Football, or soccer as it’s more commonly known in the US, is the most popular spectator sport in the UK. As a result, millions watch matches every week, both legally and illegally.

The latter method of consumption is a big thorn in the side of organizations such as the Premier League, which has been working hard to stamp out piracy in all its forms, often via aggressive enforcement. However, a new survey published today suggests more education is also needed.

Commissioned by betting tips service OLBG and carried out by market research company OnePoll in September, the survey looks at some of the habits of 1,000 football fan respondents.

The survey begins by noting that 16.6% of respondents usually attend live games, closely followed by 14.3% who “usually” watch in the pub. However, the largest audience (46.9%) are those who regularly watch matches live at home.

This, of course, opens up the opportunity for piracy. The report states that 22.4% of football fans surveyed admitted to knowingly using “unofficial streams” at some time in the past, a figure that is extrapolated in the report to “over five million UK football fans” admitting to illegal streaming.

Asking whether fans had watched a pirated stream in the past 12 months (or even “usually”) would have arguably been a little more useful, in order not to inflate the figures beyond current consumption habits. There will be fans in those millions who, in varying combinations, attend matches, watch legally in the pub, and on occasion, illegally at home too.

Nevertheless, the report provides some interesting data on the knowledge of those surveyed when it comes to illegal and legal consumption.

For example, just over 61% of respondents acknowledged that accessing streams from unofficial providers is illegal, meaning that almost 40% believe that watching matches from third-party sources is absolutely fine. That’s a pretty big problem for the Premier League and other broadcasters when four out of ten fans can’t tell the difference between a legal and illegal provider.

Strangely, the figure drops slightly when respondents were asked about “Kodi-style” devices. Just 49% said that these boxes provide content illegally, meaning around half believe they offer football matches legally. Given the drive to stamp out the illegal use of these devices globally, this is also an eye-opener.

Moving to other methods of access, the figures are a little bit more predictable. Just under 29% felt that social media streams (Facebook Live etc) are illegal, so that may raise the possibility that respondents associated the perceived legitimacy of the platform with legality.

Password sharing is also tackled in the survey, with 32.5% of respondents stating that they believe that using someone else’s login to access football matches is illegal. If that happens outside the subscriber’s household it might constitute a terms-of-service breach but actual illegality is open to question, account stealing aside.

All that being said, according to the survey, just 11% have actually used a family member’s login to watch football during the past 12 months, a figure that drops to 9.8% when borrowing from a friend.

In common with the debate around password sharing on Netflix and other platforms, this issue is likely to receive greater attention in the future but how it will be tackled by providers is far from clear. At least at the moment, the problem seems limited.

Finally, and just returning to the headline “five million football pirates in the UK”, it’s worth noting that this refers to people who have “EVER” used an unofficial stream to watch football, so it’s not necessarily five million fans who don’t ever part with a penny.

As far as we could see, no question in the report tried to determine what percentage of fans currently freeload all of the time, which is undoubtedly the biggest problem for the Premier League.

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Over the past several weeks, The Pirate Bay has suffered prolonged downtime. For many people, the popular torrent site was completely unreachable.

The reason for the persistent issues has not been revealed directly by the site’s operators. Users and staffers, including the moderators, had no idea what was wrong.

This lack of communication is nothing new. Usually, the site returns to normal after a while, to continue as if nothing ever happened. And indeed, starting a few hours ago some people were able to access the site again.

TorrentFreak spoke to someone who directly communicated with the operators. According to this reputable source, the recent Pirate Bay problems were likely caused by malicious actors who DDoSed the site’s search engine with specially crafted search queries.

This person, or persons, overwhelmed The Pirate Bay with searches that break the Sphinx search daemon, effectively crashing the site. Sphinx is an open-source search server and The Pirate Bay reportedly used an older version of the software.

Due to the high volume of malicious search queries, it wasn’t possible to log the errors and send a bug report, which complicated matters. However, our contact informed us that the Pirate Bay updated Sphinx to a newer version yesterday, which resolved the crashes.

TorrentFreak was unable to independently confirm the above, but our source is generally well informed.

When we tried accessing The Pirate Bay this morning, it was still returning a Cloudflare 522 error in some regions. However, elsewhere the site was coming through fine with plenty of new uploads being listed. It’s unclear why it doesn’t work everywhere, but the site appears to be recovering.

The question that remains is who targeted The Pirate Bay with these harmful search queries and why?

We didn’t speak to The Pirate Bay’s operators directly, but our source believes that this isn’t the work of anti-piracy outfits. Instead, he suspects that a malicious proxy site (or sites) is likely to blame.

Taking The Pirate Bay out drives more traffic to proxy sites. And by holding off the attacks for a while every now and then, there would be enough time for new scripted uploads to be added to the site, so the proxy site could still scrape fresh content.

For now, this remains speculation, but all the signs suggest that someone was purposefully targeting The Pirate Bay.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

For more than a decade, alleged file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees.

These so-called ‘copyright-trolling’ efforts are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders obtain a list of ‘pirating’ IP-addresses and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data.

This scheme can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rightsholders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant. That is, if a court grants expedited discovery, allowing the companies to request the personal details of alleged infringers from ISPs.

In the past, it has been relatively easy to pursue these cases, but the tide is slowly turning. Most prominent was a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from last year in the Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales case. Here, the court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address is by itself not enough to argue that this person is also the infringer.

While the Cobbler case wasn’t about a subpoena request, it certainly said something about the strength of the underlying complaints.

As the most prolific filer of piracy lawsuits in the US, Strike 3 Holdings has come under fire as well. For example, last November Columbia District Judge Lamberth accused the company of being a “copyright troll,” that uses “famously flawed” technology to prey on “low-hanging fruit,” flooding the
courthouse “with lawsuits smacking of extortion.”

That didn’t stop Strike 3, which produces adult content, from continuing its legal campaign. The company filed has more than 1,150 lawsuits already this year, many of which are believed to have resulted in profitable settlements. However, there have been setbacks as well.

Last week, New Jersey District Court Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider denied Strike 3 expedited discovery in four cases. This means that it’s not allowed to subpoena ISPs for the personal details of account holders whose IP-addresses were used to share pirated videos via BitTorrent.

In a very detailed 47-page opinion, the Judge takes apart various aspects of Strike 3’s enforcement efforts. He makes it clear that these cases should not be allowed to go forward, as the complaints are futile.

“The most fundamental basis of the Court’s decision is its conclusion that, as pleaded, Strike 3’s complaints are futile. The Court denies Strike 3 the right to bootstrap discovery based on a complaint that does not pass muster,” Judge Schneider writes.

The futility lies in the fact that the complaints themselves include very few facts. The only thing that the company really knows is that an IP address is associated with downloading copyrighted works. Strike 3 doesn’t know whether the subscriber is involved in the actual infringements.

Courts have previously ruled both in favor and against allowing discovery to expose the account holders in these situations, but the New Jersey Court clearly sides with the latter.

“The Court sided with the cases that hold it is not sufficient to merely allege in a pleading that the defendant is a subscriber of an IP address traced to infringing activity. Consequently, the Court will not authorize Strike 3 to take discovery premised on a futile John Doe complaint.”

The decision is partly based on the aforementioned “Cobbler” ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, the Court makes it clear that even if there was a properly pleaded infringement claim, the requests for expedited discovery would still be denied.

In the opinion, Judge Schneider sums up the other issues as follows:

(1) Strike 3 bases its complaints on unequivocal affirmative representations of alleged facts that it does not know to be true.
(2) Strike 3’s subpoenas are misleading and create too great of an opportunity for misidentification.
(3) The linchpin of Strike 3’s good cause argument, that expedited discovery is the only way to stop infringement of its works, is wrong.
(4) Strike 3 has other available means to stop infringement besides suing
individual subscribers in thousands of John Doe complaints.
(5) The deterrent effect of Strike 3’s lawsuits is questionable.
(6) Substantial prejudice may inure to subscribers who are misidentified.
(7) Strike 3 underestimates the substantial interest subscribers have in the constitutionally protected privacy of their subscription information.

For example, Strike 3 has argued that these cases do not really raise any substantial privacy concerns, but the Court clearly disagrees. Being named in a lawsuit is an invasion of people’s constitutional privacy rights, which should not be underestimated.

“[G]iven the expansive view of individual privacy under New Jersey law, there should be a good reason before subscriber information is turned over. This is especially true in a situation where questionable averments are relied upon to obtain discovery,” Judge Schneider writes.

Another point the Judge brings up is Strike 3’s claim that it has no other available means to stop copyright infringements. According to the Court, this is not true. The DMCA allows the company to send takedown notices to ISPs, but Strike 3 doesn’t use this option.

While the company is by no means required to issue takedown notices, the Court finds it unreasonable for Strike 3 to argue that it has no other options when it ignores the DMCA.

“One would think that Strike 3 would be eager to notify ISPs that its subscribers are infringing their copyrights, so that an infringer’s internet service would be interrupted, suspended or terminated and infringement would stop. However, Strike 3 does not take this simple step but instead files thousands of lawsuits arguing that it has no other recourse to stop infringement,” Judge Schneider writes.

Even if Strike 3 believes that these notices don’t have any direct effect, it could at least try. If an ISP willfully ignores DMCA notices or fails to follow its repeat infringer policy, it could even consider suing the Internet provider, as other rightsholders have done, the Court adds.

Adding to that, Judge Schneider points out that the current legal campaigns against individual file-sharers are not very effective. There doesn’t seem to be a substantial deterrent effect, as Strike 3 admits that the infringements of its works have only increased.

All in all the Court sees no other option than to deny the request for expedited discovery. This is good news for the people who were targeted by these lawsuits, as they won’t be identified. At the same time, it means that Strike 3 can’t continue these cases, as it can’t name a defendant.

The Court realizes that this makes it nearly impossible to track down the alleged infringers, but sometimes that’s how the law works.

“The Court is not unmindful that its ruling may make it more difficult for Strike 3 to identify copyright infringers. To the extent this is the price to pay to assure compliance with the applicable law, so be it,” Judge Schneider writes.

“A legal remedy does not exist for every wrong, and it is unfortunately the case that sometimes the law has not yet caught up with advanced technology. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, where a party who believes it was wronged was denied discovery,” he adds.

—

A copy of the full opinion issued by US Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider is available here (pdf).

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This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

The Lion King 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	(1)	The Lion King	7.1 / trailer
2	(2)	Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw	6.7 / trailer
3	(6)	Spider-Man: Far from Home	7.8 / trailer
4	(…)	The Angry Birds Movie 2	6.4 / trailer
5	(4)	Toy Story 4	8.1 / trailer
6	(5)	Dark Phoenix	6.0 / trailer
7	(…)	The Nightingale	7.2 / trailer
8	(3)	El Camino	7.6 / trailer
9	(8)	It: Chapter Two	6.9 / trailer
10	(…)	Dolemite Is My Name	7.5 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

First launched in November 2011, Radio24syv (Radio 24 seven) is a talk radio station funded through mandatory license fees paid by the Danish public.

On October 31, however, the station will come to an end. Earlier this year Radio24syv said it wouldn’t be applying for a fresh broadcasting license after the government insisted that 70% of its employees must live in a certain geographic location of the country.

In May a lifeline appeared when the government said that the station might be able to switch to DAB rather than FM broadcasting. Ultimately, however, that fell through after another station won the slot. So with an October 31 shutdown looming, what will happen to eight years’ worth of online publicly-funded show archives and podcasts?

Station CEO Jørgen Ramskov announced last week that he was in negotiations to preserve the archive but for some, that was an assurance that could go either way. A website, created by three IT expects called ‘Archives24syv.dk’ appeared, urging members of the public to use its systems to grab every piece of content and upload it to their servers.

“So far, no one has been able to give a clear answer as to what will happen with the eight-year-long radio archive,” the website read.

“For safety’s sake, we will get it all. It is a big task, but we help each other out. Give us your connection and use the page here to copy the files from the archive to our server.”

In total, 2,000 people joined the call for action and between them downloaded and then help store the entire station’s archives in just three days.

This conservation project was unapproved by the radio station, to put it mildly. Station chief Jørgen Ramskov declared the effort “furiously illegal”, effectively branding the entire operation as mass piracy.

“It is totally and completely pirated,” Ramskov told Mediawatch. (paywall)

“If we had been asked, we would have said no – it is a complete infringement of copyright in relation to Radio24syv, Koda [collecting society for songwriters, composers and music publishers], Gramex [organization for recording rights of record companies] and others with rights in the material.”

But for those seeking to ensure that the publicly-funded content wasn’t consigned to history if a deal didn’t appear, that was an unfair characterization.

“We don’t want to compete with anything Radio24syv does,” Jens Christian Hillerup, one of the project’s founders, told DR.dk.

“If we were to redistribute in the extreme, then it would have to be cleared with Radio24syv and possibly other rights holders, so I am a little shocked at what Jørgen Ramskov says.”

The website created for backup purposes is now down, having fulfilled its initial goal. However, with a clear announcement on what will happen to the archive yet to be heard, its ‘booty’ may still prove important for preservation.

A copy of Radio24syv’s archives already exists in The Royal Library in Denmark, but access is restricted to computers that are on the library’s network, as well as those at the Danish Film Institute. But that’s not broad enough access, the backup project believes.

“Of course, it’s good to have it in the library if you research media. But that’s not the way podcast media is intended to be consumed,” Hillerup said. “It is, after all, a utility art that everyone should be able to access without stepping up to the library.”

In closing, Hillerup hopes that Radio24syv will be able to reach a deal to preserve the archives so everyone can move on.

“In that case, our archive will be irrelevant, and then we will probably just delete it,” he says.

This morning, Danish media is widely covering outrage at the termination of the channel and its archive, with words like “scandal”, “incomprehensible” and “murder” being used by politicians and observers to describe its pending demise.

Maybe an 11th-hour reprieve can save it. If not, the backup will prove more relevant than ever – if anyone is brave enough to do anything with it.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.