Rightsholders, anti-piracy outfits, and police are stepping up their efforts to disrupt ‘pirate’ IPTV operations around Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world.

These unlicensed services are considered one of the prime threats to the profits of broadcasters since they offer hundreds and often thousands of live TV channels to Internet users at a fraction of their official retail price.

Italy’s Postal and Communications Police (Polizia Postale e delle Comunicazioni) is the latest body to report success in this area, after targeting a source (perhaps the main source) of popular local provider ZSat, a service that offered the entire programming schedule of media giant Sky.

Following what authorities are describing as a highly technical and complex operation carried out under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor of Palermo, the cybercrime unit says it targeted the Palermo home of a 35-year-old man.

In his bedroom police found a total of 57 Sky Italia satellite decoders which were configured to receive Sky’s broadcasts. In turn, these receivers were connected to equipment which allowed channels to be retransmitted over the Internet for consumption by IPTV subscribers.

According to the authorities, the scale of the business was supported by the discovery of various assets at the property, including 186,900 euros in cash and a car. A banknote counter and gold bars were found hidden in a toilet and garbage disposal areas.

Police also found virtual wallets containing various cryptocurrencies. No value has yet been placed on the digital haul but the Postal and Communications Police says the amount is “certainly high” but will be better estimated following further “technical assessments”.

The discovery of a large number of satellite decoders at the address indicates that this wasn’t a low-level provider. Considerable effort is required to put together this kind of operation and it’s likely that the resulting Internet streams would have been utilized by other IPTV providers.

Authorities say the man is now under investigation for suspected criminal offenses under Art. 171 of local copyright law which carries penalties of up to three years in prison for commercial infringement.

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 rely on user-generated content, Dailymotion has to deal with the occasional unauthorized upload.

In doing so, it generally relies on takedown notices from copyright holders. In most cases, rightsholders report allegedly infringing URLs which Dailymotion then removes.

This is how most of these platforms work. However, according to a recent ruling by the Court of Rome, that’s not always good enough.

The Court ruled that Dailymotion can be held liable for failing to remove copyright-infringing content, even when the specific URLs are never pointed out to the platform. The title of a TV-show plus the name and trademark of a broadcaster already creates an obligation to act, the Court found.

The case in question was filed by RTI, a company owned by Italy-based mass media giant Mediaset. The company complained that Dailymotion hosted hundreds of infringing copies of its TV-shows, such as Big Brother and Celebrity Island.

When RTI pointed this out, identifying just a representative list of specific infringing videos, only the mentioned URLs were removed.

Dailymotion argued that there’s not much else it can do without specific URLs detailing the allegedly infringing content. However, the Court disagreed. In a ruling handed down by the Court of Rome, Dailymotion was ordered to pay €5.5 million to RTI.

According to the ruling, the video platform is seen as an active hosting provider under Article 14 of the European E-Commerce Directive. As such, it can’t benefit from safe harbor exemptions and the company should have taken action when it was notified about allegedly infringing content.

This argument is similar to the previous ruling against The Pirate Bay, which was also held liable for the uploads of its users.

In addition to the €5.5 million in damages, which is €700 per minute for the pirated shows, Dailymotion also has to deal with future uploads. If it fails to do so, the video platform must pay an additional €5,000 for each copyright-infringing video that appears on the site.

Dealing with future uploads is required, as Dailymotion is assumed to have “actual knowledge” of infringements, without the need for rightsholders to point out specific URLs, RTI attorney Alessandro La Rosa informs TorrentFreak.

“The actual knowledge of the infringing content can’t in a way be linked to the specification of the relevant URLs. The Court states that a specific indication of the infringing files [e.g., names and a general desription of shows plus the broadcaster’s trademark] is enough,” La Rosa says.

In other words, when specific TV-shows are pointed out to Dailymotion, the platform must ensure that these titles don’t appear on its site. This implies that Dailymotion has to set up a proactive piracy filtering system targeting specific works, as IPKAT notes.

The ruling poses a threat to similar video hosting services. While most are able to remove specific content, making sure that titles don’t appear on their sites in the future is something entirely different. In fact, it sounds a lot like a mandatory upload filter of specified works, similar to what the new EU copyright directive prescribes.

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

Reddit’s /r/piracy sub-Reddit is home to more than 402,000 subscribers hoping to hear about the latest news and developments in the world of digital piracy.

By its very nature, users are likely to be interested in getting something for free, so it’s no surprise that scammers are targeting its users offering just that.

Over the weekend, users of the sub-Reddit began commenting that they’d received unsolicited direct messages offering them a great deal. All they had to do was download a free piece of software called PremiumGet and in return, they would be given free premium accounts for use on Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, NordVPN and several other services.

It wasn’t initially clear why some users were getting the messages and others weren’t. However, a user one particular thread noted that immediately after posting in a discussion about ‘PremiumGet’, he received a message in his inbox advertising the scam. We had that theory tested and sure enough, the same message appeared.

The message contains a link to file-hosting platform Mediafire, where the suspiciously large 51.76MB file can be downloaded. According to the uploader, who engaged in disputes with other users elsewhere on Reddit about the tool, it doesn’t trigger alerts in anti-malware software so must be safe.

The accompanying video, if anyone cares to view it, can be found here. Those who prefer not to inflate the view count on YouTube can see a screenshot below, which shows the screen directly after the one that prompts users to enter their Google or Facebook usernames and passwords.

We have zero intentions of download, installing, or otherwise testing the software, we’ll let the security specialists do their job there. However, there is a really simple rule for those still mulling it over, and we’ve seen a few of those this morning.

Random people on the Internet offering expensive stuff for free, requiring you to install software and then asking for your existing usernames and passwords to services that may have massive control over your entire digital life, never have your best interests at heart. Ever.

Walk away. Nothing good here.

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.

Hellboy 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	(1)	Hellboy	5.3 / trailer
2	(3)	Shazam!	7.3 / trailer
3	(2)	Alita: Battle Angel	7.5 / trailer
4	(…)	Men in Black: International (Subbed HDRip)	5.7 / trailer
5	(6)	Shaft	6.4 / trailer
6	(…)	Pokémon Detective Pikachu	6.9 / trailer
7	(…)	Batman: Hush	7.3 / trailer
8	(7)	Dumbo	6.5 / trailer
9	(…)	Long Shot	7.1 / trailer
10	(9)	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.

Pirate site blocking has proven to be a rather effective copyright enforcement tool in many countries.

Italy, one of the European frontrunners, has taken a particularly active approach. In recent years, thousands of domain names have been added to the nation’s pirate blocklist, following complaints from a wide range of copyright holders.

It is not just the numbers that set Italy apart, the blocking mechanism itself is unique as well. To have a website blocked, rightsholders can ask the local telecoms watchdog Agcom to issue an order, without need for a trial.

Instead of dealing with blockades in court, Agcom has the power to grant injunctions without judicial overview, which it does on a regular basis. Over the past year alone, 385 blocking orders were issued by the telecoms watchdog.

The site blocking efforts have obviously decreased traffic to the targeted sites, but according to data released by Agcom, the number of visits to all pirate sites combined has dropped too. As shown below, the number of mobile and desktop visits to pirate sites decreased more than a third (35%) between 2018 and 2019. 

The downward traffic trend is visible across all types of piracy sites but, logically, the traffic drop for the blocked sites is most pronounced. The graph below shows that the number of visitors to blocked sites tank swiftly after a new blocking order is issued. 

For example, in January 2019 2conv.com (blue line) and flv2mp3.by (green line) were blocked, and soon after, the visitor numbers went down. 

Agcom and various entertainment industry groups are happy with the overall impact. They believe that, after many years, they finally managed to get a grip on piracy.

TorrentFreak spoke to Enzo Mazza, chief at Italian music industry group FIMI, who believes that a combination of site blocking and educational campaigns has paid off.

“The first major blockade targeted the Pirate Bay in 2008 and the case was confirmed by the Supreme Court. In terms of market impact, site blocking has proven to be effective in conjunction with the increase of the legal offer,” Mazza says.

“The Agcom regulation played a great role, also in terms of education and awareness. Most of the blocked sites have a landing page, created by Agcom and shown by the ISPs, which explains visitors how to reach legal sites.”

While this is positive news for the Italian music industry, it doesn’t mean that all is well. Mazza informs us that there are bigger problems than piracy. Ironically, these problems are linked to the legal alternatives many pirates have switched to. 

“The main issue here is not piracy. It’s how to convert people from free YouTube and Spotify accounts to premium services,” Mazza says.”Italy is a country where the ‘culture of free’ is radicated and it’s not easy to drag people into a subscription model.”

Nearly 90% of Italian music consumers use YouTube to stream music, which is a problem for the industry. While these people are enjoying music legally, record labels would like to see these people converted into paying customers.

“Conversion rates are still below the global average and this is a major challenge for the industry. We are urging in particular Spotify to do more in terms of promotional campaigns in order to engage new premium customers,” Mazza says. 

So, while the website blocking efforts have helped to bring piracy rates down, this isn’t immedially resulting in much more revenue.

The next step is to convert these same people into paying subscribers. However, this should be done witch caution, as cutting the free options could simply drive people back to pirate sites. 

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