An announcement by Spain’s National Police (Policía Nacional) this morning was in many respects nothing out of the ordinary.

In common with almost every country with a movie and TV show market to protect, Spain regularly conducts operations to shut down or disrupt local pirate IPTV services. The operation detailed in a press release this morning, distributed via official police website Policia.es and the Ministry of the Interior’s website at Interior.gob.es, seems significant.

Investigation Began Last Year

The authorities say they began investigating the “criminal organization” in February 2022. From operations centers in Alicante and Seville, the suspects allegedly provided “fraudulent multimedia content” via IPTV by installing “fraudulent applications” on customers’ devices, including set-top boxes, smart TVs, and mobile phones. As a result, movies, TV shows, and live sporting events, were available at a rate much lower than the legitimate market price.

“The organization offered illegal services through a telecommunications consulting company that had a solid marketing structure at its service,” police explained.

“The members of the criminal network were in the provinces of Alicante, Malaga, and Valladolid, and their function was to market fraudulent services, maximizing the number of potential clients to be obtained while causing serious economic damage to the main victims of this type of illegal activity.”

Police carried out raids on four locations in Spain and a total of eight people were arrested; Valladolid (3), Alicante (3), Málaga (1) and Seville (1). All stand accused of serious crimes including membership of a criminal organization and intellectual property offenses.

Police say the suspects had a “high degree of technological specialization” which allowed them to remotely manage clients who subscribed to sports audiovisual content. The suspects’ “entire IT infrastructure” was dismantled, police report.

Massive Damage to Rightsholders

Before revealing the financial losses suffered by legitimate rightsholders, the police statement notes that while the criminal organization has been dismantled, those who subscribe to pirate services “are an active party in causing damage to the main victims of these activities through well-known loss of profits.”

In other words, members of the public who subscribed are partly responsible for the losses incurred by rightsholders. By any standard, the scale of the losses reported by police this morning are considerable.

“[W]ell-known loss of profits…refers to the profits that the injured parties no longer receive as a consequence of the criminal activities investigated, which can be estimated at 366,250,000 euros.”

Anyone familiar with copyright-related losses will be aware that major rightsholders always go big on potential losses. They certainly look good in headlines like this one.

Any figure can be justified with the right approach and since the numbers are hypothetical, the best a sensible argument to the contrary will ever achieve is the production of a smaller, more boring number.

Calming Calculations

Whether €366m in losses sounded reasonable or simply got everyone very, very excited this morning is unclear. According to dozens of local media outlets and increasingly those further afield, that number was reported by police and the government so needs no further scrutiny.

According to police the-now dismantled service had 18,300 subscribers. So, if the total losses are €366 million, each individual subscriber to the service caused losses to rightsholders of €20,000. Inflation strikes again?

On Second Thoughts….

Visitors to the press release made available on Policia.es this morning saw the text as it appears in the image below. Those who visit the site right now will notice that small but pretty important edits have taken place, as confirmed by the current text at this URL vs the copy from this morning as it appears in Google’s cache .

If this was a sudden recalculation at the last minute, that raises the question of why the new figure is actually unreasonably low . If it was a plain error, that’s a human trait that none of us can avoid; what we can do is take it on the chin and publish a transparent correction.

That doesn’t appear to have happened here and that is already causing significant problems. As things standard, the truth can only be found buried away in an invisible edit. The media, on the other hand, simply printed what they were given, presumably based at least partly on trust ( 1 , 2 ,3)

If the big loss claim isn’t a fact on Wikipedia already, it will be soon. From there, anything can happen, and probably will. The Ministry of the Interior, meanwhile, is yet to change its mind .

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

Two years ago, several movie production companies, including the makers of Hellboy, Rambo V, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, and Dallas Buyer’s Club, sued Internet provider Grande Communications.

The filmmakers accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

In addition to millions of dollars in damages, the plaintiffs asked the court to impose strict anti-piracy measures. The requests included a three-strikes termination policy against alleged pirates and an outright block of various pirate sites including the notorious Pirate Bay.

Millions At Stake

There have been several of these types of ‘repeat infringer’ cases in the US, filed by both movie and music companies. Previous lawsuits have made it crystal clear that the stakes are high, with a billion-dollar damages award against Cox as the prime example.

Grande Communications can draw from personal experience. Last fall, a federal jury found the Texas-based provider liable for willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered the ISP to pay $47 million in damages to a group of record labels.

With that judgment under appeal, the ISP hoped to prevent a similar outcome in the movie company case. Grande submitted a motion to dismiss, which was denied , but it continued to push back against the piracy liability allegations, pointing out that there’s nothing wrong with its repeat infringer policy.

When the film companies tried to amend the complaint by adding additional rightsholders and piracy detection company Irdeto, Grande successfully objected. The original copyright claims remained intact, however, and the same was true for the trial scheduled for next year.

Film Companies Drop Lawsuit

Today, that trial is off the table. In a surprising turn of events, both parties filed a stipulation to dismiss the case. There is no settlement agreement and both parties will pay their own costs.

The legal paperwork doesn’t explain why the lawsuit was dismissed but Grande’s parent company Astound is celebrating it as a clear win. According to the Internet provider, it shows that there is nothing wrong with its DMCA policy.

“This completely vindicates our DMCA program. The plaintiffs had an opportunity to vet our program, and after doing so they decided the case was not worth pursuing,” Astound’s General Counsel Jeff Kramp explains.

To be clear, we did not pay a cent to resolve this case because we believe strongly in the effectiveness of our DMCA policy,” Kramp added.

But Why?

To find out more, we reached out to the filmmakers’ attorney who declined to comment at this time. We can only speculate on the reasons.

While it’s possible the filmmakers prefer to focus their efforts elsewhere, dropping a case doesn’t make much sense if you believe that you’re ahead, so that may factor into it as well.

Whatever the reasons, Astound isn’t completely free of the film companies just yet. Many of the same outfits filed a repeat infringer lawsuit against Astound subsidiary RCN, which remains pending .

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

Over the years we have seen dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Initially, many of these tried to appeal to people’s morals.

You wouldn’t steal a car , right?

This type of messaging doesn’t work for everyone , so more direct tactics have also been explored. These often focus on the risks associated with piracy, running into legal trouble, for example. However, due to the perception that exposure to these types of issues is relatively unlikely, the overall deterrent effect can be quite limited.

Malware and Other Threats

A more ‘common’ threat that people face is malware and other types of scams. This may help to explain why many recent studies and reports have linked malware to pirate sites. These findings are backed by rightsholders and anti-piracy groups, who seem very concerned about the digital safety of pirates.

The Digital Citizens Alliance ( DCA ), which has close ties to the content industries, has highlighted these types of piracy threats for years. The group has released a variety of reports pointing out that pirate sites are a hotbed for malware, credit card theft, ransomware and other evils.

Earlier this year, a DCA mystery shopper experiment revealed that handing over credit card details to sellers of shady IPTV subscriptions isn’t a good idea. Several unknown charges popped up on some accounts, suggesting that cards had been compromised.

In addition, an accompanying study among American consumers found that 72 percent of those who used a credit card to pay for an IPTV subscription experienced a credit card breach. Of those who never visited pirate sites, ‘only’ 18 percent reported similar issues.

Attorneys General Warn Pirates

DCA says that these findings should send a warning to the public that pirate sites are unsafe so, to add some extra weight, today DCA launched a new series of public service announcements. They feature attorneys general in 19 states and the District of Columbia warning the public about these threats.

Participating law enforcers include California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, and Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr. All read from exactly the same script in their PSAs.

“Some very bad actors have found a way into our homes through the entertainment we watch, so-called piracy operators lure us with the offer of free or cheap access to our favorite programs and then spread viruses such as ransomware,” they warn

“They also offer low-cost piracy subscription services to watch pirated programs and live sports then steal your credit card information.

“Don’t let hackers or credit card thieves into your house. Be careful with the websites you visit and warn your children and other family members about how to stay safe online,” the message concludes.

Spreading The Message

DCA funded the campaign which will be promoted through social media. In addition, the messages have been submitted for airing on local TV stations, hoping to dissuade people from using pirate sites and services.

According to DCA’s executive director Tom Galvin, pirated content is often used as bait to exploit naive Internet users seeking cheap access to online entertainment.

“Piracy operators dangle free content. But what they don’t tell you is that the content is bait designed to infect users’ devices and enable criminals to abuse their credit cards,” Galvin says.

TorrentFreak asked DCA whether any other attorneys general were asked to participate, but we didn’t receive a direct answer. The Alliance did inform us that a standard script was used to ease video production. The same was done a few years ago, when a similar campaign was launched.

Attorneys general are tasked with keeping their citizens safe, so the campaign fits that goal. That said, the malware problem can be more nuanced than it’s portrayed in this campaign, but that would likely take away from the deterrent effect.

Finally, it’s worth highlighting that the PSAs make no mention of the fact that online piracy is linked to copyright infringement, which also has consequences. That doesn’t have priority, at least not in this campaign.

—

The attorneys general participating in the campaign are listed below. At the time of writing, not all videos are available online.

Attorney General Rob Bonta (California)
Attorney General William Tong (Connecticut)
Attorney General Brian Schwalb (District of Columbia)
Attorney General Chris Carr (Georgia)
Attorney General Brenna Byrd (Iowa)
Attorney General Kris Kobach (Kansas)
Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (Maryland)
Attorney General Dana Nessel (Michigan)
Attorney General Keith Ellison (Minnesota)
Attorney General Lynn Fitch (Mississippi)
Attorney General Aaron D. Ford (Nevada)
Attorney General Letitia A. James (New York)
Attorney General Josh Stein (North Carolina)
Attorney General Dave Yost (Ohio)
Attorney General Michelle Henry (Pennsylvania)
Attorney General Alan Wilson (South Carolina)
Attorney General Marty Jackley (South Dakota)
Attorney General Sean Reyes (Utah)
Attorney General Charity R. Clark (Vermont)
Attorney General Jason Miyares (Virginia)

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

Across the globe, law enforcement and copyright holder groups are teaming up to tackle online piracy of all shapes and sizes.

Cooperation is seen as essential to tackling the endemic piracy problem and the key players regularly meet up to discuss progress and emerging problems.

Last week, Europol hosted its annual IP Crime Conference in Lisbon where stakeholders came together to exchange information and ideas. The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance was also present and seized the opportunity to announce its annual Anti-Piracy Award on stage.

The Anti-Piracy Award Goes to FIOD

The 2023 award goes to the Dutch fiscal police ( FIOD ), which shut down one of Europe’s largest IPTV operations in May. The illicit operation presumably offered its services to countless smaller IPTV sellers, together serving over a million subscribers according to official reports.

Large IPTV raids are not new, but this enforcement effort took place on a scale that we haven’t seen before. Information obtained by FIOD showed that the pirate IPTV operation was run from the GLOBE Datacenter in Den Helder, where more than 1,200 servers were taken offline.

The raids, which also inflicted some collateral damage , caused hundreds of thousands of screens to go dark. Several people were arrested and the prosecution is ongoing.

Commenting on the award, AAPA’s Executive Vice President Sheila Cassells notes that FIOD’s action shows how vital law enforcement efforts are against these types of illicit piracy operations.

“The scale of this operation illustrates clearly why law enforcement must continue to act against illegal IPTV services,” Cassells says .

“And the inclusion and closure of a major hosting provider reinforces the need for a clear and robust regulatory regime, including, for example, know your customer requirements, to be imposed on such actors,” she adds.

In recent years, illicit IPTV services have become a billion-dollar industry as people look for alternatives to costly official streaming subscriptions. AAPA and other copyright holders hope that by keeping the pressure on, this trend can eventually be reversed.

New ‘Host’ Anti-Piracy Award

AAPA also presented a new award this year for an agency operating in the conference’s host country, which is Portugal this year. This went to the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), which helped to implement the country’s pirate site blocking framework.

The award was handed to General Inspector Luis Silveira Botelho and AAPA Co-President Mark Mulready hopes the Portuguese model will serve as an example for other countries.

“In presenting this award, we are pleased to acknowledge the steps taken in Portugal to implement an efficient and dynamic system for blocking orders,” Mulready says.

“We have seen from other countries how helpful such blocking orders can be and we hope that countries who have not yet introduced the possibility of blocking orders will take note of the system applied here,” he adds.

Anti-Piracy Commendations

The anti-piracy coalition also handed out a certificate of commendation to Marcin Cyganek of the Polish Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime, who helped to prioritize IP crime and was instrumental in the shutdown of polsharing.com.

Certificates of commendation were also handed to Bulgaria, Italy, and Spain, for various enforcement actions. Bulgaria, for example, carried out a variety of anti-piracy operations in recent months, resulting in the shutdown of several widely-used piracy services.

Italy, meanwhile, was lauded for “ Operation Gotha “, which hit an unnamed IPTV operation that reportedly serviced 900,000 subscribers. This action took over where “ Operation Blackout ” left off and involved dozens of raids in 23 provinces across the country.

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

For those trying to avoid identification by anti-piracy groups with considerable but nevertheless finite resources, staying out of reach is certainly possible.

Over the past six years, after unmasking at least dozens but potentially hundreds of site operators, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has shown that the opposite is possible too.

Signs that ACE and the MPA are taking an interest in particular platforms appear in various forms, but few are as verifiably reliable as DMCA subpoena applications filed at U.S. courts. A new batch filed by the MPA contains familiar and less familiar names, so taking a closer look is always worthwhile.

Popular Android App VivaTV

The initial target in the first application is the Android-based movie and TV show streaming app, VivaTV. ACE identifies vivatv.io/download as the download URL for v1.6.2, but currently the site only serves v1.5.5 as standard. Nevertheless, ACE is absolutely right; a short roam around reveals the availability of several VivaTV versions, plus a bunch of other apps for download too.

Users of VivaTV and similar tools will be aware that videos listed in the app are stored on third-party hosting platforms. In the application, MPA/ACE cite VivaTV as an infringer of their members’ rights in the movie ‘Frozen’ before identifying where the movie was sourced. In this case the source is StreamTape.com, a platform with over a quarter billion visits every year.

The same method is applied to the movie Minions: Rise of Gru; while it plays inside VivaTV, hosting platform VidSrc.me is listed as the source.

Significant traffic has made StreamTape a prime target for MPA/ACE, as evidenced by referrals to watch lists maintained by the EU and United States on multiple occasions .

Other than that, fairly standard stuff as DMCA subpoenas go, at least until reports of a different nature catch the eye.

62 Security Vendors Say VivaTV is Not Malicious

There’s no shortage of blogs providing information on the latest ‘pirate’ apps, including up-to-date version data and even direct download links. Some even run Android APK files through services like VirusTotal before posting the results to show that apps under review are ‘safe’.

As the image below shows, someone has already tested VivaTV (three tests since August according to the file’s history) and the rows of green ticks are on full display.

In total, 62 security vendors waved the green flag , at least until VirusTotal (VT) users move away from the ‘DETECTION’ tab and start looking at other tabs, marked DETAILS, RELATIONS, BEHAVIOR, and COMMUNITY, where confidence takes a bit of a nose-dive.

Whether VivaTV is clean, malicious, or simply misunderstood, an analysis from VT in-house sandbox ‘ Zenbox ‘ provides examples of what it believes the app tries to do.

Might be ‘safe’, might not. Do your own research

The question for those installing this app, or indeed any other app, is whether requests for access to device data like these are required and/or reasonable for the software in question to function.

The DMCA subpoena application is available here (pdf)

Summaries for Other DMCA Subpoenas

2:23-mc-00146 (MPA v Cloudflare, October 19, 2023)

Domains Targeted: tubeyworld.com (IPTV), tubeyrack.com (.M3U)
Content Infringed: Frozen, Top Gun: Maverick

Names, physical IP/email addresses, telephone numbers, payment & account histories

The DMCA subpoena application is available here (pdf)
___________

2:23-mc-00147 (MPA v Cloudflare, October 19, 2023)

Domains Targeted: watchtheofficetv.com, bluf.online, cuevana.biz, cuevana2espanol.net, cuevana8.com, pelisplushd.to, watchbatesmotelonline.com, watchbrooklynninenine.com, watchonceuponatimeonline.com, maxseries.in, ekinotv.pl
Content Infringed: The Office, Encanto, Bates Motel, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Once Upon a Time, Breaking Bad

Names, physical IP/email addresses, telephone numbers, payment & account histories

The DMCA subpoena application is available here (pdf)

___________

2:23-mc-00148 (MPA v Tonic Domains, October 19, 2023)

Domains Targeted: myflixtor.to, flixtor.to, pelisplushd.to
Content Infringed: The Flash, No Hard Feelings, The Batman, Encanto

Names, physical IP/email addresses, telephone numbers, payment & account histories

The DMCA subpoena application is available here (pdf)

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

This summer, Lithuania amended its Code of Administrative Offenses, allowing media watchdog LRTK to fine pirates, without going to court.

This legislative change is the latest attempt to deter piracy in the European country. The potential fines should make pirates reconsider their habits, the idea goes.

Tracking Down Pirates

Handing out fines may sound like an effective strategy, but catching online pirates isn’t always straightforward. It’s typically not possible to know who is using pirate streaming sites or direct download portals, for example, unless the service in question is compromised.

Tracking BitTorrent pirates is easier. Torrent users broadcast their IP-addresses publicly and this activity can be monitored by outsiders. This is the main reason why pretty much all lawsuits against individual pirates are targeted at BitTorrent users.

The Lithuanian media watchdog is aware of this; the first three fines issued in August targeted BitTorrent users. The more unusual aspect here is that LRTK specifically singled out users of the private torrent tracker Linkomanija.

LinkoManija.net is the largest torrent site in the country and a local legend. The site has been around for more than two decades and continues to thrive. While it’s officially a private community, many locals have access; that includes the media watchdog’s piracy tracking partner.

25 Private Tracker Targets

This week, LRTK announced that it had fined twenty-five additional people who reportedly shared copyright-infringing content via LinkoManija. In all cases the offenders shared pirated versions of films owned by local movie companies.

“LRTK found that audiovisual works protected by copyright – the films “Tu mano Deimantas”, “Hypnotic” and “Paradas” – were illegally reproduced and made public on the linkomanija.net website without copyright consent from their IP addresses,” the watchdog notes .

IP-addresses don’t identify individuals so, technically speaking, the authorities don’t know whether those fined are actual users of the site. The fines simply target the people who are paying for the Internet bills, who are not necessarily the pirates.

The authorities don’t appear to be impacted by these technicalities and issued 140-euro fines to all identified subscribers, which is half of the maximum allowed penalty. If the same ‘people’ continue to pirate, potential fines can reach 850 euros.

Not Done Yet

The latest wave of fines is the largest thus far. Three people were previously penalized in August and eight more followed in September, bringing the total to thirty-six now. These offenders were all linked to the same torrent tracker.

LRTK warns all Lithuanians, and Linkomanija users in particular, that it’s not done yet. The watchdog says that it will continue to use its legal powers to monitor piracy activity and reduce the country’s piracy rate.

The private torrent tracker itself remains online, at least for now. A court previously ordered the country’s largest Internet providers to block the site, but that hasn’t stopped people from finding workarounds to access it.

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

Another day, another report from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment announcing the demise of yet another large piracy site, spanning several domains.

On this occasion the main target was WatchWrestling.ai, a site that until recently specialized in wrestling events by leading promotions including WWE, AEW, Impact, ROH and NJPW. These shows are extremely popular and traffic figures cited by ACE back that up, and then some.

“Over the past year, watchwrestling.ai and its associated domains have reached more than 253 million visits. Most of the traffic originated from the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Canada,” the anti-piracy coalition reports.

ACE/DAZN Tag Team

ACE says that it worked closely with DAZN to take down WatchWrestling. DAZN is already a member of ACE but given the streaming service’s interests in the Impact promotion , it’s possible that specialist knowledge came into play.

ACE said it identified and then confronted the site’s owner in Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India. This so-called ‘knock-and-talk’ approach has been successfully deployed many times over the past several years and DAZN seems happy with the results here.

“DAZN has invested significant amounts in building a successful business around combat sports, helping fund the development of MMA and boxing, as well as providing the best quality content and service for fans,” says Ed McCarthy, Chief Operating Office of DAZN Group.

“To continue to invest, DAZN has to be able to protect its intellectual property. The enforcement work ACE undertakes, as part of its joint Sports Piracy Task Force initiative, is a critical element of this work.”

A Closer Look at WatchWrestling

As mentioned earlier, WatchWrestling.ai appears to have been the priority target but as an individual domain it can’t account for 253 million annual visits. In July the domain received around 8.7m visits according to SimilarWeb data, but in August appeared to lose considerable traffic, with just 7.8m visits reported.

After losing another two million monthly visits in September, ACE turning up in India obviously had a negative impact. So, for the sake of building up a picture, we’ll assume an average of 9 million visits per month over the last year, giving us a total of 108 million annual visits for the .ai domain. That leaves us with just 145 million visits still to find.

WatchWrestling.ai (before domain was redirected to ACE

The domain WatchWrestling.in didn’t put up any kind of a fight. Using the same Google Analytics tag as the .ai domain made it extremely easy to find, but with just 289,000 visits in July (roughly 3.5 million pa), 140 million visits still need to be accounted for.

With around 462K visits per month, in theory WatchWrestling.gg provides a welcome five million or so visits per year. Unfortunately historical traffic data is thin, but since the domain has an official redirect to ACE, we’ll count its traffic anyway, before anyone notices.

WatchWestling.gg lacks color in caches (left) but ACE fixed that (right)

140 Million Annual Visits….For Someone Else to Find

With ACE sometimes reluctant to provide the full picture for operational and other reasons, digging below the surface for additional information is simply routine. Here we ran into multiple issues.

A domain linked with India is currently redirecting to ACE. It used to be a movie and TV show streaming site but right now its many sub-domain redirections are proving an irritant , and may not even be part of the equation.

And then there are the look-a-likes, clones, and other variants that look like WatchWrestling, many with similar domains, that either carry exactly the same or substantially the same content. It may transpire that some of these are destined to be handed over to ACE, the truth is we just don’t know.

Cut-and-paste, internet litter

At times like these, the scale of the task ahead for groups like ACE comes fully into perspective. Still, taking 250+ million annual visits out of the market is still a massive achievement.

Not quite on the level of events back in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcers table, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

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

Similar to any other online platforms that deal with user-generated content, Instagram and Facebook process thousands of copyright complaints daily.

Simply responding to takedown notices isn’t sufficient for all rightsholders, some of which mentioned Meta’s companies as potential “notorious markets” in recent recommendations to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).

Meta Rebuts Notorious Markets Claims

Meta is not happy with this and this week the company responded with a rebuttal. For starters, it points out that the USTR’s Special 301 process is intended to map foreign copyright threats, not domestic ones. That would mean that as an American corporation, Meta has no place in the review.

Zuckerberg’s company writes that it fully supports the USTR’s Notorious Markets List as a means to flag global piracy and counterfeiting threats, but expanding it to domestic companies goes beyond its scope.

“[I]f the Notorious Markets List is to continue to advance U.S. trade interests internationally, it needs to remain focused on the underlying purpose of the Special 301 program: the identification of foreign countries and foreign markets that engage in or facilitate piracy and counterfeiting.”

Many Anti-Piracy Tools

Meta doesn’t stop there. It continues the rebuttal by outlining the wide variety of anti-piracy and counterfeiting measures it has implemented over the years.

Both Instagram and Facebook have anti-piracy tools that go far beyond the basic notice and takedown procedures required by law. This includes automated content recognition technology, for example, as well as an elaborate Intellectual Property Reporting API.

Instagram also blocks hashtags linked to potentially problematic content. For example, the #Z-Library hashtag doesn’t seem to exist, and tagging posts with #IPTV doesn’t lead anywhere either.

According to Meta, these types of interventions are meant to reduce the discoverability of potential copyright-infringing content. In the case of the hashtag blocks, it also allows Instagram to automatically disable accounts that repeatedly use these forbidden words.

Anti-Piracy Popup

Meta’s rebuttal mentions that it recently added a new ‘intervention’ technique to its arsenal. To reduce piracy and counterfeiting, both Instagram and Facebook now show popups to users who search for controversial terms.

It’s unclear how many problematic terms Meta identified, but “luxury replica” and “IPTV” are explicitly mentioned.

“Now, when users enter certain counterfeit- and piracy-related terms […] into the search bar on Facebook or Instagram, they are directed to a pop-up that explains Meta’s policy against IP infringement and offered a link to Meta’s IP Help Center to learn more,” Meta writes.

Facebook and Instagram users can still reach the search results if they want, but Meta believes that this nudge will help to educate users where needed.

“Only after users see this pop-up can they click through to see the results of their search. By adding this layer of friction, we are able to reduce users’ engagement with potential counterfeit and pirated content – all while providing further education and transparency,” Meta clarifies.

Just how effective these and other tools are is unknown. Meta probably collects data on how people interact with these roadblocks so it would be great – from a transparency perspective – to learn what the click-through rate is.

All in all, Meta believes that all the efforts it takes to combat piracy, should make it clear that their platforms should not be labeled as ‘notorious piracy markets’, even if they were foreign services.

—

A copy of Meta’s full rebuttal, which it sent to the USTR a few days ago, is available here (pdf)

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

The Entertainment Software Association ( ESA ) has submitted its latest overview of “Notorious Markets” to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

These submissions serve as input for the USTR’s yearly overview of piracy ‘markets’ which helps to shape the Government’s global copyright enforcement agenda going forward.

The ESA, which represents video game companies including Activision Blizzard, EA, Epic Games, Nintendo, Sony, Square Enix, and Ubisoft, hopes that the interests of its members will be taken into account. In the report, the group lists various pirate sites that allow the public to download games for free.

Cyberlockers, Linking and Torrent Sites

Download sites remain a key problem for the video games industry and these exist in various forms. In the cyberlocker category 1fichier.com and megaup.net are mentioned specifically. The former has also been the target of Nintendo legal action in France.

Megaup hasn’t been sued, but ESA views the platform as a growing concern. Over the past year, the number of estimated game downloads rose 135% according to the report. While Megaup processes takedown notices, most are never followed up. Files that are taken down only disappear after a considerable delay, according to ESA.

“Megaup hosts hundreds of unauthorized copies of copyright protected video game titles and only has a 33% response rate to ESA’s takedown notices despite receiving numerous removal notices,” ESA writes.

“Linking websites that index and manage the links to content hosted on Megaup also benefit from the platform’s low compliance rate as these websites derive more traffic, and thus more advertising revenue, due to the durability of the Megaup links.”

These linking sites also remain a threat and the same applies to torrent indexers. ESA lists nsw2u.com, Game3rb.com, Solidtorrents.to, and 1337x.to in its submission. Interestingly, the game companies write that 1337x was launched in 2014, which is seven years after its actual founding date.

Cheats and Marketplaces

The game companies continue by listing various sites that offer cheats and related information. These include mpgh.net and unknowncheats.me. The latter claims to have over four million users and has been in operation for more than two decades.

“[Unknowncheats.me] offers cheats and tutorials for 100+ titles as well as information and links to anti-cheat software and how to circumvent their protocols. It does not charge for cheats, instead relying on advertisements to
generate revenue.

“All cheats are created by the community and the site encourages users to develop and distribute these illegal goods,” ESA adds.

Unauthorized marketplaces make up the final category of sites. ESA specifically mentions playerauctions.com and G2G.com, which sell in-game items such as skins, virtual game currency, and various boosting options. Both sites have millions of monthly visits, according to recent SimilarWeb estimates.

Scene Groups, Crackers and Repackers

ESA has called out many of the above-mentioned sites and services in previous submissions, but the group also points out problems that it hasn’t discussed in detail before. They include Scene release groups, crackers, and repackers.

While the game-cracking scene has been thriving for roughly four decades, the game companies describe the “warez scene” or “Scene release groups” as an “emerging” threat.

“Scene release groups facilitate commercial scale piracy by circumventing technological protection measures and ‘packaging’ illegal downloads to be more easily accessed by the general public,” ESA writes.

Scene releases are indeed a problem but ESA appears to confuse some terms. The Scene doesn’t release any content to the public; it’s actually frowned upon and contrary to their rules. There are, however, non-Scene release groups and repackers that do upload content to the public.

Whether a Scene label is appropriate or not, ESA believes that “highly skilled” crackers and repackers pose a major threat to the gaming industry.

“Especially critical to this illicit supply chain are highly skilled hackers – also known as ‘crackers’ and ‘repackers’,” ESA writes.

Crackers are typically the people who remove DRM restrictions. These can be from the Scene but others operate more openly. Regardless, ESA notes that crackers violate Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Cracked games usually appear on Scene topsites and private or public pirate sites, through which they are distributed to the broader public. In many cases, these pirated games are then picked up by ‘repackers’, who create slimmed-down versions that are easier to distribute.

“These ‘repacked’ files are very popular with individuals with slower internet speeds and/or data limits, as they will download faster and utilize less bandwidth,” ESA writes.

ESA doesn’t mention any crackers or repackers by name but notes that information on their whereabouts and operations is often shared through websites such as cs.rin.ru.

Cryptocurrency and Malware

Finally, the game companies mention malware and use of cryptocurrencies as growing trends. Many illicit marketplaces accept payments in cryptocurrencies, which are often harder to seize or track than regular bank accounts.

“With the growth of this oftentimes nonrestricted payment system, bad actors are using cryptocurrency as a way of purchasing or selling illicit products without using regulated financial institutions,” ESA writes.

Malware can also be used to generate revenue. In some cases, bad actors monetize pirated games by automatically installing cryptocurrency miners while adware also remains a problem.

“Distributors of pirated video games often lace their downloads with these various forms of malware in order to exploit users downloading ostensibly ‘free’ games,” ESA notes.

The gaming association hopes that by pointing out these threats, some will appear on the radars of law enforcement, policymakers, and foreign governments, then dealt with via appropriate action.

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A copy of ESA’s submission for the 2023 Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf) . An overview of the (online) threats is listed below.

Hyperlinking Websites (“Linking Sites” or “Link Sites”)
– nsw2u.com
– Game3rb.com

Hosting Websites (“Cyberlockers”)
– 1fichier.com
– megaup.ne

Torrent Indexing Websites
– 1337x.to
– Solidtorrents.to

Cheats
– unknowncheats.me
– mpgh.net

Unauthorized Online Marketplaces
– playerauctions.com
– G2G.com

Malware

Cryptocurrency

Scene Release Groups

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