Music piracy has been around for decades and there are no signs that it will disappear anytime soon.

While legitimate subscription streaming services are commonplace today, some people prefer to download or rip music instead; particularly people with limited financial means. That’s a problem for labels and music publishers alike.

According to the RIAA, the U.S. economy loses billions of dollars annually due to piracy. This estimate is difficult to prove, of course, but ‘lost’ revenues are not the only concern. Specialized pirate sites and services frequently feature pre-release leaks too.

These leaks frustrate labels and artists and not just for financial reasons. Many musicians work months if not years on their tracks; seeing these being paraded on pirate sites, before their official release, stings.

Warner’s World-class Anti-Piracy Unit

Warner Music Group is well aware of the leak vulnerability. The company has taken action against various piracy threats in the past and, outside the public eye, the music company is building a dedicated anti-piracy unit.

The unit in question is not mentioned on Warner’s official site, but it did appear in a recent job offering, where Warner Music is looking for an Anti-Piracy/Content Protection coordinator.

“We’re looking for someone who thrives on searching the depths of the internet to find when and where unreleased music first pops up. We want someone to help our artists maintain control of their release plans.”

“This person will be the next piece in building a world-class anti-piracy unit,” Warner Music adds.

To find out more about the scope and goals of this team, we reached out to Warner Music directly. However, the company didn’t immediately respond to our inquiry. Luckily, the job description itself provides some more background.

Tracing Leaks & Spotting Pirates

The anti-piracy coordinator role is quite broad. It involves protecting digital and physical releases as well as merchandise. These protection efforts are in part guided by release schedules. After all, new releases have the most value, and deserve stellar protection.

Within releases there is also a priority ranking. The anti-piracy coordinator is expected to communicate these high-priority releases with third-party anti-piracy services, so these can tailor their takedown efforts accordingly.

The position also requires some familiarity with piracy services, and accompanying research capabilities. It involves managing leak alerts, as well as discovering new piracy platforms and services that pose a threat.

The job offering provides the following examples of typical work that the anti-piracy coordinator has to carry out.

– Monitor and protect all forms of Warner Music Group’s intellectual property
– Work with our label partners on priority release schedules
– Coordinate priority releases on a weekly basis with third-party anti-piracy services
– Receive and create leak alerts for infringing uploads
– Discover new platforms that infringe on WMG’s intellectual property
– Contribute to a growing team of global content protection specialists

Artificial intelligence isn’t mentioned once. That makes sense, as it’s not typically associated with piracy, but more with general copyright infringement, which is likely handled by the broader legal department.

Requirements

The job application provides a rough idea of what the anti-piracy unit does, but it’s likely just a fraction of its full scope. The required skills for the job don’t give away anything either and are quite mundane.

Candidates need a “strong attention to detail”, “work well independently”, have “excellent written and oral communication skills” and comfort with Word, Excel and PowerPoint-type software. A college degree and some anti-piracy experience would be a bonus.

For anyone interested, the job listing is still open and can be accessed through Warner Music Group’s official website.

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

The Canadian Government is no stranger to having its copyright policies critiqued.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), for example, has repeatedly placed its northern neighbor on a “ watch list ” because it fails to properly deter piracy, and then the EU followed suit .

To tackle copyright concerns, Canada has made several changes to its laws in recent years. Rightsholders can also obtain pirate site blocking injunctions at Federal Court but despite these developments, many rightsholders remain dissatisfied.

U.S. Copyright Groups Call Out Canada

This week, the IIPA put a spotlight on these alleged shortcomings in a submission to the USTR. The alliance, which is made up of various industry groups including the MPA, RIAA, and AAP, submitted its remarks as part of the ‘Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity’ ( APEP ) review.

This U.S. Government-enabled process allows third parties to share their concerns about the participating countries, which include Chile, Mexico, Peru and other American countries, such as Canada.

“APEP represents a critical opportunity to improve copyright protection and enforcement in the region, which would support APEP’s mission by strengthening regional competitiveness and integration and fostering shared prosperity and good governance,” IIPA writes

The list of issues highlighted by IIPA is long so for the purpose of this article, our focus is on Canada. According to IIPA’s submission, rampant piracy in Canada is a roadblock that prevents legal entertainment services from reaching their full potential in the country.

“Canada’s legitimate digital marketplace for copyright materials remains hampered by widespread infringement,” IIPA notes.

The association mentions a wide variety of piracy threats including stream-rippers, pirate streaming sites, pirate IPTV services, download portals, resellers of pirate services, devices, and apps, among others.

Online Piracy Haven

These types of comments are not new. In recent years, lawmakers have updated portions of the law to strengthen protection, but Canada does not blindly accept all suggestions. For example, it previously pushed back at such complaints, describing them as “flawed” and “one-sided” .

As a result, Canada remains on the USTR’s copyright protection “watch list” and IIPA still sees plenty of room for further improvement.

IIPA is pleased with Canada’s site blocking progress but the remaining list of “urgent and longstanding problems” shows that not all demands have been met. The U.S. rightsholders signal weak enforcement and a lack of legal incentives to combat piracy among the key issues.

“The country has made some progress in shedding its reputation as an online piracy haven, but too many Canadian Internet businesses allow their services to be abused by pirate operators, highlighting the fact that interindustry cooperation must be a priority.

“The Canadian government at all levels continues to allocate insufficient resources and strategic priority to the enforcement of copyright laws, especially online,” IIPA adds.

Copyright Industry Wishlist

The list of reported problems is long. Luckily, however, IIPA has made a bullet point overview of the key action points for Canada’s Government; this starts with prioritizing anti-piracy enforcement.

“Prioritize enforcement against online piracy (including stream ripping), the operation and sale of subscription piracy services, and the trafficking in [piracy devices], apps, and circumvention software tools and modification services,” the first bullet point reads.

This increase in enforcement will require additional law enforcement resources and training which, ideally, should be readily available to properly combat piracy.

“Provide the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Crown Prosecutors, and local law enforcement with the resources and training required to implement enforcement priorities,” IIPA suggests.

In addition to going after infringing sites, services, and apps, third-party intermediaries should also be ‘incentivized’ to take action. While it’s not spelled out, this hints at potential liability for online service providers, if they don’t cooperate voluntarily.

“Counter online piracy in Canada by strengthening legal incentives for Internet service providers (ISPs), hosting providers, and all other intermediaries to cooperate with copyright owners, in accordance with international best practices,” IIPA writes.

The overview above shows that the suggestions don’t stop at fighting pirate sites and services directly.

IIPA would also like to get rid of the fair-dealing copyright exception for educational institutions. Moreover, Bills C-244 and C-294, which give the public more freedom to circumvention of a technological protection measures, should be rejected.

Whether the U.S. Trade Representative will pick up any of these suggestions has yet to be seen. That said, rightsholders are sending a clear signal that they are not pleased with Canada’s approach to its copyright challenges.

More Countries, More Concerns

IIPA’s concerns don’t stop at the northern border. Southward, there is room for other APEP countries to update their laws and heighten local anti-piracy priorities.

For example, Mexico is encouraged to develop and adopt a high-level national anti-piracy program, that will help to target large online piracy operations in the country. Colombia, meanwhile, should implement a specialized copyright enforcement training program for judges and law enforcement.

In Chile, where lawmakers are working on an overhaul of the constitution, IIPA suggests that strong copyright protection and enforcement should be a priority. At the same time, Chile should make it possible for ISPs to be held liable for copyright infringement.

“Improve and update Chile’s legal framework for ISP liability and online copyright enforcement significantly to foster the development of a healthy digital marketplace,” the rightsholders write.

A full overview of IIPA’s comments and suggestions, submitted as part of the USTR’s ‘Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity’ efforts, is available here (pdf) .

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

When today’s home video gaming market took its first tentative baby steps thanks to more affordable hardware in the early 1980s, the details of Sony’s lawsuit against Datel would’ve been dismissed as outrageous.

This was a time of experimentation; one that thrived on the energy of pushing unimaginably incapable hardware by today’s standards, to perform in unexpected ways that often exceeded manufacturers’ expectations. In some cases, that included being able to run half-decent games, or even games at all.

Sony Wins Early But Cooler Heads Prevail

Software quite rightly receives protection under copyright law but in Datel, Sony wants a ruling that outlaws the modification of variables generated by software that only ever exist in RAM and form no part of the underlying copyrighted source code. Datel’s software simply ran alongside games like Motorstorm Arctic Edge, tweaking values in memory to modify how the game played.

In January 2012, the Hamburg Regional Court found largely in favor of Sony. The Court found that Datel’s software (Action Replay PSP and Tilt FX) intervened in the ‘program flow’ of Sony’s games and, by changing the flow, the original code was modified to create a derivative of Sony’s copyrighted game code.

The decision was overturned on appeal in 2021 and the case was dismissed. Sony appealed to the Federal Court of Justice which referred key questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling.

If Sony has its way and the protection software enjoys under the 2009 Computer Programs Directive is extended to transient variables in RAM, those who modify those variables – the users of tweaking software – would become direct infringers under copyright law. Creators of the software, in this case Datel, could be held secondarily liable.

Advocate General’s Opinion Nudges Case in the Right Direction

Advocate General Szpunar’s published opinion is not binding and the CJEU could ultimately decide on its own path.

The challenge, should one exist, would be to dismiss AG Szpunar’s conclusions as anything other than legally sound, impeccably researched, and flawlessy logical.

“[T]he value of the variables is not an element of a computer program’s code. They are merely data, external to the code, which the computer produces and reuses when running the program,” he writes.

“Those data do not exist at the moment that the program is created by its author or when it is loaded into the computer’s memory, since they are generated only while the program is running. They are therefore not such as to enable the program – or even a part of it – to be reproduced.”

Variables Are Not Creative Works

According to case law, the protection conferred by Directive 2009/24 is limited to source code and object code, both of which satisfy the criterion of originality set out in Article 1(3). Variables in RAM, on the other hand, do not satisfy the criterion of originality.

The variables are not the author’s own intellectual creation, AG Szpunar points out. On the contrary, the variables are the result of progress made in the game, and a direct result of the player’s behavior.

“It is indeed true that the author designed the categories of the variables that are recorded as well the rules whereby their value is determined in the course of the game. However, that value itself escapes the author’s creative control, since it is necessarily dependent on factors which cannot be foreseen in advance, such as the player’s behavior. That value therefore cannot enjoy copyright protection.”

Noting that the variables are “transitory, temporary and provisional,” and “often reset to zero” when a program is next run, the variables fail to meet the threshold for copyright protection since they cannot be identified with “sufficient precision and objectivity.”

More Restrictions, More Money

AG Szpunar’s opinion is lengthy, technical, and at times quite challenging to absorb. The blame for that sits squarely with Sony, whose mental gymnastics appear laser-focused on what it needs to win the case, and oblivious to almost everything else.

It’s perhaps telling that various intellectual property law firms commenting on the opinion are noting the AG’s advice, while also advancing theories that generated variables in RAM could reasonably be considered part of the overall creative package.

When work for companies like Sony pays the bills, advocating for greater restrictions on existing freedoms doesn’t lead to less business, let’s put it that way. That the opposite is being argued in legal matters relating to output from generative AI, is certainly interesting, if nothing else.

AG Szpunar’s Conclusion

Ultimately, AG Szpunar draws the following conclusion:

Article 1(1) to (3) of Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs must be interpreted as meaning that the protection conferred by that directive pursuant to that provision does not extend to the content of the variables which the protected computer program has transferred to the RAM of the computer and uses in running it, in the situation in which another program operating at the same time as the protected computer program changes that content, without however the object code or the source code of the latter program being changed.

Full opinion available here

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

With dozens of millions of monthly visits, Animeflix positioned itself as one of the most popular anime piracy portals.

The site also has an active Discord community of around 35k members, who actively participate in discussions, art competitions, even a chess tournament.

Target: Animeflix

While rightsholders take no offense at these side-projects, the site’s core business was streaming pirated videos. That hasn’t gone unnoticed; last December Animeflix was listed as one of the shutdown targets of anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Whether these early enforcement efforts were responsible for the site’s closure is unclear. In May, rightsholders increased the pressure through the High Court of India, obtaining a broad injunction that effectively suspended Animeflix’s main domain name ; Animeflix.live.

This follow-up action didn’t seem to hurt the site too much. It simply moved to new domains, Animeflix.gg and Animeflix.li, informing its users that the old domain name had become “unavailable”.

Animeflix Shuts Down

Yesterday, the site became unreachable again, initially returning a Cloudflare error message. This time, the domain wasn’t the problem but, for reasons unknown, the team decided to shut down the site without prior notice.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix. After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years.

“Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms,” the Animeflix team adds.

The Animeflix team doesn’t provide any insight into its reasoning, but it’s clear that keeping a site like that online isn’t without challenges. And, when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role.

It’s clear that rightsholders were keeping an eye on the site, and were actively seeking out options to take it offline. That might have played a role in the shutdown decision but without more information from the team, we can only speculate.

Coincidence?

There is an interesting coincidence that’s worth mentioning. At least in part, Animeflix was apparently hosted by the Hungarian company ServerAstra. This is the same host previously used by MagnetDL, before it mysteriously went offline last week.

Both sites were hosted on the same AS, along with many similar sites. This doesn’t have to mean anything at all, but it does stand out.

Whatever the reason, the end result is the closure of Animeflix. This is a fate that many pirate sites will ultimately face, including the original Animeflix, which went offline several years ago .

Given the popularity of the Animeflix brand, it’s likely that the name will be recycled once more, scooped up by a new team that dares to fill the void.

Needless to say, many users are disappointed to see their favorite anime portal gone. Rightsholders, however, might be throwing a party, before they move on to one of the many anime pirate sites that remain out there.

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

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment ( ACE ), arguably the world’s most active anti-piracy coalition, is backed by dozens of major rightsholders.

The group is largely managed by the Motion Picture Association, which has requested many DMCA subpoenas on its behalf over the past few years.

New Subpoena Round

After the MPA’s former Chief of Global Content Protection Jan Van Voorn left for a new opportunity , ACE went quiet on the subpoena front. The legal requests were always signed by Van Voorn, so someone else had to fill this role going forward. But who?

The answer arrived late last week when several new subpoena requests were docketed at a California federal court. The requests are similar to those seen before, now signed by Dani Bacsa, MPA’s Deputy Chief of Content Protection.

Through the subpoenas, ACE asks Cloudflare and the .To domain registry (Tonic) for information related to several domain names. These targets can be broadly divided into three groups – streaming sites, apps, and IPTV services – some with dozens of millions of monthly visits.

Pirate Streaming Sites

Anime site Anitaku is the most prominent target, with more than 125 million visits between March and May. However, other sites such as Goojara and Kickassanime have no traffic shortage either.

The subpoenas target a total of 17 pirate streaming site domains. ACE and the MPA hope that, through their requests for information, they can learn more about the identities and whereabouts of the operators.

Piracy Apps and IPTV

In addition to streaming sites, ACE has also listed domain names of websites that offer downloads to dedicated piracy apps including ‘Gold Core App’, ‘Live NetTV’, ‘RedPlay’ and ‘MagisTv’.

In addition, the subpoenas include domain names of IPTV portals such as Atlaspro, Newtelevision, and Honeybeeiptv. The latter is particularly popular in Singapore, where it’s one of the most visited sites in the Computers and Technology category.

As with the other sites and services, links to show how these domains match to infringing titles are included for each domain.

The goal of these proposed subpoenas is to require Tonic and Cloudflare to share identifying information on the users who maintain the associated accounts. That includes any names, physical addresses, IP addresses, e-mail addresses, payment information, and account histories.

Helpful, Not Perfect

Most operators of pirate sites and services know that ACE can obtain these DMCA subpoenas. They often preempt this by using false information. However, according to MPA’s Deputy Chief of Content Protection, Dani Bacsa, these efforts can still pay off.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Bacsa says that the subpoenas are part of a legal tool set used to unmask pirates behind mass-scale infringing services. The MPA can’t share its success rate, but subpoenaed information has been fruitful in multiple cases.

Ideally, ACE, MPA, and other rightsholder representatives would like intermediaries to verify their customers’ identities.

Without referring specifically to Cloudflare or Tonic, Bacsa confirms that it would be a positive step if online intermediaries adopted robust ‘Know Your Business Customer’ (KYBC) procedures.

“Applying a KYBC policy will also ensure legal compliance, enhance security, prevent fraud, and protect the intermediary’s reputation by verifying the legitimacy of its business customers and mitigating associated risks,” Bacsa concludes.

—

A full list of all targeted domains is available below. The associated paperwork can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ).

– vegamovies.to
– goojara.to
– supernova.to
– animesonlinecc.to
– anitaku.to
– ssoap2day.to
– anitaku.so
– braflix.video
– kickassanime.mx
– movieffm.net
– hdtodaytv.icu
– animepahe.com
– animepahe.org
– gogoanime.me
– soaper.tv
– soap2day.tf
– soap2day.qa
– vegamovies.to
– gold.coreplay.tv
– livenettv.bz
– redplaycard.com
– magistv.app
– atlaspro.tv
– atlaspro.io
– newtelevision.online
– best-usahosting.com
– honeybeeiptv.com

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

Mirror and clone sites were once deployed to keep popular sites alive as they imploded under the weight of their own popularity and ensuing traffic.

The strategy was famously deployed around Suprnova, one of the original torrent giants. Given how often the whole site went down, unable to cope with unprecedented success, in hindsight it was given an unintentionally appropriate name.

Today, some clone and mirror sites still exist for the same purpose but most fall off the end of a streaming site conveyor belt, to trade on the popularity of sites with known brands, generate confusion with similar domains, or both.

As a leading cybersecurity and anti-piracy vendor, Irdeto will be only too aware of the mirror and clone site phenomenon. Whether it expected its own website to be cloned and placed online is up for debate. As the owner of Denuvo, perhaps the most hated anti-piracy tech currently on the market, it probably didn’t come as a surprise.

DMCA Takedown Notice to GitHub

Irdeto’s DMCA notice was sent to GitHub on its own behalf, which probably doesn’t happen very often.

“We are writing to you from Irdeto B.V. (‘Irdeto’). We own the exclusive copyright to Irdeto.com and its related assets,” the notice begins.

Responding to GitHub’s request to identify the original copyrighted work that had allegedly been infringed, Irdeto pointed towards its own website.

“Irdeto.com and it’s related assets (such as text, website design, and images) is our copyrighted corporate website. The reported repositories have duplicated the Irdeto website code and assets. As this repository contains a direct copy of Irdeto.com, confirm that we own the copyright for all the contents within the repository.”

Cloned Sites Operating Under Two Domains

Irdeto goes on to claim that the owner of the infringing repos, described simply as “this individual” had attempted to impersonate Irdeto. One of the domains used in connection with the cloned website was Irdeto.fr but whether there was a broader plan isn’t revealed in the notice. That being said, the existence of a mail server quite rightly generated additional concern.

After identifying the repos to be removed, Irdeto requested a rapid takedown and action against the alleged culprit.

“We respectfully request that Github removes the infringing content expeditiously and suspends the user. If anything is preventing you from removing the reported content, please let us know what additional information is required,” the company wrote.

The first request was obviously granted by GitHub but whether it took any action against the user is unknown.

Unexpected

Suspended from GitHub or not, taking on a company like Irdeto has the potential to end quite badly. At the very least, there are much less risky targets, so who would choose to take on a corporation expecting to beat it at its own game?

Unable to resist a short look around, we began with basic questions; who owns Irdeto.fr, what other domains do they own, and why are WHOIS records nearly always frustrating?

Yet amazingly, not at all frustrating today. With no blanket of redactions, no wall-to-wall privacy service, Irdeto.fr seems like an image of openness.

Registered on January, 28, 2024, Irdeto.fr offers something most domains do not, personal information – or at least that’s what the information suggests it might be. Unwilling to fall into any mischief traps, or possible registration proxies, details redacted below.

With limited time, the next easy step was to find other domains registered by the same person. Using the email address listed for Irdeto.fr we ran a check and got another suspiciously easy hit.

The same email address is not only listed against another domain, but a .US domain, which are not usually redacted. This was no exception.

At this point completely out of time, we took that as a direct order. Almost certainly, Irdeto will not, despite 121K domains left to trawl.

Irdeto’s DMCA notice is available here

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

In little over five years, TorrentGalaxy has grown out to become a leading player in the torrent ecosystem.

The site originally set out to ‘ bridge the gap ‘ between torrent and streaming sites, but it became much more than that.

With a dedicated group of uploaders and an active community, TorrentGalaxy provided a safe haven for many avid torrenters. The disappearance of other key torrent sources, including the demise of RARBG last year, made TorrentGalaxy’s position as a torrent distribution portal increasingly important.

TorrentGalaxy Goes Offline

Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that users are disappointed when the site suffers downtime. When the downtime is accompanied by a somewhat cryptic message, alarm bells start to go off.

A few hours ago, TorrentGalaxy’s main website and mirrors suddenly displayed the following mysterious message.

“TGX is offline. Updates will be posted in case of any changes.”

This message doesn’t have to be alarming; the site may simply return in a few hours after some much-needed maintenance. In that case, however, “TGx is down for maintenance, updates will be posted when more information is available” would have been a more appropriate message.

IF

The wording of the current message suggests that TorrentGalaxy is offline, may not come back soon, and updates will only follow IF anything changes.

We have reached out to our contacts at the site asking for clarification. At the time of publication, we have yet to receive any response. If we hear anything new, this article will be updated accordingly.

In addition to the main TorrentGalaxy.to domain, all official mirrors and proxies are down as well. The domain name of the status page , which showed all mirrors and proxies, is currently parked. That’s not a positive sign for users either.

The TorrentGalaxy downtime is not only felt at the site itself. Since it also provides a steady flow of [TGx] releases to other torrent sites, it will be noticeable there as well. This includes the popular ‘TGxGoodies’ user at 1337x, whose releases have been halted for now.

The current downtime might be related to enforcement actions. TorrentGalaxy has been on the radar of anti-piracy groups for a long time and, earlier this year, the U.S. Trade Representative flagged it as one of the most notorious piracy sites .

With the information that’s available to us presently, we can do little more than speculate. However, we will keep an eye out for updates and changes in the coming hours and days.

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

In France, where laws were introduced with site-blocking and similar anti-piracy measures already baked in, entertainment giant Canal+ seems intent on taking full advantage.

Like similar broadcasters with lucrative sports rights to exploit, Canal+ has a subset of viewers who prefer to consume from pirate sources which charge much less, or even nothing at all.

To maximize its existing site-blocking efforts through local ISPs, the French broadcaster has now taken the logical, albeit controversial, next step on the site-blocking ladder.

DNS Tampering at the Local ISP Level

In 2023, Canal+ went to court in France to tackle pirate sports streaming sites including Footybite.co, Streamcheck.link, SportBay.sx, TVFutbol.info, and Catchystream.com. The broadcaster said that since subscribers of local ISPs were accessing the pirate sites using their services, the ISPs should prevent them from doing so.

When the decision went in favor of Canal+, ISPs including Orange, SFR, OutreMer Télécom, Free, and Bouygues Télécom, were required to implement technical measures. Since the ISPs have their own DNS resolvers for use by their own customers, these were configured to provide non-authentic responses to deny access to the sites in question.

In response, increasingly savvy internet users that hadn’t already done so, simply changed their settings to use different DNS providers – Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco – whose resolvers hadn’t been tampered with; at least not yet.

One More Step Up The Ladder: Public DNS Tampering

Use of third-party DNS providers to circumvent blocking isn’t uncommon so last year Canal+ took legal action against three popular public DNS providers – Cloudflare ( 1.1.1.1 ), Google ( 8.8.8.8 ), and Cisco ( 208.69.38.205 ), demanding measures similar to those implemented by French ISPs.

Tampering with public DNS is a step too far for many internet advocates but for major rightsholders, if the law can be shaped to allow it, that’s what will happen. In this case, Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code (active Jan 2022) seems capable of accommodating almost anything.

When there are “serious and repeated violations” by an “online public communication service” whose main objective is the unauthorized broadcasting of sports competitions, rightsholders can demand “all proportionate measures likely to prevent or put an end to this infringement, against any person likely to contribute to remedying it.”

Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco Ordered to Prevent Circumvention

Two decisions were handed down by the Paris judicial court last month; one concerning Premier League matches and the other the Champions League. The orders instruct Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to implement measures similar to those in place at local ISPs. To protect the rights of Canal+, the companies must prevent French internet users from using their services to access around 117 pirate domains.

According to French publication l’Informé , which broke the news, Google attorney Sébastien Proust crunched figures published by government anti-piracy agency Arcom and concluded that the effect on piracy rates, if any, is likely to be minimal.

Starting with a pool of all users who use alternative DNS for any reason, users of pirate sites – especially sites broadcasting the matches in question – were isolated from the rest. Users of both VPNs and third-party DNS were further excluded from the group since DNS blocking is ineffective against VPNs.

Proust found that the number of users likely to be affected by DNS blocking at Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco, amounts to 0.084% of the total population of French Internet users. Citing a recent survey, which found that only 2% of those who face blocks simply give up and don’t find other means of circumvention, he reached an interesting conclusion.

“2% of 0.084% is 0.00168% of Internet users! In absolute terms, that would represent a small group of around 800 people across France!”

Court Rejected Arguments Against Blocking

In common with other courts presented with the same arguments, the Paris court said the number of people using alternative DNS to access the sites, and the simplicity of switching DNS, are irrelevant.

Canal+ owns the rights to the broadcasts and if it wishes to request a blocking injunction, it has the legal right to do so.

The DNS providers’ assertion that their services are not covered by the legislation was also waved aside by the court.

Google says it intends to comply with the order. As part of the original matter in 2023, it was already required to deindex the domains from search results under the same law.

At least in theory, this means that those who circumvented the original blocks using these alternative DNS services, will be back to square one and confronted by blocks all over again.

Given that circumventing this set of blocks will be as straightforward as circumventing the originals, that raises the question of what measures Canal+ will demand next, and from whom.

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