Roblox Piracy: Developer Demands Thousands of Gamers’ Personal Details A DMCA subpoena application filed in a California court is seeking to identify potentially tens of thousands of people for being part of Roblox groups, some of which contain members allegedly involved in game piracy. Christopher Boomer's games already have billions of legitimate views, with his copyrights and trademark filings hinting at a beyond-luxury lifestyle. robloxEvery day an estimated 30 million players jump into Roblox, an online game where players can play games created by other users. Around 40 million games is the current estimate. Developing games for Roblox can be extremely lucrative. The company behind Roblox revealed that developers and creators earned more than $500 million on the platform in 2021 alone, a huge amount considering that most developers are mostly young adults, some earning around $2m a year. It’s clear then that Roblux content is worth protecting so it wasn’t much of a surprise to see a DMCA subpoena filed at a California court last week complaining about piracy on the platform. After digging further into the details, it soon becomes apparent that what goes on in Roblox doesn’t necessarily stay in Roblox and can have real-world consequences. Developer Wants to Identify Alleged Infringers Filed on July 8, 2022, the DMCA subpoena application is nothing special in itself. It references a set of four DMCA complaints sent to Roblox, beginning in December 2021 and running to May 2022. It seeks the identities of the infringers detailed in those complaints, promising that any information obtained will only be used for protecting the developer’s copyrights. According to the application, the developer is Christopher Boomer but the importance of that is only revealed when reviewing the original DMCA takedown notices. According to Boomer’s legal representative, his client holds copyrights in several games and provides links to the Roblux platform (included below) as evidence of that. Weight Lifting Simulator 2 was uploaded to Roblox in August 2017 and since then has been visited 77 million times. Weight Lifting Simulator 3 was uploaded in September 2018 and has been visited more than a billion times. Muscle Legends was uploaded in September 2018 and it too has been visited more than a billion times. According to the application, other Roblox developers have been leveraging the success of the above titles by publishing games with the same names using artwork, code and assets from the originals. One alleged clone, originally called Weight Lifting Simulator 3 and uploaded in July 2021, has been removed and its page renamed, but not before amassing in excess of three million visits. Another clone, Weight Lifting Simulator 5, has also been removed after clocking up a million visits. Those were the small ones – two other alleged clones racked up 34.3 million and 15 million visits respectively. Developer Homes in On Specific Infringers In a letter dated May 17, Boomer’s legal team in Northern Ireland informed Roblux’s legal department of continuing infringement on the platform, supported by evidence of Boomer’s registered copyrights in the above games and others including Legends Of Speed and Ninja Legends. The letter goes on to claim that Boomer is being deliberately targeted and calls on Roblox to take action. A Roblox developer group called “17_Qv Studio” is specifically called out while two other allegedly-affiliated groups – Estatics (20K+ members) and Estatic Networks (71K+) – also get a mention. DMCA Subpoena is Extremely Broad As far as the DMCA subpoena goes, Boomer has a long list of people he wants to identify. Whether the court clerk will simply sign on the subpoena’s dotted line is unclear but in this case the oversight of a judge is almost certainly warranted given the scale. The requests for information are split into three groups – game URL, groups, and specific users. For each allegedly-infringing game URL on Roblox (10 in total), the developer demands “documents sufficient to identify all current and previous owners, operators, developers, and contributors to the game” including usernames, real names, physical addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses “associated with each owner, operator, developer, and contributor.” For each infringing group (7 in total), the developer demands “documents sufficient to identify all current and previous members of the Infringing Group, including but not limited to Documents sufficient to identify all usernames, real names, physical addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses associated with each member.” To say that this could involve a considerable number of people is putting it mildly. Admittedly there could be some membership overlap between groups but potentially thousands of people – including those who are not necessarily guilty of any wrongdoing – could get sucked in if the subpoena is simply signed off. roblox groups The affected groups and their member counts are as follows: 17_Qv Studio has 248,000+ members, Estatic Studios has 63,000+ members, Estatic Games has 93,000+, Estatics has 20K+, Speedster Games Inc has 11K+, and FreshyWay Studios has 25K+. In respect of individuals, Roblox users Vectus, Avectus and Avectus II – members of Flamen’ Studios and Speedster Games Inc – are listed in connection with an alleged clone of Weight Lifting Simulator 3 that pulled in 155m+ visits, a Weight Lifting Simulator 2 clone (6.1m) and Ninja Simulator (408K). Roblox users Underesteem and Codosky are listed due to alleged involvement in a Weight Lifting Simulator 2 release (384K visits) and Bitdows is linked to a Speed Simulator 2 release (2.8m visits). Users linked to releases of Weight Lifting Simulator 3 include Metadowed, MrN3koglai, BabyJohn, DUDUARTZRBLX, plus the plainly named ‘Mark’. In common with the other categories, Boomer wants to match usernames with real names, physical addresses, plus email and IP addresses. Trademarks and Luxury If the DMCA subpoena goes uncontested, which seems unlikely given its extraordinary scope, any information obtained can only be used to protect copyrights. That being said, Boomer has a lot of trademarks registered in both the United States and United Kingdom, covering the above games and other IP. Of course, trademark registrations need the name of the owner plus that person’s address – both listed here on the database and viewable by anyone with a browser. There could be some unknown factors at play here but if piracy of Roblox games is indeed causing lost sales, no real evidence of hardship will be found here. Or maybe it’s just a very, very big mortgage – payable in Robux.

Pirate Site Blocking Expansion to Mobile Networks Raises New Questions Recording industry group BPI has announced that its program to block pirate sites via court injunctions in the UK will expand to mobile networks, starting with industry leader EE. Tests on EE connections currently yield mixed results but given the complex nature of the UK's major mobile networks, coupled with the parameters of existing injunctions, plenty of questions remain unanswered. Pirate site blocking in the UK is now commonplace, with the movie, TV show, music, live sports and publishing industries all directly involved. Recording industry group BPI and its member labels are among the most prolific blocking injunction applicants. To date more than 70 base pirate sites are listed in High Court injunctions but due to their ‘dynamic’ nature, those injunctions now cover thousands of related sites and domains, including proxy, mirror and clone sites. These injunctions require the country’s major fixed-line broadband ISPs (those in the BT group, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media) to block listed domains, rendering them inaccessible to subscribers. These blocks can be circumvented using VPNs and other tools but a much bigger access hole has existed for some time. Mobile Networks Lead to The High Seas While most torrent site users have historically preferred the convenience a PC, the explosive growth in smartphone ownership since blocking began has seen millions of users flood to illegal streaming platforms and MP3 download sites instead. The reason that happened so easily in the UK is that the injunctions obtained by the BPI, Hollywood, publishers and sports companies only cover fixed-line broadband, not mobile networks. Ten years ago, expensive mobile packages with small data allowances didn’t pose much of a threat but today that’s clearly not the case so the BPI is taking action. “The BPI, the representative voice for independent and major record labels, has today confirmed that High Court website blocking of pirate music sites and apps – which previously applied only to users of fixed line broadband networks – is being extended to users of mobile networks, starting with EE, part of the BT group,” the BPI’s announcement reads. The UK recording industry group notes that previously-obtained injunctions led to BT group, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media ISPs blocking thousands of domains. Those ISPs include EE, a broadband provider that’s also the operator of the UK’s largest mobile network. The BPI says this is the first time since website blocking began in 2011 that a mobile operator has begun blocking pirate sites. So, during the past few hours, we had some tests carried out on EE’s network in the UK. The results are mixed. Recent injunctions obtained by the BPI targeted several platforms including file-hosting site Nitroflare.com and YouTube-ripping site 2Conv.com. Using EE’s 4G network the sites now refuse to load but on an iPhone with Apple’s iCloud Relay activated, everything returns to normal. Testing another dozen or so blocked domains returns the same results. This seems to suggest that blocking is taking place on EE but there are some outliers too. For example, another recent target – Mixdrop.co – loads with no issues and the same holds true for ThePirateBay.org, the BPI’s first ever blocking target a decade ago in 2012. BPI Welcomes EE Development The BPI cites figures from telecoms regulator Ofcom showing that in the last quarter of 2021, there were 85 million mobile subscriptions in the UK, a figure that exceeds the UK’s entire population. Quality of service is good too, not exactly an ideal scenario for suppressing piracy. “Mobile data connections are faster and more reliable than ever,” says BPI General Counsel Kiaron Whitehead. “A quarter of people now connect to the internet over 3G, 4G and 5G rather than broadband and wi-fi. That growth brings with it the risk of increased music piracy.” Whitehead notes that revenue generated by pirate sites goes into the operators’ pockets while none goes back to artists. Enhanced blocking on mobile networks may go some way to improving that. “We are therefore pleased that EE – which was the first mobile network to launch 5G to the UK population – has now become the first mobile network to block pirate sites which are subject to our High Court blocking Orders under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,” Whitehead adds. Mobile Network Blocking Raises New Questions Considering the millions the company spends on advertising and marketing each year, EE makes absolutely zero personal appearance in the BPI’s announcement, not even a short comment from a spokesperson. It’s hard to draw firm conclusions but this tends to suggest that EE doesn’t view site blocking as an exciting marketing opportunity. However, EE’s lack of public support raises other questions too. The terms of site-blocking injunctions are negotiated between rightsholders and the ISPs. The details are hammered out in private but we do know that blocking on mobile networks was previously ruled out and is therefore not included in the orders handed down by the High Court. That raises the question of whether EE Limited has made an agreement with the BPI to block sites voluntarily or whether additional court processes will be needed to modify existing injunctions. That leads to even more questions. If EE is covered by existing injunctions or intends to block voluntarily, why are other mobile providers (e.g Sky Mobile, owned by Sky UK Limited) not carrying out BPI blocking as well? There’s also the issue of ‘BT group’ companies being covered by existing injunctions. BT owns EE but BT Mobile customers also use the EE network. Does that mean users of BT Mobile will experience blocking on their connections too? The same thing can be said about subscribers to other providers including Plusnet Mobile, Utility Warehouse, and other smaller companies such as 1pMobile, The Phone Co-op, Ecotalk, IQ Mobile, Zevvle, RWG Mobile, and To The Moon. These all use the EE network. Also, today’s announcement only mentions BPI blocking injunctions in respect of EE. Is that the limit of EE’s blocking or does it intend to block the many, many thousands of sites listed in injunctions obtained by the MPA and Premier League, for example? And then there is the matter of EE’s main competitors – O2, Three, and Vodafone. As a company, O2 has been named previously in at least one BPI fixed-line broadband injunction but Three and Vodafone have not. There is no mention of those companies implementing blocking so at least at this stage, it seems likely they haven’t agreed to it. That leads us to all the injunctions handed down by the High Court in the past, which currently cover most of the big pirate sites. Will the BPI have to go back to court and have them all modified or perhaps the other providers will act voluntarily? All of these questions were put to the BPI before the publication of this article.

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The world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, continued to process trades by clients in Iran despite U.S. sanctions and a company ban on doing business there, a Reuters investigation has found. In 2018, the United States reimposed sanctions that had been suspended three years earlier as part of Iran's nuclear deal with major world powers. That November, Binance informed traders in Iran it would no longer serve them, telling them to liquidate their accounts. But in interviews with Reuters, seven traders said they skirted the ban. The traders said they continued to use their Binance accounts until as recently as September last year, only losing access after the exchange tightened its anti-money laundering checks a month earlier. Until that point, customers could trade by registering with just an email address. "There were some alternatives, but none of them were as good as Binance," said Asal Alizade, a trader in Tehran who said she used the exchange for two years until September 2021. "It didn't need identity verification, so we all used it." Eleven other people in Iran beyond those interviewed by Reuters said on their LinkedIn profiles that they too traded crypto at Binance after the 2018 ban. None of them responded to questions. The exchange's popularity in Iran was known inside the company. Senior employees knew of, and joked about, the exchange's growing ranks of Iranian users, according to 10 messages they sent to one another in 2019 and 2020 that are reported here for the first time. "IRAN BOYS," one of them wrote in response to data showing the popularity of Binance on Instagram in Iran. Binance did not respond to Reuters' questions about Iran. In a March blog post, published in response to Western sanctions on Russia, Binance said it "follows international sanction rules strictly" and had assembled a "global compliance task force, including world-renowned sanctions and law enforcement experts." Binance said it used "banking grade tools" to prevent sanctioned people or entities from using its platform. Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment. The Iranian trading on the exchange could draw interest from U.S. regulators, seven lawyers and sanctions experts told Reuters. Binance, whose holding company is based in the Cayman Islands, says it does not have a single headquarters. It does not give details about the entity behind its main Binance.com exchange which does not accept customers in the United States. Instead, U.S. clients are directed to a separate exchange called Binance.US, which - according to a 2020 regulatory filing - is ultimately controlled by Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao. Lawyers say this structure means Binance is protected from direct U.S. sanctions that ban U.S. firms from doing business in Iran. This is because the traders in Iran used Binance's main exchange, which is not a U.S. company. But Binance does run a risk of so-called secondary sanctions, which aim to prevent foreign firms from doing business with sanctioned entities or helping Iranians evade the U.S. trade embargo. As well as causing reputational damage, secondary sanctions can also choke off a company's access to the U.S. financial system. Binance's exposure would depend on whether sanctioned parties traded on the platform and whether Iranian clients dodged the U.S. trade embargo as a result of their transactions, four lawyers said. Non-U.S. exchanges "can face consequences for facilitating sanctionable conduct, whereby they have exposure for allowing the processing of transactions for sanctioned parties, or if they're on-boarding those types of users," said Erich Ferrari, principal attorney at Ferrari & Associates law firm in Washington. Reuters did not find evidence that sanctioned individuals used Binance. Asked about traders in Iran using Binance, a spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury declined to comment. Binance kept weak compliance checks on its users until last year, despite concerns raised by some senior company figures, Reuters reported in January, drawing on interviews with former senior employees, internal messages and correspondence with national regulators. The exchange said in response it was pushing industry standards higher. Reuters' new reporting shows for the first time how the gaps in Binance's compliance programme allowed traders in Iran to do business on the exchange. Binance dominates the $950 billion crypto industry, offering its 120 million users a panoply of digital coins, derivatives and non-fungible tokens, processing trades worth hundreds of billions of dollars a month. The exchange is increasingly going mainstream. Its billionaire founder Zhao – known as CZ – this year extended his reach into traditional business by pledging $500 million to Tesla boss Elon Musk's planned takeover of Twitter. Musk has since said he is pulling out of the deal. Last month Binance hired Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo to promote its NFT business. "BINANCE PERSIAN" Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the West and the United Nations have imposed sanctions on Iran in response to its nuclear programme, along with alleged human rights violations and support for terrorism. Iran has long maintained the nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes. Under the 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers, Tehran curbed its nuclear programme in return for an easing of some of the sanctions. In May 2018, President Donald Trump ditched the accord and ordered the reimposition of the U.S. sanctions that were relaxed under the deal. The curbs came back into effect in August and November that year. After Trump's move, Binance added Iran to a list of what it called "sanctioned countries" on its terms of use agreement, saying it could "restrict or deny" services in such areas. In November 2018, it warned its customers in Iran by email to withdraw their crypto from their accounts "as soon as possible." Publicly, some Binance executives lauded its compliance programme. Its then chief financial officer said in a December 2018 blog it had invested heavily in countering dirty money, saying it took a "proactive approach to detecting and squashing money laundering." In March the following year, it hired a U.S. compliance platform to help it screen for sanctions risks. By August 2019, Binance deemed Iran – along with Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Crimea – a "HARD 5 SANCTIONED" jurisdiction, where the exchange would not do business, according to an internal document seen by Reuters. The May 2020 document included Iran on a list of countries headed "strictly no," citing Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim. Even as Binance's stance on Iran hardened, its profile among the country's legions of crypto users was growing, traders said, citing their knowledge of the local industry. Cryptocurrencies grew attractive there as sanctions took a heavy toll on the economy. Since the birth of bitcoin in 2008, users have been drawn to crypto's promise of economic freedom beyond the reach of governments. Cut off from global financial services, many Iranians relied on bitcoin to do business on the internet, users said. "Cryptocurrency is a good way to circumvent sanctions and make good money," said Ali, a trader who spoke on condition he was identified by only his first name. Ali said he used Binance for around a year. He shared with Reuters messages with Binance customer service representatives that showed the exchange closed his account last year. They said Binance was not able to serve users from Iran, citing recommendations from United Nations Security Council sanctions lists. Other traders at the exchange cited its weak background checks on clients, as well as its easy-to-use trading platform, deep liquidity and a large number of cryptocurrencies that could be traded as reasons for its growth in Iran. Pooria Fotoohi, who lives in Tehran and says he runs a crypto hedge fund, said he used Binance from 2017 until September last year. Binance won over Iranians because of its "simple" know-your-customer controls, he said, noting how traders could open accounts simply by providing an email address. "They succeeded in gaining a huge trading volume, with many pairs of currencies, within a short period of time," said Fotoohi. Binance's Angels – volunteers who share information on the exchange across the globe – also helped spread the word. In December 2017, Angels announced the launch of a group called "Binance Persian" on the Telegram messaging app. The group is no longer active. Reuters couldn't determine how long it operated, but identified at least one Iranian who was an active Angel after Washington reimposed sanctions. Mohsen Parhizkar was an Angel from November 2017 to September 2020, managing the Persian group and helping its users, according to his LinkedIn profile. A person who worked with Parhizkar confirmed his role and shared messages they exchanged. Contacted by Reuters, Parhizkar said Binance had cancelled programmes in Iran because of sanctions. He didn't elaborate. After its 2018 ban, at least three senior Binance employees were aware that the exchange remained popular in Iran and was used by clients there, 10 Telegram and company chat messages between the employees that were seen by Reuters show. By September 2019, Tehran was among the top cities for followers of Binance's Instagram page, topping New York and Istanbul, one message from the same month shows. The employees then made light of this. One jokingly suggested advertising Binance's popularity in Iran, saying, "Push that on Binance U.S. Twitter." In a separate exchange from April 2020, a senior employee also noted that Iranian traders were using Binance, without saying how he knew this. A Binance compliance document from the same year, reviewed by Reuters, gave Iran the highest risk rating of all countries for illegal finance. "BEGINNERS' GUIDE TO VPNS" Further underpinning Binance's growth in Iran, traders said, was the ease with which users could skirt curbs via virtual private networks (VPNs) and tools to conceal internet protocol (IP) addresses that can link internet use to a location. North Korean hackers used VPNs to obscure their locations while setting up accounts on Binance to launder stolen crypto in 2020, Reuters reported in June. Mehdi Qaderi, a business development worker, said he used a VPN to trade around $4,000 worth of crypto on Binance in the year to August 2021. "All of the Iranians were using it," Qaderi said of Binance. In a 2021 guide to how sanctions applied to crypto firms, the U.S. Treasury said sophisticated analytic tools existed that could detect IP address obfuscation. Crypto companies could also gather information to alert them to users in a sanctioned country, it said, such as from email addresses. "Crypto exchanges would be expected to have these types of measures in place in order to comply with sanctions," said Syedur Rahman, legal director at Rahman Ravelli law firm in London.

Hey guys, With a heavy heart, we are this point again. The last few days we've seen another rise in virus infected "Games" uploaded to the site. We are discussing whether to take further action (which would likely be the end of the games category), but for the moment we just want to let you know that it does happen, and while staff try to be vigilant, we can't be everywhere at once. Think twice with odd looking Games torrents. Above all, do not open .exe files without being certain they are risk free - make sure your antivirus software is up to date. Be safe out there, make sure your online security is up to date and don't click suspicious links. In times like this I recall the age old advice my grandpa gave me once; "when in doubt - DON'T!" See this forum thread for discussion: Viruses uploaded in the Games category Gloryhammer on behalf of Pornbay staff

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