Pirate site blocking is one of the entertainment industry’s favorite enforcement tools. In recent years, it’s become a common practice in many countries around the world.

In the Netherlands, it took over a decade for the first order to be approved. After detours through the Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice, the final order was issued in 2020, targeting The Pirate Bay .

With all the legal paperwork in order, the doors were open to more blocking requests, especially after rightsholders and local ISPs signed a covenant to streamline the process. If a court orders one company to block pirate sites, by agreement the other ISPs will follow suit.

After the initial Pirate Bay blockade, a follow-up order targeted YTS, EZTV and other torrent sites in 2022. Last year, Lookmovie and Flixtor were singled out in yet another case, despite a challenge to the ‘dynamic’ nature of these orders, which allows new domains to be added continuously.

Blocking Shadow Libraries

All blocking requests were submitted by local anti-piracy group BREIN , which acts on behalf of rightsholders. These include the major Hollywood studios but BREIN’s purview is much broader. Last week, it obtained the latest blocking order, this time on behalf of the publishing industry.

Issued by the Rotterdam District Court, the order requires a local Internet provider to block two well-known shadow libraries; “Anna’s Archive” and “Library Genesis” (LibGen).

News of this new court order was shared by BREIN which notes that both sites were found to make copyright infringing works available on a large scale. At the time of writing, a published copy is not available but, based on the covenant, all large Internet providers are expected to implement the blockades.

“These types of illegal shadow libraries are very harmful. The only ones who benefit are the anonymous owners of these illegal services. Authors and publishers see no return on their efforts and investments,” BREIN comments.

“Copyright holders deserve an honest living. There are numerous legal ways to obtain ebooks. If desired, this can also be done very cheaply; through the library for example.”

Dynamic Order

The Rotterdam court issued a so-called ‘dynamic’ blocking order, meaning that rightsholders can update the targeted domains and IP addresses if the sites switch to new ones in the future. This also applies to mirrors and increases the blockades’ effectiveness, as there is no need to return to court.

Previously, Internet provider KPN challenged these ‘dynamic’ orders, suggesting that they are too broad. The court rejected this argument, however, noting that the process hasn’t led to any major problems thus far.

BREIN further reports that Google is voluntarily offering a helping hand. As reported in detail previously , the search engine removes blocked domains from its local search results after being notified about an ISP blocking order.

“The effectiveness of the blocking measure is increased because Google cooperates in combating these infringements and, at the request of BREIN, completely removes all references to websites that are blocked by order of the Dutch court from the search results,” BREIN writes.

Elephant in the Room

The blockade of the two shadow libraries is a key victory for BREIN; Anna’s Archive and LibGen are the largest sites of their kind along with a similar platform, Z-Library. Interestingly, however, the latter is not part of this blocking order.

Z-Library is the target of an ongoing criminal investigation by the U.S. Government, an enforcement effort in which BREIN also played a role . It is not clear why the site isn’t part of the blocking request, however.

This ‘omission’ is notable considering the anti-piracy group’s earlier stance. After Z-Library’s initial shutdown, BREIN explicitly warned that it would obtain a court order to block Z-Library if it came back online.

Instead of going after Z-Library, BREIN’s latest blocking request targets two other shadow libraries. BREIN must have its reasons not to include Z-Library in this legal effort but the group didn’t immediately respond to our request for clarification.

Update: After publication BREIN explained that it focused on these two domains as they are seen as more popular than Z-Library. Z-Library is targeted by the U.S. but BREIN is planning to request a blockade in the future if the site stays online.

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

Pirate sites are frustrating rightsholders across all continent and many of them see website blocking as the solution.

In Ecuador, blocking measures are not new. Five years ago, the country’s National Intellectual Property Service was the first to order local Internet providers to block several domains of sports streaming site “Rojadirecta”.

These blockades were issued following a complaint from the local football league LigaPro . How effective the measure was is unknown, but the piracy problem didn’t disappear. On the contrary, pirate streaming services only appeared to gain more traction.

LigaPro Boss Celebrates Site Blocking Win

In recent months, LigaPro’s boss Miguel Angel Loor repeatedly drew attention to the ongoing problems. In common with his counterpart in Spain, Loor is determined to make progress on the anti-piracy front and, a few days ago, he reported a notable victory.

“HISTORICAL. For the first time in the history of Ecuador, LigaPro achieves an URGENT ACT that orders the imminent blocking of websites used for unauthorized broadcasting of [LigaPro] matches,” Loor writes .

The recent order targets 22 sports streaming domains, including sinfutboltv.com, librefutboltv.com, futbollibre.com, intergoles.co and jokerlivestream.co. The associated IP-addresses, many of which are shared Cloudflare addresses, are also listed. Blocking these outright can lead to trouble though, as we’ve seen in Italy .

Site blocking isn’t an entirely new concept in Ecuador, but this is the first time that the football league has obtained a court order of this kind. And it’s not going to be the last either, as LigaPro and its partners are determined to keep up the pressure.

“This fight has just begun and we are going to act with the full weight of the law to protect the most popular sport in Ecuador, from which thousands of families live,” Loor says.

Target: MagisTV

In recent weeks, the football league has taken a stand against various piracy services. In addition to the now-blocked sites, it singled out one major target that has yet to be addressed: pirate IPTV service MagisTV.

MagisTV is a popular IPTV service in Latin America, well-known for providing access to premium content for a small subscription fee. The platform has previously been branded a notorious piracy market by Hollywood’s MPA, who suggests that its operators are in China.

“MagisTV has become not just a distributor of infringing content, but also a brand: resellers can purchase credits from magistv.net for MagisTV-branded IPTV services, which they then resell in the form of monthly, quarterly, or yearly
subscriptions,” MPA wrote last October .

In addition to being featured by resellers, these brands typically rely on word-of-mouth promotion by their users. However, last month, a whole new audience was reached when MagisTV became the poster child of a new anti-piracy campaign.

Anti-Piracy Push Backfires?

Earlier this month, the BARCELONA S.C’s football team posed in front of a banner urging fans to ‘say no to MagisTV’, hoping to make an impact.

The plan on display here is that once fans learned about this illegal operation, they would stop using it. In reality, it also served as indirect promotion, making people aware of a ‘cheap’ piracy service they’d never previously heard of.

It’s hard to say what the net effect of the campaign was, but in response to LigaPro’s latest site-blocking announcement on X, several people replied with screenshots of their MagisTV setup.

“Thank you for the recommendation to use MagisTv, excellent service,” said one.

This example shows that simply telling people to stop using a service isn’t always the best strategy, and may even backfire. Nevertheless, Loor and his colleagues are determined to push on, promising a radical fight against pirate sites and services.

“The fight against piracy by the authorities against those who distribute or buy illegal content is going to be radical. Step by step we are going to go against all these Magis TV and other IPTV or signals that provide our content illegally,” Loor said earlier this month.

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

Being able to receive and impart knowledge and ideas with other people is one of the most important things any human will ever do.

The information shared or received won’t always be accurate, even if we believe it is. It might not be accurate even if it appears in several widely read online newspapers. All anyone really expects is a tiny effort to ensure that they aren’t being fed fabricated nonsense made up on the spot.

Apparently, even that’s too much to ask; illegal streaming detector cars , really?

Something Something PIRACY SHIELD WARNING

The image below shows how Google responds to a search for a very specific term. The search term ‘piracy shield’ relates to an anti-piracy system that enjoyed its full launch in Italy on February 2, 2024. We’ve written about Piracy Shield and the legislation supporting it on dozens of occasions, including numerous times in the last few weeks.

Of the available ‘Top Stories’ space, we get a quarter while the remaining 75% is allocated to three extremely popular, UK-focused publications, all of which expend considerable resources on SEO and here, tell exactly the same ‘story’.

While TorrentFreak’s regular readers will already know what Piracy Shield is , who built it and why , exactly how it functions from a technical perspective, and all of its ‘secret’ targets thus far , it’s likely that readers of the publications above were less aware of it.

After reading the articles, not much would’ve improved.

Stand By Brits, This Will End Illegal Streaming, FOREVER

The Piracy Shield system was donated by Italian football league Serie A to Italian telecoms regulator, AGCOM. The technical section of an Italian law firm worked on development, the system was accredited for use in Italy under Italian law, and is currently hard at work trying to block access to Italian content, in Italy.

That obviously leads seamlessly and not at all unnaturally to headlines like these.

Given these end-of-days headlines, some may have been comforted that the doom portrayed at the start of the articles had completely disappeared by the end.

From “the crackdown may stop games being streamed illegally for good” at the start, to variations on “there are no plans for a similar procedure to be adopted in the UK” at the end. That’s either the most miraculous recovery seen recently, or the textbook definition of clickbait.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter, because it’s still not entirely true. Or indeed true at all.

Anyone Remember The Premier League?

The Piracy Shield system in Italy exists in the main to block pirate sports streams, delivered by premium IPTV piracy platforms or those accessed via web-based streaming portals. To ensure the legality of blocking under Italian law, so-called ‘precautionary measures’ with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, i.e evasive action by pirates, are issued against pirate sites.

If these ‘dynamic injunctions’ and a Piracy Shield-type system turned up in the UK tomorrow, the scenarios outlined in the articles above definitely would not happen, and for very good reason.

Always Credit The Source

Dynamic injunctions for tackling live sports piracy were actually pioneered and developed in the UK, by none other than the Premier League.

In fact, in Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Telecommunications Plc & Ors. (2017/2018) , the High Court of England and Wales issued the first ever dynamic injunctions for tackling live sports in favor of the Premier League. Since then, such injunctions have been in constant force at ISPs around the country, season in, season out, controlled and executed by the by Premier League’s own system.

That’s six/seven years of experience for the Premier League. Piracy Shield launched four weeks ago.

Think of it like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur tries to use the Holy Grail as leverage over the master of a French castle, but is informed that the master probably won’t be interested since “he’s already got one.”

Or just make something up.

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

In a little over a week’s time, Italy’s Piracy Shield system will have been fully operational for two whole months.

Claims that IPTV piracy would be eliminated almost overnight helped to convince lawmakers that without Piracy Shield and the legislation that underpins it, Italian football could die.

In reality, the system was never capable of eliminating piracy and football in Italy was never on life support; the big question now is whether it’s performing close to predictions, or even having any effect at all.

Two Months of Dynamic Blocking

During a hearing Wednesday to review Piracy Shield’s performance after almost eight weeks in the trenches, AGCOM President Giacomo Lasorella provided data to show participation in the Piracy Shield platform, specifically the number of entities that filed applications and received accreditation.

Lasorella revealed that 314 requests have been received to date, including five relating to the main users of the platform; broadcasters DAZN, Sky (Comcast) and RTI (Mediaset Group), Serie A, and Serie B. The remaining 309 applications were received from the ISPs required by law to implement blocking instructions issued by Piracy Shield.

In its first full month of operations, the platform handled blocking instructions related to 11 precautionary measures, all of them issued to protect live sports: football from Serie A and Serie B, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and UEFA Europa Conference League, plus Formula 1, MotoGP, Eurocup Basketball, ATP and WTA tennis.

“In total from February 2 to March 3, 3,127 fully qualified domain names and 2,176 IP addresses were blocked,” Lasorella said, noting that figures are available to show IPs blocked each day.

“Obviously these blocks mainly appear when there are sporting events; they are definitely encouraging results which we say testify to the incisiveness of AGCOM’s action.”

The Measure of Success

Whether the nature of AGCOM’s reporting will change as blocking matures is unknown, but in common with other countries, success in Italy is expressed through the use of blocking data; essentially the number of IP addresses and domains blocked. That’s not entirely unexpected but as a measure of success, it’s almost completely meaningless.

The true measure of success isn’t the number of IP addresses blocked or domains rendered inaccessible, but the rate at which new customers sign up and/or remain loyal to legal broadcasting services.

The broadcasters, DAZN and Sky, for example, will already have the data for February, most likely accurate to a single subscriber. Without sight of that all-important data, AGCOM could block the entire internet and those figures would still mean nothing. The unlikely prospect of actually blocking the entire internet took a step closer in February, however.

AGCOM Addresses Over-Blocking Allegations

Following a blunder mid-February that saw an IP address belonging to Zenlayer CDN blocked in error , someone with accreditation to input IP addresses on behalf of rightsholders added one belonging to Cloudflare, with predictably disastrous results .

Those who expected an explanation or perhaps an apology, received something else entirely. During a TV appearance helpfully facilitated by TG24, a channel operated by key Piracy Shield user Sky, AGCOM’s commissioner stated categorically that there had been no blunders. Reports published by journalists at Wired and DDaY were described as “absolutely false” and the whole debacle found itself dismissed as “fake news”.

During the hearing Wednesday, AGCOM’s president conceded that there had indeed been some “critical operational issues” and even went on to explain what had happened.

“The problems we encountered essentially concern the need to discriminate the legal contents from the illicit ones that exist on the same platform. That is, there are platforms where there are legitimate sites and illicit sites together, and the law prescribes that the sites must be uniquely dedicated to, let’s say, the illicit contents.”

Pirates Using Devious Methods? Impossible, surely

The issue of shared IP addresses and the likelihood of overblocking was repeatedly raised by tech experts in the run-up to the new legislation being passed last year. Assurances that blocking ‘dual use’ IP addresses would be explicitly forbidden in the text, which would be strictly adhered to, eventually led to a prediction that was only 50% accurate.

According to Lasorella, however, this is a trap being laid by pirates.

“Subjects addicted to piracy are increasingly using so-called Content Delivery Networks, CDNs. Content Delivery Networks by their nature may not be uniquely intended for activities therefore licit and illicit appear together,” Lasorella said.

“On the same IP address used for the violation of copyright can exist a perhaps fictitious domain that spreads legitimate content and this evidently prevents this address from being obscured.”

Or in Cloudflare’s case last month, evidently not.

Lasorella confirmed that one of the accredited reporters uploaded a ticket to the Piracy Shield platform which contained a Cloudflare IP address. Since legitimate and illegitimate sites shared the same IP, all found themselves blocked. AGCOM’s president said everything was sorted out “in a couple of hours” but from online reports, a minimum of four hours seems closer to events on the ground.

Potential Showdown With Cloudflare, Google

While describing events of that Saturday a few weeks ago, Lasorella mentioned that a Cloudflare IP address had been blocked and then took the opportunity to state that Cloudflare is “always more involved in these proceedings” due to its provision of DNS and VPN services “that actually facilitate online copyright violations.”

Google also received a mention; the company seems prepared to work with AGCOM to deindex pirate sites that appear in reports uploaded to Piracy Shield, but at the moment has not “considered being accredited” to the platform.

“Google has confirmed its intention not to intervene on its DNS through a local block,” Lasorella said.

It’s a little early to predict how this situation will play out but after blocking Cloudflare last month, following repeated warnings, even from Cloudflare itself , AGCOM has a side order of “we told you so” to contend with. That’s in advance of a starter being prepared right now.

In an email sent out to all customers affected by the erroneous blocking last month, Cloudflare is now encouraging users to file an official complaint with AGCOM. The stated aim is to “expand government awareness” of the collateral damage caused by IP blocking in the hope that will prevent overblocking in the future.

AGCOM already seems fully aware of the risks but, as a completely impartial regulator, must also weigh the interests of football against the interests of everyone else. Its response to these letters may prove informative.

Blocking of [website redacted] via the Piracy Shield Platform

On Saturday, February 24, 2024, a Cloudflare IP address was blocked in Italy through the Italian government’s Piracy Shield system. As a result of this action, Internet users in Italy were unable to access tens of thousands of websites. Although the block was removed within hours because of the number of innocent sites affected, we have identified your website as one that appears to have been temporarily blocked.

The Italian Media Regulator (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, AGCOM) provides interested parties, including the managers of websites and pages, the right to lodge a complaint about blocks implemented through the Piracy Shield Program. Cloudflare believes it is important to document the collateral damage caused by IP blocking in order to expand government awareness of the risks of the practice and hopefully prevent future overblocking. If you would like to submit a complaint, you can submit your own complaint to tavoloantipirateria@agcom.it and agcom@cert.agcom.it, as laid out on the AGCOM website.

To assist you, we have prepared the below template email, in both English and Italian, that may be used to submit your complaint to AGCOM:

Template email to AGCOM:

Re: Blocking of [website] via the Piracy Shield platform

We write to file a complaint regarding the blocking action ordered by the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM) of IP address 188.114.97.7 on Saturday, February 24, which rendered our website [redacted] inaccessible to Internet users in Italy. While we understand that the blocking order under AGCOM’s Piracy Shield was intended to prevent copyright infringement, our website does not infringe copyright and has never been accused of copyright infringement.

We formally complain about this action and request that AGCOM take immediate steps to prevent any future blocking of our website and other innocent websites.

Re: Provvedimenti di blocco Piracy Shield / blocco del sito [website redacted]

Scriviamo per presentare un reclamo in merito al blocco ordinato dall’Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, sabato 24 febbraio 2024, dell’indirizzo IP 188.114.97.7 24, che ha reso il nostro sito web [redacted] inaccessibile agli utenti Internet in Italia. Pur comprendendo che l’ordine di blocco previsto da “Piracy Shield” di AGCOM era finalizzato a prevenire la violazione del diritto d’autore, segnaliamo che il nostro sito web non viola il diritto d’autore e non è mai stato accusato di simili illeciti.

Ci doliamo formalmente di questa iniziativa e chiediamo che AGCOM voglia prendere provvedimenti immediati per prevenire qualsiasi futuro blocco del nostro sito e di altri siti web conformi alla legge.

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

Most anti-piracy tools and mechanisms, whether dedicated online platforms or legislation crafted to achieve a particular goal, have issues that affect their performance.

No matter how tough, legislation could be of date when finally implemented, or reveal itself to be unwieldy in practice, too costly, or simply ineffective. Technical solutions may face compliance and regulatory issues, while pirate adversaries remain light on their feet by ignoring them all.

One key to success for rightsholders is to exploit pirates where they’re most vulnerable, i.e anywhere where they’re reliant on services operated by businesses that already comply with the law and are more likely to take action.

The European Commission’s Recommendation (Toolbox) published on Tuesday, focuses on just that by providing guidance on enforcement, suggesting priority actions, and encouraging use of existing anti-counterfeit/anti-piracy tools.

Cooperation, Coordination and Information Sharing

The Commission says a key aim of the Toolbox is to promote and facilitate effective cooperation between rightsholders, providers of intermediary services, and competent authorities, by promoting good practice and use of appropriate tools and new technologies.

The headline focus is anti-counterfeiting but within the text the EC notes that “most guiding principles, good practices and tools” developed under the recommendation can also be relevant when tackling pirated content online. In particular, voluntary actions taken by online intermediaries, “enhanced cooperation among competent national authorities,” and the sharing of information and data.

Cooperation and increased information sharing are essential and should be further promoted, at all levels, in accordance with Union law, the protection of personal data and the freedom to conduct business under Article 16 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘ the Charter ’). Good practices should be identified, and recommended to all actors, including e-commerce marketplaces, transport and logistic service providers, payment services providers, social media providers, providers of domain name services, etc. Secondly, further cooperation and information sharing should be encouraged. This relates to all competent authorities, including market surveillance authorities that currently may not have competences for IP-infringing activities, and promoting further the use of dedicated tools such as the IP Enforcement Portal (‘IPEP’)…

Payment Services, Social Media Platforms

The EC highlights payment services as an area where more can be done. On one hand, these companies are central to rightsholders’ activities. On the other, they can also be used to support IP-infringing activities. The EC says that to prevent misuse of their services for IP-infringing activities, payment services should be encouraged to implement the following good practices:

(a) to clearly state in their terms and conditions, as a ground for suspension or termination of their contract with sellers, any finding, including by the competent authority, of the use of their payment services for IP-infringing activities;
(b) to set up notification mechanisms allowing rightsholders using their payment services to notify any IP-infringing activity;
(c) where technically and economically feasible, to have an information system in place to enable the identification of operators engaging in IP-infringing activities, across different payment services, when one payment service provider has terminated its services with such operators on the grounds of IP-infringing activities;
(d) to exchange information with other payment service providers on trends regarding IP-infringing activities and to put in place specific measures against repeated misuse of their services, particularly where there has been a finding by a competent authority that their services have been used for IP-infringing activities.

Social media providers should similarly prevent misuse of their services, including by having systems in place to identify and take action against those misusing their services for IP-infringing activities.

Domain Name Registries/Registrars

The Commission’s Recommendation naturally assumes that where the law compels intermediaries or service providers to take action, that should be the standard minimum response. However, when entities are asked to go above and beyond, which appears to underpin almost every proposal in the Toolbox, service providers find themselves “encouraged to implement” various measures.

In respect of domain names, Directive (EU) 2022/2555 obliges “TLD name registries and entities providing domain name registration services” to “collect and guarantee the integrity and availability of domain name registration data.” EU Member States should further require these entities to “respond without undue delay” to requests for the disclosure of registration data following requests from “legitimate access seekers.”

Legitimate access seekers include those considered competent under EU or national law for the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offenses. However, the definition can also encompass anyone with a legitimate reason to access the information, which includes rightsholders and their agents.

When access to domain name registration data that is personal data is sought, TLD-name registries and entities providing domain name registration services established in the EU and/or offering services in the EU are encouraged to recognize as legitimate access seekers any natural or legal persons who make a request for a right to information pursuant to Directive 2004/48/EC .

Member States are further encouraged to share intelligence and data on emerging piracy trends, including lists of websites that have been held by competent authorities to have carried out IP-infringing activities, the tactics and behaviors of alleged infringers, and to explore news ways to share information on those who “repeatedly engage in IP-infringing activities.”

Dynamic Injunctions, Unmasking Petty Infringers

Several EU Member States already have mechanisms in place that allow rightsholders to obtain injunctions against infringers and intermediaries, but the Commission would like to see more.

Specifically, Member States are encouraged to provide for the possibility of dynamic injunctions that can be applied to IP-infringing activities that are similar to those already identified, but are yet to be identified, such as the use of mirror sites.

The Commission also encourages Member States to ensure that petty infringers can’t escape simply because their activities are not commercial in scale or even commercial at all.

“Member States are encouraged to provide for the possibility for the competent judicial authorities to order disclosure of the relevant information to effectively fight IP infringements which are not on a commercial scale, in response to a justified and proportionate request of the claimant in proceedings,” the Commission writes.

“For these purposes, the relevant information could consist of the same information which may be requested in accordance with Article 8(2) of Directive 2004/48/EC , including the email address, telephone number and IP addresses relating to alleged infringers or participants to alleged infringing activities.”

The European Commission’s Recommendation (Toolbox) can be found here (pdf)

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

Over the past year, new artificial intelligence tools and services have been surfacing everywhere.

The same can be said for AI-related lawsuits and complaints, which have been piling up by the dozen.

In the UK, music industry group BPI has enetered the mix, targeting AI-generated voice models and cover tracks. This technology, which partly relies on copyrighted recordings, has been controversial for a while.

Voicify Faces Legal Pressure

AI vocal-cloning service Voicify was previously called out by the RIAA. In a recommendation to the U.S. Trade Representative, the recording label group asked the USTR to put the site on its list of notorious piracy sites . The USTR did not include the site in its report, however, and Voicify continued its operations as usual.

After the RIAA put a spotlight on Voicify, the BPI maintained the pressure in a letter to the site’s operators, urging them to stop all copyright-infringing activity. If not, the BPI would consider follow-up steps, implying a full-blown lawsuit.

The letter was sent privately on February 26th but aside from the legal threat, its contents remain unknown. While Voicify failed to respond appropriately according to the BPI, the service did announce a major change soon after by rebranding its website to “ Jammable “.

Rebrand Can’t Escape Lawsuit Threat

According to the website, the brand change was motivated by the service’s move away from just being an ‘AI Voice Platform’. However, a source familiar with the situation informs TorrentFreak that a ‘legal matter’ played a yet role in the decision. That could very well be related to BPI’s letter.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the news about BPI’s legal threat against Voicify/Jammable broke in The Times , just days after the rebrand. As ‘a matter of policy’, BPI can’t say whether it reached out to The Times first, or vice versa, but the added pressure helps its case.

An accompanying message released by BPI’s General Counsel Kiaron Whitehead is also crystal clear.

“The music industry has long embraced new technology to innovate and grow, but Voicify (now known as Jammable), and a growing number of others like them, are misusing AI technology by taking other people’s creativity without permission and making fake content. In so doing, they are endangering the future success of British musicians and their music.”

Massive music ‘Deepfake’ Service

With a library featuring thousands of voice models, the BPI considers Jammable one of the world’s largest and most egregious deepfake AI music sites. In its letter the BPI gave the voice cloning site the option to respond and avoid legal action but thus far the BPI remains dissatisfied.

While AI-related copyright issues are still rather novel and mostly unexplored from a legal perspective, the music group is convinced it has the law on its side. The BPI’s complaint centers around Jammable’s purported use of copyrighted music recordings to create voice models and AI covers.

In theory, these types of services could enable people to create a cover of a Frank Sinatra song using the voice of Homer Simpson, if they’d like to hear that.

This use of copyrighted music, combined with the commercial nature of Jammable, is not allowed according to BPI.

Thus far, music-related AI lawsuits haven’t appeared in UK courts so if the BPI decides to follow up on its threat, this would be the first. For now, however, there is no sign of legal action.

Several other music industry entities including the Musicians’ Union and UK MUSIC support the efforts to protect rightsholders against AI troubles.

“Jammable is just one worrying example of AI developers encroaching on the personal rights of music creators for their own financial gain,” Musicians’ Union General Secretary Naomi Pohl says.

“It can’t be right that a commercial enterprise can just steal someone’s voice in order to generate unlimited soundalike tracks with no labelling to clarify to the public the output tracks are not genuine recordings by the original artist, no permission from the original artist and no share of the money paid to them either.”

Speaking with TorrentFreak, a BPI spokesperson says that it has only sent a letter to Voicify/Jammable, not to any similar services. We also asked Jammable for a comment on the legal threat but, at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.

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

Late 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels, including Sony and Universal.

Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages .

That wasn’t the end of it. Following the initial verdict Cox launched several challenges, including an appeal that delivered a mixed result earlier this year. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit kept the contributory copyright infringement ruling intact but reversed a finding of vicarious copyright infringement.

The latter was good news for the ISP, especially since the appeals court concluded that the scale of the damages award should be redetermined in the district court.

Both Parties Request a Rehearing

Neither Cox nor the labels were satisfied by this outcome so both requested a rehearing . The music companies want the $1 billion damages award to remain and noted that Cox already waived its right to appeal. Cox, in turn, would like the contributory copyright infringement ruling to be reversed.

The ISP argued that the landmark liability ruling results in more terminations of Internet connections, based on piracy accusations from third parties. This shapes a “draconian regime” that threatens the Internet connectivity of millions of people.

Cox’s request received support from several amici, including the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. The latter detailed the stakes in a blog post recently, stressing that courts shouldn’t turn ISPs into the Internet police.

“The root of the problem is that the court failed to recognize that ISPs are infrastructure providers, not content police. Like other common carriers such as phone companies, broadband providers should not be liable for how their subscribers use their services,” Public Knowledge wrote .

“In today’s world, where broadband is essential infrastructure more akin to electricity or water than a luxury, an ISP’s role is to provide reliable internet access – not to work on behalf of the music industry. We urge the Fourth Circuit to rehear this case en banc and correct its erroneous decision on contributory liability.”

Request Denied

Despite fierce opposition from both sides, the court of appeals won’t reconsider its earlier decision. A few hours ago, it ruled on the rehearing requests, denying both without providing further detail.

“The court denies the petition for rehearing en banc and the petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc. No judge requested a poll […] on the petition for rehearing en banc,” the order reads.

This means that Cox will remain contributorily liable for the pirating activities of its users. Given what’s at stake, it wouldn’t be a surprise if this matter eventually ends up at the Supreme Court.

The $1 billion damages award remains vacated and a new trial will have to determine the scale of the damages, taking into account that Cox is no longer liable for vicarious copyright infringement.

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