While many countries around Europe have frameworks in place to block ‘pirate’ sites on copyright grounds, Denmark can take credit for being a pioneer.

As long ago as 2006, music industry group IFPI began targeting Russian MP3 download site AllofMP3 and in 2008, the country became the first in the region to compel an ISP to block The Pirate Bay.

Since then, rightsholders – under the leadership of anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen (Rights Alliance) – have taken selective action to target further sites for blocking, specifically those that have proven themselves most popular with local audiences.

Last week, Rights Alliance indicated that it had won a new blocking order following a process at a court in Holbæk. The group said that it had targeted 11 sites in various sectors, including streaming, torrent, file-hosting and ripping sites but few other details were made available.

Information provided by Rights Alliance to TorrentFreak can now put more meat on those bones.

The action was taken on behalf of many content-related companies covering music, movies, TV shows and publishing. They include IFPI, Sony Music, Elsevier, the Danish Producers’​ Association, film company Zentropa Productions, Nimbus Film, Nordisk Film, and Scanbox Entertainment, to name a few.

The single torrent site targeted was the popular platform TorrentFunk followed by six streaming platforms – Filme3d, Filmi2k, GoMovies, HDfilmcehennemi2, PopcornTime-online, and Watch32.

Given the participation of IFPI and Sony in the process, it’s no surprise that stream-ripping platforms also make an appearance. The two sites targeted in this sector are named as YouTube converter sites Converto and MP3-YouTube. In 2018, Denmark became the first country in the world to compel an ISP to block a YouTube-ripping site.

That publisher Elsevier is involved naturally points to the blocking of Sci-Hub and Library Genesis (Libgen). These ‘pirate’ libraries of scientific papers have been blocked in a number of regions already, including France, Germany, and Russia. Neither are strangers to direct legal action either, but both sites continue their stated mission regardless.

In common with many similar procedures, the action was targeted at a local ISP, in this case Fibia. The Court ultimately determined that all of the sites infringe the plaintiffs’ copyrights and that Fibia enables its customers to access the sites in question.

As a result, Fibia was directed to block subscriber access to the sites within seven days of receiving the court order. In line with a code of conduct agreed among ISPs in Denmark, other ISPs will also block the above-named sites, despite not being named in the complaint.

Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund informs TorrentFreak that this latest action represents “blocking wave 14” in Denmark and more sites will be targeted in the future.

“We file about 5-6 cases per year targeting the most popular infringing sites,” Fredenslund concludes.

Users attempting to visit the newly-blocked sites (and the hundreds blocked following previous actions) will be directed to the Share With Care campaign portal which contains advice supported by a dedicated film search engine, pointing visitors to legal sources.

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Millennium Films is continuing its quest to identify and shut down pirate sites and services.

In recent weeks the company managed to take the widely popular app CotoMovies offline and the popular torrent site MKVCage also disappeared following legal pressure.

To identify the operators of these sites and apps the movie outfit, alongside several of its daughter companies, uses a relatively simple weapon. Through their attorney, they request DMCA subpoenas, ordering hosts, domain registries, and other intermediaries to share personal information of their targets.

While foreign companies may not always be responsive to such requests, US-based corporations usually are.

The most recent effort from Millennium Films is particularly interesting in this regard. The company requested a subpoena to compel the .To registry to hand over information connected to the domains of streaming sites FMovies.to, Yesmovies.to and Cmovieshd.to, as well as torrent site iBit.to.

According to information submitted to the court, the sites are linked to pirated copies of the film “London Has Fallen.”

While .To is the top-level domain of the island kingdom of Tonga, the Tonic registry operates through Tonic Domains Corp., which clearly has a U.S. presence with a California address. As such, it will generally fall under the jurisdiction of US courts.

As is usually the case with DMCA subpoenas, this request was swiftly approved by a court clerk without oversight from a judge. As such, the registry is required to hand over emails, phone numbers, payment details, and other information it has on the domain owners.

Interestingly, the subpoena request contains several errors. It repeatedly refers to Cloudflare, for example. This is likely because it was copied from a previous submission. In addition, it addresses “Tonics Domain” corp, instead of “Tonic Domains,” but the court clerk approved it nonetheless.

Responding to our inquiry, the Tonic registry said that it will, and has always complied with valid US subpoenas. This means that it will respond to this request as well, unless it sees the misspelled name as problematic.

The question remains what Millennium Films can do with the information. While some pirate sites and services are responsive to legal pressure, not all are.

FMovies, for example, which is the largest site targeted in this instance, didn’t flinch when it was sued by ABS-CBN three years ago. The site operators simply didn’t respond to the complaint, resulting in a default judgment of $210,000 in damages.

The same judgment, issued by a federal court in Florida, also came with an injunction allowing ABS-CBN to take over the FMovies.to domain name, but that never happened.

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A copy of the subpoena issued by the US District Court for the District of Hawaii is available here (pdf).

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Over the years, many piracy-related sites and services have been accused of facilitating massive copyright infringement but on sheer scale, few come close to now-shuttered manga site Mangamura.

According to Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA, Mangamura caused around $2.91 billion in damages to the local manga industry. And that was from a standing start in 2016.

While the site closed in 2018, apparently voluntarily, authorities worked to bring its alleged operator to justice. In July 2019 there was a breakthrough when the Bureau of Immigration in the Philippines announced they’d arrested the Japanese-German-Israeli “fugitive” Romi Hoshino.

The 28-year-old, also known online as Zakay/Sakay, was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport as he attempted to board a plane to Hong Kong. The arrest was coordinated with Japanese authorities who were seeking his deportation to face charges connected with the operation of Mangamura.

After reportedly being held in custody at a detention facility in Taguig City, Hoshino boarded a deportation flight to Japan yesterday. Once onboard, he was arrested by Japanese police and flown to Narita Airport, near Tokyo.

A Mainichi report states that Hoshino was arrested in Japan under suspicion of copyright violations.

A video shot at the airport shows the suspect wearing a blue t-shirt displaying the text ‘Manila Mura’ with his personal web address – https://romihoshino.com – printed underneath. That site currently displays a ‘maintenance mode’ message.

Hoshino was interviewed by Japanese police last year, before he flew to the Philippines in May 2018. According to unnamed sources, he denied being involved in the Mangamura site. He further denied fleeing from Japan, instead citing business and other reasons for his departure.

In addition to action against Hoshino, the noose appears to be tightening on other players allegedly involved in Mangamura.

Earlier this month, 26-year-old Kota Fujisaki pleaded guilty at Fukuoka District Court to uploading copyrighted images to the site, contrary to copyright law. On the same day, a 24-year-old woman, Shiho Ito, pleaded not guilty to the same charges.

The prosecution claimed that images from the 866th episode of manga series ‘One Piece’ were uploaded to Mangamura from Fujisaki’s home in May 2017, where Ito also lived at the time. It’s further claimed that the pair conspired with Hoshino, with Ito receiving payment for the uploads.

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Music piracy, in various forms, has been a problem for decades but more recently stream-ripping has emerged as the dominant source.

Three years ago music industry group IFPI sounded the alarm bell. Stream-ripping had become a bigger piracy threat than other forms of piracy, including torrent sites, the group said.

This awareness motivated various music labels and publishers to crack down on ripping tools. That also led to the demise of YouTube-MP3, which once was the most popular ripping site.

While there was no shortage of enforcement actions, the stream-ripping problem only appeared to increase. By this time last year, IFPI’s yearly consumer insight report revealed that 32% of all Internet users were stream rippers, up from 30% in 2016.

Online piracy, in general, was also substantial, as 38% of the surveyed Internet users classified themselves as pirates. That number includes the stream-rippers, obtaining content from various legal sites.

These statistics are certainly concerning but what IFPI failed to note was that a downward trend was starting to emerge, one that continues today.

IFPI just released its latest consumer insight report, which it renamed to the “Music Listening” report. The main focus is on legal consumption, which is thriving. However, stream-ripping piracy is still highlighted as a major threat.

“Copyright infringement remains a challenge for the music ecosystem. 27% of all those surveyed used unlicensed methods to listen to or obtain music in the past month, while 23% used illegal stream ripping services – the leading form of music piracy,” IFPI notes.

There is little further context in the full report as IFPI doesn’t compare the numbers to earlier years, as it does with other statistics. We don’t know whether this is intentional or not, but the music industry group fails to observe one of the largest changes in piracy consumption in recent years.

This year 27% of Internet users classify themselves as music pirates, compared to 38% last year. Similarly, the percentage of stream-rippers dropped from 32% to 23% between 2018 and 2019, which is a rather dramatic decrease.

To put this into perspective, out of every 100 persons who were classified as music pirates last year, 29 kicked the habit. And for every 100 stream-rippers, 28 stopped. These groups obviously overlap, but it’s certainly a major shift.

Another thing we observed is that the role of search engines is no longer highlighted. This used to be a top priority. In 2016 IFPI reported that 66% of all music pirates used general search engines (e.g. Google) to find pirated music. A year later this went down to 54%, last year it dipped under 50%, and in 2019 it’s not mentioned at all.

For some reason, we think this may have been different if these trends had gone in the other direction. For example, in 2016, IFPI sounded the alarm bell when stream-ripping grew 10% while the 28% drop this year isn’t mentioned.

Perhaps the music industry group has its reasons not to discuss these newsworthy changes, but we definitely think it is at least worth pointing them out.

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In common with most major countries around the world, Russia has problems with piracy, a situation its government is constantly trying to address.

In an effort to deter citizens from using illicit sources, Russia has already developed one of the most aggressive site-blocking regimes anywhere in the world. Thousands of sites are blocked by ISPs on copyright grounds, some permanently

Right now, it is also working on further legislative amendments that will compel search engines to query online databases to ensure that links to allegedly-infringing content are removed from indexes in a matter of minutes.

But while all of that plays out, a new survey carried out by security company ESET suggests that the problem is unusually deep-seated, with just a fraction of respondents stating that they always obtain content from licensed sources.

The study was carried out in September among 2,000 people who were asked, among other things, what type of content they pirate most often. ESET says that many users highlighted more than one type of content but there was a clear leader.

52% of respondents said that ‘cracked’ games are their content of choice, closely followed by 43% who obtain movies and TV shows from unlicensed sources. Just over a third (34%) say they prefer to listen to music from illegal platforms rather than their legal equivalents.

While ‘pirate’ eBook and similar sites have been the subject of several lawsuits in Russia to date, only 14% said that they obtain content from these services. Just under a fifth (19%) of respondents say they install ‘cracked’ software. Perhaps predictably, ESET points out that since malware can come with such releases, its products can come in handy.

Overall, just 9% of all respondents in the study admit to obtaining content exclusively from licensed sources, a pretty measly figure. However, the information released by ESET doesn’t reveal how many of the 91% are ‘dual buyers’, an omission that could prove crucial.

People who pirate content but also obtain some content from licensed sources have been an important factor in more detailed studies carried out elsewhere. These people are regularly viewed as potential converts to 100% legal consumption in the future while offering some hope that the piracy puzzle can be solved in time.

But of course, people in Russia have their own reasons to pirate and it’s the old boogeyman at the top of the list – cost. According to ESET, 75% of respondents said that high prices are the reason to pirate, with just over a third (34%) stating that legal services fall short of their requirements.

Interestingly, ESET says that 25% refuse to pay for licensed content on “ideological” grounds, although it doesn’t elaborate on what they might be. That’s followed up by 16% who say they prefer pirate content because payment systems utilized by legal providers are “inconvenient”.

Finally, while ESET Russia encourages people to comply with relevant anti-piracy laws, it predictably gets in a plug for its own products. Nothing that unlicensed products and ‘cracked’ games can sometimes come with unwanted extras, the company suggests using its anti-virus solutions to combat the threat.

Given the results of the study, there’s plenty of scope for sales, if the company can get anyone to pay.

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