Here’s a curious conundrum: given its extraordinary traffic and likely position as the world’s largest pirate site, why does Zoro.to feature so rarely in rightsholders’ public complaints over piracy?

One explanation could be the site’s age; at just over two years old, it’s possible that established sites are considered more of a priority.

Another factor could be that Zoro.to focuses on Japanese anime rather than mainstream Hollywood movies. But with over 205 million visits per month, all mainstream movie piracy sites are left behind in a cloud of dust double their size.

Based on average traffic levels reported by SimilarWeb, Zoro.to should receive over six million visits today alone. Those visitors are in for a surprise because starting a few hours ago, Zoro.to unexpectedly ceased to exist.

Zoro.to is Dead, Aniwatch.to Takes Over

Visitors to the Zoro.to domain are currently redirected to a new one; Aniwatch.to. The transition is seamless via a redirect, but the culture shock shouldn’t be too great for former Zoro.to users. Old logins appear to work on the new domain and apart from a new color scheme, the design is very familiar indeed.

User reactions to the sudden change range from “nooooo what did they do to my boy zoro” to “WHAT THE **** IS ANIWATCH????” The most predictable center around a common theme: “why zoro turn into aniwatch?”

As questions go, that’s a good one.

Zoro.to Was “Acquired” By a New Dev Team

Pirate sites are known for moving to new domains. Domain seizures or suspensions can often play a part in sudden changes, but domain jumping has served two additional purposes more recently. Anti-piracy groups have spoken of the difficulties domain jumping can cause during investigations, but the second relates to search engine visibility.

Receiving too many DMCA notices can cause Google to derank sites from search results, but in this case it appears that the Zoro.to domain hasn’t yet reached the threshold. At the time of writing, Google reports the removal of around 43,700 URLs and it’s rumored that 50,000 may be the limit. A new domain may have been required shortly anyway but the reasons for today’s switch are reportedly different.

In response to some Zoro.to users having a meltdown over the domain and palette changes, a staff member explained that there is no need to panic over a management issue.

“Everyone calm down, Zoro is acquired by a new dev team, they will now handle the whole website and social network accounts. Do not worry, all the data will remain the same, the old staff will keep supporting the server. Thank you,” the message reads.

There Are Things Users Don’t Need to Know

On the basis that telling users anything about internal site operations is always a terrible idea, a couple of decades of history show that announcements like this one aren’t intended to provide useful updates to pirates. More likely than not, this is a message intended for those who would prefer to see Zoro.to consigned to history and already had a plan in place for that to happen.

Whether the cosmetic changes on display here will make much difference to the future of Aniwatch.to will remain to be seen, but it’s certainly possible that this move hasn’t been at the serious planning stage for very long. Activity on the new domain dates back around three months but development work related to the new domain/site that wasn’t secured from public view only dates back around 72 hours.

Tip of the Iceberg

The final factor worth mentioning is the large number of sites in operation today that look very much like zoro/aniwatch and have broadly the same functionality. These operate from separate domains but as a sample of just four shows, originality appears to be a problem.

The reason that so many of these similar-looking sites exist is pretty straightforward. The days of having to make your own site and obtain content from somewhere are well and truly gone.

Today it’s simply a case of buying a template, installing the script on a server, and waiting for thousands of movies to be pumped through as part of the package.

Of course, it’s not ideal for lots of sites to rely on a third party to supply all of the content; if that entity bites the dust, it’s game over.

But while it was game over for Zoro.to this morning, the appearance of Aniwatch.to shows that when a situation requires creativity, solutions are never too far away. That also applies to advertising; Zoro reportedly didn’t have too many ads but complaints about the rebranded platform are already coming in.

—

Update: Zoro.to’s owner presumably ‘sold’ the site after ACE shut down one of their other services 2Embed .

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

In recent years, pirate streaming platforms have surpassed torrent sites and direct download portals in terms of popularity.

These portals offer the ‘on-demand’ convenience many people have grown accustomed to. For site operators, the streaming business also has its advantages.

Piracy as a Service

The streaming boom has created a new branch of pirate entrepreneurs that offer “piracy as a service”. This includes platforms that provide access to a library of pirated content, which streaming sites can subsequently use to embed movies and TV shows.

This means that site owners no longer have to source and store content. They simply connect an API to the backend of their public-facing streaming portal. Front-ends can also be bought in the form of pre-packaged scripts and templates, if needed.

2Embed is one of the pirate libraries that has taken the pirate streaming world by storm. The site offered access to a catalog of pirate streaming links for 300,000 movies and TV shows, which could easily be embedded in any website using an IMDb ID for reference.

The service has long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. The Motion Picture Association ( MPA ) has repeatedly reported 2Embed to the U.S. Trade Representative. In its most recent filing , the MPA wrote that hundreds of streaming sites relied on 2Embed, a service that it had linked to Vietnam,

“Pirate site operators can either use 2embed’s service for free, in which case 2embed remunerates itself by inserting ads, or use its paid service that allows them to insert their own ads. MPA has evidence of the site’s connection to Vietnam.”

Hollywood’s concerns didn’t go unheard. Both the U.S. Trade Representative and the European Commission highlighted 2Embed as a notorious piracy source. Vietnamese authorities started to take an interest in the problem as well.

2Embed Shuts Down

Last week, representatives from the MPA and the affiliated anti-piracy group ACE visited Vietnam, speaking with local government officials. Around the same time, ACE booked a major success by shutting down 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator.

“[T]he service was shut down through direct operator outreach,” ACE chief Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak, noting that the action directly impacted hundreds of streaming sites.

“Of the 457 streaming sites identified by ACE as using 2Embed as their exclusive source of content, 302 are now unavailable, offline or devoid of content since ACE took the service down. These 302 sites received a combined 2.756 billion visits in the past two years.”

Domino Effect

According to ACE, Fmoviesto.site was the largest site hit by the shutdown. The streaming portal had nearly 15 million visits in May. At the time of writing, Fmoviesto.site appears to be streaming pirated content again, but others still display an error message, as seen below.

The 2Embed takedown is a significant blow to the pirate streaming ecosystem. Many of the affected streaming portals may eventually recover using alternative video libraries, such as the copycat service 2embed.cc, but other sites are threatened more directly.

Van Voorn explains that the 2Embed operator is also behind other popular sites. This includes Zoro.to, which has over 200 million monthly visits and is currently the 180th most visited website in the world. ACE is in discussions with the Vietnamese operator to shut this site down as well.

These negotiations ran into complications earlier today when Zoro.to announced that the site had been “acquired” by a new dev team . The domain now redirects to Aniwatch.to, which is probably not the resolution ACE was aiming for.

Vietnamese Connections

MPA and ACE are not likely to let this issue go easily, though, especially at a time when they’re strengthening their relationships with Vietnamese authorities. A few days ago, the anti-piracy group met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), to discuss future cooperation.

Through this meeting, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Public Security, Le Quoc Hung, asked MPA and ACE to share intelligence going forward so that both sides can cooperate in their efforts to curb online piracy and copyright infringement.

According to Van Voorn, who was present in Vietnam, the job is not done yet.

“There is much to do in Vietnam, which has become a major global source and exporter of pirated content. But engagement with the government, particularly the Ministry of Public Security, is progressing,” Van Voorn tells us.

It’s unclear which ‘Vietnamese’ sites and services are next on the list to be targeted. However, the MPA previously linked Fmovies.to, Myflixer.to, BestBuyIPTV.store, Abyss.to and Fembed.com to the Asian country.

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

Many pirate sites have attracted large volumes of traffic over the years but a relatively new breed of streaming portals have taken things to a whole new level.

Excellent traffic levels a few years ago were measured in tens of millions of visits per month, but when Soap2Day suddenly threw in the towel around June 12/13, the site was receiving at least 108 million visits. Given that traffic levels were trending up and the site had no obvious technical issues, a zero-notice termination of a hugely successful platform prompts a single question: why now?

Legal Action in Canada

Dozens of reasons lie behind the closure of hundreds of sites over the years, but it’s extremely rare for highly successful sites to throw in the towel for minor reasons. A catastrophic team issue was a possible explanation when Soap2Day shut itself down, but the safer money was always on legal problems.

We can’t confirm the reasons from a direct source, but the following facts appear to leave very little doubt that Soap2Day shut down under massive legal pressure.

On May 31, 2023, major entertainment companies Bell Media, Netflix, Disney, Columbia, Universal, Warner, and Paramount, plus Get Er Done Productions and Spinner Productions, launched legal action at the Federal Court in Canada. The named parties were Soap2Day and a presumed operator of the platform listed only as ‘John Doe’.

The plaintiffs immediately sought an interim confidentiality order and on June 7, the Court obliged. The studios requested an interlocutory injunction pursuant to section 44 of the Federal Court Act and Rule 373 of the Federal Court Rules; the latter allows the Court to issue an injunction where there is a strong case to support copyright infringement and the plaintiffs face irreparable harm.

In short, the Court ordered the site to shut down and that’s exactly what it did.

Plaintiffs Seek Norwich Order

In Canada and the United Kingdom, the Norwich Pharmacal Order is often the discovery weapon of choice in cases involving online copyright infringement. First acquired in a case back in 1973/74 , Norwich orders allow plaintiffs to obtain information regarding infringements from parties who may not themselves be involved in the alleged infringement. In this case, two service providers.

Court documents reveal that on June 12, 2023, Exclusive Technologies Inc. (doing business as domain registrar Register.to) was served with the statement of claim, letters from the plaintiffs, a confidential version of the plaintiffs’ motion, and a court order. OVH Hosting Inc. was served on the same day.

Soap2Day operated a .to domain and was known to utilize OVH servers. The Norwich order, which hasn’t been made public, will require the companies to hand over any information held on Soap2Day and its operator(s).

Shutdown Coincided With Operator(s) Being Served

Along with the site’s domain registrar and hosting company, Soap2Day’s ‘John Doe’ was served with various documents and a court order on June 12, via email.

The image below shows how Soap2Day’s landing page appeared on June 11, the day before Soap2Day was served.

This second image shows the site’s appearance on June 13, the day after ‘John Doe’ was electronically served and ordered to shut down the streaming platform.

How the case will progress from here is unknown. Whether Soap2Day’s operators have any direct connections to Canada other than retaining a domain with Register.to and server hosting with OVH is unclear.

A Zoom conference is scheduled for Tuesday and the defendants were instructed to file their response by June 29, but that doesn’t appear to have happened.

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

More than forty years ago in the early eighties, Texas Instruments home computers were all the rage .

The world wide web didn’t exist yet and most people interested in these new devices saw themselves as tinkerers or hackers.

These original ‘hackers’ tried to put the hardware to use in ways that others hadn’t envisaged. This was also the case for a Canadian teenager named Gary Bowser, who founded the company “Oasis Pensive Abacutors” (OPA) in March of 1985, a few months before the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in America.

These Oasis Pensive Abacutors had absolutely nothing to do with the successful gaming console, but Bowser would later become one of Nintendo’s largest threats. Under the nickname GaryOPA, Bowser was affiliated with the infamous Team-Xecutor , a group that Nintendo claimed had caused millions of dollars in losses.

Decades after launching his first computer company, Gary was living in the Dominican Republic, serving as a webmaster and news writer for the hacking group Team-Xecuter . This job netted between $500 to $1,500 per month, but it also led to a 40-month prison sentence following his arrest in 2020. It was a heavy price to pay.

Today, the former hacker is a free man again , looking for a job and seeking support through a GoFundMe campaign , hoping to build back his life piece by piece.

To understand where Gary came from and for much-needed context, decades of important history must be unpacked. The background is by no means an excuse, but it does add a much-needed human element to the Bowser jokes and million-dollar headlines produced by the press in recent years.

After his release from prison, Nick Moses helped to connect us with Gary, who kindly agreed to tell his side of the story, in his own words. This isn’t a tale of a typical criminal career; GaryOPA gradually slid into the business, which was far from his dream job or passion.

1983: OPA is Born

Gary’s venture into the world of computers became serious in his early teens. As an early adopter of technology and electronics, he taught himself how to code. The TI-99 home computer, released by Texas Instruments in the early ’80s, offered a welcome playground.

“I started out building hardware and software for the Texas Instruments Home Computers,” Gary notes, pointing us to some examples of the products on his new website GaryOPA.com .

At the age of sixteen (1985), this hobby grew into a company, launched with help from an inheritance from his mother who had just passed away. The name of the company, Oasis Pensive Abacutors, also explains the GaryOPA nickname he still goes by today.

Oasis Pensive Abacutors was a term Gary came up with to describe his goal of building a thinking (pensive) abacus computer (abacutor). This all happened after his family left the desert of Arizona and moved to Canada, which explains the final oasis reference.

Gary’s company made hardware and software for other computer-minded people. This includes the BOOK-KEEPER software featured above. This program could be used to store a large volume of accounting data while supporting basic sorting and editing functions.

1993: Interactive Kiosks

This initial business venture went relatively well and continued under the OPA flag for roughly a decade. In 1993, Gary eventually moved on to run another company, New & Improved Technologies (NIT), using his knowledge to build interactive kiosks.

NIT eventually came up with the ‘ GMTA System ‘ that, among other things, was able to replace traditional advertising posters with digital versions displayed on a plasma screen. That was revolutionary at the time, as the promo text below shows, and some of this technology remains in use today.

For a while, the startup was destined for a great future, but the timing was horrible. GMTA relied on its own operating system and was incompatible with Windows, which was already taking over. As a result, the government permanently suspended its funding and shareholders pulled out, eventually leading to NIT’s demise.

1998: The Internet Starts Brewing

Gary didn’t stop tinkering with hard- and software after this setback. Computers remained his true passion and when the World Wide Web started to take off in 1998, he started the Ontario company “Gen-X Computers”; a PC building shop, Internet café, and gaming arcade in one.

This sounds like a geek’s dream job but the gaming element eventually opened the door to a darker side of technology that would dominate Gary’s life for the next two decades.

“It started with repairing gaming consoles, such as the Dreamcast, Xbox, and PS1, and then it was learning how to mod them,” Gary recalls. “On the computer side, I started learning about CD burners and such, it was a slow slide down the rabbit hole as they say.”

These activities were not limited to the offline world. By 2003, “GaryOPA” was a household name on various hacking-related gaming forums. First as a relative newbie, but it didn’t take long before he became the resident expert.

“Because of my advanced skills in designing hardware and coding on early computers, I quickly found out that working on modchips was basically just good old low-level coding. Soon after, I was building up my reputation on early scene sites including XboxHacker BBS, PSX-Scene, and Xbox-Scene.”

These sites, which are no longer around in their original form, also introduced Gary to various new contacts in the game hacking scene. That included XiaNaiX, the owner of PSX-Scene, who asked him to help manage and host the website.

At the end of the 2000s, the Canadian operated a thriving game and computer ‘repair’ business with multiple stores. The Internet café was still running as well and with one of the best Internet connections in Toronto, it became a good hosting location too.

2008 Criminal Investigation

While Gary enjoyed business success and his growing online reputation, he was suddenly introduced to the downsides. The Canadian authorities, likely tipped off by the gaming industry, started looking into the consoles and blank DVDs that passed through one of his stores. They suspected that it was hiding a massive modding operation.

It transpired that the store in question didn’t have any modded consoles or pirated games. However, pirated movies were sold as a side hustle at a flea market, where one of the investigators convinced an employee to sell a home arcade based on a modded Xbox.

The employee also agreed to sell two burned discs to the investigator. These homebrew discs were sold at the store, which implicated Gary, and these allegations were eventually brought before the court.

Fearing the worst, Gary and the employee committed to voluntary community service, even before a judgment was handed down. That paid off as the court agreed to issue a suspended sentence, while the company was allowed to continue doing business.

“I was not doing anything with pirated games, or modding consoles, just replacing Blu-ray lenses and DVD drives, re-balling, and replacing broken screens and cases on Nintendo DSs at the time,” Gary recalls.

Geohot

Despite the reminder that there can be consequences for tinkering ‘too much’ with consoles, GaryOPA continued to lecture on the subject online. And when George Hotz , aka Geohot, posted a copy of the PlayStation 3’s private key online, traffic to game hacking sites blew up.

This was also the case for PSX-Scene, which Gary was hosting, managing, and posting on at the time. With rivalry growing between game hacking sites, he suddenly had to advance his security skills. Meanwhile, legal pressure was building, especially after Geohot was sued by Sony.

Faced with growing turmoil, the owner of PSX-Scene wanted out. In 2011, he eventually sold the site to a third party, which aimed to unite several gaming sites. GaryOPA could stay on for a monthly salary of $500 if he promised to publish there exclusively, but he declined that offer.

“I decided that it was not worth the money, and my reputation and name were worth more than just $500 per month, Gary recalls.

This seemingly random decision seemed wise, but it was also the start of what would turn into one of the darkest periods of his life. After waving PSX-Scene goodbye, the site’s former owner referred him to someone else who needed help with gaming sites; Max .

Max ran a bunch of operations such as PS3Crunch and 360Crunch, which eventually merged into MaxConsole. Along with Gary, the same Max would later be named as a co-conspirator in a United States government indictment . Unlike Gary, however, Max is still on the run today.

Team-Xecuter

The shift from being a coder and builder who shared tips through online forums, to becoming part of Team-Xecuter – one of the largest hacking groups Nintendo has ever faced – happened before Gary could fully grasp what was going on.

At the end of the 2000s, Gary sold his Canadian business and moved to the Dominican Republic to work on real estate projects with a friend. That business failed after the 2008 crisis and his savings quickly vanished.

While managing and posting news on hacking-related sites wasn’t a dream job, Gary was happy to take it at the time.

GaryOPA was put in charge of maintaining MaxConsole and earned a basic salary of $500 per month. As part of this deal, he had to post updates on modding devices and the Team-Xecuter suite of products. In addition, he was allowed to keep the site’s advertising revenue, pushing his overall income to somewhere around $1,000 per month.

This isn’t the scale of income one might associate with a ‘criminal’ but Gary never saw himself that way. As an original hacker, his main interest was to unlock the power of hardware for homebrew projects and to emulate old systems.

Millions?

The fact that Team-Xecuter wasn’t operating completely within the boundaries of the law wasn’t news, of course. Gary never actually met other Team-Xecuter people in person and only spoke to Max over the phone occasionally.

Gary didn’t see the millions of dollars being made either. On the contrary, he lived a pretty modest life in the Caribbean.

“I was not hosting the websites directly, nor was I profiting in the actual sales of devices and such. All that money went towards the actual developers and resellers,” he notes.

Gary’s main role was to post news and updates on the releases. This would then be picked up by other sources. He also acted as a middleman between testers and developers, ensured the sites were secure, and occasionally dealt with resellers.

With a hosting business on the side, Gary earned roughly $3,000 per month. That was plenty of money to get around, especially in a Caribbean country where an average lawyer earns around $1,200 per month.

While having enough money is great, the work wasn’t all that appealing. When we asked Gary to recall some of the best memories he has from that time, nothing in particular came to mind.

“I can not think of anything, it was just a daily grind of doing things, in some ways maddening, and not really my passion for making actual hardware and software. That is my first love, so between posting news on websites, keeping them running, and chatting with people, nothing really stands out.”

Arrest and Conviction

What did stand out was his turbulent arrest in 2020, which came as a complete shock, right around the time when the first Covid lockdown was ending in the Dominican Republic.

“It was a total surprise to me. I never thought they would go to the trouble of coming to the Dominican Republic. It’s not like I was running drugs or guns, or running away from murder,” Gary notes.

The evening before the arrest, Gary was looking forward to going out again for the first time in months. He loved going to the beach or driving around the island. He didn’t get the chance to do any of that.

“Instead, I woke up with guns pointed at my head, and me yelling at them, both in English and Spanish. Yet, they acted like I was speaking German or Russian, not answering my questions or telling me what was going on.”

Eventually, Gary found out that he was being taken to the Interpol office where his papers would be checked. If these were not valid, he would be kicked out of the country, which is what eventually happened.

It was three days before Gary heard any news. In the meantime, he was locked in a metal case in the pouring rain, without any food.

“After three days they promised to buy me a Burger King meal and take me to the Canadian consulate. Instead, they drove me to the airport. There, I started yelling and screaming, demanding to speak to the Canadian consulate.”

Gary never arrived at the consulate but he did get a plane ticket to Toronto, Canada. While he boarded the plane, he never reached that destination either. Instead, U.S. authorities took him into custody during a mandatory refueling in New Jersey.

The arrest was the start of a trip to several jails around the country before he finally ended up in the Federal Detention Center, SeaTac, in Seattle. By then, months had passed and he could finally work with a lawyer to prepare his defense.

This is where history begins to meet court records, which we have reported on in detail over the past two years.

After pleading guilty, Gary was eventually sentenced to 40 months in prison for his role in the criminal enterprise. The sentence was significant but lower than the five-year prison term requested by the government. In part due to good behavior, he was released on May 25 this year, also known as Towel Day among nerds.

Getting Back on His Feet

Life in prison wasn’t easy but as a ‘people person’, Gary managed to get around, staying far away from trouble. Being a free man again today is a huge relief, but getting his life back on track isn’t easy.

“It hasn’t been easy trying to get things going again. It’s a daily struggle just to survive another day, basically being homeless, jobless, friendless, familyless,” Gary says.

“With just pure luck and a couple of good friends, I have been able to arrange a cellphone, laptop, and partial roof over my head, if you can call sofa-surfing a home. But I’m a strong-minded person, always stay positive, and plan things out; so my outlook on the future is good.”

Gary is hoping to get fully back up on his feet in the near future and he’s dreaming of a simple and legitimate job in the IT field. Ideally a remote job, due to his health problems.

Gary suffers from Lymphedema in his left leg, starting just below the kneecap down to the ankle. Wearing shoes is still possible, but long walks are a real and painful challenge.

A cane and wheelchair have been helpful to get around and Gary is also hoping that Canada’s public health care system can improve his condition. However, that requires a lot of paperwork and there are no guarantees that everything is covered.

“Hopefully I can get disability coverage and then proper treatment, but it’s not been easy without coverage,” Gary says.

Hopes and Dreams

Gary is grateful for the help he has received from friends over the past several weeks, but after everything that’s happened, plenty of people want nothing to do with him anymore.

“I will forever be remembered as a criminal, so there are a lot of people that will no longer talk to me. That includes people who were part of my actual family, including my half-sister and brother, who believe that I’ve tainted the Bowser family’s name.”

On the family side, Gary still has hopes and dreams as well. Having reached the respectable age of 54, he wouldn’t mind becoming a father again, if that opportunity presents itself.

“That’s a part of life I enjoy as well. I have raised a few sons over the decades. Sadly one of them, my adopted stepson, passed away in his early twenties in the Dominican Republic from vaping in 2019, just a year before my arrest.

“I have always been a father figure to people in their lives, and as such would not mind raising another kid,” Gary says.

Finally, there’s the passion that started it all. The tinkering, the hacking, and the TI99s. These are still in his future plans as well.

“My dream, once I have done the hard part of finding a job and a place to live, is to get back to my original passion for building retro hardware and software,” Gary notes.

“It all started with the Texas Instruments systems, and there’s currently a strong rebirth of hobbyists who produced some amazing new products for the over-40-year-old system.”

Gary says that he wouldn’t mind sharing his retro ‘hacking’ knowledge in the gaming scene but from now on, he will make 100% sure that everything he does is completely legitimate.

—

People who want to learn more about Gary can check out his official website at GaryOPA.com as well as his GoFundMe page . Gary owes millions of dollars to Nintendo which he has to repay starting in December. He believes that these donations are separate from that.

The information shared in this article is filtered from an unchecked reflection of Gary’s memories.

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

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment ( ACE ) is the most active anti-piracy coalition, assisting enforcement efforts around the world.

The group is backed by prominent rightsholders such as Apple, BBC, beIN, Canal+, Disney, Sky, Netflix, and Warner Bros, as it systematically hunts down key piracy players.

Through new partnerships and connections, ACE expanded its work in the MENA region last year. This includes Egypt, where the coalition teamed up with local law enforcement to tackle several large streaming portals over the past months.

Movizland

This week, another casualty was added to this growing list. ACE announced that it assisted the authorities in taking down Movizland, a popular pirate streaming site that has been in business for over a decade.

As part of the enforcement action, the alleged owner was arrested. The site originally launched in 2012 by an Egyptian national, who operated it out of the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Movizland provided access to a library of roughly 34,000 movies and series and had roughly 12 million monthly visitors, spread across several domain names.

The streaming site was popular in the Middle East, with Egypt being the top traffic source. In recent months, Movizland was among the top 100 most visited websites in the country.

Taking Out Major Players

ACE boss Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak that his organization brought this case to the attention of the authorities after it identified the operator. This person was located through an in-house investigation by ACE, where third-party subpoenas also proved useful.

The anti-piracy group regularly targets third-party intermediaries, including domain name registries and CDN provider Cloudflare, with subpoenas that request information on pirate sites. This occasionally leads to useful information.

The takedown of Movizland follows after earlier successes against various sports streaming sites in Egypt, as well as other popular pirate streaming portals such as MyCima and Shahed4U.

“We are thankful for the continuous hard work of the Egyptian authorities to address these criminal networks,” Van Voorn tells TorrentFreak, adding that there is “more to come.”

Persistent Pirates

These enforcement efforts undoubtedly have an effect, and not just on the operators. Based on the responses on social media, many people are disappointed to see their favorite pirate streaming site offline.

Whether they will do much to eliminate piracy in the region is another question. For now, we have seen that pirate brands such as Egybest, MyCima, Shahed4U, Yalla-Shoot and Yallakora live on , presumably under different operators.

These alternatives typically start as clones and copycats but can eventually become just as popular as the original.

ACE hopes, however, that by continuing to apply pressure, most pirate site operators will eventually give up. That may work, but there’s plenty of work left to do; despite the takedowns, Egypt’s top 100 most visited websites list still features dubious streaming sites.

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

Generative AI models such as ChatGPT have captured the imagination of millions of people, offering a glimpse of what an AI-assisted future might look like.

The new technology also brings up novel copyright questions. Several rightsholders are worried that their work is being used to train AI without any form of compensation, for example.

How these and other copyright questions will be dealt with is not entirely clear. Governments around the world are taking different approaches, with U.S. Congress recently stating that it doesn’t plan to overreact . Meanwhile, rightsholders don’t intend to stand idly by.

Authors Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement

This week, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing ChatGPT’s parent company of copyright infringement and violating the DMCA, among other things. According to the authors, ChatGPT was partly trained on their copyrighted works, without permission.

The proof for this claim is seemingly simple. The authors never gave OpenAI permission to use their works, yet ChatGPT can provide accurate summaries of their writings. This information must have come from somewhere.

“Indeed, when ChatGPT is prompted, ChatGPT generates summaries of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works—something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,” the complaint reads.

Pirate Training

While these types of claims are not new, this week’s lawsuit alleges that OpenAI used pirate websites as training input. This potentially includes Z-Library , a shadow library of millions of pirated books that’s at the center of a criminal prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.

OpenAI hasn’t disclosed the datasets that ChatGPT is trained on, but in an older paper two databases are referenced; “Books1” and “Books2”. The first one contains roughly 63,000 titles and the latter around 294,000 titles.

These numbers are meaningless in isolation. However, the authors note that OpenAI must have used pirated resources, as legitimate databases with that many books don’t exist.

“The only ‘internet-based books corpora’ that have ever offered that much material are notorious ‘shadow library’ websites like Library Genesis (aka LibGen), Z-Library (aka Bok), Sci-Hub, and Bibliotik. The books aggregated by these websites have also been available in bulk via torrent systems.”

Based on these data points, the complaint concludes that OpenAI committed copyright infringement. As compensation, the plaintiffs demand statutory damages, which can reach $150,000 per work. Additional damages for the alleged removal of copyright management information, in violation of the DMCA, are also on the table.

AI, Piracy and Copyright

There is no direct evidence that OpenAI used pirate sites to train ChatGPT. That said, it is no secret that some AI projects have trained on pirated material in the past, as an excellent summary from Search Engine Journal highlights.

The mainstream media has picked up this issue too. The Washington Post previously reported that the “C4 data set,” which Google and Facebook used to train their AI models, included Z-Library and various other pirate sites.

“At least 27 other sites identified by the U.S. government as markets for piracy and counterfeits were present in the data set,” the article added.

The present lawsuit will be closely watched by AI enthusiasts and rightsholders. It may result in OpenAI having to disclose some of its training data, which would be interesting in its own right

Even if it transpires that ChatGPT was trained with pirated books, the court would still have to decide whether that amounted to copyright infringement. Some experts believe that this type of AI training can be considered fair use.

Fair use protects transformative uses of copyrighted works that don’t compete with the original content. According to several experts, that defense could likely apply to AI training cases.

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A copy of the complaint filed against OpenAI at the federal court for the Northern District of California is available here (pdf)

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

For responsible adults with decades of experience from which to draw their own conclusions, the idea that adults we have never met have the power to govern our online activities is a borderline insult.

Of course, governments have a responsibility to protect all, so for every person who gets upset at politicians poking around in their private business, theory suggests there should be others who stand to benefit from whatever intervention is currently under discussion. And as responsible adults, that is taken into consideration.

The looming problem is that once ‘protection measures’ are put in place for even the most well-intentioned reasons, they are usually there to stay and always vulnerable to mission creep. If the wrong government somehow gains power, outright abuse can never be ruled out. In the meantime, others may claim entitlement to protection too, through the courts if necessary.

Developed by UK ISP BT at an estimated cost of £500,000, the Cleanfeed content-blocking system was launched in 2004 with the stated aim of preventing access to child abuse material. For most people in society, that was considered a positive move but just a few years later, the very existence of Cleanfeed was seen as an opportunity.

In an effort to suppress Usenet indexer Newzbin, Hollywood studios sought and won an injunction that compelled BT to use Cleanfeed to block the site, with the studios admitting that the company was targeted because it had the tools in place to implement blocking. In June 2023 alone, over 850 new entries appeared on UK ISPs’ blocklists.

French Government Says it Wants to Protect

The French government’s drive to prevent children from accessing pornographic content online is well-documented. Few disagree that widely available and openly accessible ‘tube’ sites are unsuitable for minors, but in a world where parental responsibility is considered old-fashioned, not to mention ineffective, France believes that legislation is the only way to protect the country’s children.

In parallel the government is on the verge of passing new law that aims to protect adults from the dangers of online fraud. Given the scale of the problem and law enforcement’s lacking response globally, what could possibly be wrong with that? According to Mozilla, the people behind the Firefox browser, almost nothing – if it’s done properly, at least.

France Demands “Dystopian Technical Capability”

“In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability,” Mozilla reported this week.

“Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill [below, translated] would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.”

“While motivated by a legitimate concern, this move to block websites directly within the browser would be disastrous for the open internet and disproportionate to the goals of the legal proposal – fighting fraud,” Mozilla continued.

“It will also set a worrying precedent and create technical capabilities that other regimes will leverage for far more nefarious purposes. Leveraging existing malware and phishing protection offerings rather than replacing them with government provided, device level block-lists is a far better route to achieve the goals of the legislation.”

Of course, major browsers currently make use of Google’s Safe Browsing system, which alerts visitors to flagged sites that there could be trouble ahead. Users can continue to those sites if they so wish, but Mozilla warns that the language in the current proposal is focused on website blocking and contains nothing to ensure privacy or prevent the blocking system being used for other purposes.

“Forcing browsers to create capabilities that enable website blocking at the browser level is a slippery slope. While it might be leveraged only for malware and phishing in France today, it will set a precedent and create the technical capability within browsers for whatever a government might want to restrict or criminalize in a given jurisdiction forever,” Mozilla warns .

“If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments,” the not-for-profit foundation concludes.

And not just requests from governments either. In 2023, it seems like everyone wants something blocked. Having a system already in place won’t make that any more difficult, nor will it deal with the source of the problem.

Image credit: pixabay/ geralt

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

Rightsholders operating business models that attempt to turn piracy into revenue are always looking for ways to streamline their work to reduce costs and maximize profits. Identifying infringers in bulk is one of the favored options.

In 2016, a group of movie companies known for their pursuit of alleged BitTorrent pirates attempted something rare in Canada. Voltage Pictures, Cobbler Nevada, Ptg Nevada, Clear Skies Nevada, and several other companies filed an application at Federal Court requesting certification of a reverse class action.

Their targets were an unspecified number of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared movies, including The Cobbler, Pay the Ghost, Good Kill, Fathers and Daughters, and American Heist.

Building a Case Around Single Defendant

The plaintiffs (collectively ‘Voltage’) built their case around a single customer of ISP Rogers, initially known only as John Doe #1. Voltage claimed the subscriber had uploaded all five movies and after obtaining his personal details via a so-called Norwich disclosure order (which included a trip to the Supreme Court), Robert Salna became the plaintiffs’ point of focus.

Salna owns several rental properties and provides internet access to his tenants. Salna said that they must be responsible for the alleged infringements, something they denied. Voltage subsequently added the tenants to the case but then discontinued the action against them.

Significant Opposition, Federal Court Denies Certification

Schemes targeting large numbers of internet subscribers are fraught with difficulties and rarely popular beyond the plaintiffs. Interveners in the case included Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Bell Canada, Cogeco Connexion, Rogers Communications, Sasktel, Telus Communications, Videotron, and Xplore.

All opposed the class action approach and in November 2019, the Federal Court supported their position. The Court found that since a file-sharing case involving many alleged infringers would require multiple individual fact-findings for each class member, class certification would be denied on all grounds.

Voltage’s Successful Appeal

Voltage and related plaintiffs have a reputation for exhausting every option before conceding defeat, a track record maintained in Canada. In 2021 at the Federal Court of Appeal, Justice Rennie set aside the 2019 Federal Court ruling, reversing it on all grounds.

The Court noted that while a reverse class action could benefit the plaintiffs, those accused of infringement could also take advantage by pooling their resources. The case was then referred back to the Federal Court with two questions: was a reverse class action the preferable procedure in this case, and did Voltage have a workable litigation plan?

In deciding the latter, the Federal Court would be required to revisit Voltage’s proposal to use Canada’s ‘notice-and-notice’ infringement warning program to communicate with alleged infringers. The system was put in place to allow rightsholders to notify subscribers, via their ISPs, that their connections had been monitored sharing copyrighted content.

The Federal Court previously ruled that the system could not be used to facilitate communication in a class action, a point on which the Court of Appeal subsequently disagreed.

Federal Court Again Weighs Arguments

In a process over six years old, Voltage’s goal of targeting more than 55,000 subscribers in a class action has faced deterioration over time. As of September 16, 2022, potential class members (internet account subscribers who allegedly infringed Voltage’s copyrights during the previous six months) had been reduced to less than 1,000.

According to the Federal Court’s estimate in its order handed down June 26, the figure is now ‘just’ 874 subscribers. Justice Fothergill said that even if the class comprised 874 members, he was satisfied that Voltage had demonstrated “some basis in fact” for the conclusion that a class proceeding is indeed the preferable procedure in this matter.

“A class proceeding will permit the determination of common issues based upon a single set of pleadings. The common issues will be decided on the basis of common evidence, including expert evidence. Respondent Class Members may pool resources to fund the defense, and may advance a coordinated position with the assistance of Class Counsel. This in turn alleviates the risk of inconsistent judgments,” his order reads

“A class proceeding may permit Respondents to benefit from a higher degree of anonymity. They may choose to identify themselves only to Class Counsel. By contrast, individual applications, including those commenced against multiple respondents, will require identification of each respondent by name unless the Court grants a confidentiality order.

“Another major advantage of a reverse class proceeding is that any settlement must be approved by the Court. This is an important safeguard against ‘copyright trolling’, where respondents are pressured to settle unmeritorious claims under threat of significant litigation costs.”

ISP Interveners Object

As is often the case when rightsholders target large numbers of internet users, ISPs are expected to assist in processes that involve their subscribers and their data. In this case the ISPs objected to Voltage’s plan, which would require them to send a class action “Certification Notice” to the alleged infringers and “retain data on identities of their subscribers until following final determination of the hearing on the merits (including any appeals).”

The ISPs said that retaining subscriber data would mean the unrealistic proposition of storing all data for all customers for years, redesigning their software and databases to automatically preserve only data retroactively selected by Voltage, or manually saving data for potentially tens of thousands of customers.

Inevitably the ISPs would face other subscriber-related issues, including customers calling for legal advice and the need to train staff to deal with these sensitive discussions. Some customers may choose to complain or blame their ISP for their predicament, or even leave to join another ISP. Others may be tempted to sign up with bogus contact information to avoid legal liability, preventing ISPs from contacting their own customers in relation to their accounts or developing business with them.

More fundamentally, the ISPs said that using the “notice-and-notice” system to communicate with class members would be illegal under Canadian law. The Federal Court agreed and said that would not happen.

“[V]oltage’s proposed use of the notice-and-notice regime to advance this class proceeding is inconsistent with the Copyright Act, and is contrary to law,” Justice Fothergill’s order reads. “It is therefore unnecessary to reach definitive conclusions regarding the ISPs’ concerns about cost, inconvenience and the potential disruption of their relationships with their subscribers.”

Federal Court Again Denies Class Certification

In conclusion, the Federal Court found enough deficiencies in Voltage’s litigation plan to deny class certification, at least for now.

“Voltage remains at liberty to present a revised litigation plan that does not depend on the notice-and-notice regime in the Copyright Act to identify and communicate with Class Members, and that makes adequate provision for the funding of Class Counsel,” the order reads.

How the case will progress from here is unclear. In very basic terms, the settlement model favored by Voltage is no different from any other business; costs of doing business are weighed against anticipated revenue (via settlements) and if the difference represents an acceptable return, there’s a reason to press ahead.

Since free use of the notice-and-notice has now been ruled out, costs appear to be going in the wrong direction, something particularly problematic in Canada. Unlike most other regions where Voltage is active, Canada places a $5,000 cap on non-commercial infringement, something that significantly dampens the psychological pressure to settle “or else”.

Justice Fothergill’s order can be found here (pdf)

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

YouTube’s Content ID system helps rightsholders and content creators prevent copyright infringement.

Copyright holders can either remove problematic content from the video platform, or they can choose to monetize it.

Monetization is preferred in many cases and can be quite lucrative. Over the years, the Content ID platform has generated more than $9 billion in ‘claimed’ advertising revenue.

Criminal Content ID Scam

This option isn’t just utilized by legitimate owners, scammers have been making use of it too. While it’s unknown how often the system is abused, an indictment published by the Department of Justice in late 2021 showed that a U.S. company run by two men built a multi-million dollar business on this scheme.

A criminal investigation had uncovered a massive YouTube Content ID scam. By falsely claiming to own the rights to more than 50,000 songs, the pair generated more than $24 million in revenue.

The scammers’ company, MediaMuv LLC., wasn’t a direct member of the Content ID program. Instead, it operated through a trusted third-party company, which had access to the platform,

Last year, one of the defendants confessed to his part in the ‘MediaMuv’ copyright swindle by pleading guilty. Webster Batista Fernandez described it as a relatively simple scheme: find Latin American music that wasn’t yet monetized on YouTube and claim the content as their own.

The ‘number two’ of the operation, Jose Teran, signed a plea agreement this February. While he wasn’t the driving force, Teran participated in the criminal conspiracy and plead guilty to money laundering and wire fraud.

Appropriate Sentence?

This week, Teran was the first to be sentenced for his role in the operation. The defense requested a mild probation or home confinement sentence, which would allow the defendant to continue to care for his family.

“[Mr. Teran] respectfully asks that the Court exercise its discretion to sentence him in a manner that allows him to continue supporting his family while working to make the victims whole,” the attorney wrote.

The prosecution, on the other hand, argued that a multi-year prison sentence would be more appropriate, to deter Mr. Teran and other scammers from abusing the Content ID system in future.

“Teran personally obtained more than $6 million in personal profit, which he used to sustain a lavish lifestyle. In addition to the harm Mr. Teran caused and the exorbitant profits that he reaped; a significant sentence is warranted to deter future conduct,” the Government argued.

Court Issues 70-Month Prison Sentence

After reviewing these two opposing positions, U.S. District Court Judge Douglas L. Rayes sided with the Government’s take, sentencing the defendant to 70 months in prison followed by three years of probation.

In addition to the prison sentence, Mr. Teran will forfeit various properties. These include a house in Phoenix, a Tesla Model C, a BMW i8, and bank accounts containing over a million dollars.

This is the first sentencing in this criminal Content ID case. The second defendant, who is seen as the leader of the operation, is expected to be sentenced later this year.

The scale of this scam was unprecedented but abuse of YouTube’s broader set of copyright tools certainly isn’t. Google previously went on the record stating that tens of thousands of accounts are terminated each year due to dubious copyright infringement claims.

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