Copyright holders are increasingly taking Internet providers to court, accusing the companies of failing to terminate repeat copyright infringers. 

Up until recently, the alleged pirating subscribers have remained anonymous. However, in the case between several music labels and Cox Communications, this position changed. 

Without direction from the court, the ISP agreed to reveal the identities of thousands of business subscribers whose connections were repeatedly used to share infringing material. These personal details are not being made public, but names, addresses, and other info will be handed over to the labels. 

It’s not clear what the rightsholders intend to do with this information but it’s unlikely to be in the interests of the accused subscribers. This didn’t sit well with one business subscriber, which protested the stipulated order in court. 

The “John Doe” company, an unnamed non-profit that provides hospital and medical care facilities, is one of the 2,793 affected business subscribers. The organization didn’t deny the piracy allegations but told the court that the infringements were made over its unsecured network, which is accessible to visitors.

Before accessing this network all visitors had to agree to the terms of service, which specifically prohibited illegal downloading. Apparently, this wasn’t enough.

The company states that revealing its identity to the record labels isn’t going to change anything. There is no record of who accessed the network at the time of the infringements, so tracking down the culprits is impossible.

“Thus, disclosure of John Doe’s subscriber information will not lead to the discovery of the individual(s) who are alleged by Plaintiffs to have engaged in copyright infringement through the misuse of John Doe’s network in violation of the access agreement,” the company informed the court.

Instead, the company argued that disclosure will breach its privacy rights under the Cable Communications Privacy Act. It therefore filed a request to prevent its personal info from being handed over. 

The music labels and Cox didn’t respond to this objection and after a thorough review of the arguments, US Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson decided to grant the objection. This means that the company’s information can’t be shared with the labels.

“No response has been filed to this motion and the fourteen-day period for doing so has expired. Having reviewed the motion and supporting declaration, and there being no opposition, it is hereby ORDERED that the motion is granted, and defendant shall not be required to disclose John Doe’s subscriber information to the plaintiffs,” Judge Anderson writes.

It’s unclear why there was no response to the objection, but it’s possible that the music labels and Cox preferred not to draw any more attention to the matter. Sacrificing the details of one subscriber likely outweighs having an extensive review.

After all, there are still 2,792 business subscribers who didn’t object.

Without any further pleadings, it remains unclear what the music companies plan to do with the subscriber information. Perhaps more will become clear once the case progresses.

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Trying to persuade the public to consume content online legally is a battle that’s been waged by the entertainment industries for close to 20 years.

The advent of high-quality legal offers has made that task much easier in recent times but piracy levels continue to cause problems in many countries around the world. In Finland, however, the trend appears to be a downwards one.

An annual survey carried out by market research company Taloustutkimus Oy reveals that the majority of citizens are against piracy, with 58% of the population believing it’s not acceptable in any form. That figure falls just 11% when considering unauthorized downloading for personal use.

The most common form of illicit consumption was found to be streaming from illegal services, with 9% of respondents admitting that they do so. That’s down from the 12% returned in a similar study carried out last year.

Interestingly, just six percent of respondents admitted to accessing unlicensed movies or TV shows from illegal online services. That’s down from 7 percent in 2018.

Anti-piracy group TTVK, which published a summary of the study, says that illicit downloading has dropped overall.

“Although illegal downloads are still the most common among the youngest age group [15-24], downloading has still dropped significantly,” TTVK notes.

“According to the survey, 13% of people under 25 say that unauthorized downloading of Internet-based material is acceptable for their own use, but only nine percent of the age group themselves or a member of the family report doing this.

“In 2015, the corresponding figure was 29%, so the consumption of Finnish entertainment seems to have moved more and more to legal channels as streaming services became more common.”

As ‘pirate’ streaming services have developed, many have presented themselves with impressive Netflix-style interfaces. Popcorn Time was perhaps the most famous front-runner but now there are dozens of sites and apps that to the untrained eye are indistinguishable from legal sites.

The study found that around a third of respondents have difficulty distinguishing between legal and illegal sites. Fortunately, close to six out of ten (57%) say they can do so easily, even if the rest remain unsure.

For Finns, some clarity is available by visiting Laillisetpalvelut.fi, a portal designed to help consumers find legal resources. However, the study found that awareness is weak, with only 6% of respondents having knowledge of the resource.

In general terms, 84% of respondents regard copyright as an important issue, with just 3% believing it’s completely unnecessary. TTVK will also be pleased that 83% respondents feel that that copyright organizations are necessary, with 79% feeling they “are on the right track”.

“In addition, Finns are very much in agreement that creative workers should receive compensation for the work they do, depending on how much of their works are utilized,” TTVK notes, referencing 91% of respondents.

The full results of the 2019 survey can be viewed here, 2018 survey here.

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In an effort to turn piracy into profit, copyright holders have chased alleged BitTorrent pirates through courts all over the world.

This so-called ‘copyright troll’ model was also adopted by the firm Prenda Law. However, the lawyers involved began to break the law themselves.

The firm was accused of all sorts of wrongdoing including identity theft, misrepresentation, and even deception. Most controversial was the shocking revelation that Prenda uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

This eventually caught the attention of the US Justice Department. In 2015 we first reported that two Pirate Bay co-founders had been questioned by Swedish police, acting on behalf of the FBI. The feds were interested in the honeypot evidence, to build a case against Prenda.

A year later the investigation was finished, resulting in a criminal indictment against Prenda attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele. The US Government accused the pair of various crimes, including money laundering, perjury, mail and wire fraud.

Since then both defendants have signed plea agreements, admitting their guilt in the fraudulent scheme.

Today the first of the two was sentenced. Paul Hansmeier appeared before a federal court in the District of Minnesota, where U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen sentenced the Prenda attorney to 14 years in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release.

The Judge departed upward from the 12.5-year prison sentence the U.S. prosecutor recommended. In addition to the prison sentence, Hansmeier must pay his victims a total of $1.5 million in restitution.

Among other things, Hansmeier instructed his brother to upload torrents of videos he produced himself. In doing so he misled the court, as he made it appear as if the videos were from a third-party company.

Whether the people that were sued were indeed guilty wasn’t much of an issue. This means that many innocent people were likely targeted as well.

“Hansmeier was generally content to take this step without investigating whether the subscriber was, in fact, the infringer. Hansmeier thus inflicted plenty of pain on persons who did not, in fact, download his pornographic bait,” the Government previously wrote.

All victims of the Prenda scheme are all eligible for restitution. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Minnesota previously invited those who were affected by the fraudulent anti-piracy lawyers to come forward.

John Steele, the second defendant in the Prenda case, is scheduled to be sentenced next month. The U.S. prosecutor previously stated that Steele has been very cooperative following his arrest so has recommended an 8-10 year sentence, as FCT notes.

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Breaking story, further clarifications and updates will follow if needed.

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Every day, millions of people enjoy fan-made subtitles.

These files help foreigners to better understand English entertainment and provide the hearing impaired with a way to comprehend audio.

The subtitles are often used in combination with pirated files. While helpful to many, they are a thorn in the side for major copyright holders, who see them as yet another threat to their business.

As a result, fansub communities are increasingly portrayed as illegal operations. Several sites are now blocked by ISPs and site operators have been taken to court following copyright infringement allegations. 

Given this backdrop, it’s quite unusual to see one of the largest entertainment industry brands using these ‘pirate’ subtitles on its official streaming service. This is exactly what Comcast-owned Sky Switzerland is doing at the moment. 

Subscribers of the local Sky platform who watch the last episode of the hit series Chernobyl, with English subtitles enabled, see the following message appearing around the five-minute mark.

“- Synced and corrected by VitoSilans – www.Addic7ed.com.”

The message is part of the credits that are typically added to fan-made subtitles. In this case, it clearly indicates that they were sourced from Addic7ed.com, a well-known resource for these type of subtitles and one that is blocked by ISPs in Australia. 

Looking more closely at the official video and the Addic7ed subtitles, we see that the timing doesn’t match. This suggests that the subtitle has been synced separately to fit the Sky video. However, the opening ‘credits’ were not removed. 

Also, these subs generally have a closing credit too. These are not visible during the episode on Sky.ch.  

The Addic7ed team tells us that it doesn’t mind seeing their subs being used by major entertainment conglomerates. It has happened before and as long as it helps people to enjoy a movie or TV-show, everybody benefits.

“When we started the project we wished that content would be available to a larger audience by breaking the language barrier or providing English subtitles for hearing impaired people, which would otherwise not enjoy videos as much. If this means that others take our work, so be it,” Addic7ed informs TF.

“Professionals or not, our main objective was reached: more people enjoyed the show. Kudos to Sky for keeping the credits.”

Sky Switzerland hasn’t responded to our request for comment at the time of publication. Whether the Addic7ed credit was left in intentionally is highly doubtful though. It seems more likely that someone forgot to remove it.

In any case, the mention hasn’t gone unnoticed either. At least one person has alerted Sky via Twitter, but the company didn’t respond there either. 

Interestingly, this is not the first time ‘pirate’ subtitles have been used on a streaming service. In the past, Netflix was caught using “unauthorized” fansubs as well. In addition, American anime distributor Funimation previously used ‘pirate’ subs in their dubbing room.

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While millions of the world’s pirates are focused on sites offering movies, TV shows, music, videogames and software, many are enjoying unlicensed content without even knowing it.

There are tens of thousands of radio stations on the Internet, most of which require licensing to operate legally. However, many operate on a hobbyist basis, with official paperwork and sanctioning left as a mere afterthought.

For many, there are zero consequences for taking this approach but for several Netherlands-based Internet stations, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN informs TorrentFreak that following information provided by one of its members SENA, it successfully targeted four Dutch radio stations, or webcasters as they’re sometimes known.

SENA helps artists and producers exploit neighboring rights and part of that effort involves webcasters/stations paying the group a license fee to operate. Once paid, stations are able to display the SENA logo to indicate they are above board. The four stations in question, all Netherlands-based according to BREIN, hadn’t paid the necessary fee.

“The radio streams of the channels are provided by a hosting provider based abroad that is not affiliated with Stichting Webcasting Nederland and does not otherwise have the required licenses,” BREIN said in a statement.

Following BREIN’s approach, three paid up. A fourth took the nuclear option and shut down. However, BREIN had other stations on its radar too, but they indicated their streaming host is the formal owner of their channels.

The host, which BREIN says operates under the IDFNV and Microglo brands, offers Shoutcast and IceCast server hosting, among other things. The anti-piracy outfit says that the company failed to respond to a demand for it to obtaining licensing for the stations or shut them down. That probably didn’t come as a surprise.

“A complicating factor is that host profiles itself as a ‘bullet-proof host’ and is based in the Seychelles,” BREIN explains.

“In other words, the host will never provide data and states that it has nothing to do with Dutch or EU regulations. The host wants to make himself and his customers invulnerable to enforcement actions.”

However, both sales portals for the host offer servers inside the EU and indeed the Netherlands, a “vulnerability” that BREIN may yet exploit. BREIN adds that licensors could also play a part, by refusing to do business with webcasters and stations that utilize such companies.

“Licensors could make it a condition that licensees do not use hosts that deliberately also host unauthorized channels. After all, such hosts earn money from illegality and should not be supported by the legal providers,” BREIN says.

This type of action is rarely publicized but BREIN chief Tim Kuik says his company has carried out this type of enforcement before.

“It is not our job to license but we will enforce on the request of our participating right holders,” Kuik concludes.

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