The US Trade Representative (USTR) placed Bulgaria on the ‘Special 301 Watch List’ between 2013 until 2017, because its copyright policies and enforcement were reportedly lagging behind.

The USTR uses this annual report to motivate foreign countries to take action, which can often pay off.

This also appears to be the case in Bulgaria, where law enforcement agencies have actively pursued various piracy cases in recent years. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the USTR, which removed Bulgaria from its watch list in 2018, leading to both countries sharing their progress and goals ever since.

For example, last year Bulgaria mentioned that it planned to criminally prosecute torrent tracker Zamunda.net , the country’s most-visited pirate site. In addition, criminal prosecutions of other high-profile torrent sites such as ArenaBG.com, Zelka.org and RARBG.to were in the works as well.

When we highlighted these developments last year they were still in the planning phase. However, a new report sent by Bulgarian authorities to the USTR this week shows that progress has been made.

The report notes that the various recommendations from the US Government are being taken very seriously. This includes the explicit request to fight online piracy and take local torrent trackers offline.

Bulgaria writes that, last summer, Sofia Regional Prosecutor’s Office started four separate pre-trial proceedings against Zamunda.net, ArenaBG.com, Zelka.org and RARBG.to. All sites stand accused of criminal copyright infringement.

Last November the matter was discussed on the highest diplomatic level. In a telephone call, a high-level representative from the US State Department informed Bulgaria’s Ambassador to the United States that prosecuting Zamunda.net and Arenabg remains a key issue.

In the progress report, Bulgaria stresses that it takes these concerns very seriously. It mentions the pre-trial proceedings that were launched, and highlights several steps that have been taken thus far.

“Numerous investigative actions were carried out – interrogation of witnesses, website inspections, preparing and sending requests for legal aid to the competent authorities in the USA, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a request for information and termination of users’ access to the specified sites,” the report reads.

Despite these actions, Zamunda, ArenaBG, and the other torrent sites remain online today. However, law enforcement hasn’t given up.

In a separate message, Bulgaria’s Government notes that US law enforcement also has a role to play. Apparently, Zamunda.net has servers located in the US, and the Department of Justice was recently asked to help shut these down.

“[A]n important event we need to highlight is the submission on January 27th, 2021, of a Request for Mutual Legal Assistance from the Bulgarian Supreme Prosecutor Office to the DOJ for the seizure of illicit servers hosting vast amounts of entertainment and software content with breached IP on US territory, operated by the Bulgarian piracy torrent tracker entity Zamunda.

“The act follows the execution of a mutually agreed Action plan for the improvement of IP enforcement on Bulgarian territory presented by our partners at the USTR,” a representative from the Bulgarian Government adds.

While it’s uncertain if the prosecutions will turn out to be successful, Bulgaria hopes that these efforts will prove sufficient to keep the country off the ‘Special 301 Watch List’ in the coming year.

All in all, it is fascinating to see how these law enforcement actions are orchestrated at the highest political levels. This is not new by any means, however. We previously uncovered how similar tactics triggered Sweden’s criminal prosecution of The Pirate Bay.

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A copy of the status report the Government of Bulgaria sent to the US Trade Representative is available here (pdf)

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

Every year copyright holder groups get the chance to share their list of “notorious” piracy actors to the US Trade Representative .

These recommendations serve as the basis for USTR’s annual report, which is a diplomatic tool to pressure companies and countries to take action.

In recent years this list has slowly expanded to include not only pirate sites and counterfeit markets, but also third-party intermediaries.

Focus on Intermediaries

The USTR follows this trend and has made online intermediaries a ‘focus issue’ this year. This was illustrated earlier this week when the RIAA and MPA ‘nominated’ several hosting services, domain registries, and advertisers.

These two groups are not alone as many other rightsholders have chimed in as well. This includes Spain’s top football league ‘ La Liga ‘ which submitted several recommendations that, for the public at large, are not typically associated with piracy.

“Our biggest concern consists of the illegal streaming of live sports competitions by people or companies that are not authorized to do so,” La Liga writes.

IPTV and Streaming Threats

The organization starts by highlighting several illegal IPTV services such as Megaplay, Seko IPTV, VolkaIPTV, ATN and King 365 TV, as well as IPTV playlist forums including IPTV URLs and IPTV SAT. These are the usual suspects one would expect.

The second category includes illegal streaming sites like Pirlo TV, BeIN Match and Yalla Shoot, as well as streaming link sites, such as Cable Gratis TV, Hulk Sport and Hulk Sport. Most of these are clearly infringing as well.

La Liga then moves into the intermediary area by highlighting hosting providers. According to the sports organization, these companies can help to prevent infringements but, in most cases, they don’t.

Uncooperative Hosting Companies

Rightsholders often complain about abuse by pirate sites and services but these complaints don’t have any effect.

“It should be noted that most of the Hosting Providers Companies ignore e-mails and letters referred to IPR infringements,” La Liga writes, after which it sums up the most relevant companies.

This list includes Namecheap, which is located in the US, as well as the Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify. US-based CDN provider Cloudflare gets a mention as well, together with the Russia-based Offshore-Servers and BlueAngelHost from Pakistan.

“Preventive actions are needed to avoid that IPR infringers can host illegal content so easily on the Hosting Provider Companies’ servers,” La Liga notes, while demanding “quick responses and effective solutions” from these intermediaries.

The sports league provides no details on what infringing content these companies host or what action they fail to take. However, it clearly demands a more active and aggressive anti-piracy stance.

eBay and Alibaba

The latter also applies to eBay and Alibaba. These companies are listed in the e-commerce category and reportedly offer illegal set-top boxes and IPTV deals.

While these are “somewhat cooperative” in terms of enforcement, according to La Liga, they can do more.

The list of notorious piracy markets continues with ‘cyberlockers’ such as Mega, MediaFire, and Uptobox. These can be used legally, the recommendation notes, but are often used to share pirated content as well.

Telegram

The latter also applies to social media and communication apps. La Liga calls out Telegram specifically in this regard, noting that it’s “extremely complicated and slow” to remove illegal content from the platform.

“We have detected that Telegram is increasingly being used to illegally share copyright-protected contents through certain channels. Those channels have significantly increased their users, La Liga writes.

These and other recommendations will be taken into account by the USTR which will issue its final list of “notorious markets” in a few months. Whether Namecheap, eBay, Telegram, and Shopify will be called out, has yet to be seen.

Over the past several years, copyright holders have repeatedly called on third-party intermediaries to increase their anti-piracy efforts. The USTR now follows this lead by making it a focus issue and these recommendations are part of the strategy.

However, it’s still an odd sight to see eBay and Namecheap being mentioned alongside The Pirate Bays of this world.

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A copy of La Liga’s submission to the US Trade Representative is available here (pdf)

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

When President Clinton signed the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law in 1998, its goal was to ready copyright law for the digital age.

The law introduced safe harbors for Internet services (DMCA Section 512 ), meaning that they can’t be held liable for their pirating users as long as they properly process takedown notices and deal with repeat infringers.

Today the four-letter acronym is known around the world and the United States appears keen to export it in future trade agreements. Most recently, a DMCA-style provision was added to the  United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ( USMCA ), which covers a wide variety of trade issues including copyright-related topics.

While this would have been welcomed by rightsholders twenty years ago, the situation looks quite different today. The music industry, in particular, believes that the DMCA is obsolete, dysfunctional, and even harmful . For these reasons, major industry groups would like to see it replaced with something ‘better.’

When the first draft of the USMCA was published, the RIAA made this clear in no uncertain terms. “Modern trade treaties should advance the policy priority of encouraging more accountability on public platforms, not less,” RIAA President Mitch Glazier said.

The issue was crucial enough to be specifically mentioned in the RIAA’s lobbying disclosures at the U.S. House and Senate. This may have had an effect, as this week the concerns were picked up by the House Judiciary Committee.

In a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the Judiciary Committee points out that Section 512 of the DMCA is widely debated and that “some” have called on Congress to update it.

The Committee notes that the U.S. Government conducted an in-depth review over the past years of which the results are expected soon. This may in part be impacted by the European Union’s new Copyright Directive which hints at potential upload filters and increases in liability for online service providers.

“The U.S. Copyright Office is expected to produce a report on Section 512 around the end of this year, the result of a multi-year process that started in 2015. Moreover, the European Union has recently issued a copyright directive that includes reforms to its analogous safe harbor for online platforms, which may have an impact on the U.S. domestic policy debate,” the letter reads.

The Judiciary Committee doesn’t take a position in this debate but it stresses that adding the widely contested safe harbor language to the USMCA and other trade agreements, would not be wise at this point.

“[W]e find it problematic for the United States to export language mirroring this provision while such serious policy discussions are ongoing,” the letter, signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Ranking Member Doug Collins reads.

“For that reason, we do not believe a provision requiring parties to adopt a Section 512-style safe harbor system of the type mandated by Article 20.89 should continue to be included in future trade agreements,” the letter adds.

The Committee urges the USTR to take the matter seriously and consider the possible changes that are coming. This largely reflects the position of several major copyright industry groups, including the RIAA.

If the language is indeed removed or changed it will be a major setback for Internet services and various digital rights groups. This includes the Re:Create Coalition , which welcomed the inclusion of these protections last year.

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A copy of the letter sent by the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary to the USTR is available here (pdf) .

Source: TF , for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons .