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

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

Evading App Store and Google Play Removal

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

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

‘Watched’ Bundle Available at Oha.to

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

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

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

ACE Goes to Court in the United States

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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.

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.

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.

After being launched in the Chinese market in 2016 as “Douyin”, social networking service TikTok has become one of the world’s recognizable app brands.

New estimates published this month suggest that TikTok could have as many as a billion monthly users, with around 100 million of those coming from the United States. It’s safe to say the product is already a phenomenon and wildly popular, especially among younger people, but not everyone is happy with its status.

Accusations of Privacy Breaches

Labeled a threat by the Trump administration due to its Chinese connections, TikTok has constantly found itself accused of siphoning off user data for use overseas. According to analysts, however, the software is no more intrusive than Facebook and Instagram. Which, of course, is a pretty low bar by most standards.

Nevertheless, many people simply do not trust TikTok, something which led to a coder known as ‘ augustgl ‘ reverse-engineering the company’s Android app and publishing the resulting source code on developer platform Github.

Published to Github

“This project is a bit different from my other projects. TikTok is a data collection engine disguised as a social media platform. It’s legitimate spyware, so I thought I would reverse engineer the Android application,” wrote ‘augustgl’ on his now-removed Github repo.

The source reportedly published includes that dedicated to location tracking, phone calls, screenshots, WiFi networks, and facial recognition. None of these features appear to have sat particularly well with ‘augustgl’, who signed off with the message, “China, I’ll see you when you send the hitmen to my house.”

While that did not happen, at least as far as we know, TikTok did become aware that reverse-engineered source was being made available online. Unsurprisingly, the social media company then used copyright law to have it taken down.

DMCA Takedowns

“I am legal counsel to TikTok Inc., owner of the copyright that is the subject matter of this notification, and am authorized to act on the owner’s behalf,” the notice begins.

“The original copyrighted work is source code for the TikTok Android app. Github user augustgl appears to claim to have reverse engineered the app. He posted the code to the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/augustgl/tiktok_source .”

At the same time, TikTok asked Github to help clean up all the repositories that had forked the code. In total, 19 other repositories operated by other coders were handed DMCA takedown notices, with Github complying by taking each one down.

While TikTok may have believed it had cleaned up all instances of the reverse-engineered code, there was more work to be done. In a new notice filed this week, TikTok returned for a second sweep, targeting another five repositories that had forked the original, apparently after being notified by Github.

“The original copyrighted work is source code for the TikTok Android app. Github user [redacted, but almost certainly a reference to ‘augustgl’] appears to claim to have reverse engineered the app. We submitted a DMCA notification to GitHub previously, resulting in a takedown. GitHub subsequently notified us that the user still had forks posted,” the DMCA notice reads.

All of the offending repositories appear to have been removed following TikTok’s request but the big question is whether anything surprising or insightful came from the published code, particularly in respect of the privacy and security allegations that have followed the company around in recent times.

TorrentFreak contacted ‘augustgl’ to discover what he’d found, if anything, but at the time of publishing he was yet to respond.

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

While the vast majority of videogames players are happy to enjoy games within the parameters set by their developers, there are millions who prefer to cheat their way to victory.

As a result, an industry has appeared ready to service people looking to gain an unfair advantage, offering cheating products often at a premium price. This disruption is frowned upon by developers and regular players alike, who argue that when the gaming experience becomes unfair, the fun associated with playing collapses.

In an effort to reduce the number of players cheating online, various videogame companies have filed lawsuits in the United States. Yesterday another one was added to the growing list when Riot Games and Bungie filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against GatorCheats for offering tools enabling cheating in Valorant, Destiny 2, and other titles.

“Malicious” Software Products “Destroy” plaintiffs’ Games

Filed in a California district court, the lawsuit targets Albuquerque, New Mexico resident Cameron Santos (the alleged operator of GatorCheats), plus an additional 10 ‘Doe’ defendants, some of whom (“Hal,” “Matt” and “Megan”) are alleged to provide customer support to cheat users.

“By this lawsuit, Plaintiffs seek to put a stop to the unlawful, for-profit sale and distribution of malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages (i.e., to cheat) in the Games, and, thereby, to impair and destroy Plaintiffs’ Games, Plaintiffs’ overall business, and the experience of Plaintiffs’ player community,” the complaint reads.

According to Riot and Bungie, Santos owns several online ventures engaged in the development and sale of “malicious cheats” targeting the companies’ games. “Honeyhacks” and “Voidcheaters” get a mention but GatorCheats is the largest, selling a cheat known as “Gatorant” and several tools for Destiny 2.

“The Cheating Software enables players to manipulate Valorant and Destiny 2 to their personal advantage, such as by automatically aiming weapons, revealing the locations of opponents, and allowing the player to see a vast array of information that otherwise would be obscured,” the companies note.

Cheat Makers Undermine Business Models

This undermining of the gaming experience for ordinary players comes at an enormous reputational and financial cost according to the complaint. As gamers leave their respective arenas in the face of cheating opponents, Riot and Bungie are reportedly losing goodwill along with millions of dollars in revenue.

The key issue is that the popularity of both Valorant and Destiny 2 lies not only in their gaming experiences but also in the business models selected by the plaintiffs. Since both games are available to play for free, the companies rely on gamers staying online for as long as possible while buying virtual goods such as characters, weapons, skins and clothing. When the experience is diminished by cheaters, the whole plan begins to come apart at the seams.

“If players perceive that others are cheating or have an unfair advantage, they will grow frustrated with the Games and stop playing. That, in turn, could disrupt and/or destroy the Games’ player communities and severely harm Plaintiffs’ ability to generate revenue and to maintain, improve, and expand the Games,” the complaint reads.

Bungie Issued Cease-and-Desist Notice in 2020

In an effort to protect their game, in November 2020 legal counsel for Bungie served GatorCheats with a cease-and-desist notice. GatorCheats subsequently informed users that the Destiny 2 cheats would be removed from sale but Santos reportedly assured those who had purchased a lifetime license they would continue to receive customer support.

However, the plaintiffs aren’t convinced that GatorCheats will discontinue the Destiny 2 cheats, alleging that the cheat maker will probably sell the software to users in a more discreet manner, including via a private section of the GatorCheats site.

The uncertainty surrounding compliance with the cease-and-desist notice appears to have triggered the lawsuit, which majors on breaches of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions plus violations of contract and unfair competition laws.

Trafficking in Circumvention Devices

The plaintiffs state that their games are protected by anti-cheat technologies designed to detect and thwart cheating tools. These technologies must be installed on users’ machines if they want to play the games. This means that if a cheat maker is to have a successful product, it must either conceal its existence from the developers’ anti-cheat technologies or disable them altogether. This is illegal under the DMCA, the plaintiffs claim.

“The Cheating Software is comprised of or contains technologies, products, services, devices, components, or parts thereof that primarily are designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing technological measures that effectively control access to the Games,” the complaint reads, noting that the cheats have no commercially significant purpose other than to circumvent technological measures.

“As a result of the foregoing, Defendants are offering to the public, providing, importing, or otherwise trafficking in technology that violates 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2) .”

As a result of these alleged infringements, the plaintiffs are demanding either the profits attributable to the sales of the cheats or the maximum statutory damages of $2,500 per violation of the DMCA. In respect of the former, the complaint estimates sales in the “tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars” for both sets of cheats. In the case of the latter, both cheats are said to have been downloaded “thousands of times” which easily supports a claim in the millions of dollars.

Interference With Contractual Relations, Unfair Competition

In addition to the claims under the DMCA, Riot and Bungie allege that though the provision of the cheats, GatorCheats intentionally encouraged its customers to breach the licensing contracts they had agreed with the companies when they installed the games. As a result, the cheat maker is guilty of “oppression, fraud, or malice” allowing the plaintiffs to recover exemplary and punitive damages.

In their final claim, Riot and Bungie state that GatorCheats engaged in unfair competition under California law, an act that again requires the cheat maker to pay compensation for damages caused to their businesses.

In the interim, the plaintiffs request injunctions to prevent GatorCheats from continuing to violate their rights, demanding that the cheat maker shuts down its software and removes it from the Internet. The gaming companies are also seeking access to financial records showing GatorCheats’ sales and how much money was made. That amount could be substantial.

According to the videogame companies, the Valorant cheat costs users $90 per month, $350 for three months, and $500 for lifetime access. The Destiny 2 cheats are slightly less pricey at $100 per month or $200 for a lifetime license.

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

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

Over the years we have reported on numerous ‘speculative invoicing’ schemes where copyright holders demand money from alleged copyright infringers.

This includes hundreds of thousands of settlement offers that were sent to suspected pirates, but we have also seen similar threats against people who use copyrighted photos on their personal sites.

The issue with these schemes isn’t the fact that rightsholders are enforcing their copyrights. That’s something they are entitled to do. It’s often the aggressive and sometimes even extortion-like nature of the threats that’s problematic.

Yesterday, comedian “Ozzy Man Reviews” shared one of his recent experiences on this front. With millions of subscribers on YouTube , Facebook , and other social media, Ozzy Man has a dedicated following. But, it’s not just people interested in his entertaining videos keeping an eye on his work.

‘Pirated’ Chinchilla Clip

After posting a new compilation commenting on some ‘ relaxing animals ‘, the Aussie comedian received a notification from Facebook that the video had been removed after a copyright holder complained. As it turns out, the 20-second clip of a chilling chinchilla was the culprit here.

While there are fair use defenses for this type of video, the takedown request by itself is justified. However, there is more to the story.

The chinchilla clip was originally shot by Instagram user ompt_gram but the takedown request came from someone else. As it turns out, it is at least partly ‘owned’ by the Facebook page “Go Animals” and that page is operated by the digital video marketing outfit “Creative Stage”.

Because takedown requests on social media may eventually lead to heavy account penalties, Ozzy Man hoped to resolve the matter. The good news was that Creative Stage was also open to retract the claim, but at quite a steep price.

$10,000 to Retract Claim

“Your violation caused the company damages and in order to retract we demand to receive a monetary compensation of $10,000,” a representative from Creative Stage wrote back.

Needless to say, this wasn’t how Ozzy Man expected the release of his first video of the year to go.

“I immediately responded to the attorney representing Creation Stage/Go Animals and outlined that the amount they were asking for is unjustified. It’s very similar to Speculative Invoicing,” Ozzy Man informs TorrentFreak.

Creator Not Involved

While the comedian admits that he didn’t clear the rights, he points out that the original creator of the clip didn’t have a say either. This is not uncommon as many viral videos are ‘exploited’ by licensing companies.

“The person who originally shot the video should get a say. I think it’s unclear to many people submitting videos to licensing companies or Facebook publishers online that the company is also asking to be a rights manager or an ‘attorney-in-fact’ for their content,” Ozzy Man tells us.

Account at Risk

The comedian shared his frustration on Facebook and stressed that this takedown put his entire account at risk. However, he had no intention of paying $10,000 for a 20-second chinchilla clip.

In theory, he could rely on a fair-use or fair-dealing defense, but copyright holders are usually not sensitive to that. This also applies to Creative Stage which showed little sympathy for the ‘trouble’ their takedown caused.

“I spoke to them in detail about the effect their DMCA takedown legal action had on me and it did not faze them. Takedowns trigger both YouTube and Facebook to penalize an account instantly by default. This includes restrictions on features, loss of monetization, and throttling of organic reach. It’s brutal,” Ozzy Man says.

The Web of Infringements

Stepping back, the above nicely illustrates the copyright complications many online creators and regular social media users face today, often without knowing. When all ‘infringements would be removed from social media and user-generated video platforms, very little remains.

Ozzy Man was in the wrong when he used the clip, but the same can be said for millions of others who post mashups, reviews, edits, or commentary online. Not to mention the millions of copyrighted photos that are published every day, without permission.

“It doesn’t get easier as you get bigger or more popular either, you simply end up with more sharks around ya,” Ozzy man notes.

Paying License Fees

The comedian is not an outright pirate though. He tries to balance the risk of using multiple source videos and also pays licensing fees for many clips.

“For instance, I do pay established licensing companies like Jukin Media and ViralHog. On average I’ll pay $100 USD for a clip. If I’m doing a compilation commentary and license 6 videos for 600 bucks USD, I know that my risk level goes down.

“And if these companies are genuinely sharing a cut of the financial pie with the original posters that shot the content then it’s nothing but a win for all of us.”

Ozzy Man’s problem isn’t so much the payment part but if he does pay for something, a share of that should go to the original creator. Right now, there are too many third-parties exploiting others’ content.

Have Some Ethics

“If ya looking to start a video licensing company online in 2021 have some damn ethics, integrity and discretion in how you operate and assess ‘damages’ or ‘market harm’.

“I think the idea of ‘market harm’ over a chinchilla being groomed video is ludicrous. It’s farcical. Don’t go gung-ho in the Content ID systems on YouTube, Facebook, etc and expect zero criticism for doing so.”

It appears that after making the matter public, things moved in the right direction. An army of followers defended the comedian and after a few hours the video was restored. We have to wonder, however, if the same would have happened to someone with a smaller following.

Ozzy Man is happy with the outcome and confirms to us that he didn’t pay anything. While his risk assessment with the chinchilla clip was a bit off, this doesn’t mean that he will stop using unlicensed clips on occasion.

“I hate being restricted, so I’m always gonna take SOME risks in the pursuit of comedy gold,” he concludes.

Enjoy.

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

As one of the most iconic gaming manufacturers in the world, Nintendo has been fighting piracy for decades.

The company has an in-house anti-piracy division that signals the latest threats to steer enforcement actions in the right direction.

In recent years it’s gone after sites and stores that offer pirated games and has assisted in the criminal prosecution against alleged members of the hacking group Team-Xecutuer. However, the smaller fish are not being ignored either.

Nintendo Targets Non-profit Fangames

A few days ago, Nintendo’s legal department sent DMCA notices to the game publishing community Game Jolt . The site, where hobbyists and indie developers share their creations for free, was notified that hundreds of fangames infringed Nintendo’s trademarks.

The takedown spree, which was published publicly by Game Jolt co-founder and CEO Yaprak DeCarmine, notes that the games in question use copies of Nintendo’s intellectual property without permission. Game Jolt allegedly profits from this.

“These web pages display images of Nintendo’s video game characters in connection with unauthorized online games that copy the characters, music, and other features of Nintendo’s video games.

“The web site at gamejolt.com generates revenue from advertising banners displayed on the site and advertisements played while users wait for the games to load,” the takedown notices add.

379 Games

This certainly isn’t the first time that Nintendo has targeted fangames, but the scope of this recent effort is massive. In total, the two notices posted by Game Jolt target 379 game URLs, which were all taken down. Game over.

The developers of the games and many of their fans were taken by surprise. Players were suddenly greeted with a 404 error message like this one and developers received an alert notifying them that their game had been targeted.

The mass removal is a hot topic in the Game Jolt community. Many people don’t understand why Nintendo would target some of its most dedicated fans. That includes the indie developers who spent weeks or months on their projects.

Game developer ‘Eeveeloverdoesgaming,’ who publishes several Nintendo-inspired games, wasn’t targeted but summarizes the general feeling towards Nintendo quite well.

No Sympathy for Nintendo

“They’ll get no sympathy from me, this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled a stunt like this. They’ve made it clear they hate their fans and repeat it time and time again never learning from it.”

The developer will continue to work on his “Five Nights At Team HQ series” but fears that it will be targeted eventually. That doesn’t stop the developer though, and he encourages others to simply flood the Internet with copies.

“Nintendo if you think taking down everyone’s games will help your image and get people to buy more of your games then you’re sorely mistaken! I’ll keep making and reuploading fan games even if you try to take them down, so DEAL WITH IT!

“All people who have copies of the fangames that were taken down take them and reupload them all over the internet so they stay up no matter what!”

Reuploaded

Although some developers prefer to lie low and stay out of Nintendo’s hairs for the foreseeable future, some have indeed brought their games back to life. For example, ‘Jeb Yoshi’, the developer of “Five Nights at Yoshi’s,” re-uploaded it with ads disabled.

“After looking into it, I believe the fact there was profit being earned from advertisements on the game page was the reason for the takedown of this game among countless others,” the dev writes.

‘Jeb Yoshi’ refers to Nintendo’s mention of the advertising element in the DMCA takedown request, which is mentioned by other people as well. They are not sure whether that’s indeed the case though. “Let’s hope this goes well,” the dev wrote on Discord.

In pursuit of more clarity TorrentFreak reached out to Nintendo for a comment but, at the time of writing, we have yet to receive a response. We also reached out to Game Jolt to hear their thoughts on Nintendo’s DMCA requests but the company didn’t immediately reply.

We will update this article if more information becomes available.

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