With the rise of sites of YouTube, anyone can stream videos and songs directly to their browser. It’s convenient, quick, and should generate revenue for the site and copyright holders.
However, many people prefer to have content saved on their local machines, so millions turn to so-called ‘stream-ripping’ sites.
In basic terms, these platforms allow users to download or ‘rip’ content for offline use, something which negates the need to return to YouTube for repeat plays.
While this helps with bandwidth costs and might even be good for the environment, copyright holders – music labels in particular – tend to lose revenue as a result. Furthermore, users having a library of offline songs can reduce the need for services such as Spotify, for example.
This has led to the practice of stream-ripping being labeled not only as piracy, but one of the most serious forms of piracy facing the music industry today. As a result, platforms that offer stream-ripping services are now seen in the same light as torrent sites once were.
In an effort to prevent stream-ripping by Australian citizens, Music Rights Australia, backed by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), Sony Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music, are requesting a block of several stream-ripping services.
The application first became public in January and the parties were in Federal Court again today, arguing for ISP blocks against four sites – 2conv, Flv2mp3, FLV.to, Convert2mp3. All are based overseas, one of the requirements for blocking under Australian Copyright Law.
Convert2mp3 is Germany-based and was previously declared illegal and blocked in a first-of-its-kind case in Denmark. The other three are all based in Russia and have recently been embroiled in legal action with labels in the United States. Thus far, they have emerged on top, but not without controversy (1,2).
According to barrister Rob Clarke, licenses are not available from APRA for anyone in Australia to download music content for free from YouTube, neither have the owners of YouTube been granted licenses to facilitate that.
ComputerWorld reports that in Court, Clark read from 2conv’s description of its own service, declaring that the service “converts your videos to mp3 and other formats from YouTube in just a couple of clicks.”
“They’re not your videos!” he said.
While some people may indeed download videos they own from YouTube, the music groups contend that the vast majority of people are doing so in order to amass offline libraries of music. This is particularly assisted by desktop apps published by the Russian sites that allow people to process downloads from YouTube in batches, Clark added.
The barrister also noted that the terms of service on 2conv (and indeed Flv2mp3 and FLV.to) require users to have “necessary licenses” to download content but according to ComputerWorld, Clarke poured cold water on the statement.
“We say that that’s a meaningless warranty,” he said. “The owners of this website know very well that, given they’re telling people to copy URLs from the YouTube website, those people don’t have any licenses, permissions and so on to go about downloading those videos.”
Before recent amendments to the Copyright Act, “online locations” outside Australia with a strict “primary purpose of infringing” could be blocked by ISPs. That definition was expanded last November so that sites “with the primary effect” of infringing or facilitating infringement could also be blocked.
The labels clearly hope that the Federal Court will find in their favor in this stream-ripping application and there is no doubt that the chances of that will have been increased following the recent changes to the law.
The domains requested to be blocked by ISPs in the original application are as follows:
According to a December 2018 report, the video games industry was set to generate around $135 billion last year.
It’s undoubtedly a huge market, and a growing one too. The 2018 forecasts outperform 2017’s figures by almost 11%.
Of the three major sectors – mobile, PC, and console – the latter enjoyed the largest growth, with revenues increasing around 15% on the previous year. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the latter is the least affected by piracy, with most major consoles relatively secure against pirate players.
The same cannot be said about PC titles, however. This sector accounts for 25% of the global market, according to market analysts Newzoo, but still managed growth in 2018, increasing revenues by 3.2% to $33.4 billion. Nevertheless, PC games piracy is widespread, largely due to the relatively open nature of its native platform.
To combat this issue, games companies often deploy (to a greater or lesser extent) some kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution. These software-based systems are designed to defeat attempts to ‘crack’ gaming titles, but evidence shows that effectiveness can vary greatly.
One of the most formidable and notorious systems is Denuvo. Countless articles have been written about the DRM solution, with many arguing it harms the gaming experience and only has a negative effect on genuine buyers.
Many publishers, however, see it as the last line of defense against pirates determined to download free games whenever they can. The big question, of course, is whether it achieves that goal.
While Denuvo is undoubtedly fiendish and impossible for Joe Public to defeat, dedicated cracking teams see it as a mountain to be climbed and time and again they’ve shown that it can be scaled – quickly too. On the other hand, Denuvo claims that AAA games not using its technology face huge losses.
Interestingly, anti-piracy company MUSO published a piece today that suggests that there may be a more consumer-friendly alternative to DRM.
Titled “DRM, The Cracks Are Starting to Show” and written by Adam Hitchen, Technical Services Executive at MUSO, the piece questions whether DRM is the right approach to PC game piracy, especially given both the apparent ease it’s now being cracked and the restrictions it places on genuine players – such as having to remain online for a game to play.
Highlighting the leak of what would’ve been a Denuvo-protected Devil May Cry 5 recently, which fell to pirates on the very first day of its release (while revealing a performance advantage without the protection), Hitchen asks:
“With this precedent set, combined with the frustration it induces in players, is DRM really worth it?
“Games studios and distributors need to protect their content online, and take a stand against piracy, but the chosen strategy should not undermine the core product or hijack the conversation around a release,” Hitchen adds.
“Gaming creates huge and passionate fan bases which need to be nurtured; fans should not be left feeling as though their gameplay is being hindered.”
Given that Denuvo is arguably the most successful DRM around today, the fact that it’s regularly being cracked close to ‘Day One’ for major AAA gaming titles must be a concern for those who believe that DRM is the only way to protect their investment. MUSO, however, believes there is another way.
“With immediate availability of cracks to work-around DRM, and hackers choosing to proactively target releases using DRM, it’s time to change the conversation,” the company says.
“Content protection strategies should be non-invasive and data-driven. Rather than embedding mechanisms within the games themselves, studios can effectively remove illegal content as it appears by crawling for copies.
“Taking this approach keeps fans onboard, doesn’t impact gameplay and still ensures that piracy is stamped out – the things that really matter,” Hitchen concludes.
There’s no doubt that this is a highly controversial topic that has no simple solutions or indeed any perfect ones. One way or another it appears that PC content is going to be pirated. But MUSO’s piece definitely raises some good points.
If DRM, like Denuvo, is going to regularly fall very close to a game’s release date moving forward, it becomes somewhat useless. While some titles will remain protected, it currently seems like the cracking groups are the ones with the power.
They increasingly appear to be the arbiters of whether time gets put into cracking games – or not. This is not the balance of power games publishers relish when investing millions into their new creation.
However, will they be prepared to take MUSO’s advice by releasing DRM-free content into the market to keep paying customers happy, in the hope of rendering pirate copies inaccessible with takedowns?
MUSO clearly hopes so – but then it would because this is one of the company’s areas of expertise. The company is right that this problem for the gaming industry perhaps needs a fresh set of eyes but in the meantime, many eyes will be turning to Google’s Stadia.
This cloud-based gaming system seems to have the potential – one day in the distant future – to deal with the piracy problem once and for all. Until then it’s takedowns or DRM or both – and pirates don’t like either of them.
In recent years copyright holders have been rather concerned with the health of pirates’ computers.
They regularly highlight reports which show that pirate sites are rife with malware and even alert potential pirates-to-be about the dangers of these sites.
While some of these claims are exaggerated, there is no denying that malware is spread through pirate sites. On torrent sites, this is usually done in the form of fake releases uploaded by malware peddlers, who disguise themselves as legitimate uploaders.
While the .torrent files and the sites are not the problem, the actual downloads can include all sorts of nastiness.
This problem isn’t new. We have highlighted it repeatedly over the years, going back more than a decade in some cases. Although it’s been hard to quantify the problem, a new report from Kaspersky Lab adds some intriguing context to the phenomenon.
The cybersecurity company and anti-virus provider decided to take a closer look at how scammers use popular TV shows to lure victims. Are some shows more frequently used than others, for example, and which ones are most successful in delivering their payload?
“Our goal was to see which TV series were the most popular with the malware pushers and to take a closer look at what kind of threats are distributed that way,” Kaspersky writes.
The research provides a snapshot of how malware spreads through downloads of 31 popular TV shows. Kaspersky ran these titles against its in-house database of malware encounters, to see how often the TV-shows were linked to malware.
The results show that last year, 126,340 users were attacked by malicious payloads that could be linked to (fake) pirated copies of popular TV-shows. The total number of recorded attacks among all users was 451,636. That translates to little under 1,000 malware attacks per day.
The 2018 numbers are a significant decrease compared to the year before when 188,769 users were attacked. According to Kaspersky, this drop is in line with a decrease in the overall prevalence of malware attacks in other areas. Torrent sites are losing traffic slowly as well, which may play a role too.
While the number of malware attacks linked to popular TV-shows is sizable, it’s worth keeping in mind that these originate from uploads by scammers. These uploads are usually swiftly removed from well-moderated torrent sites but can clearly survive longer on other indexes.
Looking at the individual show titles, Kaspersky found that Game of Thrones accounted for 17% of all user attacks in the sample. This is quite an achievement since there were no new episodes released in 2018. The number of total attacks and unique malware samples were also the highest for Game of Thrones.
“Of all the TV series analyzed, Game of Thrones had the greatest number of users attacked by malware of the same name – 20,934. It tried to infect users 129,819 times, and the total number of Game of Thrones-themed malware files in our threat collection is 9,986.
“This makes the show an unmatched leader in popularity not just among users but also among cybercriminals looking for the most effective way to distribute malware,” Kaspersky adds.
Top 10 TV shows used as a disguise for malware in 2018 (credit Kaspersky)
The list of top 10 most popular ‘malware’ TV shows is completed by other popular titles such as The Walking Dead, Arrow, and Suits. These are familiar names in our yearly list of most pirated TV-shows, which makes sense, as scammers seek out the most sought after releases.
A more detailed look at the episodes within a season further shows that the premiere and season finale are the most likely to be infected. As such, they also target the most users.
“The common theme we were able to spot was that the first and last episodes were used as a disguise for malware each season. Also, the titles of the opening and closing episodes of each season were used the most actively to hide malware compared to other episodes,” Kaspersky writes.
GoT: number of infected files and unique users attacked in seasons 1, 6 and 7 (credit Kaspersky)
While Game of Thrones is the uncrowned king of torrent related malware, American Horror Story also deserves a mention. Of all the researched TV-shows, this show was the most effective, as it hit an average of three users per infected release.
Finally, Kaspersky reports that “Not-a-virus:Downloader” and “Not-a-virus:AdWare” are the most common threats which are shared TV show content. The most popular ‘dangerous’ malware was the Trojan category.
With the final season of Game of Thrones coming up later this month, Kaspersky’s findings should serve as a “stark” warning to pirates.
The anti-virus vendor notes that using legitimate sites is the best option to avoid trouble. Other tips include checking the extension of a downloaded file, avoiding suspicious links that promise early releases, and checking the comments before downloading a torrent.
ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, has scored yet another legal victory in the United States.
This week, a Florida district court issued a default judgment against 27 defendants who operate websites that offer links to copyright-infringing streams of ABS-CBN content.
The lawsuit, filed last December, targets more than three dozen domain names, including dramaofw.ch, vidco.su, pinoyflixtv.com, pinoytvlovershd.com, and tambayand.com.
The domains are connected to streaming portals that specialize in Philippine content. These sites attract visitors from all over the world, including the United States, where they target people of Philippine origin.
“Defendants’ websites operating under the Subject Domain Names are classic examples of pirate operations, having no regard whatsoever for the rights of ABS-CBN and willfully infringing ABS-CBN’s intellectual property,” the company wrote in its original complaint.
One of the sites
Despite facing hefty damages, none of the site operators turned up in court. This prompted ABS-CBN to file for a default judgment which was granted by US District Judge William Dimitrouleas this week.
In his verdict, the Judge orders the 27 defendants to each pay $1 million in damages, for willfully violating ABS-CBN’s trademark. In addition, four of the defendants received an additional $30,000 in copyright infringement damages on top, as requested.
The order
ABS-CBN’s most recent win follows a pattern of similar verdicts in recent years. With these lawsuits, the company has managed to score dozens of millions in damages from a wide variety of streaming sites with relative ease.
While this sounds like a success story, it is unknown whether the Philippine media company has managed to recoup any damages from the defendants, who are generally not known by name.
In order to get at least some money from the defendants, ABS-CBN also obtained an injunction against the advertisers of the pirate sites. These services, including Google Adsense, RevenueHits, and Popads, will have to hand over the outstanding revenue of these sites to the media giant within a week.
The permanent injunction further requires the domain name registrars and registries of the sites to transfer the domain names to ABS-CBN.
At the time of writing, many of the domain names, including the .net and .com ones, redirect to a “serving notice” page with the case details. Websites with the former Sovjet Union’s .SU extension, remain accessible for now.
Whether the $1 million in damages and the injunction will deter all defendants from continuing remains to be seen.
Some of the names of the websites in this lawsuit are similar to ones ABS-CBN targeted previously. If the operators remain unknown, they may simply continue their business with a new domain.
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A copy of the default judgment is available here (pdf). A list of all the affected domain names, with the associated defendant number, is available below.
Travis McCrea a, the former leader of the Pirate Party of Canada, has been involved in the pirate activist arena for many years.
While many of his counterparts have faded out of the limelight, McCrea has actually upped the tempo in recent years, with a particular focus on the eBook arena.
After launching TUEBL (The Ultimate eBook Library), McCrea went on to grab headlines with eBook.bike, a relatively new user-uploaded content venture focusing on the same niche.
Early March, opposition to McCrea’s site hit a peak, with authors lining up on Twitter to berate the entrepreneur. McCrea admittedly stoked things up, apparently making matters worse but as a side-effect, increasing visitor numbers to his site.
In the middle of last month, McCrea told TorrentFreak that he would be happy if someone actually sued him.
“My statement remains what it always was. I want someone to sue me. I want to win that case and then have legal precedent which should let me start finding ad partners, not having to deal with as much BS,” he told TF.
McCrea didn’t have to wait long. In a lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Texas, author John Van Stry is now suing McCrea and alleged business partner Francisco Humerto Dias (doing business as ‘Frantech Solutions’) for direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement.
While McCrea and Dias are both Canada residents, the suit alleges that the US Court in question has jurisdiction because Ebook.bike and hosting provider Frantech “allows for and does reproduce” copies of copyrighted works without a license into Texas, despite being issued with notice of infringement.
The suit claims that both defendants are also vicariously liable for the infringements of Ebook.bike users, since they had knowledge of direct infringement and each “materially contributed” by providing hardware and/or software platforms which “encouraged and facilitated” copyright infringement in Texas for “material gain”.
The plaintiff, author John Van Stry, claims to have begun writing in 2011 and by 2015 was a full-time author living solely off the royalties from his books, including under the penname Jan Stryvant. Seventeen of his books are said to have become number one best-sellers on Amazon.
When switching to the defendants, the suit inevitably trawls the archives in respect of Travis McCrea.
“Mr. McCrea has a long and proud history of pervasive, blatant, and egregious violations of other persons’ intellectual property rights,” it states, noting that McCrea became the leader of the Pirate Party of Canada in 2011.
“Mr. McCrea boasted that he ‘pirates’ movies by downloading through torrents or usenet, that his media piracy ‘isn’t theft,’ and stated that he will continue his piracy downloading until the media is offered to him at what he considers a fair and accessible price,” it notes, adding: “Mr. McCrea is literally the poster child of abusers of struggling authors..”
Given McCrea’s activities over the years, the suit isn’t light on background information. It claims that in 2013, the entrepreneur admitted to running a site called Library Pirate, which instructed students on how to scan their own books and upload them to the site. The same year, McCrea allegedly launched TUEBL, a site not dissimilar to Ebook.bike.
“[O]n or about the beginning of 2013, Mr. McCrea boasted on tubel [sic] of having 7 thousand authors and 24 thousand books available. And, in about six months, his self-reported numbers were up to 32 thousand books, and 13 thousand authors, having their books downloaded over 9.5 million times.”
Given that McCrea was born in the United States and is being sued there, it’s no surprise that the takedown provisions of the DMCA feature prominently in the complaint. McCrea is on the record as saying that since he’s in Canada he doesn’t have to abide by the terms of the DMCA, but does so since it’s a recognized system.
However, the suit suggests that when running TUEBL, McCrea required senders of takedown notices to prove (beyond a mere statement) that they own the works in question via “scanned or faxed hand-signed letters” while refusing to accept emailed notices.
The complaint also alleges that McCrea claimed that user donations to TUEBL would be tax deductible since they would be made to a church – “The Kopimist Church of Kopimism”. Indeed, McCrea did register such a church as a Religious Non-Profit Corporation in Idaho in 2012 and became its ‘Reverend’, before changing roles in 2014.
From the complaint
While the notion of a religion based on piracy certainly isn’t new (another ‘branch’ of the Church of Kopimism was officially recognized in Sweden during 2012) the suit offers documentation that donations to TUEBL would be used to buy a plane, so the site could “provide rapid response to places in the US and Canada who might have communication problems due to censorship or natural disaster.”
The fact that McCrea now has a photograph of himself on Twitter next to a plane (a 1967 PIPER PA-28-140 which was registered to the Kopimist Church of Idaho in 2014) seems to give weight to the claim of where at least some of the donations ended up.
The plane in question
Around 19-pages into the complaint, it addresses the current issue – that of Ebook.bike. The platform serves the same “function and mission” as TUEBL, the complaint notes, adding that McCrea admits to running it.
“Mr. McCrea’s eBook.Bike solicits visitors of the site to upload books to the website and facilitates such uploading with an interface where anonymous visitors to the website can simply ‘drag and drop’ a file which contains an entire book.
“There is no message, warning, or other instruction on the upload page that persons should not share copyrighted works or works for which they do not own the copyright,” it adds.
The complaint further alleges that after upload, McCrea categorizes books and links metadata to render them searchable by category, author, title, or tag, while adding covers and other information. This, plaintiff adds, helps to drive traffic to Ebook.bike’s yet-to-be-launched online store selling “reading accessories.”
Van Stry says that Ebook.bike makes “at least twelve” of his works available for download without his permission, along with other titles by “Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Joanne Harris, Tom Clancy, and thousands more.”
Van Stry claims that on March 11, 2019, he sent an email to EBook.bike asking for 15 of his books to be taken down but they remained up at the time the complaint was filed. A letter containing the same request, sent by his lawyer to the postal address on the site, produced the same result.
At this point the complaint turns to Cloudflare, which provides services to Ebook.bike. The plaintiff alleges that when presented with a DMCA complaint, the company would only reveal where McCrea’s site was hosted and an associated email address at Frantech.ca.
Frantech allegedly failed to respond to a DMCA notice but the complaint states the sending counsel “thereafter received malicious emails through a website account that had never been used since its creation.”
The plaintiff claims that Frantech is run from Canada by Francisco Dias and Aldryic C’boas and “provides, or has provided, hosting services for neo-Nazi and hate groups.” The alleged connection to Ebook.bike is detailed in the image below.
From the complaint
“As recently as March 16, 2019, Mr. McCrea expressed, ‘I want someone to sue me. I want to win that case and then have legal precedent’,” the complaint cites McCrea as saying, referencing a TorrentFreak article.
“His wish has been granted,” Van Stry’s legal team write.
The complaint concludes with claims for direct, contributory and vicarious infringement, while demanding a preliminary injunction against the defendants and a trial by jury. If statutory damages are deemed appropriate, the complaint demands up to $150,000 per infringement.
Speaking with TorrentFreak, McCrea says that he hasn’t yet been served with the complaint but will be fighting his corner.
“I’m happy to prove that what I’m doing is legal in court. The complaint that I have seen has so many false allegations I could write a novel, distribute it on ebook bike, and make a killing because ebook bike doesn’t hurt sales it helps them,” he says.
Finally, it appears that both parties have launched GoFundMe campaigns to assist with their legal fees. However, while Van Stry’sfundraiser is active, McCrea informs TorrentFreak that his was shut down by the platform.
“Mine was removed, GoFundMe won’t respond to my emails. I find it weird that people are going after a legal defense fund. If they are so confident in their positions they wouldn’t care if I was able to hire a lawyer to defend myself,” he adds.
Interestingly, the case has been assigned to District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who was previously described by Techdirt as “Patent Trolls’ Favorite Judge”.
