When an opponent fails to defend themselves in an ordinary fight, things tend to be over pretty quickly. The same isn’t true for copyright lawsuits.

In early October 2021, MG Premium – a subsidiary of adult entertainment giant MindGeek – filed a copyright complaint at a district court in Washington. It targeted Daftsex.com, an adult ‘tube’ site offering MG-owned videos from the Brazzers and Digital Playground series, among others, to dozens of millions of users every month – for free.

Daftsex had little chance of winning in court and completely ignored the lawsuit. It still took more than a year to conclude but with a damages award of $32 million and a broad injunction that included domain seizures, MG Premium prevailed in the end. In reality, however, very little had changed.

Domain Seizures Immediately Countered

Verisign was ordered to sign several domains over to MG Premium, including Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com. Daftsex responded by switching to new domains – Daft.sex, Dsex.to, biqle.ru and biqle.org. The site took a traffic hit but managed to stay online.

Meanwhile, MG Premium redirected its newly acquired domains (and millions of former Daftsex users) to MindGeek-owned RedTube. Despite an external move to undermine domain transfers , the opportunity to convert pirates into paying customers would’ve been useful.

Unfortunately, further opportunities quickly dried up. Seized domain Daftsex.com received more than 41 million visits in November 2022. A month later, traffic plummeted to 6.5 million. According to SimilarWeb data, in January 2023, just three months after MindGeek took control, the domain received just two million visits.

In parallel, Daftsex continued to rebuild its traffic on new domains. In January 2023, Daft.sex received 22.7m visits and Dsex.to 5.7 million. In the background, MG Premium renewed its legal efforts to take the site down.

Contempt of Court

In December 2022, MG Premium filed a request to reopen the case so that alleged Daftsex owner Vasily Kharchenko held in contempt of court ( 1 ). Declarations in support were filed by Jason Tucker of anti-piracy company Battleship Stance, and MG Premium’s Anti-Piracy Strategy Manager, Steven Salway, a former Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit detective ( 1 , 2 )

In addition to the court holding Kharchenko in contempt, MG Premium requested permission to take over the new Daftsex domains – Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org. Since Daftsex is using a Twitter account to communicate with its user community, MG Premium wants the court to issue an order compelling Twitter to shut down the account or transfer it to MG Premium.

As things stand today, none of those things have happened and Daftsex just keeps on growing. That doesn’t mean that MG Premium is simply letting it happen though.

DMCA Takedown Campaign Begins

Within hours of Daftsex announcing its new domains last November, MG Premium began sending DMCA notices to Google, hoping to make daft.sex, dsex.to, and biqle.org less visible in search results.

That went on to become what is almost certainly the largest and most intense DMCA notice-sending campaign by a copyright holder against a single site since the DMCA was introduced in 1998.

The first DMCA notices targeting daft.sex and dsex.to were sent to Google on November 14 and 21, respectively. In the first week, Google recorded takedown requests for 937,952 Daft.sex URLs and 941,424 URLs belonging to Dsex.to, but that was just a taster of things to come.

Largest Ever Copyright Holder Campaign Against Single Site

According to Google data – an entry dated January 9, 2023, covering a single week – Google received DMCA notices requesting the removal of 4,686,019 Dsex.to URLs. An entry dated January 16, again covering a single week, states that Google received DMCA notices requesting 5,025,742 Daft.sex URLs to be taken down.

Data shown in Google’s charts lag a little behind actual notices received but between November 14, 2022 and February 20, 2023, Google received ~11,000 individual requests from MG Premium targeting daft.sex.

Total daft.sex URLs requested for removal until March 3, 2023: ~45.6 million .

Between November 21, 2022 and February 20, 2023, Google received around ~11,000 individual requests from MG Premium targeting dsex.to.

Total dsex.to URLs requested for removal until March 3, 2023: ~45.6 million

URLs requested for removal overall (both domains combined): 91+ million

To put these figures into perspective, the number of URLs requested for deletion against The Pirate Bay’s .org domain currently sits at 6,008,980 – after being targeted since 2012.

Majority of Notices Had No Immediate Effect

Since Google reports what action it takes after receiving a DMCA takedown notice, we can see that the vast majority of these notices failed to have any immediate effect.

When considering all MG Premium notices sent to Google, targeting both daft.sex and dsex.to URLs, close to 80% were reported by Google as ‘not in index’, meaning that the reported URLs were absent from Google’s search so couldn’t be removed.

That raises the obvious question of why so many URLs reported by MG Premium as infringing were unrecognized by Google.

TorrentFreak requested comment from MG Premium on Saturday evening but received no response, most likely due to the timing.

We’ll publish an update if we receive a response, but we suspect that other factors could be at play here that only MG Premium will be able to properly explain.

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

Last fall, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

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

The trial took more than two weeks to complete and ended in a resounding victory for the labels. The Texan federal jury ruled that Grande is guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and must pay the record labels $47 million in damages .

U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra confirmed the judgment on January 31st, as can be seen below, but that doesn’t mean that Grande has given up the fight. Recent court filings show that the company is exploring several options to contest the decision.

Judge or New Jury

On February 27, Grande filed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law . Put simply, Grande wants the Judge to overrule the jury, which can happen if the evidence clearly weighs in favor of the requesting party, but when a jury found otherwise.

Grande hopes to find the court on its side and lists a variety of shortcomings in the presented evidence, casting doubt over the jury’s conclusion.

According to the ISP, the record labels failed to provide sufficient evidence to show that its subscribers committed copyright infringement. For example, there were no copies of the 1,403 original copyrighted works to compare against the alleged pirate copies, and it’s unclear if the infringers were actually Grande subscribers, instead of unauthorized network users.

The music companies also failed to show that Grande was “wilfully blind” to the alleged infringement, the filing argues. Tracking company Rightscorp sent many thousands of piracy notices but the ISP says it wasn’t convinced that the warnings were legitimate.

“At trial, the only evidence of actual knowledge was the collection of emails Rightscorp sent to Grande accusing certain Grande IP addresses of being the source of infringing activity,” Grande writes.

“This was legally insufficient because Plaintiffs presented no evidence that Grande could actually verify the accuracy of Rightscorp’s accusations. In fact, the evidence conclusively established that Grande had no way of knowing whether Rightscorp’s accusations were true.”

Who Owns the Music?

The motion also touches on several other presumed shortcomings. For example, the ISP says there was insufficient evidence to show that the music companies own each of the 1,403 sound recordings at the center of the lawsuit.

Leading up to the trial, the record labels requested summary judgment that could have decided the question of ownership, but the request was denied. The court later stated that it already ruled on ownership but Grande believes that was an error.

“At trial, there was no evidence from which a jury could reasonably conclude that Plaintiffs own the copyrights to the 1,403 sound recordings at issue,” Grande writes.

What’s Next?

All in all, the ISP believes that since several pieces of evidence are legally insufficient, that warrants a directed judgment. Alternatively, the trial could get a do-over if the Court agrees that the jury verdict goes against the weight of evidence or if there are other shortcomings or clear errors.

“For these reasons, the Court should grant JMOL in favor of Grande on Plaintiffs’ contributory infringement claim or, in the alternative, grant a new trial,” Grande writes.

With $47 million in damages on the line, the stakes are high. If Judge Ezra denies both requests, Grande says it will appeal the decision at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

—

A copy of Grande Communications’ request for a judgment as a matter of law or a new trial is available here (pdf) . The notice to appeal is available here (pdf) .

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

When people use search engines to find pirate sites or pirated content, the results they receive today represent a massively edited subset of what is actually out there.

In response to DMCA notices sent by rightsholders, billions of URLs have already been removed from Google’s search results. Every week, millions of new URLs are processed by Google and when individual domains are considered especially infringing, Google takes that as a downranking signal .

Rightsholders in many jurisdictions can obtain ISP blocking injunctions against substantially infringing sites but, in most cases at least, these have no direct effect on search results. Just over a year ago, everything changed.

As previously reported , these injunctions can now be presented to Google for recognition. The end result is voluntary deindexing, meaning that the targeted sites will completely disappear from search results for the specified region.

New Domains Switched For IP Addresses

For years pirate sites have deployed new domains to defeat ISP blocking. At least in the beginning, the tactic helped to keep the sites accessible, but switching domains today often provokes a swift response by rightsholders to have the new domains blocked.

New domains are also used to mitigate Google’s downranking measures, but whether that remains effective for long is doubtful. A more recent trend in some regions has seen pirate sites dump domains entirely and rely on IP addresses instead.

That may sound like a trip back to the Stone Age (and it is), but short-term benefits do exist.

IP Address ‘Domains’ Reappeared in Google Search

The Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission (LRTK) has responsibility for blocking actions in Lithuania. Court orders are required to block pirate sites and over the years, dozens have been blocked by ISPs in Lithuania ( list .txt) .

When pirates attempt to circumvent blocking with new domains, these are handled under an administrative process and then added to the existing ISP blocking list. Since LRTK has a court order, these are sent to Google and the referenced domains are deindexed from search results.

However, it appears that the administrators of more than a dozen previously blocked and deindexed sites managed to reappear in Google search.

“It should be noted that the domain names of the aforementioned 13 websites were removed from the Google search system earlier by the order of the LRTK, but the administrators of these websites, trying to avoid the restrictions applied to them, made it possible for users to connect to the websites using only IP addresses without domain names,” LTRK explains.

“[This month] Google representatives informed us that the URLs containing IP addresses reported by the Lithuanian Radio and Television Commission, that allow access to illegally publicly published copyrighted content, have been removed from the Google search system.”

LRTK says that it considers the removal of domain names and corresponding IP addresses from Google search “an extremely effective means of preventing access to illegally published copyrighted content.”

Using IP addresses instead of domain names has another potential upside too.

IP Addresses Thwart DNS Blocking

When sites use human-readable domain names, those domains need to be converted to an IP address so that sites can be accessed. That’s achieved by using the Domain Name System (DNS), which usually works extremely well.

However, when pirate sites are blocked by court orders or administrative processes, ISPs are required to poison DNS records so that domain names no longer resolve to the resource they’re supposed to. By doing away with domain names altogether, DNS becomes surplus to requirements. This means that poisoned records are never accessed, and DNS-only site-blocking measures are instantly defeated.

Due to the many downsides, direct IP address access to pirate sites seems unlikely to become the next big thing, but it is happening. One example relates to Indonesian piracy giant Indoxxi, which reportedly shut down in December 2019 but lives on through an endless supply of clones and copies .

Blocking is carried out by Kominfo, the government communications ministry responsible for general internet censorship in Indonesia. In 2022 it was reported that 3,500 pirate sites had been blocked by local ISPs but only in more recent months has the prospect of IP-address blocking emerged following requests from rightsholders.

Around 200 sites have been blocked thus far in 2023, ostensibly on copyright grounds (factors other than copyright may also be required) but no specifics related to IP address-only blocking are detailed.

The darker side of encouraging Indonesia to develop its blocking arsenal is that the last thing the government needs is encouragement; it already abuses internet blocking measures to silence critics and the public ( pdf ) . More technical ability to block is almost guaranteed to be abused.

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

The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of technical issues over the past years, sometimes resulting in hours or even days of downtime.

When the notorious torrent site goes offline, the associated SuprBay forum usually remains online. This is helpful, as the forums have a dedicated page where outsiders can check the status of the main site.

More recently, the tables have been turned. At the time of writing The Pirate Bay is online but the forums are unreachable. People who try to access SuprBay get a connection timeout instead, which has been the case for several days now.

Dark Web Message

The Pirate Bay website doesn’t have any information on the issue but on the dark web, the .onion domain shows a little more information.

“Moe is still playing with himself, but we are slowly getting things sorted,” the brief notification reads.

Hacked

The message doesn’t reveal much but suggests that if Surpbay admin “Moe” takes action, the site will eventually make a full comeback. This is confirmed by fellow administrator Spud17, who explains that the server was compromised.

An outsider reportedly hacked and messed up the server but Spud17 says that user data was not compromised in the process. The main Pirate Bay site was unaffected by the whole ordeal.

The good news is that there are recent backups in place. This means that the forums can be brought back online with relative ease. According to the SuprBay team, that should take a week, or perhaps two.

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

Mid-February, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced that MyCima , one of the largest pirate streaming sites in the Middle East, had been shut down.

Reportedly operated from Alexandria and offering 12,000 movies and 26,000 TV series, MyCima enjoyed around 50 million visits per month.

Following an ACE referral, Egyptian authorities took action to shut the site down. MyCima’s most popular domain – myciiima.autos – went offline along with around 70 others.

ACE thanked Egypt’s Prime Minister and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for protecting intellectual property, while two new members of the ACE coalition – MENA-based OSN and MBC Group – were acknowledged for their work in shutting MyCima down.

Not Quite Dead Yet: MyCima Sewn Back Together

According to Egyptian mythology, Osiris was a much-loved king who was killed by Seth, his jealous brother, who chopped him up and scattered the 14 pieces all over Egypt. MyCima had many more pieces, notably around 70 domains. While 13 pieces of Osiris were found and sewn back together, one was never found. An important piece of MyCima was overlooked too.

In January 2023, myciiima.autos alone received more than 43.3m visits, making it the 10th most-visited domain in Egypt. Many other domains redirected in and out, among them mycimaa.tv. Domains redirecting to mycimaa.tv were numerous too – myciiima.bond, myciiima.boats, myciiima.makeup and myciiima.monster, among others.

At some point in January, Myciiima.autos redirected to mycimaa.tv and on February 2, 2023, myciiima.autos was updated and fell out of use. Also on February 2, a new domain was registered and connected to many existing domains. Wecima.tube appears to be MyCima’s new home. Or one of them at least

MyCima? No. Wecima? Yeah

Given these and other connections not detailed here, there seems little doubt that WeCima is just MyCima with a new name and a new domain.

The site was already pretty glossy, so a new coat of paint probably wasn’t needed. That being said, absolutely no effort has been made to portray this as a new platform.

It’s unclear why the site’s operators are still in business, especially given the big shutdown announcements in February that received regional and international attention. The involvement of OSN and what this resurrection means for them is made especially clear on WeCima’s front page.

Site Changes Pirated Content Policy

On WeCima’s homepage, under the top row of movie and TV show cover images, is some Arabic text. It’s been edited at least once, maybe twice, over the past week or so. The image below shows the notice in English, as it appeared a few days ago.

Taken at face value, this clearly suggests that content owned by TV network OSN has been removed. That could be for any number of reasons, but the most obvious is that MyCima/WeCima are under the impression that removal either removes or reduces the risk of being targeted again.

Viewed from a different perspective, the site might be more concerned about local companies’ content than content owned by companies located overseas. A little more weight is given to that theory with a more recent update to the site’s main page.

It appears that while OSN content still won’t feature on the site, the same now holds true for all local content. This stated position is a far cry from the site being completely closed down and is almost certainly a big diversion from what the rest of the ACE coalition thought would happen.

But Will it Last?

After being chopped into pieces by Seth and sewn back together by Isis, Osiris lived for just a single day. His legacy, a son he conceived despite lacking a crucial body part, lived on. A single domain allowed WeCima to live on but the site is taking no chances.

Since wecima.tube was registered on February 2, 2023, the registrations have barely stopped. Domains including weciima.motorcycles and weciima.makeup are just two examples from a list of several dozen domains that are either active already and pointing at WeCima, or waiting for the right moment to do so.

Other resurrections may be happening elsewhere in Egypt too.

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

The “repeat infringer” issue remains a hot topic in U.S. courts, with ongoing lawsuits against several ISPs.

Internet provider RCN is one of the companies targeted. In 2021, the ISP was sued by several film companies , including the makers of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, London Has Fallen, and Hellboy.

The movie companies alleged that RCN wasn’t doing enough to stop subscribers from pirating on its network. Instead of terminating the accounts of persistent pirates, the Internet provider turned a blind eye, the companies argued.

The stakes are high in these liability lawsuits. Internet providers face damages claims reaching hundreds of millions of dollars, while tens of thousands of Internet subscribers risk having their accounts terminated.

Redditors as Evidence

The two camps are currently in the discovery phase where they gather evidence to support their arguments. In this quest, the filmmakers stumbled upon several comments from Reddit users which they believe could be useful.

A few weeks ago the movie companies obtained a subpoena asking Reddit to share the personal details of these users, including IP-address logs. The filmmakers believe that the commenters can provide evidence to show that RCN didn’t have a proper repeat infringer policy, among other things.

Reddit was unhappy with the subpoena and characterized it as overbroad. According to Reddit’s lawyers, the subpoena was more akin to a fishing expedition than regular evidence gathering. As such, Reddit only handed over the details of one user whose comment mentioned RCN, denying other ‘less relevant’ ones, citing the users’ First Amendment right to anonymous speech.

Reddit Opposes Motion to Compel

Reddit’s rejection prompted the filmmakers to file a motion to compel . They argued that the targeted comments are relevant, proportional, and may help to back up their legal arguments in court.

In court this week, Reddit filed its official response. According to the discussion platform, courts have repeatedly protected people’s First Amendment right to anonymous speech.

If a party wants to unmask users through the court, it has to meet a stringent standard, which isn’t the case here.

“That standard requires the requesting party to establish that it is an ‘exceptional case’ where a ‘compelling need’ for the discovery outweighs the users’ First Amendment rights,” Reddit’s attorneys write.

“Plaintiffs are far from meeting that strict standard here. First, they cannot overcome the Reddit users’ First Amendment rights because the users’ posts Plaintiffs have identified as the basis for this subpoena are completely irrelevant to Plaintiffs’ lawsuit.”

Irrelevant & Unneeded

Reddit writes that the targeted posts are “completely irrelevant” to the lawsuit against RCN. In fact, four of the comments don’t even mention the provider by name, and simply refer to “my provider”.

Other comments are not about piracy or are too old to be relevant, including one comment published nine years ago. A summary of these irrelevancy factors is shown in the table below, which accompanied Reddit’s objection.

Reddit further argues that the type of information the filmmakers seek can be obtained elsewhere. If the companies want to know more about RCN’s repeat infringer policy, they could get this information from the company directly, instead of targeting anonymous third parties.

“Most obviously, Plaintiffs could seek discovery directly from RCN. That would be far more efficient than taking wild guesses about which Reddit users might be RCN customers or might have engaged in copyright infringement at some point in the last decade.

“And, more importantly, it would not involve setting aside the fundamental First Amendment rights of uninvolved third parties,” Reddit adds.

Redditor Responds

The filmmakers previously argued that the Redditors didn’t seem to have any objections, as they didn’t respond in court. However, we later learned that Reddit didn’t inform the eight remaining users until after the motion to compel was submitted.

TorrentFreak spoke to one of the targeted Redditors, who wasn’t aware of the filmmakers’ request until it hit the news. This person, who wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, expects Reddit’s opposition to be succesful.

“My attorney and I are both under the assumption that the court will side with Reddit, and that the motion to compel will be denied,” the Redditor says, warning that the alternative will set a dangerous precedent.

“Granting the motion would set a precedent, allowing other companies to do the same. That would be a huge violation of everyone’s privacy and, in my opinion, Reddit would take action and ban the piracy subreddit.”

Whether Reddit would take such drastic action is unknown. The company informs TorrentFreak that it is committed to protecting our users’ privacy” and that it will oppose legal requests when appropriate .

At the same time, history has shown that the filmmakers don’t give up easily either. They will likely counter Reddit’s arguments, so it will eventually be up to the court to decide which party is right.

—

A copy of Reddit’s opposition to the motion to compel, filed at a federal court in California, is available here (pdf)

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

In an effort to make ends meet, many people in the UK are cutting back on luxuries. Fewer nights out or perhaps none at all. Downgrading Netflix or even dumping it altogether.

Subscription television is even more expensive and often demands longer-term commitments people simply can’t afford. To some, cheap but illegal streaming services might prove tempting but it appears that Sky TV and police in the UK are working hard to limit supply.

Police & Sky Conduct Raids

A statement by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) says that in partnership with Police Scotland and subscription broadcaster Sky, officers have executed a series of raids around the UK as part of an illegal streaming crackdown.

Officers reportedly searched four premises in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stoke. Four people were arrested on “suspicion of involvement” in the illegal streaming of premium content, including channels belonging to Sky. During these operations, computer equipment, laptops and phones were also seized.

‘Disrupted’ Services / 500K Customers

Given that the names of the services have not been announced by police, it’s impossible to say what effect the raids may have had on the targeted services. That being said, the announcement itself carries enough information to cautiously assess a few things.

“Officers believe that the illegal streaming services disrupted by the operation had more than 500,000 customers.”

The word ‘believe’ obviously removes a level of certainty here and use of the word ‘disruption’ could mean that no services were actually shut down. No doubt some media reports will take the ‘500,000 customers’ comment and run with it but nowhere here does it say that 500,000 lost access to one or more services.

That being said, beginning around February 20/21 until around February 25/26, social media ‘chatter’ showed a significant increase in people from the UK, particularly in the Midlands and further north, complaining about IPTV services going offline.

Police Delivered Cease and Desist Notices

In addition to the four arrests, police say that more than 200 ‘cease and desist’ notices were delivered to individuals “suspected of running illegal streaming services around the country.”

The definitions of ‘running’ and ‘service’ aren’t made clear, but on the basis that 200 physically separate IPTV services are unlikely to exist in the UK alone, this may be a reference to people who act as resellers.

If that’s the case, 200 is a completely believable number, and depending on how many customers each reseller has, the number of connections at stake if the cease-and-desist notices do their job could be significant.

Organized Crime, Malware Warnings

According to Matt Hibbert, Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, these nationwide actions “made a significant impact against individuals involved in serious organized crime.”

PIPCU Detective Chief Inspector Gary Robinson says that “organized criminal groups often view the distribution of illegal streaming services as a low-risk, high-reward crime,” that can “expose end users to the risks of data theft, fraud and malware.”

These types of statements are certainly not unusual and there’s no doubt that, depending on the contact point, IPTV subscription buyers face at least some element of risk. The problem is getting people to believe that the threats are real and not just another deterrent message that only applies to other people.

Vultures Move In

What was glaringly obvious to us during the period IPTV downtime was being reported in February, was the number of ‘people’ posting on social media offering IPTV services with a billion channels and billions of movies as a good replacement.

Just like the people who send bogus delivery or banking alerts by SMS, fraud is the endgame and there is no service. People can try and report them, but that rarely works out.

Police say that of the four arrested in February, one person has been charged in relation to intellectual property theft and three people have since been released under investigation.

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

In common with most broadly comparable countries, internet users in Denmark enjoy movies and TV shows, music, videogames, and ebooks.

The problem for rightsholders is that a subset of the population prefers not to pay for the privilege.

Local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Rettigheds Alliancen) mitigates all types of piracy but for the past few years, has maintained a keen focus on torrent sites.

Working in partnership with the Danish government’s SØIK IP-Task Force, Rights Alliance forced several sites to close down and successfully prosecuted site operators , staff members, and users who uploaded content to those sites.

In 2021, Rights Alliance targeted specialized servers that not only supply content to torrent sites but also play a role in boosting download times while improving security.

Seedbox Providers Appear in the Crosshairs

In basic terms, every BitTorrent user already operates a potential ‘seedbox’. A computer (box) loaded with a correctly-configured torrent client and content to upload can ‘seed’ or share content with others. However, the term ‘seedbox’ usually refers to a pre-configured remote server running a torrent client.

Accessed via a web interface in the user’s browser, these remote torrent clients have several advantages, including 24/7/365 uptime, high-speed connections, and depending on the provider and many other factors, varying levels of protection against rightsholders’ lawsuits.

In 2021, news broke that six people had been arrested in Denmark due to their alleged connections to several local torrent sites. Among them was Kasper Nielsen of internet services company HNielsen Networks, a supplier of servers under various brands that could be configured for ‘seedbox’ purposes.

Available information indicated that the servers had been used by an unknown number of users to share content on private torrent sites ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes.

Prosecution

Targeting the operator of a service provider, offering access to fundamentally legal servers and software, isn’t the same as targeting a user of those services who act as direct infringers. In order to hold a third party liable for someone else’s infringement, rightsholders usually need to show negligence or demonstrate that the provider or similar third party is somehow complicit.

In Denmark, the bar has been set fairly low. In 2015, a man was arrested for running a site that carried no pirate software but did advise users how to use piracy app Popcorn Time. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court , and the man ultimately received a six-month conditional sentence for contributory infringement.

When Rights Alliance filed its criminal complaint against HNielsen Networks, the anti-piracy group referenced the landmark Filmspeler case which involved the sale of piracy-configured media players.

Seedbox Seller Sentenced

According to statements published by Rights Alliance and NSK (Særlig Kriminalitet) Denmark’s Special Crime Unit, Nielsen was convicted yesterday for selling seedboxes in the knowledge they were being used by others to share movies, TV shows, eBooks and other content, without permission from rightsholders.

“On February 28, the Court in Aalborg ruled against the Danish owner behind a seedbox company for, in the period November 2020 to May 2021, having sold seedboxes and server capacity to an unknown number of people, knowing that they were used for illegal sharing of no less than 3,838 copyright-protected works on the Danish and Nordic file sharing services ShareUniversity, Superbits and DanishBytes,” Rights Alliance reports.

Nielsen was handed a three-month conditional (suspended) sentence and a confiscation order for DKK 300,000 (around $42,600), the amount users had paid his company to access the seedbox servers. The 35-year-old must also pay compensation of DKK 298,660 to Rights Alliance.

“Providers of seedboxes have a responsibility to ensure that their services are not used for illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted content, which the Rights Alliance can clearly see that they are doing,” says Maria Fredenslund, Director of Rights Alliance.

“Therefore, this case helps to send a signal to other providers that you cannot deliberately sell services to the illegal market.”

Defendant Did Not Contest The Case

Since court documents are yet to be published and Rights Alliance was unable to share copies with TorrentFreak, we asked Nielsen if he could provide more background detail on the case. An important detail is that Neilsen was advised by his lawyers to take a plea deal, and did so at any early stage.

This came to light when we requested details relating to the Rights Alliance claim that “no less than 3,838 copyright-protected works” were shared on the torrent sites. Since 3,838 is pretty specific number, how was that proven?

The simple answer is that when Nielsen took the plea deal, there was no need to prove anything in court. The 3,838 figure and any evidence related to ‘knowledge’ of infringement carried out by seedbox customers on the sites, were accepted as true.

In respect of the 3,838 titles shared on the sites, there was apparently no indication of how many clients were sharing that content, so one user per title was assumed. No data is available to confirm or deny that claim but Neilsen says that the decision yesterday renders that moot, and he’s pleased the case is all over.

“I am quite happy that the case is over and that I can now focus on the future for myself and my company. The sentence is what we aimed for. The financial side is naturally tedious but we’ll overcome that,” he says.

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

Over the past several years, several videogame companies have taken cheaters to court in the United States.

In 2021, American videogame companies Bungie and Ubisoft joined forces in a lawsuit against “Ring-1”, a developer and distributor of cheat software targeting Destiny 2, Rainbox Six Seige, and other popular titles.

Bungie and Ubisoft identified four defendants who allegedly ran the cheating business. Filed at a California federal court, their complaint named Andrew Thorpe (aka ‘Krypto’), Jonathan Aguedo (aka ‘Overpowered’), Wesam Mohammed (aka ‘Grizzly’), and Ahmad Mohammed as key players.

Three Settlements

Aguedo and the two Mohammeds were tracked down in the United States and eventually admitted their wrongdoing. This resulted in settlement agreements totaling $600,000 in damages.

Thorpe, a resident of the UK, was the only defendant who failed to respond to the allegations, despite being properly informed. In the absence of a formal defense, Bungie and Ubisoft asked the court to issue a default judgment.

According to the videogame companies, Mr. Thorpe was a “prominent” member of Ring-1 who, among other things, “ran” the group’s official website. This claim was corroborated by the testimony of one of the co-defendants.

Bungie and Ubisoft requested $2.2 million in damages, a figure that includes compensation for several claims, including copyright infringement and trafficking in circumvention devices.

Unrepresented defendants run the risk of evidence weighing in favor of the plaintiffs. In this case, however, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen took a more balanced approach.

Court Denies Default Judgement

After reviewing the arguments and evidence presented by the videogame companies, Judge Chen denied their motion for default judgment. This means that the fourth and final defendant won’t be required to pay any damages.

The key issue at stake is whether the California federal court has personal jurisdiction over the UK resident. Specifically, Bungie and Ubisoft were required to show that he was a key player who directed his actions at the United States.

In his order, Judge Chen first considers the role of the defendant, relying on the evidence provided by the game companies. This evidence failed to show that Mr. Thorpe was a prominent Ring-1 member.

“Mr. Thorpe is not an original developer of the software or an original participant in the Ring-1 enterprise, but only joined after Ring-1 had already attracted many users,” Judge Chen writes.

“His role at the Ring-1 enterprise appears to be akin to a customer service representative. For example, customers have asked him for information related to the Cheating Software such as its features, operations, and updates.”

Jurisdiction

Bungie and Ubisoft argued that the defendant’s actions were targeted at the U.S., based on the notion that the broader actions of Ring-1 can be attributed to him. That goes too far in this case, as the court fails to see him as a leader.

Co-defendant Mr. Agueda testified that Mr. Thorpe ran the Ring-1 website. However, Judge Chen believes that the term “run” is vague and is therefore insufficient to consider the defendant an alter ego for the entire Ring-1 group.

Instead, the court decided to evaluate whether Mr. Thorpe specifically directed his personal actions at the U.S., which would be sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction. Again, Judge Chen found the evidence unconvincing.

“First, contrary to what Plaintiffs argue, the fact that the two Plaintiffs are located in the United States does not mean that Mr. Thorpe has thereby targeted the United States,” Judge Chen writes.

Second, Mr. Thorpe may have assisted customers, but there is no evidence that any of those customers were based in the United States. More fundamentally, there is nothing to indicate that Mr. Thorpe reached out and solicited those customers. Rather, the evidence indicates that the customers reached out to him.

Insufficient Evidence

Judge Chen ultimately decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude that Mr. Thorpe purposefully directed his activities at the United States. As such, the court doesn’t have personal jurisdiction over the UK resident.

That left no other option than to deny Bungie and Ubisoft’s motion for default judgment and the $2.2 million in compensation they requested.

“Without the requisite minimum contacts, the Court does not have specific personal jurisdiction over Thorpe pursuant to Rule 4(k)(2), and thus a default judgment is not warranted,” the order reads.

In a footnote, Judge Chen writes that the injunctions awarded against the other defendants – prohibiting the Ring-1 members from engaging in any infringing conduct going forward – also apply to Mr. Thorpe but notes that his court has no power to enforce compliance.

Whether Mr. Thorpe is still part of the operation is unknown but, despite the previous settlements, the Ring-1 continues to be online and publicly accessible to this day.

The ruling in this lawsuit stands in sharp contrast with the criminal conviction of Gary Bowser, who was a relatively low-level ‘salesperson’ of the Team-Xecuter ‘hacking’ group. Last year, a U.S. court sentenced the Canadian to 40 months in prison for that role.

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chan’s order, denying the motion for a default judgment, is available here (pdf)

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