Faced with a copyright infringement related ban in Mexico, streaming media platform Roku is working hard to win hearts and minds. In May, the company invited a group of Mexican journalists to its Silicon Valley headquarters to hear about its anti-piracy efforts. However, Mexico's Telecommunications Law Institute says the company needs to follow the example set by Apple TV. Until the turn of the decade, obtaining online pirate content was almost exclusively achieved by individuals with desktop and laptop computers. With the rise of streaming, set-top devices are now the major entry point. With Kodi-enabled Android devices grabbing much of the attention (and criticism), other platforms have also been feeling the heat. Despite offering plenty of legitimate content such as HBO Go, Hulu, and Netflix and playing no active role in the provision of unlicensed media, Roku is one of those enduring a bumpy ride. Last year following a complaint from Cablevision, the Superior Court of Justice of the City of Mexico handed down a ban, prohibiting stores like Amazon from importing and selling Roku devices due to third parties offering unlicensed content via the platform. It didn’t take long for Roku to react. Last August the company began displaying warnings to users who added channels to their device that weren’t obtained via the official Roku store. Then just a month later, it was revealed that Roku was assembling its own anti-piracy team. In the background the legal wheels turned, with Roku trying everything in its power to have the Mexico ban overturned. As of today the ban remains with no clear end in sight but that doesn’t mean that Roku has been standing still. It appears that on May 23, a group of Mexican journalists was welcomed to Roku’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Just days later, Roku CEO Anthony Wood and Marketing Director Matthew Anderson visited Mexico City. While these events were no doubt designed to build bridges, Mexico’s Telecommunications Law Institute (IDET) painted the efforts in a rather different light. According to El Economista, IDET said the moves were designed to exert pressure on the judiciary and to sway public opinion in favor of Roku. “[Roku’s] intention is to influence the judges who are reviewing this case, which formally has not begun,” said IDET member Gonzalo Rojón. “We feel they are doing that because they want to influence the judges, but the truth is that intellectual property rights are still not respected and the truth is that this is a very strong problem for Mexico.” In a response, Roku denied this interpretation, stating that their aim is to introduce Mexico to its business and to demonstrate the measures it takes to counter copyright-infringing content. “On May 23, we invited a group of Mexican journalists to the Roku headquarters in Silicon Valley to introduce them to the company and our history in the streaming market and also to explain the strong anti-piracy measures we have implemented in Mexico and around the world,” Marketing Director Matthew Anderson explained. “Right now, we feel it is very important to help journalists and the public understand more about Roku and our history, that we are a reliable company, particularly for the leading content generation companies in the world that distribute their content on the platform. We want to explain the anti-piracy measures we are taking.” While both IDET and Roku agree that piracy is a problem, there is a difference of opinion on where the bounds of responsibility lie. IDET holds Roku to blame when unlicensed content appears via its service but Roku insists that piracy is an Internet-wide issue that has spread to platforms everywhere. IDET has been extremely vocal on the topic and has published three press releases on the subject of Roku during the last couple of weeks. They say that Roku needs to do more, holding up competitors such as Apple TV and Google Chromecast as examples of set-top devices that tackle piracy well. “Roku seeks to become the most economical, simple and accessible device in the streaming market. Its competitors in this segment are Apple TV and the giant Google that have similar devices which, however, do not face legal conflicts similar to those of Roku,” IDET writes. “It is a cheap and accessible technology but it allows the streaming of stolen signals directly to the television screen. [Roku’s] Matthew Anderson, who comes from the legitimate content generation industry, assures that Roku strives to bring to the market a ‘legal’ means of downloading content. But with a presence in 23 countries, more than 45,000 associated channels, and more than 21 million accounts, Roku – unlike Apple TV and Google – is still vulnerable.” There is no dispute that Roku wants to reduce piracy and IDET agrees that Roku in no way advertises or encourages any means to infringe and it is third-parties abusing Roku that are to blame. However, Roku and IDET seem to have a difference of opinion as to how this should be tackled. For its part, Roku says that once it’s advised that infringing content is being made available via its platform, it takes steps to eliminate it. It’s a system employed by Internet platforms all over the world and recognized as being at the core of the DMCA, for example. IDET, however, wants Roku to be more proactive. It says that once the content has been made available via Roku the damage has already been done and it appears that unlike some of its competitors, Roku has not found a solution to that problem. “Why can Apple or Google prevent this situation? Because their devices eliminate the possibility of distributing stolen material in advance. It’s just a technology issue. It is not understood why an important streaming platform, such as Roku, has not been able to turn this problem around,” IDET says. With the import and sales ban stubbornly in place, IDET says that no one wants Roku devices off the market. They’re good for competition and provide consumers with more options. However, Roku will have to do more if it wants to do business in Mexico, a solution that IDET insists is merely a technical step away. “No one is against selling Roku devices in the market. On the contrary, the promotion of competition is applauded and the consumers of audiovisual content have more and better and better options to decide,” IDET writes. “What is unfortunate is that this high caliber competitor can not resolve the intrusion of piracy on his device. In the end it is just a matter of technology to invest in an appropriate software. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.” Reports that 40% of all Roku users in Mexico are pirates certainly don’t help the company’s case (Roku contests the figure) but by banning services such as the popular cCloud, the company shows good intent that may eventually pave the way for the ban to be lifted in Mexico.

Netflix wants to expand its Global Copyright & Content Protection Group. The streaming giant is looking for an individual "who can hit the ground running" into a variety of tasks, from scanning all the major social media platforms and dealing with takedown requests, to gathering data on pirate streaming sites, cyberlockers and usenet platforms. For many years, Netflix relied on content supplied by other companies to satisfy its growing userbase. Now, however, that reliance is beginning to take a back seat to productions of its own. Back in February, Netflix CFO David Wells said that his company was set to spend more than $8 billion on content in 2018, a figure that contributes to the 700 original TV shows and 80 movies it will offer globally this year. There can be little doubt, Netflix is now a powerful creator and commissioner of content in its own right. This shift in strategy raises some interesting points, not least concerning the company’s attitude toward piracy. While the MPAA has spat venom over the issue for decades, Netflix has appeared somewhat more relaxed. Quietly, however, Netflix understands that scraping every possible dollar from consumers while restricting the availability of pirated content is something it must sink resources into. Back in 2017, we revealed the existence of Netflix’s Global Copyright Protection Group when the company advertised for a Global Copyright Protection Counsel. Since then the company has recruited more individuals to the cause and this week advertised for another new recruit. Netflix’s new Copyright and Content Protection Coordinator will work with the Global Copyright & Content Protection Group to protect Netflix Originals, the TV shows and movies for which Netflix owns the rights. “The ideal candidate will have carried out a similar role at another company and can hit the ground running,” the listing for the position reads. “He or she should have experience of anti-piracy initiatives and be very well versed in managing an effective notice and take down program and experience of working with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Bing, VK, Daily Motion and other well known platforms.” Although Netflix’s business model is somewhat different to that of more traditional studios, the company faces the same problems with pirate links appearing online. To that end, the successful applicant will be expected to disrupt this availability as much as possible, particularly through the management of the company’s DMCA notice sending systems. The company’s new coordinator will be expected to carry out daily scanning of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Periscope, Google Search, Bing, VK, DailyMotion and other platforms used for piracy. Fingerprinting technologies on YouTube (ContentID) and Facebook (Rights Manager) will also need to be monitored, with attention paid to content that’s uploaded in a way that circumvents those recognition systems. Of course, these legitimate platforms are just the tip of a very large iceberg. It seems likely that Netflix content is more likely to be found illegally on torrent and streaming platforms so these will need to be tackled too, with Netflix advising that the candidate will gather data on “pirate streaming sites, cyberlockers and usenet platforms.” While Netflix is now a true competitor to the mainstream Hollywood studios and companies like Amazon, they all have to deal with piracy in roughly the same way. These synergies were formalized last June with the debut of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a coalition of 30 companies dedicated to presenting a united front against piracy. As a founding member of ACE, Netflix contributes $5m per year to the alliance. This expensive relationship needs to be nurtured so the new coordinator will have responsibilities there too, working with other ACE members to tackle the piracy threat.

YouTube is a great video platform that has a lot to offer to both consumers and creators. At least, those who play by the rules. For creators, there is a major drawback though, one that put a spotlight on the alternative 'free-libre' software PeerTube this week. On Tuesday we reported that several YouTube channels had all their videos blocked worldwide. This included those belonging to MIT OpenCourseWare,’ the ‘Blender Foundation,’ and many others. The error message that was displayed typically appears for copyright reasons. However, in this case, the problem was more complicated, related to a new license agreement, among other things. While some prominent channels have now been restored, others still face similar issues. The people at Human Beatbox, for example, tell us that they are experiencing the same problem, which at the time of writing is still not fixed. YouTube simply informed them that its a “technical issue” which the engineers are trying to resolve. Meanwhile, all videos of theirs and many other channels have been inaccessible for nearly a week… Whatever the problem is, it’s clearly a ‘mistake’ of epic proportions. While YouTube probably has no intention to ‘censor’ these channels, it shows what can go wrong if creators put their faith in the hands of a single service. A service they have no control over at all, which removes your content, erroneously or not. Luckily there are some alternatives that put creators in control again. PeerTube is one of these options. When the Blender Foundation had all its videos blocked by YouTube earlier this week, a decision was taken to give this alternative a try. In a matter of hours, Blender had a fully operational streaming site, one which they had complete control over. This prompted TF to take a closer look at PeerTube and what it has to offer. Blender testing PeerTube Put simply, PeerTube allows anyone to set up their own video streaming site. This can run independently, but it can also be linked, or federated, with other PeerTube instances to create a broader reach. All with P2P steaming support. The first version of PeerTube launched last year. It’s operated by the small French non-profit organization Framasoft, and thus far it hasn’t really broken through in English-speaking countries. The Blender Foundation’s problems, while very unfortunate, may change that. “Blender’s example illustrates our main goal: autonomy, independence from external platforms. When you centralize videos and attention, you gain power over the users. Our approach goes the other way,” Framasoft’s Pouhiou tells TF. PeerTube comes with built-in WebTorrent support. This means that viewers also contribute their bandwidth, which can come in handy if a video goes viral. To ‘federate’ with other PeerTube instances, the software uses the ActivityPub protocol, which is also used by the popular social networking software Mastodon. This helps to grow the video library if needed, but it’s entirely optional. “Federation allows diversity in the governances: each PeerTube Instance Hoster can determine their own set of rules, their settings, their moderation policy, etcetera,” Pouhiou says. Embedding a PeerTube video The idea behind PeerTube is to let creators regain control over their content. This helps to avoid censorship in the broadest sense of the word, and also “problems” that block videos for days on end. It’s this spirit that also drives the developers to make the software entirely free and open. “To us, it is really about taking back the web into our own hands. We have a joke about the ‘Power to the people’ song of John Lennon: PeerTube is kind of ‘Software to the people’,” Pouhiou tells us. “That’s why PeerTube has to be Free-Libre software: not even we should be able to ‘close’ the code, it would give us way too much power, which we don’t want.” Of course, there are plenty of downsides to alternatives like PeerTube. For one, in terms of costs, they are not free to operate. Even though WebTorrent can limit the bandwidth bill to a degree, it requires hosting and some technical skills. Monetizing PeerTube videos will also require more work. You can’t just click a button and magically start earning money. And then there’s the issue of reaching a wide audience, which may be harder for creators who are ‘locked’ into external services. That said, for outfits such as Blender and MIT OpenSourceWare which are non-profit and have their own sites which people know how to find, it makes a lot of sense. At the least, everyone who relies on external platforms might want to stop and think for a minute if they really want to put all their eggs in someone else’s basket. More information on PeerTube can be found on the official site. The company recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to ensure continued development, which has raised over €20,000 at the time of writing.

When several torrent distribution groups started their own home at ETTV.tv, they moved into unchartered territory. In addition to distributing the latest releases, they were facing new problems, including ISP blockades. With a new proxy portal, ETTV is now responding to this week's Australian blockade, as well as similar efforts. For several years, ETTV has been a household name in the torrent community. The group, which distributes pirated TV-shows, originated at ExtraTorrent but when the site closed it built its own home. Together with several like-minded uploaders, including ETHD, they launched ETTV.tv last fall. While the groups still distribute their work on other mainstream torrent indexes, the site’s traffic has been growing steadily. That doesn’t mean that it’s been a smooth ride though. Like many other sites that offer pirated content, ETTV has been subject to various blocking efforts. Some ISPs in India are blocking the site, for example, and this week Australian providers were ordered to do the same. To counter these efforts ETTV.tv has now launched its own proxy portal at ETTVproxies.com. The site currently lists one operational ‘alternative,’ but a site representative tells TF that other domains will follow. “We’re going to launch more. This is just the beginning for us,” ETTV informs TorrentFreak. “The goal here is to bypass these blocks they are trying to do. It’s not hard to evade their blocks at all, but for those that can’t be bothered ..we will have a bunch of domains which they can find us on.” Generally speaking, ETTV is not overly concerned about the blocking efforts. While they are a nuisance, determined users have several options to circumvent them, even without a proxy site. “We think the website blockades are useless. Some people are going to evade them using VPNs, some people using public DNS services such as Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8), and others are using Tor.” ETTV is also planning to launch its own Tor version of the site, to make it more resilient. Also, it will keep its proxies out of popular search engines, hoping to stay under the radar as much as possible. As we highlighted in the past, ETTV, ETHD, and similar groups don’t rip or encode any releases themselves. They’re pretty much automated scripts that take scene releases, and put these out in public. There’s a broad audience for this content as their torrents are downloaded millions of times every week. This has also inspired some copycats to take away some of their traffic. But, ETTV is not too worried about those. “They do not provide original content, and they will never gain popularity especially since people know who we are and where to find us, so they will eventually shut down,” ETTV tells us. The biggest threat are the copyright holders, perhaps. Many torrent sites have come and gone over the past decade and a half, and several operators have paid a high price for stepping into this business. Again, ETTV doesn’t seem to be too bothered about the ever-looming crackdown. “Let’s see how much progress they will make by 2028. Last 15 years was a complete failure for them. The only people that got something out of this are the lawyers. Everybody else lost. Some more, some less,” ETTV concludes.

Watermarking has long been one of the tools used to track sources of pirated content so with the growth of live content streaming, it's becoming more important than ever. However, while broadcasters can use these marks to shut down infringing streams in a live situation, pirates are reportedly able to remove them using devices readily available on eBay. Anyone familiar with the annual leak of awards season movies onto the Internet will recognize the watermarks used to identify the purpose of a copy. The “For Your Consideration” watermarks are perhaps the most widely recognized additions to DVD screeners, notifying the viewer that the copy was originally provided for the scrutiny of Oscars and similar voters. Other watermarks, with “Property of Studio XYZ here” splashed across the screen, serve a similar purpose. While these watermarks are designed to ensure that any leaks result in heavily defaced ‘pirate’ copies, other less visible watermarks can be used by studios to track a leak back to its original source, including back to a single person. These provide a deterrent but in the event a copy is diverted or stolen, they do nothing to stop a leak that has already happened. In the case of pirate streams of live events, such as TV and sports programs made available online via websites and illicit IPTV services, watermarks have the ability to help anti-piracy efforts much closer to real-time. Since pirate streams are often captured from consumer decoders, a watermark denoting which subscriber account is being used can be embedded into the video. Once the mark is identified and matched with a customer device, the stream can be cut off at its source by the broadcaster. Watermark hashcodes during the Mayweather v McGregor fight While it is possible to remove these codes, doing so isn’t always straightforward. Systems can place the watermark in any place at any time, meaning that some always slip through the net. However, others are more easily dealt with, as a report from security company Irdeto reveals. “So-called ‘HashCode removal tools’ work in near real-time to strip away any kind of visual marks from a video feed. This ranges from unique fingerprints right down to the broadcaster’s on-screen logo that’s so familiar on many channels, both helping pirates to cover their tracks,” the company explains. “These tools are so smart, they take a sample of the surrounding pixels and re-use them to replace the visual marks, so the viewer of the pirate stream barely notices any disturbance in the picture.” Irdeto says that its work with TV companies has revealed an uptick in the use of such tools in recent months. That’s partially down to how readily available they are. “Research by Irdeto’s anti-piracy team found HashCode removal tools openly on sale via popular selling platforms like eBay and Alibaba for less than US$2,000,” the company reveals. “These devices fall into a legal grey-area. They don’t actively ENABLE piracy, but they do help pirates to mask their identity. This means the sellers don’t even need to be shy about describing exactly what their products can achieve,” Irdeto notes. Indeed, some companies are happy to publish demonstrations on YouTube showing their systems in action, complete with before-and-after videos supplemented by behind the scenes action. While these devices have their uses, Irdeto says they cannot tackle the most sophisticated watermarking systems that use covert methods. “A unique User ID is still inserted into the stream and persists through different screen-capture and transformation techniques, but because the pirates can’t see the watermarks, they have a hard time obscuring them,” Irdeto explains. While both overt and covert watermarking has its uses, to date they haven’t managed to prevent the major IPTV ‘wholesalers’ from putting together packages consisting of thousands of pirated TV channels from most major broadcasters worldwide. With these consistently available for just a few dollars, euros, or pounds per month, the cat and mouse game will continue.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'Rampage' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Ready Player One'. 'Escape Plan 2: Hades' completes the top three. This week we have five newcomers in our chart. Rampage is the most downloaded movie. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

The Coalition Against Piracy, an initiative backed by companies including Disney, Fox, HBO Asia, NBCUniversal, BBC and the Premier League, has revealed the extent that piracy-enabled set-top boxes have penetrated homes in Hong Kong. Their YouGov survey reveals that one in four Hong Kong residents now use the devices with half saying that they'd canceled legal services as a result. 2017 saw the birth of two major anti-piracy coalitions with some common members and similar goals. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was formed by 30 major players including Disney, HBO, and NBCUniversal. Several of the same media giants are also involved in the Coalition Against Piracy (CAP). CAP coordinates anti-piracy efforts in Asia and is backed by CASBAA, Disney, Fox, HBO Asia, NBCUniversal, Premier League, Turner Asia-Pacific, A&E Networks, Astro, BBC Worldwide, National Basketball Association, TV5MONDE, Viacom International, and others. From the outset, CAP has had the stated aim of tackling the pirate set-top box market. CAP General Manager Neil described their prevalence as “staggering” and a new report published this morning appears to back that up. The newly released survey, commissioned by CAP and carried out by YouGov, reveals that one in four Hong Kong consumers own a set-top box that can be used to stream pirated TV and movies content. “TV boxes BossTV (9%), Ubox (7%), EVPad (6%), Lingcod (5%), and Magic Box (4%), which come pre-loaded with applications allowing ‘plug-and-play’ access to pirated content, are among the most popular ISDs amongst Hong Kong consumers,” the study reveals. It’s claimed that these devices, which often contain piracy-enabled Kodi setups, dedicated Android apps, and players configured to receive pirate IPTV services, are taking chunks out legitimate content distributors’ userbases. The survey offers some evidence to that end and the numbers are significant. Of the quarter of all consumers who own a piracy-enabled set-top box, almost half (49%) told the survey that they had canceled all or some of their subscriptions to legal pay-TV services as a result. Slightly more than one in four (26%) claimed to have canceled their subscription to a local premium provider as a direct consequence of owning a pirate box, with 21% saying the same for their international subscriptions. Almost a fifth (19%) claimed to have canceled a part of their traditional cable TV bundle after acquiring a device, In common with other players in the anti-piracy space, the Coalition Against Piracy has a two-pronged strategy when it comes to presenting this information to the public. In addition to highlighting the damage these devices can do to the suppliers of entertainment, CAP warns customers of the negative issues they face as users. “The damage that content theft does to the creative industries is without dispute. However, the damage done to consumers themselves, because of the nexus between content piracy and malware, is only beginning to be recognized,” CAP Managing Director Neil Gane says. “The piracy ecosystem is a hotbed for malware, whether purchasing ISDs from Sham Shui Po’s Golden Arcade [a popular electronics ‘hotspot’ in Hong Kong] or downloading content from infamous torrent sites. “Unfortunately the appetite for free or paying cheap subscription rates for stolen content, blinkers some consumers from the real risks of malicious malware infection such as spyware,” Gane adds. While it is certainly possible to download content that contains malware from torrent sites, people who use set-top boxes to stream content rarely do so from torrent sites. Streaming platforms and file-locker sites are the number one source for video and malware almost never transfers to devices in this manner. The effort to associate malware with set-top boxes running Kodi is nothing new but the claims are not without challenge. A report published by TorrentFreak earlier this month revealed that several major anti-virus vendors are entirely unaware of any such threat. That’s not to say there aren’t issues with malicious software, of course. People buying ready-configured Android boxes, for example, could have almost anything inserted into their devices pre-sale, so it really is a matter of ‘buyer beware.’ Overall, however, there can be little doubt that these devices are having an impact on legitimate distribution models particularly considering their popularity with younger people. The study found that the boxes are particularly popular with high-income 25-34-year-olds, which is a desirable and valuable market for distributors. “The illicit streaming device (ISD) ecosystem is impacting all businesses involved in the production and distribution of legitimate content,” says Louis Boswell, CEO of Casbaa. “ISD piracy is also organized crime, pure and simple, with crime syndicates making substantial illicit revenues from the provision of illegally re-transmitted TV channels and the sale of such ISDs.” In addition to public information campaigns, CASBAA welcomes enforcement action against those involved in the growing industry. In May, Hong Kong customs arrested seven men and one woman while seizing more than 350 pirate devices. Last October, ACE and CAP teamed up to shut down an illicit IPTV provider in Australia. While these operations are touted as successes, it will take a remarkable effort to stem the tide of this piracy juggernaut which has now spread to every major country on the planet.

The Pirate Bay has been hard to reach for the past week. No further details have been announced but the Tor version of the site remains operational. However, with many instances of downtime this year already, this hardly passes as "news" anymore. About a week ago we reported that The Pirate Bay’s upload functionality was broken. While this problem was eventually solved after a few days, the regular domain became unusable soon after. Today, more than five days later, the problem persists. For most people, the site currently displays a CloudFlare error message across the entire site, with the CDN provider mentioning that a “bad gateway” is causing the issue. No further details are available to us and there is no known ETA for the site’s full return. However, judging from past experience, it’s likely some technical issue that needs fixing. TPB 502 Cloudflare error The Pirate Bay has had quite a few stints of downtime in recent months, and by now it’s becoming a regular occurrence. While more than five days is a new record, aside from the 2014 ‘raid,’ there’s no news to report. The moderators in the official forums don’t appear to have any information on the ongoing issues either. They do point out, however, that the site is not down completely. TPB is still available via its .onion address on the Tor network, accessible using the popular Tor Browser, for example. The site’s Tor traffic goes through a separate server and works just fine. The Pirate Bay team has a status page in the forums where people can check to see if an outage is affecting everyone or not. This also shows that the Tor version of the site is working fine. At least, at the time of writing.

Google recently received a takedown notice, sent on behalf of FIFA, asking the search engine to remove several allegedly infringing sites. FIFA hoped to limit the availability of pirated World Cup streams but Google decided not to take any action. In part, perhaps, because not all reported sites were offering pirated content. With hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world, the FIFA World Cup in Russia is one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year. During these weeks, fans are most concerned with the performance of their favorite teams. For FIFA and all other stakeholders, however, the World Cup is also a battle against piracy. While most people watch the matches through licensed broadcasters, there is a large group of people who resort to unauthorized sources. These so-called “pirate” streams are available via hundreds of sites or apps, generating millions of views during popular sporting events. Other fans are using VPNs and proxies to bypass geo-blockades to tune into legal broadcasts. By changing their virtual location to one where the World Cup is freely accessible, they can watch without paying. These types of ‘piracy’ are a thorn in the side of rightsholders, who are doing their best to take appropriate countermeasures. Sony Entertainment Network, for example, sent out preemptive takedown notices to streaming sites a few weeks ago. More recently we spotted a takedown notice which NetResult sent to Google, on behalf of FIFA, targeting various allegedly infringing sites. The list includes several known offenders, such as zorrostream.net and thefirstrow.eu, and asks Google to remove these sites from search results. In addition, it also targets several URLs which ‘advise’ users how they can access World Cup streams through a VPN, which some use to bypass geo-blockades. For example, the takedown notice lists URLs from ExpressVPN and BestVPN, which explain how users can access FIFA World Cup matches from various locations. “The listed URLs are all either linking directly to embedded live streams of unauthorized live football content (2018 FIFA World Cup), or advising users how to access unauthorized live streams not available in their territory,” the notice reads. From the takedown notice Interestingly, Google decided not to remove any of the reported URLs. The search engine has given no explanation, but it’s possible that the notice in question is seen as too general. In many cases, it points to the homepages of sites, without identifying a specific copyright infringement. Whether it’s illegal to advise users how they can use a VPN to access World Cup streams is also up for debate. Finally, it appears that not all of the URLs identified in FIFA’s takedown notice are actually infringing. The list also includes a page from the Canadian sports service Sportsnet.ca, which is owned by Rogers Media. FIFA’s notice also targets the American sports streaming service FuboTV, which is partly funded by investors such as AMC Networks, 21st Century Fox, and Sky. Considering the latter, it might be wise that Google didn’t blindly honor the request. TorrentFreak reached out to NetResult’s parent company MarkMonitor for more information on FIFA’s takedown efforts, but the company informed us that it couldn’t comment on individual brands or companies. FIFA and other rightsholders, meanwhile, continue to fight World Cup piracy globally and on several fronts. In addition to VPN tips and traditional streaming sites, they’re also up against alleged pirate TV services such as BeoutQ, and Fly TV from Ghana.

Kim Dotcom has revealed that a judgment requiring authorities to hand over information to him hasn't been complied with due to apparent IT system issues. According to the Megaupload founder, data generated before December 2013 is no longer available to be handed over. In response, Dotcom's lawyers have filed an urgent submission with the Human Rights Tribunal demanding immediate action. It’s been more than six years since New Zealand and United States authorities collaborated to take down Megaupload. While the site itself is long gone, founder Kim Dotcom is putting up a determined fight. At every twist and turn of his epic legal battle, Dotcom has challenged the efforts of authorities in multiple jurisdictions. The New Zealand courts, in particular, have seen sustained action. From the beginning, Dotcom has aimed to extract as much information about his case as possible. From the seized data that was present on Megaupload’s servers to the information held by New Zealand authorities, Dotcom has chased down every bit, byte, letter, and document. At almost every turn, he’s met resistance. In a series of tweets this morning, Dotcom has revealed a surprising turn of events in response to an order compelling authorities to provide him with data. New Zealand police have informed Dotcom’s lawyers that they haven’t complied with Human Rights Tribunal judgment because the information requested was generated before December 2013 and is no longer in the new IT system.

After Mexican courts put a ban on Roku sales in the country, the popular media player ramped up its anti-piracy efforts. According to new data released by Roku today, this response has paid off. Globally, approximately 99.5% of all "streaming hours" come from channels with no links to 'pirate organizations.' In recent years it has become much easier to stream movies, TV-shows and other media over the Internet. Legal services such as Netflix and HBO are flourishing, but there’s also a darker side to this streaming epidemic. Millions of people are streaming from unauthorized sources, often paired with perfectly legal streaming platforms and devices. This issue has become particularly problematic for Roku, which sells easy-to-use media players. The company’s media players were banned from sale in Mexico last year, where the company has over a million users. This ruling turned piracy into one of the company’s main priorities and it didn’t take for Roku to take action. It soon started building its in-house anti-piracy team and several pirate channels were banned from the platform, replaced by FBI warnings. Today, roughly a year after Roku’s piracy woes hit the mainstream news, the company has released fresh details that show how effective its anti-piracy measures have been. According to data collected directly from Roku’s platform this month, approximately 99.5% of all “streaming hours” come from channels with no links to ‘pirate organizations.’ In other words, the vast majority of the time spent streaming content on Roku is not related to piracy. In Mexico, approximately 92% of streaming hours come from ‘legitimate’ channels, but Roku is confident that this number will align with the global average as time progresses. While the new data show that piracy is relatively minimal, Roku doesn’t explain how this compares to a year ago. The company suggests, however, that there is a clear downward trend. Previously, figures published by a Mexican market research firm estimated that forty percent of all Roku owners in the country use the device to access pirated content. However, that report didn’t look at the time spent viewing various channels. The positive progress was achieved through a combination of enforcement efforts, Roku says. The company says it tracked down more than 400 pirate organizations and removed all associated channels, for example. In addition, Roku also took action against thousands of social media pages that were used to promote allegedly infringing Roku channels. These efforts have not been without controversy. They caused some backlash when legitimate YouTube and Netflix channels were accidentally replaced by FBI warnings, and recent bans of M3U playlist players are also called into question. Roku, however, is not planning to ease up. Developers will now have to get certified before they can publish any channels and the company says it’s using automated technology to detect potential infringing content. “Piracy hurts our business and the industry. We continue to devote considerable resources to fighting piracy by continuously improving our software, tools and detection methods to remove pirates from our platform,” Gary Ellison, Roku’s VP of trust engineering says. “The data we are releasing today shows the effectiveness of our anti-piracy efforts. It is a top priority to ensure that our platform is closed for pirates and good for consumers.” The data focuses on Mexico for a reason. Over the past several months, Roku has discussed its piracy efforts with Mexican government bodies and trade organizations and hopes its progress will eventually mean devices being welcomed back to local stores. “Mexico can benefit greatly from legitimate TV streaming and should not let piracy stand in its way,” Matthew Anderson, Roku’s chief marketing officer says, commenting on the data. “It’s time for all major leaders in the TV industry to work together to end piracy while giving consumers the wide choice of TV content they deserve,” he adds.

Article 13, the proposed EU legislation that aims to restrict safe harbors for online platforms, was crafted to end the so-called "Value Gap" on YouTube. However, according to YouTube's global head of music, it's something that simply not on the agenda. “I do know, from every single senior executive, that we’re not discussing the value gap,” Lyor Cohen says. Music piracy was traditionally viewed as an easy to identify problem, one that takes place on illegal sites or via largely uncontrollable peer-to-peer networks. In recent years, however, the lines have been blurred. Sites like YouTube allow anyone to upload potentially infringing content which is then made available to the public. Under the safe harbor provisions of US and EU law, this remains legal – provided YouTube takes content down when told to do so. It complies constantly but there’s always more to do. This means that in addition to being one of the greatest legal platforms ever created, YouTube is also a goldmine of unlicensed content, something unacceptable to the music industry. They argue that the existence of this pirate material devalues the licensed content on the platform. As a result, YouTube maintains a favorable bargaining position with the labels and the best licensing deal in the industry. The difference between YouTube’s rates and those the industry would actually like is now known as the “Value Gap” and it’s become one of the hottest topics in recent years. In fact, it is so controversial that new copyright legislation, currently weaving its way through the corridors of power in the EU Parliament, is specifically designed to address it. If passed, Article 13 will require platforms like YouTube to pre-filter uploads to detect potential infringement. Indeed, the legislation may as well have been named the YouTube Act, since it’s the platform that provoked this entire debate and whole Value Gap dispute. With that in mind, it’s of interest to consider the words of YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen this week. In an interview with MusicWeek, Cohen pledges that his company’s new music service, YouTube Music, will not only match the rates the industry achieves from Apple Music and Spotify, but the company’s ad-supported free tier viewers will soon be delivering more cash to the labels too. “Of course [rights holders are] going to get more money,” he told Music Week. “The problem with the industry is, they’ve always compared advertising to subscription. I’m hoping that there will now be more sophistication in understanding, but in terms of subscription, we’ll be providing the same sort of economics that the other services do.” If YouTube lives up to its pledge, a level playing field will not only be welcomed by the music industry but also YouTube competitors such as Spotify, who currently offer a free tier on less favorable terms. While there’s still plenty of room for YouTube to maneuver, peace breaking out with the labels may be coming a little too late for those deeply concerned about the implications of Article 13. YouTube’s business model and its reluctance to pay full market rate for music is what started the whole Article 13 movement in the first place and with the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliament (JURI) adopting the proposals last week, time is running out to have them overturned. But while the Internet melts down with Doomsday scenarios of aggressive filtering and irreparable damage caused by censorship, YouTube’s global head of music is as cool as can be. It’s like the whole Value Gap thing never happened. “I do know, from every single senior executive, that we’re not discussing the value gap,” Cohen told MusicWeek. “We’re discussing how to maximize our funnel and how to grow the business, how to be better partners with them. It’s nice.” Behind the scenes, however, the labels and their associates are going flat out to ensure that Article 13 passes, whether YouTube decides to “play fair” or not. Their language suggests that force is the best negotiating tactic with the distribution giant. Yesterday, UK Music CEO Michael Dugher led a delegation to the EU Parliament in support of Article 13. He was joined by deputy Labour leader Tom Watson and representatives from the BPI, PRS, and Music Publishers Association, who urged MEPs to support the changes. “The UK music industry is totally united on this issue. The contribution of music to the UK economy is nearly £4.5 billion. Music outperforms in every part of the economy bar one – and that’s average earnings, which are less in our sector than in the rest of the economy,” Dugher said. “It’s time for Google’s YouTube to stop ripping off the creators and investors behind our world-beating music.” While they might not be discussing it with YouTube, the aggression and passion over the Value Gap have hardly disappeared into the night.

PUBG has dropped its lawsuit against Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite. The copyright infringement complaint was filed in South Korea earlier this year, accusing Epic Games of copying elements from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Whether both parties agreed on a settlement is unknown. The legal battle between PUBG and Epic Games, two gaming heavyweights, has come to an end. Earlier this week PUBG sent a letter of withdrawal to Epic Games’ attorneys, announcing its decision. Not much later the South Korean lawsuit was closed, Bloomberg reports. The Korean game developer filed the lawsuit in January alleging that Epic copied “Fortnite” elements from “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” (PUBG). This followed earlier complaints where PUBG accused Fortnite of being very similar to its own game. Whether the companies have agreed on a settlement to resolve this dispute is unknown, but PUBG and its law firm confirmed that the case is over. Both Fortnite and PUBG have been very successful over the past year, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition to the aforementioned case, this also triggered several other copyright infringement lawsuits. In the United States, PUBG recently filed a separate copyright infringement lawsuit against the developer of the mobile games “Rules of Survival” and “Knives Out,” accusing these of copying specific elements from PUBG. This case is still ongoing. For its part, Epic Games has filed a series of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters. The primary goal of these cases is to stop the cheaters, not to recoup any losses. While the future of Fortnite was never in any immediate danger due to the PUBG lawsuit, avid fans will probably sleep a little bit better knowing that the matter is resolved.

In the present day and age, it's nearly impossible for a media distribution platform to be recognized by major content publishers without implementing DRM. This is one of the reasons why the popular Kodi media player has added "digital rights management" support in its most recent alpha release. Several addons are already making use of this new feature, by bringing Netflix and Amazon to Kodi, for example. While Kodi is a neutral media player, the name often shows up in piracy related headlines. This is the result of dozens of unofficial addons, which can turn the software into a piracy tool, something the Kodi team can do little about. In fact, the media player developers prefer to see their software used for legitimate purposes. While that’s already the case, they hope to expand their reach by offering support for DRM. The Kodi team already announced that it was working on DRM support last year and with the “Kodi v18 Leia” alpha release, it’s now reality. This means that publishers can develop official addons which are capable of playing encrypted content. Martijn Kaijser, Project lead of the XBMC Foundation from which the Kodi team operates, stresses that without DRM, mainstream adoption from publishers is not an option. “In the past, we have talked to publishers and in almost all cases the first question was if we supported DRM. If not, that was the end of the talk. Others did have interest if we were going to add it and would come back to us if we would,” Kaijser says. Mainstream adoption is a slow process though. Thus far there are no “official” addons using the DRM capabilities. However, the Kodi team hopes that these will come soon. “Up till now, there is no official work or interest that I know of from providers. Our current motto is ‘if you implement it they will come’ so let’s hope this will indeed open doors,” Kaijser notes. This doesn’t mean, however, that the DRM functionality is not being utilized. The Kodi team believes that several addons in their repository have it implemented already, including the Eurosport Player and the YouTube plugin. The unofficial Netflix and Amazon addons, which are available elsewhere on the web, are confirmed to use the DRM functionality, according to Kaijser. It has to be noted that DRM might not work perfectly everywhere, as the requirements can differ per platform and service. So there might be some restrictions. “The first one we had working was Android because it has the system implemented in the Android API and has full 4K support depending on the license in place on the hardware. For Linux, we act as if we are a browser and then you are limited to what a browser can play,” Kaijser says. That brings us to the main downside of DRM. For the end user, it is not always the most convenient option. However, in this case, it’s a choice between not having mainstream content available at all, or with limitations. Let’s hope that users don’t get too frustrated by any of the possible DRM issues, as that may tempt them to look for alternatives.

Hacking group Team Xecuter released a jail-breaking solution for Nintendo Switch earlier this month, opening the door to homebrew and piracy alike. However, according to a UK-based security researcher, the code contains DRM which can lock your Switch with a random password if there's an attempt to crack it for unauthorized distribution. Late last year, hacking veterans Team Xecutor (TX) revealed that they’d developed an exciting kernel hack for the Nintendo Switch. In January, the group announced an unstoppable solution, one that exploits a fundamental flaw in the Switch system. That led up to the release of ‘SX Pro‘, a device dongle and tool for booting TX’s custom firmware (SX OS) on Nintendo’s latest hardware. Unlike the pirated games the system is able to run, TX solutions cost money. On Max-Console, SX Pro is listed at £42.40 and SX OS at £18.80. However, it appears that TX has already considered that some pirates might try to…gasp….crack its software. The discovered was made by UK-based security researcher Mike Heskin who took to Twitter with the news. Mike Heskin @hexkyz PSA: SX OS contains brick code. How do I know this? Take a guess... Anyway, the concept is the same that was used by Gateway for the 3DS: your eMMC will be locked with a specific password. Sadly, in my case, the password was generated from random garbage on the stack. 2:13 AM - Jun 25, 2018 478 220 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy The news that TX’s code can brick a Switch was met with concern, especially when Heskin revealed that the anti-cracking countermeasure could potentially affect people who are using SX OS normally. “The code can indeed trigger with normal usage, but the odds are so low that is very unlikely that anyone will be affected by this (unless you’re messing with voltage or time sensitive stuff). These were direct observations from reverse engineering and testing their code,” he wrote. While TX haven’t denied the presence of the anti-cracking code, they have issued a denial that it could be triggered under normal usage. In an email response published on the forums of GBATemp, TX said that there hadn’t been a single problem reported by 100,000 users. Team Xecutor refuting the claims With TX offering reassurances, Heskin has now confirmed that the ‘bricking’ process is technically possible to undo and was “quite painless” with the right knowledge. But with an additional revelation, the controversy over TX’s solution is set to continue. In response to Heskin gently questioning why parts of the SX OS code “look so familiar” to him, a response from one observer suggests that not all of it is original. Mike Heskin @hexkyz · Jun 28, 2018 Sneak peak of TX's enterprise-ready filesystem layer totally developed from scratch! But why does it look so familiar? "embeddedfs:/titles/%016lx/exefs/main.npdm" pic.twitter.com/sHMUi7jT0C fincs @fincsdev So "SX OS" = stolen Atmosphère and HBL code, with bonus console bricking malware and "DRM". How ironic and unfortunate this is... This is unacceptable and undefendable. I really hope people wake up and realize how awful GW/TX really are, and stop giving these bastards attention. 6:59 AM - Jun 28, 2018 208 77 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy This latest controversy over Switch modding comes in the wake of news that Nintendo is able to identify consoles that are running pirated games, if users dare to venture online with them.

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance has announced the winner of the first "Anti-Piracy Award." At this year’s Europol Intellectual Property Crime conference the honors went to the anti-piracy division of the Spanish Police, which has been instrumental in bringing down several "illegal streaming" operations. Every year, the entertainment industries celebrate their stars in various award ceremonies. From the Oscars, through the Grammys, to the Emmys, there’s no shortage of spotlights for the finest performers. This week the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) launched an award of its own, to praise those who protect the entertainment industries. The group, which counts prominent media players such as BT, Canal+, Fox Networks, La Liga, Premier League and Sky among its members, issued its first Anti-Piracy Award. The award ceremony took place at Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime conference in Budapest, Hungary. The anti-piracy division of the Spanish police came out as the big winner. Police Nacional’s ‘Grupo de Antipirateria’ is led by inspector Marlene Álvarez Vicente, who personally received the award from the hands of AAPA’s Vice President Mark Mulready. Together with AAPA member Irdeto, the Spanish Police played a key role in several successful operations. This includes the shutdown of an ISP in Malaga which offered unlicensed IPTV subscriptions, as well as “Operation Casper,” through which a large IPTV piracy ring was dismantled. “Irdeto has been working with Marlene and her team on cases such as Operation Casper and Y-Internet and I can testify personally to the commitment, dedication and skills demonstrated by her and the team,” Mulready says. Mark Mulready and Inspector Marlene Álvarez Vicente (Photo AAPA pr) The runners-up for the Anti-Piracy award were a team from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, a branch of the Irish Police, and Bogdan Ciinaru of Europol’s IPC3 unit. The AAPA is mostly concerned with audiovisual piracy so the new award has its limitations. The winners all directly protected the interests of several of the group’s members, which made them prime contenders. “The work done by our three award recipients in fighting audiovisual piracy is of enormous value to the industry. It sends a clear signal that piracy will not be tolerated and law enforcement has the resources, skills and expertise to investigate this crime and bring the perpetrators to justice,” Mulready says. “We hope that these awards will help encourage others to take up the fight against audiovisual piracy and we are ready to support those efforts,” he adds.

After several updates, major Internet providers in Ireland are now blocking more than 250 pirate site domain names. Many of these were added after the court issued its injunctions, through regular updates which allow copyright holders to block new proxies and mirror sites. With this strategy, the Motion Picture Association hopes that pirates will eventually give up. Like many other countries throughout Europe, Ireland is no stranger when it comes to pirate site blocking efforts. The Pirate Bay was first targeted in 2009, as part of a voluntary agreement between copyright holders and local ISP Eircom. A few years later the High Court ordered other major Internet providers to follow suit. Next, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) set their eyes on other targets. On behalf of several major Hollywood studios, the group obtained blocking orders against the most used torrent and streaming sites, including 1337x.io, EZTV.ag, Bmovies.is, 123movieshub.to, Putlocker.io, RARBG.to, and YTS.am. This most recent order, issued earlier this year, triggered the usual response. Many users who have their favorite sites blocked, tried to find alternatives, such as the various proxy and mirror sites that are available. This works well, but it’s usually not a permanent solution. A few weeks ago Irish ISPs expanded their blocklist covering several of the most used proxy sites for Rarbg, 1337x, and others. Again, users were confronted with a blocking notification, such as the one below from Virgin Media. It is not uncommon for blocking injunctions to allow copyright holders to update the targeted domains. For example, when new domains or proxies appear. And indeed, this is what’s happening here, according to the MPA. “In accordance with the orders issued by the Dublin High Court, the blocklist is regularly updated, including for alternative domains and proxies,” an MPA Europe spokesperson informed TorrentFreak. The latest update was processed quietly earlier this month, which led to frustration among avid torrenters, many of whom had just settled with an alternative. It’s something they have to get used to though. While the MPA can’t share the full list of blocked sites, it informed us that over 250 domains are on the most recent version of the blocklist. More domains will be added when needed. This strategy may be effective, to a degree, but determined pirates who look hard enough can usually find a workaround, such as a new proxy, VPN, Tor, or other options. The MPA knows all too well that site blocking is not a silver bullet. Still, the Hollywood-funded group believes that it’s effective enough to stop a significant number of people. Or perhaps frustrating pirates alone might already be worth it?

A study carried out by Queen Mary University of London has found that streaming piracy sources are vulnerable to takedown. The research, which sampled 33 cyberlocker sites during 2017, found that just two hosting providers hosted 58% of the videos. Targeting these hosts could remove 71% of the servers from the data set, the study found. While BitTorrent indexing sites dominated the landscape until just a few years ago, streaming is now the most visible form of online video piracy. Through networks of hosting platforms and indexing sites, pirate streaming is now available to any Internet user, as long as he or she can operate a web browser. It’s a far cry from the complex file-sharing world of yesterday. This shift prompted researchers at Queen Mary University of London to examine this relatively new ‘pirate’ ecosystem. Titled ‘Movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Exploring Illegal Streaming Cyberlockers‘, their study finds a “remarkably centralized system with just a few networks, countries and cyberlockers underpinning most provisioning.” Co-author Dr Gareth Tyson informs TF that after previously looking at technologies like BitTorrent, the team decided to take a closer look at the role cyberlockers are playing in the distribution of copyright media. “At first, we weren’t really sure about how they were being used. So we decided to dig into things a little bit and found that there were hundreds of them, but lacking the types of search functionality of YouTube,” Dr Tyson explains. “This piqued our interest and we decided to dig a bit deeper, which led us to the indexing sites. I suppose the short answer is that it seemed a pretty interesting ecosystem that nobody had looked at before, so we got curious.” While simple on the surface, the cyberlocker ecosystem isn’t entirely straightforward. Most hosting sites don’t allow users to search directly, which means visitors are often redirected from indexing platforms that are more specific about the content that’s available. “This has created an interesting ecosystem where cyberlockers depend on third party (crowd-sourced) indexing websites that create a searchable directory of direct links (URLs) to the videos. These two types of website operate hand-in-hand with a symbiotic relationship, collectively underpinning a global network of online piracy,” the researchers write. Given the scale of the ecosystem, examining everything would prove impossible. Instead, the researchers homed in on three indexing sites – Putlocker.is, Watchseries.gs and Vodly.cr – which were found via Google and selected for their regular appearances in search results. Also under the spotlight where 33 cyberlockers including Movshare, NowVideo, and Openload, whose content was accessed via the indexing sites. “We started off by scraping the indexing sites because it seemed that they were the main ‘entry point’ to the cyberlockers,” Dr Tyson informs TF. “This was because many of the cyberlockers had fake front pages (i.e. they didn’t show their real content – presumably to hide all the copyright stuff) and they lacked search features to find it. Hence, it was pretty much impossible to access the copyright infringing content by visiting the cyberlocker alone.” Between January and September 2017, monthly crawls collected information from the indexers and scraped related data from the cyberlockers, including file availability and where the videos were hosted. This revealed some interesting data indicating a potential weakness for the cyberlockers when defending against enforcement attempts. “A key finding is the apparent centralization of these portals, with a small set of dependencies vulnerable to attack from copyright enforcers. For example, we observe that 58% of all videos are located within just two hosting providers [M247 and Cogent/LeaseWeb], despite being spread across 15 cyberlockers,” the researchers reveal. “M247 is based in Romania, which (as a country) hosts the largest share of streaming servers, containing 42% of the total streaming links witnessed. Similarly Cogent/Leaseweb are based in the Netherlands which hosts 23% of streaming links.” The team cites previous research which found that a lack of copyright enforcement coupled with high capacity Internet infrastructure may drive sites to use these territories. However, putting all eggs in one basket could be a risky strategy, if the tides begin to turn. “A sudden increase in copyright regulation within these countries may see a shift in this behavior and, again, we argue that this dependency on individual countries poses a resilience challenge for the cyberlockers,” they note. Also of interest are the researchers’ findings that the same sets of pirates could be behind multiple websites, with DaClips, GorillaVid and Movpod put forward as candidates. “These three cyberlockers alone host 15% of observed content. Again, this suggests a distribution model that is far less resilient than its decentralized P2P counterparts,” they add. Digging deeper, the researchers say at least one-fifth of the cyberlocker domains in the study are actually operated by just two organizations/individuals, something which confirms a “remarkable dependency on just a small number of stakeholders.” Also under the researchers’ spotlight was the number of takedown notices issued against the domains in the study. Using LumenDatabase, 21.8m allegedly infringing URLs were identified across 49,829 individual complaints sent by 304 organisations. To see how the cyberlockers react to copyright complaints, six were chosen for their mixture of behaviors. Openload.co, Estream.to and Streamin.to are said to have reacted “positively” to copyright complaints with 75% of videos being deleted within a month of reports being registered on Lumen. Vidzi.tv and TheVideo.me earned a poor report, with less than 30% of videos deleted within the same period. Finally, the researchers reveal some interesting findings in respect of where infringing content is hosted and how that relates to takedowns. “We observe that the videos that are not deleted from openload.co, estream.to, vidzi.tv are all hosted in Romania on M247. That said, it would be unwise to draw conclusions here, as Romania hosts both the cyberlocker that ignores the most complaints and the cyberlocker that acts upon most complaints,” they write. “Overall, the country hosting content that least frequently respects complaints is the Netherlands, where only 6% of requests are acted upon. Hence, the diversity seen within individual countries suggests that the decision to act upon a complaint is largely driven by the individual cyberlockers.” Aware that research of this type can often have links to rightsholders, TF asked the team at Queen Mary University of London if their research had in any way been funded or shared with content industry groups. “No, the research was performed independently,” Tyson confirmed. “The research was not funded by any movie studios and the university received no external funding for this particular stream of research.”

With the aim to protect the interests of copyright holders, Google is making ‘pirate’ sites more difficult for its users to find. This week the search engine revealed more information about the scope of this effort. Thus far, Google has downranked 65,000 sites, a measure that led to a 90% reduction in referrals from search results. The entertainment industries have repeatedly accused Google of not doing enough to limit piracy while demanding tougher action. Ideally, groups including the MPAA and RIAA want search engines to remove clearly infringing websites from their search results entirely, especially if courts have previously found them to be acting illegally. While Google doesn’t want to remove whole sites, the critique did prompt the company to make changes. For example, in 2014 it updated its core algorithms aimed at lowering the visibility of “pirate” sites. Using the number of accurate DMCA requests as an indicator, these sites are demoted in search results for certain key phrases. “Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. This ranking change helps users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily,” Google explained. While the effects were felt immediately, it’s been unclear how many sites were affected by the algorithmic change. This week, the search engine is filling in some of these blanks. In a comment to Australian media, Google states that it has demoted 65,000 sites in search results, a list that’s still growing every week. In total, the company received DMCA takedown requests for over 1.8 million domain names, so a little under 4% of these are downranked. The result of the measures is that people are less likely to see a pirate site when they type “watch movie X” or “download song Y.” This means that these sites see a drop in visitors from Google and a quite significant one too. “Demotion results in sites losing around 90 percent of their visitors from Google Search,” a Google spokesperson told The Age. Indeed, soon after the demotion signal was implemented, pirate sites were hit hard. However, pirates wouldn’t be pirates if they didn’t respond with their own countermeasures. In recent years, many infringing sites have hopped from domain to domain, in part to circumvent the downranking efforts. In addition, Google’s measures also created an opportunity for smaller, less reputable, sites to catch search traffic that would otherwise go to the main players. Overall, however, it’s probably safe to argue that Google’s demotion efforts lowered the search engine’s referrals to pirate sites. That said, demands to do more won’t subside. In Australia, Village Roadshow co-chief Graham Burke has been especially vocal. He has accused Google of profiting from piracy-related traffic and wants the search engine to permanently remove infringing sites from search results. Blaming piracy for declining revenues, Burke noted this week that there are “empty desks everywhere … we can’t compete with stolen goods being sold for free.” And he is not alone. Google sees things differently of course. The company has repeatedly highlighted that it has taken several measures to address the piracy concerns, while noting that the entertainment industries have a responsibility of their own as well.

NYC.com advertises itself as the world's go-to source for everything there is to love about New York City. Since its inception, the site has sold over $100 million in ticket and hotel inventory. However, as of recently, the site has a copy of the popular torrent site 1337x hidden on a subdomain as well. Pirates are an inventive bunch and they can get quite creative when it comes to hosting. But, finding a copy of the popular torrent site 1337x on a prominent domain such as NYC.com doesn’t happen very often. This is exactly what we stumbled upon this week. The site, which helps people to find the latest hotel and entertainment deals in New York, has been operational since 1996. For some reason, however, it recently expanded into the torrent business. The ‘secret’ torrent site is hosted on the site’s subdomain “cdn.nyc.com.” It’s unlikely that this is intentional, the more logical explanation would be that an old content delivery network (CDN) domain entry has been breached somehow. The result is that the NYC.com domain now hosts thousands of pages linking to infringing content. This is not something most legitimate companies would like to happen. NYC.com torrents? From what we can see the entire cdn.nyc.com subdomain is now being used as a torrent site. The NYC site itself still uses a CDN as well, but this is now served from static.nyc.com. While the ‘breach’ has escaped the attention of the people who manage the site, it hasn’t gone unnoticed to various copyright holders. Companies including Netflix, Lionsgate, Columbia Pictures, and Sony Pictures Television have all sent takedown request to Google, asking the search engine to remove NYC.com URLs. The first takedown notices started coming in early June. Since then, more than 1,000 URLs have been reported. Whether any of these companies reached out to NYC.com directly is unknown. TorrentFreak alerted the site’s owners to the issue but at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back. Update: A NYC.com spokesperson says that the issue has been escalated with their in-house development team. They hope to resolve it soon.

The DMCA allows copyright holders to protect their work, by sending takedown requests to remove infringing material. However, some people appear to use this tool rather broadly. This includes several high profile people who presumably use the DMCA to hide their inconvenient pasts. Most of us like well-respected people. They’ve usually worked hard to get where they are and have found some way to give back to society. Unfortunately, even these people might have made a mistake or two in the past. And if those end up on the Internet, they’re hard to erase. That doesn’t mean that you can’t try of course… Recently, we stumbled upon a series of DMCA takedown requests which kindly request Google to remove various inconvenient links. While copyright has little to do with it, this route is worth a shot, they likely thought. The senders have a lot in common. They all note that they’re “well-respected” in the society that they come from and accuse several websites of using their “image and name” to attract attention. They were also all convicted of fraud, but that’s probably a coincidence. Take radio talk-show host Warren Ballentine, for example, who describes himself as an artist and motivational speaker. While we would like to link to his Wikipedia page for some background, we’re hesitant to do so, as that’s one of the allegedly offending websites. “I am a well respected person in the society that I come from, the US, and other parts of the world where I am known as an artist and motivational speaker,” Ballentine wrote to Google. “However, recently, there are a number of websites that utilize my image and name to attract traction for people go through their content. I want Google to remove such sites from the search. Thanks.” Unfortunately for Ballentine, Google decided not to honor his request. Perhaps because the content he linked to in the DMCA notice is not infringing on any copyrights? This means that the various news reports and the Department of Justice’s press release on his conviction for engaging in two mortgage fraud schemes remain online. Oh, and the aforementioned Wikipedia entry remains unscathed too. And the same applies to various unrelated links to other Warren Ballentines, which were inadvertently included in the takedown requests. But perhaps the true reason for the notices is to cover up the past? It wouldn’t be the first time that someone tried that, and this failed attempt appears to be part of a series, as we hinted at earlier. Over the past few weeks, there have been several similarly worded takedown requests from well-respected people who have been convicted of fraud. Such as this one, from tax fraud convict Monica Morgan, and several others from pension fraud convict Chauncey Mayfield, which haven’t gone unnoticed. According to the information provided to Google, these people submitted the requests themselves. However, since the language is nearly identical, it appears to be a coordinated action. It’s clear that the DMCA takedown requests all target mentions of their mishaps, as well as other unrelated links that rank well for their name. While this urge may be understandable, copyright law is not any help in this case. In fact, abusing DMCA notices usually backfires, whether someone’s well-respected or not.

There have long been warnings that tough anti-piracy measures will eventually 'break the Internet'. While that catastrophe is yet to happen, meddling in any piece of complex machinery is likely to lead to unexpected consequences. Like the hobbyist tuner trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of an already perfectly good car, exhilaration - or catching fire - is always around the corner. Back in the 80s, I fancied myself as a half-decent 8-bit coder but of course, there was always someone who did it outrageously better. Like my idols in the C64 demo scene, for example, whom I eventually rubbed shoulders with. They made computers do things they weren’t supposed to, like displaying graphics in places the machine didn’t natively allow or playing music on the heads of disc drives. The aim, at least in part, was to push software and hardware to breaking point. What they didn’t need, however, was help from self-professed experts. Unfortunately for them, my clearly superior teenage coding knowledge (and access to their machines) allowed me to quietly ‘improve’ some of their work in progress, ‘fixing’ it here and there without needing to ask permission or mention what I’d done. Luckily for the shape of my face, nothing broke down immediately and development on the ‘improved’ software mostly continued as if nothing had happened. And then people began swearing. A lot. I’m still sorry for that. I imagine the cursing that went on back then, in the wake of my efforts to ‘fix’ problems that were none of my business, was similar to that recently uttered by Internet pioneer Vint Cerf and the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, in response to the Article 13 controversy. These men, who were there at the very beginning, also had a vision for their creations that didn’t involve smart-asses interfering with their work. Just like my unwanted efforts to ‘improve’ perfectly good parallax scrolling, web-blocking and content filtering are added complications that don’t easily fit with the original vision for an open web. No one wants complications. Most people – the vast majority of people – go on, 99% of people – do not want web-blocking, they don’t want filtering, and they don’t want expanded liabilities for intermediaries. But they’re mainly not being obtuse or pro-piracy, it’s just that their Internet (like a certain group’s scrolling) doesn’t need fixing because it’s just fine as it is. Of course, this call for the status quo is easily countered by the pro-blocking and pro-filtering movement who claim that the measures they want implementing globally have shown to work thus far, without any serious collateral damage. On this basis alone, why should anyone object to more of the same? Well, why shouldn’t they? None of these restrictions improve Internet users’ lives and there’s a dramatically reduced chance that the “Internet will break” if it’s left alone. So why not leave it? It’s not as if the public is being offered an incentive to welcome restrictions with open arms – price reductions on movies and music alongside a promise to increase quality if restrictions are put in place perhaps? Hardly. The point is this: it’s easy to frame this argument as one between those in favor of protecting copyright and those who want to pirate everything. In truth, it’s actually more fundamental. This is a clash between people who believe the Internet shouldn’t be tampered with – period – and those who believe that, because they’re potentially losing money, they should be allowed to tinker under everyone’s hood. People should, of course, be allowed to protect their rights but not at any cost. In the same way the Internet has grown and developed beyond all expectations, we should expect that the movement to block, filter, delete, divert and otherwise meddle in the net’s inner workings will grow too, probably in ways we’d never envisioned 10 years ago. That being said, it’s unlikely that any single filtering, blocking or liability-increasing effort will “break the Internet” and even a couple combined won’t herald the online apocalypse. After all, censorship machines are attacking as we speak, and most of us are still online with decent amounts of freedom. But in the same way that the famous Doomsday Clock ticks and tocks inexorably towards midnight, it’s not one event under consideration here, but the interplay between many. A restriction or web-block here, a content filter or a long-forgotten scrolling adjustment there. None of it really matters until that moment when history catches up with us and we wished we’d have been more careful over who was given control. Should we really be letting people who don’t know what they’re doing mess around with something so important, even when they’re doing it for reasons they genuinely believe in? If something really is properly broken, then perhaps we should consider sensible ways to fix it. However, when all the fixes become the very reason everything breaks down, we will have clearly gotten our priorities wrong and it will be too late. The big question is how long we’ll have to wait to find out. Will it be ‘never’ as we’re reliably informed by the entertainment industries or ‘sooner or later’ as the technologists suggest? The truth is, none of us really knows. The Internet experts don’t know there will be a meltdown next decade and copyright holders can’t promise that everything will be just fine in 20 years’ time. What we can say, however, is that our beloved Internet has served us pretty well up to now and despite much complaining and the existence of piracy, most people are doing very well out of it. No matter what happens it’s unlikely to break completely but there is a chance, at some point in the future, it will find itself being suffocated into submission. So, the simple challenge for us today is to find ways to protect rightsholders without affecting the vision for the open Internet. Answers on a postcard, please.

A browser extension that acted as an anti-censorship tool for 185,000 people has been kicked out of the Chrome store by Google. The open source Ahoy! tool facilitated access to more than 1,700 blocked sites but is now under threat. Despite several requests, Google has provided no reason for its decision. Last December, TF reported on SitesBloqueados (Blocked Sites) a web portal run by Revolução dos Bytes (Bytes’ Revolution), a group of anti-censorship activists in Portugal. Internet censorship is common in the country, with more than 1,700 sites banned from regular Internet access for reasons ranging from copyright to gambling. The process does not require intervention from the courts so Revolução dos Bytes decided to keep an eye on things with its Ahoy! Chrome and Firefox extension. “Ahoy! basically bypasses any traffic to a blocked site through our own proxies, allowing the users to navigate in a free, uncensored internet,” team member Henrique Mouta previously told TF. Not only is Ahoy! able to unblock sites, it can also detect newly blocked domains and feed information back, so that its unblocking abilities are always up to date. Things had been going well. After servicing 100,000 users last December, Ahoy! grew to almost 185,000 users this year. However, progress and indeed the project itself is now under threat after arbitrary action by Google. “Google decided to remove us from Chrome’s Web Store without any justification”, Henrique informs TF. “We always make sure our code is high quality, secure and 100% free (as in beer and as in freedom). All the source code is open source. And we’re pretty sure we never broke any of the Google’s marketplace rules.”

Founded in 2003 by a group of hackers and activists, The Pirate Bay aimed to bring file-sharing to the masses. In the fifteen years that followed, the site transformed from a small community to Hollywood's resilient arch-rival, serving millions of users. And that's not the only thing that changed.

Ahmedabad: Consumers in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Surat will have to shell out more for the electricity they consume as Torrent Power Limited (TPL) has increased fuel price and power purchase adjustment (FPPPA) charge or fuel surcharge starting from July. There is, however, a breather for customers in the rest the state as Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL) has reduced the levy. TPL has worked out a fuel surcharge of 93 paise for the first quarter (April-June) of fiscal 2018-19, which will be recovered in the second quarter (July-September). Torrent has already passed 10 paise increase on to the consumers as power distribution companies can raise 10 paise fuel surcharge without the approval of Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC). The remaining 83 paise hike will go to GERC for approval.