Right now, the English Premier League is engaged in perhaps the most aggressively innovative anti-piracy operation the Internet has ever seen. After obtaining a new High Court order, it now has the ability to block ‘pirate’ streams of matches, in real-time, with no immediate legal oversight.

If the Premier League believes a server is streaming one of its matches, it can ask ISPs in the UK to block it, immediately. That’s unprecedented anywhere on the planet.

As previously reported, this campaign caused a lot of problems for people trying to access free and premium streams at the start of the season. Many IPTV services were blocked in the UK within minutes of matches starting, with free streams also dropping like flies. According to information obtained by TF, more than 600 illicit streams were blocked during that weekend.

While some IPTV providers and free streams continued without problems, it seems likely that it’s only a matter of time before the EPL begins to pick off more and more suppliers. To be clear, the EPL isn’t taking services or streams down, it’s only blocking them, which means that people using circumvention technologies like VPNs can get around the problem.

However, this raises the big issue again – that of continuously increasing costs. While piracy is often painted as free, it is not, and as setups get fancier, costs increase too.

Below, we take a very general view of a handful of the many ‘pirate’ configurations currently available, to work out how much ‘free’ piracy costs these days. The list is not comprehensive by any means (and excludes more obscure methods such as streaming torrents, which are always free and rarely blocked), but it gives an idea of costs and how the balance of power might eventually tip.

Basic beginner setup

On a base level, people who pirate online need at least some equipment. That could be an Android smartphone and easily installed free software such as Mobdro or Kodi. An Internet connection is a necessity and if the EPL blocks those all important streams, a VPN provider is required to circumvent the bans.

Assuming people already have a phone and the Internet, a VPN can be bought for less than £5 per month. This basic setup is certainly cheap but overall it’s an entry level experience that provides quality equal to the effort and money expended.

Equipment: Phone, tablet, PC
Comms: Fast Internet connection, decent VPN provider
Overal performance: Low quality, unpredictable, often unreliable
Cost: £5pm approx for VPN, plus Internet costs

Big screen, basic

For those who like their matches on the big screen, stepping up the chain costs more money. People need a TV with an HDMI input and a fast Internet connection as a minimum, alongside some kind of set-top device to run the necessary software.

Android devices are the most popular and are roughly split into two groups – the small standalone box type and the plug-in ‘stick’ variant such as Amazon’s Firestick.

A cheap Android set-top box

These cost upwards of £30 to £40 but the software to install on them is free. Like the phone, Mobdro is an option, but most people look to a Kodi setup with third-party addons. That said, all streams received on these setups are now vulnerable to EPL blocking so in the long-term, users will need to run a paid VPN.

The problem here is that some devices (including the 1st gen Firestick) aren’t ideal for running a VPN on top of a stream, so people will need to dump their old device and buy something more capable. That could cost another £30 to £40 and more, depending on requirements.

Importantly, none of this investment guarantees a decent stream – that’s down to what’s available on the day – but invariably the quality is low and/or intermittent, at best.

Equipment: TV, decent Android set-top box or equivalent
Comms: Fast Internet connection, decent VPN provider
Overall performance: Low to acceptable quality, unpredictable, often unreliable
Cost: £30 to £50 for set-top box, £5pm approx for VPN, plus Internet

Premium IPTV – PC or Android based

At this point, premium IPTV services come into play. People have a choice of spending varying amounts of money, depending on the quality of experience they require.

First of all, a monthly IPTV subscription with an established provider that isn’t going to disappear overnight is required, which can be a challenge to find in itself. We’re not here to review or recommend services but needless to say, like official TV packages they come in different flavors to suit varying wallet sizes. Some stick around, many don’t.

A decent one with a Sky-like EPG costs between £7 and £15 per month, depending on the quality and depth of streams, and how far in front users are prepared to commit.

Fairly typical IPTV with EPG (VOD shown)

Paying for a year in advance tends to yield better prices but with providers regularly disappearing and faltering in their service levels, people are often reluctant to do so. That said, some providers experience few problems so it’s a bit like gambling – research can improve the odds but there’s never a guarantee.

However, even when a provider, price, and payment period is decided upon, the process of paying for an IPTV service can be less than straightforward.

While some providers are happy to accept PayPal, many will only deal in credit cards, bitcoin, or other obscure payment methods. That sets up more barriers to entry that might deter the less determined customer. And, if time is indeed money, fussing around with new payment processors can be pricey, at least to begin with.

Once subscribed though, watching these streams is pretty straightforward. On a base level, people can use a phone, tablet, or set-top device to receive them, using software such as Perfect Player IPTV, for example. Currently available in free (ad supported) and premium (£2) variants, this software can be setup in a few clicks and will provide a decent user experience, complete with EPG.

Perfect Player IPTV

Those wanting to go down the PC route have more options but by far the most popular is receiving IPTV via a Kodi setup. For the complete novice, it’s not always easy to setup but some IPTV providers supply their own free addons, which streamline the process massively. These can also be used on Android-based Kodi setups, of course.

Nevertheless, if the EPL blocks the provider, a VPN is still going to be needed to access the IPTV service.

An Android tablet running Kodi

So, even if we ignore the cost of the PC and Internet connection, users could still find themselves paying between £10 and £20 per month for an IPTV service and a decent VPN. While more channels than simply football will be available from most providers, this is getting dangerously close to the £18 Sky are asking for its latest football package.

Equipment: TV, PC, or decent Android set-top box or equivalent
Comms: Fast Internet connection, IPTV subscription, decent VPN provider
Overal performance: High quality, mostly reliable, user-friendly (once setup)
Cost: PC or £30/£50 for set-top box, IPTV subscription £7 to £15pm, £5pm approx for VPN, plus Internet, plus time and patience for obscure payment methods.
Note: There are zero refunds when IPTV providers disappoint or disappear

Premium IPTV – Deluxe setup

Moving up to the top of the range, things get even more costly. Those looking to give themselves the full home entertainment-like experience will often move away from the PC and into the living room in front of the TV, armed with a dedicated set-top box. Weapon of choice: the Mag254.

Like Amazon’s FireStick, PC or Android tablet, the Mag254 is an entirely legal, content agnostic device. However, enter the credentials provided by many illicit IPTV suppliers and users are presented with a slick Sky-like experience, far removed from anything available elsewhere. The device is operated by remote control and integrates seamlessly with any HDMI-capable TV.

Mag254 IPTV box

Something like this costs around £70 in the UK, plus the cost of a WiFi adaptor on top, if needed. The cost of the IPTV provider needs to be figured in too, plus a VPN subscription if the provider gets blocked by EPL, which is likely. However, in this respect the Mag254 has a problem – it can’t run a VPN natively. This means that if streams get blocked and people need to use a VPN, they’ll need to find an external solution.

Needless to say, this costs more money. People can either do all the necessary research and buy a VPN-capable router/modem that’s also compatible with their provider (this can stretch to a couple of hundred pounds) or they’ll need to invest in a small ‘travel’ router with VPN client features built in.

‘Travel’ router (with tablet running Mobdro for scale)

These devices are available on Amazon for around £25 and sit in between the Mag254 (or indeed any other wireless device) and the user’s own regular router. Once the details of the VPN subscription are entered into the router, all traffic passing through is encrypted and will tunnel through web blocking measures. They usually solve the problem (ymmv) but of course, this is another cost.

Equipment: Mag254 or similar, with WiFi
Comms: Fast Internet connection, IPTV subscription, decent VPN provider
Overall performance: High quality, mostly reliable, very user-friendly
Cost: Mag254 around £75 with WiFi, IPTV subscription £7 to £15pm, £5pm for VPN (plus £25 for mini router), plus Internet, plus patience for obscure payment methods.
Note: There are zero refunds when IPTV providers disappoint or disappear

Conclusion

On the whole, people who want a reliable and high-quality Premier League streaming experience cannot get one for free, no matter where they source the content. There are many costs involved, some of which cannot be avoided.

If people aren’t screwing around with annoying and unreliable Kodi streams, they’ll be paying for an IPTV provider, VPN and other equipment. Or, if they want an easy life, they’ll be paying Sky, BT or Virgin Media. That might sound harsh to many pirates but it’s the only truly reliable solution.

However, for those looking for something that’s merely adequate, costs drop significantly. Indeed, if people don’t mind the hassle of wondering whether a sub-VHS quality stream will appear before the big match and stay on throughout, it can all be done on a shoestring.

But perhaps the most important thing to note in respect of costs is the recent changes to the pricing of Premier League content in the UK. As mentioned earlier, Sky now delivers a sports package for £18pm, which sounds like the best deal offered to football fans in recent years. It will be tempting for sure and has all the hallmarks of a price point carefully calculated by Sky.

The big question is whether it will be low enough to tip significant numbers of people away from piracy. The reality is that if another couple of thousand streams get hit hard again this weekend – and the next – and the next – many pirating fans will be watching the season drift away for yet another month, unviewed. That’s got to be frustrating.

The bottom line is that high-quality streaming piracy is becoming a little bit pricey just for football so if it becomes unreliable too – and that’s the Premier League’s goal – the balance of power could tip. At this point, the EPL will need to treat its new customers with respect, in order to keep them feeling both entertained and unexploited.

Fail on those counts – especially the latter – and the cycle will start again.

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

Every day, copyright holders send out millions of takedown notices to various services, hoping to protect their works.

Pirate sites are usually at the receiving end of these requests but apparently, they can use it to their advantage as well.

A few days ago the operators of sports streaming site soccerstreams.net informed the developer platform GitHub that a copy of their code was being made available without permission.

The targeted repository was created by “mmstart007,” who allegedly copied it from Bitbucket without permission. The operator of the streaming site wasn’t happy with this and sent a DMCA takedown notice to GitHub asking to take the infringing code offline.

“It’s not an open source work its [a] private project we [are] using on our site and that was a private repo on bitbucket and that guy got unauthorized access to it,” Soccerstreams writes.

The operators stress that the repository “must be taken down as soon as possible,” adding the mandatory ‘good faith’ statement.

“I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, or its agent, or the law. I have taken fair use into consideration,” the complaint reads.

GitHub responded swiftly to the request and pulled the repository offline. Those who try to access it today see the following notification instead.

The people running the Soccer Streams site, which is linked with a similarly named Reddit community, are certainly no strangers to takedown requests themselves. The website and the Reddit community was recently targeted by the Premier League recently for example, which accused it of providing links to copyrighted streams.

While soccerstreams.net regularly links to unauthorized streams and is seen as a pirate site by rightsholders, the site doesn’t believe that it’s doing anything wrong.

It has a dedicated DMCA page on its site stating that all streams are submitted by its users and that they cannot be held liable for any infringements.

While it’s a bit unusual for sites and tools with a “pirate” stigma to issue takedown requests, it’s not unique. Just a few weeks ago one of the popular Sickrage forks was removed from GitHub, following a complaint from another fork.

This episode caused a bit of a stir, but the owner of the targeted Sickrage repository eventually managed to get the project restored after a successful counter-notice.

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

Over the past several years, Russia has become something of a world leader when it comes to website blocking. Tens of thousands of websites are now blocked in the country on copyright infringement and a wide range of other grounds.

With circumvention technologies such as VPNs, however, Russian citizens are able to access blocked sites, a position that has irritated Russian authorities who are determined to control what information citizens are allowed to access.

After working on new legislation for some time, late July President Vladimir Putin signed a new law which requires local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor to maintain a list of banned domains while identifying sites, services, and software that provide access to them.

Rozcomnadzor is required to contact the operators of such services with a request for them to block banned resources. If they do not, then they themselves will become blocked. In addition, search engines are also required to remove blocked resources from their search results, in order to discourage people from accessing them.

With compliance now a matter of law, attention has turned to how search engines can implement the required mechanisms. This week Roskomnadzor hosted a meeting with representatives of the largest Russian search engines including Yandex, Sputnik, Search Mail.ru, where this topic was top of the agenda.

Since failure to comply can result in a fine of around $12,000 per breach, search companies have a vested interest in the systems working well against not only pirate sites, but also mirrors and anonymization tools that provide access to them.

“During the meeting, a consolidated position on the implementation of new legislative requirements was developed,” Rozcomnadzor reports.

“It was determined that the list of blocked resources to be removed from search results will be transferred to the operators of search engines in an automated process.”

While sending over lists of domains directly to search engines probably isn’t that groundbreaking, Rozcomnadzor wants to ensure that companies like Yandex are also responding to the removal requests properly.

So, instead of simply carrying out test searches itself, it’s been agreed that the watchdog will gain direct access to the search engines’ systems, so that direct verification can take place.

“In addition, preliminary agreements have been reached that the verification of the enforcement of the law by the search engines will be carried out through the interaction of the information systems of Roskomnadzor and the operators of search engines,” Rozcomnadzor reports.

Time for search engines to come into full compliance is ticking away. The law requiring them 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.

Part of that regulation requires anonymization services to disclose the identities of their owners to the government.

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

It’s not uncommon for torrent sites to suffer downtime due to technical issues. That happens pretty much every day.

But when close to a dozen large sites go offline, people start to ask questions.

This is exactly what happened this week. As reported previously, The Pirate Bay was hard to reach earlier, after a surge of traffic and a subsequent DDoS attack overloaded its servers. And they were not alone.

TorrentFreak spoke to several torrent site admins who noticed an increase of suspicious traffic which slowed down or toppled their sites, at least temporarily. While most have recovered, some sites remain offline today.

TorrentProject.se, one of the most used torrent search engines, has been down for nearly three days now. The site currently shows a “403 Forbidden” error message. Whether this is a harmless technical issue, the result of a DDoS attack, or worse, is unknown.

TorrentFreak reached out to the owner of the site but we have yet to hear back.

403 error

Another site that appears to be in trouble is WorldWideTorrents. This site, which was started after the KAT shutdown last year, is a home to many comic book fans. However, over the past few days the site has become unresponsive.

Based on WHOIS data, the site’s domain name has been suspended. The name servers were changed to “suspended-domain.com,” which means that it’s unlikely to be reinstated. WorldWideTorrents will reportedly return with a new domain but which one is currently unknown.

Popular uploaders on the site such as Nemesis43, meanwhile, are still active on other sites.

WorldWireTorrents Whois

Then there’s also Isohunt.to, which has been unresponsive for over a week. The search engine, which launched in 2013 less than two weeks after isoHunt.com shut down, has now vanished itself.

With no word from the operators, we can only speculate what happened. The site has seen a sharp decline in traffic over the past year, so it could be that they simply lost interest.

Isohunt.to is not responding

Those who now search for IsoHunt on Google are instead pointed to isohunts.to, which is a scam site advising users to download a “binary client,” which is little more than an ad.

The above shows that the torrent ecosystem remains vulnerable. DDoS attacks and domain issues are nothing new, but after the shutdown of KAT, Torrentz, Extratorrent, and other giants, the remaining sites have to carry a larger burden.

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

Earlier this week, TF reported on the surprise retirement of established and respected Kodi addon developer, MetalKettle.

After several years of producing and distributing a wide range of addons for the popular media center, ‘MK’ threw in the towel.

“Over the past year or so Kodi has become more mainstream and public we’ve all seen the actions of others become highlighted legally, with authorities determined to target 3rd party addons making traction,” MK announced.

“This has eventually caused me to consider ‘what if?’ – the result of which never ends well in my mind.”

The “what if?” here is whether MK himself would ever find himself targeted by legal action. As the recent case filed against Kodi addons site TVAddons by Bell, Videotron, Groupe TVA, and Rogers shows, copyright holders are prepared to act aggressively to protect their rights.

While we don’t doubt MK’s reasons for retirement, it now transpires that MK was already in the spotlight of Plex Inc., the company behind Plex. They seem particularly unimpressed with some of his recent work.

Plex is a system which allows users to manage and organize their entire media library, import artwork and all kinds of metadata, and then stream it to any device, such as TVs, phones, and set-top boxes.

For people with content already around it’s a beautiful Netflix-beating system that’s free to use up to a point, but it also comes with premium features as part of a $5pm Plex Pass subscription. Those extras include a Kodi addon.

“Currently available as a preview to our premium Plex Pass subscribers, the Plex for Kodi add-on gives users the best of both worlds; the advanced customization of Kodi home theater and the beauty and simplicity of Plex for access on any device, anywhere, anytime,” the Plex site reads.

MK Plex, the addon produced by MetalKettle, unlocks the restrictions. Installable in Kodi with just a few clicks, the addon allows users of Plex to achieve the above without the need for a Plex Pass subscription. The addon was submitted by MK to the TVAddons repository last week but it took only days for Plex’s legal department to swing into action.

TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the company’s letter to TVAddons from a source close to the platform.

“We represent Plex, Inc. of Los Gatos, California, USA (‘Plex’) in trademark and other intellectual property legal matters. Plex recently learned that you offer a software product called MK Plex that is promoted on [your] website,” it begins.

“The designation MK Plex infringes on Plex’s intellectual property rights and therefore Plex hereby demands that you remove all web pages that use the designation MK Plex, delete all software branded MK Plex and disable all downloading, and cease all other use of Plex’s trademarks immediately.”

While this request would’ve been enough for TVAddons to respond, the lawyers went on in some detail about trademark issues, reiterating that “the designation ‘unofficial plugin’ indicates that your use of MK Plex is intended to trade on the reputation and goodwill of the Plex brand.”

In summary, Plex said that by presenting itself as an unofficial plug-in, MK Plex infringes trademark and unfair competition law in the United States. There was no mention at all of the features provided by the software, the entire issue was framed as a trademark dispute.

Plex’s lawyers continued by threatening formal legal action against TVAddons, including a claim for damages and a court order to shut down the entire site. That’s pretty aggressive for a letter that references an addon that was completely produced by a third-party. Nevertheless, TVAddons informs TF that it had no problem complying with Plex’s takedown request as a matter of urgency.

“We love Plex and would never do anything to cause them grief. The user generated addon in question should never have made its way into our repository in the first place and we apologize for that,” a site representative said.

“We’d like to stress, however, that we took swift action as soon as Plex made us aware of the issue. This is why it’s so important that all web sites with user generated institute a legitimate takedown notice system, so that issues like this can be amicably resolved much faster than they could be in court, without any harm done to either party. TV ADDONS has always and will continue to respect the rights of others.”

TVAddons doesn’t know if MK himself is fully aware of the problem Plex has with his addon or whether he’s going to put it into retirement along with himself. However, the undertone in our conversation indicated that might be a prudent course of action.

TVAddons said they responded immediately to all of Plex’s demands and were thanked for dealing with the matter comprehensively, so it’s at least possible that MK has similar options available.

While a trademark dispute for a Kodi addon is interesting enough, this case offers a perfect illustration of how problems with intellectual property can be worked through, if the parties are prepared to work together. In the ongoing case of the Canadian broadcasters against TVAddons, not a single takedown notice or piece of correspondence was sent to TVAddons in advance of super-aggressive legal action.

Had a simple email been sent, the problem could’ve been solved in a day, rather than the years currently expected.

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