There are numerous mixed martial arts organizations around the world but none are prestigious as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

The UFC’s broadcasting model is complex, from offering free-to-air events in some countries, relatively cheap subscription access in others, to particularly expensive pay-per-views in the United States, for example.

But whatever the model, UFC events are pirated on a large scale, both during the events themselves via web-based streaming portals and IPTV, to live streaming torrents and those available after the event, so to speak. The UFC would like to bring all of this piracy to a halt, but so would lots of other media companies.

With mixed martial arts’ popularity growing in places like Russia, the UFC has sought to curtail piracy. Last December the organization – which is home to superstars such as Conor McGregor and unbeaten Russian arch-rival Khabib Nurmagomedov – met with the local telecoms watchdog to discuss progress.

Roscomnadzor deputy Vadim Subbotin held a meeting with UFC Russia vice president Andrei Gromkovsky. The telecoms watchdog reportedly advised the UFC on procedures available to tackle sites that distribute UFC content without permission, including contacting those sites with requests to remove content.

“If the owner does not take measures to delete this information, [the UFC] has the right to contact the Moscow City Court and demand protection of its copyright, namely, to ensure that the Internet resource is blocked for the duration of the determination of the Moscow City Court,” Roscomnadzor reported.

According to official sources, the meeting went well, with agreements reached between the parties on how to move forward against errant sites, within existing legislation. That now appears to have claimed its first scalp, with the UFC successfully obtaining a blocking injunction – thought to be its first anywhere in the world – to have an infringing site blocked at the ISP level.

According to a report from Roscomnadzor, UFC Russia has been successful in obtaining a preliminary blocking order from the Moscow City Court. It compels local Internet service providers to block access to Ripple.is, a site focused on mixed martial arts that reportedly streamed live UFC events without appropriate licensing.

The site appears to carry MMA news stories culled from other sites. However, on closer inspection, it also offers a ‘VIP’ section which directs users to an IPTV service which enables visitors to watch all kinds of sporting events – UFC bouts included – for a relatively small payment.

Whether this was the basis of the complaint remains unclear but at least for now, UFC fans in Russia won’t be able to directly access the Ripple.is domain without using circumvention techniques such as VPNs or Tor.

Should Ripple.is continue infringing the UFC’s rights, the company will be able to return to the Moscow City Court to obtain a permanent injunction, one that will place the domain on Russia’s national blacklist.

The blocking injunction arrives at a peculiar time for UFC fans in Russia.

For many local citizens, the fighter they most want to see in action is Khabib Nurmagomedov, the man who submitted Conor McGregor at UFC 229 to retain his lightweight belt. However, few if any will have to turn to pirate sources to watch Nurmagomedov defend his title at UFC 242 against interim lightweight champ Dustin Poirier on September 7, 2019.

While US UFC fans will be paying around $80 to watch the PPV event, the entire thing will be broadcast on Russia’s main state TV channel for free, making site-blocking completely irrelevant.

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While most YouTube users are simply visitors to the site, a minority produce their own content and upload it to the platform for others to enjoy.

Some can make a decent living when they enter a revenue-sharing agreement with YouTube but when things go wrong, those earnings can stop in an instant. According to popular YouTuber DJ Short-E (real name Erik Mishiyev), this happened to him – and he’s blaming the whole thing on YouTube using copyright-strikes as “retaliation” to his threats of a lawsuit.

In a complaint filed in a California federal court Wednesday, Mishiyev describes himself as a “well-known Journalist and DJ, known as ‘Short-E’, who publishes original music, DJ mixes, and celebrity interviews in videos on YouTube.”

Since 2007, Mishiyev says he’s run two YouTube channels – ‘djshortehot4eva’ and ‘theshorteshow’. These channels were monetized following an agreement with YouTube and after developing a subscriber base of 250,000 users, his channels generated more than 110 million views. For this, YouTube paid him $310,000 over a five-year period.

In March 2016, Mishiyev claims he began receiving copyright claims on his “highest advertisement revenue videos”. He says he responded with counter-claims to avoid YouTube’s “three strikes” process which would’ve disabled his channel. However, he reports that all claims were won and his channel was re-instated for monetization.

A year later, Mishiyev says YouTube recognized him as a successful contributor by handing him a “Silver Creator Award” for reaching 100,000 subscribers. However, despite growing his audience at a rate of around 4,000 subscribers per month, views remained low when compared to similar channels.

“Plaintiff was concerned about this suspicious activity and sought confirmation numerous times from YOUTUBE that they were truly distributing his new videos to his fans and subscribers, but YOUTUBE failed to provide such confirmation, stating ‘They could not share this information’ with him,” the complaint notes.

Mishiyev includes an email from one of his subscribers to back up his claims that YouTube failed to promote his content as per his agreement with the company.

“I subscribed to both of your channels and turned my notifications on for you so I would know when you uploaded new videos,” it reads.

“I subscribed about 2 weeks ago and haven’t got a single notification from youtube but I noticed you have uploaded many new videos since I subscribed [to your channels]. Please fix this problem, i’m sure there are many other people who haven’t been notified either and that’s why I noticed your views are very low compared to other similar channels.”

According to Mishiyev, YouTube’s failure to promote his content would cause him to lose $125,000 in revenue over a three-year period but after losing faith in YouTube’s support team, he told the company he would be filing a lawsuit if its conduct persisted.

In response, on December 18, 2018, YouTube reportedly sent a notice saying that they would be terminating Mishiyev’s accounts and removing his content. The very next day, serious copyright problems began.

“On December 15, 2018 through January 15, 2019, Plaintiff was abruptly bombarded with copyright claims like he never had been before the entire time he had been managing and growing his channels,” the complaint notes.

On January 22, 2018, YouTube reportedly blocked access to all of Mishiyev’s videos, replacing them with a notice that they had been removed due “to a copyright claim.” YouTube then placed “strikes” on his account but Mishiyev says that YouTube’s actions were actually in response to his threat of a lawsuit.

“Although YOUTUBE stated they removed his channels and videos for copyright claims, the removals appeared to Plaintiff to be in retaliation for his placing them on notice that he would be filing a lawsuit,” Mishiyev’s lawyers write.

According to the YouTuber, he followed the company’s rules by submitting counter-notices as required by the DMCA, noting that every time he had done that in the past he had prevailed since no one ever filed a lawsuit against him.

Generally, when a counter-notification is filed and there is no lawsuit notification from a complainant, content goes back up. But YouTube apparently wrote back saying that at least some of Mishiyev’s counter-notices were “ineligible.”

The complaint adds that YouTube later retracted its statement that the videos were ineligible for counter-notification and promised to process them. It’s not clear what happened next but it didn’t help Mishiyev’s predicament.

“To date, Plaintiff’s strikes have not been removed, his counter claims have
not been processed, and his videos and channels have been permanently removed, though no claimants presented evidence that they filed any lawsuits. Thus, evidencing that YOUTUBE did not simply remove his content because of copyright claims, but instead in retaliation for placing them on notice that he was filing a lawsuit against them,” the complaint asserts.

As a result, the now-former YouTuber says he lost $90,000 in revenue between January 2019 and July 2019, adding that when lost subscribers, views, future views, performance bookings, and lost advertising and sponsorship deals are taken into account, YouTube’s actions have caused him damages of $720,000, for which he demands compensation in full.

Mishiyev is suing YouTube for breach of contract, interference with contractual relations, interference and negligent interference with economic advantage, and negligence. He also demands an injunction preventing YouTube from “banning Plaintiff from the full use of the internet and YOUTUBE’s services.”

The complaint plus supporting documents can be found here 1,2,3,4,5 (pdf)

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When the European Parliament adopted Europe’s first net neutrality rules in 2015, some people believed that this would put an end to BitTorrent blocking

The rules, which were included in the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) regulation, prevent ISPs from outright discrimination between different types of traffic.

While there has been little research on the topic thus far, a new paper published by Italian researchers shows that several ISPs continue to interfere with BitTorrent transfers.

For the study, Valerio Luconi and his colleagues used a specialized tool called NeutMon to measure traffic flows on several mobile ISP networks. Specifically, they checked whether BitTorrent traffic is treated differently than traffic that appears the same, but isn’t using the BitTorrent protocol.

These traffic measurements were taken throughout the day and in a follow-up measurement, were compared to regular traffic as well. The results show that despite the EU’s net neutrality rules, BitTorrent throttling is still ongoing.

The research started with a broad measurement targeting all of the nine ISPs that were available through the NeutMon tool, some in multiple countries. They then measured the throughput of BitTorrent traffic versus the control group, to see if there are any changes.

The results show that three of the nine ISPs interfered with BitTorrent traffic flowing through the standard port 6881.

This wasn’t the case on all tests, so the researchers selected these providers for a more thorough follow-up run.

This “focused” test looked at the average download speeds for the following traffic types, which were (except HTTP) all similar in respect of types of packets and size.

–BT: BitTorrent traffic on port 6881, or a random high number if that fails
–CT1: Control traffic on port 6881
–CT2: Control traffic on a random port higher than 50000
–HT: HTTP request of a large file

After testing the three possibly non-neutral ISPs the researchers found that the earlier interference that was found at the Swedish ISP Telenor could not be replicated. However, on Vodafone (Spain/Italy) and Yoigo (Spain), something was amiss, as the figure below also shows.

The researchers found that Vodafone always blocked BitTorrent traffic on port 6881, except between 1 AM to 5 AM. However, BitTorrent traffic was blocked on higher ports as well. This led to the suspicion that it takes place through deep packet inspection.

“We can in general confirm that classification is done via deep packet inspection, as only BT is always throttled with a very low throughput, both when using port 6881 and when using a random high port,” the researchers write.

The control traffic performs much better, although there is occasional interference there as well. According to the researchers, this might be because this traffic is sporadically misidentified as BitTorrent traffic since it shares the same characteristics. HTTP traffic was, as expected, allowed to flow freely.

On Yoigo there’s also non-neutral activity, according to the findings. Interestingly, much of the control traffic was throttled as well. According to the researchers, this could be due to port blocking.

“From the obtained results we can confirm Yoigo’s non-neutral behavior too, but with quite different modalities,” they write.

“BT, CT1, and CT2 are capped to a very low throughput, whereas HT obtains good performance. These results seem also to confirm that traffic is shaped on a per-port basis.”

BitTorrent was certainly treated differently from the two control conditions though. The researchers report that Yoigo always shut down BitTorrent traffic after a short time, which meant that none of the tests completed. This suggests that the ISP uses multiple blocking measures.

The article concludes that while there’s no blocking on most mobile ISPs, some clearly interfere with traffic in a non-neutral way. They argue that it may be time to introduce real-world monitoring systems, to check whether ISPs play by the rules or not.

That brings us to another issue, which is not mentioned in the article. While the EU has indeed adopted net neutrality rules, it’s up for debate whether BitTorrent blocking is actually prohibited.

ISPs are arguably still allowed to throttle specific categories for “reasonable” network management purposes, as long at it improves the overall “transmission quality.” That would not be a far-fetched argument since torrent traffic can be quite demanding on a network.

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The paper titled “Net Neutrality in Mobile Broadband: a European Study Based on a Large Scale Testbed” is accepted for publication in the Internet Technology Letters.

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For roughly two decades, copyright holders have been sending takedown notices to ISPs to alert them that their subscribers are sharing copyrighted material.

Under US law, providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances” and increasingly they are being held to this standard.

Several major music industry companies have filed lawsuits against a variety of Internet providers. With help from the RIAA, the companies targeted Cox Communications, Grande Communications, and Charter, hoping to recoup damages for their role in the pirating activities of their subscribers.

The overall theme of these lawsuits is the same. The music companies accuse the ISPs of turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers. This is also made clear in a new complaint that was just filed against several ISPs that operate under the RCN brand.

The lawsuit is again filed by music companies, including Arista Music, Bad Boy Records, Capitol Records, Laface Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music, UMG Recordings, and Warner Records. Some of these are also involved in the aforementioned cases.

“This is a case about a leading internet service provider knowingly enabling its customers’ massive online copyright infringement of sound recordings,” the music companies allege in a complaint filed at a federal court in New Jersey.

“Defendants operated RCN as a haven for infringement. Defendants promoted RCN’s high internet speeds to customers, knowing that the ability to download copyrighted material illegally using high-speed internet, without repercussions, was a substantial draw for infringers,” they add.

The music companies state that RCN, including several local branches, willingly profited from keeping pirates on board. The ISP advertised high-speed internet which would be particularly appealing to BitTorrent pirates, it’s claimed.

“RCN provides its subscribers with a fully functioning system that allows them to engage in copyright infringement on a massive scale using BitTorrent networks,” the complaint reads.

“And for those subscribers who want to pirate more and larger files at faster speeds, RCN obliges them in return for higher fees. The greater the bandwidth its subscribers require for pirating content, the more money RCN receives.”

We have seen similar claims in related “repeat infringer” lawsuits. Previously it was pointed out that, while it is certainly true that high-speed Internet access is beneficial for pirates, legal users of streaming platforms such as Netflix would benefit as well.

The music companies, however, are convinced that the high speeds lure pirates to RCN. On top of that, they accuse the Internet provider of ignoring repeat infringers, so it can continue to profit from this piracy activity.

The music companies back up their claims with data from anti-piracy tracking company Rightscorp, which previously sent RCN more than five million infringement notices. These notices identified tens of thousands of alleged pirates.

Despite being aware of this copyright-infringing activity, RCN did nothing to stop it, the complaint notes. According to the Rightscorp data, 36,773 subscribers repeatedly engaged in piracy, with hundreds of these being flagged more than 1,000 times.

Since Rightscorp doesn’t monitor all activity, this is likely a small fraction of all the infringing activity occurring over RCN’s network, the music companies add. And despite the high number of repeat infringers, RCN did little to stop it.

“Defendants failed to take any meaningful action to discourage this
wrongful conduct. Instead of terminating repeat infringers—and losing subscription revenue— RCN for years simply looked the other way and chose to allow the unlawful conduct to continue unabated.

“By ignoring the repeat infringement notifications and refusing to take action against repeat infringers, and instead providing those customers with ongoing internet service, Defendants made a deliberate decision to contribute to known copyright infringement,” the complaint adds.

In cases like this, Internet providers can generally rely on the DMCA safe harbor defense, which shields them from liability. However, the music companies argue that RCN lost this right by not having a properly functioning repeat infringer policy.

“Although RCN purported to adopt a policy to address repeat infringers, RCN in reality never adopted or reasonably implemented a policy that provided for the termination of repeat infringers—despite receiving over five million infringement notices. Its purported policy was a sham,” the complaint reads.

The allegations are very similar to the other “repeat infringer” lawsuits we have seen in the past. As in the other cases, the ISP is accused of both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. The same also applies to RCN’s management company Patriot.

The music companies claim substantial losses for which they want to be compensated. They request actual damages or statutory damages of $150,000 per work. With an illustrative list of more than 1,000 tracks as evidence, a list that may grow even longer, the potential damages are already over $150 million. 

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A copy of the complaint, filed at the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, is available here (pdf).

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Here are part one and two of our chat with Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan.

Tang taught herself programming at an early age of 8 and she says that she’s a ‘civic hacker’ who uses her specialized skills to help rather than harm.

Part one includes Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, which marked the first time the country’s legislature has been occupied by citizens, and which led to a radical new phase for Taiwanese democracy.

In part two we discuss, among other things, how the Taiwanese government is using Free Software such as Discourse and Polis to enable its ongoing real-time experiment in direct democracy

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Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing crypto, privacy, copyright and file-sharing developments. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Audrey Tang

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Lucas Marston
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Eric Barch

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