For most people living in the West, MyCima may not ring a bell. In Arabic-speaking countries, MyCima was the second-largest piracy ring in the region.

The site offered downloads and streams of roughly 12,000 pirated copies of movies and 26,000 TV shows. These streams were embedded and utilized third-party hosting services such as Uptostream and Userload.

Free Movies and TV

MyCima was most popular in Egypt where it was among the ten most-visited sites in the country. The site also generated a lot of traffic from neighboring countries, including Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

The true purpose of the site was obvious and its operators publicly advertised it as the best way to watch entertainment without paying.

“Our website is the most prominent free movie site, meaning that it enables you to follow your favorite shows and movies for free without the need to pay in order to subscribe to the site,” MyCima wrote on its website.

This free-for-all approach generated serious advertising revenues for the site. Behind the scenes, copyright holders were hard at work trying to bring the platform to its knees.

Egypt Shutters MyCima

The Alliance of Creativity Entertainment ( ACE ), which includes Netflix, Disney and other prominent players, took on the task and reported the MyCima piracy ring to law enforcement in Egypt.

Intelligence has shown that the operation was headquartered in Alexandria. Based on the referral from ACE, Egyptian authorities managed to shut down the operation this week. As a result, myciiima.autos and roughly 70 other domain names have stopped working.

It appears that the authorities hit the hosting facility of the piracy ring as most domain names are still active. However, instead of showing the usual links to pirated movies and series, visitors see a Cloudflare error stating that the host is unreachable.

‘You Can’t Hide’

ACE boss Jan van Voorn, who is also the Motion Picture Association’s Global Content Protection Chief, notes that pirate site operators will face the consequences of their actions, regardless of where they operate.

“The latest shut-down in the Middle East reinforces the fact that no matter where in the world they are, criminal distributors of pirated content can’t hide,” Van Voorn says .

Van Voorn is pleased with the actions Egypt has taken and he explicitly thanks the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for their help.

“We applaud the action taken by the Egyptian authorities and look forward to supporting them in further actions. We would also like to thank the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for their work in the investigation and protection of intellectual property rights.”

ACE has its roots in Hollywood but has been expanding all over the globe in recent years. This includes the Middle East where two of its newest members, OSN and MBC GROUP, proved to be instrumental in the MyCima investigation.

To give the successful anti-piracy operation more weight, ACE stresses that MyCima was the second-largest piracy operation in the Middle East region. The number one isn’t mentioned, probably for a good reason.

#1 Survives?

Egybest has traditionally been the top pirate site in the region. This download and streaming platform appeared to shut down in 2019 following an enforcement effort that also involved the Motion Picture Association (MPA). However, that didn’t last.

Through various copycat sites and redirects, the brand managed to survive. The original Egy.best domain also made a comeback as a dominant piracy player in Egypt and elsewhere.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Trade Representative called out Egybest as one of the oldest movie piracy portals in the region. According to the MPA, the site had well over 130 million monthly visits.

Interestingly, the main Egy.best domain became unreachable again last December. The recent disappearence is shrouded in mystery but there are plenty of copies and clones still in operation. Whether ACE still sees it as the leading piracy operation is unknown.

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

Cheating in computer games has existed almost as long as gaming itself. The difference today is that single-player games have mostly given way to multiplayer experiences featuring human competition.

Poking around in 8-bit gaming code was something enjoyed in isolation. Deploying a commercial cheating product to ensure ‘victory’ in a multi-player environment is something else entirely.

Activision vs. Call of Duty Cheat-Makers

Activision is among several companies leveraging copyright law to send a message to cheat-makers. A lawsuit filed early January 2022 in the U.S. targets German companies EngineOwning UG and CMN Holdings S.A, plus a growing list of both named and yet-to-be-identified defendants.

EngineOwning UG and ten named defendants filed a 53-page motion to dismiss last month, characterizing the lawsuit as a battle between a $50 billion dollar company and mostly overseas defendants with limited resources to fight back. Two of those defendants, EngineOwning UG and Valentin Rick, are already being sued by Activision in a similar lawsuit in Germany.

In broad terms, appeals to dismiss the U.S. lawsuit center on Activision’s decision to sue foreign defendants, with limited ties to the United States, in a California court. Germany would be a more appropriate and ultimately more practical venue, the motion argues.

Germany has competent courts, meaning the defendants wouldn’t have to incur huge costs to defend the same actions thousands of miles away. And since Activision has offices in Germany, a local proceeding shouldn’t be a burden for the plaintiffs either, the defendants insist.

A decision in the German case is expected to arrive soon and according to the defendants, it will be resolved “one way or another.”

Two Defendants Decide to Settle

With the prospect of potentially prolonged legal action ahead, two of the named defendants in the United States action have reached agreements with Activision.

In two separate filings dated February 14, Activision and defendants Ignacio Gayduchenko and Manuel Santiago request entry of consent judgments to bring their respective matters to an end.

In broad terms, both defendants have agreed to permanently cease and desist from knowingly or intentionally performing any of the activities detailed in a comprehensive list. The image below contains a small sample.

The agreements are customized based on details specific to each individual, their alleged role and other circumstances, but the overall message is extremely clear: stay away from cheat-related behaviors connected in any way to Activision’s business or face the consequences.

Gayduchenko agrees that judgment shall be entered against him “in the amount of two million dollars ($2,000,000), to be due and payable solely pursuant to the terms set forth in the Parties’ Confidential Settlement Agreement and Release.” Manuel Santiago agreed to the same terms but just half of the money – $1,000,000.

“The Parties irrevocably and fully waive any and all rights to appeal this Judgment and Permanent Injunction, to have it vacated or set aside, to seek or obtain a new trial thereon or otherwise to attack in any way, directly or collaterally, its validity or enforceability,” both documents continue.

“Nothing contained in this Judgment and Permanent Injunction shall limit the right of the Parties to seek relief including, without limitation, damages for any and all infringements of any Intellectual Property rights or for violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA occurring after the date of this
Judgment and Permanent Injunction.”

Entry of these judgments and permanent injunctions require the judge’s signature, but for defendant Katerina Disdle, things are more straightforward. On February 10, Activision voluntarily dismissed her from the case. The reasons for that are unknown but since the dismissal is without prejudice, Activision has left the door open for further action, if that’s ever required.

Judge Warns Remaining Defendants

When regular people represent themselves in complex legal battles against rich opposition and then win , people make movies about them. The other cases where most lose? Not so much.

A self-representation order placed on file by District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald notes that one or more defendants in this matter intend to appear without an attorney. That’s completely within their rights but since proceeding pro se has significant risks, a few should be pointed out.

“Generally speaking, non-attorney litigants are less like to be victorious than those assisted by counsel. The opposing party may have a lawyer, and that lawyer’s duty is to achieve victory for his or her client. He or she will take every step legally permissible to that end,” the Judge warns.

“The Court is a neutral adjudicator of the law. The role of the judge is to resolve disputes arising between the parties in accordance with the law. As such, the judge cannot assist you, cannot answer your legal questions, and cannot take sides in the dispute, nor can any members of the judge’s staff.”

Simply stated, when you elect to proceed pro se, you are on your own and become personally responsible for litigating your action in accordance with the rules. You must become familiar with these rules. You will be held to the same standards as a lawyer as far as complying with the Court procedures and the rules and regulations of the court system

The next few pages in the order cover some of the basics ( pdf ) but since much more is required, additional defendants may be persuaded to settle.

The proposed joint stipulations and voluntary dismissal can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , pdf)

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

When Lionel Messi held up the World Cup Trophy, all of Argentina was watching. Many people tuned in to legal broadcasts but pirate services were buzzing too.

With an audience of millions, piracy is quite popular in Argentina. Rightsholders are unhappy with the country’s mediocre enforcement results in the piracy arena and are demanding tougher action.

Thus far, private actions have already enjoyed a level of success. A few days before the start of the World Cup, ACE took down a ring of illegal sports streaming sites including futbollibre.net and televisionlibre.net. The sites had millions of monthly visitors and were operated from Argentina.

While these domain names were effectively pulled offline, the piracy problem persists. After the shutdowns, new domain names appeared, helping to fuel the perpetual game of cat-and-mouse between rightsholders and pirates.

Premier League Flags Argentina

A few days ago, the Premier League stepped in to make a statement. True to the global nature of the issue, England’s top football league reported Argentina to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) as a prime candidate for its upcoming piracy watchlist.

The football organization is headquartered in the UK and broadcasts in the United States through international partners. The league also operates an educational program in hundreds of U.S. elementary schools , teaching roughly 75,000 kids about online safety and other issues.

The USTR submission doesn’t deal with these educational goals. Instead, it focuses on copyright enforcement hurdles, including those related to Argentina.

‘Criminal Enforcement Deception’

The Premier League’s submission references a specific case where a criminal referral to the authorities failed to produce the desired results. The matter dates back to 2018, when the football organization reported a number of high-profile sports streaming platforms to the authorities.

“At the time the case was filed the streaming platforms operated by the suspects were the largest source of free-to-access infringing live streams of Matches in the world,” the submission reads.

After the initial report was filed, progress was slow. The case was passed between multiple courts and, much to the frustration of the Premier League, the unnamed defendants were informed about the ongoing investigation, which provided an opportunity to destroy evidence.

The Premier League nonetheless continued to put effort into the case. It appealed jurisdictional challenges, identified new domain names, and introduced evidence to show that a U.S. court had previously found that the suspects operated sports-related piracy sites. Ultimately, that didn’t help.

“Despite these efforts, the suspects were recently acquitted,” the Premier League writes.

The websites in question are not mentioned, and the related U.S. lawsuit is a mystery too. What we do know is that, at the time the case was first filed, Rojadirecta.me, Livetv.sx and Sport365.Live were among the top sports streaming sites.

‘Argentina Should Up Its Game’

The case is just a single example, but the submission suggests that enforcement problems are common in Argentina. Through the U.S. Government, the football league now hopes to increase the pressure on Argentina by urging the country to take the matter seriously.

“It is vital that an effective IP enforcement framework enables legitimate rights owners to bring and conclude deterrent enforcement actions in a timely manner and before pirate technology has evolved, and that courts are willing to give due consideration to evidence and expertise offered by copyright owners.

“Unfortunately, in the Premier League’s experience, which we have been advised by local legal counsel is by no means unique, the current framework in Argentina does not offer the support rights owners require to protect their IP rights.”

The Premier League’s proposal suggests placing Argentina on the Priority Watch List of the USTR’s forthcoming 2023 Special 301 Report. This would be in line with previous years, where the USTR already highlighted several Argentinian copyright enforcement problems.

—

A copy of the full report is available here (pdf) . In addition to Argentina, the Premier League submission also highlights shortcomings in other countries, including China, Iraq, Thailand, and Vietnam.

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

When Extreme Download (Extreme-Down.com) first appeared on the internet around 15 years ago, it linked to movies hosted on sites like Megaupload. The site was a little basic in the beginning, but people expected a lot less back then.

Four years later, Megaupload went down in spectacular fashion, but Extreme-Down and similar sites chose to ride out the storm. With increasing traffic and rising popularity, the eventual appearance of dark clouds was almost inevitable, it was only a matter of when.

Millions of Visits, Against The Odds

Focused on French-language content, Extreme-Down was predictably popular in France. Over three-quarters of Extreme-Down’s visitors hailed from the region in December 2022, with Belgium, Canada and Switzerland accounting for most of the remainder.

Extreme-Down received around 15 million visits per month last year, an impressive feat considering the circumstances. In common with other successful sites, Extreme-Down regularly switched to new domains. While the reasons were not always made clear, legal action by rightsholders was rarely far behind.

ISP blocking orders in Belgium ( pdf ) presented some obstacles but when rightsholders joined forces to target Extreme-Down in France, many of the site’s domains were blocked by ISPs in the region that mattered most ( pdf ) .

More Domains, More Confusion, More Copycats

To mitigate blocking, Extreme-Down began deploying new domains, which also helped the platform retain visibility in search engines. ISP blocking in France was supported by court-ordered ‘dereferencing’ instructions, meaning that Google was required to completely deindex Extreme-Down domains.

Deindexing was supposed to have a devastating effect on the site but, as some had predicted, it ended up making things worse. Spotting a gap in the market for sites with the same design and a similar name, copycat sites appeared one after another in a race to dominate search results. Some even exploited the confusion to separate people from their money.

Meanwhile, Extreme-Down remained determined to stay up, and did so well into December 2022. Then suddenly, without warning or suggestion of renewed blocking, the platform disappeared. From fairly early on, the chances of yet another return seemed less likely than before.

Early this Monday, it became clear that Extreme-Down is unlikely to make a return. One by one, domains previously controlled by the site – extreme-down.lol, extreme-down.video, extreme-down.tv, extreme-down.pro, and extreme-down.live – were transferred to a brand new owner.

Alliance For Creativity Shuts Down Extreme-Down

As additional domains were transferred to the Motion Picture Association, including extreme-down.in, extreme-down.io and extreme-down.info, all that remained was for the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment to officially announce Extreme-Down’s demise.

“The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition, today announced it has shut down France’s second most popular illegal streaming site, Extreme-down,” the ACE announcement reads.

“Thanks to ACE’s rapidly expanding global network, we are in a better position than ever to act decisively against illegal piracy operators in all markets across the world,” said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Global Content Protection Chief of the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE.

“Extreme-down offered a large library of TV series and movies in French and original versions; we counted more than 40,000 movies and TV series episodes affecting ACE members. That library is now closed.”

ACE Traced Operator to Tunisia

The ACE investigation received support from French premium television channel providers, ACE members CANAL+ and France Televisions, and local authorities.

Extreme-Down’s operator was traced to Houmt Souk, Tunisia. ACE made an approach and obtained an agreement for the site to shut down. Surrendering domains to the MPA was part of the package.

“CANAL+ Group has fought content piracy for years and, as a member of ACE, we are particularly pleased with the takedown of this notorious illegal website,” said Celine Boyer, Global Head of Content Protection at CANAL+ Group.

“The elimination of this website is a massive success for the protection of rights holders in French-speaking countries.”

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

Over the past several years, a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits has targeted alleged cheaters and cheat makers.

Several game companies including Take-Two Interactive and Epic Games have taken cheaters to court in the United States. More recently, American video game developer Bungie has been rather active as well.

Bungie is known for the Halo and Destiny series, which have millions of fans around the world. The popularity of these games also attracts cheaters and cheat sellers, including “Elite Boss Tech” and “AimJunkies.com.”

How these sellers have responded to legal pressure varies considerably. Earlier this year Elite Boss Tech accepted a loss by signing a consent judgment, agreeing to pay $13.5 million in copyright damages. AimJunkies, on the other hand, is doing everything in its power to fight back .

Bungie vs. Veterancheats

Bungie’s case against Veterancheats has gone in another direction. After the lawsuit was filed against the cheat seller in 2021, not much has happened. The site’s alleged operator, Romanian resident Mihai Claudiu-Florentin, didn’t answer the complaint in court.

A few days ago, this lack of action prompted Bungie to request a default judgment totaling roughly $12 million in damages for copyright infringement and circumventing Bungie’s technological protection measures.

According to Bungie, the defendant sold several Destiny 2 cheats, including “Razor”, “HLBOT”, and “Render.” These allowed “unskilled” and “unethical” players to gain an unfair advantage, effectively ruining the fun for everyone else.

“Cheat software negatively impacts the gaming experience of Bungie’s community of honest players who enjoy playing and winning fairly using skill and developed through practice,” Bungie writes.

It’s a sentiment shared by many affected gamers, and Bungie lists several instances of people publicly complaining about Destiny 2 cheaters.

Serious Money

Veterancheats remains online and is aware of the lawsuit. The cheat seller previously removed the Destiny 2 cheats from its site in the hope that would settle the matter. However, Bungie is pressing on.

The game company obtained subpoenas to request financial information from Coinbase, PayPal, and Stripe. The Stripe information was particularly useful as it revealed thousands of cheat sales, including 5,848 separate subscription transactions that could be linked to Destiny 2 cheats.

These transactions brought in roughly $146,000 in revenue, which Bungie demands as actual damages for copyright infringement. In addition, the game maker seeks $2,000 for each of the 5,848 sales for circumventing the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision – $11,696,000 in damages overall.

Adding attorneys fees to these two figures pushes total compensation above $12 million.

Serious Money

The damages are warranted for a variety of reasons, according to Bungie. The company has spent more than $2,000,000 on cheat mitigation while Veterancheats and Claudiu-Florentin willingly broke the law and then failed to respond to Bungie’s complaint.

Interestingly, Claudiu-Florentin did briefly communicate with the game maker’s legal team. When Bungie tried to get the transaction data from Stripe, Veterancheat’s operator offered to stop selling cheats going forward, if Bungie would stop pursuing the case.

Claudiu-Florentin instead pointed a finger at competing cheat sellers, who continued to offer similar software. In addition, he drew Bungie’s attention to the developer of the cheat.

“The one who should be sued is the developer of the product, not a small seller like me. Why they dont try to identify the developer of the product instead? ring-1,” Veterancheat’s operator wrote.

“I request a withdrawal of information request and if you accept, i will stop distributing the destiny 2 software (Skycheats,Battlelog,Privatecheatz has sold Destiny 2 software for more than 1 year and they did not got sued by Destiny 2,” he added.

This diversion attempt didn’t help, it appears, as Bungie continued with the case and now demands millions of dollars in compensation.

The court has yet to rule on the default judgment and damages request but without an official defense from Veterancheats, little stands in the way of a successful outcome for the game vendor.

—

A copy of the motion for a default judgment against Veterancheats/Claudiu-Florentin and the associated memorandum is available here (pdf)

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

Last month the European Commission (EC) issued a call for evidence to support an incoming “toolbox” of measures to combat live sports piracy.

The announcement followed a huge campaign by rightsholders last October. Organizations and companies, including the MPA, UEFA, Premier League, beIN, LaLiga, Serie A, Sky, and BT Sport, called on the EC to introduce new law that would compel intermediaries to take pirate streams offline within minutes of a complaint.

After denying the request , the EC offered an opportunity for rightsholders and other stakeholders to file submissions detailing their problems along with possible solutions actionable under existing law.

Most major stakeholders filed submissions close to the deadline late Friday. The majority were filed by sports leagues and organizations, broadcasters, and/or affiliated anti-piracy groups. Cloudflare, CCIA Europe, and an Austrian ISP coalition represented the internet/comms/tech sector.

The Voices of Football

Despite being framed as a process to protect all live sports, it’s clear that the primary focus is to prevent European and UK football matches from appearing on pirate IPTV and similar web-based services. It therefore makes sense to focus on the demands of entities such as the Premier League, affiliated broadcasters, and the anti-piracy groups tasked with protecting their rights.

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) represents football leagues and their broadcasters all over Europe. AAPA members played a key role in the campaign last October, and their current position remains completely unchanged.

“As signatories to the Call To Action to End Live Piracy Now, we would like to restate that an EU legislative instrument still remains the most efficient and effective way to tackle piracy of live content within and across Member States,” AAPA begins.

In the knowledge that’s not going to happen anytime soon, AAPA notes that since the purpose of the exercise is to “ prevent ” online piracy, the main focus should be on the immediate removal of infringing content via the notice and takedown mechanism.

What is a ‘Timely’ Takedown?

“The issue we have always had to face is the delayed response, if any, from online intermediaries that have been notified. The recently adopted Digital Services Act (DSA) makes no meaningful change to the concept of ‘expeditious’ removal currently enshrined in EU law,” the AAPA writes.

“The latter is open to interpretation from online intermediaries which, in many cases, means they will simply either not respond to notices or do so hours or days after the end of the live event. Many of them will exploit all ambiguities in the law to avoid acting at all – never mind expeditiously – which is why concrete measures need to be taken.”

To empower rightsholders in the face of slow or even total non-compliance, the AAPA says that clarification of takedown terms would allow it to build on the concept of “timely” removals introduced in the DSA. Since accurately identifying infringing content is reportedly straightforward, non-compliant intermediaries should be held responsible for any infringement.

“As live content is almost always watermarked and/or fingerprinted there is no question about identifying the stolen content which means the removal should be immediate and, in any case, well before the event terminates. In case online intermediaries do not remove access to the content in a timely manner, they should be held responsible for the harm caused to rights holders.”

If fingerprints are so easily detected and subscriber/device-level fingerprinting is available from multiple security vendors, that raises the question of why cutting off sources of infringing content isn’t a better option than battling to have streams taken down by uncooperative third parties. Perhaps we’ll hear more on this in due course.

EU-Wide Implementation of Proactive ISP Blocking

In several EU member states and the UK, rightsholders already obtain court injunctions that require ISPs to block pirate sites when they try to evade blocking. These ‘dynamic’ injunctions are useful but ‘live’ injunctions are favored by rightsholders tackling IPTV services since they offer even more flexibility.

In broad terms, some European courts authorize live injunctions with particular aims in mind, protecting football matches or PPV boxing events, for example. To thwart the efforts of pirate services seeking to evade specified domain or specified IP-address-based blocking, rightsholders are given the power to identify in advance any online locations that are likely to be used for piracy in the near future.

These are relayed to Internet service providers and rendered inaccessible, sometimes before events even begin. As such, live blocking injunctions are popular with rightsholders, but they’re not available in every member state. AAPA says this imbalance should be addressed by harmonizing this type of enforcement across the EU.

“The Commission should seek to create a level playing field and therefore replicate across the EU a powerful but carefully used approach to live blocking orders, bearing in mind that such actions shall not exclude rights holders who cannot act on the legal ground of copyright,” the anti-piracy group notes.

Cloudflare: Tackle Infringement at the Source

Cloudflare’s submission begins with an overview of the company’s approach to copyright infringement and examples of how it cooperates with rightsholders seeking to protect their content from piracy.

Cloudflare then moves on to the Digital Services Act (a common theme in many submissions) and the mechanisms it offers for dealing with illegal content, in ways that are proportionate to the harm, while offering transparency, due process, and remedy for incorrect actions.

“We believe those same standards must apply to any actions in the Commission’s toolkit for combating online piracy of live content,” Cloudflare informs the EC.

“The DSA assesses that the best way to address content challenges is at the source. Under the model outlined in the DSA , this is done by alerting hosting providers and owners of websites, who have the ability to remove content at a granular level, and who have an obligation to remove or disable access to it expeditiously under article 6.

“Article 9 of the DSA also poses clear conditions on orders to act against illegal content, which includes, amongst others a well-defined legal basis, the identity of the issuing authority and available redress mechanisms. From this, it follows that notice and take down orders should be targeted at the host of the live streamed content.”

Zero Transparency and Inevitable Blunders

Targeting infringing content at the source is not how rightsholder-favored dynamic/live injunctions work, quite the opposite in fact.

Instead of targeting sources of infringing content, blocking injunctions work on a regional level by ordering local ISPs to prevent internet users from accessing illegal streams, will leaving the streams intact. Rightsholders say that uncooperative hosting companies leave them with no other choice, and in fairness, that’s often the case when dealing with hosts of pirate services.

The problem – which is only getting worse as blocking injunctions develop – is the total lack of transparency which in turn fosters an environment of unaccountability. On one hand, rightsholders insist that if pirates obtain information relating to blocking, blocking becomes easier to counter. Since judges make decisions on the basis that their instructions will be carried out, all parties agree to render the blocking process completely opaque.

On the other hand, a complete lack of outside scrutiny means that when mistakes are made, and innocent third parties suffer due to erroneous or abusive blocking, no one is held to account. Certainly, no company, group or organization offers a public apology or compensation for those affected.

This isn’t a flaw in the system either – dynamic/live blocking and administrative website blocking programs are secretive by design, with the latter often operated under voluntary agreements. According to Cloudflare, blocking by IP address – which is favored against IPTV services – “often has serious unintended, unavoidable, and largely unreported consequences.”

Thousands of Legal Websites Have Been Blocked

As previously reported, ISPs in Austria were compelled to block Cloudflare itself in 2022, even though they knew that was wrong.

Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, input from ISPs was no longer deemed necessary – all they had to do was blindly follow instructions and the letter of the law. It appears that Cloudflare has seen much, much worse.

“In another Member State, an ISP with a voluntary arrangement to block allegedly infringing content has, on multiple occasions, blocked thousands of unrelated websites using our services for its users,” Cloudflare’s submission reveals.

“Without any court oversight, this overblocking in some cases took days to remedy. Even though the Commission has focused on critical infrastructure reporting on outages in the NIS Directive, efforts to block for reasons of copyright infringement do not result in reporting on its unintended consequences, which look like outages for external parties.

“This lack of public awareness means we see few incentives for rightsholders or the ISPs involved to assume accountability for the overblocking, publicly describe what had happened, or represent that they would take steps to prevent overblocking in the future.”

In summary, stakeholders in the football sector believe that the Digital Services Act may offer opportunities to take infringing content down more quickly, while an expansion of ISP blocking across the EU may help to block content that doesn’t get taken down.

Cloudflare also supports the DSA’s takedown provisions but expects promised levels of transparency too. Infringing content should only be taken down at source though; not only because some deputies are a little bit trigger happy but because blocking does nothing to remove the source of the problem.

Image credits: Pixabay ( 1 , 2 )

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

By providing free access to millions of books, Z-Library became the go-to site for many readers in recent years.

Z-Library’s very existence was put to the test last November when U.S. law enforcement seized over 200 domain names connected to the site. Two alleged Z-Library operators from Russia were arrested in Argentina as part of a criminal investigation.

Down, Not Out

Despite the gravity of the criminal accusations and pending extraditions, Z-Library never went completely offline. The site continued to operate on the dark web, offering millions of pirated books and articles as it did before.

Z-Library’s resilience suggested that elements of the team remained operational. And indeed, a blog post published a few days after the crackdown suggested that the site has no intention of throwing in the towel.

“We believe the knowledge and cultural heritage of mankind should be accessible to all people around the world, regardless of their wealth, social status, nationality, citizenship, etc. This is the only purpose Z-Library is made for,” the platform announced.

The shadow library promised to take authors’ complaints seriously and asked for their forgiveness. Meanwhile, pirated books remained widely available and, behind the scenes, Z-Library was working on a full comeback.

Z-Library Returns in Hydra Mode

Z-Library’s resilience wasn’t just temporary grandstanding. In an unprecedented move, Z-Library announced its return to the publicly accessible web (clearnet) this weekend, with a technical setup that anticipates future enforcement action.

Sites can often be seen hardening their operations to mitigate disruption caused by domain name seizures. Many have a list of backup domains that can be deployed when needed; The Pirate Bay infamously launched its hydra setup consisting of five different domain names.

Z-Library is taking this hydra-inspired scheme to the next level. A new announcement reveals that the platform is publicly available once again and offering a unique and private domain name to every user.

“We have great news for you – Z-Library is back on the Clearnet again! To access it, follow this link singlelogin.me and use your regular login credentials,” the Z-Library team writes.

“After logging into your account, you will be redirected to your personal domain. Please keep your personal domain private! Don’t disclose your personal domain and don’t share the link to your domain, as it is protected with your own password and cannot be accessed by other users.”

Personal Domains

While we can’t confirm that all users will get unique domain names, people are indeed redirected to different clearnet domains after logging in. After doing so, a popup message reminds them to keep their personal domain secret.

The domain names in question are subdomains of newly registered TLDs that rely on different domain name registries. Every user has two of these ‘personal’ domains listed on their personal profile page.

If users can’t access the universal login page, Z-Library says they can log in through TOR or I2P and get their personal clearnet domains there.

Happy Users

Thus far, users of the site have responded positively to the comeback. The blog post announcement already has hundreds of comments, most featuring an outpouring of gratitude.

“Thank you so much, Z library has been an invaluable resource. I hail from a small village in India, and I could never afford to read these books had it not been for Z library,” one user writes.

“You helped me a lot during my engineering. I was not in [a] condition to buy new books. I have completed my engineering with the help of you. Thank You,” says another.

Future Enforcement

How many new domain names Z-Library has is unclear but that’s exactly the point. The site’s operators want to prevent future domain name seizures and with the U.S. Government on its back, new domains are far from safe.

At the same time, rightsholders will do everything in their power to disrupt Z-Library’s clearnet comeback. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN previously informed us that in the event of a comeback, Z-Library domains could face blocking.

Whether this elaborate domain name hydra will be effective long-term remains to be seen. The authorities will undoubtedly be aware of some of the new domains already and OSINT tools may help to spot others.

However, the recent actions show that Z-Library is determined to keep the project online, for as long as it can.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on February 13 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists .

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

Commissioned by the Australian Attorney-General’s Department, the annual Consumer Survey on Online Copyright Infringement is now available for 2022.

The Australian Government has commissioned these surveys since 2015, with the goal of understanding internet users’ consumption habits related to several core content types: music, video games, movies, TV shows and live sports, with the latter appearing more recently in 2019.

The 2022 Consumer Copyright Infringement Survey was conducted online from 24 June to 14 July 2022 and sought responses from internet users aged 12+ regarding their consumption habits in the preceding three months. Overall, 72% of respondents said they consumed content from at least one of the categories.

Overall Consumption and Legality

Consumption of content online increased in 2022 over the figures reported the previous year. TV shows were consumed by 57% of respondents in 2021, with 60% reporting doing so in 2022. An identical three-point increase was observed in the consumption of movies (53% in 2021 / 57% in 2022) and music (45% in 2021 / 48% in 2022).

Video game consumption leaped from 26% in 2021 to 37% in 2022, with live sports reaching 34% in 2022, up from 26% recorded the previous year.

Rather than expecting respondents to determine the legality of their consumption methods, methods were classified as either ‘likely to be lawful’ or ‘likely to be unlawful’ in advance. This allowed respondents to point out the methods used, without discussing legality in depth.

Roughly three-quarters of the population consuming content exclusively from legal sources is a decent result, but closer inspection reveals a caveat. This figure relates to respondents who consumed content in all categories – music, video games, movies, TV shows, and live sports.

Similarly, the remaining 22% to 26% detailed below are respondents who consumed content from all categories, with “at least some” of that content consumed from sources that had a predetermined status of “likely to be unlawful.”

At its most basic level, the term ‘infringer’ in the report identifies a respondent who “reported consuming any content in a way that was likely to be unlawful.” Couple that with respondents who consume content from fewer categories, and Australia suddenly has a problem to solve.

Significant Infringement Increase

The study identifies a ‘non-infringer’ as a respondent who exclusively consumed content from sources predetermined as ‘likely to be lawful’. A single instance of infringement renders a non-infringer an infringer, but in this case, no amount of consumption from legal sources can redeem an infringer.

As result, when the survey balances those who streamed or downloaded any content in the previous three months across any of the content types (music, movies, TV shows, video games, and/or live sports), the picture becomes more gloomy.

This 39% ‘overall infringement’ rate is up from the 30% reported in 2021 and exceeds the 34% reported in 2020. However, a new type of behavior introduced for the first time contributed to the rise in 2022. Pre-categorized as “likely” to be unlawful, credential sharing pushed up infringer rates by four points.

Credential Sharing

New unlawful methods of consumption are a feature of a continuously developing piracy landscape. In an effort to keep up with these emerging trends, the 2022 survey considered respondents who “pay a small fee to access one or many subscription services through a shared / unknown account (e.g. shared login credentials).”

Most people understand the concept of password sharing; a friend or family member shares their Netflix password, for example, so that the other person doesn’t have to pay. It’s the most common type of credential sharing for that very reason – it’s free.

By including “pay a small fee”, the category might be targeting people who share accounts with others for a fee, but then that misses the overwhelming majority who don’t. That leaves hacked/stolen accounts or conceivably subscription IPTV services, but as a paid piracy option, IPTV doesn’t appear in a distinct category of its own.

Despite the potential for confusion, 11% of all respondents said they had paid a small fee to access one or many subscription services through a shared or unknown account.

Muddying the waters a little more is the finding that of all respondents who personally pay for a legal subscription service, 33% allow someone outside their household to use it.

Site Blocking Measures

Site blocking doesn’t appear to bother pirates too much in Australia, possibly because the general public has seen it all before. After being denied timely access to legal movies and TV shows for many years, Australians turned to VPNs to ‘unblock’ access to overseas content.

According to this year’s study, 17% of consumers encountered a blocked site in the previous three months. Six out of ten “simply gave up” trying to access any content at all, a figure directly in line with last year’s survey.

Of the remainder, 16% bypassed the block, 14% sought alternative lawful access, while 6% attempted to obtain the same content for free from other illegal sources.

Pirate Blocking Countermeasures

Those who bypassed website blocks used various tools. With 46% overall, VPNs came out on top but still fell short of the 61% who used them in 2021. Just 6% used a custom DNS but nearly a quarter of respondents (23%) said they were aware of them.

Almost a quarter (24%) used some kind of proxy website, versus 21% in 2021. Nearly one-fifth (18%) say they used a search engine to find an alternative site, while 15% used Google Translate as a workaround.

The full report offers plenty of ammunition for those on all sides of the piracy debate.

For the optimistic, roughly three-quarters of the most dedicated consumers of content in all categories never pirate anything. Of the remainder, the majority are buying something, meaning they can be encouraged to buy more.

Even the estimates relating to fewer content categories aren’t that bad. When 61% of consumers exclusively use legal content and 39% are reported as having obtained pirated content once or more, that doesn’t mean 39% pirate everything.

“Within content types, no more than 12% of all respondents use only unlawful methods to access content and just 3% of all respondents use only unlawful consumption methods across all content types they consume,” the report reveals.

Or as the Australian government frames it: “Research conducted for the Attorney-General’s Department has revealed the rate of Australians accessing online content unlawfully remains disturbingly high.”

Consumer Survey on Online Copyright Infringement 2022 can be found here

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