With the issue of piracy-enabled set-top boxes still making the headlines, the English Premier League (EPL) has emerged as the most likely organization to prosecute sellers of infringing boxes in the UK.

However, last month the Federation Against Copyright Theft, who provide anti-piracy services for the EPL, revealed that mere users of boxes (such as those containing augmented Kodi setups) could be targeted for prosecution sometime in the future.

As noted in our earlier coverage, people who merely stream pirated content into their own homes are difficult to track online. They pose much greater challenges than BitTorrent users, for example, who can lead investigators straight to their door. But for FACT chief executive Kieron Sharp, there are opportunities to find people via non-technical means.

“When we’re working with the police against a company that’s selling IPTV boxes or illicit streaming devices on a large scale, they have records of who they’ve sold them to,” Sharp said.

The suggestion here is that box sellers’ customer lists contain the personal details of people who obtain Premier League and other content for free so, once identified, could be open to prosecution.

With conventional thinking under copyright law, prosecuting a set-top box/Kodi user for streaming content to his own home is a bit of a daunting prospect, not to mention an expensive one. Copyright cases are notoriously complicated and an individual putting up a spirited defense could cause problems for the prosecution. The inevitable light sentence wouldn’t provide much of a deterrent either.

With all that in mind, it appears that FACT is more interested in prosecuting under other legislation.

During an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live’s Chris Warburton this week, Sharp said that people streaming into their own homes are committing a criminal offense, i.e., something that could interest the police and attract a fine or custodial sentence.

“The law has always been the case that people who are doing something illegal, streaming in their own homes, through these devices, are committing a crime. What’s happened recently is that’s been clarified by an EU judge in one case and by a civil judge in another,” Sharp said.

The EU case was BREIN v Filmspeler, which in part determined that people who stream content from an illegal source do so in breach of copyright law. The judge in the civil case was Justice Arnold, who in a UK Premier League blocking case reached the same conclusion.

While it’s now fairly clear that streaming pirate content in the EU is indeed illegal, is a civil wrong, and can be dealt with by suing someone, it’s not immediately clear how that turns into a criminal offense. It wasn’t clear in the interview either, so Warburton pressed Sharp again.

“What is the bit of the law that you are breaking when you’re streaming, how are you committing a criminal act?” he asked Sharp.

“There are various pieces of legislation,” the FACT chief said. “The one we’ve been looking at is under the Fraud Act which would say you are committing a fraud by streaming these football matches through to your television, watching them at home, and not paying for the license to do so.”

At this point, everything begins to slot into place.

For the past several years through several high-profile Internet piracy cases, FACT has shied away from prosecutions under copyright law. Each time it has opted for offenses under the Fraud Act 2006, partly because longer sentences were available at the time, i.e., up to 10 years in prison.

However, earlier this year FACT’s lawyer revealed that prosecutions under the Fraud Act can be easier for a jury to understand than those actioned under copyright law.

With this wealth of experience in mind, it’s easy to see why FACT would take this route in set-top box cases, especially when fraud legislation is relatively easy to digest.

Possession etc. of articles for use in frauds

“A person is guilty of an offense if he has in his possession or under his control any article for use in the course of or in connection with any fraud,” the Fraud Act reads.

To clarify, an ‘article’ includes “any program or data held in electronic form,” which is perfect for infringing Kodi addons etc.

Given the above, it seems that if the Court can be convinced that the person knowingly possessed a pirate set-top box programmed for fraudulent purposes, there could, in theory, be a successful prosecution resulting in a prison sentence and/or a fine.

Obtaining services dishonestly

“A person is guilty of an offense under this section if he obtains services for himself or another….by a dishonest act, and….he [knowingly] obtains them without any payment having been made for or in respect of them or without payment having been made in full,” the relevant section of the Act reads.

There are probably other angles to this under the Fraud Act but these seem to fit so well that others might not be needed. But how likely is it that someone could be prosecuted in this manner?

Sharp reiterated to the BBC that FACT could get the identities of box buyers as part of investigations into sellers, and as part of that “would see what the situation is” with their customers.

“It may well be that in the future, somebody who is an end-user may well get prosecuted,” he said.

But while the possibilities are there, Sharp really didn’t seem that keen to commit to the hounding of stream consumers in the future, and certainly not now. FACT’s strategy appears to be grounded in getting the word out that people are breaking the law.

“[People] think they can get away with it and that’s an important message from our perspective, that they must understand that they are committing offenses, apart from all the other issues of why they should be paying for the legal product. This is something that should be of concern to them, that they are committing offenses,” Sharp said.

The big question that remains is whether FACT and the English Premier League would ever take a case against a regular end-user to court. History tells us that this is fairly unlikely, but if any case did end up in court, it would definitely be hand-picked for best results.

For example, someone who bought a box from eBay would probably be of no real interest, but someone who had extended email exchanges with a seller, during which they discussed in detail how to pirate English Premier League games specifically, would provide a more useful test subject.

And then, when there are two people involved (the knowingly infringing buyer and the seller, who would also be prosecuted) that also raises the question of whether there had been an element of conspiracy.

Overall though, what people probably want to know is whether lots of people are going to get prosecuted for fraud and the answer to that is almost certainly ‘no.’ Prosecutions against the little guy are resource hungry, expensive, offer little return, and tend to generate negative publicity if they’re perceived as vindictive.

A single highly publicized case is a possible outcome if FACT and the EPL got really desperate, but there’s no guarantee that the Crown Prosecution Service would allow the case to go ahead.

“Prosecutors should guard against the criminal law being used as a debt collection agency or to protect the commercial interests of companies and organizations,” recent CPS advice reads.

“However, prosecutors should also remain alert to the fact that such organizations can become the focus of serious and organized criminal offending.”

FACT could, of course, conduct a private prosecution, which they have done several times in the past. But that is a risk too, so it seems likely that education efforts will come first, to try and slow things down.

“Our desire has always been that sports fans, football fans, would pay for the commercial package, they would pay a fee to watch and that is still our position,” Sharp told the BBC.

“But working with our clients and members such as the Premier League and Sky and BT Sports, we have to consider all the options available to us, to put a bit of a brake on this problem because it’s growing all the time.”

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

Last week ISP Cox Communications told the Supreme Court that pirating subscribers should not be disconnected from the Internet.

The Internet provider found support for this claim in the recent Packingham v. North Carolina decision, where the highest court ruled that it’s unconstitutional to bar convicted sex offenders from social media.

If convicted sex offenders still have the right to use social media, accused pirates should not be disconnected from the Internet on a whim, Cox argued. Especially, if these piracy allegations are solely based on copyright holder complaints.

The argument is part of Cox’s appeal in its case against music rights group BMG. In 2015 the ISP was ordered to pay $25 million in damages, after it was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement for refusing to disconnect alleged pirates.

Cox presented the new evidence to strengthen its appeal, but according to a new filing just submitted by BMG’s lawyers, the argument is irrelevant.

“The First Amendment does not guarantee Cox’s subscribers the right to use Cox’s internet service to steal music any more than it prevents Cox from terminating subscribers who violate Cox’s policies or fail to pay their bills,” they argue.

The music rights group notes that the Packingham ruling doesn’t apply to “specific criminal acts.” The copyright infringements reported by BMG were specific and targeted at individual accounts, so these would warrant an account termination.

“Just as criminalizing the use of Facebook for sexual exploitation does not violate the First Amendment, the civil law of copyright liability may incentivize ISPs to terminate those subscribers who repeatedly use their service to infringe,” BMG explains.

The question remains, of course, whether alleged infringements can be classified as specific acts. One of Cox’s main objections has been that they don’t want to disconnect an entire household from the Internet, based on rightsholder complaints alone. In part, because it’s unknown who committed the act.

BMG is convinced that the Packingham order doesn’t change the standing verdict. It says nothing about repeat copyright infringers, and the company doesn’t believe that account terminations violate the First Amendment rights of accused pirates.

“Infringers do not have First Amendment right to use Cox’s internet service to commit crimes, and Packingham does not hold otherwise,” BMG concludes.

It is now up to the Supreme Court to review the evidence and determine its applicability in the current case. No matter what the outcome, the case is likely to have a massive impact on how ISPs treat repeat infringers going forward.

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BMG’s full letter is available here (pdf).

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

When the The Pirate Bay suffered over a month of downtime late 2014, many of the site’s regular visitors went elsewhere.

This resulted in a significant traffic dip afterwards, but in recent months the notorious torrent site has seen a massive uptick in visitors.

At the beginning of the year TPB was already the largest torrent site. Today, Internet traffic ranking service Alexa lists the site among the 100 most-visited domains in the world once again, in 99th place. That’s the first time in three years.

While external traffic measurements are far from perfect, the graph below shows a steady increase in ranking since last summer. Exactly how many visitors The Pirate Bay has remains unknown, but SimilarWeb estimates it at a quarter billion ‘visits’ per month.

Keep in mind that the estimates above don’t account for the dozens of Pirate Bay proxies that serve users in countries where the site is blocked. That will likely add several millions of monthly visitors, at least.

Whether Pirate Bay’s recent resurgence is something torrent users should be happy about is another question. The recent uptick in traffic is mostly caused by the demise of other torrent sites.

Last summer both KickassTorrents and Torrentz left the scene, and ExtraTorrent followed a few weeks ago. Many of these users have flocked to The Pirate Bay, which is the prime source for user uploaded torrents.

That the Pirate Bay is still around is somewhat of an achievement in itself. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to shut the site down.

It started in 2006, when Swedish authorities raided the site following pressure from the United States, only for the site to come back stronger. The criminal convictions of the site’s founders didn’t kill the site either, nor did any of the subsequent attempts to take it offline.

While many pirates have fallen in love with TPB’s deviant behavior, the recent downfall of other sites means that there’s a lot of pressure and responsibility on the shoulders of the site now. Many other indexers rely on TPB for their content, which is something not everyone realizes.

For now, however, TPB continues its reign.

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

Founded in 2006 by Dimitri Mader, Wawa-Mania grew into a million member strong ‘warez’ forum specializing in a broad range of ‘pirate’ content. But just three years later things were already starting to go bad.

In 2009, the Frenchman was detained by the authorities after the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALPA) identified more than 3,600 films being made available via the platform without permission. In the meantime the site continued, generating income from advertising and accepting donations via PayPal.

The case dragged on for years but reached its goal in 2015. Mader was found guilty, sentenced to a year in prison, and hit with a 20,000 euro fine. But by this time the Frenchman was long gone and living with his family in the Philippines. He didn’t even attend the hearing – but things weren’t over yet.

With Mader’s guilt established, the court had to determine the level of damages payable to the plaintiffs, which included Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount, Tristar, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. The amount eventually arrived at by the court was around $15m.

“I won’t think about the penalty, it is just beyond any common sense,” Mader told TF at the time.

“I will surely not [pay anything] and even if a new court makes the penalty lower, it won’t change anything. Five million, 15 million or 30 million. What’s the difference after all?”

Being outside the country with a jail sentence and huge fines hanging over his head was a big problem for Mader, who told us that returning home after years outside the country would be a complicated affair. But things still weren’t over.

In a ruling handed down last month and just made public, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the lower court, affirming that Mader owes the plaintiffs 13 million euros ($14.85m).

According to a report from Numerama, the court said that “the likely harm [to rightsholders] must be assessed in light of the extent of visitors to this site [at the time of the investigation], the number of creative works involved, and the ‘views’ duly established.”

The court determined that every visit to the site wouldn’t necessarily have resulted in an illegal download, but it still placed a value of two euros on every work believed to have been downloaded by users.

Mader did not attend the appeal and was not represented, so things were never likely to go his way. His current whereabouts are not clear, but it seems likely that he remains in the Philippines with his family.

Correspondence sent by TF to his encrypted email account bounced. Only time will tell whether Hollywood will have equal difficulty contacting him.

The full decision can be found here.

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

When one thinks of anti-piracy efforts in the United States, the MPAA and RIAA are often the first groups that come to mind.

While that may be true, there’s another player which has made a massive impact, while barely being noticed at all.

ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, has filed a series of lawsuits against pirate sites in the US, with the popular streaming portal Fmovies as the biggest target.

The company has already won several cases with damages ranging from a few hundred thousand to millions of dollars. However, the associated injunctions in these cases are perhaps even more significant.

We previously covered how ABS-CBN managed to get court orders to seize domain names, without the defendants getting actively involved. This is also the case in a recent lawsuit where a Florida federal court signed a broad injunction targeting more than two dozen sites.

The websites, including dramasget.com, latestpinoymovies.com, pinoydailyshows.com, tvnijuan.org and weeklywarning.org, may not ring a bell with a wide audience but their domain names have all been suspended, linking to a takedown message instead.

And there is another interesting element to the injunction, which hasn’t been widely used in the past. Hoping for a good shot at some damages down the road, ABS-CBN put in a request to freeze the advertising revenues of these sites at Google Adsense, MGID, Popads.net, and elsewhere.

The court signed off on this, and added it to the preliminary injunction. As a result, the advertisers must freeze the funds until further notice.

“…all funds in the advertising accounts related to Defendants as identified on Schedule B, including but not limited to those which are currently held by the advertising services […] are immediately restrained from movement, transfer, or otherwise being disturbed, as opposed to ongoing activity.”

None of the funds of the defendants are allowed to be moved. Instead, the court order directs the advertising companies to transfer everything to a holding account that is known to the court.

On top of that, Google Adsense, MGID, and the other advertising companies must send the copyright holder an overview of the revenue in each account and all transactions associated with it.

“(i) an accounting of the total funds restrained and identifies the advertising/financial account(s) which the restrained funds are related to, and (ii) the account transactions related to all funds transmitted into the advertising/financial account(s) which have been restrained.”

Needless to say, this injunction will have a pretty severe effect on alleged pirate sites. Not only do they lose their preferred advertising outlets, but they also miss out on any pending revenue.

The sites that are targeted in this case are relatively small, but it could, in theory, happen to the big players as well. While the RIAA and MPAA are not involved in this case, we’re pretty confident that they are watching this case very closely.

Finally, the injunction sheds an interesting light on which registrars and registries swiftly respond to US court orders. At the time of writing all .com, .org and .net domains are suspended, but some of the .ag, .ch and .ph domains are still operational. With new ads, of course.

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A copy of the preliminary injunction is available here (pdf).

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