Last week, several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against Omniverse One World Television.

Under the flag of anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Omniverse and its owner Jason DeMeo of supplying of pirate streaming channels to various IPTV services.

Omniverse doesn’t offer any streaming boxes but sells live-streaming services to third-party distributors, such as Dragon Box, HDHomerun, Flixon TV, and SkyStream TV, which in turn offer live TV streaming packages to customers.

According to ACE, Omniverse offered these channels without permission from its members. As such, the company is now branded as a pirate streaming TV supplier.

Omniverse initially didn’t respond but in a statement sent to TorrentFreak a few hours ago, the company states that, even though it doesn’t agree with the allegations, it supports ACE’s anti-piracy efforts.

“While Omniverse disagrees with the substance and the specifics of the allegations made against the company in a recent California court filing, we are highly supportive of the mission that the plaintiffs and their partners in the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) are carrying out,” the company says.

With a lawsuit from some of the most powerful entertainment industry companies hanging over its head, Omniverse says that it intends to quickly and constructively resolve the concerns of the ACE members.

“It is our belief that when this process is complete, that both sides will be satisfied with the outcome,” the company notes.

In its statement, Omniverse further suggests that there may be some misunderstanding, stating that the company is also a victim of “unlicensed” distribution.

“Omniverse believes there is no place in the industry for media pirates and, consistent with the plaintiffs, believes their legitimate business has been harmed by the unlicensed distribution of media content,” the company writes.

Although Omniverse is the legal target, many other companies are directly affected by the lawsuit. This includes Silicondust, which operates the HDHomeRun Premium service.

Theodore Head, President of SiliconDust, told Cord Cutters News that it’s aware of this risk and that it is trying to find a way to cope with the potential fallout for its customers.

“SiliconDust is not a party of the lawsuit, but we can be indirectly affected by Omniverse not able to continue their service and so we are in the process of finding out a way to best mitigate any potential interruptions to our service and will let our customers know as soon as we know if there will be any change to the current services,” Head said.

Omniverse itself will also try to address the matter and prevent any major disruptions, but it’s unknown whether it can continue with the same channels.

According to ACE, several channels were offered without permission from rightsholders, so that’s one of the key issues to be resolved. The finer details of the allegations and Omniverse’s response will likely become apparent as the case progresses.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

In many regions of the world, copyright holders, anti-piracy companies, and authorities are teaming up to tackle the problem of pirate sites.

In the past, emphasis was placed on aggressive shutdowns but increasingly there is a tendency to “follow the money”, a strategy that aims to starve site operators of their income while making sites less lucrative to run.

A big part of this is restricting the amount of quality advertisers prepared to have their ads appear on pirate sites. Indeed, there are significant programs in the United States and Europe dedicated to encouraging companies to stay away from pirate sites.

Over in Sweden, one such initiative was announced in 2015 by Rights Alliance and the Association of Swedish Advertisers. The headline was that 600 advertisers had banned The Pirate Bay from their networks but there were actually an additional nine sites on the worst offenders list, most of which have now faded away.

Now, less than four years later, the partnership has published a new and updated blacklist containing ten domains, which advertisers are encouraged to boycott, especially the gambling industry which is claimed to support pirate sites more than most.

“Advertising finances the illegal services,” says Sara Lindbäck, lawyer at Rights Alliance.

“After a major survey, we can see that gaming companies are the largest advertisers. By updating the blacklist, we make it easy for all advertisers, including the gaming companies, not to place their advertising on the illegal services.”

The top 10 list of ‘worst-offending’ pirate sites to be avoided by advertisers in Sweden reads as follows:

• ThePirateBay.org
• FMovies.to
• DreamfilmHD.cc
• Nyafilmer.com
• Nya-filmer.tv
• Swefilmer.eu
• Dreamfilm.pro
• Dreamfilm.fun
• Swesub.net
• Streamtajm.com

Given that only a handful of these domains looked immediately familiar to us (branding aside), we checked them out, one by one. The Pirate Bay needs no explanation, of course, but others warrant further explanation.

FMovies.to is a very popular streaming site, with SimilarWeb reporting in excess of 40 million visitors per month. The site is not only significant locally in Sweden but also on an international scale. It’s certainly no surprise this site is featured prominently in the list.

At the time of writing, DreamfilmHD.cc is currently non-operational but Lindbäck informs TF that the site might only be “down temporarily” and since it has had a lot of advertising placed on it for a long time, its place on the list is justified. However, SimilarWeb reports a worldwide site-rank in excess of a million, so its importance seems limited.

Nyafilmer.com is a completely different ball game. The streaming platform is currently Sweden’s 74th most-popular site, period, so it’s absolutely clear why Rights Alliance and Swedish Advertisers have blacklisted the domain.

Both Swefilmer.eu and Streamtajm.com, on the other hand, are much less significant, with the former barely moving the traffic needle and the latter bringing in around 750,000 visitors per month. Dreamfilm.fun isn’t listed by SimilarWeb but according to Alexa, it pulls in around 200k visitors per month.

That brings us to the final three sites in the list, which we’ll bundle together since they have something in common on the advertising front.

Nyafilmer.tv, Dreamfilm.pro, and Swesub.net are all streaming platforms. The former is very tiny, with a world site-rank in excess of four million, but the others appear to be growing and derive most of their traffic from Swedish visitors. However, all three use a particularly irritating form of advertising.

As a test, we chose to search for the movie Aquaman on the sites, since it’s new and shouldn’t be available to stream legally, especially via a pirate site. After clicking the thumbnail, the user is greeted with an embedded video player at the top of the screen (the real movie is way underneath) that begins to play the familiar Universal intro reel, which is a red flag since the movie is actually a Warner/DC affair.

Needless to say, Aquaman did not play. Instead, the user is greeted with this message (translated);

The link takes users to GamesHeaven.net (we’re not going to link) which claims that the movie is available there for ‘free‘, if only people sign up.

However, this site does not have this movie at all (or most others that users sign up to receive for that matter) and actually requires people to enter credit card details, which, as this thread and others show, often goes nowhere good. This platform, and others that are based on the same underlying system, have been the subject of large numbers of complaints.

This type of advertising is extremely misleading so pirate (and other) sites should consider not directing their customers to such platforms in this manner when they clearly don’t have the content being claimed. If people want to pay for movies, they should go to platforms like Netflix, that are simplicity itself to use and indeed cancel, when required.

Unfortunately, however, not even Sweden’s advertising ban is likely to prevent these ads from appearing on lower-tier pirate sites since we’re informed they’re based overseas and quite lucrative. Also, since the underlying services do indeed have other (albeit less popular) licensed content available, they’ve been running along trouble free for years.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

China has long been associated with rampant counterfeiting and copyright infringement, with the country facing criticism in the West on an almost daily basis.

Over the past couple of years, however, Chinese authorities have become increasingly vocal when these activities are perceived to have a negative effect locally. In particular, the government appears to have a new interest in curtailing movie piracy.

Last year, MPAA chairman Charles Rivkin declared that China will become the world’s top movie market “in short order”, overtaking the likes of the United States and Canada, despite the country (at least officially) capping foreign films to around three dozen per year.

At this scale, China clearly sees importance in protecting revenues in its local market and to this end has just announced fresh moves to curtail piracy in the region, declaring it a “priority” for 2019.

The National Copyright Administration (NCAC) says that it will pour resources into reducing the unauthorized recording of movies in theaters, an act known colloquially as “camming”. Given that the majority of the movies released in the region are local productions, it seems unlikely that the West will benefit greatly, but the action will be welcomed nonetheless.

The NCAC adds that with the assistance of the China Film Administration, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it will “dig deep” into the sources of piracy and “sternly investigate” online platforms that help to distribute pirated content, such as websites, chat platforms, and smartphone apps.

In serious cases, the NCAC says platforms will be dealt with under a criminal process but at the same time, major Internet platforms will also be encouraged to strengthen their “corporate responsibility” when dealing with infringement complaints.

The NCAC suggests that sites outside the country are mainly responsible for hosting pirated movies (with links shared locally) so it intends to improve cooperation with other interested parties internationally. This is of particular interest given a piece published on the NCAC site on Monday.

While written by an outside source, the article on the copyright agency site appears to praise the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the global anti-piracy organization headed up by the MPAA.

“[T]he Motion Picture Association of America and its member companies have joined forces with 30 companies around the world, such as Netflix and Amazon, to form a global organization,” the piece reads.

“Through the cooperation between global companies, we will make full use of the technology and experience of all parties to enhance the level of combating online piracy.”

Again, the article wasn’t written by the NCAC, but the fact that it chose to publish the piece in full tends to suggest that the agency agrees with the strategy. There are certainly strong indications that the way forward is through collaboration on a global scale, but that’s not to say there isn’t work to be done at home.

Last week, the NCAC asked the public to report discovered instances of piracy through direct messages on Weibo, WeChat, and email. 

“Please provide infringement clues and clean up the online copyright environment. Let’s work together,” the agency wrote.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Besides website blocking, which is gradually spreading all over the world, targeting the domain names of pirate sites is considered to be a somewhat effective anti-piracy tool.

For years, copyright holders and local enforcement authorities have reached out to domain registries and registrars, asking these companies to terminate sites for alleged copyright infringements.

In addition, Hollywood’s MPAA also struck voluntary deals with companies in the domain name industry, to suspend the domain names of infringing sites. While these agreements are criticized by some outsiders, the participating parties appear to be happy with it.

Recently we learned of a relatively new voluntary agreement that also targets pirate domains, but not for copyright infringement.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance’s (IIPA) latest submission to the US Government explains that Hollywood’s MPA has a voluntary agreement with the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and India’s Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP).

Under this agreement, which has been in place for a while, copyright holders can report “pirate” sites with an .IN domain. Not for copyright infringement, but because they used false Whois data to register the domain in question.

“In 2017, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) agreed to a voluntary arrangement with DIPP and NIXI to suspend infringing websites based on false whois information; it focused on domains in breach of statutory and contractual obligations to maintain accurate and complete whois information,” IIPA writes.

As far as we know this deal hasn’t been made public until now. However, it is seen by copyright holders as an effective anti-piracy tool in addition to site blocking.

“This [agreement] has led to disruption of dozens of websites in India and should be considered an additional enforcement tool to traditional enforcement or site blocking,” IIPA notes. 

The ‘false Whois’ suspensions are not the only domain name actions taken in India. The relatively new Maharashtra Cyber Digital Crime Unit (MCDCU) is also taking action against pirate sites, which resulted in suspensions of more than 200 domains.

The Digital Crime Unit has taken a page from the City of London Police, reporting sites that are suspected of crimes to various domain registrars.

“In addition, since 2017, the MCDCU has suspended 203 domains impacting approximately 160 million users accessing these sites per month. In conjunction with fighting to suspend these domains, convicting those involved in content theft is also under the MCDCU’s jurisdiction.”

It’s unclear how many domain registrars rejected the suspension requests from the Digital Crime Unit. A few years ago we revealed that most domain name registrars refused to suspend domains based on a mere accusation from the City of London Police.

In addition to domain suspension, the Indian unit was also involved in other enforcement actions. This includes including the arrests of four people in connection to a leaked episode of Game of Thrones last year, which was covered by news media all around the world.

IIPA notes that there is still plenty of improvement possible when it comes to copyright enforcement and anti-piracy actions in India. It is happy with the help from MCDCU and NIXI though and encourages these outfits to continue their “excellent work” suspending domain names.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Downloading and sharing copyrighted content without permission is illegal everywhere in the EU.

It doesn’t matter whether users obtain infringing content via BitTorrent sites, web streaming services, or their favorite Kodi addon, doing so is potentially actionable under existing law.

A minority of users discover this the hard way (particularly in countries like Germany and Sweden) when they receive a demand for cash from copyright trolls who track their activities when using BitTorrent.

In reality, however, most small-time pirates are able to carry on with their activities relatively unhindered, since the mainstream movie and music companies rarely chase down individuals for settlement or prosecution.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not watching and that some people can suffer serious consequences.

Back in 2017, a UK student made international headlines after she downloaded and shared the movie Chicken Run using BitTorrent. What was unusual about this case is that she did so using her university’s WiFi, which was monitored by an anti-piracy company working for the film’s owners.

What followed was a 20-day ban from Eduroam (education roaming), a worldwide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community.

Eduroam allows students and staff to access the Internet across campus and other participating sites, unless they’re currently under a suspension for piracy, of course. And, it transpires, that is more common than one might think.

According to The Tab Network, which describes itself as a “guerilla army of bold and subversive student reporters across the country”, a staggering 93 students at the University of Sheffield in the UK were banned from the Eduraom network between 2017 and 2018 following copyright complaints.

The surprising statistic was obtained following a Freedom of Information request. The details suggest that those downloading movies and TV shows are most at risk of being tracked by anti-piracy companies. While dozens of titles are listed, the most complained about content is listed as follows:

• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (6)
• Rick and Morty (5)
• Ghost in the Shell (4)
• IT (4)
• South Park (4)
• The Accountant (3)

While most of the titles in the full list appear new or relatively so, it’s clear that entertainment industry groups are monitoring films from decades ago.

The Naked Gun 2 (1991) is one such example but complaints were also received for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), despite both movies moving dangerously close to half a century old.

As the full list indicates, TV shows were also complained about regularly, with Rick and Morty and South Park unsurprisingly proving popular with students. Various episodes of MTV’s reality show Geordie Shore featured in a number of complaints too, as did Impractical Jokers.

That downloading and sharing highbrow material such as Geordie Shaw has resulted in an Internet ban for many Sheffield University students must come as a disappointment to those involved, but they can’t claim they weren’t warned.

While the University does allow the use of peer-to-peer software such as BitTorrent, it does not permit the sharing of copyrighted content and appears to have a robust process in place to deal with allegations.

“University computing facilities (including any University provided connection to the Internet) must not be used to copy or distribute copyright material without authorization of the copyright owner. This includes movies, music, software and electronic books,” the facility’s copyright policy states.

“The use of University facilities in breach of copyright law is a serious matter, which can damage the good name of the University and is against University Regulations and English Law.

“Material that is proven to infringe the law or is in breach of University policy will be removed. Users found to be in breach of this policy may have their accounts temporarily or permanently suspended and/or face disciplinary action,” it adds.

While the anti-piracy companies monitoring these movies and TV shows are happy to catch any infringer in their dragnets, there can be little doubt that they absolutely know that in these cases they are targeting students.

It’s up for debate whether having an education disrupted is an appropriate and proportionate response to small-time infringements but given that this type of peer-to-peer piracy has been chased down for almost two decades, students really can’t complain that they don’t know the risks.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.