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Comcast has joined AT&T and Verizon to become the third U.S.-based ISP to be sued for copyright infringement this month. Led by Voltage Holdings, a coalition of filmmakers says that Comcast failed to meet its obligations under the DMCA to disconnect customers repeatedly flagged for copyright violations. throttleIn 2019, a Virginia jury ordered Internet provider Cox Communications to pay a billion dollars in damages to record labels including Capitol Records, Warner Bros, and Sony Music. The plaintiffs alleged that by failing to terminate subscribers that had been accused of copyright infringement multiple times, Cox failed to meet its obligations under the DMCA. The decision is being appealed but in the meantime other ISPs face similar allegations, including AT&T and Verizon, who were sued earlier this month. Both of these lawsuits were filed by Voltage Pictures and several movie industry affiliates, together behind movies such as “After We Collided,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Room 203,” and “The Bird Catcher”. This week, the same companies filed yet another lawsuit, this time targeting the largest broadband company in the United States. Lawsuit Accuses Comcast of Copyright Infringement In general terms, the new lawsuit filed against Comcast is almost a direct copy of those filed against Verizon and AT&T. It alleges that the ISP can easily take action to prevent piracy carried out by its customers using BitTorrent networks. All it has to do is terminate their subscriptions. “Comcast can stop providing internet services to a customer at any time. It can stop providing internet services to customer accounts that repeatedly use its services for piracy. And Comcast doesn’t have to find these repeat offenders itself — copyright holders like Voltage already do that for Comcast, by sending copyright infringement notices. But Comcast does not take this simple step,” the lawsuit alleges. The filmmakers say that Comcast doesn’t terminate repeat infringers because their business is lucrative. Each customer account returns between $400 and $1,000 in additional profits and when combined, these accounts add tens of millions of dollars to Comcast’s bottom line. More Than 250,000 DMCA Notices Sent to Comcast The plaintiffs say that third parties (Comcast subscribers) are responsible for downloading torrents from sites including RARBG, 1337x, The Pirate Bay, YTS, and the less-well-known Russia-focused torrent site seleZen. By joining torrent swarms and sharing their movies, the plaintiffs say that Comcast subscribers reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed, and publicly performed copyright works without permission from the rightsholders. The plaintiffs say that evidence of this infringement was captured by Maverickeye, a company well known for its involvement in ‘copyright-trolling’ cases against single BitTorrent users. Over the past three years, the German-based company logged hundreds of thousands of infringements carried out by Comcast users, the plaintiffs say. The movie companies say they notified Comcast of these infringements in more than 250,000 DMCA notices. Failure to Terminate Repeat Infringers Despite receiving more than a quarter of a million copyright notices, Comcast failed to take action against its allegedly infringing customers, the lawsuit claims. “Comcast failed to terminate the accounts associated with these IP addresses or otherwise take any meaningful action in response to these Notices. Comcast often failed to even forward the Notices to its internet service customers or otherwise inform them about the Notice or its content,” the plaintiffs say. “Instead, Comcast continued to provide the internet access and services necessary for users to commit further online piracy. Comcast continued to provide access to the internet from the IP addresses that infringers used to pirate movies.” The complaint highlights several instances of particularly egregious conduct. One particular IP address was reported 782 times for infringement, another 626 times. Two IP addresses had 609 and 532 copyright infringements logged against their respective accounts, with several others having a minimum of 373 complaints filed against theirs. Comcast does have a published repeat infringer policy but the lawsuit claims that the company’s failure to terminate repeat infringers means that it no longer enjoys safe harbor from liability under the DMCA. “Comcast only counted the DMCA notifications regarding a customer account in each month, rather than counting total DMCA notifications. Under this policy, Comcast did not terminate an account that had a very high number of infringements over several months, but not in any one month,” the lawsuit notes. Several Types of Copyright Infringement Due to the alleged inaction of Comcast, the plaintiffs claim that the defendants are liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. These claims alone could run to many millions of dollars in damages. Due to the plaintiffs’ Copyright Management Information (CMI) being removed or altered in movie files distributed via BitTorrent by Comcast customers, the ISP is also liable for contributory and vicarious violations under the §1202(a)(b) of the DMCA, the complaint adds. The plaintiffs demand actual or statutory damages and an order that compels Comcast to implement a repeat infringer policy that terminates the accounts of repeat infringers. In common with the plaintiffs’ lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon, the complaint demands an order that compels Comcast to block access to pirate sites listed in the USTR’s Notorious Foreign Markets report. These include YTS, The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and 1337x.

The piracy liability trial between several major record labels and Internet provider Grande is scheduled to start this fall. Both parties have now submitted their statement of claims to the jury. The record labels believe that the ISP is liable and seek significant damages. Grande disputes this assertion, noting that it never induced or encouraged subscribers to pirate anything. grande astoundThree years ago, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music sued Internet Provider Grande Communications. The recording labels accused the ISP, which is owned by Astound, of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers. Since the complaint was filed, both parties have gone back and forth in court with various arguments and accusations. The legal battle will soon go to trial and both parties filed preparatory documents in court this week. As part of the jury selection process, the record labels and the ISP have submitted their statement of claims, which provide a clear and concise overview of the issues at stake. Grande Denies Liability Grande Communications believes that it shouldn’t be held liable for the alleged copyright infringements committed by its subscribers. The company portrays itself as a neutral service provider that never encouraged any type of piracy. “Grande disputes the plaintiffs’ claim that Grande is liable for acts of copyright infringement allegedly committed by its subscribers. Grande asserts that it is merely an internet service provider and never induced or encouraged anyone to infringe the plaintiffs’ copyrights.” grande claim The ISP calls out the record labels’ piracy monitoring service Rightscorp which, according to Grande, cannot accurately or reliably identify copyright infringements. In addition, the piracy tracking company allegedly destroyed or failed to preserve key evidence. As a result, the copyright infringement notices that Rightcorp sent via email were insufficient to warrant any drastic measures, Grande suggests. Therefore, the company firmly believes that it shouldn’t be held liable. “Rightscorp’s emails to Grande were flawed and unreliable, because of defects in Rightscorp’s system and because the emails lacked any supporting or verifiable evidence,” the ISP notes. Record Labels Seek Millions The statement of claim from the record labels argues the polar opposite. According to the music companies, it’s clear that the ISP is liable, alleging that Grande willingly profited from pirating subscribers. With 1,422 sound recordings at stake, the amount of potential statutory damages that the jury can award exceeds $213 million. At trial, the labels plan to show the jury that Grande was aware of this piracy problem since the early 2000s. Initially, it responded by terminating accounts of subscribers, but as time progressed the ISP changed course. “[B]eginning in 2010, in an effort to increase profits, Grande eliminated its termination policy and chose instead to allow its subscribers to infringe copyrights freely with no consequences,” the labels write. After this decision, the music companies sent over a million piracy notices and they allege that Grande failed to terminate even a single account in response. “Yet despite knowing of, or deliberately avoiding learning about, specifically identified repeat infringements by its customers, Grande continued to provide those customers the internet service essential to their continuing their unlawful conduct,” they write. The lack of terminations allegedly allowed the Internet provider to increase its profits while causing significant damage to the labels and their artists. Do You Read TorrentFreak? In addition to the statements of claim, both sides will also ask prospective jury members to answer a series of questions. These can help to detect biases and other issues that might make a person unfit to sit on the bench. The labels’ questions are similar to the ones we’ve reported on the past. They want to know how familiar candidates are with file-sharing and whether they ever downloaded something from The Pirate Bay or other torrent sites. There are also questions about the use of stream-ripping services and support for the EFF. In addition, TorrentFreak gets a mention as well, together with Ars Technica, another news site. “Have you ever read or visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak? If so, for what type of material?” the labels plan to ask potential jury members. tf These questions could theoretically steer potential jurors in a certain direction. Even those who have never heard of TorrentFreak may be intrigued by the question and start reading it going forward. But that’s probably not the goal here. The music companies are not the only ones asking questions of course. Grande Communications has also prepared a list, hoping to signal bias or other disqualifying factors. The ISP asks, for example, if the candidates are musicians or have ever worked at a record label, and whether they believe it’s an ISP’s responsibility to monitor and police online piracy. Moving Forward After the jury members are selected the case will move to trial in a few weeks. Both parties expect to need a total of 10 days to present evidence and argue their case. This isn’t the first case between record labels and an ISP that’s been scheduled to go to trial this year. Charter Communications and Bright House were in the same position but both companies signed a settlement agreement instead. Meanwhile, a group of independent filmmakers recently filed new piracy liability lawsuits against Verizon, AT&T and Comcast so the U.S. federal courts are not done with these repeat infringer lawsuits just yet.

New research shared by the entertainment industry-backed Digital Citizens Alliance finds that 12% of all ads on pirate streaming sites are linked to malware. The problem is so bad that the researchers fell prey to multiple ransomware attacks. Intriguingly, the findings also suggest that pirate sites are 'safer' than before, although that greatly depends on which studies you look at. ransomwareOver the years we have seen dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Initially, many of these tried to appeal to people’s morals. You wouldn’t steal a car, right? This type of messaging doesn’t work for everyone, so more direct tactics are explored as well. These often focus on various risks, with particular concern for the health of pirates’ computers. Rightsholders and anti-piracy groups regularly highlight reports which show that pirate sites are rife with malware and even alert potential pirates-to-be about the dangers of these sites. While some of these claims are exaggerated, there is no denying that malware is spread through some pirate sites. How common this problem is depends on who you ask and even the estimates from various research outfits vary quite a bit. New Pirate Site Malware Research The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) shared some new research that it carried out in partnership with piracy advertising expert White Bullet and cybersecurity outfit Unit 221B. The group has a long history of publishing anti-piracy research and has highlighted the malware angle before. Despite these efforts, the problem persists. The findings show that 12% of all ads on pirate streaming sites are linked to malware. In addition, nearly 80% of the researched sites served at least some malware ads. “Piracy operators lure users to their sites by offering them ‘free content,’ including the latest movies, music, and television shows. Once they come to the piracy site, users are subjected to a deluge of malicious ads […] that employ fear tactics and other deceptions to trick users into clicking on them.” “[P]iracy operators and malvertisers have created an unholy triangle with pirate site visitors, who have unwittingly entered a perilous game of ‘Pirate Roulette’ by entrusting their cyber-safety to malicious actors,” the “Unholy Triangle” report adds Piracy Investigators Hit by Ransomware These comments are pretty scary and to emphasize the threat, the researchers describe in detail how they were hit by a ransomware attack after visiting a pirate site. “With just a few clicks on a piracy site, investigators were victimized by a ransomware attack that encrypted their computer files. The criminals demanded payment to unlock them. This cyber threat was observed across multiple piracy sites.” ransom Luckily, the researchers used virtual machines so they didn’t end up paying anything to unlock their test machines. With these data and anecdotes, they warn the public to stay away from pirate sites. All in all, the report paints a pretty grim picture suggesting that things are worse than they ever were. However, that’s not clear from the previous studies we’ve seen. 80%, 90%, or 100%? In 2014, a study conducted by the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness found that 90% of the most used film and TV piracy sites contained malware or credit card scams. That’s more that the ‘eight in ten’ sites in the recent DCA study. A report from OpenText Security Solutions’ Webroot that was released last month also found that 90% of the top illegal streaming sites contain risky content. And according to FACT, the same study found that all of the analyzed sites had “malicious content.” Based on these rudimentary comparisons, pirate streaming sites were previously much riskier than in this latest report. But that’s impossible to say for sure, as the methodologies and researched sites vary quite a bit. EU Didn’t See a Malware Piracy Epidemic Also, it’s worth noting that there is research on the topic that shows quite a different picture. Aside from nuanced remarks from anti-virus experts, the EU Intellectual Property Office also draws a less dystopian conclusion. Through a detailed study conducted in several EU countries, EU researchers investigated more than 1,000 pirate site domains. They found that less than 10% of these sites linked to malicious content, which includes the less severe “potentially unwanted software.” According to the EU researchers, pirate sites were not particularly problematic. “At present, suspected copyright-infringing websites and streaming services are not normally considered to be dominant sources of malware or otherwise unwanted software distribution,” the research concluded. The results from the DCA’s “Unholy Triangle” report are quite different, to say the least. However, with varying methodologies and definitions of ‘malicious’ it’s not easy to compare the findings. In any case, it’s good to see that copyright holder groups are spending so much time and resources making sure that pirates are warned against malware. Whether that will prevent people from visiting pirate sites is another question, of course. Perhaps the main purpose of the report isn’t to warn the public at large, but to alert the authorities to take action against piracy. That’s at least in part what the authors hope to achieve, as they call on the DoJ and the FTC to take action. “As this report shows, malicious actors dangle free content as ‘bait’ to lure users to be victimized. Therefore, it’s vital that the DOJ targets malvertisers and piracy sites that are setting up users to be victimized by ransomware and other harmful software.” “In addition, the FTC should consider new efforts to alert consumers about the cyber security risks of piracy and the emergence of malvertising on these sites,” the report adds.

Copyright holders are expanding their web-blocking horizons by going after DNS resolvers. Cloudflare is one of the key players that's being targeted. While the Internet infrastructure company complies with targeted blocking orders related to the websites of its CDN customers, it believes that blocking domains on its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver goes a step too far. 1111Website blocking has become an increasingly common anti-piracy tool around the globe. In dozens of countries, ISPs have been ordered by courts to block pirate sites. In some cases, these blocking efforts are part of voluntary agreements. Cloudflare ‘Pirate’ Blocking Orders In the United States, these types of injunctions are rare. However, since the Internet has no clear borders, the effects sometimes spill over. The American Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, for example, has been ordered to block pirate sites in Germany and Italy. This week, Cloudflare published its latest transparency report covering the second half of 2021. The company explains that after weighing the potential impact on freedom of expression, it generally complies with blocking orders that target websites operated by its CDN customers. These blocking efforts are not global. Instead, Cloudflare only blocks access to the location from where an order originates. These sites include DDL-Music in Germany and nearly two dozen sites in Italy. “If we determine that the order is valid and requires Cloudflare action, we may limit blocking of access to the content to those areas where it violates local law, a practice known as ‘geo-blocking’,” Cloudflare explains in its transparency report. Target: DNS The aforementioned blocking orders apply to the websites of Cloudflare customers. However, Cloudflare also operates a DNS revolver that is the target of a newer anti-piracy campaign. DNS resolvers are the address books of the web. They link domain names to the correct IP addresses to make these accessible through a web browser. They are a key component of a well-functioning Internet. Interestingly, these DNS servers are often used by ISPs to comply with site-blocking orders. By removing a domain from the address book, users are unable to load the site in question. This is a relatively simple blocking method that’s easy to circumvent by using an external DNS resolver, such as the ones provided by Google, OpenDNS, Quad9, or Cloudflare. For this reason, DNS resolvers have become the target of blocking requests as well. In Germany, Quad9 was previously ordered to block a pirate site through its DNS resolver following a complaint from Sony. Similarly, in Italy, a court ordered Cloudflare to block several pirate site domains on the DNS level. Cloudflare Opposes 1.1.1.1 Blocking In its transparency report, Cloudflare makes a clear distinction between blocking requests that target its customers’ websites and those that apply to DNS functionality. DNS blocks can target any website on the web and are not easy to restrict geographically, the company writes. “Because such a block would apply globally to all users of the resolver, regardless of where they are located, it would affect end users outside of the blocking government’s jurisdiction. “We therefore evaluate any government requests or court orders to block content through a globally available public recursive resolver as requests or orders to block content globally,” Cloudflare adds. Cloudflare doesn’t want to meddle with its DNS resolver, which puts the company in a tough spot that requires a creative solution. The company says that, thus far, it hasn’t actually blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver. Instead, it relies on an “alternative remedy” to comply with the Italian court order. “Given the broad extraterritorial effect, as well as the different global approaches to DNS-based blocking, Cloudflare has pursued legal remedies before complying with requests to block access to domains or content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver or identified alternate mechanisms to comply with relevant court orders.” The above clearly shows that the company is determined to fight DNS blocking orders in court. And even if it loses, Cloudflare will seek alternative solutions. What these alternatives entail is not clear, but Cloudflare likely has the know-how to find a technical ‘circumvention’ mechanism.

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk

Welcome to invitehawk