In a few hours the 2014 World Cup kicks off in Brazil, an event that will be seen by hundreds of millions of people from all over the world.

While most people watch the matches through licensed broadcasters, there is also a large group of people who resort to unauthorized sources. These so-called “pirate” streams are available through dozens of sites, including Firstrow and Rojadirecta, which generate millions of views during popular sporting events.

These broadcasts are a thorn in the side of world football association FIFA who have contacted several owners of streaming-related sites over the past few days. TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the letter from a site owner who asked to remain anonymous.

In the letter, signed by Director of Legal Affairs Marco Villiger and his colleague Jörg Vollmüller, FIFA asks the site operators to do all they can to take these streams offline. Those who refuse to do so could face criminal liability.

“Due to the nature of your service, we anticipate that a large number of users will continually use your website to create, distribute and/or link to live streams via the Internet of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM. We want to ensure that all infringing streams can be promptly identified and removed, regardless of whether they can be viewed openly or through private areas of your site,” FIFA writes.

The letter then goes on to emphasize that the site owners bear full responsibility for all unauthorized live streams, or links to live streams.

FIFA strongly recommends that site operators immediately block access to unauthorized broadcasts when these are pointed out to them. To facilitate this process the football association has included a link to the tournament schedule, further demanding that the websites in question have people available during the matches, to ensure rapid takedowns.

“As you have been provided with the specific dates and times of all matches, we thereby expect a member of your website team to be present and available to promptly perform this duty during and throughout ALL matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM,” FIFA writes.

In addition, FIFA requests a special takedown tool so their monitoring and enforcement company NetResult can remove streams whenever needed.

“Provide a service or tool whereby NetResult, FIFA’s service provider for online monitoring, will have the ability to immediately take down and remove ANY and ALL unauthorized streams of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM found on your website,” FIFA demands.

While the site owner we spoke with only received the letter two days ago, the deadline to comply with the demands ends today. Toward the end of the letter FIFA points out that those who fail to comply will face civil and criminal liability.

“Should you fail to implement either of the above by the beginning of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM on June 12, your failure to comply will expose you to civil and criminal liability,” the letter states.

The FIFA letter is unique in its kind, as copyright holders generally don’t take these types of proactive measures. As far as we know this is the first time that FIFA has sent an advance warning to site owners.

While most site operators are happy to comply with takedown notices, FIFA’s demands go above and beyond the common takedown procedure. Whether this will have the desired effect has yet to be seen.

FIFA letter obtained by TorrentFreak

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Perhaps surprisingly, Google’s Transparency Report reveals that there are a few dozen sites that receive more infringement notices than The Pirate Bay. The top five most-reported sites have received in excess of six million notices each in the last year alone, pushing Sweden’s pirate haven way down the list.

In fact, when it comes to crowning the past year’s ‘King of the Notices’ one site comes out head and shoulders above all the rest, which is particularly interesting since most in the mainstream will have never heard of it.

Called Dilandau, this music search engine has been providing easy access to MP3s and full albums for some time and as a result has amassed a staggering 9,698,946 notices with Google in the past 12 months alone. The site beats file-hosting service RapidGator into second place with a measly 7,120,128 notices and ZippyShare into third with 6,971,163.

In the last four weeks Google received 571,942 notices related to Dilandau but that pattern is set to change following what appears to be a forced major modification to Dilandau’s business model.

Guillaume Champeau of French news outlet Numerama informs TorrentFreak that authorities recently launched legal proceedings against Dilandau following a complaint from SACEM, a music rights organization behind many previous local anti-piracy operations.

Dilandau’s operator is reportedly Spanish but it’s believed that French cybercrime police seized his France-based servers three or four weeks ago. Dilandau is currently up and hosted in Germany, but there have been some telling changes to the site.

Navigation to the site’s main domain, Dilandau.eu now results in a diversion to another domain, Dilandau.la. A check into Dilandau’s .EU domain reveals that the domain has been put “ON HOLD”. EURiD, the registry for .EU domain names, reports that while the domain is currently active it “may not be transferred pending the outcome of legal activity.”

Once on Dilandau.la, however, the biggest changes yet become apparent. Gone are the tools and indexes which allowed visitors to download unlimited quantities of free MP3 files of the biggest artists around. In their place is a brand new interface which allows the visitor to view only the artists’ YouTube videos.

Only adding to the intrigue is the fact that a Google search for Dilandau fails to turn up the site in the first results. Instead searchers are presented with a fake site that appears to have nothing to do with the original. Only by searching for a precise URL (dilandau.eu or dilandau.la) does Google return the correct site.

Dilandau’s operators declined to comment on any possible legal action, telling TorrentFreak, “We just want to stay away from downloads.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 has made a business out of suing online services for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement.

Over the past several years the company has targeted a dozen high-profile companies including Google, Amazon, Yandex, Mastercard, Visa, RapidShare, Giganews and Depositfiles.

Earlier this year Perfect 10 continued its legal crusade by filing a lawsuit against Leaseweb, one of the largest webhosting companies on the Internet. According to the publisher, LeaseWeb provided services to several pirate sites, including the now defunct Megaupload.

In the complaint Perfect 10 argued that LeaseWeb is directly responsible for the copyright infringements of its customers, and that the hosting provider failed to take thousands of infringing URLs offline after they were notified via several DMCA notices.

LeaseWeb refuted many of the allegations that were put forward by the magazine publisher. Among other things, the hosting company stated that none of the notices that were sent by Perfect 10 conformed with the DMCA’s requirements. In addition, LeaseWeb denied that it knew about the claimed widespread infringements.

“LeaseWeb USA denies that it has actual knowledge of allegedly ‘rampant infringement’ by any of its customers and that it has committed copyright infringement. LeaseWeb USA denies it has knowingly aided and abetted massive alleged infringers, including megaupload.com,” the hosting company stated in a response.

While the legal battle in court continued, behind closed doors both parties were also discussing the option to end the case without bloodshed. This has now resulted in a settlement agreement and in a joint submission at a federal court in California they asked to dismiss the case.

This is not the first time that Perfect 10 has settled a case early, the same happened in its disputes against Amazon and Depositfiles. It can be assumed that LeaseWeb has paid the magazine publisher some form of compensation, but none of the parties is willing to comment on the terms of the settlement.

LeaseWeb informed TorrentFreak that it has nothing to say on the matter. The magazine publisher couldn’t comment on the case either, noting that the settlement agreement is confidential.

However, Perfect 10′s multi-millionaire founder Norm Zada stresses that piracy remains a massive problem. Talking to TorrentFreak, Zada calls for stricter enforcement against copyright infringers so these type of lawsuits aren’t needed.

“Widespread copyright infringement is hurting millions of people in the creative industries. The world desperately needs some form of Internet police that can deal with the hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property that is stolen each year,” Zada says.

“If your car gets stolen, you can call the police. When a person’s livelihood is destroyed by a theft of their intellectual property, there is no one to call. Most victims of intellectual property theft do not have the resources to file lawsuits and should not be required to do so,” he adds.

While the “hundreds of billions” figure is most likely a bit high, Perfect 10 is determined to deal with the problem with all means at its disposal. Since there is no Internet police just yet this most likely means filing another lawsuit, and another.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Back in April, the MPAA’s Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. filed a brand new lawsuit in a Virginia District Court.

Targeting Kim Dotcom and his associates Mathias Ortmann and Bram Van Der Kolk, the civil case aimed to recover millions in damages said to have been caused by the now-defunct Megaupload file-storage site.

The case filed by the MPAA was quickly followed by another initiated by the RIAA, with both following the pattern set by a U.S. Government criminal case already underway against Dotcom and colleagues in the United States.

To avoid their clients incriminating themselves ahead of the criminal case, Megaupload’s legal team later asked a U.S. court to freeze the civil cases filed by the MPAA and RIAA. Yesterday, United States District Judge Liam O’Grady granted that Motion to Stay.

However, the plaintiffs were successful in their request to have a number of conditions attached to the decision, each designed to give them freedom to embark on further legal action should they feel that’s appropriate.

Firstly, Judge O’Grady’s order does not disallow the plaintiffs from effecting service on any other defendant who has not already been served. They are also free to amend their complaint as they see fit.

Unsurprisingly, the thorny issue of Kim Dotcom’s assets, currently frozen by the New Zealand government pending an appeal, was also addressed.

“If the New Zealand Government loses the appeal, the assets will be unfrozen, and there is a significant risk that they will then be immediately dissipated,” the studios explained in a filing last month.

That concern was dealt with by Judge O’Grady in yesterday’s order by granting the studios freedom to go after Dotcom’s assets wherever they see fit.

“Plaintiffs may institute and pursue any action in the United States or a foreign jurisdiction to preserve Defendants’ assets in the event that such action becomes necessary,” the Judge wrote.

“The Court finds that each of Plaintiffs’ proposed conditions are reasonable under the circumstances of this case because of the possibility that Defendants’ assets abroad may become unfrozen.”

As a result the case is now frozen until August 1, 2014, seven weeks from today. The same decision was made in respect of the civil case filed against Megaupload by the RIAA.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The RIAA has submitted its latest tax filing to the IRS, covering the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, which provides some background on how the organization is faring.

Continuing the trend from recent years the total revenue of the anti-piracy group dropped once again, to $24.2 million. This is a record low in recent history, and down more than 50% compared to four years ago.

The drop is a direct result of the decrease in membership dues the RIAA receives from the record labels, which makes up almost its entire budget. Apparently the labels have decided to put less money into anti-piracy efforts, or stop the payments altogether.

On the plus side there is a small amount of income from anti-piracy settlements, including that obtained through the Limewire lawsuit. In 2012/2013 the “anti-piracy restitution” proceeds were $170,880, which is relatively low considering that the Limewire case alone was settled for $105 million.

Thanks to continuing employee cutbacks and lower legal fees the RIAA is still financially healthy. The reported loss over the reported year was $170,000, but this is easily covered by the $14 million in total assets.

The organization employed 58 people in 2012 and the total salary costs amounted to $11.6 million. Previously, the music industry group had well over 100 employees.

The RIAA’s Washington Office

The RIAA’s chief executive Cary Sherman is the highest paid employee with a salary of just over a million dollars. In addition, the RIAA boss received several bonuses which totaled $498,000.

Also high up the payment roster are Senior Executive Vice President Mitch Glazier, General Counsel Steve Marks and Executive Vice President International Neil Turkewitz, making over half a million dollars each.

Looking at other costs we see that the money spent on lobbying efforts remains static at roughly $2 million. Legal fees are just under $1 million, which is about the same as last year. However, four years ago legal fees were a massive $16 million, making the cutback in legal efforts one of the main cost savers.

While the RIAA’s revenue continues to drop, the overall decline is relatively modest when compared to last year. This suggests that the group has more or less finished its financial reorganization, and that the RIAA will now go forward with fewer lawsuits and employees.

The anti-piracy group may have halved in size over the last four years, which is significant, but there are no signs that it will disband entirely.

The full 2012/2013 filing, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.