Back in August, members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy coalition featuring the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, filed a lawsuit against US company TTKN Enterprises, LLC.

Better known online as IPTV service Crystal Clear Media (CCM), TTKN and owners Todd and Tori Smith of Florida were accused by Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Warner, Universal, Netflix, Columbia and StudioCanal of operating a pirate service providing access to thousands of live and title-curated television channels in breach of their copyrights.

“Blatantly Infringing Service”

Citing blockbusters including Disney’s Frozen II, Warner Bros’ Harry Potter collection, Columbia Picture’s Bad Boys for Life, and Universal’s Mr. Robot, the companies alleged that TTKN/CCM’s operators had gone to great lengths to hide their roles in an operation that had illegally streamed these titles and more to the public. Domains including mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com, and webplayer.us, were mentioned as supporting the operation.

Describing CCM as a “blatantly infringing service”, the entertainment companies noted that despite being acutely aware that rival service Vaders had previously come to an untimely end for similar actions at the hands of the same plaintiffs, CCM continued to provide an illegal VOD service to the public. Furthermore, the service also continued to expand its reach via a network of resellers.

“Defendants’ reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants’ resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors,” the lawsuit claimed.

Alleging willful direct copyright infringement, the plaintiffs demanded the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work plus the same amount per work as a result of CCM inducing others by “encouraging, and promoting” the use of CCM for copyright infringement purposes.

Parties Reach Settlement Agreement

While these kinds of cases have the potential to roll on for some time, it transpires the plaintiffs and TTKN/CCM plus named defendants Todd and Tori Smith have agreed to settle their dispute. The agreement was reached on November 2, 2020, and as a result, they are together asking the court to sign off on a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding a permanent injunction and damages.

In respect of the injunction, the defendants comprehensively agree not to distribute any copyrighted content owned by the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries in any manner, including via streaming. All operations of Crystal Clear Media must be completely shut down within five days of any injunction and its operators are barred from distributing or otherwise releasing any of its source code, domain names, trademarks and other assets.

“Defendants irrevocably and fully waive notice of entry of the Permanent Injunction, and understand and agree that violation of the Permanent Injunction will expose Defendant to all penalties provided by law, including contempt of Court,” it reads.

“Defendants consent to the continuing jurisdiction of the Court for purposes of enforcement of the Permanent Injunction, and irrevocably and fully waive and relinquish any argument that venue or jurisdiction by this Court is improper or inconvenient.”

Proposed Judgment Includes a Massive Damages Award

The original complaint included references to the now-defunct Vaders IPTV service that was also targeted by the same plaintiffs in a largely secret lawsuit in Canada. However, while the Vaders/Vader Streams matter ended in a $10 million damages award in favor of the studios, TTKN/CCM has agreed to pay substantially more than its former rival.

“Damages are awarded in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendant TTKN Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Crystal Clear Media, in the total amount of forty million dollars ($40 million),” the proposed judgment reads.

While the proposed consent judgment and permanent injunction are yet to be signed off by Judge George H. Wu in a California court, the nature of the agreement means that is likely to be a formality in the days to come.

The proposed orders can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 pdf)

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

When UK citizens move overseas they often report missing out on basic things they take for granted at home. Colman’s mustard, Yorkshire tea, Cadbury’s chocolate, Kelloggs Cornflakes and Marmite all get a mention, but entertainment is often high on the list too.

Brits are known for their love of soaps, including the long-running Eastenders and Coronation Street, for example. Moving abroad often means missing out on these home comforts but for many years ex-pats have found ways to access these shows abroad, with many turning to various IPTV services to get their fix.

UKTVEverywhere – Endorsed by the Rich and Infulential

One of the services established to scratch this particular itch was US-based UKTVEverywhere. The service offered a long list of UK TV channels that on home soil were ordinarily covered by a regular TV license. However, by capturing these signals in the UK and broadcasting them worldwide, the service became popular with viewers overseas, including some notable celebrities.

For example, business tycoon and The Apprentice star Lord Sugar (Alan Sugar) regularly took to Twitter to reveal that he was enjoying the services of UKTVEverywhere while living in the United States. There was no obvious sign that he was getting paid for the endorsements but on more than one occasion the businessman promoted the IPTV platform.

Catching up on Eastenders on http://t.co/rd74p6UO5c .The writers need to put Alfie and Kat back in the vic.The new cast are a total joke.

— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) January 2, 2014

Similarly flattering comments were also tweeted by outspoken broadcaster and journalist Piers Morgan, who said he was using UKTVEverywhere to watch a UK football show in the United States and highly recommended the service to “all Brits living abroad.”

About to watch #FootballFocus in NY using @Uktveverywhere – amazing device, highly recommend to all Brits living abroad.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 9, 2013

But despite these presumably free plugs from the rich and famous, UKTVEverywhere was running on borrowed time. Many shows broadcast on these channels are owned by divisions of two broadcasters – the BBC and ITV – and it appears they weren’t happy with the IPTV service making money from its programming.

BBC & ITV Channels Disappear: The Beginning of the End

After previously noting that displaying their logos raised trademark issues, several months ago UKTVEverywhere announced that it would stop offering channels from the BBC and ITV. They weren’t the only channels offered by the IPTV provider but given the target audience, that meant that the big soaps and other popular titles such as Doctor Who and Love Island would no longer be available.

Without these, ex-pats were unlikely to favor the service and sure enough, it eventually disappeared leaving subscribers high and dry with reportedly no refunds issued.

As many expected, the demise of the service was linked to legal action by BBC Studios and ITV, a fact now confirmed by a message on the site’s homepage .

“This domain name has been transferred to the BBC and ITV in settlement of their copyright dispute against its former owner,” it reads.

“BBC One, BBC Two, BBC iPlayer, along with ITV and ITV Hub are not lawfully available outside of the UK. It is an infringement of copyright to distribute, publicly perform or reproduce the content on these channels, without the consent of the respective copyright owners, or to induce such infringement.”

A joint statement from the BBC and ITV puts more meat on the bones.

“As producers and distributors of premium content, we have the right and obligation to take action against piracy, in accordance with relevant laws in the territories we operate. Ensuring that our content is viewed legally, equally ensures we will be able to bring our viewers the programs they love and expect,” the companies say.

“BBC Studios and ITV both produce thousands of hours of quality British programming, which in turn gives vital employment to writers, producers, cast and crew. Illegal streaming of this content means a wide range of workers were being deprived of their rightful earnings.”

BritBox: New Domain Owner Standing By To Do Business

A check of domain WHOIS records reveals that the UKTVEverywhere.com domain is now owned by Denipurna Limited, a company associated with the BBC and ITV streaming service BritBox. Having launched in the United States during 2017, BritBox subsequently launched in Canada and then the UK, with an Australian release penned in for 2020.

Given that BritBox offers episodes of national favorites such as EastEnders and Coronation Street within hours of them airing in the UK, it is clear why both the BBC and ITV wanted UKTVEverywhere out of the market, a short-term mission that has now been accomplished.

However, there are dozens of other platforms offering similar services, including many mainstream ‘pirate’ IPTV suppliers, so the job isn’t done yet, not by a long way.

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

Over the past several years Italy’s Guardia di Finanza has been applying increasing pressure to various players in the piracy ecosystem.

In addition to targeting distributors of movies, TV shows and live sports via subscription services, the authorities have also homed in on suppliers of pirated newspapers and periodicals. A new law enforcement operation revealed Wednesday continues along those same lines.

Operation Evil Web

The new action is being spearheaded by the Economic-Financial Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Gorizia. The unit reports that following an investigation it was able to secure a preventative seizure order to block access to 58 websites and 18 Telegram channels.

With combined annual traffic of around 80 million visits, the authorities claim that by blocking these platforms they have disrupted around 90% of the audiovisual and editorial piracy carried out in Italy. Given the availability of pirated content in the region, regardless of blocking, that figure sounds optimistic but the operation is clearly significant nonetheless.

Investigation Into IPTV Expanded Overseas

According to the GdF, the investigation began by targeting an IT expert operating under the online nickname of ‘Diabolik’. The authorities haven’t yet positively identified this developer but given the existence of a Kodi addon called Diabolik441 dedicated to Italian content with links to the Evil King branding (GdF’s operation is called ‘Evil Web’), it seems likely this was one of their targets. An Android application using the same name is also featured in a GdF video (see below).

After reportedly identifying Diabolik, the investigation broadened to several regions of Italy and then overseas, including Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Three other IT experts also became part of the investigation, identified by GdF as ‘Doc’, ‘Spongebob’, and ‘Webflix’.

Again, GdF hasn’t identified these alleged IT experts using anything other than their nicknames but nevertheless describes them as “real oracles” when it comes to the illegal distribution of movies, pay TV, live sports, cartoons, newspapers, magazines, manuals, and even pornography. All four developers have been reported to the “competent judicial authorities” for prosecution.

Authorities Trying to Identify 1,000 IPTV Subscribers

In Italy, piracy-enabled set-top devices are called ‘pezzotto’ and in common with many regions, are used by huge numbers of end users hoping to gain free or cheap access to pirated movies, TV shows, and live sports. GdF says work is now underway to identify around 1,000 pezzotto/IPTV subscribers – some local, some overseas – so that they can be prosecuted for breaches of copyright law and receiving stolen goods.

According to the authorities, penalties can reach up to three years in prison and a fine of 25,000 euros. Similar penalties were mentioned back in Febraury when the Guardia di Finanza said it had reported 223 subscribers of pirate IPTV services to the judicial authorities.

Enhanced Site-Blocking Procedures

GdF reports that thanks to a new “procedural innovation”, it is now possible to more effectively block sites that facilitate access to previously blocked domains.

“This procedural innovation is allowing, day by day, the immediate inhibition of hundreds of new web domains illegally created in order to circumvent the original provision of the Judicial Authority,” its announcement reads.

“In addition, the procedures for international judicial cooperation have been activated – and are still in progress – in order to seize the servers from which multimedia contents are distributed in violation of copyright.”

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

In addition to serving cease-and-desist notices on various players involved in the supply of pirated movies and TV shows, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment often takes matters a step further.

Mostly via copyright infringement lawsuits filed in the United States, the global anti-piracy coalition has accused several providers of acting outside the law, hoping to shut the services down and achieve a damages award or significant settlement.

Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against CCM

During August, ACE sued pirate provider Crystal Clear Media (CCM) under its business name TTKN Enterprises LLC. It also named Todd and Tori Smith of Florida as defendants, identifying them as the operators of CCM.

A key feature of the case is the emphasis placed on so-called VOD content. While CCM and other providers tend to provide thousands of live TV channels, they also delivered so-called 24/7 channels (which reportedly offered “marathons of Disney’s movie Frozen II and Warner Bros.’s Harry Potter movie collection”) along with other mainstream movies on-demand.

According to the complaint, CCM knew this was a problem after ACE successfully shut down the Vaders IPTV platform last year. However, instead of backing away, CCM continued to provide access to video-on-demand while cultivating a network of resellers dedicated to servicing existing and prospective CCM customers.

Lawsuit Demands Injunctive Relief and Damages

The ultimate goals of the lawsuit against CCM are to win a permanent injunction to take it offline while obtaining a substantial damages award. With statutory damages running to $150,000 per title infringed, significant amounts are on the table.

In the first instance, however, the ACE members – including Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Netflix and others – sought a preliminary injunction with a number of key elements. That was comprehensively achieved via an order handed down by Judge George H. Wu in a California district court this week.

Preliminary Injunction

Addressing the plaintiffs’ claims under 17 U.S.C. § 106 of the Copyright Act , Judge Wu ordered the defendants not to directly or secondarily infringe any of the rights owned or controlled by the plaintiffs in respect of their copyrighted works.

While that effectively prevents the CCM service from operating, the Judge also responded to requests from the plaintiffs to render unusable a wide range of domain names previously deployed by the IPTV provider.

“Except to as requested by Plaintiffs, Defendants shall not transfer or otherwise relinquish control to the domains: mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com and webplayer.us,” the order reads.

Along those same lines, the Judge further ordered GoDaddy, One.com and their respective registrars to disable access to the above domains while preventing them from being modified, sold, transferred or deleted. The WHOIS information of the domains must also be preserved, including all contact and similar identifying information.

Additionally, the listed domain companies, plus all others receiving notice of the order, must preserve all evidence that may be used to identify the people that used the domains in question to infringe copyright.

Injunction Also Targets Resellers of the CCM Service

The original complaint alleges that CCM operated an “extensive and expanding” reseller network. These people bulk-bought “credits” from CCM that were converted to subscriber login credentials when purchased by customers.

“Defendants’ reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants’ resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors,” the lawsuit claims.

After hearing that this expansion poses an exponential infringement threat, Judge Wu agreed that the network of sellers must also be prevented from operating. With that, he granted permission for the entertainment companies to complete service of process on anyone acting in concert with the defendants, including resellers of the service.

“Upon receipt of a copy of this Order, these individuals and entities shall cease directly or secondarily infringing any of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works through any means including publicly performing, reproducing, or otherwise infringing in any manner…any right under 17 U.S.C § 106 in any of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works by continuing to provide access to Defendants’ service or by any other means,” the Judge added.

While CCM is already believed to be out of action, the above paragraph indicates that if resellers of CCM are currently offering other IPTV packages from a different supplier that also offer illegal access to the plaintiffs’ content, they must stop doing that too after receiving a copy of the order.

The preliminary injunction is available here (pdf)

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

In July, Amazon Content Services, publisher Penguin Random House and several authors including John Grisham and Lee Child, targeted a range of eBook download sites operating under the ‘Kiss Library’ brand.

Listing several domains including kisslibrary.net, kissly.net, wtffastspring.bid, libly.net, and cheaplibrary.com, among others, the lawsuit alleges that the sites offer a wide selection of books at “unbeatable prices”. The plaintiffs allege that this deep discounting is possible for only one reason – the content is pirated.

Alleging willful direct copyright infringement, among other things, the plaintiffs demanded statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringed work. They further demanded injunctive relief, including an order impounding all copies of the infringing materials.

Temporary Restraining Orders Quickly Handed Down

Noting that the defendants had gone to “great lengths” to conceal their identities, within days of the filing of the lawsuit a Washington court handed down a comprehensive temporary restraining order in an effort to shut down the allegedly-infringing activities of the sites.

The orders included evidence preservation instructions and restrained many entities, including payment processors, domain registrars, Internet service companies, advertisers and search engines, from doing business with the sites.

In addition, the order required financial companies such as banks, payment processors and credit card companies to locate the defendants’ accounts and temporarily freeze them. Domain companies were instructed to do the same, rendering the sites inaccessible.

The restraining order was valid for just 48 days, meaning that the defendants’ had until August 25, 2020, to appear and put up a fight. Despite being notified of the action via a KissLibrary.com email address, that did not happen.

Kiss Library Defendants Did Not Appear

After failing to respond to the plaintiffs correspondence or the court’s order, the Kiss Library defendants also failed to attend a show cause hearing this week. As a result, the court went about its business in a predictably one-sided manner, declaring that on the basis of the plaintiffs’ allegations, their case against the defendants is likely to succeed.

“Defendants have engaged in direct copyright infringement of those Works by reproducing, displaying, and distributing the Works for profit through the Websites identified in the Complaint,” the court’s order reads.

“Defendants have induced, caused, and materially contributed to others’ infringement of those Works, through the intentional solicitation, facilitation, and ability to control and supervise others’ upload of the infringed Works on the Websites for profit,” and as a result, “third-party purchasers have also impermissibly copied Plaintiffs’ protected works, further infringing Plaintiffs’ rights in those Works.”

Declaring that the defendants intentionally contributed to the infringing activity and at a minimum acted with “willful blindness” or in “reckless disregard” of the plaintiffs’ copyrights, Senior District Judge Marsha J. Pechman handed down a broad preliminary injunction Thursday against the Kiss Library defendants and those doing business with them.

Preliminary Injunction

While the Kiss Library sites appear to have gone offline following the filing of the lawsuit in July, the preliminary injunction handed down yesterday should make it extremely difficult for them to reappear in any recognizable form.

Targeting the defendants and any third-party entities connected to them, the injunction prevents banks, payment and cryptocurrency processors, email providers, domain registrars, hosts, ISPs and a wide range ancillary web companies, including search engines, ad companies and even web designers, from doing any business that might contribute to the infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyrights.

Furthermore, if any of these entities have documents, business records, computer files or other evidence relating to the defendants’ websites, assets and operations, these must not be moved, destroyed or otherwise disposed of. This instruction will stay in place until the court rules otherwise.

Ex Parte Asset Restraint

In an effort to ensure that the Kiss Library defendants don’t disappear with the profits of their activities while leaving nothing for the plaintiffs in the event of a damages award, a wide range of financial institutions are ordered to immediately locate all accounts connected to the defendants and/or the websites and prevent them from transferring or disposing of any funds.

These include named entities FastSpring, PayPal, BitPay, and MasterCard but extends to any company or organization served with the order, such as “banks, savings and loan associations, payment processors or other financial institutions.”

On the technical front, the court requires companies including Cloudflare, Tucows, Whois Privacy Corp., NameCheap, 1337 Services LLC (Njalla), NameSilo, Web.com, White & Case, and Pork Bun LLC to disable the Kiss Library domains within three days and prevent them from being transferred.

Expedited Discovery

After concluding the plaintiffs had “engaged in reasonable but fruitless efforts” to uncover the identities of the people behind the Kiss Library operation, the court has now stepped in to assist.

All entities covered by the instructions in the preliminary injunction must hand over all information and records they hold on the defendants and/or their websites within five days. This includes names, addresses, financial accounts, details of assets and any other information, without limitation, that could allow the plaintiffs to positively identify the defendants.

The preliminary injunction and expedited discover order can be obtained here (pdf)

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

This Tuesday, TorrentFreak received more rapid-fire anonymous tips than we have done in recent memory.

Demanding confidentiality is nothing new but tipsters and sources using anonymous mailers, obscured IP addresses, alongside repeat requests that identities aren’t revealed, usually point to something particularly unusual.

And indeed, something unusual was definitely underway. Late Tuesday, documents filed under seal in the United States as early as January 2020 were suddenly unsealed, revealing one of the most important piracy-related cases of the past decade.

As detailed in our report yesterday , a case brought by the US Government resulted in a Grand Jury charging at least three members of several and related top-tier ‘Scene’ release groups – SPARKS, GECKOS, DRONES, ROVERS and SPLiNTERS – with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and other crimes.

The US case has been ongoing for many months and the investigation certainly longer. Exactly how long was unknown until yesterday when a Swedish prosecutor revealed that it had been underway “for years”. However, What took us by surprise was the volume of reports on Tuesday, the claims of panic and fear in ‘The Scene’ globally, and what now appears to be a significant reduction of releases of all kinds from what is usually a prolific and cascading ‘Piracy Pyramid’ system.

Initial Information Proved Correct

People closely involved in The Scene are naturally secretive, or at least that’s the mandate. The truth is that some are prepared to talk but everyone is so scared of being caught by the authorities or labeled by fellow members as insecure, that truly verifiable sources are extremely hard to come by. As a result, reporting the finer details becomes a product of overlapping independent sources, none of whom want to be identified, which isn’t ideal.

Nevertheless, during Tuesday we were told by multiple sources that topsites and warez-affiliated members and resources were being targeted by law enforcement, anti-piracy groups, or a combination of both in many regions. What they all had in common was that the entities were affiliated with SPARKS and various topsites.

Another recurring theme was the focus on Nordic countries as being at the heart of action. Many countries were mentioned, including the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Poland but, again and again, the reports cited both Norway and Sweden as potentially the main ‘problem’ areas.

US Department of Justice Began Talking Yesterday

In an official announcement Wednesday, following the initial yet unofficial reports of raids 24 hours earlier and after the unsealing of the indictments, the USDOJ revealed the global scale of the operation against SPARKS and its affiliates.

“Thanks to the efforts of HSI, the Postal Inspection Service, Eurojust, Europol, and our law enforcement partners in 18 countries on three continents, key members of this group are in custody, and the servers that were the pipeline for wholesale theft of intellectual property are now out of service,” the announcement read.

The US revealed that law enforcement authorities in many countries assisted in the investigation against SPARKS including those in Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Republic of Korea, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

SPARKS member George Bridi, 50, was reportedly arrested on Sunday in Cyprus on an INTERPOL Red Notice. Correa (aka ‘Raid’), 36, was arrested Tuesday in Olathe, Kansas, where he will appear in federal court. Umar Ahmad (aka ‘Artist’), 39, was not arrested and as of Wednesday was reportedly still at large, according to the US Government.

The Nordic Connection

Several pieces of information received by TF during Tuesday indeed placed someone known as ‘Artist’ as a central and important figure in the action taking place.

Umar Ahmad is now officially named as that key person but according to his indictment, the US Government is not seeking to prosecute him for SPARKS-related offenses beyond January 2020. That’s also the case for George Bridi, an indicted co-defendant whose alias is currently unknown. The only SPARKS defendant charged with offenses up to August 2020 is Jonatan Correa, aka ‘Raid’.

While there is room for speculation as to what may have happened here, it seems somewhat reasonable to conclude (at least given the charges) that Ahmad and Bridi stopped their alleged offending months ago. However, according to records kept by Scene-watching sites (known as pre-databases), SPARKS-related groups continued releasing content online until fairly recently.

That aside, what we can confirm today is that Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service, commonly known as Kripos, carried out raids at several premises this week and seized computer equipment on what is being described as a “large scale”.

In addition, three men – who are yet to be named but are in their 30s and 40s – were arrested and charged for breaches of Norway’s Copyright Act. It is not currently known whether 39-year-old Oslo-resident Umar Ahmad is among them.

Danish authorities have also confirmed that four men, aged between 35 and 48, had their homes searched and were subsequently charged with copyright infringement offenses. Servers and other pieces of IT equipment were seized.

Source: Some Warning Signs Were Spotted a While Ago

It’s certainly possible that SPARKS members were absolutely oblivious to the US Government’s investigation but according to one difficult-to-verify source, who insisted on anonymity but spoke with us at length and in considerable detail, this year and “before COVID”, some Scene members were questioning why a particular SPARKS member had suddenly “retired”.

We are not publishing that member’s name here (which we believe was provided to us in advance of the unsealing of the US indictment) but according to the same source, another possibly-connected mystery was still lingering.

The source alleges that some months earlier an individual connected to a separate yet prominent release group also “went afk” and suddenly stopped providing content. Again, we aren’t publishing the name of that group or the nickname of the person involved but we can confirm that the alleged group stopped releasing several months before the end of 2019.

This led to rumors that one or both may have been compromised and hadn’t just taken a break. The relevance is that, according to the same insider, the pair (coincidentally or not) are believed to have shared the same content sources. Again, this is unconfirmed information but the first group has never returned to action and the second has the US Government on the attack after uncovering where it was obtaining its DVD and Blu-Ray discs from.

Significant Legal Action in Sweden

After receiving initial information, which was later confirmed by the USDOJ, that significant action had taken place in Sweden. On Tuesday, we spoke with Jon Karlung, the owner of ISP Bahnhof, which we were informed may have been visited by the authorities investigating SPARKS. That turned out not to be the case.

Karlung told us that nobody had visited the company nor requested information. However, he said that with 400,000 households and 10,000 companies as clients, plus the company’s sale of bandwidth capacity to other ISPs, he couldn’t rule out that someone way down the chain, even a client of someone else, may have been visited.

Whether connected to this specific ISP or not, multiple sources informed us that at least one topsite affiliated with multiple groups utilized a high-bandwidth home link in Sweden, with another topsite connected to multiple groups also seized in the country.

What we know from official sources is that there were 14 house searches carried out in Sweden on Tuesday, including in Umeå, Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm. No one was arrested during the raids but according to prosecutor Johanna Kolga, more servers were seized in Sweden than anywhere else.

Netherlands Action and the Existence of MLATs

Finding information about what happened in the Netherlands led us to Tim Kuik of anti-piracy group BREIN. We put it to him that if anyone in the country knows anything about the case, it must be him. Like most other people, Kuik wasn’t budging on detail. But he did offer a plausible explanation for the silence.

“It is an interesting case indeed. It is entirely possible for so-called MLATs to be carried out on the request of say US law enforcement and the Dutch authorities carrying it out without informing any private stakeholders,” Kuik told us.

“In such cases it may be so that stakeholders abroad, who may have filed a criminal complaint for example, have been made aware and would not be at liberty to say anything about it. So nobody is likely to comment I think. But you can always try. I have no comment.”

Later, however, Eurojust – the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation – confirmed that it “helped transmit and facilitate the execution of over 30 Mutual Legal Assistance requests and Letters of Request necessary for taking down the servers and executing searches..”

In all, over 60 servers were taken down in North America, Europe and Asia and “several main suspects” were arrested, the agency added.

Interesting Allegations, Few New Releases, and Kevin Bacon

Over the past 48+ hours, TF has been provided with a list of topsites and related infrastructure that has either been raided or taken down as a precautionary measure. The dozen-plus platforms will therefore remain unnamed, as we simply cannot determine which of the platforms are offline voluntarily, or down because they have been seized.

This leads us to why so many sites and other key pieces of infrastructure have disappeared, apparently just because one group was targeted. The reasons, we are told, are complex but can be boiled down to the number of connections SPARKS had in The Scene.

One recurring theme is that one of SPARKS’ members is claimed to have become quite influential and as a result may have “extended his tentacles too far”, as one source framed it. These connections, with many other groups and activities, may go some way to explaining why The Scene all but shut down Tuesday. If we take Bacon’s Law and apply it here, the response makes complete sense.

Nevertheless, the scale of the shutdown is unusual, to say the least, and only time will tell if The Scene will fully recover. For the average torrent or streaming site user, a period of reduced new content availability might be on the horizon but history shows us that rarely lasts for long and that the cycle will probably begin again, once people have figured out who they can trust.

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

It’s public knowledge that sites like The Pirate Bay store IP addresses and other data relating to its users.

Users hope that this data will be handled with care but in 2013, when the site effectively did the unthinkable, many users cheered the site on instead.

In order to assist the criminal prosecution of the infamous lawyers behind the now-defunct Prenda Law copyright troll outfit, The Pirate Bay released user logs that identified the company as the uploader of several movies. This and other evidence put two lawyers behind bars, where both remain today .

Seven years later, users of YTS – which is currently the second most-visited torrent site in the world – have an entirely more worrying scenario to consider because this time around, they are on the receiving end.

FACT: YTS is Handing Over User Data to a Law Firm

This saga has been running for some time but this week we were able to confirm what we’ve long suspected. The operator of YTS is actively handing over personal information about his own users to a law firm in Hawaii, which is acting on behalf of companies behind movies including Hellboy and Rambo: Last Blood.

The background to this ‘partnership’ appears to have its roots in cases where YTS itself was sued by attorney Kerry Culpepper for copyright infringement .

Since or around that time, YTS operator Senthal Vijay Segaran seems to have started cooperating with Culpepper, giving up email and IP addresses to the attorney in support of lawsuits against alleged pirates in the United States.

What we are seeing now, however, is that user data handed over to the attorney by YTS’s operator is being used in emailed threats to alleged users of YTS, demanding cash settlements to make potential lawsuits disappear.

Emailed Pay-Up-Or-Else Threats

TorrentFreak recently obtained an email sent by Culpepper IP to an alleged user of YTS. It begins with three pieces of information; the email and IP address of the recipient, plus the date (but not the precise time) of the alleged infringement. (Note: We have redacted some information to protect the privacy of our source)

It continues by stating that the law firm previously filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in Hawaii on behalf of its clients and “subsequently obtained identifying contact information for many of these users from the YTS website operator, including yours.”

The point of the email, it adds, is one of “courtesy” before legal action is taken that may result in additional costs.

With there being no doubt whatsoever that YTS data is helping to power this campaign, the email claims that the recipient “logged into the website YTS using the email address [redacted] from the IP address [redacted] and illegally downloaded a torrent file for copying our clients’ motion picture…”

In isolation, this claim is interesting. Torrent files contain no copyrighted content and it isn’t illegal to download them as they contain only metadata, i.e data that describes other data. No one has ever been prosecuted for downloading a .torrent file – anywhere, ever. That’s because it does not necessarily follow that the .torrent file downloader subsequently loaded it into a torrent client to download and/or share the work it references.

It is possible for the IP address of a user to be observed sharing the actual content in a torrent swarm if they later chose to do that, but the emailed letter offers no indication that is the case.

To be clear: downloading a torrent file is not illegal, sharing copyrighted content is. And there is a big difference as far as the courts are concerned. That being said, evidence showing the downloading of a torrent file on a specific date via a torrent site account attached to an email address, could also be accompanied by IP address evidence from a torrent swarm. That could be much more compelling in court.

The Options on Offer According to the Emailed Letter

In common with most settlement schemes, the letter seeks a cash payment from the recipient. For privacy reasons, we aren’t detailing the exact amount but it’s around the $1,000 mark. In exchange for paying this amount quickly, the law firm offers a “comprehensive release of all legal claims”, including the recipient not becoming a named defendant in a lawsuit.

Somewhat unusually and for reasons that are not immediately clear, it also demands additional information.

This includes a signed declaration indicating the BitTorrent client used to carry out the alleged infringement, the name of the site or business that promoted that BitTorrent client, and whether the letter recipient has ever received a copyright warning notice from his or her Internet service provider.

One can only speculate as to how this information might be put to use in the future but it certainly sounds like a bigger picture is being formed. Recall, the same law firm – Culpepper IP – is also trying to hold Internet backbone company Hurricane Electric responsible for piracy carried out by BitTorrent users.

Why This Approach is So Unusual

Apart from the operator of one of the world’s largest torrent sites giving up the personal information of his users, it’s worth looking at the structure of how this is taking place.

A $1 million consent judgment from earlier this year between movie companies affiliated with Millennium Media (under the legal guidance of Culpepper IP) and YTS, positively identified India-resident Senthil Vijay Segaran and the UK company Techmodo Limited as the operators of YTS.

So, a UK company runs YTS? Perhaps we should let that sink in for a moment.

Techmodo Limited is officially registered with the government in the UK, with Segaran listed as the sole director. It hasn’t yet filed any meaningful accounts and the same is true for the company of the same name , also operated by Segaran, that was dissolved following a via compulsory strike-off just months earlier.

So, what we appear to have here is an official UK-registered company, which is subject to all relevant local law (both civil and criminal), being identified by plaintiffs in a US-lawsuit as the operator of an illegal site. We use the term ‘illegal’ here as guided by the High Court of England and Wales, which previously determined that YTS and hundreds of similar sites act illegally under civil law (at least) in the UK and should be blocked by local ISPs.

So the big questions must follow. If Techmodo Limited is the operator of YTS and YTS is a site that operates illegally, it seems highly unlikely that Techmodo Limited can legally operate the YTS site in the UK. What charges or challenges it might face are matters for HMRC and possibly even the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit because, when infringement is carried out in the course of business, it becomes a criminal offense.

Big Questions to Be Answered in Murky and Unchartered Waters

In summary, what we appear to have here is a verifiably illegal site, run through an ostensibly legal entity, collecting and processing private user information, then handing that data over to third-party overseas attorneys/media companies, ones that appear to know the legal status of the site and the company behind it. This, so that people can be approached for payments for alleged offenses that took place utilizing that illegal site.

We can only presume that Culpepper IP and its associates have done their homework, they’re lawyers after all, but this business and/or legal arrangement is unorthodox, to say the very least. If a UK precedent exists determining the legality of the transfer of this kind of user data in these circumstances, we’re completely unaware of it.

If nothing else, the bar seems to be set particularly low when a legal entity, Techmodo Limited, is stated to be the operator of an illegal site, one that’s also supplying private information on alleged infringers that were only able to infringe because the YTS site supplied the torrent files in the first place. Quite remarkable.

Copyright experts, privacy buffs, and company law lawyers on both sides of the pond are invited to write in with an opinion on the implications of this massive conundrum because this goes way, way beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

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

This April, companies owned by Columbia, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, Warner, and Universal, sued ‘pirate’ IPTV service Nitro TV .

Filed in a California district court, the lawsuit accuses Alejandro Galindo, the supposed operator of Nitro TV, plus an additional 20 ‘Doe’ defendants, of massive copyright infringement.

While clearly referencing the service’s provision of live unlicensed TV channels, the suit focuses on Nitro’s VOD offering. i.e on-demand movies and TV shows plus the now-common 24/7 channels which continuously loop popular TV shows.

The lawsuit, potentially worth multiple millions in damages, quickly progressed and in May the entertainment companies obtained a preliminary court injunction to shut Nitro TV down. Since then the case has progressed, but not in the direction the plaintiffs might have hoped.

Galindo “Destroyed and Hid Evidence” During Discovery Process

In a motion filed this week, the plaintiffs – which form part of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment – slam Galindo for his failure to cooperate with the discovery process, including hiding and destroying evidence while lying to conceal his alleged role in Nitro TV. They also accuse him of breaching the court injunction.

According to the motion, Galindo freely admits that he sold Nitro subscriptions to consumers but denies being the operator of the service. The entertainment companies say this is nonsense, adding that Galindo hasn’t “produced a single document or identified any of his partners or affiliates in his initial disclosures or verified interrogatory responses.”

According to Galindo, his business was run exclusively through messaging service Telegram which was configured to “self-destruct” messages after they were read. The movie and TV show companies aren’t buying that either.

Significant Financial and Electronic Trails

The motion notes that for Nitro TV to operate, that must involve the buying and selling of subscriptions and reseller credits. This results in a documented financial trail, regardless of whether Galindo was at the top of Nitro or acted somewhere lower in the reseller pyramid. Running such a business leaves an electronic trail, and it appears the plaintiffs have several inside tracks.

As an example, the entertainment companies identify a Richard Horsten as someone who worked with Galindo. The pair communicated via email, not just via “self-destructed” Telegram messages. The plaintiffs say that Galindo failed to identify Horsten in his interrogatory responses, including the fact that he paid him tens of thousands of dollars using an account in his wife’s name.

The plaintiffs also state that even after being put on notice of the action against him, Galindo continued to use Telegram for Nitro-related business while still allowing messages to “self-destruct”. He also deleted emails from his Gmail account. This, they claim, runs afoul of the requirement to preserve evidence as required by the court.

Violations of the Preliminary Injunction

After the court handed down its order early May, it’s alleged that Galindo failed to shut Nitro TV down. Then, when the plaintiffs tried to have the domain names of the Nitro service disabled as per the court’s instructions, they discovered that NitroIPTV.com and TekkHosting.com had been transferred away from Namecheap and Domain.com, which kept the service live.

In a response through his counsel, Galindo said that he couldn’t shut the service down because he was just a reseller. However, no evidence was presented to support that argument so the entertainment companies continued to obtain evidence on their own.

Mounting Evidence Supporting Plaintiffs’ Claims

After serving a subpoena on Google, they discovered that 1,500 emails had been deleted after Galindo was served on April 3, 2020. Email headers in some of those emails revealed communication with Horsten while hundreds of others were sent and received “from a number of different providers of services that facilitate the operation and sale of IPTV service.”

It was discovered that hundreds of others involved communication with payment processing company MoonClerk, which is alleged to have supported the reseller network for the Nitro TV service. Also deleted were 20+ emails related to Coinbase communications.

“[T]he very existence of many of these emails undermines Defendant’s claim that he is ‘just a reseller,’ as only operators, and not those who were merely selling subscriptions to end user subscribers, would need to communicate with many of these service providers (e.g., Xtream Codes, WHMCS),” the motion reads.

Server company FDCServers also confirmed it had an account under the name Martha Galindo, believed to be the defendant’s mother, using Alejandro Galindo’s email address.

On top, PayPal confirmed that payments of more than $30,000 had been paid to Horsten in the name of Anna Galindo, Alejandro Galindo’s wife. An unnamed third-party “involved in Nitro” said that more than $40,000 had been paid to that party through Anna Galindo, Martha Galindo, and an email associated with TekkHosting.

Plaintiffs Request Orders to Prevent Destruction of Evidence and More

Given the lack of confidence in Galindo’s cooperation thus far, the movie and TV show companies are now demanding orders requiring evidence preservation, forensic imaging of all of the defendant’s electronic devices, and an order requiring Google to “deliver and divulge” the contents of his Gmail account covering the period January 2015 to July 2020.

The motion and proposed orders can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 pdf)

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

Running in their own niche alongside traditional streaming portals and torrent sites , pirate IPTV services have, over the past several years, become the “next big thing” in online piracy.

With relatively humble roots there are now seemingly hundreds of suppliers, some near the top of the tree with others simply rebranded versions of similar services. It’s reportedly a billion-dollar business in the United States alone but one service that recently stopped adding to that tally was Area 51.

Area 51 Announces its Shutdown

In late June, customers of Area 51 began receiving emails with the sender marked as ‘support@area51-hosting.host’, denoting one of the streaming platform’s official domains. It revealed that after several years of active service, Area 51 would be shutting down.

“We have been forced to make this very difficult decision, and close Area 51. We had quite a run, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without customers like you,” the email began.

With little other information available through public channels, speculation that the service may have run into legal trouble wasn’t far away. However, when pirate IPTV platforms disappear, they usually do so fairly tidily, but that wasn’t the case here.

The email from Area 51 indicated that another “amazing company” called Outer Limits would be taking over all of Area 51’s customer accounts, suggesting that subscriptions wouldn’t simply be lost. Indeed, former Area 51 clients were told to log into the Outer Limits site (outerlimits.info) with their current client area login credentials.

Resurrections/Rebranding Don’t Sit Well With Copyright Holders

Soon after, customers received another email, again from Area 51. This gave more information, stating that some of the team had decided to “move on to other ventures” while some had “just decided to focus more on our families.” However, earlier references to using Outer Limits were gone, replaced with a new brand purportedly taking over – Singularity Media.

“Hello and welcome to Singularity Media. We have taken over your account from your existing IPTV provider,” an email from the provider to its new customers explained.

“Your account remains the same and we are now looking after it for you. This means your logins remain the same.”

The announcement was certainly curious. If Area 51 had been subjected to legal threats from any credible entertainment anti-piracy group, directing customers to a new pirate service would be forbidden under the terms of any agreement following a normal cease-and-desist order.

So, given the rumors that some or all of the Area 51 team may have been personally served with orders to shut down, it wasn’t really a surprise when reports surfaced days later that Singularity Media would be shutting down too. Its URL is still dead but we can now reveal that Area 51 was indeed subjected to legal threats.

Domains Seized By the Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment

Area 51 operated various aspects of its service from several domains, including area-51-hosting.host. In addition to being identified as the sender of the ‘shutdown’ email, this domain acted as a sales portal for Area 51, offering packages at $10 per month up to a yearly subscription of $120.

After almost two months of uncertainty, we now confirm that the ownership of this domain has now been transferred from the Area 51 team and into the hands of the MPA which represents the major Hollywood studios and Netflix.

As previously reported on numerous occasions, including the shutdown of the Vaders service , when the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment arranges for a domain to be seized, it is transferred to the custody of the MPA.

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We can also confirm that at least two other domains previously operated by Area 51 are also in the hands of the MPA, including area51tv.stream and theuforepo.us. The latter, a reference to ‘the UFO repo’, was deployed by Area 51 as a repository to host various APKs and plug-ins used to access the service.

A Simple Shutdown – Or Will the Area 51 Mystery Continue to Unfold?

In common with its Nevada-based namesake, the now-confirmed shutdown of Area 51 has the potential to fuel more conspiracy theories. The big question, of course, is whether this matter is now over as far as the massive global anti-piracy coalition ACE is concerned or if there’s more action to come.

One only has to look at the sudden shut down of the Vaders IPTV service last year and the official announcement, arriving months later, that revealed that Vaders’ operators had agreed to pay ACE members $10m in damages . Whether that will be repeated here remains a mystery.

At this stage, it’s hard to say precisely what aspect of the Area 51 service was focused on by ACE lawyers but given recent lawsuits, including one against Clear View Media first reported by TF last week , Area 51’s VOD offering seems a likely candidate.

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