Seattle-based artist Christopher Boffoli is no stranger when it comes to suing tech companies for aiding copyright infringement of his work.

Over the years he has filed lawsuits against Cloudflare, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, Imgur, and others. All these cases were eventually dismissed, presumably after both sides resolved the matter behind the scenes.

While no settlement details have been made public, it’s likely that the photographer has been getting something in return, as he filed a similar case this week. The latest target is yet another familiar Silicon Valley name: Facebook.

In a brief complaint filed at the District Court for the Western District of Washington, Boffoli accuses the social media platform of failing to remove copyright infringing photos. This, despite the claim that the photographer reported dozens of links to unauthorized copies of his work on Facebook between August and October of last year.

Facebook initially replied to these notices stating that the content had been removed, but that wasn’t the case. After more than three months, the pirated photos were still online, the complaint says.

“As late as January 9, 2020 — more than 100 days after receiving Boffoli’s first notice — Facebook had not removed or disabled access to the Infringing Content,” Boffoli’s attorney writes.

After the attorney alerted Facebook about the problem, the material was eventually removed last month. Apparently, it remained online all this time due to a technical error.

“On or about January 30, 2020, Facebook removed or disabled access to the Infringing Content only after communication from Boffoli’s attorney. Facebook admitted it failed to previously remove the material despite notice and stated that its failure to do so was due to a technical error,” the complaint explains.

By then it was already too late, however. Instead of accepting the error, Boffoli has now taken the matter to court where he demands actual or statutory damages for the copyright infringements. With at least four photos in the lawsuit, the potential damages are more than half a million dollars.

In addition, the photographer requests an injunction to prevent future copyright infringements and wants Facebook to destroy all copies that it has in its possession.

The timing of the notices is interesting as it coincides with another incident involving the photographer. Last September we reported that Facebook had removed one of our articles, which used a meme based on a public domain image of Boffoli.

The meme in question referenced the backlash after the photographer filed a lawsuit against Imgur in 2014. When that case was made public, someone responded by uploading 20,754 of his photos to The Pirate Bay. Ironically, Facebook did remove the image and the link to our article years later, even though it was clearly fair use.

That incident shows that Facebook did respond to takedown notices. According to the new lawsuit, however, that wasn’t always the case.

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A copy of the complaint is available here (pdf) and the email exhibits can be found here (pdf).

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Earlier this week, Germany-focused music piracy site DDL-Music.to suddenly became inaccessible to the public. The site had been using the services of Cloudflare but an unusual error message suggested that the US-based company had stepped in disrupt the site’s activities.

‘Error HTTP 451’ is displayed by Cloudflare when a site is “Unavailable For Legal Reasons” and at least as far as pirate sites are concerned, its appearance is very rare indeed. Cloudflare’s documentation indicates that the message should be accompanied by a reason for the response, noting that it “should include an explanation in the response body with details of the legal demand.”

As the image above shows, no explanation was provided by Cloudflare but an investigation by Tarnkappe, details of which were shared with TorrentFreak, now reveals the unusual circumstances behind DDL-Music’s disconnection.

Early June 2019, Universal Music GmbH (Germany) reportedly sent a copyright infringement complaint to Cloudflare after finding links on DDL-Music to tracks from the album Herz Kraft Werke by German singer Sarah Connor. The tracks themselves were not hosted by DDL-Music but could be found on a third-party hosting site. Universal wanted the tracks to be rendered inaccessible within 24 hours but Cloudflare didn’t immediately comply.

Universal Music reportedly followed up with a warning to Cloudflare on June 19, 2019, demanding information about DDL-Music and its operators. A day later, the CDN company responded by declaring that it’s not responsible for its customers’ activities and Universal should deal with the website’s operator and/or webhost. However, Cloudflare did provide Universal with an email address along with details of DDL-Music’s hosting provider, supposedly in Pakistan.

With an obvious dispute underway, a hearing took place at the Cologne District Court (Landgericht Köln) on December 5, 2019. Lars Sobiraj of Tarnkappe, who obtained documentation relating to the hearing, informs TF that the Court ultimately determined that Cloudflare could be held liable for infringement of Universal Music’s copyrights by facilitating access to the tracks via DDL-Music, if it failed to take action.

This “liability as a disturber” (Störerhaftung) comes into play when a service (in this case, Cloudflare) contributes to a third-party’s infringement, without the element of intent. Under German law, however, the service can be held liable for infringement, if it fails to take reasonable action to prevent infringement in future.

On January 30, 2020, the Cologne District Court handed down a preliminary injunction against Cloudflare. This was received at the Hamburg offices of Cloudflare’s law firm TaylorWessig on February 4, 2020. It informed Cloudflare that should it continue to facilitate access to the Universal Music content detailed above, it could be ordered to pay a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($270,000) or, in the alternative, the managing director of Cloudflare could serve up to six months in prison.

In the event, however, Cloudflare appears to have taken the decision to jettison DDL-Music completely, as indicated by the Error 451 message that appeared a few days ago. The district court’s decision can be appealed but whether Cloudflare will take that route is currently unknown. Despite requests from TF for comment, the company has remained silent.

Meanwhile, DDL-Music appears to be migrating to DDoS-Guard, a CDN and DDoS mitigation platform that according to its website is registered in Scotland but is most probably based in Russia. Or the Netherlands, if its Twitter account is to be believed.

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A group of major record labels is running a legal campaign against Internet providers which they accuse of not doing enough to deter persistent copyright infringers.

This has already resulted in a massive windfall in their case against Cox, where a jury awarded a billion dollars in damages. In a few weeks, the music companies will be hoping for the same outcome following the trial against ISP Grande Communications.

Similar to the Cox case, the music companies – including Capitol Records, Warner Bros, and Sony Music – argue that the Internet provider willingly turned a blind eye to pirating customers. As such, it should be held accountable for copyright infringements allegedly committed by its users.

In preparation for the trial, both sides have submitted requests to keep information away from the jury members. These motions in limine, as they’re called, can be used to prevent misleading or prejudicial information from influencing the jury.

The record labels, for example, asked to exclude certain evidence regarding Rightcorp, the company that sent the anti-piracy notices to Grande. These notices are essential evidence in the case as Grande is accused of not properly responding to them.

Specifically, the music companies asked the court to exclude “irrelevant or unfairly prejudicial” evidence or arguments about Rightscorp’s business practices, the company’s finances, or the allegation that the anti-piracy firm destroyed evidence.

A few days ago Grande responded to this request. According to the ISP, it would be unfair to exclude these broad categories, especially because the information is directly relevant to the reliability of key witnesses.

As we have documented here in the past, Rightscorp’s financial situation isn’t very positive. It manages to survive with financial help from the record companies, a point not lost on Grande.

The ISP questions whether the music companies’ trial witnesses, Rightscorp’s Gregory and Boswell and Christopher Sabec, are still credible given the circumstances.

“In assessing the credibility of Mr. Boswell and Mr. Sabec, the jury should be permitted to consider not only Rightscorp’s financial relationship with Plaintiffs, but also evidence regarding Rightscorp’s dire financial condition,” Grande notes.

“In short, Rightscorp’s relationship with Plaintiffs is the only thing keeping Rightscorp’s business afloat, and the jury should know that when evaluating testimony from Mr. Boswell and Mr. Sabec regarding the reliability of the Rightscorp system and the evidence it generates.”

Grande concedes that Rightscorp technically has no direct financial interest in the outcome of the lawsuit. However, it notes that the company certainly has a strong interest in proving that its notices are reliable.

In addition to the financial situation, Grande also questions the ethical side of Rightcorp’s business practices.

The piracy tracking outfit made a name for itself by demanding settlements from hundreds of thousands of alleged pirates. This business model is one that the music companies were aware of and frowned upon, Grande argues

The ISP points to emails it obtained from the music companies through discovery which reference an article that describes Rightscorp’s call center script as “terrifying extortion.”

In addition, Grande points out an email from Sony where the music company notes that it wants to keep its distance from Rightscorp, describing it as “publishers using 3rd parties to milk consumers.” Despite these comments, its lawsuit now relies on evidence provided by the same company.

“Now, however, having purchased evidence from Rightscorp, Plaintiffs want to present Rightscorp’s notices as legitimate evidence of infringement and intend to argue that Rightscorp is a credible business with a reliable system,” Grande notes.

The ISP believes that the jury should know about Rightscorp’s financial situation and business practices, including the call center script. This should allow it to make a better assessment of the Rightscorp witnesses’ credibility.

The music companies disagree and, at the same time, submitted several responses to Grande’s requests to have information excluded from the trial.

For example, Grande asked the court to exclude evidence which shows that the company terminated customers for non-payment. However, the music companies argue that this information is crucial, as it shows that terminations were taking place.

“It is understandable that Grande wants to keep from the jury evidence that it terminated customers for non-payment. Such evidence completely eviscerates an argument Grande is likely to make: that because of the importance of internet access, termination of service is a drastic measure that should be used sparingly, if at all.”

The music companies feel that it’s important to highlight that terminations were not a problem when the ISP itself was affected.

“Moreover, evidence that Grande terminated customers when its property or services were being stolen, but refused to do so when others’ property was being stolen, is independently admissible as it is highly probative of Grande’s willfulness,” the music companies add.

It is now up to the court to decide on these and various other motions to determine what evidence can be discussed at trial. Later this month the jury will be selected. As reported earlier, the jury members will be first asked several selection questions, including whether they read TorrentFreak articles.

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A copy of Grande’s response to the music companies’ motion in limine is available here (pdf), and the music companies’ opposition can be found here (pdf).

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While there are many hundreds of pirate sites and hundreds of millions of pirates around the globe today, for many years it was Sweden that generated a disproportionate number of news headlines covering the phenomenon.

With a population that had become exceptionally comfortable with file-sharing technologies and a general lack of enforcement, sites like The Pirate Bay flourished alongside significant numbers of private torrent sites, so-called Direct Connect hubs, and streaming sites. Eventually, however, legislation and law enforcement began to catch up, targeting sites both large and small, as well as individuals viewed as significant players by the entertainment industries.

After reporting what felt like dozens of cases over the years, some involving torrent and streaming site operators, others involved with DCC sharing, the last couple of years felt strangely devoid of criminal prosecutions. With the mainstream entertainment companies appearing to focus more on ISP blocking processes, criminal legal cases dropped off the radar.

Now, there is official confirmation from the authorities that for the first time since 2010, when a new criminal code was introduced, not a single person was criminally charged with a piracy-related offense during the whole of 2019.

Information obtained by SVT from the Prosecutor’s Office reveals that just 23 crimes were reported to the authorities last year, the lowest figure for nine years.

That revelation lies in stark contrast to the position in 2016, when Sweden’s national police announced that three-quarters of intellectual property complaints filed in the country related to file-sharing, with a new complaint being filed with authorities every three days.

File-sharing and similar cases are currently handled by the National Unit against Organized Crime but for a case to get underway, it must receive a referral from copyright holder groups and their representatives.

However, according to Rights Alliance, the most prominent anti-piracy group in Sweden, sizeable targets are now thin on the ground.

“All Swedish illegal film services, whether streaming or file sharing via BitTorrent, are notified and under investigation. There will, of course, be new ones all the time, but every one of size is already registered,” Rights Alliance lawyer Sara Lindbäck told SVT.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that file-sharing, web-streaming, IPTV and other forms of piracy have been defeated but there does seem to be a perception that local targets have either shut down or moved overseas, placing them outside Swedish jurisdiction. There’s also the matter of investigations that are already underway but haven’t yet got to the charging stage.

“This type of case can take a long time as evidence is often found in another country and legal assistance is needed to get the information out,” says Brita Wallström, head of the police unit dealing with intellectual property crimes.

While there may be a level of optimism at the lack of criminal prosecutions in 2019, the battleground against piracy appears to have shifted in Sweden. Pirated content is still readily accessible in the country, no matter who administers it or where it is being served from. As a result, there are now companies who, rather than attack the suppliers of that material, now prefer to go after regular Internet users in civil actions.

As reported last week, there has been an explosion of so-called copyright-trolling cases in Sweden during recent years.

Beginning around four years ago, in 2019 more than 60,000 IP addresses were targeted in civil actions, with around 144,000 IP-addresses targeted over the past three years.

So, while anti-piracy groups and the authorities may be running out of higher-level pirate site operators to bring to trial in Sweden, there is currently no shortage of downloaders to pursue for cash settlements. The rest, who prefer to utilize streaming platforms and ever-popular IPTV services, will remain mostly under the radar – for now.

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This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Frozen 2 is the most downloaded movie.

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 articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(…)	Frozen II	7.1 / trailer
2	(3)	Knives Out	8.0 / trailer
3	(…)	Charlie’s Angels	4.2 / trailer
4	(1)	21 Bridges	6.6 / trailer
5	(2)	Ford v Ferrari	8.2 / trailer
6	(…)	Parasite	8.6 / trailer
7	(…)	Jumanji: The Next Level (Subbed HDRip)	6.9 / trailer
8	(5)	Jojo Rabbit	8.0 / trailer
9	(4)	Terminator: Dark Fate	6.4 / trailer
10	(8)	Joker	8.8 / trailer

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