For the last 40 years the Motion Picture Association has regularly highlighted the damage caused by in-theater recordings of the latest movies. And quite rightly so.

So-called ‘cam’ copies appear online within hours of movies first appearing in theaters, yet as piracy releases go, cams are unique in their ability to disappoint just about everyone. Not only do these often potato-quality copies somehow eat away at the box office, but filmmakers’ work is often reduced to a smear, and that disappoints pirates too.

The fact that unlicensed gambling ‘companies’ continue to use cams as a promotional vehicle leaves few obvious grounds to argue that the majority of cams benefit anyone at all. Yet camming persists in a number of countries, despite intense pressure from the United States demanding meaningful action against it.

In-theater camming contributed to India being placed on the USTR’s Priority Watch List and the question now is whether a long-running legal amendment process can even begin to address it.

Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill 2019

The Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill 2019 was introduced to amend the Cinematograph Act, 1952 , which contained provisions for the certification of films for exhibition and for regulating exhibitions of those films.

Certain amendments proposed to the 2019 bill ( pdf ) recognized the growth of piracy in India and specifically targeted ‘cam’ piracy. It stated that “ no person shall, without the written authorization of the author, be permitted to use any audiovisual recording device in a place to knowingly make or transmit or attempt to make or transmit or abet the making or transmission of a copy of a film or a part thereof. ”

The proposals stated that violations would be punishable by a prison term of up to three years, a fine, or both

The bill was the subject of a Standing Committee Report published in March 2020. A copy available via PRS Legislative Research ( pdf ) shows that the committee heard evidence from the Motion Picture Distributors Association, Viacom 18, the Film and Television Producers Guild of India, and others.

Amended Amendments

The Standing Committee Report referenced 18 U.S. Code Section 2319B , the United States’ anti-camcording provision, which also provides for up to three years in prison for a first ‘camming’ offense.

The Committee felt that since movies are expensive, punishments should be reviewed in an upwards direction. Somewhat remarkably, the Committee also raised doubts over the bill’s ability to counter the piracy that takes place inside India’s Censor Board.

Throughout the process, concerns were raised over a number of issues. They included fears of potential overreach in the statement that “no person shall be permitted to use any audio-visual recording device…,” which could include the use of a mobile phone, for example. Other debates centered on whether broadly defining recording “in a place” or more specifically an “exhibition facility” would be better or worse, or vice-versa.

A clear definition for the word “knowingly” was sought to establish mens rea while the reference to recording a movie “or a part thereof” raised questions over punishing behavior that should be protected under fair use exceptions.

Calls for tougher sentencing were addressed with proposals for a minimum three-month prison sentence, a minimum fine of roughly US$3,600, and a maximum fine of 5% of the audited gross production cost of the recorded movie. Not even the United States has ventured that far.

Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023

The Union Cabinet, the supreme decision-making body in India, approved the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023 ( pdf ) in April.

Anurag Thakur, Minister for Information and Broadcasting, predicted the bill would meet the needs of all.

“This Bill will live up to the expectations of the industry,” the minister said. “This Bill is going to satisfy each and every one without any controversy.”

The bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament) on July 20, 2023 . It includes provisions for film certification and the prospect of films being denied any kind of exhibition at all. For our purposes here we will not venture into that political quagmire, but it’s fair to say that controversy is rarely far away.

A PRS India summary of the section relevant to camming reads as follows:

The Bill prohibits carrying out or abetting: (i) the unauthorized recording and (ii) unauthorized exhibition of films. Attempting an unauthorized recording will also be an offense. An unauthorized recording means making or transmitting an infringing copy of a film at a licensed place for film exhibition without the owner’s authorization. An unauthorized exhibition means the public exhibition of an infringing copy of the film for profit: (i) at a location not licensed to exhibit films or (ii) in a manner that infringes upon the copyright law

When accompanied by the fines mentioned earlier, which include up to 5% of a movie’s audited gross production costs, it seems likely that the United States would’ve been quite pleased with India’s latest attempt at anti-camming legislation. And then this;

Certain exemptions under the Copyright Act, 1957 will also apply to the above offenses. The 1957 Act allows limited use of copyrighted content without owner’s authorization in specified cases such as: (i) private or personal use, (ii) reporting of current affairs, or (iii) review or critique of that work.

That fair use-style exemptionsFpurp, available under the Copyright Act 1957, will also apply to in-theater recording scenarios, seems unlikely to be viewed in the same positive light. The IIPA previously urged India to “swiftly enact legislative amendments to outlaw unauthorized recording of all or part of an audiovisual work in a cinema.”

Image credit: Pixabay / igorovsyannykov

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

In 2021, Sony Music obtained an injunction ordering DNS resolver Quad9 to block the popular pirate site Canna.to.

The injunction , issued by the District Court of Hamburg, required the Swiss DNS resolver to block its users from accessing the site to prevent the distribution of pirated copies of Evanescence’s album “ The Bitter Truth “.

Quad9 Appeals Site Blocking Injunction

The Quad9 Foundation fiercely opposed the injunction. The not-for-profit foundation submitted an appeal hoping to overturn the blocking order, arguing that the decision set a dangerous precedent.

The DNS resolver stressed that it doesn’t condone piracy but believes that enforcing blocking measures through third-party intermediaries, that don’t host any content, is a step too far.

This initial objection failed; the Regional Court in Hamburg upheld the blocking injunction. However, this was only a preliminary proceeding and Quad9 promised to continue the legal battle, warning of a broad impact on the Internet ecosystem.

Sony Starts Main Proceeding

After Sony’s preliminary victory, the music company initiated a main proceeding at the Leipzig court. This was the next step in the legal process and allowed both sides to provide more evidence and expert opinions.

Sony, for example, referenced earlier jurisprudence where Germany’s Federal Court ruled that services such as YouTube can be held liable for copyright infringement if they fail to properly respond to copyright holder complaints.

Quad9’s expert, Prof. Dr. Ruth Janal, contested this line of reasoning , noting that, under EU law, DNS resolvers shouldn’t be treated in the same fashion as platforms that actually host content.

Court Confirms Blockade

After hearing arguments from both sides, earlier this year the Regional Court of Leipzig handed a win to Sony. This means that Quad9 is required to block the music piracy site canna.to. If not, those responsible face a hefty fine, or even a prison sentence.

“The defendant is liable as a perpetrator because it makes its DNS resolver available to Internet users and, through this, it refers to the canna.to service with the infringing download offers relating to the music album in dispute,” the Court wrote.

Judge Werner argues that Quad9 should have taken action when the copyright holder alerted it to a pirated copy of the Evanescence album. Its intentional failure to act makes the DNS resolver liable.

Quad9 Appeals

Quad9 characterized the decision of the Leipzig Regional Court as absurd. In essence, it ruled that a DMS resolver can be held liable for the infringements of third-party websites. This is contrary to EU and German law, according to the foundation.

The DNS resolver sees itself as a neutral intermediary but the court’s judgment classified it as an actual wrongdoer. This is an “absurdly extreme” decision according to Quad9, which filed an appeal at the Dresden Higher Regional Court last month.

Under EU and German law, DNS providers should be classified as Internet access providers, not hosting platforms. As such, they shouldn’t be held directly liable for third-party infringements.

“[H]osting providers or platforms through which content is made available for retrieval via the Internet are fundamentally different in terms of their technical functionality and also the provider’s ability to influence content posted by customers to operate a DNS resolver,” the appeal filing reads.

German Ruling, Global Blockade

Quad9 was already heavily disappointed by the original court ruling but then a few weeks ago, the situation took another turn for the worse.

Sony wasn’t happy with the geo-blocking measures taken by the DNS provider to comply with the ruling. The music company applied for an administrative fine at the Regional Court in Hamburg, arguing that the measures were ineffective.

According to Sony, the blocked Canna.to (and the new canna-power.to domain) site could still be reached by Germans through a VPN. In addition, users of an unnamed mobile network were also able to access the site, presumably because their traffic was routed outside of Germany.

Facing a €10,000 administrative fine, Quad9 felt that it had no other option than to block the pirate site globally, across its entire service.

“The fact that the court issued a fine meant that we had to impose the blocking at the global level,” Quad9 explains .

The DNS provider doesn’t agree with the fine as it has zero control over how third parties may circumvent blocking measures. However, its hands are tied and a global blockade is the only solution now.

Ultimately, Quad9 hopes that the lower court’s blocking order will be overturned on appeal. It will continue to fight the case, even if that takes several years.

“Quad9 is prepared to continue the battle for freedom of access to information and Internet sovereignty. Cases like this are typically drawn out over the course of months and years.

“We hope that we will ultimately prevail as we consider it to be inappropriate and disproportionate to be required to roll out blocking based on a court decision in one country to result in a global block,” Quad9 concludes.

—-

A translated copy of the appeal brief filed by Quad9’s lawyer at the Dresden Higher Regional Court is available here (pdf)

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

French football club Paris Saint-Germain holds the record for purchasing the two most expensive players in the world; Neymar for €222 million and Kylian Mbappe for €145 million.

In 2022, PSG reported losses of €368 million, with reports suggesting that Mbappe’s contract will end up costing the club around €630 million euros .

Barcelona, one of Spain’s most iconic clubs, has an average match crowd of more than 83,000 fans, but is also €1.35 billion in the red. Manchester United is almost a billion pounds in debt , and according to a recent report, the majority of all clubs in the UK are “ hugely loss-making .”

Italy Goes Hard on Pirates

Italian clubs also have debt problems; Inter Milan (€390m), Roma (€271m) and Juventus (€223m), for example. Top-tier Italian football clubs, broadcasters, and the government together concluded that since piracy must be mostly to blame, nothing should be off-limits in their quest to stamp it out.

Earlier this month, the Italian parliament gave the green light to new legislation that authorizes telecoms watchdog AGCOM to issue legally binding orders to the country’s ISPs. On receipt of an order and without delay, ISPs must take technical measures to block piracy-facilitating internet infrastructure.

Concerns that the entire internet industry would be required by law to stand by to protect the business interests of multi-billion euro corporations were mostly drowned out; urgency to get the law passed by parliament was the priority. Even when ISPs described the blocking program as a “ mega firewall ” scant attention was paid to the risks.

ISP Association Vows to Fight For Its Sector

After the law was passed earlier this month, official documents revealed that meetings to finalize exactly how unprecedented blocking would be achieved from a technical standpoint were yet to take place, and the “single technical platform” underpinning nationwide blocking in Italy was yet to be built.

Gian Battista Frontera is the president of the Association of Independent Providers ( Assoprovider ), a trade association that represents the interests of more than 200 small to medium-sized companies operating in the internet and telecoms sector. Frontera says that despite repeated warnings and requests to consider the concerns of its members, many of whom operate in remote, low-population, and disadvantaged areas, the government failed to listen.

“At risk are more than 2,000 companies and more than 10,000 highly specialized workers who have been providing services for decades in the most peripheral areas of the country, in inland and mountainous areas, those considered to be market failures where large companies are not present, playing a precious and irreplaceable role with their own financial resources in bridging the serious scourge of the digital divide,” Frontera wrote recently, hoping to avert a potential “disaster”.

The new law was ultimately approved by both houses of parliament, but Frontera says that it won’t be effective in the fight against piracy but will instead undermine Assoprovider’s members.

“[The law] obliges providers, at their own expense, to intervene promptly by disabling access to illicit content,” Frontera informs Corcom

“These obligations imposed on providers will force companies, which have an average of three to four employees and a turnover that barely reaches 500,000 euros, to hire at least four other people to guarantee a 24-hour control service, including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

According to Assoprovider estimates, the costs of complying with the rapid blocking requirements of the law could reach 200,000 to 300,000 euros per year, an amount that will push many smaller companies into bankruptcy. Larger players will have the resources to cope, Frontera suggests; they also have a vested interest.

“In addition to not being effective, this law still favors large multinationals, many of which have direct interests in the streaming sector, to the detriment of small and medium-sized enterprises,” he notes.

DAZN Angers Fans With Price Hikes

While the new law in Italy will protect all ‘live’ content, it was crafted to support broadcasters and football clubs in Serie A, Italy’s top league. Based on the assumption it will drive football fans away from pirate set-top boxes (known locally as “pezzotto”) and towards companies like DAZN, subscription uptake should be considerable.

Yet to a background of service failures and broadcasters offering much less for Serie A broadcasting rights, DAZN has just announced considerable subscription price rises in Italy. The country’s passionate football fans are less than happy (translated) .

Over the past several days, DAZN has been the subject of relentless criticism on social media. The price increases are obviously unpopular since they widen the gap between pirate and legal subscriptions when people feel the opposite is required.

“After the new law on #piracyonline, #Dazn triples the costs of subscriptions, 55 euros per month for a poor service full of problems. If you wanted to wage war against #pezzotto you are on the wrong track, now doing so will become a necessity,” one comment reads.

“Dear #DAZN, you increase the prices and I’ll subscribe to the #pezzotto . A month’s subscription to Dazn costs the same as a year of pezzotto. Adios,” adds another . Others are even more blunt .

The ‘coincidence’ between the new law being passed and prices going up is a popular angle of discussion, but there are plenty of others too, including DAZN’s website crashing when people tried to change their package online.

Overall though, many people feel that being a football fan is now more of a financial commitment than a pastime, one increasingly for the rich over the regular guy in the street.

The problem for Italy is that the popularity of the “pezzotto” will be difficult to repress, especially when events like those of the last few days end up generating interest in piracy, contrary to the goals of the new law.

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

It’s no secret that the majority of mainstream movies appear on pirate sites soon after their release. In that respect, not much has changed since the early 2000s. Pirate site aesthetics, on the other hand, have undergone a transformation.

Today’s pirate movie and TV show sites are considerably more polished, often carrying official poster images and metadata to give that Netflix-style feel. Pirate sites offering Japanese cartoons (anime) often look so good they could easily pass for legitimate platforms.

These glossy sites receive hundreds of millions of visits every month from extraordinarily enthusiastic fans who happily soak up every available detail but mostly pay nothing for the privilege.

Japanese rightsholders are making progress against anime piracy, even in challenging overseas territories such as Brazil . But having spotted the pots of gold at the end of the anime rainbow, companies like Disney also have content to protect. With decades of experience doing just that, there’s little doubt that the pressure is building.

DMCA Subpoenas, Visit to Vietnam

During the last week of June, high-level executives from the Motion Picture Association visited Vietnam, a hotbed of some of the most polished and popular pirate sites to ever exist. The visit coincided with the takedown of Vietnam-based 2Embed, a site that supplied hundreds of other sites with video content.

Authorities in Vietnam welcomed enhanced cooperation with ACE to tackle other pirate sites moving forward, but a visit to court in the United States and a routine application for a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare was also delivering results.

Animedao, one of the targeted sites

In the wake of our initial report on the subpoena early July, one of the targeted sites ‘Anime Kaizoku’ indicated it had thrown in the towel . Now a considerably larger platform claims to have done the same.

Animedao.to Announces Shutdown

Recent data published by SimilarWeb indicate that AnimeDao received over 54 million visits in three recent months. In April, the pirate anime site welcomed around 19.1 million visitors, and in May, around 18.1 million.

June’s figures were lower at 16.9 million visits, but with the majority of visitors arriving from the United States, it was inevitable that anti-piracy group ACE would eventually take action.

The DMCA subpoena provided fairly clear evidence that the site was under some type of investigation but what lies ahead after more recent developments is unclear.

As the image below shows, AnimeDao has now decided that for financial, technical, and legal reasons, its days of servicing millions of visitors each month are over.

The comment about content no longer being available without popup ads is interesting. While situations vary, it may suggest that at least some content arrives as a package and is intended to be consumed in a particular way, i.e. while being monetized.

The statement about CORS relates to cross-origin resource sharing, a browser mechanism that controls access to resources located outside of a given domain. This suggests that content that may otherwise have been accessible from other platforms is being restricted .

The final comment about ‘being targeted’ is self-explanatory but how that will play out, especially given recent events, is open for debate.

Problematic Resurrections

Following MPA/ACE’s visit to Vietnam, Zoro.to – until recently the world’s most popular pirate site – suddenly shut itself down and handed its domains over to the MPA .

Had that been the end of the matter, Hollywood would’ve probably mentioned it via a press release. What actually happened is that within hours of Zoro.to’s closure, it reemerged under a new domain (aniwatch.to) with all-new branding.

That could suggest that if any agreement was in place with the operator of Zoro, it might not have taken the form of a cast-iron legal contract usually associated with ACE activity. Whether that indicates one of the parties not taking things particularly seriously is open to speculation but the recent reemergence of former fan-favorite Aniwatch.me (not to be confused with Aniwatch.to) may be a sign of things going in the wrong direction.

Then finally, there was the demise of Anime Kaizoku, a much smaller site, but a significant closure nonetheless. After disappearing online in response to ACE pressure, a few days ago the animekaizoku.com domain suddenly found new life and now redirects to another anime site called Simkl.com, which is now scooping up all of the shuttered site’s traffic.

Only time will tell how this difficult anime landscape will change over the next few months, but it seems unlikely it will be allowed to continue in the manner it does today. The anime piracy scene seems to be extremely well organized, with both centralized and somewhat sophisticated independent systems ensuring that content reaches the widest possible audience via any number of supplied sites.

That raises interesting questions concerning the diversity of original (pirated) content sources and how that might affect the stability of the anime piracy ecosystem.

Relatively few sites offer large volumes of anime content that they both host and control, perhaps fewer than 10 and maybe less than that. One of those sites, GogoAnime, is relied upon by dozens of sites for their content so they may be especially vulnerable to being substantially wiped out overnight.

One domain that won’t be offering anime content anytime soon is BUNNYCDNN.RU. It was previously known for its connections with high-traffic anime platforms but today, after being transferred to a new owner, is now notable for being under the control of MPA/ACE.

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

In 2021, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal upheld the first pirate site-blocking order in the country.

The landmark decision opened the door to additional and more advanced blocking requests. Indeed, it didn’t take long before NHL broadcasters asked the court for a pirate IPTV blocking order of their own.

The Federal Court eventually granted this request for the ongoing season, with some safeguards. In part due to intervention from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic ( CIPPIC ), an independent expert was appointed to measure the effectiveness and proportionality of the blocking efforts.

This NHL blocking action was followed by a FIFA World Cup blocking order last fall, which was also granted without further hassle. Following up on these successes, rightsholders set their sights on the MLB.

2023 MBL ‘Blue Jays’ Piracy Blockade

Last week, Canada’s Federal Court authorized another sports streaming blockade. Following a complaint from Rogers and TVA, Canadian Internet providers are now required to block IP addresses used to broadcast Toronto Blue Jays games.

The blocking order is different from previous requests, as it mostly covers the games of Canada’s only MLB team. In addition, MLB Jewel Events including All-Star games and the World Series are covered as well. These limitations are determined by Rogers and TVA’s broadcast rights.

“Third Party Respondents shall, during each of the MLB Live Game Windows […] block or attempt to block access, by at least their residential wireline Internet service customers, to each of the IP addresses for the Target Servers,” Judge Lafrenière writes.

The game windows and server IP addresses are not disclosed, but they likely cover several of the most popular IPTV streaming services in Canada. These IP addresses can also be updated during the season, if streaming services try to circumvent the blockades.

The blocking efforts will remain in place for the remainder of the 2023 MLB season, which ends in October. If rightsholders would like to extend blocking to future seasons they will have to go back to court first.

Costs and Complaints

The Internet providers are not accused of any infringing activity and they will be compensated for any costs incurred when implementing these blocking measures. This compensation should be paid by the rightsholders, up to a maximum of CA$50,000.

As in previous cases, the Court has also appointed an independent expert to review the IP addresses submitted for blocking, to ensure that detection and notification requirements are followed.

TekSavvy is one of the Internet providers targeted through the order. While the company protested previous blockades , further protest appears pointless so the company will comply with the blocking requirements.

That said, TekSavvy does point out that other parties who are affected by the measures can challenge them in court.

“Anyone who claims to be affected by the order may also apply to the Court to discharge or vary the order. This includes any operators of servers who are affected by this order, any Internet service customer affected by the Order or any other third party who claims to be affected by this order,” the ISP notes.

This is the fourth blocking order issued in Canada. At the time of writing, only the original “GoldTV” blockade and the new MLB blockade remain active. The NHL order expired and must be renewed for the upcoming season if rightsholders want to keep it in place.

Interestingly, traditional pirate streaming and torrent sites are not yet blocked in Canada. A complaint against Soap2Day could have been the setup for the first attempt of this kind, but the streaming site decide to shut down after being served .

—

A copy of the MLB blocking order, issued by Justice Roger R. Lafrenière last week, is available here (pdf)

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

Given the scale of the problem and the underlying feeling that anti-piracy campaigns rarely have much of a long term impact, a change of tactics every few years is to be expected.

After demonizing file-sharers for much of the 2000s, more focus was placed on pirate sites and the people behind them. In parallel, pirates were asked to consider the effect of their habits on creators, not the very big ones, but those struggling through life trying to make ends meet, just like them.

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with that message but since Hollywood and most of the music industry thrive on images of extraordinary wealth and power, the message often found itself muffled under red carpets, dazzling awards shows, and other big displays of huge money, also not being shared with the little guys. It was time for another change in tactics.

Think About The Guy in the Mirror

The theme of the last five years has three key components: criminality, malware, and the welfare of pirates. Now portrayed as victims themselves rather than the reason pirate sites exist, pirates are warned about high-level organized crime, using digital content as misdirection, while malware steals their privacy and empties their bank accounts. Piracy also received an upgrade in the corridors of power; it’s a cybercrime issue now .

The narrative is indeed dramatic, but is it credible?

In many cases, this imagery is overblown and completely unhelpful. In other cases the claims are entirely credible, there’s little doubt about that. The caring-is-sharing philosophy has been on life support for years and by default, even the smallest pirate site operators are criminals under the law. In many cases the way they generate revenue is no more harmful to users than the rest of the awful advertising found online, but malware and other mechanisms are also part of the equation.

Based on the theory that scary reports have limited impact and that knowledge always beats fear, perhaps it’s the right time for people to make up their own minds after taking a little look under the hood. That’s not just an opportunity to see how things tick, but also part of a balancing exercise; legality and supporting creators on one side and illegality and potentially deal-breaking risks on the other.

Since Android apps are likely to be installed without even a moment’s thought, especially by younger people, that might be a good place to start. None of the following tools require any apps to be installed.

Free Tools For Basic Checks

While it’s not the most comprehensive tool on the market, CloudSEK’s BeVigil mobile app search engine can be installed on Android devices themselves via Google Play . The BeVigil app will raise the alarm if another app requests excessive permissions, while aiming to improve malware and vulnerability detection in rogue apps.

The BeVigil platform can also be accessed via the web, where users can search for an app by name or upload an app for the platform to test.

For the purposes of illustration we selected a single variant of the movie and TV show streaming app ‘ Pikashow ‘ at random and discovered three risky device permissions and three more flagged as dangerous.

For absolute beginners the color scheme alone provides guidance; green being broadly acceptable and red the complete opposite. Three reds means three red flags, no matter how many greens.

For the curious, clicking each reported color-coded permission will provide an explanation about what the app could do, if the user grants it permission to do so. For example, the red ‘system alert window’ permission above allows the app to place another window on top of all windows containing any message whatsoever.

Most of the time “Click here to remove malware” means “Click here to install malware” while “Click here to watch movies” means “Click here to install malware.” An alert window may also offer a shiny new update with sincere assurances that everything is always safe to use and despite warnings “click install anyway.” Countless people blindly do just that.

To be clear, not everything that raises an alarm turns out to be malicious but double-checking on another platform never hurts. We asked Immuniweb its opinion on the same app and it received an even worse report .

The overall score calculated for an app to be rated relatively ‘safe’ on BeVigil seemed too high. One BeeTV variant downloaded over a million times received a security rating of 7.4 despite requesting ‘system alert window’ permission and access to information in the user’s phone, including network provider, outgoing call status, and the details of all phone accounts registered to the phone.

The question that needs to be asked here is simple: Why does an app need all of that information just to play a video? The answer is simple too: It doesn’t.

VirusTotal and JoeSandbox

On a base level both VirusTotal and JoeSandbox make it easy for users to upload an APK and have it analyzed. In many cases other users will have uploaded the same file already, meaning that reports are available immediately.

These tools are much more advanced and while still easy to use, interpretation of the presented data becomes increasingly complex as connections are developed. VirusTotal has a gallery of other users’ investigations into all kinds of malware, which on one hand can be truly fascinating yet on the other, absolutely terrifying.

That being said, both have a free tier so are perfect for becoming more familiar with both apps and websites from a perspective most users never experience. Both platforms also allow viewing of detailed reports carried out in the past and one in particular catches the eye.

Advance warning that this report is huge and may well lock up your browser for a while as it loads. The report is a major concern and more time is needed to digest it properly, but it doesn’t look great at first blush.

More generally, the sky isn’t falling just yet but with so many opportunities to get educated via freely available tools, taking unnecessary risks needs to become a thing of the past. The important thing is to raise awareness; informed choices that resonate with the individual always beats blindly following the crowd.

Note: Risk can be managed and reduced but it cannot be eliminated. No single tool is authoritative. Testing on five tools is always better than testing on one. All security vendors reporting an app as clean does not necessarily mean that an app is safe. No app should be trusted by default just because it has a familiar name. Finally, security issues aside, it should be obvious that copyright infringement is against the law.

Other free tools worth checking out:

Any.run – Interactive malware analysis
Hybrid Analysis – Free malware analysis
Qu1cksc0pe – Malware analysis tool (advanced)
MobSF – Malware analysis tool

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

In January 2023, the Alliance Against Pay Television Piracy ( Allianz ) welcomed Jorge Bacaloni as the organization’s new president.

Bacaloni is also the Regional Anti-Piracy Manager of Vrio Corp, a company comprised of DirecTV Latin America and Sky Brasil, among others. In an interview following his appointment, the anti-piracy chief stressed that public/private partnerships are a necessity in the fight against piracy.

“It is necessary for the entire industry to accept that this is a challenge for everyone and to work in coordination,” he said .

“Alianza has a very important role, but it cannot fight a huge criminal network alone, one that is growing by leaps and bounds, hand in hand with technological advances. That is why we believe that governments, in addition to creating favorable conditions for the private sector to create value, must carry out concrete actions to provide legal certainty.”

Precisely when DirecTV’s anti-piracy team filed its complaint with the authorities in Argentina isn’t clear, but it appears the type of cooperation Bacaloni called for again in June is already producing results.

Specialist Prosecutor Launches Investigation

DirecTV’s complaint focused on Digital TV, a pirate IPTV service offering around 900 live TV channels, including channels exclusive to the company in Latin America. Digital TV also had a sizeable VOD platform, 8,000 movies and 400 TV series, DirecTV reports. To round off the package, Digital TV reportedly offered live soccer and adult channels as part of a low-cost subscription deal.

Under the control of specialist cybercrime prosecutor Alejandro Musso in Buenos Aires, the investigation was carried out by Argentina’s Specialized Fiscal Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrimes ( UFECI ) with assistance from fraud investigators at online marketplace operator Mercado Libre.

Raids Against Pirate IPTV Provider ‘Digital TV’

After receiving authorization from a local court, law enforcement carried out raids in the Buenos Aires Province town of Ramos Mejía, and the cities of Arrecifes and Chivilcoy.

“A 22-year-old man, a computer technician with extensive knowledge of programming, was arrested in Ramos Mejía and brought to justice after being accused of being the creator of ‘Digital TV’, a platform that was used for the illegal retransmission of television signals,” a statement from DirecTV reads.

Image of the raid issued by police

The company says that according to a preliminary inspection, the service had around 85,000 subscribers. An app associated with the service, available for download from “one of the main virtual stores” is said to have been downloaded over 100,000 times.

“The Court ordered [the app’s] immediate blocking given the million-dollar losses suffered by rightsholders due to the action of piracy,” DirecTV adds.

TorrentFreak found an app fitting that description on Google Play .

At the time of writing the app remains available on Google Play from Argentinian and overseas IP addresses. The same is true for what appears to be one of Digital TV’s websites .

TorrentFreak was independently able to link the app on Google Play directly with the website, and then link both to the developer arrested by police.

Police Traced “Mastermind” Via IP Addresses

Local media outlet La Nacion published police photographs of the suspect and identified him as local man Martin Coll, the alleged “mastermind” behind DigitalTV and just one of the players involved in TV piracy across Latin America.

“The suspect is part of one of the organizations that operates throughout Latin America, it is a million-dollar business that generates large losses for the affected companies,” a police source said.

Police-issued photo of Digital TV suspect

La Nacion reported that police were able to identify Coll by tracking the IP addresses he used online. While that evidence would indeed prove useful as part of a larger package, we were able to discover the name of the “mastermind” within five minutes of downloading the Digital TV Android app from Google Play.

Whether it was a blunder or misplaced overconfidence is unclear, but the Digital TV app contains an abundance of useful information. In terms of personally identifying information, the certificates are particularly informative since they carry the developer’s full name.

Among other highly sensitive pieces of information, the app links to an API at the domain DigitalTV.cloud. Other than a default server landing page there’s no public-facing website at that address, but one does exist at another URL .

The servers indicated behind the scenes clearly formed an important part of Digital TV’s infrastructure and the authorities are obviously well aware of that since the domain is now linked to an ISP blocking notice.

As noted earlier, Coll’s anonymity was completely removed when local media published his full name and photographs, which included images of the suspect in handcuffs following his arrest. Whether that’s normal for Argentinan media is unclear but whatever the truth, local TV channel Canal26 went on to broadcast images of the suspect to 4.5 million subscribers all around the country.

When that genie escapes from the bottle, there’s no hope of returning it. In the meantime, reports suggest the developer is refusing to answer any questions. Two other men said to be resellers of the service have reportedly been identified by the authorities.

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

Operating a pirate site is not without risk. Those who get caught risk millions of dollars in damages, multi-year prison sentences, or even both.

To avoid that fate, many sites prefer not to poke the proverbial bear. With dozens of high-profile shutdowns in recent years, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment ( ACE ) is the biggest bear there is in the piracy landscape.

DonTorrent Stands Out

ACE is well aware of all large pirate sites, so hiding isn’t really an option. Instead, most sites simply try to stand out less than the rest, a strategy that doesn’t apply to one of Spain’s most popular torrent sites, DonTorrent.

With millions of visitors, DonTorrent is one of the larger pirate sites in the region but getting users to the site isn’t always easy. Spanish ISPs are required to block DonTorrent, so the site regularly rotates to fresh domains.

DonTorrent currently has over 100 registered domains and also offers a censorship-free Tor version. To inform followers about its most recent new home, it uses a dedicated Telegram channel , which pops up for all new visitors.

Taunting the Anti-Piracy ‘Don’

The photo that accompanies the Telegram invite link may not immediately ring a bell with everyone, but those in the know recognize Jan Van Voorn’s likeness. Van Voorn is the head of ACE and MPA’s Chief of Global Content Protection.

Van Voorn’s photo, with an added pirate hat and crossbones, is also present in the site’s official logo now. Apparently, the site is not afraid of drawing attention, even though this type of mockery is likely to make ACE even more determined to find its operators.

This isn’t the first time that DonTorrent has openly featured the ACE chief. The torrent site previously listed Van Voorn as the site’s owner and is now upping the ante.

Needless to say, ACE is working behind the scenes to find those responsible for the site. For example, a few weeks ago the coalition obtained a subpoena that required Cloudflare to hand over the details of the admin behind Dontorrent.cat, and there have been similar attempts in the past.

Thus far this hasn’t resulted in any effective enforcement actions, suggesting that the torrent site doesn’t have any sensitive data at Cloudflare. But ACE is not an outfit that gives up easily. According to Van Voorn, DonTorrent is indeed on its radar but the group didn’t have much more to add at the moment.

Messing With OSINT Investigators

DonTorrent is well aware of the potential risks involved but seems unfazed by it all. Speaking with TorrentFreak, one of the people involved with the site notes that OSINT investigators are circling the site as well.

For example, an IP crime investigator from a Belgian company, located close to one of MPA’s branches, sent money to DotTorrent’s Paypal address, presumably fishing for information. Whether MPA or ACE were involved in this is unknown, but the torrent site laughed it off.

DonTorrent also shared an example of a Spanish investigator who apparently tried to obtain IP-address details via email. When DonTorrent privately confronted the person via social media, the OSINT expert blamed it on an infected server.

For the Lulz (and Some ‘Netflix’ Money)

Needless to say, the site is playing a high-stakes game that has an asynchronous payout. It can only be lost once.

In addition to taunting anti-piracy forces for fun, the site also generates revenue through advertisements. These are not the nasty popups found on some pirate sites. Instead, the income is ironically generated indirectly through legal streaming platforms.

DonTorrent is an affiliate for StartGaming , a service where users can purchase shared accounts for legal streaming services. Whether Netflix, Disney and HBO are happy with this is doubtful.

It’s not clear how password-sharing crackdowns will affect this business model but, for now, it helps the torrent site to pay its bills.

“We don’t make money through popups, malware, or pushing intrusive advertising. What we have is a deal with an external store that we take a percentage of the user’s purchase in their store,” our DonTorrent contact says.

The revenue helps to pay the server bills but it’s not the site’s goal to make big bucks. Instead, DonTorrent says that it is mostly a hobby project. While that may be true, it certainly is a risky one.

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

Two years ago, Bungie filed a complaint at a federal court in Seattle, accusing AimJunkies.com of copyright and trademark infringement, among other things.

The same accusations were also made against Phoenix Digital Group, the alleged creators of the ‘Destiny 2’ cheating software.

AimJunkies denied the claims and argued that cheating isn’t against the law . In addition, it refuted the copyright infringement allegations; these lacked substance because some of the referenced copyrights were registered well after the cheats were first made available, AimJunkies said.

AimJunkies Won Fist Battle

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly handed an early and partial win to AimJunkies . The original complaint didn’t provide sufficient evidence for a plausible claim that the ‘Destiny 2 Hacks’ infringed any copyrights, the Judge concluded.

This was a setback for Bungie, but the court allowed the game developer to amend its complaint, which it promptly did. As a result, the copyright infringement dispute is currently ongoing and progressing through the legal process.

During 2022, Judge Zilly referred several of the non-copyright-related complaints to arbitration, including allegations that AimJunkies’ cheats violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision and were illegally sold to third parties.

Arbitration Judge Sides with Bungie

The arbitration process was conducted behind the scenes and resulted in a resounding win for the game developer; Bungie was awarded a total of nearly $4.4 million in damages and fees .

The bulk of the award was DMCA-related damages. According to arbitration Judge Ronald Cox, the evidence made it clear that AimJunkies and third-party developer James May bypassed Bungie’s technical protection measures in violation of the DMCA.

In addition to breaching the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, the defendants were also found liable for trafficking in circumvention devices. Or, put differently, selling and shipping the cheats.

The DMCA circumvention and trafficking violations total nearly $3.6 million in damages with the remainder of the $4.4 million consisting of fees and costs.

Aimjunkies Files Appeal

AimJunkies opposed the arbitration outcome but U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly ultimately denied these objections and confirmed the arbitration order last month.

That could have been the end of the road for this part of the lawsuit, but the cheat seller is not quick to concede. It recently filed an appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping for a better outcome.

“Defendants Aimjunkies.com, Phoenix Digital Group LLC, Jeffrey Conway, David Schaefer, Jordan Green and James May hereby appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,” attorney Philip Mann writes.

In addition to the confirmation of the arbitration order, the defendants also appeal the associated permanent injunction that prevents them from creating and selling similar hacks and cheats in the future.

Battles on Multiple Fronts

AimJunkies has yet to file its opening brief at the Court of Appeal. The deadline to do so is in October, so the matter won’t be resolved anytime soon. Meanwhile, there are other battles to fight as well.

Bungie’s copyright and trademark infringement claims remain pending and the countersuit, where third-party cheat developer James May accuses Bungie of ‘hacking,’ theft, and DMCA violations , also remains outstanding.

These issues are expected to be resolved during a multi-day trial, currently expected to take place later this year.

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