Following Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet reshuffle earlier this month, Matt Hancock replaced Karen Bradley as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Hancock, the 39-year-old MP for West Suffolk, was promoted from his role as Minister for Digital and Culture, a position he’d held since July 2016.

“Thrilled to become DCMS Secretary. Such an exciting agenda, so much to do, and great people. Can’t wait to get stuck in,” he tweeted.

Of course, the influence held by the Culture Secretary means that the entertainment industries will soon come calling, seeking help and support in a number of vital areas. No surprise then that Stan McCoy, president and managing director at the ‎Motion Picture Association’s EMEA division, has just jumped in with some advice for Hancock.

In an open letter published on Screen Daily, McCoy begins by reminding Hancock that the movie industry contributes considerable sums to the UK economy.

“We are one of the country’s most valuable economic and cultural assets – worth almost £92bn, growing at twice the rate of the economy, and making a positive contribution to the UK’s balance of payments,” McCoy writes.

“Britain’s status as a center of excellence for the audiovisual sector in particular is no accident: It results from the hard work and genius of our creative workforce, complemented by the support of governments that have guided their policies toward enabling continued excellence and growth.”

McCoy goes on to put anti-piracy initiatives at the very top of his wishlist – and Hancock’s to-do list.

“A joined-up strategy to curb proliferation of illegal, often age-inappropriate and malware-laden content online must include addressing the websites, environments and apps that host and facilitate piracy,” McCoy says.

“In addition to hurting one of Britain’s most important industries, they are overwhelmingly likely to harm children and adult consumers through nasty ads, links to adult content with no age verification, scams, fraud and other unpleasantness.”

That McCoy begins with the “piracy is dangerous” approach is definitely not a surprise. This Hollywood and wider video industry strategy is now an open secret. However, it feels a little off that the UK is being asked to further tackle pirate sites.

Through earlier actions, facilitated by the UK legal system and largely sympathetic judges, many thousands of URLs and domains linking to pirate sites, mirrors and proxies, are impossible to access directly through the UK’s major ISPs. Although a few slip through the net, directly accessing the majority of pirate sites in the UK is now impossible.

That’s already a considerable overseas anti-piracy position for the MPA who, as the “international voice” of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), represents American corporations including Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.

There’s no comparable blocking system for these companies to use in the United States and rightsholders in the UK can even have extra sites blocked without going back to court for permission. In summary, these US companies arguably get a better anti-piracy deal in the UK than they do at home in the United States.

In his next point, McCoy references last year’s deal – which was reached following considerable pressure from the UK government – between rightsholders and search engines including Google and Bing to demote ‘pirate’ results.

“Building on last year’s voluntary deal with search engines, the Government should stay at the cutting edge of ensuring that everyone in the ecosystem – including search engines, platforms and social media companies – takes a fair share of responsibility,” McCoy says.

While this progress is clearly appreciated by the MPA/MPAA, it’s difficult to ignore that the voluntary arrangement to demote infringing content is somewhat special if not entirely unique. There is definitely nothing comparable in the United States so keeping up the pressure on the UK Government feels a little like getting the good kid in class to behave, while his rowdy peers nearer the chalkboard get ignored.

The same is true for McCoy’s call for the UK to “banish dodgy streaming devices”.

“Illegal streaming devices loaded with piracy apps and malware – not to mention the occasional electrical failure – are proliferating across the UK, to the detriment of consumers and industry,” he writes.

“The sector is still waiting for the Intellectual Property Office to publish the report on its Call for Views on this subject. This will be one of several opportunities, along with the promised Digital Charter, to make clear that these devices and the apps and content they supply are unacceptable, dangerous to consumers, and harmful to the creative industry.”

Again, prompting the UK to stay on top of this game doesn’t feel entirely warranted.

With dozens of actions over the past few years, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (which Hollywood ironically dumped in 2016) have done more to tackle the pirate set-top box problem than any group on the other side of the Atlantic.

Admittedly the MPAA is now trying to catch up, with recent prosecutions of two ‘pirate’ box vendors (1,2), but largely the work by the studios on their home turf has been outpaced by that of their counterparts in the UK.

Maybe Hancock will mention that to Hollywood at some point in the future.

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In recent years the MPAA has pursued legal action against several pirate sites and the streaming service Pubfilm is one of their latest targets.

Hollywood’s industry group initially kept the lawsuit secret. This was done to prevent Pubfilm’s operator from moving to a new domain preemptively. While this strategy worked, Pubfilm didn’t throw in the towel.

Soon after the pubfilm.com domain name was suspended, the site moved to pubfilm.ac. And that wasn’t all. Pubfilm also started to actively advertise its new domain through Google Adsense to regain its lost traffic.

Today, close to a year has passed and Pubfilm is still around. The site moved from domain to domain and currently resides at Pubfilm.is and a few other domains that are advertised on the site.

All this time the company failed to responded in court, so the case saw little movement. This week, however, the MPAA made its demands clear and soon after the court issued a default against the site and its unknown operators.

“Defendants are Internet pirates who own, operate, and promote a ring of interconnected websites under the name “PubFilm” and variants thereof whose purpose is to profit from the infringement of copyrighted works,” the group wrote in its request.

Because of this continued infringement, the MPAA demanded the maximum amount of statutory copyright infringement damages. With 132 titles listed in the complaint, this totals nearly $20 million.

“Given the egregious circumstances of this case, Plaintiffs should be awarded the full amount of statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 132 Works identified in the Complaint, for a total of $19,800,000,” the MPAA writes in its memorandum.

In addition, the Hollywood studios requested a permanent injunction that will require domain registries to put associated domain names on hold and sign them over to the MPAA.

Both requests were granted by the court on Thursday.

Pubfilm domain hopping

Previously, several domain names were aready seized through a preliminary injunction that resulted in Pubfilm moving from domain to domain in recent months. While these seizures can be effective, not all domain registries will comply with a US court order.

One of Pubfilm’s main domain names at the moment uses the Icelandic .is cTLD. In the past, Iceland’s domain registry ISNIC told TorrentFreak that it would only take action when an Icelandic Court tells it to.

This means that the MPAA’s win might be one without teeth.

Getting millions of dollars from an anonymous site operator, presumably outside the United States, is not easy. And since the site still has several hard-to-shutdown domains, taking it offline isn’t that straightforward either.

The streaming site operators didn’t appear to be impressed by the legal battle either. For the time being, they seem more concerned with fighting fake versions, judging from their most recent Facebook update.

Pubfilm’s latest Facebook post

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A copy of the MPAA’s Memorandum in support of the default judgment and permanent injunction is available here (pdf). A copy of court’s order can be found here (pdf).

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Despite a considerable migration towards streaming piracy in recent years, copyright trolls are still finding plenty of potential targets around the world. Alleged BitTorrent pirates are target number one since their activities are most easily tracked. However, it isn’t all plain sailing for the pirate hunters.

Last December we reported on the case of Lingfu Zhang, an Oregan resident accused by the makers of the 2015 drama film Fathers & Daughters (F&D) of downloading and sharing their content without permission. While these kinds of cases often disappear, with targets making confidential settlements to make a legal battle go away, Zhang chose to fight back.

Represented by attorney David Madden, Zhang not only denied downloading the movie in question but argued that the filmmakers had signed away their online distribution rights. He noted that (F&D), via an agent, had sold the online distribution rights to a third party not involved in the case.

So, if F&D no longer held the right to distribute the movie online, suing for an infringement of those rights would be impossible. With this in mind, Zhang’s attorney moved for a summary judgment in his client’s favor.

“ZHANG denies downloading the movie but Defendant’s current motion for summary judgment challenges a different portion of F&D’s case,” Madden wrote.

“Defendant argues that F&D has alienated all of the relevant rights necessary to sue for infringement under the Copyright Act.”

In response, F&D argued that they still held some rights, including the right to exploit the movie on “airlines and oceangoing vessels” but since Zhang wasn’t accused of being on either form of transport when the alleged offense occurred, the defense argued that point was moot.

Judge Michael H. Simon handed down his decision yesterday and it heralds bad news for F&D and celebration time for Zhang and his attorney. In a 17-page ruling first spotted by Fight Copyright Trolls, the Judge agrees that F&D has no standing to sue.

Citing the Righthaven LLC v. Hoehn case from 2013, the Judge notes that under the Copyright Act, only the “legal or beneficial owner of an exclusive right under a copyright” has standing to sue for infringement of that right.

Judge Simon notes that while F&D claims it is the ‘legal owner’ of the copyright to the Fathers & Daughters movie, the company “misstates the law”, adding that F&D also failed to present evidence that it is the ‘beneficial owner’ of the relevant exclusive right. On this basis, both claims are rejected.

The Judge noted that the exclusive rights to the movie were granted to a company called Vertical Entertainment which received the exclusive right to “manufacture, reproduce, sell, rent, exhibit, broadcast, transmit, stream, download, license, sub-license, distribute, sub-distribute, advertise, market, promote, publicize and exploit” the movie in the United States.

An exclusive license means that ownership of a copyright is transferred for the term of the license, meaning that Vertical – not F&D – is the legal owner under the Copyright Act. It matters not, the Judge says, that F&D retained the rights to display the movie “on airlines and ships” since only the transferee (Vertical) has standing to sue and those locations are irrelevant to the lawsuit.

“Under the Copyright Act, F&D is not the ‘legal owner’ with standing to sue for infringement relating to the rights that were transferred to Vertical through its exclusive license granted in the distribution agreement,” the Judge writes.

Also at issue was an undated document presented by F&D titled Anti-Piracy and Rights Enforcement Reservation of Rights Addendum. The document, relied upon by F&D, claimed that F&D is authorized to “enforce copyrights against Internet infringers” including those that use peer-to-peer technologies such as BitTorrent.

However, the Judge found that the peer-to-peer rights apparently reserved to F&D were infringing rights, not the display and distribution (exclusive rights) required to sue under the Copyright Act. Furthermore, the Judge determined that there was no evidence that this document existed before the lawsuit was filed. Zhang and his attorney previously asserted the addendum had been created afterwards and the Judge agrees.

“F&D did not dispute that the undated anti-piracy addendum was created after this lawsuit was filed, or otherwise respond to Defendant’s standing argument relating to the untimeliness of this document,” the Judge notes.

“Accordingly, because the only reasonable inference supported by the evidence is that this document was created after the filing of this lawsuit, it is not appropriate to consider for purposes of standing.”

So, with Vertical Entertainment the only company with the right to sue, could they be added to the lawsuit, F&D asked? Citing an earlier case, the Judge said ‘no’, noting that “summary judgment is not a procedural second chance to flesh out inadequate pleadings.”

With that, Judge Simon granted Lingfu Zhang’s request for summary judgment and dismissed F&D’s claims for lack of standing.

As noted by Fight Copyright Trolls, the movie licensing scheme employed by F&D is complex and, given the fact that notorious copyright troll outfit Guardaley is involved (Guardaley filed 24 cases in eight districts on behalf of F&D), it would be interesting if legal professionals could dig deeper, to see how far the rabbit hole goes.

The summary judgment can be found here (pdf)

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In 2014, Mike Weatherley, the UK Government’s top IP advisor at the time, offered a recommendation that copyright education should be added to the school curriculum, starting with the youngest kids in primary school.

New generations should learn copyright moral and ethics, the idea was, and a few months later the first version of the new “Cracking Ideas” curriculum was made public.

In the years that followed new course material was added, published by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) with support from the local copyright industry. The teaching material is aimed at a variety of ages, including those who have just started primary school.

Part of the education features a fictitious cartoon band called Nancy and the Meerkats. With help from their manager, they learn key copyright insights and this week several new videos were published, BBC points out.

The videos try to explain concepts including copyright, trademarks, and how people can protect the things they’ve created. Interestingly, the videos themselves use names of existing musicians, with puns such as Ed Shealing, Justin Beaver, and the evil Kitty Perry. Even Nancy and the Meerkats appears to be a play on the classic 1970s cartoon series Josie and the Pussycats, featuring a pop band of the same name.

The play on Ed Sheeran’s name is interesting, to say the least. While he’s one of the most popular artists today, he also mentioned in the past that file-sharing made his career.

“…illegal fire sharing was what made me. It was students in England going to university, sharing my songs with each other,” Sheeran said in an interview with CBS last year.

But that didn’t stop the IPO from using his likeness for their anti-file-sharing campaign. According to Catherine Davies of IPO’s education outreach department, knowledge about key intellectual property issues is a “life skill” nowadays.

“In today’s digital environment, even very young people are IP consumers, accessing online digital content independently and regularly,” she tells the BBC. “A basic understanding of IP and a respect for others’ IP rights is therefore a key life skill.”

While we doubt that these concepts will appeal to the average five-year-old, the course material does it best to simplify complex copyright issues. Perhaps that’s also where the danger lies.

The program is in part backed by copyright-reliant industries, who have a different view on the matter than many others. For example, a previously published video of Nancy and the Meerkats deals with the topic of file-sharing.

After the Meerkats found out that people were downloading their tracks from pirate sites and became outraged, their manager Big Joe explained that file-sharing is just the same as stealing a CD from a physical store.

“In a way, all those people who downloaded free copies are doing the same thing as walking out of the shop with a CD and forgetting to go the till,” he says.

“What these sites are doing is sometimes called piracy. It not only affects music but also videos, books, and movies.If someone owns the copyright to something, well, it is stealing. Simple as that,” Big Joe adds.

The Pirates of the Internet!

While we won’t go into the copying vs. stealing debate, it’s interesting that there is no mention of more liberal copyright licenses. There are thousands of artists who freely share their work after all, by adopting Creative Commons licenses for example. Downloading these tracks is certainly not stealing.

Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, notes that the campaign is a bit extreme at points.

“Infringing copyright is a bad thing, but it is not the same as physical theft. Many children will guess that making a copy is not the same as making off with the local store’s chocolate bars,” he says.

“Children aren’t born bureaucrats, and they are surrounded by stupid rules made by stupid adults. Presumably, the IPO doesn’t want children to conclude that copyright is just another one, so they should be a bit more careful with how they explain things.”

Killock also stresses that children copy a lot of things in school, which would normally violate copyright. However, thanks to the educational exceptions they’re not getting in trouble. The IPO could pay more attention to these going forward.

Perhaps Nancy and the Meerkats could decide to release a free to share track in a future episode, for example, and encourage kids to use it for their own remixes, or other creative projects. Creativity and copyright are not all about restrictions, after all.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Last Tuesday a year-long investigation came to a climax when the Intellectual Property Crime Unit of the Cypriot Police teamed up with the Cybercrime Division of the Greek Police, the Dutch Fiscal Investigative and Intelligence Service (FIOD), the Cybercrime Unit of the Bulgarian Police, Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition (IPC³), and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), to raid a ‘pirate’ TV operation.

Official information didn’t become freely available until later in the week but across Cyprus, Bulgaria and Greece there were at least 17 house searches and individuals aged 43, 44, and 53 were arrested in Cyprus and remanded in custody for seven days.

According to Europol, the IPTV operation was considerable, offering 1,200 channels to as many as 500,000 subscribers around the world. Although early financial estimates in cases like these are best taken with a grain of salt, latest claims suggest revenues of five million euros a month, 60 million euros per year.

Part of the IPTV operation (credit:Europol)

As previously reported, so-called ‘front servers’ (servers designed to hide the main servers’ true location) were discovered in the Netherlands. Additionally, it’s now being reported by Cypriot media that nine suspects from an unnamed Internet service provider housing the servers were arrested and taken in for questioning. But the intrigue doesn’t stop there.

Well in advance of Europol’s statement late last week, TorrentFreak was informed by a source that police in Bulgaria had targeted a specific ISP called MegaByte Internet, located in the small town of Petrich. After returning online after a couple of days’ downtime, the ISP responded to some of our questions, detailed in our earlier interview.

“We were informed by the police that some of our clients in Petrich and Sofia were using our service for illegal streaming and actions,” a company spokesperson said.

“Of course, we were not able to know this because our services are unmanaged and root access [to servers] is given to our clients. For this reason any client and anyone that uses our services are responsible for their own actions.”

Other questions went unanswered but yesterday fresh information coming out of Cyprus certainly helped to fill in the gaps – and then some.

Philenews reports that a total of 140 servers were seized in Bulgaria – 60 from the headquarters of MegaByte Internet and four other custom locations, and 80 from two other locations in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

At least as far as locations go, this ties in with a statement provided by MegaByte to TF last week which claimed that some of its equipment was seized from Telepoint, Bulgaria’s biggest datacenter.

Viewing cards facilitating feeds…

We now know that ten employees of MegaByte were interrogated by the police but perhaps the biggest revelation is that the owner of the Internet service provider is now being openly named as the brains behind the entire operation.

Philenews reports that 47-year-old businessman Christos Apostolos Samaras from Greece, who has owned and run MegaByte since 2009, is the individual Europol reported as being arrested in Bulgaria last week.

In addition to linking him to MegaByte Internet’s domain, various searches indicate that Samaras is also connected to 1Stream, a hosting company dedicated to providing bandwidth for streaming purposes.

The investigation continues.

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