As illustrated by the ruling handed down against ISP Bredbandsbolaget by the country’s Patent and Market Court of Appeal this week, piracy is still considered a big problem in Sweden.

Despite better access to legal services such as Spotify and Netflix, some citizens still prefer to get their fix from pirate sites. Whether that’s via The Pirate Bay and torrents or newer streaming-based portals, piracy is still a popular route for obtaining media.

According to figures just released by media industry consultants Mediavision, in January 2017 almost a quarter of all Swedes aged between 15 and 74 admitted either streaming or downloading movies from ‘pirate’ sites during the past month.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tendency to do so is greater among the young. More than half of 15 to 24-year-olds said they’d used a torrent or streaming site during December. When concentrating that down to only young men in the same age group, the figure leaps to 70%

Mediavision has been tracking the piracy habits of Scandinavians since 2010 and actually reports an overall increase in piracy over the past seven years. However, piracy levels have remained relatively static during the past three years, with roughly 25% of citizens admitting to engaging in the practice.

The company, which previously reported on the activities of Popcorn Time users, says that illegal consumption of media is far more prevalent in Sweden than in the neighboring Nordic countries of Norway, Denmark and Finland.

“The ruling against Bredbandsbolaget is a big thing in this context,” says Natalia Borelius, Project Manager at Mediavision.

“The measures taken to date, with, for example, shutting down illegal websites, has been shown to have limited effect on illegal consumption. In Finland and Denmark, where site blocking has been in place for years, piracy is less than half as prevalent as in Sweden.”

As a result of this week’s decision, rightsholders now have the opportunity to obtain injunctions against all Swedish Internet service providers, barring them from providing customer access to not only The Pirate Bay, but other allegedly infringing sites worldwide.

While this may have some effect on the habits of casual pirates, it remains to be seen how the masses respond. Blocking a couple of sites via one ISP certainly won’t have the desired effect, a conclusion supported by various studies (1, 2). Expect more blocking then, sooner rather than later.

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

It is safe to say that The Pirate Bay is one of the most blocked websites on the Internet.

When Internet backbone provider Cogent blackholed the site two weeks ago many people, therefore, assumed that it had something to do with the notorious torrent site.

Ironically, however, it turns out that The Pirate Bay and dozens of other “pirate” sites linked to the same IP-addresses, were actually collateral damage following a separate action.

Cogent’s actions were a direct response to a court order which required the company to block access to one or more websites, which remain unknown. The real target was accessible through the IP-addresses 104.31.18.30 and 104.31.19.30.

These addresses belong to CDN provider Cloudflare and are also used by many other sites including The Pirate Bay. So, when Cogent complied with the court order and blackholed the IP-addresses, dozens of other sites became inaccessible as well.

Yesterday we reported that Cloudflare moved most of the affected sites a new location, so they are now available again. The real target probably remains on the original IP-addresses, to comply with the court order.

Cloudflare’s General Counsel Doug Kramer informed us that they worked together with Cogent to resolve the issue and to limit the impact on other sites.

“We have taken technical steps on our end to permit Cogent to comply with a court order issued to them without additional impacts,” Kramer informed TorrentFreak.

The whole blocking episode reveals the danger of broad blocking orders that are issued by judges who don’t fully understand the effects. The threat of over-blocking is real, and when it involves smaller sites it will be much harder to notice.

“It’s important for courts to understand how Internet systems work so they can write orders that don’t end up having unintended consequences,” Kramer stresses.

In the future, the two companies will now be able to deal with similar issues more efficiently. In any case, Cloudflare says that it remains dedicated to preserving open access to the Internet, within the legal boundaries.

“As a company, Cloudflare believes strongly in an open, free, and secure Internet. And it is also our policy to fully comply with legitimate court process,” Cloudflare’s General Counsel says.

“This can be challenging at times, especially when courts target backbone providers and don’t understand fully how they work. Cloudflare takes steps to make sure those court orders don’t lead to unintended impacts.”

Cogent hasn’t released any further details on the target of the block, but Ars Technica reports that it was issued in Spain.

It’s not the first time that innocent Cloudflare customers have been affected by a court order. Previously, UK ISPs blocked several websites because they were sharing an IP-address with The Pirate Bay. This would also explain why the CDN provider now groups known blocked sites on the same addresses.

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

Since around 2003, torrent sites have plagued the MPAA. Hydra-like in their ability to withstand all kinds of attacks, from legal onslaughts to domain blocking, torrent platforms are still going strong today.

However, what BitTorrent lacks in its standard form is a living-room friendly interface. Regular torrent clients are functional at best, uninviting at worst, and lack the colorful Netflix-style interface demanded by today’s sophisticated media consumer.

At least to some extent, the advent of Popcorn Time solved that particular problem for pirates, but the software still performs better in the desktop environment, despite its ability to run on portable devices. Kodi, on the other hand, is a different beast altogether.

This entirely legal piece of media-playing software is equally at home running on a PC, tablet, mobile phone, or crucially, an Android-powered set-top box or stick. As a result and thanks to its colorful interface, Kodi is now a central entertainment component of millions of homes.

Kodi has always had an enthusiastic following, but its ability to run third-party addons has turned this media player into a piracy goliath. Users are understandably delighted by its ability to bring all kinds of video media directly into their homes, at zero cost. Those that make the media are less enthusiastic.

Legal battles over the misuse of the platform are ongoing, mainly in the UK and the Netherlands, where test cases have the ability to clarify the legal position, at least for sellers of so-called “fully loaded” devices.

Interestingly, up until now, the MPAA has stayed almost completely quiet, despite a dramatic rise in the use of Kodi for illicit streaming. Yesterday, however, the silence was broken.

In an interview with Variety during the Berlin Film Festival, MPAA chief Chris Dodd described the Kodi-with-addons situation as “new-generation piracy”.

“The $64,000 question is what can be done about such illegal use of the Kodi platform,” Dodd said.

While $64,000 is a tempting offer, responding to that particular question with a working solution will take much more than that. Indeed, one might argue that dealing with it in any meaningful way will be almost impossible.

First of all, Kodi is open source and has been since its inception in 2002. As a result, trying to target the software itself would be like stuffing toothpaste back in a tube. It’s out there, it isn’t coming back, and pissing off countless developers is extremely ill-advised.

Secondly, the people behind Kodi have done absolutely nothing wrong. Their software is entirely legal and if their public statements are to be believed, they’re as sick of piracy as the entertainment companies are.

The third problem is how Kodi itself works. While to the uninitiated it looks like one platform, a fully-modded ‘pirate’ Kodi setup can contain many third-party addons, each capable of aggregating content from dozens or even hundreds of sites. Not even the mighty MPAA can shut them all down, and even if it could, more would reappear later. It’s the ultimate game of whac-a-mole.

To give an example, Chris Dodd mentioned that the movie “Bridge of Spies” had 160 sources on a Kodi setup and to anyone familiar with how these things work, that is not an unusual position for the most popular content. For hosts based in the US and Europe, a takedown/staydown regime might help a little, but there is plenty of opposition (1,2,3) and a long time to go before anything like that could be put in place.

That being said, indirectly the problem is already being addressed. Due to the way content is pulled from the web, tackling Kodi piracy is in many ways the same as tackling any infringing web-based content. As a result, many regimes already in place (site-blocking, DMCA notices, etc) are already part of the solution, at least if the studios’ claims on effectiveness are to be believed.

On the consumer front, things are even more complex and indeed bleak. Despite a flood of mainstream UK news sites falsely claiming the opposite in recent weeks, people using Kodi setups to stream content won’t be the subject of warning notices from their ISPs. Only peer-to-peer systems like BitTorrent can be tackled this way, so contacting pirating users directly to “educate” them will be almost impossible.

Overall then, the present Kodi situation is more like a $64,000,000 question, and one that won’t be answered quickly, despite the price.

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

Last week the news broke that Cogent, which operates one of the largest Internet backbone networks, blackholed IP-addresses that were linked to several notorious sites including The Pirate Bay.

As a result of this action, people from all over the world were unable to get to their favorite download or streaming portals.

The blocking intervention is quite controversial, not least because the IP-addresses in question don’t belong to the sites themselves, but to the popular CDN provider CloudFlare.

While CloudFlare hasn’t publicly commented on the issue yet, it now appears to have taken countermeasures. A little while ago the company moved The Pirate Bay and many other sites such as Primewire, Popcorn-Time.se, and Torrentz.cd to a new set of IP-addresses.

As of yesterday, the sites in question have been assigned the IP-addresses 104.31.16.3 and 104.31.17.3, still grouped together. Most, if not all of the sites, are blocked by court order in the UK so this is presumably done to prevent ISP overblocking of ‘regular’ CloudFlare subscribers.

TPB accessible on the new CloudFlare IP-address

Since Cogent hasn’t blackholed the new addresses, yet, the sites are freely accessible on their network once again. At the same time, the old CloudFlare IP-addresses remain blocked.

Old CloudFlare IP-addresses remains blocked

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of one of the sites involved who said that he made no changes on his end. CloudFlare didn’t alert the site owner about the issue either.

We contacted CloudFlare yesterday asking for a comment of the situation, but a company could not give an official response at the time.

It seems likely that the change of IP-addresses is an intentional response from CloudFlare to bypass the blocking. The company has a reputation of fighting overreach and keeping its subscribers online so that it would be fitting.

The next question that comes to mind is will Cogent respond, and if so, how? Or has the underlying issue perhaps been resolved in another way?

If their original blockade was meant to block one or more of the sites involved, will they then also block the new IP-addresses? Only time will tell.

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

December 2015 a Virginia federal jury ruled that Internet provider Cox Communications was responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers.

The ISP was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and ordered to pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million in damages.

This week Cox received more bad news. While the case is currently under appeal, the District Court ordered the ISP to compensate the music group for the attorney’s fees and costs they incurred during the first round.

In its motion, BMG asked for more than $10 million in compensation and after applying a discount, Judge Liam O’Grady decided to award a total of $8,383,468 in fees and an additional $146,790 to cover the bill of costs.

In a detailed memorandum, Judge O’Grady notes that the objective reasonableness of a party’s position is a major factor in determining the fees question. In the current case, the Internet provider clearly crossed a line.

Among other things, evidence revealed that Cox appeared to be complying with the DMCA in public, while privately disparaging and intentionally circumventing the law’s requirements.

“In a hard-fought litigation battle such as this one, discovery disputes and fierce briefing are to be expected, and they should not be held too harshly against either party,” the Judge writes.

“Nonetheless, there are a few instances in which Cox’s advocacy crossed the line of objective reasonableness. In particular, both Cox’s attempts to obscure its practice of reinstating infringing customers, and its subsequent assertions of a deeply flawed DMCA defense evince a meritless litigation position that Cox vigorously defended.”

In addition, the court also awards the legal fees as a deterrent. The high legal costs should motivate the Internet provider to change its policies and appropriately respond to reported copyright infringements.

In practical terms, this could include a new and improved DMCA program as well as a more responsive approach to infringement notices from companies like Rightscorp, which were previously ignored.

“However Cox decides to address its users’ repeat infringement, it is clear that the company should be given a proper financial incentive to change its policies and procedures,” Judge O’Grady notes.

Another factor that weighs heavy in the decision to award legal fees, is the assuring message it sends to other copyright holders. Picking a legal battle against a company with billions in revenue is quite a risk when attorney’s fees are not compensated.

“In order to continue to promote the vindication of individuals’ copyrights, therefore, BMG (and others like it) should be rewarded for facing up against willful infringers with deep pockets,” the Judge writes.

Combining these and several other relevant factors, Judge O’Grady concludes that the $8.3 million in attorney’s fees is appropriate in this case. This brings Cox’s total costs to well over $33 million.

Adding insult to injury, the Judge also denied Cox’s request for legal fees against Round Hill Music, arguing that there can only be one prevailing party in a lawsuit. The full memorandum is available here (pdf).

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