In recent years, software applications that provide access to the latest movies, TV shows, live TV and premium sports events have become increasingly popular.

Most commonly available for Android, PC, and iOS platforms, these tools often come pre-configured for piracy meaning that when they installed, the latest content is just a few clicks away. This approach means that such apps can be quickly ejected from Apple’s App Store and Google Play on the basis they are self-contained piracy tools. However, there is another way.

Evading App Store and Google Play Removal

Exposure on official app stores is a tried-and-tested method to grow public awareness of an app but if they are quickly removed for infringement, that all falls apart. To prevent this from happening, apps have been appearing on both platforms that are capable of supplying infringing content but have crucial components missing at the point of download. These need to be added in at a later point to provide functionality.

One example is the ‘ Watched ‘ streaming app which at the time of writing is in the Top 30 most popular entertainment apps on Apple’s App Store. No content is presented in the app but after installation, users are prompted to supply a ‘bundle’ via a URL of their choosing. No information is provided as to what this URL should be but a little searching online reveals that certain URLs make ‘Watched’ much more useful.

‘Watched’ Bundle Available at Oha.to

One of the more popular ‘bundle’ URLs is Oha.to and when this is entered into ‘Watched’ it transforms the app in much the same way as adding a third-party repository/addon to Kodi might. The website at this URL contains the necessary components to fill ‘Watched’ with movies, TV shows and live TV channels, which are all accessible via the provided interface.

(Before adding ‘Oha.to on the left, after on the right)

While the ‘Watched’ app remains accessible on app stores and via the software’s homepage, there are moves by global entertainment industry companies to target bundle URLs, including Oha.to .

ACE Goes to Court in the United States

The Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is a global anti-piracy coalition that brings together dozens of the most powerful entertainment industry companies in the world. These include the major Hollywood studios plus Netflix and Amazon, all of which aim to disrupt the illegal streaming market to protect their businesses.

Yesterday, ACE members filed an application for a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare in a California court and the complaint itself shows how convoluted these matters can become.

Cloudflare provides services to Oha.to but at least as far as we can tell (and like Cloudflare), Oha.to doesn’t carry any infringing content either. Instead, Oha.to provides a service that enables end-users of ‘Watched’ to find content to which ACE members hold the rights.

“We have determined that individuals operating and controlling Oha.to have infringed ACE Members’ Copyrighted Works by using Cloudflare servers, networks, and other services, to connect end users of the ‘Watched’ mobile application to websites containing infringing content,” explains MPA Executive Vice President & Chief of Global Content Protection, Jan van Hoorn.

“The Oha.to service receives requests for infringing content from the Watched application, scrapes various links to identify cyberlockers containing the requested infringing content, and returns a response containing the scraped links to the application, which allows users of the Watched application to stream infringing content.”

ACE Wants To Unmask The Operator(s) Of Oha.to

The purpose of the ACE legal action is to find out who is behind the Oha.to repository/bundle. In common with similar requests, it requires Cloudflare to hand over the personal identities of the people behind the website, including their names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information and account histories.

Whether Cloudflare will have any useful information to hand over is unclear but this is not the first time that ACE has gone after component services that allow ‘Watched’ to function.

As reported last November, ACE previously filed an application for a similar DMCA subpoena against the Tonic domain registry in an effort to discover the identities of the individuals behind Huhu.to.

This domain operates in a similar if not identical manner to Oha.to, in that people who use the ‘Watched’ app can enter the domain when prompted to supply a ‘bundle’ URL, prompting the ‘Watched’ app to do something useful. It’s unknown whether Tonic was able to provide any useful information in this case but the domain is fully functional at the time of writing.

The ACE application for DMCA subpoena can be found here ( 1 , 2 )

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.

With millions of daily users, Reddit is without a doubt one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

The community-oriented platform has “subreddits” dedicated to pretty much every topic one can think of, including several that are linked to online piracy and related issues.

A few years ago copyright holders paid little attention to these discussions. In 2017, the site ‘only’ removed 4,352 pieces of content in response to copyright holders’ complaints. Three years later, however, this number has skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands.

This surge in takedowns is highlighted in the social media platform’s latest transparency report, published just a few hours ago.

The company reports that it received a total of 86,866 takedown notices, which resulted in 375,774 pieces of content being removed. This is a 300% increase compared to the previous year.

While the number of takedown notices and removed content has skyrocketed, Reddit also rejected many complaints. Last year, the site decided not to remove roughly 27 percent of the 517,054 items that were flagged.

The reasons to reject takedown requests vary. The vast majority were duplicate requests, but Reddit also refused takedowns because an entire subreddit was targeted, the reported link wasn’t a Reddit URL, or simply because no infringement was found.

In addition to links and other content taken down, Reddit also reports how many users and subreddits were removed from the platform on copyright grounds. This typically happens when they are classified as repeat copyright infringers.

“We have a policy that includes the removal of any infringing material from the Services and for the termination, in appropriate circumstances, of users of our Services who are repeat infringers,” Reddit writes.

In 2020, Reddit removed 303 users following repeat copyright infringement complaints, which is a small increase compared to last year. The number of subreddits that were taken down under this policy saw nearly a fourfold increase, from 137 in 2019 to 514 last year.

In the past we have seen several instances of subreddits being removed for repeat copyright infringements, including /r/mmastreams . Other subreddits, such as /r/piracy, were repeatedly warned and had to clean house in order to survive.

Finally, Reddit also received several 143 counternotices from users who argued that their content had been removed without a proper reason. It’s not clear how many of these were reinstated.

All in all, copyright takedowns only result in a small fraction of all content that’s removed from the platform. In total, Reddit admins and moderators removed more than 225 million pieces of content for a variety of reasons.

—

The full 2020 transparent report, which also covers law enforcement requests, is available here

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

On 19 January 2012, the United States Department of Justice seized and shutdown Megaupload, a massive cloud-storage site founded by Kim Dotcom.

On the same day, Dotcom and several of his associates were arrested in New Zealand in a military-style raid on his rented mansion, carried out at the behest of US authorities. Ever since, the United States justice system has fought tooth and nail to have Dotcom, Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk extradited. That has proven difficult, to say the least.

Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object

Whether US or New Zealand authorities expected a monumental fightback from their targets is unknown. But that is exactly what they got. Rather than backing down, Dotcom’s defense team hasn’t given an inch, with every substantial claim challenged in minute detail, and every counterclaim met with the same determination.

As a result, New Zealand’s courts have been kept busy for more than nine years, expending resources on several cases – many involving extradition matters – that are still not over. But while the outcome of this entire process remains uncertain, there can be no doubt over the scale of financial resources poured into the prosecution of Kim Dotcom.

Until now, only estimates of the true costs involved have been aired in public but thanks to an Official Information Act request and data published by NZ Herald ( paywall ), the cost to New Zeland’s taxpayers thus far are now up for scrutiny.

New Zealand’s Bill is Substantial and Growing

Earlier estimates of a few thousand hours spent on various Dotcom-related cases seemed to be within reason. However, the latest published figures show that government lawyers have already spent 40,500 hours working on these cases over the past decade. Or, as NZ Herald frames it, if the lawyers had been working 40-hour weeks, the effort exerted would be 19 years and six months.

Worryingly, that’s not the entire financial picture either. The data shows that on top of the 40,500 hours of government lawyer time, extra costs including external legal work, airfares, and general administration, account for an additional NZ$3.6 million (US$2.6 million) in expenditure.

Allocation of Legal Resources

Government spending on the Megaupload matter reportedly began before Dotcom was even arrested. In preparing the case against him, Crown Law – the office that provides legal advice and representation services to the government – had already spent 432 hours working on the case. Then in 2012, 2013, and 2014, more than 7,000 hours were expended each year dealing with the fallout.

And the fallout has been huge. Dotcom’s cases have expanded into an interconnected web of complex processes, dealing with matters such as illegal spying by government agencies through to the extradition case itself. In 2011, Crown Law was prepared for two proceedings. Since then the tally has grown to almost two dozen.

Goliath versus…Goliath?

That a wealthy Pacific nation can afford to continue with expensive litigation over the course of a decade shouldn’t be a surprise but the fact that it is effectively up against the determination and resources of one man should be pause for thought.

Kim Dotcom has occasionally hinted at the scale of his legal bills since 2012, suggesting that they run into the tens of millions of dollars. How he has been managing to pay those bills after the authorities reportedly seized most of his assets isn’t completely clear but as recently as 2015, he was apparently “ broke and destitute ” and begging the courts for seized assets to be released.

Since then there has been little sign that Dotcom is struggling for cash, with his luxury lifestyle often portrayed on Twitter to the envy of many followers. How much he has spent on lawyers since 2012 isn’t revealed in the latest data but according to NZ Herald’s analysis, matching the New Zealand government’s expenditure would’ve cost Dotcom around NZ$25 million (US$18 million).

Not Over Yet

While Crown Law initially seemed somewhat unprepared for the expansive battle that eventually panned out, the office will have by now got the message that Dotcom isn’t one to back down. Despite all of the money spent on both sides to date, Dotcom is still entrenched in New Zealand and most probably will remain that way for years to come.

Meanwhile, Dotcom is as defiant as ever – both in court and on Twitter, of course.

40,000 hours wasted on this novel bullshit case which makes New Zealand look like an obedient colonial appendix defecating on their own rule of law in exchange for some “brownie points”. Embarrassingly dependent and spineless. But at least I don’t get Covid in New Zealand

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) February 16, 2021

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

While pirate streaming operations around the United States and Europe attract the most headlines, unlicensed IPTV and similar platforms are now mainstream in most parts of the world.

Authorities in the West are tackling this problem using quiet ‘behind-the-scenes’ agreements through to civil litigation and criminal enforcement. The situation in Asia is similar and over the past couple of weeks a number of cases have been made public.

Police in Taiwan Arrest Nine

As reported by Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA , authorities in Taiwan carried out an operation through the latter part of January and early February targeting what is described as a “criminal organization” involved in the supply of illegal streams. With assistance from the prosecutor’s office, police, and detective agencies, officers arrested nine people.

Taiwan established a dedicated team in early 2020 to tackle the illegal streaming of TV shows to pirate devices and since then 18 locations have been searched, resulting in the seizure of hundreds of set-top devices and computer servers. After analysis, it was found that some of the devices provided illegal access to broadcasts from Taiwan and Japan.

“It is believed that the criminal organization deciphered the broadcast signals of each major TV station through network servers installed in domestic telecommunications equipment rooms and sent them to infringing set-top devices via the Internet,” CODA reports.

Thai Police Raid Five Premises Linked to Illegal Streaming

Over the past several years Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has carried out numerous actions against individuals involved in the supply of pirate IPTV and similar streaming services.

Two Brits and a local were arrested in 2017 under suspicion of violating the rights of the Premier League and in 2019, DSI shut down the country’s most popular pirate site, Movie2free.com, following a request from the Motion Picture Association.

Last weekend, the DSI unit was in action again, raiding five premises linked to the illegal movie streaming. According to Pol Lt Col Korawat, among the items seized were 100 receivers, decoders, satellite dishes, computers, notebooks, hard disks and mobile phones. It’s believed that the equipment was used to supply pirated movies and TV content to the website fwiptv.cc. That site is currently down.

According to the Bangkok Post , the main players behind the streaming operation were not discovered during the raids and the authorities were only able to arrest technicians hired to run the operation.

Fwiptv.cc was reportedly founded in 2012 and was Thailand’s largest broadcaster of pirated movies and sport, including content owned by the Premier League.

Prosecution in Malaysia

Over in Malaysia, a company director behind the operation to supply ‘Long TV’ pirate TV devices to the public pleaded guilty on Monday. According to local reports, the individual was charged with selling the devices and breaching intellectual property rights last September.

“The company, located at I-City, Persiaran Multimedia, Section 7, Shah Alam, Selangor has violated Section 41(1)(ha) of the Copyright Act 1987 for selling any technology or device for the purpose of bypassing any effective technological measures stated under subsection 36A(3) of the same Act,” a statement from the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs reads.

According to the Ministry, the yet-to-be-named individual faces a fine of up to RM40,000 (around US$9,900) and a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Educational Initiatives in Japan

Last August, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, a body of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, hired Hello Kitty to become its Copyright Ambassador. Since then, local anti-piracy group CODA has been releasing educational content featuring the famous character in an effort to keep people away from sources of pirated content.

Masaharu Ina, CODA’s Director of Overseas Copyright Protection, recently sent TorrentFreak a new video to promote compliance with Japan’s brand new anti-piracy law along with a Hello Kitty quiz designed to test people’s knowledge of copyright.

The video is embedded below and the quiz can be found here .

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

More than three years ago, Epic Games decided to take several Fortnite cheaters to court, accusing them of copyright infringement.

Pretty much all of these lawsuits have been settled but there is one that proved to be quite a challenge.

One of the alleged cheaters, who was also accused of advertising and distributing the cheat via his YouTube channel, turned out to be a minor. The game publisher wasn’t aware of this when it filed the lawsuit, but the kid’s mother let the company know in clear terms.

Mother Intervenes

“This company is in the process of attempting to sue a 14-year-old child,” the mother informed the court back in 2017.

The letter was widely publicized in the press but Epic Games didn’t back off. Due to his young age, the Carolina District Court ordered that the kid, who operated the “Sky Orbit” YouTube channel, should only be referred to by his initials C.R. The case itself continued, albeit slowly.

Since C.R. didn’t retain an attorney or otherwise respond in court, Epic filed a motion for default judgment. The court didn’t accept this right away, however, instead deciding that the mother’s letter should be treated as a motion to dismiss the case.

Among other defenses, the mother highlighted that the EULA, which the game publisher relies heavily upon in the complaint, isn’t legally binding. The EULA states that minors require permission from a parent or legal guardian, which was not the case here.

Default judgments Denied

The court reviewed these arguments but concluded that they were not sufficient to dismiss the case. After that ruling things went quiet. Neither C.R. nor his mom responded, which prompted Epic Games to file another motion for default judgment, which was also denied.

According to the court, it is not allowed to order default judgments against minors who haven’t been represented. That brought the case back to square one, and Epic Games saw no other option than to ask the court to appoint a guardian to represent C.R. This request was granted in the summer of 2019.

Settlement Agreement

This strategy eventually paid off and it brought all parties together again. After more than three years, Epic Games and C.R have agreed to settle the case.

The legal paperwork doesn’t reveal any details regarding the outcome. Epic Games specifically asked to keep the agreement out of the public eye, to protect C.R. who hasn’t turned 18 yet.

“In this case, the minor Defendant’s privacy interests outweigh the public interest to access,” Epic Games informed the court (pdf) .

“There is no proper purpose or public service that could be achieved by public disclosure of the private details of the settlement agreement – rather, the minor could be exposed to public scrutiny and unfairly disadvantaged as a result.”

Money Isn’t a Motive

Since C.R. previously continued promoting cheats on YouTube while the lawsuit was active, we assume that the settlement will strictly forbid this type of activity going forward.

A large settlement sum seems unlikely, as previous cases have shown that the games developer isn’t trying to financially ruin its targets. The company is mainly interested in preventing them from cheating in the future.

At the time of writing, the court has yet to officially approve the settlement publicly. The docket lists an order dated today, but that’s sealed and not available to outsiders.

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

After years of battling peer-to-peer sharing carried out on networks including BitTorrent, the major record labels now view stream-ripping as the major piracy threat.

Broadly speaking, stream-ripping is carried out in two ways – either by using tools such as youtube-dl (which allow users to rip content from YouTube directly to their machines) or via dedicated websites that simplify the process. Some of these sites have become extremely popular, attracting the attention of the labels on the way.

Application For Injunction – Stream-Ripping

For well over a decade, entertainment industry companies have appeared in the High Court of England and Wales demanding that the UK’s leading ISPs block access to torrent and streaming sites. If the major record labels have their way, the same will soon apply to stream-ripping sites too.

This week a group of record labels under the umbrella of the British Recorded Music Industry Ltd (BPI) and Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) appeared at the High Court demanding that six major Internet service providers (including BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk, EE and Plusnet) should block access to eight stream-ripping sites.

“On 3 February 2021, the High Court in London held an online hearing for a new set of website blocking cases, brought by the BPI to help reduce music piracy in the UK,” BPI General Counsel, Kiaron Whitehead informs TorrentFreak.

“The judge, Mr Justice Miles, has reserved his judgment and so we await receiving his ruling, and his written reasons for it, in due course.”

As the Judge is yet to render his decision, the BPI doesn’t want to go into too much detail at this legally sensitive stage, including by naming the plaintiffs and the sites being targeted. Nevertheless, we have been able to independently confirm some of the action’s key details.

According to the labels – which include Warner, Sony, and Capitol Records – 2conv.com, flvto.biz, 2Convert.net, H2Converter.com, H2Download.org, Flv2mp3.by, Flvtool.com and Ytbapi.com are sites that help users to rip music from sites like YouTube, in breach of the labels’ copyrights.

2conv and flvto.biz are already being sued by major labels in the United States and H2Converter has appeared on the EU’s ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’.

Notably, several of the targeted ripping sites are already blocked by ISPs in Australia following successful legal action by Sony, Universal, and Warner, with assistance from Music Rights Australia and the Australasian Performing Right Association.

Stream-Rippers ‘Authorize’ Users’ Piracy

TorrentFreak understands that this week’s application was made under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 . This allows the High Court to grant an injunction against a service provider, where that service provider has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright.

The labels told the Court that since content uploaded to YouTube is generally licensed to be streamed via the site, people who download the labels’ tracks to their machines are making unlicensed (pirated) copies.

By extension, the labels argued that since the stream-ripping platforms authorize and facilitate the creation of those pirate copies contrary to the Copyright Act, they too can be held liable for users’ infringement.

While these arguments will be assessed on their merits in respect of the labels’ copyrights, the sites in question appear to be general tools that can be used to download content to which none of the labels hold the copyrights. Whether this aspect will be investigated by the Judge remains to be seen. It certainly didn’t prevent the sites from being blocked in Australia.

What we do know is that opposition won’t arrive in the form of objections by the ISPs. The service providers say they won’t oppose the application but do want to provide input should Justice Miles grant the application, presumably so they can protect their interests at the blocking stage.

Second Application For Injunction – Cyberlocker

In a second application for injunction reported by Law360 , the labels want the same ISPs to block access to cyberlocker site Nitroflare.com.

Record company lawyer Edmund Cullen of Maitland Chambers told the Court that Nitroflare could potentially claim safe harbor under the UK’s electronic commerce regulations but in this case, protection from liability isn’t available.

“This is not a provision designed or available to a service like Nitroflare which is essentially structured for infringement and it can’t be a protection for pirates,” Cullen said, alleging that Nitroflare encourages its users to store and share copyrighted content.

At this stage it is not known when Justice Miles will render his decision.

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

Internet provider Charter Communications is one of several companies being sued for turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers .

The cases, filed by dozens of major record labels and music companies, allege that Internet providers fail to terminate accounts of repeat infringers.

Stakes Are High

These lawsuits are serious business. In 2019, for example, a jury found Cox liable for the infringements of its customers, awarding a billion dollars in damages to several record labels. This decision was confirmed recently but will be appealed.

With the stakes this high, the lawsuit against Charter is being fought tooth and nail by both sides. The ISP has already fought back, arguing that the record label’s takedown notices were abusive and misleading. That effort failed and meanwhile, tensions remain high.

With the trial getting closer the focus has shifted on the core accusations. Over the past two weeks, that resulted in an interesting standoff over P2P piracy including BitTorrent, and whether that is still a problem for the music industry.

P2P is No Longer a Problem

The origin of this issue dates back to a hearing last year over a discovery request from Charter. The ISP requested revenue details from the music companies, with a specific interest in streaming income in recent years.

According to Charter’s attorney Erin Ranahan, this information would be relevant to determine the scale of potential damages, if the ISP is found liable. When P2P piracy is no longer a big issue, the amount could be lower from a deterrence perspective.

While making this argument, the attorney stated that P2P piracy is indeed no longer an issue. Not just that, with help from ISPs the music companies now make lots of money from streaming.

“And just to give you some background, the snippet of time in which this case involves, because of the total length in the claim period, is a time when this P2P issue was at its most pronounced. Today it’s no longer a problem,” Ranahan said.

“Today plaintiffs’ clients are making a ton of money off of the Internet streaming capabilities […]. Charter’s Internet is actually giving them a vehicle by which they make a huge amount of money.”

Music Companies Demand P2P Evidence

This argument wasn’t well-received by the music companies. While other piracy threats may be more prevalent than P2P piracy, they still see it as a major problem.

To back this up with data, the companies sent a series of new requests to Charter asking for information. They want to show that P2P piracy is still a problem and that Charter financially benefits from this infringing activity.

Among other things, Charter was asked to share extensive logs of infringement notices, internal discussions about copyright infringement, as well as monthly revenue statements linked to alleged pirates.

The music companies argue that they need this information to rebut Charter’s claim that P2P piracy is no longer a problem. The ISP could use this claim as a defense during the trial, they fear.

Request Denied, For Now

Charter refused to provide the information and pointed out that the court already denied a similar request in the past. During a hearing two weeks ago, the Special Master agreed with the ISP and denied discovery.

The record labels are not letting the issue go that easily though. This week they were back in court, objecting to the denial. They note that the current request is not related to earlier queries, but is specifically tailored to address the P2P problem comment, which is ‘new’.

“Plaintiffs should be permitted this limited discovery to rebut Charter’s argument that peer-to-peer piracy is no longer a phenomenon to which Charter contributes and which contribution must be deterred,” they argue, hoping to reverse the earlier denial.

The request was submitted a few days ago and the Colorado federal court has yet to decide whether it will reconsider its position or not.

—

A copy of the music companies’ objection to the Special Master’s order denying discovery is available here (pdf)

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

Back in 2014, the MPAA made its usual ‘notorious markets’ submission to the USTR and among regular targets such as The Pirate Bay and Popcorn Time, the Hollywood group highlighted the activities of China-based YYeTs.com.

At the time, the site – which is also known as Renren Yingshi – was described as the most popular dedicated download site for copyrighted content in China, providing links in various formats, including for the popular Xunlei and BitTorrent clients. It rose to fame after being founded in 2004 by a group of Chinese students living in Canada.

Notably, the site was also called out for offering crowd-sourced Chinese subtitles for Western content, something that helped boost infringement of US-made movies and TV shows. On the other hand, it allowed local users to easily consume otherwise unavailable content, to the disappointment of both Hollywood and the Chinese government, albeit for different reasons.

Chinese Government Takes Action

On November 22, 2014, visitors to YYeTs and another subtitle-focused site, Shooters.cn, found the platforms in considerable trouble. With Shooters announcing its immediate closure, YYeTs said that it would be offline for a while, ostensibly to “clean up” its site. State-run news services indicated that the sites had been targeted for infringing the rights of foreign companies.

YYeTs somehow managed to survive, as it had done previously following similar enforcement action in 2010. This week, however, it became clear that the site is under pressure once again after being targeted by local police.

According to local media reports, police in Shanghai arrested 14 people under suspicion of being involved in the operations of YYeTs/Renren Yingshi, which was recently reported to have eight million registered users.

“Investigations showed that the suspects set up several companies engaging in the distribution, operation and maintenance of the ‘Renren Yingshi’ mobile app and a related web portal by setting up or leasing servers in China or overseas since 2018,” the People’s Daily reported Wednesday.

It’s believed that those arrested in this week’s operation systematically downloaded movies and TV shows from pirate websites located outside China, added subtitles, and distributed the captioned videos from their own servers in breach of copyright.

Specific dates for the arrests haven’t been circulated in the media. But, in mid-January, there were several reports that China-based pirate sites had closed their doors to new members. It’s likely those precautionary measures were linked to the current arrests.

A report from SCMP notes that China has hundreds of subtitling sites similar to Renren Yingshi that originally used volunteer translators. Over time, however, site operators have chosen to hire translators to generate Chinese subtitles for foreign movies and TV shows, paying around $60 per video.

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