Many people know BitTorrent Inc. for its uTorrent and BitTorrent mainline clients, which have a base of roughly 100 million monthly users.

The company has tried to launch many other applications and services over the years, to diversify its offerings, but these efforts haven’t been very successful.

After the acquisition by the crypto-startup TRON, there is no shortage of new plans. With solid financial backing and fresh developers, the company has just announced a new product, “BitTorrent Live,” which it hopes the masses will embrace.

The “BitTorrent Live” brand itself isn’t new. A similarly named service was revealed to the public in 2013, but after several iterations, this eventually shut down. However, the new BitTorrent Live promises to be something entirely different.

The new platform will operate as a social media network which people can use to stream live content from and to mobile devices, anywhere they have access to the Internet.

“Imagine chatting with your favorite athlete, becoming immersed in a music festival, or meeting new friends to share your passions – all by simply firing up the BitTorrent Live app,” says Justin Sun, CEO of BitTorrent.

“By using our decentralized technology, we aim to create a boundary-free internet but also be at the forefront of a new content experience,” Sun adds.

Live streaming apps are nothing new of course. Many social media platforms already incorporate some kind of streaming function. BitTorrent Live promises to be different, with a strong focus on privacy and an option for creators to generate revenue.

“In coming months, BitTorrent Live also will incorporate blockchain technology that returns privacy and ownership to users while also enabling cryptocurrency to be used as a new payment option,” BitTorrent Inc. says.

The problem is that, for now, there is nothing to test. The company has opened the door for Beta testers to apply, but it will take at least a few more weeks before the first invites go out. There are no mockups of the application available either.

TorrentFreak did learn that the first version of the platform won’t use BitTorrent to power the live streams. There is no option to access archived content either, it appears.

Specifically, BitTorrent Inc. told us that the early version of BitTorrent Live “will be centralized.” This means that, unlike the name suggests, there is no P2P technology involved.

“But the team is already looking at ways to integrate decentralized technology into the core of the app. We are also looking at ways to archive the content,” a BitTorrent Inc. representative added.

The company further explained that the revenue generating opportunities it plans to offer will depend on “content quality.” These revenues will be paid in BitTorrent’s own BTT token, which launched in January.

At this point, it’s hard to tell whether the public will be interested in the live streaming platform. The same can also be said for its ‘get paid to seed’ plans. It would be interesting if BitTorrent Live eventually incorporates BitTorrent technology though. They have the patent for it, after all.

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Piracy of TV content is an extremely hot topic at the moment, with IPTV and often associated card-sharing systems proving a huge thorn in the sides of content owners and broadcasters alike.

The latest news comes in the wake of raids carried out Monday in London by police, Trading Standards, and anti-piracy outfit the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

The action, described as targeting a “£3 million fraud operation”, came as part of an investigation to “download, encrypt and widely distribute TV content from Sky, Virgin and BT.”

Local sources in Ilford, where officers raided a shop, say the operation was carried out in partnership with Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham Trading Standards. Two homes were also raided and searched.

Two men were arrested on suspicion of fraud, with police claiming that the suspects generated £600,000 per year from their activities. A list of 3,000 subscribers to their services, which was found in the shop, is now in the hands of the authorities.

A figure of £3 million has been placed on the estimated fraud although it remains unclear whether that’s the total revenue of the ‘pirate’ business or the amount the broadcasters are claiming in losses.

According to the Ilford Recorder, equipment worth £100,000 – including computers, servers, and set-top boxes – was seized by the councils’ Trading Standards officers.

TorrentFreak contacted the Federation Against Copyright Theft for further details on the operation but at the time of writing, we are yet to receive a response. It therefore remains unclear whether the targets were running an IPTV operation alongside ‘pirate’ set-top box sales, or perhaps offering card-sharing services.

“This type of fraud, on this scale has an impact upon providers of TV channels, steals their income and can lead to increased costs for legitimate subscribers,” said Councillor Robert C. Littlewood, Cabinet Member for Crime, Safety & Community Cohesion.

“Investigations are ongoing and Redbridge Trading Standards are continuing with enforcement action to bring the offenders before the courts, including the seizure of illegal assets gained from the fraud.”

News of action against pirate TV providers has suddenly become an extremely hot topic recently.

Last week, three men from the UK were jailed for a total of 17 years for running a pirate TV operation, which more recently including illegal streaming.

Just a day a later, news broke that police across Europe had dismantled what they claimed to be the biggest illegal IPTV network targeted thus far in the region, worth an estimated eight million euros. Five people were arrested.

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In the years leading up to 2017, it was almost exclusively Hollywood’s MPAA taking action against major movie and TV pirates across the globe.

In dozens of actions targeting torrent and streaming platforms, the MPAA’s studio members were the ones making the headlines, pursuing The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, and a multitude of similar unlicensed platforms.

Almost two years ago, a new tactic emerged with the formation of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a new initiative designed to target existing and developing piracy operations on a global scale. By the summer of 2017, the MPAA was no longer tackling video and TV piracy alone.

The ACE coalition, which has the studios of the MPAA plus Netflix and Amazon as founding members, boasted 30 international companies to complete its launch ranks, including giants such as BBC Worldwide, Bell Canada, MGM, and Village Roadshow, to name a few.

Today, its ranks expanded further still with the addition of three prominent new members.

The highest-profile addition is Discovery Inc., a company operating factual networks across 220 countries in 50 different languages. Its premium brands include the world-famous Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV, Oprah Winfrey Network, Animal Network, plus many others. Its revenues in 2018 were a reported $10.55 billion.

Also celebrating their membership of ACE are a pair of Viacom-owned companies.

Channel 5 is a free-to-air TV channel based in the UK. Launched back in 1997, Channel 5 is the fifth most popular channel in the region by audience share (around 4%) and was acquired by Viacom back in 2014 for more than $750m.

Another Viacom-owned company, Telefe, has also been welcomed to the ACE fold. The coalition describes the company as one of the leading free-to-air channels and one of the biggest creators of content in Argentina, boasting 11 studios and more than 3,500 hours of content produced each year.

“ACE is the leading global content protection organization, and the addition of Discovery, Channel 5 and Telefe only enhances our ability to support creators,” said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA.

“Leveraging the expertise of MPAA’s content protection team, ACE has achieved numerous successes over the last two years and we continue to work with law enforcement around the world to reduce the threat of piracy and illegal streaming.”

While all of the new members can observe their content being shared on torrent sites and web-based streaming portals, they will also be interested in preventing the distribution of their content via unlicensed IPTV services.

Discovery channels, in particular, are a big draw on such platforms, with subscribers offered most (if not all) of their channels in multi-thousand channel packages for just a few dollars, euros, or pounds per month.

And, of course, ACE’s new members are also exposed to unlicensed content distribution via preloaded devices. ACE has targeted them with legal action too, including those sold by Dragon Media and TickBoxTV, cases that both ended in multi-million dollar settlements.

Pirate streaming apps and third-party Kodi add-ons are also considered a threat, so ACE has been picking a few of them off too (1,2,3,4) over the past couple of years.

The full list of ACE members is now confirmed as follows:

Amazon, AMC Networks, BBC Worldwide, Bell Canada and Bell Media, Canal+ Group, CBS Corporation, Channel 5, Constantin Film, Discovery, Foxtel, Grupo Globo, HBO, Hulu, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Millennium Media, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, SF Studios, Sky, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Star India, Studio Babelsberg, STX Entertainment, Telefe, Telemundo, Televisa, Univision Communications Inc., Village Roadshow, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

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In 2016, the European Commission first announced its plans to modernize EU copyright law.

Initially, the plans received little mainstream attention, but over the past year that changed drastically.

Article 13 and Article 11 of the Copyright Directive, which were renamed to Article 17 and Article 15 in the final text, were highly contested. Opponents repeatedly warned that the former would lead to “upload filters” and censorship, and the latter was framed as a “link tax.”

At the same time, many rightsholder groups, publishers, and other members of the creative industry embraced the proposals. They saw it as a much-needed lifeline to ensure fair remuneration on the Internet.

Today, the European Parliament voted on the final text of the proposed Directive.

First up was a proposal to reject the entire Copyright Directive. This was rejected with 443 votes against and 181 in favor. A subsequent vote to allow amendments to the text of the directive was also rejected, although that was very close with 317 in favor and 312 against. 

Parliament then moved on to vote on the entire text of the Copyright Directive without any changes, including the renumbered Article 13 and Article 11.

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

The decision comes as a major disappointment to Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Copyright Directive.

Earlier today she urged her colleagues to reject the plans and moments ago described the outcome of the vote as a “dark day for internet freedom.” Reda, who’s the Vice-President of the Greens/EFA Group, says they will continue to fight against this new European law.

“The new copyright law as it stands threatens a free internet as we know it: Algorithms cannot distinguish between actual copyright infringements and the perfectly legal re-use of content for purposes such as parody,” Reda notes. 

“Obliging platforms to use upload filters will lead to more frequent blocking of legal uploads and make life difficult for smaller platforms that cannot afford expensive filter software,” she adds.

Article 13 (now 17),  requires many for-profit Internet platforms to license content from copyright holders. If that is not possible, they should ensure that infringing content is taken down and not re-uploaded to their services.

Many rightsholder groups are pleased with the outcome. Frances Moore,  CEO of the music group IFPI, was quick to thank lawmakers for their efforts and is looking forward to seeing the changes implemented.

“This world-first legislation confirms that User-Upload Content platforms perform an act of communication to the public and must either seek authorization from rightsholders or ensure no unauthorized content is available on their platforms.

“The Directive also includes a ‘stay down’ provision requiring platforms to keep unlicensed content down – another global first,” Moore adds.

With support from the European Parliament, the Copyright Directive will now be sent to the Council, which has to formally adopt the law. This is likely to take place in two weeks, on April 9.

There still is a chance that a member state such as Germany withdraws its support in the Council, which would mean that further negotiations are required. This could introduce delays beyond the European elections on May 23, 2019.

If the Copyright Directive is adopted by the Council, EU member states will have to implement the text in local legislation. This won’t happen right away could take up to two more years.

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Yesterday, we reported that a group of music industry giants, including Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros, have sued Internet provider Bright House Networks for failing to disconnect pirating subscribers.

While that lawsuit was filed in Florida, the same companies also filed a complaint against Charter Communications in a Colorado District Court. The cases and the underlying accusations are very similar, which is no surprise as Charter acquired Bright House in 2016.

Under US law, providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances” and Charter failed to do so, according to the music publishers. Specifically, the ISP is accused of ignoring repeat infringers on its network, which it continued to serve as customers.

“It is well-established law that a party may not assist someone it knows is engaging in copyright infringement. Further, when a party has a direct financial interest in the infringing activity, and the right and practical ability to stop or limit it, that party must act,” the complaint reads.

“Ignoring and flouting those basic responsibilities, Charter deliberately turned a blind eye to its subscribers’ infringement. Charter failed to terminate or otherwise take meaningful action against the accounts of repeat infringers of which it was aware.”

As highlighted by Ars Technica, the music companies allege that the ISP’s high-speed Internet service was used to lure customers who could use it to facilitate their infringing activities.

Specifically, the complaint states that Charter was “advertising its high-speed Internet services in Colorado to serve as a draw for subscribers who sought faster download speeds to facilitate their direct and repeated infringements.”

These allegations are not new and have been made against other ISPs in the past, including the aforementioned Bright House, but also Grande Communications and Cox Communications.

These ISPs provide an “attractive tool” and “safe haven” for pirates, according to the music companies. As such, they should not be entitled to “safe harbor” protection under the DMCA, it is argued. 

This was also the conclusion of the Texas District Court earlier this month, which ruled that Grande Communications failed to adopt and reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy.

Charter will likely face similar allegations going forward. The complaint that was just filed provides several examples of “repeat infringers,” including some subscribers for which the ISP received hundreds of infringement notices.

According to the music companies, it is clear that Charter intentionally ignored these repeated copyright infringements. As such, they believe that the ISP is liable for both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.

As compensation for the claimed losses, the companies demand statutory or actual damages, as well as coverage for their attorney fees and other costs. This could potentially run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

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A copy of the complaint, filed at The United States District Court for the District of Colorado is available here (pdf).

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