England is widely regarded as the ‘home of football’ and the Premier League is its top competition, drawing hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world.

Aside from the sportive stakes, the Premier League also has a vested interest in selling broadcast rights. These rights generate billions of pounds in revenue per year; a staggering amount unmatched by any other football league.

Broadcasters who secure these rights typically recoup their investment through the public, often in the form of subscriptions. However, not all football fans are willing to play this game and some seek out free or cheaper alternatives in the form of pirate streaming platforms.

In recent years, the Premier League has tried several legal avenues to tackle the piracy problem. In addition to obtaining blocking orders in multiple countries, the organization has been a driving force behind several lawsuits, some of which resulted in prison sentences .

Shutting down a pirate operation is always the preferred outcome for rightsholders, but it’s more easily said than done. Operators of streaming sites and services are typically aware of the risks and do their best to remain anonymous.

Premier League Takes Aim at GoDaddy Customers

In an attempt to lift this veil, the football organization went to a California federal court this week, hoping to discover the identities of operators connected to more than two dozen domain names.

The legal request isn’t targeted at the streaming sites directly. Instead, the Premier League requests a DMCA subpoena to compel domain registrar GoDaddy to hand over all information it holds on the operators. This doesn’t have to but might result in useful intel.

Domain names mentioned in the request (full list below) include live-kooora.com, 30.tv, live4.kooora-gooal.com, fctvlive.com, and soccertv4k.com. Some of these have a few hundred domain names, while others have several millions of monthly visits.

In addition, the Premier League requests information on several backend domains connected to the popular pirate streaming services EVPad and SVI Cloud. These two platforms are particularly popular in South East Asia and were previously called out as “notorious markets.”

EVPad, for example, was described as an “ extremely sophisticated ” pirate streaming service.

“A product purchased on behalf of the Premier League was found to provide access to over 1,700 channels, including 75 offering live sports broadcasts. The operators have been very careful to hide their location and identities, Premier League links them to Hong Kong and China.”

Identifying Pirates and More?

Through the requested DMCA subpoena, the Premier League hopes to gather more information on the people behind the sites and services.

Among other things, the football league asks GoDaddy for information that can identify people connected to the domains. This includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses, payment information, and other account details.

Aside from the subpoena request, the Premier League sent a letter directly to GoDaddy, asking the domain registrar to remove or disable access to the infringing content. If not, it is expected that these sites will continue to broadcast similar pirate streams throughout the rest of the season.

At the time of writing, many of the domains and services listed in the application remain online. GoDaddy typically doesn’t take domains offline without a court order, so that doesn’t come as a surprise.

That said, if the DMCA subpoena is granted, GoDaddy will hand over the requested account holder information. These types of subpoenas only require a signature from a court clerk, so this will likely move forward.

Whether any of the information is usable to the Premier League is another question. Many pirate site owners use ‘inaccurate’ domain registration data and, since GoDaddy accepts cryptocurrency payments, the financial trail might run dead as well.

Update: The subpoena was signed by a court clerk.

—

The subpoena request and the associated paperwork, filed at a California federal court, is available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ).

A full list of all the domains mentioned can be found below. The request below includes several subdomains.

Websites

– live-kooora.com
– 5koora.live-kooora.com
– mpm24hd.com
– fctvlive.com
– koora-live.io
– yalla-shoot-as.com (redirects to yyallashoot.live)
– tarjetarojatvenvivo.net
– yalla–live.net
– kooora4lives.io (redirects to koora4live.ai)
– futbollibretv.me (redirects to futbollibretvhd.me)
– doomovie-hd.com (redirects to doomovie-hd.pro)
– streamlive7.com (redirects to match.fctvhd.com)
– live4.kooora-gooal.com
– 30.tv
– koooralive-tv.com (redirects to kooralive-tv.io)
– dooball2you.com
– dooballx.com
– soccertv4k.com
– futebolgratis.net
– baadooball.com
– dooballfree24hr.com
– herodooball.com
– kora-live-new.com
– kora-livee.com
– koora–live.com
– bein–match.com (redirects to tv.bein-match.pro)

SVI Cloud

– broker.6868a.cc
– 6868b.cc
– vpic.6868c.cc
– playback.f666666.xyz

EVPad

– appindex.google10sv.com
– v10js.google144.com
– sx.dl1717.com
– dlt.6868nbtc.com
– findpic.00005555.cc
– tm1.hdtvvip.com
– cdn_pic.0168861.com

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

In a world where users can have their own ChatGPT-like AI instances up and running on their own PCs, in just a handful of minutes, for zero spend and completely legally, the app experience on smart TVs rarely fails to disappoint.

Yet when smart TV users somehow manage to clunk their way through, say, LG’s menus, and then avoid the avalanche of distractions that exist purely to break their will, only disappointment lies ahead for the IPTV-curious.

If, against all odds, they find an app that resembles the thing they actually searched for, the high probability of being presented with the app “Smart IPTV” is something thousands before them will attest to.

More Disappointment

It’s not that Smart IPTV is a poor product, it’s not. The fact that most of the time people have to pay to use it isn’t to blame either. The problem is the expectations of those who bought the software in the belief it contains illegal streams. It doesn’t, and that can be very disappointing.

Most likely due to the number of complaints from misinformed buyers, listings for the app on the LG, Samsung, and Google Play stores are now very clear: Smart IPTV does not provide access to playlists or streams, so don’t even ask.

LG TV App Store

The reason for the confusion among prospective buyers isn’t immediately clear. Smart IPTV seems like it’s been around forever and at no point has anything stuck out as being especially misleading or offering any suggestion that more might be on offer.

Yet now, even those who purchased Smart IPTV in full knowledge it offered no content, are being disappointed too.

Smart IPTV Website Blocked in Spain

During the past few days, reports have surfaced indicating that the official website of Smart IPTV has been blocked by Spanish ISPs. Visitors to siptv.app are instead redirected to an alternative page displaying the following text:

“Contenido bloqueado por requerimiento de la Autoridad Competente, comunicado a esta Operadora”

When translated to English, the message reads: “Content blocked at the request of the Competent Authority, communicated to this Operator.

In common with many countries around the world, particularly in Europe, Spain has a site-blocking system that restricts access to sites and services deemed to infringe copyright. Some prominent cases receive publicity as they travel through the legal system, most notably when top tier football league LaLiga and its broadcasting partners obtain injunctions to block pirate IPTV services.

While Spain does put together a report every few months to show the extent of blocking in the country, its usefulness is limited to a review of blocking already in place. As a tool to explain what is happening now, much less why a site or service was deemed infringing, the report is effectively useless.

As a result, which company declared the Smart IPTV app as copyright-infringing is unknown. What we can do, if only as a thought exercise, is use existing information to establish the most likely candidate based on motivation and past statements.

LaLiga – Who Else?

When it comes to blocking measures, especially those related to pirate IPTV, no rightsholders anywhere in the world are more aggressive than those behind the most popular football leagues.

The Premier League (England), Serie A (Italy) and LaLiga (Spain) are widely considered to be the leading proponents of blocking measures. Through a basic process of elimination, LaLiga is the only entity from the three likely to have targeted Smart IPTV in Spain, but there are more compelling reasons than simply being an aggressive blocking proponent in a specific geographic area.

In a 2022 submission to a then-upcoming edition of the European Commission’s Counterfeiting and Piracy Watchlist, LaLiga submitted a list of apps that, from a technical perspective, could play illegal streams of LaLiga football matches.

More accurately, the majority simply allowed the users of the apps to play content referenced in .M3U playlists that were not supplied with the apps themselves .

Terrifying Text Files From The 90s

Being able to play an .M3U playlist is a basic functionality offered by media players including VLC. For those sporting gray hair today, the same ‘technology’ was available in Winamp. Those who remember .M3U playlists starting to gain popularity in 1996 will be able to explain this incredible technology in a few words; it’s a text file containing locations where information can be found, on a hard drive (c:\playlists) or a network, mostly using a domain or IP address.

Instead of accusing the apps of infringement directly, LaLiga used broad strokes to paint a picture of infringing capability.

“It is important to note that all of these player applications allow the consumption of an innumerable amount of audiovisual contents such as sports, movies, series TV channels, etc. In other words, this problem affects the entire audiovisual and entertainment industry in general,” LaLiga added, carefully choosing its words.

As we highlighted at the time, LaLiga’s careful words were supported by carefully presented evidence, which in one case took an IPTV developer’s documentation and used it against them, after cropping the screenshot to disappear a line that began: “This app doesn’t contain any built-in channels…”

Again, we must reiterate that Spain’s blocking mechanism fails to offer enough transparency to identify who is behind the blocking of Smart IPTV. This means that we cannot say with any certainty that LaLiga is actually behind the blockade, but we can offer a generalized conclusion.

Any system that allows participants to mark their own homework in relative secrecy, can never be fit for purpose when other people’s basic rights begin to suffer. The fundamental right to conduct a legal business throughout the Union, for example.

Blocking Began Around April 12

To find out more about recent events, TorrentFreak spoke with the owner of Smart IPTV.

“The website domains siptv.app and siptv.eu have been blocked at some of Spain’s ISPs since approx. 04/12. Some ISPs still allow access to the website,” he explains.

“I have not received any correspondence from the officials or ISPs, I only started receiving messages from angry users from Spain that they couldn’t access the website. I conversed with a couple of them and it turned out the blocking is on the domain level, where ISPs are redirecting using 451 HTTP error, which also threw SSL certificate errors for those using HTTPS.”

With the blocking clearly causing access and security issues, Smart IPTV’s owner says that blocking can be avoided using a VPN but for him, it’s “not a very good solution.”

Instead, he’s having to make modifications to his apps to mitigate the problems.

“Since the App is operating on the same domains [as the website], the only way to work around this is to release updates of the appropriate Apps on devices, which I have already submitted and waiting for approval from Apps Stores (this can take a while),” he explains.

“A manual Android install is already operating normally, confirmed by Spanish users. The problem is that older devices that won’t get the app update (I am talking 10-year-old devices) will not be able to benefit from the app any longer.”

Of course, it’s likely that angry users who don’t understand the situation will blame the developer, then expect a new version of the app for free. But, as the MPA highlighted recently as it prepares its own proposals for blocking in the United States, blocking never, ever goes wrong.

As everyone else knows, that’s absolutely true, except for when it does.

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

Under U.S. copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”

Many ISPs have been reluctant to take such drastic measures, which triggered a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits in recent years with WideOpenWest ( WOW! ) as one of the targets .

The Colorado-based Internet provider was sued by a group of movie companies including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures. The filmmakers accuse the ISP of failing to disconnect the accounts of subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for sharing copyrighted material via BitTorrent.

The movie companies hold WOW! liable for these pirating activities, which could lead to millions of dollars in damages. The ISP rejects the claims and responded with a motion to dismiss, which was denied last year , and the case remains ongoing today.

Multi-Million Dollar Lawsuit Expansion

After the case was stalled for over a year, the movie companies requested permission to submit an amended complaint, which would add seven new plaintiffs and more than 300 new works.

The proposals raised the stakes significantly. Instead of 57 works, good for maximum statutory damages of roughly $8 million, an expansion to roughly 375 works would increase the statutory maximum to $56 million.

In addition to the monetary stakes, the proposed update also introduced evidence from two new third-party piracy tracking companies, Irdeto and Facterra. The initial complaint only included piracy tracking information from anti-piracy partner Maverickeye.

WOW protested these additions, but the court allowed the movie companies to go ahead. This week, they filed their second amended complaint at the Colorado federal court, making the changes official.

Same Claims, Higher Stakes

The nature of the claims against WOW! haven’t changed. The movie companies accuse the Internet provider of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, as well as DMCA violations.

The complaint lists several examples of WOW! subscribers who, according to the referenced piracy tracking data, repeatedly shared copyright-infringing content including plaintiffs’ films.

WOW! purportedly received tens of thousands of infringement notices and was allegedly aware of these piracy activities. However, the ISP decided not to take any action as that could hurt its revenues, the movie companies allege.

“Defendant knew that if it terminated or otherwise prevented repeat infringer subscribers from using its service to infringe, or made it less attractive for such use, Defendant would enroll fewer new subscribers, lose existing subscribers, and ultimately lose revenue,” the amended complaint reads.

Redditors and Site Blocking

In addition to IP-address logs and other evidence, the movie companies also cite screenshots from Reddit users who discussed WOW!’s handling of piracy notices, or its lack thereof. They suggest that this acted as a draw to potential subscribers.

“The ability of subscribers ‘who want it all’ to use Defendant’s high speed service to ‘intensively upload and download’ Plaintiffs’ Works without having their services terminated despite multiple notices being sent to Defendant acts as a powerful draw for subscribers of Defendant’s service,” they write.

Besides terminating accounts of subscribers whose connections are repeatedly used to pirate, the ISP could have taken other ‘simple’ actions as well. For example, by blocking notorious ‘pirate’ sites such as torrent sites YTS and (the now defunct) RARB.

“Upon information and belief, Defendant refuses to block or limit its subscribers from accessing notorious piracy websites out of fear of losing subscriber revenue,” the complaint reads.

Increased Damages and More

To compensate for this wrongdoing, the plaintiffs request statutory damages up to the maximum of $150,000 per work. With roughly 375 titles in suit, damages could reach $56,250,000 for the copyright infringements alone. The DMCA violations could add millions more to this tally, the movie companies note.

On top of the damages increase, the movie companies still seek far-reaching injunctive relief. They specifically request an order requiring WOW! to terminate the accounts of subscribers targeted by three unique infringement notices in three days.

In addition to this mandatory three-strikes policy, WOW! should also block all alleged pirate sites listed in the USTR’s annual overview of notorious markets . This includes the likes of The Pirate Bay, FMovies, and YTS.

Finally, the movie companies request an order that requires the Internet provider to disclose the identities of account holders whose accounts are flagged for copyright infringement. Needless to say, such an order would allow the companies to target the alleged pirates directly.

—

A copy of the movie companies’ second amended complaint, filed against WOW! at the US District Court for Colorado, is available here (pdf)

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

Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking platform is the mechanism through which sports rightsholders exercise their right to use state-approved tools in their fight against IPTV piracy.

In common with other systems in use around Europe, Piracy Shield acts on information provided by rightsholders. After identifying the target to be blocked, domain names and IP addresses are fed into the Piracy Shield system.

From there, data is pumped directly to the nation’s ISPs who must block or risk financial penalties.

Given that Piracy Shield cannot function without human input, when we refer to Piracy Shield here that means the entire chain. From data collection and approval for entry, through to actual blocking, regardless of whether any component is software, hardware, or human.

Who Benefits From Overblocking?

Pirates aside, two broad pools of people participate in site-blocking debates: those who understand the internet and the fallibility of human beings, and those who are equally aware of the risks but have an overriding and extremely urgent piracy problem to solve.

The concerns of the former include the not insignificant risk of innocent platforms being blocked in error. Such overblocking can be triggered by a simple typo or something more complex, a pirate site sharing an IP address with one or more completely innocent sites, for example.

Similar concerns are shared by rightsholders and anti-piracy groups; nobody ever reduced piracy by blocking innocent sites and no anti-piracy group’s work has ever been made easier by a belligerent mob shouting about censorship.

Given that a high-paced, dynamic environment virtually guarantees at least some mistakes, debating the inevitable isn’t anywhere near as important as finding out what went wrong, improving the system, and if required, having a discussion about it.

Piracy Shield “Works Perfectly”

During an appearance on Sky TG24 by AGCOM commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio and Federico Bagnoli Rossi, president of anti-piracy group FAPAV, it was revealed that since the launch of the Piracy Shield platform, there have been no overblocking blunders whatsoever.

Yet media reports published by DDAY.it and Wired recently, both contained sufficient evidence to mount a credible and, in at least one case, publicly verifiable argument directly to the contrary.

So did the publications both make blunders of their own? Is it feasible that they independently decided to report instances of collateral damage, against innocent web entities, without evidence or regard for the truth?

AGCOM Analysis: FAKE NEWS

A text excerpt from the TV show published by Libero.it begins by stating that AGCOM and FAPAV give the Piracy Shield system “full marks” based on its work thus far and that any reports of “friendly fire” blocking should be considered “fake news.”

“This is absolutely false and unfounded news,” states Capitanio. “Since the launch of the platform no DNS or IP address holder has made a request to AGCOM, as required by law, to have a site rehabilitated. There is a procedure for those who report that is so rigorous, I am not aware of any public administration sites being blocked in recent weeks.”

In other words, since AGCOM received no complaints of wrongful blocking from anyone wrongfully blocked, it must follow that no wrongful blocking took place. Whether the two publications mentioned above now consider their reporting debunked seems unlikely.

Similar stories are regularly discussed among workers at the country’s ISPs and associated entities. The so-called “rigorous” complaints procedure is mostly mocked for its critical failings.

Rigorously Impossible to Complain

After spending the last two weeks in the virtual company of people who keep Italy’s internet running, one thing is beyond doubt: how the system is being portrayed in public does not align with facts on the ground.

Workers at Italy’s ISPs and closely related companies don’t seem entirely consumed by the imposition of Piracy Shield on their businesses, but they are showing signs of frustration.

Many feel they have no voice and after AGCOM and FAPAV appeared on TV, unhindered by the views of the IT workers compelled to make blocking happen, it was immediately understood that bickering among themselves in public would’ve “spoiled the advertorial.”

Others chimed in on the rigorous complaint procedure referenced by AGCOM that, through its own basic failings, effectively doesn’t exist.

Instant Blocking on Tap (No Instant Undo)

The image below shows summaries of three recent orders for full and perpetual blocking to be administered through the Piracy Shield platform. The full orders are also available and can make for interesting reading.

But while commendably detailed in almost every respect, a decision has clearly been made to list only a single domain (some with subdomains) in each order to identify the platform authorized for blocking. Once an order is published there is a five-day window of opportunity for a complainant to file a complaint.

The text here shows that this option is useless for those wrongfully blocked; it seems highly unlikely that an unknown third party would receive a copy of an order in advance of Piracy Shield accidentally blocking them. That raises the prospect of a blocked innocent third party having to a) proactively discover that their connectivity has been limited b) isolate the problem to Italy c) discover the existence of AGCOM d) learn Italian and e) find the blocking order relating to them.

Don’t Get Too Optimistic

Awkwardly, and after all that detective work, the domains of innocent third parties do not appear in blocking orders for obvious reasons. That may suggest that they have been unlawfully blocked, especially since the regulations and Piracy Shield policy disallow any blocking of innocent parties.

In any event, overblocking is almost always the result of other things, such as shared IP addresses, which also do not appear in the orders published by AGCOM. While AGCOM does publish aggregated figures for IP addresses blocked after the initial order, zero IP addresses are published in public.

Since IP addresses don’t appear in initial orders, they can only appear in ‘subsequent reports’. The good news here is that those allowed to complain can at least try to file a complaint if they’re negatively affected. They must do that within five days of the ‘subsequent report’ (containing the IP addresses) being published on the AGCOM site.

There are some issues with that logic, however. First, AGCOM doesn’t publish subsequent reports. Second, a complaint will not stop the blocking.

Third, and probably most importantly, wherever the complaint procedure is mentioned, only recipients of a blocking order are specifically mentioned as qualified to complain.

That raises the prospect of pirate IPTV providers – immaculately reported to AGCOM for scrutiny before being deemed illegal by the regulator – being allowed to file a complaint. Those who have done absolutely nothing wrong, on the other hand, are treated as if they don’t even exist.

Of course, since they don’t even exist, filing complaints can be tricky. And, as established earlier, if there are no complaints that leads to the clear conclusion mentioned on TV: there has been no overblocking and any news to the contrary is fake.

‘Everyone Breaks The Rules’

This remarkable system “is a shit show” from beginning to end, a source familiar with it informs TF. There’s even a sarcastic suggestion that everyone abiding by the rules and regulations could bring the entire system down.

First, the law that disallows blocking of legitimate servers doing the legitimate work of legitimate third parties, is being violated. That means legitimate users are blocked, maybe in violation of their basic human right to send and receive information.

Second, information about blocks that should be published to facilitate correction of blunders, is not being published, also in violation of the regulations. Finally, we’re informed that some ISPs, having seen the mess, have decided to unblock some IP addresses without permission from those who initiated the mess, thus contravening the rules themselves.

One IT worker also expressed an interest in appearing on TV during the next debate but expects the spot to be scooped up by an ISP that also sells TV subscriptions.

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

In recent months, Movie-Web has quickly gained popularity among a particular group of movie aficionados.

The open source software, which is still available on GitHub, allows anyone to set up a movie search engine capable of streaming content from third-party sources. These external sources tend to have large libraries of pirated entertainment.

Like Google

Movie-Web’s developers are not oblivious to the legal ramifications but since they don’t host any files, they hoped to avoid legal trouble. The software just provides a search engine for third-party content, they argued.

“Think of it like Google, we search the Internet for videos, but we don’t own the sites, nor the content. We merely link to them,” Movie-Web explained in its FAQ.

That ‘Google’ argument has previously been used by torrent sites. However, history has shown that this doesn’t make such projects immune to legal issues. And as Movie-Web grew, Hollywood started to take notice, and action.

Movie-Web Domain Shutdown

Yesterday, the movie-web.app domain was suddenly taken down. According to a message posted on the official Discord server, this is the result of a “court action” from several movie companies including Warner Bros. Netflix, Paramount, Universal, and Disney.

TorrentFreak is not aware of any lawsuit, but [I]t appears that action was taken against the movie-web.app domain. It seems likely that registrar Namecheap suspended the domain after receiving a legal complaint from the aforementioned Hollywood companies.

Update: After publishing the article we learned that there is a legal action that requires registrars to take action against several ‘pirate’ domains. We’re looking into the matter and will follow this up later.

Namecheap updated the domain’s status to clientHold, which effectively rendered the domain inaccessible. The measure is often used to suspend pirate site domains following copyright holder complaints.

No Comeback

The surprise takedown only affects Movie-Web’s publicly hosted ‘demo’ instance. On Discord, the Movie-Web team says that it has no plans to bring this website back in any shape or form.

“As a team, we always said that if we were taken down, we would go down without a fight and we have decided to stick to that. We have zero interest in getting involved with legal matters, and so we will not be trying to circumvent this takedown in any way,” developer ‘BinaryOverload’ writes.

While this is the end of the popular movie-web.app site, the project isn’t dead yet. The code remains available on GitHub and people can still use it to run their own self-hosted instances.

In fact, the Movie-Web team points to several of these third-party instances, which were not targeted in the same takedown effort.

More Targets…

TorrentFreak reached out to the Movie-Web team requesting more details about the takedown action but, at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

Looking through the discussions, we found a comment from user ‘chaos,’ one of the project leads, who confirms that the domain name takedown happened through Namecheap. This also suggests that Movie-Web wasn’t the only target. [see earlier update]

“This wasn’t just targeting movie-web, it was a blanket attack on a lot of other domains/sites as well. I doubt they actually have any grounds, but Namecheap isn’t going to go to court to defend piracy,” ‘chaos’ wrote.

The Movie-Web team says that it will continue to support people who want to self-host instances of the app, when possible. In addition, it will also maintain the list of “official mirrors” that they trust and recommend. Whether Hollywood will approve remains to be seen.

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

The InterPlanetary File System, more broadly known as IPFS , has been around for nearly a decade.

While the name may sound alien to the general public, the peer-to-peer file storage network has a growing user base among the tech-savvy.

In short, IPFS is a decentralized network where users make files available to each other. The system makes websites and files censorship-resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages; as long as at least one user in the network continues to share.

These advantages allow archivists, content creators, researchers, and others to reliably distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. Many developers support the project and some do so actively, by running an IPFS gateway that the public can freely use to access IPFS-stored content.

IPFS DMCA Notices

The operators of these gateways are not aware of how people use them; they simply enable the technology. However, that hasn’t stopped copyright holders from sending complaints that urge operators to prevent alleged copyright infringements.

In recent years, several gateway operators have received DMCA takedown requests for content available through, but not stored on, their service. These complaints are not only lodged against small players. Cloudflare has also received thousands of takedown requests.

While Cloudflare has in-house legal experts to rely on, these notices can be a challenge for smaller developers who tend to run IPFS gateways as hobby projects. This also applies to computer scientist Mike Damm, who operates the Hardbin.com service.

IPFS & JetBrains Keys

Hardbin is an encrypted pastebin that enables users to share text. The service relies on IPFS for storing content and offers a gateway through which it can be viewed publicly.

Technically, Hardbin doesn’t store any third-party material but it can be published and accessed through the site. Not all rightsholders are happy with this and the Czech software company JetBrains shared its concerns with the operator last October.

JetBrains sent a takedown notice to the site, asking for the content to be removed. In response, Mr. Damm explained that Hardbin.com is an IPFS gateway that doesn’t store content, hoping that would resolve the matter. It didn’t.

While JetBrains now understands that IPFS gateways don’t store content, the company suggested disabling the Hardbin.com URL through which the software keys can be accessed. If not, the operator could be liable for copyright infringement under the DMCA, the software company warned.

“By knowingly facilitating the access to the cracks, activation codes, or other methods that aim to circumvent measures for protecting JetBrains’ products from unauthorized use, you are directly liable, even if you did not directly engage in software piracy activities.”

“Further, by knowingly inducing or providing links to the tools which are then employed in unauthorized access of JetBrains’ software, you may be liable for contributory copyright infringement,” JetBrains added.

Note: While Hardbin had an active “write” function, TorrentFreak was informed that the HTML file at issue here wasn’t uploaded to the IPFS network using Hardbin. It was uploaded by third parties using an external service, but accessible through Hardbin’s gateway.

EFF Steps Up

Faced with this legal conundrum, Mr. Damm reached out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF ), who stepped up to help. EFF replied to JetBrains on behalf of the Hardbin.com operator, stressing that the service is not legally responsible for the alleged availability of the pirated software keys.

“That suggestion is baseless. As Mr. Damm has explained, an IPFS gateway is a conduit similar to VPNs, internet access services, or Tor nodes,” the letter from EFF attorney Kit Walsh reads.

“Mr. Damm is not presenting the complained-of link to the public; the link is only generated when a user provides the hash that identifies the file they wish to retrieve. This step is analogous to providing a domain name to an ISP’s DNS server in order to obtain the IP address corresponding to that domain..,” Walsh adds.

JetBrains’s suggestion that Hardbin violates the DMCA is not accurate, according to EFF. The letter points out that the IPFS gateway is not a hosting service, but a general-purpose conduit for information, which should not be held liable.

The software company sent its letter under Section 1201 of the DMCA, which applies to trafficking in circumvention technology. This is different from the traditional Section 512 takedowns. However, EFF sees no reason why liability should apply in this case.

“It would be absurd to suggest that Congress granted conduits special immunity for copyright claims based on third party activity but then, in the same statute, made them liable for pseudo-copyright Section 1201 claims,” Walsh writes.

Liability is Complex

EFF’s response doesn’t necessarily suggest that all IPFS gateways are immune to liability. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Walsh explains that there are several aspects operators may want to consider before sending a similarly styled response.

This includes whether they make money by offering the gateway service to users with accounts, whether they have made any statements encouraging people to use their service for infringement, and whether they host the complained-of files.

Thus far, the responses from IPFS operators have been mixed. Cloudflare, for example, has disabled access to thousands of externally stored files through its IPFS gateway, and other gateways have responded similarly in the past.

UK-based programmer James Stanley, who previously operated Hardbin.com, temporarily took the entire service offline when he received requests to take down thousands of links. Legal threats and uncertainties make it less fun to run these projects, he noted at the time.

Hardbin’s current operator sought help from EFF and the site remains online. To hear the other side of the story we also reached out to JetBrains but the company has yet to reply.

While IPFS gateway operators can feel strengthened by the position EFF takes in its response, legal uncertainties always remain. EFF’s Kit Walsh informs us that she will consider writing a FAQ to address these legal aspects and nuances, similar to the legal FAQ for TOR relay operators.

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A copy of the second takedown notice Jetbrains sent to Mr. Damm is available here (pdf) and EFF’s response letter can be found here (pdf)

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

For many people, Google is the go-to starting point when they need to find something on the web. With just a few keystrokes, the search engine can find virtually anything.

This is generally good, but copyright holders are not happy with all content that can be discovered. Pirates sites, for example, should remain hidden when possible.

In recent years Google has tweaked its algorithms to address this issue. At the same time, it continues to process DMCA takedown notices which allow rightsholders to ‘remove’ problematic content, even when it’s yet to be indexed.

Takedown Transparency

In the spring of 2012, Google expanded its Transparency Report by publishing all DMCA requests the company receives, including the targeted links and their senders. For the first time, outsiders were able to see the URLs copyright holders targeted and in what quantity.

Here at TorrentFreak, we’ve also paid considerable attention to how the volume of these requests has evolved. In the early years, there was a rapid rise in DMCA takedowns, reaching a peak around 2017 and then dropping off afterward.

Surprisingly, this trend reversal was only temporary. Last year it became clear that Google search DMCA notices had picked up again. And this second surge continues to this day.

8 Billion Reported URLs

A few days ago, Google processed its eight billionth takedown request, measured by individual reported URLs. This follows a little over six months after the seven billionth request, establishing a record-breaking pace.

For comparison, between 2019 and 2021, it took almost two full years to add a billion new takedowns.

As highlighted previously, the recent surge is partly caused by an increase in activity from the takedown outfits Link-Busters.com and Comeso. Together, they now submit the vast majority of all takedown requests.

These companies work with a variety of rightsholders. Link-Busters, for example, mostly works with major publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Hachette.

Active Senders

To give an indication of the volume, Link-Busters.com flagged an average of more than two million URLs per day recently. If that pace continues, it will report more than 700 million URLs a year.

Comeso currently averages around 1.2 million reported URLs per week , which translates to well over 400 million yearly takedowns.

A large number of Comeso takedowns were sent on behalf of Kakao Entertainment, a major webtoon publisher. Earlier this week the Korean media giant released a whitepaper celebrating a record number of 208 million “takedown operations” between June to December 2023. The majority of these relate to Google takedown requests, the company confirmed to us, but other search engines and services were targeted as well.

While hundreds of millions of removals sure sound impressive, some nuance is warranted, as not all URLs are deindexed by Google. For example, only 36% of Comeso’s requests resulted in content being removed. Most URLs, about 58%, were not indexed by Google and put on a blacklist instead. The remaining URLs were not removed for other reasons.

Whether these efforts will put a significant dent in publishing piracy has yet to be seen, but the two takedown companies are certainly doing their best.

10 Billion?

If this trend continues, we could be at 10 billion takedowns by this time this year. That sounds like a lot and it certainly is. However, pirate sites are not oblivious to this tactic and actively switch to new domains, so there can always be more.

To offer some context, there are thousands of “Z-Library” related domains online, each with millions of URLs. That adds up quickly.

In the grander scheme of things, the eight billion figure might represent just a tiny speck. It’s less than 0.007% of the 130 trillion webpages Google search reportedly had indexed years ago.

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

The Internet Archive is widely known for its Wayback Machine, which preserves copies of the web for future generations.

These archiving efforts, which started decades ago, will become more valuable over time. The same could apply to IA’s other projects, including the digitization of old books and records.

Six years ago, the Archive began archiving the sounds of 78-rpm gramophone records, a format obsolete today. In addition to capturing their unique audio, including all ‘crackles and hisses’, this saves unique recordings for future generations before the vinyl or shellac disintegrates.

The ‘ Great 78 Project ‘ received praise from curators, historians, and music fans but not all music industry insiders were happy with it. Several record labels including Sony and UMG, sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement in Manhattan federal court last year.

IA’s Motion to Dismiss

A few weeks ago, IA responded to these allegations with a motion to dismiss . According to the Archive, many of the claims are simply too late, as they supposedly point to infringements that occurred over three years ago. The record labels were aware of this, they allege, as the RIAA sent a cease and desist letter on their behalf but took no further action at the time.

The motion is centered around the statute of limitations but IA also stressed the importance of their archiving efforts, hinting that it would be eligible for a fair use defense.

Specifically, the motion explained that the ‘Great 78 Project’ aims to systematically archive these old records, including the hisses, crackles and pops, to preserve them for future generations.

“The specific quality of the sound, including the peculiar and distinct crackles and other imperfections that are a hallmark of this antiquated medium formed an indelible part of American culture for many decades,” the motion reads.

Record Labels Respond

The record labels responded to this motion a few days ago, letting the court know that they see no reason to dismiss any claims at this stage. The RIAA letter that IA relied on didn’t mention any dates and shouldn’t be construed as knowledge of any specific infringements, they counter.

“[T]he letter cannot demonstrate that Plaintiffs were aware, or should have been aware, that Defendants infringed any of the particular works in suit at the time the letter was sent,” their reply reads.

The labels listed a total of 2,749 musical works, which are good for a potential statutory damages award of more than $400 million. None of these claims should be dismissed at this stage, they argue, as discovery could show that they are timely.

“Later in the case, discovery will adduce the multitude of dates pivotal to the statute of limitations analysis, including: all of the dates Defendants created copies of the sound recordings at issue […] and the dates that the Defendants distributed and/or transmitted the sound recordings at issue to others.”

The Archive’s motion to dismiss is limited to the statute of limitation argument but the record labels also picked up on the “hisses and crackles” references, which they couldn’t ignore.

‘Hisses and Crackles’

The music companies are convinced that IA’s archiving of obsolete records is illegal, equating it to a massive pirate streaming library.

“Defendants have created a massive online storefront providing digital copies of thousands of these protected sound recordings to anyone to stream or download for free. The Great 78 Project is illegal,” they state.

The labels further believe that the defendants are “dreaming up baseless arguments” to justify their activity. This includes the value placed on the unique sound of old records, which the music companies label the ‘Rice Krispies’ argument.

These sounds are not a feature, but a bug, the music companies counter. They are audible imperfections, a sign of decaying physical records, which were never intended to be heard.

“When these recordings were released, they did not have all of the same hisses, crackles, and pops they have today. Many of those flaws result from the brittle discs’ many decades of age,” the labels note.

“Contrary to Defendants’ arguments, recording the hisses and crackles does not preserve how the records sounded on release. Instead, it anachronistically captures how an older format behaves after more than seventy years of aging.”

Fair Use?

Today, many people have come to appreciate these unique sounds. IA stressed that, without digitizing them, they may be soon lost forever. As such, its archiving effort should be able to rely on a fair use defense.

While the court is not yet being asked to consider the fair use aspect, the labels reject IA’s line of reasoning.

“Fair use cannot be perverted into forfeiting a sound recording’s protection under copyright law just because the recording is copied, distributed, and performed in something other than its cleanest sound. If ever there were a theory of fair use invented for litigation, this is it,” they write.

All in all, it’s clear that both parties have a very different take on the ‘Great 78 Project‘. First, the court has to decide whether any claims will be dismissed based on the statute of limitations argument. After that, we will likely see more ‘fair use’ fireworks.

The music companies also responded to a separate motion to dismiss from the Kahle-Austin Foundation. The foundation argued that there are no grounds to include it in the lawsuit, as it only helped to fund the Internet Archive, but the labels argue that as a named sponsor it knew of the infringements.

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A copy of the record labels’ response to IA’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf) . The response to the Kahle-Austin Foundation can be found here (pdf)

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

The action in Canada this week is being described as the second phase of an operation that began last year .

Events were triggered when rightsholders led by Bell Media filed a criminal complaint against pirate IPTV service, Arubox TV.

Following an investigation by the Quebec Provincial Police, in 2023 the Office of Criminal Assets Recovery and Money Laundering carried out five searches; a condo in Laval and premises in Saint-Eustache and Brownsburg-Chatham were among the targets.

When some of those locations were targeted again this week, police may have returned to finish the job.

At Least Five Arrested For Links to Arubox TV and Stocker IPTV

During Tuesday’s raids, conducted by the Quebec Provincial Police at locations in Gatineau, Longueuil, Saint-Eustache, and Brownsburg-Chatham, at least five people were detained for suspected links to Arubox TV and Stocker IPTV.

The suspects were arrested on suspicion of various crimes including theft of telecommunications services, fraud, and money laundering. According to a local media report, Videotron, Bell, and Rogers are among the TV companies affected. Police say that more arrests are likely to follow.

Police claim that Arubox and Stocker packages provided access to more than 3,000 channels and in four years attracted over 7,000 subscribers. During the period 2020 to date, that reportedly generated around CA$2 million (US$1.5 million) for their operators, with sales over the past few months presumably taking place under the eye of the authorities.

Court Appearances via Videoconference

Following their arrests, the suspects appeared by videolink at the Trois-Rivières courthouse in Québec, accused of the crimes mentioned earlier plus another, mischief in relation to data .

Section 430(1.1) of the Criminal Code describes the offense as knowingly and intentionally destroying or altering data, to the extent it becomes useless or ineffective, or lawful use of the data is obstructed.

In respect of damage to the cable companies, the suspects stand accused of depriving them of an amount in excess of CA$500,000 using deception and fraudulent means.

Suspects Identified

The suspects were identified in court as follows: Éric Grenier (who is yet to be arrested) and Danick Rouleau, plus alleged accomplices Sarah-Maude Grenier, Christian Sabourin, Marie-Ève ​​Poliquin Karaguioules, Daniel Perreault-Marcotte, Patrick Cyr and Éric Laforge.

Éric Grenier is the alleged operator of Arubox.tv and per our 2023 report , he made no secret of his involvement in the IPTV market. Over several years, Canadian news reports have repeatedly linked Grenier to a local chapter of the Hells Angels and in that respect, police aren’t yet ruling anything out.

Danick Rouleau is the alleged operator of Stocker IPTV. The nature of the Stocker service isn’t made clear, something that also holds true for the Arubox service. The ‘signal theft’ allegations against the men imply a video capturing operation but thus far we’ve seen little to support that theory, at least in respect of Arubox.TV

Descriptions of the other suspects are currently limited to their names, but it seems likely that as the case develops, so will the media’s interest. It seems unlikely to be boring, let’s put it that way.

Were The Pirate Services Taken Down?

One curious aspect of the case is that for reasons that remain unclear, the portal through which Arubox customers watched the service seems to be at least partially operational. Attempting to access it via a web browser obviously produces an error but remains online nonetheless.

Determining whether it’s fully operational requires a subscription but in the current environment, that’s obviously best avoided. There is a way to obtain usable MAC addresses to access some portals of this type without handing over cash, but that’s most likely illegal, regardless of the nature of the service.

Fortunately, and regardless of its use of Cloudflare, Arubox’s setup allows for the identification of an IPTV server that seems to be still alive; that’s despite the raids this week and despite the action in May 2023.

That raises the question of why it hasn’t been shut down like servers in other cases involving Bell. We have no idea but the eight-minute walk from Bell HQ in Montreal to the server location probably rules out distance.

Are Subscribers Facing Arrest?

Police say that IPTV subscribers are not a target in the current action, which should put some minds at rest. However, they are advising people to return their set-top boxes to an official drop-off point at the Quebec Electronic Products Recycling Program.

Whether handing in close to top-of-the-range set-top boxes for dismantling sounds attractive will be a personal choice but the devices in themselves are not illegal. That’s good news for those who want to be kind to the environment; if there’s one thing better than recycling, it’s getting the most use out of a device before that’s even necessary.

Formuler Z10/11 devices sold by Arubox recently can be returned to factory settings in just a few seconds , leaving owners to install whatever legal apps they like from Google’s Play Store. They also outperform most smart TVs and won’t spy on your viewing habits nearly as much.

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