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 new entries on the list. “The Batman” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 18 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(8)	The Batman	8.4 / trailer
2	(…)	X	6.9 / trailer
3	(1)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	8.6 / trailer
4	(3)	Moonfall	5.2 / trailer
5	(2)	The Outfit	7.2 / trailer
6	(6)	All The Old Knives	6.1 / trailer
7	(…)	Infinite Storm	5.3 / trailer
8	(4)	The Contractor	5.7 / trailer
9	(5)	Death on the Nile	6.5 / trailer
10	(7)	Jackass Forever	7.2 / trailer

 

 

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

 

 

“I woke up to the sounds of a door breaking down. I got out of bed and saw screaming people running towards me upstairs. I’ve tried to close the door to the bedroom. My wife woke up and started screaming loudly in panic…”

 

“My first thought was that these people were robbers, or maybe worse…”

 

During the summer of 2017, the French authorities booked a massive success with the shutdown of T411, a popular semi-private torrent tracker with over five million registered members.

 

Despite France’s three-strikes law, better known as Hadopi, the site managed to gain a spot among the 50 most-visited sites in the country. That reign ended abruptly, which came as a shock to many regular users.

 

There were other surprises as well. When the news of the shutdown became public it turned out that T411 wasn’t strictly managed by a French team. In fact, two of the alleged “brains” behind the operation were Ukrainians, while the site itself was hosted on Swedish servers.

 

Following the initial arrests, the authorities haven’t released any additional information. And now, nearly five years later, it turns out that one of the key Ukrainian suspects is still in limbo, unsure whether he will have his day in court.

 

Today, the former systems operator of T411 is willing to share his story with us. This is done on condition of anonymity, to avoid issues with future employers. We agreed to this as we think it’s important to share his story with a broader public, and will refer to him as “Alex” instead.

 

—

 

It’s important to realize that this is a one-sided account and TF was not able to independently verify all the statements. That said, this story isn’t as much about details as it is about feelings, as will soon become apparent.

 

This is not an attempt to create sympathy for Alex or judge who’s right or wrong. That’s up to the courts. The main goal is to show the personal stories behind a 2017 headline most people have long forgotten.

 

—

A Succesful Startup

Alex’s involvement with T411 starts in 2009. At the time he was still living in Ukraine, where he worked as the technical chief of a system administration department at a large outsourcing company. The Ukrainian company worked for clients worldwide and T411 came in as a regular new project.

 

The owner of T411 wanted to optimize the site and servers because the site was growing rapidly growing at the time. After inspecting the servers, Alex decided to take the lead on the project, engaging in direct communications with the owner.

 

From a technical perspective, Alex saw the torrent site as a challenge that required some non-standard solutions. However, he never really discussed anything non-technical with the owner and couldn’t understand much of the front end, as it was all in French.

 

In 2010, Alex left the outsourcing company and moved to Sweden, hoping to find new opportunities in Europe. When he notified T411 about this decision the torrent site asked him to continue his work on a freelance basis. Without any objections from his former employer, that’s exactly what he did.

 

In the years that followed the partnership continued. Alex took the lead making the backend run smoothly and even hired additional freelancers when needed. It felt like being part of a successful startup.

 

“It worked like a small successful startup. I never hid my involvement in this project and didn’t treat it as if I was doing something illegal. I was not involved in managing the content of the site, that part was done by French moderators,” Alex tells us.

 

“I was proud of this project because I’ve implemented its complex technical setup via non-standard edge technologies. I still have an old copy of my CV from 2013, which I used to find a job in Sweden, and t411 was in the top list of projects I’ve described there.”

 

Alex continued working on other projects aside from T411, but the former took up most of his time. The fact that copyright holders were complaining about the torrent tracker didn’t come as a surprise though. In fact, Alex regularly had to remove torrent files from the database in response to takedown notices.

 

The site’s owner said that it was too time-consuming for moderators to remove all reported torrents through the admin panel so Alex had to do it directly from the database. At some point that became too much hassle as well, so a special tool was created to automate things.

 

“Incoming DMCA emails were automatically recognized and all torrents in the list were removed from the site,” Alex tells us. “This system made me believe that I didn’t do something illegal and that the site respects copyright.”

 

Rightsholders and law enforcement officials clearly saw things differently, as would soon become apparent to Alex as well.

The Terrorist Arrest

On a summer’s morning in 2017, roughly around 7am, a handful of police cars rolled up to a quiet neighborhood in a Swedish town. A special police force, from a department that also handles terrorist threats, was about enter a house where a family with an 8-month-old baby was still fast asleep.

 

“June 27, 2017, was the worst day of my whole life,” Alex says.

 

“I woke up to the sounds of a door breaking down. I got out of bed and saw screaming people running towards me upstairs. I’ve tried to close the door to the bedroom. My wife woke up and started screaming loudly in panic…”

 

“My first thought was that these people were robbers, or maybe worse…”

 

After the initial panic, Alex was taken to a police car where he was told that his arrest was related to T411. And to his surprise, the officers also arrested his wife. Meanwhile, the house was searched for evidence of potential crimes.

 

The arrested couple were taken into custody where they were interrogated in detail. While Alex was clearly involved with the site, his wife wasn’t. The problem was that Alex had used her PayPal account for his freelance work as Ukrainian accounts couldn’t receive incoming payments at the time.

 

This tragic mistake resulted in a family drama that was nothing short of a nightmare for the young family.

The Baby

While Alex and his wife were in custody a neighbor took their 8-month-old son. After a few hours, the police came by to pick up the baby with someone from social care. They informed the neighbor that the boy would probably not see his parents again for a long time.

 

The baby was then placed in a temporary social care facility. Luckily, however, the PayPal issue was sorted out and Alex’s wife was released from custody and reunited with the baby two days later.

 

Looking back, emotions still run high.

 

“After my wife took him back, he stopped accepting breastfeeding because of the stress. This is how police actions interrupted the natural process between the mother and her son. Sorry for the emotions here, but I just can’t accept this,” Alex tells us.

 

As it turns out, law enforcement had already arranged a foster family for the baby in advance, assuming that the couple would remain locked up for a long time.

 

“What frustrates me and my wife the most is that Swedish police prepared the arrest for more than one month and they didn’t even check if we have any relatives in Ukraine who can take care of our son,” Alex says.

 

“If the regular police would have knocked on my door instead, I would have cooperated. That would be the same result for them, but without a life trauma for our whole family.”

French Prison

The developer eventually spent about two weeks in Swedish custody where he was allowed to see his family. This was hard and emotional but things were about to take a turn for the worse – Sweden had agreed to extradite Alex to France.

 

The transfer to France happened July 14, which is a national holiday. This means that the process was slow. Eventually in Paris, he was put in a dirty, cold jail room to spend a night in custody with some rather unpleasant company.

 

During his transfer, Alex also spoke to a few French police officers who were all too familiar with the torrent site.

 

“I had some short conversations with the police officers who transferred me. They didn’t speak much English but enough to tell me that they used t411. They said that it was a nice site before the shutdown and that they had to switch to another site.”

 

“They also told me how they got Hadopi claims at home, but simply ignored them. That was fun to hear,” Alex adds.

 

Time in prison was tough but Alex was happy that there were some Russian-speaking people who he could talk with. While these were seasoned criminals, it still felt good.

 

“The prisoners in my department were mainly connected to drugs crimes, robberies, and a few persons were killers. Luckily most of them were not aggressive,” Alex says.

 

“I shared my cell with a big drugs dealer, who was convicted to seven years in prison and was waiting for an appeal. He was a really kind and well-organized person, helped me with a lot of things, explained the prison rules, and helped me with filling out various papers in French.”

 

Unfortunately, there was no option to meet with his family; no phone calls either. They were able to communicate through letters but these could take a long time to arrive because they first had to be analyzed.

 

In addition to missing his family, Alex also missed life and coding. The newspapers and TV were both in French so he felt disconnected. Meanwhile, he could almost feel his coding skills degrade.

 

Eventually, Alex’s first official hearing took place after five months and roughly a week later he was released, pending further investigation.

Life in Limbo

After his return to Sweden, Alex focused on his family and work, hoping to put everything that happened behind him. This was easier said than done. On paper the French investigation is still open, which means that things can suddenly take a turn for the worse, at any time.

 

After nearly five years, there’s still a lot of frozen property. There are claims on the house, car, and a bank account, which are regularly prolonged. Alex’s wife eventually managed to get her part unclaimed, but the family still feels stuck.

 

“The main effect for our family is that we can’t sell our house to move to another one. We are prisoners in this house and don’t feel complete freedom as regular citizens.”

 

Ideally, the family would like to buy a new home in a more rural area. They both work from home and would like to enjoy nature more. Also, the old house never felt safe again after the traumatic arrest.

 

Moving to a new place has also become more of a priority now that the family has grown.

 

“We got a second kid in 2019 and more recently we took in our parents from Ukraine. They escaped from war and there are no guarantees they will be able to go back in the upcoming years because many of the houses there are destroyed.”

 

As far as we know, no person has yet been convicted in relation to the T411 investigation. The original owner of the site used a fake name but was presumably from Canada. The authorities tracked him down but it’s unclear whether he was arrested or even located.

 

Alex has no idea how much longer he will have to wait before his case is finalized but in light of current events in Ukraine, he’s no longer afraid. That’s also why he’s sharing his experiences today.

 

“I’m ready for a fair trial where the arguments will be reasonable and all evidence is provided,” Alex concludes.

 

More than a decade has passed since the file-storage empire of Kim Dotcom collapsed and Megaupload became the prime target in a high-profile law enforcement operation.

 

Aside from Andrus Nomm’s plea deal and conviction, progress in the criminal proceedings against Megaupload’s founder and former associates is slow.

 

The United States has asked New Zealand to extradite Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, but the German-born entrepreneur and his former colleagues are fighting the request tooth and nail.

 

As the extradition battle continues, the criminal case in the U.S. has been halted as well. The same is true for the civil lawsuits filed by the RIAA and MPA. These are not expected to start until the criminal case is finalized.

MPA and RIAA Cases Postponed Again

Over the past years, Megaupload has repeatedly asked the court to stay these lawsuits. The latest request came in a few days ago. Since the music and movie industry outfits don’t object to another delay, District Court Judge Liam O’Grady extended the stay until October this year.

 

These bi-annual postponements are a mere formality now and it could take several more years before the lawsuits continue. That said, there were some other unusual developments in the RIAA and MPA lawsuits over the past weeks that are worth highlighting.

New Judge

As it turns out, the most recent order to stay was the last one signed by Judge Liam O’Grady. Earlier this month the RIAA and MPA cases against Megaupload were reassigned to District Judge T. S. Ellis. There are no further details as to why this happened but Megaupload’s lawyers certainly noticed.

 

Last week Megaupload sent a notice of related cases to the court, suggesting that it would be better to assign the criminal case and the civil forfeiture cases to Judge Ellis as well.

 

“Megaupload respectively submits that the Criminal Action and two civil forfeiture actions also should be reassigned to Judge Ellis in the interests of judicial economy, so that a single judge may preside and administer these related cases efficiently.

 

“Although both civil copyright actions are stayed at this time, the rulings in one action may affect or control issues in the other when active litigation resumes; therefore, the Court has prudently assigned them a single District Judge to preside over both,” the notice reads.

 

Megaupload probably wouldn’t have made this request if it didn’t see Judge Ellis as a good option to handle these cases. While some have described him as a ‘bully in a black robe‘ or an ‘activist judge,’ most ‘critique’ appears related to the prosecution side. Megaupload certainly doesn’t seem concerned.

Another Judge Change

However, a few days after Judge Ellis was assigned to the lawsuits, the cases were reassigned to District Judge Anthony J Trenga. Again, it’s not clear why this change was made, but his name is certainly not unfamiliar when it comes to criminal copyright infringement cases.

 

Trenga was also the presiding judge in the case against the popular pirate site NinjaVideo. In this case, several people were convicted of criminal copyright infringement. They included the site’s founder Hana Beshara who was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

 

Interestingly, Megaupload also played a role in the NinjaVideo case back in 2010. As part of “Operation in Our Sites”, the U.S. Government approached Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload with a search warrant targeting files uploaded by NinjaVideo staff.

 

According to Kim Dotcom, the FBI made it clear that the warrant should be kept quiet so as not to jeopardize the NinjaVideo investigation. Megaupload complied with this law enforcement request and was under the impression that it had to preserve the files, which it did.

 

This decision to keep the files online and accessible was later used as evidence against Megaupload in their criminal prosecution. Megaupload saw this as a form of ‘evidence planting‘ but the Department of Justice shrugged that off as a “conspiracy theory.”

 

While these events took place well over a decade ago, the issue might be revisited in the future. That is, if Megaupload also asks for Judge Trenga to be assigned to the criminal case. At the time of writing, no such request has been made.

 

Last month, Lookmovie and Cuevana3, two of the largest pirate movie and TV streaming sites, had their domains suspended.

 

Both sites utilized .io domains under the control of Donuts, a registry that has an agreement with the MPA to suspend piracy-related domains.

 

Anti-piracy group Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which is staffed in part by MPA anti-piracy investigators, denied it was directly responsible but just three days later, Lookmovie’s Telegram channel was also banned, suggesting that some type of enforcement was indeed taking place.

 

With millions of regular visitors, the initial impact on the sites would’ve been significant but in response to the suspensions, Lookmovie and Cuevana3 quickly jumped to new domains. It didn’t take long for ACE and the MPA to pick up the slack.

Who is Behind Lookmovie’s New Domain?

After being jettisoned from its clearly-risky .io domain, Lookmovie moved to lookmovie2.to, a domain administered by Tonic Domains Corporation which has been criticized by rightsholders for servicing pirate sites.

 

Tonic insists that it complies with court orders, including those issued in the United States. That will now be tested again due to ACE/MPA quickly obtaining a DMCA subpoena from a California court to identify the person who registered Lookmovie’s new domain.

 

In common with at least hundreds of similar pirate sites, Lookmovie also uses the services of Cloudflare. In April 2021, MPA/ACE obtained a subpoena to identify the operator of Lookmovie’s now-suspended .io domain. One year later, the site’s new .to domain is receiving the same treatment.

Sites With 100 Million+ Combined Monthly Visitors

After filing an application early April claiming infringement of the movie ‘Spider-Man: Far from Home,’ MPA/ACE obtained a court order requiring Cloudflare to identify the person behind Lookmovie2.to.

 

Whether that will lead to any useful information is unknown, but the same order also seeks identities related to more than a dozen additional pirate sites. When combined they account for well over 100 million visits per month.

 

9anime.vc, for example, receives 40.7 million visitors according to SimilarWeb estimates. Tinyzonetv.to accounts for 16.7 million and French-stream.re 12.2 million. The remainder are as follows:

 

Dandanzan.com (5.8m), , Baixarseriesmp4.club (4.8m), Phimmoichill.net (5.1m), Pelisplus2.io (11.6m), Pelisflix.li (8.2m), Pelispop.me (10.9m), Movieffm.net (2.7m), Entrepeliculasyseries.nu (11.7m), , Poseidonhd.nz (1.7m), Fzmovies.net (6.9m)

A1Streams and EpicIPTV

In addition to tackling free streaming sites, ACE and the MPA have a keen interest in subscription-based IPTV providers, sellers, and resellers. Early April, they obtained a DMCA subpoena requiring Cloudflare to identify the person behind a specific account related to A1Streams.com.

 

The platform appears to act as a sales portal for various providers, including NFPS, TVZon, Crown IPTV, Express IPTV and OK2 IPTV.

 

At first blush, it doesn’t appear that A1Streams carries any infringing streams or content and the subpoena obtained by the anti-piracy groups seems to support that. Instead, ACE/MPA cite infringements on the VOD service of Epic IPTV which should raise alarm bells with its operators.

 

When the MPA files a lawsuit against a pirate IPTV service, in most if not all cases it is the VOD service that forms the basis of the case.

 

As seen in the image above, ACE lists the Epic Stalker portal located at tv.epic79.com as infringing, along with links and tokens related to movies allegedly stored on Epic’s VOD service.

 

Lookmovie & streaming site subpoena documents here (1,2,3,4,5,6, pdf)

 

A1Streams / EpicIPTV documents here (1,2, pdf)

 

Launched in 2008, search engine DuckDuckGo is a go-to service for Internet users who value their privacy.

 

Unlike many competitors, the site doesn’t keep a record of users’ IP addresses or other sensitive information.

 

In recent years, the site also stood out by returning cleaner results than competitors such as Google, which actively alters its algorithms to downrank pirate sites. At one point, Google even pointed users to DuckDuckGo when they searched for Pirate Bay proxies.

DuckDuckGo Fears Liability

The privacy-focused search engine is not immune to potential copyright issues, however. This first became apparent when it removed several search shortcuts for ‘pirate’ sites. These “bangs”, as they are called, were seen as a potential copyright infringement liability.

 

“We operate globally, as do bangs, and products that actively facilitate interaction with illegal content can have us and our employees face significant legal liability, and jeopardizing the entire service,” DuckDuckBang’s Tagawa explained.

 

DuckDuckGo ended up removing roughly 2,000 bangs for popular sites including The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and RARBG. At the time, the search engine stressed that these sites were still listed in search results. However, that appears to have changed now.

Pirate Domains are Deindexed

When doing some research earlier today we noticed that several popular pirate sites were no longer showing up in DuckDuckGo’s results globally. Initially, we thought that some popular pages had been removed following DMCA takedown notices, but there is clearly more going on than that.

 

For example, searching for “site:thepiratebay.org” is supposed to return all results DuckDuckGo has indexed for The Pirate Bay’s main domain name. In this case, there are none.

 

The lack of results is not tied to a specific country and manually fiddling with the region settings didn’t change anything either. Apparently, DuckDuckgo has simply removed all thepiratebay.org URLs from its index.

 

This whole-site removal isn’t limited to The Pirate Bay either. When we do similar searches for 1337x.to, NYAA.se, Fmovies.to, Lookmovie.io, and 123moviesfree.net, no results appear. For RarBG.to and Fitgirl-repacks we only get one result, instead of the hundreds of thousands we see on other search engines.

 

The absence of results doesn’t only apply to pirate sites themselves. For example, there are no results for the streaming portals Flixtor and Primewire. In addition, the associated status pages, which merely include links to the official domains, are not indexed either.

 

Even several popular stream-rippers have been completely wiped from the search results. That includes 2conv.com, Flvto.bid, and several others.

Youtube-dl Gone?

The most surprising omission, by far, is that the official site for the open-source software youtube-dl is not indexed by DuckDuckGo. This site certainly doesn’t host or link to any copyright-infringing material.

 

The youtube-dl code repository was previously removed from GitHub, following a takedown notice sent by the RIAA. After looking more closely at the matter, Github eventually restored it.

 

We don’t know why the official youtube-dl.org website is not in DuckDuckGo’s search results, but at least the official GitHub repository is still findable.

Why?

TorrentFreak reached out to DuckDuckGo to discover why these domain names are not showing up in its search results. At the time of publication, we have yet to hear back. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the move is copyright-related, though.

 

A few months ago, Google also started to remove several pirate site domains from its search results. However, in Google’s case, these delistings are regional and linked to ISP blocking orders.

 

It’s worth pointing out that many pirate sites are still findable in DuckDuckGo. However, the search engine could certainly provide some transparency to help clear up what’s happening exactly.

 

Rightsholders will be happy to see that pirate sites are removed from DuckDuckGo, but it’s not without risks for users. While seasoned pirates can probably still locate the sites in question, more shady knockoff sites will now appear higher in its search results.

 

Last year, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo sued YouTube over various piracy related claims.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The movie tycoon also pointed out that YouTube’s repeat infringer policy resets copyright strikes after 90-days, after which the same users can upload copyright-infringing content again.

 

YouTube and Google responded to these allegations by filing a motion to dismiss, which was decided on last month. While the Florida federal court dropped the antitrust claims, the copyright allegations remained, meaning that YouTube must answer these in court.

YouTube Responds to Piracy Claims

Yesterday, the Google-owned streaming service submitted its response, denying many of the allegations. According to the company, Vasallo’s copyright claims lack specifics and amount to an attempt to obtain a tailored Content ID agreement.

 

“Plaintiff, through its representative Carlos Vasallo, was offered YouTube’s copyright management tools in 2015, including Content ID, but Plaintiff refused them. Plaintiff opted instead to use YouTube’s DMCA-compliant notice-and-takedown system.

 

“Now, seven years later, Plaintiff seeks an injunction against Defendants to force YouTube to provide Plaintiff with a non-existent version of Content ID tailor-made to Plaintiff’s preferences. Plaintiff’s claims of entitlement to Content ID are badly misguided; its claims of copyright infringement even more so,” YouTube notes.

Content ID is Not for Everyone

YouTube doesn’t plan to offer special treatment to the movie tycoon. The company maintains that its DMCA process and policy comply with the law. The Content ID system is an extra option that should only be used by trusted parties who agree to certain terms.

 

“Precisely because YouTube’s novel copyright management tools are so powerful, they must be used with care,” YouTube writes. If the Copyright ID system ends up in the wrong hands, it can lead to misuse and censorship.

 

“Misused or put in the wrong hands, these tools can be used to censor videos that others have every right to share through YouTube. These tools can also enable users to wrongfully claim ownership rights in others’ content or to take for themselves revenue that rightly belongs to others.”

 

YouTube’s answer doesn’t include much detail. The company simply denies many of the allegations and only admits the most straightforward claims, such as the statement that it has a notice-and-takedown system.

DMCA Matching?

The specific allegations will be argued as the case progresses. These include Vasallo’s complaint that YouTube only removes videos from specific URLs listed in takedown notices, without searching for other matching copies on its platform.

 

This “matching” process is not part of the DMCA process, but it appears that the movie tycoon would like YouTube to implement this feature nonetheless.

 

In addition to responding to Vasallo’s claims, YouTube also lists a series of defenses. Among other things, the company says that the DMCA’s safe harbor shields it from liability for user-uploaded content. And if any infringing content does appear, Vasallo could simply take it down with a DMCA notice.

 

—

 

A copy of Google/YouTube’s answer to the complaint and its affirmative defenses is available here (pdf)

 

In October 2021, TorrentFreak learned that the Motion Picture Association and its anti-piracy partner Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment had taken an interest in one of the world’s most popular pirate streaming sites.

 

In a DMCA subpoena application filed at a California court, MPA/ACE asked Cloudflare to hand over all information held on several pirate platforms including movie, TV show and anime streaming site Pelisplushd.net.

 

The site was not particularly well-known in English-speaking regions but in Latin America, its status as a giant was undisputed – 58 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb data. In the following months the site grew by millions more visitors but in the third week of March, locals reported problems accessing the site. We now know why.

ACE Claims Victory Over Pelisplushd.net

In a statement published Wednesday, ACE officially announced that it was behind the closure of Pelisplushd.net. The anti-piracy group labeled the platform the second-largest Spanish-language ‘rogue website’ in the entire Latin American region with 383.5 million visits in the past six months and nearly 75 million visits in February 2022.

 

In Mexico alone, the site had more visitors than hbomax.com, disneyplus.com and primevideo.com, a clear problem for those platforms which are all ACE members.

 

“This is a huge win for the ACE team based in Latin America as we work to protect the legitimate digital ecosystem throughout the region,” said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association.

 

“The successful action against the operator of Pelisplushd.net was only made possible because of evidence that we gathered from previous operations conducted in other countries in Latin America.

 

“This speaks volumes about ACE’s ability to crack current cases utilizing years of past gathered intelligence and highlights the global, strategic approach that determines our actions around the world.”

Where Was The Site’s Operator?

The operator of Pelisplushd is yet to be named but ACE reveals that after a positive identification, the anti-piracy group tracked him down to the “remote countryside of Peru.”

 

That took place in March and soon after, ACE says the operator agreed to turn over his domains. As far as we can tell the main domain at Pelisplushd.net is not yet completely in ACE/MPA hands but a full transfer will probably take place later.

 

In the meantime, ACE members including Netflix continue to send DMCA takedown notices to Google, even after the platform’s demise.

 

Overall, 175 copyright holders filed similar takedown notices against the Pelisplushd.net domain, suggesting that the scope of ACE’s takedown will be welcomed far beyond its regular members.

 

The domain was also mentioned in a recent submission to the European Commission’s ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’ by the MPA but following its shutdown, that domain can probably be crossed off the list.

 

That being said, several other Pelisplus-branded sites are still around, together worth tens of millions of views per month. They include Pelisplushd.to, a domain that appears to have increased its traffic by more than 500% in the last month.

 

Created by New Horizon Interactive, massively multiplayer online game (MMO) Club Penguin first opened to the public in 2005.

 

Its Antarctic-themed virtual world, inhabited by players’ penguin avatars, proved incredibly popular and two years later boasted 30 million users.

 

This success attracted the attention of Disney and in 2007, New Horizon was scooped up for $350 million. Ten years later, Disney pulled the plug in favor of successor Club Penguin Island, which in turn was shut down late 2018.

 

In the previous year, however, one of many third-party Club Penguin servers had already gained significant traction.

 

In a matter of months, Club Penguin Rewritten had a million users and, after briefly shutting itself down in 2018, grew to reach an estimated eight million players late 2020. This appeared to upset Disney.

Copyright Troubles Begin

In April 2020, Disney filed a copyright complaint with Google, stating that Club Penguin Rewritten’s domain (cprewritten.net) not only infringed its rights in artwork but also its trademarks. A month later Disney filed a second complaint, informing Google that Club Penguin Rewritten was an “unauthorized version of the Club Penguin game” containing “infringing copyrighted content including but not limited to software and artwork.”

 

According to Google records, no action was taken in response to either complaint (1,2) but events this week show that Disney hadn’t forgotten about the popular online game.

UK Police Shut Down The Game

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a department of the City of London Police. It has been sending warnings to pirate sites and other intellectual property-infringing services on behalf of rightsholders for years. It claims to have shut down thousands of domains and can now add one more to the list.

 

This week, visitors to Club Penguin Rewritten’s main domain were greeted by an ominous banner stating that the site had been taken over by Operation Creative, an initiative carried out by PIPCU in conjunction with rightsholders.

 

On the game’s official Discord channel, staff confirmed the shutdown, citing a “full request” by Disney. “We have voluntarily given control over the website to the police for them to continue their copyright investigation,” they added.

Three People Arrested

PIPCU is known for backing up its shutdowns with arrests of the most egregious pirates but at least in some cases, opportunities were given to shut down voluntarily. Whether that was the case with Club Penguin Rewritten is unknown but a statement from PIPCU obtained by Club Penguin Mountains, a site dedicated to all things Club Penguin Rewritten, reveals that three people were indeed detained.

 

“Three people were arrested on April 12 on suspicion of distributing materials infringing copyright and searches were carried out,” PIPCU’s statement reads.

 

“They have been released under investigation and to aid with the police investigation, they agreed to sign over the website to the control of PIPCU.”

 

The involvement of PIPCU strongly suggests that the individuals are located in the UK but as data from Cloudflare shows, Club Penguin Rewritten was only marginally active in the UK market, with the vast majority of its traffic coming from the United States.

 

The next steps and their timing are difficult to predict. Earlier PIPCU arrests have turned into full-blown criminal cases and hefty prison sentences but others have failed too.

 

In any event, the process faced by Club Penguin Rewritten’s operators is unlikely to be a short one. Cases can sometimes take years to reach court, if they get there at all.

 

Every week millions of online copyright infringements are detected by rightsholders and their anti-piracy partners. In the overwhelming majority of cases the aim is to remove content or links to content.

 

YouTube and Google tend to respond to such complaints quickly, through the removal of videos or search engine results respectively. In most cases that’s the end of the matter but some rightsholders may have other things in mind, including further punishment for alleged pirates.

Manga Piracy on YouTube

Last week a Tokyo-based law firm wrote to YouTube requesting action against seven videos uploaded to the platform by seven YouTube users. The correspondence, sent on behalf of Japanese publishing giant Kadokawa, appears to be a standard DMCA takedown request.

 

“We demand that you immediately disable access to the Infringing Work and cease any use, reproduction, and distribution of the Original Work. Specifically, we request that you remove or disable the Infringing Work from www.youtube.com and/or any of your system or services,” the letter reads.

 

As far as we can tell, YouTube responded to the takedown notice quickly. The YouTube links for the cited works (which appear to be videos of manga comics) return a page stating that Kadokawa filed a copyright claim and the content is no longer available.

 

This would usually be enough for most copyright holders but there are clear signs that the manga publisher isn’t prepared to leave it there and could have more in store for the seven YouTube users.

Kadokawa Goes to Court to Expose Users

A day after the complaints were filed with YouTube, an attorney acting on Kadokawa’s behalf filed several documents at a California court. Citing the takedown notices sent to YouTube relating to violations of Kadokawa’s copyrights in manga publications, the company applied for a DMCA subpoena requiring YouTube to hand over the identities of the seven alleged infringers.

 

“Kadokawa Corporation is seeking a subpoena pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(h) to obtain information sufficient to identify the persons infringing its copyrighted works. The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of the alleged infringers. Such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting rights under the Copyright Act,” it reads.

 

While DMCA subpoena applications are not particularly rare, the majority aim to identify the operators of pirate sites engaged in massive copyright infringement, not casual YouTube users uploading content without necessarily understanding the risks.

 

Nevertheless, Kadokawa seems determined to find out the identities of the seven, which should sound alarm bells given recent moves by Japanese content companies.

Civil and Criminal Cases Are Possible

As reported last summer, several YouTubers were arrested in Japan for uploading short movie edits to YouTube. These so-called “fast movies” are regular films edited to around 10 minutes in length and aimed at those unwilling to dedicate a couple of hours to find out what a movie is all about.

 

While that may sound relatively harmless, Japanese rightsholders filed a criminal complaint and several people were arrested. Three people were later handed suspended prisons sentences ranging from 18 months to two years.

 

Given that simply downloading pirated manga is now a criminal offense in Japan punishable by up to two years in prison, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Kadokawa may have some kind of prosecution in mind, should Google/YouTube hand over the users’ details.

Kadokawa Wants Lots of Information

The subpoena application says that YouTube should hand over the names and addresses of the seven users, plus their email addresses and telephone numbers. The publisher also demands all of their access logs, including IP addresses, dates and times, plus credit card numbers and bank account details, dating back six months.

 

Kadokawa also wants to determine how much money the users made from their uploads. It wants access to AdSense accounts and information related to any monetization via YouTube’s Partner Program. From the information available, it’s not clear that any of the users made anything from their uploads.

 

One account has been completely wiped of content and one another has been terminated by YouTube for violations of its repeat infringer policy. Others have view counts ranging from around 72,500 up to 208,000 but that is for all content, not necessarily the few manga comics owned by Kadokawa.

 

Importantly, even non-profit infringement is considered a criminal offense in Japan, whether users upload content themselves or simply link to it.

 

In 2019, three former student graduates who linked to copies of pirated manga works owned by Kadokawa received prison sentences ranging from two years and four months to three years and six months.

 

The DMCA subpoena documents can be found here (1,2,3 pdf)

 

By offering access to high quality movies and TV-shows, streaming site Flixtor.to has become the go-to destination for many pirates.

 

The site is particularly popular in the United States and Canada, which together are good for roughly half of the site’s 26 million monthly visits estimated by SimilarWeb.

 

This traffic hasn’t gone unnoticed by Hollywood and other major content creators. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which counts Apple, Disney, HBO, Netflix and Sony among its members, has been trying hard to track down the site’s operators.

Multiple DMCA Subpoenas

In the summer of 2020, ACE obtained a subpoena that compelled Cloudflare to hand over information on the customer maintaining the Flixtor.to domain. A few months later, the Tonic domain name registry was required to do the same.

 

Neither of these efforts appears to have yielded the expected result as ACE obtained another DMCA subpoena last December, asking Cloudflare for information on the same Flixtor.to domain.

 

By now it’s clear that the Flixtor site is a high-profile target but, despite the legal efforts, it remains up and running today. This suggests that the requested information hasn’t proven useful but ACE is not giving up yet.

Flixtor.org

A few days ago the anti-piracy group obtained yet another DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare. While Flixtor is once again at the center, the targeted domain is different this time.

 

“We have determined that users of your system or network have infringed certain ACE Members’ Copyrighted Works through operating flixtor.org,” MPA’s content protection chief Jan van Voorn informs Cloudflare, on behalf of ACE.

 

Initially, we assumed that ACE was targeting one of the site’s many backup domains but that is not the case here. The .org domain doesn’t have any hyperlinks to infringing content. It simply documents all the streaming platform’s official domains.

‘First Amendment’

Flixtor.org clarifies that it’s simply making a news statement protected under the First Amendment. In addition, it says that it is not affiliated with the other Flixtor domains. This is also corroborated by Flixtor.to, which informed us that they are not operating the .org site.

 

ACE clearly sees things differently. Through the MPA it requested a DMCA subpoena which was granted by a court clerk last week.

 

“Enclosed is a subpoena compliant with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The subpoena requires that you provide information concerning the individuals offering the flixtor.org website, which links to websites containing the infringing material…,” Van Voorn informs Cloudflare.

 

The statement above is technically correct. The Flixtor.org domain has ‘links’ to the Flixtor sites which in turn link to copyright-infringing material. However, these same non-hyperlinked domain names are also in ACE’s own subpoena request.

 

While Flixtor.org doesn’t hyperlink to the other Flixtor sites, there are clickable links in the other direction. All official Flixtor domains have a hyperlink to the .org site, presumably to help people keep track of future changes.

 

This isn’t the first time that ACE has targeted a “news” domain; it previously did the same with primewirestatus.org and onionplay.network.

 

As we highlighted in our previous coverage, it can be debated whether a domain that doesn’t contain any hyperlinks to infringing material is actually breaking the law. However, DMCA subpoenas are issued without oversight from a judge, so that wasn’t reviewed in detail here.

 

—

 

Copies of the subpoena and the associated declarations are available here (1, 2)

 

In November 2019, the US federal government shut down IPTV services operated by Bill Omar Carrasquillo, aka ‘Omi in a Hellcat’.

 

IRS and FBI agents seized “at least” $5.2m from his bank accounts along with a fleet of supercars. The US government says that Carrasquillo’s platforms redistributed Comcast, Verizon, Spectrum, DirecTV and Frontier Communications broadcasts, reportedly earning Carrasquillo a cool $34 million.

 

Earlier this year, Carrasquillo announced he would plead guilty, presumably in the hope of receiving a lighter sentence than the 514 years in prison suggested in the government’s indictment.

 

There have been no public developments on that front but Carrasquillo now faces new problems relating to a spin-off business.

Carrasquillo’s ‘Reloaded’ IPTV Branding

Carrasquillo operated several IPTV services, variously branded Reboot, Gears TV, Reloaded and Gears Reloaded but with those no longer in operation, he needed to make money in other ways.

 

The YouTuber was already considering the apparel/merchandising business and has since used his already well-known ‘Reloaded’ IPTV brand to sell a range of clothing and sneakers through ReloadedMerch.com.

 

While Carrasquillo wisely avoided promoting his ‘Gears’ branding (ripped-off from Epic Games’ Gears of War), the decision to go with Reloaded has now resulted in yet another lawsuit.

Company Claims Ownership of ‘Reloaded’ Trademark

In a complaint filed this month in an Indiana court, clothing and apparel company NuStar Enterprises LLC states that since September 2016, it has continually used the ‘Reloaded’ trademark in commerce.

 

“NuStar’s clothing and apparel products, including its RELOADED® line of merchandise, are available for retail purchase in brick-and-mortar stores, and were also marketed, distributed, and sold through NuStar’s ‘Reloaded’ storefront on Amazon.com,” the complaint reads.

 

“To protect its rights in the RELOADED trademark NuStar obtained and owns U.S. Trademark Registration No. 6,376,399 in International Trademark Class 025 for the mark RELOADED in connection with ‘clothing and apparel, namely, shirts, jackets, pants, hats, belts, scarves, gloves, socks, underwear, swimwear, and wristbands.’ The RELOADED® trademark was registered on June 8, 2021.”

NuStar Tried to Negotiate With Carrasquillo

According to the complaint, NuStar learned that Carrasquillo intended to launch an apparel business under the ‘Reloaded’ brand in July 2019. In response, NuStar says it informed Carrasquillo via his agent that NuStar has rights in that name so the parties entered into a negotiation.

 

“Over the following months Mr. Carrasquillo’s agent sought to work out a licensing arrangement with NuStar. These efforts fell apart in late 2019, on information and belief, due to Mr. Carrasquillo’s legal and financial troubles,” NuStar says.

 

The complaint says that Carrasquillo formed Reloaded Merch LLC in November 2020 to sell ‘Reloaded’ products under “an identical mark” NuStar claims to own. Due to the “Omi in a Hellcat” persona, the market became so saturated with Reloaded products that the trademark is now associated with Carrasquillo, not NuStar. That has reportedly caused problems.

NuStar Received a Violation From Amazon

According to the lawsuit, NuStar sold its products on Amazon but when some Amazon customers saw the company’s ‘Reloaded’ footwear products, they complained to the online marketplace that they “were not made by “Omi in a Hellcat.” In response, Amazon hit NuStar with a violation.

 

“As a result of this undeserved violation, Plaintiff’s RELOADED® footwear products were removed from Amazon, the largest retail e-commerce site in the world, at great reputational and financial damage to Plaintiff,” NuStar notes.

 

“As a result of these and other similar instances of reverse confusion, Plaintiff has lost the ability to control its brand identity, lost control over its goodwill and reputation, and has lost the ability to move into new products and markets.”

Plaintiff Seeks Damages and Injunction

Due to the alleged damage to its business interests, NuStar seeks judgments that its trademark has been infringed and Carrasquillo’s use of the ‘Reloaded’ mark amounts to unfair competition. The company also demands an injunction to prevent further use of the ‘Reloaded’ mark where that “would create a likelihood of confusion, mistake or deception.”

 

NuStar also wants an order compelling Carrasquillo to “deliver up and destroy” any material bearing the infringing designation plus damages related to infringement and unfair competition. The company also demands all profits generated by Carrasquillo and Reloaded Merch LLC times three, as per 15 U.S. Code § 1117.

 

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have three new entries on the list. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 11 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(2)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	8.6 / trailer
2	(…)	The Outfit	7.2 / trailer
3	(1)	Moonfall	5.2 / trailer
4	(6)	The Contractor	5.7 / trailer
5	(3)	Death on the Nile	6.5 / trailer
6	(…)	All The Old Knives	6.1 / trailer
7	(4)	Jackass Forever	7.2 / trailer
8	(7)	The Batman	8.4 / trailer
9	(…)	Agent Game	3.6 / trailer
10	(5)	Turning Red	7.1 / trailer

 

 

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

 

Indonesia has been very active on the anti-piracy front in recent years, with the government ordering Internet providers to block thousands of pirate sites.

 

The government action began in mid-2009 and at the start of this month, the local blocklist had grown to include over 3,500 domain names

 

These interventions are cheered on by the Coalition Against Piracy (CAP). The organization, which includes Hollywood players such as Disney, Fox, HBO Asia and NBCUniversal, plus sports leagues such as the Premier League and the NBA, sees Indonesia as one of the most successful anti-piracy pioneers in Asia.

Legal Options Flourish as Pirate Traffic Drops

CAP is keeping a close eye on the evolvement of online piracy in the Asian region. Its own data shows that traffic to pirate sites decreased by 75% in Indonesia since the blocking efforts started. At the same time, visits to legitimate streaming platforms have tripled.

 

“Indonesia is leading the way when it comes to regulatory site blocking in the Asia Pacific region, if not the world, and the Indonesian government is to be congratulated for the strong stance they have taken in this area,” CAP’s General Manager Matthew Cheetham says.

 

The positive findings are backed up by CAP’s recent YouGov study which found that more than half of all Indonesian consumers say that they cut back or stopped using pirate services due to the blocking efforts.

 

The same survey also found that 76% of Indonesian consumers say they now pirate less and use legal services more often. At the same time, over a quarter of the respondents said they’ve subscribed to a legal service due to pirate site blockades.

Challenges Remain

According to CAP, pirate site blocking efforts are also driving traffic to legal sources in other countries in the Asia Pacific region. However, piracy remains a concern, particularly in Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines, where more than 60% of the public uses pirate sites.

 

The anti-piracy group realizes that there is still a long way to go before piracy is no longer a concern. However, it believes that site blocking is here to stay as it helps people get on the right track.

 

“It is now clearly evident that site blocking, particularly regulatory blocking, is effective,” Cheetham previously said, noting that blocking efforts also help to curb the spread of malware and other threats.

 

“The benefits are multi-fold, not only are consumers being directed towards legitimate content, but in being blocked from accessing pirate sites, they are also protected from the serious risks that previous CAP studies have proven are inherent in accessing pirate sites.”

 

In addition to site blocking, it’s also crucial that affordable legal options are widely available. Academic research previously found that, when Netflix failed to launch in Indonesia in 2016, piracy numbers significantly increased compared to neighboring countries.

 

Over the past decade, hundreds of pirate streaming sites gained traction as free alternatives to official streaming platforms such as Netflix.

 

In 2013, Afdah.com entered the already crowded market and quickly attracted millions of users tempted by a comprehensive library of copyright-infringing movies. But of course, along with a rise in Afdah’s popularity came increased interest from copyright holders determined to shut down or disrupt the site.

Afdah Was Originally Fueled By Content Stored on Google

In 2014, a German anti-piracy outfit identified more than 18,000 pirated videos stored on Google’s servers, noting that more than a dozen pirate sites were using the library as fuel for their own sites.

 

Google described this as a violation of its terms of use, adding that infringing content is removed when rightsholders complain. Nevertheless, several well-known ‘pirate’ brands exploited the ‘loophole’, including Movie4K, Putlocker, Yify and Afdah.

 

Whether Afdah continued to use Google’s servers following the complaint is unclear but the site continued to grow. In 2015 it found itself among the top 250 most popular pirate sites in the world meaning that it would remain on Hollywood’s hit list.

Movie Companies Increase The Pressure

With Afdah increasing in popularity, in 2015 the Motion Picture Association obtained a High Court injunction compelling the UK’s leading ISPs to block Afdah.com.

 

Whether blocking was the direct reason is unclear but Afdah later deployed new domains including Afdah.tv and Afdah.to. These were blocked by ISPs following a legal process in Singapore in 2018. This dynamic injunction was also used to block additional domains deployed by Afdah in more recent years.

 

A year later, leading movie studios including Disney Enterprises, Universal City Studios, Netflix Studios and Village Roadshow applied for an ISP blocking injunction in Australia covering dozens of pirate sites including Afdah.com. But the studios weren’t done.

 

In April 2021 we discovered that MPA and ACE had obtained a DMCA subpoena in the United States compelling Cloudflare to hand over the personal details of an individual behind an Afdah domain. At the time the domain was receiving more than six million hits per month. Just weeks later, Google received a request to remove Afdah from its search results but did not reveal the details “due to the nature of the court’s order”.

 

In October 2021, the MPA labeled Afdah.video (another new domain) a ‘notorious market’ in a submission to the United States Trade Representative, claiming that its operator lives in Singapore. Around six months ago reports suggested that the original Afdah may have gone down but given the number of other unrelated sites using its name to get traffic, some believed it may have been resurrected.

 

We can now confirm that the site’s official domains definitely won’t be making a comeback.

MPA/ACE Get Results After Years of Legal Action

On April 8, 2022, Afdah’s confirmed official domains – Afdah.com and Afdah.video – found themselves under new ownership. As the latter’s WHOIS information shows, it’s now under the control of the Motion Picture Association.

 

The ‘seizure’ of these domains hasn’t been officially confirmed by the MPA or ACE but it’s likely they were handed over as part of a legal agreement between Afdah’s owner and the movie companies. In many similar cases the studios’ investigators have been able to find out the real identities of site owners and contact them directly with an order to cease and desist.

 

One of the conditions for site operators not being sued by the studios is that they hand over domains to the MPA. These are then used to display a deterrent message to would-be users of the shuttered platforms suggesting that they go legal to avoid putting themselves at risk.

 

Afdah’s oldest domain (Afdah.com) and its newest (Afdah.video) now display such a warning.

 

It took the MPA more than seven years but as the case against PrimeWire (an even older site) shows, the MPA’s anti-piracy division is always prepared for the long haul.

 

With millions of monthly visitors, DonTorrent is a force to be reckoned with. The site is particularly popular in Spain and offers links to a curated selection of torrents.

 

DonTorrent regularly switches domain names to evade ISP blocking efforts, a common practice among pirate sites. It is currently operating from dontorrent.cat and also has a dedicated .onion address so it can be accessed anonymously through the Tor network.

ACE and MPA Watch DonTorrent

In addition to site blocking, there are other potential risks on the horizon. Anti-piracy coalition ACE is following the site closely. The group previously asked Cloudflare to share all details it holds on the operators of the site, presumably in advance of legal action.

 

ACE tried to obtain this information through a subpoena submitted by MPA’s Chief of Global Content Protection Jan Van Voorn. This is a common practice nowadays, which – in some cases – helps ACE and its members to obtain useful intelligence.

 

Whether Cloudflare shared anything useful on DonTorrent is unknown. However, the site is certainly aware of ACE and MPA’s interest since it’s openly taunting the anti-piracy collectives. According to the site’s disclaimer, DonTorrent is owned by MPA content protection boss Jan Van Voorn.

Who Owns DonTorrent?

“This website belongs to Jan van Voorn, address 15301 Ventura Boulevard, Building E Sherman Oaks, California 91403 United States,” the disclaimer begins.

 

This message isn’t a belated April fools prank, as it has already been in place for weeks. That said, it’s obviously meant as a joke of some kind, as the MPA and Van Voorn are on the other side of the piracy spectrum.

 

The notice is a bold move nonetheless and we assume that ACE and the MPA will only become more determined to find out who’s really behind the scenes. And they may get some help from Spanish law enforcement.

MPA’s Close Ties With Spain

Two weeks ago, MPA Chairman Charles Rivkin met with Francisco Pardo, the Director General of the Spanish Police, who committed to protecting rightsholders from online piracy.

 

“Director General Francisco Pardo Piqueras told me today that the film/TV/streaming industry needs to be protected from piracy because it ‘creates dreams, hope, and happiness, and that… is magic’,” Rivkin tweeted in response.

 

For now, the Spanish torrent site appears to feel pretty safe. Before publishing, we tried to find out what motivated DonTorrent’s operators to put Van Voorn in change but we didn’t hear back.

 

By now it’s hardly breaking news that for a small monthly fee, people can subscribe to pirate IPTV services supplying everything from live TV and sports to movies and TV shows.

 

These pay services have surged in popularity but millions of people still prefer to rely on websites that embed or link to pirate streams and offer them for free.

 

Legitimate content companies would like to see these platforms shut down but recent submissions to the European Commission show that the websites are part of an thriving ecosystem, one that allows people to view pirate streams and also share them with the masses.

Open Web Piracy vs Closed Web Piracy

Major sports rightsholder the Premier League describes subscription-based IPTV services as “Closed Network Piracy” because the content is only available to those who pay for access. “Open Web Piracy”, on the other hand, is described as freely accessible content available on the web without users having to pay anything.

 

The image below submitted to the European Commission provides a basic overview of how “Open Web Piracy” works.

 

The TV screen graphic top/left represents an official broadcast signal (such as a football match) being captured, often by a ‘professional’ pirate. According to the Premier League, this can be achieved by using an HDMI splitter connecting a legitimate set-top box to a computer or by other means. The graphics to the right represent the captured content being sent to a streaming platform (and its servers) from where it can be viewed by users on various devices.

 

It’s important to note that there is also an arrow pointing from the viewers to the streaming platforms. This indicates that users can also become content suppliers if they know how the system works. The Premier League’s report suggests that it’s not at all difficult.

Pirate Streams Can Be Viewed and Shared Too

To illustrate how internet users can create or capture video content before distributing it to the masses, one needs to look no further than YouTube. It’s the perfect example of how lone creators (or copiers) can reach millions of people with relatively little effort but, for pirates, YouTube is not ideal.

 

YouTube’s Content ID system (and Facebook’s Rights Manager) can quickly identify pirated content, a feature used by the Premier League to take down pirate streams from the platforms in near real-time. But these are not the only platforms that allow users to view pirate streams and upload their own for viewing by others.

 

The Premier League has a shortlist of problematic platforms and other rightsholders are weighing in too.

Streaming Platforms Used to Receive & Spread Content

The first platform to receive criticism is a blast from the past. Originally marketed under the name Torrent Stream, Ace Stream is a BitTorrent-based peer-to-peer service dedicated to streaming. In common with regular torrent magnet links, Ace Stream content is accessed using special URLs in the format ‘acestream://********’, with the asterisks representing the unique code for a specific stream.

 

Search engines exist for such content and in common with YouTube, the material can range from the entirely legal through to pirated streams. The latter can be found on dedicated indexing sites for those who simply wish to view but for those who have a stream to share, Ace Stream makes things pretty easy too.

 

As a result, the Premier League is unhappy with Ace Stream’s alleged Ukrainian operators. This type of sharing has been going on for years and there is no cooperation when it comes to takedowns.

 

“Despite thousands of notices being sent to the software operators over many years, and being included in the Premier League’s previous submissions to the Watch List, no action has ever been taken by Acestream to stop infringements,” they note.

 

Other platforms that offer similar but more centralized functionality include Wigistream.to which, in common with Ace Stream, also makes an appearance in the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) submission.

 

“The operator of the platform has taken extensive measures to obfuscate their identity, rendering any attempts to enforce against the platform or the streams it offers extremely challenging,” the Premier League complains.

 

The football organization also labels China-based ‘Just Fun’ (zhuafan.tech) as a threat. The platform looks a little like YouTube but appears to carry huge numbers of infringing live sports streams accessible on Just Fun itself and embedded in other sites around the web.

 

Again, users can simply view pirate streams or choose to upload their own for others to watch.

 

“The platform enables individuals to upload live and on-demand content to the platform, with live streams of Matches indexed and accompanied by commentators / anchors provided by the platform,” the submission continues.

 

The separate AAPA submission lists many more additional platforms that operate along similar lines including telerium.tv/teleriumtv.com, assia.tv/org, wstream.to, livestream.com, ezcdn462.net, uzcdn828.net, jokerswidget.com, cloudstream.to, stephn.xyz, wmsxx.com, streammart.club, ragnarp.net, worldwidestream.net and liveonlivetv.com.

 

At the time of writing, availability on some sites seems patchy but given their ability to leverage visitors as both viewers and suppliers of infringing streams, their popularity looks set to continue.

 

The submissions to the EC from Premier League and AAPA can be found here (1,2 pdf)

 

With over 200 million code repositories, GitHub takes prides in being the largest and most advanced development platform in the world.

 

As with other platforms that host user-generated content, this massive code library occasionally runs into copyright infringement troubles.

 

In some cases, people use code without permission from the creators, while others use GitHub to store pirated books or even music. And there are also developers whose projects are seen as pirate tools or apps, which often leads to copyright holder complaints.

 

A few high-profile cases have popped up over the years, including the RIAA’s takedown of YouTube-DL, which was later reversed. Other rightsholders were more successful, with GitHub taking down Unblockit proxy service respositories, as well as the reverse engineered GTA games “Re3” and “reVC”.

1,828 DMCA Notices Last Year

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. GitHub’s latest transparency report reveals that the platform received a total of 1,828 valid DMCA takedown notices last year. Just a small number of these, 46, were retracted or reversed.

 

GitHub doesn’t just remove content in response to takedown notices, it can also reach out to developers before taking action. This means developers can sometimes make modifications to prevent entire repositories from going offline.

 

“That way, if the user removes or remediates the specific content identified in the notice, we avoid having to disable any content at all. This is an important element of our DMCA policy, given how much users rely on each other’s code for their projects,” GitHub notes.

 

GitHub already posts copies of all DMCA notices on its own website and, starting this year, it also sends copies to Lumen. This central database, managed by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, also archives copies of notices sent to Google, Twitter, and other platforms.

19,276 Projects Taken Down

These detailed notices also show how many GitHub projects were targeted last year. This is substantially higher than the number of notices, which can list dozens of projects each.

 

In 2021, DMCA notices took down 19,276 GitHub projects. This can refer to complete repositories and subsets of code or individual files. In response to counternotices or reversals, 85 projects were reinstated, which means that 19,191 stayed down.

 

Github notes that this number is significantly lower than in 2020, when 36,173 projects were pulled offline. The company stresses that the number is also relatively small compared to the total number of repositories hosted on the site.

 

“The number 19,191 may sound like a lot of projects, but it’s less than .01% of the more than 200 million repositories on GitHub in 2021,” GitHub writes.

Supporting Developers’ Rights

There is no clear explanation for the drop in takedowns. However, GitHub believes that its response to the YouTube-DL debacle, after which it committed strongly to supporting developers’ rights, may have played a role.

 

“We are not able to determine the exact cause of the downtick, however, we suspect that a contributing factor is GitHub’s continued focus on standing up for developers’ rights, including the update to our DMCA review process in late 2020,” GitHub writes.

 

It’s also worth noting that, for the first time, GitHub provides details on its automated scanning filters. The platform doesn’t use these for copyrighted content but it does scan images for child abuse, extremist and terrorist content. This resulted in one hit last year.

 

“In 2021, out of millions of images scanned, we confirmed automated detection of one account with CSEAI, which was reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC),” GitHub writes, noting that no terrorist or extremist content was found.

 

GitHub’s full transparency report is available here. In addition to what’s discussed above, it also includes more details on requests for user data, national security letters, takedown requests from governments, and more.

 

Published each year by the United States Trade Representative, the ‘notorious markets’ report highlights piracy threats located outside the US, in the hope that foreign authorities will take action.

 

The ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’ is a similar report published by the European Commission. In common with its American cousin the list is based on input from various stakeholder groups but in this case, piracy and piracy-supporting services outside the EU.

 

Submissions for the 2022 report include detailed input from the Motion Picture Association, the trade industry group for the major Hollywood studios and Netflix.

The ‘Piracy Problem’ Summary

The submission begins with the MPA highlighting the scale of the problem using findings from various studies. Almost one in four internet users visit pirate sites, pirate sites have profit margins between 86% and 93%, and their users expose themselves to a higher risk of malware, for example.

 

None of the cited studies are published directly by the MPA but it’s worth noting that some – including those published by the UK government and Digital Citizens Alliance – are based on data supplied by the MPA itself. Nevertheless, there’s no denying that the MPA and its partners face a complex piracy landscape and will take all the help they can get.

Pirate IPTV Services

For several years, pirate IPTV services have been a key enforcement target for the MPA and affiliated anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. The MPA says that the technical infrastructures of these services are often “vast and complex”, which makes the identification of content sources and service operators extremely challenging.

 

In addition, pirate IPTV services drive other illegal businesses such as subscription resellers and entities involved in distributing and selling illegally sourced TV channels. Other players include suppliers of infrastructure and support services, such as hosting providers, media servers and panel hosters, some of which knowingly support pirates “and become bad actors in their own right.”

 

Highlighting some of the most problematic players, the MPA begins by drawing attention to BIPTV.best and BestBuyIPTV.store. Based in Vietnam but very popular in Europe, the service reportedly offers more than 10,000 channels and 19,000 VOD titles such as movies and TV shows. The studios believe that BestBuyIPTV has more than 900,000 users, 12,000 resellers (effectively independent sales agents) and 2,000 re-streamers – entities that use BestBuyIPTV channels in their own IPTV offerings.

 

Tunisia-based King-IPTV.net has been operating for six years, offering 16,000 channels and 20,000 VOD titles to subscribers. Importantly, the MPA says the service also offers IPTV restreaming, which could mean that its channels feed “hundreds” of IPTV and streaming platforms worldwide.

 

Theking365tv.pro is said to be located in North Africa and appears to be a relatively small player, especially when measured against GenIPTV. Reported as operating a front-end in the UK (genip.tv) and a back-end in Switzerland (geniptv.net), the MPA says GenIPTV is one of the largest IPTV providers in the world with multiple resellers providing access to 10,000 international channels and 52,000 VOD titles.

 

IPTVForest.org, VolkaIPTV and Gogo IPTV are also concerns for the MPA. These reportedly operate from the UK, Tunisia, and Algeria, providing thousands of live channels plus VOD. The former reportedly uses the services of UK-based hosting platform DataCamp, which is currently being sued by DISH Network in the United States.

Linking and Streaming

In addition to several smaller players in Singapore, Vietnam, and UAE, the MPA highlights some extremely popular sites in its ‘linking and streaming’ category. Many host no content of their own, instead linking to infringing content on other platforms. Others are believed to have their own supply of movies and TV shows to “maintain continuity” and “avoid takedowns” actioned on third-party hosting platforms.

 

The largest by far is Egypt-based Egy.best, which appeared to shut down in 2019, a victory partially claimed by the MPA. Since the site’s return, Egy.best and sister sites egybest.xyz and egybest.com now boast almost 167 million visitors per month. Hosted in Russia and utilizing Cloudflare services in the US, the MPA says that Egy.best will soon become the most popular pirate site globally.

 

With 141m+ visitors per month, Argentina-based Cuevana3.io isn’t that far behind but its inclusion in the MPA’s report is now outdated since the site’s domain went offline in March. The recent move to Cuevana3.me will cause the site’s traffic to dip but longer term it will remain a major player and of interest to the MPA.

 

Other major players listed in the report are detailed as follows:

 

Rezka.ag (Ukraine, 93 million visits per month), Fmovies.to (Vietnam, 78 million), Pelisplushd.net (Peru/Uruguay, 70.5 million), Cima4u.ws (Egypt, 37 million), Seasonvar.ru (Russia, 35.7 million), Gnula.nu/se (Latin American, 27.3 million), Dytt8.net, Dy2018.com, Dygod.net, and Ygdy8.com (China/Taiwan, 27.3 million), Topflix.vc (Brazil, 22.8 million), Gimytv.com (Taiwan, 24.2 million), Fullhdfilmizlesene.com (Turkey, 17.6 million), Rlsbb.ru (Iran, 6.7 million) and Solarmovie.to (Switzerland, 3.2 million).

Cyberlockers and Streaming Hosts

Linking sites rely on cyberlockers and streaming hosts to provide access to movies and TV shows. According to the MPA, content stored on these sites is also made available via apps, social media, forums, blogs and email. Enforcement can be tricky.

 

“[C]yberlockers and video hosting services frequently provide several unique links to the same file and use proxy services to mask the locations of where the site and content are hosted. If a content owner sends an infringement notice for one of the links, the others may remain up, enabling continued infringement,” the studios inform the EC.

 

“No meaningful measures are in place to prevent the upload and publication of clearly infringing content. On top of that, many cyberlockers and video hosting services do not respond at all to takedown notices,” the MPA adds, noting that many generate revenue from advertising and pay uploaders via reward schemes.

 

At the top of the list with 1.4 billion visits per month sits Russian social media giant VK.com. It appears to be an imperfect fit for the category given the MPA’s criteria but there are obvious problems with people uploading pirated content to VK. Nevertheless, the MPA actually spends time explaining what VK does right.

 

In 2016, VK limited the use of third-party applications that allow pirated content to be downloaded and it also blocks pirate platforms from accessing videos stored on VK. The MPA further notes that VK is responsive to takedown notices and offers a content filtering tool for rightsholders. However, VK now needs to be more proactive when it comes to dealing with infringement, the MPA says.

 

Similar criticism are leveled at Baidu Pan, the cloud storage service operated by Baidu in China. The MPA says the company provides takedown tools and demotes new infringing video listings in search results. However, the studios claim that takedowns need to be actioned more quickly, filtering technology needs to be deployed, and repeat infringers should be suspended or terminated.

 

Given that the above services appear to be cooperating with the MPA, its complaints to the EC are a sign that even after implementing systems that go beyond the standards required by local law, more requests to do better will ultimately follow. That being said, the MPA suggests that many services do substantially less.

 

They include Uptostream.com/Uptobox.com (UAE, 38 million per month), Uploaded.net (Switzerland, 19.5 million), Mixdrop.co (Russia, 35 million), Streamtape.com (Switzerland, 32 million), Hqq.to (Belize, 32.9 million), and Waaw.to (Belize, 26.4 million).

Torrent Sites

This section reads like a step back in time. Many of the sites have been the subject of legal actions of one kind or another over many years but somehow continue to operate.

 

Utilizing ad network RevenueHits in Israel and ‘masked’ behind Cloudflare, 1337x.to tops the MPA’s list in traffic terms with 76.9 million visitors per month. Russia-based, Seychelles-owned RuTracker comes next with 41.1 million, with The Pirate Bay relatively close behind with 33 million.

 

Another Russian language site, Rutor.info (17.3 million), is claimed to operate out of Switzerland while Morocco-based YggTorrent focuses on the French language and serves 16 million visitors per month.

 

Torrent search engine Zooqle.com also makes an appearance along with Gimmepeers.com, a small private tracker said to be based in Canada. There are much bigger targets in the private torrent scene than Gimmepeers but for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, they are omitted from the MPA’s submission to the EC.

Hosting and Other Infrastructure Services

Pirate sites need third-party services to operate and for this reason the MPA calls out several in its report. On the hosting side, “bulletproof” hoster Host-palace.com (Netherlands/India), Private Layer (Switzerland) and DDoS-Guard.net (Russia) stand accused of being pirate-friendly, with Russia’s Mnogobyte blamed for providing the infrastructure behind massive ‘pirate CDNs‘.

 

Many domain name registries are also listed for providing services to pirate sites including those operating .to, .tv, .ru, .bz, and .io domains. The MPA doesn’t allege any specific wrongdoing but strongly suggests that registries have the power to disable domains used by sites engaged in “massive copyright infringement”.

 

Advertising networks and brands including 1XBET, Mgid, GetB8, AdsKeeper, and Propellor Ads all make an appearance, despite the latter angrily describing previous MPA accusations as “legally baseless and libelous.”

Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Finally, the MPA lists various platforms that supply off-the-shelf services, making it easy for would-be pirates to easily get into the game. These include simple setup piracy content systems, pirate content provision, and IPTV dashboards.

 

For example, 2embed.ru (Russia) is described as a “pirate content management system” currently used by at least 30 sites generating 200 million views per month, with Fembed.com (Vietnam) providing similar services. Collaps.org (Russia) is described as a ‘pirate CDN’, an off-the-shelf facilitation service that makes it easy for would-be pirates to create and monetize a pirate service.

 

Last but not least, Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde’s Njal.la (St Kitts and Nevis) is called out for acting as a domain name proxy service for pirates. There are no specific allegations of legal wrongdoing but there is a strong suggestion that the MPA views anonymity as a hindrance to its enforcement activities.

 

The full MPA submission to the European Commission can be found here (pdf)

 

For many seasoned BitTorrent users, 1337x.to is a familiar name. The site has been around for fifteen years and is a home to many reputable uploaders.

 

Over the years 1337x has steadily climbed through the ranks. With millions of daily visits, it is one of the most popular torrent sites, trailing only behind YTS.mx and The Pirate Bay.

 

At the time of writing, the site is hard to reach though. Most people who try to access the main 1337x.to domain name are greeted by an error message from their browser. This is no surprise, as the domain doesn’t to have any DNS records as the moment (for some it may still load due to cached DNS entries).

 

“This site can’t be reached. Check if there is a typo in 1337x.to,” Chrome reports, while Firefox notes that it has “trouble finding that site.”

 

It is not clear why this is happening. The issue isn’t related to a hosting or server problem, but it typically shows up when DNS servers can’t resolve the website’s URL to an IP address.

 

Looking more closely at the matter, we noticed that the 1337x.to domain name expired earlier this week. While there’s typically a grace period that will keep expired domains operational for a while, this could have something to do with the downtime.

 

Strangely enough, the domain records were updated two days after they expired. However, that clearly didn’t solve the problem.

 

While the main 1337x.to domain name is currently out of action, several of the torrent site’s official backups are still working as usual. These include 1337x.st, x1337x.ws, x1337x.eu and x1337x.se. That also confirms that the servers are working as expected.

 

We contacted the operator of 1337x to find out more about the domain troubles but they didn’t immediately reply.

 

Update: A few hours after we published this article the 1337x.to domain name was renewed. There are DNS records as well now, so the site should start to reappear again shortly, if it hasn’t already.

 

Last month persons unknown began sending DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, claiming that videos uploaded by Destiny content creators infringed Bungie’s copyrights.

 

YouTube responded by removing the videos, including some that had been uploaded by high-profile creators and others that appeared on Bungie’s own channels.

 

With the finger of blame pointing at Bungie, the company began an investigation to discover the truth. It transpired that the notices, formatted to give the impression they were sent by a Bungie content protection partner, were actually elaborate fakes sent from a newly-created Google/Gmail account.

 

According to one of the alleged notice senders, the fakes were designed to draw attention to Bungie’s failure to properly handle bogus notices sent in the past by other people. Clearly annoyed by the protest, Bungie filed a lawsuit claiming that the defendants willfully sent DMCA takedown notices containing material misrepresentations, a breach of copyright law.

 

Bungie wants Google to hand over the notice senders’ personal details but a new filing in the case reveals that Google is currently refusing to comply.

Google: Request is Improper and Otherwise Objectionable

Bungie previously said it would send a DMCA subpoena to Google to identify the defendants and hold them accountable for their “tortious and illegal conduct” and deter anyone else “stupid enough to volunteer as a Defendant by targeting Bungie’s community for similar attack.”

 

Making good on its promise, on March 29 Bungie served a DMCA subpoena on Google demanding any and all information it holds on the fraudulent DMCA notice senders. A few days later, a Google response indicated that the company will not be complying with the subpoena.

 

“Google will not produce documents in response to the Proposed Subpoena because it is improper and because the request is otherwise objectionable,” a letter to Bungie’s counsel reads.

 

The problem, according to Google, is that DMCA subpoenas enable a rightsholder to obtain information relating to an alleged copyright infringer. In this respect, Bungie’s request fails.

 

“Section 512(h) of the Copyright Act provides only for the production of information sufficient to identify an alleged infringer of copyright. To be valid, an application for a DMCA subpoena must include a copy of a Section 512(c)(3)(A) notification [copyright infringement notice] alleging that the target of the subpoena is an infringer,” Google’s reply reads.

 

“The Proposed Subpoena instead seeks information sufficient to identify senders of copyright removal requests that you allege were fraudulent, not infringers. It also seeks a list of email addresses belonging to correspondents of those notice senders. Section 512(h) does not authorize the production of such information.”

More Problems: Defendants Aren’t In The United States

Another issue raised by Google relates to personal jurisdiction. YouTube’s owner says that even a “casual review” of the defendants’ publicly available videos would’ve revealed that they do not reside in the United States. With that in mind, Google says that Bungie’s counsel lacks “a good faith belief” that the US court has personal jurisdiction over the defendants. And there’s more.

 

Google indicates that the personal information requested by Bungie relates to users of Google’s services within the European Economic Area (EEA) and/or Switzerland. Google Ireland Limited controls EEA data for YouTube and that entity operates under Irish law.

 

“Google Ireland Limited requires binding legal process issued by an Irish court or under Irish law which must be validly served on Google Ireland,” Google adds.

Additional Objections

Google continues by noting that the subpoena fails to provide enough time to notify the affected users and for the users to assert their rights in response. Google allows users “at least 10 days” to object to a data release or inform the company of their intent to file a motion to quash.

 

Additionally, Google says that the subpoena imposes an undue burden on a disinterested non-party, seeks to obtain information Bungie already has in its possession or could’ve been obtained from public sources, and is unreasonable in several other ways.

 

“Google objects to the Proposed Subpoena to the extent it seeks information that is not proportionate to the needs of the case, not relevant to any party’s claims or defenses, or not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” Google adds.

Google Offered to Discuss

In its response to Bungie’s counsel, Google said that if there are any questions its Legal Support Department may be able to help. However, if Bungie intends to seek any judicial relief, Google would like the opportunity to “meet and confer in advance of any such filing.” Bungie says that was not possible.

 

“Upon receipt [of Google’s response], I immediately responded requesting a meet and confer as directed. As of the filing of this motion, I have received no response to that email,” Bungie’s counsel informs the court.

 

The next steps will become apparent in the coming days but Google is clear that in this case, a DMCA subpoena is not an appropriate route to obtain personal data.

 

Related court documents can be found here (pdf)

 

With 70 million users and over 200 million code repositories, GitHub is the largest online developer platform of its kind.

 

The site is used by individual coders and large organizations to host visually any piece of code imaginable. In addition, GitHub pages can also be used as a hosting service for websites.

 

While most projects are perfectly legitimate, there are some that attract negative attention. Every week, GitHub receives dozens of takedown notices from copyright holders who claim that their content is published or linked to without permission.

 

These complaints often refer to code or files that are hosted in a GitHub repository. In some cases, the targeted projects also have their own GitHub page, using a dedicated Github.io subdomain.

 

The latter also applies to the IPTV streaming app CucoTV, which has become the go-to tool for many people who want to watch movies and TV shows without paying a subscription. The Internet is littered with guides and how-tos explaining how to get it up and running.

 

In theory, the application may have legal uses but that’s probably not how most people use it. In fact, the CucoTV Twitter account doesn’t beat around the bush and highlights the app’s piracy capabilities out in the open.

 

As shown above, the CucoTV website is hosted on a GitHub page, and the official repository is on GitHub as well. This prompted UK media giant Sky to step in. With help from its anti-piracy partner Kopjra, Sky asked the developer platform to remove the site and the ‘infringing’ APK.

 

“We are writing in the name and on behalf of Sky UK Limited, the exclusive owner of distribution and exploitation rights of the Sky UK channels. This IPTV App (CucoTV) includes illegal and unauthorized Pay Tv Sky UK tv series: Gomorra,” the notice reads.

 

The notice continues by explaining how the application can be used to access copyright-infringing material. To stop this activity, Github was asked to remove the cucotv.github.io page and an APK file, hosted in the cucotvapk.github.io repository.

 

Thus far, the results of this takedown effort are mixed. When we checked this morning, the APK file is indeed inaccessible, replaced by a DMCA takedown placeholder. However, the main cucotv.github.io remains online.

 

In fact, the CucoTV website still appears to be fully functional, and the APK file can still be downloaded.

 

At this point, we don’t know why GitHub hasn’t taken action against the CucoTV site. The associated repository is still online, for now, as is the APK file that’s hosted there. That repo is linked to another user than the one Sky targeted, which may be part of the explanation.

 

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that Sky has tried to get the site taken down. The Italian branch of the company sent similar takedowns last May and June, without the desired effect. Perhaps they’ll make another attempt in the near future.

 

Sports leagues and their TV broadcasting partners all over Europe are working hard to combat the supply and sale of pirate IPTV subscriptions.

 

Available for just a few euros, pounds or dollars per month, pirate IPTV subscriptions allow users to watch all the live TV content they’ll ever need, plus PPV events, movies and TV shows in one convenient package. Rightsholders see them as a threat to their survival so significant resources are expended to bring IPTV providers and distributors to justice.

LaLiga Strikes Again

Top-tier Spanish football league LaLiga is now tackling live streaming piracy on all fronts. From a few early steps in 2016/2017 and more recently in 2022, services are being dynamically blocked and many individuals have been arrested for broadcasting or selling access to the league’s games without permission.

 

An announcement this week by Spain’s National Police reveals that La Liga is keeping its foot on the gas. In 2019, LaLiga launched an investigation into a website advertised on social media that was being used to illegally market football content plus other material belonging to a “well-known” on-demand television platform.

 

According to police sources, the site offered subscriptions to illegal IPTV and CCCAM services. Where IPTV streams contain actual video content, CCCAM services capture encryption codes from legal subscriber viewing cards and then, via the internet, distribute them to set-top boxes that have access to a source (such as a satellite) but don’t have a legal subscription – so-called ‘card sharing’.

 

In addition to selling both types of subscriptions, the site also had a blog where technical support was given to users.

LaLiga Investigation Goes in Two Directions

To target the individuals involved, LaLiga’s investigation went in two directions. In the first instance, it sought to identify the person behind the pirate network and discover the technical infrastructure supporting the illicit broadcasts.

 

LaLiga then took a ‘follow-the-money’ approach to determine how subscribers paid for subscriptions, leading investigators to a financial payment platform. This enabled the identification of two individuals in Malaga who are believed to be the main people behind the operation.

National Police Make Two Arrests

On Monday, Spain’s National Police said that following LaLiga’s investigation, two people had been arrested on suspicion of illegally selling access to premium audiovisual content distributed via the Internet and satellite.

 

“They have been arrested for crimes against intellectual property, against conditional television broadcasting services, and electric power fraud. They had a high degree of technological specialization. To carry out their illicit activities they used a sophisticated infrastructure to provide services to their clients,” a police statement reads.

 

Gross revenues generated by the suspects are yet to be revealed but at least for now, police say that the profit made exceeds €87,500 (US$95,400).

 

Given that LaLiga’s anti-piracy efforts are increasing and enjoying success on multiple fronts, it’s worth looking at how the league is tackling piracy using in-house tools.

LaLiga Develops Its Own Anti-Piracy Tools

In February 2015, LaLiga launched a piece of web-spidering software called ‘Marauder’. It scans the web looking for hot terms such as team names (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, etc) and assesess whether any ‘hits’ are related to piracy. If they are, Marauder identifies the provider/server and sends automatic infringement notices to web-based platforms and apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to have the content removed.

 

LaLiga says that Marauder can also detect illegal IPTV streams and card sharing operations. In these cases, infringement notices are sent to infrastructure providers to have the related servers blocked or taken down. The system is also used to identify sites selling illegal subscriptions. As previously reported, these are then sent to Google for delisting from its search engine.

 

Marauder can also provide a visual map that helps LaLiga geo-locate illegal websites but more recently LaLiga has discussed its ‘Blackhole’ tool which appears to map illegal IPTV services at a national and international level. Finally, LaLiga’s Lumière tool assists with investigations by extracting and signing digital evidence and preparing evidence for legal action.

 

Technology created by LaLiga is also being used by other industries to protect their intellectual property. In February, LaLiga said its LaLiga Tech subsidiary (which operates LaLiga Content Protection) had signed a deal with CEDRO, an association representing creators in the publishing sector.

 

“LaLiga Content Protection will detect and analyse illegal domains using artificial intelligence monitoring software across the world’s major search engines and social media platforms, allowing it to identify the source of illegal content and speeding up the process through which CEDRO can request the disabling and blocking of pirated material,” the company said.

 

Following the example of the United States, the EU started publishing its very own piracy watchlist a few years ago.

 

This ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’ is put together by the European Commission. As in the US, it relies on stakeholder groups to nominate several problematic sites and services for inclusion.

 

The third iteration of the EU watchlist will be published towards the end of the year and several interested parties have already submitted their nominations. This includes the music industry group IFPI, which represents roughly 8,000 music companies around the world.

 

IFPI submitted a 36-page document that begins by highlighting the harm piracy does to the music industry. This includes economic harm affecting investments in the industry and talent development. The report then continues with examples of concrete threats.

 

Not surprisingly, the list of problematic sites and services includes YouTube rippers, direct download sites, cyberlockers, and torrent sites. However, another category of platforms is seen as an even bigger enforcement challenge.

IFPI Flags Top Piracy Problems

According to IFPI, a group of social media platforms and messenger services have become increasingly problematic. Platforms such as Discord, Reddit and Telegram are often used to share and sell pre-release content, which is a top concern.

 

“Although there are huge numbers of services that infringe our members’ rights, due to the grave economic harm caused by pre-release piracy, the services mentioned above – Discord, Reddit, and Telegram – are considered enforcement priorities for the music industry and are a particular focus in this submission,” IFPI writes.

 

The music industry group notes that social media can also be beneficial to artists. However, it has seen an emergence of platforms where pirates exploit these services to share infringing content in recent years.

 

This content isn’t necessarily stored by these ‘social’ platforms. Groups of pirates often share links to external cyberlockers such as Dbree and Onlyfiles that don’t respond to takedown requests.

 

IFPI discusses several platforms in more detail, stressing that the operators should do more to prevent piracy. Shutting down servers, groups, subreddits and channels where pre-release content is shared, should be a top priority.

Discord

Discord is seen as a serious concern because there are several servers, often private, where people share pirated music. This also includes pre-release content that is occasionally sold through the platform.

 

“Most notably and problematically for the music industry, Discord has rapidly become an underground marketplace for the distribution and crowd funding of stolen, unreleased or prerelease content, through so-called ‘Group Buys’. This is where users use a Discord server to operate an auction to sell unreleased or pre-release content,” IFPI notes.

 

The infringing content is often stored on external sites but IFPI believes that Discord contributes to the problem. Since many of the groups are private, the platform is also hard to monitor, so the scale of the infringing activity could be even larger than has been detected to date.

 

The music industry group stresses that Discord should to more to police its platform and prevent illegal activities. When bad actors are found, they should be banned and prohibited from reappearing on the service.

Reddit

Copyright infringement is a problem on Reddit too, according to IFPI. The popular social media platform is used to discuss virtually every topic imaginable and pre-release music piracy is no exception. This includes dedicated ‘leak’ communities.

 

“We have detected many instances of pre-release content distributed across the platform, including on leak-specific subreddits. REDDIT is used in combination with other services such as Discord and Twitter to promote the distribution of pre-release content,” IFPI writes.

 

Reddit is well aware of the copyright issues on its platform and responds to takedown requests. It also has a repeat infringer policy and permanently banned 2,813 users and 2,625 subreddits last year.

 

The music industry is aware of these efforts but believes it can do more. Ideally, it wants the platform to take “proactive” steps to prevent piracy.

 

“Reddit needs to take further steps to identify and address the illegal sharing of content, especially pre-release content, on the platform,” IFPI notes.

Twitter and Telegram

While Reddit and Discord are not typical pirate sites, IFPI is listing them hoping that this will trigger the companies to take action. It previously did the same with Telegram, which subsequently took action against infringing channels and bots.

 

However, IFPI’s latest recommendation notes that Telegram’s efforts are just a start; more should be done.

 

“While this [takedown] process appears to be working, it barely tackles the problem given the large amount of infringing content remaining on the platform, including via bots, and because of right holders inability to find the infringing content in the first place,” IFPI writes

 

This also applies to Twitter. The social media platform removed hundreds of thousands of tweets, but IFPI also wants the company to prevent “future infringements.”

 

“Twitter still does not take steps to prevent future infringements of content that has been notified. Consequently, IFPI and its member companies spend a significant amount of time and resources identifying and notifying reappearances of the same content.”

‘EU Law Requires a Proactive Stance’

Preventing something that hasn’t happened yet might sound complicated but we assume that the music industry is again hinting at upload filters.

 

Upload filters are a familiar topic in the EU, as they are indirectly required by the DSM Directive, which was adopted in 2019. Under European law, online service providers either have to obtain licenses or take proactive steps to prevent infringing content from reappearing on their platform.

 

IFPI notes that many of the aforementioned platforms and services claim that “safe harbor” legislation protects them from being held liable. However, that is not necessarily the case in Europe.

 

“[The DSM Directive] is particularly relevant to many social media services with infringing functionalities since it confirms that they have to modify their EU-facing operations and either get licensed for the music content made available on their platforms or ensure that no such unlicensed content is available there.

 

“While Europe led the way in providing this clarification, it is evident that many services, notably some based in the US, often view their obligations as limited to compliance with US safe harbour laws and not the new EU standards of protection,” IFPI adds.

 

—

 

A copy of IFPI’s submission for the European Commission’s ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’ is available here (pdf)

 

Last year, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo sued YouTube over various piracy-related claims.

 

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

 

While copyright allegations against Google and YouTube aren’t new, the case came with an interesting twist. According to Vasallo, YouTube would only allow him to join the Content ID copyright protection program if he agreed to a revenue share deal. In addition, he had had to waive all possible piracy claims that took place in the past.

 

The movie tycoon refused to accept these terms. Instead, he opted to send old-fashioned DMCA takedown notices. However, according to the complaint filed at a Florida federal court last year, that did little to stop people from pirating his films.

Copyright and Antitrust Claims

The lawsuit accused YouTube of breaching antitrust law through ‘illegal tying.’ According to Vasallo, YouTube tied Content ID participation to a required revenue-sharing deal and the condition to waive older copyright claims.

 

The movie tycoon also accused YouTube of several copyright infringement claims by making movies available on the platform without permission. On top of that, YouTube allegedly violated the DMCA, by removing copyright management information from the videos.

 

YouTube disagreed and previously refuted the allegations. The streaming giant asked the court to dismiss the case, noting that the statute of limitations on many of the claims had expired.

 

After reviewing the arguments from both sides, U.S. District Court Judge Darrin Gayles ruled on the motion to dismiss last week. While the Judge was not ready to drop the entire case, he dismissed some of the claims.

No Illegal Tying

Starting with the antitrust allegations, Judge Gayles notes that there is no evidence that YouTube coerced the movie tycoon to join the Content ID program. This is one of the required elements for an ‘illegal tying’ claim.

 

“YouTube argues that Plaintiff fails to meet the second element because Plaintiff was not ‘forced’ to buy Content ID. Indeed, Plaintiff admits that it refused YouTube’s offer and nothing in the allegations suggests that Plaintiff ever purchased anything from YouTube or entered into any agreement,” Judge Gayles writes.

 

In addition, a successful claim involves some type of purchase, which isn’t the case here as the Content ID system is free of charge.

 

“Additionally, Plaintiff does not allege that it had to purchase Content ID. If Content ID is a free service offered by Defendants, Plaintiff’s claim must fail because the acceptance of a free service does not constitute an impermissible tie-in,” the order reads.

 

Based on these and other arguments, the court dismisses the antitrust claim against YouTube.

Expired Copyright Infringement Claims

Moving on to the copyright claims, the court agrees with Google that the three-year statute of limitations has passed for all alleged infringements that took place before May 3, 2018.

 

Google had requested to simply drop all copyright allegations as the movie tycoon lumped older and newer infringements together. However, Judge Gayles disagrees, which means that YouTube must defend itself against the more recent claims.

 

The same is true for the alleged DMCA claims. The movie tycoon accused YouTube of removing or altering ‘copyright management information’ while uploading videos from users, which would violate the DMCA.

 

YouTube countered that it wasn’t clear what copyright management information it had supposedly removed, or that it did so intentionally. However, Judge Gayles won’t dismiss these claims from the lawsuit at this stage.

 

All in all, this means that the case will continue without the antitrust allegations while limiting the copyright infringement allegations to the more recent uploads.

 

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Darrin Gayles’ order ruling on Google’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

This week we have two new entries on the list. “Moonfall” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 04 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Moonfall	5.2 / trailer
2	(1)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	8.6 / trailer
3	(5)	Death on the Nile	6.5 / trailer
4	(2)	Jackass Forever	7.2 / trailer
5	(3)	Turning Red	7.1 / trailer
6	(…)	The Contractor	5.7 / trailer
7	(6)	The Batman	8.4 / trailer
8	(4)	The Adam Project	6.9 / trailer
9	(8)	The King’s Man	6.5 / trailer
10	(10)	The Matrix Resurrections	5.8 / trailer

 

 

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