It’s likely that you’ve never heard of WxChasing, but you have almost certainly seen one of its videos.

 

The company is a one-man operation run by award-winning videographer Brandon Clement, who has a passion for documenting the extremes of Mother Nature.

 

Clement is one of the best in his field, something recognized by licensing deals with major media companies and coverage on National Geographic, Netflix, HBO, and the BBC. This exposure allowed the Mississippian to turn his hobby into a job.

 

In addition to selling footage to media companies, WxChasing also shares content online for free. Over the years its YouTube channel amassed a respectable 29K subscribers and it’s doing even better on Facebook, with 368K followers.

Billions of Unauthorized Views

Many creators might look at these numbers with envy but they could have been much higher. Most people see WxChasing videos on third-party channels that duplicate the footage without permission. This isn’t just an isolated incident either; it happens day in and day out, numerous times.

 

Everybody knows that content is copied online but the scope of the problem is truly massive. Some of these are innocent infringements, but there’s a whole industry of shady copyright exploiters out there as well. For WxChasing alone, this amounts to billions of misplaced views.

 

WxChasing Compilation

 

 

The scale of infringements sounds pretty outrageous for an independent creator and we were blown away when Clement showed us his daily copyright infringement battle in action. There’s a never-ending stream of infringements across social media platforms that seems impossible to stop, much like the weather.

 

“Most of the serious infringements come through Facebook,” Clement informs TorrentFreak, adding that the company also has the most advanced rights management tool.

44,000 Copies of One Event

Facebook’s Rights Manager interface can actually be quite intimidating. There are long lists of “matching videos” and “disputes” with more being added every hour. It’s pretty much a day job to deal with them all, which is why Clement has asked someone to help him out with this side of the business.

 

To give an indication of the scale of the problem, Brandon mentions fellow storm chaser Brian Emfinger. Earlier this year, he shot a video of a pickup truck being flipped by a tornado in Texas, which then drove off. It’s probably the shot of his lifetime but, after posting it online, Emfinger was overwhelmed by the massive wave of copyright infringements.

 

Clement decided to help his friend out. In March he purchased the rights to two videos of the event, adding them to his copyright management system. Since then, Facebook has reported more than 44,000 “matches.”

 

The top ten pages that ripped off these two videos have already generated over 100 million views and the total number of ‘unauthorized’ views is in the billions. And that’s just for a single weather event, and only on Facebook.

A ‘Big’ Problem

The sheer volume of takedown requests isn’t the only issue. How copyright disputes are decided is another source of frustration and unfairness.

 

With a dedicated team of takedown specialists, Facebook allows its users to stop a lot of infringement. But there’s a big problem, literally. While Facebook has a fairly elaborate copyright backend, large pages have the ability to trump smaller ones when there’s a copyright conflict.

 

“If two pages claim a video in the Rights Manager then it creates a conflict. When the conflict is created, the page with the most followers has the option to ‘confirm ownership’ regardless of actual ownership,” Clement tells us.

 

“There is no way to dispute this and META simply gives the managing rights of the video to the bigger page after a 7-day waiting period.”

 

This approach essentially forces Clement and others to give up their rights. The image above shows two videos he and a fellow storm chaser shot and uploaded. While they were the first to publish it, “Sky News Arabia” and “MBC” own it now, according to Facebook.

 

“So I have my content stolen and managerial rights are given away because the claimants’ pages are bigger. This is beginning to happen more frequently and we lost the managing rights to dozens of videos because of this flawed system.”

Copycats Hijack Licenced Videos

This is a massive problem as the copycats also get the right to take down the content across Facebook’s ecosystem. This means that they can start to claim other videos, even those licensed by WxChasing to other companies.

 

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have a contactable person that can help to resolve these issues. Instead, users are directed to the help section which eventually advises them to resolve the dispute with the ‘infringers’ who often don’t respond at all.

 

“There has to be a better solution than to look at who has the biggest page. It’s all about who is the biggest. The bigger you are the more rights you have. This is insane,” the videographer says, summarizing his frustration.

 

In some cases, the content is hijacked by large pages that don’t mean to do any harm. At the same time, there are others who appear to willingly exploit the system. They are happy to monetize others’ content since there are millions of dollars to be made.

Money, Money, Money

It’s easy to criticize Facebook and other user-generated content platforms for not doing enough. But they are in a tough spot too as they try to balance the rights and interests of all parties involved.

 

Clement is not oblivious to these issues but questions the motives of these platforms. Sometimes, he can’t help noticing that some ‘rulings’ tend to favor large pages and channels with a large following.

 

We’ve seen a long list of decisions where Facebook chose to keep copied content online, citing fair use. This fair use argument also applied when large pages use the full videos without attribution.

 

“Some pages use the whole video without quoting us, reporting the same news we already reported. But since someone is talking at the top of the video, Facebook is claiming that it’s fair use, not taking it down,” Clement notes.

 

In yet another case, Clement flagged infringement on a single Facebook page more than two dozen times. Despite this, it remains online today.

YouTube, Twitter…

The challenges are not limited to Facebook either, YouTube’s Content ID system has its issues too. As a relatively small operation, WxChasing is not allowed to have access to Content ID, but others use the system to claim his videos.

 

CollabDRM is one of the ‘rightsholders’ claiming WxChasing content and appears to have turned the Content ID system into a business model.

 

“CollabDRM finds and monetizes unlicensed uploads that slip past YouTube’s Content ID system,” we read on their site.

 

While this system can be used for legitimate purposes, YouTube itself is littered with complaints about CollabDRM. This is confirmed by Clement, who has dealt with their illegitimate claims on several occasions.

 

In addition to battling false claims, the videographer also sends takedown requests targeting unauthorized copies of his videos on YouTube. This used to work well as channels were often suspended after three notices. Since then, things have changed.

 

Clement mentions an example where he targeted six infringing videos from a single channel on a single day, without any noticeable result. Some of these repeat infringers have over a million subscribers, so it’s certainly not a trivial issue.

 

The copying problem is quite hard to contain. This is due to the speed at which it is happening and because legitimate mainstream publishers are inadvertently taking part as well.

 

“The Dallas flooding the other night. I posted a couple of quick clips on Twitter because I knew it would run like crazy there. And then I posted a link to my YouTube video upload for the full video because I’m trying to grow my YouTube platform,” he says.

 

“Well, two different pages ripped it on Twitter and allowed embedding. Then the Washington Post, The Independent, and the BBC all start quoting and embedding the guy that ripped it. All of a sudden, you look up and he has two million views on my video and I have 18,000.”

 

Needless to say, this isn’t great for a business that relies on licensing payments. If legitimate clients see that other mainstream outlets are taking the content for free, they may start rethinking their options.

It’s Getting Worse

According to WxChasing’s owner, it feels like takedowns have become less effective over time. He suggests that the competition for social media market share may have something to do with it.

 

“It used to work but, since TikTok has started to take a big share of social media, it’s like, whatever. You can hit these channels over and over and nothing happens,” Clement says.

 

“Social media platforms, in many cases, do not adhere to their own repeat infringer policy. Obviously, content is king and they are profiting from the piracy or they would enforce it heavily.”

 

These comments illustrate the frustrations and opinions of a single creator and it’s hard to draw any broad conclusions based on individual accounts. That being said, it’s clear that copyright infringements are not only a problem for large corporations.

 

Clement has reached a point where he no longer knows what to do through the regular takedown systems. Hiring a team of takedown managers may help a bit, but copycats and copyright hijackers are not easy to beat.

 

Eventually, he may have to resort to legal action to force some kind of breakthrough. While that won’t be an easy road either, Clement is open to suggestions from copyright lawyers and other experts.

 

“It’s simply devastating to small creators to lose hundreds of millions or even billions of views. The cascading effect of losing views from one video leads to fewer subs and followers. That, in turn, means fewer views, subs and subscribers for each concurrent video, destroying the small content creator,” Clement concludes.

 

Ten years ago the High Court in London ordered all major ISPs in the country to block The Pirate Bay. The injunction couldn’t stop the site from operating but indirectly left its mark in more insidious ways.

 

To demonstrate the futility of blocking, hundreds of Pirate Bay-themed proxy and mirror sites swarmed online, ready to stick to the man. Most looked and functioned like The Pirate Bay itself and by undermining the injunction, quickly became go-to platforms in the UK. Within the file-sharing community it was seen as a glorious yet functional display of the ‘hydra effect’. But more was to come.

Chopping All Heads Off At Once

Over the next decade more than 20,000 sites and 75,000 domains would find themselves blocked in 39 countries, a total that now includes mirrors and proxies that facilitate access to previously blocked sites. Thousands are covered by dynamic injunctions, meaning that if previously banned sites use new domains to circumvent blocking, those will be blocked more quickly than the originals, no court process needed.

 

Meanwhile, however, another type of irritant has been gaining ground.

Rise of The Big Fat Phony

In a mainstream piracy scene where blocking has normalized the use of sites that simply resemble the original, imposter sites with big-name branding easily gain traction. Since the sites they impersonate are blocked by ISPs and delisted from Google, pirate site forgeries (not to mention malware sites) often dominate the top results.

 

The case of long-dead streaming site 123movies provides a good example. The MPA obtained an injunction to block the site in October 2016 after 123movies.to became the most-used pirate site in the UK. A month later it was confirmed that half a dozen additional 123movies domains had also been blocked.

 

In March 2018, the MPA described 123movies as the world’s most popular pirate site. Two days later, 123movies.to shut itself down following a criminal investigation.

 

After pulling in tens of millions of visitors each month thanks to competing domains being shut down, in May 2021 the operator of yet another 123movies site, operating from 123movies.la, was identified by Hollywood and also forced to shut down.

 

As a result, many other unaffected 123movie-branded sites stepped in to reap the benefits.

And There’s More

Continuing the fight that never ends, over the next few months MPA injunctions hit more and more pirate sites featuring 123movies branding, such as 123movies-one.com, 123moviess.online, 123movies-one.com, 123-movies.gy, 123-movies.as, 123-movies.gs, 123movies.ms, 123-movies.sx, 0123movies.cam, and 123moviesready.org.

 

At this point it’s not difficult to imagine frustration setting in at the MPA. While domains are sometimes covered by existing injunctions, others demand more work and more court appearances. Although it wasn’t apparent back then, blocking orders obtained late last year marked a significant turning point in the war against these imposter sites.

More Blocking Injunctions Turn The Tide

Orders obtained by the MPA last October and December targeted domains including 123movies.online, 123moviesfun.ch, and 0123movies.net, 1-2-3movies.com, 123movies.vu, and watch123movies.ch.

 

But, of course, this wouldn’t solve the problem either. At least not immediately.

 

The application hasn’t been made public but the MPA returned to the High Court this summer with two sets of new domains and requested blocking in connection with an earlier order. As far as we can establish they included 123chill to, 123series.ru, d123movies.to and w-123movies.com.

 

The first set was handled without a hearing but the second set was described by the High Court as “something of an extension of the relief” that had been granted earlier.

 

A hearing took place and here’s what happened.

Clone and Imposter Sites Neutralized Injunctions

Referencing two injunctions targeting 123movies domains and handed down by Justice Falk and Justice Johnson late last year, Justice Meade stated the following:

 

“The problem is that when an order in the form granted by Falk J or indeed by Adam Johnson J (as he did in December 2021 and which I will touch on again shortly), the reaction of people willing to infringe this kind of copyright is to start up a website with a different but very similar domain name,” the Judge wrote.

 

According to a confidential witness statement provided by an MPA lawyer, when 123movie domains were blocked following the December order, “traffic diminished, as one would expect.” But then a new problem emerged.

 

“[O]ther websites with very similar names picked up the slack and either increased the previous traffic or started from zero and moved to significant traffic, with the effect that although the specifically-targeted websites were throttled back to a significant degree, overall traffic through websites with 123 Movies in their name was not restricted very much if at all,” the Judge added.

 

Highlighting the difficulties in identifying the operators of imposter sites and establishing direct connections to sites already blocked by injunctions, the Judge found that the issue of ownership was irrelevant.

 

“It does not really matter: the problem clearly exists and is of real impact. To my mind this illustrates not only that the commercial problem facing the applicants is not addressed, but that the court’s order, while effective, is much less effective than it might otherwise be.”

Clone and Imposter Sites Punished For Copying

The MPA proposed a very simple solution. If new domains appear with similar 123movies branding and exist to infringe its members’ rights in the same manner as those already blocked, they should be blocked in the same manner, regardless of ownership or connections to the previous targets.

 

After consideration, Judge Meade found the proposal “necessary, effective, dissuasive” and not unduly costly or complicated. Websites carrying out “infringing activities overwhelmingly” using a “colorably similar name” to an existing blocked website, will also be blocked by all major ISPs in the UK.

 

After the order has handed down, the MPA blocked additional 123-branded domains including 123movieshub.cfd, 123movieshd.icu, 123movies2022.org, 123moviesprime.com, 123movies.tools, 123moviesfree.quest, 123moviesfree.rest and 123moviesfree.mom.

 

Then in a single wave implemented yesterday, the implications of the MPA’s new powers really hit home. More than one hundred 123-branded domains were blocked by UK internet service providers.

 

Of course, this standard will almost certainly be applied to other ‘pirate brands’ at some point and as far as we can see, GoMovies domains may already be in the mix.

 

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that Australia is also testing a similar format, but it’s unlikely to stop there and will probably spread pretty quickly.

 

Whether this new blocking freedom will end the flood of generic streaming platforms remains to be seen but, if nothing else, copying other sites’ names to get search engine clicks may soon be a thing of the past.

 

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

 

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

 

Internet provider RCN is among the targeted providers. Last year, the company was sued by several film companies, including the makers of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, London Has Fallen, and Hellboy.

 

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

 

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

RCN Wants Case Dismissed

RCN chose to fiercely defend itself. The company isn’t new to these types of legal battles. In 2016, the company got involved by filing a proactive lawsuit against music rights group BMG that was eventually settled. In addition, it’s also involved in another piracy liability lawsuit filed by several other music companies.

 

The filmmakers are a new opponent, however, and they also present some new claims. In addition to alleging that the ISP is liable for its customers’ copyright infringements, alleged violations of the DMCA and a site-blocking request were added to the mix.

 

RCN asked the court to dismiss all of these claims last year. The ISP characterized the movie companies as being “part of a well-known web of copyright trolls” and argued that their claims fall short.

 

However, in an opinion handed down earlier this week, New Jersey federal court Judge Georgette Castner largely sides with the filmmakers.

Copyright Infringement Claims

Judge Castner concludes that the movie companies sufficiently pled that RCN is liable for contributory copyright infringement. This requires evidence that the ISP was aware of the infringing activity and that it contributed to it.

 

These two factors were both fulfilled as the plaintiffs sent 5,400 piracy notices to the ISP. In addition, the ISP contributed to these infringements by allowing these subscribers to continue their piracy habits.

 

Claims of vicarious copyright infringement also survive the motion to dismiss. According to the Judge, the filmmakers have provided enough information to show that RCN can ‘control’ the infringing activity and profits from it as well.

 

RCN argued that it charges a flat fee, so it shouldn’t matter whether subscribers pirate or not. However, the court agreed with the filmmakers that allowing people to pirate can act as a draw, which may bring in more subscribers.

Site Blocking Injunction

Quite unusually, the filmmakers also requested a site-blocking injunction as a cause of action. This would require the ISP to block foreign pirate sites including 1337x, The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and YTS.

 

RCN objected to this demand, arguing that this type of injunction is a remedy and not a separate cause of action. The court agreed and the count was dismissed.

 

“The Court agrees with Defendants that Plaintiffs’ Count Three should be dismissed as Plaintiffs’ application for an injunction is a request for a remedy and is not a separate cause of action,” Judge Castner writes.

 

The denial doesn’t automatically mean that a blocking injunction is out of the question. The filmmakers can still request one as a remedy related to the copyright infringement claims.

DMCA Violations

Finally, Judge Castner denies the request to dismiss the DMCA violation claims. These relate to allegations that the ISP can be held liable for subscribers’ alterations of copyright management information (CMI) in movies.

 

CMI includes the titles and other identifying information of a film. The pirating subscribers distributed files with altered CMI information, where piracy-linked terms like “YTS” and “RARBG” were added in.

 

These terms are presumably added to the pirated movies by the uploaders to signal the quality of the releases. That, in turn, would draw more traffic to their sites.

 

CMI-related DMCA violations haven’t been common in piracy lawsuits until recently. However, the court finds that the filmmakers’ allegations are sufficient to continue. That includes its claims of secondary liability for DMCA violations.

Moving Forward

All-in-all, the order is mostly good news for the filmmakers, who can continue to pursue their claims. These have yet to be proven in court or at trial, so it’s too early to draw final conclusions.

 

A copy of US District Judge Castner’s opinion is available here (pdf) and the associated order can be found here (pdf)

 

Sci-Hub and Libgen have developed a reputation for breaking down digital walls as part of their quest to grant universal access to scientific papers, research, and knowledge.

 

This mission objective receives considerable support from both academics and students. In stark contrast, major publishing companies own the rights to millions of papers being offered by Sci-Hub and Libgen for free, something that undermines their premium business model.

 

The publishers view the platforms as straightforward pirate sites so want to deny access to them in any way possible, including via site-blocking measures.

 

Publishers from Germany, the United Kingdom, and United States have been fighting a legal battle in Germany. They believe that telecoms company Deutsche Telekom should implement DNS blocking to prevent customers from accessing Sci-Hub and Libgen.

 

After an initial lawsuit and subsequent appeal found in favor of one party and then the other, a ruling published by the First Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) now clarifies the conditions under which site-blocking measures can be sought.

District Court of Munich

The case was first heard at the District Court of Munich (LG München) where publishers including Elsevier and Springer Nature claimed exclusive rights in publications including The Lancet and Nature. They claimed with a certainty of 99.99% that at least 96% of the content offered by Sci-Hub and Libgen was being made available to the public without the necessary rights.

 

The publishers said that before filing the lawsuit to compel Deutsche Telekom to implement DNS blocking, they had obtained a $15m judgment and injunction against Sci-Hub in the United States and conducted investigations in Russia and elsewhere. None of these ‘wins’ led to Sci-Hub shutting down.

 

Targeting Sci-Hub’s hosting providers was also ineffective. The publishers said copyright complaints were ignored or Sci-Hub would move to another provider, including so-called “bullet proof” hosting companies selling non-cooperation as part of their feature set.

 

With no other options left, compelling Deutsche Telekom to implement DNS blocking would be reasonable and also relatively cheap (2,000 to 4,000 euros), the publishers said.

 

Deutsche Telekom said it was not responsible for the infringements of third parties, nor was it able to assess or influence the intent of internet users during a pre-existing communications process. Noting that DNS blocking is unsuitable for eliminating infringement, the telecoms company said that the publishers had failed to exhaust more reasonable other options, including legal action against hosting providers.

 

In its decision, the Munich District Court sided with the publishers and ordered a number of Sci-hub domains (plus unrelated proxy sites) to be blocked by Deutsche Telekom.

Court of Appeal and Federal Court of Justice Decisions

Deutsche Telekom appealed the Munich District Court’s decision, arguing that the publishers failed to exhaust other available options before requesting a blockade, as required by law. This includes action against a hosting provider in Sweden, a member of the European Union.

 

The Munich Higher District Court (OLG München) agreed, overturned the lower court’s decision, and dismissed the case. Following a legal review carried out by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), a decision published yesterday finds that the court of appeal made the correct decision when it sided with Deutsche Telekom.

Site-Blocking Should Be a Tool of Last Resort

The Federal Court of Justice notes that the Telemedia Act (TMG) allows rightsholders to request blocking orders against internet service providers in order to prevent repeated violations of their rights. While this can include DNS blockades, certain conditions must be met before the relief can be obtained.

 

Under the TMG, the rightsholder must have “no other possibility” of dealing with infringement. The Federal Court of Justice writes that demanding DNS blocking from an ISP (Deutsche Telekom) is only suitable when action against parties closer to the infringement has been exhausted.

 

In this case, the publishers should have filed a lawsuit in Germany against the known Sweden-based hosting provider, demanding that it hands over all information relating to its customers, Sci-Hub and Libgen. Without even attempting this option of targeting the infringement closer to where it occurs, the publishers should not have demanded a DNS block from a service provider.

 

“The access provider [Deutsche Telekom], who only provides general access to the Internet, is only secondarily liable to those parties who (like the operator of the website) committed the infringement themselves or (like the host provider) contributed to the infringement by providing services and are therefore much closer to the violation of legal interests,” the decision reads.

 

“The plaintiffs must attempt to assert a right to information against the Swedish host provider before a German court by way of an injunction. There is no reason to refer the matter back to the Court of Appeal. The plaintiffs have made extensive submissions on the measures they have taken.”

 

The BGH decision can be found here. It underlines a BGH decision handed down in 2015 which found that internet providers can be obliged to block infringing websites on the condition that rightsholders have already done everything reasonably possible to stop the infringement.

 

Supported by Hollywood and other content industries, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has a long and well-established track record.

 

Where other groups often take pride in announcing million-dollar damages and prison sentences against pirates, BREIN is rather pragmatic.

 

This approach is illustrated by a warning campaign launched at the end of 2020. Unlike other copyright enforcement groups, BREIN is not interested in casual pirates. Instead, it focuses on the bigger fish so previously asked Internet providers to forward warnings to these subscribers.

 

This sounds like a balanced approach that would be relatively easy to pull off in the United States and other countries where forwarding piracy notices is standard procedure. In the Netherlands, however, this isn’t straightforward at all.

ISP Refuses to Forward Warnings

When BREIN approached the country’s largest Internet provider Ziggo to forward the alerts to subscribers, the company refused to do so. According to Ziggo, linking IP addresses to specific subscribers raises serious privacy concerns, even if personal information isn’t shared with BREIN.

 

The anti-piracy group was not pleased with this refusal and took the ISP to court. There, it argued that warnings are a relatively mild measure that would help rightsholders to address the piracy problem. At the same time, it would not result in any damages claims, as the identities of the alleged pirates remain private.

 

In February, the Utrecht Court sided with the Internet provider. The Court found that there is no legal basis to compel Ziggo to forward warnings. In addition, the ISP also lacks a license to link IP-addresses to personal information.

 

BREIN was disappointed with this outcome and appealed the ruling. This week, the appeals court handed down its decision, which effectively affirms the lower court’s ruling.

No Legal Basis to Require Forwarding

The first question asks whether ISPs can be legally obligated to forward piracy notices to their customers. According to the appeals court, this is not the case.

 

“Although it is understandable that BREIN would like to warn infringers, that does not mean Ziggo’s refusal to cooperate in this regard is unlawful and the ISP is not liable for any resulting damage.

 

“Because Ziggo, due to the lack of a legal basis, does not have to forward warning letters, BREIN’s request can’t be granted,” the court adds (pdf).

 

Based on Dutch case law, internet providers and other intermediaries can be required to hand over the personal information of alleged copyright infringers. BREIN successfully requested such information in the past. However, in these cases, the targeted accounts were part of an active legal proceeding.

 

The court sees the warnings as something separate. BREIN doesn’t plan to take the frequent uploaders to court. On the contrary, it will actually delete their IP addresses from its systems when the warning letters are sent. This means that there is no legal follow-up.

 

In addition, the appeals court also affirmed that Ziggo would indeed need a license to process the personal information of alleged infringers.

BREIN Has to Sue?

Ironically, this verdict means that Ziggo’s refusal to forward piracy notices could come back to bite its subscribers. If BREIN is not allowed to send gentle and anonymous warnings, it may have to sue Ziggo customers instead.

 

“Warning subscribers without taking a case to court immediately is mild and should be possible,” BREIN director Tim Kuik says. “Ziggo now ensures that its infringing customers will be confronted with legal claims right away. That’s not our choice, but if we have to, we’ll do it.”

 

Whether BREIN will follow up on its threat remains to be seen. The group is currently considering whether to take the forwarding question to the Supreme Court, for a final decision on this matter.

 

Over the years, copyright holders have tried a multitude of measures to curb online piracy, with varying levels of success.

 

Site blocking has emerged as one of the preferred solutions. While blocking measures are not bulletproof, the general idea is that they pose a large enough hurdle for casual pirates to choose legal options instead.

 

The blocking approach was very controversial at the start of the last decade but it’s increasingly being normalized. Dozens of countries have legal or procedural options to request blockades today. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has been the driving force behind many of these blockades and, in a recent webinar, the group revealed the global scale of this endeavor.

 

The online panel, hosted by the Washington Legal Foundation, featured MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President Karyn Temple, who discusses the many successes of recent years. This includes the formation of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which leads anti-piracy efforts around the world.

 

In just a few years, ACE has established itself as the dominant anti-piracy force, facilitating seizures, arrests, and convictions across various continents. While going after the operators of pirate sites and services tends to be the preferred option, these people are not always easy to locate. When that’s the case, site blocking comes into play.

 

Site-blocking measures are often targeted at ISPs in the form of “no-fault” injunctions. These allow rightsholders to demand blockades from Internet providers, without holding the companies directly liable. In addition, some countries have adopted dedicated site-blocking schemes, which approve blocking measures through an administrative process without direct oversight of a court.

20,000 Sites Blocked in 39 Countries

The scope of these blocking campaigns continues to expand. Three years ago we reported that 4,000 websites had been blocked in 31 countries. A few days ago, the MPA revealed that there are now 20,000 websites being blocked in 39 countries, an effort that encompasses over 75,000 domain names.

 

The MPA is pleased with these achievements on the blocking front, but one country is noticeably absent from this global effort; the United States. According to Temple, site blocking is more complicated in the US as the law doesn’t explicitly provide the option for “no-fault” injunctions.

 

“We don’t utilize it in the United States because there’s not currently a specific provision in the US copyright law that allows us to do so. So it hasn’t been something that people have regularly done in the United States, but we have a very effective enforcement program overseas where there are a number of countries that have site-blocking regimes,” Temple said.

 

This “no-fault” injunction problem has been mentioned in the past. Technically, US courts can order intermediaries to block sites, and that has indeed happened. However, the text of the law is not entirely clear on whether ISPs have to be held liable or not.

US Site Blocking?

Ideally, the MPA and other rightsholders would like to change the legal framework in the United States to allow for these orders on home turf. Concrete proposals are yet to be formed but it’s been a decade since the last attempt and there are increasing calls to give it another try.

 

The previous “SOPA” site-blocking legislation became stranded after massive public protests were supported by tech giants including Google and Wikipedia. The main fear was that blocking would eventually lead to over-blocking and other problems affecting core internet infrastructure.

 

Ten years on, Temple notes that global site-blocking efforts have shown that these concerns were unfounded.

 

“What we found is that some of the issues that have been raised in the past in the United States when we’ve been considering legislation on this, have really proven to be red herrings,” Temple said. “There haven’t been significant issues of overblocking or censorship and the Internet still is in existence.”

 

The internet is indeed still intact but there have been instances of over-blocking, such as in Austria recently where ISPs had to knowingly block innocent sites to comply with an order. While these are ‘incidents,’ they can have a broad impact.

Google’s an Ally Now

That said, the tide seems to have slowly turned in favor of rightsholders. Ten years ago Google was one of the leading opponents of site blocking, characterizing it as censorship. Today, the search engine voluntarily complies with site blocking orders, even if it’s not listed as a defendant itself.

 

This change hasn’t gone unnoticed at the MPA, as Temple highlighted during the panel discussion.

 

“Ten years ago I don’t think that this would be an outcome that anyone would’ve imagined – that we would be able to use site blocking so effectively overseas and that we’re actually able to increase the effectiveness of site blocking by having a voluntary initiative with Google, that delists those websites from the search engine.”

 

These voluntary cooperations are key to solving the piracy problem, Temple believes. The MPA now has a lawyer dedicated to getting more of these cooperations in place; cooperations with companies that it considered lawsuit candidates in the past.

 

All-in-all, we get the impression that the MPA is pleased with the progress achieved over the past decade, including the 20,000 blocked sites. The ultimate victory, however, will come when site-blocking becomes commonplace in the US.

 

Under extreme pressure from copyright holders and numerous public campaigns, brand leaders and ad agencies agreed that reputable cash shouldn’t find its way into the pockets of pirate site operators.

 

Rightsholders believed that without access to mainstream advertising partners, pirate sites would eventually wither and die. Years later they’re still online, settling for less return per head but with increasing levels of traffic. Meanwhile, pirate site visitors that aren’t already blocking ads have to endure all kinds of ridiculous schemes promising wealth, wisdom, and whatever else pirates need these days.

 

But one freshly-launched streaming site is doing things a bit differently. It’s offering free stuff with no strings attached, and then actually keeping its word.

MFFWatchFree and The Pirate Pass

This week we learned that if pirates searched for specific movies on unnamed illegal streaming sites, they would find themselves redirected to a new streaming platform with something special on offer.

 

That didn’t sound particularly likely, if we’re honest, but with Armageddon Time (Anne Hathaway/Anthony Hopkins) and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Daniel Craig/Kate Hudson) on the search list, we decided to give it a go.

 

As we expected, no adverts appeared for the movies or the mysterious MFFWatchFree on the handful of sites tested, so we went straight to the site itself to see for ourselves.

 

As the screenshot above shows, a big plus on MFFWatchFree is the absence of in-your-face advertising. The downside is that almost everything else is absent too.

Armageddon Time, Hopefully Not Literally

Throwing caution to the wind, we took up the offer to pirate Armageddon Time, while we still can. The movie will play in New York Film Festival’s (NYFF) Main Slate this week in a 60th-anniversary screening event, so a quick glimpse would be timely, if nothing else.

 

Surprisingly the movie started to play as promised, preceded by what can only be described as a blatantly pirated MPA logo with a few bits missing.

 

After a few seconds of plain sailing, the movie began to cut out and then disappeared altogether. Similar tactics were used by a ring of scammy ‘pirate’ sites traced back to Canada last year, so we were wondering what lay ahead.

Reaching Out to Pirates

Luckily, this experience was nothing like that, nothing like that at all. What we have instead is a campaign by the Montclair Film Festival designed to reach out to pirates through the channels they already use. The last few seconds of the clip reveal an exclusive pirate offer.

 

Of course, nobody likes a bait-and-switch, so we were interested to see if the free tickets promised at the end of the clip are actually on offer. We clicked the link marked “CLICK HERE TO USE CODE!!!” and found ourselves directed to the festival’s ticketing portal. After dropping a ticket in the cart, we applied the code, and were given a 100% discount on one ticket.

Filmmakers and Pirates Appreciate Movies Together

Lucky free ticket holders should know that the festival takes place October 21-30 in New Jersey, United States. Since plenty of filmmakers will be in attendance, the organizers are hoping to build bridges between the traditionally warring parties, through their mutual appreciation of movies.

 

“We wanted to find a way to highlight the value of the theatrical experience while acknowledging the challenges the industry is facing in terms of piracy and file sharing,” says Tom Hall, artistic director and co-head of Montclair Film.

 

“This campaign accomplishes both of those things by inviting people into the cinema and The Montclair Film Festival, so they could personally enjoy what makes moviegoing great and hopefully join us in becoming champions for the theatrical experience.”

 

The campaign is the work of Goodby Silverstein & Partners New York

 

Despite the growing availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites and services are used by millions of people worldwide.

 

New data released by UK-based piracy tracking company MUSO shows that pirate sites remain very relevant. And people have no trouble finding them either.

141.7 Billion

In fact, traffic to these sites is booming. During the first eight months of 2022, pirate site visits increased by more than 20% compared to the same period a year earlier, which is good for a dazzling 141.7 billion visits.

 

Nearly half of this traffic (47%) goes to TV-related content. The publishing category takes the second spot with 28 percent, followed by the film (12%), music (7%), and software (6%) categories.

 

The traffic increase is noticeable across all types of piracy but the film category stands out. Compared to the year before, the number of visits has grown by nearly fifty percent.

 

This jump in film piracy may have been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, as many releases were held back or delayed the year before.

 

Looking at the other categories in the bar chart below, we see that publishing piracy also grew by more than a third. The remainder of the categories show relatively modest increases, with music barely showing any increase.

 

Muso separates piracy into streaming and download categories, with torrent sites and cyberlockers occupying the latter. This leads to some obvious conclusions. For example, pirates don’t stream software and books.

 

However, we also see that TV piracy is now dominated by streaming piracy, which accounts for more than 95% of the traffic in this category. For films, streaming sites are in the lead as well (55%) but download sites remain often used (45%) too.

United ‘Pirate’ States

Finally, the geographical distribution shows a familiar picture. The United States is firmly in the lead as the country that sends most visitors to pirate sites. Muso clocked 15.5 billion visits, which is more than 10 percent of the global piracy audience.

 

Russia and India follow at a respectable distance with around 8 billion pirate site visits, followed by China and France, with 4.7 and 4.6 billion visits, respectively.

 

These country rankings are more or less on par with previous years, with the top three remaining unchanged. This isn’t a major surprise as these countries are also among the largest in population size, with access to the Internet.

 

While these trends are intriguing to follow, it should be noted that the numbers only apply to regular pirate sites visits. This means that a large and growing part of the piracy ecosystem, including dedicated piracy boxes and illegal IPTV offerings, are not included.

 

All in all it appears that piracy has continued to grow over the past two years. That follows a period in the late 2010s when visits to pirate sites declined in some regions.

 

Muso’s report doesn’t provide an explanation for this trend. Muso CEO Andy Chatterley previously argued that increased fragmentation in the streaming ecosystem, paired with higher prices, is starting to make piracy more appealing again.

 

UK broadcaster Sky has never been particularly fond of people pirating its content.

 

It’s a battle that’s raged for more than 30 years, and despite there being no apparent end in sight, Sky keeps slugging it out, putting in the rounds, and hoping for a win on points.

 

From its roots as Sky Television through its teenage years as BSkyB, Sky has battled everything from box and smartcard hacking through to smartcard blocking and smartcard emulation. Not even cardsharing dented Sky’s enthusiasm for a piracy brawl.

 

Sky’s latest arch-nemesis is the commercial IPTV provider. Utilizing captured satellite and cable streams or even its own streaming service NowTV, today’s Sky faces the most organized pirates the company has ever seen, and in greater numbers too. But as that war rages in the background, Sky is careful to ensure that other aspects of internet-based piracy are taken care of too..

Small Apps, Major Irritation

Over the past decade, Android-based piracy apps have given Sky a migraine along with the rest of the entertainment industries. Popcorn Time, Showbox, Mobdro and Terrarium TV all played their part – at least before every last one succumbed to legal pressure.

 

The problem for Sky is that it’s easier than ever for today’s competent programmers to come up with an alternative. Despite anti-piracy groups claiming to have taken hundreds down, new apps or resurrections of old ones are never in short supply.

 

Indeed, despite several attempts by Sky to wipe out the same few apps, they always have a tendency to bounce back in one way or another.

Sky, MPA and ACE vs. TeaTV: Seconds Out, Round 6

Back in 2020, the Motion Picture Association decided to disrupt popular streaming app TeaTV. The app had featured in a widely-read article published by CNBC before disappearing offline, but a grand return was always on the cards.

 

The MPA tried to have TeaTV’s operator permanently banned from Github and since the MPA is behind anti-piracy group ACE (and Sky is a member of that coalition), the broadcaster would’ve given its full support. But despite four sets of correspondence with Github, the ultimate goal of killing the app remained elusive.

 

TeaTV turned out to be a pretty strong brew, despite the suspension of its Twitter account. Through strong branding it has managed to stay in the game, but whether today’s variant (of which there are several) is/are the same and/or operated by the original developer is a question for people with an abundance of spare time.

 

The key thing is that still exists and Sky still isn’t giving up. In a fresh move against TeaTV, an anti-piracy company representing Sky Group’s Sky Italia follows the familiar pattern of demanding the app’s removal from Github.

 

“We are writing in the name and on behalf of Sky Italia Srl, the exclusive owner of distribution and exploitation rights of the Sky IT channels. This IPTV App (TeaTV) includes illegal and unauthorized Pay Tv Sky IT tv series: Gomorra,” Kopjra S.R.L. writes.

 

In an effort to help Github understand the problem, Kopjra provides a tutorial detailing where to find the app, how to download and install it, and ultimately how to carry out a search to find the infringing content before watching it.

 

Whether Github took them up on the offer isn’t clear but Sky’s DMCA takedown notification was a success. The locations referenced in the takedown notice were either deleted or suspended by Github in response.

Sky vs. CucoTV: The Rematch

If TeaTV is an irritant to Sky, movie and TV show streaming app CucoTV certainly won’t be viewed any more positively. Anti-piracy group Kopjra S.R.L. asked Github to take down a TeaTV website and repository in May 2021, but even that required an additional complaint weeks later to hopefully finish off the task.

 

Somewhat predictably, ten months after that the job still wasn’t done, so yet another complaint was fired off to Github. Featuring a customary piracy tutorial, it prompted Github to respond with the necessary action.

 

Five months later, after a user called CucoTV switched to CucoTV2 and then to CucoappTV, a CucoTV-branded app appeared once again on Github. This time it was Sky UK’s turn to spoil the piracy party with another tutorial and yet another demand for the persistent piracy app to be taken down.

Spoiler Alert: CucoTV Reappeared

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, a user called ‘cucotv2022’ recently signed up to Github and proceeded to upload a CucoTV-branded streaming app to a similarly named repository.

 

Whoever it was also created a new website to promote the free software but the fun was short-lived. Another DMCA complaint filed on behalf of Sky UK successfully requested the elimination of both.

 

CucoTV doesn’t appear to have much of an offical presence on Github right now but its Twitter account suggests that Discord may have become the latest hot location. In the meantime, Sky maintains its search engine delisting campaign against dozens of sites claiming to offer CucoTV for download.

Organized Piracy Meets Disorganized Piracy

Whether Sky will follow up on Discord remains to be seen but the company remains vigilant as it identifies new threats on the back of existing ones.

 

Two days after the latest successful CucoTV takedown, a follow-up DMCA notice from Sky took down what appears to be the official repo of popular free streaming app CinemaHD, an app that also has links to similar services. In common with CinemaHD, they also have clones and copycats muddying the waters.

 

Saying that the piracy app ‘marketplace’ has become more complicated over the years is a bit of an understatement. If users put in enough effort and have enough patience, it’s possible to track specific apps over time. But factor in the disruption caused by takedowns, which sometimes results in developers ‘going dark’ and coming back with a similar app under a new name, not much is straightforward for long.

 

Opportunists deliberately sowing confusion to draw attention to their own tools is also a problem, especially for people who click on the first thing they find. Sky takedown notices sent to Google reveal dozens of sites claiming to offer CucoTV, albeit in a range of suspiciously broad filesizes.

 

Sky undoubtedly faces additional headaches due to this chaos, but if it’s any consolation at all, it’s not alone when it reaches for the painkillers.

 

Image Credits: Pixabay/meineresterampe

 

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 10 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	(…)	Hellraiser	6.2 / trailer
3	(4)	Top Gun: Maverick	8.6 / trailer
4	(…)	Jeepers Creepers: Reborn	2.4 / trailer
5	(2)	Vesper	6.2 / trailer
6	(5)	Thor: Love and Thunder	6.5 / trailer
7	(3)	Hocus Pocus 2	6.3 / trailer
8	(6)	The Greatest Beer Run Ever	6.8 / trailer
9	(7)	Jurassic World Dominion	6.0 / trailer
10	(9)	Nope	7.1 / trailer

 

 

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

 

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has been a key player in the anti-piracy fight for decades and this position has only strengthened in recent years.

 

As the driving force behind the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the MPA finds itself at the center of an international enforcement apparatus.

 

Just a few days ago we reported how ACE was instrumental in shutting down pirate streaming services in Latin America. Pretty much at the same time, it was involved in over a dozen arrests in Singapore, where more than 2,500 pirate streaming boxes were seized at Lim Square.

Notorious Markets

The MPA and ACE can already claim a long list of anti-piracy successes but some of the most egregious threats are rather persistent. This is apparent from the latest overview of ‘notorious markets’ that was just submitted to the US Trade Representative (USTR).

 

The MPA report typically provides a detailed overview of the piracy landscape. This year, the USTR further asked rightsholders to explain how piracy impacts US workers. According to the movie industry group, the effect is significant.

 

“In 2020, there were an estimated 137.2 billion visits to film and TV piracy sites globally, which cost the U.S. economy at least $29.2 billion in lost revenue each year. Specifically, piracy has been estimated to reduce employment in our industry between 230,000 and 560,000 jobs,” MPA writes, citing external research.

The Internet’s Responsibility

The MPA notes that piracy is a global problem that requires cooperation from the broader Internet ecosystem. Services that see themselves as neutral intermediaries, operating parts of the core Internet infrastructure, should take responsibility.

 

“All stakeholders in the internet ecosystem – including hosting providers, DNS providers, cloud services, advertising networks, payment processors, social networks, and search engines – should actively seek to reduce support for notoriously infringing sites,” MPA writes.

 

The industry group views Cloudflare as part of this group and mentions the US company by name in its submission.

 

“Cloudflare’s customers include some of the most notorious, longstanding pirate websites in the world, including the massively popular streaming site cuevana3.me and The Pirate Bay,” MPA notes, adding that repeated notices of infringement elicited no action on Cloudflare’s part.

 

The notorious markets list is limited to non-US operations, so Cloudflare itself isn’t one of the MPA’s targets. Various other Internet services are, including several third-party intermediaries.

Registries, Hosting, Ads, and Payments

The MPA’s list of notorious markets calls out domain name registries, including the Russian .RU registry, and the companies that maintain the records for the .CH, .CC, .IO, .ME and .TO domain names. These continue to keep pirate sites on board, despite numerous complaints.

 

The same is true for the payment provider VoguePay, which is reportedly quite popular among IPTV services. In addition, advertisers such as 1XBET and Propeller Ads are called out as well. The latter company rebutted MPA’s accusations last year but that didn’t prevent it from being highlighted again.

 

Hosting companies are also cited as intermediaries that could and should do more. Instead, some find themselves appealing to pirate services with products such as “bulletproof” hosting. Squitter.eu and Amaratu are two such examples, the MPA reports.

Piracy as a Service

In addition to third-party intermediaries, there is also a category of services that caters to pirates directly. These “piracy as a service” (PaaS) companies offer tools that allow people to start a pirate site with minimal effort.

 

“PaaS encompasses a suite of often off-the-shelf services that make it easy for would-be pirates without any technical knowledge to create, operate, and monetize a fully functioning pirate operation,” MPA writes.

 

The MPA first defined PaaS as a separate category in its report last year. In its latest overview, it again mentions a variety of services such as Collaps.org, which offers a pirate movie CMS, and XFileSharing, which offers cyberlocker software.

 

“These services are evidence of the scale, sophistication, and profitability of modern online commercial copyright infringement. The emergence and development of PaaS services have become a key concern of MPA and a top priority for its antipiracy efforts.”

Classic Pirate Sites and IPTV

Actual pirate sites themselves are also mentioned, including the usual suspects The Pirate Bay, RARBG and YTS. In addition to torrent sites, the MPA also lists direct download hubs, streaming portals and linking sites, including Uptobox.com, Fmovies.to and Egy.best.

 

Various dedicated piracy apps get a mention as well, and the MPA further includes a long list of unauthorized IPTV services. The anti-piracy group says that it has identified more than a thousand pirate IPTV platforms, so the list provided to the USTR is certainly not exhaustive.

 

In fact, the MPA says that all companies, sites, and services are part of a broader piracy problem. Those flagged in the MPA’s report are just examples of some of the worst offenders, nothing more.

 

In a similar vein, we have also noticed that some “notorious markets” are removed from the list over time. That doesn’t mean that they’re no longer considered a problem for Hollywood, of course.

 

All in all, it is clear that, despite the ACE successes, the MPA still has plenty of work ahead. With its USTR submission, it is hoping for a helping hand from the US Government, potentially in the form of some diplomatic nudges.

 

—

 

A list of all sites and services that are highlighted and categorized in MPA’s notorious markets submission (pdf) can be found below. For additional context, we highlight the new entries, while also indicating those from the 2021 report that have been removed.

 

Linking and Streaming Websites

 

– Cda.pl
– Cuevana3.me (new)
– Cuevana.pro (new)
– Dytt8.net, Dy2018.com, Dygod.net, and Ygdy8.com
– Egy.best
– Fmovies.to
– Fullhdizlesene (new)
– Gimy.app
– Gnula.se/Gnula.nu
– Hesgoal.com (new)
– KatmovieHD (new)
– Myflixer.to (new)
– NooNoo.tv (new)
– Rezka.ag (new)
– Soap2Day (new)
– Streaming Community (new)
– Tamilblasters / Streamblasters / TamilMV (new)
– TheNetNaija (new)
– Afdah.video
– Altadefinizione
– Bs.to
– CB01
– Chomikuj.pl
– Cuevana3.io
– MrPiracy.top
– Pelisplushd.net
– Phimmoi
– Rezka.ag
– Topflix.vc
– Zone-telechargement.com

 

Direct Download Cyberlockers and Streaming Video Hosting Services

 

– 1fichier.com
– Baidu Pan and Baidu Search
– DoodStream.com (new)
– Mixdrop.co
– Streamtape.com
– Telegram
– Uptobox.com
– VK.com
– PowVideo.net
– Uploaded.net
– Vivo.sx

 

Illegal IPTV Services

 

– Apollo Group TV (new)
– BIPTV.best and BestBuyIPTV.store
– GenIPTV
– IcutCord.net (new)
– Iptv.casa (new)
– TheKing365tv.site
– King-IPTV.net
– MagisTV
– SatCon Africa
– Spider Receiver
– IPTVForest.net

 

Piracy Devices and Apps

 

– EVPAD
– LokLok (new)
– PikaShow
– Shabakaty
– SVI Cloud
– TVMob
– Unblock Tech (unblocktech.com)
– PopcornTime
– PopcornTime.one (Kids)

 

Peer-to-Peer Networks & BitTorrent Portals

 

– 1337x.to
– Rarbg.to
– Rutracker.org
– ThePirateBay.org
– Yts.mx
– Gimmepeers.com (formally Bitsoup.org)

 

Hosting Providers

 

– Amaratu/KoDDos
– Ddos-Guard.net
– Mnogobyte
– Squitter.eu (ABC Consultancy)
– BlueAngelHost
– Host-palace.com

 

Registries

 

– .CH Registry
– .IO Registry (new)
– .CC Registry (new)
– .ME Registry (new)
– .RU Registry
– .TO Registry
– .IS Registry
– .TV Registry

 

Payment Processors

 

– VoguePay

 

Ad Networks and Online Advertisers

 

– 1XBET
– Propeller Ads
– AdsKeeper
– GetB8.com
– PopAds and PopCash
– RevenueHits

 

Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS)

 

– 2embed.ru
– Abyss.to
– Collaps.org
– Fembed.com
– GDrivePlayer
– WHMCS Smarters
– Njalla
– Pelisplus.icu
– XFileSharing/XVideoSharing
– Embedforfree.co

 

The mainstream file-sharing scene is well-known for its public-facing websites and forums but underneath all of that, chat channels have always played a big role.

 

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was a popular option when BitTorrent sites ruled the waves. Many sites had channels serving as community hubs on one hand, and portals to the latest files on the other. IRC’s relatively steep learning curve helped to stunt its own growth but for modern-day equivalents such as Telegram, there are no such problems.

 

After IRC first appeared in 1988, it took more than 20 years for the most popular networks to peak between 100K to 200K users. After just nine years online, Telegram now has 700 million active users each month. Channels are used for every type of discussion imaginable, with piracy facilitation and distribution some of the fastest-growing trends. As a result, copyright holders have yet another battle on their hands.

Italy’s War on Telegram Piracy

Since at least 2019, Italian authorities have targeted Telegram channels linked to illicit IPTV services and movie and TV show piracy, but protection of literary works is becoming increasingly common.

 

In 2020, complaints from the Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEG) over the illegal distribution of newspapers, periodicals, and books, led to an emergency order requiring Telegram to shut down 19 channels or face blocking itself. A year later, FIEG said it had taken down more than 300 Telegram channels offering similar content.

 

A major anti-piracy operation carried out last week shows that even more work needs to be done.

Journalist Organization Demands Action Against Pirates

In order to work legally in Italy, journalists must obtain registration from Ordine dei Giornalisti (Order of Journalists, ODG), a state-approved body that has been responsible for regulating the profession since 1963.

 

While registration and regulation of journalists is controversial, ODG is seen as a champion of its members’ rights. In addition to protecting writers in their negotiations with publishers, ODG works to ensure its members are paid fairly. The organization also seeks fair competition in the marketplace where piracy is seen as a disruption.

 

A memorandum of understanding signed two years ago by ODG and government law enforcement agency Guardia di Finanza was designed to send another message on behalf of its members; journalism plays a key role in democracy and pirates shouldn’t be allowed to undermine either.

 

In early 2020, ODG filed a complaint at the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Milan. The regulator said that Telegram and WhatsApp groups were mass distributing PDF copies of newspapers and periodicals on a daily basis. Since this piracy harms ODG members, shutting down pirate channels would be a proportionate response. The authorities listened and dozens of channels were blocked.

Latest Response From Specialist IT Unit

Gruppi Sportivi Fiamme Gialle is the sports division of the Italian police force, competing in athletics, rowing, skiing and disciplines including judo and karate. Fiamme Gialle IT specialists werecredited for identifying 6,500 pirate IPTV users and according to the Guardia di Finanza of Rome, they’ve recently been tracking down those pirating ODG members’ works too.

 

“The investigations carried out by the specialists of the Fiamme Gialle led to the identification of a much wider illegal network than the one envisaged in the complaint,” a statement from GdF reads.

 

“This allowed the unmasking of a consolidated system of unauthorized sharing and dissemination, not only of newspapers and magazines published by the main Italian editorial groups, but also television schedules, TV series and other paid entertainment content, distributed via the internet by the major streaming platforms.”

Police Obtain Authority to Search and Shutdown

Under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Milan, the Technological Fraud Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome obtained authority to shutdown the pirates’ Telegram channels and carry out searches against suspects.

 

The seizure order relates to 545 Telegram ‘resources’ suspected of distributing copyrighted content and individuals said to be involved in their operation. In five areas of Italy – Lombardia, Piemonte, Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Campania – searches were conducted against eight people. GdF describes them as the suspected administrators of channels linked to criminal copyright infringement offenses.

Telegram Piracy Channels Were Very Popular

GdF say that the targeted Telegram channels had over 430,000 subscribers who paid nothing to join channels but were monetized by the administrators in other ways.

 

The first method involved the administrators pasting links into their channels that referred users to e-commerce sites. When these links were followed and products were purchased, a percentage was kicked back to the administrators.

 

The second method is described as “sponsorship” where advertising banners were placed on the allegedly-infringing channels in return for payment from the advertiser. Information related to these sponsorship deals is still online and shows the interconnected nature of the channels targeted by the police.

Which Channels Were Blocked?

The channels haven’t been officially named by the authorities but information obtained by TorrentFreak allowed us to identify a key channel in the investigation, confirm it had been banned by Telegram, and then find other connected channels that received the same treatment.

 

The Riviste Gratuite (Free Magazines) channel launched in September 2020 and a year later had 30,575 subscribers. The channel reached a peak of 41,046 around October 9, before being blocked by Telegram for copyright infringement.

 

Other channels in the same niche also banned last week include eBook Free House (55,000), Epub Gold (28,500), and Giornali Gratuti (21,800).

 

As pointed out by GdF, the system their specialists uncovered offered more than just pirated newspapers and magazines. In the end, offering content other than that reported by ODG failed to keep them online.

 

Whether they offered movies and TV shows or other content in Italian, House Streaming (29,000 subscribers), Il Cinema Notturno (34,000), and APK Plex (100,500), were all blocked along with many others.

Who Sponsored The Channels?

The banned channels listed above (plus others not documented here) all targeted Italy, with Italian-focused content. Their tendency to keep mentioning each other in their respective channels made them very easy to spot.

 

The huge amount of data available from Telegram (not to mention basic Google searches) shows they had connections with ‘Sponsor Cultura‘, which appears to be acting as some kind of agent for potential advertisers.

 

One offer lists the channels @RivisteGratuite, @GiornaliGratuiti, @RivisteInternazionali and @AppPlexFree (three of which are now blocked). It states that they reached 115,000 members/20,000 visuals per day, and offered a 15:00 to 20:00 (5 hours) time slot for 40 euros. Other offers are openly visible on Telegram.

 

This sponsor isn’t banned, and neither are the many other Italy-focused magazine channels that still exist on Telegram. Another round of takedowns should be expected in the not-too-distant future.

 

US broadcaster DISH Network has a reputation for chasing down anyone involved in piracy of its content. From large IPTV providers to resellers, from card-sharing networks to humble buyers, DISH can sculpt a suitable lawsuit for everyone.

 

Still fresh after obtaining a judgment worth more than half a billion dollars against an IPTV seller in May, DISH quickly filed a new lawsuit against the alleged operators of PrimeStreams, one of the most recognizable brands in the market.

 

The lawsuit, which alleges large-scale breaches of the Federal Communications Act and the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, is still ongoing. If proven, DISH could be entitled to tens of millions of dollars in damages but in the meantime, DISH is doing what it always does – chasing down other people allegedly connected to the service.

DISH Files Lawsuit Against KTV Streams

In a lawsuit filed at an Ohio district court, DISH and subsidiary Sling TV name William Everly III as the alleged owner of KTV Hosting, also known as KTV Streams. DISH claims that Everly’s KTV IPTV service resold PrimeStreams subscriptions, which reportedly accessed content directly from Sling TV’s servers.

 

According to the complaint, PrimeStreams acquired TV programming by circumventing protection technologies, including Google’s Widevine DRM, Apple’s FairPlay DRM, and Microsoft’s PlayReady DRM. Once PrimeStreams had access to the content, its operators allegedly monetized the streams by selling subscriptions, either directly to end-users or via a network of resellers operating under their own branding.

 

The complaint alleges that through his KTV brand, Everly was one such reseller.

KTV Registered as a Business in Ohio

In common with Daniel Scroggins and Steven Daugherty, who allegedly operated PrimeStreams through a company called Dscroggs Investments LLC, Everly officially registered his KTV service as KTV Streams LLC in Ohio, naming himself as the owner.

 

DISH alleges that Everly bought credits from PrimeStreams and then sold them on to his own customers via ktvhosting.com, which ostensibly offered webhosting plans.

 

At this point the statements in the lawsuit appear to suggest something that isn’t explicitly said. It involves another well-known streaming and IPTV personality/seller who goes by the name ‘Firestick Steve’.

‘Firestick Steve’ Was Being Targeted By DISH

The ‘Firestick Steve‘ IPTV/streaming brand is well known online and for good reason. Among other things, Firestick Steve’s services were promoted in YouTube videos that appeared completely oblivious to the fact that selling pirate IPTV services is illegal, under civil law (if you’re lucky) and criminal law (if you’re not).

 

 

In the complaint filed against PrimeStreams in May, Firestick Steve was mentioned alongside Bing TV and Better Than Cable TV as rebrandings of the PrimeStreams service. In the new lawsuit against Everly, it’s alleged that Everly acquired the customer base of the Firestick Steve operation in April 2022 and merged that into his own KTV Streams/KTV Hosting service.

 

That certainly lines up with conversations online earlier this year. When Firestick Steve suddenly shut down, former customers received emails advising that someone new had taken over. KTV Hosting was revealed as the new provider and people were able to log in with their old credentials. So what happened to Firestick Steve?

Two People Merge Into One…Maybe..

The complaint alleges that Everly acquired the Firestick Steve customer database from someone who had already received cease-and-desist notices from DISH, which may explain why they were keen to pass former users over. DISH identifies the person who transferred the Firestick Steve (FSS) database to Everly as follows:

 

“Everly acquired the FSS customer base from Daugherty – one of the defendants in the PrimeStreams case – who at the time was facing legal pressure from Plaintiffs in the form of pre-suit cease and desist demands,” DISH reveals.

 

“Everly’s acquisition of the FSS customer base included both end users and resellers of the FSS service. On information and belief, FSS users were migrated to Everly’s KTV Service and purchased Device Codes from Everly in the same manner as other KTV Service users.”

 

At no point does DISH explicitly state that Daugherty and Firestick Steve are the same person. However, the company does state that Daugherty operated rebranded services that utilized the PrimeStreams service and that he was already under pressure from cease-and-desist notices. Daugherty’s name is also linked to social media accounts under the username ‘firesticksteve’.

 

Whatever the truth, Everly was walking directly into the fire.

Everly Split Users and Resellers

DISH says that after acquiring the FSS database, Everly used KTV Hosting to service former FSS customers who simply bought subscriptions to watch TV, and then started a new service called Tixe Hosting to service the former FSS resellers, who were actually reselling PrimeStreams subscriptions under a different name.

 

Everyone was advised to keep things as quiet as possible, in particular by not posting the news on Reddit. Of course, that request wasn’t adhered to by some users.

 

The DISH complaint also includes screenshots from Tixe Hosting’s Discord group where resellers were warned not to mention PrimeStreams by name, to only use their own branding, and – again – to never advertise anything on Reddit.

 

Messages also advised that if anyone had received a letter from NagraStar, a content protection company partly owned by DISH itself, Tixe Hosting wouldn’t be doing business with them.

 

Despite knowledge of the PrimeStreams lawsuit as a bare minimum, DISH says that Everly continued the Tixe Hosting operation. Not even a cease-and-desist convinced him to stop.

 

“Everly was notified on July 15, 2022 that his operation of the Pirate Services violated federal laws and that he must cease and desist from such activity but the Pirate Services continue to operate,” the complaint adds.

 

As a result, Everly stands accused of large-scale breaches of both the Federal Communications Act and the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, just like the defendants in the PrimeStreams case. It’s impossible to predict the scale of the damages at this stage of the lawsuit but tens of millions of dollars seems realistic.

 

The DISH lawsuit can be found here (pdf)

 

Last year, the Motion Picture Association warned of a new and emerging piracy threat; Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS).

 

The term refers to tools and services that make it easy for prospective pirates to set up and operate a piracy site.

 

This category includes pre-configured scripts that allow prospective pirates to launch a streaming site in no time, for example. These can then be paired with pre-populated video libraries or CDNs, that instantly offer access to externally hosted movies and TV shows.

HDFoxCDN Shutdown

HDFoxCDN was one of the services that offered access to such a broad library of pirated content. With minimal effort, pirate sites could use its API to embed tens of thousands of titles.

 

Some of these ‘PaaS’ services try to hide their intentions with vague terms and concealed backdoor access. HDFoxCDN, however, was quite open about its main selling points.

 

“One API, more than a hundred thousand free videos for your website. Add movies, series, and anime to your website in seconds,” the service promised.

 

The screenshot and quotes above are translated from Portuguese, as HDFoxCDN mainly focused on the Brazilian market. That didn’t go unnoticed by international anti-piracy coalition ACE, which had the service firmly in its crosshairs.

One CDN Leads to Many Shutdowns

In a coordinated effort by investigators from the US and Latin America, the operator of the service was tracked down. They identified a 26-year-old Brazilian man as the main suspect and linked him to 19 other pirate sites.

 

After being confronted, the man agreed to shut down the service and transfer the domains to ACE. This directly impacted many third-party sites as well, as these relied on HDFoxCDN as a content library.

 

Research by TorrentFreak reveals that dozens of sites used the service. Some of these now redirect to ACE, including adorofilmes.one, baixakifilmes.net, cineflow.club, flixfilmes.me, linkfilmes.biz, lisofilmes.com, netfilmestv.com, netfrix.biz, superfilmes.online, and verfilmesonline.biz.

 

These sites now all redirect to the ACE banner that’s shown above. Others domains that used HDFoxCDN, such as xfilmes.me have simply gone offline or redirect elsewhere.

YMovies

HDFoxCDN is not the only major piracy player to be rolled up by ACE in recent weeks. The group also identified the operator of the pirate streaming site YMovies and shut it down.

 

It is no surprise that this site was targeted. This summer, the anti-piracy coalition obtained DMCA subpoenas against Cloudflare and the Tonic registry, in an attempt to identify the owner.

 

YMovies had an estimated 2.5 million visits per month. In this case, a Colombian suspect helped to connect ACE to the operators of four large piracy sites. YMovies is the only one that’s been shut down so far and the domain transfer of the unnamed sites is “in progress”, ACE says.

 

Our research indicated that yify.li and yseries.tv are connected to the same owner. These all point to ACE’s website at the time of publication. YMovies.se is linked to the same owner as well, but isn’t seized yet.

 

All in all, the anti-piracy coalition is pleased with these new takedowns, and particularly with the international cooperation that continues to pay off.

 

“ACE is making great progress fighting piracy across Latin America and protecting the region’s growing creative community,” ACE Chief Jan van Voorn says, commenting on the news.

 

“I’m particularly proud of how well our Latin American and U.S. teams coordinated to identify and take down the Ymovies operation. Piracy is a global challenge that demands the kind of global coordination that ACE is uniquely positioned to provide,” Van Voorn adds.

 

Over the past several years waves of copyright infringement lawsuits have targeted alleged cheaters and cheat makers.

 

The legal battle between the American video game developer Bungie and AimJunkies.com is one of the most litigated cases thus far.

 

Last summer, Bungie filed a complaint at a federal court in Seattle, accusing AimJunkies of copyright and trademark infringement, among other things. The same accusations were also made against Phoenix Digital Group, the alleged creators of the Destiny 2 cheating software.

 

Both parties in this case are experts at high-level virtual combat. The court, however, is an entirely different playing field where the stakes are typically higher. Nonetheless, both sides have committed to winning this battle.

 

Over the past year, there have been a series of allegations back and forth. Bungie is eager to shut down the cheating operation, which it believes is clearly illegal. AimJunkies disagrees and has fired back on several occasions.

Hacking Countersuit

Two weeks ago, the cheat seller denied all of Bungie’s claims in court and fired back with a countersuit. Among other things, it accused the game company of accessing the computer of defendant James May without authorization, which AimJunkies equates to hacking.

 

AimJunkies pointed out that Bungie’s license agreement (LSLA) didn’t explicitly allow for this type of access at the time, and that it was updated at a later stage to permit this for anti-cheating purposes.

 

Yesterday, Bungie filed a motion to dismiss these counterclaims at the federal court in Seattle, Washington. According to the game company, the hacking allegations are legally deficient and factually unsupported.

False and Unsupported

The allegations are based on a spreadsheet produced by Bungie, showing file paths on the local computer of AimJunkies’ James May. However, Bungie notes that it was May who initiated these connections, not the other way around.

 

“May’s allegations regarding Bungie’s supposed ‘access’ of his computer are simply false,” Bungie’s motion to dismiss reads.

 

“The purported evidence May relies on, which Counterclaimants attach to their counterclaims, does not show Bungie downloading files from May’s computer; it shows metadata of processes on May’s computer that he connected to the Destiny 2 process, such as May’s ‘Reverse Engineering Tool(s)’.”

 

Even if Bungie had initiated the connection, the claim would be legally insufficient since May does not allege any significant harm or injury, which is required to make the case for hacking, Bungie adds.

 

In addition, Bungie argues that it would be allowed to access May’s computer under its privacy policy, which is referenced in the LSLA. This broadly worded policy allows the company to access the computers of Destiny 2 players under certain circumstances.

 

“May’s counterclaims do not include any factual allegations demonstrating that the data purportedly collected by Bungie falls outside of these categories of data he agreed to allow Bungie to collect,” Bungie writes.

Bungie Rebuts DMCA Claims

Aside from the hacking claims, AimJunkies also accused Bungie of violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. The game company had to do so in order to access the loader software, the cheat seller said.

 

Bungie asks the court to dismiss this claim as well. There is no evidence that the company “circumvented” anything and, on top of that, AimJunkies doesn’t show that the loader is a protected copyrighted work, as the DMCA requires.

 

“Phoenix Digital alleges that Bungie accessed its ‘proprietary loader software,’ but Phoenix Digital does not allege that this loader software constitutes a copyrighted work.”

Unsupported, False and Damaging

According to Bungie, it’s crystal clear that the counterclaims should be dismissed. The game maker argues that they are unsupported, false, and intended to damage its reputation.

 

To illustrate this, the motion mentions that AimJunkies’ David Schaefer sent an email (2:05) to lawyer and YouTuber Richard Hoeg, showing an interesting take on the legal term “on information and belief.”

 

This phrase of often used in legal paperwork to illustrate that statements are based on secondhand information that the declarant believes is true. According to Schaefer, it’s code for “it’s not true but were going to throw this out there and see if it sticks with the judge.”

 

The characterization referred to Bungie’s use of this term. However, it also suggests that AimJunkies would use it similarly.

 

“Counterclaimants have apparently taken this erroneous definition to heart and acted in accordance, alleging claims with no basis to ‘get away with’, allegations that they know are ‘not true’ to ‘see if it sticks’.

 

“To state the obvious, Schaefer is mistaken; alleging facts ‘on information and belief’ does not justify or excuse making knowingly false allegations or ‘get[ting] away’ with libel (or slander),” Bungie adds.

 

Based on the above, Bungie asks the court to dismiss the counterclaim with prejudice. That would mean that AimJunkies would not get the chance to amend and refile them in the future.

 

—

 

A copy of Bungie’s full motion to dismiss, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf)

 

Pornhub is without a doubt one of the most visited adult entertainment outlets on the Internet.

 

The ‘entertainment’ platform is owned by MindGeek, the company formerly known as Manwin. In just a few years it has transformed the adult industry’s pay-to-access model into an all-you-can-eat, free-to-stream business.

 

Part of this magic formula is down to Pornhub and other MindGeek-owned tube sites allowing users to upload content. This material includes legitimate videos but also quite a few pirated versions too.

DMCA-Protected Flywheel

These videos drove millions of visitors to the site, which also helped to draw in even more uploaders. This flywheel kept spinning and spinning with help from the DMCA, which shields Pornhub from copyright liability.

 

Over the years, complaints from porn rightsholders increased alongside pressure from credit card companies calling for a ban on ‘offensive’ material. Then the authorities expressed increasing concern over potentially abusive content on the site.

 

Pornhub worked hard to weather the storm by implementing upload filters, manual content checks, and by processing hundreds of thousands of takedown requests. But despite all this effort, Pornhub could not prevent the floodgates from opening in late 2020.

“The Children of Pornhub”

In an opinion piece titled “The Children of Pornhub,” the New York Times shone a light on the dark side of the tube site.

 

The piece made an impact on people around the world, including billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who piled pressure on Pornhub payment providers Visa and Mastercard.

 

While Pornhub thrives on free content, FT recently documented that its operations are heavily intertwined with the credit card companies, who help to process many millions in ad revenue. So, when Visa and Mastercard suspended these payments, MindGeek’s flagship was destined to go down.

The Purge

Faced with potentially imminent demise, in December 2020 Pornhub responded by taking down millions of videos. The goal was to prevent anything exploitive, including child pornography, from ever appearing on the platform. To support this commitment, content uploaders would have to be verified going forward.

 

Pornhub’s decision wasn’t so much about copyright but verification inadvertently became one of the Internet’s most effective ‘anti-piracy’ interventions.

 

The copyright infringement implications have not been reported publicly by PornHub but data shows a significant impact. When TorrentFreak compared Pornhub’s most recent transparency report with the one issued a year earlier, we found a massive uploader verification effect on piracy complaints.

DMCA Takedowns ‘Vanish’

In 2020, PornHub removed 544,021 pieces of content in response to DMCA notices. That’s a significant number, even when considering that Pornhub hosted close to 14 million videos at the time.

 

A large chunk of these videos were removed when the site went ‘verified-only’. Roughly four million videos survived the purge and many more were re-added when verified. As a result of this process, DMCA removals tanked.

 

In 2021, Pornhub removed just 8,547 pieces of content in response to DMCA notices, a historic drop of more than 98% year-over-year.

The Holy Verification Grail?

Aside from the obvious conclusion that it’s good to see Pornhub tackling child exploitation and other types of abuse, this saga might just plant a seed with copyright holders. Apparently, uploader verification is a very effective anti-piracy tool.

 

Pornhub had been dealing with DMCA complaints for many years. It spent serious effort and resources building a dedicated takedown team. Then, after flipping on the verification switch, all problems suddenly vanished.

 

This is both impressive and scary, depending on your perspective. While many copyright holders dream of uploader “verification” checks on YouTube, for example, the prospect of mandatory ‘Internet passports’ give others nightmares.

 

It is hard to tell whether Pornhub’s data will lead to anything new. However, the adult entertainment industry is often the first to implement new ideas and technologies, whether it’s related to online streaming, payment processing, or virtual reality. And user verification too, perhaps.

 

When SmoothStreams disappeared offline mid-July, subscribers to the service went through the usual cycle of assumptions. From temporary technical problems to a full-blown law enforcement raid, no one seemed to know anything for sure.

 

Over the next two weeks, a picture began to emerge. SmoothStreams had been raided but not as part of any criminal action. A month earlier, Bell Media, Rogers Media, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and Warner Bros. had filed a copyright infringement complaint at Canada’s Federal Court.

 

They allege that Marshall Macciacchera and Antonio Macciacchera (son and father respectively) are the owners and operators of SmoothStreams.tv and several additional platforms, including live247.tv, StreamTVNow.tv and StarStreams.tv. According to the plaintiffs, these platforms enabled subscribers to access large volumes of live TV channels and movies, in violation of their rights.

Injunction and Anton Piller Order

In addition to an injunction, the plaintiffs obtained an Anton Piller order, a type of court authorization that allowed them to search premises linked to the defendants and seize evidence. They executed that on July 14 in three locations, reportedly seizing dozens of TV receivers and encoders, plus a number of servers believed to have been used for capturing and redistributing streams.

 

Anton Piller orders grant extraordinary powers to those who obtain them but cooperation from defendants isn’t guaranteed, even when supported by an interim order issued by the Federal Court. After being presented with the documents, Antonio refused to read them, declined his consent for the order’s execution, and eventually faced a contempt of court hearing. The outcome of that is yet to be announced.

Demands for Disclosure of Information

According to court records, Marshall’s compliance didn’t match the plaintiffs’ expectations either. The interim order required him to disclose SmoothStreams-related technical information including the source of about fifty unauthorized streams that remained online after the raids took place. It also compelled him to disclose the login credentials for his home computer so that evidence could be preserved.

 

Marshall was also ordered to reveal information about other people involved in the SmoothStreams operation who hadn’t already been targeted. An unknown third party gained access to the SmoothStreams system during the execution of the order and the plaintiffs want to include them in the action. The plaintiffs are not satisfied with the defendant’s responses thus far so, as things stand, Marshall also faces a contempt of court hearing, but not anytime soon.

The Wheels of Justice Turn Slowly

A court entry dated September 1, 2022, instructed the parties to discuss the specific grounds for Marshall’s alleged contempt of court. A case management meeting on September 29 heard that the plaintiffs had sent “all of the relevant documents” to the defense.

 

They are yet to be reviewed but the plaintiffs were reminded that there needs to be full disclosure of any evidence that has the potential to clear Marshall of alleged wrongdoing. The plaintiffs agreed to conduct a review and hand over any additional material by October 14, 2022.

 

Finally, Court entries reveal that Marshall may call the plaintiffs and their lawyers as witnesses. Beyond that it’s believed he will seek to disqualify Smart and Biggar, Canada’s leading IP law firm, from acting against him once the matter of contempt is concluded. The Court set a deadline of October 14 for him to do so.

 

A virtual case management conference booked for October 25 will discuss the scheduling of the contempt hearing. Lawyers were advised to have access to their agendas because that may not take place until March 2023. When the full case will be heard on the merits is currently unknown.

 

Image Credit: MichiT/Pixabay

 

After years of trying to contain the meteoric rise of illegal streaming sites and pirate IPTV services, rightsholders in Europe have seen enough.

 

In a call to action published today, more than 100 rightsholders, organizations, and powerful media groups threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the European Union, demanding immediate action to prevent piracy of all types of live events.

End Live Piracy Now

Given their experiences fighting illicit IPTV services over the past several years, it’s no surprise to see UEFA, Premier League, beIN, LaLiga, Serie A, Sky, and BT Sport among the campaign’s supporters. But the drive to ‘End Live Piracy Now’ is much broader than that.

 

The campaign has support from groups including the British Horseracing Authority, State Federation of Associations of Theatre and Dance, Danish Ensembles, Orchestras and Opera Institutions, through to the London Marathon, Cricket Australia and the Ryder Cup.

 

Of course, the usual suspects such as the MPA, Disney and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance are signed up too, but they never appear in the same sentence as Swedish Performing Arts and the Association of Music Festivals.

 

So what’s the problem and what do they all want? And why is it so urgent?

Takedown Now, Removal Right Now, Block Right Now

In their big reveal today, the signatories call on the European Union to address piracy in general, but with a clear focus on piracy of live sports and similar entertainment events.

 

“Piracy has and continues to drain Europe’s creative and cultural ecosystems, sports and live performance sectors depriving workers and industries from billions in annual revenues and undermining the sustainability of an essential part of our social and economic fabric,” the call to action reads.

 

“We, the undersigned, call on the European Union to address the issue of piracy and particularly live content piracy. Piracy has and continues to drain Europe’s creative and cultural ecosystems, sports and live performance sectors depriving workers and industries from billions in annual revenues and undermining the sustainability of an essential part of our social and economic fabric.”

 

The groups are demanding that the European Commission delivers a legislative instrument to tackle live content piracy to show that there’s a firm commitment to address the problem with adequate measures. Specifically, they want a law that guarantees the removal and blocking of live streams immediately upon takedown notification, and before the live event itself terminates.

Stopping Live Piracy Helps Everyone

While no legislation is in a position to offer guarantees that something will or won’t happen, the signatories insist that they need effective tools if piracy networks are to be fought and ultimately disabled. This is important, and not only for live sports, they say.

 

Campaign supporters say that criminal networks incorporating a number of criminal operators are using piracy to launder gains from illegal activities. How dirty money is effectively laundered through yet more criminal activity isn’t addressed.

 

Nevertheless, ‘End Live Piracy Now’ says it’s Europe’s duty to protect and promote the creative and cultural workforce. It is also Europe’s responsibility to “preserve consumers from the risks tied to piracy.” These risks aren’t specifically detailed but in the months and weeks to come, it’s likely that malware will enter the equation, supported by a recent report generated by some of the companies taking part in this campaign.

 

“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 insists.

 

“We encourage the European Commission to act firmly and rapidly towards proposing such an instrument.”

Proposed Legislation Likely Targeted at Intermediaries

On September 7, stakeholders at an event at the European Parliament hosted by ACT, the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe, reportedly discussed the impact of live piracy.

 

It appears that the type of legislation being demanded (but yet not presented in public) will not target pirates directly. Instead, it will seek to apply maximum pressure to online intermediaries by increasing liability.

 

“The only effective tool is a legislative one. Non-legislative approaches allow intermediaries to continue to exploit existing ambiguities in the law and will not have the desired impact,” a brief from Geoffroy Didier MEP reads (pdf).

Campaign Organized by Pearle

On September 19, Performing Arts Employers Associations League Europe (Pearle) called for interested parties to support the ‘End Live Piracy Now’ initiative by signing a pledge of support before October 1.

 

“The aim is to add a new European legislative instrument to protect online events from piracy to the 2023 work programme of the European Commission,” Pearle’s announcement reads.

 

Upon signing, organizations were encouraged to address pledges to their respective culture ministers and if they also expressed support for the campaign, Pearle said that they could be added to the list before it was sent to EC President Von der Leyen.

 

The call to action can be found here (pdf) and the signatories are listed below

 

A+E Networks EMEA
AEPO-ARTIS
AMC Networks International
Asociación clubes baloncesto
Asociaţia Română de Comunicaţii Audiovizuale
Association of Bulgarian Broadcasters
Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe
Association of Danish ensembles, orchestras and opera institutions
Association of music festivals
Association of the Professional theatres in the Czech Republic
Association professionnelle des régies publicitaires TV et radio
Association Sygnał
ATP Media
Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance
Australian Football League
beIN Sports
British Horseracing Authority
BT Sport
Bulgarian Association of employers in Culture
Canal+ Group
Central European Media Enterprises
Confindustria Radio Televisioni
Cricket Australia
Deutsche Fussball Liga
Deutscher Fussbal-Bund
Discovery+
Ekstraklasa
England and Wales Cricket Board
England Rugby
English Football League
Euroleague Basketball
European Arenas Association
European Professional Club Rugby
European Tour
Eurosport
Federation Equestre Internationale
Fédération Française de Rugby
Fédération Française de Tennis
Federazione per la Tutela delle Industrie dei Contenuti Audiovisivi e Multimediali
FIFA
Football DataCo
Global Cycling Network
Guinness Six Nations
Indian Premier League
International Cricket Council
International Netball Federation
International Paralympic Committee
International Tennis Federation
KIGEiT – Krajowa Izba Gospodarcza Elektroniki i Telekomunikacji
Ladies European Tour
LaLiga
Ligue de Football Professionnel
London Marathon
Mediapro
Mediaset España
Mediaset S.p.A.
Motion Picture Association EMEA
Moto GP
News Media Europe
Nova Broadcasting Group
Nova Greece (Wind)
Nova TV Croatia
NRL
Paramount
Pearle* Live Performance Europe
PGA Tour
Premier League
Premiership Rugby
Roland Garros Paris
Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews
Rugby AU
Rugby Football League
Rugby World Cup
Ryder Cup
Scottish Professional Football League
Scottish Rugby
Serie A
Sky plc
Speedway Great Britain
Sport Integrity Global Alliance
Sports Rights Owners Coalition
State Federation of Associations of Theatre and Dance production enterprises
Swedish Performing Arts
Syndicat national du spectacle musical et de variété
Tennis Australia
TF1
The British Golf Championship
The Championships Wimbledon
The European VOD Coalition
The Football Association
The Lawn Tennis Association
The Walt Disney Company
tvi
UEFA
UNI Global Union Europa – Media, Entertainment & Arts
Union Internationale des Cinémas
United Media
UTECA – Televisión Comercial en Abierto
VAUNET – Verband Privater Medien
Verband Österreichischer Privatsender
Viaplay Group
Vivacom
Warner Brothers Discovery Sports
Women’s Tennis Association
World Athletics
World Federation of Advertisers
World Snooker
ZPPM Lewiatan – Związek Pracodawców Prywatnych Mediów Lewiatan

 

Image credits: Pixabay (anncapictures, mohamed_hassan)

 

 

Over the past decade, Google has consistently documented its efforts to remove links from its search results to content that the tech giant considers pirated, and recently, the total number of Google takedowns since its reporting began has shot past 6 billion. It's a milestone that Torrent Freak suggested shows that, "[w]hile copyright infringement can't be eradicated entirely, Google is slowly but steadily presenting itself as a willing partner in the anti-piracy fight."

 

Google's slow evolution into an anti-piracy champion began ramping up in 1998. That's when the Federal Communications Commission granted safe harbor to online service providers like Google, protecting them from copyright infringement claims about third-party content, with a condition that the providers disclose information on any users alleged to be infringers. A decade later in 2009, it seemed like Google wasn't doing enough, though, and the FCC again intervened, responding to news publishers lashing out at Google and others. At that time, the publishers accused service providers of profiting off ad placements next to links from aggregators and scrapers, who were accused of grabbing and republishing news content without permission.

 

Back then, Google promised to address the issue by making it easier for rights holders to flag infringing content in search results. Then it launched its first transparency report in 2010, but that initial report only shared information on government requests for takedowns. Two years later, Google expanded its report, publicly counting every takedown notice that it received and "providing information about who sends us copyright removal notices, how often, on behalf of which copyright owners and for which websites."

 

More recently, Google decided to go one step further by creating a preemptive blocklist in 2018. That move stopped copyright-infringing URLs from ever being indexed in search results, and those links are included in the 6 billion total of URLs delisted that Google documents today.

 

According to Torrent Freak, 326,575 copyright holders identified 4,041,845 separate domain names, adding up to 6 billion takedowns since 2012. But not all reports were valid. Torrent Freak itself was counted among "false positive" reported domains, along with "websites of the White House, the FBI, Disney, Netflix, and the New York Times."

 

In 2012, Fred von Lohmann, Google's senior copyright counsel, wrote in a blog that Google's efforts to be more transparent about takedowns over this past decade were intended to help inform policy choices as the Internet evolves.

 

"As policymakers and Internet users around the world consider the pros and cons of different proposals to address the problem of online copyright infringement, we hope this data will contribute to the discussion," Lohmann wrote.

 

Google did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment on policy impacts of its transparency reports.

 

Google's partner in tracking all of its takedown notices for transparency purposes is Lumen, whose project manager, Adam Holland, told Ars that Google submits more data than any other company that Lumen partners with, such as Twitter, Wikipedia, or Reddit. Holland said that the majority of requests for Google data come from academics interested in analyzing long-term trends, as well as, increasingly, media and non-government organizations, but rarely policymakers.

 

"We don't actually get a lot of interest directly from lawmakers," Holland told Ars. "Personally, that disappoints me, but that's the reality."

 

However, recently, Holland said that Lumen has begun advising European Union policymakers as they work to implement new transparency requirements for online service providers included in its newly passed Digital Services Act. As a neutral data resource, Lumen's primary goal isn't to influence policy, though. Holland told Ars the only stance that Lumen takes on the issue is remaining firmly against invisible takedowns by online service providers, because "[o]ur unofficial motto is good policy requires good data." And because of its global reach, Google remains the key supplier of Lumen data.

 

Following more than a year of legal action, DISH Network has booked yet another big money win against yet another pirate IPTV provider targeting the United States.

 

DISH filed its complaint against My Indian TV in a New York district in August 2021, describing the defendant as a global pirate television service. The broadcaster said that the IPTV platform transmitted channels originating from India and Pakistan to customers in the United States, violating the exclusive licenses it holds for the entire country.

 

Subscriptions to My Indian TV were advertised on Twitter and YouTube. Starting at $14.95 per month, customers were promised HD quality via browsers, Android and iOS apps, and a custom Kodi addon. After attempts by DISH to shut the IPTV service down came to nothing, the company responded with its lawsuit alleging direct copyright infringement (17 U.S. Code § 106) and secondary infringement in 177 registered works.

DISH Awarded $26.5m in Copyright Infringement Damages

In a judgment handed down yesterday by District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken, two operators of My Indian TV are found directly and secondarily liable for infringing DISH’s exclusive rights to distribute and perform the licensed channels and the copyrighted programs within.

 

The Court found that the defendants captured the programs and converted them to “internet-friendly” formats, transmitted them to subscribers in the United States, and unlawfully publicly performed and distributed the copyrighted content.

 

By marketing and advertising My Indian TV as a piracy service, knowingly facilitating subscriber access, and knowingly inducing infringement of DISH’s exclusive rights, the defendants demonstrated willfulness and actual knowledge of their infringing activities, the judgment adds.

 

The Court found the defendants jointly and severally liable for each act of infringement because they “personally directed, authorized, supervised, or participated in, and financially benefited from” infringing conduct. Describing that conduct as willful, malicious, intentional, and purposeful, they were hit with an injunction and ordered to pay damages of $150,000 for each of the 177 registered works, $26,550,000 overall.

IBCAP Celebrates Big Win

The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) today celebrated the award on behalf of member and plaintiff, DISH Network.

 

IBCAP says it coordinated and supported the lawsuit against My Indian TV and welcomes the broad injunction. It prohibits future infringement such as sales and marketing, and restrains hosting companies and CDNs from providing services facilitating such infringement. On top, domain name registries and registrars must transfer the IPTV service’s domains to DISH.

 

“This case marks yet another victory where IBCAP coordinated a lawsuit with its member companies resulting in the shutdown of a major pirate service in the U.S.,” says Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP.

 

“With broad injunctive tools such as prohibitions against CDNs and hosting providers supporting the pirate service, banning retailers from selling the pirate services and transfers of key domain names used by the pirate operators, we can cripple pirate services to a point where they have no choice but to exit the market.”

 

DISH and IBCAP are clearly pleased that My Indian TV is now offline, something that appears directly attributable to the lawsuit. Yesterday’s injunction will also help to stop My Indian TV from reestablishing itself but, in this case, it wasn’t responsible for the service exiting the market.

Lawsuit Was a Massive But One-Sided Effort

When DISH filed its complaint more than a year ago, the company revealed it had no idea who it was targeting because the defendants had taken “elaborate steps” to conceal their identities. A two-year investigation revealed account names and IP addresses but what DISH really needed was real names and physical addresses. Expedited discovery against third-party entities doing business with My Indian TV might turn those up. The court agreed.

 

On March 30, 2022, DISH filed an amended complaint naming Sanjeev Kumar and Tsvetomir Dobrilov as the alleged operators of My Indian TV and just over a week later permission was granted to serve both via email. Just days later, users began complaining that the service had gone down unexpectedly. According to DNS records, My Indian TV was last seen on April 13, 2022, and it hasn’t been seen since.

 

DISH Network’s motion for default judgment was served on Kumar and Dobrilov by sending a link to a Dropbox folder, as instructed by the Court. There’s no indication that there was a better way to contact the men or that DISH has since obtained their physical addresses, wherever they are in the world.

 

That raises the question of whether $26.5 million in damages will ever find their way to DISH. Given its track record, the company seems unlikely to give up trying.

 

The original complaint and default judgment can be found here (1,2, pdf)

 

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

 

Some copyright holders have tried to go after individual pirates in court but, increasingly, third-party intermediaries are targeted as well.

 

There are several lawsuits pending in US courts, where rightsholders accuse Internet providers of not doing enough to stop piracy. One of the main allegations is that ISPs fail to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in ‘appropriate circumstances’, as required under the DMCA.

Filmmakers Sue Earthlink

Earthlink became one of the latest targets in this quest. The ISP was sued by a group of litigious filmmakers, headed by Voltage Pictures. The movie companies own the rights to well-known movies such as “Ava”, “I Feel Pretty” and “The Cobbler,” which are publicly shared via BitTorrent networks.

 

Through their lawsuit, the filmmakers aimed to deter piracy activity by Earthlink customers. These types of legal battles can often last for years but this one was settled rather quickly.

 

Last month the parties informed the court that a tentative settlement had been reached. Yesterday they filed a request to dismiss the case which reveals an interesting obligation on Earthlink’s part.

Requesting Wholesale Providers to Block YTS

The dismissal notice doesn’t mention any money changing hands. However, Earthlink agrees to request its wholesale providers to block access to the torrent site YTS, one of the most-visited pirate sites on the Internet.

 

“Plaintiffs have requested and Defendant has agreed to request its wholesale providers to use commercially reasonable efforts to block access to YTS on their servers in the United States used for Defendant’s services,” both parties inform the Georgia federal court.

 

This agreement is a big deal. As far as we know, it’s the first time in history that a US-based Internet provider has openly backed a pirate site blocking order.

Focus Shifts to Wholesalers

Earthlink was a big name in the past but today it’s a relatively modest player. However, it resells services from bigger brands, which are the wholesale providers the legal paperwork refers to.

 

The agreement doesn’t mention any wholesalers by name. That said, Earthlink sells (or resold) infrastructure from AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and perhaps other large companies as well.

 

The language Earthlink agreed to doesn’t come with any strings attached. The ISP simply has to “request” its unnamed wholesale providers to block YTS, but there are no repercussions if that doesn’t happen. At least, not for Earthlink.

The YTS Leverage Play

Attorney Kerry Culpepper, who represents the filmmakers, has a history of using leverage obtained in one lawsuit to pursue claims against other parties. That plays a role in this case as well.

 

YTS is the blocking target for a good reason. The operator of the torrent site was sued by the same filmmakers a few years ago. These cases were eventually settled for over a million in damages, but the site remained online.

 

In addition to paying damages, YTS also shared information about its users with the filmmakers. This information was then used to pursue claims against individual pirates and VPN providers.

 

A dated admission by the YTS operator, that the site distributed copyright infringing material, is now being leveraged to request Earthlink to take action. And that might just be the start of a new legal quest.

 

Based on the judicial tactics we’ve observed over the years, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the filmmakers take action against the wholesale providers. That is, if they choose to ignore Earthlink’s request to block YTS.

 

At this point, we’re venturing into speculation mode, but it might not be a coincidence that the filmmakers voluntarily dismissed their liability lawsuits against AT&T and Time Warner’s Comcast, just days after they reached a settlement with Earthlink.

 

Those lawsuits can be refiled in the future, potentially with additional evidence added to the complaints. It wouldn’t be a massive surprise if that involves some newly obtained leverage as well.

 

—

 

A copy of the joint stipulation of dismissal, filed by Earthlink and Voltage et al. at the federal court in Atlanta, is available here (pdf)

 

For website operators trying to get information into the public eye, the last thing they need are legal threats claiming that they’ve infringed someone’s copyrights.

 

Copyright lawsuits have a reputation of being expensive to defend so, when threatened, most people take the easiest way out. A new wave of copyright complaints being sent out right now offer an extremely easy off-ramp for supposed infringers. That’s because the scammers behind it actually want people to take that route.

Alleged Infringement of ‘Copyrighted Images’

In March 2022, Richard Byrne of freetech4teachers.com uncovered a scam in which website operators were informed by supposed law firm Arthur Davidson Legal that they’d infringed copyright in an image and a lawsuit could follow. However, if the recipient simply linked to a domain and posted a credit on their site, the matter would be closed.

 

A similar scam optimistically targeted TorrentFreak last year but a couple of articles in response are unlikely to stop these schemes from spreading and claiming even more victims.

 

In a new article this week, Richard Byrne reports on an email sent to him by another fake law firm, this time calling itself ‘Nationwide Legal’ [nationwidelaw[D0T]org]. The email doesn’t mention Byrne by name (a red flag in itself) but attempts to achieve the same goals: link to a site, credit the ‘source’, and Byrne won’t get sued for copyright infringement.

 

The image referenced in the email as being the original, copyrighted image, is suspiciously hosted on Imgur. It took us less than 20 seconds to find that the image is offered on Pixabay and marked ‘Free for commercial use’ and ‘No attribution required’.

 

There is no copyright infringement and the scammers know it.

The Goals of the Scam

These scams have just one initial goal in mind – to have as many domains as possible link to a specific domain in order to increase its perceived value in the eyes of search engines. This time the scammers are attempting to drive traffic to [briandcruzhypnoplus[D0T]com], which claims to represent the business of a UK-based hypnotherapist called Brian D’Cruz.

 

As the screenshot below shows, reputable third-party sites are already falling for this bogus credit-and-link scam.

 

The [briandcruzhypnoplus[D0T]com] domain that people are being pressured to credit and link to was registered on January 1, 2022, and supposedly carries business information related to Brian D’Cruz and his hypnotherapy practice.

 

It will come as little surprise that there is nothing straightforward about the website or the person it claims to represent. But before we dive down the rabbit hole, let’s take a look at who this campaign has been targeting.

Victim Sites Are Mostly Linked to Mental Health Issues

One of the metrics used by search engines to determine the value of external links pointing to a domain is whether the content on the linking sites (those who received a fake DMCA notice) is relevant to the content on the target site, in this case the bogus hypnotherapy site.

 

From the available information, it appears the scammers are mostly focusing on sites covering mental illness and medical illnesses affecting the mind, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Given that they now all contain links to the scam hypnotherapy site, they aren’t hard to find.

 

Some of the sites targeted are listed below. The article title appears first with a link to the source page, which at the time of writing carry credits and links back to the bogus hypnotherapy site.

 

Trauma-Informed Pedagogy – Barnard College / Columbia University
Health and Counselling Services – Bard College Berlin
Occupational Therapists and Mental Health Interventions – Moving With H.O.P.E
In Grief: Nursing Student Struggle With Father Loss – Grief Healing Blog
Exhaustion and Overwhelm – Buddhistdoor Global
New Ai-Based Algorithm to Detect Brain Bleeds – NoCamels
Mental Health During Crises Like Covid 19 – Safe Communities Portugal
“Effective Treatment” for Alzheimer’s – EyesOnALZ
We Can Do Better – Association for the Chronically Mentally Ill
What is a Mental Health Crisis? – Jonathan’s Voice (UK-based mental health charity)

 

The above list is nowhere near comprehensive and appears to be growing over time.

DMCA Scam Misleads By Abusing Real Information

Identifying who is behind these scams is never easy but with the right tools and patience, shining light on the mechanisms is entirely possible. With that in mind, it’s worth drawing brief attention to Brian D’Cruz, who has been thrust into the spotlight (whether he likes it or not) thanks to this campaign. It turns out that Mr. D’Cruz, whoever he is, is a useful conduit towards finding additional information.

 

From everything we’ve seen thus far, Brian D’Cruz does exist. As the bogus website clearly states, he practices hypnotherapy in the south of England, or did at one point. However, if one cross-references the name Brian D’Cruz with listings on the General Hypnotherapy Register, the scammers’ website isn’t the one listed.

 

In fact, the listing links D’Cruz to BeyondBoundariesHypnotherapy.com, an apparently dead site that carries much of the same information as the new one published in January. A copy from the Wayback Machine also reveals that the photographs of the therapist are drastically different when compared across sites, an indication of a deliberate switch.

Ghosts From the Past

Given that the email address available for Brian D’Cruz is linked to the now lost ‘Beyond Boundaries’ domain, contacting him there was impossible. However, we were able to establish that the original ‘Beyond Boundaries’ domain was created a number of years ago and registered to a Sam D’Cruz.

 

As the archive copy of the Beyond Boundaries website on the Wayback Machine clearly shows in the footer, the site was created by web design/SEO company i New Media. Sam is currently registered on their ‘friends’ page and appears to have strong connections with the company.

 

At the time of writing, we are yet to receive any reply from Sam following our requests for comment. We haven’t received any response from I-New Media either. That is a real shame, considering how many questions we have.

I-New Media Has Also Been Getting Image Credits and Backlinks

According to its website, I New Media offers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, as many companies do. However, we were surprised to learn that the company is also receiving backlinks from sites that appear to credit them for ownership of images they do not hold the rights to.

 

For example, there is this piece on the website WeGrowValue.com, where an image is credited to the company for no apparent reason. Alongside there is a link back to the URL i-newmedia.com/media.

 

This next example of a credit-and-link back to I-New Media provides more irony than anyone could’ve hoped for.

 

Lewis Silkin is a major international law firm with undoubted skills in all areas of law, copyright included. In fact, Lewis Silkin worked in the UK to help identify alleged BitTorrent pirates so that they could receive a letter in the mail from rightsholders alleging copyright infringement. Of course recipients could choose to settle their cases by taking positive action, in that case paying a settlement.

 

In this case it appears that Lewis Silkin received a demand to link back to I-New Media and under the threat of a copyright lawsuit, decided to comply with the scammers.

 

Other sites crediting I-New Media for image content they don’t own include:

 

What is Social Media Marketing? – GetSocialGuide.com
Social Media Use May Contribute to Sleep Deprivation – HealthTechInsider.com
A Quick Guide To Tracking Social Media Followers – Bad Rhino Inc.

 

There are many more instances of sites crediting and linking back to I-New Media but the missing link is why they chose to do that. Did they do it under duress or perhaps they have a relationship with the company and did it willingly?

 

At this point it’s worth referring back to the email received by Richard Byrne of freetech4teachers.com. We mentioned it at the start of this article and it’s the reason we embarked on this mission. The email was sent by Nationwide Legal’s ‘trademark department’, it mentioned the DMCA, and warned that a copyright lawsuit might follow in the event of non-compliance. So we started contacting people who linked back to I-New Media to find out what prompted them to do that.

 

We received a number of responses and they all told the same story. An unsolicited email claiming copyright infringement in images instructed them to credit I-New Media and link back to a specific URL. In return, past and future ‘infringements’ would be ignored and no lawsuit would follow.

 

As mentioned earlier, we requested comment from Sam D’Cruz and I-New Media but neither responded. That means we cannot get answers to some of these other questions either, which is a disappointment given the circumstances.

A Few Coincidences to Clear Up

Given that the scammy hypnotherapist website was copied from a website that I-New Media originally designed, we wanted to clarify the facts with the company. Is that one of those one-in-a-million coincidences that happen every now and again, or is there another explanation?

 

Equally, is it a coincidence that a person called Sam D’Cruz, who does work for I-New Media, is not only recorded as the domain registrant for the original hypnotherapy site, but also shares the same uncommon surname as the hypnotherapist? Stranger things have happened but we wanted to clear that up too.

 

So given the links above, coincidental or not, what are the chances of the exact same scammy law firm sending out identical legal threats to drive traffic to the bogus hypnotherapy site, while apparently doing exactly the same for I-New Media’s website too? Or is I-New Media an unfortunate victim in all of this?

 

These are questions that need to be answered but as we said, our emails aren’t being answered. If they were, we’d also ask about another coincidence. It concerns the choice of hosting for the I-New Media website and that of the scammy hypnotherapist website.

 

Domain names and ages aside, their WHOIS reports look exactly the same and even though the IP address points to shared hosting used by a large number of other websites, there are an extraordinary number of IP addresses available online where one site (or the other) could’ve been located instead.

 

Throwing in the exact same DNS server for both domains on top of this IP address coincidence seems mathematically extraordinary but what will happen next is unknown.

 

TorrentFreak is informed that at least one of the companies targeted with a fake DMCA notice is already consulting its legal team and we wouldn’t be surprised if others were considering their options too.

Roughly 25 years ago, Google started its business as a simple and straightforward search engine.

 

The startup swiftly captured a dominant market share which it managed to retain and grow as time passed.

 

Google’s position as a search leader also brings responsibility. This is an issue copyright holders have hammered on for a long time. And slowly but steadily, Google tweaked its policies to hinder pirate sites.

 

The most direct way for the search engine to address the piracy problem is by responding to DMCA notices. If copyright holders spot pirate sites in search results, they can direct Google to remove these links from its indexes.

Six Billion Reported URLs

The overall volume of takedown notices has now reached an impressive milestone. Over the past decade, rightsholders have asked the company to remove six billion links to alleged copyright-infringing content. The majority of these requests were indeed removed or put on a preemptive blacklist.

 

The six billion links were reported by 326,575 copyright holders who identified 4,041,845 separate domain names. These domains also include many false positives, including websites of The White House, the FBI, Disney, Netflix, the New York Times, and even TorrentFreak.

Prolific Reporters

Overall, we can say that a relatively small number of rightsholders are responsible for a disproportionate number of takedown requests. The ten most active senders reported nearly 2.5 billion URLs, more than 40% of the total.

 

Similarly, as we previously highlighted, most of the removed URLs belong to a small group of websites. Just 400 domains are responsible for 41% of all links removed by Google over the years.

 

Google continues to remove more than a million URLs per day but the trend started to change a few years ago. The frequency at which new links were reported started to decline. At the same time, Google started to cooperate more with rightsholders.

 

For example, Google began to accept takedown notices for links that are not indexed by the search engine yet. These links, which are also counted in the six billion figure, are put on a preemptive blocklist. That prevents the links from being added to search results in the future.

Voluntary Cooperation

Google also actively demotes pirate sites in its search results when it receives an unusually high number of takedown requests for a domain. In addition, the search engine chose to voluntarily comply with third-party site-blocking orders by removing entire domain names from its index.

 

These proactive anti-piracy measures have started to improve the relationship between Google and rightsholders. And it wouldn’t be a surprise to see this trend continue going forward.

 

While six billion reported links in ten years is a lot, it pales in comparison to the takedown activity on another Google property; YouTube.

 

Last year, YouTube opened up its copyright removal books for the first time, showing that its Content ID system processed almost 1.5 billion Content ID claims in a single year. How those numbers will evolve has yet to be seen.

 

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 six newcomers on the list. “Bullet Train” is the most downloaded title.

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

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Bullet Train	7.4 / trailer
2	(…)	Vesper	6.2 / trailer
3	(…)	Hocus Pocus 2	6.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Top Gun: Maverick	8.6 / trailer
5	(1)	Thor: Love and Thunder	6.5 / trailer
6	(…)	The Greatest Beer Run Ever	6.8 / trailer
7	(6)	Jurassic World Dominion	6.0 / trailer
8	(…)	Blonde	5.6 / trailer
9	(4)	Nope	7.1 / trailer
10	(…)	Dead For a Dollar	4.9 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Running a pirate streaming site might sound complex but with help from pre-coded scripts and illicit video databases, it can be done with minimal effort.

 

The real challenge is driving traffic to a site while ensuring it also stays online.

1.3m TikTok Views

WishFlix nailed the first part of that equation. The French streaming site actively campaigns on social media where it has booked some impressive results. One of its TikTok videos went viral recently, generating over a million views of free advertising with an 8-second clip.

 

This clearly shows that there is plenty of demand for the platform which promises access to Netflix, Disney, and Prime Video without any paid subscriptions.

 

That kind of social media exposure is unprecedented for a pirate site and it definitely helped to get more viewers to the platform. Unfortunately, not all of the attention is equally appreciated.

GitHub Receives DMCA Takedown

This weekend, French media company StudioCanal sent a DMCA takedown notice to WishFlix’s hosting company. The host isn’t some vague company in an exotic location. On the contrary, the site is hosted by the Microsoft-owned developer platform GitHub.

 

StudioCanal didn’t have much trouble tracking down the hosting location as the WishFlix domain name gave that away already; wishflix.github.io/WishFlix.

 

Looking more closely at the takedown notice, we see that it lists a pirated copy of the TV series “La Flamme” as an example. WishFlix pulls its video from third-party hosting service Uqload.com but GitHub was asked to remove the page that links to the infringing content in question.

 

“We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this product(s) via your company’s network,” StudioCanal writes.

WishFlix Remains Online

GitHub is rather strict when it comes to this type of infringing activity so WishFlix finds itself in a tough spot. That being said, the streaming site has not given up just yet.

 

The WishFlix GitHub repository remains largely unscathed and the GitHub-hosted streaming site is still online as well, at least for now. In fact, even the “La Flamme” series is , albeit with the exclusion of episode 7, which is the one StudioCanal highlighted in its takedown notice.

 

With the pressure mounting, it is questionable whether the streaming site’s luck will last much longer. Most seasoned pirate site operators will know that GitHub isn’t the best hosting option. But they can wish, of course.