While rightsholders and anti-piracy groups often deploy multiple strategies for dealing with online copyright infringement, blocking websites, streams, and servers is now one of the most common.

The Premier League broke new ground on this front in 2017, after it obtained a pioneering injunction which enabled it to track live ‘pirate’ streams and have them blocked by leading ISPs BT, Virgin Media, EE, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk in real-time.

With backing from the High Court, the Premier League deployed its system during the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons. We can now confirm that the Court recently granted permission for the efforts to continue during the 2019/20 campaign.

A High Court order signed off July 15, 2019, by Justice Arnold, but as yet unannounced by the Premier League or the Court, will be the basis for the blocking mechanism during the upcoming season. Thus far, one ISP has confirmed the existence of the order.

“A number of unidentified servers associated with infringing Premier League match footage will be blocked until the end of the 2019/20 Premier League season,” Sky notes.

Unlike other blocking orders targeting torrent sites or streaming platforms with a fixed domain, the servers streaming Premier League content are “unidentified” until its anti-piracy partners are able to locate them a few minutes before matches begin. The relevant IP addresses are then forwarded to the ISPs who block them under the authority of the Court.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm that other ISPs are aware of the new Premier League order but are yet to make a public statement.

Late 2017, UEFA followed in the footsteps of the Premier League by obtaining a similar order covering the period February 13, 2018, to May 26, 2018, in an effort to protect European matches. A month later in July 2018, UEFA was given permission by the High Court to expand and extend its campaign until July 12, 2019.

Earlier this month, UEFA obtained permission from the High Court to continue. As yet, no associated documents have been published by the Court but both Sky and Virgin have confirmed they will be blocking ‘pirate’ servers again, with the Court’s authorization, until 2021.

“A number of unidentified servers associated with infringing UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Nations League, UEFA European Qualifiers and UEFA Friendlies match footage will be blocked until the end of the 2020/21 Champions League or Europa League competitions,” Sky notes.

Virgin states that it will block “Various Target Servers notified to Virgin Media by UEFA or its appointed agent for the duration of the UEFA 2019/2020 & 2020/2021 competition seasons.”

The technical details of the blocking systems deployed by both the Premier League and UEFA (TF understands they’re managed by different anti-piracy companies) are largely secret although some insiders have recently been prepared to talk more about what happens behind the scenes.

As the new season progresses, we expect to report more on how this digital game of cat-and-mouse is playing out.

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

With over a million visitors per day, Pelispedia.tv was one of the most popular streaming sites in Latin America.

While users saw the site as an ideal service to enjoy free entertainment, the movie industry approached it as a major threat.

Following a referral from Hollywood’s MPAA, it also appeared on the radar of the US Trade Representative, which branded Pelispedia a notorious pirate site in April.

By then, rightsholders and enforcement authorities already had their eyes focused on the site’s alleged operators, a couple from Uruguay. The two, who are referred to by their initials J.A.G.R. and M.J.H.G., were tracked for weeks and eventually, the curtain fell.

Following collaborative efforts from Interpol, rightsholders, and Uruguayan authorities, the two were arrested in May. The alleged operators are charged with copyright-related crimes as well as money laundering. Soon after, Pelispedia went offline.

The case in question was referred to an Uruguayan court specialized in organized crime, which handed down its verdict a few days ago. The
couple was sentenced to three years and four months of jail time.

In addition, roughly US$500,000 worth of previously-seized assets will be transferred to the Government, as is customary under local money laundering law.

The investigation into the site was launched after complaints from the Motion Picture Association and several Hollywood studios. Anti-piracy coalition ACE and MPAA Chairman Charles Rivkin are very happy with the swiftly resolved case.

“We applaud the work of our partners at Interpol and law enforcement agencies in Uruguay for the successful legal action against a major Latin American piracy organization, and thank the court for acting swiftly to stop this criminal network,” Rivkin comments.

Virginia Cervieri, the lawyer who represents the Motion Picture Association and the other complainants, previously said that domain name WHOIS data was the starting point of their investigation. While the registrant details were later updated, an earlier version has already put them on the right track.

“In these cases, information is not widely available, but it was discovered that, according to the domain WHOIS, an Uruguayan national was the holder of the Pelispedia domain. We then began to investigate if the person was real and if the data provided coincided with reality, which it did,” Cervieri told Redaccion.

The details led to a 35-year-old man, J.A.G.R., who launched Pelispedia after another popular streaming site, Cuevana, went down in 2014. Together with his wife M.J.H.G (34), he reportedly earned between $4,000 and $10,000 per month.

While Pelispedia is not coming back, the site’s demise has left a gaping hole that other pirate sites are eager to fill. Following the shutdown earlier this year, sites such as pelisplus.co, pelisplus.to and repelisgo.com have seen a healthy boost in traffic.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(…)	Godzilla: King of the Monsters	6.5 / trailer
2	(…)	Avengers: Endgame	8.7 / trailer
3	(1)	Hellboy	5.3 / trailer
4	(…)	Tolkien	6.9 / trailer
5	(3)	Alita: Battle Angel	7.5 / trailer
6	(6)	Pokémon Detective Pikachu	6.9 / trailer
7	(2)	Shazam!	7.3 / trailer
8	(4)	Men in Black: International (Subbed HDRip)	5.7 / trailer
9	(9)	Long Shot	7.1 / trailer
10	(10)	Captain Marvel	7.1 / trailer

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

Increasingly, people are canceling their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper or niche-based Internet TV instead.

While there are plenty of legal options available, there’s also a broad offer of easy-to-use set-top boxes which are specifically configured to receive pirated content.

These pirate IPTV boxes are often sold bundled with a monthly or yearly subscription. This created an industry that’s worth billions of dollars worldwide and may grow even bigger.

It is safe to conclude that IPTV piracy makes up a large part of the pirate ecosystem. This hasn’t gone unnoticed to copyright holders of course. Over the past year, we have seen enforcement actions against hundreds of sellers and more are likely to follow.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is one of the outfits that have IPTV-pirates high on their agenda. This was highlighted in an interview with local radio station BNR in which director Tim Kuik referred to the criminal nature of this problem.

While IPTV sellers come in all shapes and sizes, the true masterminds behind the pirated signals often remain unseen. According to BREIN, many resellers are actually afraid to identify their sources.

“The signals are stolen by criminal organizations. These set up the infrastructure and provide vendors with the codes. Sellers are afraid to name their suppliers out of fear of retaliation. ‘That would put my life at risk,’ we regularly hear.”

The Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group mostly takes action against public sellers. It tracks down these companies and successfully demands hefty settlements. However, in order to tackle the problem properly, more resources are needed.

“We target sellers and take their money. A settlement costs them tens of thousands of euros, but to tackle the infrastructure you need better resources and a criminal investigation,” BREIN notes.

Potential investigations should target the criminal masterminds behind the scenes but BREIN says that Dutch hosting providers should remain alert as well. Also, providers who willingly host illegal IPTV services should face charges themselves.

“Providers who shelter such illegal services and willingly turn a blind eye should be prosecuted,” the anti-piracy group argues.

Because of its good Internet infrastructure, the Netherlands is typically a popular location for IPTV vendors to host their services. These ISPs generally claim that they are not aware of the criminal nature of their clients. However, many rightsholders have their doubts about that.

According to BREIN, there is a small number of Dutch hosting providers that frequently does business with these IPTV services. These companies don’t get actively involved when complaints come in but forward them to their customers instead.

“Reports of rightsholders are only forwarded to the criminals who obviously do nothing with it. If the provider has to take action, it gives the illegal customer plenty of time to keep his service online,” BREIN adds.

Whether the hosting companies are required to do more under Dutch law remains the question. However, BREIN would clearly like these companies to take more responsibility. Or, alternatively, have a proper criminal investigation where the role of a hosting provider is seriously considered.

In the past, we have already reported on large Europol raids where servers in the Netherlands were targeted. However, as far as we know, Dutch hosting providers were never accused or criminally charged as part of these operations.

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

Millions of people in the UK cite football (soccer for those over the pond) as their favorite sport. Every week, huge numbers head off to grounds far and wide but for the travel averse, watching matches on TV is the only option.

Broadcasters like Sky and BT Sport would like consumers to choose their premium offerings but that can be prohibitively expensive. Even then, the Premier League’s top games played on a Saturday afternoon are banned from TV, thanks to the somewhat archaic “3pm blackout“.

As a result, pirate IPTV services, which all but eliminate high costs while completely ignoring the blackout, are thriving. In response, the Premier League obtained a pioneering injunction from the High Court in 2017 that compelled the largest ISPs to block ‘pirate’ servers for a season. It has obtained permission to continue along the same lines twice since.

Based on information made available in the initial injunction, we previously provided a rough guide on how the system operates. However, the High Court also accepted that other details were secret and agreed to them not being detailed in public.

Since then, TF has received various pieces of information about how the blocking system works in practice but recently a new source came forward offering much more detail, from both the perspective of IPTV providers dealing with the technology and based on information that we’re told was leaked from inside an anti-piracy company.

TF was able to review copies of some of the information. We have been unable to confirm the manner in which the leaks allegedly took place but a secondary source, who has proven reliable in the past, acknowledged that a leak had taken place. It therefore seems likely that the company in question, which we have also chosen not to name, is already familiar with the circumstances.

We’re told that the original source of the leaks, with whom TF has had no contact and whose identity is unknown to us, went AWOL a number of months ago and stopped providing data. Exactly why is unclear but at this point, the details aren’t particularly important.

Inside the Blocking System

In a detailed analysis, our source explained that, unsurprisingly, the anti-piracy company first needs to become a customer of the providers it targets. That means signing up to services in the usual manner and handing over money to what are essentially illegal services.

Documents reviewed by TF also suggest the use of fake online social media accounts which solicit IPTV providers for trials. One particular account, created less than a week before the new season began in August 2017, had nothing but these kinds of requests in its timeline. At least one provider responded in public, apparently unaware of the nature of his potential customer.

Other information supplied suggests that in some instances PayPal accounts with fake details were used to sign up to IPTV providers. This, the source says, probably caused problems because the details on the accounts didn’t match real people’s identities, so they would eventually fail PayPal’s checks and become much less useful.

Once signed up, the anti-piracy company could act like any other subscriber but this didn’t go unnoticed. TF was shown a screenshot from an IPTV service’s customer panel, dated sometime in 2018, which revealed a suspect subscriber who had been a member for many months. The last login was actioned from a particular IP address which, according to current public WHOIS information, remains registered to the anti-piracy company in question.

An invoice for between 10 and 20 euros, dated 2019, which the source says was issued to one of the anti-piracy accounts, gave a name plus an address in London. The supplied postcode relates to an address in another country of the UK. When all put together it is clearly a fake account, although we weren’t able to positively link it to a specific anti-piracy operative.

Nevertheless, it seems clear from the supplied channel surfing logs (which we were told were retained and supplied by a cooperative third-party IPTV provider) that a normal human viewer almost certainly wasn’t behind the subscription.

The logs show that sports channels were systematically selected, presumably to be analyzed back at base, and then skipped to fresh channels over pretty precise set periods. According to our source, these durations were sometimes varied, in his opinion to avoid detection as a computerized system.

Of course, not all attempts at subscribing to channels for anti-piracy purposes are spotted early by the affected IPTV providers. Once in, we’re informed that the preferred method of scanning for infringement is via the humble .m3u playlist file, with channels to be monitored being captured for set periods and then rotated.

The scanning system reportedly allows for a VPN to be assigned to each .m3u line/account, in order to make detection more difficult. VPNs are also sometimes used to sign up and/or used for contact via customer support services offered by the providers.

According to the source, captured frames from ‘pirate’ streams are compared with a direct source from the original content. If there’s an automatic match (sometimes manual intervention is required) then the source server’s IP address is logged and sent to the big six ISPs in the UK for blocking.

We’re told that an email is also sent to the hosting companies of the servers informing them of the block, accompanied by a link to the High Court order. Often these notices aren’t passed on to the operators of IPTV services.

According to one IPTV provider, the process for checking for infringing streams begins around 15 minutes before a match begins and continues for 15 minutes after. Further checks are conducted in the interim to catch any IP address or other network changes carried out by the providers.

However, while infringing streams are apparently blocked in just a “few seconds”, it can take a couple of hours for them to become unblocked by ISPs after the games have finished.

While reports online indicate that some services have been affected by this type of blocking, it has also had some unintended consequences that may have made IPTV providers more resilient and more adept at countering the blocking program. We’ll cover some of those next time.

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