The last time developer Christopher Boomer appeared on our radar was back in July 2022 when he attempted to unmask thousands of alleged copyright infringers using the DMCA subpoena process.

As the developer behind the Weightlifting Simulator series of games, among others, Boomer has enjoyed extraordinary success in the Roblox community. Billions of plays of the developer’s games are an endorsement of his work; for some, it’s also a signal to publish similar if not identical games, to generate revenue for themselves.

Boomer’s earlier attempt at using the DMCA subpoena process, to unmask potentially thousands of targets, failed Roblox weighed in . While it was clear that the developer had at least some genuine claims, a DMCA subpoena was the wrong mechanism to obtain alleged infringers’ identities.

New Lawsuit Filed in the United States

A new lawsuit filed in a California court this week faces no such obstacles. The complaint states that Boomer is the author of the massively popular Roblox games Weight Lifting Simulator (released in 2017/18) and a game with a similar theme called Muscles Legends (2019).

Key features of the games include a play area with weights, benches, treadmills, and other sundry objects. When the player interacts with these items their in-game character becomes larger and stronger in appearance, which leads to progression in the game.

Get Muscles Simulator

Released on the Roblox platform in January 2022, Get Muscles Simulator “appears to be based on the same idea and features the same underlying mechanics as Mr. Boomer’s Weightlifting Games,” the complaint notes.

In Weight Lifting Simulator , player avatars interact with in-game objects to increase attributes, and can also battle other avatars. The same gameplay mechanics also appear in Get Muscles Simulator but the complaint alleges that copying goes well beyond that.

“[T]he infringing game blatantly copies Mr. Boomer’s protectable expression, including, inter alia, its artwork, level design, animations, design aesthetics, game pieces, user interface and the selection and coordination of game elements, colors, and shapes.”

A visual comparison of the games

“Indeed, the presence of these elements in Defendant’s game makes it readily apparent that it is a blatant clone of Mr. Boomer’s game. As the non-exhaustive examples [above] show, the main elements of Defendant’s Get Muscles Simulator are substantially similar to the constituent elements of Mr. Boomer’s Weightlifting Games that are original.”

DMCA Counter-Notices Should Be Taken Seriously

As previously reported , a thriving and cut-price cottage industry has sprung up in recent years promising to remove infringing content from the internet using DMCA notices. The same operations also claim that if a client’s content is taken down, they will file DMCA counter-notices to ensure content is restored.

Unfortunately, many of these DIY operations have a cavalier attitude to counter-notices and few warn of the consequences when things go wrong. As this case shows, no matter who sends a counter-notice, they should be taken seriously.

Around January 24, 2024, Boomer submitted a DMCA takedown notice to Roblox with the aim of removing Get Muscles Simulator from the platform. Three days later, around January 27, the developer of the allegedly-infringing game responded with a DMCA counter-notice to Roblox.

A DMCA counter-notice allows those targeted by a DMCA takedown notice to challenge its validity and ask for the removed content to be restored. However, this also triggers a 14-day period in which the original complainant has an opportunity to sue to prevent restoration.

If no lawsuit is filed, the content should be restored between day 10 and day 14. In this case, Boomer sued.

Under Penalty of Perjury, Don’t Provide False Information

Counter-notices must contain an address where the sender can be reached and here, the counter-notice sender provided an address in Montana. According to Boomer’s complaint, that statement was false. In a second counter-notice, submitted around January 31, the developer of Get Muscles Simulator provided an address in California.

Whether that address is accurate is unclear, but other things also need to be taken into account.

Counter-notices require the sender to state, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that their content should not have been taken down. In this case, Boomer’s lawsuit makes his position clear; Get Muscles Simulator is a blatant copy of his copyrighted game. The defendant will have to satisfy the court that simply isn’t true.

When submitting a counter-notice, senders are required to consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court in the district where they live. In this case, Boomer’s complaint states that there are no jurisdiction issues to consider because the defendant consented in writing to the jurisdiction of the court in the counter-notice submitted to Roblox.

Claim for Damages

The complaint notes that Get Muscles Simulator copies substantial original elements from Boomer’s game. It further alleges that the game’s developer, identified as Alexander Koshkin, is a deliberate and willful infringer, who generated unjust profits, gains, and advantages by competing against Boomer’s game hoping to “poach the market” for his weightlifting games.

Boomer requests a preliminary and/or permanent injunction to prevent further infringement, an award for damages, costs and attorney’s fees, interest, and a trial by jury.

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

In recent months, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

The list includes record labels, individual authors, visual artists, and even the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work without proper compensation.

Several of the lawsuits filed by book authors include a piracy component. The cases allege that tech companies, including Meta and OpenAI, used the controversial Books3 dataset to train their models.

The Books3 dataset was created by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, who scraped the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik. The general vision was that the plaintext collection of more than 195,000 books, which is nearly 37GB in size, could help AI enthusiasts build better models.

The vision wasn’t wrong; large text archives are great training material for Large Language Models, but many authors disapprove of their works being used in this manner, without permission or compensation.

Authors Sue, OpenAI Responds

In a lawsuit filed last June , authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad accused OpenAI of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, among other things. Soon after, writer/comedian Sarah Silverman teamed up with authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey in an identical suit.

The complaints allege that the authors’ books were sourced from pirate sites. They specifically mention the controversial Books3 dataset, as well as data from other shadow libraries such as LibGen, Z-Library, and Sci-Hub.

“The books aggregated by these websites have also been available in bulk via torrent systems. These flagrantly illegal shadow libraries have long been of interest to the AI-training community..,” the authors wrote.

OpenAI didn’t deny these allegations directly but nevertheless disagreed that using books to train AI amounts to vicarious copyright infringement or violations of the DMCA.

In a motion to dismiss , OpenAI asked the California federal court to ‘trim’ the scope of the case. The only claim that should be able to survive is direct copyright infringement, but OpenAI said it expects to defeat that at a later stage.

Court Dismisses Copyright and DMCA Claims

After reviewing input from both sides, California District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled on the matter. In her order, she largely sides with OpenAI.

The vicarious copyright infringement claim fails because the court doesn’t agree that all output produced by OpenAI’s models can be seen as a derivative work. To survive, the infringement claim has to be more concrete.

“Plaintiffs’ allegation that ‘every output of the OpenAI Language Models is an infringing derivative work’ is insufficient. Plaintiffs fail to explain what the outputs entail or allege that any particular output is substantially similar – or similar at all – to their books,” the order reads,

In addition to copyright infringement, the authors accused OpenAI of violating the DMCA by intentionally altering the copyright management information (CMI). Details such as the title, the author, and the copyright owner, were allegedly stripped to “enable” or “conceal” infringement.

Judge Martínez-Olguín sees no evidence for the intentional removal of this copyright information. And, even if these allegations are true, there’s no evidence that it was done for nefarious reasons.

“Plaintiffs argue that OpenAI’s failure to state which internet books it uses to train ChatGPT shows that it knowingly enabled infringement, because ChatGPT users will not know if any output is infringing.

“However, Plaintiffs do not point to any caselaw to suggest that failure to reveal such information has any bearing on whether the alleged removal of CMI in an internal database will knowingly enable infringement.”

The authors further claimed that OpenAI distributed its works without CMI, which would also violate the DMCA. This argument fails too, the court ruled, as OpenAI didn’t distribute full copies of books.

“Instead, [the authors] have alleged that ‘every output from the OpenAI Language Models is an infringing derivative work’ without providing any indication as to what such outputs entail – i.e., whether they are the copyrighted books or copies of the books,” the order reads.

Direct Copyright Infringement Claim Remains

In addition to the vicarious copyright infringement and the DMCA violations, Judge Martínez-Olguín also dismissed the California Unfair Competition Law ( UCL ) claims for ‘unlawful business practice’, ‘fraudulent conduct’, ‘negligence’, and ‘unjust enrichment’. The UCL claim for ‘unfair practices’ can proceed.

This isn’t the end of the legal battle. The authors have the chance to file an amended complaint to correct any shortcomings, should they wish to proceed with the dismissed claims.

Finally, it’s worth reiterating that the direct copyright infringement claim wasn’t covered by OpenAI’s motion to dismiss, so that will move forward as well. As will many of the other AI copyright lawsuits.

—

A copy of California District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín’s order on the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf) .

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

While anti-piracy enforcement actions are likely to be at the highest level ever seen, there’s no shortage of sites and services surging to millions of monthly visits before appearing to attract negative attention.

Piracy services slipping through the net may not have actually done so completely unnoticed, however. Finite anti-piracy resources or strategy may play a role in services staying online, and not every platform warrants immediate attention.

That being said, when piracy-focused apps appear on Google Play and somehow manage to grow huge audiences for month, that can be puzzling. Google will take down obviously infringing apps in response to a DMCA takedown notice and since major rightsholders can file those in an instant, it’s difficult to know why popular apps don’t get taken down.

Pirate Streaming Apps on Google Play

As part of its coverage of the new Piracy Shield IPTV blocking system recently deployed in Italy, local tech news outlet DDAY.it recently highlighted pirate streaming apps on Google Play, some with hundreds of thousands of downloads. Those mentioned in the article focus on live football streams, the same priority content Piracy Shield is supposed to wipe out.

While that lofty goal was never likely to be achieved in two weeks, DDAY asked Google why the apps hadn’t been delisted and, from Google’s response, the question seems likely to have mentioned Piracy Shield.

The platform built by AGCOM, Piracy Shield, is used to notify providers who provide access to sites hosting infringing content with orders to disable such access. However, hosting service providers such as the Google Play Store are not subject to these orders.

In any case and regardless of the legislation in question, it is always possible for authorities and users to report apps that allow activities in violation of the law or platform rules as described here . (Response from Google)

As a statement of fact, Google’s response is non-controversial. In contrast, a subsequent comment from AGCOM significantly muddies the waters.

Comply With The Law, But Do More

Google accepts DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders and those authorized to act on their behalf, as the provided link demonstrates. That tends to suggest that takedown notices to remove the apps from Google Play may not have been sent by the relevant rightsholders.

In his response, AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitano doesn’t address the possibility that an existing anti-piracy option wasn’t used. Instead, he says that others simply need to do more.

In this historical moment we need an alliance for legality, which passes through respect for the rules but also through autonomous initiatives by private entities inspired by ethics and self-regulation. Nobody asks for an ex ante filter, nor to wear blindfolds. (Response from AGCOM Commissioner Capitano)

If “respect for the rules” means compliance with the law, the law says that if Google receives a proper complaint, those apps would have to come down. If “autonomous initiatives” is a reference to private deals that go beyond the strict requirements of the law, Google would still need to know which content to remove and why.

Since only the relevant rightsholders have that information, having them supply it in a takedown notice seems like a clear and efficient option.

Law 93/2023, Article 2, Paragraph 5

After suggesting that Google should ethically remove content without rightsholder involvement, Commissioner Capitano goes on to claim that the new law passed last year does indeed apply to the Play Store, contrary to Google’s earlier statement.

[I] would like to remind you that law 93/2023 following the amendments prepared by the Caivano Decree, paragraph 5 of article 2 expressly provides that search engines and other sites, even if they are not directly involved in accessibility of Pirate sites subject to Agcom investigation, must adopt all technical measures useful to hinder the visibility of illicit content. (AGCOM Commissioner Capitano )

The relevant section of the law ( art. 2, para 5 ), states that network access service providers, search engine operators and information society service providers “involved in any capacity in the accessibility of the website or illegal services” must within 30 minutes, disable DNS resolution of domain names and traffic routing to the notified IP addresses.

Google Can’t Comply With The Above

While AGCOM and Google argue over whether Google Play qualifies under the law, it’s beyond clear that Google’s ability to comply with the above terms in respect of an app is all but impossible.

Any app providing access to pirated streams will do so using IP addresses and DNS servers of which Google Play has no knowledge. Even if it had knowledge, Google Play could do nothing about that; it doesn’t supply internet connectivity and doesn’t control DNS. In the event the app relied on Google DNS, then Google DNS should be served with a blocking order, not Google Play.

Google Play Could Do ‘Something’

The law does provide a catch-all clause that requires platforms, “in any case…to adopt technological measures or the organizational measures necessary to prevent access to content disseminated illegally.”

That could logically mean the removal of an app from Google Play. However, regardless of what action is eventually taken, the targets are first identified by rightsholders and then placed in a list, which is subsequently made available to the service providers to take action. Without that list, no action can be taken because, ethically or not, guesses are no match for facts.

That leads to the conclusion that as well as likely receiving no takedown notices, Google Play has received no lists of targets to take action against under the new law, regardless of whether the law applies to it or not.

Furthermore, the only reason those pirate streaming apps remain useful is purely down to the availability of streams accessible within the app. Since it’s Piracy Shield’s job to render those inaccessible, that might be a good place to start.

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

Despite the growing availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites and services are used by millions of people worldwide.

New data released by UK-based piracy tracking company MUSO shows that pirate sites remain very relevant. And people have no trouble finding them either.

229 Billion Pirate Site Visits

A few weeks ago it was revealed that video piracy continued to grow in 2023. A new report shows this uptrend is visible across all other content categories, reaching 229 billion platform visits in 2023, a 6.7% increase compared to a year earlier.

Music and software piracy are by far the smallest categories, but these saw the largest relative piracy increases. The number of visits to music and software piracy sites grew 13.4% and 14.1% respectively over the past year.

TV piracy remains the most popular among consumers, however, accounting for almost half of all piracy traffic with 103.9 billion visits in 2023. The publishing category takes second place with 63.6 billion visits, followed by 29.6 billion film piracy visits.

Manga

In recent years, the publishing category has seen a sharp traffic increase. This rise is mostly driven by manga comics, which have drawn more pirate site visits than film piracy in recent years.

“The global phenomenon of Manga, Japanese comic book and graphic novels, has driven publishing piracy to new heights in recent years, overtaking film piracy and the second most pirated medium in 2020,” MUSO writes .

Manga now dominates the publishing category. While traditional book publishers have been very active on the anti-piracy front recently, more than two-thirds of all ‘publishing’ pirates (69.2%) are drawn to manga sites.

The United States is in the lead as the main source of traffic to manga sites. With 13% of all visits, it leaves all other countries, including Japan, trailing behind.

TV Piracy

Looking at the TV category, we see that the United States remains the top traffic driver overall. With more than 14 billion visits it puts runner-up Russia in distant second place.

The TV category also includes anime content which, unlike our yearly overview , is included in MUSO’s top 10 list of most viewed TV series. The Last of Us remains the winner, however.

In recent years TV piracy has been dominated by streaming sites, which represent direct competition for Netflix and other authorized platforms. These pirate streaming sites now make up 96.3% of all traffic, marginalizing torrent sites and download portals.

Iran, India and Russia

It’s no surprise that the United States is leading in the TV and Publishing categories due to the sheer size of the population and readily available broadband access. However, this dominance doesn’t apply to all categories.

Looking at movie piracy, India is the clear winner by a wide margin ( 30%! ), according to MUSO’s data. Interestingly, visits to this category declined sharply in the second half of 2023 for reasons that are not immediately clear.

In the music category, Iran is the surprising leader with 11.8% of music piracy visits, followed by India and the U.S. as runners-up. This includes traffic to stream-ripping sites, download portals, and streaming sites.

Finally, MUSO attributes most software piracy to Russia, with the U.S. and China closely behind. This includes traffic to app piracy sites. Needless to say, all software piracy takes place through direct download portals.

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

In recent years, rightsholders have repeatedly teamed up with Egyptian law enforcement to tackle several large pirate sites and services.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) booked several successes, shutting down domains related to popular piracy rings , streaming portals such as MyCima and, more recently, Cima4U .

Several of these actions took place in coordination with sports broadcaster beIN . The company is very active in the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA region) where a large part of its subscriber base resides. Traditionally, this is a region with plenty of enforcement challenges.

beIN Shares MENA Piracy Concerns

Despite recent successes, these challenges remain. A few days ago, beIN and subsidiary Miramax submitted an overview to the U.S. Trade Representative, as input for the annual “ Special 301 ” review. The submission focuses exclusively on the MENA region.

“[T]here is still a huge amount to be done. beIN and other intellectual property rights owners, continue to sustain huge revenue losses from piracy in MENA, which greatly threatens the development of the legitimate audio-visual sector,” beIN writes.

“In many countries, commitment to intellectual property enforcement, and general respect of intellectual property remains very low. In many countries, piracy continues to be the primary way for people to consume premium sports and entertainment content.”

The submission signals a variety of piracy-related problems in countries such as Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, UAE, and Lebanon, where lacking enforcement is a recurring theme. However, our attention was mostly drawn to the comments regarding Egypt.

Similar to other countries, many pirate sites are easy to access in Egypt and dedicated piracy devices and subscriptions are openly sold there. While the ACE actions have shown that there is some cooperation from local law enforcement, plenty of concerns remain.

Paid Pirate Site Blocking Licenses

One particularly problematic development relates to site blocking. Rightsholders historically faced difficulty getting support from local authorities on the site-blocking front. Last year, there appeared to be some progress on this front, but not the type beIN wanted.

Site blocking is an option in Egypt today. However, instead of it being part of a legal or administrative process, pirate site blocking is offered as a ‘privatized’ service by an unnamed commercial company.

BeIN inquired about the available blocking options, but it believes that the fees that are currently charged are too steep.

“In 2023, beIN was made aware that license to order such blocking has been granted to a commercial entity, which is offering this to rights owners as a paid service. The fee offered to beIN was neither proportional nor realistic to the service being offered.’

The ‘pay to block’ offering came as a surprise to beIN, which hopes that the Egyptian government will reconsider the blocking scheme. Perhaps after a nudge from the U.S. Trade Representative ( USTR ).

“beIN is not aware of any other country, where enforcement of IPR has been privatized in such a manner. beIN would urge the authorities in Egypt to reconsider their approach,” the company informs the USTR.

How Bad Is It?

TorrentFreak asked ACE, which is well-connected in Egypt, to share their thoughts on the matter. At this time, however, the anti-piracy group prefers not to comment.

Without more details on the scheme and the blocking company involved, it is hard to grasp what’s going on precisely. In theory, the fees being charged could simply be used to cover the costs, instead of blocking being a for-profit business.

Interestingly, it appears that not all rightsholders are increasingly concerned about Egypt. The International Intellectual Property Alliance ( IIPA ), which represents major rightsholder groups including the MPA and RIAA, removed the country from its watchlist recommendation for the first time this year.

Since 1989, IIPA has listed Egypt as either a “watchlist” or “priority watchlist” recommendation in its “Special 301” submissions to the USTR, but that’s no longer the case today. So, not all is bad.

—

A copy of the submission beIN and Miremax sent to the USTR for its upcoming 2024 Special 301 Review is available here (pdf)

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

At the end of 2020, the operator of one of the largest YouTube rippers took the unprecedented step of taking the music industry to court .

Yout.com’s Johnathan Nader had grown tired of the bombardment of DMCA takedown requests and allegedly defamatory claims. In response, he sued the RIAA, asking the federal court in Connecticut to declare his service non-infringing.

The RIAA and others were asking Google to remove so-called YouTube-rippers from search results. The music industry group believes that these sites should not be allowed to operate and filed a motion to dismiss Yout’s lawsuit.

RIAA Wins, Yout Appeals

At the end of 2022, the district court handed a win to the RIAA and dismissed the matter at an early stage. Judge Stefan Underhill concluded that Yout had failed to show that it doesn’t circumvent YouTube’s technological protection measures. As such, it could be breaking the law. That wasn’t the end though.

Yout operator Johnathan Nader opted to appeal at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking it to reverse the lower court’s decision. The stream-ripper’s arguments are partly supported by amicus briefs from GitHub and the EFF , both of which joined the case.

On the other side of the aisle, the RIAA dug in its heels. The music group saw no reason to doubt the lower court’s position and, in its response to the appeal, found the Copyright Alliance at its side .

Appeals Court Hearing

On the surface, this case largely revolves around a seemingly simple question. The problem, however, is that both parties have a completely different answer.

– Does YouTube employ a technological measure that effectively controls access to copyrighted works?

This question brings up all sorts of semantic challenges. What is a measure and when is it technological ? What does access mean in this context and under which conditions is it controlled ? And if there is such a measure, does Yout.com circumvent it?

A few days ago Yout and the RIAA had the chance to explain their reasoning to the Court of Appeals. The hearing was presided over by Judge Carney, Judge Leval, and Judge Sullivan, who critically questioned both attorneys on their views.

First up was Evan Fray Witzer, who represents Yout LLC. The attorney explained that this case brings up several novel questions, relating to three distinct provisions of the DMCA’s section 1201. At the same time, however, it is crucial to have a full factual record, which is currently missing.

The lower court dismissed Yout’s case at the rule 12 stage before all the factual evidence was gathered. No witnesses were heard and it’s not even clear if YouTube intentionally implemented a ‘measure’ to prevent users from downloading videos.

“There is a question as to what YouTube intended with these measures. We don’t know because YouTube isn’t here. YouTube has not come in as an amicus. And we have not had the opportunity to question YouTube about that,” Witzer said.

Yout’s attorney suggests that it’s possible that YouTube never implemented any technology specifically to prevent people from grabbing video files. It might have, but in that case, it is still easy to circumvent, even without specialized tools such as Yout.

Where’s YouTube?

Judge Leval responded by saying that preventing downloads is of great commercial significance to YouTube, as it generates its revenue from advertising. Yout’s attorney agreed but had his response ready.

“I have two responses to that. The first is; one would expect if that was YouTube’s concern, that you would have an amicus brief from YouTube here, and you don’t. And I think that that is significant and telling.

“The second, though, is that is the same concern, Your Honor, that every television broadcast had when the VCR came out. If you can simply record this, you can show it at your movie night. You can show it as many times as you want.”

The VCR comparison was brought up a few times but not as often as the role of YouTube in this lawsuit. The case essentially centers around its purported protection measures, without any direct input from the company itself.

When Judge Carney asked what in particular would be developed on a fuller record, if this case was sent back to the lower court, Yout’s attorney said that YouTube could and should be heard.

“I think one thing that would be developed on a fuller record, Your Honor, is what precisely is the technological measure employed by YouTube and does it, is it designed to prevent access? Is it designed to prevent copying? Or does it have some other use that YouTube is putting to it?”

The attorney said that they would need to subpoena YouTube as a third party. That should clarify what their technology and methods are and how this relates to YouTube’s business.

“I’ll simply conclude by saying this is the type of case that calls out for expert witnesses,” Witzer said, noting that the EFF and GitHub had already argued in their favor.

Court Questions RIAA

The hearing then continued with RIAA attorney Rose Ehler, who started by pointing out that Yout allows the public to download audio and video files. This includes copies of music videos that were only intended to be streamed through YouTube.

This introduction triggered a quick tête-à-tête with Judge Sullivan, who tried to get to the bottom of RIAA’s reasoning. It went like this.

Judge: But I could do that without Yout, right?

RIAA: There are instructions for how one could do it without Yout. But what Yout does is enable it on an automated basis.

Judge: I get that. But […] what is the technological measure that would be protecting this copyrightable material if I can do it myself?

RIAA: Well, just because you can do it yourself or you can hack the technological measure, it doesn’t mean…[interrupted]

Judge: Well, I’m not hacking anything. I mean, I could do this right now in this courtroom on my computer probably, right?

RIAA: Your Honor could. I think it would be hacking…

RIAA’s attorney went on to explain what it sees as the “technical measure.” Yout itself has stated that YouTube uses a “signature mechanism” that must be read and interpreted by JavaScript. Yout modifies the signature value.

This prompted more questions from Judge Sullivan, who suggested that the signature value is accessible through a regular browser and that he and others could also modify it without using a dedicated tool such as Yout.

“You’re saying I would then be violating the statute as well?” the Judge asked.

RIAA’s attorney agreed that people could do it on their own which, in individual cases, may qualify as a copyright exemption. However, doing it to download a music video and to seed piracy on the Internet would be classified as circumvention under the DMCA.

Reverse Engineered Technological Protection?

Moving on to the “protection” element, the RIAA believes that the signature value used by YouTube serves as a technological measure that, in the ordinary course, prevents people from downloading music videos.

“The strength is not what we look at. We look at how it operates in the ordinary course and whether in the ordinary course of the operation, it serves the function of limiting or controlling access,” RIAA’s attorney said.

This again triggered more questions from the court about how effective this is and whether the signature value was intended as a protection measure. The latter question can only be answered by YouTube, whose views are unknown.

The RIAA countered by noting that intent isn’t important, as it’s not part of the DMCA rules. The statute looks at whether a technological measure is being circumvented in the ordinary course of operation, which it believes is the case here.

This didn’t convince Judge Sullivan who pointed out that the lower court seems to have “reverse engineered” its way to a conclusion.

“But how are we able to know that from the pleadings? How are we able to know how it works in the ordinary course? I mean, it might be people are doing this all the time on their own. There’s no discovery on that. There’s no expert opinion on that.

“It seems to me that Judge Underhill sort of inferred that this, because it’s complicated, because there’s no download button, because it’s a contractual provision, there must be a technological measure. He’s sort of backwardly engineered it, it seems to me,” Judge Sullivan added.

An Easy Solution

As is, the court may not be convinced by the RIAA’s arguments alone. That’s not to say that they’re wrong, but he suggests that this case could benefit from YouTube’s input on the matter. Particularly because there are “some pretty big stakes here.”

“This could be easily solved. And my hunch is when it is. It’s going to be clear that there are other technological measures that are here. But right now, YouTube’s staying out of it and we’re kind of guessing, Judge Sullivan noted.

Both attorneys were confronted with critical questions during the hearing, as is often the case. This means that it is too early to draw any conclusions. It is clear, however, that YouTube holds the keys to many of the questions that have come up. Whether it will be heard, however, is for the Court of Appeals to decide.

—

A copy of the full hearing is available here (mp3) . All quotes are transcribed by us.

Update: we fixed part of a quote that included an incorrectly transcribed word.

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

From the very beginning and from every possible angle, this story makes almost no sense. But it will, eventually.

By chance, when trying to track down a document a few weeks ago, a .pdf file with ‘IPTV’ in the description suddenly stood out in Google search results. Interesting things can appear by pure luck but, on first view, the document seemed quite mundane.

Sporting a maple leaf in the top left corner and text on the right mentioning a meeting of Mapleton City Council, deletion was mere moments away. But then the word ‘ACTION’ caught the eye, quickly followed by ‘Xtreme High-Definition IPTV streaming’.

It transpires that Mapleton is no regular city. Founded in 1850, settled in 1856, and officially incorporated in 1948, it currently boasts a population of around 11,220 people. According to FBI data, just 16 crimes involving violence or threat of violence were recorded in 2022. No murders, no robberies, and it looks absolutely stunning .

Mapleton City Council Loves Mapleton, Records Everything

As far as data is concerned, Mapleton City Council operates with a high level of transparency and appears to keep immaculate records, many of which are published on its website. The city is currently building an all new fiber network promising speeds of up to 2Gbps but, in the meantime, existing internet connections seem to suffice.

According to another of the city’s highly detailed documents, on November 3rd, 2022, Mapleton City staff met to finalize and propose a rate to deliver a “High-definition IPTV subscription service” for all network users. In common with most documents that mention IPTV on the Mapleton City Website, this one mentions ‘Xtreme High-Definition IPTV’ too.

“Mapleton City Administration asked the Mapleton City Network to investigate offering High-definition IPTV streaming service to residential and business users,” the official request for the Council to approve the ‘Xtreme’ service reads.

“As we research the options, it became clear that a High-definition IPTV subscription service would be the best value and the least expensive to deploy. We as staff agree that a streaming subscription service should be deployed to compete with other communications companies within the Mapleton service area.”

So what type of ‘Xtreme IPTV service’ could give local communications companies a run for their money?

Well, if we shorten ‘Xtreme High-Definition IPTV’ we arrive at a more manageable and recognizable name : Xtreme HD IPTV . If we then place a few channels from the proposed Mapleton IPTV service on the left, and channels from what is actually a well-known pirate IPTV service on the right, we get…

…..exactly the same service

March 15, 2023: D-Day

Even the most permissive view of events thus far defies explanation. Did the search for a cheap but legal service to entertain city residents simply get out of hand? Is there a weird, Utah-specific internet filter that blocks negative news about illegal IPTV services and streaming sites, but allows other stuff through?

The screenshot below, of a post dated March 15, 2023, was taken from the official Instagram account of the City Council. Based on the possibility that there may have been a huge mistake, or perhaps people have been led to believe certain things that simply aren’t true, we’ve chosen to obscure the identities of the people below.

The relevant sections in red clearly show upcoming events. Since when do people running a city knowingly celebrate the upcoming approval of a massive pirate IPTV reselling operation with an announcement on Instagram?

And if that sounds too ridiculous to be true, how about the existence of a detailed cost analysis? The table below not only attempts to calculate the potential size of the local market, but also predicts huge profit margins after weighing in IPTV-specific factors such as concurrent connections.

Yet, despite all of the above, there was still a strong urge to uncover any reason that might go at least some way towards explaining why a local authority might find itself in such a crazy position.

This week, we reached out to two key figures on the council with a request for comment, or even a chat to hear why this isn’t such a great idea. At the time of publication, we still hadn’t heard back.

Desperate for any new theories, here’s an obvious one: Is the city and/or its population in dire financial straights? More recent figures may indicate otherwise but in 2021, the median property value in Mapleton was just over $502,000, while median household income was close to $115,000. Just 3% of residents live below the poverty line, which is actually pretty impressive.

But even if 100% of all residents were unable to make ends meet, wouldn’t it be sensible to discuss something like this a little more quietly ?

After spending way too much time trying to answer these and similar questions, a long trawl through the Mapleton City YouTube channel effectively answered them all.

Seeing is Believing

On March 15, 2023, Mapleton City Council unanimously approved the implementation of the Xtreme HD IPTV system. They did so based on 16 minutes of testimony describing how it worked and, more importantly, the absence of legal concerns.

The discussion concerning the Xtreme HD proposition begins around the 32-minute mark but from a personal perspective, it’s a very tough watch. The people who gave the project the green light asked questions which mostly headed in the right direction; the information relied upon to reach that decision had only negative value.

The same can’t be said of the video , which may turn out to be priceless. Without it, no sane person would believe something like this could ever be possible. Despite the project receiving official approval (a unanimous vote is audible in the video), hopefully someone managed to pull the plug before launch, or at least fairly soon after.

The public records referenced in this report are available here

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

Back in August we reported how Google had received requests to remove one billion allegedly-infringing links from its search results. A billion is a big number, especially when it refers to takedown demands received over a period of just nine months .

A few days before we published that report, Google had just processed its seven billionth removal request, having reached six billion less than a year earlier . At the time of writing, just four months after reaching seven billion, Google has already processed another 572,000,000 takedown demands.

And that’s only Google search. Content ID claims alone reached 1.5 billion on YouTube in 2021 and that doesn’t account for all the removals carried out by Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter, Snapchat and any other platform that springs to mind.

The Situation is Bad and Getting Worse By the Day

Under the Digital Services Act , large online platforms are required to keep the European Commission updated via so-called ‘statements of reasons’ which detail the circumstances behind the removal of every piece of content from their platforms. These reports are added to an EC database which is made available in the form of a continuously updated transparency report.

For demonstration purposes we extracted all the reasons for removal cited by YouTube in one 24-hour period during the last week and found several related to copyright, including those detailed below.

⦿ Your video has been removed from YouTube for a Terms of Service violation because it is a copy of another video that was previously removed from YouTube due to a copyright removal request that we received.

⦿ Content that shows viewers how to gain unauthorized free access to audio content, audiovisual content, full video games, software, or streaming services that normally require payment is not allowed.

⦿ Due to multiple copyright strikes associated with the videos below, your YouTube channel has now been terminated. Copyright owners can choose to issue legal complaints that require YouTube to take down videos that contain their content. When you have 3 or more copyright strikes, your channel can be terminated.

Other reasons for content deletion unrelated to copyright, and in some cases seemingly more complicated to determine via automated means, were in abundant supply. Those listed below represent just a small sample.

Social media platform Facebook also reports huge numbers of takedowns to the EC. On the handful of days we extracted the company’s reports, data protection and privacy violations were very common, along with ‘scams and fraud’, ‘illegal or harmful speech’, and ‘pornography or sexualized content’, the latter often labeled ‘synthetic media’.

Reasons For Removal Vary But All Platforms Are Staggeringly Busy

Depending on the nature of the platform, the reasons for removing content can vary considerably. On the days we took samples, which may not necessarily be representative in a broader analysis, Amazon removed huge numbers of listings for copyright and trademark infringement, violations of electrical/packaging standards, fakes and scams, and general advertising policy violations. Overall, few if any violations were of a personal nature, however.

TikTok, on the other hand, appears to spend a worrying amount of time removing content categorized as ‘Violent Behaviors and Criminal Activities’, ‘Harassment and Bullying’, ‘Hate Speech and Hateful Behaviors’, ‘Sexually Suggestive Content’, ‘Sexual Exploitation and Gender-Based Violence’, ‘Suicide and Self-Harm’ and well, you get the idea. What motivates users to act in this manner is best left to mental health specialists, but it seems that without TikTok’s constant moderation, the platform might be completely uninhabitable.

That brings us back to the almost inevitable conclusion that at some point, few if any major platforms will have the resources to deal with abusive takedowns on an individual, human-powered basis, on any meaningful scale. The EU’s DSA ‘Statements of Reasons’ database shows why individual attention is likely to become even more scarce as major platforms deal with a seemingly endless tsunami of takedowns based on a growing list of alleged violations.

When combined, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Google Play, Apple’s App Store and Amazon reported 25,847,600 takedowns for just one week , each with a statement explaining why the content was removed. But that’s only the beginning.

To provide the full picture we would need to add AliExpress, Booking.com, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pintrest, Snapchat, X/Twitter, and Zalando to the above.

The numbers are big: 11,679,101 statements of reasons were added to the system on December 5 and another 15,519,304 on December 6. During the last week the smallest number of statements filed in a single day was 9,828,619. The image below shows the overall position as of this morning.

Those curious to see for themselves can grab daily .csv files weighing in at 5GB/6GB each and containing nothing but text.

After attempting to review just one of these files, it’s clear why YouTube struggles with disputes that can’t be handled by automation. AI will at some point provide something close to acceptable but until our artificial overlords can provide a credible fair use assessment or recognize when anti-piracy outfits are using crude word-based filters, copyright frustrations will continue as normal.

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

With few signs that public appetite for cheap but illegal streaming services will subside anytime soon, law enforcement agencies all over Europe are working to disrupt suppliers wherever they can.

The Directorate for the Prosecution of Electronic Crime in Athens, Greece, is reporting an apparently successful operation against an organization that until recently serviced customers in five regions of the country. A series of raids last Friday are said to have “dismantled” the group, details of which are now emerging.

Nine ‘Key members’ Arrested

The Directorate for the Prosecution of Electronic Crime says a coordinated operation carried out last Friday targeted a “criminal operation” whose members were “systematically active in the illegal retransmission of subscription television services.” In the areas of Attica, Ilia, Thessaloniki, Kozani and Crete, nine alleged key members of the group were arrested, with another three key members reportedly still on file.

Together they face charges relating to the formation, management, and membership of a criminal organization, violations of intellectual property law, offenses relating to subscription services, and weapons offenses after pepper spray and a knife were confiscated by police.

Other items seized during the raids include 52,915 euros in cash, 41 ‘online receivers’ (nature unspecified), 24 mobile phones, 46 bank cards, 22 hard disks, 11 computers, 6 SIM cards, 5 tablet devices, 3 USB flash drives, customer lists, and a wireless router.

The Organization’s Structure

Information provided by the Directorate indicates that two key members of the group were responsible for maintaining the network infrastructure from where illicit TV streams were retransmitted to subscribers of the service.

Other core members of the group acted as resellers to their own sets of customers, who purchased pre-configured set-top boxes using various mechanisms including cash, bank transfers, online money transfers, and cryptocurrency transactions.

Police say the resellers were able to check the status of each customer to determine if they had “fulfilled their financial obligations, if their subscription period had expired, as well as activate or deactivate the connection of each user.”

An example IPTV panel (no connection to current case)

Known in IPTV circles as a ‘reseller panel’ this a type of software that allows resellers to manage their own customers via an online interface. In return for effectively becoming an IPTV provider’s sales and customer support agent, the business is structured so that resellers are able to make a profit on each ‘credit’ (usually a month’s subscription) bought and sold. In this case, police say the resellers received a 40% cut.

How Much Was Made?

When the authorities announce seizures of drugs or counterfeit goods, early value estimates are often calculated using methods more likely to have a bigger impact in the media.

Drug hauls, for example, aren’t valued using the ‘wholesale’ price available for 100kgs, but at the rate they would’ve been sold at for the smallest possible quantity at ‘retail’, commonly known as street value. Counterfeit watches purchased for a few dollars each at ‘retail’ and worth much less in bulk, are reported at the price a jeweler charges for an original timepiece.

With the above in mind, trying to decipher figures provided by the authorities following IPTV busts is rarely straightforward. In this case, however, Greek police take a different approach.

Financial Benefit to Subscribers

By taking the estimated number of subscribers to the service (2,000 minimum) and calculating the ‘financial benefit’ they obtained (presumably by buying a pirate subscription over an official package), the police arrive at a financial benefit for subscribers valued at 420,000 euros.

This suggests that each customer avoided paying/financially benefited to the tune of 210 euros each. The loss to the subscription TV companies, meanwhile, is measured at 2,240,000 euros, over five times the amount saved by the subscribers and equivalent to 1,120 euros in losses for every single one.

Taking that at face value, the difference is significant and may be important for more than 40 people reported by the police for watching illegal streams.

“The case file also includes 43 customers of the organization, for illegal viewing of subscription services,” police report.

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