According to at least one assessment, Canada is currently the third-best country in the world overall. When it comes to piracy issues, major U.S. rightsholders place Canada among the worst.

 

In a report to the United States government, the powerful International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) pulls no punches.

 

On behalf of the MPA, RIAA, Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Independent Film and Television Alliance, the IIPA lists dozens of areas where Canada falls short of the standards expected by U.S. corporations.

 

Since the report runs to 241 pages, our focus is a subset of issues linked to online piracy.

Canadians Love to Pirate

Citing a report from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, IIPA states that Canada remains one of the leading markets for U.S. copyrighted works.

 

A reported 71% of Canadians spend at least one hour each day watching TV shows or movies online. The legal market for online video is growing, with around 61% of all Canadians subscribing to Netflix, for example. Canadians love music too and as a result, recorded music revenues grew by 12.6% in 2021.

 

But it should’ve been more. Much more.

 

“Evidence persists, however, that the digital marketplace for copyrighted content in Canada continues to face challenges in realizing its full potential due to competition from illicit online sources. In 2022, 22.4% of Canadians accessed pirate services,” the report notes, citing an IFPI study.

Stream-Ripping and Other Problems

The report states that stream-ripping services, typically sites that allow users to download MP3 files from YouTube, are now the leading mechanism for music piracy in Canada.

 

IIPA notes that stream-ripping services undermine the legitimate markets both for streaming and licensed music downloads, highlighting y2mate.is as a particular problem. That’s understandable, but the site is causing problems just about everywhere in the world, not just in Canada.

 

“Dozens of websites, software programs, and apps offering stream-ripping services find an eager marketplace in Canada,” the report continues.

 

“Use of peer-to-peer (P2P) sites remains high, with BitTorrent indexing sites including Rarbg, The Pirate Bay, and 1337x popular in Canada. Cyberlocker sites, such as Mega, Uptobox, GoFile, and Rapidgator, are also a common way to illicitly access recorded music.”

IPTV Piracy Ecosystem

IIPA says the subscription-based piracy ecosystem continues to grow in Canada. Sellers and resellers of subscription IPTV piracy services, offering high quality streaming and VOD services, are problems in terms of supply and consumption.

 

“Many of these illegal services in Canada have generated millions of dollars in revenue, oftentimes laundering the money through seemingly legitimate businesses set up solely for this purpose,” the report adds.

 

Canadians are also “actively involved” in the circumvention of technological protection measures, the IIPA says. Circumvention allows them to spread unlicensed live TV and movies via their own pirate IPTV services, sell streams to other services for use inside Canada and beyond, and provide content for release on torrent sites.

 

“It is nearly impossible to overstate the magnitude of the piracy problem in Canada,” the IIPA informs the U.S. government.

 

“Mimicking the look and feel of legitimate streaming services, infringing streaming websites continue to overtake P2P sites as a highly popular destination for Canadians seeking premium content in both English and French.”

Piracy Configured Set-Top Boxes, Piracy Apps

Given that legitimate services are impacted by unlicensed alternatives made available in the same market, Canada needs to do more in a number of areas. The IIPA says that set-top boxes, configured for pirate IPTV services or preloaded with dedicated piracy apps, are “easily and widely” available, sold via Canadian-owned-and-operated websites and traditional retail stores.

 

“Canadian piracy operators remain involved in the coding and development of infringing add-ons and Android application packages (APKs) that enable subscription piracy services and mass-market [set-top boxes] to access streaming services without authorization,” the report adds.

Police Have Other Priorities

The IIPA suggests that the RCMP, Canada’s main federal law enforcement agency, considers intellectual property crime a non-priority area. It’s claimed that RCMP transfers cases to municipal police forces, which often lack the resources “and the strategic mandate” to investigate IP crimes or prepare cases for prosecution.

 

For their part, local police agencies reportedly “responded well” to entertainment industry training programs but according to the report, are unable to effectively deal with organized piracy and increasingly fail to follow up on detailed cases referred to them by rightsholders.

 

In two unnamed cases related to IPTV, local law enforcement actually receive some praise for engaging with rightsholders. Unfortunately, the IIPA seems to lack optimism that deterrent sentences will conclude these ongoing matters.

 

“Few resources are dedicated to prosecutions of piracy cases; prosecutors generally lack specialized training in prosecuting such offenses, and too often dismiss the file or plead the cases out, resulting in weak penalties.”

IIPA Demands Action

For details on every IIPA demand, the full document is available below. The summary in respect of the niche detailed above goes as follows:

 

– Adequately fund federal law enforcement to fight piracy
– Fund and provide specialized training to tackle IPTV services and circumvention tools
– RCMP should work with U.S. law enforcement on online piracy cases
– Crown Counsel must criminally prosecute copyright/circumvention cases
– Strengthen “legal incentives” for service providers to stand by their terms of service
– Encourage service providers to cooperate with U.S. rightsholders

 

IIPA 2023 Special 301 Report on Copyright Protection and Enforcement (pdf)

 

Various courts around the world have come to the conclusion that The Pirate Bay is a copyright-infringing website.

 

As a result, Internet providers in dozens of countries are required to block access to the site. This works well, but blocking measures are also quite easy to circumvent.

 

Some people may resort to VPN services, for example, or replace the default DNS resolver provided by their ISP with independent alternatives. Dedicated ‘proxy’ sites have also become quite popular.

 

These proxies act as a copy of The Pirate Bay, making the site accessible through an alternative domain name. These platforms are thorns in the sides of rightsholders, who fight back by adding proxy site domains to existing blocking orders targeting The Pirate Bay.

 

This cat-and-mouse game inspired the development of sites that provide an overview of working Pirate Bay proxy sites. ‘The Proxy Bay’ is just one of many similar examples.

Police Take proxybay.github.io Offline

The Proxy Bay has been operating in the ‘proxy information’ niche for many years. Aside from its main domain name, it also uses a proxybay.github.io version, which is linked to the Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub. This variant has also been available for years, but last month found itself abruptly pulled offline.

 

The takedown was requested by City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU). On behalf of music group BPI, PIPCU sent a takedown request to GitHub, alerting it to the alleged criminal activity taking place on its domain.

 

“This site is in breach of UK law, namely Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988, Offences under the Fraud Act 2006 and Conspiracy to Defraud,” PIPCU wrote.

 

“Suspension of the domain(s) is intended to prevent further crime. Where possible we request that domain suspension(s) are made within 48 hours of receipt of this Alert,” the notice added.

DMCA Counternotice

GitHub honored the takedown request and proxybay.github.io was redirected to a 404 error. However, The Proxy Bay operator clearly disagreed with this decision and responded with a formal DMCA counternotice.

 

“The person claiming DMCA doesn’t understand, that there is no content hosted on proxybay.github.com hence why it is wrong to send a DMCA request for it,” the site owner wrote.

 

“There are no content/media of any kind hosted on proxybay.github.com, if there is – again ask mister DMCA robot to provide with exact links of media files which were infringed and I will be glad to remove them from repository.”

 

That ‘mister DMCA robot’ was none other than the UK police didn’t seem to impress The Proxy Bay operator. Since there are no links to copyrighted content, the domain should be reinstated, they argued.

 

The legality of these sites can be debated. In the UK, thepirateproxybay.com and similar sites have been added to court-sanctioned blocklists in the past, making this a tricky situation when blended with DMCA notices relevant under United States law.

GitHub Restores The Proxy Bay

Despite the sensitivities, the DMCA counternotice was successful and this week GitHub decided to restore the domain and the site. As a result, proxybay.github.io is available once again to the public at large.

 

The reinstatement doesn’t mean that GitHub has taken sides. The DMCA simply dictates that disputed content has to be restored between 10 and 14 business days, unless the rightsholder takes legal action.

 

Apparently, no legal action was taken in this case, so the logical response was to reenable the domain name.

 

Interestingly, GitHub had an easy out if it wanted to keep The Proxy Bay offline. The counternotice listed the wrong domain name, as it referred to proxybay.github.com instead of proxybay.github.io. This .com domain doesn’t exist, which could render the DMCA takedown protest moot.

 

YouTube’s terms and service prohibit users from downloading audio and video, but there are numerous ‘stream-ripping’ sites available on the web that do just that.

 

These services are a thorn in the side of recording labels which consider them a major piracy threat. Some operators of these stream-ripping tools disagree, pointing at the variety of legal use cases instead.

 

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

 

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

Yout.com Opens Appeal

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

 

The appeal begins by pointing out that the case deals with novel issues regarding the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. One of the key questions is whether YouTube videos have effective technological measures that aim to prevent the public from accessing copyrighted works.

 

Arguing that there is no DRM or encryption protecting the videos, Yout says that’s not the case here.

 

“Neither YouTube nor the Defendants employ any form of Digital Rights Management or encryption, the inclusion of which would eliminate the ability of the Yout software to allow Yout’s users to make copies of the works.

 

“Indeed, not only is there a lack of protection against such copying, the process can be accomplished by anyone with a web browser without the need for Yout’s services,” the opening brief adds.

 

The RIAA nonetheless asked Google to remove Yout.com URLs from its search engine, which it did. As a result, Yout’s traffic numbers dropped and similar takedown notices allegedly resulted in a PayPal ban too.

 

“Defendants improperly sent anti-circumvention notices to Google with the intent that Google would ‘delist’ Yout’s software platform, rendering it undiscoverable for the majority of Internet users seeking such services, which is precisely what occurred to Yout’s detriment.”

 

The 92-page appeal brief lists a myriad of issues and open questions, which suggest that the case warrants an in-depth proceeding. The lower court’s dismissal was premature, Yout’s attorneys argue, adding that the service is analogous to a VCR and has significant non-infringing uses.

 

The brief illustrates, through detailed descriptions accompanied by screenshots, that anyone can download video and audio from YouTube. The process doesn’t require any software other than a regular web browser.

Downloading Taylor Swift

The example used the music video of Taylor Swift’s “The Lakes” but the same process applies to all YouTube videos. Through this process the audio and video files are separate, but there are free tools to combine the two.

 

“A visitor can use Yout to save a personal recording on their personal computer for later viewing when not connected to the Internet. In essence, Yout allows a user to ‘time shift’ content. Yout never saves or retains its visitors’ time-shifted content on its own servers,” the attorneys write.

 

The fact that Yout’s attorneys are using a video from one of the biggest artists in the world shows that potential copyright sensitivities are not being evaded.

 

Instead, Yout explains that its service simply automates the ‘ripping’ process, without storing any content on its own servers. While rightsholders are clearly against this, the attorneys argue that there is no “circumvention” of a technological measure that prevents either access or copying.

 

YouTube does employ a JavaScript-based ‘rolling cipher’ to make it harder to download content directly. However, Yout doesn’t believe that this is an effective technological measure. In addition, it’s not clear whether YouTube implemented this code to prevent copying.

Copyright Protection or Bot Prevention?

The RIAA sees the rolling cipher as a form of DRM but the music group didn’t put the code there. YouTube has not been heard in the case but the video platform may have added the code to deter bots from generating fake views to generate income.

 

“There is no evidence […] that YouTube intended this to be a ‘technological measure’ designed to limit access or copying at all. And, if the technology was not designed or intended to limit or accessing copying, the Defendants cannot claim retroactively that such a technological measure exists by happenstance.”

 

The appellant doesn’t deny that the rolling cipher was introduced to make it harder to download videos but only YouTube itself can provide the answer.

 

“YouTube is not a party here and the Defendants can no better speak to YouTube’s intentions than Yout can,” the attorneys write.

Free Access

All in all, it’s clear that YouTube’s videos are not behind a paywall. They are publicly available to anyone with access to a web browser and the Internet. In fact, allowing access to videos is the main purpose of the site.

 

“Indeed, it is clear from YouTube’s Terms of Service – which the District Court took judicial notice of – that, by providing their videos to Youtube – the Defendants explicitly agreed that Youtube’s visitors were permitted access to the works, the brief reads (emphasis original).

 

Making copies of audio and video is an entirely different thing, of course. However, Yout argues that since users have access to the files, without any meaningful technological protection measures, there’s no DMCA violation.

 

The full arguments are much more detailed than we can summarize here. This is just the start of the appeal and certainly not the last time these issues will be raised.

 

No date has been set for RIAA’s response, which will likely follow in a few months. In addition, there may be several amicus briefs from interested parties as well, given the gravity of the case.

 

—

 

A copy of Yout’s full opening brief, filed as the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, is available here (pdf)

 

After building their sites almost from scratch and then populating them with the right kind of users, private torrent site owners understand the long haul.

 

Private tracker users also tend to be more invested, partly due to a community spirit mostly absent from public sites. For these reasons and more, merging two private sites into one is a fairly rare occurrence.

 

Private torrent trackers HDCity and HD-Spain did have things in common, not least a shared interest in Spanish-focused HD content, movies and TV shows in particular.

 

Operating from a .li domain, HDCity had its own encoding team, and becoming a member was no easy task. Opinions varied, but some believed that HD-Spain had more to offer. Soon that would become undisputed.

Time to Merge

Following a decision to merge the sites, the initial plan was for both to lose their identities and then reemerge as an ambitious single project, with fresh branding and a brand new name – Pixelados.

 

When it became clear that the Pixelados project needed more time, users from HDCity were migrated to HD-Spain as an interim measure. In time, HDCity ceased to exist and in line with tradition, the site departed with the usual quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

 

Those behind the merged torrent sites previously joked that the site would become “Schrödinger‘s tracker” – HD-Spain.com carrying the merged user data with Pixelados.tv the new domain – despite not actually being the Pixelados as planned.

 

As recently as December 2022, both HD-Spain and Pixelados domains remained in use. A few days ago, all domains suddenly fell out of service. When they returned, any hope of Pixelados still being alive – or even both dead and alive – was removed.

Another ACE Shutdown

Like hundreds of sites over the past five years, Pixelados/HD-Spain had succumbed to the legal threats of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

 

“As you can see (or not yet, depending on how you refresh the hd-spain.com and pixelados.tv domains in your browser) the domains now point to a website owned by the ‘Alliance For Creativity And Entertainment’,” an announcement by the sites’ operator reads.

 

“Currently, copyright laws in Spain allow websites to be sued for distributing files by any method that infringes copyright, whether or not there is a profit motive. If there is and it can be proven, the complaints would go through criminal proceedings with possible jail sentences and fines.”

 

Pixelados/HD-Spain had always maintained a no-profit policy, but as its operator notes, even when there is no profit involved, claims under civil law remain viable and can lead to damages awards reaching hundreds of thousands of euros. Technically, that’s not even the limit, but another option was also on the table.

 

“In exchange for NOT UNDERTAKING ANY LEGAL ACTION against those responsible for the websites or those related to it, the ‘Alliance For Creativity And Entertainment’ has retained ownership of the existing domains and of course requires the activity of the websites to cease,” the announcement adds.

 

“And that is how it will be done, it is well known to all that we have NEVER had any profit whatsoever, but this is a hobby, and as such at the moment that it may present a problem for any person in charge of the website or a relative, we close everything for real.”

 

With the domains transferred, all that remained was to finish the job. The announcement adds that everything has been destroyed; the website, hardware, and all data related to all users – nothing exists.

 

“Thank you all very much for the time shared, both in good times and in bad.”

Another Site Added to The List

For ACE, this shutdown is just another day at the office. After sending investigators to approach the site’s operator in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, an agreement was reached for everything to be shut down.

 

“Thanks to ACE’s rapidly expanding global network and decisive action against illegal piracy operators, the legal marketplace for creative content has never been so well protected,” says Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Global Content Protection Chief of the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE.

 

“As we enter 2023, our coalition is better equipped than ever to target and shut down the pirates who threaten the legal creative economy.”

 

ACE reports that 26,000 torrents attracted 300,000 visits to the domains each month, with almost all traffic coming from Spain.

 

At the time of writing, the domains hd-spain.com and pixelados.tv are in the hands of the Motion Picture Association along with two other related domains – hd-spain.org and hdspain.org.

 

When the federal government shut down pirate IPTV services owned by Pennsylvania and New Jersey man, Bill Omar Carrasquillo in November 2019, it became one of the most high-profile anti-piracy operations ever conducted in the United States.

 

Under handles including “Omi in a Hellcat” and “Targetin1080p” Carrasquillo publicized almost everything he did on social media, from selling pirate subscriptions and devices, to banking the mountains of cash he undoubtedly made from the service. When the FBI dismantled his operation, Carrasquillo expressed surprise that the “legal loophole” he’d exploited had somehow let him down.

 

As things stand, Carrasquillo and co-defendants Jesse Gonzales of California and Michael Barone of New York await sentencing after pleading guilty to a number of offenses, all related to the illegal capture and redistribution of Comcast, Verizon, Spectrum, DirecTV, and Frontier Communications broadcasts.

 

This week, counsel for Barone filed a sentencing memorandum explaining why the court should go easy on him. His story is fairly typical of people who take an interest in piracy at a base level and then find it difficult to check their own momentum.

 

Claims of being threatened by two sets of gunmen, and allegations that Carrasquillo himself threatened to kill Barone if he quit his job, are both extraordinary and unprecedented.

Barone Was Lured in By Carrasquillo’s Advertising

As outlined in the memorandum filed in court this week, Barone previously had a completely clean record. Having worked as a New York City train conductor, Barone quit in 2016 to become a full-time carer for his father. To make ends meet he began looking for work he could do from home, tech support in particular.

 

Barone had some experience with computers and had been hearing about a “new kind of television service called ‘IPTV’.” After discovering a chatroom run by Carrasquillo that advertised his ‘Reboot’ IPTV service, Barone decided to educate himself on the pros and cons of IPTV.

 

Barone says that Carrasquillo’s reading of “antiquated laws governing copyright protected television and movie content” led him to sign up to Carrasquillo’s service for a month.

 

From there, things escalated quickly. After participating in the service’s chatroom, Barone found himself helping people out. Carrasquillo spotted Barone’s work and offered him a job as a moderator. Barone says he was paid 25 cents for every support ticket he answered, earning him between $250 and $500 per week via PayPal.

 

Barone says he studied how Carrasquillo made his money; subscriptions to his Reboot IPTV service and advertising revenue from IPTV tutorials on YouTube, for example. The New York man also noted how Carrasquillo created “media hype and self-serving videos” to increase his following, which in turn encouraged more sales.

Moderator Becomes Admin

The time-honored tradition of promotion in file-sharing and other piracy circles is the transition from moderator to administrator. When Barone’s time came, his pay increased to between $400 and $600 per week, he says. New responsibilities included overseeing other moderators, supporting IPTV resellers, and remotely installing software on servers in Canada and the United States.

 

“Mike researched the legalities online and found numerous articles and blogs expounding on the benefits of IPTV and discussion of the legality of streaming,” counsel for Barone writes.

 

“Gradually Mike became convinced of the rosy picture painted by Carrasquillo and others in the IPTV world — that the legality of streaming television channels through an independent service was a ‘gray area’.

 

“Essentially, Mike became convinced that streaming was not illegal due to the outdated provisions of the Copyright Act, and was convinced that Carrasquillo’s service did not offer recorded content,” the memorandum continues.

 

According to Barone, the “legal loophole” IPTV business model made Carrasquillo “so flush with cash” that he began branching out into real estate and “buying up properties — in cash — at weekly auctions, purchasing bars and nightclubs.”

Carrasquillo’s Demeanor and Gears TV

As his company grew, and transitioned from the name Reboot to Gears, Barone says he observed Carrasquillo becoming “increasingly erratic and obnoxious.”

 

“[C]onstantly posting offensive videos flashing large boxes of U.S. currency, boasting about how much money he was making, displaying garish signs of wealth in jewelry, houses, bank accounts, sports cars, exotic dancer clubs, and directly and explicitly mocking law enforcement while declaring his income legitimate and that he was untouchable from law enforcement,” Barone says.

 

When Carrasquillo began posting videos online “openly threatening people perceived as undermining him or betraying him in some way,” Barone says he became afraid and decided to leave Gears TV. According to Carrasquillo’s co-defendant and then employee, that’s when the threats began.

“If you leave, I’ll kill you”

After Carrasquillo reportedly began posting videos of himself visiting local banks, making cash withdrawals of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” at a time, while “obnoxiously cursing at and declaring to bank personnel that he was entitled to his own money at any time, for any reason,” Barone says his desire to leave the IPTV business increased.

 

Barone claims that when he told Carrasquillo he wanted to quit, on several occasions his boss responded with “if you leave, I’ll kill you” – and not in a joking manner, Barone insists. From there, the situation only became worse.

 

“Thereafter, one day in the fall of 2017 when Mike left his house in Queens to walk to a local store, a car pulled up to him, a man exited while showing Mike a gun and announced ‘if you leave I’m gonna come back and see you’,” Barone’s counsel notes.

 

With no other conflict in his life, Barone concluded that this was a message from Carrasquillo. There’s no evidence presented in the memorandum to indicate that Carrasquillo was actually involved but the incident wasn’t the last of its type.

 

“In the spring of 2018, the same type of incident occurred again wherein Mike left his house and was walking up the street when a car pulled up and a different man got out, this time pointing the gun directly at Mike and stated ‘we’re not gonna tell you again. If you leave, we’re coming back’.”

Barone Leaves Gears TV

Barone’s memorandum states that he reported none of these alleged threats to the police; he hatched a plan to grind down co-defendant Jesse Gonzales instead.

 

Through the use of accusations and insults, Barone planned to antagonize Gonzales to the extent he would recommend to Carrasquillo that Barone should be fired. The memorandum doesn’t say whether the plan worked or was even attempted, but Barone reportedly left Gears in August 2018.

 

“After Mike left, Carrasquillo and Gonzalez and others helping continued on with the
business for more than a year, until the FBI executed search warrants on Omar Carrasquillo in November 2019,” the memorandum claims.

 

With Carrasquillo continuing to post videos online, including those that highlighted the “legal loophole” and questioned why he was being targeted by the U.S. Government, Barone watched events roll out in the media. Several months later, the FBI requested a meeting.

FBI Wanted to Discuss Gears TV

In February 2020, the FBI contacted Barone to discuss Gears TV, leading to a three-hour interview in New York conducted by two agents who wanted to know everything Barone could tell them about the service. The FBI did not search his apartment or seize any electronic equipment – Barone says he took that to mean he wasn’t the focus of the investigation.

 

A year later in March 2021, a second FBI interview with two agents took place in a restaurant parking lot in New York. Barone went on to hire an attorney who coordinated the handover of Gears-related documents, including personal banking and financial records, to the FBI.

 

Like Carrasquillo before him, Barone was arrested and charged with offenses related to the IPTV empire.

 

The case involved 120 terabytes of data in electronic discovery alone. Thousands of Hollywood movies, TV shows, sports events, and other programming accounted for the lion’s share. A reported 14 terabytes of data required actual review by the defense.

 

“For reference, one terabyte of data contains approximately 2 million pages of documents, or hundreds of social media videos,” the memorandum helpfully points out.

Mitigation

After many months of intensively reviewing “massive amounts” of discovery, and “hundreds of hours of discussion” between the defendant, his counsel and a support team, the memorandum notes that Barone came to understand he could be found responsible for being part of a conspiracy.

 

The Government’s evidence shows that for a two-year period, Barone was essential to the operations of the business day-to-day by assisting customers. For balance, Barone had no access to Carrasquillo’s massive profits, was paid a limited salary, and had no interest in the company.

 

Barone made no effort to hide himself online, using VPNs or Tor, for example, but was aware that Carrasquillo obscured sales of Reboot and Gears subscriptions by using the term ‘webhosting’. Barone also had encoders and other TV equipment set up at his house.

Overall Conspiracy Infringement: $167,817,004.60

As things stand, Barone appears liable for $64,912,444.52, representing a third of the overall conspiracy amount of $167,817,004.60.

 

The fact that the other two-thirds are attributable to Carrasquillo and Gonzalez appears to be a point of contention for Barone’s defense team. Barone’s total earnings amount to $122,402, and even if it’s decided he owes that in restitution, he’ll likely spend his whole adult life paying that off.

 

The statutory maximum sentence is five years imprisonment and Barone’s team believe that all things considered, sentencing guidelines indicate 8-14 months in prison. Barone also has a clean criminal history, setting him apart from the other defendants.

 

In summary, Barone’s team believe he “took a job ‘under the table’ so he could work from home,” and “turned his head away from recognizing” that the business was questionable.

 

“In spite of threats to his safety if he left, he did eventually leave. While the business was massively lucrative for Carrasquillo, Gonzalez, and perhaps a few others,
Barone was kept on the outside of the profits and the planning, including the massive money laundering,” the memorandum concludes.

 

Barone’s Sentencing Memorandum, filed Wednesday at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, can be found here (pdf).

 

Every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a list of ‘notorious markets’ that facilitate online piracy and related intellectual property crimes.

 

Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

 

For more than a decade we have covered the online part of the report. Traditionally, that includes prominent torrent sites, download portals, cyberlockers, and streaming services that offer copyrighted content without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

 

In recent years, the scope of the report has broadened. For example, we have seen hosting companies, advertisers, and social media platforms being added. These don’t have piracy as their core business, but they allegedly facilitate infringing activity.

2022 Notorious Markets Review

Yesterday, the USTR published its 2022 Review of Notorious Markets. According to Ambassador Katherine Tai, the annual overview will help companies and countries to take proper action, where needed.

 

“The Notorious Markets List is an important tool that urges the private sector and our trading partners to take action against these harmful practices,” Tai notes, commenting on the release of the report.

 

The importance and political clout of the report shouldn’t be understated. However, the fact that some names have been listed for over a decade, shows that there are no guarantees for improvement.

Familiar Names

Looking at the 2022 Review of Notorious Markets, we see the usual suspects, including The Pirate Bay, RARBG, Rapidgator, Fmovies, Sci-Hub and 2Conv. These all come with a short description of the sites and why they are deemed problematic by rightsholders.

 

Some dedicated IPTV services and related companies such as Globe IPTV are called out as well, while ‘bulletproof’ hosting companies (Amaru / Flokinet) and even social media platforms (VK / WeChat) get mentioned too.

 

The same is true for popular foreign e-commerce platforms such as Aliexpress, Baidu Wangpan and Shopee.com. These stores are often linked to the sale of counterfeit goods. Meanwhile, there is no mention of anime piracy sites, which are massively popular.

Newcomers

This year’s overview only delivers a few new names, including torrent sites Rutracker and YTS. The latter was noticeably missing last year, despite being the most visited torrent site on the Internet.

 

Russia-based classified advertisement platform Avato is another newcomer. The same is true for hosting company Amarutu, which hosts many of the largest pirate sites according to rightsholders.

 

The fifth and final addition is an interesting one. The USTR lists Lalastreams / istream2watch.com as a family of sports streaming sites. And indeed, these were reported by the UK Premier League a few weeks ago.

 

What the USTR report fails to mention is that the istream2watch.com domain was seized by U.S. law enforcement authorities last December. Other domains from the same group are not called out and remain online.

Dropouts

We expect that istream2watch.com won’t be used as an example next year. And while we’re on the topic, it’s worth mentioning the sites that have been removed from the notorious markets list following appearances last year.

 

These are:

 

-Blueangelhost (reason unknown)
-Chomikuj.pl (started filtering)
-Dytt8.net (reason unknown)
-Phimmoi (original site shut down)
-Popcorn Time (popular fork shut down)
-Private Layer (reason unknown)
-Revenuehits.com (reason unknown)
-Uploaded.net (shut down voluntarily)

 

Finally, it’s worth noting that there are no immediate legal consequences for sites and services that appear on the USTR’s list. That said, over the past year, we have seen several requests in US courts where rightsholders asked intermediaries including ISPs to block domains that appear on the USTR’s annual list.

 

As far as we know, none of these requests have been granted, but that could change in the future.

 

—

 

A copy of the USTR’s 2022 Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf). The full list of highlighted online sites/services, including those focused on counterfeiting, is as follows:

 

Torrent Sites
-1337x.to
-Rarbg.to
-Rutracker.org (new)
-Thepiratebay.org
-YTS.mx (new)

 

Cyberlockers
-1Fichier
-Rapidgator.net

 

E-commerce
-Aliexpress
-Baidu Wangpan
-Bukalapak.com
-DHgate.com
-Indiamart
-Pinduoduo.com
-Shopee.com
-Taobao.com
-Tokopedia.com

 

PaaS
-2Embed

 

Advertising
-Avito (new)

 

Streaming / IPTV
-Bestbuyiptv.store
-Chaloos
-Cuevana3.io
-Egy.best
-Fmovies / Bmovies / Bflix
-Globe IPTV
-Istar
-Lalastreams / Istream2watch.com (new)
-Pelisplus.icu
-Shabakatv
-Spider

 

Hosting
-Amaratu (new)
-FlokiNET

 

Social Media
-VK.com
-WeChat

 

Gaming
-Mpgh.net

 

Music
-Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com
-MP3juices.cc
-Newalbumreleases.net

 

Publishing
-Libgen
-Sci-Hub

 

Late last year, popular anime site AmimixPlay closed its doors, citing technical and motivational issues.

 

The decision was a massive disappointment to its loyal user base, which was good for an estimated 100 million monthly visits.

 

Following the site’s demise, several copycats popped up. A group of fans also created a new project to honor the original in a more respectful matter, while giving former users a new home; AnimixReplay.

 

This scenario has worked for other pirate sites and services in the past but it’s certainly not without risk. Visiting a pirate streaming site as a casual user is an entirely different ball game to running one, and the legal implications are not immediately obvious to everyone.

ACE Investigates AnimixReplay

The AnimixReplay team learned this lesson over the past few days. While they were building up their project, including a new app, the MPA-staffed Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was gathering intelligence on the key people involved.

 

A few days ago, ACE boss Jan van Voorn requested two DMCA subpoenas from a California federal court. The first one targeted CDN provider Cloudflare, while the other was directed at the Tonic registry, which oversees all .to domain names.

 

The subpoenas listed a variety of suspected piracy portals, including kool.to, zoro.to, theflixer.tv and gogohd.pro. And indeed, the animixreplay.to domain made an appearance as well.

 

The goal of these DMCA subpoenas is to request the personal details of the domain operators from online intermediaries. This information is sometimes unusable as pirate sites can provide fake details, but with AnimixReplay, ACE hit the jackpot.

Legal Threat

On Monday, AmimixReplay suddenly shut down “until further notice”, mentioning that they had received word from a lawyer. This lawyer, who mentioned prominent ACE backers including Disney, Netflix, and Warner Bros, urged them to cease their copyright infringing activity.

 

“You may be wondering whats happening? Well that’s because we got a Subpoena from Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros, and more all at once! So yeah thats a thing,” the announcement on Discord read.

 

At this point, the implications weren’t entirely clear to the AnimixReplay team. Lack of understanding was also apparent in a Reddit post, which suggested jail time was on the horizon.

The Real ACE

TorrentFreak reached out to Fryz from the AnimixReplay team yesterday, who confirmed that ACE had warned them and sent a copy of the Cloudflare subpoena. This seriously spooked the operators, but they still weren’t convinced.

 

After doing some research, the team initially thought that it could all be a prank, so they reached out to Cloudflare to get confirmation.

 

To learn more we reached out to ACE’s Jan van Voorn, who informed us that the warning salvo was very real. ACE was indeed behind the subpoenas and although Cloudflare hadn’t produced any information yet, the anti-piracy group had tracked down two US-based operators through other means.

 

“[W]hile waiting for subpoena responses, we continued our investigation, and we relatively quickly identified the 2 US-based operators (Kentucky and Ohio) of animixreplay.to and its related website fryz.site through OSINT analysis,” Van Voorn said.

 

“Our findings were confirmed via the voluntary cooperation of other intermediaries used by these websites,” he added.

 

The above suggests that the subpoenas certainly weren’t key in tracking down people connected to AnimixReplay. The alliance has more OSINT tricks and can rely on help from third-party intermediaries. While ACE doesn’t mention which ones, it’s possible that the ‘friendly‘ Radix registry assisted with providing more information on the .site domain.

Shutting Down

For the AnimixReplay team, it doesn’t really matter ‘how’ they were tracked down. The potential legal consequences have presented a bigger worry. At this point, no lawsuit has been filed and based on ACE’s comments, that’s not on the horizon as long as the site remains offline.

 

“Should the websites be brought online again after this initial warning, either in their original or a rebranded form, we will be happy to have our attorneys reach out to them directly,” Van Voorn tells us.

 

Fryz and the rest of the AnimixReplay team received the message, loud and clear. Shortly after the confirmation, they announced that the project won’t come back online.

 

“This is a legal shutdown on the website, I’m confirming all docs are legit,” Fryz wrote, effectively calling the end of the project.

 

Numerous reports published by the European Union over the past decade have linked higher levels of content piracy with lacking availability of legal content.

 

Restricted access to legal offers fuels the perception among citizens that piracy is an acceptable option, which in turn leads to higher levels of pirated content consumption. One way to combat that is by making content available and raising awareness, through the EU’s Agorateka platform, for example.

 

Member State Lithuania has faced criticism for its high piracy rates, including an EU finding in 2022 that 43% of young people mainly access movies from illegal sources. However, when Agorateka sends citizens to the country’s “Buy Legally” portal which doesn’t appear to exist, that doesn’t help when the same EU report (pdf) found that 50% of people said they would stop pirating content if it was made available legally.

Filmai – A Pirate Movie Service Like No Other

Filmai is the most famous movie and TV show piracy site in Lithuania. Founded in 2009 when access to legal content was exponentially worse than it is even today, Filmai is no ordinary piracy platform.

 

So that Lithuanians can access and enjoy international movies, the site hires translators and voice actors to create Lithuanian language streams and downloads. Since this costs money, Lithuanian visitors mostly pay to access the service. In 2021, it was revealed that Lithuanian officials were Filmai users.

 

At the same time, two alleged administrators of the site were under criminal investigation. Filmai had been infiltrated by anti-piracy investigators posing as translators. The team reportedly earned 111.17 euros for their work, and payment was sent to their PayPal account. The fates of two alleged operators of Filmai were announced yesterday.

One Conviction, One Acquittal

Following a legal process that took more than five years, relating to the activities of two men between 2010 and 2017, the Kaunas District Court handed down its decision last Friday. One of the defendants was acquitted of all wrongdoing but the other wasn’t so lucky.

 

The Lithuanian man, who hasn’t been named, was ordered to pay almost 50,000 euros in fines to rightsholders including 38,000 euros to the Lithuanian Copyright Collective Administration Association (LATGA) and 11,000 euros to All Media Lithuania (TV3 television).

 

The most significant component of the sentence is a confiscation order. Assets worth almost 200,000 euros will be seized from the defendant, who is also required to compensate LATGA for its legal costs.

LATGA Celebrates Win

In a statement issued yesterday, LATGA welcomes the district court’s verdict since it also serves as a reminder that takedown notices and ISP blocking are not the only anti-piracy options available to rightsholders.

 

“The legal acts also provide for the possibility to apply for the application of criminal liability to specific persons who administer illegal websites and receive financial benefits from such activities, at the same time claiming against them claims for compensation for property damage,” says LATGA director Laura Baškevičienė.

 

“This court decision only confirms that copyright violations are taken seriously and can lead to serious legal consequences.”

Filmai Appears to Be Thriving

While Filmai has suffered some downtime over the past few years, the site appears to be thriving. During the last three months of 2022, Filmai.in received around 1.8 million visitors per month, despite the site’s domains being blocked by internet service providers. Legal competitor Go3.lt receives around 1.9 million visits per month.

 

Also of interest is the significant amount of traffic Filmai attracts from abroad. Around 38% of the site’s total traffic comes from outside Lithuania, with the United Kingdom (19%), Norway (7%), Sweden (4%) taking the top spots according to SimilarWeb stats.

 

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, visitors from Ireland recently increased by 78% and now account for 3% of Filmai’s overall traffic. All of this helps to maintain Filmai’s position among the top 120 most-visited sites in Lithuania.

 

Finally, it appears that Filmai also shared some of its spoils with the state. The entity behind the site paid around 287,000 euros in VAT over the years and between 2015 and 2017, declared another 56,000 euros in VAT as payable. That in itself doesn’t render the site legal but it does suggest demand in what appears to be an underserved market.

 

After being sued by DISH Network in 2021, former Nitro TV operators Alex Galindo, Anna Galindo, Martha Galindo, and Osvaldo Galindo, made no real attempt to fight the lawsuit.

 

Why that decision was taken is still unknown, but court records suggest that throwing money away on a case that couldn’t be won might be one of the possibilities. The downside is that the plaintiffs went completely unchallenged, including when they requested and received a damages award in excess of $100 million last June.

Cash Disappeared, House Remained

After receiving the green light, DISH began searching for the defendants’ assets, including more than $10 million generated by the Nitro TV service.

 

Four banks that had received deposits of more than $9 million complied with disclosure requests; two reported no active accounts, one confirmed a $49.00 balance, and the final account was in the red.

 

Finding the cupboard bare, DISH moved in on the defendants’ house in Friendswood, Texas.

 

Since the property might qualify for homestead protection, DISH presented evidence to the court to show that Nitro TV subscription revenue was used to pay for the house. With the defendants entirely absent from the legal process, the court ordered the United States Marshal Service to levy and sell the property.

 

Out of nowhere, the defendants suddenly decided that wasn’t going to happen.

The House is Off Limits

In a motion to alter or amend the judgment “to prevent a clear error or manifest injustice,” counsel for Alex Galindo explained that his client bought the house in Friendswood in March 2020 and declared it his home.

 

“The Texas Constitution provides special protections for the homestead separate and distinct from protections afforded other types of property,” the motion reads.

 

“Because constitutional homestead rights protect citizens from losing their homes, statutes relating to homestead rights are liberally construed to protect the homestead.”

 

DISH evidence linked 99% of the house purchase price to sales of illegal IPTV subscriptions. The company argued that homestead protection is not available when a property is purchased with wrongfully acquired funds.

 

To support that claim, DISH cited another case – Deluxe Barber School, LLC and Bonifice I. Mbaka – but according to counsel for Galindo, an important detail means that his house still enjoys protection.

No Money Was Stolen

In a nutshell, Deluxe Barber involved a foreclosure on a property that was purchased with stolen cash. The strong suggestion here is that since the cash at issue in the Nitro case wasn’t stolen and wasn’t earned by DISH, Deluxe Barber is unhelpful to the broadcaster.

 

“[T]hese funds were never possessed, or even earned, by the Plaintiffs. There is no evidence that such funds belonged to the Plaintiffs or that Defendants stole or wrongfully acquired funds directly from Plaintiffs,” the motion reads.

 

The 99% figure is also important, the motion adds. It argues that since the account used to buy the property contained personal funds and money “potentially earned” from legitimate transactions, just one percent of legitimate funding would mean homestead rights under the Texas Constitution, especially since Texas courts “liberally construe statutes” relating to homestead rights.

 

Predictably, DISH sees things quite differently.

DISH: Don’t Undo The Correct Decision

In calling for the motion to be dismissed, DISH cites the history of the lawsuit, using the Court’s own words to state its position. The defendants operated an “illegal streaming service called Nitro TV, through which the defendants pirated the plaintiffs’ television programming and sold that content to Nitro TV’s subscribers,” the court’s judgment reads.

 

The Court also handed down a statutory damages award of $100,363,000 – the defendants didn’t challenge the award in June 2022, and they aren’t challenging it now, DISH adds. Furthermore, the defendants were served with a motion relating to the house in October 2022, and a month later after receiving no response, the Court found that the property does not warrant homestead protection.

 

“Defendants moved the Fifth Circuit to stay the sale of the Friendswood Property – making essentially the same arguments raised here – and that motion was denied,” DISH notes.

 

“Defendants’ motion for reconsideration should likewise be denied as there are no grounds warranting the extraordinary remedy of reconsideration and, even if reconsidered, the Court’s Order allowing the sale of the Friendswood Property is supported by the undisputed facts and well-established Texas law.”

The Money Wasn’t Stolen But Fraud Works Too

Addressing Galindo’s assertion that stolen money wasn’t used to buy the house, DISH draws attention to “analogous Florida laws” where homestead protection did not apply because funds were “fraudulently obtained.” Furthermore, if the house was indeed a homestead, it wasn’t designated as such for tax purposes.

 

“Defendants fail to show entitlement to the extraordinary remedy of reconsideration. Defendants’ motion to alter or amend the Court’s Order authorizing the U.S. Marshal to levy and sell the Friendswood Property and apply the proceeds towards the satisfaction of Plaintiffs’ judgment should be denied in all respects,” DISH concludes.

 

Galindo’s motion to alter/amend and the DISH response can be found here (1,2,3 pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have five newcomers on the list. “M3GAN” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 30 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	M3GAN	6.5 / trailer
2	(1)	Puss in Boots: The Last Wish	7.8 / trailer
3	(2)	The Menu	7.3 / trailer
4	(3)	Avatar: The Way of Water	8.1 / trailer
5	(…)	Teen Wolf	7.7 / trailer
6	(…)	Shotgun Wedding	5.6 / trailer
7	(…)	Everything Everywhere All at Once	8.0 / trailer
8	(5)	Black Adam	7.1 / trailer
9	(8)	Top Gun: Maverick	8.3 / trailer
10	(…)	You People	5.6 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Strike 3 Holdings is a familiar name in U.S. federal courts. Last year alone the adult entertainment company filed a record-breaking number of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates.

 

While many of these lawsuits have resulted in private settlements, Strike 3 also encountered pushback from some of the people it sued.

 

In the Middle District of Florida, for example, a “John Doe” defendant denied any wrongdoing and fought back. The previously unnamed adversary came out of the shadows as John Adaire last week, as both parties prepare to go to trial.

Heading to Trial

It’s rare for this type of case to make it this far without being settled. As a result, the parties are fighting tooth and nail to obtain the best possible position in preparation for a public showdown.

 

According to Strike 3, it is clear as day that the man downloaded and shared 36 of Strike 3’s porn videos without permission. Backed up by technical evidence and testimony, Strike 3 explains that it repeatedly found an IP address, assigned to Adaire, sharing the pirated movies.

 

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

 

“Even if Doe were not the infringer, he made sure to destroy and conceal evidence of his innocence,” Strike 3 wrote in its pretrial statement.

 

The defendant, now identified as Mr. Adaire, denied any wrongdoing and alleged that Strike 3’s evidence is unreliable. The adult company developed its “VXN” tracking technology in-house, which makes it little more than ‘circumstantial’ evidence.

 

“VXN had no user’s manual, no design documentation, and was never verified by an independent third party. There is no known false positive rate of VXN, since it was never measured,” the defense argued.

Excluding Homebrew Piracy Evidence?

In preparation for a trial later this year, both parties submitted a motion in limine asking the court to withhold evidence from the jury. Among other things, the defense asked to exclude the VXN tracking evidence.

 

In addition, the defense asked the court to exclude evidence taken from Doe’s social media profiles and comments from his neighbors, who testified on the strength of his WiFi signal.

 

Last week the court delivered a mixed ruling. US District Court Judge Mary Scriven denied the request to exclude the VXN data. This means that Strike 3’s main evidence, which links the defendant’s IP-address to pirated films, remains intact.

 

However, the court granted the request to prohibit the use of information from the defendant’s social media profile. On top of that, testimony by non-experts such as neighbors is, in principle, not allowed either.

Copyright Troll & Press

Strike 3 also asked the court to exclude information from the upcoming trial. As reported previously, the company doesn’t want the defense to use the term “troll,” which is often used to describe its sue-and-settle practice.

 

According to Strike 3, it’s clear that being called a ‘troll’ is derogatory, so it wants to prevent a jury from being influenced by ‘prejudicial’ language.

 

“Name-calling has no place in civil litigation,” Strike 3’s lawyers wrote, noting that the label is inaccurate and thus irrelevant.

 

In her order, Judge Scriven doesn’t agree that this term is off-limits so denied the request. This means that the defense can freely use the ‘copyright troll’ moniker in their arguments.

 

Aside from the troll worries, the adult entertainment company also wanted to exclude all blogs, media, and other Internet coverage from the potential pool of evidence.

 

These online news articles often contain subjective comments that put the company in a bad light, which could present the wrong picture to the jury, Strike 3 argued.

 

“The Internet and media articles target Plaintiff and its counsel and contain comments that are biased, slanderous, and prejudicial, and should not be referred to at trial for any purpose,” it wrote.

 

The court was more sympathetic to this argument and granted the request “on stipulation”. This stipulation isn’t detailed further in the written order, but it’s a win for Strike 3 nonetheless.

Summary Judgment and Sanctions

The good news for Strike 3 doesn’t stop there. In addition to the motion in limine, the court also ruled on the motions for summary judgment from both sides, handing an early victory to the adult company.

 

After reviewing all arguments, Judge Mary Scriven denied Mr. Adaire’s request for a judgment that he didn’t engage in any copyright-infringing activity. This question will be decided by the jury instead.

 

Strike 3’s own request for summary judgment was denied along with most of Mr. Adaire’s counterclaims.

 

The only remaining counterclaim is the accusation that Strike 3 misused its copyrights, by using the Florida State Court as a preliminary process to attempt to acquire federally protected subscriber information. This argument can be presented to the jury.

 

Finally, Judge Scriven ruled that the alleged pirate will be sanctioned for failing to preserve electronically stored evidence. This is based on Strike 3’s arguments that the defendant destroyed evidence by wiping data from his desktop computer and other devices.

 

Details of the sanctions aren’t revealed in the court order but they certainly won’t help the defense during trial.

 

All in all, the case can still go either way. It will ultimately be up to the jury to decide on the copyright infringement allegations but Strike 3 will likely feel emboldened by the court’s recent orders.

 

—

 

A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Mary Scriven’s full order, which also touched on other subjects, is available here (pdf)

 

As outlined again only this month, people who simply watch pirate streams break UK law. If the content comes from an illegal source, it’s illegal to consume it under copyright law. That is a fact – there is no debate.

 

The problem for rightsholders is that copyright cases are complex, difficult to prove, and won’t end in a prison sentence under civil law. A stronger, criminal angle might prove more persuasive.

 

The Federation Against Copyright Theft, which acts for the Premier League, SKY, and BT Sport, came up with a solution – Section 11 of the Fraud Act 2006, which criminalizes the act of obtaining any kind of service dishonestly.

 

With a potential crime now part of the equation, the logical conclusion for Joe Public is that people risk being arrested in their own homes for watching an unlicensed stream. Of course, people also need to be persuaded that an underfunded police force doesn’t have bigger fish to fry.

Press Hysteria

Early January, FACT sent out a press release titled “Police visit homes across the UK to issue warnings to subscribers of illegal sports streaming services.”

 

We’ll return to the first paragraph shortly, but as anyone can see, there are two distinct statements. One says that FACT and police will be visiting homes. The second says that 1,000 people were identified after a raid on a streaming service. Nowhere does it say that FACT and police will be visiting the homes of 1,000 people.

 

Dozens of articles just like these perpetuated the idea of a massive crackdown but the truth is more mundane. Some people will indeed get a personal visit, but the rest will be contacted by email, as confirmed by FACT when TorrentFreak questioned the volume.

Prison “For Watching Unauthorized Streams”

Let’s get this absolutely clear. While it is illegal under both civil and criminal law, nobody has ever gone to prison for simply watching an unauthorized stream in the UK. That doesn’t mean it won’t eventually happen, but the snippet (below) from FACT’s press release shouldn’t have been reported in isolation.

 

Important and relevant information about these men was made available by FACT at the same time but given no weight in popular media. That led to widespread misinformation that could’ve been avoided.

 

The prospect of ordinary people going to prison for simply viewing an unlicensed stream is an extraordinary claim and it’s a journalist’s job to investigate extraordinary claims. If it’s true that simply viewing unlicensed streams will put UK internet users in prison for months, millions of families face the prospect of seeing loved ones behind bars.

 

That’s the bigger story that needed to be investigated, and it would’ve been ridiculously easy too. Simply scrolling to the bottom of the FACT press release reveals that both jailed men were operators of illegal streaming services and both pleaded guilty to multiple copyright and fraud offenses.

 

The prosecution in Millington’s trial alone estimated damages running to well over £10 million. Instead, the ‘news’ that two men were arrested and sent to jail for 16 months for simply watching streams went all around the world, almost completely unchallenged.

 

As the snippets above show, news outlets in Brazil, Russia, Poland, China, Greece, Italy, Thailand, Spain, Indonesia and beyond, not only repeated the statement without any context, but helped to make it an established and uncontested ‘fact’ around the world.

 

Now here’s what actually happened, to set the record straight.

No Ordinary Pirate Stream Watcher

The details in Millington’s case reveal that the opportunity for a “watching streams” conviction came gift-wrapped and tied up in gold ribbon.

 

The most serious charges against him related to his Kodi-based ‘stephen-builds’ software packages, which included the ‘Supremacy’ and ‘Supremacy Sports’ addons that provided his users with free access to illegal streams.

 

For context, Supremacy was one of the most-used pirate addons on the entire planet and, according to the lawyer who prosecuted Millington, was responsible for causing more than £10 million in damages to rightsholders.

 

Millington pleaded guilty to charges under Section 7 of the Fraud Act (making or supplying articles for use in fraud) and under the Copyright Act for distributing movies and other content via a Plex server.

 

He also pleaded guilty to watching illegal streams under Section 11 of the Fraud Act (obtaining a service dishonestly) but the background shows this was no ordinary case.

 

For several months after his home was raided, Millington’s defense was that the software and equipment he had accumulated existed for his own personal use. He was a keen gamer but also admitted that he used the equipment for viewing pirate streams via software he developed.

 

Millington later changed his plea to guilty but there was a pivotal moment: To advertise his Kodi-related products online, Millington recorded a video of himself as he used his own pirate software to access illegal streams.

 

That video was found on his phone during the investigation. The prosecution then took the opportunity to add a charge of viewing illegal streams to a case where the defendant ultimately had no choice but to plead guilty, due to a mountain of evidence. It’s still a conviction for watching unlicensed streams but in this case, context is everything.

 

The source of this information is vitally important too.

UK’s Leading Prosecutor of Streaming Pirates

Ari Alibhai is the lawyer of choice when it comes to the private prosecution of pirates in the UK and his track record speaks for itself. Among many others, he’s conducted multiple successful pirate IPTV prosecutions on behalf of FACT, Premier League, BT Sport and SKY.

 

It’s important to note that Mr Alibhai did not take part in the public announcements earlier this month, no reference was made to his work, and he has never claimed that Millington and Faulkner were sent to prison for simply viewing unlicensed streams. And he should know – he prosecuted both of them.

Webinar Published on the Millington Case

Late November 2021, Mr Alibhai conducted a webinar. The video of that presentation was posted more than a year ago on his company’s public website, together with other information on Millington’s case.

 

Given the importance of the victory, the promotional value of the video is obvious and, as such, it’s still available today.

 

For those who don’t have time to watch the entire video, discussion on the possibility of prosecuting people who simply watch unlicensed streams appears around 40 minutes into the 48-minute recording. It begins with a question from a man assisting Mr Alibhai from behind the camera.

 

“You mentioned about the difficulty of prosecuting end-users,” he said. “Someone asked if there any reasonable risks of prosecution or penalty to the end-users, the ones watching the content?”

 

Mr Alibhai’s response, as reported below, represents just a tiny fraction of a very informative presentation. In light of the reporting on this month’s events, and especially given the authoritative nature of the source, his opinion holds considerable value. In order to provide the most clarity, the response is cited verbatim.

 

Ari Alibhai webinar on Millington/Supremacy prosecution

 

Ari Alibhai: I’m assuming that question means, is there a risk to the user? So, is there a realistic risk to someone who’s watching TV that you will be prosecuted. Now, again, there’s an academic answer and then there’s a real answer.

 

In theory you can be prosecuted for watching unlawful television. You can be prosecuted under the Copyright Act under section 297 (I think, I haven’t used it for a long time), but you can also be prosecuted under section 11 of the Fraud Act (obtaining services dishonestly). In fact, in the explanatory notes [of section 11] mention is made of illegal television viewing boxes being part-and-parcel of section 11.

 

Section 11 carries a maximum penalty of five years in imprisonment so, you know, in theory you face imprisonment if you watch TV illegally.

 

In practice, the idea of someone being prosecuted who isn’t also concerned in the trade, so they aren’t also concerned in supplying illicit television services, is minimal.

 

This opinion from arguably the UK’s leading expert stands on its own two feet. Why overt public messaging sits in such stark contrast is puzzling to say the least.

 

That being said, Mr Alibhai wasn’t quite done.

Risk and Benefits of Viewer Prosecutions

In follow-up comments, Mr Alibhai questioned whether the idea of NOT prosecuting viewers would be the right approach but then laid out the risks associated with that type of strategy.

 

“I often feel that if you do you want to send a message out then maybe you’d have to take on pure prosecutions against end users. But clearly there is a reputation issue here, there’s a David and Goliath issue that’s going to come up for the broadcaster that takes that on. And there’s potential adverse press to consider,” he said during the webinar.

 

“So in the round, I would say that it’s unrealistic to expect that, if anyone is watching it, then you’ll get prosecuted.”

Scary Stories, Reputation, Animosity

Finally, on the matter of reputational issues, the Twitter thread linked here contains an article from UK tabloid The Mirror. It states quite clearly that 1,000 homes will be visited as part of a “major ongoing criminal investigation” and that two people “were sentenced to a total of 16 months for watching illegal streams in 2021.”

 

At the time of writing it has been viewed 6.3m+ times but the overwhelming majority of the comments on the tweet are negative. They either put the blame at the feet of the Premier League and/or the broadcasters, or criticize the police for taking this on when so many other ‘real crimes’ go unsolved.

 

The above may suggest that even when presented with the prospect of going to prison, the public response isn’t to hand over their cash. Instead they list their demands – better access to matches (including at 3pm on Saturdays) and – overwhelmingly – don’t expect normal working people to spend £100+ every month to see a limited number of matches.

 

Universal access to football at a fair price? It might just work. A commercial solution to what is essentially a commercial problem seems reasonable. The problem for the Premier League is the prospect of devaluing a premium product in the mere hope of gaining enough subscribers to maintain its financial position.

 

Given that pirate services won’t simply go away, the difficult bottom line seems almost inevitable. The risk of being prosecuted for simply watching pirate streams may be low today, but that will almost certainly change.

 

If those who currently stream illegally can afford it, perhaps they might consider supporting the sport they love. For those who don’t have the resources to buy what is essentially a luxury product, millions will sympathize. If the decision is to continue with illegal streams regardless, rightsholders most definitely will not.

 

The MPA and strongly-affiliated Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment are the sworn enemies of illegal streaming sites, IPTV services, and torrent portals.

 

Still, when everything boils down, the hunter and the hunted ultimately find themselves on the same digital battlefield, equipped with broadly similar tools, underpinned by mostly the same technical rules. Tradition seems to allow pirates to break and make up rules as they go along, while Hollywood is free to amend legislation to take up the slack.

 

There’s no one-size-fits-all scenario in the piracy wars, but in general, pirates need their services to stay visible at all times while staying invisible themselves. The challenge for MPA/ACE investigators is almost exactly the opposite. Find a chink in the armor, obtain information, and then exploit every possible resource to remove anonymity.

 

Victory in the endgame – rendering once-visible sites permanently invisible via a binding legal agreement – relies on meticulous evidence. The MPA wants to add two more people to its Global Content Protection team to help harvest that from the internet.

Internet Investigator (OSINT)

On a basic level, most internet users have dabbled in the world of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). A Google search will return information retrieved from the open internet, but that’s just one tool out of the hundreds available to OSINT investigators, including those working in the anti-piracy niche.

 

“The Internet Investigator (OSINT) is primarily responsible for conducting detailed investigations of key players and other global targets involved in copyright infringement, including the investigation of individuals and organizations,” the MPA’s job listing reads.

 

The position demands someone with skills in OSINT and attribution methods. In a nutshell, this means leveraging openly available information to identify an individual and/or a group/organization and then being able to link those targets to illegal activity, direct or secondary infringement, for example.

 

Social media research is unsurprisingly cited by the MPA as an area of interest. Many pirate service operators use platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to attract customers and service existing ones. On the plus side for investigators, the volume of data that can be extracted from these platforms and their users is extraordinary.

Key Responsibilities

Gathering information on pirate services and those who run them can be relatively easy, but that’s only part of the job. Any specific intelligence collected may also be utilized more broadly, requiring the candidate to produce “forensically sound and actionable investigative reports.”

 

After obtaining intelligence on a target, a decision must be taken on how to proceed. Is civil action appropriate or is behavior more suited to a criminal investigation? The candidate will offer recommendations based on the intelligence at hand.

 

As pirate services disappear or get taken down, new ones tend to appear. The successful candidate will be required to proactively hunt for potential future targets and analyze them, which sounds easy but almost certainly isn’t.

 

The skill here is to identify a new site’s potential for growth, based on factors available today. An approach that treats all new entrants equally risks the misallocation of resources to dozens of low-key threats. That doesn’t mean MPA/ACE won’t happily take them down but priority targets are called that for a reason.

 

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and some initially innocuous players will inevitably slip through the gaps. Datasets that indicate disproportionate interest on social media may help to reduce that – in tandem with dozens…and dozens of other sources.

Investigations Manager

A second managerial position will see the successful candidate “assist the Global Content Protection team in shaping, contributing to, and executing the team’s enforcement strategy.”

 

Other responsibilities include the following:

 

– Supervise a team of investigators working on detailed investigations of key players and other global targets involved in copyright infringement, including the investigation of individuals, organizations, and technical infrastructures

 

– Assist in identifying cases suitable for escalated actions, civil and criminal

 

– Collaborate with MPA member studios, industry partners, law enforcement, vendors, attorneys, and various internal departments to work towards the resolution of cases

 

– Supervise the proactive identification of new potential targets. Monitor, analyze, and report on emerging trends and technologies in online piracy

 

For anyone interested in OSINT and/or piracy, the above sounds like exciting work. Of course, the MPA will know everything about most potential candidates before they’re invited for an interview, largely thanks to the trails almost everyone leaves behind.

 

Enjoy.

 

The MPA job listings can be found here (1,2)

 

With millions of monthly users, USTVGO was one of the most visited live TV streaming portals on the Internet.

 

As its name suggests, the portal focused on US channels, making it a popular site for cord-cutting Americans or those living abroad.

 

Last week, USTVGO came to an abrupt end. Instead of the usual list of links to over a hundred channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Nickelodeon, visitors were welcomed by a brief statement suggesting that it had shut down; “Sorry, we are closed”.

 

In recent days the message disappeared, and the USTVGO.tv domain name became completely unreachable. The same applied to several other domains reportedly operated by the same owner, including ustv247.tv and watchnewslive.tv.

ACE Takes Credit

No immediate explanation for the shutdown was made available, but in these types of cases, the most likely culprit is some type of legal pressure. Today, we can confirm that is indeed the case.

 

Jan van Voorn, Chief of Global Content Protection for the MPA and head of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), informs TorrentFreak that USTVGO’s shutdown is the result of ACE enforcement efforts.

 

The anti-piracy coalition, which is backed by several major video entertainment companies, took action after it tracked down and contacted the site’s owner in Hanoi, Vietnam.

 

At the time of writing ACE has yet to seize control of the site’s domain names, which were registered through the privacy service Njalla. However, Van Voorn informs us that the domains should be signed over to the anti-piracy alliance in due course.

 

“We are in the process of taking all the domains and hope to conclude this case soon,” Van Voorn notes.

 

The USTVGO shutdown is another major victory for ACE but the next threat is never far away. Many disgruntled users of the streaming site are already flocking to alternatives; for as long as they last.

 

Coming Soon…

In 2009, anti-piracy group BREIN took News-Service Europe (NSE) – one of Europe’s largest Usenet providers at the time – to court.

 

Representing the movie and music industries, BREIN argued that NSE must delete all infringing content from its servers, and in 2011 the Court of Amsterdam sided with the anti-piracy group.

 

In its initial verdict, the Court concluded that NSE willingly facilitated online piracy through its services. As a result, the company was ordered to remove all copyrighted content and filter future posts for possible copyright infringements.

Shutdown and Appeal

According to the Usenet provider, this filtering requirement would be too costly to achieve. It shut down its service but appealed the case.

 

After several more years of litigation, the Amsterdam appeals court ruled that NSE wasn’t liable for pirating users after all, but NSE was required to offer a responsive and effective notice and takedown procedure, possibly with additional measures.

 

Unhappy with the outcome, BREIN decided to take the matter to the Dutch Supreme Court. While NSE was no longer a threat, the case could prove crucial for many other Usenet providers.

 

BREIN has been very critical of some commercial Usenet companies, describing them as a refuge for pirates of all ilks, with uploaders, site owners and resellers working in tandem to facilitate and profit from widespread copyright infringement.

 

NSE clearly disagreed and positioned itself as a content-neutral intermediary that simply hosts and transfers bytes. As such, it should fall into the same category as other services, including YouTube and file-hosting platforms.

Supreme Court Decides

Since the Dutch Supreme Court initially struggled with key questions on the liability side, it planned to seek input from the European Court of Justice (ECJ). However, after a related YouTube/Uploaded liability verdict was delivered by Europe’s highest court, that was no longer deemed necessary.

 

Instead, both NSE and BREIN were asked to share their stance on that verdict, which essentially held that online platforms are not liable for pirating users, provided they have a proper takedown procedure and are not aware of any specific infringements.

 

In its decision published today, the Dutch Supreme Court states the appeals court ruled correctly when it found that NSE shouldn’t be held liable. The fact that NSE had a decent takedown procedure and no apparent knowledge of infringement, weighed in its favor.

 

The court also confirmed that NSE didn’t curate any content, nor did it specifically promote copyright infringement.

 

The finer details are discussed in the full verdict which also orders BREIN to pay €65,000 in legal fees. Aside from the financial aspect, it is mostly a moral victory for the former Usenet provider, as it shut down its service many years ago.

Bittersweet Victory

Patrick Schreurs, the former technical director of NSE, describes the Supreme Court verdict as a bitterwseet victory.

 

“This confirms that in 2011, NSE had to cease its activities on the basis of an incorrect judgment of the Amsterdam District Court. Unfortunately, BREIN Foundation was unwilling at the time to wait for the appeal to conclude. With this final judgment, that appears to have been a gross judgment error,” Schreurs says.

 

NSE’s former Financial Director Wierd Bonthuis adds that the 14-year battle with BREIN left its mark. It had significant personal, financial, and business consequences.

 

BREIN director Tim Kuik, meanwhile, is unhappy with the outcome. He also highlights the length of the legal battle, albeit for a different reason, noting that Usenet has changed significantly since 2009.

 

“Of course, we are disappointed that, following the Court’s somewhat unclear fact-finding, the Supreme Court ruled that this usenet provider was not infringing at the time. It doesn’t matter much, however, because that would be different today,” Kuik tells us.

 

“As the Court also ruled, an effective notice and takedown policy are needed that can keep track of the number and frequency of new uploads, and additional measures are also available. Since the CJEU’s YouTube/Cyando ruling, it is clear that, if you don’t have those, then you are infringing.”

 

BREIN was the party that ultimately took this matter to the Supreme Court, or course, so this wasn’t exactly a trivial matter. The anti-piracy group hoped that the highest court would hold NSE liable but, as we learned today, that’s not the case.

 

Elon Musk is not only one of the smartest and richest people on the planet, he’s also a passionate meme connoisseur.

 

A few months ago we covered a Musk-approved meme which suggested that piracy may start to appeal again as the legal streaming landscape gets more crowded. And that was just one of many he shared.

 

Since Musk has quite a large following, these memes circulate all over Twitter and far beyond. This has inspired some ‘entrepreneurs’ to use them in business, by setting up dropship services that print Musk’s memes on T-shirts and other goods, for example.

Musk Meme Takedowns

Since meme shirts are now being sold in various online stores, there seems to be a demand for this type of product. These nerdy fashion items have largely gone unnoticed by the general public, but Google was recently informed about this viral activity through a series of takedown requests.

 

The DMCA notices were sent by none other than Elon Musk or, much more likely, someone claiming to be the tech billionaire. They all follow the same format, asking Google to remove links to copyright-infringing t-shirts from search results.

 

“The following websites have stolen my copyright and they have no right to sell them, please remove the following links from search results,” ‘Musk’ writes in one of the requests, citing one of his ‘own’ tweets.

 

The image shared in the tweet is a ‘bots’ meme, referring to Musk’s attempt to reduce bot activity on Twitter. And indeed, most of the listed URLs that were reported to Google sell T-shirts emblazoned with this meme.

 

While there’s no question that Musk shared the meme, the copyright claim is trivial. Even if Musk created this meme himself, he doesn’t own the rights to the base photo, which is Grant Gustin on the set of The Flash. This photo has been used as meme inspiration for years.

 

The same is true for other memes highlighted in ‘Musk’ takedown notices, including the Lego Doctor, Mediocrates and They Brainwashed You memes. Again, the takedown requests target several stores that sell clothing with a print of this meme, with ‘Musk’ claiming ownership of the memes themselves.

 

Aside from memes, ‘Musk’ also targets a design that hits closer to home. One notice highlights an exclusive design for the official Tesla AI Day t-shirt. This request seems more plausible, but the broader context puts the validity of these requests in question.

Musk Be Fake

Aside from the questionable copyright claims, we seriously doubt that these DMCA notices were sent or authorized by Musk. It’s more likely that someone else is pretending to be the tech billionaire, to further their own cause.

 

For example, an imposter may be a player in the highly competitive Musk-meme t-shirt-selling business. By removing competitors from Google’s search results, this person can improve visibility and increase their own profits. That would be a typical example of DMCA abuse.

 

While DMCA abuse is against the law, this certainly wouldn’t be the first time that an imposter has exploited copyright law to gain an unfair advantage. We have seen similar efforts in the past, often with a competitive edge.

 

The suggestion that there are imposters at work is strengthened by other notices we spotted, in which “The Beatles” and “Barstool Sports” also flag ‘Musk’ (and other) shirts. In turn, some Musk takedowns report entirely unrelated designs.

DMCA Drama

These and other notices are among thousands of t-shirt takedowns in recent weeks, covering a variety of designs. Perhaps this is all related to a brawl between competing apparel outlets? For now, the good news is that Google has rejected the vast majority of these claims.

 

To completely rule out that these notices were sent by the real Elon Musk, we reached out to Twitter, hoping that his company could offer some clarity. At the time of publication, we have yet to receive a response.

 

In any case, we caution others from drawing the wrong conclusions. After all, the tech billionaire isn’t a big fan of the DMCA, to say the least. Just a few months ago he characterized the copyright law as being an “overzealous plague on humanity.”

 

That was the real Elon Musk, for sure. Perhaps someone should put that on a t-shirt?

 

By offering free access to millions of ‘paywalled’ research papers, Sci-Hub is often described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”.

 

The site is used by researchers from all over the world to access papers they otherwise have a hard time accessing. For some, the site is essential to their work.

 

Major academic publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society are not happy with the rogue research library. These companies have made billions of dollars selling access to research and see Sci-Hub as a direct threat to their business model.

 

The publishers have previously tried to shut down Sci-Hub through U.S. courts. While this resulted in favorable default judgments, Sci-Hub hasn’t gone away. The site’s audience continues to grow with millions of academics flocking to Sci-Hub.se every month.

Sci-Hub.se Deactivated

Yesterday, however, the site’s Swedish domain name suddenly became unresponsive. The reasons for that were unclear, even Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan was taken by surprise.

 

After initially thinking of a DDoS attack, Elbakyan learned that the Swedish domain name had been deactivated by the domain name registry. As a result, the site is now unreachable.

 

“Yesterday I noticed problems when trying to open Sci-Hub website: at first, I was thinking that is some DDoS attack, but after checking again today, found out that http://sci-hub.se domain that was resistant for many years has been deactivated,” she wrote.

Copyright Complaint?

Sci-Hub.se’s domain status was changed to “ServerHold.” Set by the domain registry, this status effectively makes the domain unusable. Similar action was previously taken against other domains, including Fmovies.se.

 

To find out more, we reached out to The Swedish Internet Foundation, which manages Sweden’s .se domains, but at the time of publication, we haven’t heard back (update below). While no official explanation is available, it’s likely that the action was triggered by a copyright complaint.

 

Sweden’s domain registry was previously involved in a legal battle over thepiratebay.se ten years ago. At the time, CEO Danny Aerts called the effectiveness of these deactivations into question.

 

“Removing a domain name can be compared to taking down the signs hanging outside the shoe store. Although this would make it more difficult for customers to find the store, it would still be there,” Aerts said.

 

In the present case, Elbakyan doesn’t expect that the domain can be reinstated. Instead, she simply points followers to the alternative sci-hub.ru domain name, which remains accessible.

 

—

 

Update: The .se registry informed us that the owner of the domain received an email with all information needed. We’re trying to get more details on this from the owner and will update this article if that comes in.

 

Three years ago, a U.S. District Court in Minnesota sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison.

 

Hansmeier was a key player in the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent.

 

Investigating and suing pirates isn’t illegal, but Hansmeier and his associate John Steele entered criminal territory when they lied to the courts, committed identity theft, and created a honeypot by uploading self-produced porn torrents to The Pirate Bay as bait.

 

Hansmeier and Steele’s individual responses to the criminal prosecution couldn’t have been more different. Steele cooperated with the prosecution from the start. This resulted in a relatively modest 5-year prison sentence, including a probation period, and he left prison a few weeks ago. Hansmeier decided to go on the offensive.

Hansmeier’s Fights

Hansmeier initially denied any wrongdoing and later appealed his sentence. The convicted lawyer also launched a flurry of petitions and new lawsuits, hoping to aid his case or reduce the prison term.

 

A few weeks ago, the former lawyer filed a new request to reduce his sentence. Hansmeier says officials have treated him harshly, including a 122-day stay in solitary confinement.

 

“Specifically, Hansmeier engaged in petitioning activity and, in response, prison officials threw him in an isolation cell for five months,” he informed the court, writing in the third person.

 

“While he was in the isolation cell, Hansmeier was limited to one phone call to his family per month, he was locked in a tiny, windowless room where the light stayed on 24 hours a day, he was prohibited from receiving a newspaper or any other periodicals and he was prohibited from having attorney-client privileged calls.”

Torture?

These events are just a fraction of the punishments allegedly suffered by Hansmeier, at least according to Hansmeier’s own reporting of events. If the allegations are accurate, concerns over Hansmeier’s treatment would be warranted, despite his past activities.

 

These concerns were recognized by journalist Joe Patrice from Above the Law, who previously worked as a litigator and has an extensive legal background. In his coverage of the matter, Patrice suggested that Hansmeier’s treatment could potentially qualify as torture, according to the United Nations.

 

Hansmeier read this report and used Patrice’s article to support his case. In the end, that didn’t help him. United States District Judge Joan N. Ericksen denied the request early this month.

Undercover Piracy Investigator

The denial means that the 14-year sentence still stands, but that doesn’t mean Hansmeier is giving up. A few days ago he submitted a new request, asking permission to hire an undercover investigator to enforce his copyrights.

 

This isn’t the first time that Hansmeier has attempted to continue his anti-piracy work from prison. Similar suits were filed before – and dismissed. Last summer the court prohibited him from filing more.

 

Despite the filing restriction, Hansmeier now requests a preliminary injunction to prevent the U.S. Government from enforcing the mail-wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy statutes for his planned copyright enforcement activities.

 

This basically means that he wants the court to greenlight a similar enforcement strategy for which he was convicted. That’s the simple way of putting it, without any nuance.

 

“Paul Hansmeier would like to hire an undercover investigator to enforce his copyrights in creative works and bring claims under the Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act against people who pirate the works,” the motion reads.

 

“Hansmeier seeks to do so in a way that addresses the political issues raised by his prior anti-piracy litigation. The primary impediment to Hansmeier protecting his copyrights against Internet piracy is the chilling effect of the government’s criminalization of the routine copyright enforcement methods Hansmeier seeks to use now.”

 

The copyright enforcement campaign could help Hansmeier’s defense, which argues that his conviction was unconstitutional. However, the former lawyer also stresses that pirates deserved to be punished.

Piracy is a Cancer

According to Hansmeier’s motion, piracy is basically theft and a cancer on the creative industries.

 

“Internet piracy is a cancer eating away at the markets for creative expression. It destroys the incentive to invest in creative output and thus lessens the public’s access to works that enrich the human experience.

 

“Piracy—which is really just theft—contributes nothing to our society. Efforts to deter piracy benefit our society with no corresponding harm to the public; the only person who loses is the pirate, but pirates can avoid being sued if they don’t steal,” the motion adds.

 

These arguments didn’t convince District Judge Joan N. Ericksen to rule in Hansmeier’s favor. In a rather brief order, the request was denied, which sends Hansmeier back to the drawing board.

 

—

 

Hansmeier’s request for a preliminary injunction is available here (pdf). The previously mentioned request for a sentence reduction can be found here (pdf)

 

In August 2021, Bungie filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a number of defendants involved in the development and supply of Destiny 2 cheating tool, Wallhax.

 

Last summer, Elite Boss Tech, Inc., 11020781 Canada Inc., and owner Robert James Duthie Nelson, admitted that their tool breached copyright by injecting new code into Bungie’s, thereby creating an unlicensed derivative work.

 

The defendants further conceded that their software circumvented technical measures in breach of the DMCA, but a $13.5 million damages award in Bungie’s favor didn’t mark the end of the lawsuit.

 

Documents handed over by Nelson enabled Bungie to identify Wallhax Senior Developer Patrick Schaufuss (Badger) in Germany and Denmark-based developer Daniel Larsen. After reaching an agreement with the plaintiff, Nelson and Schaufuss are now providing evidence in support of Bungie’s motion for default judgment against Larsen.

New Year, New Defendants

Late December, several defendants were summoned to appear or face default judgment.

 

They include Sebastiaan Juan Theodoor Cruden, aka “Luzypher” (Netherlands), Eddie Tran, aka “Sentient” (San Jose, US), John Doe #4, aka “Goodman” (Sichuan, China), Yunxuan Deng (Shanghai, China), Anthony Robinson aka “Rulezzgame” (Germany), Chenzhijie Chen, (Beijing, China), Dsoft (Denmark), and Marta Magalhaes (Portugal).

 

If there was any doubt over Bungie’s determination to see this lawsuit through to the bitter end, an avalanche of filings over the past few days settles that once and for all.

 

New declarations from experts and witnesses in support of Bungie’s lawsuit are heavily redacted. However, text left in the clear still manages to deliver powerful testimony that leaves precious room for maneuver.

 

To warm things up, here’s a starter: During the period Wallhax sold their Destiny 2 cheat, Bungie spent “a minimum of $2,000,000” on game security measures to counter cheating. In this lawsuit alone, Bungie has already incurred litigation costs in excess of $338,000.

Expert: Cheat Software Logged Sensitive User Data

Steven Guris is Director of Threat Investigation at cybersecurity firm Unit 221B. He’s an ethical hacker, an expert in video game cheats, and a Destiny 2 player with over 2,200 hours of logged gaming time.

 

According to his declaration, Guris and his team spent 21 hours analyzing the Wallhax Destiny 2 cheat. The image below shows Wallhax in action, but page after page of redacted text indicates many findings are being suppressed for security reasons.

 

Details relating to the mysterious Wallhax ‘logging function’ are mostly redacted too, but text left in the clear reveals a feature that users of the cheat should be made aware of – sooner rather than later.

Major Privacy Breach For Users of Wallhax

“Some of the logged processes are not stand-alone applications, but are found on browser tabs that the user had open on their machine,” Guris explains.

 

“In order to identify these tabs, the cheat must look at the name of every browser tab the user has opened every time the user launches the cheat.”

 

Guris goes on to reference a log file that “only contains 20,868 entries” while noting that the cheat software most likely performed a scan each and every time it ran on a user’s computer. Parents are likely to be alarmed at the findings detailed below.

 

From this low point, things somehow manage to get worse. One log entry references a browser tab called ‘patientportal.mhsgenesis.health.mil login’ while another carries the label ‘MHS GENESIS Patient Portal – COVID-19 Results.’

 

“MHS Genesis is the patient portal for the United States Department of Defense,” Guris writes. “I believe these log entries represent the cheat software’s logging of the browser windows containing MHS Genesis Patient Portal sessions, including health care information.

 

“Based on this information, it appears that the Wallhax cheat software was scanning the computers of, and logging data from, active duty military or Department of Defense personnel.”

 

From the text in the declaration that isn’t redacted, there’s no evidence to indicate that logging military personnel data was an explicit aim of the cheat, but in itself that’s unlikely to be of much comfort to users of the cheating software.

 

“In sum, the Wallhax cheat was fundamentally designed to breach private data spaces, evade security measures, and attempt to ensure that cheat users could continue to access Destiny 2 and achieve success against other Destiny 2 players based not on their own skill, but on the cheat software’s technology,” Guris concludes.

Badger’s Declaration in Support of Bungie

While it’s safe to assume that Patrick Schaufuss (Badger) filed his declaration of his own free will, albeit within the confines of his agreement with Bungie, the document bears the polish of a legal professional. As such, it devastates any defense Larsen would’ve had, if he’d actually tried to defend himself, which it appears he hasn’t.

 

Schaufuss says that the Wallhax business was a partnership consisting of him, Nelson and Larsen. The Wallhax software “exists for the one purpose and only one purpose” – to enable users to cheat in videogames, Destiny 2 included. Schaufuss says he left Wallhax in 2022 but Nelson is still paying towards his legal fees.

 

“When I first joined the Wallhax partnership in 2012, I was the primary software developer for the business,” Schaufuss writes.

 

“Larsen initially joined the partnership as a forum moderator and asked me to teach him programming and reverse engineering in lieu of payment. He was a good student and learned very quickly, and I continued to mentor him for the next three or four years.

 

“Reverse-engineering games is an essential part of Larsen’s cheat development process, and therefore his role at Wallhax,” the cheat developer adds.

“Larsen Understood That He was Violating Game Companies’ Rights”

The next several pages detailing the Wallhax software are completely redacted. Claims that Larsen willfully violated the DMCA are not.

 

“Larsen and I knew that the Software was wrongful and that it violated the DMCA. In fact, in an effort to taunt me about this litigation Larsen specifically told me that he was well aware that what we were doing violated the DMCA,” Schaufuss writes.

 

“At some point between 2016 and 2018, Larsen decided to make a cheat for Overwatch, which is a game from Activision/Blizzard. After Larsen made that cheat and Nelson began promoting it, Activision/Blizzard reached out to us and told us that they would sue us if we started selling it. Larsen’s reaction was, essentially, ‘Ha ha, try’.

 

“Nelson and I each signed agreements with Activision/Blizzard saying that we would not touch their games, but Larsen refused,” Schaufuss adds.

 

James Barker, Bungie’s Deputy General Counsel, also filed a declaration in support of Bungie’s motion for default judgment. Barker says that cheaters ruin the Destiny 2 experience and with 1,700 hours of gameplay under his belt, he can “viscerally understand the aggravation of encountering a cheat software user.”

 

Like Schaufuss before him, Nelson also filed a declaration in support of Bungie.

 

From the statement that many Wallhax customers “are based in the United States, and send us payment from the United States” to Larsen being aware of the lawsuit but refusing to hand over his copyrighted cheat code, exits were closed one after another.

 

The declarations referenced above are available here (1,2,3, pdf)

 

First broadcast in the Netherlands back in 1999, reality TV show ‘Big Brother’ is now a global franchise spanning more than 60 countries.

 

Big Brother Brazil (BBB) is one of the most successful regional variants. Right now, BBB23 is live on air, so millions of fans are tuning in at home to watch other people living in a different house for a bit while others watch.

 

When BBB fans aren’t glued to their TVs waiting for the drama to unfold, many can be found on social media, usually speculating about what comes next, based on what they’ve just seen. To facilitate the discourse, fans often post images and video clips from the show, but for TV company Globo, which broadcasts the show 24/7 on pay-per-view, some fans go too far.

Security Department’s Email Gets Leaked

When Globo broadcast BBB22 last year, the company decided to loosen its copyright policy. Rather than being banned from Twitter for sharing clips of the show without permission, Globo said that fans could share a one-minute clip online for every hour of the show.

 

According to an internal communication leaked to local media outlet TVPop, the position may have changed for BBB23.

 

Reportedly issued by Globo’s Information Security department, new guidelines inform staff that digital piracy harms the show and as a result, harms the company.

 

“Digital piracy causes several damages to the market and the entertainment industry is especially affected by it,” the translation reads.

“Piracy Impacts Advertising”

Reportedly sent to staff via an internal communications system, the new guidelines suggest that piracy harms Globo employees and has a negative effect on the advertising market.

 

“The damage goes far beyond the loss of uniqueness and the dissemination of content without authorization. For example, there is an impact on the attractiveness of audiovisual products for the advertising market,” it reads.

 

While the extent of any damage isn’t quantified, data shows that subscriptions to the Globoplay streaming platform increased by 79% in 2020 and by another 32% in 2021. A document published by Associação Brasileira das Administradorasde Consórcios (pdf) last September provides specifics on the BBB23 advertising program.

 

“Advertising on Big Brother Brasil will become more expensive in 2023. 112 days before the start of the program, brands are rushing to secure a space in the most watched house in Brazil, even with sponsorship quotas for the [Globo] program costing up to 32% more than in previous series,” it reads.

 

“According to program data, in 2022, more than 153 million people watched the program on Globo platforms. Although without breaking the 2021 audience record, according to the broadcaster, the public spent 13% more time watching the last series.”

“Lots of Parties and Bullshit”

Globo’s leaked communication initially celebrates the launch of BBB23 but quickly emphasizes the importance of clamping down on piracy.

 

“The most watched house in the country is back and promises lots of parties, bullshit, exciting competitions, shacks and audience records. It’s a lot of good things together! But there are people wanting to take a ride on this success. Piracy generates several negative consequences for BBB and for the work of all of us,” it reads.

 

So what can Globo staff do to help?

 

To clamp down on social media users sharing images and videos of BBB23, staff are instructed to report them to Globo. The line between free advertising and piracy isn’t made clear, but when it comes to another modern-day scourge, facilitated by Globo’s paying customers, everything seems more cut and dried.

 

“If you see pirated content out there or know of someone who is sharing the Globoplay login with other people, you already know: just report it by email,” the communication adds.

 

According to TVPop, Globo appears to be taking down BBB videos dating back several years at the same time as taking down content from BBB23. Evidence of takedowns can be found on the Lumen Database, which lists dozens of DMCA takedown notices sent by Globo to Google.

 

Whether this will be enough for Globo is unclear, but with headlines in local media asking, “What time do participants go to the secret room?” the pressure on fans to subscribe can’t be understated.

 

Adult entertainment outfit Malibu Media has often been characterized as a copyright-trolling operation.

 

The Los Angeles company, known for its popular “X-Art” brand, has gone after thousands of alleged file-sharers in U.S. courts, collecting millions of dollars in settlements on the way.

Tables Turned

Not too long ago Malibu was one of the most active anti-piracy litigants in the U.S., but in recent years this activity ground to a halt. In the one case that continued, the hunter became the hunted.

 

A “John Doe” defendant turned the tables and filed a long list of counterclaims against Malibu Media, accusing the company of abuse of process and misuse of copyright, among other things.

 

“Plaintiff monetizes its alleged copyrights through coercive and needless litigation and by extracting settlements from that litigation disproportionate to the minimal value of Plaintiff’s works,” the defense wrote.

 

In addition, the accused pirate asked the court to dismiss Malibu Media’s claims, arguing that the company can’t be involved in a lawsuit due to a suspension of its corporate status. California’s Franchise Tax Board suspended Malibu Media in 2021 over tax deficiencies.

Company Suspension Deadline

Responding to this situation, Senior United States District Judge David Ezra set a deadline for the adult entertainment outfit. Malibu needed to fix the suspension problem or face its case being dismissed.

 

That deadline passed last Friday, so without any response from Malibu, Judge Ezra was left with no other option than to dismiss the matter.

 

“The deadline has now passed, and a search of the California Secretary of State’s website shows that Malibu Media’s corporate status remains suspended,” Judge Ezra’s order reads.

 

“Accordingly, the case is dismissed without prejudice to Malibu Media seeking reconsideration at some future time when its capacity to defend itself in federal court has been restored.”

Future Uncertain

The second sentence offers some hope to the troubled adult entertainment outfit. If the corporate suspension is eventually resolved, it can choose to refile the piracy lawsuit and start over.

 

Based on recent history, it is doubtful that Malibu Media aims to pick up its old habit. Malibu’s most recent John Doe piracy lawsuit dates back to 2019, and since then the company has faced setbacks, including a $108,271 ruling in favor of an accused pirate.

 

Malibu Media’s judicial problems add to a list of issues currently facing its owner. For example, several other companies associated with Malibu’s CEO are also suspended. As such, this order could very well mark the end of an era.

 

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A copy of Senior United States District Judge David Ezra’s order to dismiss the case without prejudice is available here (pdf)

 

The World Cup is international football’s most prestigious tournament. International governing body FIFA guards its lucrative rights to the competition with a rod of iron.

 

FIFA World Cup 2022 got underway on November 20 in Qatar, and in the hours leading up to December 10, Homeland Security Investigations began seizing pirate streaming site domains. Our initial report was confirmed by U.S. authorities two days later, with a statement claiming that “55 separate websites” had been seized.

 

Over the next few days, 23 additional domains were seized, bringing the total to 78. The official announcement referenced an affidavit filed in support of the seizures, but no copy was provided and hours spent trawling court records turned up nothing in December.

Affidavit Dated December 2022 Filed in January 2023

After being officially filed on January 12, 2023, two identical affidavits appeared on record this month at the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. Submitted by HSI Special Agent Jones under two different case numbers, the affidavits carry the signature of Judge Maddox dated December 16, 2022.

 

Both affidavits relate to seizures that took place between December 16-19 but make no mention of earlier seizures. The affidavits list two other case numbers but those documents were filed under seal.

 

After previous assignments at the NSA and Weapons of Mass Destruction Response Team, Special Agent Jones is currently assigned to HSI’s Transnational Cyber Crimes Team (TCCT).

 

His affidavit states that he has probable cause to believe that the listed domains are subject to seizure and forfeiture under 18 U.S.C. § 2323(a)(1)(A)-(B) and (b)(1) because they are used or intended to be used to commit or facilitate criminal infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 506 and 18 U.S.C. § 2319.

Friend MTS Referral to HSI in September

At least two months before World Cup 2022 began, in its role as representative of FIFA, UK-based anti-piracy company Friend MTS (which is heavily involved in dynamic stream blocking in Europe) began supplying HSI with information on “several” domains.

 

“Friend MTS identified the sites as being used to transmit and distribute copyright infringing content (World Cup games in particular), without the authorization of the copyright holders,” the affidavits read.

 

A “whitelist” of domains allowed to broadcast games is apparently maintained by FIFA, but none of the domains submitted by Friend MTS appeared on that list.

‘Open-Source’ Search For Additional Domains

To find additional domains illegally streaming copyright-protected content, U.S. investigators reportedly conducted a review of “open-source internet messages.” Some of the sites discovered “appeared to host illicit streaming content,” while others embedded streams or offered links to content hosted elsewhere.

 

The table below lists some of the domains and the time they were confirmed as offering FIFA content. Also listed are their corresponding domain registries, in this case mostly VeriSign, but others include GoDaddy, Inc., Identity Digital Inc., and Tonic Domains.

 

After confirming all domains were offering unlicensed content, HSI concluded that “neither a restraining order nor an injunction” could guarantee their seizure.

 

However, if the domains were seized and redirected to another website, that would “prevent third parties from acquiring the name and using it to commit additional crimes” and “prevent third parties from continuing to access the websites in their present forms.”

Legal Assessment & Seizure

The affidavit states that for civil forfeitures, venue may lie in any district where any of the acts giving rise to forfeiture occurred, where the property was found, or where it was bought. For criminal forfeitures, venue lies in any district in which prosecution could occur.

 

In this case, the affidavit states there is probable cause to believe that the domains are subject to civil and criminal forfeiture. With all bases covered, attention turns to the domain registries for .com, .tv, .to, .cc, me, .live, and .net domains – Verisign, Inc., GoDaddy, Tonic Domains, and Identity Digital, Inc.

 

Upon seizure of the domains, the registries were required to associate them with new authoritative name servers, to direct visitors to a government seizure notice referencing a warrant issued by the court.

 

After being served with a copy of the seizure warrant, domain registrars (through which the domain owners had purchased their domains) were told to “modify any records, databases, tables, or documents” used to identify the owner of the domain, to show that seizure had taken place.

Domain Seizure Instructions

Both affidavits have four attachments marked A1-A4, each detailing actions to be taken by a specific registry. In all cases domain seizures were instructed to take place on December 16, 2022, at 4:00 pm EST.

 

Registries were given the choice of adding two new DNS entries (ns1 and ns2.seizedservers.com) to each domain or redirecting domains to two designated IP addresses. A third option allowed law enforcement to issue instructions to a relevant domain registrar instead.

 

All registries were warned to prevent any modification or transfer of the domains and to implement instructions as quickly as possible. The list of domains for each registry reads as follows:

 

Verisign: Rojadirectatvonline.net, Soccerstreams.net, Weakstream.net, Wizwig1.com, Releasesky.com, Tenorsky.com, Vipleagues.net, Extremotvplay.com, Futbollatam.com, Futboltv-envivo.com, Futbollatin.com, Librefutbol.com, Ovopremium.com

 

Registry Services, LLC (GoDaddy): AJSports.tv, Sportstream.tv, Futboltv.biz

 

Tonic Domains: Soccerstreams.to

 

Identity Digital, Inc.: Rojadirecta.global, Hesgoal.pro, Rojadirecta.me, Livetv605.me, Futboltv.live, Hesgoal.me

Notify Domain Owners of Seizures (or not)

Since domain seizures are still relatively uncommon in the United States, it was unclear whether the authorities would target domain registries, domain registrars, or both. The paperwork clearly shows that registries are the preferred option, but registrars do get a few mentions.

 

For instance, there’s an instruction for domain registrars to modify registrant records “to reflect the seizure” and also the potential for registrars to change DNS records. In the section shown below, there is a requirement for domain registrars to notify customers that their domains were seized by Homeland Security.

 

As detailed in our earlier report, U.S. domain registrars are listed for more than 60% of the seized domains. Registrars have access to domain owners’ details, so contacting them about seized domains would be straightforward.

 

Despite instructions in the warrant directed at registrars and notes that the seizure warrant will be sent to domain name registrars based in the United States, in all cases the list of registrars is surprisingly small.

 

The affidavit claims that no registrars are based in the United States but in the example above, both AJSports.tv and Futboltv.biz list NameCheap Inc. as the registrar.

 

Other domains listed in the affidavit as having no registrar in the United States include Hesgoal.pro (NameCheap), LiveTV605.me (NameCheap), Fullboltv.live (NameCheap) and Hesgoal.me (Name.com, Inc.)

 

At least on the surface, it appears that all U.S. registrars must inform their customers of the seizures but only if they are listed in the affidavit as being in the United States. None are listed as such.

 

Finally, the original seizure applications and orders were sealed and remain so. At least one was filed in a Miami district court back on October 5, 2022, at least six weeks before the start of the World Cup on November 20, 2022.

 

 

The two identical affidavits filed in separate cases can be found here and here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 23 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Puss in Boots: The Last Wish	7.8 / trailer
2	(2)	The Menu	7.3 / trailer
3	(3)	Avatar: The Way of Water	8.1 / trailer
4	(…)	Jung_E	5.4 / trailer
5	(4)	Black Adam	7.1 / trailer
6	(8)	The Old Way	5.4 / trailer
7	(6)	Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery	7.4 / trailer
8	(9)	Top Gun: Maverick	8.3 / trailer
9	(…)	Transfusion	5.4 / trailer
10	(7)	Devotion	6.7 / trailer

 

 

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

 

 

With millions of monthly users, USTVGO was one of the most visited live TV streaming portals on the Internet.

 

As its name suggests, the portal focused on US channels, making it a popular site for cord-cutting Americans or those living abroad.

 

A few days ago, USTVGO users were presented with a disappointing message. Out of the blue, the site’s clean homepage, which usually carries links to over a hundred channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Nickelodeon, was replaced with just four words; Sorry, we are closed.

Mystery Disappearances

When the message first appeared, some had hoped that the downtime would be temporary. But, as time passed, a short hiatus seemed more and more unlikely.

 

It’s not just the main USTVGO.tv domain name that’s affected either; many alternative points of access, including ustv247.tv and watchnewslive.tv, display the same “we are closed” message.

 

To discover more about the shutdown, TorrentFreak reached out to USTVGo’s administrators. At the time of writing we’re yet to receive a response. The site’s email addresses no longer work since USTVGo’s mail servers have disappeared. The platform’s official Discord channel has also been shut down.

 

The above suggests that the people behind the site don’t want to be reached. That leaves former users and the public with unanswered questions, which will undoubtedly lead to speculation.

On The Anti-Piracy Radar

A statement on USTVGO’s website claimed that it was legal ‘to watch’ its streams. However, the site itself was clearly not seen as a legal streaming service, as the streams were (re)broadcasted without permission from rightsholders.

 

Despite its popularity, USTVGO never appeared on the U.S. Trade Representative’s list of notorious pirate sites, but it was in the crosshairs of copyright holders and anti-piracy groups.

 

In recent months, the TV streaming website was targeted in DMCA notices sent by ESPN, Major League Baseball, and NBCUniversal, who all had their channels listed on the site.

 

Anti-piracy outfit Alianza, which represents major TV broadcasters including DirecTV, Discovery, Fox, HBO, and Sky, has also been on to the service for a while. In a 2021 report produced by Nagra, USTVGO was listed as one of the most popular TV streaming sites.

 

The screenshot above estimates that the service had roughly two million visitors in early 2021, but traffic continued to grow. More recently USTVGO reportedly enjoyed 16 million monthly visits, with almost three quarters coming from the US.

Pressure?

Without official word from the site’s operators, we can only speculate about the reasons behind USTVGO’s sudden closure. However, in cases like these, some type of legal pressure seems a likely option.

 

There is no evidence to suggest that a third party has taken control of USTVGO’s domains, but perhaps the owners were approached with a cease-and-desist notice.

 

For the site’s former users, whose favorite streaming portal has already gone, the cause of the closure is irrelevant. Some will likely flock to USTVGO alternatives such as 123tvnow, 123tv, tv247, and others.

 

 

YTS remains at the top of the list in 2023, despite the fact that the site and its users were subjected to various lawsuits in recent years.

 

The main YTS domain name continues to draw millions of visitors per day. That’s quite an achievement when considering that the site only lists movie torrents.

 

The annual list of popular torrent sites features well-known brands, and this year there are some notable additions. The new entrants are a pair of gaming-focused sites; skidrowreloaded.com and igg-games.com.

 

The two newcomers replace TorrentGalaxy and LimeTorrents, which remain online but were simply surpassed in traffic terms. If we had to signal a trend, we would point out that niche sites are becoming more popular, relatively speaking.

 

We have limited the list to English-language torrent sites, which means that sites such as Rutracker.org, Rutor.info, Dytt8.net and Etoland.co.kr are not included, despite the fact that they have substantial traffic numbers.

 

Finally, we have to stress that the yearly ranking is based on single domain names. If proxy sites and alternative domains were taken into account, The Pirate Bay and others would rank higher.

 

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Below is the full list of the top ten most-visited torrent site domains at the start of the new year. The list is based on various traffic reports. Please note that this list is created as a historical record, to keep track of the popularity of these sites over time.

 

We do not recommend or endorse using any of these sites. Some are known to link to malicious ads, at least incidentally. BitTorrent technology itself is not illegal but may only be used to share content with permission from the rightsholder.

Top 10 Torrent Sites of 2023

1. YTS
2. 1337x
3. NYAA
4. RARBG
5. The Pirate Bay
6. FitGirl Repacks
7. Skidrow & Reloaded
8. IGGGAMES
9. EZTV
10. TorrentGalaxy

1. YTS.mx

 

YTS.mx is the unofficial successor of the defunct YTS or YIFY group, which shut down a few years ago.

 

YTS has been the target of several lawsuits in the U.S. over the past few years. The operator signed a consent judgment and agreed to hand over user data to rightsholders. As a result, several YTS users received settlement requests or were sued instead.

 

2. 1337x

 

In 2023, 1337x retains its spot in the top three. Unlike some other sites, it has a dedicated group of uploaders and bots that provide fresh content on a daily basis.

 

1337x offers a wide variety of torrents. The site banned official YTS releases after the above-mentioned controversy.

 

3. NYAA.si

 

• NYAA.si is a popular resurrection of the anime torrent site NYAA. While there is fierce competition from alternative pirate streaming sites, the torrent portal continues to do well, climbing two positions compared to last year.

 

4. RARBG

 

RARBG has remained steady over the past year. The site operates from several popular domain names, but only the one with the most traffic is taken into account for this list. RARBG was founded in 2008 and specializes in high-quality video releases.

 

 

5. The Pirate Bay

 

 

After well over a decade of occupying the top spots, The Pirate Bay has now dropped out of the top three. Despite some technical issues and occasional downtime, the site continues to draw a large audience.

 

The Pirate Bay continues to operate from its .org domain but is also available through many proxies. The site’s registrations remain closed, however, and comments are still disabled.

 

6. FitGirl Repacks

 

FitGirl Repacks is by no means a traditional torrent site. It is the home of a popular ‘girl’ who releases slimmed-down cracked versions of popular games, which keeps download times to a minimum.

 

FitGirl, who we interviewed in 2020, publishes torrents on other sites too but also offers magnet links of their own, which is why we included the site here.

 

7. Skidrow & RELOADED

 

Skidrow and RELOADED are two iconic game-cracking groups. This likely served as inspiration for the people running Skidrowreloaded.com, which is a blog-style release site featuring popular game releases.

 

The site’s Twitter account has been banned, but the domain itself remains online, making its first appearance in the top 10 this year.

 

8. IGGGAMES

 

Due to IGG-Games’ popularity, another gaming-focused site enters this year’s Top 10. IGG-Games is no newcomer though; the site has made headlines on a few occasions and continues to climb up the ranks.

 

9. EZTV.re

 

EZTV.re is a controversial TV-torrent distribution group that hijacked the EZTV brand from the original group, which was forced to shut down soon after.

 

The site still has some decent traffic, but it likely suffers from the rise of pirate streaming sites.

 

10. TorrentGalaxy

 

Launched a little over four years ago, TorrentGalaxy is a relatively new torrent site. It has a dedicated group of uploaders and an active community. In addition to torrents, TorrentGalaxy also makes some releases available for streaming.

 

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Disclaimer: Proxies and clear copycats are excluded. Please keep in mind that many sites have mirrors or alternative domains, which are often not taken into account here. The yearly list is published as an informational / news resource. The 2022 torrent site list is archived.