When mainstream piracy was in its infancy two decades ago, the majority of file-sharers had no idea that they were even at risk from snoopers. Thanks to a massive wave of lawsuits from the RIAA in 2003, that perception soon changed.

Somewhere around 2004, the MPAA embarked on a parallel campaign to drive the message home to pirates that the Internet is not anonymous.

“If you can think you can get away with illegally swapping movies, you’re wrong,” the ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ posters read. “Illegally trafficking in movies is not just a dirty little secret between you and your computer. You leave a trail.”

The MPAA also gave unquestionably good advice: the only way to guarantee that users weren’t caught for sharing pirated movies was not to share them at all. Of course, millions didn’t listen and by the time that VPNs really started to take off around 2006/2007, file-sharers were laughing into their keyboards.

The biggest threat back then (as it is now) was sharing torrents without protection. Torrents are public and any rightsholder can monitor them before filing a lawsuit for damages. But by 2009 or so, when streaming sites had already embedded themselves as the next big thing, a whole new click-and-play generation had become complacent again, lulled to sleep by the perceived security offered by third-party hosting sources.

Today, millions of people are streaming content via apps and so-called Kodi boxes, mostly with zero protection. The idea, if people even consider it, is that ‘pirate’ sites can’t or won’t give up their information. That is a dangerous assumption.

As recently documented here on TF, there is a worrying situation playing out on YTS, one of the Internet’s most popular torrent indexes. Taking all the facts at hand and adding in some educated guesses, it seems that after being subjected to massive legal pressure, the owner of that torrent resource may be handing information on some of its users to movie companies.

To many file-sharers, that might seem an outrageous proposition but when faced with multiple six-digit claims for damages, no one should expect anything different. Once the identity of the site’s operator became known to the movie company plaintiffs, the pressure seems to have increased to the point that skin-saving might now be the order of the day. That seems to have been the case at Cotomovies as well.

The thing is, if a torrent site or app developer can be pressured in this way, so can any other site holding potentially incriminating user data. There can be little doubt that many file-hosting and streaming platforms carry detailed logs and if the proverbial hits the fan, they could be handed over. Even some so-called debrid download sites, that appear to offer enhanced security, state that they carry download logs for up to a year.

The bottom line is that if users are expecting pirate sites (or even gray area sites like the now-defunct Openload) not to store their personal information or carry download and upload logs, they are effectively banking on a third-party’s security and their determination not to buckle under the most severe pressure imaginable.

In 2020 and after almost two decades of aggressive litigation, it’s perhaps surprising that anyone is taking such things for granted. But people do. They use their regular email addresses to sign up for questionable services, access all kinds of pirate sites without using a VPN, use their personal PayPal accounts for payments and donations, and generally fail to take seriously what could be a very expensive exercise in complacency.

As an example, just last week a user on Reddit reported that a copyright troll in the US had tracked him down with evidence that he’d shared 20 movies. To put that into settlement terms (to make a lawsuit go away) that could mean paying out $20,000, $40,000 or even $60,000 – a potentially life-changing or indeed life-ruining sum.

A decade-and-a-half ago the MPAA’s “Click But Can’t Hide” campaign declared that the Internet is not anonymous. It was accurate (at least by default) but many people continue to believe that security isn’t important. The truth is, the Internet is getting less anonymous every single year and rightsholders know how to exploit that.

Like the apparent YTS fiasco, expect more preventable ‘surprises’ in the months and years to come.

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

A few months ago, the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) started an in-depth inquiry into South Africa’s copyright policies and plans.

The US Government launched this official review following complaints from the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA).

The coalition of prominent rightsholder groups, including the MPA and RIAA, informed the USTR that they’re not happy with how South Africa addresses copyright issues. Lacking enforcement of online piracy was prominently mentioned, as well as the country’s approach towards fair use.

The fair use angle has triggered a wide range of responses from stakeholders who sent their thoughts to the USTR a few days ago.

South Africa plans to introduce a fair use provision into law that is largely based on the US model. According to the IIPA, this is dangerous, as the country can’t rely on 150 years of existing case law. In addition, the new provisions are even broader than the US variant while they arrive on top of the existing ‘fair dealing’ system, the group warns.

The public submissions show that several rightsholders are siding with IIPA, but there’s also overwhelming pushback from public interest groups, organizations, and legal experts.

Pretty much all critics of the IIPA’s stance explain that South Africa’s fair use proposal is largely the same as the US model. The problems signaled by the IIPA are overblown, they argue, adding that South Africans should enjoy the same freedoms as Americans.

There’s not enough space to highlight all protests, but we will provide a short overview of some of the opposition’s responses.

The Internet Association, which represents many large technology companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Spotify, strongly urges the USTR to reject the IIPA’s fair use complaints.

“South Africa’s fair use measure is modeled on U.S. law and includes a standard four-factor test that strikes an appropriate balance between the interests of authors, creators, and users,” the Internet Association writes. ​

“If the U.S. does not stand up for the U.S. copyright framework abroad, then U.S. innovators and exporters will suffer, and other countries will increasingly misuse copyright to limit market entry.”

Wikipedia’s parent company Wikimedia also chimes in. The organization stresses that fair use has allowed US creators and consumers broader access to knowledge. The South African fair use proposal is very similar and by no means a threat, they add.

“While we respect the need to ensure that copyrighted works are properly protected abroad, the reasonable exceptions and limitations included in the draft amendments to South African copyright law are not going to erode that protection any more than the century-long tradition of fair use has in the United States.

“[]It makes little sense to prevent South African citizens from the freedoms that have long been held by citizens in our own country,” Wikimedia notes.

The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) stresses than many countries have been able to enjoy fair use for decades. Not allowing South Africans the same right is a breach of constitutional rights.

“A developing country like South Africa, that wants to improve its copyright law by modeling it on the US copyright law and other progressive copyright regimes, should be encouraged and affirmed, not punished for doing so,” AfLIA writes, urging the USTR to stop its review.

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) agrees with the other opponents. The group compared the US and South African fair use texts and found “no substantive differences.”

Any additional exceptions in the South African proposal follow the model that already exists in US copyright law and can draw on existing jurisprudence, the IFLA adds.

Peter Jaszi, Emeritus Professor of Law at the American University’s Washington College of Law, sees no roadblocks for the fair use proposal either.

“It seems anomalous that the creative industries in a country where fair use is a venerable part of the law would object to another nation’s decision to adopt it as part of an effort to promote domestic innovation,” Jaszi says.

Finally, the South African government is not being swayed by the IIPA’s concerns either. In its submission, it cites other US businesses, including Google, that support its plans. In addition, South Africa stresses that it has a widely-respected tradition of judicial competence and independence when it comes to intellectual property law.

A complete overview of all the responses, including those in favor of the IIPA, is available here. The USTR will take these into account when it makes it final decision on any possible trade sanctions or other recommendations.

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

There are thousands of businesses and individuals involved in the supply and sale of ‘pirate’ IPTV services around the globe.

These subscription packages routinely grant access to hundreds and even thousands of otherwise premium channels for a cheap price, undermining the business models of content providers and broadcasters alike. This has resulted in both criminal and civil action across several continents with broadcaster DISH Network leading the charge in the US.

Just one of the company’s lawsuits, filed last August in a Texas court, targeted Easybox, an IPTV service that reportedly offered subscribers more than 1,000 channels, including more than two dozen channels exclusively licensed by DISH.

“Defendants capture live broadcast signals of the Protected Channels, transcode these signals into a format useful for streaming over the Internet, transfer the transcoded content to one or more servers provided, controlled, and maintained by Defendants, and then transmit the Protected Channels to Service Users through OTT delivery,” the DISH complaint alleged.

According to DISH, the company went to great lengths to have Easybox cease its activities in advance of filing the lawsuit, including sending almost 300 copyright infringement notices to the service and its CDN providers, all of which were ignored.

The Easybox IPTV offering

Last September, DISH was granted permission to subpoena several companies (including PayPal, Google and Namecheap) in order to identify the people behind Easybox. They were eventually named as Hung Tran and Thi Nga Nguyen.

With the individuals mounting no defense, DISH requested a default judgment at the end of December 2019 with a clerk entering a default earlier this month. DISH has now laid out its proposals for a final judgment and permanent injunction.

“Defendants, without authorization from DISH, transmitted the Protected Channels and the copyrighted works that air on those channels to users of their Easybox set-top boxes, smart IPTV subscriptions, and subscription renewals in the United States. In doing so, Defendants directly infringed DISH’s exclusive rights to distribute and publicly perform the works that air on the Protected Channels,” the proposed order reads.

Laying out its claim for direct copyright infringement, DISH demands statutory damages of $150,000 for each of 66 registered and copyrighted works owned by DISH and that the defendants “willfully and maliciously infringed by transmitting without authorization on the Easybox service.” That’s a not-insignificant total of $9.9m.

In addition, DISH is demanding a permanent injunction to prevent the defendants or anyone acting in concert with them from streaming, distributing, or publicly performing DISH channels and programming, and/or advertising, selling or providing any service offering the same.

DISH is also requesting an order preventing any company from providing infrastructure to the defendants in respect of Easybox or a similar service. These include data centers, domain companies, domain anonymization services, CDNs, and social media platforms.

The broadcaster further demands that Verisign and any other registries or registrars of the domains Easybox.tv, E900x.com, and k2442.com should render them inaccessible before transferring them to DISH for the company’s use. Any future domains registered by the defendants for the purposes of infringing DISH’s rights should be treated similarly, the proposed injunction reads.

The court is yet to sign off on DISH’s proposals but given the one-way traffic thus far in what has become a busy case generating thousands of pages of documents, a judgment favorable to Easybox seems unlikely.

The motion for default judgment and the proposed final judgment and permanent injunction can be found here and here (pdf)

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

To protect copyright holders, YouTube uses advanced tools that flag and disable videos which are used without permission.

In addition to this Content-ID system, copyright holders can also submit manual takedown notices to remove infringing content.

Both routes have led to abuse in the past, resulting in takedowns of perfectly legitimate videos. This is particularly worrying for channel owners, as these allegations can potentially lead to multiple copyright strikes after which YouTube removes the entire account.

Over the years we have covered takedown mishaps in great detail. However, this week we learned something new. As it turns out, copyright holders also have the ability to remove content that doesn’t exist yet. A preemptive copyright strike, so to speak.

This unusual takedown strategy was revealed by Matt Binder, a reporter at Mashable who hosts a podcast named DOOMED, which is also live-streamed through YouTube.

Earlier this month, Binder scheduled a show discussing CNN’s Democratic candidates’ debate with progressive activist Jordan Uhl. The show was recorded after the broadcast and in preparation Binder scheduled the podcast’s livestream on YouTube, with “post-Democratic debate” in the title.

Many creators use this scheduling feature to announce their upcoming live streams. What’s new, however, is that Binder’s scheduled stream was removed before it even started. In other words, the content was deemed to be infringing before it existed.

Binder documented the unusual episode on Mashable where he also reveals that the takedown notice was issued on behalf of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which owns CNN.

“The notice informed me that I had received a copyright strike for my scheduled stream,” Binder writes, noting that YouTube immediately restricted his ability to stream content live.

“That one copyright strike was enough to disable livestreaming on my channel for the strike’s three-month duration. If I were to accumulate three strikes, YouTube would just shut down my channel completely, removing all of my content,” Binder adds.

Apparently, Warner Bros. and CNN were monitoring streams that could potentially infringe on their right to broadcast the Democratic candidate’s debate. Based on the title alone, they mistakenly concluded that Binder’s stream was going to be illegal, which it clearly wasn’t.

To correct the mistake Binder protested the takedown notice, hoping that it would be swiftly reversed. However, his first request was denied because it was unclear if he had a valid reason to file a counter-notification.

As a reporter, Binder followed up the story and reached out directly to YouTube, informing the company that he planned to write about the issue. That worked, as the mistake was soon corrected and the copyright strike disappeared as well.

One has to wonder, however, if the average Joe would be able to achieve the same result. In any case, it seems off that copyright holders can claim copyright infringement on content that has yet to be created.

We previously reported that Google search allows rightsholders to remove infringing URLs that are not yet indexed by the search engine. Binder’s case is similar but goes a step further as the allegedly infringing content didn’t exist when the stream was taken down.

YouTube constantly has to balance the interests of its users and those of copyright holders. It’s likely that the option to preemptively strike live streams is used to make it easier to take down scheduled broadcasts of sports games or other time-sensitive major broadcasts.

While this preemptive takedown option may be useful, Binder’s example shows that these powers can also lead to overblocking, which can seriously hurt legitimate content creators.

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

DMCA notices are sent in their millions every single week, mainly to restrict access to copyright-infringing content. These notices usually target the infringing content itself or links to the same, but there are other options too.

The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA allow companies that own or provide access to copyrighted works to target tools and systems that facilitate access to that content in an unauthorized manner. Recent examples can be found in the war currently being waged by the RIAA against various YouTube-ripping sites, which provide illicit access to copyright works, according to the industry group.

This week Facebook-owned Instagram entered the arena when it filed a DMCA notice against code repository Github. It targeted Instagram-API, an independent Instagram API created by a Spain-based developer known as ‘mgp25‘. Instagram claims that at least in part, the notice was filed to prevent unauthorized access to its users’ posts, which can contain copyrighted works.

“The Company maintains technological measures to control access to and protect Instagram users’ posts, which are copyrighted works. This notice relates to GitHub users offering, providing, and/or trafficking in technologies, products, and/or services primarily designed to circumvent the Company’s technological measures,” the complaint begins.

According to Instagram, Instagram-API is code that was designed to emulate the official Instagram mobile app, allowing users to send and receive data, including copyrighted content, through Instagram’s private API. It’s a description that is broadly confirmed by the tool’s creator.

“The API is more or less like a replica of the mobile app. Basically, the API mimics the requests Instagram does, so if you want to check someone’s profile, the mobile app uses a certain request, so through basic analysis we can emulate that request and be able to get the profile info too. The same happens with other functionalities,” mgp25 informs TorrentFreak.

While Instagram clearly views the tool as a problem, mgp25 says that it was originally created to solve one.

“Back in the day I wasn’t able to use Instagram on my phone, and I wanted something to upload photos and communicate with my friends. That’s why I made the API in the first place,” he explains.

There are no claims from Instagram that Instagram-API was developed using any of its copyrighted code. Indeed, the tool’s developer says that it was the product of reverse-engineering, something he believes should be protected in today’s online privacy minefield.

“I think reverse engineering should be exempt from the DMCA and should be legal. By reverse engineering we can verify whether apps are violating user privacy, stealing data, backdooring your device or doing even worse things,” he says.

“Without reverse engineering we wouldn’t know whether the software was a government spy tool. Reverse engineering should be a right every user should have, not only to provide interoperability functionalities but to assure their privacy rights are not being violated.”

While many would consider that to be a reasonable statement, Instagram isn’t happy with the broad abilities of Instagram-API. In addition to the above-mentioned features, it also enables access to “Instagram users’ copyrighted works in manners that exceed the scope of access and functionality that would be permitted by a user with a legitimate, authorized Instagram account,” the company adds.

After the filing of the complaint, it took a couple of days for Github to delete the project but it is now well and truly down. The same is true for more than 1,500 forks of Instagram-API that were all wiped out after their URLs were detailed in the same complaint.

Regardless of how mgp25 feels about the takedown, the matter will now come to a close. The developer says he has no idea how far Instagram and Facebook are prepared to go in order to neutralize his software so he won’t be filing a counter-notice to find out.

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