Last year, the European Commission published its long-awaited proposal to modernize EU copyright law. Among other things, it will require online services to do more to fight piracy.

Specifically, Article 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive requires online services to monitor and filter pirated content, in collaboration with rightsholders.

This means that online services, which deal with large volumes of user-uploaded content, must use fingerprinting or other detection mechanisms to block copyright infringing files, similar to YouTube’s Content-ID system.

The Commission stressed that the changes are needed to support copyright holders. However, many legal scholars, digital activists, and members of the public worry that they will violate the rights of regular Internet users.

They believe that mandatory filters ignore established case law and human rights. This critique is now, in part, backed up by questions from several EU member states.

Authorities in Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands have recently sent a series of questions to the Council Legal Service, requesting clarification on several issues.

The document (pdf), published by Statewatch, asks whether a mandatory piracy filter is proportionate and compatible with existing law.

“Would the standalone measure/ obligation as currently proposed under Article 13 be compatible with the Charter of Human Rights […] in the light of the jurisprudence of the CJEU that aims to secure a fair balance in the application of competing fundamental rights?

“Are the proposed measures justified and proportionate?” the member states add.

Specifically, the member states suggest that the filters may hinder people’s right to freedom of expression and information, the right to protection of personal data, and freedom to conduct a business.

One of the problems is that such filters work by monitoring the communications of all citizens uploading to platforms, which would go against existing EU law. In the Sabam v Netlog case, the European Court of Justice ruled that hosting sites can’t be forced to filter copyrighted content, as this would violate the privacy of users and hinder freedom of information.

The letter, which was sent on July 25, also stresses that important copyright exceptions, such as parody and the right to quote, are not taken into account.

“The [Commission’s] proposal does not provide for appropriate measures that would enable these users to actually benefit from public interest copyright exceptions. It is important to point out that certain exceptions to copyright, such as e.g. parody or the quotation right are the embodiment in copyright of fundamental rights other than the right to property.”

This is not the first time that member states have responded critically to the proposal. Tweakers notes that the Dutch Government previously stressed that there should be a better balance between the rights of consumers and copyright holders.

The recent letter from the six member states backs up many of the questions that have been asked by activists, scholars and members of the public, including the “Save the Meme” campaign. These critics hope that the proposal will be changed substantially, ideally without mandatory piracy filters, when it’s voted on in the EU Parliament.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

The seventh season of Game of Thrones has brought tears and joy to HBO this summer.

It was the most-viewed season thus far, with record-breaking TV ratings. But on the other hand, HBO and Game of Thrones were plagued by hacks, leaks, and piracy, of course.

While it’s hard to measure piracy accurately, streaming in particular, piracy tracking outfit MUSO has just released some staggering numbers. According to the company, the latest season was pirated more than a billion times in total.

To put this into perspective, this means that on average each episode was pirated 140 million times, compared to 32 million views through legal channels.

The vast majority of the pirate ‘views’ came from streaming services (85%), followed by torrents (9%) and direct downloads (6%). Private torrent trackers are at the bottom with less than one percent.

Pirate sources

Andy Chatterley, MUSO’s CEO and Co-Founder, notes that the various leaks may have contributed to these high numbers. This is supported by the finding that the sixth episode, which leaked several days in advance, was pirated more than the season finale.

“It’s no secret that HBO has been plagued by security breaches throughout the latest season, which has seen some episodes leak before broadcast and added to unlicensed activity,” Chatterley says.

In addition, the data shows that despite a heavy focus on torrent traffic, unauthorized streaming is a much bigger problem for rightsholders.

“In addition to the scale of piracy when it comes to popular shows, these numbers demonstrate that unlicensed streaming can be a far more significant type of piracy than torrent downloads.”

Although the report shares precise numbers, it’s probably best to describe them as estimates.

The streaming data MUSO covers is sourced from SimilarWeb, which uses a sample of 200 million ‘devices’ to estimate website traffic. The sample data covers thousands of popular pirate sites and is extrapolated into the totals.

While more than a billion downloads are pretty significant, to say the least, MUSO is not even looking at the full pirate landscape.

For one, Muso’s streaming data doesn’t include Chinese traffic, which usually has a very active piracy community. As if that’s not enough, alternative pirate sources such as fully-loaded Kodi boxes, are not included either.

It’s clear though, which doesn’t really come as a surprise, that Game of Thrones piracy overall is still very significant. The torrent numbers may not have grown in recent years, but streaming seems to be making up for it and probably adding a few dozen million extra, give or take.

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Total Global Downloads and Streams by Episode

Episode one: 187,427,575
Episode two: 123,901,209
Episode three: 116,027,851
Episode four: 121,719,868
Episode five: 151,569,560
Episode six: 184,913,279
Episode seven (as of 3rd Sept): 143,393,804
All Episode Bundles – Season 7: 834,522
TOTAL (as of 3rd September) = 1,029,787,668

Total Breakdown By Type

Streaming: 84.66%
Torrent: 9.12%
Download: 5.59%
Private Torrent: 0.63%

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

After years of criticism from both international and local rightsholders, in 2013 the Russian government decided to get tough on Internet piracy.

Under new legislation, sites engaged in Internet piracy could find themselves blocked by ISPs, rendering them inaccessible to local citizens and solving the piracy problem. Well, that was the theory, at least.

More than four years on, Russia is still grappling with a huge piracy problem that refuses to go away. It has been blocking thousands of sites at a steady rate, including RuTracker, the country’s largest torrent platform, but still the problem persists.

Now, a new report produced by Roskomsvoboda, the Center for the Protection of Digital Rights, and the Pirate Party of Russia, reveals a system that has not only failed to reach its stated aims but is also having a negative effect on the broader Internet.

“It’s already been four years since the creation of this ‘anti-piracy machine’ in Russia. The first amendments related to the fight against ‘piracy’ in the network came into force on August 1, 2013, and since then this mechanism has been twice revised,” Roskomsvoboda said in a statement.

“[These include] the emergence of additional responsibilities to restrict access to network resources and increase the number of subjects who are responsible for removing and blocking content. Since that time, several ‘purely Russian’ trends in ‘anti-piracy’ and trade in rights have also emerged.”

These revisions, which include the permanent blocking of persistently infringing sites and the planned blocking of mirror sites and anonymizers, have been widely documented. However, the researchers say that they want to shine a light on the effects of blocking procedures and subsequent actions that are causing significant issues for third-parties.

As part of the study, the authors collected data on the cases presented to the Moscow City Court by the most active plaintiffs in anti-piracy actions (mainly TV show distributors and music outfits including Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music). They describe the court process and system overall as lacking.

“The court does not conduct a ‘triple test’ and ignores the position, rights and interests of respondents and third parties. It does not check the availability of illegal information on sites and appeals against decisions of the Moscow City Court do not bring any results,” the researchers write.

“Furthermore, the cancellation of the unlimited blocking of a site is simply impossible and in respect of hosting providers and security services, those web services are charged with all the legal costs of the case.”

The main reason behind this situation is that ‘pirate’ site operators rarely (if ever) turn up to defend themselves. If at some point they are found liable for infringement under the Criminal Code, they can be liable for up to six years in prison, hardly an incentive to enter into a copyright process voluntarily. As a result, hosts and other providers act as respondents.

This means that these third-party companies appear as defendants in the majority of cases, a position they find both “unfair and illogical.” They’re also said to be confused about how they are supposed to fulfill the blocking demands placed upon them by the Court.

“About 90% of court cases take place without the involvement of the site owner, since the requirements are imposed on the hosting provider, who is not responsible for the content of the site,” the report says.

Nevertheless, hosts and other providers have been ordered to block huge numbers of pirate sites.

According to the researchers, the total has now gone beyond 4,000 domains, but the knock on effect is much more expansive. Due to the legal requirement to block sites by both IP address and other means, third-party sites with shared IP addresses get caught up as collateral damage. The report states that more than 41,000 innocent sites have been blocked as the result of supposedly targeted court orders.

But with collateral damage mounting, the main issue as far as copyright holders are concerned is whether piracy is decreasing as a result. The report draws few conclusions on that front but notes that blocks are a blunt instrument. While they may succeed in stopping some people from accessing ‘pirate’ domains, the underlying infringement carries on regardless.

“Blocks create restrictions only for Internet users who are denied access to sites, but do not lead to the removal of illegal information or prevent intellectual property violations,” the researchers add.

With no sign of the system being overhauled to tackle the issues raised in the study (pdf, Russian), Russia is now set to introduce yet new anti-piracy measures.

As recently reported, new laws requiring search engines to remove listings for ‘pirate’ mirror sites comes into effect October 1. Exactly a month later on November 1, VPNs and anonymization tools will have to be removed too, if they fail to meet the standards required under state regulation.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

In June, a New York District Court handed down a default judgment against Sci-Hub.

The pirate site, operated by Alexandra Elbakyan, was ordered to pay $15 million in piracy damages to academic publisher Elsevier.

With the ink on this order barely dry, another publisher soon tagged on with a fresh complaint. The American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, also accused Sci-Hub of mass copyright infringement.

Founded more than 140 years ago, the non-profit organization has around 157,000 members and researchers who publish tens of thousands of articles a year in its peer-reviewed journals. Because many of its works are available for free on Sci-Hub, ACS wants to be compensated.

Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court. As a result, a default was entered against the site, and a few days ago ACS specified its demands, which include $4.8 million in piracy damages.

“Here, ACS seeks a judgment against Sci-Hub in the amount of $4,800,000—which is based on infringement of a representative sample of publications containing the ACS Copyrighted Works multiplied by the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each publication,” they write.

The publisher notes that the maximum statutory damages are only requested for 32 of its 9,000 registered works. This still adds up to a significant sum of money, of course, but that is needed as a deterrent, ACS claims.

“Sci-Hub’s unabashed flouting of U.S. Copyright laws merits a strong deterrent. This Court has awarded a copyright holder maximum statutory damages where the defendant’s actions were ‘clearly willful’ and maximum damages were necessary to ‘deter similar actors in the future’,” they write.

Although the deterrent effect may sound plausible in most cases, another $4.8 million in debt is unlikely to worry Sci-Hub’s owner, as she can’t pay it off anyway. However, there’s also a broad injunction on the table that may be more of a concern.

The requested injunction prohibits Sci-Hub’s owner to continue her work on the site. In addition, it also bars a wide range of other service providers from assisting others to access it.

Specifically, it restrains “any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, to cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to [ACS’s works].”

The above suggests that search engines may have to remove the site from their indexes while ISPs could be required to block their users’ access to the site as well, which goes quite far.

Since Sci-Hub is in default, ACS is likely to get what it wants. However, if the organization intends to enforce the order in full, it’s likely that some of these third-party services, including Internet providers, will have to spring into action.

While domain name registries are regularly ordered to suspend domains, search engine removals and ISP blocking are not common in the United States. It would, therefore, be no surprise if this case lingers a little while longer.

Update: Sci-Hub is reportedly shutting down its service in Russia as Alexandra Elbakyan feels that local scientists are running a smear campaign against her.

“Recently, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences decided to name a parasitic insect in honor of Alexandra,” a public statement reads.

“What I consider to be an extreme injustice: if you analyze the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information and makes a useful case.”

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A copy of ACS’s proposed default judgment, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Back in January, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that due to Internet technologies and services expanding in a “disorderly” fashion, regulation would be needed to restore order.

The government said that it would take measures to “strengthen network information security management” and would embark on a “nationwide Internet network access services clean-up.”

One of the initial targets was reported as censorship-busting VPNs, which allow citizens to evade the so-called Great Firewall of China. Operating such a service without a corresponding telecommunications business license would constitute an offense, the government said.

The news was met with hostility, with media and citizens alike bemoaning Chinese censorship. Then early July, a further report suggested that the government would go a step further by ordering ISPs to block VPNs altogether. This elicited an immediate response from local authorities, who quickly denied the reports, blaming “foreign media” for false reporting.

But it was clear something was amiss in China. Later that month, it was revealed that Apple had banned VPN software and services from its app store.

“We are writing to notify you that your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,” Apple informed developers.

With an effort clearly underway to target VPNs, news today from China suggests that the government is indeed determined to tackle the anti-censorship threat presented by such tools. According to local media, Chinese man Deng Mouwei who ran a small website through which he sold VPN software, has been sentenced to prison.

The 26-year-old, from the city of Dongguan in the Guangdong province, was first arrested in October 2016 after setting up a website to sell VPNs. Just two products were on offer but this was enough to spring authorities into action.

A prosecution notice, published by Chinese publication Whatsonweibo, reveals the university educated man was arrested “on suspicion of providing tools for illegal control of a computer information system.”

It’s alleged that the man used several phrases to market the VPNs including “VPN over the wall” and “Shadow shuttle cloud”. The business wasn’t particularly profitable though, generating just 13957 yuan ($2,133) since October 2015.

“The court held that the defendant Deng Mouwei disregarded state law, by providing tools specifically for the invasion and illegal control of computer information systems procedures,” the Guandong Province’s First People’s Court said in its ruling, handed down earlier this year but only just made public.

“The circumstances are serious and the behavior violated the ‘Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China Article 285.”

Article 285 – don’t interfere with the state

“The facts of the crime are clear, the evidence is true and sufficient. In accordance with the provisions of Article 172 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, the defendant shall be sentenced according to law.”

Under Chinese law, Article 172 references stolen goods, noting that people who “conceal or act as distributors” shall be sentenced to not more than three years of fixed-term imprisonment, or fined, depending on circumstances. Where VPNs fit into that isn’t clear, but things didn’t end well for the defendant.

For offering tools that enable people to “visit foreign websites that can not be accessed via a domestic (mainland) IP address,” Deng Mouwei received a nine-month prison sentence.

News of the sentencing appeared on Chinese social media over the weekend, prompting fear and confusion among local users. While many struggled to see the sense of the prosecution, some expressed fear that people who even use VPN software to evade China’s Great Firewall could be subjected to prosecution in the future.

Whatever the outcome, it’s now abundantly clear that China is the midst of a VPN crackdown across the board and is serious about stamping out efforts to bypass its censorship. With the Internet’s ability to treat censorship as damage and route round it, it’s a battle that won’t be easily won.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.