Ghostbusters: The Video Game

An aspiring Nigerian musician named Wisekid copied an album from one of Africa's biggest artists Wizkid, reportedly passing it off as his own. By uploading the 'pirated' album to music services such as Apple Music, Amazon and Tidal, the scammer appears to have earned substantial revenue. Legal streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music have been the music industry’s most effective weapon against piracy. Many people don’t even bother ripping or downloading albums of tracks nowadays. The legal alternatives are just more convenient. Despite this success, legal streaming platforms have their challenges as well. For years, artists have complained about low payouts. And to make things worse, ‘pirates’ are starting to abuse legal services as well now. Pirated Music on Legal Streaming Services A few weeks ago we reported that the RIAA was sending DMCA takedown notices that targeted Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, and various other legal music outlets. Apparently, some artists were using the works of others without permission. At the time we weren’t sure if this was intentional or a mere licensing dispute. The RIAA didn’t respond to our questions on the matter. However, this week we spotted yet another takedown notice and, this time, there is more of a backstory. On Wednesday the RIAA sent a takedown notice to Google identifying several infringing URLs on the legal streaming service Tidal. The links point to tracks that were published by Nigerian artist Wisekid but, according to the takedown request, they are from the local music star Wizkid. Wisekid Rips Off Wizkid Looking more closely at the matter, we quickly noticed that Wisekid appeared to have uploaded an entire album from Wizkid, passing it off as his own. The album in question, titled “Lasgidi Made” is the same as Wizkid’s “Made in Lagos,” but the track order and titles have been changed, apparently to make the similarity less obvious. This ‘pirated’ album made its way onto popular music services including Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal, and reportedly generated substantial revenue for the scam artist. Millions of Streams Apparently, Wisekid was quite proud of his accomplishments as he posted a screenshot on Twitter showing off that he had millions of streams and more than a thousand digital sales on Apple’s service. This is when things started to go downhill. Several commenters on social media noticed the similarities between Wizkid and Wisekid, accusing the latter of running a scam and ripping off a hard-working musician. Wisekid, however, claimed to be innocent. Instead, he indirectly blamed his distribution company “Freeme Digital” for being responsible. Or in his own words (edited for readability); “I don’t know who did that. I just accessed my apple artist name I saw streams. I just wanted to get people to check me out nothing more,” he wrote. “Freeme Digital is the company that distributes all my songs. I’m just an upcoming artist and I know nothing about this. Please, I am not the one distributing Wizkid’s album on apple music.” Deny and Delete Soon after, the news was picked up by the Nigerian press while Wisekid removed his Twitter profile. Around the same time, the distribution company responded to the controversy, denying any involvement. While Freeme Digital indeed worked with Wisekid, the company said that the ‘Lasgidi Made’ album was not distributed via their platform. The company also decided to cut its ties with the artist. “We will be deleting the rest of Wisekid’s content on our platform and we have informed our legal team to immediately commence investigation on the issue and prosecute the matter to the full extent of the law.” Removing Pirated music (and More) Meanwhile, Wizkid’s management said it was working hard to take down the illegal uploads across all digital platforms. The RIAA helped out as well, which brings us back to the takedown notice we spotted on Wednesday. In addition to the RIAA, UK-based industry group BPI also sent a takedown notice identifying Wisekid’s infringing upload. Sadly, this notice also flagged several news reports as copyright infringement, but that’s a different rabbit hole.

Subnautica

Respectful

The European Parliament is considering a draft resolution that requires online services to take pirated sports streams offline within 30 minutes. This includes a proposal to allow copyright holders to act as trusted flaggers. According to Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, the plan is dangerous as it can cause massive collateral damage. In recent years the European Commission has proposed and adopted various legislative changes to help combat online piracy. This includes the Copyright Directive which passed last year as well as the Digital Services Act, which was officially unveiled last December. These laws will have a significant effect on how online services respond to copyright infringement complaints. However, according to some, upload filters and other broad enforcement tools don’t go nearly far enough. Next week, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament will vote on a draft resolution that goes a step further. The proposal in question is superficially tailored to deal with pirated live sports streaming, which is a thorn in the side of major sports leagues. 30-Minute takedown Window According to the draft, prepared by rapporteur Angel Dzhambazki, sports event organizers face significant challenges in the digital environment due to piracy. To help combat this problem, online services should remove infringing content as soon as possible, within minutes of an event beginning. Specifically, this means that current legislation should be updated to “specify that the removal of the illegal content should take place immediately after reception of the notice and no later than 30 minutes after the event started.” According to some EU lawmakers, this proposal doesn’t go far enough and several compromise amendments have been negotiated to make the language even stronger. This includes the use of “trusted flaggers,” who may act on behalf of copyright holders. These takedowns could be sent to streaming services such as YouTube, but they may also be targeted at hosting providers. A similar system is already in play in the UK, where sports streams can be taken down in real-time, with proper court approval. No Court Order Needed The EU proposal doesn’t necessarily require judicial oversight and will involve more parties. This is something sports organizers will welcome, but it opens the door to overblocking as well, which occasionally happens in the UK too. The proposed resolution is not welcomed by all Members of Parliament. Patrick Breyer, MEP for the Pirate Party, says that he and his fellow members of the Greens/EFA Group will vote against it. “This text reads as if it had been dictated by lobbyists in the rights holders industry, it threatens fundamental digital rights,” Breyer says. Shorter Takedown Window Than Terrorist Content According to Breyer, the Digital Services Act should be sufficient to deal with online copyright infringement issues. The new proposal is overbroad and excessively burdensome to online services, he adds. “A 30-minute deletion requirement would be shorter than is foreseen for terrorist content, and outside of business hours it would be much too short, especially for small and non-commercial providers. “Allowing private interest groups with self-interest to have content removed without review by a court would foreseeably lead to an excessive blocking of legal content as well,” Breyer adds. Breyer informs TorrentFreak that he had submitted an amendment that called for the deletion of the new legislation. That would be the best solution in his view. “There is no need for the specific legislation on sports streams the resolution calls for. The existing means and instruments are more than sufficient,” Breyer says.

Oreos

Daylight

HDDs are great for storage but they have stagnated in pricing the past few years and SSDs have been rapidly becoming cheaper. However, there are some breakthroughs in HDD technology coming up that will hopefully give us much bigger and cheaper HDDs.

Deep Rock Galactic

Godzilla vs. Kong Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) - IMDb WWW.IMDB.COM Directed by Adam Wingard. With Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry. The epic next chapter in the... Very entertaining popcorn flick.

Zodiac

France is set to take a fresh approach to online anti-piracy enforcement. A new bill presented to the Council of Ministers this week has several key goals including a pirate site 'blacklist', mechanisms to deal with mirror sites, and a new system to tackle live sports piracy. A new regulatory body will also be formed by merging Hadopi and the Higher Audiovisual Council. For more than a decade, French anti-piracy agency Hadopi had made headlines in its quest to reduce illicit sharing on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. France became a pioneer of the so-called “graduated response” system back in 2010, with Hadopi chasing down persistent copyright infringers with threats to disconnect them from the Internet. Since then, however, many aspects of the piracy scene have changed and France believes that change is needed to better tackle today’s threats. Bill Presented to Council of Ministers This week, France’s Council of Ministers was presented with a new bill that aims to more tightly regulate and protect access to cultural works in the digital age. “Much awaited by cultural and audiovisual professionals, this text provides concrete answers to three major challenges in the field of audiovisual communication in the digital age: the protection of rights, the organization of our regulation, and the defense of public access to French cinematographic and audiovisual works which constitute our heritage,” a statement from the Ministry of Culture reads. The bill’s aims are split into three broad sections, two of which deal with piracy matters – the protection of creators’ rights and the modernization of regulation. Protection of Creators’ Rights A key aim of the bill is to make it much harder for sites that profit commercially from the distribution of infringing content to operate freely. Under the current system, much focus had been placed on French Internet users using P2P networks to share content but with a shift towards other technologies, France sees a need to upgrade its toolbox. “This bill thus strengthens the means of combating counterfeiting on the internet against streaming, direct download or indexing/linking websites, which profit from the posting of works in violation of the rights of creators,” the Ministry says. In particular, the bill will see the creation of a centralized “blacklisting” system for blocking pirate sites, restricting their appearances in search engines, and preventing them from generating revenue from advertising, for example. The bill also aims to establish a system to combat “mirrors”, sites that help to facilitate access to platforms blocked as part of earlier enforcement actions. In addition, France wants to create a new mechanism to deal with piracy of live sporting events, one that is able to cope with the urgency associated with preventing access in real-time. Modernization of Regulation In 2019, France’s Ministry of Culture revealed early plans to create a powerful authority capable of regulating both audiovisual and digital communications by merging Hadopi with the country’s electronic media regulator. Those plans are moving ahead. “To implement these new innovative and ambitious anti-piracy tools, the bill creates a new regulator, marking both the desire to move up a gear in the fight against pirate sites and to include this action in a broader policy of regulation of online content,” the Ministry notes. The plan is to merge Hadopi with the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) to create the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (ARCOM), an agency with greater powers and jurisdiction over the entire field of audiovisual content, “whether that is to fight piracy, protect minors or defend the public against online disinformation and hatred.” The bill will now be discussed by the French Parliament.

Oslo

Stingray

Popular adult video site Pornhub has released a transparency report showing how it responds to problematic content. Last year, more than half a million pieces of content were taken down following DMCA notices. In addition, Pornhub also deployed an automatic upload filter that caught more than 100,000 videos before they went online The company, which is owned by the Mindgeek conglomerate, is loved by many but it’s certainly not without controversy. Illegal Content A few months ago, a New York Times article linked the site to child exploitation and abuse. This prompted Pornhub to organize a massive review of the content on its site, resulting in a mass removal of videos. This isn’t the first time that Pornhub has been criticized. While on a different level, there have been plenty of copyright complaints from within the adult entertainment industry as well. Retired porn icon Jenna Haze, for example, previously warned against PornHub while citing it as a reason to quit her directing work. “Please don’t support sites like porn hub,” Haze wrote at the time. “They are a tube site that pirates content that other adult companies produce. It’s like Napster!” Some have argued that at least in part, Pornhub and other Mindgeek-owned tube sites built their business on pirated content. However, the scope of the alleged infringing activity of Pornhub users wasn’t entirely clear. This changed a few days ago when the site released its first transparency report. More Than 500,000 DMCA Takedowns The report shows that hundreds of thousands of videos were removed for violations of its terms of service and Pornhub gives further insight into its DMCA takedown efforts. Last year, the site says it removed 544,021 pieces of content following DMCA takedowns. The takedowns peaked in April at the height of the first coronavirus lockdowns. The volume dropped significantly in December, when the site purged its content library following abuse and exploitation allegations. More than half a million DMCA takedowns is a substantial number and it shows that pirated content is not just an incidental problem. It will be interesting to see how this will change over time, now that Pornhub is actively verifying uploaders. Pornhub Upload Filter There is another element from Pornhub’s transparency report that’s worth highlighting too. The platform is not just responding to takedown notices, it also uses Vobile’s MediaWise system to filter uploads. “In addition to DMCA requests, we prevented an additional 106,841 pieces of copyright-protected content from being published by scanning our uploads against content which was previously fingerprinted,” Pornhub writes. With this upload filter, the site may be in part responding to the obligation that was set forth in the EU Copyright Directive. This requires online platforms to ensure that infringing content is taken down and not re-uploaded to their services. The transparency report shows that Pornhub takes copyright infringement and other illegal content seriously. This is to be expected, especially since its parent company Mindgeek is known to take a very aggressive stance toward copyright infringers. In recent years, Mindgeek has repeatedly used the DMCA to uncover the identities of the operators of copyright-infringing sites. In addition, it has filed lawsuits against people who downloaded pirated copies of its work via torrent sites. Criticism Remains That said, plenty of Pornhub criticism remains. Just last weekend, CTV News reported on a woman who had to go to extreme lengths to have non-consensual footage removed from the site. While the video was swiftly removed, the thumbnails initially remained available. This resulted in a heated discussion between the two parties. Among other things, the woman pointed out that Pornhub offers a service to help ‘its own’ models take down content from third-party sites while caring little about her problem. “It is interesting how capable and diligent you are when it comes to your monetized ‘exclusive’ content, while caring absolutely nothing about the non-consensual content you (illegally) choose to host,” the woman wrote to the site. Double Role Aside from documenting a terrible personal situation, the article also highlights that Pornhub has somewhat of a double role when it comes to the DMCA. On the one hand it receives DMCA notices but on the other, it also sends DMCA takedowns to third-party sites to protect its exclusive models. “You can now opt in to be exclusive to the Pornhub Network in order to help protect your content from being uploaded to other websites,” the site writes, advertising its own takedown service. “Nothing is worse than seeing your content on other sites if you’re not getting paid for it,” Pornhub notes. Given all of the recent outrage, the latter statement is rather unfortunate. It’s not hard to imagine a situation where videos uploaded to Tube sites could do much more than financial damage.

The RIAA and NMPA are putting Twitter under pressure to do something about the platform's piracy problem. Slamming the company for allowing pre-release music to be distributed to the public, the industry groups say that Twitter is failing to meet its legal obligations when responding to takedown notices. Licensing is the answer, they suggest, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the years, a number of music industry players have taken on some of the largest content distribution platforms on the Internet over alleged copyright infringement, with varying success. Services such as Napster and LimeWire were effectively destroyed through litigation but more recent problems aren’t easily solvable in the same way. YouTube and Facebook, for example, have very deep pockets and an abundance of lawyers but perhaps more importantly, they also have the potential to become formidable long-term music distribution partners. A similar case can be made for Twitter but it is becoming increasingly clear that while the music industry would like to partner with the social platform, it’s currently disappointed with Twitter’s attitude towards copyright infringement. Last December, RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said that while YouTube and Facebook had developed anti-piracy tools, Twitter had done nothing and things needed to change. It appears that a few months on, little has. RIAA and NMPA Chiefs Slam Twitter In an op-ed just published in Billboard, Mitch Glazier and National Music Publishers Association president David Israelite lay into Twitter again, stating that music creators and music fans deserve better from the social networking service. Noting that Twitter can be innovative when it wants to be, Glazier and Israelite say that when it comes to piracy, it’s a whole different game. “[I]n one important respect Twitter remains ‘old school’ and stubbornly refuses to use even the most basic tools when it comes to combating piracy or helping music creators prevent theft of their works on its platform. Unfortunately, the company’s efforts to innovate only seem to go so far,” they begin. With the basics out of the way, the pair swiftly turn to Twitter’s business model, implying that without music and music fans, Twitter wouldn’t be where it is today. The authors say that record companies and music publishers want the “partnership” with Twitter to work, even going as far as expressing pride in powering Twitter’s success. But unfortunately, that’s when the pleasantries end. “[T]he viral immediacy and global reach of the Twitter platform presents a double-edged sword – one that cuts especially deep for artists, songwriters, and music rightsholders who see their work leaked, copied, distributed, and monetized on the platform with almost no recourse,” they write, sounding the alarm. “Last year music creators sent more than 2 million notices to Twitter of unlicensed and infringing appearances of copyrighted music on the platform – more than 200,000 of which dealt with the especially harmful presence of not yet released stolen songs.” Twitter’s Response is “Totally Inadequate” While many platforms have been criticized by the music industry for not doing enough to combat piracy, in Twitter’s case there appears to be more under the hood. Complaining that Twitter can take “days or longer” to respond to a complaint, the industry leaders flat-out accuse Twitter of failing to meet its legal obligations – strong words when that could theoretically form the basis of a lawsuit. There is no clear suggestion of legal action at this stage but Glazier and Israelite imply that a compromise of sorts could be reached with Twitter. Interestingly the parameters being suggested seem to push Twitter much further than its legal obligations require. For example, in respect of pre-release music leaks, the music bosses want takedowns actioned almost immediately. “With pre-release leaks, takedowns must come in seconds or minutes, not days,” they write. Building upon the requirement for a real-time response, the RIAA and NMPA want Twitter to proactively find pirated music on its platform, without first having to be notified that infringement has taken place. “While Twitter’s response to takedown notices fails to meet its legal obligations, even worse is the company’s refusal to take affirmative steps to more effectively police its own platform and find unlicensed music before it is widely circulated and without waiting for a rightsholder to do the work and notice the infringement for them,” they note. “No one can see better than Twitter what happens on its system or has the access and technical capacity to address problems at the speed and scale of the network. There is much Twitter could do to address this problem.” So What Should Twitter Do? Given that the RIAA and NMPA strongly suggest they would like Twitter to be a partner, it will come as no surprise that they would like Twitter to buy its way out of its current predicament. “Most fundamentally, [Twitter] could license music and pay creators for the songs and recordings that it distributes. This is what many other services have done and it is the single most important thing the company could do to meet its obligations to artists and songwriters,” the RIAA and NMPA chiefs write. On the anti-piracy front, the industry bosses would like Twitter to be more like YouTube and Facebook by introducing automated tools and content protection technologies. These should be able to take down unlicensed copies of works before they even appear on Twitter, negating the need for “artists, songwriters, and their representatives to scour the five hundred million tweets that are posted to the platform every day.” An interesting element of the RIAA and NMPA criticism is that Twitter does have the ability to help right now but will only do so for a price. They accuse the platform of demanding “massive payments” from music creators in return for access to the company’s data flow and with that the ability to spot pirated content. “Twitter could easily provide an API with sufficient capacity and speed to allow for monitoring at scale, just as it provides to other users like researchers who it hopes will help publicize and vouch for the company’s operations and to third party vendors who sell Twitter analytics. Incredibly, despite many requests it has refused to provide it to music creators without charge,” the groups write. “Charging music creators for access to the data they need to find infringement of their own work is just another Silicon Valley shakedown – moving fast and breaking music.” In summary, the RIAA and NMPA are demanding “serious and immediate changes” to Twitter’s response to unlicensed music appearing on the platform. There are currently no indications of what might happen if those changes aren’t delivered as requested.

Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider wants a court to order YouTube to hand over huge amounts of data relating to copyright infringement on the platform. In summary, Schneider wants to identify all users who had a takedown notice filed against their account since 2015 to determine whether YouTube's repeat infringer policies come up to scratch. Last summer, Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider filed a class action lawsuit against YouTube, claiming massive deficiencies in its copyright enforcement measures. Schneider claims that YouTube restricts access to its takedown tools, profits from infringement, and fails to terminate repeat infringers. Noting that 98% of YouTube copyright issues are resolved with Content ID, Schneider says that YouTube has “entirely insulated” huge numbers of users from its repeat infringer policies. “This two-tiered system essentially trains YouTube’s billions of uploading users that there is essentially minimal risk to uploading to their hearts’ content,” the complaint reads. As previously reported, Schneider was joined in the class action by a company called Pirate Monitor, which alleged that many of its copyrighted works appeared on YouTube in breach of copyright. YouTube, however, claims that the company itself uploaded those works before sending its own takedown notices. Lawsuit Claims That Content ID Should Not Shield Repeat Infringers Determined to show that YouTube’s approach to copyright enforcement is lacking, Schneider’s legal team is demanding that the video platform hands over information about infringement on the platform. This should include information about actions carried out under Content ID and following regular takedown notices. “Both elements of this two-tiered system are relevant to the claims here including because of their role in establishing whether Defendants should be prohibited from taking advantage of safe harbors against copyright liability granted by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, 17 U.S.C. § 512 (‘DMCA’),” a new filing from Schneider reads. “Those safe harbors are not available absent ‘a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of’ uploaders ‘who are repeat infringers’.” The issue of how Internet services deal with repeat infringers is a thorny one that can lead to huge damages awards, as illustrated by the $1 billion award in the RIAA’s lawsuit against Cox Communications. Schneider’s lawsuit aims to show that YouTube is negligent too, since infringements dealt with under Content ID do not result in action against uploaders’ accounts. “Infringement caught by Content ID is excluded entirely. Defendants’ failure to assess penalties, including copyright strikes and termination for these repeat infringers: (i) fails to satisfy the reasonableness requirement to track and terminate repeat infringers as required for the safe harbors; (ii) encourages and incentivizes users to continue posting infringing content; and (iii) creates the constructive (if not actual) knowledge of infringement that is an independent basis to deny access to the DMCA safe harbors,” the filing reads. Lawsuit Demands Massive Access to YouTube Infringement Records To show the scale of infringement on YouTube (and YouTube’s alleged failure to properly deal with repeat infringers), Schneider is demanding that YouTube hands over large amounts of data. Precisely how large remains to be seen but describing the request as ‘broad’ is likely to underestimate the request. In summary, Schneider initially asked YouTube to provide copies of every single takedown notice filed with the platform. That request was rejected, with YouTube instead agreeing to only hand over notices filed by the plaintiffs, claiming that beyond that would amount to a huge burden, even if it had the information in a deliverable format. In what appears to be a counteroffer, Schneider narrowed her demands – but not by much. She now wants YouTube to identify EVERY person that has filed a copyright takedown notice since January 1, 2015. That information should include information such as dates, the works allegedly infringed, and the URL of the targeted content. Schneider also wants the details of EVERY YouTube user targeted by these takedown notices including their account names, email addresses, and IP addresses used to upload the content targeted by the notices. Schneider further demands a full accounting by YouTube detailing all steps taken to resolve every takedown notice, any evidence the platform holds on registrations of copyright works listed in notices, the outcome in every case, and whether YouTube still holds copies of the works listed in notices. YouTube Refuses to Play Ball YouTube appears to be less than impressed with Schneider’s demands. Indeed, according to Friday’s filing, the Google-owned platform is only prepared to hand over one month’s worth of takedown notices but according to Schneider, that “ignores the purpose and need of this discovery and thus is not a meaningful compromise.” Indeed, in its responses to Schneider’s requests for information, YouTube describes the demands as “overly broad” and “unduly burdensome” almost three dozen times. Whether the judge will agree with that position remains to be seen.

Oysters

American Made

Kind-hearted

Denuvo is the most well-known videogame anti-piracy system on the market and also the most controversial. Critics believe that the system is anti-consumer but is that reputation really deserved? TorrentFreak caught up Denuvo’s Chief Marketing Officer and was informed that the Denuvo team is compromised of passionate gamers who do not slow games down. Last month we reported how anti-piracy company Denuvo is in the process of recruiting a a Sales Director for its video games security system. For the right candidate, it will provide a unique opportunity to not only encourage uptake of Denuvo but also become part of a team that is on the one hand respected by game developers but on the other disliked by some elements of the gaming community. This is par for the course with Denuvo since when it works (by protecting games in their early release windows), developers love it and pirates hate it. When it doesn’t, which is relatively rare these days, the opposite is broadly the case. But what is it really like to work at Denuvo and what goes on behind closed doors? TorrentFreak caught up with Denuvo’s Chief Marketing Officer Steeve Huin for the lowdown. Denuvo: Passionate Gamers at Heart “The Denuvo team is a team of passionate gamers with software engineering & cybersecurity background,” Huin explains. “Working for Denuvo is great as you get to work with the coolest game studios in the world, advising them on security and design and getting access to the games before they are published so we can validate and optimize our technologies for their new games. Who would not want to be part of a team like that?” Obtaining access to games before release is certainly something that most if not all pirates would be interested in. But of course, it’s Denuvo’s job to delay pirate access for as long as possible, ideally forever. As part of that, Huin says that the team has to understand the latest trends, including new cheating and hacking techniques. Some of this research is carried out on the dark web, with the team reverse engineering code so that they can better understand what their opponents are up to. That being said, it’s not all about hiding in the shadows while gathering intelligence. Huin says that his team are all gamers and playing games is the best way to learn about the latest issues, cheats and trends. In that respect at least, they’re not that different from regular consumers or indeed pirates, so why does Denuvo have such a bad reputation in some areas of the gaming community? Gaming Performance: A Big Issue or Simply Overblown? To be clear, it’s not just pirates that dislike the presence of Denuvo. Many people who purchase protected games at retail have developed a mistrust of the system, with persistent claims that Denuvo slows games down or affects performance in other ways. Huin says that the claims are simply not true. “Denuvo is regularly blamed for decreased game performance. We guarantee to our customers (game development studios) that it’s not the case. We do this by benchmarking the game before/after applying our technologies (and they also see it for themselves). We would not be used by most of the large game publishers today if our technology was not great and had an impact on in-game experience!” While this makes complete sense from a logical standpoint, this is essentially Denuvo’s word against those of its detractors. If there was a way to confirm this, with public support from game developers, for example, perhaps some of the fears could be allayed. We put it to Huin that a joint and public Denuvo/developer response might be the solution but Huin says that’s unlikely to happen. “Sadly there is, in general, a lot of secrecy expectations from our customers, and that even includes the ability to mention which studios or which games we are providing security technologies for. It makes it therefore pretty hard for us to defend ourselves in practice. That being said, I can refer you to these independent testings (1,2),” he says. Denuvo: Being Called ‘Evil’ Comes With The Territory There are several online forums where hatred for Denuvo reaches its peak and unsurprisingly they are populated by some of the most dedicated pirates. In the English language, Reddit’s /r/crackwatch is probably the most popular due to its accessibility, with emotions swinging from anger when Denuvo is doing its job through to jubilation when a cracker manages to circumvent the company’s protection. These negative sentiments towards Denuvo’s work are expected, Huin says, given the company’s position in the market. “We’re sometimes depicted as evil which is not cool but I guess it comes with the territory – a possible parallel is with the traffic cops, for example, which are there for the greater good of the community but are not really appreciated – especially when you are stopped for running a red light or driving over the speed limit,” he says. “We are here to ensure that games studios can sell their games and recoup investments they made in the game and ensure they can then invest in the next games and that does not draw popularity amongst the gamers. Sadly, people have not realized that in our hearts we side with the gamers (as we are gamers ourselves). We’ve been recently more focused on anti-cheat technologies to make sure gamers have fun while playing, instead of games being ruined by cheaters – which is seriously uncool.” But Couldn’t The Presence of Denuvo Leave Buyers Exposed? Some gamers have aired concerns that DRM-protected titles requiring online verification might become casualties should those holding the keys go out of business. While that seems unlikely in the short term for Denuvo, does the company have any reassurances for those worried that legitimately purchased games will cease to work in a worst-case scenario? “Given that Denuvo is part of Irdeto, which is a Cybersecurity company founded in 1969, the risk is very low of Denuvo to go out of business (or even Irdeto, which is in turn part of a $2bn+ group a year). That being said, the game publishers can easily republish the games without the Denuvo protection without our help; and have all information on the legitimate purchases and can allow re-download of the games,” Huin says. “Our contracts are in place for time-limited protection for games (6 or 12 months for example, that may or not be renewed). After that period, games get released unprotected, so a process to republish the games without protection is already in place today for most games in practice.” Monitoring Crackers and Cracks It’s common for anti-piracy outfits of all kinds to have employees closely monitoring their adversaries and of course, this must also be true for Denuvo. But how much would the company reveal when asked directly about its secret work? Not much perhaps, but certainly better than the “no comment” offered by similar groups. “A fair amount of time is spent in the cracking and cheating communities to understand what’s going on to help our game studio customers (and ourselves) be best prepared for what’s coming next. We have as part of our wider Cybersecurity team, ex-law enforcement team members as well as white hat hackers. Some of our hackers have won worldwide hack fests – so pretty good and skillful people,” Huin reveals. On the law enforcement front, TorrentFreak asked Denuvo directly about Voksi, the Bulgarian cracker who abruptly ceased his activities back in 2018 after being targeted by a local cybercrime unit. Voksi said that Denuvo was involved, something that was later confirmed by Denuvo in a now-deleted post. So what happened there and are we likely to see a legal process featuring the Bulgarian or did he settle? Denuvo would not provide additional details but did confirm that legal action can take place at the behest of a publisher. “Overall, we focus our efforts on making our technology better but we do have indeed a Cybersecurity team that supports the game publishers in identifying what cracks have occurred, how and who’s been involved,” Huin says. “At times, on the request of the game publishers (who you can imagine are not taking it lightly when their investments are ruined by cracked games being published), we do support law enforcement agencies around the world. We however cannot comment on any possible cases and whether we have provided support or not.” Finally, then, the big question remains – what happens when things don’t go to plan? A game protected by Denuvo gets cracked by someone and placed online. Do sirens go off at Denuvo HQ propelling everyone to action stations? Maybe a little bit but Denuvo says it is concerned on other fronts too. “When a crack appears, then we go and investigate if it’s true (there are a lot of malware floating around pretending to be cracks or cracked versions of a game), we reverse engineer/understand how the crack has been achieved and then we focus our energy on making our tech even better,” Huin reveals. “More than anything we monitor that there are no issues with the game, and if there are, that we’re not the cause of it – as we want our customers to be successful and we want the games that we protect to be great, and the gamers to enjoy the gaming experience. “Of course we monitor the hacking scene too but that’s not as important as the launch of the games!” he concludes.

Yemen

Long island ice tea

OpenTrackr helps millions of people to share files via BitTorrent. The software has been running on an old Dell server but in recent months it's suffered severe bottlenecking. To keep everything running smoothly, OpenTrackr's operator decided to order new gear. Part of the costs are covered by donations and the rest are chalked up as 'hobby expenses.' Every day, millions of people from all around the world use BitTorrent to download and share files. Most of these transfers are facilitated by third-party torrent trackers, which help file-sharers to connect to each other. When someone asks for information referenced by a specific torrent hash, the tracker will respond with a list of peers, if available. This is a pretty straightforward but resource-intensive process. While there are serverless technologies such as DHT and PEX, trackers remain a central part of most people’s torrent transfers. Despite this rather crucial role, the top trackers are mostly run by volunteers and hobbyists. OpenTrackr’s Rise This is also the case for OpenTrackr, which coordinates the transfers of close to 10 million torrents. The tracker’s operator Bart launched Opentrackr in 2015 because there was a lack of reliable alternatives at the time. His goal was to start a content-neutral tracker that would adhere to the law, which turned out to be a great success. At the time of writing, the tracker handles roughly 200,000 connections per second. This adds up to roughly six terabytes of bandwidth every day, which merely comes from passing on requests from file-sharers. The actual files that are transferred never touch the server. Hardware Bottleneck Thus far, OpenTrackr has managed to keep things afloat on an outdated server. The tracker is currently hosted on a 10-year-old Dell R410, which is running two Intel L5640 CPUs with four DDR3-1066 ECC 16GB memory modules. This setup is now experiencing bottlenecks. “The current server is strongly bottlenecked,” Bart tells us, mentioning that both the CPU and memory bandwidth are not cutting it anymore. “We currently use DDR3 ECC memory, ECC memory has bad timings that give it a much lower throughput. This results in the CPU having to wait longer for it to receive data from memory, while it’s already getting overloaded with requests.” In recent months, the urge to update the server became stronger and stronger. While that might be a logical step for a commercial operation, for a ‘hobby’ project it’s a different decision. Nonetheless, Bart decided to take the leap. New Gear After considering various options he settled for an AMD Ryzen 9 Pro 3900 CPU with 2x DDR4-3200 memory. The memory doesn’t support error correction code, but that shouldn’t be a problem. In addition, the new server will use a 10Gbps fibre network card, which will help the tracker to grow in the future. “The parts have been ordered, I hope to have the server ready and active next month if everything goes to plan,” Bart says. Needless to say, this hardware doesn’t come cheap. And while the tracker accepts donations through Patreon, that doesn’t cover all costs. “The new server is partly coming out of my own pockets. I don’t really mind, the tracker has always been a fun project and I’m happy to continue with it for many years. The new server will cost a total of about €1200, the old server should go for at least €150 so it’s costing about €1000 or so,” Bart tells us. Transparency It’s refreshing to see a service at the core of the BitTorrent ecosystem being quite open about its financials. At the moment, OpenTrackr is receiving €61 per month from 15 supporters, which helps to pay the running costs. The transparency doesn’t stop there either. Through Patreon, OpenTrackr regularly shares detailed bandwidth statistics too. And there are financial updates to show where the money is being spent. Even takedown notices are processed in the open. It is safe to say that OpenTrackr has succeeded in its plan to become a stable and content-neutral torrent tracker. The public doesn’t always notice, but it plays a bigger role than most people assume.

In the summer of 2020, a long-running case filed by several movie companies against Swedish ISP Telia was concluded in favor of the rights holders. The result was Sweden's first 'dynamic' blocking injunction against The Pirate Bay and several other platforms. The law firm responsible for that victory has now been handed a prestigious industry award for its efforts. Having largely given up on tackling individual file-sharers with direct legal action, the mainstream movie, TV, and music companies have been taking a different approach. The theory is that if pirates can’t easily reach torrent and streaming platforms using their regular Internet connections, then that will eventually result in more sales from legal platforms. Rightsholders try to achieve this goal by taking internet service providers to court and attempting to convince a judge that they should block access to infringing sites to avoid liability. The practice is underway in several regions, including in Europe, where thousands of sites are blocked by ISPs. In Sweden, the first big win came in 2017 when the Court of Appeal ruled in favor of Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, and the Swedish film industry, ordering local ISP Bredbandsbolaget to block access to The Pirate Bay. But of course, this was just the beginning. Legal Action To Force Telia To Block The Pirate Bay In 2018, following legal action by the Swedish Film Industry, Nordisk Film, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox, ISP Telia was ordered to block subscriber access to several ‘pirate’ sites – The Pirate Bay and streaming platforms Fmovies, Dreamfilm and NyaFilmer. The case was struck down on appeal but the matter was far from over. Following a second bite at the cherry, the Patent and Market Court ordered Telia to block access to the four pirate sites. Perhaps more importantly, however, the Court also responded favorably to a call to issue a flexible or ‘dynamic’ injunction. Instead of chasing pirate sites to new domains, proxies, mirrors, and IP addresses, new locations could be added to otherwise static injunctions, without the need for a new process. Telia didn’t like the outcome of that case and filed an appeal, arguing that website blockades are easy to circumvent and therefore ineffective. However, in the summer of 2020 the Court found that blocking efforts are effective enough to deter some people from piracy and any risk of over-blocking (i.e blocking non-infringing sites) is minimal. At that point, Sweden was given it very first dynamic blocking injunction. Law Firm Behind The Win Handed Prestigious Industry Award Earlier this week, Synch – the law firm that fought the case against Telia on behalf of more than a dozen film companies – was recognized by its industry peers for its achievements in Sweden. During a virtual ceremony in London for the Managing IP Awards 2021, the company was handed the Impact Case Award for the most significant case of the year. “In the case, Synch successfully represented a total of 16 Nordic and American film companies/studios against Telia where the court judged that the internet provider has participated in copyright infringement by providing internet connection to its subscribers who gained access to films and TV series that were illegally made available to the public by The Pirate Bay and three other services,” a statement from Synch reads. Synch notes that the Patent and Market Court of Appeal had to weigh the film companies’ interests in preventing copyright infringement against the costs of blocking for Telia, and the freedom of Internet users to freely impart and access information. Ultimately, the Court found that the rights of the film companies come first, partly because of the illegal nature of The Pirate Bay and the named streaming sites. “It’s fun and honoring that Synch won this prestigious award last night,” said lawyer Sara Sparring who together with lawyer My Byström and lawyer Jim Runsten ran the case at Synch. “The case has received a lot of attention because it is the first time in Sweden a court has issued a dynamic injunction.”