Conor McGregor is without doubt the biggest star the world of mixed martial arts has ever seen. Often controversial but always entertaining, the Irishman’s name on a pay-per-view event represents a financial windfall for everyone involved.

As a result, any card displaying McGregor’s name as one half of the main event attracts huge attention and last Saturday’s UFC 246 was no different. Taking place in a sold-out T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and broadcast live on PPV, millions of people parted with money to enjoy the extravaganza. Of course, countless thousands didn’t pay a penny to the UFC or its official broadcasting partners.

UFC 246 was widely available on ‘pirate’ IPTV services and unlicensed sports streaming sites over the weekend. However, it was also broadcast on platforms that have less of a bad reputation for piracy such as Twitch, for example, with one particular instance ending in disaster for the person behind the illicit stream.

On Saturday night and for reasons best known to him, Twitch user SkarrsWorld streamed the UFC 246 PPV on his channel to what appears to have been a fairly limited audience. However, during a promo section of the event featuring UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, a personal message notification popped up on screen and was immediately broadcast along with the pirated PPV.

While the text in the message raises all sorts of questions, this disaster had the potential to go unnoticed to the wider public. However, an eagle-eyed viewer of the stream noticed the error and turned the section into a clip which was then shared around on social media.

Just a few hours ago it had already been seen at least 100,000 times and at the time of writing, more than 146,000 views are being reported. That’s a huge audience for what was originally a niche broadcast and while amusing for some, undoubtedly represents a serious breach for the streamer. Having private matters paraded in public is undesirable but in combination with intentional piracy of a PPV event, the gravity increases.

This rookie mistake raises questions of how easy it has become for Joe Public to get into live pirate streaming and the possible consequences for those who get into the game without considering their own security. This type of online infringement has traditionally been carried out by ‘professionals’ with experience of obtaining streams and broadcasting them securely but this Twitch debacle is miles apart. But the issues go deeper than that.

The clip featuring the private message is obviously terribly embarrassing but due to the manner in which the fight played out, the implications of streaming the Conor McGregor vs Donald Cerrone main event on a platform like Twitch are an even bigger cause for concern for the UFC.

From the moment the bell rang to the moment referee Herb Dean called off the fight following a McGregor onslaught, just 40 seconds had passed. To put that into perspective, a fight that had been hyped for weeks (and had dozens of hours of official broadcasting dedicated to it in the lead-up) was over in the space of a GIF. Or, more conveniently, in the Twitch clips that immediately spread like wildfire, even before McGregor could make his victory speech.

While those 40 seconds were just a small part of the pay-per-view, the rest of the card was relatively weak, especially for the casual fans the UFC hopes to scoop up every time McGregor fights. So, when viewed through the prism of considerable dollar costs to view, particularly in the United States, value for money probably wasn’t on the lips of many paying fans at the end of Saturday night.

A pirate Twitch stream or clip, on the other hand, is likely to have proven more than adequate for the passer-by looking for 40 seconds of pure mixed martial arts excitement. In a world where revenue is king, that’s not what the UFC ever wants to hear.

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This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Terminator: Dark Fate is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(…)	Terminator: Dark Fate	6.4 / trailer
2	(…)	1917 (DVDscr)	8.6 / trailer
3	(1)	Joker	8.8 / trailer
4	(…)	Dark Waters (screener)	8.6 / trailer
5	(2)	Maleficent: Mistress of Evil	6.8 / trailer
6	(4)	Frozen 2 (DVDScr)	7.2 / trailer
7	(3)	Countdown	7.2 / trailer
8	(…)	Motherless Brooklyn	7.0 / trailer
9	(6)	Ford v Ferrari (DVDScr)	8.3 / trailer
10	(7)	Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood	7.9 / trailer

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According to a recent survey, nearly a third of all Indonesians have accessed streaming piracy websites or torrent sites.

In recent months, Indonesia’s Information and Communications Ministry has worked hard to address the country’s piracy problem. Among other things, the Government has ordered ISPs to block more than 1,000 domain names.

The main target of these efforts was streaming giant ‘IndoXXI.’ With millions of daily visitors, it was listed among the 25 most-visited sites in the country up until last month.

Initially, the notorious streaming site evaded the blocks by switching to new domains. However, after a new round of blockades just before the new year, it decided to throw in the towel.

“Happy New Year 2020. As of today our site is no longer accessible, as is the case with the IndoXXI lite application,” the operators wrote at the site.

This news was welcomed by the local movie industry as well as Hollywood, which had previously complained about IndoXXI as well. However, the site’s demise doesn’t mean that the piracy problem is over now.

According to the Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA), hundreds of other sites stepped up to fill the gap left by IndoXXI. Some of these mimic the look and feel of the closed site, hoping to draw in visitors.

“[S]ince this announced closure, many other piracy sites, including some obvious copycat clones of IndoXXI, have become available,” AVIA notes.

One of the many clones

In response, copyright holders have stepped up again demanding that more domain names be blocked. AVIA notes that more than 200 new sites have been reported to the government during the past week alone.

Although website blockades may have some short-term effects, the Video Coalition of Indonesia (VCI) believes that the government can do more. Ideally, the group would like the culprits behind these sites to be criminally prosecuted.

Neil Gane, General Manager of AVIA’s Coalition Against Piracy, believes that the people running pirate sites are often involved in other crimes as well, which may in part be financed by piracy revenue.

“Many syndicates and individuals associated with the piracy ecosystem are involved in other criminal endeavors including illicit online gambling, and there is a likelihood that part of the illegal proceeds are used to finance these other crimes,” Gane says.

The call for criminal prosecutions is supported by prominent Indonesian film director Mira Lesmana, who wants the site operators to be brought to justice.

“We need to be able to recoup our financial investments to fund new creative content. We encourage the government to track down and prosecute those Indonesian-based operators who are behind these networks of piracy sites,” Lesmana says.

The question remains whether criminal prosecutions will do much to stop the flood of pirate sites. In recent years there have been various criminal piracy cases around the world. Despite these efforts, there has been no shortage of pirate sites.

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Last November, Canada’s Federal Court approved the first pirate site blockade in the country.

Following a complaint from major media companies Rogers, Bell and TVA, the Court ordered several major ISPs to block access to domains and IP-addresses of the pirate IPTV service GoldTV.

These types of blocking efforts are common in quite a few countries. However, in Canada they are new, which means that developments are closely watched by both supporters and opponents.

One of these newer developments is the expansion of the blocklist with new domain names. After the initial injunction was ordered GoldTV became accessible through new addresses, effectively circumventing the court’s measures. This was dealt with by blocking the new domains as well.

This extension of the court’s order was permitted under the injunction and signed off by the court. This order is also public to those who pay to access it, which allows us to report on it.

However, as more and more blocks are issued this process may become harder to follow. It would be more transparent if ISPs published a list of blocked domains and IP-addresses. This would make it possible for the public to see what’s going on and report errors. If there are any.

This transparency idea isn’t too far-fetched. Canada’s current net neutrality regulations require ISPs to disclose what traffic management practices they use. Disclosing a list of blocked domain names and IP-addresses could fall into the same category.

As we were unable to find any ISP publicly listing this information on a page that’s available outside its network, we decided to ask them whether they had any plans to provide one.

In addition, we also asked what technical means the ISPs use to block domain names. Is it a simple DNS redirect, or are there more invasive techniques in use?

After waiting for several days, we still only have a response from one Internet provider. The ten remaining companies simply stayed quiet and didn’t even acknowledge receipt of our questions.

The company that did respond is TekSavvy, which also happens to be the only ISP that appealed the blocking injunction.

TekSavvy’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, informs us that they already provide detailed information to blocked users. This includes links to all the blocked domains and the court order itself.

In the future, TekSavvy plans to make this available to outsiders as well. The ISP shared a copy of the info page (pdf) with us but it’s not linked from the ISP’s website yet.

The information shows that TekSavvy is using DNS blocking. It effectively changes the DNS entry so the domains point to the blocking notice instead of the regular page.

Kaplan-Myrth notes that this works but adds that the blockade can be circumvented when subscribers switch to alternative DNS providers such as Google, Cloudflare, or OpenDNS.

While we are pleased with TekSavvy’s openness, the lack of response from the other ISPs isn’t very encouraging when it comes to transparency. We contacted Bell, Rogers, SaskTel, Cogeco, Eastlink, Distribitel, Fido, Shaw, Telus, and Videotron, without hearing back.

Although more transparency is welcome, the Canadian system is quite open compared to some other countries. In the UK for example, none of the blocklist changes are publicized beyond the initial court orders. This means that it’s more or less a guess how many are blocked.

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In March 2019, author John Van Stry filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against former Pirate Party Canada leader Travis McCrea, the operator of eBook download platform eBook.bike.

The complaint alleged that McCrea infringed the copyrights of Van Stry by making “at least twelve” of his works available for download without his permission, along with other titles by Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Joanne Harris, Tom Clancy, and thousands more.

It took months for McCrea to file an answer to the complaint and progress since then has been pedestrian, with Van Stry’s legal team claiming that McCrea frustrated and failed to comply with the requirements of the discovery process.

As previously reported, Judge Bryson gave McCrea a December 2019 deadline to respond, warning that the court would take action if no significant progress was made. According to Van Stry’s team, nothing positive has happened since and as a result, the court should subject him to the most serious of sanctions.

In summary, the plaintiff is asking for a number of facts to be taken as a given in the case moving forward and it’s clear he wants no prisoners taken.

Among other things, in a proposed order Van Stry wants the court to find that McCrea was the sole operator of eBook.bike, wrote the site’s software, and reproduced copyrighted content (eBooks and covers) by shifting it from server to server and converting from one format to another.

He also wants the court to find that McCrea knowingly distributed millions of copyright-infringing works in the United States, knew that Van Stry’s copyrights were being violated via the site, and was aware that users of eBook.bike did not have permission to upload or download Van Stry’s works.

The proposed order further asks the court to rule that McCrea knew about the copyright infringement notices sent by Van Stry, could have taken the relevant content down quickly and easily in response but failed to do so, all while generating advertising revenue from the pirated copies.

On top, Van Stry asks the court to declare that McCrea was the domain registrant and administrator of a second site called Books.cat where he allegedly coordinated with “hunters” to obtain eBooks, remove their DRM, and upload the resulting files to eBook.bike.

In the face of no discovery to the contrary, the order also wants the court to find that McCrea made “hundreds of thousands of dollars” through eBook.bike, used the revenue to buy an airplane, and destroyed evidence after receiving a document retention notice. Finally, it demands that McCrea be prohibited from supporting the defenses he previously presented to the court.

“Given the discovery at issue is all of Plaintiff’s written discovery, Plaintiff found this motion a difficult exercise,” the motion reads.

“[H]owever, Plaintiff endeavored to (1) accurately capture the truth as Plaintiff understands it when proposing its summary of facts to be taken as a given; and (2) strike a balance by putting forth high-level facts without overwhelming with minutia, on one hand, while maintaining that the proposals remain facts rather than the ultimate conclusions of law, on the other.”

Only time will tell whether Van Stry will get all his own way on these proposals.

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