As mentioned a few days ago, every year thousands of people are sued in the United States for online file-sharing, mostly through BitTorrent.

The bulk of these cases are filed by two adult content producers, which are often referred to as “copyright trolls” or “porno trolls,” specifying the nature of their works.

These companies target people whose connections were allegedly used to download and share infringing videos, in the hope of obtaining a significant financial settlement.

While many of the defendants may have done the deed, quite a few of the accused Internet subscribers have done nothing wrong. This is also what a John Doe, known by the IP-address 73.225.38.130, argued in a recent court filing in a federal court in Seattle, Washington.

The defendant in question was sued over a year ago by Strike 3 Holdings,  but he isn’t planning on settling. Instead, as the case progressed, the still unnamed man went on the offensive, helped by major law firm Fox Rothschild.

As it turns out, the adult company picked a fight with a 70+-year-old retired police officer. Following some initial pushback in court, Strike 3 Holdings was ready to let the case go. The company filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss all claims in August, but the “ex-cop” wasn’t willing to let them.

There were still several counterclaims pending and the defendant has built up a significant legal bill, which he doesn’t plan on paying himself. Instead, he wants to be found innocent and accuses the copyright holder of abuse of process. These counterclaims could go all the way up to trial.

With the tables turned, the retired policeman submitted amended counterclaims to the court last week, accusing the rightsholder of being engaged in a “perverse litigation campaign” against hundreds of defendants.

Strike 3 accused him of sharing dozens of copyrighted videos, but the man argues that he has never even heard of them.

“John Doe is a retired police officer in his 70’s. He has been married for over 40 years. Until he was sued by S3H, John Doe had never heard of the pornographic websites: ‘Blacked’, ‘Vixen’, or ‘Tushy’. John Doe does not know who downloaded these movies,” the document reads.

The man seeks a declaration of non-infringement, but also accuses the adult content producer of copyright misuse and abuse of process.

“John Doe, an ex-cop, seeks affirmative relief that he did not infringe the works at issue, that the works are unenforceable under the doctrine of copyright misuse, and that litigation model itself is actionable under the common law of abuse of process,“ the filing reads.

“What is clear is that the S3H litigation model is not what it claims, to protect itself from copyright infringement, rather S3H has a business model to use the court system to extract income using ‘sue and settle’ without resorting to the far less costly provisions provided under the DMCA.”

From the filing

The copyright misuse claims were dismissed previously, but Judge Thomas Zilly kept the counterclaims for a declaration of non-infringement and abuse of process alive. 

According to the attorneys of the former policeman, there is no real legal dispute with Strike 3’s lawsuits, but “only a scheme to extort.”

The accused file-sharer argues that Strike 3 has filed hundreds of lawsuits, but if it was really interested in enforcing its rights, it would also use DMCA notices to alert ISPs and their customers of any infringing activity.

“S3H’s intentional failure to send DMCA notices to the ISP addresses of alleged John Doe defendants evidences an ulterior purpose to accomplish an object not within the proper scope of the process: extortion through sham litigation,” the filing reads.

“Filing a lawsuit with no intention of litigating evidences an ulterior purpose to accomplish an object not within the proper scope of process: extortion through sham litigation,” it adds.

Based on these and other arguments, the former policeman wants the adult production company to be held accountable for abuse of process. In addition, it also requests the declaration of non-infringement, with all fees and legal costs being compensated.

The court has yet to rule on the requests but it appears that the retired policeman has the upper hand, as Strike 3 previously indicated that they are willing to let the case go.

Whether the court will grant summary judgment, or if the case will be resolved through an alternative route, possibly a trial, has yet to be seen.

This case is not the only setback for the adult content producer either. In several recent cases the company was requested to provide “something more” than an IP-address as evidence of alleged infringement.

In addition, the IP-address geo-location tools which are crucial in these cases remain controversial as well. Just last month, a California federal court dismissed a request for an ISP subpoena, as there wasn’t sufficient evidence that an IP-address was tied to the court’s jurisdiction.

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A copy of the second amended counterclaims is available here (pdf).

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

Section 115a of Australia’s Copyright Act allows copyright holders to apply for injunctions to force ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing ‘pirate’ sites.

The legislation has been used on many occasions, mainly by movie industry players, to have “overseas locations” (aka ‘pirate’ sites) blocked by local Internet service providers.

Last year it was significantly upgraded to tackle mirrors and proxies more effectively, restrict the appearance of blocked sites in Google search, and introduce the possibility of blocking ‘dual-use’ cyberlocker-type sites.

The idea is that making such sites more difficult to access will cause pirates to spend more on legitimate content. While clear evidence of that rarely figures in industry statements in favor of blocking, it is abundantly clear that such restriction is viewed as a valuable anti-piracy tool.

In December, Australia’s Federal Court issued an injunction in favor of Village Roadshow, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia, Universal, and Warner, requiring local ISPs to block 181 pirate domains linked to 78 ‘sites’, including several dedicated to subtitles.

Soon after, it now transpires, the same companies (plus Australian distributor Madman) were back again with a new application to block 79 “online locations” associated with 99 domains. A full list, as obtained by ComputerWorld, which first reported the news, is detailed at the end of this article.

Should the injunction be granted (and there’s no indication there will be any objections based on the sites and their modus operandi) Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG, Vodafone, plus their subsidiaries, will be required to prevent their subscribers from accessing the platforms.

After targeting KickassTorrents and various mirrors and proxies for blocking back in 2016, Australian music companies have also filed a new injunction application with the Federal Court.

Music Rights Australia, backed by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), Sony Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music, are requesting a block of several stream-ripping services. The list of sites is not yet publicly available. (Update: CW has obtained the list, it’s detailed at the bottom of this article)

These platforms, which are often web-based affairs, allow users to ‘rip’ (download) music from streaming sites such as YouTube, in order to store tracks on their own machines. This practice is considered copyright infringement by the labels and one of the main threats to their business models.

“These no fault injunctions are used to block the worst of the illegal sites which undermine the local and international music industry,” a spokesperson from Music Rights Australia told Computerworld.

“We use this effective and efficient no fault remedy to block the illegal sites which undermine the many licensed online services which give music fans the music they love where, when and how they want to hear it.”

This first-of-its-kind action in Australia against overseas-based stream-ripping services is perhaps inevitable given the attention these platforms are attracting in other regions.

In July 2018, following legal action carried out by Rights Alliance on behalf of music industry group IFPI, Convert2MP3 was declared unlawful by a Danish court, with local ISPs ordered to block the platform.

While this was the first time anywhere in the world that a so-called stream-ripping site had been declared illegal, the music industry has successfully targeted similar platforms in the past.

Back in 2016, YouTube-MP3, at the time the world’s largest YouTube-ripping site, was sued in the United States by IFPI, RIAA, and BPI. However, that ended in a settlement agreement rather than a full trial, so the case was never decided on the merits.

More recently, a case filed in Germany by Sony Music against MusicMonster.fm ended with a declaration that the service cannot rely on the private copying exception so is both unlicensed and illegal. Nevertheless, the site is still available today.

Meanwhile, major labels including Universal, Warner Bros, and Sony, are embroiled in legal action in the US against Russia-based stream-ripping sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com. The operator of those sites has already indicated a desire to fight back.

The list of domains in the Australian movie studio application, via CW, is as follows:

01torrent.net
1movies.nl
1movies.biz
1movies.pl
1movies.ch
1movies.is
300mbfilms.co
9putlocker.io
afdah.info
afdah.to
arawatch.video
cafehulu.com
cartoonson.tv
cartoonsons.com
dafreetv.net
tvdafree.com
filmlinks4u.is
gamatotv.co
gamatotv.me
gostream.site
greekmovies.com
iomovies.to
kat.tv
monova.to
2movierulz.com
movierulz.ht
movierulz.gd
movierulz.pl
movierulzfree.me
moviewatcher.is
moviewatcher.io
o2tvseries.com
onlinemoviewatch.org
onlinemoviewatch.to
openloadmovies.net
otorrents.com
putlocker0.com
putlockerr.is
putlockers.co
putlockers.movie
putlockers.net
putlockers.tf
putlockers.id
putlockers.tv
putlockertv.ac
putlockerstv.se
putlockertv.ist
putlockertv.to
rainierland.is
scr.cr
seehd.pl
series9.io
solarmoviex.to
speed.cd
seriestop.online
srstop.online
streamlord.com
swatchseries.to
tamilyogi.nu
tamilyogi.fm
tamilyogi.cc
toonova.net
toptvshows.co
torrenting.com
tt.smallfoot.me
torrentking.eu
torrentking.to
torrentking.site
torrentleech.org
torrentwal.net
torrentyeah.com
twomovies.name
uwatchfree.online
uwatchfree.se
uwatchfree.tv
watchcartoonsonline.la
vtv16.com
watchonline.red
woohay.com
xpau.se
yify.is
yifyhdtorrent.com
ymovies.tv
anime1.com
animedao.com
Animeheaven.eu
animehub.ac
animeland.us
animeland.cc
animepahe.com
animerush.tv
chia-anime.tv
dubbedanime.net
horriblesubs.info
hotanime.me
justdubs.org
justdubsanime.net
kickassanime.io
nwanime.tv
toonget.net

The list of domains in the Australian music companies’ application, via CW, is detailed below. It dovetails perfectly with platforms already subject to legal action or blocking in other regions, as detailed in the above article.

2conv.com
Flv2mp3.by
Flv2mp3.com
Flv2mp3.org
Convert2mp3.net
Flvto.biz
Flvto.com

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

Millions of Internet video consumers favor the open source media player Kodi for its long history and unparalleled flexibility.

While perfectly at home playing legitimate content, the tool can also be configured, via third-party addons, to act as a powerful piracy tool.

This has led to Kodi being dragged into all kinds of controversies, none of which the official development team encourage or relish. Nevertheless, when a headline features the word ‘Kodi’ these days, trouble is rarely far behind.

The latest installment raised its head during the past few days, when the official Kodi team took to Twitter to berate electronics giant Sony. Owners of some of Sony’s latest Android-based TVs had complained of installation issues when attempting to deploy Kodi on their hardware and the feeling was that Sony wasn’t playing fair.

After various tests, the Kodi team felt that Android Oreo wasn’t playing a part, since the NVIDIA SHIELD runs on the same Android variant. Only adding to the suspicions were tests carried out by Kodi enthusiasts that suggested that Sony might be blocking Kodi’s Package ID.

Indeed, more detailed testing this week seemed to back up that claim, after members of the Kodi team ‘faked’ their Package ID and found that overcame the problem on Sony’s hardware.

TorrentFreak originally contacted Sony for an explanation but the company would only tell us that they do not curate apps and does not have the ability to block them. Since the statement was fairly vague we followed up with more questions and although they still weren’t directly addressed, the company has now provided an explanation.

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” Sony Electronics told TF.

“After looking into the issue further, we’ve discovered a software issue on our end that is incorrectly classifying Kodi as a kernel object (‘ko’). We are working on a fix for this issue to include in our next software update,” the company added.

TorrentFreak shared the comments with the Kodi development team who appear skeptical of Sony’s explanation and have asked for additional details on the company’s “classification” algorithm.

“The real fun thing is: Just changing the PACKAGE_ID is proven to be enough [to solve the issue], so that this ‘classification’ won’t happen anymore,” says Peter Frühberger.

“Furthermore, the Fun-Fact: As we have shown, creating a different APK, not Kodi-related, but with the very same PACKAGE_ID Kodi had, causes the same issue.

“To be honest – as someone that did PHD studies with pattern classifications and data mining, this sounds really, really odd. I doubt this explanation, but if it’s true – their classificator most likely sucks,” Frühberger added.

While there will probably be much additional debate over Sony’s explanation, it does appear that Kodi won’t be blocked forever on the company’s smart TVs, which is probably the end result both the Kodi team and its users had hoped for.

TorrentFreak’s additional questions, concerning Sony’s promotion of Kodi on its website last year (which was later removed), remain unanswered.

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

Tens years ago India only had about five million broadband subscribers. Today, there are close to half a billion.

This massive increase has left its mark on society, and as we envisioned at the time, it proved to be a growth market for pirates as well.

The high online piracy rates are a problem, but offline there are issues too. As it turns out, many of the camcorded movie leaks that appear on pirate sites originate from Indian movie theaters.

This presents a problem for both Bollywood and Hollywood, both of which have repeatedly argued that current copyright legislation is not properly equipped to deal with the problem.

“The Indian Government should swiftly enact legislative amendments to outlaw unauthorized recording of all or part of an audiovisual work in a cinema,” MPAA noted just recently. 

The US Trade Representative also highlighted this issue in its most recent Special 301 Report, noting that proposed amendments to the Cinematograph Act have stalled for several years.

Whether this outside pressure had an effect or not, the Indian Government is now proposing a new amendment to the Cinematograph Act to target unauthorized copying in theaters. As a result, camcording pirates may soon face jail time and hefty fines.

The proposal suggests putting a maximum prison sentence of three years on unauthorized recording audio or video footage at a movie theater. In addition, there’s a maximum fine of Rs.10 Lakhs, which is roughly $14,000.

The amendment in question reads as follows:

“Notwithstanding any law for the time being in force including any provision of the Copyright Act, 1957, any person who, during the exhibition of an audiovisual work, cinematographic in an exhibition facility used to exhibit cinematograph films or audiovisual recordings and without the written authorization of the copyright owner, uses any audiovisual recording device to knowingly make or transmit or attempt to make or transmit or abet the making or transmission of a copy or visual recording or sound recording embodying a cinematograph film or audiovisual recording or any part thereof or a copy of sound recording accompanying such cinematograph film or audiovisual recording or any part thereof during subsistence of copyright in such cinematograph film or sound recording, shall be punishable with imprisonment not exceeding three years and shall also be liable to fine not exceeding Rs.10 Lakhs, or to a term of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or both.”

The draft legislation has yet to pass but major players in the movie industry are happy with the announcement.

Uday Singh, managing director of the MPA’s Motion Picture Distributors Association (MPAA-India),  says that the camcording amendment will put India on par with other countries that already have similar measures.

“Most countries in the world either have a law or some kind of a provision that covers camcording. It is a welcome move. We used to see a lot of leaks in the supply chain in this area. I think that this is one more step towards plugging that leak,” Singh notes, quoted by Television Post.

While there is not yet a fully-fledged anti-camcording law, there hasn’t been a shortage of arrests. Indian law enforcement has taken steps against unauthorized recording in theaters on several occasions.

This even led to the arrests of several, presumably innocent, theater owners. The Indian Film Exhibitors Association recently called on the Madras High Court to put a halt to these overbroad crackdowns.

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

ARIN may not be well known to the wider public, but it provides a crucial service which affects the Internet at large.

One of the main tasks of the non-profit organization is to distribute crucial Internet number resources, including IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, and AS numbers.

These numbers are not directly allocated to individual end-users. They typically go to large companies including Google and Amazon, Internet registrars, as well as ISPs such as AT&T, Comcast, Bell, and Rogers.

For several decades these companies have maintained a voluntary Whois database, keeping track of customers assigned a large block of IP-numbers. Not the average Joe’s Internet connection, but a large university, or a hosting provider, for example.

In a letter sent to the Canadian Government as part of the Statutory Review of the Copyright Act, ARIN stresses that the Whois database is an important copyright enforcement tool.

“When copyright infringing material or other illicit content is found online, Whois is often the first point of investigation of the source,” ARIN writes.

“Law enforcement agencies and private parties with a legal interest can access the Whois database either in accordance with the registrar’s policies, or under judicial order.”

Until recently, this Whois database was kept in place by ARIN through a “carrot” and “stick” approach. Companies would regularly come back to request new IP-addresses (carrot), and ARIN would only allocate this if the Whois database was properly maintained (stick).

This has worked fine for over thirty years, but the American non-profit fears that their “stick” may no longer be as effective now things are moving to IPv6.

Since the IPv4 address pool is exhausted, companies are moving to IPv6 addresses, which are widely available. This means that these companies may not have to return to ARIN for years.

Without this pressure, these companies may neglect the Whois database, the organization fears.

“ISPs and others will be able to request large blocks IPv6 numbers and may not need to return to ARIN for replenishment for several years. As a result, ARIN will no longer have a mechanism to require compliance with maintaining up to date records of IP dispersals,” the organization writes.

“As no other regulatory or other mechanisms exist that would require this information be updated and preserved, it is likely that many organizations will rarely or never do so.”

ARIN fears that without a proper Whois database, rogue players could “wreak havoc.” That will make it harder to investigate and stop copyright infringement, as well as other illegal activity.

As such, the organization is asking the Canadian Government to “require” companies and ISPs that receive large blocks of numbers to “maintain an up-to-date registry of the assignment of internet numbers.”

In addition, the Government shoulds take legislative or regulatory action to ensure that companies which can assign internet numbers to third parties have a legal duty to keep the Whois database up to date.

ARIN recommendations

This is the first time we’ve seen ARIN getting involved in copyright enforcement discussions at this level. It will be interesting to see how their request will be received.

Whether all 5,896 ARIN members stand behind the request is doubtful. Milton Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy and a former ARIN advisory committee member, believes that it’s a bad idea to fragment these kinds of policies on a country-to-country basis.

Mueller also questions whether most ARIN members stand behind the submission, which was apparently sent in without consulting the organization’s broader base.

“I think ARIN’s community would be shocked to see its staff inviting national governments to regulate them without any discussion or vetting of this idea within the community,” he informed The Wire Report.

Copyright holders in the United States and abroad will likely welcome the proposal though. For them, Whois data has been a hot topic over the past several months.

In addition to the IP-address allocation data, rightsholders are also concerned about the domain name Whois data, which many companies obscured following the implementation of the GDPR, the EU’s new privacy regulation.

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A copy of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology can be found here (pdf).

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