Since 2017, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the supervising body and publisher for the Jehovah’s Witness religious group, has filed more than 70 DMCA subpoena applications in the United States.

 

When taken at face value, they all tell a straightforward story. Someone on the internet has breached Watch Tower’s copyrights and, as a result, their true names and addresses should be handed over so that the group can seek remedy for infringement.

 

Most (if not all) of these cases are targeted at the religion’s critics but not once has Watch Tower followed up with a copyright claim after obtaining the identity of an alleged offender. That raises the question of whether the DMCA is being used for copyright enforcement or simply as a tool to crack down on anonymous speech by so-called ‘apostates’.

Silencing an Apostate

One such critic is ‘Kevin McFree’, the creator of a series of Lego animations that criticize the religious group. In 2018, Watch Tower sought to silence that speech by filing a DMCA subpoena application to obtain his personal details.

 

McFree fought back against the request and despite limited means to defend himself, came out victorious. After reviewing McFree’s videos, last month a New York judge denied the Watch Tower application declaring that McFree’s use of Watch Tower clips was permitted under fair use.

 

However, Watch Tower is still pursuing a parallel copyright infringement lawsuit against McFree in another court. It covers exactly the same content and is supported by exactly the same arguments. Watch Tower doesn’t care. Instead it is doubling down and trying to de-anonymize McFree in this action, regardless of the earlier ‘fair use’ determination and in the knowledge that McFree doesn’t have the means to defend himself.

 

Until now, that is.

Public Citizen Litigation Group Steps In

Public Citizen Litigation Group is a public interest law firm in the United States that specializes in First Amendment rights, which includes the Supreme Court-endorsed right to anonymous free speech. The nonprofit group has now stepped in to defend not only fair use but McFree’s right to remain anonymous. The latter comes with a fairly delicious twist.

 

In 2002, the Supreme Court struck down a Stratton, Ohio, ordinance that made it a misdemeanor to canvass or solicit door-to-door without a permit. The Court found that the ordinance violated First Amendment protections for anonymous free speech, a clear and important win for the plaintiff…..Watch Tower.

 

One of the Watch Tower attorneys supporting anonymous speech in that case was Paul D. Polidoro. Yet now, two decades later, Polidoro is also the Watch Tower attorney doing everything in his power to de-anonymize McFree. The content created by McFree was deleted years ago and has been recently cleared by a judge as protected under fair use but Watch Tower refuses to back off.

“Watch Tower is Trying its Luck”

In a recent letter to Judge Cathy Seibel at a New York district court, Public Citizen attorney Paul Levy begins with an overview of Watch Tower’s DMCA subpoena application (filed at another court) that tried and failed to remove McFree’s anonymity. Levy notes that the judge in that matter determined that there was no infringement since McFree’s critical parodies were protected under fair use.

 

“Watch Tower has not appealed; instead, it is trying its luck before a different district judge,” Levy informs Judge Seibel.

 

“Parties that litigate subpoenas to identify anonymous Internet users, and lose because they cannot establish a prima facie claim on the merits (here, a claim of copyright infringement), cannot bring a second proceeding based on the same claim. Rulings on motions to quash are entitled to full res judicata effect over subsequent subpoenas seeking substantially the same information concerning the same parties.”

 

Watch Tower previously suggested the DMCA subpoena decision wasn’t relevant since Watch Tower was denied the opportunity to conduct discovery and was denied “a fair and full opportunity to litigate.” However, in that matter the judge said that discovery wasn’t needed for him to determine that McFree was protected under fair use.

Shining a Light on Watch Tower’s ‘Copyright Abuse’

“(i)f the merits of this case have to be litigated, McFree will rely on res judicata, fair use, and the First Amendment, as well as the defense of copyright misuse,” Levy informs the court.

 

“We expect to address Watch Tower’s history of pursuing similarly abusive copyright claims against dissatisfied members – ‘apostates,’ in Watch Tower’s terms – who use its copyrighted works solely for the purpose of criticism…using the threat of ‘shunning’ to suppress open dissent.”

 

As demonstrated in an RIAA music piracy case ruling back in 2010, alleged copyright infringers cannot simply claim First Amendment anonymity rights to avoid liability. If the presented evidence persuades the court that there is a case to answer, the right to anonymity can be overridden. However, the judge in the DMCA subpoena matter previously addressed the RIAA ruling and found no evidence that McFree infringed copyright.

 

Levy also addresses an attempt by Watch Tower to conduct discovery against the currently anonymous McFree by serving him via email. The religious group cited a case where that was allowed against a group of counterfeiters selling infringing goods but Levy says that the McFree case bears no resemblance to that one.

 

“[M]cFree is not evading court process: he has faithfully engaged with court process, retaining counsel in both the DMCA subpoena case as well as this one. Moreover, McFree lives in England, where the law forbids service via email except by express permission,” the attorney writes.

Reign of Terror Against Fair Use

A key feature of similar Watch Tower cases against supposed infringers is the religious group’s ability to wield its power against much weaker opponents. In a separate blog post, Levy describes the complaint against McFree as “indiscriminate bullying” and calls for the formation of a broader project to stop Watch Tower from abusing copyright law.

 

“We need to find a way to stop Watch Tower’s reign of terror against bloggers who engage in fair use,” Levy says.

 

“We at Public Citizen can only take so many such cases. I’d be glad to hear from other lawyers, especially those able to practice in the Southern District of New York where Watch Tower has consistently filed its DMCA subpoenas, who are ready to provide pro bono representation (even as local counsel for others) to oppose DMCA subpoenas seeking to identify those who make use of Watch Tower materials for the purpose of commentary.”

 

Public Citizen’s letter to the court can be found here (pdf)

 

At TorrentFreak we do our best to keep readers updated on the latest copyright and piracy news, highlighting issues from different points of view.

 

We report on the opinions and efforts of copyright holders when it comes to online piracy and have active dialogues with anti-piracy outfits. At the same time, we also make room for those who oppose them. That’s how balanced reporting works in our view.

 

There is probably no site on the Internet that reports on the negative consequences of piracy as much as we do and but for some reason, the term “pro-piracy” is sometimes attached to our reporting.

 

In most cases we shrug off these characterizations, concluding that those who portray us in this light are simply uninformed. However, when these words are part of a court filing intended to keep information from the public, we have to respond.

MarkMonitor Evidence

This week, anti-piracy MarkMonitor sent a request to a federal court in Florida, asking for the option to file some evidence under seal. This information includes documents, source code, and witness testimony regarding the company’s efforts to track online pirates.

 

The filing is part of the legal battle between several record labels and ISP Bright House, which is accused of failing to terminate repeat copyright infringement. This accusation is based on evidence from MarkMonitor.

 

MarkMonitor believes that the requested information is confidential and asks the court to keep it out of the public’s view. This isn’t an unusual request as sealed filings are quite common. However, the argumentation certainly stands out.

TorrentFreak Threat?

The anti-piracy outfit informs the court that it’s particularly concerned about a particular news site named TorrentFreak.

 

“The designation and maintaining the confidential nature of this information by keeping it filed under seal also helps avoid unrestricted publication of the Confidential Information by Torrent Freak,” MarkMonitor writes.

 

The request explains that TF and others share news with the public at large, including people who may be involved in hacking or piracy. That can potentially reach the pirating subscribers who are at the center of the lawsuit.

 

Later on in the filing, MarkMonitor’s legal team uses the term “pro-piracy”, without giving any further explanation of how TorrentFreak would fit into this category.

 

“[T]he Confidential Information here is proprietary in nature […] with the public’s interest being low, but for competitors who wish to gain an unfair advantage over MarkMonitor or others that wish to publicize or exploit MarkMonitor’s highly sensitive technical information in the pro-piracy sector of the general public.”

 

MarkMonitor’s filing is in support of a sealing request by the two main parties in the lawsuit. In the original motion, the record labels clarify that some of the MarkMonitor evidence could help pirates to evade detection.

Perplexed

Needless to say, we are perplexed after reading this filing. While it is totally understandable that MarkMonitor and the record labels don’t want to share proprietary or confidential information in public, singling out TorrentFreak is completely unnecessary.

 

Even worse, using the “pro-piracy” term is wholly inaccurate. Judging from the responses we get, our readership is rather diverse. In fact, copyright holders often approach us with news and regularly cite our independent reporting, even MarkMonitor did so in the past.

 

While it’s certainly true that we report on these types of lawsuits in detail, we cover the good and the bad for all sides. This also includes positive news for MarkMonitor and the record labels.

 

This isn’t the first time that the name of this publication has shown up in court filings. The record labels previously portrayed TorrentFreak as an unreliable source. In addition, the music companies were particularly interested to know whether potential jurors in these cases read our news coverage.

 

—

 

A copy of MarkMonitor’s filing in support for the joint motion to file under seal is available here (pdf)

 

Jake Paul vs Ben Askren was one the most-hyped boxing events of recent years, despite the former having limited experience in the boxing ring and the latter having none.

 

Askren was quickly knocked out in the Triller-promoted match, giving fans poor value for their PPV spend. Well, those who paid for it, at least.

 

Soon after the event was over, Triller promised a scorched-earth approach to all pirates, from those who simply watched the fight to those who allegedly facilitated access to it. Almost a year down the line the legal campaign is mirroring the success of Askren, if we take Askren’s significant purse out of the equation.

Chasing Down FilmDaily

The first big legal assault targeted many services and individuals said to have pirated the fight. The first site on the list was FilmDaily.co which together with the other defendants (we’ll come to some of those later), found themselves on the end of a $100m damages claim filed in April 2021.

 

Just a few weeks later a judge decimated the lawsuit after Triller failed to prove that any of the entities acted jointly and should therefore be handled in the same lawsuit. All other entities were dismissed from the case, leaving FilmDaily.co as the sole defendant. In July 2021, with Triller appearing to do little to progress the case, the court warned the lawsuit could be dismissed for lack of prosecution.

 

Triller responded, informing the court that it was working behind the scenes and had been able to discover the “true identity” of those behind FilmDaily. Triller told the court it was preparing an amended complaint but it made no difference. Triller was supposed to serve the defendant within 90 days but failed to do. As a result, the case was dismissed.

Yet Another Lawsuit Targets FilmDaily

As the first named defendant in its lawsuit campaign, Triller seemed determined to make an example of FilmDaily and those behind it. So it filed yet another lawsuit (pdf), this time against FilmDaily.co and its alleged operator, Frances Levi.

 

Triller alleged willful copyright infringement (for distributing, uploading, copying, and publicly displaying the fight), violations of the Federal Communications Act (interception/misuse of a satellite broadcast), and vicarious copyright infringement in respect of the infringing acts of those who allegedly viewed the fight on FilmDaily.

 

Exactly how much in damages Triller intended to claim was unclear since it produced no evidence to back up any of its claims. However, given its past actions, it was likely to run into the millions given the potential damages on offer. But, like the previous attempts to squeeze something from FilmDaily, this effort also went absolutely nowhere too.

Triller Dismisses Its Own Case

In its most recent attempt at a lawsuit against FilmDaily and Frances Levi, the allegations were pretty vague, to say the least. Triller claimed that the defendants made several posts on Reddit with various titles including “Live Reddit! Jake Paul vs Ben Askren Stream Free, How to Watch?” and which contained clickable links titled “Click to Watch Paul vs Askren Live Free”.

 

After providing screenshots of these links, Triller jumped straight into claims of “calculated and reprehensible infringement, theft, and other unlawful acts,” related to the supposed illegal broadcasting of the event. None of this was supported by any evidence.

 

While producing rock-solid evidence of infringement usually arrives as a case progresses, the complaint failed to show even a prime facie case of wrongdoing, such as a URL where the fight was offered or even a basic screenshot of the fight being aired on the platform. In fact, the only screenshot from FilmDaily shows the site advertising the fight as being available on Triller for $49.99.

 

It’s worth noting that FilmDaily appears to deploy clickbait-style advertising to attract people to its ‘news’ site and while it’s not exactly clear what happened here, there is nothing to show that the platform ever streamed this fight, which is the core of the entire complaint.

Triller Dismisses Its Own Case

After hiring an outside party to track Levi down, Triller attempted to serve Levi at three addresses in Los Angeles on six separate occasions, ultimately failing to serve by a November 2021 deadline. It was then granted an extension by the court which required it to serve the defendants by February 9, 2022.

 

That didn’t happen.

 

So with a whimper rather than a bang, Triller dismissed its own flagship lawsuit against its original number one defendant FilmDaily. There’s nothing on the record to show that any contact was made or any settlement reached, let alone millions in damages.

 

It seems fair to say that this legal campaign hasn’t gone well. After hoping to win $100 million in damages, Triller appears to have prevailed in just one case against YouTuber Matthew Space, the person behind the Eclipt Gaming channel. In that matter Triller demanded $170K+ in damages but was awarded just $15,000.

 

Another lawsuit against YouTuber ‘ItsLilBrandon’ was thrown out after Triller failed to follow the court’s orders.

 

Several other cases are pending but thus far, none appear to be moving in a positive direction. One example is the case against YouTuber Arvin De La Santos, the alleged operator of the YouTube channel YourEXTRA.

 

Triller reportedly agreed to settle the lawsuit but after the agreement was signed and the fee was paid, the company reportedly returned the money and resumed legal action. Unfortunately, the defendant’s lawyer has just informed the court that his client has no means to pay for a defense so permission has been requested (1,2) for him to withdraw.

 

Only time will tell whether any of the other complaints will bear fruit but if progress thus far is any metric, this expensive legal campaign may have become more trouble than its worth.

 

Around the world, there is a variety of blocking schemes targeted at pirate sites. Some require ISPs to block access, while others focus on advertisers.

 

The idea behind the advertising blocklist is that pirate sites are unable to survive without revenue. While it’s no silver bullet, there is some anecdotal evidence that this strategy can be effective.

 

Advertising blocklists are not new but, until a few years ago, these were relatively local. Pirate sites, however, often cater to a global audience. This lack of coordination motivated the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to develop a global system based on input from countries around the world.

WIPO Alert Blocklist

WIPO, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its “WIPO Alert” blocklist.

 

The goal of the project is simple; allow stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share the resulting list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. This should result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit.

 

The “WIPO Alert” system stayed mostly under the radar but we’ve kept a close eye on the project. Thus far, 11 countries are participating; Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, Republic of Korea, Russia, Spain and Ukraine.

 

The number of domain names included in the databases is also growing rapidly but keeping track of the changes is hard, as WIPO is not publishing much detail in public.

 

This limited transparency isn’t WIPO’s choice. Talking to TorrentFreak, WIPO’s legal counsellor Thomas Dillon explains that many of the participating countries prefer to keep the details private, as they don’t want to ‘promote’ pirate sites.

 

“What holds us back from publishing the database is that some participating Contributors consider that it would be undesirable to make their lists generally available, as this would effectively advertise the infringing websites.

 

“WIPO is really bound therefore to leave the issue of publication for decision at the national level,” Dillon adds.

7,717 Domains, 4,042 Active

The organization is trying to get as much information out under these restrictions and was kind enough to share some further details. For example, that there are now 7,717 domains listed in the database.

 

Pirate sites comes and go and some change domains, so many of the listed names are no longer active. According to WIPO, 4,042 of the domain names in its database point to a working site at the moment.

 

Without sharing any names, WIPO said that the majority of the targeted sites have a .com domain, followed by .net, .ru, and .org.

 

In an effort to provide more transparency the organization made another major change a few days ago. The public is now allowed to search the database to see if a specific domain is listed.

 

Not all countries signed up for this. Thus far, Italy, Russia, Spain, Peru, Ecuador, and Lithuania have agreed to add domains to the searchable portion of the WIPO Alert database but not all information is complete yet as it’s still being rolled out.

 

As shown above, a quick search for “thepiratebay.org” reveals that it’s on the advertising blocklist in Italy and Spain, while “fmovies.to” is blocked in Lithuania and Italy.

Appeals?

With the added transparency, WIPO makes its easier for site operators to check whether they are listed and potentially appeal. Until recently, this was not possible.

 

“We are constantly trying to enhance the system – in this case, site operators who are concerned that their sites might be listed on WIPO ALERT can carry out a check and contact the national authority concerned if necessary,” Dillon tells us.

 

WIPO itself remains a neutral intermediary that merely operates and facilitates the blocklist system. The organization doesn’t proactively notify site operators to inform them that they’re being targeted.

 

“WIPO does not attempt to contact the affected domain operators – notification and appeal procedures are a matter for the national agencies,” Dillon notes.

 

Similarly, WIPO doesn’t evaluate whether a site should be blocked or not, it simply takes on the recommendations from the participating countries, who often have their own checks and balances.

14 Advertising Companies

The effectiveness of the advertising blocklist doesn’t only depend on the number of listed domains. How many advertising companies are participating is equally important.

 

The WIPO Alerts system is free of charge and open to all advertising agencies. Thus far, fourteen commercial companies and three trade organizations have joined and WIPO informs us that it’s in the process of signing up another international media group.

 

Blocking brand ads on pirate sites undeniably has an effect since it limits the advertising options for pirate sites. How effective it is in cutting off the money supply has yet to be seen, however, as there are still plenty of advertisers left who are eager to team up with pirates.

 

With more advertisers joining and additional domain names being blocked every year, we expect the WIPO Alerts database to grow accordingly. We plan to check in again next year to see where things stand then.

 

Private torrent sites are members-only platforms that usually facilitate sharing of copyright content between a tightly-controlled network of like-minded individuals. Focused on the Danish market, Asgaard was one of the more popular local platforms.

 

Asgaard was founded in May 2019 and those who were able to gain access became part of a thriving sharing community. However, due to a tightening enforcement environment in Denmark, 2020 became a year to forget for most pirate torrent sites in the region.

 

Investigations carried out by Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance and the government’s SØIK’s IP-Task Force led to the closures of both DanishBits and NordicBits. In response, Asgaard opened its doors to new members and swelled in size, but the party wouldn’t last for long.

 

With Rights Alliance monitoring the site and its growth, just weeks later Asgaard announced it would close down in preference to having the “doorbell ringing one day” with the police on the other side of the door. The shutdown did not prevent that from happening.

Seven Arrests in a Matter of Weeks

Days after the announcement, a 50-year-old from Middlefart was arrested and spent Christmas 2020 and the New Year in prison.

 

In June 2021 at the court of Odense, the man was convicted of copyright infringement offenses related to the sharing of thousands of films, TV series, music tracks, comics, and books. He rented a server, set up payment services, and handled customer support requests. For this, he received a four-month prison sentence of which three months were conditional.

 

In February 2022, a 43-year-old man was handed a three-month conditional prison sentence and community service by the court in Odense for his contributions which included server management and coding work.

 

Of the seven arrested, two had been brought to justice but following new convictions this week, that has now swelled to four.

Two More Convicted For Criminal Copyright Infringement

According to an announcement by Rights Alliance, two more ‘ringleaders’ of Asgaard were convicted of criminal copyright infringement offenses this week. On Tuesday, the men (aged 54 and 35) were both handed three-month conditional prison sentences and 80 hours of community service.

 

The 54-year-old from Assens helped to manage the website and categorized torrent files to optimize the user experience. He also faces a confiscation order for DKK 2,282 (US$338) and a mobile phone and must pay DKK 35,000 (US$5,195) in compensation.

 

The 35-year-old from Odense was a moderator on Asgaard’s Discord channel. He too faces a confiscation order for DKK 2,282 (US$338) and a mobile phone and must pay DKK 35,000 (US$5,195) in compensation.

 

One of the men accepted the verdict while the other is considering whether to appeal.

Then There Were Three

According to Rights Alliance, the convictions of four men leave three prosecutions to go.

 

One man, a 46-year-old, is described as the Asgaard ‘press officer’ for his role in writing and publishing news items for members of the site. The second is described as a 50-year-old ‘accomplice’ who acted as a moderator of the site until he was “thrown out” by the others. The details of the final person are yet to be revealed.

 

The anti-piracy group says the identities of all people behind the “criminal network” are known, marking the first time that all operators of a single Danish file-sharing site will be brought to justice.

 

“The behind-the-scenes cases for Asgaard clearly illustrate that rights holders’ media content, film series, etc. are used to drive systematic, organized crime,” says Maria Fredenslund, Director of Rights Alliance.

 

“For each completed case, a clearer picture emerges of how the people behind the file-sharing service organize themselves and what methods they use. We are becoming increasingly aware of the illegal market and the behind-the-scenes cases may contribute insights that will be crucial in the IPR unit’s future efforts to prevent copyright infringement on the Internet.”

 

The National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) says that the convictions will please the movie company clients of Rights Alliance.

 

“It is gratifying that the prosecution’s handling of the cases has led to financial compensation for the Rights Alliance, which represents a large number of members, including Nordisk Film, Zentropa, Scanbox Entertainment and SF Studios,” adds prosecutor Christian Raaholt Hahn.

 

Back in 2018, broadcaster DISH Network sued the people behind pirate IPTV service SetTV.

 

Within months, defendants Nelson Johnson and Jason LaBossiere found themselves on the wrong end of $90 million judgment for breaches of the Federal Communications Act. The court also issued a permanent injunction that prevented the defendants and any cohorts from operating a similar service in breach of DISH’s rights.

 

DISH believed the injunction was airtight but according to the broadcaster, that didn’t stop former Set TV owners Jason LaBossiere, Sean Beaman and Stefan Gollner from launching new pirate IPTV services. DISH’s allegations, which are supported by evidence including recorded telephone conversations obtained from a jailhouse, are detailed in our earlier article.

 

In summary, DISH believes the men are behind ExpediteTV, Mundo TV, and Must TV, something that amounts to contempt of court, deserving of the case being reopened, and sanctions of $1,000 per day. But it appears that is just the beginning of the new interactions with the broadcaster’s legal team.

DISH Files Brand New Piracy Lawsuit

Filed by DISH, Sling TV and NagraStar in a Florida court this week, the lawsuit names Jason LaBossiere, Sean Beaman, Stefan Gollner and Osivette Brito as defendants, together doing business as ExpediteTV, Mundo TV, and Must TV.

 

It references the earlier SetTV lawsuit, noting that Beaman and Gollner were co-owners of the corporate defendant Set Broadcast LLC, along with LaBossiere. Brito is identified as a reseller of the SetTV service. According to DISH, the defendants rebranded SetTV as ExpediteTV and sold its services via expeditetv.com.

 

Mundo TV and Must TV are described as rebranded versions of ExpediteTV that were sold to subscribers via the domains mundo-tv.com and must-tv.com, in breach of the agreed settlement and court injunctions in the earlier lawsuit.

New Lawsuit Goes Deeper Than The Original

In common with the SetTV case, it’s alleged that DISH programming was illegally obtained from DISH satellite transmissions and illegally broadcast on ExpediteTV. If proven, these actions constitute violations of the Federal Communications Act but the new lawsuit also alleges copyright infringement offenses too.

 

According to the complaint, the DISH or Sling programming retransmitted on Mundo TV and Must TV was obtained via the internet communications of these companies since watermarks were detected in their output channels. The source of the channels were official DISH and Sling accounts that were leveraged to breach access controls (DRM).

 

“The DRMs are believed to be circumvented using either a differential fault analysis attack where faults are injected into the DRM to disrupt its operation and create pathways to extract the keys necessary to decrypt DISH Programming and Sling Programming, or a man-in-the-middle attack whereby customized software is used to bypass the DRM by intercepting DISH Programming or Sling Programming passing from the DRM’s decryption library to the user’s viewing platform”, the complaint explains.

 

Whichever method was utilized, this constitutes a breach of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, DISH and Sling say.

Sales of ‘Device Codes’

In all similar DISH lawsuits, subscriptions to pirate IPTV services are described as ‘device codes’ and this one is no different. According to the broadcaster, device codes for all three services were sold for around $24 per month. The services reportedly require users to download Lenox Media Player and Ultra Media Player, viewing software that was reportedly developed by Brito.

 

Sales of the ‘device codes’ for Expedite TV were deposited in a bank account established by Gollner and credit card payments were processed through a Florida fictitious business name linked to LaBossiere and Beaman. Codes for Mundo TV and Must TV were reportedly processed through entities linked to LaBossiere, Beaman, Gollner and Brito. (additional details)

Claims for Relief

DISH says that when its satellite broadcasts were obtained and device codes were sold without authorization, that constituted willful violations of the Federal Communications Act (47 U.S.C. § 605(a)). Assisting others to receive programming that they weren’t entitled to via the media players amounts to willful violations of 47 U.S.C. § 605(e)(4).

 

On the copyright infringement front, DISH and Sling claim that gaining access to programming by bypassing DRM represents willful violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A).

 

As a result, the plaintiffs are requesting a broad permanent injunction and an order finding the defendants in contempt of court in the SetTV case, plus sanctions.

 

In addition, DISH is seeking damages in excess of $100,000 for each violation of the FCA on one count and DISH and NagraStar up to $100,000 on a second. DISH and Sling are also seeking up to $2,500 for each violation of the DMCA.

 

The precise level of the overall damages will need to be determined following discovery but given the earlier $90m judgment, the final amount will be considerable, especially given the DMCA breaches and alleged contempt of court.

 

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

 

In a world that’s dominated by viral social media posts and catchy headlines, branding is everything.

 

Controversial statements and recognizable names are a great way to gain visibility. This attention can then be monetized.

LimeWire Comeback?

Last week we noticed that one of the most iconic file-sharing brands was making headlines once again. According to numerous news articles, LimeWire is making a comeback as an NFT marketplace.

 

There was no shortage of attention for this news, which was repeated in hundreds of media outlets around the world. Below are just a few examples of the headlines that crossed our radar.

 

– Former file-sharing site LimeWire to relaunch as NFT marketplace – CNBC

 

– Limewire is back from the dead – and it’s selling NFTs – Metro

 

– LimeWire is going from P2P to NFT as it plans a comeback in May – Business Insider

 

– Piracy Icon LimeWire Is Coming Back, But As an NFT Marketplace – Vice

 

– LimeWire Will Be Resurrected as NFT Marketplace – CNET

 

– LimeWire is relaunching…as an NFT marketplace – Mashable

 

These are great headlines but they also lack some nuance. The new LimeWire project has absolutely nothing to do with the team that originally developed the file-sharing software. They just happen to share the same name.

 

Several of the articles mention that the NFT project “bought the rights to the company” or “LimeWire’s assets and all current business activities” but that seems to be an overstatement. Or at the minimum; a confusing way to describe the situation.

LimeWire Founder Not Thrilled

The original LimeWire company, called Lime Group LLC, was founded by Mark Gorton who also acted as its CEO. We initially assumed that he had been alerted in advance to the LimeWire comeback but that’s not the case.

 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Gorton says that he had never even heard of this NFT project before it hit the news.

 

“I was not approached about this NFT project, and I didn’t hear about it until the public announcement,” Gorton tells TorrentFreak.

 

There was probably no legal obligation to inform the former LimeWire chief. The original trademarks have expired and the NFT website uses a new logo, so they can use the brand. However, Gorton is not happy to see the name used in a way that deviates from its original purpose.

 

“I am not thrilled about an unrelated group of people using the LimeWire name. Using the LimeWire name in this way creates confusion and falsely uses that brand that we created for purposes for which it was never intended,” Gorton says.

LimeWire.com

The new LimeWire does have at least one asset that previously belonged to the original LimeWire team; the Limewire.com domain name.

 

This domain wasn’t purchased from Gorton. Until a few months ago it was owned by former LimeWire developer Zlatin Balevsky. He picked it up when it was set to expire a few years ago and forwarded it to his new application MuWire to gain some eyeballs.

 

Last year, Balevsky sold the domain name to Julyan Zehetmayer, the founder & co-CEO of the LimeWire NFT marketplace. Zehetmayer wanted to buy all digital assets, but the developer never owned anything aside from the domain.

 

It’s clear that the original LimeWire team is not eager to endorse the NFT platform and Balevsky believes that it’s a bit much to claim that LimeWire is making a comeback.

 

“I think it’s a bit risky to say that LimeWire ‘is back’, the NFT project has got nothing to do with the original,” he says.

NFTs for Newbies

While not all LimeWire veterans are excited about the planned launch of the NFT marketplace this May, the new LimeWire can’t wait to get started. With their project, they hope to make NFTs more accessible, by simplifying the technology and allowing credit card payments.

 

The LimeWire brand was chosen because the platform plans to strongly focus on digital collectibles in the music space. However, instead of sharing content for free, artists will be properly rewarded.

 

“On LimeWire, the artist always receives the majority of all earnings, retains full control and ownership of their content and is entitled to receiving royalty payments even when their collectibles are traded further down the line in the secondary market,” ‘new’ LimeWire CEOs Julian and Paul Zehetmayr inform TorrentFreak.

 

We also asked about the old LimeWire assets that were acquired. Unfortunately, however, the company could not share any further details on that.

 

“We cannot disclose specifics about the acquisition, but we can say that it was quite a lengthy process last year to acquire all the assets, put them all together and conduct the necessary due diligence to get the brand back to market.”

 

Last December, Paramount, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Disney and Netflix sued long-running pirate streaming site PrimeWire.

 

The companies accused PrimeWire of encouraging users of the site to upload links to pirated content and facilitating access to those movies and TV shows via a curated index, in breach of copyright.

 

According to the plaintiffs, VOD services such as Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, and Peacock have been damaged by PrimeWire’s existence. As a result, they demanded millions in damages for copyright infringement and were later granted a preliminary injunction.

 

The injunction ordered PrimeWire to cease its illegal activities and also required domain name registrars and registries to disable three PrimeWire domains. While primewire.ag was indeed suspended, the site continued its operations using two others after they were transferred to a new registrar that took no action.

 

The studios then asked the court for a permanent injunction that would restrain the defendants and tackle the appearance of new domains. They also sought permission to conduct discovery on third-party companies related to PrimeWire to formulate an accurate damages claim.

PrimeWire Removes All Links to Pirated Content

While PrimeWire’s operators havent appeared in court to defend, they are aware of the complaint. In January it appeared that the site was preparing for domain seizures and taking measures to overcome them. Last week PrimeWire took further action by ‘relaunching’ via a new domain (primewire.tf) and revealing changes to the site.

 

“Due to recent legal action, it is possible that the current domains will be frozen or seized. To prevent the new domain from being seized, some changes will be made to the site to comply with temporary and possible future permanent injunctions,” an announcement on the site reads.

 

PrimeWire doesn’t implicitly state what the changes are but anyone browsing the site for content will quickly discover that all links to pirated movies and TV shows have been removed. This is an interesting move under the circumstances.

 

If PrimeWire is set to continue without providing links to pirated content then it’s unlikely that the site’s users will stay around for a long. A pirate streaming site without any pirated content is effectively just a site, and most pirates expect quite a bit more than movie covers, IMDb ratings, and running times.

 

The big question then is whether this move is permanent or simply designed to disrupt the awarding of a functional permanent injunction.

 

Either way, the studios have been watching developments closely. In a notice filed with the court on Saturday, they insist that it doesn’t matter whether or not there is any infringing content on the new domain, they are still entitled to an injunction, including against the new PrimeWire domain.

Studios Believe PrimeWire is Playing Games

According to a statement from MPA anti-piracy chief Jan van Voorn, the new site operating from PrimeWire.tf is “largely identical” to previous incarnations of PrimeWire and on March 8, 2022, did carry at least some infringing content. However, tests carried out on March 9 revealed that the usual links to pirated content had been removed.

 

The submission to the court goes on to suggest that “[T]he removal of certain links to unauthorized streams does not necessarily mean that streams of that nature are not currently available through primewire.tf.” To support that notion, the MPA highlights two buttons labeled ‘Watch Now’ and ‘Download’ on the PrimeWire site that lead to another site that requires credit card information for access.

 

The MPA provides no evidence to say it checked for infringing content but it’s pretty clear that the buttons actually lead to a highly questionable, affiliate-scheme-driven, third-party-operated, subscription-trap type platform. Links to these sites appear on many pirate platforms and for those who choose to sign up for them, only disappointment and regret lie ahead. Not least since they rarely offer the content they promise.

 

Nevertheless, the MPA has stronger claims elsewhere, including the fact that PrimeWire is still operating its ‘Submit a link’ system which gathers the links to content that later appear in PrimeWire’s indexes. Those links aren’t being displayed right now but under the law, that doesn’t necessarily matter.

Cessation of Infringement Doesn’t Prevent Injunctive Relief

As the MPA rightly points out, the removal of infringing links could be a ploy to undermine its request for a permanent injunction. Logic says that if there are no links, there’s also no infringement, but that’s not how things work.

 

The US Supreme Court previously stated that when a defendant voluntarily ceases illegal activity, it is the defendant that faces the “formidable burden” of showing that the same type of illegal activity won’t reoccur.

 

In this case, PrimeWire’s operators are choosing not to appear in court, so that’s arguably the worst possible base for someone trying to convince the court of anything. Secondly, the MPA feels that the evasive action taken thus far (new domains etc) is a sign of bad faith, which includes an announcement from PrimeWire that the site “will continue to operate as normal” after the domain switch.

 

“Defendants do not merit the benefit of any doubt. If Defendants actually intend to keep links to Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works off of their newest PrimeWire Website, Defendants can appear, make a showing, and seek relief from this Court,” the MPA informs the court.

 

“That is not their intent. Defendants have tried similar tactics of switching domains when their websites have been blocked in other countries. All evidence indicates they will do the same thing here if the www.primewire.tf domain is not included in the injunction. Defendants will be able to restore the links as quickly as they took them down.”

Amended Permanent Injunction and Partial Default

In closing, the MPA proposes an amended permanent injunction that covers the same ground as before but with the inclusion of primewire.tf. It basically prevents PrimeWire from infringing the studios’ rights in any way moving forward and includes a proposed order that would require PrimeWire to hand over all of its domains to the plaintiffs.

 

If PrimeWire fails to hand them over, the MPA wants the court to order the associated domain registrars (and if necessary, registries) to transfer them to the studios or disable them until they expire.

 

The MPA’s filings with the court can be found here (1,2,3, pdf)

 

Online piracy exists in many shapes and forms. Torrent sites were dominant a decade ago, but these have long been eclipsed by streaming portals.

 

IPTV services have grown in popularity as well. In some cases, these offer access to live sports and TV programming without the permission of rightsholders.

 

A few years ago, Advanced TV Network (ATN) was a dominant player in the Swedish IPTV market. Founded in 2008, ATN was a fast-growing business that had 25 employees and over 70,000 paying customers at its height. However, that all changed in 2016, when local police raided its Malmo office.

Prison Sentences for IPTV Operators

The authorities launched a criminal investigation on behalf of the Qatari company beIN Sports and Albanian TV group Digitalb, who accused ATN of rebroadcasting their channels without permission.

 

Two years later, the Stockholm Patent and Market Court found several people connected to the company guilty of copyright infringement and the unauthorized decoding of broadcast signals.

 

ATN owner Hamid al-Hamid was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The owner’s son received a one-year prison sentence. In addition, they were ordered to pay over 209 million Swedish kroner ($21m) in damages to the rightsholders.

 

In most similar cases the story might end there. However, the ATN defendants were adamant that their business wasn’t as illegal as the prosecution had suggested and swiftly announced an appeal.

‘Non Enforceable Copyrights’

This month, the Patent and Market Court of Appeal overturned the prison sentences and damages after the Court found that the copyright infringement charges didn’t hold up. The reasons for the reversal are rather unique.

 

ATN might have broadcasted beIN content without permission. However, according to the appeals court, the broadcasts from the Qatari company can’t be enforced as Qatar hadn’t signed up to the Rome Convention at the time.

 

The Rome Convention is an international treaty that protects the rights of broadcasters around the globe. Qatar only became a member in 2017, a year after ATN was raided by the police.

 

“[T]he prosecutions and related individual claims have been rejected on the grounds that the broadcasts have taken place from countries in the Middle East and that there is no legally relevant connection to Swedish law,” the Court explains in a press release.

 

The defendants were also indicted for using satellite broadcasting signals from Albania without permission. However, according to the Patent and Market Court of Appeal, it can’t be proven that this is the case, as there is a related dispute about contractual issues between ATN and the broadcaster in Albania.

No Prison, No Copyright Damages

As a result of the overturned verdicts, the men have no longer have to go to prison. In addition, the Court also set aside the $20 million in damages they owed beIN.

 

The defendants are not completely without blame. The Court upheld several EU trademark infringement charges related to the rebroadcasting of certain TV channels. Together with a weapons charge, these trademark infringements resulted in a suspended prison sentence.

 

Defense lawyer Jonas Nilsson, who represented Hamid al-Hamid, told The National that the father and son haven’t spent any time in prison after the appeal. However, their business was effectively destroyed after the raid.

 

The lawyer stresses that this is a unique case that involves various complicated international laws. His client is pleased that he can now move on.

 

“It’s been a lot of stress since the police visited him and he had to close down the business,” Nilsson said. “Now that we have this verdict, he feels relieved. He wanted to put these matters behind him so he could continue with his life.”

 

The verdict doesn’t necessarily close the books on this case. The Swedish prosecution can still take the case to the Supreme Court, which it reportedly intends to do.

 

—

 

A copy of the order, issued by the Swedish Court of Appeal, is available here (Swedish pdf)

 

Amidst growing concerns surrounding online privacy and security, VPN services have become increasingly popular in recent years.

 

Millions of people use VPNs to stay secure and to prevent outsiders from tracking their online activities. As with regular Internet providers, a subsection of these subscribers may be engaged in piracy activities.

 

Over the past few years, we have seen copyright holders take several ISPs to court, accusing them of failing to disconnect repeat copyright infringers. These lawsuits have expanded recently, with VPN providers and hosting companies as the main targets.

 

The VPN lawsuits are filed by a group of independent movies companies that previously went after piracy sites and apps. They include the makers of films such as The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Dallas Buyers Club, and London Has Fallen.

Filmmakers sued Torguard

In one of these cases, the filmmakers accused Torguard of being involved in widespread copyright infringement. The company allegedly ‘encouraged’ subscribers to use pirate sites while helping to conceal movie piracy.

 

“TorGuard knows and encourages its end users to use its VPN service to access The Pirate Bay and pirate content” the complaint read, pointing to a topic in the Torguard forums.

 

“When TorGuard’s end users have trouble accessing Pirate Bay, TorGuard’s official moderators give them advice on how to fix their settings so that the end users can freely pirate content,” the movie companies added.

 

In response to this complaint, TorGuard asked a Florida federal court to dismiss the case. Among other things, the VPN company argued that the movie companies never sent any of their alleged copyright infringement and takedown notices to TorGuard’s designated DMCA agent.

Settlement & U.S. Torrent Blocking

The court hasn’t ruled on this motion yet, and that’s no longer needed either. Earlier this month, both parties agreed to end the legal dispute with a confidential settlement agreement.

 

There is no evidence that any money will change hands and both sides have agreed to cover their own costs. However, the settlement comes with a twist. As Bleeping Computer spotted, Torguard agrees to block BitTorrent traffic on U.S. servers.

 

“Pursuant to a confidential settlement agreement, Plaintiffs have requested, and Defendant has agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to block BitTorrent traffic on its servers in the United States using firewall technology,” a joint statement reads.

 

This is quite a far-reaching measure as a broad BitTorrent blockade will also affect legal traffic, which includes software updates from Twitter and Facebook. That said, people can still use BitTorrent on servers in other regions.

TorGuard Responds

TorrentFreak reached out to TorGuard and a spokesperson shared the company’s official comment, which was also posted on its own website a few minutes ago. The company confirms that it’s blocking torrent traffic on U.S. servers, but that doesn’t change anything for the privacy of users.

 

“TorGuard has not been forced to log network usage data. Due to the nature of shared IP’s and related hardware technicalities of how TorGuard’s network was built it is impossible for us to do so,” the VPN provider writes.

 

“We have a responsibility to provide high quality uninterrupted VPN and proxy services to our client base at large while mitigating any related network abuse that should arise. This commitment to user privacy and service reliability is the reason we have taken measures to block Bittorrent traffic on servers within the United States.”

 

TorGuard is not the first VPN service to agree to block BitTorrent traffic to settle a lawsuit filed by these movie companies. VPN Unlimited signed a similar deal a few weeks ago and last year VPN.ht also agreed to block torrent traffic on U.S. servers.

Fallout?

While the settlement effectively ends TorGuard’s legal dispute with the filmmakers, it could fuel the flames of another lawsuit that was deemed to be over.

 

Last December, a Florida federal court dismissed copyright infringement claims the filmmakers had lodged against hosting company QuadraNet. The case was dismissed, as Quadranet wasn’t aware of any specific infringements, nor could it control or stop any specific piracy activity.

 

The filmmakers were not happy with this ruling and asked the court to reconsider the order. They hope that, when allowed, they can properly back up their claims when sufficient evidence is gathered.

 

Some extra evidence could come from TorGuard, which previously leased servers from QuadraNet. As part of the settlement, the VPN provider also signed a list of undisputed facts, where the hosting company is prominently featured.

 

For example, the movie companies sent 97,640 Notices to QuadraNet of alleged piracy activities on SOCKS5 IP addresses that were assigned to TorGuard. However, these were never forwarded to the VPN provider.

 

“Had Quadranet sent these Notices to our DMCA agent, TorGuard’s ordinary business practices would have been to immediately take steps to stop further piracy,” TorGuard states, adding that “Quadranet never took any disciplinary actions against TorGuard in response to these Notices.”

 

As far as we can see, the Florida federal court has yet to rule on this motion for reconsideration. Given the track record of the movie companies, this is probably not the last we’ve heard of it.

 

—

 

A copy of the joint stipulation, mentioning the dismissal and the blocking intent, is available here (pdf)

 

When ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ was about to be released late last year in theaters, spoilers and leaked footage started to circulate online.

 

The spoilers didn’t give away much, nor were they of notable quality. Nonetheless, Columbia Pictures did its best to bury them all.

 

The movie studio sent numerous takedown notices which, accidentally, even targeted news articles that mentioned the leak. In addition, the constant stream of ‘leaks’ and copyright complaints forced Reddit to ban the “nowayhomeleaks” subreddit.

 

After the film officially premiered in theaters, low-quality ‘cam’ copies began to surface on pirate sites. These were in high demand, but the massive downloading surge for pirate copies usually comes after the official digital release or when the Blu-ray comes out.

 

For ‘No Way Home,’ these official releases are scheduled for March 22 and April 12 respectively. However, pirates are jumping the line once again.

 

A few hours ago a Blu-ray rip of the film began to circulate online. The release in question comes from the P2P group known as EVO, which has leaked many prominent titles over the past months, including “Dune” and a screener of “The Power of the Dog“, to name just two.

 

EVO doesn’t mention how it obtained this Blu-ray copy but the group stresses that it’s the real deal. “Yeap, its real. Exclusive. Enjoy,” EVO writes in the release notes.

 

At this point, we can only speculate as to the source of this leak but it seems that someone got their hands on an early copy. Or even a bunch of copies, if this listing we found on eBay is legitimate.

 

This eBay seller, who has 100% positive feedback, presumably started to ship the ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Blu-ray discs earlier this week. Thus far, 53 copies have been sold according to the online store.

 

“Before you ask, yes these are the real deal. The same one you can purchase on 4/12. I just happened to receive them early. Thank you for looking,” the eBay seller writes.

 

We don’t know if this release is linked to the leak, and haven’t independently verified the legitimacy of the disc, but the timing definitely fits.

 

Whatever the source, the leak will come as a massive blow to Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios, who might have to work overtime this weekend to try and limit the fallout. Whatever they do, stopping these leaks from circulating entirely will be impossible by now.

 

In 2019, several major music companies filed a lawsuit against Internet provider RCN. Helped by the RIAA, they argued that the ISP turned a blind eye to pirating subscribers.

 

The lawsuit is in many regards similar to the ones against other ISPs, such as Cox, Grande, and Charter, which were all accused of failing to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

 

How Internet providers respond to these allegations also shows quite a bit of overlap. Most have attacked the piracy evidence that was collected by companies such as Rightscorp and MarkMonitor, for example. However, each case also introduces some unique angles.

 

With hundreds of millions in potential damages at stake, ISPs try to use any and all means to fight back. Thus far, RCN has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit and argued that the underlying piracy evidence was fraudulent. However, both these efforts failed.

iTunes DRM Removal

As the case moves to trial, both parties have collected evidence to aid their viewpoints. RCN focuses heavily on the piracy tracking evidence from Rightscorp but has also brought up another topic; the decision by major record labels to remove DRM from the iTunes music store in 2009.

 

This decision was made two years before the timeframe covered in the piracy liability suit. Nonetheless, RCN believes that it is relevant. Among other things, the removal of DRM may have made it easier to pirate.

 

“It is certainly reasonable to infer that this decision—along with Plaintiffs’ continuing decision not to re-impose the use of DRM—has affected the frequency with which Plaintiffs’ music is shared over peer-to-peer networks,” RCN previously argued.

 

RCN asked the labels to share the records it has on the DRM removal decision but none were found. This prompted the ISP to learn more about the music industry bosses that were involved in the DRM removal process. However, the labels objected to this, arguing that the DRM issue is irrelevant for the “repeat infringer” lawsuit.

 

This standoff resulted in a discovery dispute where RCN asked the court to compel the labels to reveal who were responsible. Among other things, the ISP says that the DRM removal could mean that the labels failed to prevent piracy themselves, which in theory could lead to lower damages.

‘DRM Issue is Irrelevant’

This week the New Jersey federal court ruled on the matter. Without going into much detail, Magistrate Judge Tonianne J. Bongiovanni denied the request. This means that RCN can’t hear out music industry insiders on the DRM removal motivations.

 

“The Court finds that the information sought, which concerns a decision Plaintiffs made two years prior to the first instance of copyright infringement at issue in this case, is irrelevant,” Bongiovanni writes.

 

“Despite RCN’s arguments to the contrary, the Court finds that the decision made by Plaintiffs in 2009 neither bears on Plaintiffs’ request for damages nor their alleged duty to mitigate same,” she adds.

 

This decision will come as a disappointment to the ISP. However, there was also some positive news for the company.

More Discovery Disputes

Among other things, Judge Bongiovanni granted RCN’s request that requires Rightscorp to share communications with clients “about the importance of monitoring the internet for infringement of certain songs over others” or “if a client thought it was only important to monitor a certain song for a short period of time.”

 

In addition, Rightscorp must now produce a copy of its SQL database containing a variety of data obtained from individual BitTorrent users, to the extent these data apply to RCN-related information.

 

According to the Judge, this database information will help the ISP to determine the “accuracy of Rightscorp’s alleged detections and to test the veracity and completeness of its alleged infringement evidence.”

 

The labels also booked a small victory in the discovery dispute as the Judge ordered RCN to hand over, or open up for inspection, a sample of emails and attachments the ISP previously held back over privacy concerns.

 

At this point, it’s unclear whether these information requests will help either side. That will eventually be revealed at trial, where both sides will prevent their full arguments to the jury.

 

—

 

A copy of Magistrate Judge Tonianne J. Bongiovanni’s order on the discovery disputes is available here (pdf)

 

Running a pirate IPTV service can be extremely profitable. One only has to look at the extraordinary wealth accumulated by Bill Omar Carrasquillo, aka Omi in a Hellcat, to see that tens of millions of dollars can be generated by a successful operation.

 

Hanging on to that wealth is another matter, however.

 

After being raided in 2019, Carrasquillo not only faces losing every penny he made, but also the prospect of a significant custodial sentence. Quite how long is currently unknown. The details of his guilty plea are currently under seal but at least in financial terms, the prospects for other IPTV operators could be even more significant.

Nitro TV Attacked on Two Fronts

Pirate IPTV service Nitro TV is currently facing two massive lawsuits. One, filed in August 2021 by DISH Network, Sling and NagraStar, could be close to a conclusion. Despite the plaintiffs only claiming a fraction of the damages available to them under the law, Nitro’s operators still face a potential $100m judgment.

 

The second, filed by members of the Alliance for Creativity in April 2020, seems to be heading towards an even worse outcome for defendants Alejandro “Alex” Galindo, Anna Galindo, Martha Galindo, Osvaldo Galindo, Richard Horsten, Raul Orellana (better known as YouTuber ‘Touchtone’), and business entity Firestream LLC.

Only Alejandro Galindo Attempted to Defend

In the face of massive copyright infringement allegations relating to movies and TV shows including The Office, SpiderMan: Homecoming, Toy Story 3, Star Trek Beyond, Homecoming, and Joker, Nitro shut down after being served with an injunction.

 

Only Alejandro Galindo appeared to defend himself against claims of direct and contributory infringement of 1,897 copyrighted works, for which the plaintiffs demand $150,000 maximum statutory damages for each work. What followed were allegations of discovery abuses and the production of zero responsive documents.

 

As a result, the plaintiffs (including Universal, Paramount, Columbia, Disney and Amazon) were advised by the court that it would be issuing sanctions but according to a recently filed joint case management statement, that is yet to happen. Nevertheless, the quagmire only appears to be getting deeper.

 

After hiring an experienced attorney, Galindo pleaded the Fifth Amendment which, along with other strategies, were swiftly countered by the plaintiffs.

 

“Defendant has asserted his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination. Plaintiff has failed to prosecute this matter in a timely manner, and the case continues to drag on with no new progress.

 

“The case should be dismissed for a failure to timely prosecute,” the studios now inform the court, noting that the clerk of the court has already entered default against all defendants.

 

The movie and TV show companies say that they are waiting for the court to issue findings on their motion for sanctions before moving for default judgment against all of the defendants. Meanwhile, Alejandro Galindo – the only person to defend – now finds himself without an attorney.

Nitro Boss Hired An Attorney, Didn’t Pay Him

From the beginning, Galindo was represented in the lawsuit by attorney Steven Vondran, who has a specialty in IP-related matters, as evidenced by his informative YouTube channel. Vondran is also active in other cases involving alleged pirates so was a good option if Galindo and Nitro were to at least try to manage their losses. That option now appears to be well and truly off the table.

 

“I have been counsel of record for Defendant Alejandro Galindo since the inception of this case. A written retainer agreement was signed between the parties calling for certain fees to be paid in a timely manner,” Vondran now informs the court.

 

“At this time, fees have not been paid as agreed, moreover, despite several requests, no communication or other responses have been received from Defendant and he has simply gone quiet.”

 

As a result, Vondran now needs permission from the court to withdraw from the lawsuit.

 

The attorney says that good cause exists to show that there has been a “complete breakdown” of the attorney-client relationship. Galindo is no longer communicating and has failed to provide instructions to his attorney that are necessary to represent him. Furthermore, he has “plenty” of time to obtain new counsel – if one is prepared to take him on, of course.

Does Galindo Have The Means to Pay?

The question of what funds are left following the Nitro shutdown remains a question but according to the movie and TV studios, Nitro and partners certainly received a lot of money.

 

Third-party subpoenas allowed them to discover that over $7 million in sales of Nitro TV subscriptions and reseller credits were made through accounts held in Martha Galindo’s name. Defendant Firestream LLC, reportedly operated by Veronica Orellana, the wife of Raul Orellana (Touchtone), received more than half a million dollars to market Nitro online.

 

However, even if every penny was squirreled away somewhere, that is unlikely to make even a small dent when the lawsuit inevitably goes to a default judgment. Whether the plaintiffs will ultimately seek maximum damages and have that amount approved by the court in respect of all 1,897 works remains to be seen but if so, there’s the potential for a judgment in excess of $250 million.

 

That’s on top of the $100 million demanded in the DISH Network lawsuit.

 

Supporting documents can be found here and here (pdf)

 

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

 

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

 

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

The most torrented movies for the week ending on March 07 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(…)	Blacklight	4.7 / trailer
2	(1)	The King’s Man	6.5 / trailer
3	(3)	Scream	6.8 / trailer
4	(…)	Fresh	6.8 / trailer
5	(4)	Spider-Man: No Way Home	9.0 / trailer
6	(5)	The Matrix Resurrections	5.8 / trailer
7	(2)	West Side Story	7.7 / trailer
8	(6)	Project ‘Gemini’	3.7 / trailer
9	(8)	Eternals	6.6 / trailer
10	(9)	No Exit	6.2 / trailer

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

Youtube-dl Takedown Battle

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

 

The RIAA initially succeeded as GitHub complied with the takedown request. However, after public outrage and involvement from digital rights groups including the EFF, this decision was eventually reversed. In addition, GitHub put $1 million into a takedown defense fund.

 

This was a clear setback for the record labels but they didn’t back off. Instead, they set their sights on youtube-dl hosting provider Uberspace.

 

The RIAA had already sent cease-and-desist orders to the hosting company in 2020, before it approached GitHub. The company didn’t take any action at the time, not least because the software itself is not hosted on the website which only links to it.

Labels Sue Uberspace in Germany

Earlier this year Uberspace informed us that Sony Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music had taken the matter to court in Germany. Their complaint, which cites an earlier case from 2017, alleges that youtube-dl aids copyright infringement by circumventing YouTube’s technical protection measures.

 

A few days ago Uberspace responded to the lawsuit, asking the Hamburg District Court to dismiss the case on a variety of grounds. The hosting provider is being assisted by the German Society for Civil Rights (GFF), which has the required expertise and contacts to put up a defense.

 

“With its lawsuit, the music industry is once again putting pressure on a neutral provider of internet infrastructure under the pretext of copyright,” the Society for Civil Rights notes in a recent statement on the legal dispute.

Numerous Legal Uses

Among other things, the defendants note that youtube-dl is an essential tool to safeguard freedom of the press and freedom of information. This is backed up by several public statements from organizations including Amnesty International and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

 

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

 

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

 

Uberspace’s legal team adds that YouTube and its creators also have an interest in the ability to download content from the platform. For example, to create “reaction videos” in response to other YouTubers, which are then monetized through advertisements.

 

The defense further notes that YouTube allows creators to publish content under a Creative Commons license, which specifically allows others to reuse the content. This would be impossible without downloading a copy off the platform first.

No Circumvention

The motion to dismiss also rejects the record labels’ claims that youtube-dl circumvents effective protection measures. As we’ve seen in similar cases, Uberspace’s motion to dismiss stresses that anyone can easily download YouTube videos directly from a browser, without tools such as youtube-dl.

 

“YouTube makes all information for the retrieval of videos in the public area of YouTube available to every retrieving device openly and unencrypted. YouTube does not use any ‘encryption technology’ that is intended to prevent YouTube content from being ‘downloaded without authorization’,” the defense writes.

 

Even if there is a legitimate dispute, Uberspace doesn’t believe that it has to intervene by blocking the site at this stage. The company merely hosts the youtube-dl website and doesn’t even store the software, which is made available on GitHub.

GitHub Next?

There could be more to this lawsuit than meets the eye. Uberspace’s legal team accuses the music companies of forum shopping. That is, they presumably picked the Hamburg court because of the favorable decision from 2017. If they win again, this could aid their position in other cases.

 

This point is also raised by the EFF, which suggests that, if this effort is successful, the record labels may go after GitHub next.

 

“Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music seem to be hoping German law will give them leverage that they can’t get in the United States. They are suing a small hosting provider, called Uberspace, on essentially the same theories that failed to impress GitHub (and EFF) two years ago.”

 

The above is just a selection of the defense and the full filing, which is available through the German Society for Civil Rights and goes into much more detail.

 

The record labels will undoubtedly disagree with the arguments and counter them in a follow-up filing. After that, it will be up to the court to make a decision. No matter the outcome, it will undoubtedly have a broad impact on the future of stream-ripping tools and services.

 

When Netflix had just started offering online video content years ago, it didn’t consider piracy to be a major issue.

 

However, now that the company itself is one of the largest content producers, this outlook has changed drastically.

 

Like many other rightsholders, Netflix now keeps a close eye on pirate sites and services. The company has its own in-house anti-piracy team with offices on several continents and also works with third-party anti-piracy vendors.

 

Increasingly, the streaming service is also teaming with other rightsholders to coordinate its enforcement efforts. Netflix is one of the founding members of the Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and in 2019 it joined the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

New Anti-Piracy Manager

This week brings yet another expansion. This time the company is building out its internal anti-piracy team which, according to Netflix, is required to support the business as it continues to grow.

 

“Netflix has an ever-growing number of Originals and other key titles launching each month that need to be protected from piracy,” the company writes in a job listing.

 

“The Content Protection team leads these anti-piracy efforts on a global basis as part of the broader Public Policy team at Netflix. In order to better support the business as it scales, the Content Protection team is looking for a new Manager to lead our internal title protection and data analytic efforts.”

 

The person who takes the newly created role of “Title Coverage and Insights Manager” will have to lead several internal content protection initiatives. For this position, Netflix seeks candidates in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and London.

 

In addition to the aforementioned cities, the anti-piracy team is also operating in Singapore, which shows that it has established a global presence over the past few years.

Responsibilities

These types of job listings can give a glimpse into the anti-piracy priorities at the streaming giant, which is always interesting to see.

 

For example, the “responsibilities” of the prospective manager include partnering with online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, to ensure that Netflix’s content is properly protected.

 

In addition, the manager is required to build a dynamic and impactful coverage strategy, evaluate new technological solutions to tackle piracy online, while building relationships with other members of the MPA.

 

The anti-piracy strategy is in large part focused on data. This requires analyzing piracy insights and analytics, while also supporting data gathering on pirate streaming sites, cyberlockers, and other pirate platforms.

Leaks

In addition to pirate sites and services, Netflix will also need to protect content on the publishing side.

 

Over the past months, several high profile Netflix titles leaked early, including the season 2 premiere of “The Witcher” and “The Power of the Dog”, which leads the field of Oscars contenders this year.

 

Those who are interested in applying for a new job can find out more at Netflix’s official site. Please note that, ideally, candidates should have deep experience with takedown programs, analyzing piracy data, and leading a team.

 

Peer-to-peer technology was hot in the early 2000s, with many developers building their own networks, protocols, or applications.

 

Napster was considered the poster child for these early developments but, soon after, iconic names such as LimeWire, Freenet, and BitTorrent emerged. These technologies would grow out to become game-changers.

 

Away from the computer, there were major developments in the real world as well. This includes September 11, 2001, when even the most passionate coders were drawn away from their CRT monitors. This would change history.

September 11

After the September 11 attacks, the world was in a state of shock and uncesrtainty. Terrorism became a global threat and, in response, online surveillance was placed high on the political agenda. For a good reason too – most people wanted the terrorists to be caught.

 

At the same time, however, the scope and power of the digital surveillance apparatus raised concerns as well.

 

In that environment, a young developer named Lance James pondered the implications of increased online ‘monitoring’ on the privacy of law-abiding citizens. In response, he came up with the idea for a network layer that would be anonymous and censorship-resistant.

 

This was a pretty unique concept at the time but several other developers were playing with similar ideas. The United States Navy, for example, was working on Onion routing, which later turned into the TOR network. However, that code was not yet available publicly.

 

James, also known under his nickname “0x90,” was aware of these initiatives. He already used the anonymous P2P platform Freenet for personal use. That worked well, but he was looking for a way to complement this idea with instant messaging functionality.

 

“I really like codes and ciphers, and the problem of anonymity and cryptography at scale,” James tells us 20 years later.

 

“I was a big fan of Ian Clarke’s Freenet at the time, but it had a problem. I could not send a real-time message. I wanted to figure out how to solve that problem. It came to me at 4am one morning and woke me up and I started drawing feverishly on a napkin.”

 

On that morning in October 2001, he wrote the first lines of code for what he called the “Invisible IRC Project” (IIP) which would later be rebranded as the “Invisible Internet Project,” or I2P for short.

The Invisible IRC Project

In February of 2002, James first presented his anonymous communications project to a broader audience at CodeCon in San Francisco.

 

“There are a lot of studies and readings on anonymous IRC, it has been long-awaited. So we are starting to do something with it,” he told the cypherpunk audience, before showcasing an early version of the software.

 

This presentation was the start of a dedicated developer community that continued to improve the project. While James never meant to use the code as a political statement or tool, others were more outspoken about what the anonymous network’s goals should be.

 

When the anonymous developer “jrandom” joined in 2003, things started to change. The prolific newcomer had a clear vision for both the technological and ideological goals of the project and started to take more control into his hands.

IIP Becomes I2P

After a few months, jrandom assumed the role of project leader and renamed it the Invisible Internet Project or “I2P”. This rebranding came with a detailed philosophy document, which set out the future path and goals.

 

“InvisibleNet has formed the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) to support the efforts of those trying to build a more free society by offering them an uncensorable, anonymous, and secure communication system,” the document starts.

 

In the years that followed I2P developed into a network layer that allows applications to use anonymous connections. This prevents outsiders from tracking down the source of the traffic, which could be chats, files, or anything else.

 

There are a variety of applications that use or are compatible with I2P. These include file-sharing tools such as BiglyBT and MuWire, but also IRC clients, routers, chat tools, and even cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero.

Looking Back

As the original pioneer looking back today, James doesn’t hold any grudges. He’s the type of person who likes to start ideas and watch them grow, but he doesn’t feel the need to remain involved forever.

 

Also, some people who joined the project early on had anti-government views and strong political agendas which the original developer wasn’t comfortable with. While these outspoken voices, including jrandom’s, eventually disappeared, James had made up his mind and left as well.

 

“So I left, amicably. It was time as I was happy with the impact it made inspiring other projects, and I learned a lot about cryptography. And the militant folks went away, by the way, but I left because it was time,” James tells us.

 

Today, cryptography and decentralized networks are all the rage and, in a way, James and his cohorts laid the early groundwork. Although I2P has its own shortcomings, it continues to fuel new projects.

 

After 20 years, James is proud of how his idea has inspired others. He’s currently the CEO of cybersecurity intelligence outfit Unit 221b and looks back at his early involvement with a sense of accomplishment.

 

“I’m proud it made it 20 years. I’m proud that it was a first of its kind before Tor even, and that it inspired action among cypherpunks to do (code) more and talk less. I am glad of the development culture that inherited it, and I’m proud that I’ve seen it used to empower conversations, turning adversaries into friends,” James adds.

Mass Adoption?

To get a more complete picture of how I2P evolved and the current status of the project, we also reached out to developers who are still actively working on I2P.

 

This includes ‘zzz’, who tells us that he first got involved in 2005. He eventually worked himself up from a user to a bug reporter and became more active as time went by.

 

When ‘zzz’ started going to conferences such as HOPE, DEFCON, and CCC, meeting other developers from the team, his contributions increased even more. Today, he’s one of the leaders of the project.

 

While I2P has tens of thousands of active users at any given point in time, it remains a relatively niche project. However, ‘zzz’ believes that mass adoption is still possible but to accomplish this, it should become easier to use.

 

“The need for privacy and security tools has grown remarkably in 20 years. The complex threats from governments and other actors are increasing rapidly, and people need solutions that are simple to use.

 

“Our challenge is to offer I2P as a solution and spread the word. If adoption doesn’t grow, it’s because we’ve failed to make it easy enough to find I2P and use it. That continues to be our focus,” ‘zzz’ says.

 

As can be seen from a slide from zzz’s presentation at Hacklab in 2015, these ‘marketing’ issues are not new. That said, there is a solid userbase now that, with a viral application, could easily explode.

Free and Anonymous Internet

Another person who joined the I2P community is former LimeWire developer Zlatin Balevsky, who was also involved in the Freenet project early on.

 

“Over the years I worked at LimeWire I would occasionally ‘drop by’ the I2P developers just to see how they were doing,” Balevsky tells us.

 

Roughly ten years ago when Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street were dominating the news headlines, he decided to get more actively involved in I2P as a developer.

 

“What excites me about the project is its vision of a free and anonymous internet. To me, that is the real ‘Promised Land’ of our time, and it is our duty to preserve it for future generations.”

 

In 2019 Balevsky launched the I2P-based file-sharing client MuWire. On his personal blog he wrote in detail about his personal motivations to start the project, criticizing the “monetization” element that poisoned the true purpose of sharing.

 

MuWire works well but there are drawbacks too. One of the downsides of I2P is that it routes traffic through multiple nodes, which tends to be quite slow. However, there is some steady progress on this front.

 

“In 2015 30kb/sec was considered normal for I2P, whereas now we see speeds of over 1MB/sec. And we’re not done yet,” MuWire’s founder notes.

 

Looking ahead, Balevsky believes that privacy will become more important over time. And while there are commercial privacy tools such as VPNs, he sees an open-source non-profit solution as the best way forward.

 

All in all, the manner in which I2P has grown and evolved over the years is quite an achievement. While many developers have come and gone, it continues to evolve. We can’t wait to see where it will be in another two decades.

 

In April 2020, a coalition of entertainment companies led by Universal, Paramount, Columbia, Disney and Amazon filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the operators of ‘pirate’ IPTV service Nitro TV.

 

The case, which encompassed alleged operator Alejandro “Alex” Galindo, wife Anna Galindo, and YouTuber ‘Touchtone‘, is still ongoing but things haven’t gone well for the defendants thus far.

 

Allegations of evidence destruction plus an injunction certainly put them on the back foot and a second lawsuit from broadcaster DISH Network didn’t help either.

 

Filed in August 2021, the complaint targets Alex, Anna and Osvaldo Galindo. According to plaintiffs DISH, Sling and NagraStar, the defendants received millions of dollars in exchange for subscriptions to their pirate service.

 

Unlike the Hollywood complaint, the lawsuit did not allege direct or contributory copyright infringement but instead claimed violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions and breaches of the Federal Communications Act (FCA). These relate to the circumvention of Sling’s DRM and unauthorized use of satellite signals respectively.

Defendants Were Served, Failed to Answer Complaint

Despite months passing since the complaint was filed, the defendants failed to respond in court, meaning that the case is now moving towards a significant default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. The big question is exactly how much the defendants will be required to pay.

 

In a motion for default filed late last week, DISH and partners lay out their reasoning for a colossal damages award.

 

In respect of the alleged breaches of the FCA (improperly receiving communications for benefit), DISH claims that the defendants illegally received its broadcasts and then retransmitted them via the Nitro service to users, who paid Nitro for the privilege while DISH received nothing.

 

On the copyright front, DISH says that the DMCA prohibits a person from circumventing a technological measure that controls access to a protected work. Sling utilizes digital rights management (DRM) to protect its content from piracy but the complaint alleges that was defeated by the defendants, who distributed the acquired content via their Nitro TV service for profit.

The Question of Damages

DISH says that section 605(a) of the FCA allows them to recover statutory damages in the amount of $1,000 to $110,00 for each violation while section 605(e)(4) allows for $10,000 to $100,000 for each violation. Under the DMCA, each violation of section 1201(a)(1)(A) allows for statutory damages ranging from $200 to $2,500.

 

Since the court may not respond positively to claims at the top end of the scale, DISH is presenting its case relatively modestly. For example, for each breach of section 605(e)(4) it’s only asking for $1,000 when it could request $100,000. However, it’s the multiplier that matters here, i.e how many subscriptions Nitro sold. As it transpires, the IPTV service sold quite a lot.

 

Since the defendants didn’t appear in the case, DISH and partners turned to Nitro’s merchant service providers (PayPal, Stripe, Zelle, Square, and Cash App) and other financial institutions to provide information. Those records show that the defendants sold more than 100,000 subscriptions, referenced in the complaint as ‘device codes’.

Plaintiffs Demand $100 Million in Damages

“The account records provided to Plaintiffs show that Defendants sold at least 100,363 Device Codes. Therefore, statutory damages should be awarded in the amount of $100,363,000 (100,363x $1,000), jointly and severally against Defendants,” the motion for default reads.

 

While that’s certainly an eye-watering figure, DISH says that its requested damages are conservative. The defendants also received subscription payments via Facebook Pay, Coinbase, and Paymentech but these were not included in the claim since the plaintiffs couldn’t determine exactly how many subscriptions were involved.

 

What they could establish is the amount of money Alejandro and Martha Galindo received into their bank accounts – a total of $5.5 million across two accounts at Wells Fargo and Chase.

 

DISH further explains why its $100m damages claim is reasonable, noting that enhanced statutory damages are available in this matter due to the for-profit motive and the stated aim to convert legal customers into subscription pirates at Nitro. The plaintiffs also cite the Hollywood lawsuit as demonstrating the defendants’ broader involvement with TV piracy.

 

Finally, DISH and the other plaintiffs say that they are not claiming the attorney’s fees or costs they are entitled to under the DMCA and FCA. All they want is a judgment for $100.36 million and a broad permanent injunction against the defendants.

 

The motion for default can be found here (pdf)

 

In the UK it’s possible for copyright holders to obtain High Court injunctions to have pirate sites blocked by major internet service providers including BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.

 

This anti-piracy strategy has been regularly utilized by rightsholders since 2011 when the first blocks against Usenet indexer Newzbin came into force.

 

Since then many hundreds of domains have been blocked and after a somewhat brief hiatus in 2019, both Hollywood and the music industry have been seen returning to court to prevent access to the most popular pirate platforms.

 

This month the trend continues after the major Hollywood studios and Netflix teamed up against dozens more pirate sites under the banner of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Major Torrent Sites Targeted

Considering the recent emphasis on streaming sites and services being blocked in the UK, the latest action unusually targets some of the big torrent sites that have thus far evaded blocking measures.

 

The most significant site on the list with around 17 million visits per month is TorrentGalaxy, which appears as one of the top 10 most popular torrent sites 2022. The injunction covers three domains (torrentgalaxy.to, torrentgalaxy.mx and torrentgalaxy.su) but in common with previous orders, will also cover additional domains, should TorrentGalaxy deploy others to circumvent the ban.

 

Other new additions in the torrent category include Zooqle (zooqle.com), a torrent search engine and indexer that according to SimilarWeb stats, pulls in around five million visits per month. MagnetDL (magnetdl.com, magnetdl.org) is another pretty big player with an estimated six million visits per month, around a quarter of which hail from the UK.

 

The inclusion of private torrent tracker TorrentLeech (torrentleech.org) on the new list is somewhat of a rarity. Members-only sites are not key targets for anti-piracy enforcement even though they have been targeted before in the UK, as far back as 2014.

 

With around 1.3 million visits per month, GloTorrents (glodls.to, gtdb.to) is not as large as the other platforms in the latest order but given that around 30% of its traffic is from the UK, it’s no surprise that the MPA has sought to limit access.

Other sites and Unblocking/Proxy Services

So-called DDL sites (direct download) are indexing services that carry no content themselves but link to movies, TV shows, music and other material hosted elsewhere, usually file-hosting platforms. Several such domains are present in the latest injunction including rlsbb.ru, rlsbb.to rlsbb.com, releasebb.net, proxybb.com and tfp.is.

 

Furthermore, in case some of the sites in this latest batch try to rely on unblocking services to facilitate access to their freshly-blocked domains, the injunction throws in some of those platforms too for good measure. Sites that unblock GloTorrents, MagnetDL, TorrentGalaxy are included too, with as glotorrents.unblockit.cam, magnetdl.proxyninja.org, and torrentgalaxy.unblockit.cam as just some of the examples.

 

Finally, the order(s) also cover the main domain and dozens of sub-domains of mxdcontent.net. This site is inaccessible directly but appears to act as a content delivery system for MixDrop, a site that was recently announced by the MPA as the first cyberlocker hosting movies and TV shows to be targeted in the UK with blocking measures.

 

Interestingly, while the MPA targeted two MixDrop domains (mixdrop.me, mixdrop.co), it doesn’t appear to have targeted mixdrop.to, which is the same platform as mixdrop.co, evidenced by the domains using the same login credentials.

 

Action in January/February also required ISPs to also block these domains: eztv.unblockit.how, projectfreetv.cam, pw.unblockit.how, yts.unblockit.how, solarmovie.unblockit.how, scnsrc.unblockit.how, losmovies.today, flixtor.mx, 1.123movies2022.org, bflix.ru, 123movies.ms, hurawatch.at, onionplay.re, soap2day.film

 

Other domains to be blocked following a report in December 2021 can be found here.

 

The full list of domains to be blocked in the latest action (per TalkTalk) are as follows:

 

 

Many Internet traffic reports have been published over the years, documenting how traffic patterns change over time.

 

One of the trends that emerged in recent years, is that BitTorrent’s share of total Internet traffic decreased.

 

With the growth of services such as YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok, streaming has consumed massive amounts of bandwidth. As a result, BitTorrent lost a significant chunk of its ‘market share’.

BitTorrent Comeback?

This trend gradually increased until a few years ago, when the Canadian broadband management company Sandvine signaled a BitTorrent revival. In some parts of the world, file-sharing traffic including BitTorrent started to gain market share again.

 

Sandvine’s 2018 report found that more than 20% of all global upstream traffic could be attributed to BitTorrent.

 

At the time, BitTorrent’s upload share was relatively modest in the Americas, accounting for a little over 9%. In the EMEA region, which covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, there was a clear upward trend as roughly a third of all uploads were torrent-related.

 

The latest bandwidth study published by Sandvine shows that, a few years later, there is not much left of this comeback. On the contrary, the downward trend continues once again.

BitTorrent is Losing Ground Again

The 2022 “Global Internet Phenomena” report shows that, globally, less than 3% of all consumer traffic can be attributed to BitTorrent. This percentage was as high as 35% in the mid 2000s, but the internet has changed dramatically since then.

 

Today, video accounts for more than half of all traffic on the Internet with YouTube and Netflix as the dominant players. TikTok, a relative newcomer, is gaining ground rapidly and has already surpassed BitTorrent.

 

Unlike other applications, BitTorrent typically demands more upstream resources and this is clearly visible in the data. Globally, BitTorrent is still in the lead in terms of upload traffic, accounting for nearly 10% of the total.

 

Whether BitTorrent will be able to maintain this lead is doubtful. Regular HTTP traffic and Google are closing in and these could surpass torrent upstream traffic in the coming year.

Mobile Traffic and Regional Differences

There are some other interesting patterns we observed. For example, when we look at mobile traffic we see that BitTorrent has a higher downstream market share than on fixed connections. It’s roughly on par with other popular apps such as TikTok.

 

According to Sandvine, this can be partially explained by the fact that companies such as Facebook and Twitter use BitTorrent technology to distribute content to users.

 

“BitTorrent is also higher up in the rankings on mobile networks as it is increasingly being used to distribute updates to Facebook and Twitter servers as well as for transferring large files like video and music clips,” Sandvine writes.

 

Looking at the overall traffic numbers, we see that there are quite a few regional differences as well. In the Americas, for example, BitTorrent only accounts for 6% of all upstream traffic, but in EMEA, this is nearly double, close to 12%.

Relative, Not Absolute

While BitTorrent may soon lose its crown as the king of upstream traffic, this doesn’t automatically imply that the absolute volume is decreasing.

 

All the figures reported here are relative to the total bandwidth used on the Internet, which is steadily growing. This means that even if BitTorrent’s ‘share’ dropped significantly, BitTorrent may still generate more traffic than a decade ago.

 

As the world’s leading free distributor of millions of oftentimes ‘paywalled’ research papers, Sci-Hub is often described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”.

 

While this status warms the hearts of many researchers, academics and students around the world, especially those with limited resources available to access education, Sci-Hub has also accrued many high-powered enemies.

 

These are not limited to major publishing houses angry at their content being distributed for free. Founder Alexandra Elbakyan is also a person of interest to elements of the US government’s intelligence and security services, which appear to be conducting an investigation into the computer security expert.

Elbakyan’s Apple Account Compromised

In May 2021, Elbakyan received an email from Apple (via her Gmail account) advising her that in 2019, Apple had received a request from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) that requested “information” from her Apple account.

 

Quite what information the FBI requested wasn’t made clear but Apple did advise the Sci-Hub founder that due to the nature of the request, Apple was only allowed to provide “delayed notice” to Elbakyan.

 

Now, 10 months later, it appears that the FBI also made another request, this time to tech giant Google.

Google Now Confirms It Too Handed Over Data to the FBI

In January 2021, Twitter suspended the official Sci-Hub account so when site updates are published, they now tend to appear on Elbakyan’s personal account. A new tweet this week reveals that Google was also required to hand over her account data.

 

In an email to Elbakyan dated March 2, 2022, Google advises that following a legal process issued by the FBI, Google was required to hand over data associated with Elbakyan’s account. Exactly what data was targeted isn’t made clear but according to Google, a court order required the company to keep the request a secret.

 

“Google received and responded to legal process issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation compelling the release of information related to your Google account,” the email reads.

 

“A court order previously prohibited Google from notifying you of the legal process. We are now permitted to disclose the receipt of the legal process to you.”

 

Google notes that since it is “not in a position” to provide Elbakyan with legal advice or to discuss the substance of the legal process, the Sci-Hub founder may wish to contact an attorney.

 

The big question remains – what exactly is the investigation about?

Usual Piracy Allegations or Something More?

Given the scale of Sci-Hub and its notoriety around the world, it’s certainly possibile that a criminal copyright infringement investigation is underway in the United States that could feasibly lead to an indictment for Elbakyan and any cohorts involved in the operation. However, more serious allegations have been made in the past.

 

Back in December 2019, The Washington Post reported that Elbakyan was being investigated by the US Justice Department on suspicion that she “may” be working with Russian intelligence to “steal U.S. military secrets from defense contractors.”

 

No solid evidence was published to back up those allegations but the publication did note that Elbakyan may have collected log-in credentials from journal subscribers in order to access academic literature, presumably so that it can be offered on Sci-Hub.

 

For her part, Elbakyan denied the more sinister allegations of being connected to Russia in any official capacity.

 

“I know there are some reasons to suspect me: after all, I have education in computer security and was a hobby hacker in teenage years. But hacking is not my occupation, and I do not have any job within any intelligence, either Russian or some another,” Elbakyan said at the time.

 

“I think that whether I can be a Russian spy is being investigated by U.S. government since they learned about Sci-Hub, because that is very logical: a Russian project, that uses university accounts to access some information, of course that is suspicious. But in fact Sci-Hub has always been my personal enterprise.”

 

The case number relating to the data release from Google: 18-2; 18gj3650; 18-3532

 

Football is the number one sport in the UK and every week, millions of passionate fans cheer on their favorite Premier League teams.

 

This passion comes at a price. Many top-tier games are not broadcast live to encourage stadium visits. To watch the limited matches that are available, fans have to spend roughly £100 per month on a subscription.

Fans Flock to HesGoal

It’s clear that football is big business; too big for some fans. Due to the high costs, pirate live streaming sites and services enjoy great popularity in the UK, with HesGoal.com the most visited streaming portal of them all.

 

HesGoal was founded a little over a decade ago. Since then, it has steadily expanded its user base around the globe, exceeding over 40 million monthly visitors according to SimilarWeb. It is particularly popular in the UK, which is credited with more than a quarter of all traffic.

 

Thus far the site has operated relatively unhindered but the Premier League hopes to change this position. The English football organization went to court in the US this week, hoping to discover the identities of HesGoal’s operators.

DMCA Subpoena

The legal request isn’t targeted at the streaming site directly. Instead, the Premier League requests a DMCA subpoena to compel the site’s CDN provider Cloudflare to hand over all information they have on the operators.

 

Among other things, the Premier League is asking for information that can identify people connected to the site. This includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses. While not mentioned, Cloudflare is also known to hand over payment details.

 

These DMCA subpoenas are typically granted by a court clerk, without any pushback from Cloudflare. The subpoena doesn’t require a separate order from a judge. At the time of writing, however, it’s yet to be granted.

Cloudflare (and Pirates) Know the Drill

This is certainly not the first DMCA subpoena Cloudflare is facing. As we covered previously, the American company processed 45 DMCA subpoenas during the first half of last year that targeted more than 35,000 domain names.

 

Even if the Premier League’s request is granted the question of how useful the information Cloudflare holds remains. By now, many pirate sites are aware of these subpoenas, so it’s possible that they may have taken measures to shield the true operators from being exposed.

 

—

 

A copy of the subpoena request, submitted by the Premier League at a federal court in California, is available here (pdf).

 

MG Premium, part of the Mindgeek adult empire, had been homing in piracy platforms YesPornPlease.com and VShare.io for some time.

 

In 2019 the Brazzers owner obtained a DMCA subpoena requiring Cloudflare to hand over the personal details of the sites’ owners. In January 2020, YesPornPlease had around 100 million visitors per month (SimilarWeb stats) so any information would’ve been useful to MG Premium.

 

Sources within unlicensed adult site circles soon indicated that Cloudflare had little to offer but according to MG, the sites infringed its copyrights on a grand scale so something needed to be done about them.

MG Premium Files Copyright Lawsuit

Late February 2020, MG Premium filed a full-blown copyright lawsuit in a Washington court against the then-unknown operators of the platforms. It alleged that the platforms operated under the guise of being user-generated content sites but were in fact directly and knowingly involved in the “trafficking of tens of thousands of pirated works.”

 

Almost immediately the sites went offline but MG Premium’s claims stood and were further honed in an amended complaint filed in December 2020.

 

MG Premium named Thomas Zang (Belize), Howard Stroble (US), Matthew Bradley (Gibraltar or GB), Michael Goal (Columbia), Mateusz Czajka (Poland), plus Viktor Ivanov and Aleksey Samokhinas as defendants. The adult content company alleged egregious and willful violations of its copyrights by defendants who failed to comply with the requirements of the DMCA, including by failing to register a DMCA agent, failing to respond to takedown notices, and failing to implement a repeat infringer policy.

 

As a result, MG said they could claim no safe harbor as a service provider.

 

“The YesPornPlease Web Site is a pirate website, displaying copyrighted adult entertainment content without authorization or license,” MG Premium wrote in its amended complaint.

 

“The YesPornPlease Web Site is operated in conjunction with the VShare Web Site, wherein purported Internet users desiring to post videos on the YesPornPlease Web Site must actually upload the video to the VShare Web Site and then are directed to ‘copy and paste’ the URL assigned to the uploaded video on the VShare Web Site onto the YesPornPlease Web Site.”

 

MG Premium further alleged that users were encouraged to upload content in exchange for monetary rewards based on the length of the video, the amount of content downloaded and the time actually watched. The YesPornPlease site generated revenue via pop-up ads, MG added.

 

Stating that the defendants engaged in “intentional, knowing, negligent, or willfully blind conduct”, MG Premium alleged direct copyright infringement and inducement of copyright infringement relating to 3,078 of its copyrighted works, demanding the maximum of $150,000 in statutory damages for each.

 

The adult company also requested broad preliminary and permanent injunctions plus a freeze on the sites’ domains.

MG Premium Claims Losses of $727 Million

Since none of the defendants appeared in court to respond to the complaint, MG Premium served them via email, enabling it to move for a default judgment. Interestingly, the 3,078 allegedly infringed works were subsequently trimmed down to 2,433 since the remainder were displayed before MG had registered them at the US Copyright Office.

 

Nevertheless, 2,433 copyrighted works is still a high number considering the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work available – a total of almost $365 million.

 

To support this claim, MG Premium settled on YesPornPlease having 3.2 million users per month for the 24 months preceding the lawsuit, arguing that a subscription to Brazzers is $9.99 per month, therefore it “lost” revenues of $727,232,000 during that period.

Judge Issues Default Judgment

In a default judgment handed down Tuesday, Judge Benjamin H. Settle writes that he wasn’t happy with the losses being claimed and wasn’t convinced that maximum statutory damages were warranted either.

 

“[W]hile MG Premium has demonstrated that maximum statutory damage awards are often affirmed when the infringement is willful, it has not cited a case making or affirming a statutory damages award anywhere near the sum it seeks, particularly against individual defendants,” his judgment reads.

 

“Further, MG Premium’s claimed lost revenue is speculative; the 3.2 million users it cites admittedly did not pay Defendants the sum it claims it charges for access to its adult videos. In other words, MG Premium did not lose, and Defendants did not make, $727 million when Defendants provided free access to MG Premium’s protected works. $365 million is similarly not a fair or accurate estimation of any lost revenue, or of illicit profit.”

 

Describing the damages claim as “obscene”, the Judge says that a more reasonable (albeit massive) award is appropriate and will act as a deterrent, even though it’s unlikely the judgment will be paid.

Defendants to Pay $36.5 Million

“In its discretion and in the interests of justice, the Court will therefore award statutory damages of $15,000 for each of the 2,433 offending videos, for a total of $36,495,000. The award is against the five individual defendants, jointly and severally,” Judge Settle writes in his judgment.

 

Noting that it is unlikely that MG Premium will recover the damages, the Judge then turns to the requested injunction to restrain the defendants moving forward. All things considered, a broad permanent injunction is warranted in this case.

 

The judgment also orders Verisign to disable the domain ‘yespornplease.com’ and transfer it to MG Premium. At the time of writing, it appears to drive traffic to a webcam site. References to VShare.io are absent from the judgment.

 

Supporting court documents can be found here (1,2, pdf)