In 2018, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against two very popular YouTube rippers, FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels, including Universal, Warner Bros, and Sony, hoped that the legal pressure would shut the sites down, but this plan backfired. At least in the short term.

The Russian operator of the sites, Tofig Kurbanov, fought back with a motion to dismiss. He argued that the Virginia federal court lacked personal jurisdiction as he operated the sites from abroad and didn’t target or interact with US users.

The district court agreed with this assessment. In a verdict released early last year, Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operated and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

The record labels and the RIAA were disappointed with the outcome and swiftly announced an appeal. The landmark verdict also raised the interest of other groups, including the Motion Picture Association and EFF, which both filed amicus briefs, supporting the opposing sides.

After several months had passed, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held a remote oral hearing this week, giving both sides the opportunity to share their arguments.

First up was Ian Heath Gershengorn, attorney for the record labels, who described FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com as sites that help millions of people to infringe the copyrights of his clients.

“Defendants operate wildly popular websites that engage in and facilitate massive infringement of plaintiffs U.S. copyrights in the United States. The United States is defendant’s third-biggest market, and each year defendants make handsome profits by sending hundreds of millions of infringing music files to their U.S. users,” he said.

This is no different than copies of hundreds of millions of vinyl records or CDs, the attorney informed the judges. The record labels believe that the district court made a grave mistake by ruling that it doesn’t have jurisdiction, one that provides “a roadmap” for pirate sites to “operate with impunity.”

According to the music companies, the lower court’s judgment should be overturned for various reasons. This includes the sheer volume of the infringements, the interactive characteristics of the sites, their commercial advertising agreements, and the sites’ failure to block US visitors.

In addition, their attorney points out that the sites had a registered DMCA agent listed at the US Copyright Office, which shows that he subjected himself to US law.

“The only point and I guess the principle point of that DMCA agent is to invoke the protections of the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And so they have literally invoked the protections of U.S. law. The district court concluded otherwise,” Gershengorn said.

The attorney for FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, Evan Fray-Witzer, has a completely different take on the case. He told the judges that the district court was right and that his client should not be dragged into a US lawsuit.

He describes Tofig Kurbanov as a Russian citizen from a small city in southern Russia who has never traveled to the United States and hasn’t done any business there. Kurbanov simply made a site that allows users to download audio from YouTube, which the attorney equates to a modern-day version of a tape recorder.

“Mr. Kurbanov created two Web sites, which he has operated entirely and exclusively from Russia. These Web sites, your honor, are the modern-day equivalent of an old fashioned tape recorder,” Fray-Witzer said.

Much of the discussion revolved around the interpretation of current personal jurisdiction precedents and how these apply to this case. That includes the advertisements that third parties placed on the site, the availability of the site in the US, and the absence of any geo-blocking restrictions.

The attorney stressed that Kurbanov simply made his websites available worldwide and did nothing to target the US specifically. He doesn’t decide which ads are served where, and what users do with the sites is up to them.

On top of that, he pointed out that the site has many different uses. This includes the option to download free lectures for offline use.

“And that’s really, I think, probably the best case argument here. Mr. Kurbanov has done nothing to target the United States. The websites are content-neutral,” Fray-Witzer said.

While the sites have a DMCA agent the attorney argues that they are not bound by the DMCA, which the site’s terms of service clearly state. In addition, he argues that registering a DMCA agent doesn’t automatically mean that a site subjects itself to US jurisdiction.

At the and of the hearing the microphone went back to the music companies’ attorney who, among other things, wasn’t convinced by the other side’s arguments. This includes the tape recorder analogy.

“If you had an old fashioned tape recorder and you recorded hundreds of millions of songs and then you sent those out to users across the world, including more than 100 million in the United States, yes, you would be subject to jurisdiction in the United States for that misuse and abuse of your tape recorder,” he said.

The music companies hope that the appeal court will agree. If not, then the US may have little recourse to deal with foreign pirates sites going forward.

“Then this court has created the recipe for infringement that every pirate Web site will adapt and it will eviscerate the U.S. copyright laws. That is not the purpose of personal jurisdiction. And it’s a perversion of due process,” the music companies’ attorney concluded.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also help you to find the best anonymous VPN.

Any pirate movie or TV show site operating on the Internet today at any scale can eventually expect to find copyright holders breathing down their neck.

Aside from the thousands and in some cases millions of DMCA takedown notices filed with Google aimed at disappearing their platforms from search results, site operators can also find themselves targeted more personally. For the past couple of years that attention has increasingly come from ACE, the Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment.

Compromised of dozens of leading content companies, distributors and broadcasters and headed up by the Motion Picture Association, ACE is now the most potent anti-piracy coalition on the planet. With massive resources at its disposal, ACE has filed and won lawsuits against several streaming operations and in many cases, has had piracy-focused platforms capitulate following the mere threat of force.

In the weeks leading up to mid-April, streaming site Nites.tv suddenly started getting a lot of attention in the press. Quite why this happened seemingly out of nowhere remains unclear but several publications noted a social media campaign promoting the streaming platform. With a large library of movies and TV shows and a happy userbase, things appeared on the up but within days, Nites.tv was no more.

As previously reported by TF, the Nites.tv domain suddenly started redirecting to the ACE anti-piracy portal. However, the apparent ‘seizure’ bore none of the usual behind-the-scenes technical hallmarks usually associated with an ACE/MPA takeover.

But if nothing else, Nites.tv seemed spooked. Instead of the usual promotional messages on Twitter, the site’s operators suddenly surprised their followers, changing their tone in a single tweet.

“We take copyright violations very seriously and will vigorously protect the rights of legal copyright owners. For that we decided to shut down our services. We are working on other ways to show you good content in a legal way,” the platform announced.

The domain diversion to ACE and the tweet certainly suggested that trouble was afoot but at no point did Nites.tv reference the anti-piracy group, a position maintained today. However, this week it was all but confirmed that ACE had jumped in to shut Nites.tv down, when its domain was transferred to the Motion Picture Association.

In common with the majority of domains registered in the name of the MPA, the domain registrar is now MarkMonitor, the brand protection company that works with the MPA and other companies to protect them from piracy, fraud and cybersquatting. The details are an exact match for other domains taken over by the MPA/ACE and suggest that beyond a reasonable doubt, ACE threats were the reason for Nites.tv’s sudden closure.

The only missing piece of the puzzle is that most ‘pirate’ domains seized by the MPA (or, more accurately, transferred) are quickly switched to nameservers operated by the Hollywood group. In Nites’ case, that didn’t happen until a day or two ago but with that now established, the seizure is complete.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also help you to find the best anonymous VPN.

The Jehovah’s Witness religious group is perhaps best known for knocking on doors to recruit new followers to the faith. When it comes to their promotional videos and documents, however, the organization takes a very different approach.

As reported recently, people who post their videos to YouTube, for example, can find themselves on the wrong end of a copyright lawsuit. On Thursday, that’s what happened to journalists Ryan McKnight and Ethan Gregory Dodge, who together founded Truth & Transparency (TTF), a site with a mission to provide “religious accountability through impact journalism”.

According to a lawsuit filed in a New York district court by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the supervising body and publisher for the Jehovah’s Witness religious group, the pair committed massive copyright infringement for illegally distributing Watch Tower’s “motion picture” works.

The complaint alleges that in mid-2018, Watch Tower discovered that 487 of its “copyrighted literary works” had been posted by the defendants on FaithLeaks.org, a site presented in a Wikileaks-style format. Late December 2018, Watch Tower demanded that the works be taken down, alleging breaches of copyright. The defendants reportedly refused to remove the content, claiming fair use under the Copyright Act.

Then, in May 2019, Watch Tower learned that “74 motion pictures” to which it holds the copyrights had been uploaded to RuTube.ru, a Russia-based YouTube-like platform. Watch Tower sent takedown notices to RuTube which resulted in the videos being removed. Shortly after, however, it’s alleged that McKnight and Dodge re-uploaded the videos to FaithLeaks where they remain available today.

Watch Tower points to a May 2019 article published on TruthandTransparency.org in which the defendants “boasted not only about their past infringements and refusals to comply with Watch Tower’s efforts to enforce its copyrights, but also about these new infringements, leaving no doubt as to Defendants’ willfulness.”

The article in question suggests that the videos, apparently recordings of conventions to which the public was invited, were indeed uploaded by the defendants, to elicit commentary and critique from observers. The article further notes that Watch Tower was approached for comment on the event but failed to respond. Albeit several months later, it has now.

In a complaint that details every video and alleged infringements one by one, there are repeated allegations that the defendants “unlawfully copied, reproduced, publicly displayed, publicly performed and distributed” Watch Tower’s videos, in their entirety and without alteration. Dozens of pages of evidence later, the religious group reaches its conclusion.

“Defendants McKnight and Dodge personally participated in, and supervised and directed, the infringing acts described above. Indeed, they personally conceived of, and directed and approved all key aspects of, TTF’s infringing activities. They were the moving force behind those infringing acts,” it reads.

“The acts of Defendants described above were committed without the permission, license or consent of Watch Tower. Upon information and belief, the acts of Defendants described above were committed with knowledge or in reckless disregard of Watch Tower’s exclusive rights in the Watch Tower videos.

“Plaintiff, accordingly, seeks injunctive relief and statutory damages for willful copyright infringement.”

Given that damages for willful copyright infringement can reach $150,000 per infringed work, McKnight and Dodge are facing a potentially massive damages claim running to millions of dollars. Additionally, Watch Tower is demanding the removal of the videos and an injunction which prevents infringement of its copyrights moving forward.

TorrentFreak approached both McKnight and Dodge for comment on but at this time, the journalists declined.

The complaint, filed in a New York district court, can be found here (pdf)

Image credit: Pixabay

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

The Oscars is the most watched awards show of the year. It’s widely covered in the press and highly anticipated by movie fans.

In the weeks leading up to the awards ceremony, movie pirates also have something to be excited about: screener leaks.

Many Oscar screeners, which are sent to Academy members as part of the voting process, end up in the hands of pirates. When that happens, the leaked screeners are typically shared by millions of people.

The leaks are often tagged “DVDscr,” referring to the DVD screener source format which is still in use. While streaming screeners have become more and more common, tens of thousands of physical screener copies are still sent out via mail.

This year, plenty of discs will be shipped too but, after the upcoming Oscars ceremony, that will be a thing of the past. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this week that physical screeners will no longer be allowed in 2021.

“[T]he 93rd Awards season will be the final year DVD screeners will be allowed to be distributed; these mailings will be discontinued starting in 2021 for the 94th Academy Awards,” the Academy writes.

The Oscars follow the same path as the Emmys, which already made the switch this year. According to the Academy, the transition is part of its sustainability efforts. This also includes a ban on physical music CDs, hard copies of screenplays, paper invites, and other things that possibly hurt the environment.

Banning physical screeners will indeed be much more sustainable. Manufacturing tens of thousands of discs and shipping these all over the country takes up more resources than sharing a link to an online screener. As an added benefit, it also saves the studios a lot of money.

Piracy is not mentioned by the Academy but the transition does mean that the infamous ‘DVDscr’ tag will eventually be obsolete for Oscar screeners. That marks the end of an era.

Whether piracy was considered as a factor at all remains a guess. Some insiders believe that digital screeners are easier to protect and therefore more secure, but that is up for debate.

There may be fewer leak opportunities in the distribution process, but it’s common knowledge that streaming platforms can be easily compromised. In fact, we have already seen several screeners being leaked from online sources. This was corroborated by pirate release group EVO last year.

“We had access to digital screeners and they are indeed easy to leak. The DRM on it is a joke. We had an account last year with three screeners on it and they were pretty much MP4 ready to encode,” the EVO team informed us at the time.

Whether streaming or physical screeners are more secure ultimately depends on the type of protection measures that are implemented for each. The safest conclusion, for now, is that piracy will likely remain a problem no matter what the distribution platform is.

Two years from now, we’ll likely know more. During the upcoming season, however, there will likely several ‘DVDscr’ leaks again.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

Every year the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes an updated list of its “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets.”

Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

The targets traditionally include popular piracy portals such as well known torrent sites, cyberlockers, and streaming portals. However, in recent years we have also seen domain registrars, hosting companies, and advertisers thrown into the mix.

That is also the case this year. As expected, the USTR mentions cyberlockers such as 1fichier and Uploaded, streaming portals including FMovies, and the torrent sites RARBG, Rutracker, The Pirate Bay, and 1337x.

The latter site is a new addition, of which there are a few. BestBuyIPTV, for example, which sells access to pirate IPTV services, and the streaming site Cimaclub.com, which is very popular in Saudi Arabia.

The most surprising new additions are in another league, however. For the first time ever, the USTR has listed an advertising company as a notorious market. The report calls out Propeller Ads for its role in funding piracy websites and spreading malware.

“Right holders identify Propeller Ads as providing significant advertising revenue for many popular torrent sites, cyberlockers, and other pirate websites. Propeller Ads has also been linked to serious ‘malvertising’ operations whereby malware is distributed through online advertisements,” USTR writes.

The malware angle plays an important role, as it’s the USTR’s special focus this year. The report cites a broad list of articles that highlight the malware risks on pirate sites. However, it also references a TorrentFreak article that describes some of these claims as overblown.

It’s a significant step for the USTR to add an advertising company to the report, but this is largely overshadowed by Amazon’s surprise appearance.

As a US-based company, Amazon.com can’t be listed as a notorious market, because this list is exclusively meant for foreign actors. However, the USTR bypassed this restriction by calling out Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.in.

The world’s largest online retailer is being labeled a notorious market because it reportedly provides a platform for copyright infringers, counterfeiters to be precise. While that is true for many online retailers, Amazon’s response to these infringers has apparently been below par.

The USTR mentions that copyright holders complain that sellers are not vetted, that the removal process is burdensome, while the counterfeiting problem continues to grow. Amazon should change its policies to address these issues.

“[Rightsholders] ask that Amazon take additional actions to address their concerns, including by collecting sufficient information from sellers to prevent repeat infringers from creating multiple storefronts on the platforms, making detailed information about the real seller of a product obvious to consumers and right holders,” the USTR writes.

Responding to the listing, an Amazon spokesperson characterized the company’s inclusion as being part of a personal vendetta of the Trump administration against the company.

“This purely political act is another example of the administration using the U.S. government to advance a personal vendetta against Amazon,” the company informed Politico.

Vendetta or not, Amazon was reported to the Government by the American Apparel & Footwear Association, which specifically asked for a listing of the foreign Amazon domains.

Amazon is not the only online retailer that’s listed. The US Government also sees the Chinese platform Taobao, India’s Snapdeal, and the Indonesian store Tokopedia as notorious platforms.

Below we have compiled a full list of all the online sites and services that are mentioned. Although some harsh language is used, the USTR stresses that its overview doesn’t “make findings of legal violations” and that these are merely “illustrative.”

Most importantly, perhaps, the report is used to send a clear warning to the sites and companies involved, suggesting that it might be a good idea to implement some changes. That’s not likely to impress sites such as The Pirate Bay, but others may be more susceptible.

—

A copy of the USTR’s 2019 overview of notorious markets (published yesterday) is available here (pdf). The full list of highlighted online sites/service, including those focused on counterfeiting, is as follows:

-1337x.to
-1Fichier.com
-Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.in
-Bestbuyiptv.com
-Bukalapak.com
-Carousell.com
-Chomikuj.pl
-Cimaclub.com
-DHgate.com
-Dytt8.net
-FlokiNET
-Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com
-FMovies.is
-Hosting Concepts B.V.
-MP3juices.cc
-Mp3va.com
-Mpgh.net
-Newalbumreleases.net
-Phimmoi.net
-Pinduoduo.com
-Private Layer Hosted Sites
-Propellerads.com
-Rapidgator.net
-RARBG.to
-Rutracker.org
-Sci-Hub and LibGen
-Seasonvar.ru
-Shopee.sg
-Snapdeal.com
-Taobao.com
-Thepiratebay.org
-Tokopedia.com
-Torrentz2.eu
-Turbobit.net
-Uploaded.net
-Uptobox.com
-VK.com
-Warmane.com

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.