Johnny English Strikes Again 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.
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Increasingly, people are cancelling their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper or niche-based Internet TV instead.
While there are plenty of legal options available, there’s also a broad offer of easy-to-use set-top boxes which are specifically configured to receive pirated content.
These pirate IPTV boxes are often sold bundled with a monthly or yearly subscription. This created an industry worth more than a billion dollars worldwide, perhaps even more.
Canadian broadband management company Sandvine recently put a spotlight on this activity, revealing how popular these boxes are. The company gathered data in 16 states and provinces in the US and Canada, monitoring traffic across multiple fixed access tier-1 networks.
Following an analysis of the data, the company was able to pinpoint how many households were accessing pirate IPTV networks. It’s a revisit of a similar study last year which found that 6.5% of the households used illegitimate subscription-based services.
The new results are somewhat lower. Sandvine reports that 5.5% of households could be linked to pirate IPTV subscriptions but this doesn’t mean that interest is waning.
The most recent study looked at a broader and more diverse population than before. Last year’s sample was concentrated in urban areas with a population over a million, which skewed the findings.
The recent study shows that 7.3% of the households in high-density urban areas have pirate IPTV subscriptions, compared to 4.3% in lower populated areas. This means that the overall reach may have actually grown.
US/Canada households accessing pirated live television services
The findings clearly show that pirate TV subscriptions are more popular in big cities, which is an interesting fact in itself.
“There is a huge variability in the demographics of those using pirated video services from region to region,” Sandvine’s Veroljub Mihajlovic notes.
The scope of the activity also remains intriguing. As previously revealed, pirate IPTV traffic generated more bandwidth than many other piracy tools and services, such as BitTorrent.
Also, it doesn’t even factor in other types of set-top box piracy, such as pirate boxes that access OTT streaming sites to play movies and TV-series “on demand.” This means that the overall piracy box landscape is even larger.
All in all it is safe to conclude that IPTV piracy makes up a large part of the pirate ecosystem. This hasn’t gone unnoticed to copyright holders of course. Over the past year, we have seen enforcement actions against several providers and if this trend continues, more are likely to follow.
On December 12, the US Department of Justice revealed that a federal grand jury had indicted five men in four countries on charges that they distributed or offered for sale hundreds of movies and TV shows in advance of their official release.
While none of the men has yet to be proven guilty in a court of law, the details revealed thus far indicate that this could be one of the biggest piracy prosecutions in recent memory.
The background to the case can be found here, but it’s alleged that the five men illegally accessed servers belonging to movie production and distribution companies, grabbed movies and TV shows, and then sold and/or distributed them online.
No one needs to have it pointed out to them that this is a seriously risky business. Given that much of the content was also pre-release material, the sweat levels should have been rising at a ridiculous rate. However, if the allegations are to be believed, many crazy errors of judgment led to the men’s demise.
First of all, it’s alleged that the men used a number of aliases. This is common in the online space but it appears at least two were seriously short of ideas. One of the men, named by the DoJ as Sam Nhance, reportedly used the alias ‘Sam NhaNc3’. Another, Jitesh Jadhav, used the alias ‘Jadhav’.
While these aliases could’ve done with a bit more thought, it’s the financial aspects of the indictment that provide the most eyebrow-raises.
It’s alleged that at least some of the defendants – Aditya Raj, Sam Nhance, Ghobhirajah Selvarajah, Jitesh Jadhav, and Malik Luqman Farooq – used a PayPal account registered in Selvarajah’s name. This account was allegedly used to accept payments when the defendants sold pirated movies and to pay for the server where the content was hosted.
While this is a big enough error in itself (PayPal is an easily accessible US company), the indictment weaves many threads together when it reveals how other defendants were allegedly prepared to link their own finances in.
For example, on July 31, 2013, its claimed that Farooq transferred his own money into the PayPal account to pay for a server. During August, he allegedly sold a ‘cammed’ copy of The Smurfs 2, not to Joe Public, but to an undercover investigator hired by the MPAA.
It’s further alleged that a year later, Farooq transferred part of the funds from the sale of “The Amazing SpiderMan 2” from the shared PayPal account mentioned above to his very own PayPal account.
Not long later, Jadhav allegedly got paid his share of the money following the sale of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” from the same shared PayPal account. Only adding to the mounting evidence, Farooq allegedly responded to complaints that he hadn’t been contributing to payments for the group’s server by sending money to the shared account from his own PayPal account.
There are numerous other examples of super-risky PayPal transactions, with some involving Farooq’s own account following the sale of pirated movies to the investigator. At least one of the defendants was happy to transfer money from the main PayPal account into his own bank account.
Rounding things off in a manner that seems fitting given the above disasters, it’s further alleged that the group’s server was rented from OVH in defendant Raj’s own name.
As pointed out earlier, the men are yet to be tried on the basis of the claims in the indictment. Indeed, to date only Farooq has been arrested (in the UK) and the others are all supposedly at large in India, UAE, and Malaysia.
Maybe this physical distance from the United States proved a factor in the attitudes of the men. It’s certainly possible that these kinds of alleged offenses are considered less important in these parts of the world than they are in Europe and the US. That being said, Farooq – a UK resident – should have been aware of the current climate.
The moral of the story though (if there is one) is that selling copies of copyrighted works in the manner alleged in the indictment is likely to end not only in disaster, but also in a beautifully convenient paper trail that ties everything together in a nice little package.
YouTube’s copyright enforcement is a growing source of frustration, with many creators complaining about overbroad takedown efforts.
The protests have become more vocal in recent months, even though the issues themselves are far from new.
We first signaled problems with YouTube’s Content-ID system more than seven years ago. Since then, many examples have followed.
Most of these are the result of overbroad flagging, where YouTube finds a copyright match where it shouldn’t. The filters have previously flagged randomly generated audio, for example, or bird chatter.
This week we stumbled upon a video with 50 hours of rain sounds which has been flagged by no less than five separate rightsholders. Admittedly, the rain in the video sounds very familiar, as does most rain, but it clearly is unique.
While some mistakes are expected to happen, things only seem to be getting worse. Over the past several days alone, dozens of new examples of YouTube copyright problems have appeared. Many of these were brought to the forefront by creators themselves.
Last week the popular musician TheFatRat found out that ‘someone’ had claimed his own song as theirs, effectively diverting the ad-revenue to someone else. For a song with millions of views, that’s not a trivial issue.
Kidding?
YouTube does allow users to file a “dispute,” which TheFatRat did. However, the claimant rejected it. The musician could appeal the claim but YouTube warned that he would then risk a strike. If that fails, there’s another appeal option at which point it enters DMCA territory.
If a Content-ID claim is appealed the claimant will have to file a regular takedown request. This will result in a strike. The YouTube account holder can then file a counter-notice and if the claimant doesn’t file a lawsuit within two weeks, the video is eventually restored.
That’s quite a hassle, to say the least.
What doesn’t help is that YouTube keeps referring to false claimants as the “copyright owners”. This also happened to Dan Bull, who was hit with a similar false claim last week.
I’m right.
It’s not always clear where the problem lies. In TheFatrat’s case, his song was reportedly infringing a track from Andres Galvis, who apparently doesn’t know Power Records LLC or Ramjets, which YouTube lists as the claimant.
This may sound bizarre, but things can get even worse. In November YouTuber Drew Gooden was hit by a copyright claim from… Drew Gooden.
?
It doesn’t seem unimaginable that some people are abusing YouTube’s copyright policy to generate revenue by claiming videos of others. At the very minimum, these examples show that YouTube’s claiming process is a mess, which can seriously hurt legitimate users.
This frustration was nicely illustrated by YouTuber Gus Johnson, who provides even more examples.
Johnson shows that not all false claims are made through automatic recognition, there are plenty of inaccurate ‘manual’ claims as well. It appears that just mentioning the title of an artist or song can result in a claim, even though the audio itself isn’t used in the video.
As Techdirt points out, this mess doesn’t bode well for the EU’s Article 13, which may result in even more filters. That said, at YouTube things are already spiraling out of control.
We can easily continue to point out mistakes and false claims day after day after, but perhaps it’s time for a change?
During a hearing on Canada’s copyright reform plans, Liberal MP David Graham rightfully noted that YouTube currently operates a “guilty until proven innocent” system. YouTube’s representative didn’t dispute this assertion but gave no indication that this could be reversed.
While “innocent until proven guilty” sounds better for creators, copyright holders are not going to like that one bit.
TorrentFreak spoke to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have been critical of YouTube’s system for years. According to EFF’s Legal Director Corynne McSherry, the copyright strikes are particularly problematic.
Through these “strikes”, channel owners risk losing their livelihoods after three complaints. These strikes are only applied after direct copyright takedown requests, not through Content-ID flags, but it’s a major concern.
What might help is if copyright holders who repeatedly abuse the Content-ID system are penalized as well.
“YouTube could improve its handling of copyright complaints by actively identifying and excluding from Content ID rightsholders that abuse it,” McSherry says.
In addition, YouTube could also protect channels which are known to be good actors.
For search takedown requests Google already appears to work with a whitelist of non-infringing domain names. YouTube could do the same with its channels, protecting these from broad takedown requests.
It’s clear that YouTube is in a difficult spot with major rightsholders asking for tougher measures and YouTubers complaining about the same. At the very least, the company could take a good look at its policies and systems to see if clear abuse can be addressed and prevented.
Earlier this month, Team YouTube said that it was looking into the issues, but thus far not much has changed.
For TheFatRat the recent trouble was the final straw. Yesterday he launched a petition urging YouTube to fix the copyright protection system which 22,000 people have signed already,
Anyone wanting to develop new skills can find information to do so on the Internet. While many areas can benefit from one-to-one instruction, tutorials on how to accomplish most things under one’s own steam can be found online.
The majority of online tutorials are completely non-controversial but when it comes to learning skills that have the potential to break the law, things get a little more volatile.
This is particularly evident in the online piracy scene. With just a few clicks of a mouse, people can learn how to obtain content without paying for it, learn how to crack software or bypass anti-piracy mechanisms on pay TV, for example. It’s been this way for at least a couple of decades and doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.
That’s perhaps why there was such outcry on Reddit this week when a long-standing tutorial on how to pirate Adobe CC was taken down following a copyright complaint.
The tutorial, titled ‘Pirating Adobe CC for Dummies’, was posted in 2016 and was presumably interesting to the many thousands of people who read it, whether they went on to pirate anything or not. However, a takedown notice received by Reddit saw the tutorial removed.
Taken down after two years
The text that now sits in place of the tutorial doesn’t indicate that the takedown notice was sent by Adobe. However, it seems fairly likely the world-famous software company was behind the effort. In any event, Reddit clearly viewed the tutorial as problematic and removed it.
This ignited a very lively discussion about the legality of the tutorial, with people pointing out that it didn’t link to any unauthorized Adobe content, nor did it directly link to any of the tools required to pirate the company’s software.
Perhaps more surprisingly, however, is that many users turned their anger on Reddit’s admins, who were accused of taking the site in a corporate direction while pleasing shareholders with the takedown of content, this tutorial in particular. In fact, many posts discussed where users of /r/piracy could move to, in order to escape perceived censorship on Reddit.
There are several angles to this issue, none of which are straightforward. TorrentFreak showed the original thread to three lawyers at separate companies while pointing out the lack of links to copyrighted content, to see if this aspect might play a role in the validity of the original claim.
None particularly wanted to commit on whether the tutorial itself was illegal but in off-the-record comments, two independently touched on contributory infringement, “a means by which a person may be held liable for infringement even though he or she did not actually engage in infringing activities.”
TorrentFreak also sought comment from the EFF but at the time of publishing, we were yet to receive a response. Clearly, getting definitive answers on the legality of the tutorial itself wasn’t going to be easy but perhaps that’s the distraction here.
After receiving the complaint, Reddit was compelled by law to take the content down. There is, of course, the possibility to file a counter-notice, which would enable the author to challenge Adobe’s assertions of infringement (if that’s who sent the notice) and allow the content to go back up, at least for a while.
However, it is extremely unlikely the author of the tutorial would be prepared to file a counter-notice because that would mean a) identifying him or herself (with a statement including “name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of federal district court for the judicial district in which the address is located”) and b) exposing themselves to a potential lawsuit if the sender wanted to make a point.
This leads, of course, to the inevitable conclusion. Few people who write this kind of tutorial want to be exposed or find themselves on the end of a lawsuit, whether they believe they have the law on their side or not. For most people, expensive lawsuits are not fun and the fight for freedom of speech and access to information often stop when the bills come flooding in.
So, with no counter-claim forthcoming, the tutorial stays down and Reddit keeps its own safe harbor protections, ready to fight another day.
None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. Adobe trying to protect its content? Reddit responding to copyright takedown demands? Piracy tutorial creators not wanting to be part of a lawsuit? A heated debate over freedom of speech? It’s just another day at the office in the copyright world.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the /r/piracy sub-Reddit now has another copyright complaint to add to the increasing tally, despite the best efforts of its moderators who, like Reddit’s admins, may soon have tough choices to make about what content can stay and what must go.
Adobe did not respond to TorrentFreak’s request for comment.
This week we have three newcomers in our chart.
Increasingly, people are cancelling their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper or niche-based Internet TV instead.
YouTube’s copyright enforcement is a growing source of frustration, with many creators complaining about overbroad takedown efforts. 
