Put on your protective irony suits folks, you’re definitely going to need them. Facepalming is also allowed, especially if accompanied by a slow head-shake.

With the downfall of Android-based apps like TerrariumTV, pirates everywhere are looking for the next big thing. Lots of content in a Netflix-style interface is the order of the day, and there is no shortage of contenders.

One player gaining traction with pirates is TVZion. The Android-based software looks good, performs well, and is a perfect fit for those looking to access all the latest movies and TV shows.

The standard version of TVZion is free and supported by ads. There is a ‘pro’ version too which is advertised as “100% Ad free, premium features, priority requests and more.” Being in the ‘club’, however, comes at a price.

While some pirates are indeed happy to purchase the type of service detailed below (and indeed subscribe to the likes of Netflix and Spotify), the operator of TVZion appears exasperated by a growing number of users who want pro features at zero cost.

Such a thing is indeed an option, via modded TVZion APK files that are widely available and being promoted heavily by YouTubers. Trouble is, this apparent freeloading is grinding the dev’s gears while simultaneously undermining his product.

“So yesterday I had to take down the server momentarily to deploy yet another optimization. Upon checking logs now it’s safe to say about 35% users are mod users. Thanks to mindless youtubers, they are only linking to the modded versions,” he wrote on Reddit this week.

“Needless to say a server based app will not sustain this way because eventually I will run out of optimizations and server rent. So I am thinking of a countermeasure to deter users from wanting to use the modded version and also deter youtubers to linking to one.”

Presuming these freeloaders can be identified, the simplest method to end their fun would be to ban them from the service but according to the developer, he’s “looking for something more than that”, something that will act as a deterrent to prevent people using modded APKs altogether.

​If this sounds like the start of an anti-piracy brainstorming session, hold onto your hats folks – this one is something special. Here are the options for punishing ‘illegal’ pro version users, as suggested by the developer:

1. Log mod users for Ip addresses, timestamps and contents accessed and keep this information to be used as I see fit if it ever comes to that
2. Crypto mining – Mine crypto currency in the background. From my experience this’ll only overwork the device for very little money
3. Use device as proxy – This will essentially turn their device into a proxy server which will be rented to others (NOT A FAN OF THIS)

“Everything else that comes in my mind is rather more malicious so no point exploring that. The most graceful way to deal with this [in my opinion] is to simply let the user know that this is a mod app and now they are being logged. Let me know what do you think?” he added.

Even the most hardcore pirates in the world can’t fail to appreciate the irony here.

TVZion is an application that is designed to offer content that otherwise would cost a fee to access. Movie and TV studios all over the world are complaining that their stuff costs billions to make and pirates are undermining their business models. In some cases, these companies employ copyright trolls to log IP addresses with the aim of later punishing them.

And what we have here is a developer of a pirate application, complaining that his business model is being undermined by pirates, so the solutions should perhaps include logging their IP addresses with the aim of punishing them at a later point.

There can be no doubt that this developer has invested plenty of time and energy into what seems to be a very competent application that achieves its stated goals. That classic anti-piracy tactics are being discussed as a solution to protect revenues is ironic at best and mind-boggling at worst.

If we want to argue that the guy is justified in protecting his investment, we can do that. If we want to state he has every right to log the IP addresses of freeloaders taking his service for free, we can do that as well.

What we can’t do in parallel is criticize entertainment and anti-piracy companies for making the same case for logging infringers and taking subsequent action against them. Either taking other people’s content and monetizing it is fair game for all, or the entire house of cards comes tumbling down.

Although it’s impossible to say what is going on behind the scenes of the TVZion app, at least for now it appears that these suggestions haven’t been put into practice. Trouble is, once you talk about doing this kind of thing voluntarily to save a business model, what happens when the authorities come calling and action is required to save a skin?

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Every day millions of people post photos online, without approval from the rightsholder. This is particularly prevalent on social media platforms such as Facebook.

Many photographers don’t have the time or resources to go after these types of infringements, but some are clearly drawing a line in the sand.

This week, photographer Kristen Pierson filed a complaint against Facebook at a New York District Court. Pierson accuses the social media platform of hosting and displaying one of her works without permission.

Normally these issues are resolved with a DMCA takedown notice but in this case that didn’t work.

Last year, Pierson noticed that the Facebook account “Trusted Tech Tips” had used one of her works, a photo of Rhode Island politician Robert Nardolillo, without permission. When she requested Facebook to remove it, the company chose to leave it up instead.

“Hi-, Thanks for your report. Based on the information you’ve provided, it is not clear that the content you’ve reported infringes your copyright,” the Facebook representative wrote in reply.

“It appears that the content you reported is being used for the purposes of commentary or criticism. For this reason, we are unable to act on your report at this time.”

Facebook’s replyThe takedown notice was sent March last year and the post in question remains online at the time of writing, with the photo included. This prompted Pierson to file a complaint at a New York Federal Court this week accusing Facebook of copyright infringement.

According to the Rhode Island-based photographer, Facebook failed to comply with the takedown request and can’t rely on its safe harbor protection.

“Facebook did not comply with the DMCA procedure on taking the Photograph down. As a result, Facebook is not protected under the DMCA safe harbor as it failed to take down the Photograph from the Website,” the complaint reads.

The ‘infringing’ post (exhibit d)The short five-page complaint accuses Facebook of copyright infringement and Pierson requests compensation for the damages she suffered.

“Facebook infringed Plaintiff’s copyright in the Photograph by reproducing and publicly displaying the Photograph on the Website. Facebook is not, and has never been, licensed or otherwise authorized to reproduce, publically display, distribute and/or use the Photograph,” it reads.

The photographer is not new to these types of lawsuits. She has filed similar cases against other outlets such as Twitter. The latter case was eventually dismissed, likely after both parties reached an agreement.

In the present case, Pierson requests a trial by jury but it wouldn’t be a surprise if this matter is settled behind closed doors, away from the public eye.

—

A copy of the complaint against Facebook is available here (pdf).

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Since the turn of the decade, Austria has been grappling with the controversial issue of pirate site blocking.

While rights holders have long-insisted that blocking is an appropriate and proportionate response to large-scale infringement, local Internet service providers have remained unconvinced, despite many legal processes.

Last November, the Supreme Court finally ruled that The Pirate Bay and other “structurally-infringing” sites including 1337x.to can indeed be blocked, if rights holders have exhausted all other options. However, the decision wasn’t without complications.

The Telecom Single Market (TSM) Regulation established the principle of non-discriminatory traffic management in the EU. It does allow for the blocking of copyright-infringing websites but only when supported by a clear administrative or judicial decision.

However, rights holders have also written to ISPs in Austria demanding that they block sites that are potentially related to a blocked platform (such as a mirror or proxy) but aren’t specifically detailed in an official order.

Last January, this problem finally came to head when, after ‘voluntarily’ blocking several Pirate Bay clones, ISP T-Mobile reported itself to the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR) for a potential net neutrality breach. As reported by Tarnkappe, other providers including A1, Drei, Kabelplus, Liwest, and UPC later followed suit.

“The decision of the providers to self-disclose may seem surprising at first glance,” says Maximilian Schubert, Secretary General of Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA).

“However, this self-disclosure will hopefully open the eyes of many people entrusted with the topic of how unclear and almost worrying the situation is in this country.”

At issue is whether local ISPs are obliged to block ‘pirate’ sites following an informal request from rights holders and in the absence of an official order. It now transpires, thanks to pressure from the ISPs, that they do not have to block following such requests.

Telecoms regulator Telecom Control Commission will now get involved when a block is requested which will lead to a supervisory process and a full review by the agency. Informal blocking of domains following a simple request from rights holders is therefore ruled out.

“From ISPA’s point of view, this has sent another clear signal that network blocking constitutes a serious infringement of fundamental rights,” Schubert says.

“To rely on an informal system of ‘bartering’ in such a sensitive matter, as the rights holders have requested, is simply incompatible with the principles of a modern constitutional state. It is now up to the legislator, while respecting the fundamental rights concerned, to find a solution that takes account of the different interests.”

Moving forward, ISPA says that ISPs want an “independent judicial body” to confirm in advance the legality of any blocking while ensuring that a minimum of time and resources are expended on the blocking process.

“In addition, users need to be able to clearly understand why they are being blocked and thus have the opportunity to fight the block directly at the crucial point. Furthermore, the providers must be compensated for their costs and protected against any claims of third parties,” ISPA concludes.

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When it comes to civil anti-piracy enforcement, BREIN is without a doubt one of the best-known players in the industry.

The group, which receives support from Hollywood and other content industries, has shuttered hundreds of smaller sites in recent history and even took on the likes of Mininova and The Pirate Bay.

In 2018 BREIN continued these enforcement actions. Besides targeting pirate sites throughout the world, it also increased its focus on vendors that offer illegal IPTV subscriptions.

The group has just published a detailed overview of its accomplishments over the past 12 months. This provides clear insight into the group’s anti-piracy priorities and offers a glimpse of what to expect in the near future.

BREIN’s copyright enforcement actions cover a broad range of pirate avenues. Steaming may be the prime focus for Hollywood at the moment, but the anti-piracy group isn’t letting other outlets out of its sight.

“BREIN’s approach focuses on all forms of illegal supply, regardless of the technology used for it, such as bittorrent, cyberlockers and Usenet and websites or social media linking to it,” BREIN notes.

Looking at the numbers we see that the anti-piracy group is closing the books on a productive 12 months.

Over the past year, BREIN received hundreds of notices from rightsholders about problematic activity. It concluded a total of 511 investigations and 97 remain ongoing at the start of the new year.

Shutting down pirate sites is high on the agenda. BREIN says that it ‘dealt with’ 339 illegal websites and services. These include torrent sites, Usenet linking services, and cyberlockers. Some of the sites shut down completely and others were forced to leave their hosting providers.

BREIN’s resultsSpeaking with TorrentFreak, BREIN director Tim Kuik says a close eye will be kept on sites that continue to operate despite its efforts. These are candidates for further ISP blocking processes, which remain on the agenda for the coming years.

Last year the group achieved some additional results in its Pirate Bay blocking case. Following a ruling at Europe’s highest court, the local Pirate Bay blockade was expanded to several other Dutch ISPs. There are still some issues to resolve, but BREIN expects that the blockade will stand.

As mentioned in the past, BREIN also has vendors of pirate streaming boxes on its radar.  Last year, it convinced 79 vendors of copyright-infringing IPTV and VOD services to halt their sales.

In addition, BREIN also caught 17 prolific uploaders, removed 20 Facebook groups where infringing content was being shared, removed 1,291,384 search results, 12,470 files from cyberlockers, and took down 46,203 ads for illegal content.

In some cases, settlements were reached with the infringers. Last year, BREIN signed 31 agreements amounting to hundreds of thousands of euros in damages.

Looking ahead, BREIN plans to continue its enforcement efforts in the new year. Several years ago it announced plans to go after frequent seeders of pirated material. The group is still collecting IP-address data and hopes to launch the campaign in 2019.

2018 has been a special year for the anti-piracy group which also celebrated its 20th anniversary. For this special occasion it released some additional statistics, boasting its efforts.

Since its inception, BREIN has dealt with more than 41,000 websites, removed over 17 million search engine results, and targeted more than 6,000 online sellers of copyright infringing content, the group notes.

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In common with dozens of countries around the world, Singapore is struggling to contain the spread of piracy-configured set-top boxes.

Branded by industry as ‘ISDs’ (Illicit Streaming Devices), these products enable consumers to access a wide range of content – usually movies and TV shows – over the Internet without paying an associated fee.

The disruption caused by such devices, which often contain Kodi add-ons and software applications such as Showbox and Mobdro, is regularly criticized by industry players who feel that copyright legislation isn’t always in step with advances in technology.

In Singapore, such devices currently sit in a legal gray area but that position is set to change later this year with a range of proposed amendments to copyright law published Thursday by the government.

The product of a three-year review by the Ministry of Law and the Intellectual Property Office, the Copyright Review Report details measures to criminalize and impose civil penalties on those who make, import, or commercially distribute piracy-configured media devices.

While current law is capable of dealing with infringing items such as pirate DVDs, so-called ISDs contain no infringing movies or TV shows at the point of sale. The proposed amendments close this loophole, and then some.

“Our policy position is not to allow commercial gains derived from enabling access to content from unauthorized sources,” the review paper reads.

“A DVD may hold unauthorized content, while a set-top box which streams content may not hold the actual unauthorized content itself. However, we do not view this as a material difference.

While the proposals aim to prevent manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers from knowingly selling devices already set up to access infringing sources, they also claim to close a potential loophole.

In some cases, perhaps understanding the thin line between legal and illegal supply, some sellers of media boxes have supplied them without any piracy-enabling software installed.

Instead, they provide assistance or instruction to the customer on how these may be added at a later point, post-sale. In these cases, the intent and knowledge of the seller will be taken into account.

“[T]o incur liability, the retailer should have some degree of knowledge that the device in question can, and very likely will, be used to access content from a source that is not authorized by the rights-holder,” the proposals read.

This will cover people who sell boxes ready-configured, those who advertise their products for infringing purposes, and those who provide assistance to buyers in order to enable their devices for piracy.

So far, the proposals deal with device sellers but there are also those who do not sell devices but instead specialize in setting them up for piracy purposes. The proposals are also set to target people who, for a fee, add infringing capabilities to media devices by installing or providing software, such as Kodi add-ons and similar tools.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Neil Gane of the Asia Video Industry Association’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) says that the ISD problem is the most important copyright infringement issue in Singapore but dealing with it under current law is not straightforward.

“We are glad the government has recognized that this lack of legal clarity had allowed ISD retailers to mislead consumers that the content accessible through such TV boxes was legal and that requisite subscription charges went to rights-holders – which they did not,” Gane says.

“As such, we welcome the proposals to modify Singapore’s Copyright Act to better deal with this form of infringement. We are encouraged by the language in the Copyright Review Report which implies a concerted effort to clarify and ‘future proof’ the current copyright legislation.”

The full report can be viewed here (pdf)

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