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Popular TV-torrent distribution group ETTV has vanished. The official site has been offline for more than a week and many bots already stopped uploading content to third-party sites weeks ago. ETTV has recovered from internal troubles in the past but, without a word from the admin, a comeback is not expected anytime soon. ettv logoFive years ago, the torrent community was hit hard when the popular torrent site ExtraTorrent suddenly shut its doors. The site provided a safe harbor for millions of file-sharers and was also the birthing ground for several popular releasers and distribution groups. This included ETTV, which is short for ExtraTorrent TV. With its home gone, ETTV decided to carry on independently by launching its own website. Over the past years, this had grown out to become a medium-sized torrent site with a dedicated and vetted group of regular uploaders. ETTV Goes Down Over the past few days, however, ETTV has disappeared. The official site and its backup domain now show a Cloudflare error message, which indicates that the site’s server is offline. The same is also true for the status page (archived), which is hosted on yet another domain. ettv cloudflare All of this is happening without an official word from the site’s ‘operator’. TorrentFreak reached out to a contact at the site before the weekend but we haven’t received a response. This means that it’s possible that the site is not coming back at all. Troubled Past This isn’t the first sign of trouble at ETTV. The site has suffered downtime in the past and behind the scenes, there were plenty of problems as well. The internal issues started roughly two years ago when the main ETTV operator who controlled the domains, servers, and ads, suddenly went missing. With the ETTV ship adrift, administrator ‘sidekickbob’ stepped in and took the helm. At the time, he told us that it wasn’t the plan to keep managing the site permanently due to a lack of time. Selling it to a third-party with a good track record seemed to be the preferred option. “Ultimately my intention is to sell it to somebody that wants to run the torrent site. Preferably somebody that has experience in running a medium-traffic torrent site. I’m not going to give it to some random kids,” sidekickbob said at the time. Uncertain Future As far as we know the site was never sold. Sidekickbob didn’t respond to our requests for comment on the current downtime so the future of the site remains uncertain. In addition to the site, ETTV’s upload bots are also offline. These are scripts that pull videos from private sources to make them available to the public, also on external torrent sites such as 1337x.org. It’s an effective system but one that relies on central servers as well. The ETTV bots started having issues last year. The last upload on 1337x was more than three months ago and things have gone quiet since then. Perhaps that was already an early sign of the trouble ahead.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has revealed that during 2021, it took down five Usenet indexing platforms and approached 38 uploaders of content for settlement. Overall, BREIN collected cash payments of $290K from pirates, with settlements presented as an alternative to protracted and expensive legal battles. usenetIt’s one of the oldest methods for sharing large files online but despite advances in modern technology, Usenet (also knows as newsgroups) still has a considerable following among enthusiasts. While it can be used for a multitude of other things, Usenet’s popularity and longevity have certainly been boosted by the mountains of copyrighted content that exist on the sprawling system. Over the years, finding such content has been made more simple with the assistance of indexing sites, which in broad terms operate like torrent portals, offering links to content without actually storing it. Popular with users, these sites can also attract the attention of anti-piracy groups, Netherlands-based BREIN in particular. BREIN Took Down Five Indexers in 2021 Unlike the majority of enforcement entities, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has maintained its interest in tackling piracy on Usenet and in 2021, that position remained unchanged. The group says that last year and following consistent pressure, a number of uploaders and site administrators decided to “quit their illegal practices”. In total, five Usenet indexes shut down. BREIN rarely names the sites it takes offline but due to their profile, some are particularly visible. In August 2021, for example, Usenet indexer NZBXS agreed to shut down and as part of a confidential settlement, agreed to hand over the personal details of some of the platform’s users. These kinds of deals are important since at least in part, obtaining sensitive site and user data gives BREIN the opportunity to support and escalate existing investigations or even launch new ones. In the same month, Newzbin – another portal popular with Dutch users – took the decision to shut down, citing a wariness among uploaders of linking to copyright material. There can be little doubt that BREIN’s actions played a major role here too and the group warned that it would keep pursuing Newzbin’s operators, despite the shutdown. Targeting Uploaders While BREIN doesn’t have a strong reputation for targeting low-end consumers of pirated content, those that become part of the ecosystem by uploading or even linking to copyrighted material can become a target. BREIN says that following its investigations, in 2021 it identified and approached 38 uploaders, some of whom took the option to settle their cases by agreeing to pay a cash settlement. In total, BREIN says that during the year it collected more than 260,000 euros (around $290k) in settlements from pirates, who are usually required to cease-and-desist from the activities moving forward to avoid further action. The overall amount suggests an average payment to BREIN in excess of 6,800 euros per uploader but in some cases it’s clear that some people can be asked to pay more. The amount depends on what evidence BREIN holds on pirates’ offending but also their status in the ecosystem, with the latter having the potential to push settlements higher. As an example, BREIN mentions a specific case against a man from Alkmaar in the province of North Holland. According to the anti-piracy group, the man was active for years under various aliases as an uploader on Usenet and as an administrator of various sites with links to illegal content. He did not earn money from his activities but BREIN says the damage he caused was considerable. “BREIN addressed the man after an in-depth investigation yielded his identity and name, address and place of residence. Following BREIN’s legal action, the man chose to settle by paying 10,800 euros and provide information about other parties involved. For the future, a penalty clause has been agreed of 2,500 euros per day (or part thereof) that infringement occurs, with a maximum of 50,000 euros,” BREIN reports. In terms of overall importance in the global piracy ecosystem, Usenet isn’t as significant as it once was but in the Netherlands at least, BREIN is set to ensure the copyright infringement free-for-all doesn’t go unchecked.

International music industry group IFPI has submitted its recommendations for the EU's upcoming 'Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’. As expected, the report flags YouTube rippers, cyberlockers and torrent sites. However, messenger platforms and social media sites such as Discord, Reddit, Telegram and Twitter, are also seen as top enforcement priorities. cassette tape pirate musicFollowing the example of the United States, the EU started publishing its very own piracy watchlist a few years ago. This ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’ is put together by the European Commission. As in the US, it relies on stakeholder groups to nominate several problematic sites and services for inclusion. The third iteration of the EU watchlist will be published towards the end of the year and several interested parties have already submitted their nominations. This includes the music industry group IFPI, which represents roughly 8,000 music companies around the world. IFPI submitted a 36-page document that begins by highlighting the harm piracy does to the music industry. This includes economic harm affecting investments in the industry and talent development. The report then continues with examples of concrete threats. Not surprisingly, the list of problematic sites and services includes YouTube rippers, direct download sites, cyberlockers, and torrent sites. However, another category of platforms is seen as an even bigger enforcement challenge. IFPI Flags Top Piracy Problems According to IFPI, a group of social media platforms and messenger services have become increasingly problematic. Platforms such as Discord, Reddit and Telegram are often used to share and sell pre-release content, which is a top concern. “Although there are huge numbers of services that infringe our members’ rights, due to the grave economic harm caused by pre-release piracy, the services mentioned above – Discord, Reddit, and Telegram – are considered enforcement priorities for the music industry and are a particular focus in this submission,” IFPI writes. The music industry group notes that social media can also be beneficial to artists. However, it has seen an emergence of platforms where pirates exploit these services to share infringing content in recent years. This content isn’t necessarily stored by these ‘social’ platforms. Groups of pirates often share links to external cyberlockers such as Dbree and Onlyfiles that don’t respond to takedown requests. onlyfiles IFPI discusses several platforms in more detail, stressing that the operators should do more to prevent piracy. Shutting down servers, groups, subreddits and channels where pre-release content is shared, should be a top priority. Discord Discord is seen as a serious concern because there are several servers, often private, where people share pirated music. This also includes pre-release content that is occasionally sold through the platform. “Most notably and problematically for the music industry, Discord has rapidly become an underground marketplace for the distribution and crowd funding of stolen, unreleased or prerelease content, through so-called ‘Group Buys’. This is where users use a Discord server to operate an auction to sell unreleased or pre-release content,” IFPI notes. discord The infringing content is often stored on external sites but IFPI believes that Discord contributes to the problem. Since many of the groups are private, the platform is also hard to monitor, so the scale of the infringing activity could be even larger than has been detected to date. The music industry group stresses that Discord should to more to police its platform and prevent illegal activities. When bad actors are found, they should be banned and prohibited from reappearing on the service. Reddit Copyright infringement is a problem on Reddit too, according to IFPI. The popular social media platform is used to discuss virtually every topic imaginable and pre-release music piracy is no exception. This includes dedicated ‘leak’ communities. “We have detected many instances of pre-release content distributed across the platform, including on leak-specific subreddits. REDDIT is used in combination with other services such as Discord and Twitter to promote the distribution of pre-release content,” IFPI writes. Reddit is well aware of the copyright issues on its platform and responds to takedown requests. It also has a repeat infringer policy and permanently banned 2,813 users and 2,625 subreddits last year. The music industry is aware of these efforts but believes it can do more. Ideally, it wants the platform to take “proactive” steps to prevent piracy. “Reddit needs to take further steps to identify and address the illegal sharing of content, especially pre-release content, on the platform,” IFPI notes. Twitter and Telegram While Reddit and Discord are not typical pirate sites, IFPI is listing them hoping that this will trigger the companies to take action. It previously did the same with Telegram, which subsequently took action against infringing channels and bots. However, IFPI’s latest recommendation notes that Telegram’s efforts are just a start; more should be done. “While this [takedown] process appears to be working, it barely tackles the problem given the large amount of infringing content remaining on the platform, including via bots, and because of right holders inability to find the infringing content in the first place,” IFPI writes This also applies to Twitter. The social media platform removed hundreds of thousands of tweets, but IFPI also wants the company to prevent “future infringements.” “Twitter still does not take steps to prevent future infringements of content that has been notified. Consequently, IFPI and its member companies spend a significant amount of time and resources identifying and notifying reappearances of the same content.” ‘EU Law Requires a Proactive Stance’ Preventing something that hasn’t happened yet might sound complicated but we assume that the music industry is again hinting at upload filters. Upload filters are a familiar topic in the EU, as they are indirectly required by the DSM Directive, which was adopted in 2019. Under European law, online service providers either have to obtain licenses or take proactive steps to prevent infringing content from reappearing on their platform. IFPI notes that many of the aforementioned platforms and services claim that “safe harbor” legislation protects them from being held liable. However, that is not necessarily the case in Europe. “[The DSM Directive] is particularly relevant to many social media services with infringing functionalities since it confirms that they have to modify their EU-facing operations and either get licensed for the music content made available on their platforms or ensure that no such unlicensed content is available there. “While Europe led the way in providing this clarification, it is evident that many services, notably some based in the US, often view their obligations as limited to compliance with US safe harbour laws and not the new EU standards of protection,” IFPI adds.

Spain's National Police report that two people have been arrested on suspicion of intellectual property offenses and other crimes related to the supply of pirate IPTV subscriptions. The investigation was launched in 2019 by Spanish football league LaLiga which, as we'll explain today, has developed a formidable array of anti-piracy tools and services. IPTVSports leagues and their TV broadcasting partners all over Europe are working hard to combat the supply and sale of pirate IPTV subscriptions. Available for just a few euros, pounds or dollars per month, pirate IPTV subscriptions allow users to watch all the live TV content they’ll ever need, plus PPV events, movies and TV shows in one convenient package. Rightsholders see them as a threat to their survival so significant resources are expended to bring IPTV providers and distributors to justice. LaLiga Strikes Again Top-tier Spanish football league LaLiga is now tackling live streaming piracy on all fronts. From a few early steps in 2016/2017 and more recently in 2022, services are being dynamically blocked and many individuals have been arrested for broadcasting or selling access to the league’s games without permission. An announcement this week by Spain’s National Police reveals that La Liga is keeping its foot on the gas. In 2019, LaLiga launched an investigation into a website advertised on social media that was being used to illegally market football content plus other material belonging to a “well-known” on-demand television platform. According to police sources, the site offered subscriptions to illegal IPTV and CCCAM services. Where IPTV streams contain actual video content, CCCAM services capture encryption codes from legal subscriber viewing cards and then, via the internet, distribute them to set-top boxes that have access to a source (such as a satellite) but don’t have a legal subscription – so-called ‘card sharing’. In addition to selling both types of subscriptions, the site also had a blog where technical support was given to users. LaLiga Investigation Goes in Two Directions To target the individuals involved, LaLiga’s investigation went in two directions. In the first instance, it sought to identify the person behind the pirate network and discover the technical infrastructure supporting the illicit broadcasts. LaLiga then took a ‘follow-the-money’ approach to determine how subscribers paid for subscriptions, leading investigators to a financial payment platform. This enabled the identification of two individuals in Malaga who are believed to be the main people behind the operation. National Police Make Two Arrests On Monday, Spain’s National Police said that following LaLiga’s investigation, two people had been arrested on suspicion of illegally selling access to premium audiovisual content distributed via the Internet and satellite. “They have been arrested for crimes against intellectual property, against conditional television broadcasting services, and electric power fraud. They had a high degree of technological specialization. To carry out their illicit activities they used a sophisticated infrastructure to provide services to their clients,” a police statement reads. Gross revenues generated by the suspects are yet to be revealed but at least for now, police say that the profit made exceeds €87,500 (US$95,400). Given that LaLiga’s anti-piracy efforts are increasing and enjoying success on multiple fronts, it’s worth looking at how the league is tackling piracy using in-house tools. LaLiga Develops Its Own Anti-Piracy Tools In February 2015, LaLiga launched a piece of web-spidering software called ‘Marauder’. It scans the web looking for hot terms such as team names (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao, etc) and assesess whether any ‘hits’ are related to piracy. If they are, Marauder identifies the provider/server and sends automatic infringement notices to web-based platforms and apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to have the content removed. LaLiga says that Marauder can also detect illegal IPTV streams and card sharing operations. In these cases, infringement notices are sent to infrastructure providers to have the related servers blocked or taken down. The system is also used to identify sites selling illegal subscriptions. As previously reported, these are then sent to Google for delisting from its search engine. Marauder can also provide a visual map that helps LaLiga geo-locate illegal websites but more recently LaLiga has discussed its ‘Blackhole’ tool which appears to map illegal IPTV services at a national and international level. Finally, LaLiga’s Lumière tool assists with investigations by extracting and signing digital evidence and preparing evidence for legal action. Technology created by LaLiga is also being used by other industries to protect their intellectual property. In February, LaLiga said its LaLiga Tech subsidiary (which operates LaLiga Content Protection) had signed a deal with CEDRO, an association representing creators in the publishing sector. “LaLiga Content Protection will detect and analyse illegal domains using artificial intelligence monitoring software across the world’s major search engines and social media platforms, allowing it to identify the source of illegal content and speeding up the process through which CEDRO can request the disabling and blocking of pirated material,” the company said.

UK media giant Sky has asked GitHub to remove the website and APK file of the popular IPTV application CucoTV. The developer platform responded by taking a CucoTV repository offline. However, the application's main website, which is hosted on GitHub, remains up and running. cucotvWith 70 million users and over 200 million code repositories, GitHub is the largest online developer platform of its kind. The site is used by individual coders and large organizations to host visually any piece of code imaginable. In addition, GitHub pages can also be used as a hosting service for websites. While most projects are perfectly legitimate, there are some that attract negative attention. Every week, GitHub receives dozens of takedown notices from copyright holders who claim that their content is published or linked to without permission. These complaints often refer to code or files that are hosted in a GitHub repository. In some cases, the targeted projects also have their own GitHub page, using a dedicated Github.io subdomain. The latter also applies to the IPTV streaming app CucoTV, which has become the go-to tool for many people who want to watch movies and TV shows without paying a subscription. The Internet is littered with guides and how-tos explaining how to get it up and running. In theory, the application may have legal uses but that’s probably not how most people use it. In fact, the CucoTV Twitter account doesn’t beat around the bush and highlights the app’s piracy capabilities out in the open. cucotv As shown above, the CucoTV website is hosted on a GitHub page, and the official repository is on GitHub as well. This prompted UK media giant Sky to step in. With help from its anti-piracy partner Kopjra, Sky asked the developer platform to remove the site and the ‘infringing’ APK. “We are writing in the name and on behalf of Sky UK Limited, the exclusive owner of distribution and exploitation rights of the Sky UK channels. This IPTV App (CucoTV) includes illegal and unauthorized Pay Tv Sky UK tv series: Gomorra,” the notice reads. The notice continues by explaining how the application can be used to access copyright-infringing material. To stop this activity, Github was asked to remove the cucotv.github.io page and an APK file, hosted in the cucotvapk.github.io repository. cucotv Thus far, the results of this takedown effort are mixed. When we checked this morning, the APK file is indeed inaccessible, replaced by a DMCA takedown placeholder. However, the main cucotv.github.io remains online. In fact, the CucoTV website still appears to be fully functional, and the APK file can still be downloaded. At this point, we don’t know why GitHub hasn’t taken action against the CucoTV site. The associated repository is still online, for now, as is the APK file that’s hosted there. That repo is linked to another user than the one Sky targeted, which may be part of the explanation. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that Sky has tried to get the site taken down. The Italian branch of the company sent similar takedowns last May and June, without the desired effect. Perhaps they’ll make another attempt in the near future.

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