The indication from AIIP that ISPs face potential liability suggests that both costs and risks are already being pushed down the line, in a direction that favors those who stand to benefit most from the new blocking regime.

 

That Italian internet users seem destined to indirectly pay for site blocking comes as no real surprise. If the project works as planned and pirate services do indeed become more difficult to access, it will be no surprise to see the prices of legitimate TV subscriptions rise either.

 

After all the hard work, why would any broadcaster that has paid for exclusivity not seek to maximize profits in a market with no competitors? Only time will tell if Italians will effectively get to pay for blocking twice, but it certainly can’t be ruled out.

 

Pirate sites with tens of millions of visits each month are large enough to consider themselves global players yet some achieve these levels in a tighter geographic niche.

 

Founded in 2014 by two Taiwanese software engineers, movie and TV show piracy site 8maple is a prime example. Initially, the site was promoted as a commercial advertising platform but soon transformed into a full-blown piracy portal pulling in millions of visitors each month and generating large sums in advertising revenue.

 

Spending an estimated US$9,800 on server hosting in the United States, Canada, Ukraine, France and Romania each month, early estimates suggested the men behind 8maple may have been generating around US$65,600 in monthly revenues. By early 2020, the site’s main domain at 8maple.ru was pulling around 35 million visits per month, generating around US$133,000 per month in revenue.

Investigation and Shutdown

Following an investigation carried out by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the Asia-Pacific division of the Motion Picture Association (MPA-APC), Japan-based Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), and local TV network Sanli TV, Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) shut down 8maple.ru late March 2020.

 

Two men in their early thirties (Chen Su, 33, and Zhuang Su, 32) were arrested and around $1.9m in illegal gains were seized from their bank accounts. Domains including 8maple.ru, 8maple.com, 8drama.com, 8drama.ru, 8duck.ru, 8video.tv, eyny.is, and eyny.tv, were shut down.

 

The suspects were arrested for copyright infringement offenses with Taiwan’s Telecommunications Investigation Corps estimating that 8maple caused around NT$1 billion (US$33.2m) in damages to the entertainment industries.

Court Sentences Men in Taiwan

More than two years after their arrest, the Taoyuan District Court has now sentenced the two men to serve 18 months in prison for “jointly committing the crime of infringing copyright property rights under Article 92 of the Copyright Law.”

 

TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the official verdict from Taiwan prosecutor Harris Chen. It reveals a highly complex case and what appears to be the involvement of other suspects in mainland China who assisted Chen Su and Zhuang Su but are yet to be identified.

 

The convicted men are described as “highly educated” but possessing a “weak sense of the rule of law.”

 

“They failed to respect the intellectual property rights of the copyright owners who spent a lot of money to make the films, which were reproduced without authorization and transmitted in public,” the verdict reads.

 

The men not only damaged the economic interests of the copyright holders but also damaged Taiwan’s international reputation for the protection of intellectual property rights, the document adds.

ACE Welcomes Verdict

A statement by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment welcomes the sentencing of the men, which includes the confiscation of NT$ 58.8 million (US$1.97 million) in illicit gains.

 

“I’d like to congratulate the Criminal Investigation Bureau and the Taoyuan District Prosecutor’s Office for the successful prosecution of the 8maple operators,” says Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE.

 

“The deterrent sentence is testament to the seriousness of the crime. The 8maple prosecution is another example of ACE’s effective partnerships with the local video industry and law enforcement and strengthens our commitment to reducing piracy and protecting the global legal ecosystem for creative content.”

Other Sites Attempt to Exploit Gap in Market

Since the shutdown of 8maple, other sites with similar branding have attempted to exploit the gap in the market. Two apparently connected platforms, 8maple.biz and 9maple.org, currently attract just under four million visits per month and appear to be the most significant players.

 

Several others, operating under imaple and imaple8 branding, appear to be part of a ring. They currently receive around three million visits per month but even if the traffic of both sets of sites are combined, their exposure comes nowhere near that of the original 8maple platforms, representing success for the movie and TV studios and authorities in Taiwan.

 

The Pirate Bay has been around for nearly two decades, which is quite an achievement considering the immense legal pressure it has faced over the years.

 

Swedish police tried to shut the site down, twice, raiding dozens of servers. This ultimate goal failed but local authorities did prosecute the site’s three co-founders, who all served time in prison for their involvement.

 

The notorious torrent site stood tall in the midst of this turmoil and continues to operate from thepiratebay.org until this day. While it is no longer the largest piracy site online, anti-piracy forces haven’t forgotten about it.

Pirate Bay Targeted in New Subpoena Wave

This week, we spotted yet another attempt to uncover the current operators. Through the Motion Picture Association, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) requested a DMCA subpoena at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

 

These subpoenas are not uncommon and are typically directed at third-party intermediaries, Cloudflare in this case. The Pirate Bay is a Cloudflare customer and through the court, ACE requests all useful information the California company has on its illustrious client.

 

“The subpoena requires that you provide information concerning the individuals offering infringing material described in the attached notice,” ACE informs Cloudflare.

 

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

 

These DMCA subpoenas don’t require any judicial oversight. In most cases, they are swiftly signed off by a court clerk. The legal paperwork is then sent to Cloudflare, which typically replies with all relevant information it has on file.

Actionable Intel?

Whether this will result in any useful information for ACE is hard to tell. The Pirate Bay knows all too well that these subpoenas exist so likely anticipated this request. After all, ACE targeted the site with a similar request three years ago.

 

In addition to The Pirate Bay, ACE subpoenas target a variety of other domain names as well. These include thesoap2day.com, cuevana2.biz, seriesflix.is, and more than a dozen others.

 

The domain tor.cat appears to be an odd entry, as that’s merely a redirect to a .onion domain on the dark web. The .onion domain belongs to DonTorrent, which previously taunted ACE by listing the anti-piracy coalition’s boss Jan Van Voorn as the site’s owner.

 

Van Voorn and his team hope that their new subpoena requests will help to pinpoint the owners of the listed sites. While results are not guaranteed, this strategy has proven to be effective in the past, at least in some cases.

 

“Disclosure requests have been a very effective way for ACE to expand its investigations,” Van Voorn previously told us.

 

“Through these processes we target all relevant intermediaries that have customer information that can help us identify the operator of a pirate site or service, including hosting providers, payment processors, advertising networks, etcetera.”

Fabricated Data

The information in Cloudflare’s administration isn’t always useful. Many operators of pirate sites and services use fabricated or inaccurate details to sign up, but ACE says that it often gets something useful out of it.

 

“While the information obtained does not always instantly identify the individual running a pirate operation, there are almost always leads we can follow that either give us investigative insights or that help confirm prior suspicions.”

 

Even if the information turns out to be useless for direct enforcement purposes, it can still prove helpful. After all, it can help ACE to argue that online intermediaries should have stricter Know Your Business Customer (KYBC) requirements.

 

—

 

Copies of the subpoena requests filed this week are available here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). A full list of all the mentioned domain names is available below.

 

– thesoap2day.com
– tor.cat
– thepiratebay.org
– cuevana2.biz
– cuevana3.ai
– cuevana3.mu
– compucalitv.com
– seriesflix.is
– filmisub.com
– filmi7.com
– fmoviesfree.to
– topflix.fm
– filmeshdtorrent.com
– photocall.tv
– multicanais.vc
– megacamais.com
– furiaflix.net
– moviehdapkdownload.com
– download.teatvapkdownload.com
– tv.tvzon.tv

 

In 2020, the RIAA infuriated many players in the open source community by targeting YouTube-ripping tool youtube-dl.

 

The RIAA sent a takedown notice to GitHub, alleging that the software bypassed technological protection measures, in violation of the DMCA.

 

GitHub initially complied but later changed course. After consulting legal experts, including those at the EFF, it restored the youtube-dl repository. GitHub also launched a million-dollar defense fund to assist developers in similar disputes.

Targeting Youtube-dl’s Host

This episode was a massive setback for the music industry, which had been fighting stream-ripping tools for years. However, instead of laying down their arms, the music companies went after Uberspace, youtube-dl’s website hosting company in Germany.

 

A few days ago this lawsuit resulted in a clear victory for Sony Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music. The district court of Hamburg essentially ruled that youtube-dl violates the law as it bypasses YouTube’s technological protection measures.

 

Going one step further, the court also concluded that as a host, Uberspace can be held liable for youtube-dl’s activity. The hosting provider received a takedown notice for the website in the past but continued to host it. According to Uberspace, the software wasn’t clearly illegal but the court ruled that the company should have known better.

 

With the dust beginning to settle, TorrentFreak spoke with Uberspace owner Jonas Pasche, who has decided to appeal the ruling. According to Pasche, the court made a big mistake that could have far-reaching consequences.

Uberspace Responds to Court Verdict

For starters, Pasche still doesn’t believe that it’s clear that youtube-dl violates copyright law. More importantly for his own business, however, is the court’s finding that a hosting company can be held liable for doubting the validity of a takedown request.

 

German law requires hosting companies to remove the content as soon as they learn about ‘clear’ or ‘obvious’ illegal activity. That’s an easy decision in many cases, but Uberspace paused for thought in youtube-dl’s case, presumably for good reason.

 

“Just because someone ‘claims’ that something hosted with us is illegal, it doesn’t necessarily need to be true. So when we received the notice from the Rasch law firm that we’re hosting youtube-dl which they claimed to be illegal, our first reaction was: Really? Is it..? Let’s do some research,” Pasche tells us.

 

“And boy, did we do some research. Starting with a simple Google search for ‘youtube download legal’, there is a TON of sources – well-known, serious, public magazines – basically all stating: Yeah, it’s totally legal to download videos from YouTube.”

 

Uberspace knows that answers that appear through Google should be carefully weighed. So Uberspace continued looking for answers. The company reviewed YouTube’s protection measures, for example, which didn’t appear to involve any type of encryption for free and publicly available videos.

‘Clearly Not Clearly Illegal’

Also, Uberspace couldn’t find any claims from YouTube itself that their content has effective copy protection. If anything, the company’s searches suggested that the opposite was true.

 

For example, GitHub eventually concluded that youtube-dl wasn’t violating US copyright law, a decision that was based on input from the legal experts at EFF. In addition, Uberspace consulted a lawyer in Germany who reached a similar conclusion.

 

“We also got ourselves informed about ‘fair use’ under German law. We even appointed a lawyer, at our own cost, who did his own research and also came to the conclusion that what youtube-dl does is perfectly legal and covered by fair use,” Uberspace’s owner tells us.

Uberspace Keeps Youtube-dl Online

Based on its own investigation into youtube-dl, Uberspace decided to keep the website online. The company informed Rasch, the music company’s law firm, of its decision, which responded with some follow-up questions.

 

For example, the law firm wanted to know how many times the youtube-dl software had been downloaded. However, Uberspace couldn’t answer this question since it didn’t host or distribute the actual code, which was stored on GitHub.

 

“I guess they didn’t like my answer, but that’s their problem, not mine. How about asking GitHub for download numbers? We suggested that to them! I’m sure they didn’t even ask over there.”

 

The biggest disappointment and threat ultimately comes from the court’s conclusion that Uberspace is liable for youtube-dl’s alleged wrongdoing because it failed to take the website offline. Apparently, Uberspace should have known that youtube-dl was illegal, even though that wasn’t clear.

 

“This is ridiculous. And it’s devastating,” Pasche says, fearing that the court order will have a chilling effect on the hosting business.

 

“The consequences of this will be that hosting providers receiving complaints will most likely kick out their customers without a court ruling, for things that might be perfectly legal. Otherwise, they have to fear being held responsible by a court that might see things differently.”

Hosting Companies as Internet Police?

In a way, the court order requires hosting companies to police their network, which requires weighing advanced legal issues that even legal experts have different opinions on.

 

Ultimately, many hosting companies will likely take the cautious option and terminate customer accounts to avoid liability.

 

“This court decision basically takes away the option of staying neutral for a hosting provider,” Pasche says.

 

“They will be unable to say ‘it might be unlawful, but it’s not really clear. Let a court decide about this, and until then continue to host it. After all, we have a hosting contract to fulfill!’ In the future, they will have to say ‘It might be unlawful, so better let’s get rid of it, without a court order’.”

 

“It’s just too risky to insist on a court decision because we might face damages for ‘helping’ with illegal activity.”

 

Pasche also finds it bizarre that the court ordered Uberspace to answer various questions it can’t answer. This includes the number of youtube-dl downloads, which is information that it simply doesn’t have.

GitHub?

There is a much more logical target in this case in the form of GitHub, which actually hosts the software. For some reason, the music companies have decided to go after Uberspace instead.

 

“GitHub isn’t some shady bulletproof hoster located on some cozy island. It’s a Microsoft-owned corporation. They have processes to deal with complaints. They have a legal team. They could perfectly block youtube-dl, even just in Germany,” Pasche says.

 

“What’s the point of suing the hosting provider of a website pointing to that GitHub repository, when they had perfectly established ways to file a complaint with the hosting provider of the actual software they want to see banned?”

 

The music companies did approach GitHub earlier, of course, but went after Uberspace when their DMCA takedown was denied. According to Pasche, the music companies chose to pick an ‘easier’ target after this setback.

 

“It really looks like they just didn’t want to face what they might regard as a ‘real’ opponent; Microsoft. Instead, they’re going for what they might have regarded as an ‘easy target’. This is exactly the behavior of bullies.”

Legal Battle Continues

Uberspace doesn’t like being bullied, so it will continue to fight back through the appeal court. In fact, the company is determined to fight this battle to the bitter end, whatever it takes.

 

Pasche believes that the recent court order effectively opens the door to increased censorship, and he hopes to shut that door again before it’s too late.

 

“This is a shameful day for the freedom of speech. It’s paving the way for privatized censorship. Do we as a society really want this? We strongly believe we’re on the right side of history here. Everyone except the music industry knows this,” he concludes.

 

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

 

The social news and discussion platform has been around for more than 17 years and over time its popularity has only increased.

 

With Reddit about to reach adulthood, the site has certain responsibilities. In recent years, these have included the publication of a transparency report documenting how various legal policies affect the site’s content.

 

The report shows how Reddit’s content policy leads to the deletion of millions of posts per week, including spam, hateful content, sexualization of minors, prohibited goods, and harassment. As a result, more than five million user accounts were banned last year, either temporarily or permanently.

DMCA Notices and Takedowns Increase

The number is significant, especially when taking into account that it doesn’t include copyright-related complaints. Reddit’s responses to DMCA takedown notices and the site’s handling of excessive copyright infringement are listed separately in the “legal removals” section.

 

These figures have been steadily increasing, and last year was no exception, according to the transparency report.

 

“In 2022, we saw a 43% increase over the previous year in the total number of copyright notices received, a 126% increase in the amount of content reported for removal, and a 97% increase in the amount of content removed,” Reddit reports.

 

Compared to other content removals, copyright actions are relatively modest. In 2022, Reddit received 254,632 copyright notices, in which rightsholders asked the site to remove 1,668,452 pieces of content. Of these requests, close to 80% resulted in items being removed.

 

These numbers are relatively small compared to the dozens of millions of ‘content policy’ removals. However, they carry a different weight as the content is reported by third-party actors, instead of Reddit mods or bots.

User and Subreddit Bans

This increase is not limited to the copyrighted links and content removed, subreddits are affected too. Several popular Reddit communities have to jump through hoops to avoid getting banned but not all manage to do so. In 2022, Reddit booted 3,215 subreddits for excessive copyright infringement.

 

According to Reddit’s transparency report, this is a 105% increase year over year but this percentage seems a bit high, as the site already reported 2,625 subreddit bans last year. That said, the trend is definitely up. If we go back to 2020, ‘only’ 514 subreddits were banned.

 

A similar trend emerges for users banned for excessive copyright infringement. In 2020, 303 users were banned, increasing to 2,813 users in 2021, reaching 5,853 last year. That’s close to a twentyfold increase in three years.

Fan-Notices

Not all DMCA notices are accepted as true. As mentioned earlier, close to 80% are rejected for various reasons. This can simply mean that some information is missing, but there are also more notable rejections.

 

For example, Reddit reports that several of the notices received didn’t appear to come from the legitimate rightsholder, but from fans instead.

 

“The notices contained clear signals that they were submitted by the creators’ fans, who did not have express authorization from the creators to do so. A copyright notice must come from either the copyright owner or an expressly designated agent, so Reddit declined to process these notices.”

 

All in all, it’s clear that Reddit has its hands full complying with DMCA takedown notices. With billions of pieces of user-generated content, this isn’t a major surprise. That said, it’s good to keep an eye on these developments with help from Reddit’s transparency reports.

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “Shazam! Fury of the Gods”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

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

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Shazam! Fury of the Gods	6.3 / trailer
2	(…)	65	5.5 / trailer
3	(1)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
4	(2)	Creed III	7.8 / trailer
5	(4)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.5 / trailer
6	(3)	Tetris	7.4 / trailer
7	(5)	Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre	6.5 / trailer
8	(8)	Cocaine Bear	6.1 / trailer
9	(10)	Everything Everywhere All at Once	7.9 / trailer
10	(…)	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	6.4 / trailer

 

As Nintendo’s official website for Switch game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom states, “The adventure begins on May 12.” Officially, at least.

 

The hotly anticipated sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will go on sale next month in digital and physical formats, with the latter also available as a special Collector’s Edition.

 

Targeted at Zelda connoisseurs, the special edition includes “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (physical version), Artbook, SteelBook® case, Steel Poster, and a set of four pin badges.”

Pre-Release Leak: February 2023

On February 20, 2023, Eurogamer reported that a 200-page ‘Artbook’ had been leaked online, containing details of new characters, enemies, enemy types, and new locations.

 

“It’s currently unclear how this art book managed to leak, so far in advance of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s official launch date,” the publication noted at the time.

 

Two months later, it’s clear that a) Nintendo is very aware of the leak and b) they have a specific internet user in mind as the potential leaker.

DMCA Takedown Sent to Discord

On February 21, Nintendo of America sent a DMCA notice to Discord. The complaint targeted a Discord channel named “Tears of the Kingdom Official Discord Server.”

 

The notice went on to target six specific URLs featuring images or links to images “from Nintendo’s copyright-protected and unreleased special edition art book for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom video game in violation of Nintendo’s rights.”

 

Just eight minutes after the takedown notice was sent to Discord, the platform acknowledged the complaint and told Nintendo that the content “will be removed promptly.”

 

Around ten hours after sending the initial takedown notice, Nintendo followed up with a request for “immediate review and takedown” of the Discord channel, noting that members were still distributing the pre-release artwork using direct messages and links.

 

“Additionally, some members have been assigned the role of ‘The PDF Pirate’ which identifies them as a source for PDF files of the infringing art book images. For your review, we have also provided screenshots from the server featuring four members and a brief description below highlighting their activity in the server.”

 

Around 18 hours later, Discord said it had “issued a warning to the server for the reported activity.” In its original notice, Nintendo had objected to the term ‘official’ being used in the server name since the “server is not operated or authorized by Nintendo.”

 

Discord said that if Nintendo was “concerned about potential consumer confusion,” it might want to file a trademark complaint.

Nintendo Goes to Court in California

On Friday, April 4, 2023, Nintendo of America’s attorneys filed an application for a DMCA subpoena at a district court in California.

 

Referencing the notices sent to Discord in respect of the “copyright-protected and unreleased special edition art book for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” the company highlights a Discord channel and a specific user.

 

“[Nintendo of America] is requesting the attached proposed subpoena that would order Discord Inc. …to disclose the identity, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail addresses(es) of the user Julien#2743, who is responsible for posting infringing content that appeared at the following channel Discord channel Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom..[..].

 

Information available on other platforms, Reddit in particular, suggests that the person Nintendo is hoping to identify is the operator of the Discord channel and, at least potentially, the person who leaked the original content.

 

A two-month-old comment on the origin of the leak suggests the source was “a long time friend.” A comment in response questioned why someone would get a friend “fired for internet brownie points?”

 

Nintendo’s DMCA subpoena application can be found here (pdf)

 

 

 

It’s the summer of 2008 and the owner of a fairly new streaming site based in the north of England is on his way to a London hotel to meet a potential investor.

 

Two surveillance teams are already in place; one covertly video recording the meeting from a table in the restaurant, another monitoring the exits. After the meeting, the site owner returns to the north by train, a surveillance team in tow.

 

After getting off the train, a new surveillance team takes over and shadows the site owner home. No investment was forthcoming; the ‘investor’ was actually a private investigator working for copyright holders. A high-profile police raid followed just a month later, a lengthy prison sentence four years after that.

Piracy Investigations Take Place in ‘Real Life’

Fifteen years ago, covert piracy investigations were mostly the stuff of rumors and rarely documented in public. That the investigation detailed above was conducted by private companies, rather than the police, was controversial but not controversial enough to stop them.

 

Indeed, private companies conducting their own anti-piracy investigations today have the ability to peer into private lives as they go about protecting and enforcing their intellectual property rights. Since this necessarily involves the collection of personal data, companies like the Premier League sometimes disclose the type of information they collect as part of their privacy policies.

 

Documentation reveals that the Premier League collects and uses personal data about “individuals who have, might have or are likely to infringe the Premier League’s intellectual property rights.” Depending on the circumstances, that might also entail collecting personal data on others related to them.

Open Source Research, Third-Party Investigators

Given the wealth of information available online today covering billions of people, it’s no surprise that the Premier League leverages ‘open source’ data when defending its rights. The pool of information available online today is alarmingly deep and as long as there is a lawful basis to process personal data, companies are allowed to do so.

 

The Premier League’s ‘lawful basis’ for processing personal data mainly relies on its ‘legitimate interests’ when conducting anti-piracy investigations. This information spans the most basic of identifiers, such as a name, through to suspects’ leisure time activities.

Prime Data, Ripe for Collection

Being able to put a name to a suspected pirate is crucial in most investigations, but oftentimes it’s not the first piece of personal data to become available. Premier League says that it obtains names using open source research, “on-the-ground” investigations, and via discussions with potential defendants and other third parties. The same is true for contact details, such as email address and telephone numbers. IP addresses are also collected.

 

Other major pieces of information useful to an investigation include physical addresses, both residential and other premises. Open source research will play a roll but affiliates of infringers may also hand over location data, perfect for when the Premier League needs to hand over important paperwork regarding legal claims.

Affiliates and Social Media

While it’s not uncommon for pirates to operate in groups, any type of close affiliate risks having their information processed by the Premier League.

 

Friends, family and work colleagues may or may not be part of the scheme but to rule them in or out, the Premier League needs to “understand the relationship between them and who is liable, and to identify residential addresses for service of claims.”

 

Before identifying any colleagues, it’s possible the suspect’s job will have been scoped out in advance, but sequences of discovery aren’t determined in advance or set in stone. The goal here is to “establish level of involvement/extent of liability.”

 

Any photographs obtained from the internet, including those posted on social media, could help to “counter claims by individuals denying involvement, and to identify person to be served and prove personal service has occurred.”

Time to Get Personal

Other data that can be legally collected and processed include personal characteristics, such as physical descriptions of age, gender, height, stature, plus skin and hair colour. This information helps to “counter claims by individuals denying involvement, and to identify person to be served and prove personal service has occurred.”

 

Other categories include lifestyle data – hobbies, interests, and expenditures. This type of information can be useful in many ways but Premier League lists only two purposes for collection. “To ascertain ability to make payments in respect of infringements and the scale of an infringer’s operation.”

 

Finally, in a document dated 2020, the Premier League notes that in order to successfully operate an enforcement program, personal data needs to be shared with third parties including its legal advisors, investigators (including anti-piracy companies Friend MTS and Irdeto), industry enforcement operators (FACT) and law enforcement authorities (Trading Standards and the Police).

 

Some involved in piracy have tried to challenge the collection, processing and/or use of this type of data. At least as far as we know, most (if not all) attempts were completely unsuccessful.

 

Image credits: Pixabay/Lenzatic/gerault/lobostudiohamburg

 

With more than 12 million books in its archive, Z-Library advertised itself as the largest repository of pirated books on the Internet.

 

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

 

This success was briefly interrupted late last year when the U.S. Government seized the site’s main domain names. The enforcement action also led to the arrest of two alleged Russian operators of the site, who now find themselves at the center of a criminal investigation.

 

A crackdown of this magnitude usually marks the end of a pirate site, but Z-Library appears to be going in the opposite direction. The site has made a full comeback with a more ‘censorship-resistant’ setup and recently collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations.

Next Up: Sharing Paper Books

In a new message, posted this week, Z-Library thanks its userbase for their generous contributions, noting that it secured all the necessary funds to ensure continued development. Apparently, this includes support for offline sharing.

 

In addition to offering millions of ebooks, Z-Library says that it’s working on a new service that will help users to share physical copies with each other.

 

“Books you have read should not gather dust on your shelf – instead, they can get a second life in the hands of new readers! This helps to preserve the literary heritage and spread the knowledge and ideas contained in books to more people,” they write.

Z-Points

The book lending concept, commonly known as a library, is a few hundred years old already, but Z-Library will upgrade both scale and reach. The idea is to create a global market with dedicated pick-up points for user-donated books.

 

“[W]e want to organize ‘Z-Points’ – collection and storage points for books that will be the link between those who share their books and those who need them.

 

“Book owners who are willing to share them with other users can send books to the nearest Z-Point in their region. And those who need books stored in these points will be able to receive them for their use.”

 

This sounds like a P2P competitor for traditional libraries. Interestingly, however, Z-Library believes that existing libraries are ideally suited to become Z-Points. People can also volunteer to run a Z-Point from their own homes.

 

Running a book lending point will require quite a bit of storage space and organizational effort so fulfillment centers and third-party logistics services are also welcome to join in.

By Users, For Users

The Z-Point idea is still in the planning phase. According to Z-Library, users will be able to send books by mail. These can then be loaned by others and/or sent by mail when requested.

 

This proposal is quite different from the traditional pirate ebook library Z-Library offers now. And loaning a book to someone is generally not seen as copyright infringement either unless it’s a copied ebook.

 

Whether there’s a market for this plan and if it will ever come to fruition has yet to be seen, but based on the comments we’ve read so far, plenty of people seem to like it. Soon after the announcement was made public, hundreds of enthusiastic responses started rolling in.

 

If anything, it shows the global scale of the site, with people suggesting Vietnam, Brazil, Portugal, Colombia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Spain India, Argentina, Egypt, France, Ethiopia, China, and Ghana as ideal Z-Point locations.

Questions and Suggestions

The announcement was posted several days after April 1st, so it appears to be serious. That said, there are plenty of questions that remain unanswered. What are the legal implications, for example, and who covers the costs?

 

“The idea is good but like how would you deal with the logistics and also with cost? Especially when the team is facing legal pursuit how can you hide your identities and do it?[sic]” one commenter writes.

 

Other commenters pointed out that, in many countries, people already organize free libraries to collect and donate books to local communities. Some of these are organized and promoted through the “Little Free Library” project.

 

The Z-Library team says that it welcomes comments and suggestions. For now, there are no concrete plans, but a seed has been planted.

 

Two years ago, reports began to surface about a new six-part TV-series on The Pirate Bay’s turbulent history.

 

The project was initially scheduled to start last year but after an apparent delay, filming is now expected to begin this fall.

Pirate Bay TV Series

The inception and early years of The Pirate Bay are definitely a worthy subject for a series. While most pirate sites hid in the shadows, Pirate Bay’s founders were public figures, who openly taunted the entertainment industries.

 

Speaking with Variety, head-writer Piotr Marciniak explains that his screenplay is based on a wealth of archive material as well as interviews with the site’s founders.

 

“It’s a classic rise and fall story, a tragedy about flying too close to the sun, but also a timeless story of a generational conflict,” Marcimiak said.

 

The people involved in the “The Pirate Bay” series are clearly looking forward to getting the project running. The production is in the hands of B-Reel Films, working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT, while the American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights.

Selling The Pirate Bay ‘Rights’

Indeed, the rights to The Pirate Bay series are actively traded. The same will likely happen to pirated copies of the episodes when they’re illicitly posted to The Pirate Bay, but it’s unclear whether the rightsholders have plans to crack down on unauthorized sharing.

 

It’s nonetheless interesting to read that the story about a site that rebelled against the exploitation of copyrights, is being copyrighted and sold off. Would The Pirate Bay founders approve of that? Are they even involved?

 

The Pirate Bay series aims to tell the history of the notorious pirate site and co-founders Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Gottfrid Svartholm, but none appear to be actively involved.

Founders Deny Involvement

TorrentFreak spoke with both Sunde and Neij, who both confirm they were not interviewed for the upcoming series, even though it aims to document an important and hectic part of their lives.

 

“Nope, they didn’t interview me for the TV series,” Fredrik says. “Also. I’m not sure who they bought the rights from… They didn’t pay me at least.”

 

“And I know Anakata would have had nothing to do with it,” Fredrik adds, referring to co-founder Gottfrid, who prefers to live his life away from the public spotlight in recent years.

 

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde previously said that he was flattered by the idea of a Pirate Bay series, adding that it’s also a bit nerve-wracking. This week, however, Sunde confirmed that he is in no way involved either.

 

Pirate Bay’s co-founder actually discussed the TV project idea with the show’s writer Piotr Marciniak a few years ago but declined to sell his story. Instead, he was, and still is, working on a potentially competing project.

 

Later on, Sunde also met with the series’ director and someone from the production company B-Reel Films, who told him that they had no one from the Pirate Bay team who wanted to cooperate. That didn’t convince him to change his mind, however.

F*ck Off

As mentioned earlier, the Variety piece mentions that the upcoming Pirate Bay series draws from key interviews with Sunde and Svartholm. However, the Pirate Bay co-founder says that he wasn’t interviewed for the series.

 

“I have not given any deep interview, and when I met with them they said that Gottfrid had told them to fuck off. Which sounds more true to his character..,” Peter Sunde tells us.

 

We also reached out to B-Reel Films to hear their side of the story, but the company didn’t immediately reply. However, based on the comments from Sunde and Neij it is safe to conclude that they are not in any way involved.

 

Of course, the rightsholders of The Pirate Bay TV series are free to send some of the revenues to the founders of the site, who ultimately paid for their ideals with their freedom. Sunde doesn’t expect to get paid anytime soon, however.

 

“Movie studios moved to Hollywood since they didn’t want to pay for stories. They were the original pirates,” Sunde says.

 

“It’s been ironic to see them going after pirates in court for years and even more ironic to see them pirate the pirate story. Hoping it will turn out nice so I can pirate a copy of it. Maybe I’ll get sued for downloading the story about us.”

 

Rick Falkvinge founded the first Pirate Party on January 1, 2006, and then rallied the masses in Sweden six months later in the wake of the first police raid against The Pirate Bay.

 

At the European Elections of 2009, Swedish Pirates won over 7% of the vote. Christian Engström went on to become the first Pirate Member of the European Parliament, with Amelia Andersdotter taking the second seat in 2011.

 

When Felix Reda of the German Pirate Party was elected vice-president of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament in 2014, and was given the job of copyright reform rapporteur, that was a moment for the archives. It wouldn’t be the last.

Czech Pirates and Czech Piracy

A string of notable events in the Czech Republic, including three Pirate Party politicians taking seats in the European Parliament, culminated in 2021 when Pirates won three ministerial positions in the country’s coalition government.

 

Set to a background of intense Pirate politics and the movement’s roots in file-sharing communities, news that a 60-year-old Czech Republic man is facing up to two years in prison for file-sharing feels a little out of place. Of all things that were never supposed to happen when Pirates got into power, this was one of them.

 

Czech police say the man had a collection of almost 1,000 commercial music albums stored on a server, which is quite a lot. The server wasn’t protected in any way, so passing internet users could download whatever they liked. Unfortunately, those passing by included unnamed rightsholders who filed a criminal copyright complaint with the police.

Authorities Take Matter Seriously

According to a statement released by police in the Moravian-Silesian region, criminal investigators in the city of Karvina responded to the complaint by launching “an extensive multi-month investigation.” After establishing that the albums had been available for download from October 2013 until November 2022, police charged the man with criminal copyright infringement offenses.

 

“The accused stated that he downloaded the music mainly for his own use, but also for other users to download,” the statement reads.

 

“He testified that he was aware that by uploading works without the permission of the copyright owners, he was violating some legal standards, but he did everything mainly because he liked music. It is his lifelong hobby.”

 

When the man was informed he’d been making copyrighted content available to the public, he began deleting the files. Police say that he has still been charged with copyright offenses under Section 270 of the Criminal Code:

 

Anyone who unlawfully interferes, not insignificantly, with the legally protected rights to an author’s work, artistic performance, sound or audio-visual recording, radio or television broadcast or database, will be punished by imprisonment for up to two years, a ban on activity or confiscation of property

 

A sentence of up to five years would’ve been available had the man generated any profit. Fortunately, he made nothing whatsoever, so that should run in his favor. Indeed, the record shows that making no profit helped other local pirates avoid convictions.

Pirates Cleared of Piracy Crimes

The operators of several piracy sites in the Czech Republic were prosecuted in 2016 after they deliberately linked to thousands of movies and TV shows. In 2017 they were cleared after a court determined they had made no money.

 

“Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. However, until we achieve that, we will fight in courts over interpretation and enforcement of the law,” the operators said at the time.

 

The operators of movie download sites Tipnafilm.cz and Piratskefilmy.cz, and TV piracy site Sledujuserialy.cz, were the Czech Pirate Party. Unlike the man recently charged with music piracy offenses, these sites only linked to copyright-infringing material, rather than hosting it directly. For end users, these mechanics were mostly irrelevant.

That Was Then, This is Now

Given the history detailed above, it’s interesting that someone is facing prison in the Czech Republic for sharing files at a time when Pirate Party members are part of the government. In both cases, semantics over links or direct links still underpin the non-commercial use of copyrighted content. Or in Pirate Party parlance, “sharing of knowledge.”

 

Given the connections, the police statement prompted a few immediate thoughts. Do the Czech Pirates still approve of non-commerical piracy? As responsible politicians, do they now reject copyright infringement on any scale? Do they even have an opinion on the topic this far into government?

 

Since Pirate parties built their reputations standing up for non-commercial pirates, we asked the Czech Pirate Party if that’s still the case when a party finds itself in power.

 

We also asked whether the extremely capable, tech-focused Ivan Bartoš, Czech Pirate Party leader and current Deputy Prime Minister for Digitisation and Minister of Regional Development, has an opinion on the case.

 

Finally, we asked whether cracking down on non-commercial pirates is considered a priority for the Czech government. At the time of publishing, we were yet to receive a response.

Realities of Government Meet Ideology

Elevating questions such as these to members of a sitting government might seem trivial given the enormous challenges faced by every country in Europe today. But a general principle stands regardless of the topic.

 

Should a party that makes a particular stand be held to those promises years into the future, and if so, for how long? In this specific case, should someone who followed an example set by some of those now in power, be held to account in a way they were not?

 

These are just some of the quandries faced by every party operating in a democracy, and especially those in a minority coalition. It’s nobody’s fault, simply the cold reality of getting into power, struggling to stay there, and the realization that there are always much bigger issues competing for limited time.

 

As Rick Falvinge wrote here on TorrentFreak more than 12 years ago, there really is nothing new under the sun.

 

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

 

Copyright holders have tried to go after individual pirates and pirate sites in court, but third-party intermediaries are now increasingly seen as targets as well.

 

Several active lawsuits in the United States feature rightsholders accusing Internet providers of not doing enough to stop piracy. One of the main allegations is that ISPs fail to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in ‘appropriate circumstances’ as the DMCA requires.

 

These lawsuits have resulted in multi-million dollar judgments against Cox and Grande. Meanwhile, more companies at risk too, such as WideOpenWest (WOW!), which was sued by a group of smaller movie companies, including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures.

 

The filmmakers accused the colourado-based ISP of failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for sharing copyrighted material. They argue that WOW! is liable for these piracy activities and are demanding millions of dollars in damages.

WOW! Wants ‘Troll’ Case Dismissed

The ISP challenged the claims and filed a motion to dismiss the case. WOW! addressed the substance of the allegations and described the film companies and their anti-piracy partner Maverickeye as “copyright trolls”.

 

“Plaintiffs and Maverickeye are part of a well-known web of copyright trolls. Until now, Plaintiffs’ modus operandi has been to file John Doe lawsuits in the hope of securing quick settlements and to dismiss them at the slightest resistance,” they wrote.

 

Indeed, several of the plaintiff film companies have filed cases against individual file-sharers, but they have also sued hosting providers, site operators, and app developers.

 

Responding to the substance of the allegations, WOW! argued that an IP address is not sufficient to prove that subscribers downloaded or shared any infringing material. And if that’s not clear, the ISP can’t be held liable either.

Something More?

To back this up, WOW! cites the Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales case, where the court held that an IP-address alone is not sufficient to identify an infringer.

 

In the present lawsuit, WOW argues that IP-address evidence (~30,000 piracy notices) doesn’t prove that its subscribers pirated content; it could also be someone else using the network. To build a valid case, rightsholders should have ‘something more’ than just IP-addresses.

 

“Plaintiffs do not allege facts showing that any WOW subscriber committed direct copyright infringement; that WOW had knowledge of the specific alleged infringements at issue; or that WOW encouraged, induced, or profited from any alleged direct infringement,” the ISP wrote.

 

“But here, Plaintiffs only identify the alleged direct infringers by IP address; there are no additional allegations demonstrating that the activity at that IP address came from a WOW subscriber, and not some other user of WOW’s network.”

Court Refuses to Dismiss Copyright Claims

A few days ago, colourado District Court Judge Daniel D. Domenico ruled on the motion to dismiss and rejected most arguments. For one, the Judge doesn’t believe the “Cobbler” ruling is directly relevant here, as that was a case against an actual infringer, not an ISP.

 

For this lawsuit, the provided IP-address evidence is sufficient to allege that WOW! can be held liable for the copyright infringements of its subscribers. The court doesn’t rule on the merits yet but notes that the filmmakers’ arguments are good enough to move the case forward.

 

“Taking Plaintiffs’ factual allegations as true in this early stage of litigation, Plaintiffs have plausibly stated that Defendant had knowledge of its subscribers’ direct infringement, if not from the 30,000 notices, then from the correspondence between counsel.

 

“It is reasonable to infer that such notices and correspondence gave Defendant enough knowledge to have done something about the alleged direct infringement,” Judge Domenico adds.

Ability to Stop Infringements

The court also believes that the movie companies sufficiently plead the various copyright infringement allegations. They include contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims.

 

To allege vicarious liability, for example, the filmmakers have to plead that WOW! had the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and had a direct financial interest in the activities of pirating subscribers. According to the court, that’s the case here.

 

“Plaintiffs in this case have sufficiently pleaded that Defendant’s advertisements for high download speeds and known practice of ignoring or failing to act on notices of infringement serve as a draw for subscribers.

 

“Likewise, Plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded that Defendant has the legal ability to stop and limit copyright infringement by its subscribers,” Judge Dominico writes.

 

Based on these and other arguments, WOW!’s motion to dismiss the copyright infringement claims is denied,

Grande’s Motion to Dismiss also Strands

In addition to the WOW! case, the filmmakers also lodged a complaint against Grande Communications. Grande lost a similar case against several music companies last fall but hoped to have this lawsuit dismissed.

 

The motion to dismiss is largely the same as WOW!’s, which makes sense as both parties are represented by the same attorneys. Unfortunately for Grande, the ruling on the motion to dismiss is similar as well.

 

In January, a Texas federal court issued a report and recommendation, concluding that the motion to dismiss the copyright claims should be denied.

 

“Plaintiffs have alleged in their pleadings that Grande has received Notices about specific infringing uses of its services, but failed to take measures to prevent such uses, and failed to investigate the piracy,” Magistrate Judge Howell wrote.

 

“The undersigned finds that Plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to state a plausible claim of contributory copyright infringement against Grande, which is all that is required at the motion to dismiss stage.”

 

District Court Judge Robert Pitman adopted the recommendation last week. This means both WOW! and Grande will have to defend themselves against the piracy liability claims.

No Pirate Site Blocking Injunctions, Yet

The motions to dismiss weren’t denied in their entirety, however. In both cases, the filmmakers also requested pirate site-blocking injunctions, to limit piracy activity on the Internet providers’ networks.

 

In addition, the movie companies requested broad injunctions requiring the ISPs to identify pirates and suspend the accounts of subscribers who receive three unique DMCA notices in 72 hours.

 

The federal courts in Texas and Colorado both granted the motions to dismiss these injunction requests, as these proposed measures are remedies, not causes of action. However, they could be reintroduced at a later stage.

 

“I agree and will grant Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ ‘claim’ for injunctive relief. I note, however, that dismissal of this ‘claim’ does not preclude Plaintiffs’ from seeking injunctive relief if appropriate as a remedy should they prevail on the merits of one or more of their claims,” Judge Domenico writes in the WOW! case.

 

All in all, the recent orders are a win for the movie companies, as they can continue with their piracy liability claims. However, there is still a long way to go before there’s a final decision on the merits of those claims.

 

—

 

A copy of Judge Domenico’s order on the motion to dismiss in the WOW! lawsuit is available here (pdf). The recently accepted report and recommendation to largely deny Grande’s motion to dismiss can be found here (pdf).

 

For those who care to remember it, November 2016 was a dark month for communities with a penchant for sharing files. Two huge sites fell in a matter of days, both courtesy of French authorities.

 

When OiNK was shut down in 2007, the world’s largest dedicated music-sharing community fell with it. Few believed that a new site could fill the pig-shaped hole left behind; some insisted it would be wrong to even try.

 

What.cd not only filled that hole but did so by meeting and then surpassing all expectations. Then in November 2016, as French authorities swooped, What.cd self-destructed and disappeared into history, exactly as previously promised.

 

The cybercrime unit of the French military police didn’t wait for the dust to settle. Following a two-year investigation into Zone-Telechargement, the most popular pirate download portal in France at the time, police shut down the site and arrested several people, including its alleged founders.

Operation Gervais

Local anti-piracy groups SACEM and ALPA filed a complaint against Zone-Telechargement in 2014. The goal was to identify financial accounts, assets, advertising agencies, and the site’s hosting servers.

 

In the wake of the raid, it was claimed that Zone-Telechargement generated at least 1.5 million euros in sales per year, utilizing offshore accounts in Malta, Cyprus and Belize. The site caused an estimated 75 million euros in damages to rightsholders, rightsholders said.

 

The alleged founders of Zone-Telechargement were later identified as high-school buddies Thibault Ferreira and Wilfrid Duval. The pair founded the site in 2012 but had left France and were living in Andorra when the authorities shut down their site. That didn’t prevent their arrest or the seizure of luxury cars, real estate, and at least 450,000 euros.

Fallout Zone

Ferreira and Duval were eventually charged with offenses related to intellectual property crime, money laundering, and operating as part of an organized criminal gang. They spent the next few months in prison before being released in March 2017 with conditions, electronic tagging included.

 

In the years that followed, sites claiming to be Zone-Telechargement regularly appeared to fill the vacuum, including one that was later confirmed as being operated by an anti-piracy company.

 

A site with a similar look and feel as the original was shut down in 2022 after accumulating millions of visits per month. Others still in operation today are keeping the ‘ZT’ brand alive

Judgment in France

The men finally went on trial in France on March 13, 2023. One local report notes that between 2014 and 2016, the pair from Toulouse earned 600,000 euros each for their work on the site.

 

The Toulouse Correctional Court found that a custodial sentence of 18 months each was appropriate, with 12 months of each sentence to be considered suspended. The court also handed both Ferreira and Duval a fine of 50,000 euros but due to time served back in 2017, neither will actually be sent back to prison, according to a local report.

 

There are indications that the men intend to appeal. Their lawyer, Simon Cohen, suggests that while his clients were condemned for linking to pirated content hosted elsewhere, those who hosted the infringing content they linked to haven’t entered into the equation.

 

“We condemned the link, but not the database itself, whereas [Ferreira and Duval] are foreign to the database,” he said.

 

“They are seen as the inventors and initiators of a fraud system. They have benefited from the flaws in the system: is this reprehensible? Penalizing intelligence is a mistake, ” he continues.

 

According to a French proverb, gambling has two great pleasures; the risk of winning and the risk of losing. Since the concept of ‘making available’ doesn’t rely on the identification of a supplier of pirated content, potential gambling pleasure may have been already cut exactly in half.

 

EVO, short for EVOLUTiON, was a high-profile P2P group whose activities stood out in recent years.

 

The group released a steady stream of new movie and TV show titles and gained pirates’ admiration by leaking many screeners way ahead of their official premieres.

 

For several years in a row, EVO opened the “screener season” by releasing leaked copies of upcoming films. This included Oscar contenders, but also several Netflix titles that originated from festival screenings.

 

EVO was also the first to release an early Blu-Ray copy of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ last year, and a high-quality copy of the blockbuster “Dune” in 2021, ahead of its official U.S. premiere.

 

Like many other groups, EVO posted new releases on a regular schedule but that came to an abrupt halt last November when the group suddenly went quiet. While no explanation was given at the time, many pirates feared that the group had been busted.

National Criminal Investigation Police Take Credit

A few weeks ago TorrentFreak was able to confirm that this was indeed the case. Anti-piracy coalition ACE informed us that it had been working with Portuguese authorities to shut the group down and arrest its alleged leader.

 

This week Portual’s Polícia Judiciária publicly confirmed that enforcement action Operation “EVO 1.2” had been carried out through UNC3T, the national cybercrime unit.

 

The criminal investigation into EVO started early last year, following a complaint from Disney Enterprises, Paramount Pictures, Universal City Studios, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., Netflix, and Amazon. These are all members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and related anti-piracy coalition ACE.

 

Polícia Judiciária reports that EVO’s movie and TV show leaks caused significant losses, exceeding €1,000,000. The group operated internationally, but its home base was in Portugal.

FBI Involvement

After documenting how the group operated, several home searches were carried out in Portugal. The authorities also located EVO’s servers in the United States. These were taken down with help from the FBI, Portugeuse police confirm.

 

“In Portugal, house searches were carried out and various computer equipment was seized. Three defendants were held under suspicion of belonging to the criminal group.

 

“In collaboration with the FBI, the inactivation of the criminal group’s servers was also achieved,” Polícia Judiciária adds.

 

The authorities used these initial investigations to pinpoint the alleged leader of EVO, who was arrested and had his house searched in Portugal. This presumably took place last fall, around the time when the group stopped releasing new content.

Various Criminal Charges

According to the press release, the criminal charges include unauthorized access to the victims’ servers, computer fraud, money laundering, tax fraud, copyright infringement, and taking part in a criminal organization.

 

The first interrogation of the main suspect was concluded earlier and EVO’s alleged leader was subjected to restrictive measures. Among other things, he is not allowed to communicate with the other defendants or use any computer equipment.

 

The status of the other three defendants is unclear and details on the progress of the prosecution are scarce. TorrentFreak contacted the authorities to request further information, but we have yet to hear back.

 

When EVO disappeared in 2022, another prominent release group called iFT also went quiet. Whether this is connected to the EVO prosecution remains unknown for now.

 

Finally, it is worth noting that for the first time in decades, perhaps ever, no awards screeners leaked online before the most recent Oscars. Given EVO’s prominent role in these leaks in recent years, that’s likely no coincidence.

 

In 2021, a group of Grand Theft Auto enthusiast programmers released ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, a pair of reverse-engineered modifications for GTA 3 and Vice City.

 

These projects breathed new life into games that while still fantastic, benefited greatly from significant enhancements that helped to wind back the years. Fans loved ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ but Take-Two and Rockstar Games most definitely did not.

 

The companies’ first move was to file a DMCA notice that ordered GitHub to take the projects down. The programmers’ response came via a DMCA counternotice which restored their projects on GitHub but left them exposed to a potential legal response by Take-Two.

Take-Two Files Copyright Lawsuit

In September 2021, Take-Two filed a lawsuit against the programmers, claiming that the aim of the projects was to create and distribute pirated versions of GTA 3 and Vice City.

 

The company’s claims included damages for “willful and malicious” copyright infringement due to the illegal copying, adaption and distribution of GTA source code and other protected content. For good measure, Take-Two also demanded damages for alleged misrepresentations in the defendants’ DMCA counternotices.

 

The lawsuit listed 14 defendants, just four of which were named: Angelo Papenhoff (aap), Theo Morra, Eray Orçunus, and Adrian Graber. In their November 2021 answer to the complaint, the four men denied the copyright infringement allegations and cited fair use among other affirmative defenses.

One Year Later, Limited Visible Progress

The first five months of 2022 were relatively uneventful, at least based on information made available to the public. The parties did participate in an ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) session but according to the mediator’s report early May, the case did not settle.

 

No further entries appeared on the docket until December 2022, when the parties informed the court that since disclosure and discovery in the lawsuit was likely to involve the production of confidential, proprietary, or private information, special protection from public disclosure may be warranted. The court had no problem with granting the request.

 

As part of this process, Take-Two served an expert report on November 17, 2022, leaving a deadline of December 15 for Papenhoff, Morra, Orçunus, and Graber to disclose their rebuttal expert witness. What followed was a series of requests for time extensions and a note to the court on February 6, 2023, indicating that a settlement had been agreed in principle.

Take-Two Dismisses Claims Against Four Named Defendants

Following the news of the potential settlement, the court granted a 30-day extension until March 19. When that date disappeared into history with no further docket activity, the court issued an order for the parties to file a status report by April 3. The parties responded on the day of the deadline with a joint stipulation of dismissal.

 

“In accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), by and between the
undersigned counsel for the Plaintiff, Take Two Interactive Software, Inc., and counsel for Defendants Angelo Papenhoff, Theo Morra, Eray Orçunus, and Adrian Graber that all claims asserted in the above-referenced action against the Named Defendants are dismissed with prejudice,” the parties informed the court.

 

In these circumstances, the dismissal does not require the court to issue an order, since the signatures of the parties who have appeared in the case will suffice. Take-Two and the developers will bear their own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees.

 

What prompted this meeting of minds and subsequent agreement isn’t mentioned, but for the four men, the lawsuit is over and cannot be refiled in the future.

 

On Monday, the lawsuit appeared set to continue against the remaining defendants – Doe 1 (a/k/a Ash R. and ASH_735) plus Does 2 through 10 inclusive – whoever (and wherever) they might be. An update filed Tuesday clarified the position.

 

“Plaintiff, Take Two Interactive Software, Inc., hereby voluntarily dismisses Defendants Doe 1 a/k/a ASH R. and ASH_735 and Does 2-10, without prejudice,” the company informed the court.

 

It’s possible that a fresh lawsuit will be filed in the future but, realistically, not anytime soon.

 

The joint stipulation of dismissal can be found here (pdf)

 

The major record labels don’t want the public to download music from YouTube, which is common practice for millions of people.

 

To stop this, the music industry titans deployed a variety of legal tactics around the world. They obtained site-blocking orders, for example, and have taken on stream-ripping sites such as 2Conv and Yout.com directly in court.

Youtube-dl Takedown Battle

In late 2020, the open-source software youtube-dl was added to the list of targets. The tool is used by many stream-ripping sites and was freely available on GitHub. The RIAA asked the developer platform to take youtube-dl offline, arguing that it violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

 

GitHub initially complied with the takedown request but after public outrage and involvement from digital rights groups including the EFF, the decision was eventually reversed. GitHub went on to put $1 million into a takedown defense fund.

 

While this series of events represented a setback, the record labels didn’t back off. Instead, they set their sights on youtube-dl’s website hosting provider Uberspace.

 

The RIAA had already sent cease-and-desist orders to the hosting company in 2020, before it approached GitHub. Uberspace didn’t take any action at the time; the youtube-dl website it hosted was not the host of the youtube-dl software. The website carried links to the software and that was hosted elsewhere.

Labels Sue Uberspace in Germany

Last year, Sony Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music escalated the matter by taking it to court in Germany. Their complaint alleged that youtube-dl aids copyright infringement by circumventing YouTube’s technical protection measures.

 

The hosting company clearly disagreed and said that an overbroad lawsuit threatened freedom of information. In its defense, the company was assisted by the German Society for Civil Rights (GFF), which pointed out that youtube-dl has plenty of legal uses.

 

“The youtube-dl software can be used for countless purposes. Journalists, scientists, law enforcement agencies and human rights organizations regularly use youtube-dl, for example for the purpose of documentation and preservation of evidence.

 

“Amnesty International explicitly recommends the use of youtube-dl to document human rights violations on the Internet, as platforms such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter remove these videos,” the defense added.

Court Sides With Music Companies

After hearing both sides, the district court of Hamburg ruled on the matter last week, handing a clear win to the music companies. The verdict wasn’t immediately made available to the public but the music companies were quick to claim the win in a press release, stating that Uberspace must take youtube-dl’s website offline.

 

According to Frances Moore, CEO of the global music industry group IFPI, the court’s decision once again confirms that stream-ripping software is illegal.

 

“YouTube-DL’s services have enabled users to stream rip and download copyrighted music without paying. The Hamburg Regional Court’s decision builds on a precedent already set in Germany and underscores once again that hosting stream-ripping software of this type is illegal.

 

“We continue to work globally to address the problem of stream ripping, which is draining revenue from those who invest in and create music,” Moore adds.

 

Interestingly, the open source youtube-dl code remains available on the Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub. Whether the music companies have any plans to target the problem at this source is unknown.

‘Concerning Blanket Ban’

Uberspace’s legal representative GFF informs TorrentFreak that the decision doesn’t come as a total surprise since the court already declared YouTube’s “rolling cipher” to be an effective technical protection measure in an earlier case.

 

That said, the defense believes that the order, which effectively amounts to a blanket ban on youtube-dl, failed to take the software’s potentially legitimate uses into account.

 

“The court did not take into account that youtube-dl also supports the download of audiovisual content from more than 1000 other websites and that is an essential tool for legal purposes such as preservation of evidence, citations in journalistic productions or artistic remixes and mash-ups,” GFF says, commenting on the verdict.

 

In addition, GFF believes that the court’s decision severely restricts the hosting provider’s freedom to operate.

 

“If web hosts have to delete an entire website on demand of the rightsholders even in complex situations with no legal precedent, this poses a threat to the business model of web hosts and ultimately to the free flow of information on the Internet.”

Uberspace Will Appeal

The recent ruling isn’t the end of the legal battle just yet. Uberspace informs TorrentFreak that it will appeal the judgment and GFF is confident that the hosting provider will ultimately prevail.

 

GFF intends to release a full statement to the press tomorrow and Uberspace reserves further comment until then. The press release will likely include a redacted copy of the court order and we will update this article accordingly when that’s available.

 

At the time of writing, the youtube-dl website is still online as well. The site expressly thanks Uberspace for its continued support, a message that’s likely to be updated if the order is enforced.

 

In 2014, David Tardà, Andreu Caritg, and Oriol Solé were hard at work in Spain developing Tviso, a service with a goal to unify legal streaming services into a centrally-accessed discovery hub.

 

Tviso was a new venture for the Spaniards, although not an entirely unfamiliar one. At the same time, the men were also the operators of Series.ly, a then-four-year-old “social television” download site that aimed to blend the benefits of free access to premium TV series and movies with a walled-garden social network of entertainment media fans.

 

With a reported four million users, Series.ly was a success. It reportedly generated over 638,000 euros in the three years leading up to 2015, after which new legislation in Spain would render its activities illegal.

Police Raid Operators of Series.ly

Following a complaint from a local trade industry group representing U.S. rightsholders, and six months after the introduction of reformed intellectual property law in Spain, local authorities were ready to take action.

 

An investigation carried out by the Anti-Piracy Group of the Central Computer Security Brigade, with assistance from the Provincial Judicial Police Brigade of Barcelona, had linked Series.ly to a company operated by Tardà, Caritg, and Solé.

 

In the summer of 2015, Policía Nacional officers raided the company’s offices in search of evidence related to the operation of Series.ly. That included details of revenue generated by advertising and premium account sales to customers all over Europe, Switzerland, United States, Mexico, Chile and beyond.

 

The three men were arrested and subsequently charged with intellectual property crimes. It would be another seven years before they had their day in court.

Rightsholders Demand Four Years in Prison

Local police labeled Tardà, Caritg, and Solé a “criminal organization”. Rightsholders represented by the Association of National Videographic Distributors and Importers (ADIVAN), described the conduct of Series.ly’s operators as straightforward theft, for which four years in prison would be an appropriate sentence.

 

Still, a decision handed down by Criminal Court No. 1 of Sabadell in October 2022 found the men had committed no crimes. Before the new law came into force in Spain, linking to copyrighted content was not considered a crime. Indeed, the new law was introduced with this and other types of infringement in mind.

 

The defendants knew all about the change in legislation. In December 2014, Series.ly announced that due to the imminent arrival of the new law, the site would continue to exist strictly as a social network. All links that would violate the new law would be removed before it came into force to ensure the site was in full compliance.

 

“The fact that the legislator has expressly added the conduct [linking] that is the subject of this procedure, subsequently, indicates, as the defense stated, that, previously, said conduct was not typically criminal,” the judge noted.

 

Linking to copyrighted content had been established as “a new crime” under the new legislation and there was agreement the past conduct of the defendants would fit perfectly. The problem for the prosecution was that the new law wasn’t retrospective, and when it did come into force, the defendants had already stopped linking.

Rightsholders Appeal, Appeal Fails

After rightsholders represented by the Association of National Videographic Distributors and Importers (ADIVAN) appealed the decision, last week the Provincial Court of Barcelona acquitted the three men once again.

 

While he didn’t mention the case directly, defense lawyer David Bravo took to Twitter on Friday to announce a big win that had been eight years in the making.

 

According to Bravo, the prosecution knew there was evidence to show that Series.ly’s operators had stopped allowing links to external content, because police had obtained it during the raid in 2015.

 

“It is paradoxical that the ‘enter and search’ that was so publicized in the press as a ‘blow against piracy’ has nevertheless been the main evidence for the acquittal,” Bravo told ElDiario.

 

“The seized documents were legal opinions from their lawyer to maintain their activities legally, emails with the producers to eliminate the links that were reported to them, and even internal emails between the administrators who said they had to adapt to the new laws ‘however retrograde they are’.”

 

Other evidence seized from the men included internal conversations about a system to reward users who linked to legal services including Netflix.

 

“Not even I, as a defense counsel, could have provided more conclusive evidence,” Bravo added.

Rightsholders May Not Give Up

When local news outlet ElDiario requested comment from ADIVAN General Manager Santiago Mediano, he declined to comment, via a comment that made his group’s position clear.

 

“We at ADIVAN have the habit of not giving an opinion on cases that have not ended, like this one,” he said.

 

This implies that the Supreme Court may be asked to take on the case, but how that would help in the fight against piracy today is unclear. Two courts have already determined that the defendants stopped their activities eight years ago, so are no longer a piracy threat. Those courts also determined that the men committed no crimes.

 

Yet hundreds of sites are currently doing what the defendants never did, every single day, while legal resources are spent on a case that won’t reduce piracy in any measurable way, no matter who wins.

 

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “Avatar: The Way of Water”, which came out as a high-quality pirate release, is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 03 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Avatar: The Way of Water	7.8 / trailer
2	(…)	Creed III	7.8 / trailer
3	(…)	Tetris	7.4 / trailer
4	(4)	John Wick: Chapter 4	8.5 / trailer
5	(2)	Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre	6.5 / trailer
6	(…)	Champions	6.8 / trailer
7	(…)	Murder Mystery 2	5.7 / trailer
8	(3)	Cocaine Bear	6.1 / trailer
9	(6)	Puss in Boots: The Last Wish	7.8 / trailer
10	(5)	Everything Everywhere All at Once	7.9 / trailer

 

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

 

 

Website blocking has become an increasingly common anti-piracy tool. ISPs in dozens of countries have been ordered by courts to block pirate sites.

 

More recently, these blocking requests have expanded to DNS providers as well. In Germany, for example, a court ordered DNS resolver Quad9 to prevent users from accessing the music piracy site Canna.to.

Court Ordered Cloudflare to Block Torrent Sites

As one of the larger DNS resolvers, Cloudflare is also under fire. In Italy, several music companies, including Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal, took Cloudflare to court, demanding the blocking of three torrent sites on the company’s freely available 1.1.1.1 resolver.

 

Last year, an Italian court sided with the music companies. Through an interim order, the court ordered the blocking of kickasstorrents.to, limetorrents.pro, and ilcorsaronero.pro, three domains that are already blocked by ISPs in Italy following an order from local regulator AGCOM.

 

Cloudflare was unhappy with the court’s decision and immediately protested the injunction. The challenge failed last November when the court upheld its initial ruling, discarding Cloudflare’s objections.

 

Among other things, the court held that the blocking order doesn’t require the DNS resolver to surveil user activity, as Cloudflare challenged. A general monitoring obligation for online intermediaries would violate EU law, but the court determined that wasn’t relevant in this case.

 

“Cloudflare’s obligation to intervene to prevent the resolution of names does not derive from a general duty of surveillance but arises with the reporting of the specific illegal activity carried out through the public DNS service,” the court held.

Court Confirms DNS Blocking Requirement

The ruling was a setback for Cloudflare, but that wasn’t its only challenge. The American company filed an additional application where it requested clarification on the technical implementation of the blocking order. According to Cloudflare, blocking measures severely interrupt its DNS service, also in relation to competitors.

 

In a new ruling last week, the Court of Milan dismissed these arguments as well. According to the court, the original order already confirmed that blocking the site is technically feasible. Any issues regarding the technical efficiency of the measures are outside of the scope of the injunction proceedings.

 

The Court of Milan further highlighted that Cloudflare already blocks content on its DNS servers. For example, on its DNS resolver for families.

 

“The evidence on record seems to suggest that the appellant itself sets up general preventive verification systems on the content of the sites it serves, with regard to the monitoring of content unsuitable for minors or for crimes related to pedophilia,” the court noted.

Rightsholders Prepare Follow-Up Requests

The music companies are pleased with the court’s confirmation. According to music industry group IFPI, it sets an important precedent, confirming that online intermediaries, including DNS resolvers, can be required to take anti-piracy measures.

 

While the present order only applies to three sites, local telecoms regulator AGCOM has already ordered local ISPs to block thousands of piracy-related domains. This means that Cloudflare could also be subjected to follow-up requests.

 

Enzo Mazza, CEO of Italian music industry group FIMI, informs TorrentFreak that the music industry does indeed have plans to request additional blockades. Not just from Cloudflare, but also from other online intermediaries.

 

“We will continue our strategy based on blocking orders issued by AGCOM. This will involve new requests to Cloudflare and potentially other similar platforms not complying with the AGCOM blocking orders,” Mazza says.

Cloudflare Vowed to Fight

TorrentFreak reached out to Cloudflare for a comment on the dismissal, but we received no immediate response. The company previously said that it would do everything it could to protest DNS blocking orders, as these could affect other countries as well.

 

“Because such a block would apply globally to all users of the resolver, regardless of where they are located, it would affect end users outside of the blocking government’s jurisdiction,” Cloudflare noted.

 

Last September, the company said that it hadn’t blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver yet. Instead, it relies on an “alternative remedy” to comply with the Italian court order.

 

Following the most recent court order, Cloudflare’s options to appeal against the interim injunctions are exhausted. The company could still file a lawsuit to challenge the merits of the blocking requirements, however.

 

With no serious threat of being held to account, the DMCA takedown notice system is seen by some as a mechanism to hurt rivals or sow chaos for unspecified reasons.

 

As part of TorrentFreak’s regular monitoring of the Lumen Database, an invaluable repository of DMCA notices received by Google and other platforms, we recently uncovered a particularly malicious attempt to frame a respected free and open-source project as the entity behind a series of bogus DMCA claims against almost two dozen sites.

MicroG Project and Vanced

The MicroG Project (microG) is a software development initiative that enables Android apps that rely on Google Play services to run without them. The people behind the project say that while Android is a Linux-based open-source operating system, increasing numbers of libraries and APIs are only available on devices that run proprietary Google software.

 

One of many projects that relied on microG was YouTube Vanced, an alternative YouTube app that removed all advertising and enabled background play, among other things.

 

Due to legal issues, Vanced shut down in early 2022 but was soon replaced by ReVanced, a new project with similar functionality. ReVanced and various apps that have emerged as clones or copycats of Vanced/ReVanced still use microG in some way.

Imposters Masquerade as microG

Previously sponsored by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, microG is a free-as-in-freedom open-source project. This means that microG is free of charge and has no restrictions on use, so when we saw copyright claims filed in microG’s name targeting almost two dozen sites, that obviously raised alarm bells.

 

On March 30, 2023, someone claiming to be ‘MicroG’ sent a DMCA complaint to Google. “The following websites use our content, which is a significant loss for our company,” it begins, listing the allegedly infringing URLs below.

 

In the majority of cases, the URLs relate to microG’s software when utilized in Vanced-related projects, with one notable exception seen at line 8 where the takedown notice targets microG’s official website.

 

Creator and developer of microG, Marvin Wißfeld, informs TorrentFreak that the copyright complaint wasn’t his work.

 

“I was not aware of any of this prior to your message and I doubt that any microG contributor is involved here either,” Wißfeld says. “I’ve never sent a DMCA takedown notice and don’t plan to ever do so either.”

 

So who sent the complaint, and what was their motivation?

Notice Claims to Protect Business of Vanced.cc

When people file DMCA notices with Google, they are asked to include a URL where the original content that has been infringed can be found. In this case the URL links to Google’s Play Store, a little ironic given it’s the last place one might expect to see microG.

 

Specifically, the URL links to Play Tube, an app with more than 10 million downloads that claims to provide an ad-free YouTube experience while potentially sharing users’ location, sexual orientation, web browsing history and device IDs for advertising or marketing purposes.

 

Circumstantial evidence suggests that, at least potentially, an app of this nature might benefit from having the URLs listed in the notice removed from Google search. After tracking the operators of the app to Vanced.cc, we asked if they were behind the complaint to Google. Two responses arrived in broken English a few minutes apart.

 

“We are not sending this removal request to google may be it’s fake,” said one.

 

“Someone is trying to remove these websites using our app,” said the other. “If we have any problem with these website then we will contact our official mail. Can you provide us with more information on the reporter? Can you provide us with more information on the DMCA removal requester so that we can take legal action against him.”

 

While a little tricky to read in parts, the general message seems to be one of denial.

Not An Isolated Incident

At the time of writing, Google has delisted 13% of the URLs in the complaint with 87% currently marked as pending. Other recent complaints, broadly along similar lines (but also completely bogus) were previously rejected in full.

 

Others, including this one sent by ‘copyright owner’ YouTube Vanced, whoever that is, listed the official YouTube app on Google Play as the original content infringed, before attempting to take down links related to microG and/or Vanced-type software.

 

These notices are sent directly to Google, so any ability to identify the fraudulent senders lies mainly with Google. On the basis that Google is unlikely to take on the role of the DMCA notice police, it requires those negatively affected to take some kind of legal action themselves.

 

The more fundamental problem is that the DMCA has no real teeth when it comes to punishing fraudulent notice senders. At some point that will need to be addressed but that’s unlikely to be anytime soon.

 

The fraudulent DMCA notice, falsely listing microG as the sender, can be found here