The Alliance for Creativity Entertainment (ACE) is the largest anti-piracy coalition in history. It pools the resources of all the major Hollywood studios plus Netflix, Amazon and dozens of other companies to tackle piracy on a global scale.

ACE has made many announcements over the past couple of years celebrating successful conclusions to multiple operations. Most relate to closures of file-hosting services, IPTV providers and other platforms involved in the unlicensed streaming of movies and TV shows.

However, for reasons best known to the coalition, not all of its investigations are publicized. Many fly under the radar until visitors to once-active websites find themselves being directed to the ACE anti-piracy portal when they expected to find a ‘pirate’ platform.

According to information obtained by TorrentFreak, four new domains have recently begun redirecting to ACE. The first, ausmediastreaming.com.au, comes as no surprise. In early March, ACE revealed that it had secured the closure of the IPTV supplier following a cease-and-desist order.

“The closure of Aus Media Streaming is the latest in a series of victories that can protect Australian creators and ensure that legal services can continue to thrive,” said Karyn Temple, Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel of the Motion Picture Association.

The second fresh domain under ACE/MPA control is watchmoviesfree.com.au. When it was online, the site asked prospective customers whether they wanted to watch “Every single movie, TV show, sporting event, documentary, kids TV and movie ever made, free?”

Concluding that the answer must be “Of course you do”, the site then went on to offer Android-based set-top devices named Octo-Ninja and Ninja-Quad. It’s unclear what was in those devices but either a pre-loaded setup and/or a subscription-based IPTV service seems likely. Before it was taken down, the domain offered an Australian telephone number for people to get in touch.

EmpireTV.ca is the third domain. According to its now disappeared website and Facebook pages, it claimed to be the “top streaming service in Canada”, offering over 5,000 channels plus on-demand movies, TV shows, PPV and more from $9.99 per month.

Various packages were made available by the site, varying in price according to subscription length and levels of content available. The site was previously targeted in a DMCA complaint after supplying German football content without permission. It also had a detailed disclaimer that clearly didn’t cut much ice with ACE.

“We have no association with any of the IP channels shown or any of these products. TV channels and video content of the services are being provided without any liability from us regarding copyrights,” it began.

“Per our knowledge all channels provided by the server sellers abide by all relevant countries copyright laws and any copyright issues must be taken up directly with the server owners. EMPIRETV.CA does not take any liability as to what is aired on the servers and EMPIRETV.CA have NO control over the servers or streams.”

With EmpireTV.ca now redirecting to the ACE portal, the fourth domain to be placed under the anti-piracy group’s control (or more accurately, that of the MPA) is ZeddIPTV.com. Little is known about this supplier but given that it was previously offered via classified listings in Australia, it may have been focused on that region.

Although nothing has been officially confirmed by ACE in respect of ‘seizing’ any of these domains, it seems likely that following pressure from the anti-piracy group, domains were handed over as part of a settlement. ACE has shuttered close to three dozen operations to date but publicized just a few.

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Millions of people use the Kodi media player for their daily entertainment needs.

While the open-source software is content-neutral, some third-party addons have given the tool a bad reputation by using it to offer pirated content.

This isn’t anything the Kodi development team has control over. Luckily, most copyright holders realize this, but every now and then one appears having apparently missed the boat. And for Kodi, that can result in real damage.

For example, this week we noticed that the official Kodi download page is no longer listed in Google’s search results. Looking more closely, we spotted that it was removed by Google following a DMCA takedown request.

The takedown notice was sent a few weeks ago on behalf of the Turkish pay-TV service Digiturk, which is owned by the beIN Media Group. BeIN is known for its strong stance against piracy but in this case, it was too aggressive.

“The infringed content is sports content (illegal video stream) branded and watermarked with the trademark/logo BEIN SPORTS HD,” Digiturk writes.

The request identifies a series of URLs, many of which are associated with seemingly unauthorized IPTV services. However, it also lists kodi.tv/download, Kodi’s official download page.

Generally speaking, Google is pretty good at spotting such errors but in this case the URL was removed, as mentioned at the bottom of related search results.

Interestingly, Kodi was not the only legal open-source project that was targeted. The same notice also lists two Videolan.org URLs, which is the home of the popular media player VLC. Again, the download pages of the software were listed.

Luckily for VLC, Google flagged these requests as incorrect, meaning that the pages remain available in Google’s search results.

Kodi’s Keith Herrington is disappointed that their software is once again hit by the piracy stigma.

“It’s unfortunate content companies continue to lump us and VLC together with services who are clearly in violation of copyright law by not only providing streams to their content but using their logo, etc and that Google doesn’t even bother to check or validate, they just remove.

“It feels like a very ‘guilty until proven innocent’ model which I do not agree with,” Herrington adds.

The Kodi Foundation has submitted a DMCA counter-notice to Google and hopes that their download page will reappear in search results in due course.

TorrentFreak reached out to Digiturk for a comment on its unusual requests. While they could be intentional, it’s also possible that the company simply targeted these open source projects by mistake.

Talking about mistakes, Digiturk also sent takedown notices for its own website in the past, more than once actually. That’s another error they may want to pay attention to going forward.

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For the major Hollywood studios and industry body the MPA, theatrical windows have always been something to vigorously protect.

Supporting the big screen experience and the massive infrastructure behind it is a top priority for the industry overall, not to mention a crucial revenue stream.

Slowly but surely, however, theatrical windows have shortened due to various pressures but nevertheless, day and date cinema and VOD releases have remained a distant prospect for major titles. Then coronavirus happened.

In common with hundreds of business sectors and individuals around the world, the spread of the virus is having a profound effect on cinemas. As preventative measures are put in place, revenues are reportedly down to the lowest levels in twenty-five years. On the other hand, services that can be accessed at home – Netflix for example – are enjoying a boom in usage.

In an effort to cushion the blow, earlier this week Universal Pictures announced that it would be releasing some of its newest movies, that are technically still in their theatrical windows, on digital platforms for rental. As a result, The Invisible Man, The Hunt, and Emma all went on sale Friday at around the $20 mark.

How well these movies will be received and in what volumes consumed remains to be seen but within hours of them appearing on official platforms, the inevitable happened. At the time of writing, all are available for free downloading and streaming on dozens of pirate sites.

Currently available in both 1080p and 720p, The Invisible Man is now being downloaded and streamed by huge numbers of pirates and is currently the most popular of the trio. At this point, most copies are so-called ‘web-rips’ meaning they have been captured from streaming service streams rather than downloaded.

Obtained via the same method, available in the same qualities, and in second place in popularity terms, is horror/thriller movie The Hunt. Emma sits in a distant third place, with mainly lower quality rips and substantially lower levels of consumption.

The big question remains whether this illicit consumption will have a measurable effect on the success of these movies and those that may follow under the ’emergency’ release policy implemented by Universal. Most years big movies have to compete with leaked screener copies so this type of availability isn’t new but it is unprecedented for the content not to have come from ‘leaked’ sources.

If nothing else, the studios now find themselves in the middle of an experiment. Will VOD sales soar as a result of these early releases and if they do, will it be possible to replicate in a more stable environment later on?

Already beleaguered cinema chains will certainly have plenty to say in the months to come and could find themselves in the middle of yet another crisis, beyond what they’re experiencing today.

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Harry Potter is without doubt one of the biggest entertainment brands in the world. As a result, the various copyright holders, including Warner Bros., are very protective of their ‘asset.’

For example, When an underground restaurant tried to host a Halloween party with a Harry Potter theme, Warner’s lawyers came knocking, urging the owner not to use any Harry Potter properties.

More recently, a Kickstarter campaign was hit with a takedown notice for having a Harry Potter-inspired title, while a Danish Harry Potter festival was kindly urged to change its name.

This week, we can add another example to the list. In a lawsuit filed at a federal court in California, Warner Bros. accuses Random Tuesday Inc. and its alleged owner Dawn Biggs of copyright infringement and various other offenses.

Random Tuesday is the organization behind various virtual running clubs, including the “Potterhead Running Club” and the “Chilton Running Club,” with the latter being based on the Gilmore Girls series.

“This is a lawsuit to remedy Defendants’ deliberate, pervasive, and willful infringement and dilution of Warner Bros.’ intellectual property rights with respect to the well-known and highly popular Harry Potter and Gilmore Girls entertainment franchises,” Warner Bros. writes.

According to Warner Bros, the clubs are using the reputation and goodwill of these brands to grow their customer base. This includes organizing themed events and selling merchandise inspired by Warner’s properties.

“They organize virtual running races whereby they collect fees in exchange for providing medals and other merchandise displaying the HP [Harry Potter] Marks and GG [Gilmore Girls] Marks,” Warner Bros. writes.

“In addition, the Clubs’ websites have offered for sale and continue to sell a wide variety of unauthorized merchandise bearing the HP Marks and GG Marks, including hats, t-shirts, stickers, hairbands, mugs, lip balm, toys, novelties, and running medals.”

Initially, the “Potterhead Running Club” was called the “Hogwarts Running Club.” This changed in 2018, but Warner believes that the name change is not enough. The branding and products still use Harry Potter inspired names such as “Gryffinroar,” “Huffletuff,” “Slytherwin,” and “Ravenclawesome,” it notes.

As such, Random Tuesday has and continues to infringe Warner Bros.’ copyrights in the Harry Potter films and Gilmore Girls series, Warner argues, while urging the court to put an end to it.

The lawsuit shouldn’t come as a total surprise. Warner Bros. explains that it tried to resolve the matter through telephone calls and in-person meetings with the organization. However, this didn’t result in the desired effect.

In addition to copyright infringement, Random Tuesday is also accused of trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false advertising, and unfair competition, among other things. Warner Bros. requests all infringing activity to stop and wishes to be compensated for damages suffered.

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A copy of the complaint Warner Bros. filed at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, is available here (pdf).

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Originally penciled in for a November 2019 launch, Doom Eternal suffered delays. Id Software and publisher Bethesda said that this was to ensure that the game lived up to the hype.

A few hours ago, in regions that had already ticked over to March 20 (Australia, for example), people began downloading the game from official sources.

Given that the game was already revealed to be using the infamous anti-tamper technology Denuvo, no one really expected a fast ‘pirate’ release. However, a user on Reddit quickly dropped a bombshell.

The player revealed that after paying for and downloading the official Bethesda.net version’s game files, he opened up the main folder and spied the main executable – a 368MB file named DOOMEternalx64vk.exe. However, a secondary folder (located in Doom Eternal\original\) contained a second much smaller .exe file (67MB) with exactly the same name.

What followed is barely believable. According to now numerous reports, it is possible to replace the .exe file in the ‘original’ folder with the main executable and the game still runs. The theory is that the smaller file is the source .exe without Denuvo, while the highly-bloated version is the one ‘infected’ with Denuvo.

This appears to suggest that someone in the supply chain managed to place a DRM-free executable in the purchased game, put it in a folder clearly marked as ‘original’, then served it up for one of the first-ever purchasers to stumble across, apparently with minimum effort. This has led to jokes that the developers have effectively cracked their own game.

As a result, copies of the game are now being shared online and a number of people are reportedly playing the game with no issues. Initially, there was talk that the game crashed after level 3 but that appears to have been driver-related with an update fixing the problem. A Bethesda account is reportedly needed but a solution to that is already being shared on a Russian forum popular with game pirates.

There is still some work to be done before the pirate release appears in the mainstream (repacker ‘Fitgirl’ lists it as ‘coming soon’) but it seems pretty likely that will be today, the day the game was released. Denuvo didn’t even need to be cracked or disabled to make this happen which is unsettling some, who feel it might be some sort of cunning stunt to give pirates a time-limited demo or something similar.

Time will tell…

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