Over the past year there has been a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters or cheat makers.

Two of the driving forces behind these cases are GTA V developer Rockstar Games and its parent company Take-Two Interactive.

In Australia, the companies filed a lawsuit in September, targeting several people believed to be linked to the popular “Infamous” cheat.

This lawsuit is notable because the Federal Court of Australia signed off on several broad enforcement actions. Not only were the defendants restrained from any cheating related activity, they were also the subject of a search and assets freezing order.

With the orders in hand, a search party was permitted enter several buildings and search, copy, or remove relevant evidence including any computers and documents related to “Infamous.” In addition, the freezing order prevented defendants from taking out more money than needed for regular expenses.

According to court documents, several devices and hardware belonging to defendant Christopher Anderson were indeed taken. While the case remains active, this week the court decided to return some of the seized items.

The list of returned items includes several laptops, an iPad and an iPhone, as seen below. In addition, the court also listed the assets freezing order. This will help the defendant to prepare his defense.

Returned devices

The order was issued after both parties appeared before the Australian Federal Court this week to discuss progress in the case. Anderson appeared via phone and chose to represent himself.

The defendant told the court that he is working on a defense but that this had been a challenge without access to funds and an unspecified “confidential” document, ZDNet reports.

According to Justice Nicholas, who has seen the document in question, the lack of access should not prohibit Anderson from preparing a defense.

This was also made clear in the order. After an earlier extension, the alleged cheat developer is now required to submit his reply on or before February 1st, 2019.

During the hearing, it also became clear that PayPal has frozen Anderson’s funds for 180 days. This money remains locked for now, which may continue until March.

Counsel for Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive contacted PayPal about the issue but it appears that there’s not much they can do about it.

“It is between him and PayPal and they do not appear to be the easiest depositors to have one’s money,” the Counsel said. “They have their own terms and conditions, and they do their own thing.”

March will be too late for the defendant. He has little more than a month to file a response, which means that he likely has to rely on other resources.

Finally, it’s worth noting that earlier court documents mentioned several possible defendants, referring to the “person or persons” known as Christopher Anderson, Cycus Lesser, Sfinktah, Koroush Anderson, and Koroush Jeddian. The latest court records only mention Christopher Anderson.

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Earlier this year, several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, branding it a supplier of pirate streaming devices.

Under the flag of anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Dragon of using the Kodi media player in combination with pirate addons. As such, the company facilitates mass copyright infringement, it was argued.

It didn’t take long for the legal pressure to have an effect. Soon after the lawsuit was filed Dragon Box halted its sales. The company indicated that it would either shut down or run a lawful business instead.

The company eventually opted to continue its business by switching to a new subscription service called BlendTV. Although BlendTV’s website claimed that it has all necessary rights and permissions, the Hollywood studios clearly disagreed.

Two months after this switch, Dragon Box informed its customers about another change. The company said it would stop offering BlendTV late November. That, however, was not the end of the matter.

On December 11th, just hours after an unsuccessful mediation in court, Dragon Box relaunched with yet another service called “My TV Hub.” According to the Hollywood studios, this service is not legitimate either.

Frustrated by these repeated ‘comebacks’ the plaintiffs went to court this week, hoping to halt all infringing activity.

“With the freshly minted new My TV Hub service, Defendants continue to knowingly induce the widespread infringement of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works by encouraging Dragon Box customers to access infringing streams through the latest iteration of the Dragon Box Service,” they inform the court.

Logan streaming on My TV Hub

According to the movie companies, none of the services offered Dragon Box were legitimate. Instead, they accuse the vendor of playing a game of whac-a-mole.

“Defendants’ game is clear: every time they are caught marketing an infringing service to their customers, Defendants pull that service down and substitute another in its place,” the plaintiffs inform the California federal court.

“My TV Hub is not licensed to stream Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works, just as Blend TV was not before it, and just as the addons Defendants originally utilized was not,” they add.

The plaintiffs ask the court to issue a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the company from selling “My TV Hub” subscriptions. In addition, they don’t want Dragon Box to sell any service that offers copyrighted content provided by a third party.

“Absent injunctive relief, Defendants will continue this game of Whac-a-Mole. Nothing short of a Temporary Restraining Order (‘TRO’) to enjoin this latest service offering, and all similar offerings, will cause Defendants to cease their flagrantly infringing conduct,” the movie companies state.

It’s now up to the court to decide whether a restraining order is justified. At the time of writing, Dragon Box isn’t selling any boxes on its website. Remote controls and keyboards are still available, as well as CBD oil, which was added to the assortment recently.

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A copy of the application for a temporary restraining order is available here (pdf).

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The fact that ISPs around the world are blocking pirate sites to prevent copyright infringement is nothing new. The practice has been going for more than decade.

Aside from voluntary arrangements, such as the one currently playing out in Portugal, ISPs tend to wait for courts to hand down an injunction before blocking a site. In Germany, however, a new situation has raised its head.

On Tuesday, subscribers to Vodafone discovered that they could no longer access streaming portals Burning Series (BS.to) and Serial Stream (S.to). Rather than accessing the thousands of TV shows usually on offer, they were instead met by a blocking message presented by their ISP.

Both sites currently have messages on their main pages, explaining that Vodafone has chosen to block their platforms. In the meantime, local news outlet Tarnkappe has obtained a statement from Vodafone which confirmed that the ISP is blocking the sites.

“Due to the provisions of German and European copyright and telemedia law, access providers such as Vodafone are under certain conditions required by law to block access to websites with illegal content – eg to illegal streaming offers of films and TV series,” spokesperson Volker Petendorf told the publication.

While it’s no surprise to hear of yet another block, further information provided by Vodafone reveals that the block was put in place following a complaint from a rightsholder but without a court ordering a blockade.

Referencing a copyright case which was handled by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) during the summer, Vodafone now says it believes the decision has a knock-on effect that requires them to block sites in certain circumstances.

As previously reported, in that case the BGH ruled that WiFi providers cannot be held liable for piracy carried out by their users. However, they can be told to prevent access to file-sharing services and even block entire websites, once infringement has been confirmed.

Vodafone believes this applies to them too, since a copyright holder has informed them of an unsuccessful attempt to prevent infringements via the above-mentioned sites.

“Currently, the rights holder of the TV series ‘Das Boot’ has asked Vodafone to block domains that provide access to the ‘s.to’ and ‘bs.to’ websites. The copyright holder has made credible claims to Vodafone that this TV series can be accessed illegally via the Internet portals s.to and bs.to without the necessary consent of the copyright holder and thus illegally,” Vodafone told Tarnkappe.

“The copyright holder has assured us that it is not possible for him to enforce his rights other than by blocking access to these sites. Vodafone, after thorough legal examination, believes that we are currently obliged to block access to these websites in accordance with mandatory legal provisions.”

Currently, both BS.to and S.to have notices up on their main pages detailing ways that Vodafone’s DNS-based block can be circumvented.

“Some internet service providers, such as Vodafone, block access to Burning Series and censor your Internet access. Therefore, we recommend that you change your DNS name servers to the IP addresses of Google 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 or Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1,” BS.to notes.

Vodafone suggests that should the legal situation change in the future, the blocks against both sites will be lifted.

This is the third time this year that Vodafone has blocked pirate sites.

In August the ISP blocked access to Libgen after publishing giants Elsevier, Springer, and Macmillan obtained an injunction from the Munich Regional Court. In February, following a complaint from a movie distribution company, Vodafone blocked streaming portal Kinox.to.

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Copyright holders are increasingly demanding that ISPs should block access to pirate sites in order to protect their business.

This is also the case in Australia, where blocking injunctions were made possible three years ago following amendments to copyright law.

In recent years various copyright holders have requested blockades against torrent sites, streaming services, and direct download portals, with relative ease. And these efforts are not slowing down, on the contrary.

This week the Federal Court has issued the largest pirate site blocking injunction thus far in Australia, judging by the number of targeted sites. The case in question was filed by Village Roadshow, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia, Universal, Warner, and others, targeting 78 pirate ‘locations.’

The list of targets includes IPTorrents, BT-Scene, Fmovies, Putlocker, RuTracker, KissAnime, NYAA, Torrentday, YIFY-movies and various others. In total, the injunction lists 181 domain names.

Interestingly, the court order also targets several subtitle sites. The injunction lists OpenSubtitles, YifySubtitles, and SubScene, for example. While these sites don’t host or link to infringing videos, the movie companies argued that the sites are “communicating to the public a literary work,” referencing the screenplay.

Alternatively, it was argued that subtitle files could also be a “substantial reproduction” of the original subtitles, Computerworld previously reported. However, this argument was dropped after Justice Nicholas pointed out it would require proof that a subtitle was directly copied.

The screenplay argument did hold up it seems, as the subtitle sites are listed in the final injunction.

The list of ISPs that are required to implement the blockades includes Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG, Vodafone, and several subsidiaries. The blocking measures have to be implemented within 15 days, through DNS blocking, IP-address blocking, or any other means agreed with the rightsholder

“Each Respondent must, within 15 business days of service of these Orders, take reasonable steps to disable access to the Target Online Locations,” the injunction reads, listing the blocking options.

Blocking options

This order will remain valid for a period of three years. If required, the rightsholders can then apply for an extension. The movie companies must also pay ISPs to implement the blocking measures but, at the rate of $50 per domain name, that’s not going to be a problem.

With 78 targeted sites, this is the largest piracy blocking injunction issued by an Australian court. However, next year even broader injunctions may follow, after a series of controversial amendments to copyright law were passed last month.

These amendments make it possible to remove blocked sites from search engines, block mirrors and proxies more effectively, while targeting ‘dual-use’ cyberlocker type sites.

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The full list of targeted locations is as follow. A copy of the injunction, obtained by TorrentFreak. can be found here (pdf).

2ddl; 8maple.ru; 9anime.is; Addic7ed; Anilinkz; Animefreak; Animeshow; Avxhm; azmaple.com; Bilutv; Bt-scene; Cartooncrazy; Cmovieshd; Ddlvalley; DailyTVFix; Dnvod; dramacity.io; dramahk.me; Fmovies.io; Glodls; Gogoanime; Hdpopcorns; hindilinks4u.to; hkfree.co; icdrama.se; icdramase; ilovehks.com; IPTorrents; Kantv; Kimcartoon; Kissanime; kisscartoon.ac; m4ufree.com; Masterani.me; Myanimeseries; Nyaa; Nzbplanet; Ondarewatch; Openloadmovies; Opensubtitles.org; Otakustream; Phimbathu; Putlocker.ac; Putlockerhd.co; qooxi.net; Rmz; Rutracker.org; Scnsrc; Seasonvar; Seriesfree; Solarmoviez; Soul-anime; streamtvb.com; Subscene; Subsmovies; Torrentday; Torrentfunk; Torrentmovies; Tvbox; Tw116; Two-movies; Ultra-vid; Usabit; VexMovies; viewasian.tv; Vkool; Vmovee; Watchanimeonline.me; Watchcartoononline.com; Watchcartoononline.io; Watchonlinemovies; Watchseries-online; woaikanxi.cc; Yify-movies; Yifysubtitles; Ymovies.tv; Zimuzu; Zooqle.

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Following the shutdown of Megaupload in 2012 and the simultaneous raids on founder Kim Dotcom and his colleagues in New Zealand, the US Government has tried to extradite the tech entrepreneurs.

They believe that the former Megaupload quartet should be handed over to face charges of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering. The effort has been contested every step of the way.

In July, after the case had traveled through the District Court and High Court, New Zealand’s Court of Appeal ruled that under the Extradition Act 1999, Dotcom and his former colleagues are indeed eligible for extradition to the United States.

Dotcom and his co-accused quickly announced they would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. During a hearing earlier this month, the US argued that there is no direct right of appeal in Dotcom’s criminal case, since in 2012, when the case began, there was no eligibility for a third appeal in extradition cases.

This morning, however, the Supreme Court decided otherwise, with Justice William Young declaring that the Court does have the jurisdiction to handle the appeals of Kim Dotcom and former colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato, and Bram van der Kolk.

“It is common ground that under the now relevant provisions of the Extradition Act and the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, the Court has jurisdiction to hear appeals in cases involving extradition,” a summary from the Court reads.

“This case, however, falls to be determined by reference to the law as it was when the extradition proceedings commenced – that is, in 2012 which was before the Criminal Procedure Act came into effect. The case turns on the combined effect of the Supreme Court Act 2003 and the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 as they were in 2012.”

In another complex ruling of the kind this long process has become associated, the Court grapples with issues under both civil and criminal law but ultimately offers the words Dotcom had been hoping for.

“Given the significance of extradition, there is no reason to suppose that the parliamentary purpose was to exclude a right of appeal to this Court,” the decision reads.

“We conclude that we have jurisdiction to entertain the proposed appeals.”

The news was welcomed by Dotcom defense lawyer Ira Rothken.

“We are pleased that the New Zealand Supreme Court granted review of the US extradition case against Kim Dotcom. We believe that the Court will find that cloud storage providers cannot be held criminally liable for user copyright infringements under NZ law,” he said.

Dotcom, who has suffered a series of legal setbacks in recent months, enjoyed the moment too, taking to Twitter to celebrate the decision.

“The US tried to stop the Supreme Court of New Zealand from hearing my appeal by challenging its jurisdiction. What was the US afraid of? Today the Supreme Court held that it has jurisdiction and granted leave to appeal. Merry Christmas!” he wrote.

Finally, in what is perhaps a not entirely unexpected development, Dotcom also took the opportunity to welcome his wife, Liz Dotcom, to his legal team.

“I’m happy to announce that my Brilliant wife, Elizabeth Dotcom, is joining my legal team in 2019. She graduated in Law and Business this year and I’m very proud to become her first client. What an excellent start for her career in the Supreme Court of New Zealand,” he said.

This is how big today’s Supreme Court judgement is 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/SNYkyittw3

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 20, 2018

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