This year the RIAA has discovered DMCA subpoenas as a useful enforcement tool against alleged pirate sites.

The music industry group has repeatedly obtained these subpoenas against Cloudflare, ordering the CDN provider to hand over the personal details of its customers.

The latest target is Wi.to, a file-hosting site that specializes in music. In fact, that’s the only content that can be shared on the platform. However, like any user-generated content platform, people abuse it by sharing pirated files as well.

This didn’t sit well with the RIAA which, armed with three URLs of infringing music as evidence, sent a subpoena to Cloudflare. The music group specifically asked for the physical address, IP address, e-mail address, payment information, account updates, and other info of the customer connected to Wi.to.

This is the same boilerplate language we’ve seen in similar requests that were made in the past, which Cloudflare generally complies with. While the RIAA doesn’t specify what it intends to do with the information, it will generally be used to enforce the copyrights of its members.

To hear the other side of the story we reached out to the operator of Wi.to, Sergey, who resides in Estonia. He was informed about the RIAA’s subpoena last week but doesn’t feel directly threatened.

“We are not criminals,” Sergey says.

“Wi.to is a service that makes it easy to publish music files DJs have created themselves. It’s true that the service is sometimes abused. But that’s something the users do. Also, services like Soundcloud or Dropbox are abused as well.”

Sergey says that, as an Estonian, the DMCA doesn’t apply to him, however, the site does process abuse complaints. In response to these notices, infringing files are regularly removed.

This is where things get interesting. The RIAA subpoena identifies three of these infringing music tracks. However, when we checked these URLs we found out that all three files are still online, including this Harleys in Hawaii track by Katy Perry.

According to Sergey, the RIAA never asked for these files to be removed.

“The RIAA hasn’t even contacted me and it looks to me like they’re acting arbitrarily. They deliberately want to get everything out of the way they can’t make money from,” Sergey tells us.

Wi.to’s operator believes that the RIAA is overreacting. If they see any infringing files they should file an abuse complaint instead of going to court to request personal details through a third party company, while keeping the infringing files unaddressed.

To Cloudflare, the RIAA wrote that any disclosed information will only be used to protect the copyrights of its members. However, sending an abuse complaint seems to be a more direct and effective way to do so.

Intriguingly, the RIAA has asked Google to remove these three URLs from its search engine. However, these requests were pointless, for now, as the tracks were not indexed by the search engine.

TorrentFreak reached out to the RIAA to find out what the purpose of the DMCA subpoenas is, but the organization prefers not to comment. Thus far, these efforts have had mixed results, but Wi.to isn’t planning to change its course.

As outsiders, we can’t judge how Wi.to processes its abuse complaints. We did notice, however, that the site has a “pendejo” link in the footer, pointing to the Narcos theme song by Rodrigo Amarante, without permission.

According to Sergey, this was a birthday present for one of his colleagues, which will be removed in due course or sooner, if an abuse notice comes in.

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A copy of RIAA’s subpoena to Cloudflare is available here (pdf).

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For many old-school torrent users, Demonoid is a familiar name. The site was founded sixteen years ago, which made it one of the oldest BitTorrent sites around.

However, last year things changed when Deimos, the site’s founder, went missing. After months of uncertainty and downtime, it became clear that the site wasn’t coming back this time. Deimos is believed to have passed away in a tragic accident, marking the end of an era.

As time went on it became obvious that Demonoid would not return in its original state. However, many of the site’s staffers and users were eager to build a new home. Not so much to replace the old Demonoid, but more as a tribute, and to keep the name alive.

This vision came to fruition a few months ago when Dnoid.to, a Demonoid successor, was launched. The new site has the same look and feel as the old site, but started over with a completely new user database.

The new site doesn’t operate a tracker either. Instead, the most important goal of the site was to bring the old community back together.

“Demonoid always had a special spot in people’s hearts. Keeping a memento of it without letting others ruin it by making copycats and phishing sites from it is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to him and keeping his legacy alive,” Demonoid staffer ‘phaze1G’  told us at the time.

In the weeks that followed the site’s new userbase slowly started to grow but it also became apparent that the domain name choice was far from ideal.

The .to domain is also used by another site, Demonoid.to, which is a well-known scam site. Instead of offering torrents, Demonoid.to urges people to download a binary client. The client download URL redirects to an affiliate link for a paid Usenet service.

Because of the dnoid.to / demonoid.to confusion, many users ended up at the wrong site. According to phaze1G, more than 800 emails with complaints about this issue were received in recent weeks.

This volume wasn’t something the staff could ignore. As such, the team registered a new domain name, Demonoid.is, which is the new home from now on. For the time being, visitors to the old domain will be automatically redirected.

“The Tonic registry is not as reliable as it used to be with their redacted whois. They are handing over owner details, even following DMCA complaints, as we were told by some people from other sites,” phaze1G says.

Indeed, as we have covered previously, the Tonic registry does comply with DMCA subpoenas from US Courts, but that’s something it has always done. The change here may be that DMCA subpoenas are more often used as an enforcement tool nowadays.

With the fresh domain name, the ‘new’ Demonoid hopes to avoid any confusion and other domain troubles. Meanwhile, it will continue to keep the site going, something that went relatively well over the past weeks.

“The site itself is doing fine. It’s not oversaturated, which is our goal. Many former users returned and lots of newcomers are stopping by too,” phaze1G notes.

“We are trying to keep a moderated size of visitors, so the infrastructure doesn’t include more cost as the revenue from ads is not enough to cover the costs itself,” he adds.

While Demonoid remains a big name that for many is surrounded by nostalgia, it’s a small player in the larger ecosystem today. With roughly half a million monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb, it pales in comparison to the larger torrent sites.

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Selling ‘pirate’ IPTV packages and subscriptions to the public is a growing market, with the obvious potential to end badly for anyone involved.

With that in mind, there’s a growing trend for so-called IPTV resellers to be extremely open about their activities, utilizing highly active social media accounts and particularly YouTube channels, where they promote their services, describe them as illegal, and then have their own faces front and center.

For Boom Media, a prominent reseller of various ‘pirate’ IPTV services, this business model has attracted the wrong type of attention. The company, which trades as Boom Media LLC in North Carolina, is now being sued by DISH Network and NagraStar for illegally offering their content to the public.

Alongside the LLC, John Henderson of New York and Debra Henderson of North Carolina are also named as defendants.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York district court, states that Boom Media is run from John’s home and he is the sole member of the company. Together with his mother, Debra, it’s alleged they sell “access codes” (a common term used in DISH lawsuits to reference IPTV subscriptions) which are designed to enable subscribers to illegally receive DISH programming via the Internet.

“The codes are designed and produced to enable a set-top box or other Internet-enabled device to access servers used to transmit DISH programming to customers of the MFG TV, Beast TV, Nitro TV, Murica Streams, Epic IPTV, Vader Streams and OK2 services,” the complaint reads.

Noting that Vader Streams and OK2 are no longer on offer from Boom Media (likely due to the former being shut down by ACE earlier this year), the lawsuit notes that the defendants also promote their service to access channels such as HBO and Showtime, plus PPV events associated with UFC, WWE, and various boxing promotions.

In common with similar suits filed recently, DISH says it was able to determine that the channels were sourced from its service due to watermarks embedded in its broadcasts. These were then resold from the above-listed IPTV suppliers by Boom Media, which charged customers between $10 and $20 per month with an option to buy a “pre-loaded” set-top box for $150.

While DISH points the finger firmly at John Henderson for the running of Boom Media, the broadcaster claims that it is his mother, Debra, who receives payment from Boom’s customers.

As previously mentioned, Boom Media has a YouTube channel which it uses to promote the various packages it sells. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by DISH, which highlights some of the language used by Boom Media in its videos.

“In a video posted to the Boom Media YouTube channel, Defendant John Henderson informed customers that “[y]ou guys are buying pirated streams, this shit is not Hulu, it’s not Netflix, it’s pirated f**cking streams. It’s no different than buying f**king knockoff shoes. It’s black market shit,” DISH writes in its complaint.

In common with other similar lawsuits, DISH hasn’t gone down the copyright infringement route with this action, instead opting for willful violations of the Federal Communications Act.

The company demands a permanent injunction to prevent the ongoing behavior and seizure of all devices and equipment used to facilitate the violations. It also wants to seize the Boommedia.org domain name (and any others involved in the scheme) plus “all hard copy and electronic records” regarding persons involved in the entire “Rebroadcasting Scheme”.

At this stage it’s difficult to put a figure on the final amount DISH will demand in damages but even hundreds of thousands of dollars could be a conservative estimate.

The full complaint can be found here (pdf)

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In common with many other online services, copyright holders regularly ask Twitter to remove tweets that link to pirated material.

Whether it’s a tweet from the U.S. President or some random pirate site, the social media platform investigates the claims and takes action, if needed.

A few hours ago Twitter published a new update to its transparency report, highlighting the latest takedown trends. This reveals that the number of copyright notices received during the first half of the year skyrocketed compared to the previous six months.

“We received a 101% increase in DMCA takedown notices since our last report,” Twitter reports, noting that this includes a high volume of fraudulent DMCA notices from Turkey and Japan.

From January to June of this year a total of 106,951 DMCA notices were received, compared to 53,094 during the last half of 2018. This is a notable increase. However, it doesn’t directly translate to an equal change in removed tweets or withheld content.

The number of tweets that were removed increased by 46% to 113,015. At the same time, there was a 4% decrease in withheld media in the same period, 266,699 files in total.

This suggests that the average notice today includes fewer tweets and media files.

The percentage of notices for which Twitter took action also dropped significantly. On average, less than half of the notices (45%) resulted in material being removed, down from 62% last period.

The above applies to notices that were sent to Twitter, but the company also owns and operates Periscope. The number of copyright notices received by the streaming platform increased by roughly ten percent to 26,331 over the past six months.

Taken together, more than a third of the Twitter and Periscope copyright notices were sent in by a handful of reporters. Music industry group IFPI is the most prolific sender, followed by Netresult, LeakID, Athletia Sports and LaLiga.

The most spectacular increase we see in the report is the number of counternotices that were submitted by people who disputed a copyright claim. This number jumped 285% to 3,966.

This uptick is in part linked to an increase in fraudulent DMCA notices, which Twitter also highlights in its report. The company says that it will continue to keep a close eye on this trend and has put safeguards in place to help protect people on Twitter and Periscope.

Earlier this year TorrentFreak was also hit by inaccurate DMCA takedown complaints, targeting our news coverage. American entertainment giant Starz removed ours and several other tweets, pointing to an article about leaked TV-shows.

While Twitter accepted these takedowns, the reporting organization lifted the claim after we and many others complained.

Twitter’s complete transparency report, which also addresses trademark notices, information requests, rules enforcement, and other removal requests, is available here.

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TuneIn is one of the most prominent and recognizable providers of radio content in the world.

Available for free or on a premium basis, the service offers access to well over 100,000 radio stations and millions of podcasts. It doesn’t provide this content itself but acts as an indexer (“audio guide service”, according to TuneIn) for those looking to access third-party streams.

In 2017 it emerged that Sony Music UK and Warner Music UK had sued the US-based company in the UK, claiming that since many of the TuneIn-indexed stations are unlicensed to play music in the region, linking to them amounts to infringement of the labels’ copyrights.

Today, the High Court of England Wales handed down its decision and it doesn’t look good for TuneIn. The judgment begins by stating the opposing positions of the labels and TuneIn, which are particularly familiar in these types of disputes concerning hyperlinking.

“The claimants say that a finding for the defendant will fatally undermine copyright. The defendant says that a finding for the claimants will break the internet,” Justice Birss writes.

The labels argued that TuneIn needs a license, an assertion “strongly disputed” by TuneIn. The company argued that it does not “store any music, and merely provides users of TuneIn Radio with hyperlinks to works which have already been made freely available on the internet without any geographic or other restriction.”

In other words, TuneIn presents itself as not unlike Google search but instead of indexing websites, it indexes and links to radio streams. However, Justice Birss declared the service to be “much more than that”, in part due to its curation and search features.

“I find therefore that the activity of TuneIn does amount to an act of communication of the relevant works; and also that that act of communication is to a ‘public’, in the sense of being to an indeterminate and fairly large number of persons,” he writes.

The ruling, which was first published by a blog connected to Bird and Bird, the law firm that represented TuneIn, runs to 47 pages and is both extremely detailed and complex. However, the conclusion to Judge Birss’ judgment can be summarized in a straightforward manner.

When TuneIn supplied UK users with links to radio stations that are already licensed in the UK, the company did not infringe Sony or Warner’s copyrights.

However, when TuneIn supplied UK users with links to radio stations that are not licensed for the UK or are not licensed at all, the company did infringe the labels’ rights.

Noting that TuneIn cannot rely on the safe harbor defenses under the E-Commerce Directive, Judge Birss declared TuneIn, “liable for infringement by authorization and as a joint tortfeasor.”

The full judgment can be found here (pdf)

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