Following intense pressure from rightsholders for lawmakers to sign off on tough legislation to block pirate IPTV services in Italy, pens were put to paper in July, and it was all systems go for the new season.

With the nation holding its breath for what was about to come next, nothing much happened. Around 100 pirate service ‘violations’ were reportedly identified on the first day of the season early August, but no sites or services were blocked. The parties responsible for blocking had not yet completed a required technical roundtable and that remains the case today.

Some media outlets framed the lack of action on the first days of the season as a failure, especially in light of claims that piracy is killing Italian top-tier football. Whether that prompted DAZN’s decision to start firing off applications for urgent site blocking measures late August is unclear, but that’s exactly what the streaming platform did.

AGCOM Announces DAZN Success

Italy’s telecoms regulator revealed DAZN’s successful applications in an announcement titled “SERIES A AND SERIES B: AGCOM BLOCKS 45 PIRATED WEBSITES.” After blocking thousands of websites over the years with little fanfare, AGCOM’s announcement was somewhat out of the ordinary and may indicate how important site-blocking has become.

“The action of the Communications Regulatory Authority is intensified for the combating the illegal offer of live sports content. The Authority, also following the numerous requests received from DAZN, as owner of the rights for the broadcast of Serie A championship matches and Serie B, has issued numerous precautionary orders,” the announcement reads.

AGCOM also thanked Italy’s ISPs for their “active collaboration” in disabling access to a claimed 45 pirate sites said to have broadcast football matches illegally during the first two games of the season. After silently blocking thousands of sites over the years, ISPs being thanked in public is a rare event.

U.S. Law Enforcement Wanted Sites Gone Too

During the FIFA World Cup competition in December 2022, U.S. law enforcement agencies launched a domain seizure campaign . Homeland Security agents confirmed the initial action and a few days later, followed up with more seizures .

Among the targets was the popular SoccerStreams which later announced its own retirement from the game. As the dust settled, affiliated brands including NFLbite, NBAbite, and Footybite seemed to emerge unscathed, at least if one accepts that clones, mirrors, new domains, and other factors form part of the equation.

Documents filed by DAZN link ‘Soccer Streams’ with two pirate streaming platforms; nflbite.to and footybite.to. In its application for precautionary blocking measures, the streaming platform notes that footybite could be accessed via a link on nflbite. That hyperlink was enough for AGCOM to deal with them at the same time.

“The elements described [in the application] highlight a hypothesis of serious violation, due to the continuity of the conduct over the period of every day of the championship, the systematic nature of the violation, and the significant value of the audiovisual production rights of the championship affected by the conduct,” AGCOM agreed.

Kooora365, Elixx, Nizarstream

In a filing dated August 25, DAZN reported that sports streaming website kooora365.com carries “a significant amount of links that give access to the broadcasts of Serie A championship matches.”

Another platform, Elixx.xyz, reportedly provided free access to matches broadcast between August 19 and August 21, the first days of the Serie A season. “The digital works were thus transmitted in violation of copyright law,” DAZN advised.

For these sites and another streaming platform (nizarstream.xyz) DAZN requested “urgent and precautionary measures” to disable access to “audiovisual content disseminated illegally.”

It’s a pattern that continued in dozens of filings against similar sites, for largely identical reasons.

And the List Continues

Other domains against which DAZN sought precautionary blocking measures include the following:

calciostreaming.click, futbolmoderno.info, skystreaming.link, bdnewszh.com, nopay.info, nbatv.site, futbolonline.me, freestreams- live1.top, hesgoal.today, hesgoal.info, flash-24.live, 1stream.soccer, pirlotv.app, pirlo.tv, rojadirectaenvivo.fr, futbolonlinetv.club, koooralive.online, lacasadeltikitakatv.net, pirlotv.uk, calcio.ws, kooora4life.com, sportzone.la, rojadirectahd.tv, rojadirectatv.uno, pirlotvonline.org, funhdgames.xyz, hahasport.me, pirlotvlive.es, pirlotv.site, fotnet24.com, p2pstreams.live, redstream.online, calciostreaming.online, poscitechs.com, rojadirectatvhd.it, pirlotvonline.fr

Based on principles including proportionality, AGCOM instructed local internet service providers to implement DNS blocking against the domains within two days of its notification. Any visitors to the domains will be redirected to a notice explaining that the domains were blocked on AGCOM’s instructions.

AGCOM Blocking Notice (translated)

Serie A reports that another 2,000 sites have just been submitted for blocking, a figure that represents more than half of all domains currently on Italy’s ISP blocking list.

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

Like many other countries around the world, India’s copyright law allows rightsholders to limit access to pirate sites.

This legal tool is widely used by the major Hollywood studios. These companies regularly obtain injunctions that require local Internet providers to block websites to prevent piracy.

Over the years the nature of these court orders has evolved. The initial measures were straightforward, in the sense that they pointed out specifically which domains should be blocked. These later evolved into ‘dynamic’ versions, allowing rightsholders to add new domains and proxies whenever they are launched.

These dynamic orders are justified to deal with persistent pirate sites, which are regularly referred to as a “hydra-headed” problem; when one domain is blocked, many others take its place.

Preemptive Blocks and Registrar Action

The Indian courts are not stopping at dynamic blocking orders either. In several instances, Internet providers have been instructed to block websites because they might make infringing works available in the future.

For example, last year forty Internet providers were instructed to block a total of 13,445 ‘pirate’ sites that were expected to distribute pirated copies of the Hindi movie “Vikram Vedha.” A few months ago, a similar order was used to block “Spider-Man” piracy , before it took place.

Blocking injunctions are no longer applied solely to Internet providers. Domain name registrars have been added as well, including U.S. companies such as GoDaddy, Namecheap and Tucows. If these don’t take action, the Indian Government gets involved .

Dynamic+ Action Covers Non-Existing Works

The nature of these injunctions continues to evolve and a recent order handed down by Justice Pratibha M Singh of the Delhi High Court, adds yet another novel element to the mix.

The case at hand was filed by Warner Bros, Columbia Pictures, Netflix Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Disney. The entertainment companies request ISPs and domain registrars to block or ban sixteen pirate sites, including DotMovies, Tamilvip, KissAsian, PopMovies and 9xFlix.

The Delhi High Court granted this request, which is nothing out of the ordinary. However, it also adds a new element. In addition to applying to current movies and series, it also covers content that doesn’t exist yet.

“To keep pace with the dynamic nature of the infringement that is undertaken by hydra-headed websites, this Court has deemed it appropriate to issue this ‘Dynamic+ injunction’ to protect copyrighted works as soon as they are created,” the order reads.

The Court notes that this will help to prevent irreparable losses “as there is an imminent possibility of works being uploaded on rogue websites or their newer versions” as soon as new films and series are created.

“Copyright in future works comes into existence immediately upon the work being created, and Plaintiffs may not be able to approach the Court for each and every film or series that is produced in the future, to secure an injunction against piracy,” the order adds.

Questions and Concerns

Dynamic injunctions were initially issued as an exception, but some legal scholars wonder whether these are slowly become the new normal. The Indian law blog SpicyIP has several articles on the subject and also discusses this latest order.

According to law student Reva Satish Makhija, one of the concerns is that ownership of new content is automatically assumed. This means that a resource is blocked before the counterparty can dispute the claim.

“The Delhi High Court’s attempt at securing the plaintiff’s rights from the possible, anticipated infringement at the hands of the defendant is well-meaning but requires more deliberation in the context of its efficacy in balancing party interests,” Makhija writes .

It’s not immediately clear whether this new expansion will have a broad impact right away. While it may be useful to block new sites that only offer fresh content, the current injunctions already appear to be quite effective.

Perhaps the Delhi High Court is trying to create its own hydra-headed injunction scheme? If one order isn’t effective, it can simply issue new ones to ensure that pirate sites are dealt with appropriately.

—

A copy of the Dynamic+ injunction issued by Justice Pratibha M Singh of the Delhi High Court is available here (pdf)

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

When RARBG suddenly ended its operations at the end of May 2023, the absence of notice coupled with the immediate and comprehensive nature of the shutdown felt different to similar events of the past.

The RARBG team mentioned several factors that contributed to their decision to throw in the towel, but none even hinted at legal issues. The fact that a notice appeared at all does lean towards a non-chaotic termination of the site. However, with the site still attracting millions of visitors , yet no attempt to monetize traffic or sell valuable domains, the situation is somewhat unusual.

Bulgaria and Recent Pirate Site Events

After years of criticism from the United States, in 2020 there were signs that Bulgaria would begin a crackdown against pirate sites including Zamunda and RARBG. The country reportedly requested assistance from the U.S. A year later, it appeared that Bulgaria was still interested in receiving U.S. help , but the sites remained online, along with others operated from the country.

Then this April, after failing to improve enough on IP protection to warrant praise from the United States in its Special 301 Report, Bulgaria approved a draft law that in part would criminalize pirate site operators .

It’s still not clear whether that announcement prompted several Bulgaria-focused pirate sites to shut themselves down in the days that followed, but it wouldn’t be a surprise.

May Was a Busy Month For Bulgarian IP Protection Matters

International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property units (ICHIP) are compromised of attorney advisors, computer forensic experts, and law enforcement agents who provide assistance to U.S. foreign partners to combat intellectual property crime. ICHIPs act as a liaison between law enforcement partners and rightsholders, which is “critical for IPR investigations and prosecutions.”

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in May this year, ICHIP Bucharest conducted an intellectual property workshop for 40 Bulgarian judges in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

“Judicial participants at the workshop discussed the legislative frameworks in the US and Bulgaria, as well as the proposed legislative changes to Bulgaria’s criminal code,” the USDOJ reports.

On May 15, Bulgarian Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev, who was directly involved in the earlier request for assistance against Zamunda, was in the United States with Vladimir Nikolov, Chairman of the Association of Prosecutors in Bulgaria. In Washington, the pair attended meetings with officials from the US House of Representatives, including on internet crime-related matters.

At the invitation of congressmen, Geshev previously attended the 71st National Prayer Breakfast hosted by President Joe Biden in February. Whether by coincidence or otherwise, two weeks after Geshev visited the United States most recently, RARBG shut down.

June and July Were Eventful Too

In the wake of Bulgarian ISPs being ordered to block Zamunda and The Pirate Bay just a couple of weeks earlier, on June 14-15, the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) held its annual International IP Enforcement Summit.

It took place at the National Palace of Culture in Sofía, Bulgaria. Given the events of late May, at least one major torrent site wouldn’t be taking up too much time or, indeed, causing any unnecessary embarrassment for the hosts.

One major topic of discussion at the conference was EMPACT, the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats, which in the current cycle 2022-2025 has IP crime as a priority. Coincidentally or not, just hours after the EUIPO conference ended, Bulgaria’s Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that an operation had just been carried out against a pirate IPTV provider.

“The operation was conducted within the framework of the European Multidisciplinary Platform for Combating Criminal Threats (EMPACT). Bulgaria, in particular GDBOP [General Directorate Combating Organized Crime], leads the priority activity of combating and destroying criminal networks and criminal activities of individual entrepreneurs involved in crimes against intellectual property,” the Ministry said .

“As a result of the actions taken, the provision of illegal cable television by an Internet service provider operating in the Plovdiv region and in Varna was stopped. According to the collected evidence, the cable operator has been retransmitting television programs to its end customers for more than three years, without the legally required consent of the rights holders and without notifying the control state authorities of this activity, as required by law.”

Images from the operation

Local media identified the target as service provider DC Corporation , the successor of cable company Digital Cable Corporation, and its owner Ivan Gologanov. TrafficNews.bg reports that “Gologanov does not pay royalties to TV channels, which allows him to sell packages at competitive prices.” It further notes that a “large part of the company’s cable network was laid illegally, without permission from the competent authorities.”

Not Quite Done

Late July GDBOP took down another TV piracy service with the operation again taking place within the EMPACT framework.

“Employees of the Cybercrime Directorate, together with their colleagues from the BOP sectors in Vratsa and Pleven, conducted an operation to prevent the illegal use of television series as objects of copyright and related rights through the internet site tvseriali.bg,” GDBOP’s report reads.

Visitors to the site today are greeted by a seizure banner, not the Turkish TV shows they were expecting.

In summary, it seems that Bulgaria may not be the safe haven for pirate sites it once was. It may not even be safe for Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev. According to Bulgaria’s National Investigation Service, attackers attempted to kill Geshev in May using a roadside bomb, which detonated as he drove past.

“The bomb had a large TNT equivalent — about 3 kilograms of TNT, according to experts’ calculations,” the report reads.

Geshev survived the incident but after years of controversy, including criticism for failing to crack down on organized crime, he called members of parliament “ political garbage ” that should be “swept away.”

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev subsequently signed off on the Supreme Justice Council’s (VSS) decision to fire Geshev, halfway through his seven-year term. What that means for Bulgaria’s fight against piracy, if anything, will remain to be seen.

In the meantime, Zamunda is now the 16th most popular site in the whole of Bulgaria.

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

Bungie’s copyright infringement-based lawsuits against cheat makers, sellers, and those who use them, have divided opinion in unexpected ways.

While David vs. Goliath battles tend to have the masses cheering for the little guy, many videogame fans have grown tired of their enjoyment being spoiled by people who intentionally set out to spoil it.

The fact that many of these individuals pay out significant sums of money to gain an imaginary upper hand only serves to rub salt in the wounds. In one particularly malicious case, Bungie had clearly seen more than enough.

Familiar Case, Unusual Features

In July 2022, another Bungie lawsuit came to light. It targeted an individual who had deployed cheats in Destiny 2 and as a result, now faced claims of breaching security mechanisms controlling access to a copyrighted work.

For each violation of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, Bungie sought $2,500. For modifying the Destiny 2 game, thereby creating an unauthorized derivative work, Bungie was able to demand another $150,000. While complicated enough already, it soon transpired that Bungie had unwittingly sued ‘L.L.’ – a 17-year-old minor.

Luckily for Bungie, the details of the case quickly dispersed any sympathy for the teenager; DMCA claims found themselves overshadowed by allegations of a long-running harassment campaign against Bungie employees. L.L.’s decision to mount a particularly robust defense, absent of any remorse, was completely logical and looked absolutely terrible.

At least in the short term, it wasn’t particularly effective either .

Bungie and Teenage Nemesis Eventually Agree

In a proposed consent judgment and permanent injunction filed at a Washington court early this month, Bungie systematically repeats many of its original allegations, with the defendant quietly nodding along.

The defendant used software to cheat in Destiny 2. That software displayed a graphical overlay in the copyrighted Destiny 2 audiovisual work and injected code to facilitate cheats, thereby creating an unauthorized derivative work, in breach of copyright. The software circumvented Bungie’s technological measures in breach of the DMCA, with each use of that software representing an independent circumvention violation.

Further breaches of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision took place every time a new account was opened to evade a Bungie ban, and each unlicensed download of Destiny 2 was yet another breach of Bungie’s copyrights. All told, the parties agree that Bungie is entitled to $300,000 in statutory damages for copyright infringement, and a further $200,000 for 100 acts of circumvention at $2,000 each.

Grand total: $500,000 in damages

Permanently cease-and-desist

To ensure no repeat of the defendant’s alleged behavior, a wall of text in the proposed judgment restrains L.L. from having anything to do with any cheat software targeting Bungie-owned properties, having anything to do with any Bungie-related game assets, or interacting with any Bungie game, ever again.

Also prohibited is the direct or indirect harassment of Bungie or its employees, or anyone who plays Bungie games. The defendant cannot travel within 1,000 feet of Bungie’s offices, nor knowingly travel within 1,000 feet of any home of any Bungie employee, “except as is incidental to travel on public highways and roadways for purposes other than to make contact with or otherwise harass” Bungie employees.

L.L. is also required to embark on a comprehensive account deletion mission.

“This permanent injunction is binding against the Defendant worldwide, without regard to the territorial scope of the specific intellectual property rights asserted in the Complaint of the above-captioned case and may be enforced in any court of competent jurisdiction wherever Defendant or their assets may be found,” the consent judgment continues.

With that the parties request that judgment is entered in accordance with the outlined terms, including an award for $500,000 in damages in favor of Bungie. With all necessary lessons learned, the judge’s signature will bring the matter to a close. In theory, at least.

Related documents are available here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

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

Online piracy is a complex and constantly evolving phenomenon that fuels the daily reporting on this website.

While big headlines don’t appear every day, there’s always something happening. These events are no longer the preserve of niche audiences as mainstream media outlets show increasing interest.

This broader coverage is in part fueled by a steady stream of press releases issued by rightsholders and anti-piracy groups. These alerts often find their way to online news publications where they are republished with no questions asked. It’s a particularly useful mechanism for those crafting the messaging.

The Media as an Anti-Piracy Tool

The role of the press as a communication ‘tool’ isn’t typically discussed in public but did come up in a recent letter sent to the US Trademark and Patent Office by the Premier League. It mentions the media as one of the key tools through which messages can be sent.

The Premier League lists media reporting as one of the main ways the public at large is informed about the harms and dangers of piracy. This apparently can be very effective, as an example from Singapore shows.

“Raids conducted at the end of last year in Singapore are a good example of law enforcement using media coverage to send a strong message to the market about the legal risks associated with piracy.

“Since the raids, and resultant widespread media coverage, the Premier League has not been able to find any physical shops selling illicit streaming devices offering its content in Singapore,” the Premier League notes.

In addition to covering enforcement actions, the media also helps by ‘amplifying’ research and reports, including those that highlight malware threats and piracy-related scams.

“Publications of studies and reports, such as those identified in the previous response, that contain empirical data on the harms and dangers of piracy. These are generally amplified by media reporting and consumer campaigns,” the Premier League adds.

Balance vs. Hysteria

The Premier League’s letter shows that rightsholders can utilize the media to boost their anti-piracy message. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that strategy, as long as the media maintains a critical and balanced view. But it doesn’t always work that way.

With limited time available, many news publications rely heavily on information being fed to them. And since press releases typically lack caveats and counterpoints, subsequent reports risk being one-sided; in some cases, dramatically so.

In recent years we have seen media outfits not only repeat messaging but deliberately make it more extreme. This can lead to hysterical coverage or outright misinformation .

Nuance

Again, the Premier League and other rightsholders are not really to blame for this. Their press releases are carefully crafted to ensure effective delivery of their main messages and the absence of nuance is intended. The role of the media is to find balance and avoid hyperbole, but the former is often lacking.

A critical look at industry reports can pay off though. For example, when a report suggested that pirate sites are the main propagation method for malware, experts were quick to reject the claim . And when researchers fail to present proper evidence, that’s worth pointing out too.

All in all, it’s the responsibility of the media to ensure the presentation of a complete picture. The facts that are not mentioned in a press release are often far more interesting than those that are.

There are plenty of signs that rightsholder groups are deliberately creating strategies to ‘ cultivate ‘ their relationships with the press. And, needless to say, it’s not their goal to make sure that the media remains dedicated to balanced reporting; they simply want to deter piracy.

—

A copy of the Premier League’s full letter to the U.S. Parent and Trademark Office is available here (pdf)

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

While BitTorrent client functionality hasn’t fundamentally changed over the past 20 years, developers of leading clients haven’t let their software stagnate.

A good example is the excellent qBittorrent , a feature-rich open source client which still receives regular updates. In common with similar clients, qBittorent can be found on GitHub along with its source and installation instructions.

Elsewhere on the same platform, users were recently trying to work out how a standard qBittorrent install suddenly led to the appearance of unwanted cryptocurrency mining software on the same machine.

Proxmox and LXC

For those unfamiliar with Proxmox VE , it’s an environment for virtual machines that once tried becomes very useful, extremely quickly. It’s also free for mere mortals and in most circumstances, very easy to install and get up and running.

With help from various Proxmox ‘helper scripts’ offered by tteck on GitHub (small sample to the right), even beginners can install any of dozens of available software packages in a matter of seconds using LXC containers .

Even if none of that makes sense, it doesn’t matter. Those who want qBittorrent installed, for example, can copy and paste a single line of text into Proxmox…and that’s it. Given that the whole process is almost always flawless, user issues are very rare, so to hear of a possible malware infection came as a real shock recently

Cryptominer Discovery

In summary, a Proxmox user deployed a tteck script to install qBittorrent and then a month later found his machine being worked hard by cryptomining software known as xmrig . While he investigated the problem, tteck removed the qBittorrent LXC script as a basic precaution, but it soon became clear that neither Proxmox or tteck’s script had anything to do with the problem.

The unwelcome software was indeed installed maliciously, but due to a series of avoidable events, rather than a genius hack.

When a qBittorrent installation like this completes and the software is launched, access to qBittorent takes place through a web interface accessible from most web browsers. By default, qBittorrent uses port 8080 and since many users like to access their torrent clients from remote networks, qBittorrent uses UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) to automate port forwarding, thereby exposing the web interface to the internet.

Having this working in record time is all very nice, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe. To ensure that only the operator of the client can access the web interface, qBittorrent allows the user to configure a username and a password for authentication purposes.

This generally means that random passers-by will need to possess these credentials before being able to do damage. In this case, the default admin username and password were not changed and that allowed an attacker to easily access the web interface.

Attacker Told qBittorrent to Run an External Program

To allow users to automate various tasks related to downloading and organizing their files, qBittorrent has a feature that can automatically run an external program when a torrent is added and/or when a torrent is finished.

The options here are limited only by the imagination and skill of the user but unfortunately the same applies to any attacker with access to the client’s web interface.

In this case the attacker told the qBittorrent client to run a basic script on completion of a torrent. The script accessed the domain http://cdnsrv.in from where it downloaded a file called update.sh and then ran it. The consequences of that are explained in detail by tteck , but the main points are a) unauthorized cryptomining on the host machine and b) the attacker maintaining root access via SSH key authentication.

Easily Avoided

The default admin username for qBittorrent is ‘admin’ while the default password is ‘adminadmin’. Had these common-knowledge defaults been changed following install, the attacker would still have found the web interface but would’ve had no useful credentials for conventional access.

More fundamentally, possession of the correct credentials would’ve had limited value if the qBittorrent client hadn’t used UPnP to expose the web interface in the first place. Taking another step back, if UPnP hadn’t been enabled in the user’s router, qBittorrent would’ve had no access to UPnP, and wouldn’t have been able to forward ports or expose the interface to the internet.

In summary: disable UPnP in the router and only enable it once its function is fully understood and when absolutely necessary. Never leave default passwords unchanged, and if something doesn’t need to be exposed to the internet, don’t expose it unnecessarily.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that tteck ‘s response, to a problem that had nothing to do with Proxmox or his scripts, has been first class. Anyone installing the qBittorrent LXC from here will find the default admin password changed and UPnP disabled automatically.

Any time saved can be spent on automated installs of Plex, Tautulli, Emby, Jellyfin, Jellyseerr, Overseerr, Navidrome, Bazarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr, Radarr, Readarr, Sonarr, Tdarr, Whisparr, and many, many more.

Proxmox: An Open Source Type 1 Hypervisor

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

To address counterfeiting and piracy, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) invited submissions from the private sector detailing effective anti-piracy strategies and those envisioned for the future.

In advance of a roundtable scheduled for October 3, submissions from rightsholders and their representatives have called for pirate site blocking in the United States and amendments to the DMCA that would allow for instant blocking of pirate streams .

Big Coalition

The International Intellectual Property Alliance is a coalition of already powerful trade associations, including the Motion Picture Association, Recording Industry Association of America, Entertainment Software Association, Independent Film & Television Alliance, and the Association of American Publishers. IIPA aims to improve copyright protection and enforcement in overseas markets with high levels of piracy.

The IIPA’s submission begins by painting a picture of creativity and productivity in the United States versus an “entrenchment of infringing services” in foreign markets. IIPA says that online piracy harms the creative industries in the United States, causes hardships for U.S. creators, undermines exports of legal content, which in turn impacts returning revenue.

The coalition cites numerous studies dating back to 2013 that have concluded, to a greater or lesser extent, that piracy reduces legitimate sales. The numbers are huge; over $29 billion in lost revenue for movies and TV shows alone each year, plus the loss of up to 560,000 jobs.

While the first figure is straight from a Hollywood study and the second could also be ‘just’ half of that, the numbers are still big. The main point is that IIPA members are huge contributors to the United States and in order for that to continue and grow, significant changes are required at the international level.

‘Notorious Markets’ Should Be Dismantled

Each year the United States Trade Representative receives submissions from rightsholders that detail overseas sites and services causing significant problems for rightsholders. After consideration, the USTR produces a ‘notorious markets’ report which lists the piracy platforms and attributes them to specific countries.

The general idea is for those countries to recognize how relations with the United States might improve if those platforms were no longer in business, and then act accordingly. ‘Notorious markets’ have been taken down over the years but the IIPA sounds keen to see additional positive action, especially when criminal syndicates are involved.

“There have been many successes with the closure of Internet sites and services identified as notorious markets by USTR. IIPA’s long-standing recommendation is that USTR should urge trading partners either to convert sites and services to licensed disseminators of works and recordings, or these notorious markets should be taken down followed by, where appropriate, criminal enforcement actions,” IIPA writes.

Create an Effective Legal Framework

This request is supported by significant detail on what the IIPA would like to see changed, but isn’t explicit on the problem it needs to mitigate or why it can’t be handled under existing law. Where the issue is being encountered is loosely linked to cyberlocker-type sites based in Russia, but the problem is clearly more widespread.

Taking the section as a whole, it appears that copyright enforcement measures are frustrated when pirate sites and/or their service providers present as being in compliance with the law and keep up the charade to stay in business.

“Some services, including some clearly pirate services, attempt to rely on notice and takedown procedures to avoid proper copyright licensing,” IIPA notes. “Clear primary and secondary liability rules are necessary to discourage abuses and to avoid inaction or license evasion.”

What the IIPA seems to want are acknowledged bright lines on conduct that remove any ability to claim compliance when services are obviously infringing, sometimes criminally so. In turn, this would allow rightsholders to lean on intermediaries with a credible discussion on secondary liability, thus gaining their voluntary cooperation – or else.

The goal is a legal framework that: (i) prevents the operation of services that promote or otherwise induce infringement; (ii) criminalizes online infringement (particularly all ‘commercial scale’ piracy, in line with best practices); and (iii) provides strong incentives for neutral intermediaries to work with rights holders to curb the use of their proprietary networks and services for infringing purposes

Within the framework, IIPA’s members would have their exclusive rights respected, including those that relate to technical protection measures. As for internet service providers, bright lines should govern their behavior too.

ISP Liability Limitations….Should Be Limited

According to the submission, the proposed legal framework should ensure that ISP liability limitations (if there are any at all) should not “reduce the scope of substantive copyright protections” and should only be available to ISPs that meet eligibility criteria.

For example, upon an ISP “obtaining knowledge or awareness” of infringing activity, the allegedly-infringing content should be removed “expeditiously” before the ISP takes further action using “measures demonstrated effective” to prevent or restrain further infringement. That sounds not dissimilar to current understanding of the law in many developed countries, with the filtering requirements of the EU’s Article 17 bolted on top.

Within the framework, IIPA says that governments should recognize online piracy as a form of cybercrime, foster cooperation among all industry stakeholders (including ISPs) in the online supply chain, and if there are any impediments to collaboration, remove them.

“[G]overnments should encourage private sector agreements, especially those that provide enforcement rights, to properly reflect the needs of industry stakeholders, and that any remedies outside of a legal framework are available to all copyright owners,” the submission reads.

“In addition, governments should require marketplaces and encourage all relevant intermediaries to implement ‘know your business customers’ (KYBC) policies to ensure they keep up to date and accurate information about their customers and to allow rights holders to obtain accurate information to protect their rights against direct infringers.”

ICANN and Cloudflare (probably)

Difficulties linking domain names to individuals have persisted for several years. The IIPA’s submission places the blame at the feet of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The coalition makes no suggestions on what should be done but its statements leave no real doubt.

The lack of meaningful access to accurate domain registrant data occurs because of ICANN’s “failure to meaningfully enforce a requirement for accurate registrant data collection, (ii) ICANN’s failure to implement approved policies concerning privacy/proxy services, and (iii) ICANN’s overinterpretation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has almost entirely shut down access to registrant WHOIS data.”

Despite being a coalition interested in reducing infringement overseas, IIPA’s submission finds itself referencing a problem that is overwhelmingly seen in the United States and has already been mentioned in several anti-piracy reports; reverse proxy services and the layer of anonymity they provide.

IIPA doesn’t mention Cloudflare by name but on the basis that most significant pirate sites do indeed use Cloudflare, it’s safe to assume we’re talking about the American company with the same name. In any event, IIPA is calling for the U.S. government to get involved.

“While reverse proxy services serve a legitimate purpose, many pirate sites utilize reverse proxy services to hide true hosting information and to transmit large files faster. Such uses make enforcement against these sites extremely challenging. IIPA requests that the U.S. government include reverse proxy services in its efforts to address this widespread, systemic problem and to stop the misuse of such services.”

The IIPA’s submission is available 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.

The company also has many other tools to browse and organize the web, including the Chrome browser and YouTube.

All these products and services fall under the umbrella of the company Alphabet. While the various departments are largely run separately, there is plenty of overlap too. This week, we stumbled upon information suggesting that DMCA notices, received for the search engine, directly impact people’s privately saved links.

As reported earlier this month, Google’s search index is a prime target for copyright holders. Over the past several years, more than seven billion ‘infringing’ URLs have been flagged, with the majority removed. This makes sense, as Google is legally required to process DMCA takedown requests.

What comes as a surprise, however, is that the search takedown requests also impact other Google services.

Search Takedowns Affect Saved URLs

A few hours ago, Eddie Roosenmaallen shared an email from Google, notifying him that a link had been removed from his Google Saved collection because it violates Google’s policy.

The reason cited for the removal is the “downstream impact”, as the URL in question is “blocked by Google Search”.

“The following saved item in one of your collections was determined to violate Google’s policy. As a result, the item will be moderated..,” Google writes, pointing out a defunct KickassTorrents domain as the problem.

Initially, it was suggested that this removal impacted Google’s synched Chrome bookmarks but further research reveals that’s not the case. Instead, the removals apply to Google’s saved feature.

This Google service allows users to save and organize links, similar to what Pinterest does. These link collections can be private or shared with third parties.

Bookmarks?

The initial bookmark confusion is likely caused by the fact that, in Google’s app, the saved icon (shown below) appears by default. When clicked, the page in question is added to a “favorite pages” collection, which some people see as a bookmark.

Confusing terminology aside, what stands out here is that Google’s search content policy also applies to these saved links. As a result, URLs for which Google receives a search takedown, disappear from saved collections as well. This applies to both public and private collections.

DMCA’d URLS can’t be Saved

TorrentFreak was able to replicate this issue. Google doesn’t allow us to ‘save’ URLs that are removed from Google search, such as YouTube ripper “Yout.com”, torrent site “1337x.to”, or the earlier mentioned “Katcr.com.”

These blockades apply to single URLs, not entire domains. For example, thepiratebay.org is still visible in Google searches and can be added to a collection. However, Pirate Bay links that are deindexed, such as this one , can’t be saved.

The same applies to other sites. The old homepage of YouTube ripper 2conv.com can’t be saved since it’s been removed from Google search, but the latest homepage URL (2conv.com/neshq) can still be added.

It’s not clear why Google enforces the search policy for saved links or whether preventing copyright infringement is the main goal. The company didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment. If we hear back, this article will be updated accordingly.

For now, the impact is relatively limited as the saved feature isn’t widely used. However, if Google decides to “moderate” users’ Chrome bookmarks, or its DNS resolver, things could get interesting.

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

Artificial intelligence has the potential to make our lives more efficient, entertaining, and productive. There are potential downsides as well.

From a copyright perspective, AI brings up some interesting questions. For example, can content created by an AI be copyrighted? And can an AI be trained on copyrighted works without limitation?

Authors Sue OpenAI

According to several authors, large language model training sets shouldn’t be permitted to use every piece of text they come across online. In their lawsuit filed in June , book authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad accused OpenAI of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, among other things.

Soon after, writer/comedian Sarah Silverman was joined by authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey in an identical suit which also accused OpenAI of using books as training data. This happened without permission, using datasets that were sourced from pirate sites, the complaint alleged.

The complaints mention the controversial Books2 and Books3 datasets that are believed to be sourced from shadow libraries such as LibGen, Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Bibliotik.

“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 Asks Court to Dismiss Claims

This week, OpenAI responded to these accusations with a request for the bulk of the claims to be dismissed. They include vicarious copyright infringement, DMCA violation, unfair competition, “negligence,” and unjust enrichment allegations.

“None of these causes of action states a viable claim for relief because none of the legal theories challenged here actually condemns the conduct alleged with respect to ChatGPT, the language models that power it, or the process used to create them,” OpenAI informed the court.

“It is important for these claims to be trimmed from the suit at the outset, so that these cases do not proceed to discovery and beyond with legally infirm theories of liability.”

The only claim that should be able to survive, for now, is direct copyright infringement, but OpenAI expects to defeat the claim at a later stage.

Fair Use

The authors’ copyright infringement claims are grounded in copyright law. OpenAI doesn’t dispute that copyright plays a role but notes that the complaints take a hard line, glossing over exemptions such as fair use.

“Those claims, however, misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”

OpenAI notes that when the U.S. Constitution was drafted, its creators saw copyright law as a tool to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. In this case, AI is seen as useful progress, and its use of large amounts of copyrighted texts could be seen as ‘fair’.

“Numerous courts have applied the fair use doctrine to strike that balance, recognizing that the use of copyrighted materials by innovators in transformative ways does not violate copyright,” OpenAI writes.

Derivative?

The authors clearly have a different take. They argued that every output of OpenAI’s language models is a copyright infringing derivative work. These derivatives are generated without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

OpenAI argues that this conclusion goes too far. The organization points out, based on the authors’ theory, that all output from large language models is essentially copyright infringing. While that may be what the authors want, it would severely hamper AI innovations.

Courts have previously rejected interpretations of the term derivative that are too broad, and should do so here as well, the AI company notes.

“According to the Complaints, every single ChatGPT output —from a simple response to a question, to the name of the President of the United States, to a paragraph describing the plot, themes, and significance of Homer’s The Iliad— is necessarily an infringing ‘derivative work’ of Plaintiffs’ books.

“Worse still, each of those outputs would simultaneously be an infringing derivative of each of the millions of other individual works contained in the training corpus— regardless of whether there are any similarities between the output and the training works. That is not how copyright law works,” OpenAI adds.

Based on these and a variety of arguments, OpenAI asks the court to dismiss all claims, except direct copyright infringement.

The authors have yet to respond, but they will likely counter OpenAI’s motion. These cases will help to define the boundaries of copyright when it comes to AI developments, and will likely be fought tooth and nail.

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The motions to dismiss in the Tremblay and Awad case can be found here (pdf) , and the identical version that’s filed in the Silverman, Golden, Kadrey lawsuit is available here (pdf) .

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