For many years, Microsoft and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) have carried out piracy investigations into organizations large and small.

Companies accused of using Microsoft software without permission usually get a letter asking them to pay up, or face legal consequences.

Rhode Island-based company Hanna Instruments is one of the most recent targets. The company stands accused of using Microsoft Office products without a proper license.

However, instead of Microsoft going after Hanna in court for copyright infringement, Hanna has filed a lawsuit against BSA and Microsoft asking for a declaratory judgment that it did nothing wrong.

The lawsuit is the result of a long back-and-forth that started in June. At the time, BSA’s lawyers sent Hanna a letter accusing it of using Microsoft products without a proper license, while requesting an audit.

Hanna’s management wasn’t aware of any pirated products but after repeated requests, the company decided to go ahead and conduct a thorough investigation. The results, combined in a detailed spreadsheet, showed that it purchased 126 copies of Microsoft Office software, while only 120 were in use.

Perfectly fine, they assumed, but the BSA was not convinced.

Since Hanna only had Microsoft generated key cards for the most recent purchases, the company used purchase orders, requisitions, and price quotes to prove that it properly licensed earlier copies of Microsoft Office. Not good enough, according to the BSA, which wanted to see money instead.

The BSA’s lawyers informed Hanna that the company would face up to $4,950,000 in damages if the case went to court. Instead, however, they offered to settle the matter for $72,074.

From the complaint

Hanna wasn’t planning to pay and pointed out that they sent in as much proof as they could find, documenting legal purchases of Microsoft Office licenses for a period covering more than ten years. While the BSA appreciated the effort, it didn’t accept this as hard evidence.

“…the provision of purchase orders, price quotes, purchase requisitions are not acceptable as valid proof of purchase to our client. Reason being, the aforesaid documents do not demonstrate that a purchase has taken place, they merely establish intent to make a purchase of software,” the BSA wrote in yer another email.

Interestingly, the BSA itself still failed to provide any solid proof that Hanna was using unlicensed software. The Rhode Island company repeatedly requested this, but the BSA simply replied that it’s neither appropriate nor efficient to request evidence from their clients in every case.

The BSA then went a step further and suggested that Microsoft did the company a favor by approaching it directly. The alternative would have been to call in the U.S. Marshals and raid the company’s headquarters.

“The rights holders had the alternative option of simply commencing litigation and seeking a court order permitting a raid by U.S. Marshals,” the BSA’s lawyers wrote in one of their letters.

This ‘threat’ wasn’t completely in vain. In the past, the BSA and Microsoft’s accusations have developed into fully-fledged raids, with armed law enforcement officials assisting the software vendor, taking away computers for further inspection.

Still, Hanna maintained that it didn’t do anything wrong. At this point, they’d spent $25,000 on disproving the BSA’s “baseless” claims, and saw no other option than to take the matter to court.

Late last week the company submitted a complaint against Microsoft and the BSA in a Rhode Island federal court, asking for a declaratory judgment and monetary compensation.

“To date, the Defendants have not provided any documentation supporting the baseless allegation that Hanna illegally copied Microsoft Office, in spite of repeated requests by Plaintiff’s counsel that BSA produce such information,” the complaint reads.

“By this Complaint, Hanna seeks a declaration by the Court that it has not infringed any Microsoft copyrights, that Hanna has been harmed by BSA’s relentless and unsupported charges, and that Defendants pay Hanna’s costs and expenses for this action, together with reasonable attorney fees, and any additional monetary award this Court deems appropriate.”

It’s now up to the court to decide who’s right and who’s wrong, but the case already provides a rare and intriguing insight into the anti-piracy practices of Microsoft and the BSA.

This isn’t the first time that one of these cases has gone to court. In Belgium, the BSA and Microsoft lost a similar case. Here, a local company was ordered to pay a settlement on the spot or lose its computers. With law enforcement at the ready, the owner decided to pay, despite owning valid licenses.

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The full complaint is available here (pdf).

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This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is the most downloaded movie again.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(1)	Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets	6.7 / trailer
2	(…)	The Hitman’s Bodyguard	7.0 / trailer
3	(5)	24 Hours to live	5.7 / trailer
4	(9)	Thor Ragnarok (HDTS/Cam)	8.2 / trailer
5	(6)	Spider-Man: Homecoming	7.8 / trailer
6	(…)	Jeepers Creepers 3	4.4 / trailer
7	(10)	American Made (Subbed HDrip)	7.3 / trailer
8	(3)	War for the Planet of the Apes	7.8 / trailer
9	(2)	Atomic Blonde	7.0 / trailer
10	(…)	Foreigner	7.3 / trailer

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

Early 2014, a new craze was sweeping the piracy world. Instead of relatively cumbersome text-heavy torrent sites, people were turning to a brand new application called Popcorn Time.

Dubbed the Netflix for Pirates due to its beautiful interface, Popcorn Time was soon a smash hit all over the planet. But with that fame came trouble, with anti-piracy outfits all over the world seeking to shut it down or at least pour cold water on its popularity.

In the meantime, however, the popularity of Kodi skyrocketed, something which pushed Popcorn Time out of the spotlight for a while. Nevertheless, the application in several different forms never went away and it still enjoys an impressive following today. This means that despite earlier action in several jurisdictions, Hollywood still has it on the radar.

The latest development comes out of Norway, where Disney Entertainment, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros. have just taken 14 local Internet service providers to court.

The studios claimed that the ISPs (including Telenor, Nextgentel, Get, Altibox, Telia, Homenet, Ice Norge, Eidsiva Bredbånd and Lynet Internet) should undertake broad blocking action to ensure that three of the most popular Popcorn Time forks (located at popcorn-time.to, popcorntime.sh and popcorn-time.is) can no longer function in the region.

Since site-blocking necessarily covers the blocking of websites, there appears to have been much discussion over whether a software application can be considered a website. However, the court ultimately found that wasn’t really an issue, since each application requires websites to operate.

“Each of the three [Popcorn Time variants] must be considered a ‘site’, even though users access Popcorn Time in a way that is technically different from the way other pirate sites provide users with access to content, and although different components of the Popcorn Time service are retrieved from different domains,” the Oslo District Court’s ruling reads.

In respect of all three releases of Popcorn Time, the Court weighed the pros and cons of blocking, including whether blocking was needed at all. However, it ultimately decided that alternative methods for dealing with the sites do not exist since the rightsholders tried and ultimately failed to get cooperation from the sites’ operators.

“All sites have as their main purpose the purpose of facilitating infringement of protected works by giving the public unauthorized access to movies and TV shows. This happens without regard to the rights of others and imposes major losses on the licensees and the cultural industry in general,” the Court writes.

The Court also supported compelling ISPs to introduce the blocks, noting that they are “an appropriate and proportionate measure” that does not interfere with the Internet service providers’ freedom to operate nor anyone’s else’s right to freedom of expression.

But while the websites in question are located in three places (popcorn-time.to, popcorntime.sh and popcorn-time.is) the Court’s blocking order goes much further. Not only does it cover these key domains but also other third-party sites that Popcorn Time utilizes, such as platforms offering subtitles.

Popcorn-time.to related domains to be blocked: popcorn-time.to, popcorn-time.xyz, popcorn-time.se, iosinstaller.com, video4time.info, thepopcorntime.net, timepopcorn.info, time-popcorn.com, the-pop-corn-time.net, timepopcorn.net, time4videostream.com, ukfrnlge.xyz, opensubtitles.org, onlinesubtitles.com, popcorntime-update.xyz, plus subdomains.

Popcorntime.sh related domains to be blocked: Popcorntime.sh, api-fetch.website, yts.ag, opensubtitles.org, plus subdomains.

Popcorn-time.is related domains to be blocked: popcorn-time.is, yts.ag, yify.is, yts.ph, api-fetch.website, eztvapi.ml and opensubtitles.org, plus subdomains.

Separately, the Court ordered the ISPs to block torrent site YTS.ag and onlinesubtitles.com, opensubtitles.org, plus their subdomains.

Since no one appeared to represent the sites and the ISPs can’t be held responsible if they cooperate, the Court found that the studios had succeeding in their action and are entitled to compensation.

“The Court’s conclusions mean that the plaintiffs have won the case and, in principle, are entitled to compensation for their legal costs from the operators of the sites,” the Court notes. “This means that the operators of sites are ordered to pay the plaintiffs’ costs.”

Those costs amount to 570,000 kr (around US$70,000), an amount which the Court chose to split equally between the three Popcorn Time forks ($23,359 each). It seems unlikely the amounts will ever be recovered although there is still an opportunity for the parties to appeal.

In the meantime the ISPs have just days left to block the sites listed above. Once they’ve been put in place, the blocks will remain in place for five years.

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As part of its quest to reduce piracy, the MPAA continues to spend money on its lobbying activities, hoping to sway lawmakers in its direction.

While the lobbying talks take place behind closed doors, quarterly disclosure reports provide some insight into the items under discussion.

The MPAA’s most recent lobbying disclosure form features several new topics that weren’t on the agenda last year.

Among other issues, the Hollywood group lobbied the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives on set-top boxes, preloaded streaming piracy devices, and streaming piracy in general.

The details of these discussions remain behind closed doors. The only thing we know for sure is what Hollywood is lobbying on, but it doesn’t take much imagination to take an educated guess on the ‘why’ part.

Just over a year ago streaming piracy boxes were hardly mentioned in anti-piracy circles, but today they are on the top of the enforcement list. The MPAA is reporting these concerns to lawmakers, to see whether they can be of assistance in curbing this growing threat.

Some of the lobbying topics

It’s clear that pirate streaming players are a prime concern for Hollywood. MPA boss Stan McCoy recently characterized the use of these devices as “Piracy 3.0” and a coalition of industry players sued a US-based seller of streaming boxes earlier this month.

The lobbying efforts themselves are nothing new of course. Every year the MPAA spends around $4 million to influence the decisions of lawmakers, both directly and through external lobbying firms such as Covington & Burling, Capitol Tax Partners, and Sentinel Worldwide.

While piracy streaming boxes are new on the agenda this year, they are not the only topics under discussion. Other items include trade deals such as the TPP, TTIP, and NAFTA, voluntary domain name initiatives, EU digital single market proposals, and cybersecurity.

TorrentFreak reached out to the MPAA for more information on the streaming box lobbying efforts, but we have yet to hear back.

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When large-scale access to online pirated content began to flourish at the turn of the decade, entertainment industry groups claimed that if left to run riot, it could mean the end of their businesses.

More than seventeen years later that doomsday scenario hasn’t come to pass, not because piracy has been defeated – far from it – but because the music, movie and related industries have come to the market with their own offers.

The music industry were the quickest to respond, with services like iTunes and later Spotify making serious progress against pirate alternatives. It took the video industry far longer to attack the market but today, with platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Video, they have a real chance at scooping up what might otherwise be pirate consumption.

While there’s still a long way to go, it’s interesting to hear the progress that’s being made not only in the West but also piracy hotspots further afield. This week, Brazil’s Exame reported on a new study published by Google.

Focused on movies, one of its key findings is that local consumer interest in Netflix is now greater than pirate alternatives including torrents, streaming, and apps. As illustrated in the image below, the tipping point took place early November 2016, when searches for Netflix overtook those for unauthorized platforms.

Netflix vs Pirates (via Exame)

While the stats above don’t necessarily point to a reduction in piracy of movies and TV shows in Brazil, they show that Netflix’s library and ease of use is rewarded by widespread awareness among those seeking such content locally.

“We’re not lowering piracy but this does show how relevant the [Netflix] brand is when it comes to offering content online,” Google Brazil’s market intelligence chief Sérgio Tejido told Exame.

For Debora Bona, a director specializing in media and entertainment at Google Brazil, the success of Netflix is comparable to the rise of Spotify. In part thanks to The Pirate Bay, Sweden had a serious piracy problem in the middle of the last decade but by providing a viable alternative, the streaming service has become part of the solution.

“The event is interesting,” Bona says. “Since the launch of streaming solutions such as Netflix and Spotify, they have become alternatives to piracy. Sweden had many problems with music piracy and the arrival of Spotify reversed this curve.”

Netflix launched in Brazil back in 2011, but Exame notes that the largest increase in searches for the platform took place between 2013 and 2016, demonstrating a boost of 284%. Even more evidence of Netflix’s popularity was revealed in recent surveys which indicate that 77% of surveyed Brazilians had watched Netflix, up from 71% in 2016.

Importantly, nine out of ten users in Brazil said they were “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the service, up from 79% in the previous year. An impressive 66% of subscribers said that they were “not at all likely to cancel”, a welcome statistics for a company pumping billions into making its own content and increasingly protecting it (1,2), in the face of persistent pirate competition.

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