Increasingly, copyright holders are 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.

A few weeks ago adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan moved 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.

ALS Scan had alerted both companies about the infringing activities of several customers, but neither took action in response and continued to offer their services.

“On information and belief, this is because Juicy Ads and Cloudflare make money by continuing to do commerce with sites that draw traffic through the lure of free infringing content,” ALS Scan wrote in their complaint.

JuicyAds’ parent company Tiger Media clearly disagrees and has now filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. They argue that, as an advertising service, they can’t be held liable for the allegedly copyright-infringing actions of their clients.

Among other things, Tiger points out that the infringing photos in question never appeared on their websites and that they couldn’t remove them even if they wanted to.

“ALS does not allege its photos appeared on JuicyAds.com (because they never did) or pass over Tiger’s ad network (because they don’t). Nor does ALS allege that Tiger has the ability to actually disable access to its photos (because it can’t),” Tiger writes (pdf).

“Rather, ALS alleges in a conclusory fashion that Tiger is liable because the sites where ALS’s photos appeared were JuicyAds ‘publishers,’ some of more than 92,000 businesses and individuals that participate in the JuicyAds ad network.”

The advertising network informs the court that its Terms of Service clearly states that the publishers are solely responsible for the content that appears on their sites.

“ALS has not and cannot assert any claims for contributory or vicarious liability, given that Tiger has no more control over publishers’ sites than it does over any other third-party sites.”

In addition, the company notes that the advertisements would actually lead people away from the allegedly infringing content, instead of encouraging it in any way.

Tiger therefore asks the court to dismiss all copyright infringement claims against them, with prejudice.

In addition, yesterday the company submitted its objections against the preliminary injunction requested by ALS Scan. Tiger argues that, based on the evidence provided, there is no need for the extensive piracy policing requirements ALS has proposed.

“The proposed injunction would force Tiger to implement wide-ranging content review protocols for all existing and potential publisher customers, in an ongoing effort to identify and ‘weed out’ any potential infringement of ALS’s content by third parties,” Tiger writes (pdf).

“This breathtaking request for Tiger to police the Internet is unwarranted because ALS’s motion fails every criterion relating to imposition of a preliminary injunction.”

Both the injunction and the motion to dismiss will be considered in a few weeks. Cloudflare has yet to respond to the complaint and was granted an extension of time to file its reply.

While ALS Scan and Tiger are relatively small players, a ruling in this lawsuit may set a precedent for future cases. For this reason, it wouldn’t be a major surprise to see other rightsholders and service providers join the case to have their opinions heard.

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

One of the recurring themes of recent years has been entertainment industry criticism of Google alongside claims the search giant doesn’t do enough to tackle piracy.

In more recent months, the focus has fallen on YouTube in particular, with the music industry painting the video hosting site as a haven for unlicensed tracks. This, the labels say, allows YouTube to undermine competitors and run a ‘DMCA protection racket‘.

While complaints surrounding the so-called “value gap” continue, the labels are now revisiting another problem that has existed for years.

For the unfamiliar, stream ripping is a mechanism for obtaining music from an online source and storing it on a local storage device in MP3 or similar format. Ripping can be achieved by using dedicated software or via various sites designed for the purpose.

With the largest library online, YouTube is the most popular destination for ‘rippers’. Broadly speaking, the site carries two kinds of music – that for which the site has a license and that uploaded without permission by its users. The labels consider the latter as straightforward piracy but the former is also problematic in a stream-ripping environment. Once a track is downloaded by a user from YouTube, labels aren’t getting paid per play anymore.

According to IFPI, the stream-ripping problem has become huge. A new study by Ipsos commissioned by IFPI has found that 49% of Internet users aged 16 to 24 admitted to stream ripping in the six months ending April. That’s a 41% increase over the same period a year earlier.

When considering all age groups the situation eases somewhat, but not by enough to calm IFPI’s nerves. Ipsos found that 30% of all Internet users had engaged in stream ripping this year, that’s 10% up on a year earlier.

In fact, according to comments made to FT (subscription) by IFPI, the problem has become so large that it is now the most popular form of online piracy, surpassing downloading from all of the world’s ‘pirate’ sites.

Precisely why there has been such a large increase isn’t clear, but it’s likely that the simplicity of sites such as YouTube-MP3 has played a big role. The site is huge by any measurement and has been extremely popular for many years. However, this year has seen a dramatic increase in visits, as shown below.

Equally, with pirate site blockades springing up all over the world, users in affected regions will find YouTube and ripping sites much easier to access. Also, rippers tend to work well on mobile phones, giving young people the portability they desire for their music.

But while YouTube and Google will now find themselves under yet more pressure, the company hasn’t been silent on the issue of stream-ripping. On several occasions, YouTube lawyers have made legal threats against such sites, including YouTube-MP3 in 2012 and more recently against TubeNinja.

“We strive to keep YouTube a safe, responsible community, and to encourage respect for the rights of millions of YouTube creators,” an email from YouTube’s legal team to TubeNinja read.

“This requires compliance with the Terms of Service and API Terms of Service. We hope that you will cooperate with us by ceasing to offer TubeNinja with functionality that is designed to allow users to download content from YouTube within seven days of this letter.”

While it is indeed the biggest platform, the problem isn’t only limited to YouTube. Stream rippers are available for most streaming sites including Vimeo, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Mixcloud, and many dozens of others, with Google itself providing convenient addons for its Chrome browser.

With the major labels now describing stream-ripping as the biggest piracy threat, expect to hear much more on this topic as the year unfolds.

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

In recent years copyright holders have overloaded Google with DMCA takedown notices, targeting links to pirated content.

The number of requests has increased dramatically, from only a few dozen takedown notices during the entire year in 2008, to millions per day nowadays.

To give the public insight into this process Google launched a Copyright Transparency Report for search in 2012. In addition to showing the rapid increase in volume, shown below, it has helped us to report on various types of DMCA takedown abuse over the years.

#Reported URLs

A few days ago Google released a revamped version of its Copyright Transparency Report. In addition to a new look, it also now reports additional data to better show what’s going on.

Previously we have been keeping track of the total number of submitted URLs by hand, but Google now prominently includes this number in its report. The latest data show that over 1.75 billion allegedly infringing URLs have been reported since they started counting.

What’s also new is an overview of how many URLs were not removed from the search index, and the reasons for that.

For example, over the past year over 10% of all submitted URLs were not removed from the search index. Roughly half of these, 50 million (5.5%), are duplicate links that had already been reported previously.

Takedown Stats

15 million (1.6%) were “invalid URLs,” such as typos and other non-existing content, and another 31 million were rejected for another reason.

The latter group, which is 3.4% of the total, also includes various types of abuse and other errors. The revamped transparency report lists various examples of abuse, such as an anti-piracy group’s coffee hatred that TorrentFreak first reported on.

“An anti-piracy enforcement firm representing a music label filed a copyright complaint asking us to delist dozens of homepages containing the word ‘coffee’ in the title. These URLs had nothing to do with the identified copyrighted work,” Google writes.

Another abuse case highlighted by Google shows that people sometimes impersonate anti-piracy outfits to remove links without the proper authorization.

“An individual impersonating a prominent anti-piracy enforcement firm filed a copyright complaint targeting several URLs from an adult film website. We occasionally receive requests from individuals who impersonate major anti-piracy firms.”

Google hopes that the new transparency report will help people to better understand what content is targeted and how the company responds. Going forward, the company says it will continue to add new examples and new data.

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

In parallel with the sharing that takes place on P2P systems such as BitTorrent, file-hosting sites have also gained in popularity over recent years.

Some of the most famous sites included Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload/Megavideo, its successor MEGA, and the long-defunct German hoster, Rapidshare. In the wake of Megaupload’s demise, many file-hosters considered the market too risky and decided to back out. However, some viewed the shake-up as an opportunity.

A handful of the sites that have continued despite the threats include Rapidgator (Alexa world ranking #779), Uploaded (#517) and 4Shared (#495) but there is another site that has managed to grow bigger than these giants despite flying largely under the radar.

Videomega.tv appeared on the scene in mid-2012 as a basic video upload site but has continued to grow ever since. According to Alexa the site is now the 472nd most popular site in the world, a significant achievement in a little over four years. But despite the successes, there are now signs that all is not well at the video hosting platform.

Almost a week ago, Videomega’s main page disappeared. People who visit the domain are currently greeted with a blank page, meaning that no one can upload any fresh content or browse the videos that were regularly posted to the bottom of the main page.

Why the site has disappeared is a mystery that has annoyed many of the site’s users, but none more so than the thousands of uploaders that use Videomega to host huge numbers of files.

Like many sites in the niche, Videomega operated an affiliate scheme, meaning that users who uploaded videos to the site had the possibility to generate revenue from them. Of course, YouTube pays users of popular content too but sources familiar with the site inform TF that Videomega was nowhere near as strict when enforcing copyright complaints as its Google-owned counterpart.

This appears to have made Videomega very popular with operators of third-party indexing sites, who hosted content on the platform and placed links on their own domain in order to generate views. This resulted in affiliate payments ranging from $50 to a few thousand dollars each, or at least it did until recently.

Several former uploaders to the site inform TF that payments used to be made regularly but that has now come to a halt. One, who asked to remain anonymous, told us that the site owes him more than $1000 in fees, while others indicate they’re a few hundred down each.

Furthermore, a few days ago the site reportedly changed the minimum payout from $50 to $100, a move that is being described by some as an early bid to avoid paying smaller affiliates in advance of the shutdown.

The site’s admin, who according to reports used to be easily available on Skype, is no longer online, although one source indicated that he appeared briefly before the weekend only to disappear a few minutes later. The site is reportedly not receiving or is ignoring, emails from uploaders and users. TorrentFreak’s request for comment also remains unanswered.

Strangely, however, some of the site’s videos appear to be loading, despite the main domain showing no signs of life. However, those attempting to view content are first met with instructions to turn off adblockers. This is immediately rewarded with a fake video player carrying scammy ads for a third-party subscription site.

Exactly what has happened to the site or its operator remains unclear. There have been no announcements of any raids or arrests by the usual anti-piracy outfits but clearly something is seriously amiss. People tend not to build up one of the world’s most popular sites only to shut it down on a whim.

For now, however, many uploaders believe they may have seen their many thousands of videos (and thousands of dollars) for the last time, with some even going as far to say that they’re victims of a scam. Whether that is true will remain to be seen but some are on the warpath and have even published photographs of the site’s alleged admin online.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Captain America: Civil War: Out of the Shadows 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 weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(4)	Captain America: Civil War	8.1 / trailer
2	(1)	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows	6.2 / trailer
3	(…)	X-Men: Apocalypse	6=7.8=3 / trailer
4	(2)	Now You See Me 2	6.8 / trailer
5	(5)	The Secret Life of Pets	6.8 / trailer
6	(…)	The Shallows	6.6 / trailer
8	(3)	Jason Bourne (HDTC/Subbed HDRip)	7.4 / trailer
8	(…)	Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates	6.4 / trailer
9	(6)	Independence Day: Resurgence (Subbed HDRip)	5.6 / trailer
10	(8)	The Conjuring 2	7.8 / trailer

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