In common with many other user-generated content sites, Twitter is used by some of its members to host or link to copyright-infringing material.

If rightsholders submit a takedown request, Twitter swiftly takes the infringing content down. Over the past several months the company has processed thousands of requests and complied with most of them.

However, a new lawsuit filed in a California federal court suggests that Twitter’s takedown efforts aren’t perfect.

Rhode Island-based photographer Kristen Pierson filed a complaint against Twitter, accusing the company of hosting and linking to one of her works without permission.

The photo in question, taken at an Alice in Chains concert in 2006, was posted by Twitter user Karen Juanita. After Pierson found out she sent a DMCA takedown notice to Twitter on April 26 of this year.

Twitter promptly replied that it had “disabled access” to the photo, but this didn’t happen right away. While Twitter noted that it could take some time for the removal to propagate, it appears that something went wrong.

Twitter’s response

According to the complaint, it took 90 days before it was effectively taken down. It seems unlikely that Twitter intentionally waited three months, but Pierson is not looking for an excuse. Instead, she’s demanding damages from the social media outfit.

“Twitter had actual knowledge of the direct infringement and contributory infringement. Pierson provided notice to Twitter in compliance with the DMCA, and Twitter failed to expeditiously disable access to or remove the Copyrighted Photograph from their servers,” the complaint notes.

“Alternatively, Twitter directly infringed Pierson’s copyrights by continuing to allow public access to the Copyrighted Photograph on Twitter’s server or on servers controlled by Twitter.”

Theoretically, damages could go up to $150,000, should willful copyright infringement be proven. However, it’s more likely that both parties will settle their differences, or that the case will be dismissed for other reasons.

This isn’t the first time that Twitter has been sued for failing to promptly remove infringing content. Several photographers, including Pierson herself, have done so before. In most cases, these lawsuits are settled after a few weeks, behind closed doors.

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A copy of the complaint is available here (pdf).

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Sci-Hub, often referred to as the “Pirate Bay of Science,” hasn’t had a particularly good run in US courts so far.

Following a $15 million defeat against Elsevier in June, the American Chemical Society won a default judgment of $4.8 million in copyright damages late last week.

In addition, the publisher was granted an unprecedented injunction, requiring various third-party services to stop providing access to the site.

The order specifically mentions domain registrars and hosting companies, but also search engines and ISPs, although only those who are in “active concert or participation” with the site. This order sparked fears that Google, Comcast, and others would be ordered to take action, but that’s not the case.

After the news broke ACS issued a press release clarifying that it would not go after search engines and ISPs when they are not in “active participation” with Sci-Hub. The problem is that this can be interpreted quite broadly, leaving plenty of room for uncertainty.

Luckily, ACS Director Glenn Ruskin was willing to provide more clarity. He stressed that search engines and ISPs won’t be targeted for simply linking users to Sci-Hub. Companies that host the content are a target though.

“The court’s affirmative ruling does not apply to search engines writ large, but only to those entities who have been in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub, such as websites that host ACS content stolen by Sci-Hub,” Ruskin said.

When we asked whether this means that ISPs such as Comcast are not likely to be targeted, the answer was affirmative.

“That is correct, unless the internet service provider has been in active concert or participation with SciHub. Simply linking to SciHub does not rise to be in active concert or participation,” Ruskin clarified.

The above suggests that ACS will go after domain name registrars, hosting companies, and perhaps Cloudflare, but not any further. Still, even if that’s the case there is cause for worry among several digital rights activists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that these type of orders set a dangerous precedent. The concept of “active concert or participation” should only cover close associates and co-conspirators, not everyone who provides a service to the defendant. Domain registrars and registries have often been compelled to take action in similar cases, but EFF says this goes too far.

“The courts need to limit who can be bound by orders like this one, to prevent them from being abused,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz informs TorrentFreak.

“In particular, domain name registrars and registries shouldn’t be ordered to help take down a website because of a dispute over the site’s contents. That invites others to use the domain name system as a tool for censorship.”

News of the Sci-Hub injunction has sparked controversy and confusion in recent days, not least because Sci-hub.cc became unavailable soon after. Instead of showing the usual search box, visitors now see a “403 Forbidden” error message. On top of that, the bulletproof Tor version of the site also went offline.

The error message indicates that there’s a hosting issue. While it’s easy to conclude that the court’s injunction has something to do with this, that might not necessarily be the case. Sci-Hub’s hosting company isn’t tied to the US and has a history of protecting sites from takedown efforts.

We reached out to Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan for comment but we’re yet to receive a response. The site hasn’t posted any relevant updates on its social media pages either.

That said, the site is far from done. In addition to the Tor domain, Sci-Hub has several other backups in place such as Sci-Hub.io and Sci-Hub.ac, which are up and running as usual.

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While most large broadcasters around the world now offer comprehensive sports packages to their customers, subscriptions are often quite expensive.

This has led to the proliferation of pirate services, each dedicated to bringing live sports to the masses at massively reduced prices or even completely free.

As a result, it’s now possible to watch almost any sport from a pirate source, whether that’s via a website, an augmented Kodi setup, or a premium IPTV provider. Today, however, there’s one less pirate service available after a series of raids in Spain.

According to the National Police, raids took place in Madrid, Alicante, Albacete, Gandía, and the Valencian cities of Xátiva and Antequera this week. In total, seven people were arrested for illegally broadcasting football matches.

Unusually in such cases, the suspects are alleged to have offered matches via a number of mechanisms, including direct download, streaming, subscription streaming, and peer-to-peer distribution. This, the police say, allowed them to have the broadest possible access to the market.

The group’s servers were scattered around the world; some located in Spain, others in France, with the remainder in the United States and Canada.

The investigation began in 2016 following a complaint from La Liga, the top professional association in Spanish football. The group alleged that a total of 13 websites were illegally offering lists of links which enabled visitors to access content to which it holds the exclusive rights.

Police say the operation was well organized, with matches presented to Internet users with schedules ordered by championships. Revenue was generated via advertising which appeared on the various pages viewed by visitors.

It’s claimed that the sites’ operators also attempted to make their scattered servers harder to find by utilizing intermediary companies, including those that offer server location anonymization services.

Across the country, eight house searches reportedly yielded a trove of evidence, both digital and physical, detailing the pirate operation and the profit obtained from it.

At this early stage, police estimate the “economic benefit” to the defendants from subscriptions and advertising to be in the region of 1.4 million euros, although it’s unclear whether those are actual historic or projected gains.

Following the raids, seven websites were ordered to be blocked and three bank accounts, said to be linked to the pirate operation, were frozen. Police say that the investigation continues so further arrests and website blockades can’t be ruled out.

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In recent years, BitTorrent users around the world have been targeted with threats. They can either pay a significant settlement fee, or face far worse in court.

The scheme started in Germany years ago, and copyright holders later went after alleged pirates in Australia, Denmark, Finland, the UK, US, and elsewhere.

This summer, the copyright holders behind the movie Dallas Buyers Club added Spain to the mix, going after dozens of alleged pirates in Bilbao and San Sebastian. The ‘filmmakers’ are part of a tight group of so-called copyright trolls which are constantly expanding their business to other countries.

While they have had some success, mainly by sending out settlement letters, in Spain the first court case brought bad news.

The Commercial Court of Donostia dismissed the claim against an alleged file-sharer due to a lack of evidence. Dallas Buyers Club identified the infringer through an IP-address, but according to Judge Pedro José Malagón Ruiz, this is not good enough.

“The ruling says that there is no way to know whether the defendant was the P2P user or not, because an IP address only identifies the person who subscribed to the Internet connection, not the user who made use of the connection at a certain moment,” copyright lawyer David Bravo tells TorrentFreak.

“A relative or a guest could have been using the network, or even someone accessing the wifi if it was open,” he adds.

In addition, the Judge agreed with the defense that there is no evidence that the defendant actively made the movie available. This generally requires a form of intent. However, BitTorrent clients automatically share files with others, whether it’s the intention of the user or not.

“The upload of the data from the P2P programs occurs automatically by the program configuration itself. […] This occurs by default without requiring the knowledge or intention of the user,” Judge Malagón Ruiz writes in his verdict, quoted by Genbeta.

In other words, these BitTorrent transfers are not necessarily an act of public communication, therefore, they are not infringing any copyrights.

The case provides hope for other accused file-sharers who are looking to have their cases dismissed as well. Not in the last place because the defense was coordinated online, without active involvement of a lawyer.

Bravo, together with two colleague lawyers, offered self-help forms to accused file-sharers free of charge. Defendants could use these to mount a proper defense, which paid off in this case.

“This ruling sets a precedent,” Bravo tells TorrentFreak, noting that it’s a clear setback for the copyright holders who are involved in these mass file-sharing lawsuits.

While the lawyer cautions that other courts may come to a different conclusion, it appears that Dallas Buyers Club and other copyright trolls will meet some fierce ‘p2p coordinated’ resistance in Spain.

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Once upon a time, large-scale raids on pirate operations were a regular occurrence, with news of such events making the headlines every few months. These days things have calmed down somewhat but reports coming out of Germany suggests that the war isn’t over yet.

According to a statement from German authorities, the Attorney General in Dresden and various cybercrime agencies teamed up this week to take down sites dedicated to sharing copyright protected material via the Usenet (newsgroups) system.

Huge amounts of infringing items were said to have been made available on a pair of indexing sites – 400,000 on Town.ag and 1,200,000 on Usenet-Town.com.

“Www.town.ag and www.usenet-town.com were two of the largest online portals that provided access to films, series, music, software, e-books, audiobooks, books, newspapers and magazines through systematic and unlawful copyright infringement,” the statement reads.

Visitors to these URLs are no longer greeted by the usual warez-fest, but by a seizure banner placed there by German authorities.

Seizure banner on Town.ag and Usenet-Town.com (translated)

Following an investigation carried out after complaints from rightsholders, 182 officers of various agencies raided homes and businesses Wednesday, each connected to a reported 26 suspects. In addition to searches of data centers located in Germany, servers in Spain, Netherlands, San Marino, Switzerland, and Canada were also targeted.

According to police the sites generated income from ‘sponsors’, netting their operators millions of euros in revenue. One of those appears to be Usenet reseller SSL-News, which displays the same seizure banner. Rightsholders claim that the Usenet portals have cost them many millions of euros in lost sales.

Arrest warrants were issued in Spain and Saxony against two German nationals, 39 and 31-years-old respectively. The man arrested in Spain is believed to be a ringleader and authorities there have been asked to extradite him to Germany.

At least 1,000 gigabytes of data were seized, with police scooping up numerous computers and other hardware for evidence. The true scale of material indexed is likely to be much larger, however.

Online chatter suggests that several other Usenet-related sites have also disappeared during the past day but whether that’s a direct result of the raids or down to precautionary measures taken by their operators isn’t yet clear.

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