Like many countries in Europe, Bulgaria is home to large numbers of pirate sites operating in multiple niches, from torrent and streaming platforms, to dedicated IPTV services.

In recent times authorities there have indicated that they are taking a tougher line to combat infringement in the country and yesterday announced results on that front.

According to an announcement from the Ministry of the Interior, a “special operation” was carried out this week to take down dozens of streaming platforms said to be involved in the unlicensed distribution of copyright works.

Carried out under the direction of the Sofia District Prosecutor’s office, the Cybercrime Specialized Unit at the State Security Service detained a 40-year-old man said to be the owner/operator of dozens of pirate sites, which appear to have focused on the streaming sector.

The authorities claimed that the man ran more than 40 websites which distributed movies online without obtaining permission from copyright holders. He allegedly got one site off the ground and then used the content from that to fuel the others, which were then supported financially by adverts provided by Google.

“He originally published the films on one of the sites he controlled. After reaching a certain number of visitors and the traffic generated – for which he was paid for by Google respectively – he downloaded the works and shared them again, but on some other domains,” the statement from the Ministry reads.

“The procedure was repeated 4-5 times until the resource was exhausted from the sites he controlled. Thus, for the same copyright sites, the capitalist received multiple payments from Google.”

According to the statement, most of the sites were “hosted” on the Internet by one of the largest cloud service providers in the United States. This, the authorities claimed, led the man to believe he was anonymous. However, international investigations carried out by Bulgaria’s General Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime (GDBOP) uncovered his identity.

The full list of sites attributed to the man by the authorities reads as follows:

x-movies-8.com, new123movies.com, phim-3s.com, phim-14.com, xxxmovies8.com, ww1.serialitebg.com, xmovies8- tv.com, onlinemovies2017.com, xmovies-8.com, onlinemovies2016.com, newcinema2016.info, movies-16.com, onlinemovies-gold.com , megashare-movies.com, newmovies-2016.com, onlinemovies-is.com, big-top-40.com, movie-8k.com, tv-1000.net, online-movies-pro.info, moviesonline-pro.com, filmi-bg-audio.com, terminator-genesys-online.info, starwars7download.info, resident-evil-7-online.info, mision-impossible-5-online.info, james-bond-24-online.info, onlain-filmi-bg.com, filmi-fen.com, filmi-2015.com, kinofilme-2014.com, movies-2017.com, hulu-movies.com, onlain-filmi.info, movies-2015.com, movies-16.com, movie-32.com, new123movies.stream

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Responding to a request from the US Department of Commerce, the RIAA submitted its views on several copyright infringement matters.

Specifically, it informed the Government about counterfeit and pirated goods that pass through online third-party marketplaces, and what can be done about that.

The music group sent a letter that encourages the Government to take action where possible. For example, by encouraging online platforms to share names and contact information of possible infringers.

In addition, the Government can also clarify when online intermediaries should be held liable for acts carried out by sellers of counterfeit and pirated goods.

When it comes to piracy and e-commerce platforms, the RIAA believes that any such changes should apply to mobile, Kodi or browser apps, and to the storefronts that distribute them. This refers to pirate apps on mobile stores, but also devices that are sold through Amazon and eBay.

“As online commerce goes increasingly mobile and distributed, there shouldn’t be different rules that apply to apps that can access the Internet via any connected device, as opposed to just the traditional website,” the RIAA writes.

When it comes to counterfeit goods, the RIAA is particularly concerned with large platforms that sell unauthorized music recordings. These counterfeit products are sold very frequently by large retailers, the music group explains.

This year, the RIAA conducted two studies into the sale of counterfeit music. For the first, it made various tests buys on Amazon and eBay, focusing on current and evergreen album titles released by major U.S. record labels.

This revealed that a significant portion of the CDs on these platforms are unauthorized. This is also true for the CDs that were marked as “fulfilled by Amazon.”

“The study showed that 16% of the CDs purchased via eBay were counterfeit, and 11% of the CDs purchased via Amazon were counterfeit. Alarmingly, 25% of the purchased CDs that were ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’ were counterfeit,” the RIAA writes.

In another study, the RIAA searched for “brand new” box sets of selected titles on eBay and AliExpress, and then bought the four lowest-priced box sets on each platform. The result, again, revealed that copyright infringement is rampant.

“On both eBay and AliExpress, 100% of the test buys of the box sets were counterfeit. This is of particular concern as box sets are premium physical music products designed for the superfan that often contain the most significant sound recordings in an artist’s repertoire,” the RIAA notes.

Where appropriate, platforms that willingly distribute copyright-infringing content should be held liable. At a minimum, these platforms should deter repeat infringers, the RIAA argues.

The music group hopes that the US Department of Commerce will take its findings and comments into account and come up with possible solutions to curb piracy and counterfeiting on online platforms.

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A copy of the RIAA’s letter, providing input for the upcoming report on the state of counterfeit and pirated goods trafficking and recommendations, is available here (pdf).

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Piracy of football (or soccer for those in the US) is currently one of the hottest copyright infringement related topics.

The major leagues – the Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, and Serie A, to name just four – see piracy as an existential threat, with millions of fans favoring unlicensed platforms over their expensive official offerings.

But while Europe is currently the key battleground, broadcasters and their anti-piracy partners are cracking down elsewhere too. South America, where football is followed by some of the most passionate fans in the world, is now seeing action after the police targeted two men this week.

Following an investigation launched in 2017, officers of the Intellectual Property Brigade (BRIDEPI) of the Chilean Investigative Police arrested one man in the port city of Valparaíso while the other was detained in the
Santiago Province commune Maipú.

Aged between 20 and 30-years-old, they are the alleged administrators of FutbolChile.net and VeoPartidos.com, sites which aired live matches to fans without permission from rightsholders.

Head of BRIDEPI Marco León told Chile’s 24horas that the men operated independently but generated money from advertising placed on their respective sites. According to the police unit, losses to local cable broadcasters run to several million dollars.

The original signals were allegedly obtained from companies including Fox Sports via a subscription but were then captured in the suspects’ homes and transmitted to the sites via the Internet. One of the men is believed to have been operating for around five years.

“We are talking about 100,000 or 200,000 monthly visits [to the websites], where all the content was offered absolutely for free,” León said.

BRIDEPI added that it was “technically very difficult” to determine where the original signals were coming from. It was the first case of its type in the country and as a result, the police had to call in expert support from Brazil and Argentina.

The police unit warns that piracy is a moving target and today’s techniques may not work as well in the future. Technology is moving so quickly that in a year’s time, something else will come along to complicate investigations.

“[T]echnological progress is faster than us,” BRIDEPI concludes.

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This week many avid torrenters were taken by surprise when two of the largest pirate sites stopped adding fresh content.

Both EZTV.io and YTS.lt didn’t have any new torrents for several days. This unusual hiatus, which eventually ended a few hours ago, remains unexplained thus far.

While some were ready to call the end of the sites, it’s more likely that they were hit by some kind of technical hiccup. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no other issues behind the scenes at the moment.

As we reported earlier, YTS has already been hit by two separate complaints filed by movie companies in US courts this year. While it may not be directly related to this week’s problems, another lawsuit has just been added to this growing list.

In a complaint filed at a Hawaii federal court, Wicked Nevada, the company behind the biographical thriller “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” accuses the site of contributing to widespread copyright infringement of the film.

In addition to going after the site’s unnamed operator, the lawsuit also targets 16 “John Does” who are accused of downloading and sharing a copy of the movie that was uploaded by YTS. These “Does” are subscribers of ISPs Spectrum, Hawaiian Telcom and Verizon.

“Defendant JOHN DOE has made the torrent file ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile (2019) [WEBRip] [720p] [YTS.AM]’ available to users in Hawaii such as Defendants DOES 1-16, the United States and the entire World to download from its interactive YTS website,” the complaint reads.

The complaint displays a lot of similarities with the lawsuits that were filed earlier. For example, it mentions that the YTS.lt domain was registered by the now-dissolved UK company Techmodo Limited. In addition, it mentions that the torrent site uses the services of a variety of US-based companies.

Cloudflare, for example, is mentioned as a hosting and nameserver provider. The movie company used this US connection to obtain a subpoena and find out more about the alleged operator of the torrent site. This revealed that the Cloudflare account in question was logged into by AT&T, Spectrum, and Verizon Wireless IP-addresses.

Whether these IP-addresses have anything to do with the operator remains a question, of course, as this person could also have used an IP-obfuscation tool such as Hola, which routes traffic over the IP-addresses of other people. That would actually make sense, as the account was also logged into by a VPN IP-address and from the TOR network.

“Defendant JOHN DOE further uses the Virtual Private Network provider London Trust Media (Colorado) and even the Onion Router exit relays of the US Naval Research Labs in Washington, DC and an individual in Texas to conceal its login records to its Cloudflare account when operating the interactive websites,” the complaint reads.

With the lawsuit, the movie company hopes to recoup some of its alleged losses. It accuses the YTS operator and its users of contributory and direct copyright infringement, while tagging on a claim of intentional inducement against the former.

Wicked Nevada also requests an injunction to stop the defendants’ infringing activities and to prevent third-party intermediaries such as hosting companies, domain registrars, and search engines, from facilitating access to the YTS domains. Ultimately, the company hopes to shut the site down.

Again, these claims are very similar to those made in the previously filed cases against YTS.

All in all, the three lawsuits make YTS the most sued pirate site in the US that we know of. It’s worth noting that all these cases are filed in the state of Miami by the same attorney, Kerry Culpepper, who represents quite a few movie outfits.

It’s not entirely clear to us what the reason is for filing separate lawsuits, as these companies could also bundle their powers. However, with every added lawsuit, the rightsholders may believe that they are getting closer to the operator.

This week, Wicked Nevada requested two new ex-parte motions for a subpoena. These motions are sealed, so we don’t know which companies it targets, but it will likely be another effort to obtain more information.

That brings us back to the issues YTS and EZTV faced over the past several days. While we can only speculate at this point, it’s possible that the legal pressure caused the sites, which may be interconnected, to lose a hosting provider. That could explain the temporary lack of new content.

For now, however, we can only speculate. That said, with YTS being the most visited torrent site on the Internet, the lawsuits are well worth keeping a close eye on.

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A copy of the complaint filed by Wicked Nevada at the US District Court for the District of Hawaii is available here (pdf).

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Over the years, dozens of ‘pirate’ sites have suspended their operations for a wide range of reasons.

Pressure from rightsholders is perhaps the most common problem, but issues with hosting, domains, or even lack of time or resources have appeared high on the list.

Music search engine Slider.kz has a now cited a reason never heard before.

Slider.kz has been around for approximately nine years, having first appeared in 2010. It certainly doesn’t have the profile of some of today’s popular “stream-ripper” type sites but until recently has been quietly sourcing, indexing and making available for download thousands of tracks from its base in Kazakhstan.

Now, however, the site has problems. The issues are briefly outlined in a popup message when users first visit the site, which references problems with encryption.

Once the message goes away, users are met with the most recent version of the Slider.kz homepage, complete with the usual search box. But those hoping to download or stream music in the browser (Slider previously offered both options) are presented with a disappointing message.

The problems appear related to the news last month that the government in Kazakhstan has recently begun intercepting HTTPS traffic. According to reports, local Internet service providers have been ordered to force their subscribers to install root certificates issued by the government, something which would allow various agencies to intercept what would otherwise be secure web traffic.

“Pursuant to the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan On Communications and clause 11 of Rules for Issuing and Applying Security Certificates, Kcell JSC informs its customers of the need to install Security Certificate on devices capable of connecting to the Internet,” service provider Kcell told its customers in a recent announcement.

“According to law, telecom network operators are to ensure that customers with whom the operators have service contracts are able to install the security certificate on their mobile devices.”

The provider goes on to explain that the security certificate must be installed on all devices used to access the Internet (whether mobile or desktop-based) because if not, customers may face “technical limitations when accessing certain websites.”

Slider.kz does not currently have a security certificate and is running on basic HTTP, meaning that simply accessing the site isn’t a problem. However, Slider appears to index music sourced from elsewhere so it’s possible that the new regime in Kazakhstan is interfering with that in some way.

We have been unable to reach Slider’s operator for a more detailed explanation but we can confirm that at least some the 499 sample tracks compiled by the site’s operator (a small selection of what is usually available) stream directly from the site’s server, not from third-party sources.

All that being said, it’s possible that Slider may return, sooner rather than later. Local media reports are now suggesting that the government may be backtracking on its earlier requirement for citizens to install the security certificate. Only time will tell if this will completely solve Slider’s problems.

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