Last week we posted a news article documenting how several TV-show episodes had leaked online before their official release.

Due to the leaks, complete seasons of unreleased TV-shows such as “The Spanish Princess,” “Ramy,” and “The Red Line,” surfaced on pirate sites. In most cases, there were visible signs revealing that the leaks were sourced from promotional screeners.

The leaks also hit Starz, as three then-unreleased episodes from its TV series “American Gods” appeared online as well. The American entertainment company was obviously not happy with that, but its response was rather unconventional.

Soon after the news was published, Starz issued a takedown request through The Social Element Agency, requesting Twitter to remove our tweet to our own article. Twitter was quick to comply and removed the tweet that supposedly infringed Starz copyrights. 

We disagreed. The article in question never linked to any infringing material. It did include a screenshot from a leaked episode, showing the screener watermarks, but those watermarks were central to the story, as we explained in a follow-up piece.

The good news is that many legal scholars, journalists, and lawyers agree with our stance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, responded that Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak and also shared that opinion on Twitter, where many others chimed in as well. 

That’s when things started to spiral out of control. Starz takedown efforts only encouraged more people to share the original story about the leaks, which is a classic example of the ‘Streisand Effect’. However, Starz didn’t budge and issued takedown notices against those tweets as well.

EFF’s tweet, for example, is no longer available now, as can be seen below. 

However, that was just the beginning. With more and more people chiming in over the weekend, Starz began to target tweets that linked to our follow-up article as well. 

In other words, Starz started taking down tweets containing links to an article where we explained how a tweet to our original article about the leaks had been removed. This is what happened to Mathew Ingram who describes the situation as Kafka-esque.

“I think it’s an egregious over-reaching interpretation of the DMCA and I’m disappointed that Twitter agreed to take my tweet down — and a similar tweet by the EFF — when they are clearly not infringing,” Ingram tells us, commenting on the removal.

“And I think it’s extremely disturbing that Twitter is taking down tweets that merely have links to news articles in them,” he adds.

Ingram’s tweet went viral and encouraged even more people to share our original article, as well as the follow-up. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales decided to join in as well, for example. 

Others saw it as a good opportunity to cross a Twitter goal from their bucket lists, such as journalist Rob Pegoraro.

The overzealous takedown requests (we counted more than two dozen) are no joke, of course. And there are plenty of legal scholars who are not happy with this type of overreach. This includes Annemarie Bridy, who kindly backs us amidst all this drama.

Ironically, Bridy also posted a tweet that linked to our follow up coverage about the removed tweets, which was removed as well. To stop this type of abuse, she suggests changing the law so that senders of these type of notices can be held accountable.

“We really need a statutory cause of action—with statutory damages equal to those for infringement & attorneys fees—for copyright misuse. It currently exists only as an empty letter in the DMCA and a useless equitable defense to a claim of infringement,” Bridy notes.

EFF is similarly critical. The digital rights organization labels Starz efforts as overzealous and has filed a counternotice to get their own tweet restored. 

The most recent takedown requests are different from the one we received. They are sent directly by a Starz “Digital Marketing Specialist,” and not through a third-party company.

TorrentFreak previously reached out to Starz’ representative for a comment on the takedown efforts, but we have yet to receive a reply.

Many agree that the broad takedown requests go too far and, at this point, we don’t think that Starz is very happy with it either. Instead of suppressing the news about the leaks, the takedown notices are only encouraging more people to share it. 

Now let’s see if tweets to this article are also targeted by Starz…

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Back in 2016, the European Commission announced plans to modernize EU copyright law, a move that initially received very little mainstream attention.

By 2018, there was intensive lobbying both in favor and against two extremely controversial elements of the Copyright Directive.

Article 11 (later renamed to Article 15) was decried by opponents as a “tax” on links to Internet-based news, contrary to the claims of publishers who felt that such a mechanism is necessary to prevent online platforms from monetizing their reporting.

Article 13 (renamed to Article 17 in the final text) was framed by supporters as a much-needed tool to ensure copyright holders are fairly remunerated for content published on platforms like YouTube without their permission. Opponents feared this would inevitably lead to upload filters and censorship.

On March 26, a proposal to allow amendments to the text of the directive was voted down, with 317 in favor and 312 against. The EU Parliament then moved to vote on the entire text of the Copyright Directive without amendments.

The Copyright Directive was adopted, with 348 Members of Parliament in favor, 274 against, and 36 abstentions.

That, however, wasn’t the end of the road as the legislation still needed to be approved by the Council of Ministers (the EU’s main legislative body) before formal adoption. That vote took place a few moments ago during the Agriculture and Fisheries Council.

As highlighted by Julia Reda MEP earlier this morning, a majority of 55% of Member States, representing 65% of the population, was required to adopt the legislation. That was easily achieved with 71.26% in favor, so the Copyright Directive will now pass into law.

As the image above shows, several countries voted against adoption, including Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. Belgium, Estonia, and Slovenia abstained.

But in the final picture that just wasn’t enough, with both Germany and the UK voting in favor, the Copyright Directive will now be adopted.

“The entertainment lobby will not stop here, over the next two years, they will push for national implementations that ignore users’ fundamental rights,” comments Julia Reda.

“It will be more important than ever for civil society to keep up the pressure in the Member States!”

Breaking news, this piece will be updated

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This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Glass 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)	Glass	6.9 / trailer
2	(4)	Escape Room	6.4 / trailer
3	(2)	How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World	7.8 / trailer
4	(…)	The Upside	6.5 / trailer
5	(5)	Aquaman	7.7 / trailer
6	(3)	Bumblebee	7.0 / trailer
7	(7)	Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse	8.6 / trailer
8	(…)	Crypto	5.1 / trailer
9	(8)	The Mule	7.1 / trailer
10	(back)	Captain Marvel (HDTS)	7.2 / trailer

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The movie industry sees online streaming piracy as a prime threat to its revenues.  Whether it’s through dedicated pirate boxes, websites, or apps.

In recent years the major Hollywood studios have mainly targeted sellers of streaming boxes, while a group of smaller filmmakers is focusing more on apps. 

Last week, the companies behind the movies “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “London Has Fallen,” “Hunter Killer,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Once Upon a Time in Venice,” went after the operators of various websites that promote and distribute the Showbox app.

The Showbox app, as well as many similarly named clones, are used by millions of people. The apps allow users to stream movies and TV shows via torrents and direct sources, all through a user-friendly Netflix-style interface.

In a lawsuit filed at a U.S. District Court in Hawaii, the movie companies point out that many of the films available through the app are published without permission, which they say results in massive piracy.

“Plaintiffs bring this action to stop the massive piracy of their motion pictures brought on by the software application Show Box,” the 58-page complaint begins.

“The Defendants misleadingly promote the Show Box app as a legitimate means for viewing content to the public, who eagerly install the Show Box app to watch copyright protected content, thereby leading to profit for the Defendants,” the companies add.

The movie studios list several defendants, who are all suspected of having ties to one or more Showbox-related sites. The first one is Qazi Muhammad Zarlish from Pakistan, who allegedly operates ‘latestshowboxapp.com.’

Next up are the India-based digital marketing agency Pebblebridge and its employee Vishnudath Reddy Mangilpudi, who are linked to several domains including ‘showbox.fun’. Hoan Phan and Nghi Phan, who are said to be Vietnamese, stand accused of operating ‘showboxofficial.com’ and ‘apkmirrordownload.com’ respectively, complete the list.

The site operators are accused of copyright infringement as well as inducement and false advertising. While the sites are (or were) available worldwide, the movie companies state that they have clear ties to the US.

For example, they used American domain name registrars such as Namecheap, hosting services from U.S. based company Digital Ocean, and email services from Google and Microsoft. 

The website operators are believed to profit by offering the app to a broader public. While the software is not directly hosted by all the sites in question, all of their operators are accused of intentionally inducing visitors to engage in copyright-infringing activity. 

Some of these users may not even know that the Showbox app is ‘illegal,’ the movie companies stress. This may result in innocent people getting sued. This is something these movie makers are well aware of, as most have sued individual users in the past.

“These Defendants have placed hundreds of individuals in Hawaii if not thousands of individuals in the United States in legal peril for copyright infringement while they hide behind anonymous domain registrations, false identities and addresses, and enjoy the gains from their illicit enterprise,” the complaint reads.

The movie companies have been trying to shut some of the sites down for a while now. With help from Namecheap, for example, they gathered IP-addresses and email addressed that were linked to some of the domain names.

This leads to some interesting conclusions. One of the defendants, Hoan Phan, used the IP-address 64.62.174.44 to login to the Namecheap account connected to the site showboxofficial.com. The same IP-address was also used to share copies of the movies “Mechanic: Resurrection and “London Has Fallen.”

The movie companies conclude that Phan must have shared these movies. However, the IP-address in question appears to belong to a proxy or VPN service and could have been used by hundreds, if not thousands of people. 

That said, the defendants are not accused of direct copyright infringement. Instead, the movie companies argue that they knowingly and materially contributed to the copyright infringement of Showbox users, by promoting the use of the app and showing people where it can be downloaded.

With the lawsuit, they hope to shut the sites down. At the time of writing, they have already partially succeeded at that. Without any court intervention, Latestshowboxapp.com and Showboxofficial.com are no longer linking to the app.

The Showbox copy on apkmirrordownload.com is still up, and Showbox.fun remains available the time of writing. The latter site has put up a large red warning notice, urging people to use legal alternatives instead, but it’s still linking to Showbox.

To stop any ongoing activity, the movie companies request an injunction preventing the site owners from contributing to any infringement of their movies. Any Showbox copies hosted on their servers should be removed as well, they suggest. 

In addition, this injunction should also require Internet search engines, hosting companies, domain name registrars, and domain name registries to stop providing access to the domain names through which the defendants distribute and promote Showbox.

Finally, there’s a request for damages as well. In theory, a court could award up to $150,000 in statutory damages for willful copyright infringement, per movie. Provided they are guilty, of course.

Most previous cases against alleged ‘pirate’ site operators have resulted in default judgments where the rightsholders are granted an injunction and a damages award. However, the recent stream-ripper case against FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com show that, for foreign operators, it can pay off to put up a defense. 

—

A copy of the complaint from Hunter Killer Productions, Inc., TBV Productions, LLC, Venice PI, LLC, Bodyguard Productions, Inc., and LHF Productions, Inc., and all associated exhibits is available here (pdf). 

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With streaming now becoming the preferred method of obtaining video content for huge numbers of Internet users, sales of capable hardware are on the rise.

Devices like Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, Google’s Chromecast, Roku’s Streaming Stick, Apple TV, and the Nvidia Shield are now the tools of choice for millions of users. But while the above are completely legal to market and own, that isn’t always the case for alternatives from less well-known suppliers.

In most countries, people are able to buy streaming-capable (often Android-based and/or WiFi-enabled) devices over the Internet that don’t comply with local laws, and not just because they’re supplied ready-configured for piracy.

In Europe, for example, electronic devices must comply with strict safety, health, and environmental requirements (such as limits on external radio interference), before being able to display the ‘CE’ mark as required by law.

For those produced or sold in the United States, electronic devices can obtain certification and show the FCC logo (above right) providing that, among other things, the interference they cause is under the limits approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

According to the FCC, however, many devices being marketed, sold and used in the country do not meet the standards. In an Enforcement Advisory published this week, the FCC states that engaging in any of the above activites in respect of non-compliant devices is illegal and subject to punishment.

“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) has observed an increase in the marketing of Video TV Set-Top Boxes, designed to stream Internet-based content, that do not comply with FCC equipment marketing requirements,” the advisory reads.

“Anyone marketing or operating noncompliant devices should stop immediately. Violators may be subject to substantial monetary penalties that could total more than $147,000 per violation.”

In this case, the term ‘marketing’ is rather broad and defined by the FCC as importing, distributing, advertising or offering non-compliant devices for sale or lease. The $147,000 figure certainly looks scary too, but that’s only likely to apply to serious offenders (see: 47 U.S.C. § 503(b)(2)(D), 47 CFR §§ 1.80(b)(7), 47 CFR §§ 1.80(b)(9) )

While even non-compliant devices can be used for otherwise legal purposes (streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime, for example), the advisory comes at a time when large numbers of companies are selling devices configured for piracy purposes (or targeted at piracy-focused buyers), which is likely responsible for a decent slice of the observed increase in marketing.

So-called “fully loaded boxes” grant access to large volumes of copyrighted content in breach of copyright law and have attracted the negative attention of global anti-piracy coalition the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).

However, simply using non-compliant devices in the United States is also illegal, meaning that many thousands – potentially millions – of people who obtained their streaming devices from non-certified sources in the Far East or even the United States, for example, are breaking the law.

While sellers of illegal devices could indeed become targets for the FCC at any time, it seems unlikely that individuals will be affected as resources are limited are there are much bigger fish to fry.

According to the FCC, its Enforcement Advisories are “designed to educate businesses about and alert consumers to what’s required by FCC rules, the purpose of those rules and why they’re important to consumers, as well as the consequences of failures to comply.”

With that advice out of the way, users can find out whether their set-top boxes are legal (in terms of hardware at least) by referring to page 2 of the FCC’s Enforcement Advisory (pdf).

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