When it comes to civil anti-piracy enforcement, BREIN is without a doubt one of the best known players in the industry.

The group, which receives support from Hollywood and other content industries, has shuttered hundreds of smaller sites in recent history and took on the likes of Mininova and The Pirate Bay.

In 2016 BREIN continued its enforcement actions in full swing. Besides targeting pirate sites throughout the world, it also increased its focus on individual uploaders of infringing content.

The group just published a detailed overview of what it accomplished over the past 12 months. This provides some clear insights into its anti-piracy priorities and offers a glimpse of what to expect in the near future.

To begin, BREIN stresses that copyright enforcement is needed to make sure that legal offerings can flourish. The main reason why people pirate is because the content is free, it says.

“This means that enforcement is essential. Not only for creation and production, but also for online and offline distribution and further investment in innovation in these areas.”

To ensure a broad impact, BREIN targets a wide range of pirate sources, services, and facilitators. While it’s impossible to make piracy go away completely, it hopes to disrupt the ecosystem enough to lower its prevalence.

“The purpose of enforcement is the disruption of illegal supply and use. BREIN therefore uses a ‘full spectrum’ approach that covers all players,” the group notes.

This strategy includes targeting websites and their hosting providers, search engines, social media, advertisers, payment providers, but also uploaders of infringing content and those who consume it.

Looking at the numbers we see that the anti-piracy group is closing the books on a productive year.

BREIN pulled 231 illegal sites and services offline, for example. This includes 84 linking sites, 63 streaming portals, and 34 torrent sites. Some of these shut down completely and others were forced to leave their hosting providers.

In addition, BREIN also took action against or caught 26 prolific uploaders, removed 18 Facebook groups where infringing content was being shared, removed 2,559,525 search results from Google, and took down 4,159 ads for illegal content.

With regards to uploaders, the anti-piracy group relied on ex-parte court orders in several cases. With these orders in hand it managed to secure several settlements. This includes actions against people who shared content on torrent sites, Usenet and Facebook.

BREIN says it always keeps the personal financial circumstances of its targets in mind when determining a settlement. While these never come cheap, this approach can certainly be seen as more reasonable than the jail sentence that was handed out in the UK for a similar offense.

The targeted uploaders and site operators were identified using a variety of forensic tools and techniques, including IP-address monitoring and requests for personal information to hosting providers or other intermediaries.

Looking ahead, BREIN plans to continue its efforts in the new year. It’s also looking forward to the conclusion of several pending cases, such as the local Pirate Bay blockade, which is currently under review by the European Court of Justice.

In addition, BREIN has started to collect the IP-addresses of pirating users. Ideally, they would like to cooperate with Internet providers to send them warnings, similar to the UK alerts system that will be rolled out soon.

“A warning system can contribute to compliance and prevent naively pirating consumers being faced with settlement claims from individual rightsholders. If compliance increases, only persistent offenders will be targeted,” BREIN writes.

More details on the full review and BREIN’s outlook for the new year are available in Dutch, on their official website.

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

Netflix is best known as a video streaming service, but many of its users would also like an option to download content.

A few weeks ago the company started rolling out a download option for some videos on mobile platforms, but Windows-based desktop PCs were left out.

This is a gap ‘Free Netflix Downloader‘ was hoping to fill. Developed by DVDVideoSoft, it was the first Windows application that allowed people to download Netflix videos to their computers through an easy-to-use interface.

“This is the ONLY app in the world that can do this trick now!” DVDVideoSoft’s Alex informed TF two weeks ago.

While the resulting video quality wasn’t particularly good, the software did what it was supposed to do and appealed to a broad audience. This didn’t go unnoticed by Netflix and others, which soon led to an official complaint.

As a result, DVDVideoSoft has decided to pull the plug and discontinue its development.

“The development of Free Downloader for Netflix is discontinued by a third-party request. The program is not available for download now,” a message on the download site now reads.

TorrentFreak contacted DVDVideoSoft to find out more about the mysterious third-party request. The company informed us that the complaint was sent by the internet security service Netcraft.

The complaint accused the Netflix downloader tool of using Netflix trademarks without permission and urged the software developer to cease these infringements.

In response, DVDVideoSoft swiftly decided to comply with the request and it stopped offering the application to the public right away.

Technically it could be possible for the company to offer the tool without directly infringing any Netflix trademarks. However, it is not unthinkable that other intellectual property issues may pop up later on.

In any case, DVDVideoSoft has no concrete plans for a comeback.

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

Last September, during his State of the Union address, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced plans to modernize copyright law in Europe.

The proposals (pdf) are part of the Digital Single Market reforms, which have been developed over the past several years.

While the proposals cover a broad range of copyright-related issues, Article 13 is one of the most controversial. The proposal requires online service providers to proactively police copyrighted content using “appropriate and proportionate measures.” User-generated content sites, for example, would be required to install fingerprinting and filtering systems to block copyright-infringing files.

The proposals quickly caused concern, with early criticism coming from Digital rights group EDRi and Julia Reda of the Pirate Party, among others. Now, an influential group founded to protect the public domain has aired its concerns.

Founded in 2007 by groups including Creative Commons and Wikimedia, Communia has a mission to protect and expand the range of content freely available to the public by limiting the scope of exclusive copyright. Until 2011 it was actually funded by the European Commission but now finds itself criticizing the EC’s proposals.

In its fifth paper published on the Commission’s proposals for reform, Communia is clear. In an effort to address the much-discussed “value gap,” any introduction of Article 13 has the potential to serve as a “censorship machine” and will violate users’ fundamental rights while distorting the existing legal framework.

“The measures proposed in the Commission’s proposal stem from an unbalanced vision of copyright as an issue between rightsholders and ‘infringers.’ The proposal chooses to ignore limitations and exceptions to copyright, fundamental freedoms, and existing users’ practices,” Communia says.

“In addition, the proposal fails to establish clear rules with regard to how citizens can use protected works in transformative ways — such as remixes and other forms of so-called ‘user-generated content’ (UGC). As a result, a system of this kind would greatly restrict the way Europeans create, share, and communicate online.”

Communia also puts emphasis on the legal uncertainty the measures in Article 13 would create. Users’ rights are completely omitted from the proposal while a lack of proportionality would “pose a dangerous precedent” in European law.

From its report it’s clear that Communia is concerned over the totality of such a filtering system. By its very nature, all user-generated content would have to be passed through it for approval, resulting in a censorship mechanism that exists “just in case” there is an infringement.

“As a result, users’ activity will be constrained before any infringement happens. This approach goes against both fundamental rights and the European law,” the project writes.

Communia also highlights an imbalance over who has access to information concerning the operation of the mechanisms proposed by Article 13. While service providers will be required to report to rightsholders on how the system is functioning, users having their content filtered (and potentially censored) will enjoy no such luxury.

“The proposed requirements for the filtering system do not include any obligation to inform users on how the system functions, or to make rights claims transparent to end users. This leaves users without information necessary to defend themselves in case their use fits one of the exceptions or limitations,” Communia warns.

Of course, not all uses of copyrighted content actually constitute copyright infringement. However, it’s unlikely that any filtering system will be sufficiently technologically advanced to determine a parody or news report from a genuine infringement of copyright, for example.

“This type of a system, combined with an ineffective redress mechanism, will create a chilling effect that will thwart users’ rights online,” Communia notes.

Also of interest is Communia’s stance that filtering of user-uploaded content could actually be contrary to EU law. In the Sabam v Netlog case the European Court of Justice ruled that hosting sites can’t be forced to filter copyrighted content. That would violate the privacy of users and hinder freedom of information, the Court said. If the Commission’s proposals extend to hosting providers, this would raise problems.

Furthermore, Communia says that the proposals contained in Article 13 also contradict the E-Commerce Directive. Service providers are not liable for information stored by their users but the group says the proposals introduces liability for hosting services that currently enjoy safe harbor.

“If the Commission’s proposal is adopted, safe harbor may be at risk because the scope of ISSPs covered by the Directive is not clear. In this way, the proposal challenges the established practice under the E-Commerce Directive, and as such is detrimental to the EU rule of law,” Communia adds.

In conclusion, the group has a simple request – that Article 13 be completely removed from the European Commission’s proposals. Failing that, Communia would like the EU legislator to clearly define how existing content may be used.

“This can be achieved by introducing in the proposal a new, mandatory exception to copyright that allows noncommercial transformative uses of copyrighted works by private individuals, and their dissemination via online platforms. Rightsholders must not be granted any authority to remove or block user uploads that fall within the scope of such an exception, or any other exception,” Communia says.

In a final demand (pdf), the group says that users should also be granted access to transparent information regarding the functioning of any filter and be able to contest any removal actions carried out by it.

Creative Commons has a run-down of issues raised by other reform proposals.

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

If The Pirate Bay manages to navigate the stormy waters of the Internet for another couple of years, it will have spent an unprecedented decade-and-a-half thumbing its nose at the authorities. Of course, that has come at a price.

The authorities’ interest in The Pirate Bay remains at a high and, given the chance, police in some countries would happily take down the world’s most prominent copyright scofflaw. However, painting the site as having no respect for any law would be doing it a disservice. In fact, at one point it even offered to work with the police.

The revelations follow the publication of a shocking article by Aftonbladet (Swedish) which details how, over an extended period, its reporters monitored dozens of people sharing images of child abuse online. The publication even met up with some of its targets and conducted interviews in person.

One of the people to comment on the extraordinary piece is Tobias Andersson, an early spokesperson of free-sharing advocacy group Piratbyrån (Pirate Bureau) and The Pirate Bay. Interestingly, Andersson reveals how The Pirate Bay offered to help police catch these kinds of offenders many years ago.

“A ‘fun’ thing about my time at the Pirate Bureau and The Pirate Bay was when the National Police, during the middle of the trial against us, called and wanted to consult about [abuse images] and TPB,” Andersson says.

The former site spokesperson, who also had more recent responsibility at The Promo Bay project, says he went to meet the police where he spoke with an officer and a technician. They had a specific request – to implement a filter to stop certain content appearing on the site.

“They wanted us to block certain [abuse-related] keywords,” Andersson explains.

Of course, keyword filters are notoriously weak and easily circumvented. So, instead, Andersson suggested another route the authorities might take which, due to the very public nature of torrent sharing (especially more than a decade ago when people were less privacy-conscious), might make actual perpetrators more easy to catch.

“I told [the police] how they could see the IP addresses in a [BitTorrent] client belonging to those who were sharing the content,” Andersson explains.

“I showed them how to start a torrent at 0.1kb/s download to be able to see the client list but without sharing anything. Which is not really rocket science,” the TPB and Piratbyrån veteran informs TorrentFreak.

Somewhat disappointingly, however, the police were unresponsive.

“They were not at all interested,” he says.

“Our skilled moderators [on The Pirate Bay] routinely deleted everything that could be suspected to be child porn, but still people tried to post it again and again. I wanted to explain to the police that we could easily identify most of stuff being posted but they were totally uninterested.”

Meanwhile, however, Hollywood and the recording industries were working with Swedish police on a highly expensive and complex technical case to bring down The Pirate Bay on copyright grounds. Sadly, it was to be further copyright-related demands that would bring negotiations on catching more serious offenders to an end.

“Because we refused to censor [The Pirate Bay’s] search to remove, for example, a crappy Stanley Kubrick movie, our ‘cooperation’ with the police ended there. Too bad, because we could have easily provided them with lists [of offenders] like those Aftonbladet reported today,” Andersson concludes.

Today’s revelations mark the second time The Pirate Bay has been shown to work with authorities to trap serious criminals. In 2013, the site provided evidence to TorrentFreak which showed notorious copyright troll outfit Prenda Law uploaded “honey-pot” torrents to the site. The principals of that organization are now facing charges of extortion and fraud.

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.

Cox disagreed with the outcome and a few weeks ago the ISP filed its appeal arguing that the district court made several errors that may ultimately restrict the public’s access to Internet services.

The company received support from several industry associations, academic institutions, libraries and digital rights groups, who submitted amicus briefs to the court of appeals voicing their concerns. However, BMG is not fighting alone.

Late last week, several copyright industry groups, including the RIAA, MPAA, and the Copyright Alliance, rallied behind the music rights group.

The submissions, which total roughly 150 pages, all stress that the current verdict should be upheld. ISPs such as Cox should not be able to enjoy safe harbor protection if they fail to disconnect “repeat infringers” from their networks, BMG’s supporters say.

The MPAA stresses that the District Court made the right decision by holding Cox liable. They stress that online piracy is a massive problem which copyright holders can’t handle without the proper legal tools to hold intermediaries such as Cox accountable.

“Online piracy accounts for a full quarter of all internet traffic and costs the entertainment industry tens of billions of dollars per year,” the MPAA writes in its brief (pdf).

“…it is simply not feasible to combat the epidemic of online infringement unless copyright-holders have the legal tools to incentivize the cooperation of intermediaries like Cox and to hold them accountable when they knowingly facilitate widespread online infringement.”

One of the central elements in this case is the “repeat infringer” question. Under the DMCA, ISPs are required to have a policy to disconnect persistent pirates, but both sides differ on their interpretation of the term.

In its defense, Cox said that only courts can decide if someone is an infringer. Otherwise, people will be disconnected based on one-sided allegations from copyright holders, which remain untested in court.

However, the MPAA, RIAA and other rightsholder groups believe that regular takedown notices should count as well, noting that earlier court verdicts made this clear.

“If Congress meant that a subscriber should have been sued in court, had a judgment entered against her, and failed to overturn that judgment on appeal — multiple times — before facing even the threat of losing internet access as a repeat infringer, it would have said so,” the RIAA writes in its brief (pdf).

In a situation where repeat infringers only lose their Internet subscriptions following a court order, copyright holders would have to launch massive legal campaigns in the U.S. targeting individual file-sharers.

That would result in an unworkable situation which runs counter to the purpose of the DMCA, the RIAA argues.

“Under Cox’s interpretation, copyright owners would be forced to launch demanding campaigns of multiple lawsuits against every individual infringer even to hope to obtain the benefit of ISP repeat-infringer policies.

“That would require a stream of individual lawsuits in federal district courts all over the country, imposing an additional burden on the courts and draining the resources of copyright owners and individual subscribers alike,” the RIAA adds.

Siding with BMG, the copyright groups ask the appeals court to keep the district court ruling intact. This runs counter to Cox’s request, which asked the court to reverse the judgment or grant a new trial.

The recent amicus briefs illustrate the gravity of the case, which is shaping up to be crucial in determining the future of anti-piracy enforcement in the United States. As such, it would be no surprise if the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court.

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