After several successful previous applications, last month Village Roadshow Films and Hollywood partners Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal, Warner Bros teamed up with Hong Kong-based Television Broadcasts Limited and Aussie distributor Madman Entertainment Pty Limited.

Together the companies filed an application for the broadest-ever blocking injunction at the Federal Court in Australia. If successful, it would compel Australia’s ISPs to block a record-setting 151 domains related to 77 ‘pirate’ sites.

The list of ISPs in the case is familiar. Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG and their subsidiaries are all named as respondents in the case with the addition of Vodafone, which was added after recently entering the fixed-line broadband market.

As obtained by ComputerWorld, the list of sites involved is now confirmed as follows:

2ddl; 8maple.ru; 9anime.is; Addic7edAnilinkz; Animefreak; Animeshow; Avxhm; azmaple.com; Bilutv; Bt-scene; Cartooncrazy; Cmovieshd; Ddlvalley; 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.

What is notable about the list is the inclusion, for the first time, of sites such as Subscene, Subsmovies, YIFYSubtitles. As their names suggest, these platforms offer subtitles for the latest movies and TV shows, something that doesn’t sit well with any of the companies involved but particularly Madman Entertainment which specializes in Japanese anime.

“People unknown have recorded from the motion pictures … then translated the words into different languages and then those websites make available files that contain the subtitles in those languages,” counsel for the applicants told the Federal Court this morning, as reported by CW.

While most previous cases have passed the scrutiny of the Court relatively easily, this case – with the inclusion of subtitle sites – represents new ground. While the standard for infringement of video copyrights has been well tested in earlier applications, literary copyrights (in what are effectively scripts) are now under consideration for the first time.

As a result, the ever precise Justice Nicholas told the parties to ensure that no stone is left unturned in preparing evidence for the Court.

“You better make sure your evidence in relation to that is particularly thorough,” the Judge said.

“There’s some creep here occurring – I don’t say that critically… [but] it’s a new angle so I’ll need to look at that closely.”

Justice Nicholas won’t be short of source material for his studies. There are instances of subtitles sites being blocked in other jurisdictions and several cases where site operators have been successfully targeted (1,2,3) in legal action.

In common with most recent hearings, none of the ISPs listed as defendants in the case turned up for today’s case management hearing. The case itself is scheduled to be heard on September 7.

In parallel, Television Broadcasts Limited is currently tied up in a case of its own after applying for a blocking injunction last year against several unauthorized IPTV services. The case against A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5 is seen as more complex by the Court, so a final decision is still pending.

The full list of sites and more than 150 associated URLs can be found here courtesy of Rohan Pearce.

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With help from dedicated hardware boxes, live streaming piracy has seen a massive user growth in recent years.

While there are hundreds of free live streaming sites and tools, there’s also a huge market for paid pirate services, which charge a fraction of the cost of their legal counterparts.

One company that has kept a close eye on these developments is Irdeto. The anti-piracy outfit has assisted copyright holders and law enforcement on several occasions and has helped bring down some of the largest offenders.

However, the problem isn’t going away, not even when criminal law enforcement gets involved. One of the problems is that it’s relatively easy for pirate IPTV providers to operate in the open, helped by reputable payment processors such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.

This is one of the main conclusions of research published by Irdeto this week.

Irdeto, which works with prominent clients including Comcast, Foxtel, ITV, and Maxdome, looked at 400 pirate IPTV streaming supplier sites. They found that the majority of these, 76 percent, openly advertise their payment options. Visa and Mastercard were most mentioned, followed by PayPal.

“What this data confirms is that pirates depend heavily on leading payment platforms to help them gather subscription and pay per view revenue,” Mark Mulready,
Irdeto’s VP of Cybersecurity Services, notes.

The data released by Irdeto is presented in a somewhat confusing pie chart. This shows that Visa and Mastercard each account for 21 percent of all payment methods advertised. PayPal is listed at 9 percent and cryptocurrencies are far less popular, coming in at just 4 percent.

Since IPTV providers offer multiple payments options, the percentage of sites that use each of these services is probably much higher, but unfortunately, Irdeto doesn’t have this information available for us.

Payment methods (Irdeto)

Irdeto’s research comes with a rather strong message. The company suggests that media companies, who often use the same payment services, might want to reconsider who they do business with.

“Surely, it’s time for the payment platforms to support legitimate media organizations by conducting better due diligence and stopping support for these pirate IPTV streaming sites?” Mulready writes.

At the moment, payment processors have few incentives to drop pirate IPTV clients, Irdeto notes, but when media companies threaten to cut their ties with these companies, they may take action.

“If media organizations threaten to vote with their feet against payment platforms that enable piracy, it’ll be fascinating to see who blinks first,” Mulready concludes.

Piracy related pressure on payment providers is nothing new. A few years ago there were similar calls urging the same companies to stop doing business with rogue cyberlockers. This eventually paid off, as more and more services were cut off.

Whether public threats are a good tactic is up for debate though. We doubt that Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are willing to team up with pirate IPTV services. Perhaps educating the compliance departments on these services may work just as well as issuing threats, or even better.

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With 2018 just beyond its midpoint, the year is proving to be a rollercoaster ride for Nintendo pirates.

News of exploits to allow the running of both pirate and homebrew code gave hope to tinkerers and buccaneers alike, but the fun has rarely lasted long.

It began when hacking veterans Team-Xecutor revealed that they’d developed a kernel hack for the Nintendo Switch. That led to news of a hardware solution that exploited a fundamental flaw in the Switch system, one that Nintendo would be unable to stop.

Or at least that was the theory.

In June, hacker SciresM announced that Nintendo had implemented tough anti-piracy measures that are able to detect whether a digital copy of a game has been purchased legitimately.

In basic terms, when people attempt to go online with a game, their Switch checks whether it can get a device authorization token from Nintendo. If a token is granted, the console can then obtain an application authorization token for the specific title being played. If Nintendo doesn’t like what it sees, it can prevent a console from going online.

Among potential pirates on the Switch platform, the news was met with huge disappointment. Online access is a massive part of today’s gaming world and killing it is a significant move from Nintendo. Unfortunately, the bad news isn’t going to stop with Switch measures.

On July 30, Nintendo released a software update (11.8.0) for the 3DS which on the surface didn’t appear to offer much.

“Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience,” Nintendo promised.

However, it now transpires that Nintendo isn’t being completely open about what this update can do. Yet again, it’s been left to SciresM to make matters public.

“Looks like 11.8.0 backports the Switch’s aauth ideas to 3ds — network comms now send an encrypted(?) copy of app ticket to the server,” he reveals.

“They may not act on it immediately, but like on Switch this lets [Nintendo] perfectly detect pirate accesses vs normal ones, and ban however they like.”

Looks like 11.8.0 backports the Switch's aauth ideas to 3ds — network comms now send an encrypted(?) copy of app ticket to the server.

They may not act on it immediately, but like on Switch this lets N perfectly detect pirate accesses vs normal ones, and ban however they like.

— Michael (@SciresM) July 31, 2018

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

In basic terms, this means that Nintendo has brought its formidable Switch-based anti-piracy system to 3DS, meaning that users of both gaming devices now risk being banished to the offline gaming wilderness if they go online after sailing the piracy high seas.

While anti-piracy measures are commonplace and are often defeated by determined hackers, SciresM isn’t confident that people will find a way to defeat this system. In response to a user on Twitter who asked about a potential workaround, SciresM was pretty clear.

“It is not possible to do anything about,” he said.

The latest update for 3DS is just the latest setback for Nintendo hackers. Earlier this month, SciresM revealed that some Switch consoles discovered in the wild were not vulnerable to the supposedly unstoppable exploit found earlier in the year. This, thanks to Nintendo tinkering with the Switch processor via so-called ‘iPatches’.

However, in the back-and-forth world of console hacking, victories for console makers are often countered by hackers. In an announcement this week, Team-Xecuter revealed that the modified Switch units were on its radar and they too will fall.

“So don’t fear: we will deliver a solution for these new ‘unhackable’ switches in due time!” the team wrote.

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Over the past decade there have been dozens of detailed reports researching the prevalence and effects of piracy.

With a wide array of results, it’s hard to draw uniform conclusions but as the research adds up, stable patterns start to emerge.

The Global Online Piracy Study, published by the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR) today, is an important contribution to this field.

The research is the result of extensive consumer surveys among 35,000 respondents, including over 7,000 minors, in 13 countries. Combined with similar data collected in 2014, it shows how online piracy habits are changing.

One of the main conclusions is that the number of online pirates is decreasing in most of Europe. This decline is visible in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. Of all surveyed countries, only Germany saw a slight increase in the number of pirates.

In the surveyed countries across Europe, the piracy rate among Internet users is the highest in Spain, but this is topped by Brazil, Thailand, and Indonesia in the full sample.

Number of Internet users accessing content illegally

TorrentFreak spoke to Dr. Joost Poort, one of the authors of the report, who notes that pirates and legal users are largely the same people. In fact, roughly 95% of all pirates also consume content legally, and they typically spend twice as much as their non-pirating counterparts.

This doesn’t mean that pirates are rich, of course. In fact, the research shows that a higher per capita income is linked to a lower number of pirates per legal users. In other words, ‘poorer’ countries have relatively more pirates.

Lower income = more pirates

When people are asked about the reason why they pirate, the cost factor is also frequently mentioned. Pirating is free which is convenient for those who have little to spend. But does that mean that it also leads to a decrease in sales? Is piracy hurting revenues?

According to the research, there’s an overall negative effect of piracy on media sales. However, this doesn’t apply to minors. The latter makes sense, as that group has relatively little to spend anyway.

“This study confirms earlier studies in finding statistical evidence that illegal consumption of music, books, and games displaces legal consumption,” the report reads.

“However, the displacement coefficients are surrounded with substantial uncertainty. Separating these results between minors and adults suggests that displacement occurs for adults and not for minors.”

What’s also worth highlighting is that piracy doesn’t affect all media and entertainment types the same. It even benefits some revenue streams.

For example, the data suggest that every ten music albums pirated leads to three extra concert or festival visits. However, at the same time, it leads to a significant drop in physical album sales and digital downloads, while music streaming remains unaffected.

For video content, including movies, online piracy doesn’t appear to affect sales of physical copies or digital downloads. Here, however, cinema visits and online streams are severely impacted.

“For live concerts and music festivals, a positive sampling effect is found. For audio-visual content, no such sampling seems to occur for the cinema, which suffers from statistically significant displacement, as do digital streams.”

To give an illustration, the data suggest that ten downloaded movies would in general lead to four missed cinema visits.

While the research provides evidence for the negative effects of piracy, the authors don’t see any evidence that stricter copyright laws or enforcement against individuals are a good solution.

Instead, legal content providers should focus on making their work readily available for a good price.

“In terms of policy, obviously hunting down the industry’s largest customers is not the best of ideas. Rather, push for better availability, affordability, and findability of legal content. Affordability of large platforms in lower-income countries is certainly an issue,” Poort tells us.

“If you must do something in terms of enforcement, website blocking seems to be a much better strategy than going after consumers. There is some solid looking evidence for effectiveness in the UK.”

Finally, it is worth noting that this is a follow-up to a controversial EU-funded study. That report made headlines last year because the European Commission held it back. The latest version is funded by Google which had no such restrictions.

“This builds on the EU study that caught some traction because the commission was very reluctant to publish it. This time, Google financed it and respected our academic interests and independence so much better than the Commission did…,” Poort says.

—

A copy of Global Online Piracy Study is available here (pdf).

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Late May, TorrentFreak learned that Justin Sun, the entrepreneur behind the popular cryptocurrency TRON, was about to acquire BitTorrent Inc, the company behind the uTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline torrent clients.

BitTorrent Inc. acknowledged that negotiations were underway but few official details became available until last week when both BitTorrent Inc. and the TRON Foundation confirmed the acquisition had taken place.

“We are excited to announce that TRON has officially closed its acquisition of BitTorrent,” BitTorrent Inc. announced.

“With this acquisition, BitTorrent will continue to provide high quality services for over 100M users around the world. We believe that joining the TRON network will further enhance BitTorrent and accelerate our mission of creating an Internet of options, not rules.”

The joining of the TRON network and in excess of 100 million BitTorrent users is an intriguing proposition but precisely how the pair will mesh and provide value to each other is yet to be revealed. Following a new announcement from Sun, however, we have an early sign that the bandwidth of at least some BitTorrent users could eventually become monetized.

Under the current arrangement, BitTorrent users in public torrent swarms are left to make their own decisions about what content they obtain, where from, and for how long they choose to share that content (seed) once they have it on their own machines. It’s a personal choice that has few motivations beyond basic altruism.

This system has worked exceptionally well for more than 15 years but it now appears that Sun has plans to introduce financial incentives into the equation, a move that he believes will improve the quality of the BitTorrent sharing experience.

“Currently, we are exploring the possibility of using the TRON protocol to improve the BitTorrent protocol, in order to make BitTorrent protocol faster and lengthen the lifespan of BitTorrent swarms. I hope the integration of TRON and BitTorrent will allow both parties to work better as one in the future,” Sun says.

“By integrating the TRON network into Bittorrent, we aim to improve on the currently existing altruism. At this point, there are no incentives for peers who have completed downloading to continue to seed. We intend to extend rewards to peers who seed torrents, infusing more resources into the torrent ecosystem.”

The common sense conclusion is that Sun envisions a system in which BitTorrent users can earn TRON (TRX) by sharing content with other BitTorrent users. This appears to be based on the theory that people will share more and for longer when they’re being rewarded financially for doing so.

If people are able to be incentivized in this manner, the knock-on effect should be a greater number of seeders overall and a corresponding increase in upload bandwidth availability. In theory, at least, this should not only translate to faster downloads but also greater content retention.

“The TRON network will serve as the underlying protocol of the Secret Project. Hundreds of millions of BT users across the globe will become a part of the TRON ecosystem,” Sun notes.

“BT will be the largest application on the TRON network, which will allow TRON [to] surpass Ethereum on daily transactions and become the most influential public blockchain in the world.”

While it’s clear that Sun envisions BitTorrent users having the ability to get paid for seeding, it’s unclear who will be picking up that bill. The most obvious conclusion is that the people who utilize that extra bandwidth (downloaders) will have to pay to access it, but that part of the puzzle is currently up in the air.

The other interesting possibility is that given BitTorrent users’ ability to get paid for seeding (and presumably downloaders being charged for downloading) there is the opportunity for a legitimate content market operating with a twist on traditional buy/sell lines. Sun hints at that within his announcement.

“The integration of BitTorrent and TRON will offer new possibilities to global payment and settlement of online content. The creators of this content could reach hundreds of millions of global users through this decentralized network without any intermediaries,” he writes.

There can be little doubt that the monetization of the BitTorrent ecosystem has the potential to startle those who have become accustomed to an entirely altruistic system. However, Sun is offering a number of assurances, including that his “Secret Project” will not associate itself with any mining projects, meaning that torrent clients themselves won’t become slaves to the system.

“Various industries will be significantly affected by these changes. Secret Project will not associate itself with any mining projects, nor will it have any negative impact on BT user experience,” Sun adds.

“For BT users, Secret Project is only going to strengthen the current BT protocol and make it stronger and more competent.”

While it’s early days, these words should be of some comfort to those who fear that the entire system could eventually become monetized to the detriment of free users who’ve supported the system for many years. That would be a nightmare scenario for millions of users and would almost guarantee an exodus.

However, acting as a behavior regulator is the ability of BitTorrent users to adopt whichever torrent client they like if uTorrent or BitTorrent Mainline prove too restrictive or unpalatable. Given that keeping user numbers up is probably one of the main priorities, people shouldn’t expect anything too drastic in the short term.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that the idea of paid seeding isn’t new. Back in 2015, we reported on JoyStream, a torrent client that aimed to improve BitTorrent by facilitating Bitcoin payments in exchange for upload bandwidth – or content, whichever way one prefers to look at it.

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