Three years ago, a group of RIAA labels sued the Texas ISP Grande Communications.

The music companies accused the provider of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, it alleged that Grande failed to terminate repeat infringers.

The case was initially scheduled to go to trial in February, but that was canceled at the last minute due to time constraints. The legal battle is now set to conclude later this year. Before going ahead, however, some outstanding issues have to be resolved.

This week, US District Court Judge David Ezra ruled on the so-called motions in limine from both sides. These are requests to exclude certain topics or evidence from being presented to the jury at trial.

The music companies, for example, asked the court to exclude certain details regarding Rightcorp, the company that sent the anti-piracy notices to Grande. These notices are crucial evidence, as Grande stands accused of not properly responding to them.

Specifically, the music companies wanted to exclude any “irrelevant or unfairly prejudicial” evidence or arguments about Rightscorp’s business practices, its finances, or the allegation that the anti-piracy firm destroyed evidence.

Grande objected, however, and the ISP pointed out that the jury is entitled to this information. The ISP pointed out that the credibility of Rightscorp is a significant issue at trial, while highlighting that the piracy tracking firm is financially dependant on the music companies.

“In short, Rightscorp’s relationship with Plaintiffs is the only thing keeping Rightscorp’s business afloat,” Grande previously wrote.

In his ruling, Judge Ezra sides with the Internet provider. This means that Grande can question Rightscorp’s credibility and business practices at trial. The same is true for the fact that Rightscorp previously destroyed evidence.

And there is more good news for Grande. The music companies also asked the court to exclude evidence about the now-defunct Copyright Alert System. Under this music industry sanctioned program, other ISPs agreed to forward piracy notices. However, they were not required to terminate repeat infringers.

Grande can use this information to argue in its favor and it will have the option to do so at trial, as the music companies’ motion to exclude evidence regarding the Copyright Alert System was denied.

Not everything in the ruling was positive for Grande though. The ISP also submitted motions in limine, several of which were denied. For example, it asked the court to exclude evidence regarding Grande’s termination of clients who failed to pay their subscription fees.

Judge Ezra denied this motion, allowing the music companies to address these issues in court. The companies could use that information to counter Grande’s defense that Internet terminations are drastic measures that should be used sparingly.

According to the current planning, the trial is scheduled to start in September. The jury selection has yet to take place. This could get interesting as well. As we reported before, the music labels plan to ask potential jurors if they read TorrentFreak.

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A copy of US District Court Judge Ezra’s order of the motions in limine is available here (pdf)

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

While English language ‘pirate’ sites grab most mainstream headlines, anti-piracy groups have international platforms firmly on their radars. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of such sites in Asia but following coordinated police action, one of the largest has now fallen.

Following an investigation carried out by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the Asia-Pacific division of the Motion Picture Association (MPA-APC), Japan-based Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), and local TV network Sanli TV, police in Taiwan have now shut down 8maple.ru, the country’s most popular pirate movie and TV show site.

According to SimilarWeb stats, 8maple has been attracting up to 35 million visits per month, making it not only the most-visited platform of its type in the region but also the 32nd most-visited site in Taiwan, period.

According to police sources, the Criminal Investigation Bureau in conjunction with the specialist Telecommunications Investigation Corps swooped to arrest 33-year-old Chen Su and 32-year-old Zhuang Su on March 31, 2020. Both are graduates of the Department of Science and Engineering at the Northern National University and are reported to have extensive software skills.

Authorities say the pair launched 8maple in 2014, creating a fake advertising company before offering Hollywood movies plus US, Taiwanese, Japanese, Chinese and Korean shows to the public for free viewing. The site allegedly operated servers in several regions including the United States, Canada, Ukraine, France, and Romania.

8maple generated income from advertising, with authorities currently estimating revenues of around NT$4,000,000 (US$133,000) per month.

Following the arrests, which have only just been made public, police seized a number of electronic items including 25 computers, mobile phones, and data in cloud storage in France and Canada (OVH). As the image below shows, the site’s main .ru domain was among several seized including 8maple.com and eyny.tv.

The business appears to have been profitable for the two men. During a press briefing, authorities revealed that Chen and Chuang had both acquired luxury mansions for around NT$16,000,000 (US$532,000) each, both paid for in cash. These we seized along with an estimated NT$ 60,000,000 (US$1,900,000) discovered in the pair’s bank accounts.

The suspects were arrested for copyright infringement offenses with Taiwan’s Telecommunications Investigation Corps estimating that 8maple caused around NT$1 billion (US$33.2m) in damages.

The anti-piracy groups involved in the action have yet to make a statement.

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

The coronavirus pandemic has drastically changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

In every continent, local governments have imposed restrictive measures, urging people to stay inside as much as possible.

As a result of these restrictions, Internet traffic has gone up. More people are working from home over remote connections while others pass the time by looking for online news and entertainment.

Traffic to several legal streaming services has gone up significantly. YouTube, in particular, has gained a lot of traffic. In March, traffic management company Sandvine reported a global 10% increase in traffic to the streaming site, which helped it surpass Netflix for the first time.

The effects of the Covid-19 crisis are not limited to legal entertainment consumption, however. A few weeks ago we already signaled that interest in pirate sites had gone up in regions where a lockdown had been imposed. Using a variety of data sources, we can now show that piracy and file-sharing traffic is impacted around the world.

We start with China, where the virus impacted daily life first. Mid-January the new coronavirus started to make headlines and on January 23, 2020, authorities in Wuhan announced a quarantine and prevented travel in and out of the region. In the days that followed, more restrictions followed in China.

Looking at the number of Chinese visitors to pirate sites, from December to the end of February, we see that these measures had a clear impact. The data in question come from piracy tracking from MUSO and were kindly shared with TorrentFreak.

The graph below shows that a sharp increase in pirate site visits started on January 24, reaching a peak on the 27th. Pirate site traffic started to drop off a bit after that, but at the end of February, it was still roughly 20% more than before the Coronavirus measures started.

Chinese pirate site visits

While MUSO’s data are valuable, they only run to the end of February, while the measures in most other countries started around mid-March.

To cover the global trend we, therefore, obtained the number of daily BitTorrent downloads, as measured by iknowwhatyoudownload.com. This service tracks millions of files that are available on public torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay and YTS.

The worldwide torrent download estimates show a clear increase from March 6 to April 6. They started off by hovering around 12 million daily recorded downloads and went up to 16 million a month later, which is a 33% increase.

Tracked torrent downloads worldwide

This spike is also visible at the torrent tracker level. The operator of OpenTrackr.org, a widely used content-neutral tracker, informs us that he sees an uptick in the total number of connections as well as the number of connected peers.

OpenTrackr.org recently implemented a technical change, which makes it hard to compare numbers over a longer period of time. However, the number of connected peers were increasing both before and after the change.

As shown below, between March 31 and April 6, the peer count went up from little over 24 million to more than 26 million during the daily peak.

Peer count on OpenTrackr

The data presented throughout this article clearly suggest that the coronavirus outbreak is increasing piracy and file-sharing traffic. This is visible on a global level, but we expect the country-specific trends to be even more pronounced.

We are still processing some additional data to shed some more light on local trends and hope to highlight these in a future article.

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

Given Russia’s historically weak response to the availability of pirated content online, the past seven years have seen a dramatic turnaround.

While the laws of the United States, Russia’s most vocal critic, have remained largely static, Russia implemented new anti-piracy legislation in 2013 and has continually updated it. One of its major weapons is an expedited process to force platforms to remove content or face permanent blocking by ISPs.

Under the current system and following a request by copyright holders, telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor can order platforms and hosts to remove or block access to pirated content. This action must be taken three days after a related court process and can result in fines of 700,000 rubles (US$9,240) or up to 3,000,000 rubles (US$39,600) for repeat offenders. However, some targets are not responsive enough, or responsive at all, so the government plans to make that a more costly option.

According to a regulation filing spotted by Kommersant, the Ministry of Culture wants to address these issues with amendments to the law. The bills, precise details of which are yet to be revealed by the government, are tweaks to the Code of Administrative Offenses. They propose new fines for failure to comply with the instructions of Roscomnadzor to remove content and a reduction of the window of opportunity to remove content following a request.

In comments made by a representative from the Ministry, Russia’s anti-piracy legislation needs to be tightened up, with the department citing the length of the legal procedure to have content blocked as a concern. The issue of extrajudicial processes against anonymous site owners will also need to be addressed, since by their very nature they tend to be less responsive. Kommersant sources describe violations following Roscomnadzor’s orders as “frequent”.

At this stage there is no detail on the scale of any new fines, nor is the government providing an indication on how quickly content should be removed in the future. Furthermore, while legitimate platforms can probably be forced to act more quickly, ‘pirate’ sites likely won’t respond as required and won’t be responsive to fines, critics say.

“How can a pirate who is hiding his legal entity and identity be fined?” questioned one Kommersant source. Nevertheless, industry players are hoping that should new fines be introduced, they will be of a magnitude to act as a real deterrent against non-compliance.

The government has already penciled in a date of December 20, 2020, for the new amendments to come into force, so more detail should become available in the weeks to come. Whether they will have the desired effect will remain to be seen. In the meantime, however, the anti-piracy memorandum continues in the background.

The actions of the major companies party to the agreement don’t render content inaccessible at the source but according to recent reports, they are having considerable success in making pirated material harder to find in search engines.

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

Copyright holders can take a wide variety of measures to address piracy, with some being more effective than others.

Hawaiian attorney Kerry Culpepper has tried different approaches. Given his profession, most of these take place in the legal realm.

That includes lawsuits against downloaders and owners of well-known pirate sites and apps, including YTS, MKVcage, Cotomovies, Popcorn Time, and Showbox. These actions have resulted in some successes, with sites and apps shutting down or paying thousands of dollars in settlements.

However, the piracy problem isn’t easy to defeat. This is why Culpepper recently added another option to his anti-piracy toolbox. Through the recently incorporate Hawaiian company 42 Ventures, he helped to register several piracy-related trademarks.

The current trademark portfolio of the company includes the popular brands “YTS,” “Popcorn Time,” and “Terrarium.” In addition, 42 Ventures also claimed the trademark for the Showbox arrow logo.

All trademarks are registered under the same description, “downloadable computer software for downloading and streaming multimedia content images, videos and audio.” The same description also applies to the pirate sites and apps.

The fact that one of the most prolific anti-piracy lawyers is connected to these trademarks, opens the door to new enforcement options. That also appears to be the goal here.

For example, just a few days ago, a popular Popcorn Time fork had its Twitter account suspended, following a trademark claim. The Popcorn Time Facebook page was also taken down, possibly following a similar complaint.

TorrentFreak spoke to Culpepper, who confirmed that 42 Ventures is actively enforcing its trademarks. According to the lawyer, the company’s ultimate goal is to promote legal streaming.

“42 has partnered with various content providers to deliver a platform of LEGAL streaming media. One or more of these providers have been providing content since 2009 under same or related trademark,” Culpepper writes.

“42 greatly values its Intellectual Property and has taken steps to protect its valuable rights and will continue to do so in the future,” he adds.

The trademarks were only recently registered which brings up the issue of prior use. Popcorn Time, Terrarium, and YTS have been using their brands for years, and could technically object to any enforcement efforts.

42 Ventures, however, stresses that it has its own legal “Popcorn Time” website at Popcorntime4u.com, which links to content from the YouTube channel Popcorned Planet.

The Popcorn Planet channel is operated by Andy Signore who’s also known as the creator of the popular YouTube channel Screen Junkies. This may also explain why 42 Ventures registered the trademarks for “Movies Fights” and “Honest Trailers,” which are titles of shows that are linked to Screen Junkies and Popcorned Planet.

TorrentFreak reached out to Popcorned Planet for a comment on the matter but, at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

With the trademarks in hand, 42 Ventures has been successful in shutting down some piracy-related social media channels. In addition, it resolved some issues privately behind closed doors. The company isn’t officially operated by a copyright holder, but part of its goal is to prevent piracy.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first time a third-party has registered a Popcorn Time trademark for enforcement purposes. A few years ago movie distributor Dutch Filmworks registered Popcorn Time’s logo and word trademarks at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property. As far as we know, these haven’t been actively enforced.

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