Late 2018, authorities in the Philippines announced a new bill that, if passed, will attempt to tackle the ongoing piracy problem in the region.

In common with many other countries around the world, the Philippines is considering the introduction of site-blocking measures which would compel local Internet service providers to prevent access to named ‘pirate’ sites.

In most jurisdictions, where site-blocking is already underway, ISPs are compelled by court order/injunction to block sites following a legal process. However, the Philippines has a more aggressive mechanism in mind.

The bill, introduced by Senator Vicente “Tito” Castelo Sotto III , would “empower” the country’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to force local ISPs to take “reasonable steps to disable access to sites whenever these sites are reported to be infringing copyright or facilitating copyright infringement.”

However, should they not comply, they could be put out of business.

“If the recommendation of the IPO to cancel the license of the ISP is proper and meritorious, the Commission shall facilitate the prompt cancellation of the license of the ISP,” the bill reads.

While this kind of threat wouldn’t normally be welcomed by providers, Globe Telecom, one of the Philippines’ largest operators of mobile, fixed line, and broadband Internet, is giving the bill its full backing.

“The economic and social impact of online piracy is profound,” Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu said in a statement.

“Revenue loss are in millions and thousands of jobs are affected due to a myriad of illegal streaming websites and illicit streaming devices or ISDs [llicit Streaming Devices].

“More importantly, these illegal sites and devices put customers at risk not only because of its content but specifically, malware. Globe will continue to support efforts that will help stop online piracy,” he added.

While ISPs coming out against piracy is a growing trend (take Canada, for example), baking harsh punishments against them into law is new. However, since Cu recently joined the Board of Directors of the Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA), which is a hub for anti-piracy enforcement, the move shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Neil Gane, General Manager of AVIA’s Coalition Against Piracy, is also a supporter of the proposed legislation, which centers on the blocking of pirate sites through an administrative process and tackling the growing problem of piracy-configured set-top devices.

“There is no silver bullet to deterring online piracy,” Gane said in a statement.

“What is required is a holistic solution to include consumer outreach, cooperation with technology platforms and other intermediaries, enforcement, and critically, capability to disable access to egregious piracy websites through effective site blocking.

“AVIA’s Coalition Against Piracy welcomes the Philippine Online Infringement Bill, which, if passed, will provide an important building block for the Philippine content industry to tackle online piracy,” he added.

Back in 2013, the Philippines found itself at the center of a high-profile copyright dispute when it ordered the seizure of a .ph registered domain belonging to the now-defunct torrent giant KickassTorrents.

In response, however, the site simply changed to another domain, a tactic that is clearly still remembered by the architects of this new site-blocking bill.

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Pirate sites come in all shapes and sizes but streaming site KinoX is perhaps one of the most controversial.

Born as a replacement to Kino.to, a site that was targeted as part of a massive EU-wide raid in 2011, KinoX quickly grew to become a streaming giant in its own right. As recently as July 2018, the site was pulling in around 13 million visits per month, according to SimilarWeb stats.

Since then, traffic has tanked, to the point in December where the site’s main domain had less than three million visits per month, up from ‘just’ a million a month earlier. That being said, the site does have a huge number of alternative domains, so it’s certainly possible much more traffic is being diverted through those.

This week, in a surprise turn of events, KinoX was put up for sale on eBay. The sale, spotted by Tarnkappe on the auction platform’s German-facing page, indicated that the seller was trying to offload the project due to time constraints.

“I am selling my project (Kinox.to) + website, server & other domains. Since I have no time left for the project,” the auction listing read.

“The project will be sent by e-mail with all access data to the web space, login panel, server, domains etc.”

The attempted sale raises a number of important questions, not least whether the seller is actually the owner of KinoX and does indeed have access to the ‘goods’ he claimed to be selling.

The listing indicated that potential buyers can complete the transaction “anonymously via Bitcoins” but interestingly the seller also said he would accept PayPal.

While the crypto option might sound attractive, buyers wouldn’t get the same protections offered by PayPal. Whether the US-based payment processor would be keen to mediate a dispute over an incorrectly described/supplied ‘pirate’ site is seriously open to debate, however.

While the listing now appears to have been removed from eBay, possibly following an industry complaint, it wouldn’t be a stretch to state that KinoX has one of the most controversial histories of any ‘pirate’ site.

In October 2014, police in Germany announced they had launched a manhunt for two brothers said to be responsible for founding the site, accusing them of being potentially armed and dangerous.

In 2015, a former operator of the platform was sentenced to 40 months in prison but more recently, the site – which is still functioning – has been targeted in other ways.

Following a complaint from a German movie distribution company, in 2018 Internet provider Vodafone was ordered to block its subscribers from accessing Kinox.to. This was the first pirate site blocking order of its kind in Germany and will have affected direct traffic to the streaming portal.

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The Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright (BCBC) is a lobbying group which includes Canada’s largest ISPs Bell, Rogers, and Shaw, as well as Google.

The coalition doesn’t have a web presence but, behind the scenes, it’s making sure that the interests of its members are shared when major legislative changes are on the agenda.

This is currently the case. Canada is working on a Statutory Review of the Copyright Act, and together with more than a hundred other stakeholders, BCBC submitted several recommendations.

One of the items high on the agenda are the copyright notices which rightsholders send to ISPs. Millions of these are processed by ISPs every month, and they are obliged to forward them to their customers.

This notice-and-notice system caused quite a controversy, as some companies abused the system to send threatening settlement demands. This practice was outlawed with the recent passing of C-86 but BCBC believes that additional changes are required.

Under BCBC’s umbrella, the ISPs state that they are happy with the update, but they note that there’s no deterrent to stop rightsholders from sending settlement requests. Instead, the burden of excluding settlement demands rests with them, they argue.

“Bill C-86 makes it clear that ISPs will not be required to forward settlement demands to subscribers. However, the amendments contain no useful deterrent to dissuade rights holders or claimants from including settlement demands in their copyright notices.

“The onus for excluding settlement demands from copyright notices must rest solely with rights owners,” BCBC’s submission adds.

The group doesn’t give any concrete pointers on how to address the situation, but a fine or other punishment for those who continue to send settlement requests seems most logical.

The ISPs also highlight another problem. They are currently receiving millions of piracy notices per month, in many different formats. To process these requests more easily, they call for a notice standard so they can be processed automatically.

“ISPs are currently receiving millions of notices per month and
there is no way for these notices to be manually processed. Large ISPs have to adopt automated systems to process and forward the volume of notices they are receiving,” the submission reads.

The idea for a standardized notice template is not new. ISPs and members of the movie industry previously agreed on a standard computer readable format, ACNS, which is publicly available.

BCBC hopes that the Canadian Government will embrace this standard, not only to lower the costs for ISPs, but also to shield Internet users from receiving non-compliant piracy warnings.

“The Government should use its existing authority to enact regulations requiring that notices be submitted electronically in a form that is based on the ACNS 2.0. Mandating the use of these standards will eliminate the risk of ISPs forwarding non-compliant notices,” BCBC recommends. 

Aside from piracy notices, BCBC also touches on pirate site blocking. It is no surprise that the major ISPs are not against such measures, as last year’s site-blocking push revealed.

In their current recommendation, they don’t call for site blocking without a court order. However, they do stress that, if a court issues a blocking order, the CRTC should not be able to stop it from being implemented.

“The BCBC finds it unacceptable that an ISP could be ordered by a Court to block access to an infringing internet service and prohibited by the CRTC from complying with that Court Order.

“A telecommunications services provider should never have to choose between complying with a lawful Court Order and complying with theTelecommunications Act. This conflict must be resolved in favor of the Court Order,” the group adds.

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A copy of the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright’s  Submission to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology regarding the Statutory Review of the Copyright Act is available here (pdf).

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The major entertainment industry companies are waging a war against illicit streaming devices, with Kodi add-ons at the center of attention.

The Kodi software itself is perfectly legal, but many third-party add-ons complement it to offer access to pirated movies, TV-shows, and live-streaming.

The addons in question can be found of a variety of sites and repositories. Some are blatantly offering pirated content, but it’s not always clear what’s permitted and what’s not.

TVAddons, a popular repository of third-party Kodi addons, used to offer many problematic add-ons. This lead to lawsuits in both the US and Canada, after which the company cleaned up its site and tightened its policies.

However, that doesn’t mean that rightsholders are happy with all content on the site. This week CBS sent a takedown notice to TVAddons through Incorporate Now, requesting the site to remove three allegedly infringing addons.

The addons in question, developed by mhancoc7, offered access to live streams of CBS programming such as CBS News, CBS Sports, and Entertainment Tonight, without permission.

One of the CBS AddonsTVAddons never saw these Kodi addons as copyright infringements. However, CBS clearly disagrees.

“We have a good faith belief that this material is not authorized by CBS, its agents or the law. Such copying and use of this material constitutes clear infringement of the CBS’s copyrights under the Copyright Act and its counterpart laws around the world,” the takedown notice reads.

In addition, CBS also requested to count the infringements as strikes under TVAddons’ repeat infringer policy, and disable the developer’s account if appropriate.

CBS’s takedown notice

While TVAddons says that it doesn’t see the addons in question as infringing, it doesn’t want to pick a fight with CBS, so it complied with the removal request within an hour. Striking the developer goes a step too far though, TVAddons informed CBS.

“However, do not feel that this merits any strikes on our repeat-infringer policy, as it was not copyright infringement. The script was simply scraping content from your own public web site,” a TVAddons representative replied.

TVAddons replyTorrentFreak spoke to a TVAddons representative who notes that the add-ons accessed content that was made freely available by CBS through its official website. Therefore they don’t see it as infringing.

“The only difference is that the user wouldn’t be exposed to 50 nonconsensual privacy violating trackers while using Kodi,” the TVAddons representative says.

Whether these kinds of addons are copyright infringing is up to a court to decide. We expect that CBS wants to control where their content appears. Ideally, that’s through their official website, where they can monetize it.

TVAddons has enough legal worries already, so it chose to comply despite its objections. The developer also removed the addons from GitHub.

“We can’t afford to fight more lawsuits right now, so we had no choice but to comply even though we don’t necessarily agree with their assessment that it’s copyright infringement. It’s at most a trademark violation for using the CBS name in the add-on title,” TVAddons’ representative notes.

This is the second takedown notice which resulted in add-ons being removed after the site relaunched two years ago. The first complaint came from Plex, which requested the removal of  MK Plex, an unofficial Plex interface.

TVAddons further banned more than a dozen addons and developers pre-emptively.

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With tens of millions of active Kodi media player users around the globe, there is a thirst for information on how to utilize the open source software.

As a result, dozens of websites and blogs have appeared to fill this niche, many of them dedicated to tips, tutorials, and news on the latest add-ons and developments.

Founded in 2015, KodiTips.com is one of the most popular, with more than a million visitors every month. The site was created to fill a gap in the market, its operator informs TorrentFreak.

“At the time, there wasn’t a lot of tutorials and how-to guides for Kodi add-ons and hardware. The site’s original and continuing message is to offer guides on how to understand and setup Kodi, and to clarify what Kodi is vs what it isn’t (doesn’t host content, addons only scrape content hosted by others, etc), ” he explains.

KodiTips is certainly comprehensive, regularly publishing details on all the major add-ons while posting changelogs to keep visitors informed. On Thursday, however, the site lost access to its Facebook page following a copyright infringement complaint.

“We removed or disabled access to the following content you posted on Facebook because we received a notice from a third party that the content infringes their copyright(s),” a message from Facebook declared.

What is a little surprising about Facebook’s notice is that it does not detail any specific infringing content, listing only “Page: Kodi Tips – Android TV, Amazon Fire Help” and “Copyrighted Work: Other” as the allegedly infringing content.

Predicatably, the platform doesn’t seem keen to get involved in the argument either.

“Facebook isn’t in a position to adjudicate disputes between third parties. If you believe this content shouldn’t have been removed from Facebook, you can contact the complaining party directly to resolve your issue,” the notice reads.

The takedown notice, reviewed by TF, lists the “rights owner” as Sky while offering an email address often used by the company to deal with infringement disputes. We aren’t publishing it in full but the address has been in use for years, often in complaints filed against allegedly-infringing users of eBay.

This isn’t the first time that KodiTips has had its Facebook page taken down following an infringement complaint. Back in July 2018, the site lost its original page following a similar complaint, losing 80,000 subscribers in the process. Luckily, it still has more than 70,000 followers on Twitter.

The operator of KodiTips informs TF that he doesn’t intend to contest the takedown, branding it a waste of “time and energy”. He also confirms that Sky has never contacted him before, with the same being true for other anti-piracy groups such as the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

Given the controversial nature of some third-party Kodi add-ons, copyright complaints in connection with them certainly don’t come as a surprise. However, to the best of KodiTips’ operator’s knowledge, he has never infringed Sky’s copyrights via his tutorials and know-how.

Thanks to the super-vague notice from Facebook, he remains in the dark.

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