BREIN, MPA, and ACE Shut Down Massive ‘Pirate CDN’

[Matrix]

 

 

Anti-piracy groups BREIN, MPA and ACE have teamed up to take down Moonwalk, a system that allegedly provides back-end services for around 80% of pirate Russian streaming sites. BREIN says that Moonwalk's database contains 26,000 movies and more than 10,000 TV shows. An announcement from Moonwalk says it will "NEVER be up again."

Earlier this year, cyber-security company Group-IB shared an interesting report with TorrentFreak.

The company told us that “large monopolists” were supplying huge amounts of content to thousands of websites via dedicated ‘pirate’ Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

 

Group-IB provided specific details on a CDN called ‘Moonwalk’ which reportedly began operating in 2013. According to the company, at the time the system carried 33,490 movies and TV shows, paying out $0.60 per 1000 views.

 

Group-IB complained that since most of Moonwalk’s servers were outside Russia, the Netherlands in particular, enforcement by local rightsholders was proving difficult. Several months later, it now transpires that Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has stepped up in an effort to deal with the problem.

 

BREIN chief Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak that on Friday, bailiffs acting on its behalf served ex parte court orders on five hosting providers requiring them to disconnect streaming servers and preserve evidence in relation to Moonwalk.

 

Three court orders targeted Dutch companies and two “ostensibly foreign companies” whose servers are located in the Netherlands. While the action is being headed up by BREIN, the anti-piracy group is working with both the Motion Picture Association and the global Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

 

BREIN describes Moonwalk as a “video load balancer” which provides both the back-end and also huge volumes of pirated content to around 80% of known Russian streaming sites.

 

“The top 50 of these websites entertain 395 million visits from 89.9 million unique visitors per month causing hundreds of millions of euros/dollars in losses,” BREIN says.

 

BREIN’s estimates of the amount of content being provided by Moonwalk exceed the figures provided by Group-IB earlier this year. Overall, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit says that the system was recently providing more than 26,000 movies and 10,000 TV shows. That’s around 2,500 additional pieces of video entertainment which suggests growth over recent months.

 

The ex parte court orders were obtained by BREIN following a joint investigation with ACE, which counts almost three dozen of the world’s leading content and broadcasting companies as members. It’s clear the orders were intended to cause the shutdown of Moonwalk while providing evidence on its operations and presumably, its operators.

 

“The fight against piracy is global and we are going after operators of these services and their hosting infrastructure as well as other intermediaries supporting these illegal services”, says BREIN chief Tim Kuik.

 

Jan Van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection at the Motion Picture Association, stressed that cooperating internationally is crucial to dealing with today’s piracy issues.

 

“Effectively fighting piracy today requires strong partnerships at global and local level,” he says.

 

“This action coordinated between BREIN, ACE and the MPA is a significant win and another step towards preserving a healthy and vibrant ecosystem in which the creative community can produce, distribute and protect their content so that audiences can enjoy them.”

 

What happens next in the investigation isn’t clear but a website associated with Moonwalk currently states that due to this action, the service is not only down, but down for good.

 

Gone forever?

 

 

 VIEW: Original Article.

[steven36]

BREIN  is Netherlands anti-piracy so what benefit  is i it for the to shut down a bunch of Russian dubbed films ?Most CDN  suck anyway unless you find a fast one   many are too slow  and  new ones open  up and old ones close down all the time anyway with no help at all . They never been very dependable if you want something from one you better download it while the site still works . All there doing is patting themselves  on the back for some whack a mole .  People can stream with kodi and other players from torrents and  paid download services much faster  . CDN is considered the  lowest of the low of ways to stream  because there bad about buffering  so your better off downloading from them  but many are even too slow to fool with downloading from as well.

[zanderthunder]

51 minutes ago, steven36 said:

BREIN  is Netherlands anti-piracy so what benefit  is i it for the to shut down a bunch of Russian dubbed films ?

If the servers are hosted at Netherlands (regardless of what kind of films, that includes Russian dubbed films), BREIN will surely act (except if the servers located at Russia, which BREIN has no jurisdiction).

[steven36]

14 minutes ago, Edward Raja said:

If the servers are hosted at Netherlands (regardless of what kind of films, that includes Russian dubbed films), BREIN will surely act (except if the servers located at Russia, which BREIN has no jurisdiction).

Yes they do  have a jurisdiction if it's not some how in the Netherlands they have go through other channels it took 3 groups just to  shut down 1 CDN  with 26,000 i most likely have  more movies than that i have 3 drives full never counted them all. BREIN is a private organization and has no special legal or investigative authority  there not the goverment. all they are is copyright trolls and have broke the law themselves by shutting stuff down not  using the courts before . In the USA they most likely get put in jail.

[zanderthunder]

12 hours ago, steven36 said:

BREIN is a private organization and has no special legal or investigative authority  there not the goverment.

But then they have to respect the country's laws right? For example, BREIN had to hire lawyer based in Russia (not from their origin country) for court application as the servers are located at Russia.

 

Private organization or not, the country laws have to respected regardless which country they pursue.

[steven36]

On 10/23/2019 at 1:08 AM, Edward Raja said:

But then they have to respect the country's laws right? For example, BREIN had to hire lawyer based in Russia (not from their origin country) for court application as the servers are located at Russia.

 

Private organization or not, the country laws have to respected regardless which country they pursue.

Yes now they become like the USA they suck they use to allow downloading   they charged a pirate tax so did Russia  look the other way Europe cracking down on piracy  is just a few years old .But BREIN was breaking laws in the Netherlands back before it was illegal to download there even.
 

Quote

 

As of April 2014 downloading pirated media has become illegal in the Netherlands, too. It's classified under civil law. That means prosecutors will not actively seek out individual downloaders, but copyright holders may sue individuals who have downloaded their content.

 

 

This caused  the Streisand effect  and 2 more cdns shutdown because they was using moonwalks servers . The USA tried this before back when most everything was hosted in the USA . Pirates just move there servers  to another  country  or to bullet proof servers . So its  just wack a mole its not effective  in the long term  it just means  people will no longer use Netherlands for there Piracy businesses  .

 

Quote

Group-IB believes the shutdowns have the potential to affect between 5 and 10 percent of worldwide supply but cautions that this is “definitely a temporary change.”

 

Edit : by the way i just done a small test movie title  i watch the other day in English (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 2019) in Russian it's called  (Страшные истории для рассказа в темноте (2019))  it only took me a few minutes to find working Russian dubbed  streams  with a search engine i found a site in minutes . And I dont even speak Russian so if it was that easy for me to find streams it would be much more easy for a Russian to  find it they most likely already have sites bookmarked.