At the turn of the century, piracy was booming at university campuses across America and far beyond.

Seemingly unlimited broadband connections and the presence of many tech-savvy students provided an ideal breeding ground for the rapid expansion of the file-sharing craze.

Napster provided the spark and when that shut down, other software applications including Kazaa, LimeWire, and BitTorrent, fueled the fire in the years to come.

HEOA

This virtual free-for-all lasted for years and, in some places, continues to this day. In the United States, however, higher education institutions were forced to put the brakes on piracy due to the passing of the Higher Education Opportunity Act ( HEOA ) in 2008.

The HEOA requires American universities and colleges to adopt and implement effective anti-piracy policies. These should include technological anti-piracy measures as well as educational material to deter piracy.

If educational institutions fail to properly police piracy, they risk losing federal funding. This is the main reason why all higher education institutions have similarly worded ‘file-sharing’ and copyright warnings in place today.

It’s totally understandable that these policies remain in place. That said, the texts and warnings we ran into while reviewing some this week, could use a bit of an upgrade, to say the least.

Kazaa, BearShare, eDonkey, and eMule…

In the 16 years since HEOA passed, the online piracy landscape has changed dramatically. At the time, LimeWire was the most popular file-sharing tool , and names like Kazaa, BearShare, eDonkey, and eMule, were still top of mind.

These applications are dead and buried now; most collapsed under the weight of legal pressure. However, many American universities still caution their students not to use these applications for nefarious purposes.

A simple Google search instantly reveals dozens of live pages, many of which are updated regularly. For some reason, however, the LimeWire and Kazaa warnings are still front and center.

For example:

“In spite of court rulings holding that it is illegal, some people have continued to engage in so-called peer-to-peer (“P2P”) sharing of commercial copyrighted products, using software programs such as Morpheus, LimeWire, Grokster, and KaZaA. This activity is unlawful,” the University of Vermont cautions.

“It is not recommended to use file-sharing programs such as KaZaa, LimeWire, and Bearshare, unless you are familiar with their configuration,” Truman State University warns.

“Programs like Kazaa, Ares, iMesh and Limewire (Free and Pro versions) are popular ways to share music and movie files across the Internet, but they pose legal and security risks that can result in serious trouble for you – even court cases and fines,” Metro State University cautions.

“Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BitTorrent, BearShare, Limewire, Morpheus, iMesh and KaZaA make it easy for you to share files,” the University of Texas writes.

“P2P typically requires a “client” – a software program installed on their personal computer – to share files. Examples of clients are Kazaa, Limewire, BearShare, uTorrent, etc. and other various BitTorrent clients,” the University of Alabama notes.

“File sharing applications such as KaZaA, BitTorrent, eDonkey, and LimeWire are not illegal, though many people using such applications share illegal materials, and don’t have permission to distribute them,” Brescia University explains.

Blubster, Gnucleus and Shareaza…

The good news is that most universities and colleges recognize that the technology itself isn’t to blame. File-sharing is fine, but piracy isn’t. However, cautioning against the unauthorized use of software that no longer exists is rather pointless.

The most impressive summary of file-sharing applications, which are nearly all defunct, comes from Boston University . Their list includes the following:

Acquisition, Aimster, Ares, Ares Lite, BearShare, Blubster, Direct Connect, eDonkey2000, Overnet, Freewire, Gnucleus, Grokster, GTK-Gnutella, iMesh, Kazaa Lite, Kazaa Lite K++, Kazaa Media Desktop, LimeWire, LordofSearch, Mactella, Morpheus, NeoNapster, OneMX, Phex, Piolet, Poisoned, Qtella, Shareaza, TrustyFiles, Warez P2P, WinMX, and XoLoX.

This list may bring back memories for those who went to university at the start of the millennium. Today’s students, however, will have no clue what it’s about since the pirates among them use more moderns apps and services.

Beware of Skype and World of Warcraft!

The above shows that many educational institutions should update their copyright policies and related file-sharing warnings. In their current form, they don’t make much sense.

This also applies to Stanford University, which has another gem in its “ Peer-to-Peer Traffic Advisory “. Apparently, Skype and World of Warcraft, can trigger file-sharing related warnings.

The Microsoft-owned communication app and Blizzard’s popular game relied on file-sharing technology in the past. This is still a concern for Stanford.

“Skype transmits phone calls over the Internet using software based on the KaZaa file-sharing protocol,” Stanford writes.

“World of Warcraft uses the BitTorrent protocol to distribute software patches, which are sometimes large enough to hit the PacketShaper’s radar,” the university adds.

As far as we know, Skype and World of Warcraft no longer trigger P2P detection systems such as PacketShaper , but the caution remains in place. Better safe than sorry, right?

Just to be clear, Stanford’s Peer-to-Peer Traffic Advisory was last updated on March 6, 2024.

—

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

When today’s home video gaming market took its first tentative baby steps thanks to more affordable hardware in the early 1980s, the details of Sony’s lawsuit against Datel would’ve been dismissed as outrageous.

This was a time of experimentation; one that thrived on the energy of pushing unimaginably incapable hardware by today’s standards, to perform in unexpected ways that often exceeded manufacturers’ expectations. In some cases, that included being able to run half-decent games, or even games at all.

Sony Wins Early But Cooler Heads Prevail

Software quite rightly receives protection under copyright law but in Datel, Sony wants a ruling that outlaws the modification of variables generated by software that only ever exist in RAM and form no part of the underlying copyrighted source code. Datel’s software simply ran alongside games like Motorstorm Arctic Edge, tweaking values in memory to modify how the game played.

In January 2012, the Hamburg Regional Court found largely in favor of Sony. The Court found that Datel’s software (Action Replay PSP and Tilt FX) intervened in the ‘program flow’ of Sony’s games and, by changing the flow, the original code was modified to create a derivative of Sony’s copyrighted game code.

The decision was overturned on appeal in 2021 and the case was dismissed. Sony appealed to the Federal Court of Justice which referred key questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling.

If Sony has its way and the protection software enjoys under the 2009 Computer Programs Directive is extended to transient variables in RAM, those who modify those variables – the users of tweaking software – would become direct infringers under copyright law. Creators of the software, in this case Datel, could be held secondarily liable.

Advocate General’s Opinion Nudges Case in the Right Direction

Advocate General Szpunar’s published opinion is not binding and the CJEU could ultimately decide on its own path.

The challenge, should one exist, would be to dismiss AG Szpunar’s conclusions as anything other than legally sound, impeccably researched, and flawlessy logical.

“[T]he value of the variables is not an element of a computer program’s code. They are merely data, external to the code, which the computer produces and reuses when running the program,” he writes.

“Those data do not exist at the moment that the program is created by its author or when it is loaded into the computer’s memory, since they are generated only while the program is running. They are therefore not such as to enable the program – or even a part of it – to be reproduced.”

Variables Are Not Creative Works

According to case law, the protection conferred by Directive 2009/24 is limited to source code and object code, both of which satisfy the criterion of originality set out in Article 1(3). Variables in RAM, on the other hand, do not satisfy the criterion of originality.

The variables are not the author’s own intellectual creation, AG Szpunar points out. On the contrary, the variables are the result of progress made in the game, and a direct result of the player’s behavior.

“It is indeed true that the author designed the categories of the variables that are recorded as well the rules whereby their value is determined in the course of the game. However, that value itself escapes the author’s creative control, since it is necessarily dependent on factors which cannot be foreseen in advance, such as the player’s behavior. That value therefore cannot enjoy copyright protection.”

Noting that the variables are “transitory, temporary and provisional,” and “often reset to zero” when a program is next run, the variables fail to meet the threshold for copyright protection since they cannot be identified with “sufficient precision and objectivity.”

More Restrictions, More Money

AG Szpunar’s opinion is lengthy, technical, and at times quite challenging to absorb. The blame for that sits squarely with Sony, whose mental gymnastics appear laser-focused on what it needs to win the case, and oblivious to almost everything else.

It’s perhaps telling that various intellectual property law firms commenting on the opinion are noting the AG’s advice, while also advancing theories that generated variables in RAM could reasonably be considered part of the overall creative package.

When work for companies like Sony pays the bills, advocating for greater restrictions on existing freedoms doesn’t lead to less business, let’s put it that way. That the opposite is being argued in legal matters relating to output from generative AI, is certainly interesting, if nothing else.

AG Szpunar’s Conclusion

Ultimately, AG Szpunar draws the following conclusion:

Article 1(1) to (3) of Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs must be interpreted as meaning that the protection conferred by that directive pursuant to that provision does not extend to the content of the variables which the protected computer program has transferred to the RAM of the computer and uses in running it, in the situation in which another program operating at the same time as the protected computer program changes that content, without however the object code or the source code of the latter program being changed.

Full opinion available here

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

With dozens of millions of monthly visits, Animeflix positioned itself as one of the most popular anime piracy portals.

The site also has an active Discord community of around 35k members, who actively participate in discussions, art competitions, even a chess tournament.

Target: Animeflix

While rightsholders take no offense at these side-projects, the site’s core business was streaming pirated videos. That hasn’t gone unnoticed; last December Animeflix was listed as one of the shutdown targets of anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Whether these early enforcement efforts were responsible for the site’s closure is unclear. In May, rightsholders increased the pressure through the High Court of India, obtaining a broad injunction that effectively suspended Animeflix’s main domain name ; Animeflix.live.

This follow-up action didn’t seem to hurt the site too much. It simply moved to new domains, Animeflix.gg and Animeflix.li, informing its users that the old domain name had become “unavailable”.

Animeflix Shuts Down

Yesterday, the site became unreachable again, initially returning a Cloudflare error message. This time, the domain wasn’t the problem but, for reasons unknown, the team decided to shut down the site without prior notice.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix. After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years.

“Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms,” the Animeflix team adds.

The Animeflix team doesn’t provide any insight into its reasoning, but it’s clear that keeping a site like that online isn’t without challenges. And, when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role.

It’s clear that rightsholders were keeping an eye on the site, and were actively seeking out options to take it offline. That might have played a role in the shutdown decision but without more information from the team, we can only speculate.

Coincidence?

There is an interesting coincidence that’s worth mentioning. At least in part, Animeflix was apparently hosted by the Hungarian company ServerAstra. This is the same host previously used by MagnetDL, before it mysteriously went offline last week.

Both sites were hosted on the same AS, along with many similar sites. This doesn’t have to mean anything at all, but it does stand out.

Whatever the reason, the end result is the closure of Animeflix. This is a fate that many pirate sites will ultimately face, including the original Animeflix, which went offline several years ago .

Given the popularity of the Animeflix brand, it’s likely that the name will be recycled once more, scooped up by a new team that dares to fill the void.

Needless to say, many users are disappointed to see their favorite anime portal gone. Rightsholders, however, might be throwing a party, before they move on to one of the many anime pirate sites that remain out there.

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

Starting last year, various rightsholders began filing lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

The list of complainants includes record labels, book authors, visual artists, and newspapers, including the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work to train AI models without proper compensation.

The New York Times lawsuit targets OpenAI and Microsoft and is steadily moving forward. OpenAI recently indicated that it would like to consolidate this case with a similar lawsuit filed by other newspapers , but the Times objects to the proposal.

While these issues are fought out in court, both parties have also moved into discovery. That basically allows one party to request evidence from the other, to properly support or refute the copyright infringement claims that form the basis of the lawsuit.

OpenAI Seeks NYT ‘Source’ Material

In its quest for evidence, OpenAI is particularly interested in the copyrights of the New York Times’ works. This includes copyrighted news articles, which are often based on a variety of information gathered by its journalists.

For example, discovery requests no. 10-12 read as follows:

NO. 10: Documents sufficient to identify the expressive, original, and human-authored content of each of Your Asserted Works.

NO. 11: Documents sufficient to identify the non-expressive, non-original, or non-human-authored content of each of Your Asserted Works.

NO. 12: Documents sufficient to show each and every written work that informed the preparation of each of Your Asserted Works, regardless of its length, format, or medium.

The New York Times is not happy with this approach. The company has refused to share reporter’s notes and other information, as this would be overbroad and too burdensome. In addition, the Times pointed out that much of the information sought by OpenAI is protected by the reporter’s privilege.

OpenAI Files Motion to Compel

The refusal has created a dispute between the parties and OpenAI has urged the court to weigh in. Ideally, the AI company wants the court to compel the Times to cooperate.

OpenAI suggests that the ‘source’ information will help to determine what parts of the articles are ‘original’ and worthy of copyright protection, which may help it to counter the copyright infringement claims.

“[T]he Times cannot pursue a claim for infringement over any part of a copyrighted work that is not original to the Times, as would be the case if the Times copied another’s work or elements in the public domain,” OpenAI writes.

In its complaint, the Times described how it invests enormous amounts of time and expertise on its articles, which are sometimes the results of months or years of in-depth investigations. OpenAI would like to know what this claim entails.

“Having chosen to put directly at issue how the Times created the works at issue—including the methods, time, labor, and investment—OpenAI has a right to discovery into the same,” OpenAI writes.

In preparation for its defense, OpenAI further wants to know what portions of the copyrighted articles are “expressive, original, human-authored content”, and what parts are “non-expressive, non-original, or non-human-authored content.”

New York Times Refuses to Comply

Responding to the motion to compel, the Times makes it clear that the company doesn’t intend to give in. It stresses that its articles are copyrightable, whether they include third-party material or not.

“OpenAI claims that the reporters’ notes underlying the asserted works may shed light on whether The Times’s news articles are really original, expressive content—but that is not how copyright law works. The expressive nature of a work is determined by reference to the work itself.

“Moreover, even in the improbable case that a reporter’s notes show that 90% of an article comprises verbatim quotes from the author’s original sources, that article would still be protected by copyright,” the Times adds.

In addition, the newspaper reiterates that the discovery requests are overbroad, and invade the reporter’s privilege. Although OpenAI stressed that it’s not seeking to identify any confidential sources, its discovery request could have a chilling effect.

If journalistic outfits are required to disclose all source material for every copyrighted article, it may severely impact their ability or willingness to bring copyright lawsuits against potential infringers.

But perhaps that’s precisely what OpenAI tried to achieve here, the newspaper notes.

“Indeed, given the wildly improper scope of this request, one has to wonder if a chilling effect is exactly what OpenAI, who appears to have stolen from millions of content creators, is hoping for,” the Times writes.

—

A copy of OpenAI’s request to compel The New York Times to share the requested information is available here (pdf) . This also includes other disputed requests. The New York Times’ response can be found here (pdf) .

_{* For the purpose of record keeping, the referenced court filings are the sources we relied on for this article. No AI assistance was involved. Human labor was required to select and organize some of the arguments put forward by the parties, while intentionally excluding others to add focus.}

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

Voltage Pictures and parent Voltage Holdings are among the most active companies in the file-sharing settlement market, and by now, the model is well known.

1. Begin by monitoring BitTorrent swarms where the companies’ movies are being shared without authorization.

2. After capturing the IP addresses and other relevant data relating to alleged infringers, persuade a court to order local ISPs to hand over their customers’ personal details.

3. Apply pressure until the infringer pays or find someone else to hold liable.

It’s only when settlement letters begin landing on mats that the traditional settlement model has a chance of generating revenue. In some countries, the system runs like a finely tuned machine. In others, Canada for example, some courts have taken a keen interest in fundamental matters that should’ve been more critically examined elsewhere.

Voltage Holdings LLC vs. Doe: Background

Following the model outlined above, Voltage Holdings filed a claim at Canada’s Federal Court alleging that a number of internet users had been observed downloading and sharing the 2017 sci-fi movie ‘ Revolt ‘ using BitTorrent. From a list of over 100 ‘Doe’ defendants, Voltage boiled things down to focus on 30. “ The worst of the worst ,” Voltage said, citing data scooped up by anti-piracy tracking company Maverickeye.

Since none of the thirty filed a defense, Voltage sought default judgments, statutory damages, and costs against all of them. If the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic ( CIPPIC ) hadn’t intervened, that could’ve led to considerable misery for those involved. As it turns out, CIPPIC’s involvement appears to have provided the type of balance these types of cases have been crying out for; not least, a welcome review of the basics.

Evidence is Quite Important

There was no question that the Doe defendants were in default for not responding to the complaint, but they had something else in common too. All were identified as ISP account holders; their names were on file as those who pay the bills, and the IP addresses observed sharing the movie were allocated to their respective accounts at the time of the alleged infringements.

They had another thing in common too. Not one shred of evidence was presented to identify these people as the actual infringers, something CIPPIC argued was fatal to the claimant’s case. Voltage wasn’t unprepared; the company pointed out that its allegations of repeat infringement were backed up by infringement notices previously sent to the Doe defendants via their ISPs.

Since they had failed to stop the infringement after receiving the notices, Voltage said the burden should shift. The defendant internet bill payers should be required to disprove their association with the alleged infringement, instead of Voltage having to prove they were involved.

The Federal Court disagreed . Voltage had provided no evidence to show that the 30 Doe defendants were the infringers, or that they had sufficient control over the actual infringers to be seen as authorizers of their infringing behavior.

Unsurprisingly, Voltage took its case to the Federal Court of Appeal, ⁣but fared no better. In a highly-detailed judgment, a panel of three judges concluded that mere association with an IP address is simply not enough to show, on the balance of probabilities, that any of the Doe internet subscribers also shared its movie online.

Voltage Requests a Hearing at the Supreme Court

In short, the evidence underpinning the entire case was so weak it couldn’t fulfil its most basic task. Instead, guesswork attempted to fill in the gaps, and failed while doing so.

Hoping that the Supreme Court would somehow see things differently, Voltage requested leave to appeal. Late last week, the request was denied.

Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal

For reasons that aren’t being made clear by the Supreme Court, the case is subject to a publication ban. That means no transparency on why Voltage’s request was rejected, which at this late stage is somewhat disappointing. Nevertheless, CIPPIC has published its memorandum in opposition to the Voltage request ( pdf ) along with a summary of what the rejection means for those involved , and what could happen moving forward.

“The Supreme Court has denied leave to hear the appeal in Voltage v Doe #1, a case in which CIPPIC has played a central role. The case raised questions about the burden of proof borne by copyright owners and the nature of the duties copyright’s authorization right imposes on internet subscribers,” CIPPIC reports.

As a result of the refusal to hear the appeal, CIPPIC says that its successful arguments last year before the Federal Court of Appeal stand.

• Plaintiffs must have direct evidence that Internet subscribers authorize infringing file-sharing through their accounts; liability cannot be inferred on the basis of notice and continued infringement alone.

• Authorization does not impose on subscribers a duty to police their internet accounts to enforce copyright owners’ rights on the basis of a notice alleging infringement. The well-settled standard of authorization (‘sanction, approve and countenance’) from CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada , 2004 SCC 13, stands: an alleged authorizer must exercise a degree of control over a primary infringer.

“The matter remains alive,” CIPPIC notes. “Voltage must now attempt to gather more evidence about the nature of the internet subscribers’ relationship to the infringing activity before it can return to the Federal Court to seek default judgment.”

That is likely to present challenges, especially so given the age of the case. With the knowledge that additional evidence will be required in future cases, expect that to be forthcoming. Every day, tens of thousands of Canadian IP addresses can be observed sharing movies, despite a decade of cases like this periodically making the headlines.

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

Hikari-no-Akari (HnA) is one of those specialized pirate sites that has managed to build up a dedicated audience over the years.

The music download portal, which links to externally hosted files, has been operating for well over a decade and currently draws more than a million monthly visits.

In addition to the public-facing part of the site, HnA also has a private forum and Discord channel. These have been notoriously difficult to get into, as they only sporadically open their doors to a limited number of new members.

“Their Discord is like an inter-dimensional portal that only opens during a certain planetary alignment,” a Reddit user wrote last year, aptly describing the site’s access policy.

プライベート?

The site doesn’t explain why it prefers to keep its private audience limited. Some have suggested it makes it harder for rightsholders to see everything being shared behind the scenes but the publicly posted material alone is already sufficient to draw attention.

Apparently, Sony Music Japan has been keeping an eye on the unauthorized music portal. The company has many of its works shared on the site, including anime theme music, which is popular around the globe.

For example, a few weeks ago, HnA posted “ Sayonara, Mata Itsuka! ” from the Japanese artist Kenshi Yonezu, which is used as the theme song for the asadora series “The Tiger and Her Wings”.

Around the same time, PEACEKEEPER , a song by Japanese musician STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION, featured in the third season of the series “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime”, was shared on the site.

Sony DMCA Notices

Sony Music Japan is a rightsholder for both these tracks, as well as many others that were posted on the site. The music company presumably tried to contact HnA directly to have these listings removed and reached out to its CDN service Cloudflare too, asking it to take action.

“We demand that you immediately disable access to the Infringing Work and cease any use, reproduction, and distribution of the Original Work. Specifically, we request that you remove or disable the Infringing Work from hikarinoakari.com, hnadownloads.co, or any of your system or services,” Sony wrote to Cloudflare on June 20th.

By now, most rightsholders should know that Cloudflare doesn’t ‘disable access’ to allegedly copyright infringing content in response to takedown notices. Instead, it forwards these takedowns to the hosting company associated with the customer account.

However, these takedown notices do serve a purpose. They are a prerequisite for obtaining a DMCA subpoena, which Sony Music Japan requested at a California federal court this week.

Sony requested two DMCA subpoenas, both targeted at hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. The latter domain receives the bulk of its traffic from the first, which isn’t a surprise considering the ‘hnadownloads’ name.

Through the subpoena, the music company hopes to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites. That includes, names, IP-addresses, and payment info. Presumably, this will be used for follow-up enforcement actions.

“The sole purpose for which the requested subpoena is sought is to obtain the identities of the alleged infringer(s) described in the DMCA Notice and such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting Owners’ copyright rights,” Sony writes.

It’s unclear whether Cloudflare will be able to hand over any usable information and for the moment, HnA remains online.

Several of the infringing URLs that were identified by Sony have recently been taken down, including this one . However, others remain readily available. The same applies to private forum threads and Discord postings, of course.

—

A copy of the subpoenas requests from Sony Music Entertainment Japan can be found here (pdf) and here (pdf) .

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

In 2022, it was public knowledge that the MPA had its eye on video hosting and streaming service DoodStream.

When the MPA’s top lawyer called the site out a year later, DoodStream’s operators may have underestimated how significant that was. What followed was a copyright infringement lawsuit , filed at the Delhi High Court in India, DoodStream’s home turf.

DoodStream Ordered to Remove All Content Owned By The Plaintiffs

The details of an injunction obtained by the studios and the subsequent fallout are available in two in-depth articles published last month.

The bottom line is that DoodStream’s efforts to remove all copies of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works failed to meet the requirements of the injunction. The site’s operators complained that they weren’t allowed enough time to remove between 500,000 and 1,000,000 links to pirated videos. Needless to say, the Court was unsympathetic.

In light of DoodStream’s rejection of various proposals to limit ongoing infringement, a poor outcome for the defendants seemed increasingly likely. Removing download links, for example, was dismissed as a complete non-starter since that “would end up in the website being completely bare and inept.”

Infringing Content Removal Devastates DoodStream’s Traffic

The Court’s response was to issue an order that banned DoodStream’s owners, Raja Durai and Sarvesh Chandran, from directly or indirectly operating their own website, pending a hearing listed for September 18, 2024.

In the meantime, measures to prevent the plaintiffs’ content being made available via the DoodStream platform appear to be having a catastrophic effect on the service’s traffic.

The MPA previously estimated that DoodStream was good for 82.7 million visits during August 2022 alone. Semrush data indicates that during March 2024, doodstream.com received a very healthy 95.91 million visits. A month into the lawsuit, visits had plummeted to 35.95 million. In May, the number of visits was less than 27 million, almost 25% down on the previous month.

In common with similar sites operating in the same sector, DoodStream has many domains. The order that restrains the site’s owners from operating the site lists around 20. We can’t say with any certainty how many more exist beyond that, but it’s more than a handful. The traffic for these domains shouldn’t be added together due to the way they’re used, but the decline overall is significant.

Traffic Takes a Hammering

One of the domains the Court did list in its order is ds2play.com. According to Semrush data for March, the domain received 102.97 million visits. A month later, visits were down to less than 35 million and in May, a further 43% decrease in visits left the domain with barely a fifth of the visits it had before the lawsuit.

Domains with considerably less traffic include dood.watch; visits in March were roughly 2.73 million, but in May, that had reduced to 977K. Similar levels can be seen for doodstream.co, which in May received 968K, a decrease of 34% on the previous month. Likewise, dood.sh, down 45% on April’s figures in May along with a 22,000 place decline in global site ranking.

There is a domain with more interesting features, however.

Millions of Visits, But to Watch What?

Perhaps the most intriguing domain overall is dood.re. In March, it received almost 143 million visits, but in May, that had collapsed to less than 25 million, a 35% decline compared to the previous month.

What we see with this domain are some apparent gains being made amid the chaos of the headline losses. With links to mainstream movies being removed in their hundreds of thousands, there is at least some content that Hollywood can’t touch; or at least, refuses to touch – pornography.

In May, traffic to dood.re from X actually increased by almost 15%, but the big riser was way out ahead. With a 43% boost over the previous month, adult site PornHoarder became one of the domain’s leading sources of traffic.

On one hand, this might be considered a small positive in a sea of otherwise bad news and collapsing traffic. However, the Delhi High Court recently noted that by storing and distributing material that is illegal in India, any hope of seeking refuge under Section 79 of the IT Act, as an intermediary exempt from liability, is futile.

Perhaps the big question is who, if anyone, is running the site. Some uploaders to the site claim they are being paid as normal. Some uploaders claim they are not being paid at all.

Whatever the truth, the uncertainty appears to be harming confidence, as the wait for September’s hearing continues. It may not kill the site, especially when others seem prepared to pick up the slack, but the studios will settle for the disruption, at least for now.

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

When news began to break in early March, indicating that Spain’s most powerful football league had been authorized by a local court to track down people who simply viewed pirate streams, the story made for puzzling reading.

Claims in the media, that this related to pirate IPTV subscribers, spread like wildfire. That benefited LaLiga’s deterrent messaging campaign but lacked any basis in truth. That prompted a corrective statement by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.

Not only did the Court state that mere viewers would not be targeted when LaLiga obtained alleged pirates’ identities from local ISPs, its statement clarified that this wasn’t about IPTV at all ; it concerned card-sharing, an entirely different type of piracy.

“[T]he basis for agreeing to the requested preliminary diligence, can only be carried out against the ‘cardsharers’ who re-spread the signal and profit from it, and not against mere end users,” the statement explained.

And that was that, at least until letters from LaLiga’s lawyers started being delivered to homes in Spain last month.

Old School “Pay Up Or Else” Approach

The existence of the letters was first reported by lawyer David Maeztu who posted a section of one on X together with some explanatory notes.

“A conciliation claim [offer to settle] is filed against a user, who has been identified by his IP [address] because ‘it has been possible to confirm that from his Internet account [.] connections have been made to the pirate platform [.] from which access was provided’,” Maeztu explains .

“That is to say, it is a mere user connecting to a service. So yes, they intend to go against end users at least in a prior conciliation claim, which is not the same as a claim as such.”

In the letter above, LaLiga’s lawyer alleges that “at least on Day 32 of LALIGA EA SPORTS and Day 36 of LALIGA HYPERMOTION that took place between the 19th and April 22, 2024,” through the letter recipient’s internet connection, “illicit access to the audiovisual contents of LaLiga was obtained, without the consent of my client.”

The letter continues by stating that if the alleged infringer “immediately ceases the indicated behavior and, in any case, undertakes to restrict access through its network to those IP addresses, domains and web pages that allow illegal access to the referred contents,” and also “agrees to pay LaLiga 450.16 euros as compensation for the damages caused by his conduct,” the matter can be resolved.

In some respects, this sounds not dissimilar to an old school pay-up-or-else scheme, but as we suspected when reporting on this back in March, this goes way beyond anything seen before in a piracy case.

Spanish ISPs Appear to Be The Vital Component

Copyright infringement claims refer to allegedly infringing acts that have already happened; as such, claims for damages or compensation for infringements that haven’t happened yet face obvious challenges. It’s possible, based on a pattern of historical behavior, to obtain an injunction to restrain future infringement, but that’s usually as far as the law goes in these types of cases.

Based on information available at the time, our theory was that LaLiga had zero information that would allow it to identify any of the supposed infringers at Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, MásMóvil and Digi, the ISPs listed in the court order. Without an IP address, LaLiga wouldn’t be able to identify an alleged infringers’ ISP, let alone the actual infringer.

When rightsholders observe an infringement taking place online, they typically link it to an IP address. They then ask the relevant ISP to provide the identity of the subscriber who was using that IP address at the time of the observed infringement. In March, everything pointed to LaLiga having zero evidence against any users of the ISPs in question; we assumed that the ISPs would be asked to trawl their databases looking for evidence, which in itself would’ve been extraordinary.

However, if we take a look at the letter published by David Maeztu, we see that the act[s] for which LaLiga is demanding 450 euros, supposedly took place in April – two months after the court order was obtained. That not only adds credibility to the theory that LaLiga had no evidence of infringement when it obtained the court order, it also suggests that the alleged offenses referenced in the settlement letters hadn’t even happened yet.

“This makes no sense, and it would be good if the operators [ISPs] explained how this is possible,” Maeztu notes.

ISPs’ Loyalties Seem to Lie With LaLiga

As Maeztu points out, this situation makes absolutely no sense, but when the major ISPs in Spain profit from broadcasting football, it seems at least possible that extraordinary requests may be received more sympathetically.

Based on information currently available, it seems reasonable to assume that LaLiga has supplied the ISPs with card-sharing server IP addresses, plus additional information such as ports, and the ISPs are now logging (or retrieving from their logs) the IP addresses that access those servers.

After matching those IP addresses to subscriber accounts, the personal details of those subscribers are handed over to LaLiga by their ISPs, quite possibly becoming the only evidence supporting the claims in the cash settlement letters themselves.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas Medrano previously stated that IP addresses collected by LaLiga “that transmit illegal content” would be sent to Spanish ISPs. The court order states that the IP address assigned to the user when they accessed the server “that enabled the audiovisual content to be shared unlawfully” would be handed over to LaLiga.

That appears to underline the importance of the ISPs in this process, while also running counter to the assurances of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia that users would not be targeted.

Implications Beyond a Few Card-Sharers?

After appearing to cross the threshold of ISPs providing evidence of infringement from inside their own networks, could this have implications beyond identifying people who obtain football matches for free?

For example, would the prospect of identifying the anonymous operator of a whistleblowing website, accused of posting content that undermines an individual’s fundamental right to honor under Spanish law, find new opportunity beyond the compliance of the website’s host?

Of course, in this hypothetical scenario, the fundamental right to honor would have to battle against the right to freedom of expression. However, should the alleged victim have deep enough pockets, it might be of some comfort to know that proactive monitoring to obtain evidence, from inside an ISP’s network, might not be the unthinkable prospect it once was.

But as Maeztu notes, it would be good if the operators took the opportunity to explain how all of this works. It would be interesting to hear how this arrangement doesn’t leave all internet users in Spain worse off than before, and why it was worth it for the sake of a few 450 euro ‘fines’.

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

With more than half a billion site visits in just three months, pirate streaming site FMovies is seen as a major threat by Hollywood.

The pirate site rivals legal streaming platforms such as Disney+ in web traffic and has become the poster child for rejuvenated site blocking proposals in the U.S. Congress.

Pressure Mounts

To illustrate the brazenness of the site, lawmakers in Congress got a demo of the site from MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, Karyn Temple, late last year. This showed how easy it is to stream the latest movies and TV shows in one of the best secured buildings in the country.

The operators of FMovies, who allegedly reside in Vietnam, are not oblivious to the controversy. They know that the MPA and ACE are on their heels but have managed to continue their operations despite legal and diplomatic pressure.

From the outside, little appeared to change. The site has switched to a new domain name occasionally, possibly to fight back against search engine demotions and pirate site blockades, but the constant stream of fresh pirated content kept going; at least until last week.

FMovies Goes Stale

Without any type of explanation, FMovies hasn’t updated with new content for over a week.

For example, the latest “House of the Dragon” release on the site is episode one, which came out on June 17th. The Boys, meanwhile, is ‘stuck’ at the fourth episode, which dates back to June 20th.

The most recent episodes appear to have been added to the pirate streaming site little over a week ago. That also applies to movies, as recent releases such as Netflix’s “A Family Affair” are not listed.

This release delay is very unusual. Typically, pirated TV episodes and movies appear on FMovies within hours of their official release. The site’s users need this type of instant access, or else they switch to one of the many alternatives or clones.

Needless to say, the site’s users are not happy. Aside from the lack of new releases, the site functions normally and, over in the comment sections, people are starting to wonder what’s going on.

Something’s Up

To find out more, TorrentFreak attempted to contact the site’s operators, but it appears that the regular contact channel is down at the time of writing.

The lack of new content might simply be the result of a ‘simple’ technical problem. However, the fact that it has persisted for more than a week is highly unusual, especially without any official updates from the team.

For context, it’s worth noting that the FMovies team was previously linked to other pirate sites including BflixHD, SflixTV, and Losmoviesz. These sites don’t have any trouble on the supply side, it seems.

Given that all major anti-piracy groups have FMovies in their sights, we can’t rule out an enforcement effort or intervention. If that’s the case, it was only partially successful, so far, as the ‘stale’ site itself remains operational for the moment.

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