Automattic, the company behind the popular blogging platform WordPress.com, receives thousands of takedown requests from copyright holders.

For a number of years, the volume of notices continued to increase but that trend has slowly started to reverse.

This week, the company published its latest transparency report, revealing that it had processed 11,220 takedown notices during 2019. That is a significant drop compared to a year earlier when over 20,000 notices were handled.

Unlike other services, Automattic only reports the number of notices it receives for WordPress.com. Each of these notices can contain multiple URLs, in some cases even dozens.

The takedown notices are sent in by a variety of copyright holders. The most prolific sender was Image Protect, an anti-piracy service for photographers, followed by familiar names including the music groups IFPI and BPI.

Looking at the longer-term trend, we clearly see a decline in the number of takedowns requests, which reached an all-time high two years ago. The drop in numbers is in line with what other Internet services have noticed recently, including Google.

It is worth noting that not all takedown requests are blindly accepted, with Automattic keeping a close eye on errors. This results in a relatively high rejection rate. Of all notices, more than three quarters didn’t result in any content being removed.

The vast majority of the notices were rejected because they were ‘incomplete,’ meaning that some info was missing, and roughly 7% were classified as ‘abuse’.

“‘Abusive’ notices may be formally complete, but are directed at fair use of content, material that isn’t copyrightable, or content the complaining party misrepresents ownership of a copyright,” Automattic explains.

Since Automattic began counting complaints in 2014, the company has processed 75,837 DMCA takedown requests. More than two-thirds of these were rejected and for the remaining 33%, no content was removed.

Whether the drop in the number of received notices for WordPress.com will continue to decrease remains to be seen. Although a similar pattern emerges at other services as well, it’s certainly not universal. For example, Reddit reported the opposite just a few weeks ago, with the number of takedowns increasing 500% in just a year.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

Legal actions against file-sharers come in all shapes and sizes but perhaps the most common are the mass lawsuits that target alleged BitTorrent users.

Hundreds of thousands of these cases, which usually begin with a demand for cash settlement, end when the target pays up an amount to have a supposed lawsuit disappear. More rarely, however, cases end up in court and under the scrutiny of a judge, things don’t always go so well.

Like many countries in Europe, alleged file-sharers in Denmark have been receiving letters claiming that since they’ve been caught sharing porn without the copyright holders’ permission, they must now pay an informal fine. The threat for non-payment is a court case but for one company and its beneficiaries involved in a pretty big scheme, this has not gone to plan.

Copyright Management Services (CMS) is known for its involvement in mass copyright litigation. Working with Danish law firm NJORD Law, it previously demanded the identities of thousands of individuals in Sweden so it could pursue them for settlements relating to alleged porn downloads. It is also very active in Denmark.

CMS was incorporated in the UK during October 2014. Until fairly recently its sole director was Patrick Achache, who also operates German-based BitTorrent tracking company MaverickEye. Both were part of the notorious international trolling operation Guardaley, which recently changed ownership.

While actual copyright holders are perfectly able to sue alleged file-sharers, there is a tendency among some mass litigation outfits to use middle-man companies instead. There are theories that their purpose is to act as a buffer to protect the actual copyright holders should lawsuits go wrong but in the cases brought by middle-man CMS in Denmark, its involvement in the chain has caused things to unravel.

The development comes after CMS demanded cash settlements from three individuals who failed to pay and were later taken to court. The defendants were ISP account holders of IP addresses that CMS claimed were connected to illegal file-sharing. In all cases, district courts found in favor of CMS, ordering the defendants to pay 7,500 DKK ($1,039) to the company.

When the cases went to appeal, the defendants denied they committed the copyright infringements alleged by CMS. They further alleged that CMS was not a producer of the content, was not a distributor of content, and had no documentation to prove that it was entitled to sue on behalf of the actual copyright holders.

Countering, CMS referred to its successes in the district courts and insisted that it did indeed have agreements in place to prosecute the cases against the alleged pirates. That assertion was rejected this week by the Eastern High Court.

“In all three cases, the High Court found that the company had not proved that it had legal capacity to conduct the cases in its own name,” a statement from the court reads.

As a result, all three cases were dismissed.

“The cases are part of a large number of cases pending before the courts, about the sharing of films, in some cases porn films. The three cases are the first of such cases decided by the Eastern High Court,” the statement notes.

Quite how many other cases Copyright Management Services has filed on the same grounds (i.e with no right to sue) is unclear but having these cases thrown out could present problems for the company. In respect of the company itself, interesting facts are available from public sources.

As previously mentioned, Patrick Achache was the sole director of CMS. However, on November 19, 2019, he ceased to be a director and what Companies House describes as a ‘person with significant control’. In his place as the new officer with ‘significant control’ stepped Lubesly Tellidua, who has the same name as a beauty queen from the Philippines.

This could have been a complete coincidence but thanks to detective work by Danish news site K-News, it’s possible to confirm that Lubesly Tellidua the beauty queen is not only the new person in control of CMS but is also directly linked to Achache, as the photograph in their article shows.

A new director was also appointed to CMS last year, Eleanor Elizabeth Powell of Brecon, Wales, who chose to register modified names and addresses across two different companies – Copyright Management Services Ltd and Powtex Limited. Adding a middle name and tweaking the details of an address is enough for Companies House not to link the same director to two companies, at least without manual research.

Anyone interested in venturing further down the CMS rabbit hole might consider visiting Open Corporates where several familiar names in copyright trolling and anti-piracy enforcement can be found doing business, past and present.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

Over the past several weeks, The Pirate Bay has suffered prolonged downtime. For many people, the popular torrent site was completely unreachable through its main Thepiratebay.org domain.

While regular visitors knew that the site was still accessible over the Tor network, through a separate domain, the problems were unusual.

Yesterday, the situation for more confusing when the .org domain was updated. The usual Cloudflare nameservers were removed and replaced by EasyDNS nameservers. In addition, all traffic to the domain was sent to 127.0.0.1, which essentially meant that all requests dumped into a local black hole.

Without an official explanation from the Pirate Bay team, these changes were fuel for speculation. Today, however, the situation has already completely changed again.

Starting a few hours ago, Thepiratebay.org domain is back online. After another update of the domain records, it is operational again. Not just that, it also uses Cloudflare’s services.

There is a small update though. Over the past few years, The Pirate Bay used the dean.ns.cloudflare.com and sofia.ns.cloudflare.com nameservers. Today, the site uses deb.ns.cloudflare.com and sevki.ns.cloudflare.com.

Other than the nameserver update, nothing has changed domain-wise. The domain is still registered through Fredrik Neij, one of the original Pirate Bay co-founders, and EasyDNS remains the registrar.

Why the Cloudflare nameserver changed is unknown. It is possible, however, that the domain had to be operated through a separate Cloudflare account for some reason.

Previously, we were told that The Pirate Bay team would use the downtime to implement some updates to the code. While that doesn’t have to be visible, there are a few changes in the site’s appearance as well.

Several links have been stripped from the homepage now, including those to the blog and the about page. In addition, the ‘login’ and ‘register’ links simply point back to the homepage. In addition, the site uses the torrindex.net domain to serve some static content.

Perhaps these modifications are part of the previously announced changes, or it’s something that’s still being worked on. Interestingly, the Tor version of the site still shows the old look, with all the other links intact.

We will keep an eye on any other changes during the days to come. If any new information becomes available we will update this article accordingly.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

The Pirate Bay’s original and main domain has been unreachable for more than a month.

While the site operates as usual on the Tor network, visitors to ThePirateBay.org are welcomed by a Cloudflare error message mentioning that the “connection timed out.”

Two weeks ago, a source familiar with the matter informed us that the infamous torrent site faces some technical issues and the admin is taking this opportunity to rewrite some code. After that, we received no updates.

Today, however, something appears to be changing. For the first time in years, the whois record for ThePirateBay.org has been updated. Instead of the domain pointing to Cloudflare’s nameservers, it is now linked to the default nameservers of the domain registrar EasyDNS.

In addition, the domain’s status code has changed from ‘client Transfer Prohibited’ to ‘ok,’ which means that there are no restrictions preventing it from being transferred to a new owner.

At the time of writing, all traffic to ThePirateBay.org is resolving to 127.0.0.1, which is the generic localhost IP-address. This means that the domain name is effectively null routed, with all requests dumped into a local black hole.

The new details are gradually propagating. The following query from WhatsMyDNS shows that, in some places, it still resolves to the Cloudflare server.

The changes are highly unusual but without further details, it is hard to say what’s going on here. While it’s pure speculation, we can go over a few options.

The first and most likely option is that The Pirate Bay team intentionally made these changes. They may have moved away from Cloudflare to set up shop elsewhere, pointing the DNS to 127.0.0.1 for the time being.

That would not explain why they changed the status code, however. Nor is it clear why this intermediate step would be needed.

A second option is that Cloudflare may have kicked The Pirate Bay out. That seems unlikely, however, as The Pirate Bay would usually not update its DNS records this quickly. Also, there are no unusual errors in places where the domain name still resolves to Cloudflare.

Another option is that EasyDNS was ordered to take action by a court to null route the domain, and to allow it to be transferred to a third party. The latter would also explain the updated status code. This is not the case though.

EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic informs TorrentFreak that it hasn’t taken any action regarding this domain. As standard procedure, the company did reach out to the registrant to make sure they’re aware of what’s happened and to double-check if everything is ok.

Until there’s an official announcement from the Pirate Bay team, the changes will remain a mystery.

Whatever the reason is, it’s worth keeping an eye on. We will continue to monitor the situation in the days to come and will update this article if more information becomes available.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.

All around the world, content creators, distributors and associated anti-piracy groups are grappling with the thorny issue of piracy-configured set-top boxes.

These cheap devices were initially embraced by the tech-savvy but later attracted a broad audience among the general public, rendering piracy both easy and cheap to access for the masses.

Numerous legal actions have been launched in Europe and the United States but in recent years the fight has migrated to Asia too. In January 2018, it was reported that telecoms, broadcasting, and sporting giants SingTel, Starhub, Fox Networks Group and the Premier League, had teamed up to launch a pioneering private prosecution against those involved in the supply of devices in Singapore.

The action targeted set-top box distributor Synnex Trading and its client and wholesale retailer, An-Nahl. The rightsholders also named Synnex Trading director Jia Xiaofen and An-Nahl director Abdul Nagib as defendants. Last April, Nagib’s case was concluded with a small fine of less than $1,000 but nevertheless marked the first successful prosecution of a ‘pirate’ box seller in the country.

The case against Synnex Trading and director Jia Xiaofen was less straightforward. After pleading guilty to four charges of criminal copyright infringement, in October 2019 the director was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison and ordered to pay a fine of S$5,400 (US$3,800) while his company was fined S$160,800 (US$113,500). However, the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) quickly filed an appeal, claiming that the sentencing was flawed.

According to the AGC, sentencing submissions made by the parties involved in the private prosecution relied on an earlier court decision where a man was initially sentenced to eight weeks in jail for selling modified Playstation2 consoles and copying pirated software to customers’ machines. However, that jail sentence was later overruled and replaced with a fine. As a result, the jail sentence handed down to Jia Xiaofen was excessive, the AGC argued.

In submissions late March 2020, three Deputy Public Prosecutors wrote that the AGC should assist the court with sentencing in the Jia Xiaofen case, to ensure that an appropriate sentence was handed down based on accurate precedents.

“This responsibility undergirds a crucial aspect of the administration of criminal justice in Singapore — that all offenders are punished appropriately,” the DPPs wrote, as cited by TodayOnline.

“It is in this context that the Public Prosecutor has taken the unusual but necessary step of filing the present appeal against the sentence of 12 weeks’ imprisonment imposed upon (Jia).”

During the prosecution, neither the defense nor the prosecution in Jia’s case mentioned the fact that the earlier prison sentence had been overruled, which meant that the District Court handed down a similar sentence when there was no precedent. As a result, this week the High Court overruled Jia’s 12-week prison term but the defendant didn’t escape punishment.

On the advice of the DPPs, Jia Xiaofen was handed a fine of S$32,100 (US$22,000) and the original and much larger fine against his company was ordered to stand.

What this means for sentencing in future cases isn’t yet clear but with no precedent for relatively harsh periods of imprisonment, larger fines in their place seem a potential solution.

Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review.