In September 2019, Super Channel owner Allarco Entertainment filed a lawsuit in Canada’s Federal Court targeting Staples Canada, Best Buy Canada, London Drugs, Canada Computers, several related companies and up to 50,000 ‘John Doe’ customers.

The controversial legal action saw Allarco accuse the retailers and their staff of promoting, encouraging and instructing in the use of set-top boxes that could enable buyers to access copyright-infringing content.

The complaint was supported by 100 hours of undercover recordings that purported to show retailers’ staff showing prospective customers how to use software such as Kodi, or offering advice on where to get devices configured for piracy.

Allarco demanded an injunction to prevent the defendants from “communicating or facilitating the communication” of its works without permission, including by “configuring, advertising, offering for sale or selling Pirate Devices.”

Allarco Ends Federal Court Lawsuit, Launches Another

A month after the lawsuit was filed, Canadian lawyer Howard Knopf wrote that in nearly four decades of being an intellectual property lawyer, he had never seen a more unusual Statement of Claim.

He noted that it claimed copyright infringement in unspecified works, circumvention, making available, unspecified “pirate devices”, trademark infringement, the Criminal Code, through to theft, stealing, interference with the economic and business relations of the Plaintiff, and conspiracy.

After the retailers fought back, Allarco discontinued its Federal Court lawsuit on January 6, 2020. However, Allarco had already filed another similar lawsuit on December 6, 2019, this time at the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta (Alberta’s superior court). The complaint added unknown suppliers of ‘pirate’ devices as defendants and demanded CAD$50m in damages.

“It’s too early to speculate about what Allarco will attempt to do and what the Court might let it do about the 50,000 John Doe Customers or the now added John Doe Suppliers and how their interests will be represented if things ever get anywhere near that far,” Knopf wrote at the time.

However, several months later, a new report indicates that matters are now progressing.

Allarco Demands ‘Pirate’ Set-Top Device Ban

Doubling down on its allegations of wrongdoing at the retailers, Allarco is now demanding an injunction from the Court that would prevent them from offering the set-top boxes for sale.

Whether the Court will find such a request reasonable in respect of devices that are used by millions to access entirely legal services such as Netflix is yet to be determined. Allarco, meanwhile, believes that people buy them for only one thing – piracy.

“The only reason why people buy these boxes is to steal content,” says Allarco president and chief executive officer Donald McDonald, as quoted by Globe and Mail.

Interestingly, in common with his counterparts right across the streaming industry, McDonald says that the ‘pirate’ devices – which are largely Android-based and imported from China – are often preloaded with malware that targets consumers and puts their security at risk.

“These devices are dangerous to your home network, dangerous to your personal data and could end up costing you a lot more money in the end,” he says, showing concern for the people his company is hoping to sue.

Retailers Deny The Allegations

Ever since the first lawsuit was filed in 2019, Staples Canada, Best Buy Canada, London Drugs, and Canada Computers have vigorously denied the Allarco/Super Channel allegations. All were reportedly sent cease-and-desist notices before the actions were filed but all claim to have acted within the law.

“We offer technology from reputable manufacturers and leading brands. We take claims of intellectual property infringement seriously, but we believe that Super Channel’s claims are without merit, and intend to defend this action vigorously,” an earlier Best Buy statement reads.

While Staples and Best Buy are opting not to comment at this stage, London Drugs said it would “never intentionally take or condone” any action that would infringe intellectual property rights.

“London Drugs has always respected the rights of content creators and holders of copyright in all forms. We sell products and provide services for many parties engaged in content creation and distribution and recognize and fully support their right to fair compensation,” the company says.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In November 2019, US broadcaster DISH Network filed a lawsuit in a Texas district court targeting the operators of 15 domains used to illegally stream DISH content to the public.

The domains – Freetvall.net, Freetvall.xyz, Freetvall.me, Freetvall.live, Livetvcafe.com, Livetvcafe.net, Livetvcafe.me, Time4tv.com, Time4tv.net, Time4tv.me, Cricket-tv.net, Crickettv.me, Tv4embed.com, and A1livetv.com – offered a wide range of embedded TV channels, not only from DISH but other broadcasters including Sky and ESPN.

DISH’s Exclusive License to Broadcast in the United States

In its complaint , DISH listed around two dozen channels offered by the network of sites. Through licensing agreements, DISH holds the exclusive rights to distribute and publicly perform the channels in the United States. The sites had no such permission.

As the lawsuit progressed, DISH concluded that all of the sites were operated by one person, who was subsequently named as Nauman Khalid.

DISH claimed that the defendant provided users in the United States with links to unauthorized streams of its protected channels by collecting them from other locations on the Internet and organizing them on his websites. The whole operation was monetized with advertising.

DISH Notified Defendant of Infringement Dozens of Times

During a period spanning several years, DISH notified Khalid “at least” 49 times that he was infringing the company’s rights by providing infringing links to a US audience. DISH backed up this effort by sending similar notifications to Internet services utilized by the sites but Khalid “intentionally interfered” with these by changing providers or using new links.

DISH alleged that Khalid “induced and materially contributed” to offenses carried out in breach of US copyright law. Khalid was served in Pakistan but chose not to participate in the legal action against him in the US. As a result, DISH sought to obtain a default judgment from the court.

Court’s Decision – Direct and Contributory Infringement

In a memorandum opinion and order signed last week, the court found that the works at issue in the suit were authored in countries outside the United States but because those countries are all signatories to the Berne Convention , all are protected under US copyright law. In any event, all works were registered with the US Copyright Office.

In respect of the allegations of direct infringement, the court found that when Khalid provided links that enabled the retransmission of DISH content, that infringed the company’s rights to publicly perform those works. The court further found that Khalid had knowledge of these infringements since he had received at least some of the takedown notices sent by DISH.

Moving to DISH’s allegations of contributory copyright infringement, the court found that by selecting infringing links to channels and by organizing and maintaining them, Khalid “created the audience” to complete the direct infringement carried out by the unlicensed provider of the channels. As such, the allegations of inducement and material contribution were found to valid.

Question of Damages

When claiming damages, DISH had the option to choose actual damages and profits or statutory damages – the company settle on the latter. That meant the broadcaster could obtain $30,000 per infringed work and up to $150,000 if the infringement was committed willfully.

DISH elected to pursue statutory damages for 112 works registered with the US Copyright Office, to the maximum of $150,000 per infringement. The company alleged that even after sending takedown notices, Khalid continued to provide access to the broadcaster’s channels.

In support of its claim for maximum statutory damages, DISH told the court that Khalid had been infringing its rights for between five and nine years, claiming that its channels were viewed over 5.5 million times. The court agreed that the websites had caused DISH to incur substantial losses, adding that the offending was considerable.

“Because of the sheer breadth and duration of the infringement, the failure of Khalid to participate in this proceeding, his willingness to defy almost 50 notices of infringement and to evade service providers’ attempts to halt the infringement, and the likelihood that he profited from the infringement and caused substantial losses of revenue to DISH, the court finds that an award of maximum statutory damages — $150,000 per registered work — is appropriate,” the decision reads.

“Therefore, the total amount of damages that Khalid must pay DISH for the infringement of the 112 registered works is $16,800,000.”

Permanent Injunction

In addition to damages, DISH demanded a permanent injunction and the court was happy to comply. First turning to Khalid and anyone acting in concert with him, the court issued an injunction enjoining all parties from transmitting, streaming, distributing, linking, hosting, promoting or advertising any of DISH’s protected channels in the United States.

Moving to non-parties, such as those providing any kind of technical service enabling the defendant to infringe, the court permanently enjoined all entities providing servers, hosting (including data centers), domain hosting/registration/proxy services, CDNs, advertising and social media, from doing business with Khalid that involves breaching DISH’s rights.

Specifically, the court ordered VeriSign and any other registry or registrar of the listed domains to transfer them to DISH within 48 hours so that the broadcaster may “fully control and use” them. Additionally, registries and registrars were ordered to restrict any future domain names used by Khalid to provide access to DISH works by disabling them within 48 hours of receiving a complaint from DISH.

“Such domain names shall remain disabled so that the websites and content located at the domain names are inaccessible to the public until further order of this Court, or until DISH provides written notice to the registry or registrar that the domain names shall be reenabled,” the order concludes.

The memorandum opinion and order and final judgment can be found here and here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

CDN provider Cloudflare is one of the leading Internet companies, providing services to millions of customers large and small.

The service positions itself as a neutral intermediary that passes on traffic while making sure that customers remain secure. Its userbase includes billion-dollar companies such as IBM, Shopify, and L’Oreal, but also countless smaller outlets.

With a company of this size, it comes as no surprise that some Cloudflare customers are engaged in controversial activities. This includes some pirate sites and services, which have landed Cloudflare in court on several occasions.

Last year there were two prominent cases against Cloudflare in Italy. In the first one, football league Serie A and Sky Italy requested Cloudflare to block the unauthorized IPTV service “IPTV THE BEST” and in a similar case, rightsholders wanted “ENERGY IPTV” blocked.

Cloudflare Appeals Blocking Injunctions

Cloudflare lost both cases and was ordered to block the services in question. While the company hasn’t commented on the legal actions in detail, it decided to appeal the two injunctions at the Milan court.

Last Friday, the court ruled on the “IPTV THE BEST” case, confirming that Cloudflare is indeed required to block access.

In its defense, Cloudflare argued that it doesn’t provide hosting services but merely passes on bits and bytes. In addition, it pointed out that the IPTV service could still remain active even if its account was terminated.

Cloudflare Facilitates Access

The court was not convinced by these arguments and concluded that Cloudflare contributes to the infringements of its customer by optimizing and facilitating the site’s availability.

“It is in fact adequately confirmed that Cloudflare carries out support and optimization activities to showcase sites, which allow the visibility and advertising of illegal services,” the court concluded.

That the IPTV service could continue without using Cloudflare is irrelevant, the court stressed.

In addition, the court confirmed that copyright holders are entitled to these types of protective blocking measures, even if the activity of the online intermediary itself is not directly infringing.

Dynamic Orders

The Milan court reached the same conclusion in Cloudflare’s appeal against the “ENERGY IPTV” injunction, which was decided yesterday. In both cases, the court also confirmed that the injunctions are “dynamic”, which means that if the IPTV services switch to new domains or IP-addresses, these have to be blocked as well.

While the ruling is a setback for Cloudflare, copyright holders are pleased. Attorney Simona Lavagnini, who represented Sky Italy, informs TorrentFreak that it will now be easier to hold online services accountable for infringing customers.

“I am pleased to see the position taken by the Court, confirming that injunction orders can be addressed to all providers involved in the provision of services to those who offer illegal contents on the web.

“This principle is now general and includes telecoms as well as passive hosting providers and other services such as CDNs,” Lavagnini adds.

We also reached out to Cloudflare for a comment on these recent court orders but the company didn’t immediately reply. The CDN provider previously confirmed that it has been legally required to block several domains, without going into further detail.

With regard to earlier blocking orders, Cloudflare said that it complies with these in the relevant jurisdictions. In other words, the targeted services remain available in other countries. Whether that’s also the case here is unknown.

Update: The legal team representing the Lega Nazionale Professionisti Serie A (LNPA), which includes Bruno Ghirardi, Stefano Previti, Alessandro La Rosa, and Riccardo Traina Chiarini, is happy with the outcome and told us the following:

“Cloudflare participates in activities that allow the visibility of the illicit services IPTV THE BEST and ENERGY IPTV – also through the storage of data from these sites – and participates in the flow of data in violation of the rights of LNPA.”

“This implies the legitimacy of targeting Cloudflare as a passive subject of the precautionary order, despite the possibility that, in the absence of Cloudflare’s services, illicit access to the protected content would be also possible.”

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

ABS-CBN is the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines but also has a strong presence in the US.

This reach isn’t just limited to its online news and media , the company is active in the courts as well.

In recent years the company has singled out dozens of streaming sites and services that offer access to ‘Pinoy’ content without permission, demanding substantial damages.

Selling Pirate Boxes on Facebook

The defendants are often ‘John Doe’ site operators but in December 2018, ABS-CBN identified a very specific target; a Texas man named Anthony Brown. According to a complaint filed at a US federal court, Brown sold pirate streaming boxes through Facebook.

Some pirate box sellers take extreme measures to conceal their identities. In this case, however, the defendant was easily identified through an undercover operation which arrived at several damning conclusions.

According to the complaint, Brown didn’t just sell pirate boxes to the ABS-CBN representative. In private messages, chatting as “Ann Ong,” he also shared the name and address of his company, which matched the information tied to his PayPal address.

A Cut of The Business

On top of that, the defendant explained the ins-and-outs of his business, offering the investigator a piece of the action for referring new clients.

“‘Ann Ong’ stated ‘I hope you can also refer more when you have the box and then I give you a cut in the market in California’,” ABS-CBN previously informed the court.

After ABS-CBN filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of Texas not much happened. Brown was served last January but never responded to the allegations. As a result, the media company requested a default judgment.

Default Judgment

The media company accused the Texas man of selling pirate boxes “that have been designed or modified to circumvent ABS-CBN’s encryption technology,” allowing customers to “unlawfully intercept and access ABS-CBN’s copyrighted programming.” To cover the alleged damages, the company demanded compensation.

While copyright infringement plays a role in the case, the requested damages are based on trademark infringement and a violation of the Communications Act, which Brown violated by importing and/or selling pirate devices.

Earlier this week, United States District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown ruled on the default judgment, ABS-CBN’s demands in part.

$1.6 Million?

ABS-CBN initially listed four trademark violations, requesting $500,000 in damages each. On top of that, it asked for $100,000 for a violation of the Communications Act, bringing the total to $2.1 million.

However, during a hearing last week this demand was lowered to $1.6 million, effectively removing two trademark violations. While this appeared to be a kind gesture, it raises questions with the court.

“In support of this lower figure, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendant was infringing on their two trademarks in two distinct services: cable services and online streaming services. Yet in the plaintiffs’ complaint, default-judgment motion, and evidence in support of that motion, there is no distinction made between these two services.”

“In light of the uncertainty about the amount of damages the plaintiffs request, and the relationship these damages have to the defendant’s sale of goods or services, the court invites the plaintiffs to file supplemental briefing to clarify this issue.”

This means that the court can’t grant any damages at this point. However, Judge Brown did issue a permanent injunction preventing the defendant from infringing ABC-ABS’s rights. That obviously includes a ban on selling pirate streaming boxes.

—

A copy of the order and the permanent injunction is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Back in August, members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy coalition featuring the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, filed a lawsuit against US company TTKN Enterprises, LLC.

Better known online as IPTV service Crystal Clear Media (CCM), TTKN and owners Todd and Tori Smith of Florida were accused by Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Warner, Universal, Netflix, Columbia and StudioCanal of operating a pirate service providing access to thousands of live and title-curated television channels in breach of their copyrights.

“Blatantly Infringing Service”

Citing blockbusters including Disney’s Frozen II, Warner Bros’ Harry Potter collection, Columbia Picture’s Bad Boys for Life, and Universal’s Mr. Robot, the companies alleged that TTKN/CCM’s operators had gone to great lengths to hide their roles in an operation that had illegally streamed these titles and more to the public. Domains including mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com, and webplayer.us, were mentioned as supporting the operation.

Describing CCM as a “blatantly infringing service”, the entertainment companies noted that despite being acutely aware that rival service Vaders had previously come to an untimely end for similar actions at the hands of the same plaintiffs, CCM continued to provide an illegal VOD service to the public. Furthermore, the service also continued to expand its reach via a network of resellers.

“Defendants’ reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants’ resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors,” the lawsuit claimed.

Alleging willful direct copyright infringement, the plaintiffs demanded the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work plus the same amount per work as a result of CCM inducing others by “encouraging, and promoting” the use of CCM for copyright infringement purposes.

Parties Reach Settlement Agreement

While these kinds of cases have the potential to roll on for some time, it transpires the plaintiffs and TTKN/CCM plus named defendants Todd and Tori Smith have agreed to settle their dispute. The agreement was reached on November 2, 2020, and as a result, they are together asking the court to sign off on a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding a permanent injunction and damages.

In respect of the injunction, the defendants comprehensively agree not to distribute any copyrighted content owned by the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries in any manner, including via streaming. All operations of Crystal Clear Media must be completely shut down within five days of any injunction and its operators are barred from distributing or otherwise releasing any of its source code, domain names, trademarks and other assets.

“Defendants irrevocably and fully waive notice of entry of the Permanent Injunction, and understand and agree that violation of the Permanent Injunction will expose Defendant to all penalties provided by law, including contempt of Court,” it reads.

“Defendants consent to the continuing jurisdiction of the Court for purposes of enforcement of the Permanent Injunction, and irrevocably and fully waive and relinquish any argument that venue or jurisdiction by this Court is improper or inconvenient.”

Proposed Judgment Includes a Massive Damages Award

The original complaint included references to the now-defunct Vaders IPTV service that was also targeted by the same plaintiffs in a largely secret lawsuit in Canada. However, while the Vaders/Vader Streams matter ended in a $10 million damages award in favor of the studios, TTKN/CCM has agreed to pay substantially more than its former rival.

“Damages are awarded in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendant TTKN Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Crystal Clear Media, in the total amount of forty million dollars ($40 million),” the proposed judgment reads.

While the proposed consent judgment and permanent injunction are yet to be signed off by Judge George H. Wu in a California court, the nature of the agreement means that is likely to be a formality in the days to come.

The proposed orders can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In 2018, US broadcaster DISH Network sued pirate IPTV service SET TV for offering many TV channels illegally obtained from DISH’s satellite service.

That lawsuit came to an end in 2018 when SET TV’s operators were ordered by a Florida court to pay $90 million in statutory damages. However, as far as DISH was concerned, there were more loose ends to tie up.

DISH Sues Simply-TV and Goes After a Reseller

Early 2019, DISH filed another lawsuit in Florida, this time targeting individuals and companies behind Simply-TV, a pirate IPTV service that was believed to be connected to SET TV. By August that same year, the lawsuit was over after DISH was awarded $30 million in statutory damages plus an injunction.

As recently reported , DISH still didn’t give up the chase, suing an individual named as Lisa Crawford in a Florida court, claiming she was a reseller of both SET TV and Simply-TV. Several business entities were also named as defendants.

These cases have a tendency to drag on but in this case, the whole thing was settled in a matter of weeks.

Agreed Judgment and Permanent Injunction

On Thursday, DISH filed a notice of dismissal against the business entities named in the original complaint including LC One LLC, LC Pryme Enterprises LLC, LC Pryme Holdings LLC, LC Pryme One Enterprises LLC.

“This Notice of Dismissal is filed pursuant to the Confidential Settlement Agreement reached between DISH and Defendant Lisa Crawford,” the notice reads.

A short time later, DISH filed documents relating to the agreement, establishing several agreed facts and laying out the terms of the settlement.

“Defendant sold device codes and subscriptions to the Unauthorized Streaming Services through various websites including ptiptv.com, GriffTV.com, Lazertvstreams.com and FlixStreams.com. In addition, Defendant advertised the Unauthorized Streaming Services through Facebook and other forms of social media,” the filing reads.

“Defendant participated in the operation of the Unauthorized Streaming Services after the Set TV service was shut down. DISH Programming was redistributed without authorization on the Unauthorized Streaming Services throughout this time period.

“During that time Defendant trafficked in at least 40,000 device codes to the Unauthorized Streaming Services.”

Defendant Agrees to Pay DISH $30 Million in Statutory Damages

According to the agreement, the sale of the 40,000 “device codes” (subscriptions) will cost Crawford a huge amount of money. DISH says that each subscription is worth $750 in statutory damages, meaning that the total amount payable to the company is a cool $30 million. That being said, things could have been very much worse if DISH had pursued the $100,000 per offense/subscription maximum.

In addition to the damages agreement, the parties have also settled on a set of conditions for an injunction, including that Crawford never again gets involved in offering pirated DISH programming to the public. She is also barred from operating the websites ptiptv.com, GriffTV.com, Lazertvstreams.com and FlixStreams.com, which must be transferred to DISH.

Former Customers May Be at Risk

Part of the agreement requires Crawford to hand over pretty much everything associated with her reselling business over to DISH, including all computers, servers, receivers, software, and set-top devices. The agreement also goes much further than that though and may have consequences for Crawford’s former customers.

“Defendant shall transfer to DISH or a designee selected by DISH, within seven (7) days of the date of this Order, all device codes, renewal codes, subscriptions and applications for Defendant’s Pirate Streaming Services, as well as all computers, phones, servers and all social media, financial, online or other accounts associated in any way with Defendant’s Pirate Streaming Services,” the agreement reads.

This includes “books, documents, files, records, or communications whether in hard copy or electronic form, relating in any way to Defendant’s Pirate Streaming Services” plus “the identities of manufacturers, exporters, importers, dealers, or purchasers of such services and devices..”

This is important because DISH has a history of not only shutting down pirate services but also chasing down former subscribers for cash settlements. Whether it will do so in this case is yet to be seen but after shutting down a seller of satellite card-sharing codes a while back, the company has used the data handed over in the matter to pursue many other individuals.

The Agreed Judgment and Permanent Injunction is available here (pdf). It is yet to be signed off by the court but given its nature, that’s likely to be a formality.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.