PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is without a doubt one of hottest games at the moment.

The success earned the company hundreds of millions of dollars, which inspired other developers to create similar games.

Some of these games are too similar, according to PUBG.

To protect its financial interests, the company, therefore, decided to take the developer of two alleged spinoffs to court. PUBG sued the Chinese company NetEase, the makers of ‘Rules of Survival’ and ‘Knives Out’, accusing it of copyright infringement.

While NetEase readily admitted that its games operate in the same genre, it refuted the copyright infringement claims. Last month the company filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, describing it as an attempt to monopolize the popular “battle royale” genre.

This motion triggered a response from PUBG this week, in which it describes NetEase’s defense as baseless.

“Defendants’ attack on PUBG’s complaint is baseless. PUBG is not seeking ‘to monopolize the popular ‘battle royale’ genre of video games,’ instead, it seeks to protect its creative expression of unique and distinctive elements within its BATTLEGROUNDS game,” PUBG writes.

NetEase argued that the infringement claims are unfounded, pointing at several elements that are clearly different. However, PUBG clearly disagrees, noting that individual elements and the overall selection and combination of these elements were copied.

“Those distinctive and protectable elements have been blatantly copied by Defendants in not one, but two, competing games,” the company writes.

NetEase’s defense also summed up a variety of elements that were clearly different in their games.

This is a non-issue according to PUBG, as copyright infringement is based on similarities between works. This means that the differences between the games provide no defense.

In addition, PUBG notes that this argument is improper, as many of the cited differences were introduced in updates that came out after the lawsuit was filed.

“[M]any of Defendants’ claimed ‘dissimilarities’ are a fallacy, strategically inserted by Defendants after this lawsuit was filed, in a clear attempt to mask Defendants’ blatant infringement,” PUBG writes.

The developer provides several examples of ‘Rules of Survival’ changes that were added after the complaint was filed. These range from changes to optimize the gameplay to the addition of new weapons and armor.

Many of the cited differences, were not in the ‘Rules of Survival’ game when it was first released. The same applies to ‘Knives Out.’

“Similarly, since the initial publication of KO, NetEase has implemented at least 21 updates to add dissimilarities including 9 updates since the commencement of this litigation,” PUBG writes.

Based on these and other arguments, PUBG asks the California Federal Court to deny the motion to dismiss, and let the case proceed. It is now up to the court to decide if that will indeed happen, and time will tell which side gets the chicken dinner.

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A copy of PUBG’s opposition to the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf).

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Hundreds of torrent sites have come and gone over the years with most disappearing after relatively short periods in action.

Sites like The Pirate Bay, which has just celebrated 15 years online, tend to drown out smaller players on the news front, but several have an impressive history behind them.

Take SevenTorrents, for example. The site has been serving torrents for around 10 years and last year serviced around six million unique visitors. It’s not a giant by any means but its longevity is notable in a somewhat hostile and oppressive anti-piracy environment.

Now, however, the show is over for this long-term player. In an announcement yesterday, SevenTorrents’ operator said the towel had been thrown in.

“We have been serving you for near 10 years and served over 40 Million visitors, with all troubles including copyright complaints, limitations, domain bans and …., we were able to keep this site up and running and make our visitors satisfied,” the announcement reads.

Indeed, SevenTorrents has weathered the usual storms over the years. In 2014, the site’s main domain was added to the UK’s ISP blocking system following a complaint from the Motion Picture Association and in 2015, other domains were added to the list.

Unlike other sites on a downward spiral, no single event appears to have pressured SevenTorrents’ out of existence but they clearly feel the time is right to move on. However, the site’s decision to hand over its database to another torrent site raises some questions.

“Today we have decided to retire. But this is not the end for you and we will not let you down, there is a good news for you. We have talked with the owners of our professional friend site WatchSoMuch which is doing same thing as we were doing but in a better way, it has a super fast search and modern and mobile friendly design,” SevenTorrents says.

“We have transferred all the data and members to there, please visit and continue using your account in WatchSoMuch with same password and enjoy.”

While SevenTorrents is an open index, according to its operator it has around 200,000 members, which means that WatchSoMuch – a site that only surfaced in June – now has the details those users signed up with along with any other data gathered along the way.

So, after receiving emails from users and noticing some concern on Reddit and elsewhere, TF contacted SevenTorrents to find out more about the shutdown and the hand over of data to WatchSoMuch. In polite terms, the site doesn’t believe that there should be any concern whatsoever.

TF was informed that SevenTorrents hasn’t encountered anyone who is worried about their data being passed to WatchSoMuch and the overwhelming reaction has been sadness at the site closing down.

“[T]he announcement on Facebook you can see real people reactions, none of the comments in there nor the emails we received show any worries about their data, except people are sad, and asking us not to close this site,” we were told.

“WSM owners are friends of us and very professional, they can be the no #1 movie site in next months because of what they are offering.”

Highlighting the privacy-conscious nature of current times, we pointed out that some people are indeed concerned about the transfer of data. However, SevenTorrents’ operator is insistent that there’s nothing for users to be worried about.

“Yes, logically [users] should get nervous, but they [shouldn’t],” TF was told.

“Transferring the user data to a new site should sound like an upgrade to an existing site. It’s not publishing data or selling it, which many of current torrent sites do without any notice.

“But we respect those users who don’t like to join a new site (if there are any) and I will ask new owners to add a delete account option if there isn’t any.”

While it’s impossible for outsiders to know exactly what will happen, we get the impression that SevenTorrents simply wanted to give WatchSoMuch a rolling start at being a success with a community they didn’t want to tear apart. It won’t sit well with some but this is a free pirate site we’re talking about, not Netflix.

“SevenTorrents will be up for few days but we no longer update this site,” SevenTorrents says.

“We promise this event will look like a change of address and layout to you. There is no difference, the data will be better and more complete. All data including movies, torrents, activities, comments have been transferred to WSM so you will feel like home.”

Indeed, it looks like a large number of former SevenTorrents users have already made the switch. Over the past two days, more than 6,000 are said to have logged in to WatchSoMuch.

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Entertainment companies see streaming piracy as one of the largest threats to the industry. This is true for streaming sites, but also specialized pirate boxes, which are often sold with the popular media player Kodi installed.

While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, third-party add-ons can turn it into a powerful pirate tool. This is why Kodi and piracy are often mentioned in the same breath.

This negative stigma has already resulted in Google banning “Kodi” from the autocomplete feature of its search engine, among other things. And recently Facebook has piled on with another broad measure.

Facebook previously banned the sale of fully-loaded pirate streaming devices, as did Amazon and eBay, but the social network appears to have expanded this to all Kodi-powered hardware now.

This is made clear in the prohibited content section of the company’s commerce policies, as shown below.

Facebook states that users are no longer allowed to promote “the sale or use of streaming devices with KODI installed.” In addition, jailbroken or loaded devices are also banned from the platform.

Banned commerce on Facebook

The issue was first noticed by CordCuttersNews which notes that sellers who violate the policy may have their Facebook accounts banned.

Interestingly, Facebook will still permit the sale of “add-on equipment for KODI devices,” including keyboards and remotes. However, selling any devices with the software itself is no longer allowed.

TorrentFreak reached out to the Kodi team for a comment on the news, but at the time of publication, we had yet to hear back.

It’s unclear why Facebook has expanded its previous ban of ‘piracy-enabling’ devices to Kodi specifically. Kodi itself is not the problem here, which is something acknowledged by several anti-piracy groups. Perhaps the piracy-stigma is simply too big.

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This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Deadpool 2, released in a high quality format last week, 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.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(7)	Deadpool 2	8.0 / trailer
2	(1)	Avengers: Infinity War	8.7 / trailer
3	(…)	Skyscraper (subbed HDRip)	6.1 / trailer
4	(2)	Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (subbed HDRip)	6.5 / trailer
5	(3)	Rampage	6.3 / trailer
6	(6)	Overboard	7.9 / trailer
7	(4)	Escape Plan 2: Hades	3.9 / trailer
8	(5)	Sanju	8.8 / trailer
9	(…)	The Meg	6.3 / trailer
10	(9)	Raazi	7.9 / trailer

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Following a complaint filed by the BPI, City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) launched an investigation into UK-based individuals who uploaded unlicensed karaoke tracks to the Internet.

In February 2015, the BPI carried out test downloads of eight ‘pirate’ karaoke albums to which Sunfly Karaoke and Digitop held the rights. In December that year, police carried out raids in several locations, one of which targeted then 60-year-old Steve Mather.

“The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has dismantled a gang suspected of uploading and distributing tens of thousands of karaoke tracks online, including artists such as Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and Kanye West,” PIPCU said in a statement.

Mather was part of Karaoke RG (KRG), a release group specializing in karaoke tracks. On KickassTorrents alone, their account had around 2,150 uploads.

KRG claimed they were servicing a gap in the market by hand-creating their own karaoke titles that weren’t commercially available. However, karaoke companies Digitop and Sunfly Karaoke saw things differently, claiming that the release group’s actions caused them losses of £485,000 and £29,593 respectively.

It’s taken more than two-and-a-half years but PIPCU now reports that after pleading guilty, 63-year-old Mather of Rochdale, Lancashire, has been handed an eight-month suspended sentence for illegally creating and distributing karaoke tracks without permission

“By making these tracks available to the public, this not only impacts upon the businesses involved, but also upon those who work for them by putting jobs at risk and negatively impacting upon the progress of the company,” said Acting Detective Chief Inspector, Nick Court of PIPCU.

“Mather has caused these companies to suffer significant financial losses. We take these crimes and the integrity of the UK creative industry very seriously. We put every effort into protecting their work.”

Kiaron Whitehead, BPI General Counsel said that as the leader of KaraokeRG, Mather caused serious harm to legitimate karaoke companies.

“KaraokeRG’s ringleader Steven Mather liked to use the nickname ‘KaraokeKid’. But, as he has learnt, the internet is not the Wild West,” Whitehead said.

“The BPI is pleased to have supported the City of London Police in their investigation into this case – which serves as a further clear warning and deterrent to music pirates that they will not go undetected and unpunished.”

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