In recent years many people have accused so-called ‘copyright trolls’ of using dubious tactics and shoddy evidence, to extract cash settlements from alleged movie pirates.

As the most active copyright litigant in the United States, adult entertainment outfit Malibu Media has been subjected to these allegations as well.

The company, widely known for its popular “X-Art” brand, has gone after thousands of alleged offenders in recent years earning millions of dollars in the process. While many of its targets eventually pay up, now and then the company faces fierce resistance.

This is also true in the case Malibu launched against the Californian Internet subscriber behind the IP-address 76.126.99.126. This defendant has put up quite a fight in recent months and invested some healthy resources into it.

A few days ago, the defendant’s lawyer submitted a motion (pdf) for summary judgment, pointing out several flaws in the rightsholder’s complaint. While this kind of pushback is not new, the John Doe backed them up with a very detailed expert report.

The 74-page report provides an overview of the weaknesses in Malibu’s claims and the company’s evidence. It was put together by Bradley Witteman, an outside expert who previously worked as Senior Director Product Management at BitTorrent Inc.

In common with other aspects, Malibu’s file-sharing evidence was also carefully inspected. Like many other rightsholders, the adult company teamed up with the German outfit Excipio which collects data through its custom monitoring technology.

According to Witteman’s expert analysis, the output of this torrent tracking system is unreliable.

One of the major complaints is that the tracking system only takes 16k blocks from the target IP addresses, not the entire file. This means that they can’t prove that the defendant actually downloaded a full copy of the infringing work. In addition, they can’t do a proper hash comparison to verify the contents of the file.

From the expert report

That’s only part of the problem, as Mr. Witteman lists a range of possible issues in his conclusions, arguing that the reliability of the system can’t be guaranteed.

• Human error when IPP enters information from Malibu Media into the Excipio system.
• Mr. Patzer stated that the Excipio system does not know if the user has a complete copy of the material.
• The Excipio system only take 16k blocks from the target IP addresses.
• There has not been any description of the chain of custody of the IPP verification affidavits nor that the process is valid and secure.
• IP address false positives can occur in the system.
• The user’s access point could have been incorrectly secured.
• The user’s computer or network interface may have been compromised and is being used as a conduit for another user’s traffic.
• VPN software could produce an inaccurate IP address of a swarm member.
• The fuzzy name search of file names as described by Mr. Patzer could not have identified the file kh4k52qr.125.mp4 as the content “Romp at the Ranch.”
• Proprietary BitTorrent Client may or may not be properly implemented.
• Claim of “zero bugs” is suspect when one of the stated components has had 5 over 431 bugs, 65 currently unresolved.
• Zero duration data transfer times on two different files.
• The lack of any available academic paper on, or security audit of, the software system in question.

In addition to the technical evidence, the expert report also sums up a wide range of other flaws.

Many files differ from the one’s deposited at the Copyright Office, for example, and the X-Art videos themselves don’t display a proper copyright notice. On top of that, Malibu also made no effort to protect its content with DRM.

Based on the expert review the John Doe asks the court to rule in his favor. Malibu is not a regular rightsholder, the lawyer argues, but an outfit that’s trying to generate profits through unreliable copyright infringement accusations.

“The only conclusion one can draw is that Malibu does not operate like a normal studio – make films and charge for them. Instead Malibu makes a large chunk of its money using unreliable bittorrent monitoring software which only collects a deminimus amount of data,” the Doe’s lawyer writes.

Stepping it up a notch, the lawyer likens Malibu’s operation to Prenda Law, whose principals were recently indicted and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, and perjury by the US Government.

“Malibu is no different than ‘Prenda Law’ in form and function. They cleverly exploit the fact that most people will settle for 5-10K when sued despite the fact that the system used to ‘capture’ their IP address is neither robust nor valid,” the motion reads.

Whether the court will agree has yet to be seen, but it’s clear that the expert report can be used as a new weapon to combat these and other copyright infringement claims.

Of course, one has to keep in mind that there are always two sides to a story.

At the same time the John Doe submitted his motion, Malibu moved ahead with a motion (pdf) for sanctions and a default judgment. The adult entertainment outfit argues that the defendant destroyed evidence on hard drives, concealed information, and committed perjury on several occasions.

To be continued…

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

In January it was revealed that UK ISPs and the movie and music industries had finally reached their years-long goal of sending infringment notices to pirating subscribers.

The alerts, which are claimed to be educational in nature, are part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative, which includes PR campaigns targeted at the public and classroom.

Until now, no one has published details of the actual alerts in public but thanks to a cooperative member of the UK public, TorrentFreak has the lowdown. The system we’ll show below relates to Sky, so other ISPs may or may not operate slightly differently.

The initial warning email from Sky

The email above has been redacted to protect the identity of our tipster. The blacked-out areas contain his name, the date in DD/MM/YY format, an alleged time of infringement in the HH:MM format, and a seven-digit reference code for the shared content, which is the TV show Westworld.

There is also a pair of links, one to sign into the subscriber’s Sky account (presumably this ensures the person signing in is the account holder) and a link to the ‘Get it Right Information Portal’. The first page before hitting that site looks like this.

What is Creative Content UK?

Once on the GetItRight site, the user is informed that his or her account has been used to breach copyright and that further information is available on the following pages.

There’s a report coming up

Following the links, the alleged infringer is presented with a page which provides a lot more detail. The CIR ID shown below is the same as the seven-digit code on Sky’s website. The date and time are the same, although in different formats.

The all-important IP address is listed alongside details of the software used to share the content. Also included are the filename and filesize of the infringing content and the copyright owner that made the complaint.

The infringement data

Interestingly, the system’s ability to track repeat infringers is evident at the bottom of the screenshot where the “Total Instances Logged This Period” can be seen.

Since the purpose of the campaign is to “educate” infringers, we asked our tipster a little about his habits, his impressions of the system, and how this warning will affect his future behavior.

“I was expecting [a warning] sooner or later as a heavy BitTorrent user. I’m sharing everything from movies, TV shows to games, but this email was about watching a TV show on Popcorn Time,” he revealed.

“This surprised me because I don’t use Popcorn Time very often and yet after approximately 10 minutes of usage I got an email the very next day. Isn’t that funny?”

So in this case, the warning was not only accurate but was also delivered to the correct person, rather than merely the person who pays the bill. We asked our tipster if he was aware of the GetItRight campaign before receiving this warning and whether it would achieve its aims.

“Yes, I have read articles on TorrentFreak. Only what I have read on TorrentFreak,” he said.

“I don’t think [the warnings] will work, at least not on a big scale. Maybe they will educate some people who did it by mistake or did it just once but for someone like me there is no hope. But at least the campaign is not aggressive.”

Interestingly, the education factor in this particular case appears to have somewhat backfired. Our tipster said that thanks to news coverage of the warnings, he knew immediately that there would be no consequences for receiving one. That put his mind at rest.

However, he did indicate that he may change his habits after receiving the warning, particularly given Sky’s claim it will ask subscribers to remove file-sharing software if they’re caught multiple times.

“[The threat to remove software] upsets me as a long-term Sky customer. But I won’t comply, I will either subscribe to another ISP provider or start using VPNs,” he said.

“I might stop using Popcorn Time as I wasn’t using it too often anyway, but I will keep using BitTorrent,” he added. Of course, Popcorn Time has BitTorrent under the hood, so both can trigger warnings.

Received a warning from a UK ISP? Contact TF in complete confidence.

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

Increasingly people are trading in expensive cable subscriptions for cheaper or free Internet TV. However, ideally they would still like to enjoy this from the comfort of their living room.

In recent years this has become much more convenient with help from a variety of easy-to-use media players, Kodi boxes included.

Following this trend, there has also been an uptick in the availability of unlicensed TV streams, with vendors offering virtually any channel imaginable, for free or in exchange for a small fee.

Rightholders are not happy with this development and are actively cracking down on sellers of these illicit services and devices. This is also what happened yesterday in Malaga, Spain, where local ISP Y-Internet was raided.

The police action was carried out following a complaint from the UK football organization Premier League, with assistance from anti-piracy outfit Irdeto. While the company’s website doesn’t list any IPTV offers, the provider allegedly offered piracy-configured IPTV devices on the side for a hefty annual fee of €450.

While it’s not mentioned by the police, TF discovered that the ISP also has ties to a company that offers an IPTV service with UK and Irish TV & radio channels. The website in question was online at the time of the raid, but is now “undergoing maintenance.”

Y-Internet itself is a well-known business in the Costa Del Sol region according to several online sources. The Spanish Government officially licensed the company’s Internet services, and the ISP is said to serve 300,000 homes and businesses, including many UK expats.

During the raid, five company employees were present in the store, but it’s unclear if any arrests were made. Whether the company’s regular Internet subscribers were affected by the action is also unknown.

While details remain scarce, police did release a video of the raid showing several pieces of hardware and network equipment.

The UK owners of the ISP were not present in the store at the time of the raid. They reportedly observed their employees from overseas and tried to destroy files, payment transactions, and clients’ records when the police action began.

However, the police reportedly stopped them before they could permanently erase any critical evidence.

The Premier League is happy with the result and notes that this is the second success in a short period. Just a few weeks ago a UK supplier of piracy-configured IPTV boxes was sentenced to four years in prison.

“The raids conducted by the Spanish authorities, supported in this case by Irdeto’s expertise, are a positive example of law enforcement taking seriously piracy and IP infringement,” says Kevin Plumb, Premier League Director of Legal Services

“This approach is essential for organizations like the Premier League – and other creative industries – as our model is predicated on the ability to market and sell rights and protect intellectual property. It is because of this that clubs can invest in star players and managers, and world class stadiums – the very things fans enjoy about our competition.”

Or as the Spanish Police put it: One goal against Piracy…

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

Internet backbone providers are an important part of the Internet ecosystem. These commercial Internet services have datacenters all over the world and help traffic of millions of people to flow from A to B.

When the average Internet user types in a domain name, a request is sent through a series of networks before it finally reaches the server of the website.

This also applies to The Pirate Bay and other pirate sites such as Primewire, Movie4k, TorrentProject and TorrentButler. However, for more than a week now the US-based backbone provider Cogent has stopped passing on traffic to these sites.

The sites in question all use CloudFlare, which assigned them the public IP-address 104.31.19.30. While this can be reached just fine by most people, users attempting to pass requests through Cogent’s network are unable to access them.

The issue is not limited to a single ISP and affects a small portion of users all over the world, the United States and Europe included. According to Cogent’s own backbone routing check, it applies to the company’s entire global network.

No route to The Pirate Bay

Since routing problems can sometimes occur by mistake, TorrentFreak reached out to Cogent to ask if the block is intentional and if so, what purpose it serves.

A Cogent spokesperson informed us that they looked into the issue but that the company “does not discuss such decisions with third parties,” while adding that they do not control the DNS records of these sites.

The fact that the IP-address of The Pirate Bay and the other sites remains inaccessible suggests that it is indeed intentional. But for now, we can only speculate what the reason or target is.

Since so many of the sites involved are accused of facilitating copyright infringement, it seems reasonable to view that as a possible cause. However, this remains unconfirmed for now.

The Pirate Bay team is aware of the issue and tells us that users affected by the roadblock should contact Cogent with their complaints, hoping that will change things.

In the meantime, people who want to access the blocked sites have no other option than to come up with a workaround of their own. According to various users the ‘roadblock’ can be bypassed with a VPN or Tor, and some proxy sites appear to work fine too.

The websites themselves can still update their DNS records and switch to a new IP-address, which some appear to have done, but if they are the target then it’s likely that their new IP-address will be blocked soon after.

—

The following sites are affected by the Cogent blackhole, but there may be more.

The Pirate Bay, Primewire, Movie4k, Torrentproject, Couch-tuner, Cyro.se, Watchseriesfree, Megashare, Hdmovieswatch, Torrentbutler.eu, Afdah. Movie.to, Mp3monkey, Rnbxclusive.me, Torrentcd, Moviesub, Iptorrents, Putlocker.com and Torrentz.cd.

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

When it comes to sports streaming sites, Rojadirecta is one of the best known and longest standing platforms on the planet. As a result, it has gained a loyal and international following.

Unlike most pirate sites that essentially lurk in the shadows, Rojadirecta is owned by a known company. Puerto 80 has been through several legal challenges over the years and Rojadirecta was even declared legal after two major lawsuits.

Now, however, Rojadirecta’s life at the top appears to be on life support after a local court ordered the platform to shut down its operations. The ruling from the Commercial Court of A Coruña follows a complaint by Telefónica-owned Movistar+ against the site and its owner Igor Seoane.

The company accused Rojadirecta of violating its intellectual property rights when it streamed sports content to the public without permission.

According to El Pais, Seoane previously argued that certain allegedly-infringing soccer streams had been added to the site by its users. As such, Rojadirecta acted as a mere intermediary enjoying certain legal protections. The judge disagreed.

“[The] cataloging and location in the corresponding sections of an index of contents was essential for the general public to access protected content,” he said.

Adding that the content should have been reserved for subscribers only, the judge found that Rojadirecta facilitated infringement and is therefore guilty of breaching Movistar+’s intellectual property rights.

“We did not agree on how this site was using our content and justice has been done,” a Movistar+ spokesperson said.

The order to shut down, which was issued on February 1 but was published this week, covers all of Rojadirecta’s domains. The site will also be required to pay damages, pending any appeal. The broadcasters estimate the site cost them 500 million euros in damages each year.

This is the second major setback for the site in recent months. Following a complaint from Mediapro and GolT, last November the Commercial Court of A Coruña ruled that Rojadirecta must cease linking to unauthorized streams of football events.

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