Many events have contributed to the rise and fall of online piracy rates over the past 20 years but few – if any – can match the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Western companies’ partial or complete withdrawal across all entertainment sectors has profoundly affected content availability. Pre-2022 content libraries remain accessible in some cases but fresh releases of movies, music, and videogames are mostly a thing of the past, at least how things stand today.

The chaos in the movie market has been well-documented over the past 17 months and there are now signs that the videogame market is unlikely to escape a similar fate.

Seven Out of Ten Gamers Now Pirate

According to a survey carried out by online game development platform School XYZ , the departure of major international videogame publishers from the Russian market led to a sharp rise in the number of video gamers playing pirated games.

Almost seven out of ten video gamers (69%) said they’d played at least one pirated copy in 2022, and more than half (51%) said that they’re now pirating more than they did in 2021.

As first reported by the Russian news outlet Vedomosti ( paywall ) , the study was conducted across all regions of Russia and took into account all unlicensed game formats, in most cases downloaded from torrent sites.

While over a quarter of respondents (27%) said they’d pirated three PC games in 2022, and 20% confessed to pirating more than 10, other figures from the study are more positive. Of the 31% of gamers who reported pirating nothing in 2022, all said that they were opposed to piracy. Just 7% of gamers admitted to buying no games at all in 2022, meaning that 93% bought at least one piece of legitimate content.

Availability and Convenience

It’s long been argued that if content isn’t made available through legal channels, people will find a way to pirate it. Equally, if content is made available but customers are subjected to an inconvenient process to access it, that can contribute to higher rates of piracy.

According to Alexander Kuzmenko, the former editor of Russian videogame magazine and gaming website Igromania (Game Mania), it’s not just the departure of publishers including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo causing problem for gamers.

When platforms like Steam and GOG, known for their ease of access, stopped supporting Russian bank cards, barriers appeared in a previously frictionless system. Yegor Tomsky, CEO at Watt Studio , agrees that buying content has become much more difficult.

“Players are used to buying games on Steam in one click, and now, to buy a game, you need to perform the same actions as when downloading a pirated version, so everyone chooses to save money,” Tomsky says.

Multiple Factors Could Further Increase Piracy Rates

As the Russian economy faces huge difficulties directly linked to the invasion of Ukraine, some fear that game piracy rates are heading towards the 90%+ mark last seen around two decades ago.

People everywhere are trying to save money and according to Konstantin Sakhnov, co-founder of Vengeance Games, overseas game publishers may see lost profits reach $200-$300 million. A report from Kommersant published today indicates that local companies are also feeling the pain.

According to data published by job search platform HH.ru, during the first half of 2023 the number of vacancies for video game developers in Russia plummeted 38%.

During a recent Russia – a Land of Opportunities meeting, President Putin dismissed ideas that videogames are mere toys; even as part of a multi-billion dollar business, they have an important role to play, one that transcends money.

“The videogame should help a person develop, help find himself. It should help educate a person within the framework of universal human values ​​and within the framework of patriotism, and broadly from a humanitarian point of view.”

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

Over the past several years, adult entertainment company Strike 3 Holdings has filed thousands of copyright cases in U.S. federal courts.

These lawsuits target people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent.

Rare File-Sharing Trial

Many of these cases result in private settlements and are never heard of again. On occasion, however, a defendant decides to push back. A case that was initially filed against a “John Doe” in Florida, made it all the way to the final trial preparations.

It’s unusual for such a file-sharing case to be so heavily litigated since that’s quite costly for both sides. The prospect of a potential jury trial is even rarer, but neither Strike 3 nor the defendant, who was later named as John Adaire, wanted to give in.

The case has plenty of nuances but, in essence, the main question was whether Adaire downloaded and shared 36 of Strike 3’s porn videos without permission. According to the adult company, the evidence was clear as day.

Opposing Views

Strike 3 previously informed the court that it repeatedly found an IP address, assigned to the defendant, sharing pirated movies. This was backed up by technical evidence as well as other expert testimony.

The adult company further accused the defendant of destroying evidence by wiping data from his desktop computer, mishandling a hard drive, and reinstalling the operating system on his laptop.

For his part, the defendant drew the court’s attention to Strike 3’s piracy evidence, suggesting that it was below par.

The adult company uses tracking software to monitor the IP addresses in BitTorrent swarms. Similar to other rightsholders, this is then recorded in ‘PCAP’ evidence files. However, Strike 3 developed its “VXN” tracking technology in-house, which makes it little more than ‘circumstantial’ evidence.

No Trial

The case was scheduled to go to trial this week, and attorneys and jurors were all getting ready for several days of court action. On Sunday evening, however, there was a sudden breakthrough after the parties reached a confidential settlement.

“Parties have finalized and executed, by way of written agreement, a final settlement resolving all claims raised in this case. Based on such resolution, the Parties notify the Court that a trial would be moot,” they informed the court.

Due to the confidential nature of the settlement, it’s not clear if either party agreed to pay compensation. And the fact that both sides are content with the outcome doesn’t give anything away either.

Everybody Happy?

Defense attorney Curt Edmondson informs us that the dispute was amicably resolved to the satisfaction of all. Strike 3’s lawyer Christian Waugh is also content with how the lawsuit was resolved.

Strike 3 sees the outcome as “historic”, in part due to the permanent injunction agreed as part of the settlement deal.

A case like this, where my client obtained summary judgment on Defendant’s counterclaim and the judge actually found that the Defendant spoliated evidence, is not one that is appropriate for wasting a judge or jury’s time in trial.

This injunction, which has yet to be signed by the Florida court, stipulates that the defendant will have to pay $125,000 in damages if they infringe any of Strike 3’s copyrights in the future.

“The injunction itself is a historic result for content creators and owners like my client,” Waugh tells TorrentFreak. “There are extraordinary penalties, including contempt, if Defendant ever violates the injunction imposed by the Court,”

The defense attorney adds some nuance to the injunction by pointing out that his client never downloaded any of Strike 3’s movies and has no plans to do so. This means that the massive penalty for any future infringements should never come into play.

“An injunction is for future acts. As the defendant did not download Strike 3’s movies, he has no desire or interest to do so in the future,” Edmondson notes.

“I was surprised that Strike 3 wanted to settle,” he adds, noting that earlier this year Strike 3 seemed determined to prove that their evidence was reliable. The defense, however, had a different take.

“The reality was that the raw PCAP data was extremely weak and closed to non-existent. We mapped the PCAPs and recreated .MP4 files from the PCAP data and nothing was playable. Strike 3 could have taken us to trial and they chose not to.”

The fact that improperly accused defendants cannot claim massive damages awards like copyright holders can, settling the matter made the most sense. Especially since one never knows what a Jury will decide.

More Lawsuits Pending

Now that the trial is out of the way, Strike 3 can focus on the many hundreds of open lawsuits filed at U.S. federal courts. The company is currently on track to set a new all-time record for the number of complaints filed in a year.

While some have labeled this activity as copyright trolling , Strike 3 points out that it’s a legitimate copyright holder, merely protecting its rights.

“The point of my client’s litigation is not personal or to harm any defendant, it is to protect its rights under the Copyright Act, which has been done in this case,” Strike 3’s attorney concludes.

—

A copy of the joint notice of resolution is available here (pdf) and the permanent injunction that’s referenced above can be found here (pdf)

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

Three-ish plus decades ago, telecoms companies were best known for installing analog telephones in people’s homes and sending paper bills through the mail to be paid by check.

Many later branched out into the lucrative mobile phone market, but as operators of wired telephone networks, major phone companies all over the world would soon become the gatekeepers of a brave new world – the internet. While that was exciting for a while, with little opportunity for added value, selling a commodity product like bandwidth can be a race to the bottom.

By providing bandwidth and profiting from the content that consumes lots of it, telecom companies today are able to add value to their base products and generate much more profit. In 2024, telephone company Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España will celebrate its 100th birthday. Under its modern-day branding, Telefónica is a telecoms and media empire with assets worth around $110 billion, significant interests in the pay-TV market, and lots of valuable content to protect from pirates.

Telefónica and NAGRA Boost Partnership

Anti-piracy company NAGRA has also undergone a transformation. From the 1950s onwards, NAGRA produced high-end portable tape-recording devices but is better known for the video scrambling system Nagravision, which aimed to prevent unauthorized reception of pay-TV signals and any subsequent recording. In that sense, NAGRA hasn’t changed its core market but thanks to the internet, content protection now faces significant challenges from increasingly sophisticated pirates.

This week Telefónica and NAGRA announced an expansion of their existing relationship as the former works to counter the threat from pirate IPTV services. As it expands its anti-piracy operations in Latin America, Telefónica said its fraud prevention team sought access to advanced anti-piracy technologies and case file histories. While Telefónica has its own intelligence sources, a solution offered by NAGRA proved attractive.

Pirate IPTV: Identify and Disrupt

A statement from Telefónica says that NAGRA’s product provides “innovative ways to identify, monitor and display pirate activity.” The system is supported by AI-powered analytics which will alert Telefónica to “illicit patterns of activity.”

Madrid-based Delia Álvarez, manager of Global Fraud Prevention at Telefónica, says the relationship with NAGRA will provide vital intelligence as it seeks to identify and disrupt global piracy networks.

“Content piracy is a major concern with a direct impact on our performance. To increase our effectiveness in this ongoing battle, we chose to expand our existing relationship with NAGRA,” Álvarez says.

“They have a proven, global capacity to identify and remediate pirate activity. Their threat intelligence provides further value to our Fraud Prevention teams as they seek to identify and disrupt large-scale piracy networks.”

NAGRA’s Active Streaming Protection framework ( pdf ) is already deployed at Telefónica and will supplement other content protection mechanisms such as watermarking.

“We are proud to extend our partnership with Telefónica to now include more anti-piracy services.” said Pascal Metral, VP Anti-Piracy Intelligence, Investigation & Litigation, NAGRA. “Helping our customers tackle one of the biggest threats to both their revenues and their significant investments in content is our core focus and we look forward to our services unseating pirates across the Telefónica ecosystem.”

Telefónica Developers

Those with an interest in software development will find Telefónica’s official source code platform on GitHub with an impressive 261 repositories to trawl for interesting gems.

These include GoSwiftyM3U8 , a framework for parsing and handling .m3u8 playlist files that also happen to be popular among IPTV pirates. There are many reasons why the company might be interested in App Logger for Android but seemingly fewer uses for its fork of CLA-Videodownloader , a web/REST interface for downloading YouTube videos onto a server.

Telefónica’s developers are also the creators of HomePwn , billed as a Swiss Army Knife for Pentesting of IoT Devices. VpnHood , meanwhile, is an “undetectable VPN for ordinary users and experts” that’s able to bypass firewalls and circumvent Deep Packet Inspection.

Finally, a big thanks to the ElevenPaths team at Telefonica Tech for FOCA (Fingerprinting Organizations with Collected Archives), a tool that regularly makes document metadata a more interesting read than the documents themselves.

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

In recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have complained that current legislative frameworks fail to provide efficient tools to tackle live streaming piracy.

This problem was highlighted repeatedly last year as the European Commission drafted its plans to tackle ‘live piracy’ going forward.

End the Live Piracy Plague

A group of more than a hundred stakeholders, including several of the largest sports organizations, called on the Commission to propose new legislation to effectively deal with the problem. Their motto: “ End Live Piracy Now “.

“We call on the European Commission to deliver a legislative instrument to tackle live content piracy as a firm commitment from the European Executive branch to address this issue with adequate measures.

“Notably, guaranteeing that notified illegal content is taken down immediately and blocked before the live event terminates,” the organizations added.

The plan eventually unveiled by the EU was mostly seen as a disappointment to rightsholders as it lacked support from new legislation. A subsequent ‘battle plan’ published by the Commission failed to propose concrete changes to the law and hammered on voluntary cooperation instead.

Amidst these legislative lobbying efforts, sports events continued, and so did live piracy. Recent surveys and studies have shown that the problem is growing globally. This increases the frustrations of rightsholders, who feel that more advanced tools and enforcement methods are required to properly deal with the problem.

IBCAP Books ‘Live’ Anti-Piracy Success

In this standoff, there are also positive signs, however. This week, the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy ( IBCAP ) reports that its enforcement efforts in Europe and elsewhere are proving highly successful.

A few weeks ago, the coalition expanded its anti-piracy coverage to include Europe and the Middle East, adding Times Internet , India’s largest digital network, to its list of clients. This was timed well, as the network owns Cricbuzz , which was about to broadcast the Indian Premier League which attracts millions of viewers.

Cricbuzz has the broadcasting rights to the popular cricket event and IBCAP was tasked with protecting its live streams. At a time when other rightsholders mostly complain about the efficacy of existing anti-piracy measures, IBCAP has a more positive story.

100%

According to IBCAP, its worldwide efforts resulted in a “significant piracy takedown success” causing a “ major disruption ” of Indian Premier League piracy. This includes an impeccable “100%” takedown rate on social media and mobile applications.

“The team was able to disrupt nearly 9,000 streams over the course of the tournament, with more than 3.6 million views being disrupted on Facebook Live streams. The IBCAP team achieved an impressive 100% takedown rate for social media and mobile applications, constituting a significant portion of the infringing content,” the coalition reports.

While we can’t independently verify that all IBCAP takedowns were successful, it’s not hard to find evidence of IPL clips being taken down from Twitter and other services. Apparently, this was possible without any additional legislation.

From Pirates to Paying Subscribers?

In addition to its work for Cricbuzz, IBCAP also monitored piracy for the TV channel Willow . These efforts combined not only reduced piracy but presumably convinced some pirates to go legal.

“The impact of early and frequent takedowns throughout the IPL 2023 tournament undoubtedly led to frustration for pirates, increased legal viewership of the matches by consumers, and resulted in the acquisition of new paying customers for IBCAP members.

“The data once again shows that early action and consistent takedowns, particularly for cricket tournaments and other live sports coverage, result in a poor experience for users of pirate services and cause many of those users to switch to legal providers,” IBCAP adds.

Again, the information made available lacks hard data to verify these statements, but they are an interesting contrast to the complaints we have seen from sports organizations and rightsholders over the years.

Apparently, it’s also possible to effectively act against live-streaming piracy without additional legislation. According to Chintan Udani, Product and Business Lead for Cricbuzz, this can lead to impressive results.

“We are highly impressed by IBCAP’s monitoring capabilities in Europe and the Middle East. Their methods and tools are effective,” Udani concludes.

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

In common with content created in other fields, photographs generally enjoy protection under copyright law, allowing photographers to determine who can duplicate and/or distribute their work.

Photographers Alexis Hunley and Matthew Brauer posted several of their copyrighted works on Instagram. In January 2016, Time published an article titled ‘These Photographers Are Covering the Presidential Campaign on Instagram.’ Within that article, Time embedded one of Brauer’s Instagram posts, which contained a copyrighted photograph of Hillary Clinton to which Brauer owned the copyright.

In June 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, BuzzFeed News published an article titled “17 Powerful Pictures Of The Protests Through The Eyes of Black Photographers.” Within that article was a photograph taken by Alexis Hunley, displayed via an embedded post from Hunley’s Instagram page.

Time did not seek permission from Brauer or Instagram to embed the photograph of Hillary Clinton. BuzzFeed News did not seek permission or attempt to license Hunley’s photograph taken during the protests. Outraged at losing control over where their works appeared, Hunley and Brauer filed a class action lawsuit against Instagram for allowing their images to be displayed on third-party sites without permission from the copyright holder.

Copyright Claims Against Instagram

The photographers’ main target was Instagram, which Hunley accused of “intentionally and brazenly” encouraging and assisting third-party sites to display copyrighted works, while making no effort to stop the “rampant infringement”.

The complaint accused Instagram of inducement of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and vicarious copyright infringement. Time and BuzzFeed News stood accused of violating Hunley’s right of display. Hunley sought damages for the alleged infringement and an injunction to prevent further violations.

At the district court, the complaint was found to have fundamental flaws, which Instagram laid bare in its motion to dismiss. At BuzzFeed News, the location where Hunley’s image was displayed, there could be no violation of Hunley’s exclusive display right under the Copyright Act. To be found liable, an alleged infringer must display a copy of a copyrighted work; in this case, the photographs were embedded and were always stored on Instagram’s servers. The district court commented as follows:

“[BuzzFeed and Time] do not violate Instagram users’ exclusive display rights. Because they do not store the images and videos, they do not ‘fix’ the copyrighted work in any ‘tangible medium of expression.’ Therefore, when they embed the images and videos, they do not display ‘copies’ of the copyrighted work.”

All of Hunley’s copyright claims alleged secondary liability but such claims cannot exist when there is no direct infringement. Hunley’s original and first amended complaints both stated that Instagram hosted the images; that proved terminal as far as the district court was concerned. In February 2022, Hunley was denied leave to amend the complaint because the deficiencies were simply too great. The case was dismissed and Hunley appealed.

Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

In an opinion published on Monday, the Court references its own decision in the Perfect 10 v. Amazon, Inc. ( pdf ) case in 2007.

Perfect 10, a publisher of copyrighted nude images, alleged that Amazon and Google infringed its rights when they displayed thumbnail images of Perfect 10’s photographic works. Google did not host or store the main images that appeared in users’ web browsers, they were embedded from the source servers, just like the photographers’ posts were on Instagram.

“Applying the Server Test to the facts, we concluded that Google’s in-line linking (what we now call embedding) did not display a ‘copy’ of Perfect 10’s copyrighted images as that term is defined in the Copyright Act,” the opinion reads. “Although ‘Google may [have] facilitate[d] the user’s access to infringing images,’ we concluded that ‘such assistance . . . does not constitute direct infringement.”

Hunley argued that the ‘Server Test’ should not apply to social media platforms but since “ Perfect 10 states the rule for infringing the public display right using embedding” the argument was not considered. The opinion does rule out both direct and secondary infringement, however.

By posting photographs to her public Instagram profile, Hunley stored a copy of those images on Instagram’s servers. By displaying Hunley’s images, Instagram did not directly infringe Hunley’s exclusive display right because Instagram had a nonexclusive sublicense to display these photos.

Because BuzzFeed and Time embedded — but did not store — the underlying copyrighted photographs, they are not guilty of direct infringement. Without direct infringement, Hunley cannot prevail on any theory of secondary liability.

“For the foregoing reasons, we find no error in the judgment of the district court,” the opinion concludes ( pdf )

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

In February 2022, U.S. broadcaster DISH Network filed a $32.5m lawsuit against DataCamp, claiming that the UK-based CDN company failed to take action against copyright-infringing customers.

The complaint, filed in an Illinois district court, alleged that pirate IPTV services Banjo TV, Bollywood IPTV, Comstar TV, Express IPTV, Gennie TV, Gold TV, IPGuys, Istar, Red IPTV, Sky IPTV, and Zumm TV, were all customers of DataCamp.

DISH informed the court that despite sending “hundreds of notices” requesting the removal of content under the DMCA, plus copies of lawsuits and judgments relating to pirate IPTV services, DataCamp failed to “adopt and reasonably implement” a repeat infringer policy.

In an August 2022 motion to dismiss, DataCamp countered that it forwarded takedown notices to the relevant customers while encryption meant it had zero knowledge of its customers’ activities.

New Motion to Dismiss

The parties later confirmed that DISH had served requests for production on DataCamp, which included copies of invoices and support tickets for the pirate IPTV services named in the complaint. Amid ongoing settlement discussions, the Court dismissed DataCamp’s motion to dismiss late March 2023, without prejudice to later refiling.

Fact discovery deadlines were extended but with no settlement reached, DataCamp again filed a motion to dismiss, leading to further extensions of time being granted by the Court. On July 12, 2023, DISH was granted permission to depose Tomas Bacik, DataCamp’s Head of Sales & Client Solutions, DataCamp director Simon Rybisar, and DataCamp chief Zdenek Cendra . Two days later, the Court ruled on DataCamp’s motion to dismiss.

Memorandum Opinion and Order

DataCamp’s motion argued that allegations in the complaint of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 501 failed to state a claim.

DISH alleged that DataCamp ignored or turned a blind eye to its pirate IPTV customers’ “willful and repeated infringement” despite “having knowledge” of the infringement and the ability to prevent it. DISH believes that DataCamp is therefore both contributorily and vicariously liable since it profited from infringement while having the ability to prevent it.

Knowledge of Infringement, Failure to Prevent

A defendant like DataCamp can be held liable for contributory infringement when it has knowledge of the infringing activities of a third party, and induces, causes, or materially contributes to it.

According to DISH, 400 DMCA notices detailing the name of the pirate IPTV services, the channels allegedly infringed, plus the IP addresses, domain names, URLs used to transmit the works, and packet capture logs, were sufficient to establish knowledge.

DataCamp said the infringement notices provided “at most” a “general knowledge” that future infringement is likely, meaning that it had no duty to prevent it.

In his memorandum opinion and order dated July 12, 2023, United States District Judge John F. Kness says the hundreds of notices sent by DISH contained “ample information” that would have allowed DataCamp to prevent infringement.

“The notices named the Pirate Service, the infringing Works being broadcasted, and the IP addresses, URLs, and domain names being used to transmit the infringing works. This information provided Defendant with sufficient knowledge to act against the infringing Pirate Services—in other words, with knowledge of specific infringing uses,” the order reads.

Judge Kness also rejects the argument that encryption prevented DataCamp from viewing the infringing materials; the infringement notices themselves provided DataCamp with knowledge of the infringement. The Judge also notes additional evidence to support the allegation that DataCamp knew about the infringement.

In its complaint, DISH alleged that it had previously served DataCamp with a court order requiring it to disable IP addresses associated with pirate IPTV services, yet DataCamp failed to do so promptly. The Judge also cites comments from DataCamp’s CEO in 2019, which appeared to acknowledge that the company needed to be “more strict” with its customers.

Coupled with DISH’s allegations that DataCamp only forwarded some of the infringement notices, and in any event, the pirate IPTV services continued to infringe, DataCamp’s motion to dismiss the contributory infringement claims was denied.

Vicarious Infringement

A defendant like DataCamp can be held liable for vicarious infringement when it has the right and ability to supervise infringing activity and has a direct financial interest in it. In its motion to dismiss, DataCamp claimed that the allegations in the complaint fail to meet that standard.

Highlighting terms in DataCamp’s service agreement, DISH said that DataCamp could have terminated its business with the pirate IPTV providers for any reason. Alternative options could have seen DataCamp verify the services’ rights to distribute the copyrighted works, ensure compliance with the infringement notices, implement a repeat infringer policy, or implement a geo-blocking system to prevent access to the streams in the United States.

DataCamp did not argue that it lacked the right to supervise the infringing activity. The company said it lacked the ability and the plaintiff’s proposals to prevent infringement were either “impossible” or “far too overbroad.” Judge Kness found no need to consider any of the alternatives proposed by DISH.

“Defendant could directly stop the infringement by terminating access to the CDN,” the Judge writes.

“None of the authorities cited by Defendant support the proposition that terminating access is an overbroad remedy. Accordingly, the Court need not consider Plaintiff’s alternative proposed remedies. The complaint adequately alleges that Defendant had the ability to stop the infringement.”

Direct Financial Interest

DISH’s complaint alleges that the pirate IPTV services offer its channels at an artificially low price, which encourages end users to subscribe to the services. In turn, this increases the bandwidth consumed at DataCamp and the scale of the payments received by the CDN company. Due to DataCamp’s “lax policy” towards infringement, pirate IPTV services are motivated to sign up and continue to do business with DataCamp, meaning that bandwidth consumption increases, while payments for that bandwidth increase too.

DataCamp’s position is that “attracting users” and “increasing the value of its business” are “too far removed from the alleged infringement to be considered a ‘direct’ financial interest.” According to Judge Ness, everything boils down to whether there is “a causal relationship between the infringing activity and any financial benefit a defendant reaps, regardless of how substantial that benefit is.”

Noting that DataCamp is paid directly by the pirate IPTV services and that payments received are related to the amount of bandwidth consumed by the pirate services’ customers, the infringing activity induces end users to consume more bandwidth, Judge Ness notes. He, therefore, concludes that DataCamp obtained a direct financial benefit and that the allegations in the complaint establish a causal relationship between infringement and profit.

“The profits reaped from infringement also attracts new Pirate Services to Defendant’s CDN and incentives current Pirate Services to remain with the CDN, meaning more profit for Defendant. Accordingly, Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s claim for vicarious infringement is denied,” Judge Kness concludes.

With that, DataCamp’s motion to dismiss was denied in full.

The memorandum opinion and order is available here (pdf)

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

To the global audience Ulož.to may not be well-known internationally but in the Czech Republic, it is huge.

The file-sharing and hosting service has millions of users and is listed as the 51st most-visited website in the country. In addition, its mobile apps are frequently used as well.

Like many other file storage platforms, Ulož can be used to share a wide variety of files. Copyright holders complain that many people abuse the platform to share pirated music, movies, and TV shows.

Piracy Battles in Court

Like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, Uloz removes infringing content when it receives takedown notices. However, Czech rightsholders are not happy with the status quo and have sued the company on several occasions, demanding damages and tougher anti-piracy measures.

In 2020, the Municipal Court in Prague ruled that Ulož must filter and block files that reference the word “Šarlatán” (‘Charlatan’) which corresponds to the name of a Czech movie.

The order, requested by movie distributor CineMart, was set to remain in place until August 2030, but the file-sharing site immediately appealed. According to Ulož, the filtering obligation was too broad and could impact files that have nothing to do with the film, violating freedom of speech.

The appeal was successful and the High Court in Prague sided with Uloz and overturned the preliminary filtering requirement. This was welcomed as a big win by the site but it did not mark the end of its legal troubles.

$46,000 in Damages

CineMart went on to accuse Uloz of sharing unlicensed copies of its movie without permission and demanded compensation. Last week, Prague’s Municipal Court ruled on the dispute, ordering the operator of the file-sharing service to pay 976,000 Czech Koruna ($46,000) in damages.

“It was proven that it’s possible to download the work, to which the plaintiff has the rights, on the Uloz.to website from at least December 9, 2020 to February 2023,” Judge Jana Přibylová concluded.

The Court further clarified that the operator of the site, the company Petacloud, has to pay the damages within three days, HN reports . This money won’t go to the copyright holder directly but will be held in escrow until the case is finalized.

Uloz has already announced that it will appeal the preliminary verdict, which it characterizes as ‘absurd’.

“Due to the numerous defects in the judgment, we expect their return of the funds of course,” Uloz states, commenting on the verdict. “The judgment shows a number of errors and misunderstandings of the issue, which we unfortunately regularly encounter in courts of first instance.”

Safe Harbor?

The file-sharing service notes that it previously enjoyed success when appealing lower court decisions and it firmly believes this judgment won’t hold up either.

The company warns that when online platforms that rely on user-generated content are held liable for user uploads, services such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Wikipedia won’t be able to function.

“It would be a completely absurd conclusion that the operator must pay for unjustified enrichment if user-generated content that infringes on someone’s copyright appears on its commercial platform.

“This would, of course, completely negate the safe harbor principles and effectively make it impossible to operate any platform that’s built on user content,” Uloz adds.

Uloz has no problem with removing infringing content when it’s flagged by rightsholders, but categorically refuses to implement filtering technologies that are prone to overblocking.

These filtering tools are also quite costly. Hellspy, another Czech file-sharing service, shut down earlier this year when it turned out that implementing filtering technology was too burdensome.

CineMart is Happy

Film distributor CineMart is understandably pleased with the verdict. The company’s legal representative Rudolf Leška notes that this is the first time that a platform has been ordered to pay damages for copyright infringement in Czechia.

“It is the first lawsuit for monetary compensation against the repository operator that was successful,” Leška says.

Leška also pointed out that the authorities launched an investigation into the operators of the file-sharing platform. Uloz doesn’t deny this but notes that this ‘speculation’ is related to financial statements, which has nothing to do with CineMart or copyright.

Meanwhile, other rightsholders are keeping an eye on the legal battle, as they consider similar ‘unjust enrichment’ claims against the file-sharing platform.

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

Three years ago, Danish law enforcement carried out a series of raids and arrests , effectively dismantling several popular torrent trackers.

These actions were supported by the local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance , which eventually declared victory , noting that all notable pirate sites with Danish roots had reportedly shut down.

Such statements can be dangerous since pirates can be quite resilient, but there is no doubt that the law enforcement actions and subsequence convictions left a mark. So does that mean online piracy lost its appeal too? According to a recent survey, that isn’t the case.

Study: Pirates are Stubborn

The Danish Chamber of Commerce conducts a bi-annual study to track the piracy habits of locals. The most recent results for 2022 were just released and show that illegal streaming and downloading remain prevalent.

Roughly a third of the respondents (33%) admit to having downloaded or streamed something in the past and 15% did so over the past year. The last figure is up from 12% during the previous survey in 2020, and in 2018 it was only 10%.

These figures suggest that, if anything, the number of people who download or stream pirated content is increasing. It should be noted, however, that in the most recent version, people between the ages of 15 and 17 were included too, while earlier samples started at 18 years.

Age certainly matters when it comes to online piracy. Younger people typically pirate more and that’s also reflected in the Danish survey.

56% of Respondents Have Piracy Experience

More than half (56%) of the 15-29 year-olds admit they have downloaded or streamed pirated content in the past. For the 30-39 year-olds, this figure is still relatively high at 52%, but in the higher 50-74 year category, it drops to just 14%.

Younger Danes don’t just pirate more than their older counterparts, piracy prevalence also grows within the group. In 2020, fewer young Danes said they had downloaded or streamed pirated content.

There are also substantial differences between men and women. Men are twice as likely to have pirated something over the past year than women. For some categories, the difference is even more pronounced. For example, men are five times more likely to pirate music.

Social Media

In recent years, the authorities have managed to crack down on local file-sharing communities but that ‘distribution’ role now seems to have shifted to social media platforms.

“In the last two years, police have handed out more [file-sharing] sanctions and investigated more in the area. However, the consequence has been that Danish pirates have moved their illegal behavior on the internet to a new platform, social media,” the survey notes.

Of the 15% who admit to having pirated something over the past year, more than half used social media. YouTube is the most cited piracy gateway, followed by Facebook, TikTok, messenger services, Instagram, and Snapchat. As expected, the use of social media is most prevalent in the youngest age cohort.

Commenting on these findings, Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund calls on social media platforms to take more responsibility, or else.

“Now that the police’s [Special Crime Unit] has stopped the dedicated Danish file-sharing services, it is a real shame that illegal consumption is moving to legal social media,” Fredenslund says.

“This calls for increased efforts from these platforms both in terms of informing users and stopping the distribution of illegal content. It requires the platforms to take an active role, and if there are platforms that do not live up to that responsibility, it may be necessary to involve the authorities.”

You Wouldn’t Steal…

Casper Klynge, Deputy Director of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, notes that streaming piracy presents a huge problem. He believes that it deserves more attention from the authorities, as the unbridled ‘stealing’ threatens the production of future content.

“Streaming digital content without paying for it is basically the same as walking past a store and grabbing items to take home without paying for them,” Klynge says.

This isn’t the first time that piracy is compared to stealing. Interestingly, however, the Chamber of Commerce study shows that many people do see a difference between piracy and shoplifting.

Of all people who participated in the survey, 89% believe that it’s unacceptable to steal candy from a store, while ‘only’ 63% see sharing digital content without permission from rightsholders as unacceptable.

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

Based on readily available information and data provided by the entertainment industries through various studies, online piracy is rampant and in some areas, more prolific than at any point in history.

On a day-to-day basis, based on news of pirate site closures, arrests, lawsuits, and various investigations, it could also be argued that the tide is turning and has been for some time. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, shifting one way and then the other, according to the ebb and flow of dozens of complex factors, subject to change at a moment’s notice.

One constant is the enforcement work of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). According to an interview published in Vietnam at the end of June, ACE identified 1,400 pirate sites and services in the United States in 2018. After five years of enforcement operations, with the assistance of the Department of Justice and U.S. prosecutors, the number reported as still in existence today is just 36.

The overseas picture of a few hundred torrent sites and thousands of streaming-related platforms presents an epic challenge that may never be won but won’t be given up on either. Recent action in Vietnam and Latin America show mixed fortunes but that is just part of a much bigger picture.

More Domain Takeovers This Week

The recent closure of a Cuevana3 variant in Peru will see ACE (via the Motion Picture Association) take over 22 domains that were good for more than 100 million visits between March and May of this year. Some have already been handed over.

As previously reported by TF but not yet reported by ACE, the domains of Zoro.to and Goku.to are now under MPA/ACE control . On Friday, those .to domains were joined on the MPA’s DNS servers by Zorotv.to and ZoroNetwork.ru, presumably handed over by the site’s operator.

Considering the volume of similar domains still in use and now pointing to Zoro.to replacement Aniwatch.to , the loss of a couple of extra domains is unlikely to make much of a dent in traffic heading to the anime piracy giant. That being said, this battle is not over yet, and ACE/MPA won’t give up until it is.

CableKill Tried to Kill Cable, ACE Killed It

One domain that won’t be receiving (or distributing) any more infringing traffic is CableKill.us. Founded around five years ago, CableKill offered tutorials that informed people how to ‘kill cable’ by dumping their provider and using pirate apps instead.

“Kick giant companies to the curb and control your own TV! How does being able to watch ANY movie or TV show whenever you want sound? How does watching ANY sporting event that’s live no matter your location sound? On top of all that little to ZERO monthly fees. Well that’s exactly what we do here at CableKill,” the site advised.

With the benefit of hindsight, some of the logos above should’ve been avoided. Sports streaming app Mobdro went down in a ball of flames in 2021 , Area51 was shut down by ACE in 2020 and later ordered to pay $272k in damages , and the people behind Gears TV had to pay back millions and are now in prison .

Precisely what offenses led to ACE/MPA taking over the CableKill.us domain on Friday isn’t clear. The same is true for the affiliated domain CKhosting.org, which did business under CK Servers branding, and also under MPA/ACE control as of Friday.

Likely candidates include hosting many of the world’s most popular free pirate apps, selling set-top boxes ready configured for piracy, and the promotion, sale and/or hosting of premium IPTV services. The specifics aren’t public but even in isolation, any of the above would’ve been enough for ACE.

The public availability of both email and physical addresses, linked directly to the operator of CableKill and CK Hosting, would’ve been the icing on the cake.

Anime Kaizoku Calls it Quits Early

Last week we reported the details of DMCA subpoenas recently obtained by MPA/ACE in the United States. Among the targets were three anime sites; animedao.to, animet.site, and animekaizoku.com.

While the first pair continue business as usual, animekaizoku.com appears to have taken the existence of a subpoena as a signal to throw in the towel.

We aren’t in a position to verify that the communication we received was sent by one of the site’s operators, but it does align with the fact that the site went offline this week. The message begins with a link to our report and continues with assurances that the site is gone for good.

“Just figured i’ll notify you that animekaizoku.com has been taken down for good, including the data and website code has been wiped. The domain won’t be up ever again. We are fully out of the piracy side of things. You can visit the site and see for yourself,” it reads.

Domains mentioned in other DMCA subpoenas that have also gone dark recently include the following: tvzon.tv, moviehdapkdownload.com, megacamais.com, and filmisub.com.

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