Last year, several major music companies sued Charter Communications, one of the largest Internet providers in the US with 22 million subscribers.

Helped by the RIAA, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, and others accused Charter of deliberately turning a blind eye to its pirating subscribers.

Under US law, providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances” and Charter failed to do so, according to the music labels. Specifically, the ISP is accused of ignoring repeat infringers on its network, which it continued to serve as customers.

This week Charter replied to the complaint, which was amended in February, denying most of these allegations. In addition, the ISP is countersuing the music companies on two issues.

Firstly, Charter requests a declaratory judgment from the court, ruling that it’s not contributorily liable for the alleged infringements of its customers. Among other things, it points out that it doesn’t host or promote any infringing activity, nor can it detect piracy on its network.

Other ISPs have issued similar counterclaims in the past. However, Charter goes a step further by also countersuing the music companies for violating copyright law themselves.

The ISP’s claim follows a decision by the music companies to remove 272 sound recordings and 183 music compositions from their initial complaint. These were dropped after the record labels were ordered to produce further evidence that they indeed owned the rights.

This doesn’t sit well with Charter, which believes that the record companies, through the RIAA, have sent inaccurate DMCA notices for these works.

“Upon information and belief, the Record Company Plaintiffs did not own the Dropped Works when they sent notices for them,” Charter writes, adding that “…the Record Company Plaintiffs did not have the right to send notices to Charter for the Dropped Works.”

The notices in question contained “inaccurate information,” which includes the “misrepresentation” that the RIAA was authorized on behalf of the record companies to send these, the ISP adds.

According to the court documents, some of these works were also part of the lawsuit against fellow ISP Cox, where a jury recently awarded a damages amount of nearly $100,000 per work.

Charter itself argues that it was also directly harmed. The notices were processed in its CATS anti-piracy system, through which they were forwarded to subscribers. This obviously costs money.

“Charter incurs costs in implementing its CATS, including when processing Plaintiffs’ inaccurate notices,” the ISP notes, adding that the inaccurate notices also resulted in reputational damage.

“Charter is injured when it processes inaccurate notices, causing it to forward false accusations to its subscribers, to the extent this creates tension with the impacted subscribers, negatively affects goodwill, and causes reputational harm to Charter,” the counterclaim reads.

The ISP demands a jury trial on these issues and wants to be compensated for all damages suffered. In addition, it asks the court to declare that it is not contributorily liable for the alleged copyright infringements of its subscribers.

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A copy of Charter’s response to the amended complaint, including the affirmative defenses and the counterclaims, is available here (pdf).

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

Twitter account hacks are pretty common events, especially for targets that are high profile.

In January, for example, more than a dozen NFL teams temporarily lost control of their accounts. The group behind these breaches previously targeted the accounts of Marvel, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Netflix.

But while most of these hacks are very obviously what they seem, others can be more ambiguous. Last night, the Netflix Twitter account for the MENA region suddenly started behaving oddly. Down went the familiar ‘N’ logo, only to be replaced by pirate-themed artwork, a pinned tweet containing a GIF of a man rocking back and forth in his car, and a message suggesting a hack.

From here, things got even more bizarre. In a tweet around 45 mins later, the supposedly ‘hijacked’ account reached out to its 735,000 followers with a request for them to suggest movies available on BitTorrent.

Google’s attempt at translating falls short but the consensus is that the Arabic text reads “Give us movie recommendations we can torrent”.

Given that Netflix is part of Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the global anti-piracy coalition dedicated to taking down anything related to piracy, this tweet seemed to support the notion that the account had indeed been hacked.

So, this morning, with the pirate artwork removed and the Netflix logo reinstated, it was no surprise to read that Netflix MENA had regained control of the account after the earlier shenanigans.

“We apologize for the previous tweets,” the company said. “We returned to the account and the actor is being held accountable.”

Somewhat bizarrely, however, none of the earlier tweets posted by the ‘hacker’ were removed. In fact, the Netflix apology was accompanied by a hashtag relating to the hit satirical cartoon series ‘Masameer’ and Masameer: The Movie, which is available to stream…..exclusively on Netflix.

As seen in the tweet below, Netflix MENA also embedded a video featuring two of the characters in the show, one of whom (at least according to our horribly rudimentary Arabic skills) appears to be issuing a forced apology for what happened to the Twitter account yesterday.

نعتذر عن التغريدات الماضية، رجعنا الحساب والفاعل بيتحاسب. #فيلم_مسامير pic.twitter.com/T4WHN5WBQ0

— Netflix MENA (@NetflixMENA) March 19, 2020

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

We invite any Arabic speakers to write in with a (much) better translation to put us out of our misery but as far as we can tell, the apology read out by the character appears to blame sleep (perhaps a lack of) for the “unfortunate events” on Netflix’s Twitter account. There’s also a suggestion that the problems can be resolved “outside court”.

All things considered, this entire situation is pretty bizarre but if the idea was to draw attention to the new movie, that has been achieved. If it was really a hack, however, then the hacker has probably done Netflix a favor. That might explain why none of ‘his’ tweets have been deleted….

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

Six years ago, the application known as Popcorn Time did something no other BitTorrent-based tool had ever managed to achieve.

Rejecting bland text-based interfaces and the need to scour multiple torrent sites, Popcorn Time presented content in a beautiful Netflix-style interface. This simplicity resulted in soaring popularity and attention from copyright holders, who did whatever they could to take it down.

However, since the original code was open source, new forks sprang up creating yet another new game of whack-a-mole. A few years ago, Popcorn Time went offline but yesterday was resurrected from the dead with a great new version. At least according to multiple news reports today, none of which are true.

While it’s had its ups and downs over the years, Popcorn Time never went away. Yet this morning it was declared as being “back from the dead”, just in time to entertain people “during the coronavirus pandemic.” This narrative was repeated by several tech publications with at least one claiming that the new version works as well as previous ones. That isn’t true either.

What actually happened was that the people behind one fork of Popcorn Time (considered by some to be the official successor to the original software) published version 0.4 of their variant, announcing the release on Twitter.

Love in the Time of Corona Version 0.4 is out ! Get copy from https://t.co/mD4R2iY7Rl

— Popcorn Time (@popcorntimetv) March 17, 2020

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

Unfortunately for them, the backlash was almost immediate. Users of the software gathering on the official sub-Reddit (/r/popcorntime) listed complaint after complaint, starting with a degraded user interface, traversing sundry other weird issues, and ending with reportedly aggressive VPN marketing.

“This latest update is ridiculous. The whole thing is now borked. It doesn’t work anymore, consumes three times more resources and CPU (to the point my computer hangs) just to pretend it’s loading a show,” one user wrote.

“[A]nd to make things worse, instead of proper information about seeds, download speed and things you need to know whether a torrent is working or not, it just display ads for the shit VPN.”

Only adding to the misery are reports from many users that their previous settings and favorites have been deleted, all accompanied by random software crashes, issues with subtitles, and much more.

When or if these problems will be fixed is anyone’s guess but the current advice is to either don’t upgrade at all or if it’s too late for that, uninstall and go back to the previous version which doesn’t have any of the issues mentioned above and works as it’s always done.

At least as far as this fork goes, version 0.4 is the first update since March 26, 2016, almost four years ago. The reason for the development hiatus isn’t clear but to return with an update that is causing so many issues only adds to the confusion. As a result, people are asking whether this is even the same dev team but given the secrecy that surrounds Popcorn Time forks in general, proving that one way or another isn’t really feasible.

This particular fork has experienced other issues recently too. Early November 2019, the domain registrar handling the PopcornTime.sh domain issued an order to the registry to disable the domain’s DNS access. A little under a week later the domain was functioning again but in January 2020 was disabled after the registrar received a fake legal complaint.

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

Late last year, Canada’s Federal Court approved the first piracy blockade in the country.

Following a complaint from three major media companies, Rogers, Bell and TVA, the Court ordered ISPs to block access to domains and IP-addresses of the pirate IPTV service GoldTV.

The blocking injunction is part of a regular copyright infringement case that started a few months earlier. While the targeted IPTV service is relatively small, the ruling set a new precedent.

The timing wasn’t entirely coincidental either. The case against GoldTV was filed after a bid for an administrative pirate site blocking scheme from the same media companies failed.

While the GoldTV case followed the regular legal process, site blocking opponents fear that this is merely a test event and that requests to block many other sites will follow.

Thus far there are no concrete signs of new cases. However, the blocklist created by the GoldTV case has expanded. After the IPTV service switched to new domains to circumvent the order, the copyright holders went back to court, requesting an updated blocklist which was granted not much later.

Although this updated list may have worked for a while, new ‘circumvention’ domains were soon added. This prompted Rogers, Bell and TVA to return to court again a few days ago, requesting another extension.

These update requests were foreseen and are permitted under the injunction. However, there is considerable secrecy surrounding them.

This is in part due to the fact that ISPs have been asked not to publicize the details, TekSavvy explained to us. While the filing is technically public, the rightsholders want to keep the details quiet, presumably because they don’t want to make GoldTV any wiser. This is also what happened with the previous update request.

“We were again asked not to publicize it,” Andy Kaplan-Myrth, TekSavvy’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, tells us. “As much as I do not like being in this position, we have decided not to publicize the list of domains for now.”

TorrentFreak also reached out to other sources, trying to get a copy of the court records, but thus far we have yet to get our hands on the documents. The filings can usually be picked up in person at the court but the coronavirus outbreak is complicating matters.

Although the lack of transparency is frustrating from a news perspective, we don’t expect to see anything unusual in the extension request. According to the Wire Report it contains six new domain names, but we haven’t been able to verify the figure.

TekSavvy, meanwhile, remains the only ISP to appeal the blocking order. While the company is complying with the recent injunction, it hopes to overturn the verdict in this separate proceeding.

This week the ISP submitted its memorandum of fact and law to the Federal Court of Appeal. This filing also references the ‘continual update’ process, noting that the court failed to consider that it would consume judicial resources.

A bigger problem, perhaps, will appear when more blocking injunctions are requested, targeting other pirate sites. These may all require updates during the years to come, TekSavvy warns, which will place a significant burden on the courts.

“Given that the Respondents describe a widespread problem with copyright infringement online, the Federal Court can expect many more such site-blocking motions. For each order, the Court will maintain a supervisory role for the duration of the order. Cumulatively, this will place a significant strain on judicial resources,” TekSavvy cautions.

The ISP’s motion reiterates many of the comments that were made when the appeal was announced, including potential net neutrality problems and a violation of the right to freedom of expression.

“The risks of over-blocking and compromising the integrity of the Internet are real, and are heightened in the absence of legislative guidance. As highlighted by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, this has serious implications for free expression,” the company adds.

On top of that, TekSavvy questions the effectiveness of the injunction, stressing that there is “strong evidence” that site blocking doesn’t work well as it’s easily circumvented. That alone would be enough to decline a blocking order, the ISP argues.

The appeal process is likely going to take a while, so, for now, the blocking injunction will stand. At the time of writing the federal court has yet to grant the most recent update request. When we learn more about that or the targeted domains, we will report accordingly.

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A copy of TekSavvy’s memorandum of fact and law, filed at the Federal Court of Appeal, is ‘transparently’ made available here (pdf).

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

Last December, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels.

Following a two-week trial, the jury held Cox liable for the copyright infringements of its subscribers, ordering the company to pay $1 billion in damages.

Heavily disappointed by the decision, Cox later asked the court to lower the damages. This triggered a scathing response from the music companies, which said that Cox deserved to be punished and that the billion-dollar damages award could have been higher.

The labels countered that Cox’s copyright infringement policy was a “sham,” effectively offering a safe haven for pirates. The ISP’s internal documentation showed that subscribers were let back in after being disconnected, quoting the head of the abuse department saying “f the dmca!!!”

Late last week Cox responded to this reply, stressing that its position is unchanged. According to the ISP, the opposition lacks a proper legal basis and only confirms that the damages amount is too high.

“Plaintiffs’ opposition confirms the need for remittitur to reduce the historically excessive damage award, which undisputedly dwarfs any previous award in a comparable case—or indeed in any case,” Cox writes.

The ISP argues that, even though there are ‘only’ around 10,000 infringements in this case, the labels are holding the company liable for piracy losses across the entire industry. That’s not justified, Cox argues, adding that its claimed piracy profits are overblown.

“Plaintiffs strove to convince the jury that the 10,017 infringements they could prove were evidence of millions more infringements they could not prove, and that the appropriate measure of damages was the harm not to Plaintiffs from Cox’s infringement but to the entire music industry from all infringement,” Cox states.

One of the key points of the reply focuses on the allegations that Cox didn’t have a proper repeat infringer policy as it let terminated subscribers back in. However, the ISP counters that many of its policies were in line with the Copyright Alert System (CAS), the voluntary agreement rightsholders struck with other US Internet providers.

“Plaintiffs call it ‘incredible’ that Cox allowed terminated subscribers to return to Cox’s service with ‘a clean slate,’ but CAS too allowed a ‘reset’ for an infringing subscriber after a period without notices, no matter how many times that subscriber had previously infringed.

“And Plaintiffs’ claim that Cox’s ‘never-suspend and never terminate’ policy for business customers ‘was even more outrageous’ rings hollow given that CAS imposed no obligations at all with respect to ISPs’ business customers,” the reply reads.

While there certainly are some differences with CAS, Cox believes that it could have simply escaped liability by joining the program. Because it didn’t, it now faces a billion-dollar judgment, even though its policy wasn’t that different, it says.

“The fact that Cox could have joined CAS and thereby avoided any liability for the conduct at issue here (it is undisputed that Plaintiffs have not sued any of the ISPs who signed onto CAS) makes readily apparent the gross disproportion between the culpability of its conduct and the $1 billion award.”

The record labels blasted Cox’s initial request to lower the damages award, which was sprinkled with shaded language such as “outrageous,” “egregious,” “flagrant,” “sham.” However, the ISP says that adjectives are not facts. It, therefore, urges the court to look at the evidence and properly weigh it in context.

This includes the way the damages are calculated, Cox’s conduct, but also damages awards that were handed down in similar copyright infringement cases. In this light, the ISP believes that a billion-dollar award is not justified.

“Fair consideration of the record establishes that the $1 billion award is excessive, not only by comparison to analogous awards, but in light of the trial evidence on which it must be based,” Cox concludes.

It is now up to the court to make a decision. If it decides not to lower the damages, Cox would like to have a new trial. In addition, the ISP also has a separate request outstanding for the court to issue a judgment as a matter of law, which effectively bypasses the jury.

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A copy of Cox’s reply to the labels’ opposition to its motion for remittitur can be found here (pdf).

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