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Z-Library: More Domains Seized Than Any Other Pirate Site in History

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Sunday, 21 July - 10:45 · 8 minutes

After much legal wrangling, in May 2015 the Stockholm District Court ordered the Pirate Bay’s .SE domains to be handed over to the Swedish state.

While the loss of thepiratebay.se and the lesser known piratebay.se had important symbolic value, the Punkt SE registry – which defeated rightsholders’ attempts to hold it liable for Pirate Bay’s infringements – warned that domain seizures would prove ineffective in the fight against piracy.

The Pirate Bay’s response was to spawn a domain name ‘hydra’, with each head of the mythical beast representing a new domain with a lesser known extension. Variants such as thepiratebay.gs, thepiratebay.la, thepiratebay.am, thepiratebay.mn, and thepiratebay.gd, were incorporated into a new TPB logo but very quickly, those domains began to fall too .

Domain Seizures Are Effective When Suspects Can’t Buy More

Deploying multiple domain names, that made no effort to hide affiliation with a specific site, was relatively rare nine years ago. Suspensions and law enforcement seizures weren’t completely unheard of, but were usually reserved for more significant targets such as EliteTorrents , Ninjavideo , and Megaupload .

Nevertheless, scores of seizures have peppered the last two decades, including a notable wave during the last World Cup . However, unlike the examples given above, these lacked a key component in a vital area. All platforms mentioned above were physically shut down and their operators arrested. Many of the sports streaming sites targeted during the World Cup simply shifted to new domains. With no arrests having been made, there was no way of stopping them.

At least in theory, the FBI investigation and Department of Justice action against Z-Library and its alleged operators, should’ve been enough to prevent the site making a comeback.

Yet after seizing at least ten times more domains from Z-Library than the Pirate Bay burned through in a lifetime, the site made its comeback and always seemed to have more.

The Mother of All Hydras

After waving goodbye to at least 140 domains in the initial wave, and then saying Пока, не скучай to many more, Z-Library was subjected to another wave of seizures in May 2023 , and another round in November that same year.

The prospect of domain seizures carrying on indefinitely ultimately lay in the hands of Z-Library; the feds can only seize domains for as long as there are domains registered for Z-Library use.

In May 2024, Z-Library announced that it had lost one of its “primary login domains” but that wasn’t the full extent of the damage, and wouldn’t mark the end of the seizures either.

After many Swedish .SE domains were apparently bulk registered, in a consistent format indicating country-specific use, domains including zlibrary-dk.se (Denmark), zlibrary-es.se (Spain), zlibrary-fr.se (France), and dozens more covering most of the planet, the feds bagged themselves another sizeable haul. At the same time, a significant number of .SE domains with a language theme, including japanese-books.se, korean-books.se, latvian-books.se, and bulgarian-books.se, also found themselves under new ownership.

These domains likely had no opportunity to perform their intended function. How they were identified in advance isn’t clear but with zone data freely available , they were always vulnerable to seizure.

More Domains Seized Than Any Other Pirate Site in History

As far as we can determine, the most recent domain seizures are zlib-notifier.info, zlib-notifier.org, go-to-zlibrary.se, singlelogin.se and z-lib.se. For roughly a month, there have been no fresh seizures, but the odds of a resumption seem overwhelmingly high.

What we can say with absolute confidence is whether seizures resume, or whether they don’t, Z-Library’s place in the domain seizure history books, in all its dubious glory, is already chiseled in stone. Scratched underneath, a couple of interesting footnotes.

Having lost around 110 .org domains to seizure, the theory that .org domains may be safer than others, has been completely destroyed. Yet against seemingly insurmountable odds, The Pirate Bay’s .org domain remains completely intact.

While it took a full two years to place The Pirate Bay’s .se domain under the control of the state, Z-Library’s loss of around 96 .se domains appears to have gone remarkable smoothly in Sweden. At the other end of the scale, Z-Library’s avoidance of .com domains, presumably as an anti-seizure tactic, means that in total they lost only six.

Using the tools available, that leads to a grand total of ~350 domains seized from Z-Library since November 2022. It’s possible that additional seizures took place that we know nothing about, but by any standard, that figure is huge in its own right.

That Z-Library is still standing even after all of that, is nothing short of remarkable. The likelihood that two alleged Z-Library operators under house arrest in Argentina, somehow managed to escape and then disappear around May this year, even more so.

Reports that the authorities are working on the assumption that the pair remain in Argentina, provide an interesting counterpoint to the belief that the United States has zero interest in the pair beyond pirating books.

The list of seized domains reads as follows:

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

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Link-Busters Sent a Billion DMCA Takedown Requests to Google Search

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Saturday, 20 July - 20:43 · 3 minutes

link-busters logo It’s no secret that online piracy presents a major challenge to copyright holders. With owners of pirate sites largely unresponsive, search engines and other online intermediaries are often asked to intervene.

In most cases, these takedown efforts are outsourced to third-party companies. These outfits scour the web for links to infringing material and subsequently ask the operators of these sites and services to take action.

Google processes more takedown requests than any other company. This includes infringing content stored on Drive and YouTube, as well as links to pirated content indexed by Google. We recently reported that the total number of takedowns processed by the search engine is nearing 10 billion .

Busting a Billion URLs

Google Search officially began reporting these numbers publicly in 2012. Initially, the takedown efforts were largely driven by music and movie industry companies, with the adult entertainment outfits taking over after that. Today, however, the publishing category stands out.

This week, anti-piracy outfit Link-Busters sent its one billionth DMCA takedown request to Google. At the time of writing, the counter is at 1,015,949,711, but that could easily be dozens of millions higher by next week.

Link-Busters is the first reporting company to reach the billion takedowns mark for Google Search. It beat Aylo subsidiary MG Premium to the punch, and leaves many others behind at considerable distance.

The takedown company, which is domiciled in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has been in business for more than a decade. When sending a few million takedowns per year just a few years ago, it barely stood out. It can now reach those numbers in a single day.

Publisher-Driven

Looking at Link-Busters’ record-breaking numbers, we see that they are largely driven by publishing companies. The rise of shadow libraries, combined with the threat of AI scraping, has made these companies very active on the anti-piracy front.

Websites such as Z-Library and Anna’s Archive allow the public to download free books. These books can also be used for AI training, legally or not. To prevent this, publishers try to make these sites unfindable in Google.

Looking at Link-Busters’ ten most-targeted domains, we see three Anna’s Archive domains on top, followed by a series of Z-Library domains. These ten alone are already good for over 220 million reported URLs.

Link-Busters Top domains and Top Rightsholders

The table also shows the top rightsholders working with the anti-piracy company. These are all publishing companies, with Penguin Random House clearly standing out, with over a quarter billion takedowns. Other request senders include HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Hachette.

Takedowns in Perspective

The publishers seem content with the Link-Busters service, according to the various testimonials we’ve read. However, it’s worth stressing that one billion takedowns doesn’t equate to one billion removals from Google search.

As shown below, roughly 75% of the reported URLs were removed. Other URLs were not in Google’s index (21%) but were blacklisted instead . The remaining links were sent in more than once (2%), or were not removed for other reasons (1%).

Actions Taken by Google (Link-Busters)

The fact that shadow libraries have many millions of URLs, which are duplicated across dozens of domains, helped Link-Busters reach these record numbers. And since the targeted sites remain resilient , we can expect these numbers to increase further.

In the past, we have noticed that Link-Busters wasn’t always with the times. For example, it targeted stale Megaupload URLs , several years after the site was taken down. The same happened with Rapidshare links a few years later.

Nowadays, the list of targeted domains appears to be managed better. For example, the company reported links for the seized Z-Library domain z-lib.org on November 27, 2022, not long after it was seized by the U.S. Government.

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

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What Killed Fmovies? Death By a 1000 Cuts, One Killer Blow, Or Possibly Both

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Friday, 19 July - 20:56 · 6 minutes

fmovies logo Some may measure the importance of Fmovies by highlighting its popularity. With an estimated 190 million visits in March 2024, the argument sits on solid ground.

Others may point towards the site’s presentation; glossy, informational, responsive, and arguably even better presented than platforms operated by its legal competitors. Or maybe the site’s almost flawless uptime record was its most impressive feature; if a site is offline, nothing else matters.

The truth is that all of these things contributed to the importance of Fmovies; but most important of all was its ability to maintain such high standards under well-documented adverse conditions. When the MPA chose Fmovies to be the focal point, the prime example, the poster boy to show why the United States must implement site-blocking, that arguably made Fmovies the most important pirate site of recent times.

Hollywood, In the Dining Room, With the Lead Pipe

As things stand today, Fmovies appears to be dead. The site first showed signs of distress around June 22/23 when it stopped updating with new content. Around noon on July 16, everything went black, and that was that.

Based purely on motive, many would consider Hollywood the prime suspect. The major studios have wanted Fmovies gone for a very long time, everyone knows that. But with the site on the cusp of playing the starring role in the MPA’s site-blocking drive, hand-picked for displaying every quality the studios have been warning about, doesn’t the timing seem at least a little premature?

That brings us to the second point on the triad. According to most public statements, including testimony before Congress in 2023, for geographical and political reasons, the MPA had not yet acquired the means to shut Fmovies down. The main complication was understood to be the site’s operator(s) being located in Vietnam. Last year, the MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, Karyn Temple, visited Vietnam and personally asked law enforcement to intervene.

While that didn’t happen, it’s not difficult to see how that strengthened the MPA’s case for site-blocking; a tool of last resort, for tackling the most egregious foreign sites, that respond to no other measures, while stealing from Americans and laundering the money. Yet despite all that, somehow Fmovies is already dead, no site-blocking needed.

Did Opportunity Knock?

In the wake of RARBG’s unexpected shutdown, we published a report highlighting a series of political events that, when combined, offered a plausible explanation of factors that likely contributed to the site’s demise. A link to our report appeared in an MPA document; it wasn’t an endorsement but seemed to imply that we were at least on the right track.

The Fmovies situation is more complex, more political, and much less predictable; all good reasons to continue regardless.

With a focus on enforcing copyright in the digital age, the International Symposium on Copyright Enforcement took place in Hanoi over four days starting June 17. Those present included the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and Vietnam’s Copyright Office under the Ministry of Culture.

Also in attendance, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), featuring the major movie studios and Netflix. The MPA was joined by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), a venture featuring a who’s-who of major rightsholders and specialist anti-piracy companies.

The image on the right features MPA Chairman/CEO Charles H. Rivkin (left) alongside Nguyen Quoc Dzung, Vietnam’s Ambassador to the United States.

“Vietnam’s dynamic streaming market is an increasingly important one for MPA members,” Rivkin said.

“Had a great lunch with @AmbassadorDzung discussing how to strengthen the bonds between our creative economies and protect the livelihoods of the creative workforce driving this shared growth.”

The copyright enforcement symposium ended on June 21 and purely for reference purposes, Fmovies reportedly stopped updating June 22/23.

The post featuring the image above is dated June 24, three days after the symposium ended. The timing could be purely coincidental.

Things get a little more tricky when trying to imagine a discussion on how to protect livelihoods to drive shared growth, without mentioning the Fmovies-sized elephant sat at the table, helping itself to food from everyone’s plates.

If Fmovies wasn’t mentioned as a problem in need of a solution, perhaps the site’s sudden maintenance problems were mentioned in passing? We don’t know but on the balance of probabilities, something must’ve been mentioned.

Developing Vietnam’s Movie Business

On July 5, at the Da Nang Asian Film Festival held in the central city of Da Nang, the Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) held a seminar aiming to enhance international co-production and development of the local film industry.

VFDA President Ngo Phuong Lan spoke of the importance of film to the local economy, noting that Vietnam needs to gain experience from countries with a well-developed film industry. Who could possibly help?

Jared Dougherty is Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Vice Chairman and Head of Asia Pacific for Public Policy and Foreign Affairs. According to VietnamPlus , “Dougherty shared several solutions that are applicable in Vietnam, ranging from getting funding for films to capitalizing on the values of films’ intellectual property.”

Since Sony is a member of the MPA, Dougherty has seen the elephant pilfering from his plate too. Maybe its demise wasn’t mentioned as a quid pro quo in respect of the films in need of funding. Maybe that’s already understood.

Other information seems to suggest an entirely different set of problems at Fmovies.

Fmovies May Have Been Compromised

If we combine the qualities mentioned earlier, most people would likely agree that Fmovies’ security wasn’t seen as especially problematic. That being said, the MPA seem confident in their claim to have identified the site’s owner, and we see no reason to dispute that. The MPA has also shared additional pieces of information; nothing especially groundbreaking but enough to wonder exactly how much more they know.

The answer to that question is probably “much more” but having reviewed information pertaining to Fmovies just this week, the potential for others knowing a lot too seems wide open. We will take a lot more time to verify the finer details, but we suspect that sensitive details relating to Fmovies infrastructure shouldn’t have appeared online.

The MPA stated publicly that the site was hosted in Bulgaria and that appears to be true, at least from the list of IP addresses out in the open. Presumably the same applies to around two dozen IP addresses that, at least far as we can determine, acted as Fmovies proxy servers, at least in part.

Also exposed are the domains of several third party file-hosting platforms which provided Fmovies’ content libraries, and what seems to be the means to obtain that content without Fmovies’ involvement.

All of that being said, perhaps the biggest eye-opener is a list of domain names that allegedly form the Fmovies ’empire’. It’s no secret that Fmovies has connections to other, broadly similar streaming sites. Certainly, the MPA has mentioned it several times and based on common knowledge, a few have been mentioned here too .

Until we’ve tested every single one, we won’t report any here. Suffice to say, taking out Fmovies permanently could have a dramatic effect on many other sites operating under very familiar branding.

Anything being discussed in Vietnam, to the extent that Fmovies was under discussion, by default isn’t just about Fmovies. The big question is whether Fmovies’ death and the resulting gap in the market, will be seen as a warning to others or simply a golden opportunity.

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

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Sports Streaming Services Fight Piracy With… a Very Affordable Bundle

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Friday, 19 July - 09:03 · 2 minutes

slam dunk In recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have repeatedly complained that piracy of live sports is getting out of hand .

Ideally, they would like to see updates to the current legislative frameworks , so the problem can be targeted more efficiently.

Most of the discussion is focused on tighter enforcement and more restrictions, including site blocking and automated takedowns. However, there are other roads that lead to Rome, or Athens for that matter.

Affordable Access to Beat Piracy?

In Greece, two of the larger sports streaming services came up with an experimental idea. Rather than using sticks to tackle online pirates, they’re trying carrots instead. While most rightsholders wouldn’t immediately consider this option, on paper it makes sense.

This week, Cosmote TV and Nova signed a new deal designed to provide customers with access to more sports for less money. Starting on August 23, subscribers of one service can get content from the other, for a minimal extra charge.

Under the new agreement, Cosmote TV subscribers will pay just three euros extra for access to Nova’s content. At the same time, Nova subscribers can view Cosmote’s sports offerings for just one extra euro. In both cases, the price for the total package starts at less than 20 euros (USD$22).

While the services may have some overlap in their regular programming, both have several unique sports licensing deals in place that can soon be accessed for a fraction of the costs.

Nova has content from the Premier League and various other football leagues, the Grand Slams for tennis fans, Masters golf tournaments, and the European basketball league. Cosmote TV, meanwhile, has the UEFA Champions League, NBA, MotoGP, NFL and UFC, among others.

Fighting Pirates with Pricing

The sports streaming services are not secretive about the reason for this unique partnership. They’re explicitly advertising it as a way to compete with pirate streaming services, hoping to take back market share.

“This agreement is a decisive step both for dealing with piracy that is constantly spreading, and for the development of the pay-TV market,” Cosmote’s announcement reads.

“By offering all premium sports content at competitive prices and on a single platform, Nova is taking an important step in the fight against content piracy,” Nova adds , in a separate press release.

Other streaming platforms are interested in joining the action too, with Vodafone TV and ANT1+ being mentioned as potential candidates in local news reports .

A New Trend?

The partnership doesn’t mean that Greece will abandon its traditional enforcement options, which include site blocking. But, a more affordable subscription will certainly make legal alternatives more appealing than ‘unreliable’ pirate streams.

Euro2day reports that Greece has an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 illegal IPTV subscriptions, for a total population of just over 10 million, so it should be possible to convert some pirates into paying customers.

Many existing pirates are avid sports fans who already pay for legitimate subscriptions, but pirate on the side. If they only have to pay a euro extra to access everything hassle-free, that might be an offer too good to refuse.

Whether this ‘revolutionary’ idea will pay off has yet to be seen, but it’s not difficult to imagine that it could work elsewhere too. Perhaps Netflix, Disney, Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Apple TV, Fubo, plus Peacock and friends, can give it a try, some day.

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

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Russia Slams Google’s ‘Censorship’ Yet Deleting 5.6m VPN Links is Just Fine

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Thursday, 18 July - 18:34 · 4 minutes

Those who have taken an interest in the words of Dmitry Peskov since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will have noticed that Vladimir Putin’s press secretary is loyal, if nothing else.

In respect of his commentary on matters important to the Kremlin, it can be difficult for foreigners to appreciate the finer details; is he always trying to mislead or just most of the time?

Take for example a statement early February 2024, just a few weeks before new law came into effect that tightened the noose further still on the use of VPNs in Russia.

These measures included a ban on advertising VPNs as a means to circumvent government blocking, which prevents access to other information currently blocked in Russia. Indeed, providing information on how to access blocked information using a VPN is now a criminal offense, with the unblocking information also subject to blocking.

Peskov said this didn’t mean that VPNs were banned in Russia, and he offered reassurances that no decision like that had even been made.

On one hand, that statement was truthful. On the other, Russia’s evisceration of VPNs since 2017 means that when Peskov referred to VPNs, he wasn’t even on the same page as many people listening. As the law stands, there can be no expectation of privacy when using a state approved VPN, i.e the only ones allowed under law.

Censorship now applies to any mention of VPN unblocking capabilities and should those be discussed online and end up in search results, that information will be purged under the orders of telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor.

“YouTube Violates Key Principles of Free Dissemination of Information”

This week Roscomnadzor informed news outlets including Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti, that it had contacted Google CEO Sundar Pichai with complaints about YouTube. The regulator said that over 200 channels, operated by Russian media, various government agencies, politicians, and media personalities, are currently blocked by YouTube for supporting Russian authorities.

Roscomnadzor said that it demanded action from Pichai to reverse what it described as “an act of censorship” carried out by YouTube under a “Russophobic” policy.

“The victims are not only those who voice their position on various political issues, but also people who generally speak well of Russia,” Roscomnadzor said, inadvertently amusingly.

Rules For Thee, But Not For Me

In the very same press statement criticizing YouTube for failing to provide unimpeded access to information, Roscomnadzor saw no hypocrisy in calling out YouTube again, this time for not censoring content at Russia’s behest. The content at issue, over 61,000 videos containing “fakes about a special military operation,” extremist material, and “promotion of non-traditional sexual preferences.”

What these categories all have in common is obfuscation as a means to change and expand definition. The term “special military operation” was crafted to reassure Russians that there was no ‘invasion’ and certainly no ‘war’ in Ukraine. A new crime of ‘discrediting’ the military, which encompasses spreading ‘fake’ information, made the use of the words ‘invasion’ and ‘war’ in the context of Ukraine, punishable by years in prison.

‘Extremist material’ is a little like the shifting definition of VPN in Russia. It started out describing material promoting extremist ideology and then when it suited Russia, it meant something else. When Facebook, Instagram, and Meta were designated as extremist groups in 2022, the term could encompass almost anything. Promotion of non-traditional sexual preferences refers to anything that deviates from the Victorian standard of a man and a woman, period. Or at least it does today, the terminology seems broad enough to intrude even on that.

Erasing the Existence of VPNs From Search Results

As more overt wars of words attract attention, Roscomnadzor’s war on VPNs not only continues, but does so with significant assistance from Google. The company says it has no choice but to comply due to Russian law and Roscomnadzor certainly isn’t holding back.

Russia’s campaign against VPNs and similar technology gathered pace in 2017 and hasn’t let off the gas since. In addition to targeting Tor , a massive search engine delisting campaign is ongoing.

What began with takedown notices ordering Google to remove a few dozen links per month, soon escalated into orders to remove a few thousand, then tens of thousands . The invasion of Ukraine saw thousands of links crammed into single notices but nothing like the delisting campaign currently underway.

A typical notice sent by Roscomnadzor to Google is shown below. This is just one of 18 notices sent to Google in June 2024 and orders the removal of a staggering 460,750 URLs from Google search, for being related in some way to VPNs.

The exact nature of the URLs removed is not for public consumption. On top of the requirement to disappear the links, Google is compelled to deviate from its transparency policy due to restrictions under Russian law.

What we can see are the numbers involved. In just 18 takedown notices sent to Google, Roscomnadzor demanded the removal of more than 5.6 million URLs, in June alone.

Given the surge in volumes, these removals represent more than just links to VPN providers. Tutorials and discussion about VPNs have become a priority target and are likely to feature heavily here.

As a result, it’s difficult not to conclude that this represents classic censorship and the denial of the right to freely receive and impart, knowledge and information. Russia knows that, and it knows that everyone knows that it knows. It just doesn’t care.

Links to the takedown notices, courtesy of the Lumen Database, are available below

#01 June 03, 2024 – 413,348
#02 June 03, 2024 – 58,987
#03 June 04, 2024 – 39,353
#04 June 04, 2024 – 442,913
#05 June 04, 2024 – 478,474
#06 June 05, 2024 – 444,220
#07 June 06, 2024 – 37,914
#08 June 06, 2024 – 450,920
#09 June 07, 2024 – 456,006
#10 June 10, 2024 – 437,887
#11 June 10, 2024 – 38,646
#12 June 11, 2024 – 437,957
#13 June 13, 2024 – 431,769
#14 June 13, 2024 – 77,607
#15 June 14, 2024 – 445,285
#16 June 14, 2024 – 49,424
#17 June 16, 2024 – 447,292
#18 June 17, 2024 – 460,750

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

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Anna’s Archive Loses .GS Domain Name But Remains Resilient

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Thursday, 18 July - 09:53 · 5 minutes

books While movie and TV show piracy is increasingly attracting for-profit piracy operations, pirate libraries continue to wave an ideological flag.

Portals such as Sci-Hub, LibGen, and Z-Library say they strive to collect and preserve as much written content as possible. That includes books, academic papers, and magazines.

This preservation drift has awakened book publishers and other rightsholders. In recent years, we’ve seen several high-profile enforcement efforts and civil lawsuits . In addition, the U.S. Government also launched a criminal prosecution of two alleged Z-Library operators.

While all eyes were on Z-Library in late 2022, a new shadow library search engine opened its doors . With its non-nonsense website, Anna’s Archive swiftly became a daily visit for many, and that remains the case today.

Anna’s Archive Domain Suspension

This rising star didn’t go unnoticed. In its relatively short existence, Anna’s Archive has already been blocked by ISPs in several countries and sued in the U.S. for scraping and publishing OCLC’s WorldCat database.

The OCLC lawsuit, which remains ongoing, has the potential to put Anna’s Archive’s domain names at risk. Perhaps in part triggered by the legal problems, the site recently switched from its .org domain to a .gs alternative. As a precaution, we were told.

This domain change didn’t work out as planned, however. Not long after the site switched to the new domain name, it was forced to retrace its steps. Apparently, the .GS domain registry quickly decided to suspend the domain.

The annas-archive.gs domain now has the ‘server hold’ status, but it’s not clear why. The domain registry operator, Atlantis North Ltd, didn’t respond to our request for comment. The most likely explanation, of course, is that a copyright holder complained.

Domain Names Are Replaceable

The prompt domain suspension doesn’t come as a surprise. When The Pirate Bay switched to the South Georgian TLD many years ago, it only took the .GS registry a few days to take it offline .

The Pirate Bay wasn’t fazed, as it had several backup domains available. The same now applies to Anna’s Archive, which reverted to annas-archive.org and also has annas-archive.li and annas-archive.se as alternatives .

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the Anna’s Archive team says that it doesn’t know that happened to their domain, as they weren’t informed. However, it does see more domain troubles ahead.

“We don’t know what happened, the registry didn’t communicate with us. Presumably they responded to some enforcement action, or perhaps they acted on their own. This will continue to happen and is the reason we have multiple domains and communication channels,” they say.

The Mission Continues

Despite the recent setbacks and legal pressure, Anna’s Archive shows no sign of retreat, quite the opposite in fact. In a new detailed blog post the team reiterates that it will continue to gather as much human ‘knowledge’ as possible.

Interestingly, the choice to focus on textual content is more pragmatic than ideology-driven. Fundamentally, Anna’s Archive would like to preserve all media, including video, but books and papers are simply easier to store in its digital archive.

“So why papers and books specifically? The answer is simple: information density. Per megabyte of storage, written text stores the most information out of all media. While we care about both knowledge and culture, we do care more about the former,” the team explains.

Preservation though Multiplication

Currently, the archive is nearing 1 million gigabytes, or 1 petabyte, which is a massive amount for text-based data. All these works are indexed and searchable, but they are also distributed by the site though large torrent files.

“We can collect papers, books, magazines, and more, and distribute them in bulk. We currently do this through torrents, but the exact technologies don’t matter and will change over time. The important part is getting many copies distributed across the world.”

Making all of this, often copyrighted, data available to the public puts the site at risk of civil and criminal lawsuits. However, Anna’s Archive believes that this risk is worth taking, to preserve as much knowledge as possible.

In its blog post, the site quotes the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, who illustrated the importance of preservation though multiplication more than 200 years ago.

“The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” _{— Thomas Jefferson, 1791}

Anna’s Archive also has a fundamental belief in preservation. This goal runs contrary to the interests of rightsholders, who want to control access to their works. This battle is nearing a peak now and could get worse going forward.

Lower Costs, Smaller Files

Instead of dwelling on legal troubles, Anna’s Archive remains focused on its preservation goal. The site doesn’t deny there are challenges. However, multiplication is about to get easier too.

The site has already collected a massive amount of data. Archiving this information will become cheaper in the near future, as digital storage costs go down exponentially. In addition, information density will improve through technology, such as OCR .

For example, an old scanned book copy has a much larger file size than a properly optimized copy that’s mostly text-based. This means that, even if the archive expands, file-sizes and costs will decrease significantly.

“Overall it’s not unrealistic to expect at least a 5-10x reduction in total file size, perhaps even more. Even with a conservative 5x reduction, we’d be looking at $1,000–$3,000 in 10 years even if our library triples in size.”

“If these forecasts are accurate, we just need to wait a couple of years before our entire collection will be widely mirrored. Thus, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, ‘placed beyond the reach of accident’.”

‘The Lost Cannot Be Recovered’

According to Anna’s Archive, we are ‘on the eve of a revolution’ but things can still go both ways. If rightsholders win this battle in the coming years, successfully shutting down all shadow libraries, all work would be for nothing.

To make its point, Anna’s Archive cites Thomas Jefferson once more, noting that “the lost cannot be recovered”.

“We have a critical window of about 5-10 years during which it’s still fairly expensive to operate a shadow library and create many mirrors around the world, and during which access has not been completely shut down yet.

“If we can bridge this window, then we’ll indeed have preserved humanity’s knowledge and culture in perpetuity. We should not let this time go to waste. We should not let this critical window close on us.”

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

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China’s Pirate Site Crackdown is Real & Assisted By Anime Anti-Piracy Group

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Wednesday, 17 July - 19:45 · 5 minutes

Decades of experience supports the theory that intellectual property infringement is often viewed by China as a problem to be solved by those complaining of violations on home territory.

That the loudest voices continue to import mountains of Chinese-manufactured goods, including items that in some cases violate copyright and trademark laws, serves to illustrate why differences on IP enforcement are likely to continue.

Other conundrums, including IP rights owned by U.S. companies being strategically infringed by Chinese citizens, in ways that avoid liability in China itself, has led to limited enforcement opportunities and in some cases, rampant piracy.

Early March we reported on the work of Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA. After formulating an impressive strategy and demonstrating significant patience, the company now benefits from having its own office in Beijing.

From there, big things are playing out, including collaboration with Chinese authorities which led to three people behind pirate anime site B9Good being convicted earlier this year .

CODA Files Criminal Complaints Against Pirate Services

New information published by CODA on Wednesday reveals success in two other cases relating to pirate streaming. The services offered mainstream movies and TV shows owned by companies in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, among others.

Since a library of more than 30,000 anime episodes were also available for viewing, CODA’s Beijing office was prompted to file criminal copyright complaints with the Public Security Bureau of Jiangsu Province.

11 Arrests, Servers and Other Hardware Seized

In the first case, CODA reports that the Public Security Bureau of Taizhou City sent 54 investigators and other personnel to the Chongqing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai, Hebei, and Anhui provinces to conduct simultaneous searches of multiple suspects in various locations.

“The searches revealed that a subscription-style website called Shenlan had been established and operated, which copied a large amount of Japanese content, mainly anime, without permission from the rights holders, and uploaded it to a personal media server, which is a legal service, to enable streaming playback from various devices,” the anti-piracy group reports.

“As a result of the investigation, a total of 10 people, including the main culprit A (36 years old), a man living in Chongqing, who operated Shenlan and sold account information for accessing ‘Shenlan’ from the website and app on his own website, were arrested on suspicion of copyright law violations.

“In addition, nine laptops, two desktops, two servers, 11 mobile phones, and multiple storage devices were seized during the search, and the administrative accounts and passwords were obtained, and all data on the servers was preserved as evidence,” CODA reports.

Another suspect was arrested in Hubei Province on January 24th, making a total of 11 arrests in connection with the now shuttered service.

Intelligence Obtained, Police Target Second Pirate Operation

On June 5, 2024, the Public Security Bureau of Yangzhou City sent a total of eleven investigators and cybersecurity experts to the home and workplace of two other men. Information about the suspected brothers was obtained via another suspect’s testimony following the raids in January.

During the searches investigators identified a subscription piracy service called COCO operating in similar fashion to the Shenlan service previously taken down. Even greater volumes of pirated content were accessible via COCO , however; around 100,000 TV episodes were available for streaming which included 20,000 episodes of Japanese content, mostly anime.

“ COCO was opened by male B in May 2021, and male B was mainly responsible for its operation and maintenance. He operated the site from December 2023 until his arrest in June 2024, recruiting his older brother, male C, as a member of the operation,” CODA reports.

“During the search, PCs, server equipment, etc. were seized, and the administrative account and password of COCO were obtained, and all data on the server was preserved as evidence.”

China Prosecutes More Pirates Than Outsiders May Think

Research on the CODA cases led to an unexpected discovery. In contrast to reports implying a lax approach to infringement, Chinese authorities seem remarkably busy when it comes to prosecuting operators of pirate sites.

An article published on a government website late February, titled: “I just wanted to release pirated movies to earn some advertising fees, but I didn’t expect to be convicted and sentenced…” tells the story of a person identified as ‘Ke’ who chose piracy as an easy way to make money.

The report notes that since Ke majored in computer science, he figured that running a piracy service would be a low-cost, high-return business model that would generate some much-needed cash. Details aren’t specific but Ke reportedly began by “buying a website and the services it contained” which may suggest some kind of streaming template and content derived from a third-party source.

Whatever it was, Ke reportedly became more adventurous, soon deploying web crawlers to identify movies and TV shows available elsewhere on the web before storing them on his own server. He ended up running his own pirate streaming site and a ‘cinema app’ which attracted attention from advertisers in early 2022.

In May that same year, authorities received a complaint from rightsholders. At this point, Ke had a library of more than 50,000 movies and TV shows and after an investigation, he was sentenced in April 2023 to three years in prison, suspended, and fined 400,000 yuan, around US$55,000

More Prosecutions Recently Than the United States?

A February 2024 report in local media is just one of many detailing the prosecution of pirate site operators in China. This particular case was supervised by five government departments, including the Copyright Bureau and Intellectual Property Office.

A man identified as ‘Deng’ was the operator of a website where “video enthusiasts” could view movies, TV shows, and documentaries. Authorities say the plan was to attract people prepared to pay for ultra-high definition content to be delivered to their homes. When police raided Deng’s home, they found more than 317,000 pirated films and TV series, 17 computers, and 200 large capacity hard drives.

Investigators later revealed that between December 2019 and February 2023, Deng had purchased over 30,000 master discs from multiple suppliers in China, and used those as a basis for a wholesale piracy business supplying other groups around the country. At trial , the court sentenced Deng to three years and two months in prison, fined him 150,000 yuan (~US$20,600), and confiscated his illegal gains.

As recently as this April, authorities were reporting another crackdown against sites illegally offering Spring Festival films, plus an additional 200,000 movies and TV shows obtained from various platforms.

Seven suspects were arrested and 20 websites were reportedly shut down . Following a recent trial, a court sentenced three men to prison for copyright infringement, with terms ranging from ten months to four years, plus fines. Two other men received suspended prison sentences.

While China’s priorities differ from those of the United States, there appears to be consensus on the need to clamp down on movie and TV show piracy. Whose movies and TV shows should receive priority protection remains an argument for another day.

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

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Fmovies Has Gone Offline, the End of a Pirate Streaming Giant?

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Wednesday, 17 July - 09:29 · 2 minutes

fmovies logo When Fmovies first appeared on the scene in 2016, it quickly gained popularity among streaming piracy fans.

Copyright holders were less pleased. They swiftly recognized the new threat and just months after the site was launched, Fmovies found itself being sued in a U.S. Court .

The copyright infringement lawsuit and the $210,000 damages award were casually ignored by the site’s owners. Instead, Fmovies continued to focus on providing free entertainment to the masses, profiting from this activity through advertisements.

In recent years, rightsholder representatives, including the MPA, worked hard to maintain the pressure. They pinpointed the site’s operators in Vietnam and teamed up with local authorities to address the threat. In addition, U.S. authorities and lawmakers were repeatedly warned about the site.

Last fall, lawmakers in Congress got a demonstration of the site from MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, Karyn Temple. This showed how easy it is to stream the latest movies and TV shows inside one of the best secured buildings in the country. The site didn’t budge, however.

Fmovies in Trouble

After years of operating seemingly undeterred, Fmovies started to show cracks earlier this month when the site stopped releasing new content . No reason was provided for this sudden change, which left users wondering if more trouble lay on the horizon.

This week the troubles increased and yesterday Fmovies became totally unreachable. Instead of the regular homepage, people were greeted with a Cloudflare error, notifying users that the connection had timed out.

“The initial connection between Cloudflare’s network and the origin web server timed out. As a result, the web page can not be displayed,” the error message reads.

In isolation, a temporary stretch of downtime could be a minor issue. However, since the site had yet to start posting new content again, it suggests the operators may have quietly abandoned ship.

Fmovies Shuts Down?

There is no word from the Fmovies team but through an indirect source, TorrentFreak heard that the site faces “legal issues”. However, that’s nothing new, and doesn’t explain why the site went offline this time.

With more than a quarter billion site visits in three months, Fmovies is (or was) one of the most popular pirate sites on the Internet, so the stakes are high.

As far as we can see, the site doesn’t have any immediate domain name problems and hosting setbacks can’t explain the lack of new content in recent weeks. So there must be a more concrete reason for recent events.

The big question now is whether the site is destined to go off offline permanently. This will be answered as more time passes, but we can be certain that, in the interim, many new ‘Fmovies’ clones will try to scoop up the site’s regular users.

But… could that even be part of the plan?

If we have to come up with a possible explanation, we would hypothesize that the site’s operators might want to abandon the tainted Fmovies brand. Being the poster child of streaming piracy comes with immense pressure, as highlighted earlier. Stepping away from that, intentionally, might make sense.

The people running the site are presumably connected to several other large pirate streaming sites. Those pirate sites remain online but are not in the headlines, at least not as much. Time will tell, anything beyond that is speculation at this point.

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

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German State Moves $3 Billion in Bitcoin Seized From Pirate Site Operators

news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Tuesday, 16 July - 20:28 · 2 minutes

At the start of the 2010s, Movie2k was one of the most visited sites on the web.

The site was an early adopter of pirate streaming and at its peak, secured a spot among the twenty most-visited websites in Germany, beating Twitter and Amazon.

Movie2k’s success generated a healthy revenue stream which its operators converted to a new and exciting ‘currency’ called Bitcoin. It’s assumed that the goal was to keep the haul hidden from prying eyes. That initially appeared to work well, but it didn’t last.

The Movie2k reign came to an end in 2013 , when the site mysteriously went offline. The site’s closure fueled suspicion of legal issues, which was eventually confirmed years later when German police announced several arrests.

Arrests and Bitcoin Seizures

The arrests resulted in numerous convictions over the years and in 2020 the authorities also seized 2,700 bitcoins. However, this number pales in comparison to the amount that was confiscated earlier this year as part of an ongoing prosecution.

Following an investigation carried out by the Dresden General Prosecutor’s Office, the Saxony State Criminal Police, together with the local tax authority (INES), in January nearly 50,000 bitcoins were seized. At today’s exchange rate the haul is worth more than $3 billion.

Never before has this much Bitcoin been secured by German authorities; it was also one of the largest crypto hauls worldwide. According to the police report, the defendant agreed to voluntarily hand over the cryptocurrency.

Saxony Moves all Seized Bitcoin

Legally, and from a risk perspective, the German state of Saxony can’t hold the Bitcoin indefinitely. The coins had to start moving by the end of June, and that’s when the first outward transfers were recorded.

The Bitcoin transfers have been closely tracked by Arkham which provided updates of all notable transactions. While it’s clear that the funds were moving, it doesn’t automatically mean they were instantly sold.

Over the past couple of weeks, the state of Saxony moved all of its Bitcoin to external parties. The latest transfers were completed a few days ago, bringing the wallet balance to zero .

The authorities haven’t commented on the transfers and alleged selling. The coins went to various third-parties including exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp, as well as Flow Traders and Cumberland, which operate as market makers.

Bitcoin Storytelling and Donations

As is often the case on financial markets, these types of events are often used to explain price movements. So, when the Bitcoin price started to drop, several reports hinted that the German ‘selloff’ could be responsible.

It’s impossible to confirm a link between the two events without further information. However, the Bitcoin price rebounded over the past week while Saxony was moving out more and more Bitcoin; that’s the opposite effect for a similar ‘selloff’.

At this point, it’s clear that the German state is liquidating the Bitcoin assets seized from the former operator of Movie2k. Interestingly, however, the wallet’s assets are not completely zero, as some people decided to donate a few extra Satoshi to the account, which currently holds $421.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin haul’s previous owner is likely to have witnessed recent events in disbelief; the value of the ‘coins’ when first stashed away was just a few dollars each.

In April this year, the defendant heard the charges he’s facing, which include unauthorized commercial exploitation of copyrighted works and commercial money laundering. He will be sentenced at a later date.

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