Since their mainstream debut two decades ago, pirate websites have never been particularly inaccessible to the tech-savvy.

Today, however, streaming pirate movies and TV shows is simplicity itself, particularly when accessed through specially-configured hardware devices such as Android-style set-top boxes. Anyone comfortable with a smartphone interface is now educated enough to gain access to a mountain of infringing content.

As a result, these devices are now considered a major threat to entertainment industry companies all over the world and over in Asia, the situation is no different. In response to what is already an epidemic, authorities in Malaysia are now taking action to curtail the use of these devices.

To date, the Malaysian Communica­tions and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry have teamed up to block 246 sites utilized by piracy-configured set-top boxes to stream movies and TV shows to the masses.

“Based on the details and complaints from the rights’ owners which were made to the ministry, MCMC facilitated the shutdown,” MCMC Network Security and Enforcement Sector chief officer Zulkarnain Mohd Yasin told The Star.

While the names and details of the sites have not yet been made public, given their number it’s likely they are regularly accessible websites that are ‘scraped’ by software applications present on the Android devices. This is likely to become a game of cat-and-mouse as the sites switch domains and scrapers continue to adapt.

“We are working closely with the ministry and only through their complaints and the details provided to us, such as their domain and URLs, World Wide Web page addre­ss, on the illegal streaming sites, can we act to block the access,” Yasin added.

In parallel with regular blocking, Malaysian authorities are reportedly employing a secondary tactic to prevent the spread of Android-based devices that are illegal under laws other than copyright.

Under local law, all such devices must comply with standards laid down by the government, with the Standard and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM) responsible for product quality assurance and subsequent certification.

Importers and distributors are required to submit samples of their devices to SIRIM which carries out tests to ensure they meet the standards set out by MCMC. If they do, they receive SIRIM accreditation. They do not, they are considered illegal.

Punishments for breaching such regulations are reported to be RM100,000 (which at current rates is around US$24,500), and/or six months in prison.

“We know who [these people] are and will act against them soon to discourage and stop these illegal boxes, which promote the illegal content streaming, which breaches copyright and intellectual property laws,” Yasin added.

Less than an hour away south by plane, Singapore is also taking steps to deal with the pirate set-top box phenomenon.

New legal proposals to be tabled this year will aim to prevent manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers from knowingly selling devices that are set up to access content from infringing sources.

There will also be an effort to prevent suppliers from providing assistance or instruction to customers on how to modify legally-supplied devices to perform infringing acts. If the law is adopted, it will also become an offense to customize a device provided by a user so that it can obtain infringing content.

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In 2016, the U.S. Government launched a public consultation to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions.

In response, the Copyright Office received a lot of input, including more than 92,000 comments. Various rightsholders weighed in, as expected, and so did technology companies, law scholars and civil rights groups.

After a review of the initial comments, the U.S. Copyright Office found that that there was little agreement on how to move forward.

The MPAA, RIAA, and other industry groups called for extensive revisions including a ‘notice-and-stay-down‘ policy, for example. But, many service providers objected to this and said that the current system is capable of dealing with infringing content.

The Copyright Office reviewed the various positions, but more than two years have passed and nothing has changed. At least, not in terms of US policy changes. In the courts and other countries, things are moving forward quickly. 

To review these changes and developments, the Copyright Office has announced a new public roundtable on possible changes to the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions. This is scheduled to take place in April and stakeholders and the public at large are being asked to chime in. 

“The Office is now announcing that it will convene an additional roundtable to enable interested members of the public to address relevant domestic and foreign developments that have occurred since the close of the written comment period on February 6, 2017,” the Copyright Office writes.

The roundtable will have two sessions. The first will deal with US case law developments since the last meetings. This will include the BMG vs. Cox case, which touched on the appropriateness on repeat infringer policies of Internet providers. 

This “repeat infringer” issue cause quite a bit of uproar in the ISP community and several providers have tightened their policies in response. Those that fail to terminate persistent pirates, may be held liable. 

The second session will focus on foreign developments and how these relate to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Internet service provider liability. This includes the EU copyright reform proposals, such as Article 13.

“Since 2017, several other countries also have addressed issues of copyright infringement and online service provider liability. For example, in Europe, work towards a possible new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market has been underway since 2016,” the Copyright Office writes.

The European Article 13 proposal, often referred to as the “upload filter” plan, creates new obligations for online service providers. This is closely related to ISP liability, and therefore relevant to the US Government’s DMCA review as well. 

Another sensitive but important topic is website blocking. While pirate site blocking was already commonplace in many countries at the time of the first roundtables, recent developments in Australia have brought it into the realm of ISP liability.

“[T]he Australian Parliament recently passed an amendment to its copyright law that provides copyright owners with additional tools to enforce their rights regarding infringing content online, including injunctions to block domain names,” the Copyright office writes.

The amendment in question allows copyright holders to apply for injunctions that will not only target infringing ‘online locations’ but also their appearances in searches. This means that Google and other search engines can be required to remove entire domains from their search results.

The US Copyright Office would like to hear from US stakeholders and the public with their thoughts on these developments. Specifically, if they are relevant to the ongoing DMCA review.  

“The Office is aware that such proposals have generated widespread debate, with stakeholders expressing a variety of views concerning the potential implications for copyright owners, online service providers, and members of the public.

“At the roundtable, participants are invited to identify and discuss recent law and policy developments in other countries that bear on issues related to the effectiveness, ineffectiveness, and/or other impacts on online service provider liability.”

Needless to say, the roundtable and the public comments will undoubtedly result in a wide range of opposing views again.

It’s not a secret that rightsholders would like to see site blocking and increased ISP liability in the US. However, these measures tend to trigger quite a bit of opposition from digital rights activists and the broader public,

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For many years, Ukraine has been criticized for its lack of action against pirate sites and infringement in general.

The country has a thriving local piracy scene but big platforms with international significance have occasionally found themselves hosted in the region, something which has provoked complaints from copyright holders, many from the United States.

Authorities have occasionally been seen to take action against ‘pirate’ platforms but the past few months have seen an uptick in enforcement.

In a fresh announcement from the Ukraine government, it is revealed that a man from Kiev has been targeted as the suspected mastermind behind 56 pirate sites.

Employees of the Kiev Department of Cyberpolicies worked with the National Police and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine to close the streaming platforms down, along with the servers that contained the pirated content.

According to the authorities, the 35-year-old founded and administered dozens of streaming platforms including kinogo2019.com, kinobudka.net, onlineseriali.net and lostkino.net.

None of the listed domains appear to have brought in significant traffic in their own right but the accumulation of visitors over dozens of domains appears to have attracted the attention of the authorities.

As of now, however, the shuttered sites all display a warning from Ukrainian cyberpolice, stating that the domains have been blocked due to copyright infringement offenses.

“In Kiev, law enforcement officers conducted a series of searches. Removed laptops, hard disks, telephones and bank cards, which accounted for funds obtained from advertising on websites. In addition, three system blocks were removed, in which 210 virtual machines were deployed,” Ukraine’s cyberpolice said in a statement.

The crackdown on this latest batch of sites comes on the heels of similar enforcement action in January.

Following a complaint from the Ukrainian Anti-Piracy Association about sites that were illegally distributing movies and TV shows, police officers from the western city of Khmelnytskyi began criminal proceedings under Article 176 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which covers copyright and related rights.

According to information provided by local cyberpolice, a 34-year-old man is suspected of operating a number of pirate streaming platforms including kinot.me, krutor.org, kinogo-onlaine.net, rumedia.ws, and gogfilm.me.

Further action in January saw police target a 25-year-old man in the Rivne region, alleged to be the operator of HD-Mix.org. Police carried out searches and seized equipment and the site is currently down. All suspects in each case face a possible six years in prison.

In November 2018, authorities raided the home of the alleged operator of a pirate streaming portal suspected of infringing the rights of Universal City Studios and many other entertainment companies. The 24-year-old was suspected of being behind another 10 pirate sites.

Earlier this year the United States Trade Representative (USTR) kept Ukraine on its Priority Watch List(pdf), accusing government agencies of using pirated software and a “failure to implement an effective means to combat the widespread online infringement of copyright in Ukraine.”

While there is no mention of the Watch List in connection with this series of raids, the action will no doubt become a reference point as Ukraine attempts to improve relations with the United States.

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This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Bohemian Rhapsody 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)	Bohemian Rhapsody	8.3 / trailer
2	(4)	The Grinch	6.3 / trailer
3	(…)	Mortal Engines	6.3 / trailer
4	(2)	A Star is Born	8.0 / trailer
5	(3)	Aquaman (Subbed HDRip)	7.7 / trailer
6	(5)	Hunter Killer	6.7 / trailer
7	(7)	Bumblebee (Subbed HDRip)	7.2 / trailer
8	(…)	Velvet Buzzsaw (Subbed HDRip)	7.2 / trailer
9	(9)	Venom	7.0 / trailer
10	(10)	Widows	7.2 / trailer

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Late 2014 The Pirate Bay went offline after Swedish police raided a datacenter near Stockholm.

The downtime lasted over a month and many users feared that it was the end for the notorious site.

It wasn’t. The Pirate Bay came back and continued on its merry way.

While many people have since forgotten about the incident, marketing professors from business schools at the University of Houston and Western University used the downtime to research its effects on box office revenue. 

Hollywood’s general logic is that piracy hurts box office revenues. However, there is also some evidence of positive effects through word-of-mouth promotion. Using the Pirate Bay downtime as a natural experiment, the researchers tried to find out if that’s indeed the case.

“It is natural to focus on the downsides of piracy for movie makers — and these can be significant — but many will be interested to note that piracy can have an upside,” Professor Shijie Lu informs TF.

Through their research, Lu and his co-authors Xin Wang and Neil Bendle, investigated the effect of this “buzz” in detail. They published their findings in a paper titled “Does Piracy Create Online Word-of-Mouth? An Empirical Analysis in Movie Industry.”

Movies shared on The Pirate Bay are the main focus. The researchers use the Pirate Bay downtime following the 2014 raid to measure its impact on word-of-mouth promotion and box office revenues.

Based on a sample of hundreds of movie torrents and data from most popular movie review sites, Lu and his colleagues estimated this effect. Their results are rather intriguing. 

First off, the findings clearly show a negative effect of pre-release piracy on box office sales. This result is consistent with previous studies and an increase in “buzz” doesn’t do enough to offset the negative effect ..

“The impact of pre-release piracy is found to be negative regardless of piracy type. The total box office revenue is reduced by 11% due to the existence of piracy appearing before the movie release,” the researchers write.

This changes when the researchers look at post-release piracy. That is, piracy which occurs after a film has premiered at the box office. In this case, there’s a positive effect on box office revenue through an increase in word-of-mouth promotion (WOM).

“We find that the volume of online WOM mediates the impact of piracy on the box office. Based on counterfactual simulations, the WOM-effect from post-release piracy on the box office increases revenue by about 3.0%,” they write. 

In other words, when The Pirate Bay went down, box office revenue dropped as well. This effect is significant and not linked to seasonal changes, as it wasn’t there in previous years.

The positive effect is strongest during the beginning of a movie’s release and differs per genre.  Action movies, comedies, and thrillers, benefit more from a positive piracy “buzz” than dramas, for example.

While the findings suggest that The Pirate Bay does help to generate buzz and bring in more revenue, the overall effect isn’t positive. The negative pre-release piracy impact is higher than the positive post-release effect, after all.

“Pre-release piracy can have a substantial negative effect, in our data this overwhelms the positive effect we look at. That is, the overall effect of piracy is still negative,” Lu tells us.

That said, there is an interesting lesson to be learned.  Based on this study, copyright enforcement should be mainly targeted on early leaks. If these are dealt with, the main problem is ‘gone.’

“Our findings suggest approaches to target scarce anti-piracy resources, such as focusing on tackling damaging pre-release piracy,” the researchers write.

These results offer yet another piece of the piracy puzzle. It’s worth noting that the number of torrents was used as a piracy indicator in this study, which isn’t perfect. Follow-up studies with more granular data and actual download estimates may provide further insight.

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