For more than a decade, Kim Dotcom has challenged every detail of New Zealand and United States authorities’ attempts to hold him accountable for alleged crimes related to his hosting platform, Megaupload.

 

Just one strand of this complex legal web involved the seizure of 135 devices (made up of around 300 components, including external storage) under a MACMA (Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters) warrant. Most of the devices belonged to Dotcom and some of them had been encrypted.

Device Controversy Background

In March 2012, FBI investigators went to New Zealand and made clones of 19 devices identified by Dotcom as being most likely to contain relevant evidence. The FBI took one set of clones back to the U.S. and left the other set in New Zealand.

 

Dotcom said that he would hand over passwords to access the encrypted content in exchange for access to a set of clones. After that didn’t happen, Dotcom challenged the validity of the search warrants that allowed for the seizure of the devices in the first place.

 

In June 2013, a court found that the search warrants were invalid due to being overly broad. A year later, a remedies judgment declared the MACMA warrants unlawful.

 

The court ruled that no other data from the seized devices should leave New Zealand, and that police should carry out a review to identify irrelevant content and return it to Dotcom. Around 99 devices were returned and 36 devices were retained by New Zealand police, but negotiations to facilitate the exchange of device passwords failed.

 

In February 2014, the Court of Appeal found the warrants were indeed valid. Dotcom appealed to the Supreme Court but in December 2014, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal, meaning that the order that prevented data from leaving New Zealand no longer applied.

 

The US Department of Justice responded by demanding access to the original devices so that it could meet evidentiary standards in the united States. In 2017, the NZ Deputy Solicitor-General said that only clones could be sent to the United States but after the New Zealand Supreme Court declared Dotcom eligible for extradition, in 2022 the NZ official said that the U.S. could have the originals.

 

The Attorney-General added that four former or serving police officers, who had signed undertakings not to provide any of Dotcom’s encryption codes to anyone, especially the United States, should be released from those undertakings. Continuing his challenge-everything approach, Dotcom responded with an application seeking a judicial review.

High Court Rejects Dotcom’s Application

After considering the application to release the former and current officers from their undertakings regarding encryption codes, this summer the High Court found that since the Court of Appeal’s decision was upheld by the Supreme Court, there were good grounds to release the officers from their undertakings.

 

The Court went on to thoroughly examine Dotcom’s application for judicial review. In part, Dotcom claimed that the 2022 decision to send the original devices to the U.S. was illegitimate since there had been no material change in his case since 2017.

 

The Court said that by 2022 it was clear that the devices contained evidence of conduct which, if proven, constituted criminal offending in both New Zealand and the United States. Based on this and many other factors, the Court denied Dotcom’s request for judicial review and found that the Attorney-General/Deputy Solicitor-General were entitled to costs.

Parties Could Not Agree on Quantum

Since Dotcom and the Attorney-General failed to agree on a costs amount, it was left to the High Court to decide. In common with all other aspects of the Megaupload case, yet more causes for dispute were presented to the Court.

 

A filing from Dotcom claimed that the Judge’s statement, that the Attorney-General and the Deputy Solicitor-General (‘the Crown parties’) were entitled to costs, was “simply an observation of the general rule that costs follow the event, rather than as a final determination of liability for costs.”

 

In a judgment handed down on October 20, 2022, Justice Campbell says that when the High Court found that ‘the Crown parties’ were entitled to costs, it meant exactly that.

 

“That was a definitive statement. It was not (as is sometimes the case) a merely provisional view as to liability for costs,” Justice Campbell’s decision reads.

 

“That her Honour was determining liability for costs is reinforced by her direction for the filing of memoranda. That direction was conditional on the parties being unable to reach agreement on quantum. Her Honour did not contemplate that anything remained to agree in relation to liability.”

Liability Accepted: 50% Discount?

Dotcom’s filing anticipated this outcome, noting that if the court reached the conclusion he was liable, then he should receive a reduction of 50% due to the Crown parties producing a single set of evidence in response to two applications. After significant analysis and published reasoning, the Judge declined the request.

 

With that he ordered Dotcom to pay the Crown parties costs of NZ$39,016.75 and disbursements of NZ$595.65.

 

The Crown parties requested the amount to be paid within 21 days, noting that Dotcom “does not have a record of paying costs awards timeously.” The Judge said that was unnecessary.

 

“Costs awards are, as the Crown parties acknowledge, payable as soon as they are fixed. Non-payment has consequences, including the obligation to pay interest. The order sought would delay the date on which those consequences are triggered,” the Judge concluded.

 

While movie and music piracy tends to generate the most headlines, the publishing industry is facing similar issues.

 

Pretty much every book ever written is available online for free, including through so-called ‘shadow libraries’.

 

Z-Library is one of the largest shadow libraries on the Internet. Through a variety of domain names, the site offers over 11 million books and 84 million articles. This has attracted a steady userbase and many millions of monthly visitors.

 

All books can be accessed at no cost but Z-Library also accepts donations. These donations provide a month of access to a variety of , including more search results and the option to send books to the Kindle ebook reader.

 

Publishers and authors are not happy with the site and are actively trying to limit its exposure. Just recently, publishers won a site blocking order in France and they regularly target the site with takedown notices as well.

 

Z-Library was also mentioned in several recommendations to the US Trade Representative’s overview of notorious piracy markets. In some instances, third-party platforms such as TikTok were called out as well.

 

According to the Authors Guild, Z-Library has emerged as a vastly popular, high-volume source of illegal ebook downloads in recent years. This growth is facilitated by users who openly advertise the site on social media, TikTok included.

 

“The hashtag #zlibrary on popular social media platform TikTok has 4 million views, in reference to the countless videos posted by college and high school students and others across the world promoting it as the go-to place for free ebooks,” the Guild writes.

 

The USTR submission provides a detailed overview of the site and also contains comments from writers. They include NYT-bestselling author Sarina Bowen, who highlights TikTok’s ‘role’ in popularizing book piracy.

 

“Z-Library is killing us. A book we release in the morning is up on Z-library by lunchtime. All my books are up there,” Bowen says. “This isn’t the only site that hurts us, but it’s the site that keeps showing up in Tiktok videos.”

TikTok Responds

TikTok is not happy with this characterization. While the Authors Guild doesn’t recommend branding the platform as a notorious market, the social media platform responded to these and other rightsholder complaints in a letter to the USTR.

 

The Chinese company stresses that it takes the concerns of intellectual property owners seriously. It has procedures in place to prevent piracy and counterfeiting and has taken action in response to the Z-Library complaint.

 

TikTok says that it’s not doing anything wrong and like other online platforms, responds to takedown notices from rightsholders. The company says it also ‘bans’ problematic hashtags and after the Authors Guild complaint, #Zlibrary was blocked on the platform.

 

“Reducing user discoverability of content that violates our Community Guidelines is of paramount importance. Accordingly, TikTok proactively blocks search results for terms that violate our Community Guidelines, including terms that relate to counterfeit goods such as #designerdupe and #designerreplicas.

 

“We also recently blocked search results for #zlibrary while our team assesses content associated with that hashtag,” the platform explains.

 

Indeed, at the time of writing TikTok users will no longer find any content under the popular hashtag. This is a clear statement by TikTik but unlikely to prove effective against the constant stream of Z-Library videos.

 

In fact, TikTok’s Z-Library “discovery” page remains online and with 1.5 billion views, that’s getting a lot more exposure than the hashtag ever managed. In addition, Z-Library searches will return plenty of content as well.

 

This doesn’t mean that TikTok is doing anything wrong from a legal perspective. Similar videos appear on other sites as well, including Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere.

 

In its letter to the USTR, TikTok reiterates that it will take action when rightsholders report problematic activity. The Authors Guild doesn’t dispute that, but it would like to see more proactive anti-piracy measures.

 

The good news for the authors is that not all TikTok users are soulless pirates. When searching for Z-Library, one can also find people questioning the ease at which others promote piracy.

 

—

 

A copy of the Authors Guild submission to the USTR is available here (pdf) and TikTok’s response can be found here (pdf)

 

In recent years, legal video streaming services such as Netflix, HBO and Amazon have flourished.

 

At the same time, millions of people are streaming from unauthorized sources as well, often paired with perfectly legal streaming platforms and devices.

 

This mix of legal devices and illegal add-ons is a challenge for law enforcement. Platforms such as Kodi, Plex, and Roku are perfectly legal but can be configured to access pirated content as well.

 

A few years ago, Kodi found itself at the center of this add-on controversy. The software’s creators always distanced themselves from illegal activity but third-party sellers beyond their control marketed “fully loaded” Kodi boxes as ideal tools for piracy.

 

This eventually culminated in several lawsuits where sellers of pre-configured boxes were found liable for copyright infringement. The legal campaign was backed by many Hollywood studios as well as Netflix. They argued that illegal streaming boxes hurt their revenues but new research suggests that this may not always be the case.

Do Pirate Boxes Hurt Rightsholders?

The pirate streaming box controversy inspired researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to find out how these devices actually change people’s consumption and spending habits.

 

“The lawsuits brought by content providers and MSOs suggest that Kodi-ready streaming boxes facilitated piracy and meaningfully impacted the profitability of content production and distribution. Yet, as has been the case with many past claims of damages due to piracy, there was no direct empirical evidence to demonstrate economic harm,” they write.

 

To obtain empirical evidence, the researchers tapped into panel data from 10,337 households, which captures a wide range of spending and consumption habits. These data include Internet and TV usage reports as well as billing records for a sixteen-month period spanning 2017-2018, when Kodi-powered streaming boxes were widely used.

 

The data allowed the researchers to compare habits before and after purchasing a Kodi-powered box. This isn’t a perfect proxy for piracy, as the devices can be used for legitimate purposes as well. However, the article points out that earlier research showed that two-thirds of box owners have pirate add-ons installed.

More Netflix, More YouTube, More Piracy

When simply comparing households that have a Kodi box to those that don’t, it becomes clear that there are vast differences between the two groups. The box owners generate much more internet traffic on average, and they spend more time streaming through Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Twitch, and other platforms.

 

This finding isn’t particularly surprising or insightful. What happens to households after they first purchase a Kodi box is what the researchers really want to determine. Here, the data paint a compelling picture.

 

After adopting Kodi, total Internet usage in households increases by 2.88 gigabytes per day. A large part of this traffic is driven by Netflix (0.52 gigabytes) and YouTube (0.57 gigabytes). No significant increases were observed for Amazon Video and Hulu.

 

As expected, there is also a significant rise in traffic categories that are typically associated with piracy.

 

Interestingly, traffic to traditional network channel streaming content also increases. According to the researchers, this suggests that households may use the box to substitute viewership that would otherwise take place through a regular TV connection.

Lower Bills

Kodi adopters also change their spending habits after buying a box. They sped less money on TV subscriptions and more on their Internet bills as they upgrade to higher tiers. This is in line with what one would expect from cord-cutters.

 

“Kodi adopters spend 4.2% more on internet service than non-adopters. Incorporating household fixed effects, we estimate a further 3.1% reduction in monthly TV payments among TV subscribers and a 0.9% increase in monthly internet payments among Kodi adopters after the adoption date,” the researchers write.

 

Overall this suggests that the total monthly bill of Kodi adopters decreases by 1%. This means that there is less revenue going to third parties. However, the researchers caution that this may not translate to lower profits overall, as TV margins tend to be lower than Internet margins.

Piracy Benefits Companies?

All-in-all, the study shows that piracy can have both positive and negative effects on the broader economy. And this form of streaming box ‘piracy’ may even help major rightsholders, including Netflix.

 

“Many large SVOD services including Netflix appear to have benefited from Kodi adoption in spite of their support of lawsuits alleging damages,” the researchers write, adding that Internet companies also observe an increase in revenue and profits.

 

On the other hand, many broadband companies also generate profit from selling TV subscriptions. So, whether they make more or less profit overall depends on the margins they have for each business. Or as the researchers put it:

 

“As for harm to the MSO, the observed decrease in revenue corresponds to a decrease in profits only if the margin associated with lost TV revenue is large enough to offset the margin associated with increased internet revenue.”

 

The study provides valuable insights into the streaming piracy problem. While lawsuits and other legal actions have pretty much put an end to Kodi’s piracy add-on problem, this research will help to put future piracy waves in perspective.

 

—

 

A copy of the paper “The Impact of Video Piracy on Content Producers and Distributors” by Zachary Nolan, Jonathan Williams and Haoran Zhang is available here (pdf). This is a working paper that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed

 

Even in the wake of dozens of operations aimed at disrupting illegal IPTV services, people looking to buy IPTV packages containing thousands of channels remain spoilt for choice.

 

At $10/€10/£10 per month, give or take, illegal subscriptions are extremely cheap compared to those offered by legal broadcasters. But for pirates determined never to pay for anything, free alternatives are also available. They tend to be unreliable but can indeed offer a full subscription-like service for zero cost, albeit for limited periods.

 

Sports leagues and broadcasters such as Premier League and beIN would like to see both disappear for good, a position shared by anti-piracy coalition IBCAP and its partners operating in the same field – ACE, MPA, AAPA, and AVIA, for example.

 

Lists of services causing specific problems were recently outlined in submissions to the US government. Whether they will be branded ‘notorious markets’ remains to be seen, but it’s interesting to see which platforms could face unexpected pressure in the months and years to come.

 

Note: Text in italics represents direct quotes from submissions

Premier League: Free Streaming Sites

Premium IPTV providers are all causing problems for Premier League but a number of its recommendations focus on free streaming platforms, most with no barriers to entry.

 

Lalastreams / istream2watch.com is a family of Streaming Websites that have amassed almost 60 million global visits so far in 2022. Approximately 20 domains redirect to istream2watch.com.

 

As Premier League points out, there’s certainly no shortage of redirecting domains; alastreams.me, stream2watch.club, stream2watch.one, stream2watch.sx, streamgaroo.com are just a few examples.

 

The Premier League says that it detected over 1,000 infringing live streams on istream2watch.com over the course of the 2021/2022 season. It also claims to have traced “the likely operator” of the platform to Germany.

 

Livekoora is an Arabic language Streaming Website that provides links to live football matches from around the world, including the Premier League. The site provides a list of infringing streams for each match, allowing users to select what they want to watch and play the stream within the website.

 

Livetv.sx is a Streaming Website that has historically operated through multiple domains to provide an index of links to live streams of a very broad range of sports events, including live Matches.

 

According to a Premier League investigation, Livetv.sx has received 125 million visits from its global audience in 2022 alone. The football league also reveals that despite “successful” legal proceedings brought by other rightsholders, the site continues its operations.

 

Soccerstreams was originally a sub-thread on the Reddit platform which had attracted over 400,000 subscribers. Following pressure by a number of legitimate content owners, including the Premier League, the thread was suspended by Reddit in January 2019.

 

Shortly afterwards, however, a website with the same brand name appeared, claiming to be ‘by the founders of /r/SoccerStreams’.

 

SoccerStreams was once the UK’s most popular pirate site with a global reach in excess of 25 million visits per month.

 

Traffic today appears to be down about three million visits per month but the Premier League believes that Weakstreams.com is potentially linked since it drives traffic to SoccerStreams. Overall, it estimates that the domains have pulled in 230 million visits to date in 2022.

 

Totalsportek12 is a major pirate sports Streaming Website that provides links to multiple live sporting events. The site does not post links until about an hour before each live football match starts and when it does, it provides an index of up to 40 links.

 

The site attracted over 150 million global visits in the last year (October 2021 – September 2022). The Premier League believes that this website is operated by an individual in Poland.

Premier League: Premium IPTV Providers

BestBuyIPTV is already listed by the USTR as a ‘notorious market’. The Premier League claims that the service carries channels from all over the globe, including those carrying Premier League content. Following an investigation, the Premier League says it has located the operator of the service in Vietnam.

 

That doesn’t appear to have affected the service’s availability, however. BestBuyIPTV is happy to sell subscriptions to the public ($70 per year/7300 channels/9600 VOD titles), resellers, and restreamers alike.

 

Other IPTV providers listed by the Premier League include Chaloos (Iraq), EV Pad (Hong Kong/China), Globe IPTV (Lebanon), and Redline (Turkey).

Free M3U IPTV Playlists

Earlier this year the Premier League complained to the European Commission about so-called “Open Web Piracy”, i.e freely accessible content available on the web without users having to pay anything.

 

In their joint submission to the USTR, sports broadcaster beIN and Miramax (which the former controls) list a large number of IPTV-related services that have mostly been covered in one form or another. However, the companies also draw attention to what they say is a “serious and rapidly growing problem.”

 

Players in the IPTV system that provide rather than consume content, often have access to management dashboards. Known simply as ‘panels’, these interfaces allow for the distribution of IPTV channels and chosen access controls. They can also generate ‘playlists’ in the form of small, portable text files, usually in .M3U format.

 

These files are appearing online more than ever before, and since they often carry login credentials, access to pirate IPTV platforms becomes essentially free. They can be opened in software such as VLC but unlike torrent files, playlists can be remotely disabled at any moment.

 

Playlists are quick and cheap, but despite being unreliable too, beIN would like those who distribute them to be labeled as ‘notorious’ when the USTR publishes its report.

 

These temporary playlists have, in recent years, been distributed online by a number of sources.This has become a very popular means to access pirate sports content, in particular, given that the playlists are available shortly before games commence. Some of the fora dedicated to sharing these illegal IPTV playlists, and which are notorious for piracy.

 

Finally, it’s interesting to see which sites and services are nominated for action but at the same time, some extremely big platforms are not put forward by rightsholders at all. It seems unlikely that they’re unaware of their existence, so that raises the question of why they’re absent from the list.

 

Information like that isn’t made public, but since submissions are, perhaps it’s a case of not rocking the boat during sensitive periods or simply waiting until the time is right.

 

Three IPTV-related submissions to the USTR can be found here (1,2,3)

 

Image credit: Pixabay/geralt

 

With many millions of viewers on official platforms, “House of the Dragon” has had an excellent debut season.

 

The Game of Thrones prequel could also count on plenty of interest on pirate sites, where it’s been the most sought-after title of the past few weeks.

HBO Responds

Given its popularity, the leak of the season finale last Friday was headline news. The unprecedented leak also elicited a response from HBO, wth a spokesperson informing us that the company was pulling out all the stops to take copies offline.

 

“HBO is aggressively monitoring and pulling these copies from the internet. We’re disappointed that this unlawful action has disrupted the viewing experience for loyal fans of the show, who will get to see a pristine version of the episode when it premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, where it will stream exclusively in 4K.”

 

The entertainment company can’t complain about a lack of interest from legal viewers; the season finale drew a 9.3 million audience on Sunday. That’s the biggest audience since the conclusion of Game of Thrones three years ago.

 

Apparently, many loyal fans were happy to wait for the official release, instead of checking out the pirated leak. But what about the general pirate audience? Did they decide en masse to tune in early? It doesn’t seem that way.

Downloads Peaked After Finale

After running the numbers based on a large sample of torrent data provided by IKnow*, we see that there were significantly more people downloading House of the Dragon over the past weekend. These numbers roughly doubled compared to earlier weeks.

 

Interestingly, however, most downloads still took place on Monday. This shows that most pirates also preferred to wait for the ‘official’ high-quality pirate release. Or perhaps they were simply unaware of the leak?

 

The overall pattern, as seen in the chart above, shows that downloads typically peaked on Monday, to then drop off throughout the rest of the week. Last week was a clear exception as download numbers started to rise on Friday, the day of the leak.

Leak Source?

As promised, HBO and its licensing partners have been very busy trying to remove pirated releases. Many URLs were pulled from search engines and pirate sites that are responsive to DMCA takedowns.

 

The source of the leak wasn’t disclosed but HBO informed us that it appears to have originated from a distribution partner in the EMEA region. This matches information we received from several other sources.

 

Our sources report that the initial leak, which came with Hebrew subtitles, originated from an Israeli release group on a private torrent tracker. This suggests that there’s a link to Israel. We asked HBO to confirm or deny this, but the company chose not to comment any further.

 

—

 

(*) These data represent a large sample of all estimated House of the Dragon torrent downloads on a given day. These are not per individual episode but a day-to-day increase can generally be attributed to new releases. Private trackers are excluded.

 

For stakeholders engaged in the perpetual fight against piracy, Europol’s IP Crime Conference offers networking opportunities by the truckload.

 

The 2022 event began Wednesday evening with a welcome reception in Rome, Italy. Thursday’s official opening ceremony began at 08:45 with a performance by the Guardia Di Finanza Fanfara, the official band of Itay’s financial police.

 

Given that the band’s GdF partners are responsible for taking down IPTV providers and sellers en masse, many in attendance would’ve appreciated the connections.

A Who’s Who of Anti-Piracy Groups

After two years of online meetings, this year’s event sees companies and industry groups fly in from all over the world, with entities fighting IPTV piracy represented comprehensively.

 

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and their partners in the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance are both in attendance. And then there’s the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Sky Italia, Eurojust, FAPAV, INTERPOL, Motion Picture Association, NAGRA Kudelski and Nordic Content Protection. Even U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Justice made the trip.

 

The key themes of the conference are based on two questions: 1) How do we bring down criminal networks that are exploiting times of crisis to infringe IP Rights? 2) How can public-private partnership enhance the fight against IP Crime?

 

Public-private partnerships in IPR enforcement are nothing new but over the last few years, some rightsholder groups have become physically embedded inside government law enforcement agencies. The lines between civil and criminal enforcement are clear in law but much less obvious during investigations and on matters such as intelligence sharing, at least to outsiders.

 

The benefits of collaboration are obvious, however. The private sector has exceptional investigation tools, dedicated experts, and profit-driven motivation. On the other, law enforcement entities have superior access to restricted information and the not-insignificant power of arrest. When everything goes to plan, big things can follow.

Private-Public In Action

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) is a company incorporated in the UK. Run by former policeman and current Irdeto cybersecurity expert Mark Mulready, AAPA represents the companies and groups listed below.

 

It’s clear why AAPA is considered one of pirate IPTV’s most significant rivals but when enforcement is escalated to the next level, government agencies have access to new sets of tools. There are numerous examples of this paying off but for AAPA, three events stand out in particular.

And the Winner Is…..

During the opening day of the conference, AAPA announced the winner of its 2022 award. It went to the Cybercrime Department of the Bulgarian Directorate Combating Organized Crime for its lead in implementing the EMPACT priority on intellectual property crime.

 

EMPACT – the European Multi-Disciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats – is the main mechanism for prioritizing threats and organizing an operational response in the EU. The 2022-2025 EMPACT cycle renders intellectual property crime an EU priority and with early recognition for Bulgaria’s cybercrime unit, the stage may have been set for new operations similar to these (1,2,3).

 

“The award was presented to Inspector Alexander Velev for his work in leading the operational action concerning illegal IPTV and illegal streaming in the framework of the EMPACT priority,” AAPA’s announcement reads.

 

“The effectiveness of collaborative working is clear to see and is evidenced by the fact that AAPA was invited to produce and deliver a 3 -day technical based training event which was hosted by the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior in Sofia,” says Sheila Cassells, Executive Vice President of AAPA.

Conference Co-Hosts Take Both ‘Highly Commended’ Awards

A pair of AAPA ‘highly commended’ awards were presented to Nucleo di Polizia Economico-Finanziaria della Guardia di Finanza di Milano and Squadra Reati Informatici della Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale Ordinario di Milano.

 

Featuring local and state police with support from the judiciary, these financial crime units are behind ‘The Net’, an anti-IPTV operation that began in December 2020 and claimed a number of high-profile victories before its completion in January 2022.

 

“We are delighted to recognise the continued commitment of the Italian police to fighting IP crime for a second year. The scale of the illegal network which was broken up as a result of THE NET is another successful blow against pirates,” Cassells says.

 

Those in attendance appear primed to deliver many more.

 

Image credit: Pixabay/Quince Creative

 

Another week and yet another announcement from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment revealing the demise of even more pirate sites.

 

ACE says the ring it has just taken down focused on the Spanish-language market and attracted significant traffic using a familiar technique. Instead of creating unique branding for each site, domain names were named as closely as possible to effectively mimick pre-existing piracy brands.

Why Some Pirates Copy Other Pirates

In a world where branded sites such as The Pirate Bay or RARBG are downranked or even removed from Google search completely, filling the vacuum with a similar-sounding domain can reap dividends. ACE says this particular ring clocked up 271 million visits over the past two years. On average, they enjoyed 16.5 million visits per month during the last three months.

 

ACE is quite rightfully pleased with its work. All 48 domains identified by the anti-piracy coalition are being surrendered to the Motion Picture Association (MPA), adding to the hundreds of domains seized by ACE in many other operations. On the surface it certainly seems significant but there are tell-tale signs of a bigger picture.

Copy Movies and TV Shows, Copy Other Pirate Sites

One of the seized domains is Cuevana.nz, which exploited brand awareness for a site that originally launched as Cuevana.tv and later became one of the most popular pirate streaming operations in Latin America.

 

Domains including pelis24.se, Pelisplus2.org, Pelismart.net and Poseidonhd.nz continued the same copycat theme, but these are just the handful mentioned by ACE and only a small part of the full picture.

 

TorrentFreak identified other freshly-seized domains from the same ring, including poseidonhd.in, pelisplus.nz, pelisflix.in, series24.in and repelisplus.to. The list doesn’t even end there; peliculas-online.net, ples24.pl, peelink3.pro – it seems endless.

 

These alone paint a clear enough picture but leave a significant question unanswered.

Superhuman Pirate Site Juggler?

ACE identified a Colombian man in Bogota as the person behind all 48 domains, many of which followed the copycat naming convention while others linked to less popular platforms. Given the scale, we asked ACE if the 48-domain pirate site ring really was the work of just one man. We received this answer:

 

“Large, illegal piracy operations like this ring are rarely a one-man job. Even if one person manages all elements of these operations, they often source elements such as content from specialized illegal providers,” ACE told us.

 

“Some actions, such as this case, may focus on a single person, but that person relied on content obtained elsewhere.”

 

And that’s just one of the reasons why it’s completely feasible for one man to run dozens of sites. Because if pirates are good at anything, it’s copying.

Ctrl C / Ctrl V / Ctrl C / Ctrl V

Hoping to learn more about the investigation, we hoped that ACE would answer more questions. The anti-piracy coalition clearly understands the nature of the ring but declined to answer the majority. So instead, here’s a brief overview of how other site rings can be operated by just one person.

 

Since the domain is already being investigated by ACE and actually came up as we researched the current case, here’s a screenshot of Lookmovie2.to, another domain trading on the brand of a previously famous site, also acting as part of a ring.

 

At this point we would usually include screenshots for Lookmovie2.la, lookmovie.site, lookmovie.mobi, and lookmovie.media. We might also do the same for lookmovie.fyi, lookmovie.fun, and lookmovie.foundation. In this case, however, there’s not much point.

Websites Are The Windows, Not The Engine Room

Along with lookmovie.download, lookmovie.digital, lookmovie.com, lookmovie.clinic, lookmovie.click, lookmovie.buzz, and lookmovie.art, all of the mentioned domains are linked to exactly the same website code, serving exactly the same selection of movies and TV shows.

 

What we have here is an easily replicated template website pulling all of the important data from third-party sources. That includes all of the artwork and movie information but crucially the videos too. In turn, the service providing the videos is used by a number of other streaming websites, each using their own naming conventions in various domains.

 

In summary, if a website has a million different domains, the number of websites stays the same. Take away all of the domains and the website still exists. If that website is easy to replicate because it carries no content, it can be replaced extremely quickly, just like the domains.

 

All of this is made possible because the important stuff – the movies and TV shows – are not an integral part of these sites. They simply act as a front end so even if every single last one disappeared tomorrow, they can be replaced just as quickly, and nearly as quickly as the domains.

 

Running a pirate site is a dangerous endeavor. Those who get caught can face serious claims for damages or even prison time.

 

Apparently, this is a risk some are willing to take. There are thousands of pirate sites and services online today, some more public than others.

 

WishFlix is one of those sites that clearly stands out. The French streaming portal was initially hosted on GitHub and like other sites of this nature, appears to use a pre-coded script and a third-party content library to serve embedded movies and TV shows to the public.

TikTok/GitHub Pirates

In order to build an audience, the operators used social media as a promo tool. This paid off as the site gathered a large audience on TikTok, where one of its videos hit well over a million views.

 

But the success came with a downside. A few weeks ago the French media company StudioCanal sent a DMCA takedown notice targeting WishFlix. Unlike other streaming portals that use bulletproof hosting providers, WishFlix was hosted on the developer platform GitHub.

 

GitHub takes copyright infringement rather seriously and it certainly isn’t a safe haven for pirate sites. However, after making some changes, the site largely remained accessible on GitHub. For a short while at least.

ALPA Increases the Pressure

Two weeks after StudioCanal sent its notice, the French anti-piracy organization ALPA stepped up. Representing a broad range of entertainment companies, including the major Hollywood studios, ALPA demanded GitHub to remove the entire repository from its platform.

 

In its DMCA notice, ALPA provided several examples of infringing videos while stressing that there are many more.

 

“This entire repository is dedicated to sharing illegal movies and TV Shows from our member and should be taken down as is. These are just a tiny fraction of the repository’s content,” the notice reads.

 

Adding some more weight to its warning, ALPA also stressed that under French law repeat copyright infringements have serious consequences. These include hefty damages and multi-year prison sentences.

 

“If the infringement is repeated, it is then punishable by 6 years imprisonment and a fine of €1,000,000, with application of the minimum one year prison sentence,” the group wrote.

 

Following this notice, the operators seem to have realized that GitHub isn’t the ideal hosting partner for their venture. Instead, they registered the dedicated domain name “wishflix.fr” to set up shop elsewhere.

 

At the time of writing, the site uses the French hosting provider OVH where the domain is also registered. This is all public information that anyone can access in a few keystrokes.

 

The good news for WishFlix is that it still seems to control the GitHub repository. There’s no infringing content hosted there anymore, but a 404 error notice now redirects visitors to the new domain.

Comeback Attempt

Thus far the site’s comeback isn’t yet complete. There are no movies embedded on the new domain and some other things have to be sorted out as well.

 

WishFlix appears to be a typical example of a site that uses “piracy as a service” providers. It’s not hosting any of the videos itself, but pulls them from external sources while presenting everything through a pre-coded script.

 

How long the site will survive with this new setup is yet to be seen, but it looks like rightsholders are pretty determined to take it offline.

 

In addition to the GitHub removal, WishFlix’s popular TikTok account has been taken down as well. A new TikTok account surfaced soon after but the streaming portal has chosen Telegram as its main communication channel for the time being.

 

Earlier this month, the RIAA shared its recommendations for the USTR’s annual review of overseas notorious markets.

 

The music group reported well-known targets such as The Pirate Bay, Newalbumreleases, MP3Juices, RARBG, and RapidGator, plus other piracy-related sites and services.

AI Piracy?

The RIAA also carved out a brand new category this year, labeled AI Based Extractors/Mixers. These ‘Artificial Intelligence’ powered sites can extract vocals or musical tracks from songs, or “master” a song based on the style of another.

 

These technologies don’t have to be problematic, as long as all permissions are in order. However, when the names of some of the world’s top artists are used for promotional purposes, the RIAA typically becomes concerned.

 

For example, Songmastr promised to “master” songs based on the styles of well-known musical artists, such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Coltrane, Bob Dylan and James Brown, to mention just a few.

 

Similarly, acapella-extractor.com showcased links to several YouTube videos with vocals from top artists, whose labels are members of the RIAA. The featured vocals were extracted and published without permission.

Operator Responds

Most of the sites branded as notorious markets by the RIAA remain quiet but Songmastr, Acapella-extractor and Remove-Vocals, which are all operated by the same person, sent a rebuttal to the USTR which was published this week.

 

According to the person who manages these sites, the RIAA never reached out to share its concerns directly. In addition, they argue that the sites don’t deserve the ‘notorious’ brand for several reasons.

 

“[RIAA’s] arguments are a mix of factually wrong information, a misunderstanding of how these AI services work, and minor allegations regarding potential trademark infringement (corrected since) which are not piracy or counterfeiting,” the rebuttal reads (pdf).

 

“The only argument on actual dissemination of copyrighted material on these websites concerns a total of 6 links to Youtube videos (since removed) which were used as examples to illustrate the services.”

Links and References Removed

In response to the RIAA’s concerns, Songmastr removed all mentions of popular artists. Users of the site are now directed to only mix tracks when they have the rights, aspiring producers testing their own tracks, for example.

 

While the names of popular artists have been removed from the site, the operator astutely mentions that this wasn’t a copyright issue, but a potential trademark violation that’s beyond the scope of the piracy category.

 

Similarly, the Acapella-extractor website removed six YouTube links where the site’s capabilities were showcased. Going forward, these types of examples will no longer be used on the site.

The Deezer Connection

The services run by the operator mainly rely on third-party open-source technology. This leads to an interesting connection, as Acapella-extractor and Remove-Vocals use the Spleeter algorithm published by Deezer.

 

Deezer is one of the largest legal streaming services in the world and a key partner of many RIAA labels. On GitHub, Deezer explicitly advertises Spleeter’s music separation features, including the separation of vocals.

 

Songmastr is also based on third-party open-source software. The service uses the Matchering library, which is also used by the artist-endorsed Moises app.

Dumb AI…

Thus far, there hasn’t been any mention of artificial intelligence. The RIAA wasn’t sure about this element either but said that if the sites are training their AI models using copyrighted music, it would be considered problematic.

 

In their rebuttal, the operator of the sites offered reassurance that there is no learning involved in these AI platforms.

 

“The open source ‘matchering’ algorithm is not a trained algorithm. It is a predetermined set of operations, which transform the user input, using general properties of a reference song,” they write, adding that Deezer’s Spleeter algorithm ships pre-trained.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the operator notes that the term AI is more a marketing term than a technical description. This type of marketing was perceived as a threat by the RIAA but after addressing these concerns the sites hope to stay off the final notorious markets list.

 

After jumping into the hot seat on January 1, 2022, the fledgling Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (ARCOM) has been battling to reduce piracy in France.

 

Like many of its European counterparts, Arcom’s main weapon of choice is website blocking. According to a September statement by Arcom president Roch-Olivier Maistre, more than 700 sites were blocked in the first six months of 2022. In the same period, piracy of live sporting events was slashed by 50%, Maistre said.

 

A new Arcom report published this week offers more detail, including how many pirates have seen site blocking in action and how that affected their decisions moving forward.

Live Sports Universally Consumed by Internet Users

According to Arcom data, 97% of internet users say they have watched live sports events, with 73% claiming to do so on a monthly basis. Almost eight out of ten internet users (79%) utilize legal sources, such as free-to-air TV (63%) or some type of subscription service (37%).

 

With almost three-quarters of internet users watching in the last six months, football is the king of broadcast sports. In second and third place, runners-up tennis and cycling trail with 62% and 52% of the available audience. Arcom’s mission is to ensure that wherever and whenever possible, consumers are served through existing legal channels or aren’t served at all.

One in Five Have Consumed Illegal Live Streams

Of all internet users in France aged 15 and older, more than one in five (21%) say they have watched live sports via some type of illegal streaming platform. When the platform type is narrowed down to include only regular pirate streaming sites, the figure drops to 13%.

 

These figures could’ve been much worse but other findings are more of a concern.

 

The quote you shared suggests that “Almost three-quarters (72%) of the people who watch live sports via illegal streams say they watch sports on a weekly basis, suggesting a level of habit and familiarity with a process that should be getting more difficult due to site blocking. And it’s not as if the French haven’t been trying.

 

Last month Arcom revealed that 700 pirate sites had been blocked by ISPs in 2022 alone. The agency’s new report reveals that by the end of September 2022, after receiving 41 referrals relating to nine sports competitions, Agcom had referred 481 domains to ISPs for blocking.

 

That’s on top of the domains referred for blocking following court decisions, making a grand total of 835 pirate sites blocked in the first nine months of the year. Given this huge effort, perhaps the real shocker for rightsholders is that deterrent messaging designed to limit new recruits to streaming piracy is failing pretty badly.

 

Of all people in France currently consuming pirated live sports streams, 44% say that they only began doing so less than a year ago, a period that directly corresponds with a campaign designed to make piracy more difficult and much less attractive.

 

Despite these obvious concerns, Arcom data suggests that the blocking message is being delivered, in many cases by practical example.

40% of Pirates Have Personal Experince of Blocking

France has been blocking pirate sites for years but the current campaign is much more intense. Arcom says that when all consumers of pirated sports streams are taken into account, 40% now have personal experience of site blocking, accumulated over the last six months alone.

 

When added to those pirates who haven’t been blocked themselves but know someone who has, 67% of all live sports streaming pirates now have either direct or indirect knowledge of domain blocking. Arcom says that on average, pirates were blocked from infringing sites 7.3 times in the first six months of the year.

 

That leaves the million-dollar question: when pirates were presented with an infringement roadblock, did they respond in a way that benefits rightsholders or was blocking seen as a problem in need of another piracy-focused solution?

Good News and Not So Good News

Anti-piracy reports come in a number of flavors but two are seen more often than most.

 

Depicting falling skies and a looming commercial apocalypse, option one is usually rolled out to elicit helpful responses from lawmakers and governments. As an expensive and sprawling entity that must now deliver on its numerous promises, Arcom has chosen option two, emphasizing success wherever possible.

 

One example features the reactions of pirates when they discovered that their live sports streaming sites had been blocked by Arcom or the courts.

 

“The top reaction above all was to abandon illegal sites, true for 48% of Internet users who were confronted with a block,” Arcom’s report reads.

 

This rather optimistic take is undoubtedly underpinned by honestly obtained data, but it’s actually two components combined. The first might even represent great news for rightsholders.

 

When faced with a pirate site blockade, 15% of internet users decided that legal platforms showing live sports are a better option than ISPs ‘blocked’ landing pages or blank screens. It’s an optimistic but potentially believable number that, if true, could signal the end of live sports piracy if the pressure is maintained.

 

The second component is more questionable, almost to the point of being unbelievable.

Pirates Can’t Take The Heat These Days

Arcom’s study claims that after encountering a blocked site, 37% of live sports piracy consumers simply turned off their computers and abandoned pirate sites. It’s the kind of result rightsholders dreamed about when France was still sending millions of warning letters to pirates, along with cash fines and threats of imprisonment.

 

A 37% reduction in piracy never happened then and nobody seriously entertained the idea it was even possible. At the time, BitTorrent was the dominant method of sharing, something that made them extremely vulnerable to being caught. The complete opposite is true when it comes to today’s streaming sites, yet somehow this leads to spectacular results within months.

 

A more believable scenario can be found in the 46% of internet users who, when confronted with blocks, used their browsers to visit other pirate sites that hadn’t been blocked. Another realistic finding features a persistent 12% of pirates who, after experiencing blocking, turned to circumvention measures such as VPNs and modified DNS settings.

Arcom: Audience For Pirate Streaming Sites Cut in Half

Arcom’s bottom line is that site blocking has delivered extraordinary results in a very short space of time.

 

“An initial assessment of these measures shows their effectiveness: the overall audience of illicit live sports streaming sites halved between January and June 2022 (-49%) and more generally by 47% between the 1st half of 2021 and the 1st half of 2022,” its report reads.

 

If true, these figures would be a great result for the French and a landmark moment in the history of piracy mitigation measures. Somewhat intrigued, we looked at how the data was gathered and by whom.

30,000 People Happily Install Survelliance Software

Arcom’s methodology reveals that 30,000 individuals representative of the French population were studied to determine their visits to 1,941 sites offering pirated live sports streams. The data was provided by established French company Mediametrie using information from its Total Internet Audience product.

 

TIA monitors participants’ browser habits and histories, plus data relating to app usage, across three screen types; computers, mobile phones and tablets. This is made by possible by participants agreeing upfront to have dedicated surveillance software installed on each of their devices that takes care of the monitoring.

 

Without being too impolite, anyone who knowingly installs surveillance software on a device and then breaks the law on that device, hasn’t really thought things through. At a bare minimum, it’s not the type of software most pirates would like on their phones, unless they had other devices hidden away.

 

Nevertheless, since these 30,000 individuals are representative of the entire French population, we can also conclude that 100% of live sports pirates in France are happy to have data relating to their illegal activities put into a database before being shared with a government agency. That’s what the data says, we can’t be more honest than that.

After Huge Success, Arcom Wants More

In summary, live sports piracy is down 49% but Arcom wants even better results to report. From intermediaries and DNS operators to hosting companies and VPN providers, everyone has a role to play in the fight against piracy.

 

The protection of sports content therefore calls for increased vigilance, by strengthening cooperation through agreements between Internet service providers and sports rights holders, by improving technological blocking solutions and, more broadly, by involving all of the technical intermediaries in the internet ecosystem, such as domain name system (DNS) providers, virtual private networks (VPN) or hosting services, for example, in this fight against piracy.

 

The ‘Impact of Blocking Illicit Sports Services’ report can be found here (French, pdf)

 

Image credits: Pixabay/gerelt/qimono

 

Three years ago, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music sued Internet provider Grande Communications.

 

The recording labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

 

After several delays the trial is now in full swing, with both sides trying to convince the jury that their version of events is the correct one. This has resulted in several conflicts already, including when Grande surprised the labels by introducing testimony about subscribers who had previously denied piracy allegations.

 

These piracy claims, sent to the ISP by anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp, sit at the center of this case. The labels argue that Grande failed to take any meaningful action in response to the notices, while the ISP counters that the notices are unreliable and inaccurate.

Emailed Boing Boing Article

To strengthen its case, Grande informed the labels of a piece of evidence it intended to introduce at trial today. The document in question is an email sent by Warner anti-piracy expert Howie Singer, to himself, several years ago. The email contains a copy of a blog post published by Boing Boing.

 

Copying isn’t the issue here; it’s the topic of the article that’s important. The article covers a Rightscorp call center script that was surfaced during an earlier lawsuit. Boing Boing labeled the script “terrifying extortion.”

 

These documents have always been part of Grande’s evidence so their introduction is no surprise. The problem lies with the labels’ claim that presenting them to the jury today would be problematic. In a motion filed at the court yesterday, they formally request the exclusion of both.

 

“Any fair review of this evidence reveals that Grande’s sole purpose in introducing this evidence is provoking outrage from the jury based on a hostile media source’s inflammatory mischaracterization of Rightscorp’s business practices,” the labels inform the court.

“Pro-Piracy Website?”

The article is not relevant because it doesn’t say anything about the accuracy of Rightscorp’s piracy detection technology. Instead, it’s an article from a “third-party pro-piracy website” that deals with other aspects of the business, the music companies add.

 

“[T]he BoingBoing evidence is irrelevant to the issues in this case. Rightscorp’s technology is at issue in this trial, but not its business methods, and certainly not how a hostile third-party might mischaracterize those methods.

 

“[T]he BoingBoing evidence should be excluded because it is nothing more than out of court declarations from a third-party pro-piracy website,” the labels insist, characterizing the evidence as hearsay from a source that lacks trustworthiness.

 

Shortly after the music companies submitted their motion, Grande filed its response. The ISP informs the court that the labels previously tried to exclude the article from the evidence list, but the request was denied.

 

Plaintiffs provide no evidence for their statement that Boing Boing is a pro-piracy site, the response adds, while mentioning that it is an award-winning web blog that has been around for more than 30 years.

Rightscorp’s Credibility

Grande further notes that the evidence isn’t about the truthfulness of Boing Boing’s statements. Instead, it is offered to show that Warner’s own anti-piracy expert was aware of it and found it important enough to document.

 

“The evidence that Plaintiffs seek to exclude is highly relevant because it shows that Plaintiffs themselves recognized that Rightscorp was attempting to extort consumers,” Grande notes.

 

Rightcorp’s piracy evidence plays a crucial role in this case but the labels never used the company to send any warnings of their own. Instead, they purchased data from Rightscorp at a later stage to support their own legal campaign.

 

While music industry insiders previously tried to distance themselves from Rightscorp, they are now trying to convince the jury that its copyright violation detection technology is accurate. The Boing Boing email adds color to this argument, according to the ISP.

 

“It would be extremely prejudicial to Grande’s defense if the Court allowed Plaintiffs to make these arguments while precluding Grande from showing that Plaintiffs’ internal communications refute their litigation-driven narrative,” the ISP says.

 

“Plaintiffs cannot affirmatively present Rightscorp’s business and system as legitimate while suppressing evidence that shows they know the opposite is true. These documents show that Plaintiffs knew exactly who they were partnering with in this lawsuit.”

 

The trial is scheduled to continue today. Thus far the court has yet to rule on this latest dispute but the issue may be settled behind closed doors, without any public record.

 

—

 

A copy of the record labels’ motion in limine is available here (pdf) and Grande’s response can be found here (pdf)

 

In the belief that pirate sites only stay online when they’re returning a profit, City of London Police decided that deprivation of revenue should be a key strategy in its fight against piracy.

 

Launched in 2014 and controlled by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), the ‘Infringing Website List’ (IWL) carries details of pirate sites nominated by rightsholders and provides the basis for future enforcement via escalating actions.

 

After PIPCU forms an opinion that a site is probably illegal, it sometimes makes direct contact with site operators. Warning of potential prosecutions for offenses under the Fraud Act 2006, Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, and even the Serious Crimes Act 2007, PIPCU suggests shutting down as an alternative.

 

In recent correspondence seen by TorrentFreak, PIPCU offers to help a site operator legitimize his MP3 piracy site but gives just 14 days’ notice of further action, including “internet infrastructure disruption.”

Welcome to the Blacklist

Funded by the government and run by City of London Police under the banner of Operation Creative, the IWL is supported by major rightsholders, including the BPI, IFPI and The Publishers Association, plus international groups such as the MPA.

 

The IWL is shared among brands, advertising companies, agencies and affiliates, who are informed that responsible companies boycott pirate sites because it a) protects their image and b) starves pirate sites of much-needed cash. Anti-piracy groups are also given access to the IWL but despite footing the bill, ordinary people aren’t granted access to the Operation Creative portal in order to view it.

 

Well, in theory at least.

So How Many Sites Are On The List?

The IWL is in a constant state of flux due to the addition of new domains and the removal of others. That being said, we believe that 1,530 domains are on the list right now, including torrent sites RARBG, 1337x, TorrentGalaxy and YTS. The list also includes several domains referencing Pirate Bay but as far as we can see, the site’s main domain isn’t present.

 

Streaming giant Fmovies is listed several times across multiple domains along with Bflix and Soap2Day. YouTube-ripping sites such as Yout and YTMate are also blacklisted, along with many others serving specific foreign language markets.

 

The list appears to cover the most important targets and hundreds of domains many people will be completely unaware of. That’s in addition to a few hundred others that could disappear overnight without anyone noticing, but that’s partly the point of the list.

 

All sites start off slowly but when more famous sites get blocked, sudden growth can appear from nowhere. With fewer advertising opportunities, it’s certainly possible that sites with the potential to get bigger will throw in the towel before that can happen.

More than 6,000 Domains Have Ever Appeared on the IWL

The 1,530 figure initially came as a bit of a surprise since we expected many more domains to be listed. That being said, an indexing scheme used in the IWL allows us to have an educated guess at the total number of domains targeted since its inception in 2014.

 

Our estimate is 6,039 domains, which leads to the tentative conclusion that around 4,500 domains have been removed from the list over the years. Based on the assumption that sites stay on the list until they stop infringing, one might draw the conclusion that after appearing on the IWL, 75% of sites either clean up their act or simply die.

 

That kind of result would be something to shout about but the IWL deals in specific domains, not sites per se. It’s possible that a single site could have had many domains and may have appeared on the list many times over the years. Plug-and-play sites also have a tendency to quickly respawn with new identities and new domains, muddying the waters even more.

 

The reality is that we don’t know all of the details and given the secrecy to date, that’s not likely to change. What we do know is that the UK government is very keen to know everything and is willing to spend taxpayers’ money to find out.

Government Wants Data On IWL-Listed Pirate Sites

According to the official government portal Government Online, between 1,200 and 1,500 government tenders and contracts are advertised each week. On October 10, the Intellectual Property Office called for quotations on the following:

 

A tracking portal, providing data on advertising streams for requested websites, which are considered to be involved in copyright infringement.

 

“This tender is being run by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the contract will vest with and be paid for by the IPO. The benefit and outcomes of the services will be delivered by the supplier to the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), who are a strategic partner of the IPO,” the tender reads.

 

“The initial term of the contract shall run from the date of award (following this tender process) to 31 March 2024. This is anticipated to be 15 or 16 months.”

Data Sought By The Government

The Intellectual Property Office lists several minimum requirements for its portal, including the following:

 

• Total amount of adverts and estimated advert impressions across IWL domains
• Total number of brands and total number of advert intermediaries
• Total IWL domains that have advertising on them
• Advert campaign type e.g., major brands, gambling, adult, or sponsored
• Ability to click on a domain and get a screen shot of the domain and the advert
• Data must be visually represented though charts and diagrams.
• Being able to focus on one or selection domains
• Being able to focus by campaign type, e.g., brands or gambling
• Being able to focus on a particular brand
• Provide a quarterly report in a particular area such as gambling adverts

 

The specifications suggest that in addition to measuring the volume of ads keeping pirate sites afloat, the IPO may need data to support measures against specific industry sectors, perhaps through education, persuasion, or other means delivered by strategic partner, PIPCU.

 

The tender indicates that while the IPO will be paying the bill, all services will be delivered to PIPCU. The initial contract is expected to run for 15 or 16 months, with an option to extend up to 25 months.

 

The maximum budget for the initial term is £5,500 (including VAT) per month and while all companies will need to endure the bidding process, it seems more than likely that White-Bullet will pick up the contract.

 

The company specializes in this kind of work and recently won a new contract to maintain the database behind the Infringing Website List.

 

Finally, a paragraph in the tender caught our eye as being a little out of the ordinary and if the claim is true, PIPCU may have a softer side that’s never publicized.

Contact From PIPCU May Not Be a Disaster?

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit is well-known for blacklisting sites, taking down people involved in streaming piracy, seizing tens of thousands of domains related to counterfeiting, and carrying out similar enforcement operations.

 

Interestingly, the Intellectual Property Office’s description of the unit suggests something much more than that.

 

“Operation Creative, for the first time in the UK, heavily focus on early intervention seeking to engender the principles of restorative justice as a means of providing early warnings to offenders, giving them the opportunity to develop their businesses into legitimate practices,” the IPO explains.

 

The concept of restorative justice has been gaining traction in UK government circles for some time. The theory is that by opening up lines of communication between criminals and their victims, the parties may be able to find ways to repair the harm and discover a path forward.

 

The problem here is that sites are put on the IWL blacklist because they are overwhelmingly used for piracy, their operators are proven to be uncooperative, and in many cases their sites have already been blocked in the UK based on a High Court injunction.

 

The suggestion that after all this they might be invited round for a cup of tea with the MPA or BPI, to discuss where it all went wrong and how to move forward, seems utterly incredible. Times are changing, no doubt about that, but things don’t change that much, surely?

 

The tender and specification annex can be downloaded here (1,2, 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 three newcomers on the list. “Bullet Train” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 24 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Bullet Train	7.4 / trailer
2	(4)	Top Gun: Maverick	8.6 / trailer
3	(5)	Thor: Love and Thunder	6.5 / trailer
4	(…)	Black Adam	7.1 / trailer
5	(8)	Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday	5.8 / trailer
6	(2)	Clerks III	6.8 / trailer
7	(…)	Bros	6.4 / trailer
8	(…)	Terrifier 2	6.8 / trailer
9	(9)	Jurassic World Dominion	6.0 / trailer
10	(10)	Nope	7.1 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Next month, billions of people from all over the world will tune in to watch the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

 

Most viewers will do so through authorized services but events like this draw massive pirate audiences as well.

 

Since this type of live-streaming piracy is a grave concern for rightsholders around the world, mitigation measures are already being prepared. In Canada, several media companies decided that sitting on the sidelines was not an option, so took their battle to court.

Blocking Pirated World Cup Streams

In their complaint, Bell Media, The Sports Network, CTV Specialty Television, and Réseau des sports, accuse two “John Doe” defendants of offering pirated sports streams. The rightsholders asked the Federal Court for damages and an injunction to restrain the defendants’ infringing activities.

 

Initially, the legal paperwork didn’t mention any blocking requests. However, filing a standard complaint is part of the site-blocking procedure and an official blocking application followed soon after. The request was granted by Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley last Friday.

 

“[T]he Third Party Respondents shall, during each of the FIFA World Cup Live Match Windows specified in Schedule 1 of this Order, block or attempt to block access, by at least their residential wireline Internet service customers, to each of the IP addresses for the Target Servers..,” the order reads.

Confidential Targets

Unfortunately, the actual blocking targets are not published publicly. This information remains confidential to prevent the targeted operators from taking circumvention measures, such as moving to new streaming servers or changing IP addresses.

 

What we do know is that the two operators host the unauthorized streams through foreign providers. The first defendant used hosting companies in the British Virgin Islands and Ukraine, while the second used a provider from Belize.

 

These pirated streams appeared on various public sports piracy sites including bingsport.xyz, papahd.club, and sportsway.me, and through link aggregator sites such as soccerstreamlinks.com, redditsoccerstreams.org and soccerstream.net.

Match Windows

All major Canadian ISPs must comply with the order by blocking server IP addresses used to transmit pirated World Cup streams. These measures only apply when the football matches are being broadcast; the so-called “match windows”.

 

The rightsholders are solely responsible for verifying the infringing nature of the targeted servers. They must also compensate the ISPs for any costs incurred, up to a maximum amount of 15,000 Canadian dollars.

 

The Internet providers, meanwhile, have been given leeway to lift blockades under special circumstances. If they suspect that overblocking is taking place, for example, or to prevent security threats and network problems.

Temporary Measure?

When the World Cup is over the blocking order will expire automatically. However, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see similar requests in the future for other sporting events. These targeted blocking orders have become more common in recent years, especially in the UK where they are used extensively.

 

As previously reported, Canada does have some experience in tackling live event piracy. Earlier this year, the Federal Court issued a blocking order to prevent live NHL games from being viewed via pirate IPTV streams.

 

The order was limited to the 2021-2022 NHL season but the rightsholders, including Rogers, Bell, The Sports Network, and Groupe TVA, asked the court for a renewal last week, to keep measures in place for the upcoming season as well.

 

In other words, while the blocking orders are targeted and limited to a specific period, they can in theory be resubmitted to cover new seasons, events, or tournaments in the future.

 

—

 

A copy of the FIFA World Cup blocking order, issued by Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley is available here (pdf)

 

Selling piracy-configured set-top boxes or subscriptions that enables access to pirated TV streams can lead to both civil and criminal prosecutions in the UK. In most cases over the past few years, the latter has been the preferred option.

 

Any rightsholder can file a civil lawsuit but companies including Sky, BT Sport and the Premier League, prefer private criminal prosecutions offering prison sentences in addition to damages. In several cases over the past few years, investigations by local Trading Standards teams have also led to custodial sentences and on Friday, another was added to the list.

Trading Standards Investigates BillsTV

Britain’s pubs have long been associated with people quietly buying questionable items from men with names that suddenly can’t be remembered. These days it’s more likely for those sales to be organized on social media, which happily broadcast illegal sales to the whole world while logging everything for posterity.

 

After Kent County Council Trading Standards discovered piracy-configured set-top boxes and access to illegal streams being sold on Facebook, it launched an investigation. Sales took place via a dedicated page called ‘BillsTV’ with devices and subscription tiers offered at various prices, and then paid for via PayPal.

 

Combining illegal streaming subscriptions and Facebook advertising with PayPal payments isn’t exactly ideal for avoiding detection and by May 2019, Trading Standards had seen enough. Two warrants were executed in Dover and Tonbridge, one of them against a man who used his own name to brand his piracy business.

Fraud, Copyright and Money Laundering

Following their arrest in May 2019, Billy Collin Arthur Martin from London and Darren Bough from Dover had a considerable wait for their guilty pleas to be heard in court. During a sentencing hearing in Court 5 of Canterbury Crown Court last Friday (case T20220079), it was revealed that the men sold devices and memberships that allowed customers to access TV shows, movies and live sporting events, in breach of copyright.

 

Kent County Council Trading Standards (KCCTS) says that Facebook customers paid the men via five different PayPal accounts, netting them over half a million pounds over a relatively short period.

 

“In the space of approximately 18 months the fraud made the criminals more than £540,000. Bough received £399,536 and Martin £140,568, all believed to be linked to this illegal activity.”

Crimes “Too Serious” to Avoid Custodial Sentences

KCCTS reports that the men asked the Court for leniancy, citing their families’ reliance upon them. There had also been a significant delay in bringing the case to a close following their arrests in 2019. Judge Rupert Lowe took their submissions into consideration butfound that the pair’s offending had been “too serious” to avoid custodial sentences.

 

Describing the men as a “couple of Fagins” who had “struck at the heart” of online commerce, Judge Lowe sentenced Martin to 24 months imprisonment and Bough to 21 months for fraudulent trading, money laundering and copyright infringement offenses.

 

In a statement following the sentencing, Clive Phillips, Operations Manager at KCCTS, said that intellectual property crime has a negative effect on society.

 

“Intellectual property crime damages the economy. It impacts on creators, avoiding tax and hampering innovation. We will investigate and take appropriate action to ensure there is a fair and legal trading environment in Kent,” Phillips said.

Trading Standards Strike in Scotland

Following a separate investigation, a report from Trading Standards Scotland (TSS) reveals that four people, aged 51, 50, 46 and 45, have been reported to the Procurator Fiscal Paisley for providing illegal access to broadcasts owned by Sky and other legal streaming services.

 

“After a joint operation with Police Scotland and Sky, the accused have been reported for various offenses against the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Trade Marks Act 1994, offences which are punishable by a fine and/ or imprisonment upon conviction: more charges are to follow,” TSS says.

 

Matt Hibbert, Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, described the four people as potentially important players.

 

“This operation targeted a group who were believed to be a major source of illegal streams. In taking this action Trading Standards Scotland has not only blocked access to stolen Sky content, it has helped protect consumers from some of the very real risks of accessing movies, TV shows and live sports in this way,” Hibbert said.

 

TSS currently lists IPTV as a priority area for enforcement.

 

More than a decade ago, TorrentFreak reported on YouHaveDownloaded.com, a new service dedicated to BitTorrent tracking.

 

Knowing that most BitTorrent-based sharing is conducted in public, the site’s operators harvested torrents and captured the IP addresses connected to them.

 

When we discovered the project, YouHaveDownloaded had 103,200 torrents in its database and IP address data on 51.2 million users. That platform eventually shut down but a similarly named site, IKnowWhatYouDownload, later emerged with similar functionality.

 

The tracking service has been entertaining and sometimes scaring BitTorrent users for years, matching IP addresses to infringing downloads and even providing lists of IP addresses relating to specific content. It can show the countries where a torrent proved most popular this month or reveal content becoming popular everywhere today.

 

Users with dynamic IP addresses researching themselves may be presented with false alarms, but as a broad research tool operating in an underserved niche, the service works as advertised.

 

Anyone who has spent any longer than five minutes on the site – pirates especially – will understand what the site is for. It’s a service that harvests and then publishes data related to the BitTorrent ecosystem (specifically DHT) so if that’s your thing, you won’t be disappointed.

 

Those seeking pirate downloads will find absolutely nothing of interest. No torrents. No downloads. Not even a magnet link. Anti-piracy groups and leading entertainment companies arrived at a different conclusion five years ago and still haven’t changed their minds.

Anti-Piracy Experts Unite in Disagreement

After we first reported on IKnowWhatYouDownload in December 2016, anti-piracy companies started reporting the site to Google, claiming it infringed their clients’ rights.

 

DMCA notices spiked in February 2017 and a handful of months later began to level off. In late 2019, complaints to Google started to rise again and in January 2021, they suddenly took off once more.

 

At the time of writing, more than 9,472 individual complaints targeting in excess of 18,800 URLs have been submitted to Google, alleging copyright violations that simply did not happen.

 

Making matters worse, close to 50% of all complaints filed with Google contain URLs that weren’t even present in Google’s indexes when the takedown notices were sent. The search engine usually indexes all pages quickly but in this case the URLs couldn’t be indexed because they never existed in the first place.

 

The anti-piracy companies may have attempted to predict where infringing links would appear in the future, fabricated the URLs, and sent them to Google in advance, hoping that Google would bin them before they appeared in search results. That can work against pirate sites, but this is not a pirate site – it’s a database of piracy activity.

 

Other things make the continuous targeting of IKnowWhatYouDownload even more baffling.

Demo Project to Showcase Data Availability

While the service is a fully functioning BitTorrent data portal in its own right, it’s actually a live demo of what can be achieved using data collected by tech outfit PeerTrace. Due to the way data is collected, it is not suitable for prosecuting BitTorrent users but if copyright holders want to access the available data, they can.

 

PeerTrace data is also available to law enforcement agencies and, as we already know, is useful for people generally interested in how content is spread using BitTorrent, by whom, and where.

 

It’s the type of data that could prove useful to anti-piracy and entertainment companies but beyond that, it also drives legitimate consumption. Every page on the site referencing data for a specific movie carries links to legal streaming portal Kinopoisk.

Checking For Actual Infringement?

As things stand, there’s no sign that the copyright complaints will end anytime soon. French anti-piracy group ALPA, anime company Toei, Disney, Sky, Canal+, Columbia, Irdeto, Fox, Lionsgate, Sony, and Netflix have all filed infringement complaints – and that’s just a tiny sample of the 42-page list of rightsholders published by Google.

 

IKnowWhatYouDownload owner Andrey Rogov believes that the companies scan for filenames matching their content and consider that’s good enough to file a complaint.

 

“I think that a lot of companies (copyright holders) implement automatic systems that search pages with torrents with their content (movie, series and other),” Rogov says.

 

“Usually, they write to us with automatic email and we answer that we don’t distribute content. But probably some just write reports to Google and that’s it. We don’t like it, of course, but I think we can do nothing with it.”

 

One thing we considered early on is that copyright holders might not be scanning for filenames on their own but also BitTorrent hash values. In itself, publishing hashes is not an infringement of copyright but if a filename referencing pirated content appears on the same page as an ‘infringing’ hash value, it’s more likely to be a pirate site than not.

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t provide a credible explanation either. Rather than displaying the hash values of potentially infringing content, the hash values shown on Rogov’s site (including in URLs) are internally generated and definitely not BitTorrent hashes.

 

Since Google is required to remove content following complaints, around 46% of the URLs submitted in DMCA notices so far have indeed been removed from Google. That raises the question of when IKnowWhatYouDownload’s search ranking will suffer after being incorrectly labeled a pirate site.

 

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the introduction of sanctions, replacing foreign goods and services with local alternatives became a Kremlin priority.

 

Russia’s reliance on Western software suppliers led to proposals in favor of removing liabilty for piracy, as long as the unlicensed software originates from a country supporting sanctions.

Content Vacuum Will Be Filled

Removal of liability for software piracy was widely reported as the ‘legalization’ of all piracy in Russia, which at the time certainly wasn’t the case. But as the months pass by all options remain on the table, and for the entertainment industries, the situation looks pretty bleak.

 

When citizens first began screening pirated Hollywood movies in cinemas, Russian entertainment groups condemned them for it. Three months later, a dejected cinema industry chief said that he couldn’t blame venues for trying to stay alive.

 

Since Russia’s self-inflicted problems are becoming more acute, government action on a national level seems increasingly likely. It’s unclear how plans for compulsory licensing are progressing but recent MPA and RIAA submissions to the USTR offered little hope.

Russia Will Get Content, One Way or Another

It’s clear that global entertainment companies, particularly those based in the United States, face an almost unfathomable set of circumstances. In broad terms, compliance with sanctions means that there is no legal market in Russia for new movies and TV shows, for example. Meanwhile, there are millions of Russian consumers who want new content but are unable to buy it, even if they wanted to.

 

Opinions on how to solve this conundrum are not hard to find in Russia. If U.S. companies sell movies and other content in the region, they will get paid for their work. However, if they refuse to do business, the same movies will be sourced from the black market and they will get nothing.

 

During a recent roundtable discussion titled Right to Content: Why the Exit of Foreign Companies from the Market Makes Everyone Worse, nothing had changed.

 

“If the copyright holders of this or that content refuse to supply us, we should not be afraid to take responsibility for the fact that we really will have this content one way or another,” said Artem Kiryanov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy.

Legalizing State Piracy, Not Piracy By Individuals

People pirating movies, TV shows and music on the internet is nothing new for Russia, or any other country for that matter. In this case, however, Kiryanov has a different type of vision. If piracy of Western content is to be embraced by Russia, Kiryanov suggests that individual piracy efforts should be supplanted by a state-controlled entity tasked with procuring and then distributing pirated content to existing streaming platforms.

 

“(i)t shouldn’t be a spontaneous action when someone is into something – to steal, download and then watch. It should be an authorized body that will centrally collect content without any copyright payments or respect for the intellectual property of those countries that harm Russia as much as possible. And only then will the collected content be sold to our colleagues who will use it,” Kiryanov said.

 

“Accordingly, people will have what they are forcibly being deprived of. And business will operate in a legal space, so the very meaning of piracy is lost. We must not let Russians feel they are being discriminated against and deprived of some services.”

Russia Understands Value of Intellectual Property

On its current trajectory, Russia faces many serious problems over the next few years, with Kiryanov’s proposal addressing just one – badly. Not only would his scheme enrage copyright holders everywhere, at best it would provide Russian citizens with a premium service they can already get in two types of free – free of charge and free from censorship.

 

And then there’s the prospect of legal streaming platforms competing with pirate sites for market share and revenue, offering the same product at a premium price, while attempting to capture the moral and legal high ground. And if that doesn’t provide enough dark humor, stand by for the site-blocking requests targeting pirate sites – sent by authorized sites with permission to distribute pirated content.

 

Whether the proposal will gain any support remains to be seen, but if nothing else it suggests that Russia has been listening. For many years the U.S. hammered home the message that Russia’s economy would benefit from the protection of foreign intellectual property but as things stand, there’s nothing new to protect.

 

Embedding the state into piracy networks to take all of the available profit is perhaps the most depressingly predictable response, one that features a race to the bottom and ever-reducing profits.

 

The debut of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” in August didn’t disappoint. Since then it has averaged dozens of millions of views per episode.

 

The show was also an instant success on pirate sites where, in true Game of Thrones spirit, it was leaked before the official premiere.

 

In the weeks that followed “House of The Dragon” crushed “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” in the unofficial pirate download rankings. At this rate, it’s on track to become the most pirated TV show of the year. And today’s news certainly doesn’t hurt that ‘aspiration’.

 

A few hours ago, copies of the tenth episode appeared on Usenet and pirate sites, two days before the general public will have access to it on legal platforms. News of the leak is spreading quickly and tens of thousands of people have already grabbed an illicit copy.

 

It wouldn’t be a major surprise to see these download statistics exceed more than a million copies before Sunday. Significant numbers of people will also watch the episode through pirate streaming sites, which will boost the numbers even further.

 

The source of the leak remains unknown at the time of writing but there are some data points that may help to narrow things down. The video comes in 25fps, which eliminates countries such as the US, Japan, and Brazil.

 

In addition, a trusted source informs us that the original release came with Hebrew subtitles in a separate .srt file. These original releases are typically shared on private servers, which act as central points before distribution groups start sharing them on pirate sites.

 

We were not able to verify this information independently, but it could be a hint that there are links to Israel.

 

No matter what the source is, it will be hard to do anything about it now. The company and its licensing partners will likely spend much of the weekend sending takedown requests but for HBO, most of the damage is already done.

 

—

 

This is a breaking news story. If more information appears we will update this article accordingly.

 

VPN services are a useful tools for protecting internet users’ online privacy. They can also help to bypass geographical restrictions.

 

The latter can be helpful if people want to access a streaming service’s content library in another country. While this often runs contrary to most streaming companies’ terms of service, it’s common practice among so-called ‘VPN pirates’.

 

This type of unauthorized access is at the center of a case currently before the EU Court of Justice. The matter deals with a dispute between Serbian production company Grand Production and streaming platform GO4YU (now MTEL), also from Serbia.

 

The two parties negotiated a licensing deal to distribute a TV program in Serbia and Montenegro. However, Grand Production discovered that the streaming service also showed the program in Austria. In addition, VPN users were able to view the program from anywhere in the world, as long as they were connected to a Serbian VPN service.

VPN Piracy Referral to the CJEU

The production company filed a lawsuit against the streaming service in Austria, holding it accountable for this unauthorized use. The matter went all the way up to the Supreme Court which, considering the complex VPN issue, sought clarification from Europe’s Highest Court (CJEU).

 

One of the key questions for the CJEU is whether online streaming services are liable for copyright infringement if their subscribers use VPN services to bypass geo-blocking efforts. EU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar shared his advice on the matter this week.

 

The Advocate General (AG) notes that geo-blocking efforts are essentially a form of digital rights management (DRM). These are typically used to create virtual borders on the Internet which, in itself, is borderless.

 

This basically means that people circumvent access restrictions if they choose to use a VPN to access content outside these artificial borders. As such, they communicate the content to a new public, something that can constitute copyright infringement. However, that’s not the core issue at stake here.

Streaming Service Not Liable

The opinion of AG Szpunar compares the current case to existing EU jurisprudence on hyperlinks, concluding that a streaming service doesn’t violate the law when subscribers bypass its geo-blocking efforts.

 

“If the copyright owner (or its licensee) has such a block installed, it directs its broadcast exclusively to persons who are granted access to the protected content from an area designated by that right owner. Consequently, the rightholder does not communicate to the public in the rest of the territory.”

 

It’s a myth that technical restrictions can be 100% effective, Szpunar notes in his opinion. As soon as new measures are implemented, people will find ways to route around them.

 

“While there are technical means to counteract such practices, they are never infallible and probably never will be, as the techniques to overcome them are always one step ahead of safeguards,” he writes.

 

As a result, holding the operators of streaming services liable for this type of unauthorized access goes too far. In common with hyperlinking cases, the person who bypasses the restrictions should be held responsible, not the platform where they are published.

 

“It is the users themselves who circumvent this blocking by accessing the above programs, without the intervention of third parties,” Szpunar writes.

Everybody Knew

Grand Production argued that GO4YU knew very well that subscribers bypassed its geographical restrictions. The AG notes that this is likely true but the producer was also aware of the issue when it negotiated the licensing agreements.

 

“Circumventing different security mechanisms represents a risk that is inextricably linked to the distribution of copyright-protected works in digital form, especially on the Internet. When granting GO4YU Beograd permission to broadcast their shows publicly on a streaming platform in a certain area, Grand Production must have been aware of that.”

 

The general conclusion is that streaming services are not by definition liable for VPN ‘piracy’. This is an important conclusion as it directly relates to online services’ anti-piracy obligations under Article 17 of the Copyright Directive.

 

However, this doesn’t mean that these services have no obligations at all. According to AG Szpunar, they can be held liable if they don’t have any geo-blocking measures at all, or if they intentionally use ineffective blocking tools.

 

The AG’s advice is not binding but in most cases, recommendations are followed by the EU Court of Justice, which will likely issue its final verdict in the next few months.

 

—

 

A copy of EU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar opinion can be found here. The English version is not available yet and all the quotes are translations. For further reading, we recommend Prof. Dr. Eleonora Rosati’s IPKitten article on the topic.

 

The “repeat infringer” issue remains a hot topic in US courts and over the years several ISPs have been sued because of them.

 

These Internet providers stand accused of not doing enough to stop copyright infringers on their networks, even after receiving multiple ‘copyright infringement’ notifications from rightsholders.

 

The most prominent outcome thus far is the guilty verdict against Cox from late 2019. Following a jury trial, the company was ordered to pay a billion dollars in damages to a group of major record labels.

Record Labels vs. Grande Trial

Following the verdict, several of the labels shifted their focus to the next targets, including ISP Grande Communications, which is now owned by Astound. A trial was initially scheduled to start in early 2020 but due to time constraints and the pandemic, it was postponed multiple times.

 

A few days ago, the jury trial finally began at a federal court in the Western District of Texas. In anticipation, both parties submitted motions to exclude several topics, with partial success. But with the trial now underway, disagreement remains an issue.

 

During the opening statements, Grande gave the jury a brief overview of its defense. This included a mention of a witness who had heard from several subscribers targeted by piracy accusations who said they had done nothing wrong.

 

“And you’re going to learn that customers would call in confused about the accusations against them. You’re going to hear from one of our witnesses who talked to one of those people directly, and he’s going to say they swear they did nothing wrong. How is Grande supposed to know who is telling the truth? Is it Rightscorp with e-mail accusations? Is it the subscriber who calls in swearing they didn’t do anything wrong?” – from Grande’s opening statement

 

This intro came as a total surprise to the record labels, which were under the impression that responses from subscribers wouldn’t be part of the defense. This wasn’t just a hunch either, as the music companies previously asked Grande about the availability of this type of evidence during discovery.

No Innocent Infringer Evidence?

At a deposition, a Grande employee testified that there wasn’t any admissible evidence about customer calls that covered the accuracy of copyright infringement notices.

 

“At that time, Grande’s witness testified that admissible information concerning customer calls regarding copyright infringement does not exist,” the music companies informed the court.

 

“In particular, Grande represented under oath that it performed an adequate investigation of its conversations with customers and based on that investigation, it lacked knowledge of—and therefore could not disclose to Plaintiffs—the contents of any particular customer phone calls on this subject matter.”

 

The opening statement at trial suggests otherwise. It wasn’t what the labels expected and they felt ambushed. As such, they asked the court to preclude the evidence from being discussed during the trial.

 

Aside from contradicting the information obtained during discovery, the testimony should also be rejected as hearsay, the labels said. The ISP apparently wants to rely on testimony from someone who spoke with an accused subscriber, without identifying the person or detailing the piracy notice.

 

“Furthermore, to the extent Grande seeks to introduce generalized testimony on this topic, it is clear that the proffer of unverified generic statements from unidentified customers is rank hearsay and does not satisfy the accuracy and trustworthiness requirements necessary to rely on any hearsay exceptions,” the labels note.

Rightscorp and BMG vs. Cox

In addition to surprising the labels with the innocent infringer issue, during its opening statement Grande also criticized the infringement notices directly. The notices were sent by anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp and are not reliable, the ISP argued.

 

According to Grande’s attorney, the music companies have “known for years and years” that Rightscorp’s notices are problematic but consider them “lottery tickets” with the potential to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

At the present trial, the labels want to show that Rightscorp’s evidence isn’t illegitimate. The notices were central to the BMG vs. Cox trial, which resulted in a $25 million damages award. As such, evidence from that case could be relevant here.

 

The court previously restricted the potential use of that evidence to merely mentioning that Cox was found liable based on these notices. However, a new motion filed by the music companies requests permission to use emails and testimony that reference the case.

 

Grande fiercely objects and notes that the $25 million verdict wasn’t the end of that case. The initial verdict was overturned, with BMG and Cox later reaching a confidential settlement.

 

“If Plaintiffs were to introduce evidence regarding the Cox jury verdict, then Grande would have to respond with evidence regarding the evidence adduced (or not) at trial in Cox, the Fourth Circuit’s reversal, and the parties’ subsequent settlement. All of this would result in the inevitable ‘trial within a trial’ that is to be avoided at all costs,” Grande notes.

 

At the time of writing, there’s no public court order on the record labels’ requests. In any case, the trial will continue, with or without the “innocent infringer” and “Cox litigation” evidence.

 

—

 

A copy of the trial motions in limine to exclude the innocent infringer evidence and to introduce the BMG vs. Cox evidence are available here (1,2)

 

Rightsholders involved in the creation and distribution of live events say they are being undermined by massive online piracy. Illegal streams are immediately made available via websites and dedicated IPTV services on a scale that’s impossible to contain.

 

Earlier this month, over 100 rightsholders, organizations, and powerful media groups coordinated to demand action from the European Union via new law that would enable live streams to be taken down within minutes of detection and subsequent notification.

 

Groups and companies, including the MPA, UEFA, Premier League, beIN, LaLiga, Serie A, Sky, and BT Sport, were supported by less obvious participants such as the State Federation of Associations of Theatre and Dance, Danish Ensembles, Orchestras and Opera Institutions, even the London Marathon.

 

All insisted that without the weight of new European law behind them, progress against piracy would be limited.

End Live Piracy Now? European Commission Says ‘Not Yet’

The public ‘End Live Piracy Now’ campaign made headlines for a few days, but rightsholders had been putting pressure on the European Commission for some time.

 

Estimating annual revenue losses in their “billions” and the undermining of sustainability, they demanded commitment from the European Commission in the form of a legislative instrument, one that would guarantee the removal and/or blocking of live streams immediately following takedown notification.

 

“Any non-legislative instruments would be inadequate and insufficient to address the magnitude of the problem. Only a European wide regulation could provide an appropriate answer,” the coalition said.

Commission Work Program 2023

Given that at least one draft had been indexed by Google and made available for download up to a week earlier, the contents of the final Commission Work Program 2023 published this week probably came as no surprise to rightsholders.

 

Recommendation on piracy of live content (non-legislative, Q2 2023, responds to Article 225 TFEU resolution P9_TA(2021)0236 ‘Challenges of sports events organisers in the digital environment’)

 

Despite their calls for a legislative instrument, what rightsholders were given this week is a recommendation that is not legally binding. By their own definition, the response from the European Commission is both inadequate and insufficient.

 

Needless to say, the Live Content Coalition behind End Live Piracy Now is less than impressed, something made very clear in their public response.

Inadequate Solution Prompts Disappointment

The Live Content Coalition begins by welcoming the reference to their concerns in the Commission’s 2023 work program, but notes that since only “firm and decisive” measures can protect live content, the EC’s plan doesn’t come up to scratch.

 

“Despite a clear and unambiguous call from 112 organizations from across the full breadth of the EU’s cultural, creative and sports sectors, and from 107 Members of the European Parliament, the Commission has not included a legislative initiative to tackle live content piracy in its Work Programme for 2023,” the statement reads.

 

“As the Live Content Coalition, representing the organizers and distributors of live events across Europe, we welcome the reference to our concerns, but we are disappointed that those legitimate concerns are addressed through an inadequate non-legally binding recommendation.”

 

The details of how the rightsholders’ demands could be laid out in law are unclear, but directing legislation at those actually carrying out the infringement isn’t part of the plan. Instead of targeting pirates, the rightsholders want online intermediaries to shoulder the responsibility, most likely through the imposition of new liability for third-party content.

 

Instead, the Commission says it will follow up on the European Parliament resolution under article 225 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, by “offering a toolbox to fight the illegal streaming of live events, in particular sport events.”

 

The Commission Work Program 2023 and response can be found here and here

 

Over the past few years, rightsholders in Japan have shown new urgency in their fight against piracy. Strict laws on home soil mean that overseas pirate sites pose the biggest threat and with that, new sets of challenges.

 

The successful prosecution of Mangabank’s operator in China this summer was preceded by an ex parte application designed to reveal his identity. At a district court in California, the publishers requested an order requiring Google and others to hand over relevant information for subsequent use in a foreign proceeding (28 U.S. Code § 1782).

 

In August 2022, Shueisha filed a similar ex parte application at the same California court, hoping to identify the operators of mangagohan.com, mangapro.top, gokumanga.com, doki1001.com, manga1001.in, and comick.top. The company said that its goal was to file lawsuits against defendants in Vietnam or possibly Japan, depending on the information received.

A Pattern Begins to Emerge

A new ex parte application filed this week is very similar to the previous one filed in August. In the same Northern District of California Court, Shueisha, Shogakukan, Kadokawa, and Kodansha seek information that will allow them to take legal action against pirate site operators in Vietnam or Japan.

 

They believe that U.S. companies PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Google and Microsoft may hold valuable information on potential defendants. Since none will comply voluntarily, the publishers need the Court to authorize discovery so that their investigation can continue.

 

The limited information provided by the publishers shows similarities between many sites, how they are operated, and potentially who is behind them.

New Manga Piracy Targets

The domains in the application are listed as follows: mangaraw.co, mangaraw.vip, mangaraw.lol, mangagohan.me, mangakala.com, mangakala.com, cm.blazecloud.org, cloudblaze.co.

 

In common with the sites in the previous application, these also used Cloudflare’s services. The publishers obtained DMCA subpoenas against Cloudflare to hand over information, which revealed that the site operators used the services of PayPal and Visa, plus other companies listed above.

 

Cloudflare also confirmed that the site operators used IP addresses linked to Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group and Vietnam Telecom National. Cloudflare previously linked the same two internet providers to operators of other manga piracy sites.

 

The fact that Vietnam doesn’t allow third-party companies to obtain internet users’ identifying information in copyright cases will prove a hindrance once again. That’s in addition to the fluid nature of these sites and their tendency to disappear, rename, and then reappear somewhere else.

Targeted Sites Keep on Moving

According to SimilarWeb stats, Mangaraw.co is a popular site with an estimated 25 million visits per month. Instead of building on that domain’s popularity, the site recently switched to a brand-new domain and redirected the old one.

 

Mangaraw.to is the site’s new domain but this time there is no Cloudflare protection. Instead it’s hosted on an IP address belonging to Fishnet Communications, which reports its location as St Petersburg, Russia.

 

Mangaraw.vip enjoys around 12 million visits per month but unlike its namesake, hasn’t yet switched to a new domain. What it does have in common with Mangaraw.to is its choice of hosting company. Mangaraw.vip is on a different IP address but the whole block is operated by Fishnet.

 

Mangaraw.lol is a less popular platform with around two million visits per month. Its decision to move to Mangaraw.io probably won’t improve its traffic but if things do suddenly take off, Fishnet Communications will take up the load.

 

The other domains in the application – cm.blazecloud.org, cm.cloudblaze.co, mangagohan.me and mangakala.com – appear to have links to the others but shared ownership is not immediately obvious.

 

In any event, the publishers say their request to obtain names, telephone numbers and
addresses of people linked to specific credit cards, plus logs of IP addresses and time stamps, is narrowly tailored to only identify the alleged infringers.

 

The publishers’ application can be found here (pdf)

 

Earlier this month, several prominent copyright holder groups sent their annual “notorious markets” recommendations to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).

 

The U.S. Government uses these documents as input for its yearly review of notorious piracy markets, which aims to provide an overview of threats to various copyright industries.

 

The recommendations, including those from the RIAA, MPA, and ESA, traditionally focus on well-known piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay and Fmovies. Increasingly, however, third-party technology providers are also being added to the mix.

Notorious Intermediaries?

For example, domain registrars and hosting services are regularly called out, and the same is true for advertising and payment companies. Cloudflare has been frequently mentioned as well, although it’s not officially listed since the overview focuses on foreign entities.

 

While some of these intermediaries help to facilitate piracy, not everyone agrees that they are notorious piracy markets. Mentioning them in the same breath as criminal enterprises can indeed cause some confusion.

 

The above summarizes the viewpoint of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, i2Coalition for short. The industry group represents key Internet companies and counts Amazon, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Google, OVH, Verisign, and many VPN services among its members.

i2Coalition Calls For Clarity

The i2Coalition’s submission to the USTR notes that its members value copyright protection efforts but cautions against making the “notorious markets” definition too broad. In any case, the USTR should ensure that neutral intermediaries are not included.

 

Internet infrastructure companies are not marketplaces, they don’t manage content directly, and can’t easily remove infringing content, the coalition says. The USTR should keep this in mind and reflect this distinction in its final report.

 

“Why Internet intermediaries are not notorious markets is not just a semantic difference. It is crucial to understand the underlying technologies and limitations when discussing the obligations of providers,” i2Coalition writes.

 

“For instance, DNS and cybersecurity service providers, like some i2Coalition companies, route requests through a globally distributed network. Their technology creates the pathway between a series of numbers and signals and the ‘web’.

 

“By their nature, these businesses have limited access to the content information they transmit; they lack the capacity to access it or make qualitative analyses or judgments about it,” the coalition adds.

Congress Could Step In

While the USTR’s most recent reports haven’t listed these neutral Internet infrastructure intermediaries as notorious markets, they regularly feature in copyright holder submissions. This undermines the effectiveness of the annual reviews, the coalition warns.

 

The i2Coalition would like the USTR to work on a narrower definition of the term “notorious market”. An even better solution would see Congress getting involved to rewrite the definition to make sure that neutral Internet infrastructure companies can carry on their business without piracy accusations.

 

With more clarity, i2Coalition hopes that neutral intermediaries will no longer be added to the “notorious markets” category.

 

“This lack of clarity in the past few years has tended to result in numerous parties filing comments with USTR as part of this process alleging infringement and proffering submissions to the notorious markets list either erroneously or in a manner intentionally meant to mischaracterize those who are responsible for the alleged violations.”

 

The letter doesn’t mention specific companies or services the coalition believes were mistakenly called out. However, the coalition makes it clear that it is essential to clear up what a ‘notorious market’ actually is in today’s digital economy.

 

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A copy of the letter, signed by the Internet Infrastructure Coalition’s Executive Director Christian Dawson, is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Bullet Train” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 17 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Bullet Train	7.4 / trailer
2	(…)	Clerks III	6.8 / trailer
3	(2)	Hellraiser	6.2 / trailer
4	(3)	Top Gun: Maverick	8.6 / trailer
5	(6)	Thor: Love and Thunder	6.5 / trailer
6	(5)	Vesper	6.2 / trailer
7	(…)	Medieval	6.0 / trailer
8	(…)	Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday	5.8 / trailer
9	(9)	Jurassic World Dominion	6.0 / trailer
10	(10)	Nope	7.1 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a buzzword that’s frequently used by startups and established businesses in the tech industry.

 

In some cases, it refers to little more than advanced algorithms, but complex self-learning computer systems with human-like traits are actively being developed as well.

 

From a copyright perspective, AI can bring up some interesting questions. For example, can content created by an AI be copyrighted like any other work? Or perhaps AI can infringe copyrights held by others?

AI Piracy

While legal experts scratch their heads over similar questions, the RIAA has already made up its mind about a selection of services claiming to offer AI music extractors and mixers.

 

Responding to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), the music group highlighted several of these sites in its annual overview of ‘notorious’ piracy markets.

 

“There are online services that, purportedly using artificial intelligence (AI), extract, or rather, copy, the vocals, instrumentals, or some portion of the instrumentals from a sound recording, and/or generate, master or remix a recording to be very similar to or almost as good as reference tracks by selected, well known sound recording artists,” RIAA writes.

Songmastr

Songmastr is one of the platforms that’s mentioned. The service promises to “master” any song based on the style of well-known music artists such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Coltrane, Bob Dylan, James Brown and many others.

 

The site’s underlying technology is powered by the open-source Matchering 2.0 code, which is freely available on GitHub. And indeed, its purported AI capabilities are prominently in the site’s tagline.

 

“This service uses artificial intelligence and is based on the open source library Matchering. The algorithm masters your track with the same RMS, FR, peak amplitude and stereo width as the reference song you choose,” Songmastr explains.

 

Where Artificial Intelligence comes into play isn’t quite clear to us. The same can be said for the Acapella-Extractor and Remove-Vocals websites, which the RIAA lists in the same category. The names of these services are pretty much self-explanatory; they can separate the vocals from the rest of a track.

 

The RIAA logically doesn’t want third parties to strip music or vocals from copyrighted tracks, particularly when these derivative works are further shared with others.

Unauthorized Copies and Derivatives

While Songmastr’s service is a bit more advanced, the RIAA sees it as clearly infringing. After all, the original copyrighted tracks are used by the site to create derivative works, without the necessary permission.

 

“To the extent these services, or their partners, are training their AI models using our members’ music, that use is unauthorized and infringes our members’ rights by making unauthorized copies of our members works.

 

“In any event, the files these services disseminate are either unauthorized copies or unauthorized derivative works of our members’ music,” the RIAA’s submission adds.

 

Thus far, Songmastr doesn’t appear to be a major threat in terms of traffic. With less than 200 visits per day over the past 12 months, it hasn’t really caught on. Acapella-Extractor and Remove-Vocals are more popular, with a few hundred thousand monthly visits.

 

The RIAA is clearly worried about these services. Interestingly, however, the operator of Songmastr and Acapella-Extractor informs us that the music group hasn’t reached out with any complaints. But perhaps they’re still in the pipeline.

 

Aside from the emerging AI threats, the RIAA lists various torrent sites, download sites, streamrippers, and bulletproof ISPs in its overview. The popular video app likee.video is also included, as it reportedly failed to obtain proper licenses for the tracks it uses.

 

The RIAA’s full list of “notorious” pirate sites can be found below, and the full report is available here (pdf).

 

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Stream-Ripping Sites

 

– ytmp3.cc
– mp3juices.cc
– flvto.biz and 2conv.com
– y2mate.com (and related sites yt1s.com, yt5s.com, y2meta.com, , and 9convert.com)
– savefrom.net (and related site savef.net)
– ssyoutube.com

 

Music Download Sites

 

– newalbumreleases.net
– intmusic.net
– ak47full.com
– songswave.com

 

BitTorrent Indexing Sites

 

– thepiratebay.org
– 1337x.to and mirrored at 1337x.is, 1337x.se, 1337x.st, x1337x.ws, x1337x.eu, and x1337x.se)
– rarbg.to

 

Cyberlockers

 

– zippyshare.com
– dbree.org
– rapidgator.net
– turbobit.net
– onlyfiles.io

 

Unauthorized Short Form Video Services

 

– likee.video

 

AI Based Extractors/Mixers

 

– acapella-extractor.com
– remove-vocals.com
– songmastr.com

 

Additional Issues

 

– Bulletproof ISPS: PRQ, FlokiNET, Frantech Solutions/BuyVM, DDoS Guard.
– Nigerian-Operated Infringing Sites: thenetnaija.net, trendybeatz.com, justnaija.com, 24naijamuzic.com and bazenation.com.