Plex is a multifunctional media software and service that allows users to easily access all their entertainment in one place.

Whether it’s movies, music, TV-shows, or photos, Plex can organize and index, making the content ready to stream on a wide variety of supported devices.

Like many other technologies Plex can be used for good and bad. There have been reports of people sharing vast libraries of the pirated content via Plex-powered servers, for example. But at the same time Plex is a gateway to legal streaming content including movies and series on its own Mediaverse platform.

The Mediaverse part of the Plex site appears to cause some confusion. While it offers content that can be legally streamed for free, it also lists many other titles, such as The Mandalorian , Game of Thrones, Wonder Woman 1984, and Tenet.

These other titles are not freely available for streaming, of course. Plex merely added an informational page to its library so people can put these titles on their watchlist. However, not all copyright holders appear to get this distinction.

Over the past month alone more than a handful of DMCA takedown requests were sent to Google, asking the search engine to remove these “copyright-infringing” pages. The takedowns suggest that Plex offers access to the full videos and list its URLs together with those of notorious pirate sites.

For example, ‘CTW Anti-Piracy’ sent a DMCA takedown request to Google on behalf of Vertigo Releasing Limited, asking the search engine to remove the Plex information page for the film “ Becky “. The Plex page is highlighted below among more traditional pirate sites.

Similarly, ‘Shoot-Down’ sent a takedown notice on behalf of DDI Double Dutch Inc for Plex’s “Elliot the Littlest Reindeer” page, while Groupe V Media hired ‘Police Du Net’ to remove the page of “Cardinal” season four. None of these pages link to pirated videos, obviously.

We assume that these requests, and many others , were all sent by mistake but that doesn’t mean that they are harmless. While Google is generally quite good at spotting errors, it missed these ones. That means that the Plex pages have actually been wiped from Google’s search results.

Instead of getting the Plex page, people will now see the following notice at the bottom of their search results.

After browsing through several Plex takedown notices in Google’s transparency report we also spotted one for which the search giant took “ no action “. However, that isn’t because it is deemed to be an erroneous takedown, but because the URL wasn’t indexed to begin with.

We reached out to Plex to inform the company about the takedowns and requested a comment. The company informed us that they are aware of these notices and will try to work things out with the copyright holders individually.

That’s probably wise because too many notices put sites at risk of being demoted , which can seriously hurt search traffic.

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

Dealing with pirates raises all sorts of issues for content providers and entertainment companies. On the one hand these are people trying to get something for nothing but on the other, many pirates are potential and even current customers.

Converting pirates into paying customers is a puzzle that many companies have tried to crack. Many do so with free trials, hoping that after tasting the real thing people will like it enough to come back for more, wallets in hand. Some innovate, offering a product or service that cannot easily be emulated. Others prefer to intimidate.

Screaming At Pirates

As reported last week, UFC President Dana White enjoys tackling pirates with threats and profanity , treating them as a danger to be eradicated by any means. The jury is still out on whether consumers ever respond to this type of approach but if we think of consumers as regular people, few – if any – appreciate being shouted out and called names.

Judging by the number of insults leveled at White late weekend, it’s pretty safe to say that his actions rubbed many people up the wrong way. To be clear, White will not give a damn if this is the case but according to games developer Adam Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans , being hostile to pirates isn’t an approach he recommends.

No Open Hostility Towards Pirates

Writing in GamesIndustry.biz this week, Coster explains that the problem of piracy is emotionally charged but the overall goal should be to limit the harm, not only on the business itself, but also on the people creating the content.

“We don’t want to spend our time and resources fighting piracy — it’s exhausting, expensive and, frankly, doomed from the start. We want our time going into making games and building an amazing community,” Coster says.

“We certainly don’t condone or accept piracy, and we explicitly tell our players that when the topic arises. We also don’t allow players in our communities to advocate for or help others pirate games. But when we discover pirates in our midst we stay friendly .”

While big companies tend to be outwardly hostile to pirates, stating that “theft-is-theft” and there are no excuses for getting something for free, Coster doesn’t mind acknowledging that there can be reasons why people go down that route. People without financial resources, for example, or people seeking access to his games where they aren’t legitimately available.

Keeping Things Nice Has Benefits For The Developer

Despite his understanding, Coster doesn’t condone freeloading behavior but still prefers to keep things civil. There are benefits to that, he says, including keeping the environment around games consumption (and indeed, games creation) a nice place to be.

“Our non-hostile approach has helped foster a positive community, including a handful of converted pirates. But more importantly, it has been essential for our team’s mental health. Adversarial relationships take a terrible toll,” he concedes.

Keeping the pirating masses happy – or at least emotionally compliant – has some interesting benefits for Coster’s company. He believes that almost all of his potential players are pirates so it makes little sense to have an adversarial relationship with them – especially when a “jillion angry people” descend on community management and customer support teams to air their displeasure.

A Better Approach

Given that this is one of the likely outcomes of being hostile towards pirates (or if one prefers, potential customers, who may walk away after being threatened) Coster says that anti-piracy measures should not be about the pirates. The starting point, whether he likes it or not, should be an empathetic approach along with gentle encouragement to buy his games when they can.

“People will try to steal your game. Huge numbers of them. This is just the reality. Treat it as a design constraint,” he says.

“This is a business problem. Do your best to ignore how you feel about it. Yes, this is far easier said than done. Now get out there and make something worth stealing.”

The full piece, which is a must-read for developers, can be found here

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

YTS is one of the most popular torrent sites, serving millions of users per day.

All this attention got the site in legal trouble. Various movie companies including the makers of ‘Hitman’s Bodyguard,’ ‘Hunter Killer’ and ‘Mechanic Resurrection,’ took YTS ‘operator’ Senthil Vijay Segaran and the company Techmodo to court.

While lawsuits tend to end badly for pirate sites, these lawsuits turned out differently. All parties agreed to settle the lawsuits , three in total, in change for over a million dollars in piracy damages. The site, however, was allowed to continue and is still online today.

YTS Database

Initially, this was received as great news by the site’s users. However, for some, it turned out to be a disaster. As part of an undisclosed agreement, YTS also shared information from its user database . This was a limited one-time arrangement, we learned from an insider, but one with broad consequences.

After settling the case with YTS, the same movie companies moved on to several users. These film companies had sued BitTorrent users in the past but now they have extra ammunition, including emails, IP-addresses and download logs obtained directly from YTS.

This information was put to use right away. Over the past months, we have reported on several lawsuits where YTS users were targeted, and movie companies also approached alleged pirates out of court by contacting them directly via email . The latter also happened to Colorado residents W. Nelson and R. Flattery.

Settle Or Else

Both were approached with a settlement demand out of court, which they chose to ignore. Perhaps they had hoped the filmmakers would move on to other targets instead, but that was not the case. A few months ago, they were taken to court .

Flattery and Nelson were sued in federal court, where the filmmakers demanded damages. In theory, that could reach $150,000 per copyright infringement, which is many times the offer they first received over email.

In many federal lawsuits against torrent users, the evidence isn’t exactly rock solid. However, with emails and IP-addresses from the YTS database, the movie companies had a much stronger case here. And faced with potentially live-changing damages claims, both defendants have agreed to settle.

Defendants Settle After All

Earlier this week the movie companies asked the court to dismiss the claims against both defendants. Most of the time the settlement agreements remain private but, in this case, they were entered into the court’s records.

Flattery agreed to pay $2,320 in damages to Morgan Creek Productions and admitted to sharing copies of the movie “All Eyez On Me.” He was also accused of sharing several other movies, such as “Lost Child” and “Hunter Killer,” but maintains that this is incorrect.

The settlement amount can be paid off in six months and the movie company offers to waive the final $120 if the defendant pays on time.

Nelson settled with several movie companies, including the makers of “Rambo: Last Blood” and “Hellboy” but no movie titles are mentioned in the agreement. He must pay $10,500.00 in minimum monthly installments of $50.

“Generous” Deal

According to the attorney of the movie companies, both defendants were offered such “generous” deals because COVID already impacted the defendants substantially, suggesting that they lost work.

“These generous arrangements were made in view of the impact the novel coronavirus has had on the employment situation of Defendants and further hardships currently endured by Defendant Nelson,” the attorney writes.

Needless to say, this is a grim ending for the defendants. And the same is true for fellow Coloradoan S. Moody, who settled his case in early November. While they are probably happy to get this burden off their back, it must be strange for them to see YTS continue business as usual.

—

A copy of the letter informing the court about the settlement agreements is available here (pdf)

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

Due to their very nature, pirate sites become successful by offering pirated content and after staying online as long as they can, tend to die in the same way.

The demise of unlicensed sites often comes about due to legal pressure but for some, it can be possible to move onwards and upwards with a change of business model.

That was the case with former ‘pirate’ site Fakku , a platform that built its popularity on unlicensed scans and translations (scanlations) of adult manga comics, also known as ‘hentai’.

The site launched in 2006 and built a decent audience but by 2015, Fakku had gone completely straight after transforming itself into a site offering only licensed content. As a poacher turned gamekeeper, Fakku now has to contend with sites doing roughly what it did for nine years, i.e posting other people’s content without permission.

Fakku Steps-Up Its Targeting of Pirated Content

The company behind Fakku, Fakku LLC, began sending takedown DMCA notices to Google several years ago, demanding that sites publishing its content have their URLs delisted from search results. While this resulted in many thousands of takedowns, it wasn’t until the start of 2020 that Fakku really stepped on the gas.

Fairly quickly, Fakku was asking for up to 340,000 URLs to be delisted in a week, a number that jumped to 1.1 million in the summer. At the start of this year, Fakku went into overdrive and in the week starting January 4, 2021, the company asked for around 4 million URLs to be delisted, a figure repeated just a couple of weeks later.

This put sites including hentaishark.com, nyahentai.com, and nhentai.net under considerable pressure, with the former being subjected to more than 8 million DMCA notices, something that could cause it to be downranked by Google. However, it’s the 10th most-targeted domain on the list – hentai.cafe – that now finds itself in Fakku’s legal crosshairs.

Fakku Takedown Notice Ignored By Hentai.cafe

On Wednesday, Fakku’s legal representative filed a request for a DMCA subpoena at a court in the Eastern District of Michigan. The application reveals that on December 1, 2020, Eric Green of anti-piracy company Remove Your Media wrote to hentai.cafe demanding that the site take down a copy of Comic X-Eros #66, ‘Bullied Revenge Hypnosis #5’.

“Please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the infringing material or items,” the letter reads, adding the URL where the content can be found.

Checking out the URL in question reveals that the content remains up, suggesting that hentai.cafe failed to take action in response to the notice.

Fakku Wants To Identify The Operator of Hentai.cafe

This inaction appears to have prompted Fakku take to more aggressive action against hentai.cafe. Fakku’s application for a DMCA subpoena demands that Cloudflare, which hentai.cafe uses to help keep its site online, hands over the personal details of the operator and/or owner of the pirate site.

The information requested is broad and includes (but is not limited to) the “billing or administrative records that show the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), IP address(es), account number(s), credit card numbers and any other electronic or physical documents identifying the name(s) and address(es) or contact information of the operator and/or owner of the Infringing Website.”

At the time of writing the DMCA subpoena doesn’t appear to have been signed off by the court but in the majority of cases, this is usually a formality.

Quite what Fakku intends to do with the information isn’t clear. It could be a straightforward matter of taking some kind of legal action, if possible, but Fakku has also been known to offer somewhat controversial assistance to pirate sites to get themselves out of legal trouble.

The DMCA subpoena can be found here (pdf)

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

Last year, the US Department of Justice booked one of its biggest successes in its battle against online piracy.

In August 2020, law enforcement upset the international piracy ecosystem by targeting several high-profile Scene members , which were the source for many pirated movies and TV-shows.

The criminal investigation focused on the SPARKS release group of which three alleged members were indicted. However, the crackdown, which resulted in raids in various countries, had a much broader impact.

Following the raids, several topsites went offline. Some of these had their infrastructure caught up in the enforcement, but many others decided to lay low as a precaution . Meanwhile, the rumor mill was in full swing, with some fearing that the action was just the start.

Historic Scene Release Drop

After a few days, it became apparent how broad the impact was. Not just in The Scene but also further down the piracy pyramid, where torrent and streaming sites noticed a lack of fresh content.

In a report published in early September, we showed that there were 1,944 new scene releases the Wednesday before the enforcement actions. A week later, a day after the first raids, this number had shrunk to 168 releases .

During the weeks that followed things slowly but steadily started to recover. With help from Predb.org we decided to take another look at the release volume at the start of the new year. Based on recent figures, we can conclude that the release volume ultimately recovered.

We compared the release numbers starting the week before the raids (Monday-Sunday), followed by the two weeks after, and finally data from last week. For a clean comparison this analysis doesn’t cover the week the raid took place, which included the largest dip.

Release Volume Recovers

The bar chart below shows the releases across all categories. This started at 12,776 before the raid, then dipped to 3,680 and 4,463 in the two weeks after. From there it gradually climbed back to 11,759 last week, which is pretty much back to normal.

Looking at individual categories, there are similar recoveries. The TV-X264 category initially dropped 90% from 5,254 to 572, but is now back at 4,913 . And Anime, Movies-X264, and XXX releases all bounced back too, as shown below.

Based on these data we can conclude that the US Government’s enforcement actions had a major impact, but not one that’s lasting. This doesn’t mean that all groups continued business as usual, but there are certainly plenty left.

Prosecutions Continue

While the dust appears to have settled a bit in the Scene, the legal troubles for the three indicted SPARKS members are far from over.

Thus far Jonatan Correa (aka ‘Raid’) is the only defendant to have appeared in court. He pleaded guilty earlier this month and will be sentenced this spring. Due to his cooperative stance, the prosecution agreed to a sentencing guideline of 12 to 18 months imprisonment, instead of the maximum of five years.

The two other defendants, George Bridi from Great Britain and Norway resident Umar Ahmad (aka ‘Artist’), have yet to appear in US court. According to the information we have available, Bridi has yet to be extradited from Cyprus where he was previously detained while Ahmad is still at large.

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

After a film premieres at the box office, movie fans typically have to wait a few months before they can see it online, depending on the local release strategy.

This delay tactic, known as a release window, helps movie theaters to maximize their revenues. However, for many pirates, this is also a reason to turn to unauthorized sites and services.

Shrinking Release Windows

In recent years these release windows have slowly decreased and this process was accelerated in the COVID pandemic. Increasingly, traditional delays have come down, and in some cases, release windows have disappeared completely. Warner Bros, for example , now releases movies on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously.

This shift is nothing short of a historic breakthrough. While more choice is good for consumers, these changes also breed uncertainty. Some movie industry insiders and theater owners, for example, fear that their income will be negatively impacted. At the same time, there are concerns that piracy will spike.

These and other questions are addressed in new research conducted by Carnegie Mellon’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics ( IDEA ). The research group, which received millions of dollars in gifts from the Motion Picture Association, just analyzed how early releases affect piracy and box office revenue.

Impact on Box Office and Piracy

The results are published in a non-peer-reviewed paper titled The Impact of Early Digital Movie Releases on Box Office Revenue: Evidence from the Korean Market.

As the title suggests, the research focuses on the Korean movie market which is the fourth-largest in the world, following the US, China, and Japan. In recent years movie studios have experimented with release windows in korea, which are significantly shorter than in other countries, including the US.

Instead of waiting three months, Korean “Super Premium” digital releases typically come out a month after the theatrical release. This means that movies are available while they are still playing in theaters.

The researchers use this unique situation to compare various movie revenue streams, as well as piracy figures, with the United States. To get the full picture, they also add in the effect of early versus regular digital releases in Korea itself.

Box Office Revenue is Unaffected

Following a complex statistical analysis, the researchers can estimate the effect of the early “Super Premium” releases on Korean box office revenue. They find a small negative effect of less than 1%, which isn’t statistically significant.

“We find a statistically and economically insignificant decline in theatrical revenue due to the early SP release, equivalent to an approximate 0.8% drop in total theatrical revenue in Korea during the first eight weeks of the theatrical run,” the researchers conclude.

This is an important finding as it shows that releasing a digital copy of movie months in advance doesn’t hurt theater revenues. This suggests that both consumption channels are complementary, which is great news for movie studios.

More Revenue for Movie Studios

And indeed, the researchers find that “Super Premium” video on demand (SPVOD) releases boost studio revenue by roughly 12% during the first weeks.

“Using digital movie sales data in Korea and industry estimates of studio margins on theatrical and SPVOD revenue, we estimate that SPVOD releases increase the marginal revenue received by studios in the first eight weeks of a movie’s Korean release by approximately 12%.”

While this all sounds positive, it’s undeniable that these early releases also impact piracy. This is confirmed by the data which show that the “pirate” release windows are also decreasing. Not just in Korea, but globally too.

No Boost in Piracy Figures

According to the researchers, however, this isn’t much of a problem. People will download pirated copies earlier, but the data don’t show that the piracy volume in Korea or the US increases for these movie titles. Pirates just get to download a film sooner.

“Finally, while the data from torrent piracy suggest that early SPVOD releases lead to earlier global availability of high-quality piracy sources, we see no evidence that these early sources increase piracy demand for movies released in SPVOD windows in either the Korean or US markets.”

All in all, the findings show that the movie industry is on the right track by shortening release windows. It’s not just good for consumers but also increases studios’ income too.

More Research Needed

That said, it’s far too early to generalize. This study looked at a very specific set of movies for which the “Super Premium” release came out after 28 days. It could very well be that longer, shorter, or no delays will have a different impact.

This shortcoming is recognized by the researchers who also stress that more research into the effects on piracy is needed. Especially in cases where a movie is released in one country before it’s available somewhere else.

But with more and more release experiments taking place, we expect that follow-up studies are already underway.

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

Back in 2016, Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider launched a scathing attack on YouTube, accusing the platform of “criminal rackeetering”.

According to Schneider, YouTube has “thoroughly twisted, contorted, and abused the original meaning of the outdated DMCA ‘safe harbor’ to create a massive income redistribution scheme.”

Last summer it became clear that Schneider’s opinions had not changed when her name appeared as a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed against YouTube.

As previously reported, Schneider is joined by a company called Pirate Monitor in the suit and together they accuse YouTube of being massively deficient in its copyright enforcement measures, including by denying smaller artists access to its takedown tools (Content ID), failing to terminate repeat infringers, while profiting from piracy.

YouTube Accuses Plaintiff of Fraud

Last September, YouTube fought back by alleging that agents of Pirate Monitor opened bogus YouTube accounts to upload its own videos and then filed takedown notices against the same content claiming that its rights had been infringed.

According to YouTube, this was a ploy to gain access to Content ID after the company was previously denied access for having no track record of properly using the DMCA takedown process. This new and fraudulent approach only supported its earlier decision to deny access to the Content ID tool, YouTube said.

In November, the plaintiffs fought back, stating that YouTube had failed to provide any evidence to back up its allegations. But a month later, YouTube told the court that the same IP address used to upload allegedly-infringing content was also used to file DMCA notices to take it down.

Plaintiffs and Defendants Are Digging In

A case management statement published this week reveals that little progress has been made in respect of bringing the parties closer together.

The plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and the Class, repeat their claims that “millions” of copyright works have been distributed via YouTube in breach of copyright while alleging that they have no “viable means” of enforcing their rights other than via manual searches and takedown notices.

Furthermore, since YouTube only implements its repeat infringer policies for non-Content ID identifications, the plaintiffs argue that the video platform cannot claim safe harbor protection under the DMCA. For its part, Youtube says this is an attempt to relitigate its earlier copyright battle with Viacom, which found that YouTube is entitled to safe harbor protections.

“No law supports Plaintiffs’ assertion that denying them access to [Content ID] somehow makes YouTube liable for copyright infringement,” the video platform adds, noting that Schneider already has access anyway.

“Plaintiff Schneider already has access to Content ID through her publishing agent, who has used Content ID for years on Schneider’s behalf,” YouTube adds.

But there are more fundamental issues too.

Zero Copyright Infringement Alleged in Complaint

According to YouTube, Schneider has named just three copyrighted “works in suit” and Pirate Monitor has identified three too. However, neither has identified any infringement.

“[T]he Complaint failed to allege a single instance of infringement for even one of the six copyrighted works. That alone renders the claims deficient. Beyond that, Pirate Monitor recently admitted — five months into the case — that it does not have standing to assert infringement of one of the three works it asserted in the Complaint.”

YouTube says that Schneider did list around 50 new works that weren’t mentioned in the complaint during interrogatory responses but failed to allege ownership or registration. But there are other problems too.

“Schneider has failed to identify a single alleged infringement for approximately half of the new works, and the instances of alleged infringement she did identify all fall outside the three-year statute of limitations. Further, it now appears clear that Schneider’s publishing agent licensed YouTube to use all of Schneider’s musical works, which would independently defeat any infringement claim,” YouTube adds.

Class Action Unsuited to Copyright Disputes

Given the complexity of copyright infringement cases, YouTube says that the plaintiff’s suit will not be maintainable as a class action. Referencing an earlier failed attempt by the Premier League, YouTube describes the current litigation as a “Frankenstein monster posing as a class action.”

Evidence Preservation

According to Schneider and Pirate Monitor, YouTube isn’t taking its evidence preservation responsibilities seriously having rejected some of their demands. The plaintiffs say that YouTube is refusing to preserve videos that are deleted by users, even if they infringe their rights, demanding that the plaintiffs need to identify each one first.

“Defendants have also repeatedly taken the position that they will not preserve any evidence relating to the putative class in this case,” they add, a reference to entities that are not yet part of the class action – which could be almost any rightsholder.

Somewhat predictably given the scope of the plaintiffs’ demands, YouTube insists that it is preserving evidence but can only do so when the plaintiffs identify those works, noting that it does not have to guess at what that content should be. Also, when considering that almost any copyright holder could join the class action at a later point, effectively asking YouTube not to delete anything is a step too far.

“[P]laintiffs have made the extraordinary and unreasonable demand that YouTube preserve all ‘material and content’ uploaded to YouTube, notwithstanding users’ ordinary rights to delete their own data, simply because Plaintiffs have brought this case as a putative class action,” YouTube writes.

“They have cited no authority requiring anything like that, which would inflict huge costs and burdens on YouTube — essentially redesigning YouTube’s entire data retention system in violation of user privacy rights and at a cost of hundreds of hours of engineering time and millions of dollars — that are disproportionate to the legitimate needs of a case in which there are only two named plaintiffs asserting, at most, a small number of copyrighted works, and who have very low prospects of ever certifying a class.”

The case has been scheduled for trial starting November 28, 2022, but whether it will ever get there remains a question. The only certainty at the moment is that the parties couldn’t be any further apart in their positions and neither is showing any signs of giving an inch.

The joint case management statement can be found here (pdf)

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

UFC President Dana White made dozens of headlines this week when he made threats against an unnamed illegal stream provider.

During the UFC 257 pre-fight press conference, featuring main event fighters Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor, White seemed excited to tell the journalists present that he had someone specific in his sights.

“We got one. We got him,” he said with a grin on his face. “We’re watching this guy right now. All you have to do is turn it on on Saturday. And we got you f****r. I can’t wait.”

In a subsequent interview with BT Sport, White went further still, declaring that he’d hand-picked the alleged pirate and that his house was being watched, his phone calls were being listened to and if he dared to put the fight up on Saturday, he would be arrested.

“I will not be nice. I will not be lenient. I will go guns-a-f*****n-blazing,” he warned.

Dana White’s Threats Riled Up Pirates

At least in part, White’s comments were designed to scare not only his target into submission but also other illegal stream suppliers and their potential customers. PPV revenue is important for the UFC and for its fighters since they too take a share of the spoils.

That being said, there can be a tendency among seasoned Internet users to convert gung-ho threats into just another motivation to pirate, so there was no shortage of people online threatening to pirate UFC 257 anyway, despite the warnings, and whether they were fans or not. However, few could have predicted how the event was to play out.

ESPN+ Goes Down Under Massive Demand

Perhaps the biggest news to emerge from the event is that UFC cash cow Conor McGregor got knocked out in round two, with Poirier’s heavy strikes on the feet proving too much for the superstar Irishman. However, as the drama was playing out in the Octagon, a streaming fiasco had already been underway for several hours.

UFC 257 was always expected to be a popular event (McGregor PPVs always are) but it appears that ESPN+ was unprepared for just how many people would cough up $70.00 to watch the fight legally in the US. According to Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole , 1.3 million people tried to log into ESPN+ at the same time and the service simply couldn’t cope.

Still nothing. Tried xbox, android, and smart tv app. pic.twitter.com/AJCrvCfIvy

— Jeff Jones (@SlowSmokeJones) January 24, 2021

Given that the UFC’s US deal is exclusive to ESPN+ this was clearly a major problem. If fans pay to watch the whole card on a legal platform, they don’t expect to face the kind of problems often touted as being a hallmark of pirate services. The disappointed masses also included several UFC fighters who headed onto Twitter to complain that they couldn’t watch the event.

Half the UFC's own roster can't get the ESPN+ app working to watch #UFC257 pic.twitter.com/TbYiQjxVXo

— MMA mania (@mmamania) January 24, 2021

Unfortunately, worse was yet to come.

Illegal Streams Save The Day For Some Paying Customers

With huge numbers of fans bombarding ESPN on Twitter complaining that they couldn’t access the event, the broadcaster said that it was doing the best it could to restore service. However, after shelling out $70.00 the desperation mounted for many fans as the anxiety of missing the action took its toll.

In a now-deleted Tweet, UFC middleweight Ian Heinisch wrote: “Okay I am done send me illegal streams!” a sentiment that was shared by thousands of other individuals including those who already paid and those who never intended to.

Meanwhile, in several of the usual haunts occupied by pirate streamers, there was no shortage of people watching the PPV illegally while ESPN+ subscribers screamed in frustration. That should never happen, quite the opposite in fact.

Dana White’s Sunday Headache

Today’s post mortem will be a difficult one for Dana White. After being ridiculed in some corners for his anti-piracy rhetoric, it seems fairly likely that some fans will have decided to take the legal option for once, a golden opportunity to shine if ever there was one.

Instead, they will have watched their pirating counterparts receive superior service at what would’ve been less than a tenth of the price, which is just about the worst possible outcome on the night. Add that to the fact that McGregor lost, and you have a UFC 257 that White won’t look back on with the fondest of memories. That being said, it wasn’t all bad news.

According to White, the unnamed illegal streamer who he threatened earlier in the week decided that taking on the UFC wasn’t a good idea. Shortly after the pre-fight press event he allegedly made a big announcement saying that he wouldn’t be offering the event after all and had decided to shut down his entire streaming service.

Somewhat ironically though (for both legal and illegal consumers alike) plenty of other unlicensed services remained up long enough to show ESPN+ how to run a streaming service – without collapsing under the stress of too many customers wanting to part with their money.

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

Many copyright holders portray pirates as thieves that must be hampered or stopped at any cost.

However, these same people are consumers too. In fact, research repeatedly shows that they are the most passionate fans .

UK-based piracy monitoring outfit MUSO realizes this potential. In addition to traditional takedown services, the company also leverages piracy analytics as business intelligence. After all, every pirate is a potential consumer. And there are quite a few.

MUSO keeps a close eye on the number of visits to pirate sites. While this is only a subset of the entire piracy ecosystem, since it doesn’t involve streaming devices, it provides some interesting insights.

130 Billion Pirate Site Visits

The piracy tracking firm reports that in 2020 there were over 130 billion visits to pirate sites around the world.

The bulk of these, 57 percent, went to streaming sites, followed by direct download portals (27%), torrent sites (12%), and stream rippers (4%). The market share of streaming sites has declined a bit when compared to last year, in favor of download and torrent sites.

If we look at the geographical distribution, the United States remains the top traffic source with nearly 12.5 billion visits. Russia is in second place with 8.3 billion, followed by China and India with 6.9 and 5.6 billion respectively.

Needless to say, the countries at the top of the list are also some of the largest population-wise. When we look at visits per Internet user, Barbados is on top followed by Andorra, Georgia, and Ukraine.

Profiling Pirates

These data are interesting but, in isolation, the numbers don’t say much. However, MUSO does more than just counting totals. It can also build profiles of the pirate audience for particular titles or categories, including various demographic variables.

This is where MUSO distinguishes itself from many other companies that operate in the ‘anti-piracy’ niche. Aside from sending DMCA takedown notices on behalf of clients, it also sees pirates as an opportunity. They are potential customers, after all.

Through its MUSO Connect service, the company uses data analytics to built profiles of pirates. These can then be used for marketing purposes.

For example, a copyright holder may be interested in finding out what the average “The Walking Dead” pirate looks like, or what the typical profile is of a pirate who watches pirated UFC fights. These data can be used to target ads to this group.

Identifying Superfans

“MUSO’s piracy data also reveals a highly engaged audience of avid consumers and superfans willing to go through a sometimes challenging process to illegally stream or download a title,” the company explained recently.

“This is a valuable audience for entertainment companies; high-intent customers consuming their content but not currently paying for it,” the company added.

The data-driven approach works, the company explains. It highlights a case study where it helped an international broadcaster to promote its new VOD platform. Based on data from pirate views of the broadcaster’s content, MUSO generated a detailed profile of this undiscovered audience.

More Clicks

This ‘profile’ was then used as input for an advertising campaign. Because this was targeted at a high-intent audience, the click-through rate for the ads was three times higher than average, with sign-ups exceeding expectations.

“The net result is the client is converting motivated pirates into paying subscribers,” MUSO notes.

As with most data analytics and analysis services, MUSO works based on measured data that’s extrapolated. They don’t know who every pirate on the planet is. However, given the vast amount of data it can classify people based on sex, household income, education profiles, and various interests.

TorrentFreak spoke to MUSO’s commercial director Peter Clothier, who ensures us that all data are handled in compliance with privacy laws, including the GDPR.

Converting Pirates

The company stresses that it doesn’t offer advertising services itself nor does it work with pirate sites. It simply uses the data it obtains from external sources to create profiles, based on whatever the client is interested in.

The overarching message is that pirates should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. And if big data can help to convert more pirates into paying customers, everybody wins.

“MUSO Connect reveals the commercial value of the piracy audience rather than writing that audience off as worthless,” Clothier concludes.

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