Visitors to ‘pirate’ sites are no strangers to the Russia-based gambling company 1XBET.

As reported back in May, the company’s branding appears on hundreds of so-called ‘cam’ releases, much to the annoyance of people hoping to enjoy a movie without unnecessary interruptions.

The mechanism through which these ads appear in ‘pirate’ releases isn’t clear. As we’ve previously pointed out, there’s no public information that 1XBET directly sponsors ‘pirate’ releases or whether over-enthusiastic affiliates are to blame. Nevertheless, things were bound to boil over at some point.

In August, we pointed out a bizarre situation in Italy, where top tier football league Serie A launched an anti-piracy campaign, decrying piracy of all kinds – of movies too – with 1XBET advertising directly underneath. In fact, 1XBET is an official presenting partner for Serie A which has its ads all over its site.

While Serie A currently seems untroubled by these developments, Premier League clubs in the UK – who are also quick to criticize pirates – have a bigger and more immediate problem.

Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur – which all previously struck sponsorship deals with 1XBET – recently received communication from the UK’s Gambling Commission noting that after having its license revoked (in part due to its advertising on ‘illegal’ sites), the clubs cannot continue doing business with 1XBET.

“We recently wrote to Liverpool FC, Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC to remind them that organizations engaging in sponsorship, and associated advertising arrangements, with an unlicensed operator, may be liable to prosecution . . . for the offense of advertising unlawful gambling,” the Commission reportedly told the clubs.

A few days ago, Tottenham announced that it had terminated its multi-million-pound sponsorship deal with the company. At the time of writing, Chelsea and Liverpool are yet to make an official announcement.

In response to the allegations, a 1XBET spokesperson said that is taking the matter seriously and, as such has, decided to stop operating in the UK, at least for the moment.

“We take very seriously the allegation that 1xBet’s brand has been promoted on prohibited sites, which is strictly against our policies, and we have launched an investigation. Pending the outcome…we believe it is responsible to temporarily suspend our advertising activity in the UK,” the company said.

With Matt Zarb-Cousin of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling describing the clubs’ lack of due diligence as “shocking” and an “absolute debacle”, TorrentFreak spoke with brand protection company White Bullet to find out if it had some additional data on the scale of 1XBET’s alleged advertising on ‘pirate’ platforms.

The company, which works with brands to identify websites and applications that damage brand reputation (including by funding online piracy), told us that it tracks around 10,000 ‘pirate’ sites, with that number depending on how many are online and have ad impressions to be counted.

“1,200 of those sites had 1XBET ads found on a regular basis over the last 6 months,” the company noted, adding that 25% were or still are on the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s IWL Infringing Website List (IWL).

Somewhat embarrassingly for Serie A and the above-named Premier League teams, 13% of the sites carrying 1XBET ads were ‘pirate’ sports streaming platforms and categorized as “high risk” by White Bullet.

All in all, this is an interesting completion of the funding circle as far as the clubs go, not to mention the Premier League’s constant complaints about piracy.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Manga comics and novels are huge. Not just in Japan but all over the world.

People used to read them on paper, but digital is the standard today. While that makes these comics more accessible, they’re also easier to pirate.

For years there has been an active ‘scanlation’ community. These are fan-made translations that are shared online. Sharing can begin innocently, by posting a copy on a message board, but sometimes things get out of hand.

Enter MangaRock. Most people who are not into manga have probably never heard of the site, but it easily dwarfs the most well-established pirate sites. According to data from MUSO, it’s more popular that The Pirate Bay, or any Hollywood-blockbuster streaming site.

In addition, SimilarWeb lists it as the 2nd most popular site in the ‘books and literature‘ category, just behind Wattpad. That’s rather impressive, especially when you consider that many users don’t use the site, but its dedicated Android and iOS apps instead.

Up until a few days ago, the site had been running smoothly, but apparently the operators had a change of heart. In an interview with J-Cast News, picked up by Animenewsnetwork, Manga Rock owner “Not a Basement Studio” recently said the site and apps would shut down.

Initially, it appeared that nothing much had changed, but today people started to notice that the Manga Rock app had disappeared from the Play store. The iOS version will reportedly follow soon.

And if there was any confusion left, a new statement confirms that MangaRock.com will shut down as well. “It’s official: We’re taking Manga Rock down,” Not A Basement Studio writes.

Not utilizing this type of traffic from dedicated manga fans would be a shame, a point not lost on ‘Not A Basement Studio’. Behind the scenes, they’ve been working hard putting together a legal alternative while negotiating deals with several publishers.

The original plan was to remove all unauthorized content from the site at once and present the new and legal alternative to its users. This appeared to be the best option for all, and could even work well for the rightsholders, as it would be an excellent setup to convert ‘pirates’ into customers.

However, this plan was scrapped recently, and Manga Rock has decided to shut down now and launch its legal platform named “MR Comics” later.

“As we made contact with more publishers and creators, we realized that by keeping Manga Rock around while developing the new platform, we are still inadvertently hosting and supporting the practices of piracy,” Manga Rock explains.

“Until we can fully make the switch to become a 100% official comics platform and convert all the free readers into supporters of legitimate content, creators and publishers are being hurt by our practices & all the other scanlations sites,” they add.

While ‘Not A Basement Studio’ doesn’t mention anything specific, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the shutdown request is motivated, at least in part, by requests from rightsholders. After operating the site for years, a few more weeks can’t make that much of a difference.

Whatever the motivations are, one of the largest ‘pirate’ operations online today is now folding. According to a timeline published by Manga Rock, the apps were to be taken down during the first week of September. The site will follow next week and this will redirect to the new but unfinished “MR Comics” platform.

The aforementioned site has a detailed overview of how the Manga Rock team began and how it grew to the point where it is now. It is rather apologetic to the publishers, as its closing words make pretty clear.

“Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years. Once again, we’re deeply sorry for everything,” they write.

The site’s users, on the other hand, are mostly shocked and disappointed. They will have to do without their favorite scanlation site. While some will be interested in trying out the new legal platform, when it arrives, others are already scouring the web for the next best thing.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

France has been working hard to disrupt online piracy for more than a decade, largely through the efforts of local anti-piracy agency Hadopi.

After many years of planning, in 2010 France became a pioneer of the so-called “graduated response” system, whereby persistent copyright infringers could eventually find themselves disconnected from the Internet.

The entire project was overseen by Hadopi (High Authority for the Distribution and Protection of Intellectual Property on the Internet), the government agency responsible created to ensure citizens comply with relevant anti-piracy laws.

Hadopi has made the headline numerous times over the past 10 years, largely reporting on progress in its field. However, Hadopi’s main goal was to reduce illicit sharing on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent, which has in many instances given way to streaming equivalents in the interim.

In an announcement this week by the Ministry of Culture, it transpires that a new bill foresees Hadopi merging with another powerful government agency in the near future

The CSA (Conseil Supérieur de L’audiovisuel / Higher Audiovisual Council) – is the local authority for the regulation of electronic media in France, including television. It’s envisioned that a merger between Hadopi and CSA will create a brand new organization with even greater powers for regulating all things digital.

According to a Reuters report, the merger project will be presented to the Council of Minister in November before arriving at parliament early next year.

“The idea is to create a new authority based on this merger that regulates both audiovisual communications and digital communications,” said Franck Riester, France’s Minister of Culture.

Earlier this year, Riester noted that the convergence between the Internet, television, and radio needed to be addressed. This planned merger seems a clear attempt to bridge the gaps although what it will mean for anti-piracy enforcement will remain to be seen.

A July 2018 report indicated that not only were French pirates on the wane (down from 11.6 million in 2016 to 10.6 million in 2017), many were increasingly turning to legal sources such as Netflix.

Those that were still determined to pirate were also downloading and streaming less unlicensed content, with consumption down by 4% and the number of pirates without access to a legal subscription dropping by 30%.

A more recent report, published this June, indicated that in 2018 the agency had dealt with 50,000 to 70,000 instances of Internet users unlawfully and repeatedly making content available on peer-to-peer networks.

“[D]uring the three phases of warnings sent to Internet users, 60% of them were no longer accused of new illegal acts,” Hadopi said, citing the scheme’s effectiveness.

Nevertheless, calls remain for enforcement to be stepped up, including via the use of blacklists that would help to restrict access to unlicensed streaming sites via ISPs and search engines, while encouraging advertisers to boycott the platforms.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Similar to other sites that deal with user-generated content, Facebook has to battle against a constant stream of copyright-infringing material.

To address this, Facebook has rolled out several anti-piracy initiatives in recent years. The company has a “Rights Manager” tool, for example, that automatically detects infringing material on the platform.

In addition, it seems the company is also taking proactive measures. This week we were contacted by the operator of LimeTorrents.info, one of the most used torrent sites, who noticed that sharing links to his site is no longer permitted on the social media network.

People who want to use Facebook to post a link to the torrent site will see the following error message instead; “You can’t share this link. Your post couldn’t be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards.”

As it turns out, LimeTorrents is not the only site that’s affected by this policy. We checked several others and found out that Facebook also blocks links that point to YTS.lt, Torrentdownloads.me and Zooqle.com. This measure applies to all URLs from these sites, including their homepages.

Facebook’s blocking notification doesn’t provide a specific reason for the blockage. We’ve reached out to the company for a comment on the blocking measures, but the company has yet to reply.

When we read through the company’s ‘community standards,’ however, we see that copyright infringement is a potential trigger.

The four sites that are blocked may just be the tip of the iceberg. At the same time, it’s also worth noting that other major pirate sites don’t get the same treatment. Whatever Facebook’s policy is, there’s no site-wide ban on all piracy sites, yet.

While the current blocking efforts are new to us, as well as the site operator we’ve spoken to, it’s not clear when they were implemented. A search for the error message that pops up suggests that it only started to appear recently.

That doesn’t mean that Facebook has never blocked pirate sites in the past. Ten years ago the company already prevented users from posting links to The Pirate Bay, after the torrent site refused to disable its ‘share’ function voluntarily.

“Given the controversy surrounding The Pirate Bay and the pending lawsuit against them, we’ve reached out to The Pirate Bay and asked them to remove the ‘Share on Facebook’ links from their site. The Pirate Bay has not responded and so we have blocked their torrents from being shared on Facebook,” the company told us at the time.

Interestingly, in the years that followed, The Pirate Bay was unbanned again and Facebook users can freely share links to the site today.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

For many years, Dutch Internet users were allowed to download copyrighted content with impunity, as long as it was for their own use.

In 2014, the European Court of Justice decided that the country’s “piracy levy” through which rightsholders could be compensated, was actually unlawful.

It took another three years for entertainment industry groups to realize the untapped potential of settlement lawsuits but in 2017 it was revealed that distribution company Dutch Filmworks (DFW) wanted to begin monitoring pirates. It didn’t immediately mention it would be seeking any compensation but that always seemed likely.

Later that year it became clear the company would indeed try to do just that, using an initial letter to alleged infringers to request payment.

“[The lettter] will propose a fee,” said DFW CEO Willem Pruijsserts. “If someone does not agree [to pay], the organization can start a lawsuit.”

However, before DFW can begin sending letters, it needs to match the IP addresses of alleged infringers with real identities and for that, it needs cooperation from ISPs. Immediately, ISPs including Ziggo refused to comply without being taken to court.

DFW went ahead wth legal action anyway and targeted 377 of Ziggo’s customers, all alleged to have downloaded the movie “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”. However, the effort failed when in February 2019 the Central Netherlands Court denied the company’s request for data.

The Court didn’t deny that those sharing copyrighted movies without permission were breaking the law. However, it also pointed out that an IP-address alone doesn’t identify an infringer. The Court also had issues with the settlement amount that DFW proposed to extract from alleged infringers, describing the ‘fine’ as “in no way substantiated” in respect of actual damages.

In response, DFW filed an appeal, stating that the judge in the case “agreed with DFW on almost all points” so felt that the ruling should have gone the distributor’s way.

“DFW is of the opinion that this decision should have been in favor of the rightsholder and it is convinced that the claim should be awarded on appeal,” the company said.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeal looked at the case and was due to deliver its verdict yesterday, September 3, 2019. However, a report from NRC now reveals that the decision will be postponed “partly due to the complexity of the case.”

A spokesperson for the Court told the publication that “we’re working hard on it” and a ruling should be handed down no later than November 5, 2019, but hopefully sooner.

While in other regions of Europe, notably countries like Germany and Sweden, the discovery process can be a fairly simple one, it seems clear that the Dutch court wants to take a much closer look at the details.

What those reservations are isn’t yet clear but the earlier insistence from DFW, that subscribers should be responsible for what happens on their connections whether they’re the infringer or not, might be playing a part in the Court’s hesitancy.

On top, of course, any decision in favor of DFW could open the floodgates to other companies seeking to obtain settlements from Internet users, something which would be music to the ears of various copyright trolls, many based in the United States and working on an industrial scale.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.