Last year the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the anti-piracy alliance featuring several Hollywood studios, Amazon, Netflix, and other entertainment outfits, sued Florida-based SET Broadcast, LLC.

At the time, the company offered a popular software-based IPTV service and also sold pre-loaded set-top boxes. These were portrayed as legitimate, but ACE and its members disagreed.

“Defendants market and sell subscriptions to ‘Setvnow,’ a software application that Defendants urge their customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted motion pictures and television shows,” their complaint read.

Soon after the lawsuit was filed the IPTV service went offline, leaving its 180,000 subscribers behind. But that didn’t mean the case against SET TV, its owner Jason Labossiere, and its employee Nelson Johnson was over. ACE pressed on, hoping to get a judgment in its favor.

Without any of the defendants putting up a defense, ACE booked its first victory a few months ago. The media companies submitted a motion for a default judgment against the company SET Broadcast, LLC, which the court granted.

In a ruling handed down last July, the court ordered SET TV to pay $7,650,000. This reflects the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 51 works that were infringed by the defunct IPTV provider.

While ACE was pleased with the outcome, it wasn’t done yet. The default judgment only applied to the corporate entity, not the owner and its employee. With a new request, the anti-piracy alliance hopes to hold Labossiere and Johnson liable as well.

While the other two defendants initially responded to the court, they didn’t answer any recent requests. As such, ACE is now requesting a similar default judgment against Labossiere and Johnson, holding them jointly and severally for the payment of the $7,650,000 in damages

“Defendants Labossiere and Johnson are the individual Defendants who operated, managed, and ultimately profited from the willful, unlawful business of Set Broadcast. Settled law permits entry of default against willful infringers likeLabossiere and Johnson who refuse to participate in their own defense,” ACE writes.

“Plaintiffs therefore respectfully request that the Court enter default judgment against Labossiere and Johnson and hold them jointly and severally liable for the harm they inflicted upon Plaintiffs,” the Alliance adds.

In addition to the damages, ACE also requests a permanent injunction to prevent any future copyright infringement. Among other things, the defendants should be prohibited from operating the SetTV now service, as well as any website, system, software, or service that is substantially similar.

Without a response from the defendants, it’s likely that the court will grant the order.

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Two years ago, Epic Games decided to take several Fortnite cheaters to court, accusing them of copyright infringement.

Most of these lawsuits have now been settled, but there is one alleged cheater who is proving rather hard to catch.

The person in question, known in Fortnite and on YouTube as “Sky Orbit,” turned out to be a minor when Epic Games filed the complaint. This was made very clear by his mother, who sent a letter to the Court defending her son.

“This company is in the process of attempting to sue a 14-year-old child,” the mother informed the Court back in 2017.

The letter was widely publicized in the press but Epic Games didn’t back off. Due to his young age, the Carolina District Court ordered that the kid should only be referred to by his initials C.R. The case itself continued, however, albeit slowly.

Without any follow-up responses from either the defendant or his mother, Epic Games requested a default judgment. However, the Court denied this a few weeks ago, arguing that the underage defendant was never properly represented by a guardian. The mother’s letter was not sufficient to establish this.

This was a major setback to Epic Games but the company had no plans to drop the case. Especially not when it heard “Sky Orbit” had teamed up with another alleged cheater, CBV, and found other evidence that he wasn’t done cheating yet.

This week Epic asked the Court to officially appoint C.R.’s mother, Lauren Rogers, as a legal guardian, so she can officially represent her son. If that’s not possible, another adult should take this role, the game company argues.

“Defendant has ignored the appropriate orders of this Court. It is now appropriate for his mother or another adult to be appointed to officially represent him so that his interests can be protected and this matter can move forward,” Epic writes.

In an associated memorandum and declaration, the company explains that C.R. allegedly continued cheating over the past several months. Part of the evidence comes from a video titled “Fortnite Streamer Caught Aimbotting LIVE!” uploaded to YouTube by ShelbyRenae.

This video includes a captured video by another player, who’s allegedly cheating. Based on the voice of this person and several comments from people who watched the stream, this is C.R., aka “Sky Orbit.”

“The audio, including cheating player’s voice is available. On information and belief, the voice of the cheating player is Defendant’s,” Epic’s attorney Christopher Thomas writes.

“Although ShelbyRenae does not identify Defendant as the cheating player, at least 15 of the commenters separately identify ‘Sky Orbit’ – the name used by Defendant on his YouTube channel – as the player cheating in the Captured Video.”

The same voice also appears in another high profile video on YouTube. Epic argues that C.R. also appeared in the video where another teenager, CBV, responded to a separate lawsuit that Epic Games filed against him.

“You guys can eat my ass once again!” C.R. allegedly says in the video.

Based on this and other evidence, Epic believes that it’s important for the case to move forward so it can properly protect its rights. As such, the defendant should be represented by a guardian, which can be his mother.

In another video discussing the legal trouble, C.R. said that his mother “knew it all” and didn’t have to pay any lawyer fees, so appointing her as guardian would be appropriate, Epic states.

“Defendant’s statement that he and his mother got a lawyer but didn’t have to spend even ‘a little bit of money’ because his ‘mom knew it all,’ shows Defendant’s faith in Ms. Rogers. His comments also suggest that their decision not to answer in spite of the Court’s order was deliberate.

“His continued cheating, the foregoing and other public statements, and his open taunting of Epic all demonstrate that he thinks he is beyond the reach of this Court and is free to continue his unlawful conduct without consequence. This should not be permitted to continue.”

It’s clear that Epic Games is not letting this one go easily. The Court now has to decide whether it will appoint Sky Orbit’s mother or another adult as the guardian in this case.

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A copy of Epic Games’ Memorandum to appoint Lauren Rogers as general guardian is available here (pdf).

In yet another video

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EBooks are widely available and relatively cheap in many cases but there is still a thriving market for pirated copies.

This can be down to straightforward convenience but when it comes to textbooks, titles aren’t always available digitally and in many cases are extremely expensive.

To fill this demand, various sites offer textbooks for free download but in some instances, members of the public provide more personal services to access them at reduced rates. The downside is that anti-piracy companies are sometimes lying in wait.

A student from Denmark was one of the unlucky ones. After he and some fellow students pirated a few books to save money, the 26-year-old went on to launch a company with a friend after leaving college. However, when that venture failed and he ended up on benefits, he found himself selling eBooks on Den Blå Avis (The Blue Newspaper), Denmark’s largest buying and selling site.

Unfortunately for him, Danish anti-piracy outfit Rettighedsalliancen (Rights Alliance) noticed his activities. Under the alias “Michael R”, he sold one of their investigators an eBook that he’d previously converted to a PDF. After paying using MobilePay, the anti-piracy group collected it from Google Drive and reported the case to the police.

A couple of days ago, Avisen obtained information indicating that following an investigation, the Court of Frederiksberg would hear the case this week. The former student, who is trained in IT and marketing, had been charged with selling 228 copies of pirated textbooks related to his specialties.

He reportedly sold the books on The Blue Newspaper for between $12.50 and $88.00 each, a crime for which the prosecution sought a jail sentence for copyright infringement.

On Wednesday, Judge Poul Bisgaard-Frantzen at the Court of Fredericksberg handed the man, who currently lives in Copenhagen, a 20-day suspended jail sentence for copyright and financial offenses, Politiken reports.

After admitting selling 155 copies of textbooks, the Court also ordered the confiscation of 27,640 kroner, around $4,075.

“[I]t is devastating for the copyright that the authors have, and also for the publishers, when the basis for their business is taken away. Therefore, the gain must be confiscated,” the Judge said.

During the hearing, the former student, who will now have to abstain from illegal activities if he is to avoid prison, entered into a settlement arrangement with Rights Alliance, agreeing to pay the anti-piracy group 34,870 kroner ($5,123) in compensation.

Wednesday’s verdict could be just the start as the police reportedly have several similar cases pending.

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This week, Adobe delivered a worrying message to legitimate users of its software and services in Venezuela.

In response to a sanctions-related executive order (pdf) handed down by the US Government, the software company said it would have to terminate business relations with subscribers in the country.

This means that legitimate users of Photoshop and other Adobe software and services will lose access to the tools they’ve paid for. With all accounts set to be terminated on October 29, 2019, many customers will be left high and dry, with only a refund to look forward to – hopefully.

“If you purchased directly from Adobe, we will refund you by the end of the month for any paid, but unused services. We are working with our partners on the same,” the company announced.

The withdrawal of Adobe from Venezuela will no doubt deliver serious inconvenience for the country’s licensed users. However, they are in the minority. Licensing software doesn’t appear to be a mainstream activity, even in the face of decreasing price tags for Adobe products, for example.

According to Giampiero Posa of Posa Studio Creativo, a certified Adobe training center in Venezuela, the annual $200 fee for Adobe suite is still a luxury given the dire economic situation in the country. Just a few years ago, the cost was $1,780, a headline figure which did nothing to help piracy rates in the country.

The most recent Global Software Survey (pdf) published in 2018 by the Software Alliance (BSA) shows that in the previous year, Venezuela had the world’s joint second-highest rate of unlicensed software installation. At 89%, the country tied with Zimbabwe and was edged out only by Libya with 90%.

Figures from the trade group show that the situation hasn’t improved at all in eight years. In 2011, unlicensed installs accounted for 88% of the Venezuelan market, a figure that remained stubbornly stable until a 1% increase in 2017 made the situation marginally worse.

Clearly, the removal of offerings from Adobe and other companies offers no hope of a decline anytime soon but of course, alternatives do exist. Open-source tools provide a legal alternative but given high piracy rates and the comfort with which unlicensed software is apparently consumed, even more piracy seems the likely outcome.

And the possibility of consequences for that, especially factoring in hostility from the United States, seem more distant than ever.

A review of Venezuelan copyright litigation, published by Manuel Rodriguez of the Antequera Parilli & Rodriguez law firm, states that to date “there have been few cases of copyright infringements being sued before the courts.”

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Today’s Internet traffic patterns are completely different from those roughly a decade ago.

The most pronounced change in recent years has been the dominance of streaming services, mostly IPTV providers, Netflix, and YouTube.

While streaming remains the key traffic generator on the Internet today, file-sharing traffic is making quite a comeback. The early signs of this trend were already visible last year but new data from the Canadian broadband management company Sandvine show that this was no fluke.

Looking at the global application traffic share, we see that video streaming accounts for 60.6% of all downstream and 22.2% of all upstream traffic.

File-sharing has a very modest downstream market share, at just 4.2%, but it beats streaming when it comes to utilized upload bandwidth, 30.2% worldwide.

The relatively large upstream share makes sense, as that’s part of the nature of file-sharing. What’s more telling, perhaps, is the year-over-year growth numbers.

From 2018 to 2019, the share of file-sharing traffic increased by roughly 50% while the upstream share grew by 35%. Keep in mind that these numbers are relative, so in absolute terms, the traffic increases are even larger, as bandwidth usage continues to increase.

There are some regional differences in this trend. BitTorrent traffic, which is the largest chunk of all file-sharing traffic, has grown mostly in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) regions, for example.

BitTorrent is currently most popular in the EMEA region where it is good for 5.3% of all downstream traffic and a massive 44.2% of all upstream traffic. In the APAC region, the figures are 4.5% and 24.8% respectively.

According to Sandvine, the resurgence of file-sharing traffic can be largely attributed to the fragmentation of the legal video streaming landscape. With more legal options and a limited budget, people increasingly resort to piracy, the company argues.

“Netflix aggregated content and made piracy reduce worldwide. With the ongoing fragmentation of the video market, and increase in attractive original content, piracy is on the rise again,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen notes.

HBO is a crucial ‘fragment’ when it comes to torrent traffic. We have previously reported on the massive impact the last season of Game of Thrones had on BitTorrent traffic and this is confirmed by Sandvine’s data, as shown below. Interestingly, this bump wasn’t visible for Kodi-related traffic.

This Game of Thrones boost may have elevated the overall file-sharing market share this year, but that will become apparent when Sandvine releases its new figures next year.

While BitTorrent and file-sharing traffic increased globally, the Americas form an exception to this trend. There, the relative market share dropped slightly. However, that doesn’t mean that fewer people are using BitTorrent or that less data is being transferred.

For one, market share is relative and a slight drop is possible even if overall traffic increased. In addition, Sandvine’s data show a growing trend in VPN usage. The company closely monitors data used by 70 popular commercial VPNs and has noticed a major boost in usage.

Roughly 2% of all global downstream traffic can now be attributed to VPN traffic. Looking at the upstream traffic this percentage is even larger, 5%, suggesting that it’s often used for upload heavy purposes, such as file-sharing.

In the Americas, this VPN boom is particularly pronounced with the percentage of IPSec VPN traffic tripling to 7.7% of all upstream data. This goes up to almost 9% for all VPN traffic, Sandvine informs us.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if a lot of that traffic comes from BitTorrent transfers.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, while ‘file-sharing’ is often linked to piracy, the majority of all unauthorized media distribution takes place through streaming nowadays. In other words, ‘file-sharing’ is only a small fraction of the piracy landscape.

The streaming piracy traffic is part of Sandvine’s “http media stream” category which, for the first time in years, has a larger market share than Netflix.

The website Openload, which is often linked to streaming piracy, is even listed separately in the top 10 of all video streaming sources. With 2.4% of all downstream video streaming traffic on the global Internet, it’s safe to say that Openload uses a lot of bandwidth.

It will be interesting to see how these trends continue to develop during the coming years. It’s clear though, that file-sharing is not going anywhere, neither is BitTorrent, while the VPN boom only appears to be starting. A full copy of Sandvine’s latest Global Internet Phenomena report is available here.

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