Piracy is a complicated and multi-faceted phenomenon. People who stream content illegally are seen as a direct threat by the entertainment industries, but many of these pirates have paid subscriptions as well.

Against this backdrop, Sarah Oh and fellow researchers from the Technology Policy Institute looked at the interplay between legal and illegal video consumption online. The main question they asked is whether pirate video consumption directly competes with legal viewing time.

The results, published in a paper titled “Do Pirated Video Streams Crowd Out Non-Pirated Video Streams?” show that this is indeed the case.

The findings are based on a massive dataset that includes 5.25 terabytes of online activity data from 19,764 American households who together own more than 468,612. This data, including raw Internet traffic from 2016 to 2017, was then used to create an economic analysis.

The sheer volume of the information is a goldmine that provides some unique insights. For example, it includes the time spent on viewing legal and pirated video per operating system. While it’s merely used as an instrumental variable by the researchers, it’s worth highlighting separately.

The data shows that Windows users watch the most pirated content of all, more than 2 minutes per hour on average. This is more than Mac and Android OS users, which are both still well above the average.

“Windows PC devices show higher proportions of time spent on pirate sites than devices with other types of operating systems,” the researchers write, adding that “most devices used for piracy are represented by a few top operating systems.”

The graph above shows that Linux users view significantly less pirated video. They fall below the average, with slightly more than half a minute of pirated streaming per hour. The viewing time goes down even further for other operating systems, including iOS, Xbox, Roku and others.

When looking at the time spent on legal video consumption platforms, other operating systems come out on top. The Linux-based Tizen OS is in the lead, followed by WebOS and Roku.

Although these are intriguing statistics, the main purpose of the research is to look at the link between time spent on legal and illegal video streaming. Specifically, if one competes with the other.

The article answers this question with a resounding ‘yes’. On average, the researchers found that more minutes spent on pirate streaming decreases the time spent on legal video sites including Amazon and Netflix.

While the overall effect is strong enough to hold up across all legal services, the effect is actually the opposite for YouTube. Watching more pirated video streams is linked to watching more content on YouTube.

One of the explanations for this finding, according to the researchers, could be that both are free forms of entertainment, which may appeal to a similar audience.

The overarching conclusion, however, is that time spent watching pirated videos directly competes with time spent on legal alternatives.

“Pirate sites compete with non-pirated streaming services for a growing share of time that American households spend each day watching online video,” the researchers conclude.

The raw data, based on the volume of files, suggests that for every extra minute on a pirate site people spend 3.5 fewer minutes on a legal streaming service. However, since pirate files generally are more compressed, a one-on-one tradeoff is seen as more likely.

“Because pirated video files are more compressed than non-pirated video files, often by a factor of four, and because pirated video is frequently downloaded in full and non-pirated video is streamed, we conclude that time spent watching pirated video displaces nearly the same amount of time spent watching over-the-top streaming apps,” the research concludes.

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The full article titled “Do Pirated Video Streams Crowd Out Non-Pirated Video Streams? Evidence from Online Activity,” written by Sarah Oh, Scott Wallsten and Nathaniel Lovin, is available here.

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

Last August, calls for Take Two Interactive’s Red Dead Redemption (RDR1) to land on PC appeared they might be answered by the developer behind the ‘Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project’.

The supposed plan of ‘DamnedDev’ (real name Johnathan Wyckoff) was to modify the Xbox360 and PS3 versions of RDR1 and bring the game to the PC while improving the game with better graphics and additional features. In September 2019, however, Wyckoff revealed that he was being “bullied” by a corporation. A lawsuit filed at a New York court in December revealed that Take-Two was taking action to bring the project to an end.

Citing breaches of its intellectual property rights (direct and contributory copyright infringement) and user licensing agreements, Take-Two said that it had repeatedly asked Wyckoff to cease and desist but when the project continued, it had no other choice than to take legal action. It did so on two grounds.

Firstly, the lawsuit targeted the RDRII Project, which reportedly aimed to add the RDR1 game map to RDR2. It went on to make claims about the Damned Enhancement Project, which would reportedly enable users to play RDR1 on PC, where it isn’t officially available, “thereby destroying the market for an official, updated version from Take-Two, and creating competition for Take-Two’s PC-version of RDR2.”

The case has been rolling on for several months now and this week Wyckoff filed an answer to Take-Two’s lawsuit along with a series of counterclaims.

Describing himself as an “enthusiastic player” and modifier of Take-Two videogames, Wyckoff first provides a short background on what modding is all about, such as improving game graphics or changing features. He claims that this activity is accepted by gaming companies which typically publish a ‘mod policy’ to explain what type of mods are allowed. He believes that he acted within the boundaries set out in the Rockstar/Take-Two policy.

“Defendant believes it was acting in accordance with the Plaintiff’s published policy on ‘PC Single-Player Mods’ which says that ‘Take-Two has agreed that it generally will not take legal action against third-party projects involving Rockstar’s PC games that are single-player, non-commercial, and respect the intellectual property (IP) rights of third parties,” Wyckoff’s answer reads, referencing the document below.

From here, Wyckoff refutes many of Take-Two’s allegations, including that his RDR2 mod “did not contain maps” from the original RDR1 game and that the publisher’s description of the mod appeared to describe a previous mod he developed (RDRV) “that was abandoned in 2017 at the request of the Plaintiff.”

As the above ‘mod policy’ lays out, to meet the criteria any mod must be non-commercial. In its lawsuit, Take-Two implied that donations solicited by Wyckoff were used to create the “infringing programs” which were then used to “drive followers” to his social media and streaming accounts. Wyckoff sees things differently.

“Defendant asserts that it is a hobbyist and worked on the project without expecting or soliciting compensation for the mod,” he writes. “Defendant denies receiving any compensation for its mod projects.”

In its lawsuit, Take-Two wrote that it had hoped to settle the dispute with Wyckoff without resorting to the courts. However, the company claims that rather than ending his activities, Wyckoff suggested that the project might get “leaked” by him or others. In his answer, Wyckoff admits to discussions with Take-Two but denies that he ever threatened to leak the project online. In any event, he says he’s in no position to do so.

“Defendant no longer has access to the mod project files and does not intend to redevelop them,” he writes. “Defendant will not restart work on the now-lost mod files and has expressly agreed to same,” he adds, noting that all claims that Take-Two has been injured in any way are also refuted, not least since the mods were never released.

In conclusion, Wyckoff says that since everything he did was within the parameters of Take-Two’s ‘mod policy’, all copyright infringement claims should be rejected and the court should issue a declaration to that effect or, in the alternative, determine that Wyckoff is an innocent infringer.

Finally, he points to the fact that Take-Two’s ‘user agreement’ contains a clause that compels parties in dispute to enter into an arbitration process (that Take-Two must pay for) to settle their differences. Wyckoff wants that to happen.

Wyckoff’s answer, affirmative defenses and counterclaims 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.

Late last year, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis launched a new initiative in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property to find ways the US can better address online piracy.

The DMCA is more than two decades old now and, increasingly, the creative industries are calling for legislative change and bolstered enforcement.

To review the available options and possible hurdles, Tillis chaired a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee yesterday, to examine the approaches taken in foreign jurisdictions.

In two panels, academics plus stakeholders from the entertainment and tech industries shared their thoughts, complemented by written testimonies. While a wide variety of issues were raised, much of the discussion revolved around site blocking.

At the moment, known pirate sites are blocked by Internet providers in dozens of countries around the world. But in the US, which is the largest audience for these sites, pirate site blocking is notably absent. This presents room for improvement.

Stan McCoy, President and Managing Director of the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA region, informed the Senate Subcommittee that foreign site blocking efforts are the “most successful approach to online piracy” to date.

“This remedy allows a rights holder to seek a legal order, subject to due process, from an online intermediary that is capable of preventing its service from being used for unlawful purposes,” he mentions.

A ‘no-fault’ injunction puts no blame on intermediaries such as ISPs. However, it does order them to take action against infringing sites and services, which can include blocking.

“Many countries currently offer such a no-fault injunctive remedy to address infringing conduct by pirate sites, including Australia, most member states of the European Union, India and the United Kingdom, to name a just a few,” McCoy notes, while adding that Canada recently joined in as well.

These blocking efforts, many of which the MPA is directly involved in, have proven to be effective according to the movie industry group.

“Our internal data shows us that site blocking is very effective at cutting traffic to pirate domains – meaning that an order applicable to the main access providers in a given country reduces traffic to a targeted domain by 70% on average and can be as high as 80-90% in some countries,” McCoy notes.

In addition to decreasing traffic to blocked domains, which is an obvious result, McCoy also mentions that traffic to other pirate sites also decreased, while legal websites enjoyed more visitors at the same time.

“So yes, site blocking is effective. And that is why much of the rest of the world has embraced this approach,” McCoy concludes.

The effectiveness claims were backed up in other testimonies as well, including that of Dr. Michael D. Smith of Carnegie Mellon University, who published and reviewed several papers on the effectiveness of anti-piracy enforcement.

While the MPA didn’t explicitly call for new legislation, it’s obvious that the movie industry sees blocking as a viable option in the US as well. This was reiterated in testimony from Jonathan Yunger, the co-president of Millennium Media, which is one of the largest independent film production companies.

Millennium Media is the driving force behind several lawsuits against BitTorrent users, websites such as YTS, and apps including Showbox, Popcorn Time, and Cotomovies. According to Yunger, these and other forms of piracy represent an existential threat to the movie business which the DMCA hasn’t been able to curb.

“The truth is that the battle against piracy has only intensified since the DMCA became law, with too little progress to show for it,” Yunger notes.

“Anything that could be distributed digitally online was stolen and monetized by criminals, facilitated by some of the world’s wealthiest internet companies including Google, its now-sibling YouTube, and Facebook.”

Yunger sees large tech companies as clear rivals, which have only made matters worse. For example, when Millennium did a search on YouTube two years ago it found over 200 pirated versions of its films which had been viewed over 110 million times in just one month.

While blocking YouTube isn’t very realistic, Millennium’s co-president does see site blocking as the prime answer to piracy.

“I would like to be able to tell you that America is on the front lines of this global fight against piracy, but, unfortunately, that is not true. Other countries around the world have taken the lead,” he says.

“The first and most important tool being used abroad is no-fault injunctive relief aimed at blocking access to the market by known, adjudicated pirate sites, referred to by some as ‘site blocking,’ Yunger adds.

Like many others, Yunger knows that site blocking is a sensitive topic in US Congress, specifically after the SOPA legislation failed to pass in 2012. At the time, opponents warned that site blocking would ‘break the internet’ and ‘stifle free speech,’ but that was all “fearmongering” and “hyperbole” according to Yunger.

“Back then, we all thought Silicon Valley was simply trying to make the world a better place. The tech industry and its allies tried to portray the creative community as a rich and greedy behemoth that was trying to take away people’s free content and destroy their access to a safe and well-functioning internet,” he says.

“Well, I think we all know who the rich and greedy industry behemoth is today, and there are plenty of questions about who can properly wave the guardian banner on behalf of internet users. In this David and Goliath scenario, the creative industry is obviously the David to the Big Tech Goliath.”

Millennium sees site blocking as an effective anti-piracy tool and the company wants the US to join other countries. A clear message, but the company’s co-president does derail at the end, by mentioning two long-defunct pirate sites.

“Since the first website blocking order went into place in May 2010, notorious piracy site ThePirateBay has been blocked in 19 countries. Isohunt is now blocked in 10 countries and KickAssTorrents is blocked in 11 countries. But, sadly, all of those sites are still available to Americans.”

Apparently, Yunger believes that torrent sites isoHunt and KickassTorrents remain threats. However, isoHunt shut down years ago after it lost a lawsuit against the MPA, and KickassTorrents was shut down by the feds in 2016.

The overall message is obvious, however. The movie industry sees site blocking as a great tool to combat piracy and the suggestion is that US lawmakers should do something with it.

That brings us to a crucial matter. The DMCA already includes a provision to provide injunctive relief against intermediaries, which could order ISPs to block foreign pirate sites.

This matter was also brought up at the hearing by Matt Schruers, President at the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Schreurs, who represents the interests of many major tech companies, stresses that there are also potential negative consequences to site blocking.

He references several mistakes that were made when US authorities first started seizing domains of allegedly infringing websites, including the fact that 84,000 websites were taken down in error.

In addition, Schreurs also highlights that the DMCA does allow for injunctive relief under subsection 512(j).

“It is interesting to hear talk of other jurisdictions having pioneered site blocking when members of this committee gave the earliest thought to injunctive relief in this context, and it’s embodied in 512(J),” he says. “The notion that there isn’t an injunction remedy in US law is really not accurate.”

Stan McCoy of the MPA acknowledges this “hypothetical” option but points to the crux of why we haven’t seen any site-blocking efforts yet.

“The great benefit we see in a lot of the jurisdictions that have no-fault injunctive relief around the world is that it’s very clearly no-fault. We’re not asserting any kind of wrongdoing on the part of the intermediary against whom the order is sought.”

“Unfortunately, that aspect is not ideally clear in 512(j) and that’s perhaps one reason why that provision has not been used,” McCoy adds.

Yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee is part of an ongoing process to review the state of US copyright law and to see what other options are available. In addition to site blocking, the EU Copyright Directive, including Article 17, was also discussed.

While it is clear that site blocking is on the agenda of US lawmakers, any concrete changes to the DMCA or other legislation are not on the table yet.

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

Since 2012, downloading unlicensed music and movies from the Internet in Japan has been prohibited under the country’s Copyright Act and in theory punishable by up to two years in prison.

Limitations of the law meant that downloading manga and other literary works wasn’t covered by the legislation, something which drew the ire of the publishing sector. In response, early last year the Cultural Affairs Agency proposed an expansion of the law to cover all copyrighted content but things didn’t go smoothly.

Due to the breadth of the proposals, some feared that even private copying of images, for example, could be rendered illegal and punishable by a potential prison sentence. In an abrupt turnaround, however, the planned copyright amendments were shelved by the government after being rattled by protests over the implications.

After months of deliberations, the government has just approved a new bill that aims to address the concerns of copyright holders and those averse to the more draconian aspects of the original proposals.

The draft legislation criminalizes the downloading of unlicensed manga, magazines and academic publications from the Internet. The penalties will be brought into line for those already in place for music and movies with a maximum two-year prison sentence and/or a fine of two million yen (US$19,118). The most severe penalties will be reserved for egregious and repeat offenders.

In a step back from earlier proposals, Internet users will be allowed to download some image-based and academic content for limited private use in order not to stifle the flow of information and education, provided that activity does not impact copyright holders. Where the precise boundaries lie is currently unclear, however.

The government has provided some examples, such as the use of a single frame from a much larger manga publication or saving a single image from a social media site that was uploaded without permission. In the near future, to clear up any uncertainty, it will offer advisories to the public to ensure that people understand what they can and can’t do with copyrighted content to keep within the new law.

“We struck the right balance between securing effective measures against piracy and avoiding people from being discouraged in efforts to collect information,” Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Koichi Hagiuda told a press conference, as per Mainichi.

One aspect that is perfectly clear is the outlawing of so-called “leech” sites. These platforms, known in the West as linking or indexing sites, do not carry any copyrighted content themselves but provide hyperlinks to infringing material hosted elsewhere.

Operating such a service in Japan will become punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a fine of five million yen (US$47,780). The latest estimates suggest that there may be up 200 of these “leech” sites in the country, a figure the government is hoping to reduce.

The new copyright legislation regarding the downloading of literary works is expected to come into force on January 1, 2021. However, operators of linking sites will have less time to adjust, with the new penalties applying from October 1, 2020.

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

Over the past two decades, the music industry has witnessed several shifts in music consumption. First, CDs were traded in for downloads and in recent years streaming has taken over.

Despite the growing availability of legal streaming services in many countries, the piracy problem hasn’t disappeared. In just a few clicks, virtually every music track can be accessed for free through unauthorized sources.

In an attempt to prevent these infringements, the BPI and other music industry groups send millions of takedown notices to Internet services every month. Although all major search engines are targeted, most of these requests are directed at Google.

With roughly a million URLs reported to Google every week, the BPI is the most active music industry sender. When added up the numbers are substantial and have just resulted in the music group hitting a new milestone.

After crossing the mark of 500,000,000 reported links, the BPI has become the second most active reporter after Rivendell. It also means that, of all the URLs reported to Google over the past several years, more than 11% come from the UK group.

While the massive numbers open the door to mistakes, the BPI has a very decent track record. Close to 97% of the links are indeed removed by Google, which rejected less than one percent. The rest are either duplicates or links that aren’t indexed.

For comparison, Google only removed 72% of Rivendell’s reported links while more than a quarter were marked as duplicates or not listed in Google’s search results.

Over the years, the BPI has flagged ‘copyright infringing’ links on more than 30,000 domains. Many of these are no longer operational. The top targeted sites that are still online today are 4shared.com and chomikuj.pl, which were reported 9.2 million and 7.9 million times respectively.

According to BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor, the new milestone shows that piracy remains a massive problem that requires the full attention of all stakeholders involved.

“The fact the BPI has had to delist half a billion infringing music links from Google alone, on behalf of UK artists and labels, highlights the staggering scale of the problem of illegal sites, as well as BPI’s unwavering commitment to fighting for the rights of artists and their record labels,” Taylor says.

In the past, the BPI stressed that companies such as Google should take more responsibility. These continued requests eventually led to a “code of practice” where major search engines committed to do more.

This has led to progress, Taylor says, noting that demotion of known pirate sites “has significantly improved the quality of results presented to consumers.”

“The collaboration with search engines, including Google, sets a good example for online intermediaries and platforms, which must urgently take on greater responsibility to combat illegal content,” Taylor stresses.

This is not limited to search engines but also applies to advertising networks, payment providers, hosting services, domain registries, and registrars.

”For too long we have accepted a reactive approach that places all the burden on creators to search for and police hundreds of millions of infringements of their rights across the entire internet. That approach cannot succeed,” Taylor says.

“Instead we should expect reasonable, proactive, preventative measures by all online businesses, using technology and good business practices, to sweep the black market to the edges of the internet.”

According to the BPI, these changes are achievable. If not voluntarily, then with a little help from lawmakers, to push these companies in the right direction.

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