Lawsuits filed to address infringement can also play a key role as part of a wider deterrent messaging campaign. In the online arena inhabited by millions of pirates, dual-purpose lawsuits are especially common.

Even for Nintendo, suing every infringer isn’t just impractical. Negative exposure in the media has direct implications for image and branding. Additional risk of polluting or even displacing otherwise positive articles, could jeopardize what amounts to free advertising worth millions of dollars.

A deterrent message delivered on the back of the right case, however, could reach its target audience using the same means, with relatively few downsides. If the company had something similar in mind, a Nintendo lawsuit filed in November seems an almost perfect fit.

Targeting Jesse Keighin, aka EveryGameGuru, the lawsuit poses little risk to Nintendo’s image. It compresses many types of infringing and unlicensed activity into a single case, one so overwhelming in scope that resistance is likely to prove futile. Yet this complaint seems to offer more than just an easy win; on the deterrent front, it may offer something for everyone.

A Message For Gamers Everywhere?

Whether by pure coincidence or meticulous design, each type of offending alleged in the complaint relates to fairly common individual acts that, in isolation, millions of gamers will be familiar with already. The defendant’s potential downfall could send a message to pirates and emulator gamers everywhere: relatively minor individual acts can have serious consequences.

Live-streaming footage of games before their official release is a zero-tolerance issue for Nintendo, for example. Streaming is described in the complaint as the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of Nintendo’s copyrighted works. Live-streaming footage of any Nintendo game, regardless of date of release, using an illegal Switch emulator, is described as a violation of the company’s rights for exactly the same reason.

For those who enjoy sending links to friends or internet strangers, for the purposes of signposting locations where illegal emulators and/or ROMS can be downloaded, Nintendo alleges acts of inducement and contributory infringement. Sharing tiny files such as those carrying encryption keys, amounts to trafficking in circumvention devices under the DMCA.

As alleged, Keighin’s conduct was obviously much more serious than that of the average Joe. However, since relatively few gamers will be interested enough to soak up the details, any deterrent message – should Nintendo intend to send one – could end up especially broad.

That Keighin was a prolific streamer on YouTube, Discord, Twitch, TikTok, Trovo, Kick, Vaughn, Dlive, Picarto, Nimo, Facebook, and Loco, ensures social media reach with serious potential, although maybe not for a while.

Transforming a Dire Legal Position Into Something Worse

In an email dated November 8, notifying Keighin that a complaint had been filed at a court in Colorado, Nintendo expressed concern over evidence preservation, noting that things may have already gone off track.

“We have observed that, since filing of Nintendo’s litigation, you have begun deleting content you posted online, including content referenced in the Complaint. I write to remind you of your duty to preserve such evidence. Upon commencement of a litigation, litigants have a duty to preserve evidence relevant to the case,” the email reads.

“Please immediately confirm whether you have maintained copies of everything you have already deleted and that you will comply with your preservation obligations.”

Having received no such confirmation, a subsequent Nintendo email informed Keighin that efforts to serve him in person had failed multiple times already.

“We have been attempting to serve you with the summons and complaint (attached) for the above-captioned matter for multiple days, but after attempting several addresses, we have been unable to serve you personally. We believe you may be evading service. Indeed, we are aware that you have stated publicly that you are aware of this lawsuit,” the email reads.

Nintendo Not Thrilled By the Chase

In case the gamer preferred to waive formal service of the summons and complaint, Nintendo provided the necessary paperwork and offered to take care of everything upon receipt of a signature. Worth a shot, perhaps, but unlikely to succeed in light of Keighin’s response posted to X.

Court records reveal a number of failed attempts to serve the defendant at various addresses. One of those addresses appeared in five DMCA counternotices sent by Keighin, to reinstate content taken down by Nintendo DMCA notices.

An email sent to Nintendo on October 24, in connection with the suspension of an account for copyright infringement, suggested that further channel suspensions wouldn’t be effective.

According to Nintendo, it’s possible that preparations to avoid being served involved outside assistance. At various addresses, process servers found family members but no physical trace of the defendant.

To support its claim, Nintendo provided a screenshot of a Facebook post; it limited who could respond, but not who could view.

Fueling the Fire

Other evidence to show that Keighin knew about the lawsuit appears in a screenshot of a brief encounter with a 9news journalist hoping for a story. A Facebook post that used profanity to declare zero interest in the case, allegedly addressed a colleague at law firm Jenner & Block LLP using the word “BITCH”.

A friend’s post on X, suggesting that Keighin should fight the “legendary” lawsuit in court dressed as Mario, carried less weight than Keighin’s own posts three days later. They reveal a plan to “piss Nintendo off” by causing the company to waste “a ton of money” on legal fees, before ensuring that “Nintendo gets nothing” after waving “Bowser’s Bankruptcy Magic Wand.”

In his posts on social media, Keighin says that “he’s making sure there’s no precedence [sic] set here” and at minimum expects to “go down in video game history.”

The Nintendo lawsuit filed against Yuzu last year concluded with a win for the gaming company, minus any attempt to have the case settled on the merits, let alone set some type of precedent. Going down in video game history could go either way.

As the person who gifted Nintendo more than they ever imagined, in what is likely to be an uncontested default judgment, history may quickly forget. That Nintendo will emerge without even a scratch, having easily maintained the usually tricky moral high ground, is indeed one for the history books. Maybe even worthy of a memorable quote.

“Should have done more research on me,” Keighin warned Nintendo’s legal team.

“You might run a corporation. I run the streets.”

The complaint and subsequent filings are available here

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

Development of AI continues to progress at a rapid pace. This includes work on large language models (LLMs), which are typically trained on broad datasets of texts.

These technologies promise unparalleled progress which could benefit society as a whole. Yet despite widely recognized potential, areas of significant concern remain.

That many LLMs were trained on datasets containing copyrighted content is now widely known. This has led to numerous complaints and high-profile lawsuits, with companies like OpenAI , Google, Meta , Microsoft, and NVIDIA facing allegations of copyright infringement.

The courts will ultimately decide whether rightsholders have legitimate copyright claims, or whether technology companies can indeed rely on a ‘fair use’ defense. It will likely take many years before a final decision is reached so until then, rightsholders are doing all they can to prevent future infringements.

Books3

The Books3 dataset, used to train many popular LLMs, initially attracted significant attention. The dataset was compiled by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, using the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik.

Books3 was widely shared online and incorporated into other databases, including ‘The Pile,’ an AI training dataset compiled by EleutherAI. This practice remained largely unchallenged for years, but when AI entered the mainstream, copyright complaints surged.

Due to pressure from rightsholders and anti-piracy groups, Books3 was removed from numerous online platforms over copyright concerns. Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance spearheaded several of these takedown actions, while describing AI-themed infringement as a major problem.

“We have a big task ahead of us in detecting and taking down illegal training datasets like Books3, but also in dealing with AI that has already been trained on illegal content and is now spreading on the internet,” Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund said previously.

BREIN vs. GEITje LLM

In the ensuing months, takedown efforts persisted. Notably, these efforts expanded beyond datasets containing complete books, targeting the models trained on this data as well.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been active on this front and announced that, as a result, one of the largest Dutch LLMs ‘ GEITje-7B ‘ was taken offline as a result of their efforts.

This LLM was trained on ‘Gigacorpus’ a dataset of books and texts previously targeted by BREIN, including a vast collection of Dutch texts and books, some of which contained copyrighted material sourced from the shadow library LibGen

“We see a worldwide trend that creators of AI models have little or no respect for copyright,” BREIN writes.

“Apparently, the thinking is that all the attention, time and money put into copyrighted works by creators and media companies are less important than the AI models,” the group adds .

In their defense, the LLM creator cited copyright exceptions for text and data mining for scientific purposes. However, BREIN argued that the European AI Act mandates the use of lawfully acquired content as inputs for AI models.

This disagreement wasn’t tested in court. The LLM developers lack the funds to litigate the matter so took the decision to take GEITje offline voluntarily.

Voluntary Shutdown

Machine learning engineer Edwin Rijgersberg developed the GEITje LLM as a hobby. While the 7-billion parameter model became quite popular, he is not in a position to mount a legal challenge.

Rijgersberg previously consulted copyright experts who informed him that the issue isn’t as black and white as portrayed by some rightsholders. That said, a legal battle would be expensive.

“I cannot afford to engage in a lengthy and costly legal battle to resolve these issues. After all, GEITje was a non-commercial, scientific hobby project. For this reason, I am complying with BREIN’s request,” Rijgersberg notes .

While BREIN stresses the importance of protecting copyrights, GEITje’s developer still has hope for an open-source Dutch-language AI landscape

“In my view, the future of European AI still lies in open-source AI. Only when AI is free to use, can be studied by everyone, and is freely available to modify and share for any purpose. can we truly speak of sovereign AI.”

While GEITje won’t make a comeback, Rijgersberg highlights that there are now many other Dutch LLMs available to the public. These models are trained on various datasets, which may or may not include copyrighted material.

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

Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ( USPTO ) organized an anti-piracy symposium where several experts discussed recent achievements, new challenges, and potential solutions.

Held at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the meeting brought together public and private sector players to discuss various copyright and piracy-related topics.

For example, trial attorney Vasantha Rao, who works as the Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, discussed the Gears Reloaded case, the Z-Library takedown , plus international domain seizure actions including Operation Offsides .

Michael Christin, another trial attorney at the DoJ, went into great detail on the Jetflix case, discussing various challenges his team faced while litigating the case.

This was an openly accessible symposium, so discussion and commentary was limited to information already in the public record. That said, when discussing future anti-piracy solutions, more novel perspectives were brought up.

Piracy is ‘Maturing’

In a session on the latest trends in piracy and piracy prevention, Piracy Monitor founder Steven Hawley explained that piracy as an industry has evolved. There are many professional ‘pirate’ actors offering various services, both to consumers and aspiring site operators.

“I would say first off, the piracy in the universe has really matured, it’s metastasized, it’s a multichannel, multilevel industry, multinational phenomenon,” Hawley said.

“Market entry for a pirate is easy. If you wanted to become a pirate tomorrow, you could go online and find organizations that provide Piracy as a Service, they’ll give you content, they’ll give you a distribution platform, they’ll design your user interface, quite sophisticated.”

Marissa Bostick, Head of Global Litigation at the Motion Picture Association (MPA) , also sees a combination of increased professionalism and brazenness. Interestingly, this is paired with a shift from free to paid piracy services, with Bostick mentioning ‘ Magis TV ‘ as one of the examples.

“Users are paying to get access to the pirated content, whether it’s IPTV, premium cyber locker accounts, illegal password services, set-top boxes, there are various forms of this. It means the pirates are actually getting direct streams of income,” Bostick said.

The fact that some pirate services don’t even try to lie low anymore is evident in examples of brazen behavior. They openly advertise themselves through billboards and register for trademarks, as Magis TV recently did .

“Piracy is really sometimes coming out of the shadows. So what we’re seeing, and we see this in Latin America, for example, billboards for piracy sites. They’re paying influencers to go on social media and promote them. They’re registering for trademarks. This is not something that’s happening on some dark web,” Bostick added.

The American ‘Site Blocking’ Dream

The speakers went into great detail on these and other challenges. This ultimately led to the question of what can be done in response. Aside from litigation, including criminal prosecutions, pirate site blocking was frequently mentioned as a solution.

MPA’s Marissa Bostick said that they have been working on this for many years and that it’s been one of the most effective anti-piracy remedies.

There are now site blocking solutions in more than 50 countries around the world, including Australia France, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

The United States is notably absent from this list, but that may change. Bostick said that, with bipartisan and bicameral support, site blocking legislation may eventually move forward in the United States.

The call for site blocking was supported by many other speakers, including Lui Simpson of the Association of American Publishers , who stressed that the U.S. “is lagging far behind” compared to other countries, partly because the initial SOPA site blocking proposal failed in 2012.

“We’re hopeful that this time around we’ll make progress. As you know, we tried this maybe 13 years ago. The hope now is that the misinformation will not be so much of a hindrance here to actually getting a remedy in place.”

“It is long overdue. I think we’re one of the few, let’s just say more developed countries that unfortunately does not have this remedy,” Simpson added.

Attenzione!

U.S. site blocking discussions are not new and, in a meeting dedicated to anti-piracy solutions, there was little pushback. That said, it is clear that if site blocking comes to America, it should be done right.

This means that potential errors and overblocking should be ruled out, for as far as that’s possible. This is particularly important now that the Italian “ Piracy Shield ” site blocking scheme is cause for continued controversy.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed by the panelists at the symposium. Steven Hawley, for example, mentioned the “Piracy Shield” has had its challenges, especially because much of the process is automated without detailed verification.

“It sounds like a great system, but it needs fine-tuning. I guess this is a message to anyone who’s developing platforms like this, watch out for false positives,” Hawley said.

Lui Simpson also stressed that the U.S. should learn from site blocking schemes in other jurisdictions. However, she was not referring to overblocking, but to the tendency of blocked sites to launch alternative domains almost instantly.

If the U.S. proposes a site blocking solution, it should be dynamic, so that new domains can be added swiftly.

Bostick acknowledged this and stressed that the MPA has more than a decade of experience with site blocking measures around the globe. So, they can use everything they learned thus far to come up with a balanced and effective solution.

“We have over ten years of experience at this point with site blocking in various countries, different parts of the world, and how it can work seamlessly and effectively. So we need to use all that and use that experience to move forward,” Bostick stressed.

All in all, the USPTO’s anti-piracy symposium offered an intriguing peek into the learnings and priorities of various key players in the public and private sector. It also revealed that despite previous successes, there are still many challenges ahead.

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

Nearly a decade ago, the US Navy was sued for mass copyright infringement and accused of causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit was filed by the German company Bitmanagement . It’s not a typical piracy case in the sense that software was downloaded from shady sources. Instead, it deals with unauthorized installations.

It all started in 2008 when the US Navy began testing Bitmanagement’s 3D virtual reality application ‘BS Contact Geo’. After some testing, the Navy installed the software across its network, assuming that it had permission to do so.

This turned out to be a crucial misunderstanding. Bitmanagement said it never authorized this type of use and when it heard that the Navy had installed the software on 558,466 computers, the company took legal action.

Bitmanagement Wins Appeal

In a complaint filed at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in 2016, the German company accused the US Navy of mass copyright infringement and demanded damages for the alleged unauthorized use.

The Court initially ruled in favor of the government, but Bitmanagement appealed. In 2021, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the software company, concluding that the US Government is indeed liable .

This meant that the matter was reverted to the Federal Claims court, to determine an appropriate damages amount. This part of the legal battle was just as crucial, as potential damages ranged from tens of thousands of dollars to more than $100 million.

$155,400,000 in Piracy Damages?

Bitmanagement told the court that it is entitled to $155,400,000 in copyright infringement damages. The figure was based on more than 600,000 copies of the software allegedly installed by the Navy, multiplied by the negotiated $370 license per install, minus a 30% discount.

The U.S. Government disagreed. To counter the software company, it brought forward expert witness David Kennedy. After reviewing various log files, Mr. Kennedy concluded that the software was used by a few hundred unique users at most.

The witness further argued that a price of up to $200 per license would likely have been reasonable. The amount was lower than the $370 per install previously quoted, but warranted due to the large number of licenses involved.

Court Awards $154,400, Bitmanagement Appeals

The Federal Claims Court ultimately went along with the Government’s position, awarding $154,400 in damages.

The damages figure is based on 635 unique users and a license fee of $200. The court also awarded an additional $350 for each of the 100 simultaneous-use licenses the Navy would have agreed to.

The court stressed that its damages calculation was based on objective considerations, characterizing it as “fair and reasonable”. Bitmanagement had a different take and requested a higher damages award at the Court of Appeals.

Appeals Court Affirms $154,400 Damages Award

Earlier this month, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reached its decision. After hearing both sides, it concluded that the $154,400 award was correct.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the damages figure, noting that the law does not require every award of copyright damages to be on a per-copy basis.

“No case that we or the parties have identified, in this or any other circuit, requires that an award of copyright damages invariably be on a per-copy basis,” the decision notes.

The court also held that the Court of Federal Claims did not err when it required Bitmanagement, rather than the Navy, to prove how much the U.S. Navy used the software. Finally, the court was within its right to admit the testimony of the government’s expert witness.

“We have considered Bitmanagement’s remaining arguments and find them unpersuasive. Because the Court of Federal Claims’ damages award was not an abuse of discretion, we affirm,” the court concludes.

While this is certainly a unique case, it’s not the first time the U.S. military has been “caught” pirating software. The Government was previously accused of operating unlicensed logistics software, a case the Obama administration eventually settled for $50 million.

—

A copy of the verdict released by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is available here (pdf)

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

In the fall of 2002, Suprnova.org launched as one of the first sites dedicated to sharing ‘torrents’.

At the time, Napster has just shut down, leaving a void in the file-sharing landscape. A Slovenian teenager named Andrej Preston has just discovered the new BitTorrent protocol at the time and decided to embrace it.

Andrej, commonly known under the nickname ‘Sloncek’, started Suprnova as a fun project to show off to friends on IRC. Like many of these early hobby projects, it started as a very primitive setup, hosted on a Linux box at Peston’s home.

In the weeks that followed, word of the “Universal BitTorrent Source” spread like wildfire, maxing out the meager 16kb/s upload capacity of the residential internet connection. Faced with this explosive growth, Suprnova was moved to an external hosting company, with many mirror sites later helping to distribute the traffic.

December 19, 2004: Suprnova.org Shuts Down

In record time, Suprnova became one of the most visited websites on the Internet. It became the go-to site for pirates who had discovered the unlimited sharing capacity of BitTorrent and the community that came with it. It also served as inspiration for other torrent sites that launched later, The Pirate Bay included.

Just as quickly as it rose to stardom, exactly twenty years ago today on December 19, 2004, Suprnova went dark . Initially, not much was known about the circumstances, but Andrej later said that he pulled the plug after he started reading about himself in the newspapers. Something didn’t feel right .

In hindsight, this was likely a pivotal decision. A month after the shutdown, police raided Andrej’s home, taking equipment and media as part of a criminal investigation. The case was closed a month later, but it’s not hard to see how things may have ended differently if the site had been active.

Not all decisions made at the time were great. Following the demise of Suprnova, Andrej became the spokesperson for the ambitious file-sharing software startup eXeem , which failed miserably. The same can be said for the relaunch of Suprnova in 2009 by The Pirate Bay, which Andrej wasn’t actively involved in. That never really took off.

Academy of Art University

Instead of focusing on new file-sharing ventures, Andrej explored his creative side. He dreamed of being in the film and TV business and wanted to study in the United States, close to LA. Eventually, he was admitted to Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Ironically, the funds he earned from Suprnova helped him pursue this dream, but the money eventually dried up and Andrej worked as a Resident Assistant to get free room and board. Together with funds scraped together by his parents, he made it though school.

During this time, Andrej also gained experience at an online video production company, working for free. He was also the driving power and creative mind behind TorrentFreak TV , which offered more room to improve his skills between 2008 and 2010. While that project stopped after two seasons, the passion for online video certainly wasn’t over.

A YouTube Star…

Today, Andrej is the owner of “ The Infographics Show ” a YouTube channel with more than 14 million subscribers. The first videos were posted on Suprnova’s video portal back in 2011. There are still traces of Suprnova.org on YouTube today, as the channel’s oldest videos display its logo in their intro .

With more than a decade of YouTube experience, six billion video views, and a team that consists of nearly 200 people, Suprnova’s founder has come a long way. But what was this journey like? About time to hear his thoughts again, twenty years after he pulled the plug.

We typically don’t post interviews in full, but we gladly make an exception here for what is a truly authentic story, with remarkable depth and detail tracing back to the early days of torrents. In addition, it offers a unique perspective on copyright, online entertainment, and life in general.

——

TF: Looking back 20 years, what’s your overriding feeling about Suprnova.org? Pride, regret, something else?

Andrej: Honestly I feel like I’ve lived quite a few lives. Do I look at it with a particular feeling? It’s kind of hard to put into words. I’d say for most of my adult life, I saw it as just something that happened. It’s the only life I know.

As I’m quickly approaching 40, I view the past with quite different eyes. I am proud of myself and the size of the project I ran starting at the age of 15. Is my view of copyrights and business in general as naive as it was back then? Absolutely no, and I wouldn’t risk doing something like that today.

But overall, in short, yeah, I am proud. I am proud of the project and who it made me today. I also feel so lucky for the life long friends I made because of it.

TF: The profits generated though Suprnova allowed you to study in the United States. Why did you choose the Academy of Arts in San Francisco? How did that go?

Andrej: I used all the money I made to put myself through school. I loved film & tv and I felt that, the only way to do it at the scale I dreamt of, required me move to the states. But I was never a great student.

My grades through school were pretty much between a C and a D. I attended a Waldorf school through all my school years but even that felt like it wasn’t right for me in terms of education. So, I had to choose a school that offered a TV Producing major that had open enrollment and I really wanted to be close to LA.

I worked through the whole school process. I was a Resident Assistant for 3 out of 4 years to get room and board for free and I worked for almost two years for free as an intern at an online video production company to gain additional skills and experience.

I also ran out of money to continue paying for my school and had to have my parents take out a loan against their property they lived in and I grew up in. Having to study and my homework be something I was so passionate about made it really easy to get good grades. It was the first time in my life that I felt school came easy.

TF: After handing over the Suprnova.org domain to The Pirate Bay briefly, you later regained control. In 2011 you relaunched is as a video portal, briefly showing TorrentFreak TV episodes and a new project called the “Infographics Show”. Where did the idea for the Infographics Show come from?

Andrej: I realized that I really loved everything internet and as much as I felt hurt by being torn to pieces online by people for launching eXeem – which was also a financial debacle – I needed to embrace what I really loved.

I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity by you to record some TorrentFreak episodes, which actually helped me learn a lot more about the online video streaming landscape.

I was also a huge fan of statistics, data and visual representations of them. I had an idea that if I just took a static infographic and made it animated people would for sure want to watch it, as that’s something I’d want to watch. The show has evolved a lot since then and is an ‘infographic’ only in its name.

TF: It’s been over a decade since you launched The Infographics Show on YouTube, which now has millions of subscribers. How do you look back on the past years? Any milestones you can share?

Andrej: The weird part about milestones is that the bigger they are, the less they mean. The Infographics Show now sits at around 14.7 million subscribers with over 6 billion views and over 5 thousand videos made.

I believe I made about 25 videos between 2011 and 2016 and had a few thousand subscribers. It was the video ‘ North Korea vs United States – Who Would Win The War ‘ that started getting some views after a year of publishing, that made me look at my YouTube channel again.

There was also a comment by the best friend of my spouse who at the time expressed doubt about my earning potential by making a comment “but does the lightning really strike twice”, suggesting that I had luck with SuprNova and that was it. I felt like I had something to prove to myself at that point and decided to make a few more videos.

My biggest memorable milestone was when I made another video with a similar theme and it received 10,000 views in a day. That was the time I felt I can do this and I am on to something.

Of course the million subscribers milestone and then the 10 million were special (I made sure I invited the person who made the comment about having luck to my 10 million subscribers celebration, but they have no idea how their comment ever affected me or that I even knew about it).

The milestones are different now, there isn’t just The Infographics Show (even though that’s what people mostly know about). There are many other channels, including SCP Explained . It’s also not just me. The team is large, close to 200 people. I am lucky I get to work with my best friends and I am lucky to once again have my brother working with me.

And while a lot of people look at The Infographics Show and see that it’s generating smaller numbers than even a few years ago, the amount of watch time has never been higher.

Between all the channels, we’ve generated over 300 million watch time hours and, when putting that in perspective, that’s a lot more than a lot of my favorite TV shows that inspired me ever did. Yet of course it still feels like it’s not enough.

TF: Did any specific aspects of your experience with Suprnova influence your approach to creating and sharing content on The Infographics Show?

Andrej: I think SuprNova taught me at a very young age how to project manage and delegate. At the time I had no idea what I was learning but it made me the producer I am today. I also believed from the start that the way I’d like to make money is by making content available to everyone and I’ll make the money against the ads shown to them.

I believe there are so many ways to make money from popular content. Even views that aren’t directly monetized today can still contribute to revenue I make in the future. Whether that’s via the person watching more of my content but seeing ads, telling their friends about it, or maybe just showing the algorithm that it’s worth watching and spreading the reach.

TF: 20 years ago you were worrying about cease and desist letters from copyright holders. Today, you’re an established ‘creator’ yourself. Has this changed your outlook in any way?

Andrej: Ha, this is a funny one. I honestly have no real recollection of receiving cease and desist letters, maybe my brain just erased those memories. But I do often ask myself if I’m a hypocrite as I send a takedown notice.

I have to explain this part a little. I generally ‘copyright claim’ reuploads of my content on YouTube. This means other people will upload it and I will earn the money based on the ads shown on those videos.

I will sometimes copyright strike videos, where you can see somebody is just downloading my videos and reuploading them, without even editing them or giving them any new value. It’s rare but I do.

This is where you might call me a hypocrite but let me explain myself. I believe that all media (entertainment and the rest) has a significant impact on who we are and how it shapes us. I believe that there should be a way for everyone to have access to it, via different sources.

I think people who want a better experience should pay for those experiences, but I think those who would otherwise be deprived of ever having the opportunity to see it in any way, should have a chance to see it.

I feel that if I hadn’t had a chance to use certain applications as a kid, due to being in a country where access was limited, and coming from a family that was not well off, I would have not had a chance to compete on a global market at the same level as someone who had the privilege from a young age to have access to all of it. The same goes for media and entertainment. Those experiences show a person what is possible.

Since my videos are already completely free on YouTube, I don’t think there is a reason for somebody to be uploading to the exact same platform where I already provide everything, and try to collect money from it. If people were putting my videos somewhere where I could not put them myself, and that was the only way for people to see them, I would have absolutely no problem with that.

TF: Suprnova existed in a different era. How do you view the current state of online entertainment and piracy, and what are your thoughts on how the industry can adapt?

Andrej: SuprNova existed because it needed to exist. This was a time that old school business models met new emerging technologies. The world needed to change and adapt to how people consume all sorts of media. If SuprNova didn’t exist, you would be talking with a different person right now but the questions would have been the same.

The current state of online entertainment is something I am trying to predict as it will affect me massively.

I think the golden age of streaming is already over. Every legacy media empire was forced to come up with an online streaming platform. They all competed for subscribers so we saw the lowest prices we will ever see. We were also able to pick what kind of content we preferred and paid only for those platforms. I believe this is now over and we are moving into a rapid consolidation of media into what we will soon see as old school TV packages.

Streaming platforms will be more expensive and if you want to have access to all the content available, it will cost you A LOT. TV ad dollars are moving online. Sadly I believe we will eventually get to the point where even the most premium and most expensive option will be ad supported and there will not be a way to pay for services without ads.

While I don’t follow much of what is happening in the piracy world nowadays, I think once we get there, you will see a lot more people resorting to piracy, once again.

One thing we shouldn’t leave unmentioned is the advancement of AI and video generation. My prediction is that platforms like YouTube and others will be flooded within the next few years with auto generated content.

While it’s scary to think how it will affect my bottom line, I just have to accept that I was a part of technological revolution at some point and I can’t fight it. I have to see how I can adapt and embrace it and understand that nothing stays the same for long.

—

TF: We want to thank Andrej for his openness and insight he provided over the years. Looking back at more than two decades of following the piracy scene, this is one of the stories that stands out most. We’ll check in again in another decade.

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

According to an infamous anti-piracy PSA that just recently celebrated its 20th birthday, downloading a copy of a movie is the same as stealing a physical disc from a regular store, stealing a handbag, or even stealing a car.

These claims remain factually incorrect but at the time the PSA was released, rightsholders needed to drive a simple message home. While the act of stealing is instantly recognized by billions all over the world, two decades ago downloading a movie was still relatively new, mostly invisible, and didn’t even require physical media to exist.

Conflating a crime people understood with the act of downloading a movie may have helped some understand a new concept, but that still didn’t make the stealing claims true. In this context the unforgettable campaign slogan ‘Piracy is a Crime’ wasn’t the universal fit it claimed to be either. Nevertheless, twenty years later similar tactics are still in use, despite piracy itself being much more broadly understood.

Piracy Isn’t Always a Crime, Even When Dressed Up as Something Else

As telecoms regulator AGCOM warns that people who simply use pirate IPTV subscriptions risk having their details forwarded for prosecution, a case with alleged offenses dating back to January 2017 has been progressing in the background.

In summary, a man from Gallarate in northern Italy operated a website where pirate IPTV subscriptions were sold. After making payment via Postepay accounts that don’t provide anonymity, customers gained illegal access to streaming content owned by companies including Mediaset, Sky, DAZN, and Disney, but paid them nothing for the privilege.

In 2017, Europe’s highest court confirmed that simply streaming pirate content is illegal under copyright law, but prosecutors in Italy had a different idea. All 23 pirate IPTV subscription buyers were prosecuted for the crime of receiving stolen goods. It didn’t go well.

Two Different Case Tracks, Same Outome

Thirteen of the defendants opted to be heard under an abbreviated procedure which was heard recently, with the remaining nine defendants appearing before Judge Bianca Maria Todaro at the Court of Lecce in April this year.

The prosecutor argued that the defendants effectively profited from the cheap subscriptions and knew they were illegal. The company now known as Mediaset Premium spiced up the criminal procedure with an €80,000 civil claim for compensation.

Lawyers for the defendants argued that a decision dating back to 2005 clearly shows that, since violations were exclusively of an administrative nature, all of their clients should be acquitted of the alleged crime.

In her decision, Judge Todaro noted that the defendants had indeed purchased the pirate IPTV subscriptions, but had done so for strictly personal use. With no aggravating factors suggesting anything other than private consumption, the Judge said no crime had been committed. And since an administrative sanction was applicable, criminal convictions for receiving stolen goods were ruled out.

The administrative sanction for each defendant was €154, with a 33% discount available for those who settled their account within 60 days.

Thirteen IPTV Pirates Acquitted

The remaining 13 defendants appeared before Judge Roberta Maggio last week, charged with exactly the same crime of receiving stolen goods.

Judge Maggio acknowledged the purchase of the illicit subscriptions but said there was no evidence to show that any of the defendants sold, distributed, or held subscriptions for resale purposes.

Indeed, the decision states that the defendants’ possession of the subscriptions was for “purely personal purposes.” Since that is an administrative matter to be settled with a payment of €154 (minus 33% discount for prompt settlement), no crime of receiving stolen goods ever took place.

Under Italian legislation passed in 2023, those who simply use or view copyrighted content without permission face an administrative fine of between €154 and €5,000. The decisions handed down by both judges indicate that a first time offense of possessing an illegal IPTV subscription for personal use is €154, an amount only likely to increase for subsequent offenses.

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

Last week, Canada’s original site blocking order against pirate IPTV provider GoldTV expired , after rightsholders decided not to ask for any further extensions.

Overall interest in site blocking hasn’t waned, however. There are still several live-streaming orders in place, protecting sports content including football, hockey, and rugby.

Soap2Day Lawsuit

Meanwhile, Netflix, Bell, and several major Hollywood studios including Disney and Universal, prepared the first blocking order against a traditional pirate streaming site, Soap2Day. That request was granted by Canada’s Federal Court yesterday.

As is typical in Canada, the case started as a lawsuit against the “John Doe” operator of Soap2Day. In a statement of claim filed in May 2023, the rightsholders accused the site of flagrant copyright infringement.

The owner was served via email and this had an immediate impact. Instead of ignoring the matter or fighting back in court, Soap2Day.to and various related domains were shut down by their operator . The lawsuit wasn’t mentioned as a reason, but the timing was evident.

Soap2Day Judgment

With the initial goal already achieved, one might assume that the plaintiffs were satisfied, but that certainly wasn’t the case. While the main Soap2Day threat was gone, sites using the same name remained active.

Soap2Day is a popular pirate ‘brand’ that’s often used to lure visitors. The Fmovies piracy ring, for example, used Soap2dayx.to until it was shut down a few months ago. Others, including Soap2day.day and Soap2day.rs remain active today.

Netflix, Disney and the other rightsholders filed a motion for default judgement against the operators of Soap2day.to, Soap2dayX.to, Soap2day.day, and Soap2day.rs, which was granted yesterday.

Judge Simon Fothergill concludes that the “John Doe” defendants engaged in blatant, notorious and intentional misconduct. As punishment, and to deter further copyright infringement, each defendant was ordered to pay millions of Canadian dollars in damages.

– John Doe 1: $6,080,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 2: $5,820,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 3: $5,840,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 4: $4,520,000 as statutory damages

In addition, the defendants were ordered to pay $1,000,000 as punitive and exemplary damages, as well as $400,000 for which they are held jointly liable.

The Site Blocking Order

These damages are substantial but since the operators remain unidentified, the plaintiffs may be unable to collect. The rightsholders are aware of this so to ensure that their efforts have impact, they also requested a site blocking order.

Justice Fothergill of the Federal Court approved this request yesterday and issued a blocking order similar to that against GoldTV. This effectively means that all major Canadian ISPs must block access to specified Soap2Day domains.

The order specifically lists Soap2day.day and Soap2day.pe, but new domains may be added in the future, as the blocking order broadly targets platforms that use the ‘Soap2Day brand’.

If new Soap2Day domains appear online in the future, rightsholders can request an update to the blocklist. This will then be reviewed by the court which can grant the amendment, when appropriate.

The blocking-related costs incurred by ISPs must be paid by the rightsholders and the blocking measures will remain active for two years. After that, Netflix and the other plaintiffs can request an extension.

As far as we know, none of the parties involved has issued a press release on this blocking order. Whether there are plans to target other pirate sites in the future is unknown but since additional blockades are typically more effective, that would make sense.

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A copy of the default judgment and the blocking order, both issues by the Honorable Mr. Justice Fothergill, are available here ( 1 & 2 ).

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

When mainstream rightsholders say they don’t want to sue end users for consuming their content illegally, most actually mean it.

The recording industry famously tested the waters 20 years ago, learned from the experience, and never did it again. The major Hollywood studios have never done it and most likely never will.

The risk of targeting an innocent person has never gone away but simply targeting the ‘wrong’ person has the potential to transform a company’s carefully crafted social media interactions into a toxic hellscape overnight.

In their ongoing war against pirate IPTV, some sports rightsholders seem willing to give it a go anyway.

The Gamble For Top-Tier Football

The most popular football leagues in Europe are approaching the same issue in different ways. The richest, England’s Premier League, receives support from a public awareness and media campaign that by design or fortunate accident, gives the impression that pirate viewers face a constant threat of being held to account. Premier League takes no option off the table but to date hasn’t sued regular consumers of pirate streams.

Serie A’s controversial anti-piracy activities are well documented but Italy’s top league hasn’t sued or ‘fined’ pirate viewers either. Fines are often described as ‘imminent’, but even when they eventually arrive in the mail, any fine will be payable to the Italian authorities, not Serie A. A useful reputational firewall, at least for as long as it holds.

Spain’s LaLiga started mailing out ‘fines’ to supposed viewers of pirate IPTV streams earlier this year . As far as we’re aware, there’s no major awareness campaign or government involvement to provide cover in the event that everything goes horribly south. Indeed, LaLiga chief Javier Tebas doesn’t seem concerned by theories of reputational risk at all, but that shouldn’t be mistaken for not caring about what pirates think.

‘Users Are Under Constant Threat’

As previously reported, LaLiga wants pirate viewers to consider themselves a major part of the piracy problem. Where pirate IPTV providers and resellers face peril, pirate viewers should feel that anxiety too and for good reason; LaLiga will come for them too.

Clarity on the specifics was the first notable casualty of LaLiga’s looming war on pirate IPTV end users announced earlier this year. Yet despite everything, Spain’s top football league did indeed begin sending out legal threats in the summer that informed alleged IPTV pirates that a payment of hundreds of euros could prevent cases going to court.

Settlement letters posted in public are disconcertingly vague. They state that the recipient was identified by their IP address because records at their ISP showed that “connections have been made to the pirate platform” from where access [to illegal content] was provided.”

The suggestion in the settlement letters is that the recipient consumed content offered by a pirate site. However, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia publicly announced that those who simply viewed pirated streams would not be targeted by LaLiga.

A new batch of LaLiga settlement letters being reported in Spain seem to show that these apparently conflicting statements can not only co-exist, but actually make perfect sense.

Reduced Demands For Cash, More Detail on Alleged Offenses

A copy of a newer LaLiga settlement letter was recently uploaded by a user of Forocoches and shared by Xataka . Once again it’s made clear that payment of a cash settlement will prevent the recipient from ending up in court.

This letter proposes a settlement of €261.65, around €200 less than amounts proposed in previous letters. The most interesting aspect is how LaLiga managed to target someone who ‘watched a pirate IPTV stream’ when the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia promised that mere viewers would not be targeted.

LaLiga Had an Ace Up Its Sleeve

According to LaLiga’s letter, the recipient used a piece of software called Ace Stream to watch illegal streams of football matches. The significance of this cannot be understated; rather than streaming content directly from a pirate IPTV server, Ace Stream uses BitTorrent-like peer-to-peer transfers to share content among other users.

At the same time as viewing illegal streams, Ace Stream users become part of the distribution network. As an Ace Stream client downloads streams for viewing, it simultaneously uploads those streams to other Ace Stream users, whose clients download and upload to other Ace Stream clients as part of a larger swarm.

As a result, Ace Stream users are not “mere viewers” of pirate streams, they’re suppliers of pirate streams too. The fact that Ace Stream was placed on Spain’s piracy blocklist two years ago may even add a little more weight to LaLiga’s threats.

Javier Prenafeta, a lawyer at 451.legal , acknowledges that Ace Stream brings new challenges.

“In these cases, LaLiga has obtained the data of the users behind the IP addresses under the justification that they are not merely good-faith consumers without profit motive, because when they access the content they also share it, which implies a benefit,” Prenafeta told Xataka .

Those tempted to settle (at what actually appears to be a reasonable rate) are encouraged to consider the implications of signing the accompanying LaLiga declaration before doing anything.

“It would be acknowledging that they are giving access to illegal content, which could fall under the penal code. So the most advisable thing is that they consult with a lawyer.”

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

It’s been three years since we last checked in on The Pirate Bay’s Bitcoin wallet.

While the torrent site may not be raking in the digital dough like it used to, the donations keep trickling in.

Back in 2021, we estimated that TPB was receiving around $10 per day in Bitcoin donations. Our latest analysis shows that this figure remains surprisingly consistent.

Over the past three years, the site has added approximately 0.196 BTC to its latest donation address. That’s a little over $20,000 now, averaging $15 per day since the last update.

This amount isn’t enough to sustain the site, obviously, and the tiny amounts of Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero donations don’t offer any help on this front. The real spectacle is revealed when we go more than a decade back in time, adding up all donations over the years.

Silk Road & BitcoinTorrentz

In 2011, Bitcoin was mostly used on the dark web, where “ Dread Pirate Roberts ” popularized it through Silk Road. This direct payment option outside the traditional banking system also appealed to venues where added privacy was welcome.

The torrent download service BitCoinTorrentz.com was the first platform to combine BitTorrent and Bitcoin . The remote download service offered high-speed downloads at the modest price of 0.08 BTC per gigabyte. That was $0.25 at the time, but over $8,000 at today’s rates.

BitCoinTorrentz was a niche service. By July 2012, it had 422 registered users, who downloaded a modest number of files. At the time, it wasn’t seen as a spectacular success, but the 16.5 BTC it made in bandwidth fees that month would be a fortune today.

The Pirate Bay: Five Bitcoin in a single day

With Bitcoin’s spectacular price increase over the years, hindsight is a recurring theme. Paying 10,000 BTC for two pizzas was reasonable at the time, but with today’s price of ~$103,000 per bitcoin, that’s a billion dollar feast.

On a different level, earnings from The Pirate Bay’s early donation efforts also look quite spectacular.

In April 2013, The Pirate Bay quietly added a Bitcoin address to the site’s footer . This update didn’t come with an announcement or instructions, but those who were familiar with it started sending ‘donations’ right away.

The silent donation drive was quite successful. In 24 hours, 73 transactions were transferred into Pirate Bay’s wallet , adding up to a healthy 5.56 BTC. At the time, the exchange rate was roughly $125, so this $700 bonus was more than welcome.

$14 million

After this initial boom, incoming donations started to slow down but Pirate Bay supporters continued to tip the site in the years that followed.

Custos Media Technologies estimated that the torrent site earned a massive 126.64 in Bitcoin donations between 2013 and 2015, and a year later we reported that another 8.21 had been added. From 2017 onwards the Bitcoin price rose quickly, adding a little over one bitcoin in seven years.

Of course, the real story is what could have been. If The Pirate Bay had held onto all the Bitcoin it received since 2013, that stash would now be worth around $14 million. However, it’s highly unlikely the team resisted the urge to cash out at some point, or use the funds to pay for expenses.

Crypto Mining & Token

The Pirate Bay’s crypto experiments were not limited to Bitcoin. In 2017, many of the site’s users complained that their CPU usage increased dramatically when they browsed certain Pirate Bay pages. It was later revealed that the site had implemented a Monero cryptocurrency miner provided by Coinhive.

While using user resources isn’t chic, the potential monthly payout of $12,000 was certainly appealing. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that many other pirate sites, mostly the dubious ones, followed suit.

The Pirate Bay’s most recent crypto experiment came in 2021, when the site launched its own PirateToken , also known as ‘TPB’. Skeptics suggested that this could be a setup for a ‘rugpull’, but the site indirectly denied this.

According to an official statement, the token was launched to unlock new featured in the future. For example, it could be used to donate to uploaders and moderators, as well as unlock VIP content. These plans never came to fruition.

Instead, the PirateToken slowly faded into oblivion , with the rest of the ‘dead’ token projects. Apparently, not everything crypto-related turns into a goldmine.

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