Assisted by police in France and the Netherlands, the FBI took down the “pirate” Android stores Appbucket, Applanet, and SnappzMarket during the summer of 2012.

During the years that followed several people connected to the Android app sites were arrested and indicted, resulting in prison sentences for some.

SnappzMarket’s Scott Walton was handed a 46-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, and his colleague Joshua Taylor was sentenced to a 16-month term.

While some defendants pleaded guilty in order to get a reduced sentence, not all did. David Lee, a California man linked to Applanet, decided to fight the case instead, and not without success.

The US Government had charged Lee with aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement (pdf). In addition, he was charged with conspiring to infringe copyrights and violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision.

As the case progressed, it became clear that the U.S. Government’s evidence wasn’t as strong as initially thought. Before the trial even started, the prosecution voluntarily dropped the criminal copyright infringement charge.

What remained was the conspiracy charge, but after hearing evidence and testimony from both sides of the case, the jury was unable to issue a unanimous decision. As a result, the case ended in a mistrial two years ago.

The Department of Justice did not let the case go though. Soon after the mistrial, it informed the court that it would re-try Lee. This second trial was delayed a few times but never took place.

Instead, the US Government asked the court to dismiss the indictment against the alleged pirate app store operator, without providing any context. This request was granted earlier this week, which means that Lee is relieved of all charges.

It is not clear what moved the US to dismiss the case. TorrentFreak contacted both Lee’s lawyers and the US Department of Justice for comment, but at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.

However, with the indictment dismissed, Lee can close this chapter of his life after nearly six years.

Indictment dismissed

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With the online piracy wars about to enter their third decade, there’s an increasing emphasis on pressurizing influential third-parties to tackle the problem.

As a result, much blame is laid at the feet of companies like Google, who are regularly blamed for not doing more to tackle infringements carried out by individuals and entities outside of their control.

Search results are a particularly sticky subject. Google, Bing, and Yahoo, for example, wish to provide the most comprehensive indexes possible. On the flip side, entertainment industry companies insist that those indexes shouldn’t help people find pirated content. If they do, it’s argued that these companies act as piracy facilitators.

This familiar battle is now underway in Russia, where Yandex is in receipt of a strongly-worded letter which accuses the search giant of being a big part of the piracy problem.

According to local publication Vedomosti, the letter is signed by Leonid Agronov, general director of the National Federation of the Music Industry, Alexei Byrdin, general director of the Internet Video Association, Sergei Selyanov, director of the Association of Film and Television Producers, and Pavel Stepanov, president of the Media Communication Union.

The entertainment giants explain that due to ‘pirate’ search results appearing in its indexes, Yandex is contributing to the growth of online piracy. They want the company to show responsibility by adopting measures to both find and remove infringing links from search and related products.

“We urge Yandex to use all available methods to detect illegal content and eliminate it both from search results and from the applications and services of Yandex,” the letter reads.

It’s suggested that Yandex should take a similar path to that taken by search companies in the UK, via the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding which declares common interests in fighting piracy.

Yandex won’t be alone, however.

A spokesman for the Media and Communications Union, which is one of the groups behind the letter, told Vedomosti that a similar letter would be sent to Google in the near future. Needless to say, Google is no stranger to these kinds of allegations, whether in Europe or the United States.

In the letter, search engines like Yandex are accused of promoting illegal resources over legal content, resulting in revenue being siphoned away from legitimate players and into the hands of criminals. The search engine is also accused of taking down material in response to demands under the DMCA, but not doing enough in Russia.

“Yandex actively cooperates with copyright holders and is working to improve the culture of legal content consumption,” the company said in a statement, adding that it actually stands to benefit from ads promoting sales of non-infringing content.

“Yandex stands for an honest Internet, in which quality legal content is available to the user and rightsholders earn from that legitimate consumption,” the company said.

Unlike in the United States under the DMCA, content isn’t as readily taken down in Russia. Yandex also opposes filtering search results, warning that the system is easily abused by rightsholders and others looking to stifle competition.

That being said, Yandex says that rightsholders are welcome to take advantage of the local site-blocking mechanism which tackles both source sites and their mirrors. With these inaccessible, ‘pirate’ search results become useless.

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Founded around the turn of the last century, Soulseek is a small dinosaur in the file-sharing world.

Created by former Napster programmer Nir Arbel, the application swiftly turned into a tight community of music fans, which is still active today.

Over the years Soulseek operators Nir and Roz Arbel have seen other file-sharing tools come and go, but all this time they remained dedicated to their principles. Despite its name, Soulseek had long found its purpose.

While it kept a relatively low profile, Soulseek is not immune to the “stigma” that comes with being a file-sharing tool. In 2015, PayPal cut off its ability to collect donations, claiming that sharing tools required pre-approval, even though that policy didn’t exist when it signed up.

Soulseek is not a profit-oriented platform but donations are welcomed. Without PayPal, this became a challenge, but luckily for the developers, the Electonic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was able to intervene.

February 2016 everything returned to normal when the PayPal account was restored, for a while at least. Earlier his year, PayPal apparently changed its mind and booted the application once again.

Soulseek operator Roz Arbel was told that the application violated the payment service’s acceptable use policy and that ‘pre-approval’ was required for ‘file-sharing’ tools. It was pretty much the same recycled argument from years before.

Faced with this deja-vu, Soulseek turned to EFF for help once again, but this time PayPal wouldn’t budge.

“PayPal made it clear that they’re not willing to offer Soulseek financial services any longer. The company did give the Arbels access to their funds and tax documentation, after a request from EFF,” the digital rights group writes.

EFF asked whether PayPal’s latest ban was linked to a concrete copyright complaint, but the payment processor didn’t provide any further information. It just confirmed that Soulseek was banned, apparently for good.

This stance doesn’t come as a complete surprise. PayPal is widely known for its aggressive stance towards BitTorrent sites, Usenet providers and file-hosting services after all.

While some cases may be clearer than others, EFF sees the Soulseek example as a clear illustration of financial censorship.

“What the Arbels are experiencing is a form of financial censorship that has, unfortunately, become increasingly widespread. Following the law isn’t enough—PayPal apparently expects a small message board service with a file-sharing function to do far more than the law requires.”

“PayPal explained to us that they will cut off sites that ‘allow for the transfer or download of copyrighted material.’ Taken literally, that’s a staggeringly broad claim,” EFF writes.

EFF points out that pretty much all content on the Internet is automatically copyrighted. Still, there are thousands of online services that allow people to share it. Downloading copyrighted material is also possible on Dropbox and Google Drive, for example.

In PayPal’s policy, the company suggests that merchants must have a procedure to both “monitor” the files on their service and “remove or otherwise prevent access” to copyright-infringing work. Perhaps that’s where Soulseek goes wrong, but that wouldn’t be fair according to EFF.

“If payment processors were to cut off Internet services simply because they could be used for copyright infringement, a huge swath of the web would lose the ability to accept payments,” EFF writes.

“As a matter of policy, Soulseek respects its users’ privacy by not surveilling their conversations or file exchanges. Violating users’ privacy shouldn’t be the price of entry for using a payment processor.”

It’s clear that Soulseek and PayPal have parted ways. While EFF may not be able to change that, it encourages PayPal and other Internet companies to be more transparent about when and how often they terminate accounts due to complaints from governments or copyright holders.

PayPal’s file-sharing service policy

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Frustrated by thousands of cheaters who wreak havoc in Fortnite’s “Battle Royale,” game publisher Epic Games decided to take several to court.

The game developer isn’t trying to bankrupt these people financially. It is mainly interested in preventing them from cheating in the future.

The main strategy thus far has been to ‘settle’ the cases. Several accused cheaters have signed consent judgments, promising not to cheat or engage in any copyright infringing activity going forward.

This tactic doesn’t work in all cases. One of the accused, a man from Russia going by the name of Konstantin Vladimirovich Rak, has failed to respond to the allegations in court.

This failure prompted Epic Games to file for a default judgment, requesting an injunction that would prevent the defendant from using Epic’s copyrighted works to develop cheats, as well as other infringing activity.

Without Rak being able to put up a defense, one might expect an easy win for Fortnite’s developer, but that’s certainly not the case.

In an order published this week, United States Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler notes that the balance currently weighs against granting the default judgment.

Judge Beeler is specifically concerned with the merits of Epic’s claims and the sufficiency of the complaint. This includes the copyright infringement accusations, which need work.

One of the claims is that Mr. Rak engaged in direct copyright infringement. This requires Epic to show that the alleged infringer violates its exclusive rights, but that’s not the case here,

“Epic alleges that users can download Mr. Rak’s cheat and then inject the cheat into Fortnite code, but it does not allege that Mr. Rak himself injected the cheat into Fortnite code or created an unauthorized derivative work,” Judge Beeler notes.

In addition, the defendant allegedly displayed the cheat in action by posting gameplay on YouTube, thereby violating its exclusive right ‘to perform the copyrighted work publicly.’ However, without further details, the court is not convinced that this is copyright infringement.

“Epic does not allege what exactly Mr. Rak publicly performed or address whether its copyright extends to that performance. On this issue, Epic’s complaint says only that the Rak Video ‘showed full-screen gameplay using the cheat,’ without more,” Judge Beeler writes.

Then, there is the issue of whether posting gameplay material on YouTube is, in fact, copyright infringement. The court doesn’t want to draw any hard conclusions without hearing both sides but concludes that Epic’s claims are not sufficient.

“[T]the court declines to rule on whether posting a video on YouTube of gameplay from a video game does or does not infringe upon a copyright holder’s […] rights. The court will just say this: if it does infringe, Epic has not met its burden of demonstrating that to the court.”

Besides issues with the copyright claims, the trademark allegations are also lacking. Epic claims that the defendant uses the Fortnite trademark without authorization, but doesn’t link this to the sale of goods or services, as it should.

“Epic does not plead that Mr. Rak proposed any commercial transaction or offered anything for sale, much less that consumers would be misled into buying something from him or any other third party under the mistaken belief that it was coming from Epic,” Judge Beeler writes.

Before making a final recommendation, the court will allow Epic to amend its complaint to address the deficiencies. In addition, Epic has to provide the defendant with Russian translations of its filings.

If it chooses not to do so, however, the default judgment will be denied.

—

A copy of US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler’s order is available here (pdf).

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The UK has some of the toughest intellectual property legislation to be found anywhere in the world and rightsholders have plenty of options available, from civil action through to criminal referrals.

For the past several years the government has also shown a willingness to engage with the private sector in respect of online piracy. It has provided funding and resources to initiatives including the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and the multi-faceted Operation Creative, a commitment that looks set to continue.

At the heart of many of these matters sits the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), the government department responsible for copyrights, trademarks, patents and designs. This week the IPO published two documents, one detailing its corporate plan for 2018-2019 and the other outlining its overall strategy to 2021. Both contain statements relating to online copyright enforcement.

“IP matters. It touches everything that makes modern life, easier, safer, prosperous and more enjoyable,” the IPO Strategy 2018 report begins.

“Our work gives researchers, inventors and creators, whether as individuals or businesses, the confidence to invest their time, energy and money in doing something new and making life better.”

The IPO says its aim is to help the UK become the most creative and innovative country in the world by providing excellent IP services, a world-leading IP environment, and by making the IPO itself a great place to work. Much of the information in the reports focuses on how that progress will be made in the broader sense, including via the reduction of IP crime and infringement.

The IPO believes this can be achieved in a number of ways, including by investing in enforcement and improving access to enforcement options for rights holders. Investment in intelligence and an increased capacity for strategic leadership are foreseen, in addition to spending boosts to convince everyone that infringement is unacceptable.

“We will work towards a time where infringement is seen as socially unacceptable by all,” the IPO writes.

Periodically over the past couple of years, the government has stepped into the middle of disputes between rightsholders and Internet intermediaries, suggesting that if agreements to curb piracy aren’t reached, legislation could follow.

The IPO sees this kind of work continuing over the next couple of years with an offer to “broker greater engagement from online intermediaries in the fight against infringement and IP crime.”

The IPO Corporate Plan 2018-2019 touches on similar issues, promising to ensure that appropriate resources are available to deliver on promises made as part of the government’s enforcement strategy.

“Reducing IP crime requires a multi-faceted approach. The UK is already a world leader in the enforcement of IP. We want to build upon what we are doing to create a paradigm shift around infringement,” the IPO writes.

“Before we can make this happen we need to improve our knowledge around consumer understanding of IP crime and infringement and what works to change behavior in this space. We need to understand the strengths and challenges of our enforcement approach, continue to invest in education and intelligence, and maintain and increase our capacity to lead.”

The IPO says it will consider if there are ways to reduce the costs of enforcement for rights holders, such as reducing the time taken to bring a matter to court and reducing costs once there.

The Office also wants to consider the possibility of more administrative approaches, including “administrative blocking injunctions”, something which it hopes to understand the “pros and cons” of by March 2019. But the plans don’t stop there.

“We will work with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport [DCMS] and industry to support the proposed program of roundtable discussions outlined in the Creative Industries’ Sector Deal.

“A key aspect will be ensuring they are used effectively to assess the evidence for, and where appropriate, to agree future action to tackle the infringement of IP rights online,” the IPO notes.

In conjunction with industry, the IPO hopes to develop “voluntary measures” to target online marketplaces, social media, and digital advertising, while continuing to co-fund the Creative Content UK (CCUK) educational campaign in conjunction with DCMS.

“To begin the work towards making the infringement of IP socially unacceptable, we need a better view of consumer attitudes to IP crime and what messaging changes behavior.

“We know that behavioral change is long-term and never easy, but we want to secure general cultural change where respecting IP is seen as the right thing to do. This work will link up with the messaging on IP’s economic and career impact,” the IPO concludes.

—

The IPO Strategy 2018 report can be found here (pdf)
The IPO Corporate Plan 2018-2019 can be found here (pdf)

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