Increasingly, copyright holders have been urging third party services to cut their ties with pirate sites.

Hosting providers, search engines, ISPs, domain name registrars and advertisers should all do more to counter online piracy, the argument goes.

This summer adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan took the matter beyond the asking stage.

The company filed a complaint at a California federal court, targeting CloudFlare and the advertising network JuicyAds over image copyright infringement carried out by their users.

The case could set an important precedent for the entire advertising industry. However, according to a tentative ruling (pdf) issued by District Court Judge George Wu this week, they have little to worry about for now.

After reviewing the first amended complaint (FAC), he concludes that there is no evidence that JuicyAds is liable for contributory copyright infringement. The complaint lists no evidence showing that JuicyAds’ parent company Tiger intentionally encouraged infringing acts, as the defense had argued.

“The Court would agree that the FAC fails to plausibly allege a link between Tiger’s advertising brokerage services and the infringing conduct of the Publishers,” Judge Wu writes, citing a similar case between Perfect 10 and Visa.

“It is entirely unclear from the FAC how serving an advertisement on a website encourages infringement, other than by enabling the website to profit from those advertisements, a theory the Ninth Circuit expressly rejected in Visa.”

The inducement aspect of contributory infringement fails as well. Based on the current complaint there is no evidence that JuicyAds actively promoted or encouraged any infringing acts.

“Here, the FAC does not allege that JuicyAds provides its advertising brokerage service for the purpose of promoting copyright infringement, or that it has directly encouraged Publishers to display infringing content on their websites.”

On the issue of vicarious copyright infringement the Judge also sided with the defense. The adult entertainment publisher failed to show that Juicyads can control the websites of their clients or that it has a direct financial interest in the infringing activity.

Judge Wu again cites the Visa case where it was held that the defendant did not have the ability to remove pirate websites from the Internet or block the distribution of infringing images on third party sites.

Finally, the remaining claims of unfair competition and contributory trademark infringement proved to be insufficient too, awarding a clear win to Juicyads.

The present ruling is only tentative. This means that ALS Scan still has the opportunity to argue against it during a scheduled hearing. If they don’t, the ruling becomes final.

For now, however, JuicyAds’ legal team is quite pleased with the decision.

“The defense team views this decision as a victory for both JuicyAds and for the online advertising industry,” JuicyAds’ lawyer Lawrence Walters told Xbiz in a comment.

“Unchecked efforts to hold distant online service providers responsible for indirect copyright infringement has the potential to stifle innovation,” he adds.

CDN provider CloudFlare has also submitted a motion to dismiss the complaint. This is still under review and Judge Wu is expected to issue a ruling during the weeks to come.

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

Born in Singapore to an American father and English mother, Louis Theroux has grown to become one of the UK’s most-loved documentary makers.

Last weekend Theroux fans were treated to a follow-up to the filmmaker’s interview with Jimmy Savile, the now-notorious entertainer and sex offender who brought scandal upon the BBC. However, that was a mere hors d’oeuvre to the UK premiere this Friday of Theroux’s biggest creation yet.

My Scientology Movie is Theroux’s long-awaited big-screen debut, with a documentary that investigates and ultimately pokes fun at the famous church of the same name.

Funded by the BBC , My Scientology Movie had its initial airing at the London Film Festival in October 2015 but fans of the documentary maker have been treated only to trailers ever since. This morning, however, all that changed.

Just a few hours ago, Theroux’s latest offering appeared online and began spreading across torrent and file-hosting sites alike. TF is informed that the release first appeared on a fairly well-known private tracker. However, we were unable to confirm that before publication so have omitted its name from this report.

According to numerous sources, the theatrical release has a duration of 99 mins and this ‘pirate’ copy lives up to that billing, indicating that this indeed the full movie intended for release later this week.

Louis gets a grilling

Also noteworthy is the quality of the release. Often leaked ‘cam’ versions appear online in the days after a commercial release but this is an almost perfect copy, something that will be of concern to the movie’s funders at the BBC.

The big question now is where the copy originated from. Sometimes so-called DVD screeners provide the kind of quality we’re looking at here but in this case, the people behind the release indicate that the movie was captured from a ‘WEB Rip’ source, i.e some kind of streaming system available over the web.

Rather than ‘pirate’ in nature, these sources are often official. OSN in the Middle East, for example, sometimes offers movies before their official release in the West. The same can be said of various South Korean services, hence the Korean subtitles that are visible on many early, good quality movie releases.

The police get involved

Since the leak is so fresh (and also since much of the United States is still asleep) downloads of My Scientology Movie are currently fairly modest. That is likely to change as the day progresses and the news spreads.

Update: The movie had a theatrical release in the Netherlands earlier this year but is yet to premiere in the UK or US.

Update2: Two separate sources indicate the movie has been ripped from iTunes.

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

While relatively underreported, many U.S. district courts are still swamped with lawsuits against alleged film pirates.

The copyright holders who initiate these cases generally rely on an IP address as evidence. This information is collected from BitTorrent swarms and linked to a geographical location using geolocation tools.

With this information in hand, they then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

In most cases, courts sign off on these subpoenas quite easily, but in a recent case California Magistrate Judge Mitchell Dembin decided to ask for further clarification and additional evidence.

The case in question was filed by Criminal Productions, the makers of the 2016 movie Criminal, who are linked to the well-known pirate chasers Nu Image and Millennium Films.

The movie makers filed a complaint against a “John Doe” and list an IP-address that, according to a geolocation lookup, is linked to a location in San Diego County.

Magistrate Judge Mitchell Dembin, however, is not ready to issue a subpoena based on that information alone. Specifically, he notes that the complaint lacks details on when the geolocation effort was performed.

If the copyright holder looked up the IP-address information after the infringements the location and ISP info may not be accurate at all, as the assignment may have changed.

“It is most likely that the subscriber is a residential user and the IP address assigned by the ISP is ‘dynamic’. Consequently, it matters when the geolocation was performed,” Judge Dembin writes (pdf).

“If performed in temporal proximity to the offending downloads, the geolocation may be probative of the physical location of the subscriber. If not, less so, potentially to the point of irrelevance,” he adds.

This clarification is indeed important but has never been made before in court, as far as we know.

In the original request, Criminal Productions only writes that the geolocation data was obtained prior to filing the lawsuit, but it’s not clear whether that was at the time of the infringements, which took place several months ago.

“This is not good enough. As much as four months may have passed between the alleged infringement and the geolocation,” Judge Dembin writes.

“Plaintiff must provide the date that geolocation occurred and, if performed closer to the filing date, must provide further support and argument regarding the probative value of the geolocation.”

Based on the missing information the motion for discovery was denied, meaning that Criminal Productions didn’t get the subpoena they were after.

A few days after this denial the filmmakers submitted an amended request providing additional information. However, it was still unclear when the geolocation information was actually obtained, so the Judge denied it again yesterday (pdf).

Denied again

The issue raised in this case is interesting from an accuracy standpoint. Copyright holders in these cases always link an IP-address to a location and ISP, if only to show that the case was filed in the right district. However, they usually don’t say when this geolocation data was obtained.

ISPs do of course keep a log of the IP-address assignment changes. However, the right jurisdiction has to be established before a subpoena is issued.

Judge Dembin therefore suggests that rightsholders should get the information at the time of the infringement, which may be easier said than done. Geolocation databases are far from perfect and most are not updated instantly.

This is something the residents of a Kansas farm know all too well, as their house is the default location of 600 million IP-addresses, which causes them quite a bit of trouble.

Just last month EFF released a whitepaper urging courts to take caution when processing IP-address information. Whether Judge Dembin has read this is unknown, but his actions are definitely in line with the paper’s findings.

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

One of the main problems faced by anti-piracy outfits is identifying their adversaries. Pirates of all kinds value anonymity and many go to great lengths to protect it.

When it comes finding out the personal details of a pirate, whether that’s the user of a regular consumer-level ISP or the operator of a large torrent or linking site, the usual method is via court order.

Such orders are obtained in a variety of ways, but it usually involves presenting evidence and having a judge compel a provider to hand over whatever details it has on file. This happens in at least hundreds of cases every year.

Of current interest is a report from anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The Dutch-based operation says it’s investigating three as-yet-unnamed linking sites that have been distributing large quantities of popular movies and TV shows hosted on a cyberlocker.

BREIN has been trying to uncover the identities of the people behind the sites since this makes it much easier to ramp up the pressure. Indeed, once their names are known, some site operators have a tendency to throw in the towel.

The first stage of this process was fairly straightforward since the pirates were using servers belonging to a local hosting provider. This gave BREIN a nice start to its investigation and it’s all thanks to case law established more than a decade ago.

In 2003, stamp dealer and lawyer Augustinus Pessers was wrongfully accused of fraud by an individual posting on a website operated by Internet service provider Lycos. Pessers began legal action, demanding that the allegations be taken down. He also wanted to force Lycos to hand over the name and address of the poster making the allegations.

After two years of litigation and against a defense mounted by Lycos, in November 2005 the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that Lycos must hand over the personal details of the user to Pessers. The stamp dealer had won and outfits such as BREIN received a welcome boost.

Armed with this case law, BREIN found that the servers used by the pirate sites in their current investigation were Dutch-based, at hosting company Serverius. Under the Pessers ruling the company would have to comply with a disclosure request. However, those servers were actually operated by another company based overseas.

3NT Solutions is a UK-based hosting provider owned by companies in Belize and Panama. According to BREIN, 3NT handed over the personal details of the pirate sites it was hosting at Serverius, without a court order.

“These details consist of name, address, e-mail address and payment details. 3NT also ceased its hosting services to the illegal sites at issue,” BREIN says.

Normally when anti-piracy companies want to find out the identities of an ISP’s customers in the UK, they obtain a court order known as a Norwich Pharmacal Order. In this case, BREIN says that wasn’t needed, since 3NT had servers in the Netherlands.

“Both Serverius as well as 3NT have a legal responsibility to assist in curtailing piracy. Simply being based – or registered – in another country than where the servers are, does not mean one can escape that responsibility,” BREIN chief Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak.

Kuik says that both Serverius and 3NT were “reluctant to abide by their responsibilities” but they also know that BREIN would sue them if they didn’t comply and would likely lose the case and end up losing money.

“Under Dutch case law – based on EU rules – intermediaries are obliged to provide identifying details voluntarily upon request in case of infringement and damage, and the interests of the injured party prevails,” Kuik adds.

“In the Netherlands, it is a regular occurrence for BREIN that identifying details are provided by intermediaries voluntarily upon request. Court cases are exceptional,” he concludes.

BREIN say that more and more companies outside the Netherlands, include Google recently, have been following these disclosure rules.

Meanwhile, Kuik and his colleagues say that with personal details in hand they will continue their quest against the operators of the pirate sites in question, and the cyberlocker they were using.

3NT did not immediately respond to TorrentFreak’s requests for comment.

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

Jim Munroe is a Canadian science fiction author, film director and games designer. He publishes his work independently under the imprint No Media Kings.

Join us as we discuss why an ex-Sony exec loves piracy and if that marks the end of the cool pirate.

In addition we talk about why Millennials won’t pay for content or watch adverts, and how to make them love creators; and how your operating system can be used to operate YOU – and not just by stopping you from pirating.

Finally Jim discusses his new interactive fiction creation software Texture (try it! it’s free!), and his virtual reality sci-fi series Haphead, offering some great tips for creators looking to keep their heads in our dirty, digital world.

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Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Jim Munroe

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

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