Over the years there have been many claims that people involved in piracy are linked to other areas of criminality but a case concluded yesterday probably wasn’t the leading example the authorities had in mind.

In 2017, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) assisted by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) launched an investigation into Daniel Aimson, who at the time was a serving officer with the force. Another matter, which we’ll come to shortly, triggered an investigation into Aimson’s finances and his connection to A1MSN Ltd, a company registered in the UK during October 2016 directed by his then-wife, Rachel Aimson.

It transpired that this company, which described itself as being involved in the “retail sale of audio and video equipment in specialized stores”, was being used to supply piracy-configured IPTV devices providing access to sport and movies for a monthly subscription.

According to GMP, the company also sold pirate streaming subscriptions that allowed users to log into a web-based portal where the content could be viewed without the need for a dedicated device.

“Over a seven-month period between January to August 2017, the turnover for just one of the accounts linked to the company was in excess of £300,000, none of which was declared to HMRC,” GMP said in a statement.

“Further analysis of the account revealed that between September 2016 and May 2017, approximately 1,640 illicit IPTV devices were sold.”

Alleged losses for SKY TV

In September 2017, Aimson was arrested at his home under suspicion and fraud and he was suspended from his role with the police. An analysis by Sky TV suggested it could have lost around £5 million in official subscriptions but a figure of $2.124m is now being cited by GMP.

Yesterday, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, a judge at Manchester Crown Court sentenced the former police officer to 12 months in prison.

“Aimson was making enormous amounts of money from what he knew to be an illegal activity,” commented Detective Constable Paul Bayliss of Greater Manchester Police.

“He was a police employee with a good career. That is now in tatters and he’s facing a lengthy prison sentence during which to contemplate his foolish and deceitful actions.”

While 12 months may sound like a long time in prison, many offenders spend just half of their sentences behind bars. However, Daniel Aimson’s case goes much deeper than that, something that went unmentioned in the force’s statement this morning.

Already Serving a Six-Year Sentence for Drugs Offenses

According to the archives of the Manchester Evening News, in 2015 when Daniel Aimson was still a serving officer, he and several other individuals were producing cannabis on a commercial scale. One of the growing locations was leased using the identity of the member of the public after Aimson stole the individual’s driving license during a spot check.

Aimson’s farms continued to produce cannabis for at least 30 months but in June 2017 the operation was raided by police and shut down.

“He (Aimson) was seen at various stages on his own CCTV hard drive to wear a t-shirt depicting the lead character Walt in the hit TV series called Breaking Bad,” Prosecutor Owen Edwards previously commented.

“In his various text messages it is clear that Aimson reveled in his double life as officer and criminal.”

IPTV Piracy Continued While Aimson Was On Bail

While Aimson was on bail for the drugs offenses, financial investigators found links to his still-operating set-top box business, his wife’s limited company through which they were sold, and bank accounts operated by other family members used to handle the money.

In 2017, Aimson was handed a prison sentence of six years and four months for running the cannabis operation. Yesterday, just two and a half years into that sentence, he was handed an additional 12 months inside for selling the pirate TV devices.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Founded in 1998, BREIN is one of the world’s most recognizable anti-piracy groups and has taken on some of the largest names in piracy, including the infamous Pirate Bay.

BREIN has a laundry list of significant anti-piracy victories under its belt, not only by introducing site blocking to the Netherlands via a case against The Pirate Bay but also winning a landmark decision in the Filmspeler case, which found that selling piracy-configured set-top boxes is illegal under EU law.

Many of BREIN’s achievements aren’t so widely publicized in real-time but via its annual report, the Dutch anti-piracy group shines a light on its activities of the preceding 12 months. Its latest publication reveals that 2019 was a busy year, as BREIN sought to protect the rights of copyright holders in the fields of movies, TV shows, music and publishing, plus games and images.

BREIN Investigations Increase Year on Year

The global anti-piracy landscape is huge and almost impossible to map comprehensively given its fluid nature. However, BREIN is certainly taking on its fair share of cases and looking into a surprising number of matters at any one time.

During 2019, BREIN said it completed 596 investigations, up from the 511 it concluded during the previous year. The anti-piracy group doesn’t provide a precise overview of the nature of each of these investigations or the reasons for discontinuing each of them. Nevertheless, at the close of last year, 243 were still active, up from the 97 that remained ongoing at the end of 2018.

The War Against Downloading and Streaming Platforms

For many years, BREIN has reported successes against pirate platforms, often taking down hundreds in a 12 month period and 2019 was no exception. When downloading and streaming platforms are combined, BREIN says that it disabled 564 overall during the period. Sites targeted by the anti-piracy group commonly operate in the torrent, Usenet, linking, and cyberlocker niches.

Continuing to Tackle The Pirate Bay

After unrelenting pressure by BREIN, in 2012 a Dutch court issued an order for ISPs to block The Pirate Bay in the Netherlands. While that decision was overturned two years later, BREIN took the matter to the Supreme Court, which led to an EU Court of Justice referral.

In 2017, Europe’s highest court ruled that The Pirate Bay could indeed be blocked. The case in the Netherlands is still pending but with an interim injunction in place, ISPs are blocking the site. That has led to the emergence of hundreds of mirrors and proxies, all of which keep BREIN busy.

According to the group’s annual report, 258 mirrors and proxies of The Pirate Bay were blocked by ISPs using IP address and DNS methods while 333 proxies “ceased their service” during 2019.

Illegal IPTV and VOD suppliers

One of BREIN’s most notable achievements in 2019 took place in partnership with the MPA. Together the groups took legal action against Russian pirate CDN ‘Moonwalk’ (1,2) which reportedly serviced around 80% of Russia-based streaming sites.

Lower down the chain of supply, BREIN reports it also curtailed the activities of “23 illegal dealers” in ‘pirate’ IPTV and VOD subscriptions plus another 12 sellers operating via Facebook. A seller of piracy-configured IPTV devices offered through an online marketplace agreed to pay a settlement to BREIN after being tracked down by the group. During the past several years, BREIN has taken down around 300 pirate IPTV sellers and obtained settlements worth tens of thousands of euros.

BREIN also took on a more unusual case targeting the operator of a so-called ‘Plex share’ offering 5,700 movies and 10,000 TV-shows. That individual agreed to shut down and pay a settlement to the anti-piracy group.

Uploaders and other distributors

BREIN doesn’t have a history of regularly targeting small-time ‘personal’ file-sharers but does take action against people who supply content for download or devices designed for copyright infringement on a larger scale.

During 2019, BREIN targeted several Facebook and other social media-based groups offering eBooks, shutting them down and obtaining settlements from their operators. The anti-piracy outfit also concluded a case against a seller of Nintendo R4 cartridges pre-loaded with up to 100 games after the seller signed a cease-and-desist with a financial penalty clause. A similar agreement was reached with a Usenet uploader.

In a sign that BREIN expects these types of settlements to be adhered to, the anti-piracy group reports that it took action against at least two offenders who previously agreed to comply and then reneged.

In response, a repeat eBook pirate who continued her activities had her house and assets seized by BREIN before payments were resumed. A major uploader who did not comply with the terms of his settlement was summoned to court, with additional legal and collection costs.

Upcoming Activities in 2020

After being granted permission to monitor BitTorrent users several users ago, BREIN indicated that it might be prepared to demand cash settlements from people who repeatedly upload infringing content. While that never appeared at any scale, the anti-piracy group does have something up its sleeve for the months ahead.

“The dealing with frequent uploaders includes an awareness program of 6 months in which a maximum of 1000 accounts a month will receive an educational warning by email. For research into its effect, funding has been obtained,” BREIN says.

“The start of the education is planned mid-2020. Whether enforcement will eventually take place is subject to the effect of the awareness program.”

The full BREIN Review 2019 report can be obtained here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Back in March, the Internet Archive responded to the coronavirus pandemic by offering a new service to help “displaced learners”.

Combining scanned books from three libraries, the Archive offered unlimited borrowing of more than a million books, so that people could continue to learn while in quarantine.

While the move was welcomed by those in favor of open access to education, publishers and pro-copyright groups slammed the decision, with some describing it as an attempt to bend copyright law and others declaring the project as mass-scale piracy.

Today, major publishers Hachette Book Group, Inc., HarperCollins Publishers LLC, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and Penguin Random House LLC went to war with the project by filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive and five ‘Doe’ defendants in a New York court.

The plaintiffs, all member companies of the Association of American Publishers, effectively accuse the Internet Archive (IA) of acting not dissimilarly to a regular pirate site. In fact, the complaint uses those very words.

“The Open Library Is Not a Library, It Is an Unlicensed Aggregator and Pirate Site”

“Defendant IA is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement. Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, IA scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites. With just a few clicks, any Internet-connected user can download complete digital copies of in-copyright books from Defendant,” the complaint reads.

“The scale of IA’s scheme is astonishing: At its ‘Open Library,’ located at www.openlibrary.org and www.archive.org.., IA currently distributes digital scanned copies of over 1.3 million books. And its stated goal is to do so for millions more, essentially distributing free digital copies of every book ever written.”

Internet Archive Does “Violence to the Copyright Act”, Publishers Claim

Since the library was launched there has been discussion over whether the library itself is legal, with the Internet Archive firmly believing that it sits on the right side of the law. However, the publishers’ lawsuit stresses that they aren’t suing over the “occasional transmission of a title under appropriately limited circumstances”. What they are concerned with is their belief that the IA’s library is a tool for mass infringement.

“[The lawsuit] is about IA’s purposeful collection of truckloads of in-copyright books to scan, reproduce, and then distribute digital bootleg versions online. IA’s Website includes books of every stripe — from bestsellers to scholarly monographs, from entertaining thrillers and romances to literary fiction, from self-help books to biographies, from children’s books to adult books,” it reads.

The publishers also counter IA’s assertions that it only offers older 20th-century books for download, stating that is neither “accurate nor a defense.” IA scans, uploads and distributes huge numbers of in-copyright titles, the publishers state, including those published in the last few years.

“IA’s unauthorized copying and distribution of Plaintiffs’ works include titles that the Publishers are currently selling commercially and currently providing to libraries in ebook form, making Defendant’s business a direct substitute for established markets. Free is an insurmountable competitor,” they write.

Controlled Digital Lending is an “Invented Theory”, Complaint Alleges

At the heart of IA’s reasoning that its library is both legitimate and legal is that it offers content via Controlled Digital Lending, with titles only loaned for a limited period and on a controlled volume basis. However, opponents claim that scanning and lending can not be used as a cover for copyright infringement and distribution. It’s a position held by the plaintiffs in this lawsuit.

Claiming that IA is hiding behind “an invented theory” simply labeled Controlled Digital Lending, the publishers maintain there is nothing in copyright law that allows anyone to systematically copy and distribute digital book files simply because they claim to own an original physical copy.

Furthermore, IA’s loosening of its own CDL rules at the time of the pandemic only made matters worse, as it came precisely when book market players were also under pressure to survive.

“IA’s blatant, willful infringement is all the more egregious for its timing, which comes at the very moment that many authors, publishers, and independent bookstores, not to mention libraries, are both struggling to survive amidst economic uncertainty and planning deliberatively for future, changing markets,” the lawsuit adds.

In summary, the publishers state that the function of the library is similar to that of the publishers themselves. Both distribute entire books to the public for reading but unlike the publishers, the IA avoids having to invest any money in order to do so.

“In short, Defendant merely exploits the investments that publishers have made in their books, and it does so through a business model that is designed to free-ride on the work of others. Defendant pays for none of the expenses that go into publishing a book and is nothing more than a mass copier and distributor of bootleg works.”

Damages Could Run Into Tens of Millions of Dollars

The publishers are going straight for the jugular with their claim, alleging direct copyright infringement for each of the publishers’ copyright works offered by the library at a rate of $150,000 in statutory damages per infringement. In the alternative, should IA “attempt to evade responsibility” by blaming its own users for infringement, the lawsuit also alleges secondary copyright infringement.

“Defendant is secondarily liable under theories of contributory liability, inducement liability, and vicarious liability for the underlying reproduction, distribution, public display, and public performance of Plaintiffs’ Works, as well as the making of infringing derivatives of Plaintiffs’ Works,” it adds.

Summing up, the plaintiffs seek a declaration that the Internet Archive’s actions in respect of the Open Library constitute willful copyright infringement. On top, they demand preliminary and permanent injunctions to restrain it from offering their copyrighted works alongside a judgment for a yet-to-be-determined amount in statutory damages.

A copy of the complaint can be found here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

For more than a decade, Denmark has been a a frontrunner when it comes to pirate site blockades.

The first blocks date back to 2006 when music industry group IFPI filed a complaint targeting the unlicensed Russian MP3 site AllofMP3.

Not much later, Denmark became the first European country to force an ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay. Since then, many other pirate sites have received the same treatment.

Denmark’s Voluntary Pirate Site Blockades

The Danish model is seen as a prime example by copyright holders worldwide, partly because of successes in court but also due to a voluntary agreement which requires local ISPs to follow these orders, even if they’re not sued.

When copyright holders win a court case against a single ISP, others have agreed to follow suit. According to the local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, which is at the center of these legal battles, this covers roughly 95% of all residential Internet users.

The system works pretty well, from the perspective of copyright holders, but there have been challenges as well. Many of the blocked sites switch to new URLs or become available through proxy sites, for example. To address this, the voluntary agreement was updated recently.

New Code of Conduct

TorrentFreak spoke to Rights Alliance, which clarified that so-called “dynamic” blocks were already an option. However, with the new code of conduct, they can be implemented faster as the owners of alleged pirate sites no longer have to be notified if there’s no contact address listed.

“The illegal market is constantly evolving, and so it has been necessary to revise the agreement in order to keep up with the creative behavior of the criminals who circumvent the blockades,” Rights Alliance explains.

In return, Rights Alliance now carries responsibility for any overblocking that may occur. The anti-piracy group doesn’t see any issues on this front, however, and is pleased that it can implement these dynamic blocks more swiftly.

“The crucial thing about dynamic blocking is that the court does not have to decide on each of the new addresses if they offer the same illegal content. The Rights Alliance is tasked with identifying the new addresses and passing them on to ISPs so that they can be blocked,” the group notes.

The agreement was also updated to allow for local .dk domains to be blocked. These were previously exempted, as rightsholders could address their concerns directly with the registrar. However, that has proven to be a complicated process.

Future Updates May Be Needed

The Rights Alliance is happy with the changes, but it believes that there’s more to come. When pirate sites continue to adapt to evade blocking measures, the agreement will also be updated in response.

“We can already see developments in illegal live streaming, with the use of so-called cyberlockers and the use of alternative DNS services. It is a priority for the Rights Alliance to ensure that this operational part of enforcement follows developments so that effective action can be taken against online criminals.”

At the time of writing, Danish ISPs block a total of 478 sites, which is up from roughly 100 less than three years ago. A recent report revealed that the blocks drastically reduce traffic to pirate sites. However, the number of pirating users remains stable, as they use VPNs and other tools to bypass the restrictions.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Every day, millions of people download files through BitTorrent. This works well but there is one major drawback; everything you download can be tracked.

To bypass this privacy concern many people have started to use VPNs, many of which provide good anonymity. Others prefer cloud torrenting tools, which also help to hide users’ IP-addresses.

Over the past few years we’ve regularly asked VPN providers how anonymous they really are. However, little is known about the privacy policies and logging practices of cloud torrenting services. Today, we hope to fill this gap.

At the start of the week we reached out to several of the leading cloud torrenting services to ask some detailed questions. In particular, we wanted to know what information they store and if that can expose users.

The list of all questions, including the answers from providers, is listed below. At the bottom of the article we provide a summary, as well as a list of those who failed to respond at all.

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1. Does your service collect any temporary or permanent data that can link a timestamp and IP-address to a specific user on your service? If so, what information do you collect and how long is that stored?

2. Does your service store any personally identifiable information of users (including IP-addresses)? If so, what information do you store, and for how long?

3. Does your service store the names/hashes or other identifying information of downloaded content (stored on your servers) that can be connected with a specific user? If so, for how long?

4. Does your service store the names/hashes or other identifying information of previously downloaded content (after being removed from the user’s account) that can be connected with a specific user? If so, for how long?

5. How does your service respond to DMCA notices or similar takedown requests?

6. Do you have a repeat infringer policy? If so, what does it entail?

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Premiumize

1. No, we don’t log any IP access data. Our whole service is built to have minimal logging and is very light on the database level. That keeps things simple.

2. The most unique userkey is the user’s email address. We keep that for obvious reasons – to secure the account and reach the user. We keep it until the account is deleted. Apart from that we don’t store anything, but other information might be stored by our payment gateways. Nothing really can be done there except moving to Bitcoin – which we support and love.

3. There are two parts to our service. One is for fetching (eg a transfer job for importing the files into cloud storage) and then there’s the actual cloud storage. There is obviously a database that links the files to the user’s account but that connection is gone once the user deletes(removes) the file from their cloud. We cannot restore files and cannot backtrack who added/transferred what.

4.No, we do not.

5. Luckily we don’t have this problem since our business model does not contain any sort of sharing or publishing. Generated filelinks are locked to the user’s account and cannot be accessed externally.

6. We do not and it would be pretty hard since we do not have the logs. For now, we are content with the current legal situation.

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TorrentFreak summary: There are no logs that can connect a person’s IP-address to an account. Premiumize can link files to user accounts and information

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Transfercloud

1. The last IP address is registered when the user logs on and it is cleared when the user logs out. This IP is only used to permit access to their downloaded files, and it is correlated with the login cookie. This is temporary and the privacy of the user is assured when they logout. The email is used to register and as an account recovery mechanism.

2. Each account is associated with an email address. Even though we frown on ‘temporary’ or ‘disposable’ emails, we make no effort in collecting the real name. In fact, if the user logs in with a Facebook account and refuses to share their email address, we don’t store any address at all. Email is only used to ensure the ownership of the account and allow users to ‘recover’ their own account and not be available for anyone else.

At any point, users can change their email address or delete it. Also, at any point any user can ask for account deletion and all information will be purged on request. We are working on adding an automatic mechanism for this.

Now, if the user upgrades their account, our payment processor asks for PII to ensure the identity of the user to protect against credit card fraud. This information STAYS on their servers and is not available from ours. We don’t use that information at all, we just receive the activation for a specific account.

3. See the next answer.

4. On all active or previous transfers the original request is stored as long as the user leaves them on their ‘downloaded’ list. As soon as they clear this list, that information is purged and can no longer be connected with the user.

5. We respond as soon as the request is received. We delete the referred content and comply, informing the user why it was deleted and suggesting they do not try downloading any copyrighted content.

6. We have not had to enforce any “repeat infringer” policies, but we do not disclose the limits we would consider as abuse to avoid users trying to “pass below the radar”. To be clear, although we do have a “fair use” policy for bandwidth usage, we have not had to impose any limits, as we try to permit the users to use the service to their maximum potential, and instead, we are really happy to see users enjoy it that much.

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TorrentFreak summary: There are temporary logs that can connect a person’s IP-address to an account. TransferCloud can link non-deleted files and download histories to user accounts and information

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Put.io

1. Since we are a Turkish company we are required to abide by Turkish laws, which are more concerned about curtailing free speech than privacy. And since there is no speech at put.io we’re not keeping a list of [‘all’] used IP addresses.

We do keep the last used IP address to generate a download token that invalidates download links when requested from other IP addresses. We keep this last IP address as long as the user is logged in. It is erased when the user logs out or is inactive for 7 days. This is a precaution against abuse. We are currently working on a solution that will make it unnecessary to keep the last IP address.

2. We keep the username, reported email address and the last IP address for the purpose explained above. We have no access to users’ payment information. These are stored by our payment providers

3. There is an association with the account and the transfer jobs as long as they are displayed on the transfers page, and there is an association between the account and the files as long as they are stored under that account. There is also a history page that lists the latest transfer jobs, but it can be turned off.

These associations disappear the moment the transfers page is cleared, the files are deleted or the history page is cleared (or disabled). We wouldn’t be able to answer the question “What has this user downloaded?” after that.

Also, if the user ever destroys their account, we destroy everything related to the account. The only record we keep is a log entry that states that an account with that username was destroyed on that date. We had to add this to solve some mysteries with unintended account deletions.

4. No. If it’s not visible in the user interface we don’t keep it.

5. After 10 years in operation we have received only one DMCA request and that was meant for another service called Putlocker. The copyright holder had mixed up the services. We don’t receive DMCA requests, but if we ever did, we would comply and remove the content from our servers. That would be the end of it.

6. We have never had to develop a policy to deal with this.

TorrentFreak summary: There are temporary logs that can connect a person’s IP-address to an account. Put.io can link the non-deleted files and download history to user accounts and information.

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Summary: How Anonymous Are Cloud Torrenting Services

Cloud torrenting services help people to hide their IP-addresses from the public. By doing so, they add an extra privacy layer. Outsiders can’t see what people download. However, true anonymity is a different matter.

The services can link stored files – and in some cases non-deleted download histories – to the personal information they store in their database. In that regard, they are similar to cloud hosting services. This is worth keeping in mind, as services can be compromised or legally required to share information.

Cloud Torrenting Services That Haven’t Responded (fully)

The following services didn’t respond to our questions. If they do, we will update the article accordingly. Bitport submitted a partial response after our deadline, we will add the full response if it comes in.
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– Boxopus
– Cloudload
– Filestream
– Seedr
– Offcloud
– Torrentsafe
– Transfercloud
– Zbigz

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.