TorrentFreak

Describing Sweden as a country with a serious pirate IPTV problem is technically accurate, but lacking in all-important context.

As a member of the European Union, Sweden is among 27 member states experiencing broadly similar difficulties. The main drivers usually boil down to lots of content being accessible from one supplier, at a price people can afford or are willing to pay.

There are variables across the bloc, from consumer demand for specific types of often expensive regional content, to rightsholders’ ability to take action, and/or convince local governments to commit scarce resources towards solving the problem.

In broad terms, the problem today is worse than it was pre-2020. No combination of industry measures, legal amendments, or government investment, has delivered anything close to a solution, anywhere in the EU. Even when positive news does arrive, it’s often met with cautious suspicion.

60,000 Swedish Households Say “No” to IPTV

Stockholm-based consulting firm Mediavision conducts regular surveys to assess consumption trends in the Nordic countries. Its report for Sweden covering several months in 2024 could hardly have been worse.

In the period bridging spring and the fall of last year, pirate IPTV subscription rates increased by a record 25%, with an estimated 700,000 households (one subscription = one household) regularly consuming from illicit sources. On face value, however, the numbers in Mediavision’s latest report seem to indicate progress.

“The use of illegal IPTV is still high and it is now estimated that 640,000 Swedish households pay for illegal IPTV services,” says anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Rattighetsalliansen).

When a 60,000-household reduction warrants such a frosty reception (Rights Alliance says it’s too early to celebrate), the rest of the figures may not be encouraging either.

2.3 Million Swedes Use Illegal Source Every Month

The new Mediavision survey estimates that 2.3 million Swedes aged 15 to 74-years-old, consume movies, TV shows, or live sports, from illegal sources, at least every month. Sweden is a relatively small country where 2.3 million people represent 30% of the population.

Studies regularly show that infringement rates are higher among younger people; Sweden continues the long-standing trend here.

Among citizens aged 15 to 34, over half say they regularly use content from illegal sources. As expected, piracy rates are highest among younger men and when every other person is already a subscriber or regular viewer, word tends to spread especially fast.

Organized Crime

The Rights Alliance graphic below shows that another large number is also causing concern.

In 2019, the European Union Intellectual Property Office estimated that pirate IPTV services were generating close to a billion euros in annual revenue, in the EU alone (pdf). At the time, the Netherlands and Sweden had the highest percentage of IPTV users in the bloc, with 8.9% and 8.5% respectively.

To put Sweden’s pirate IPTV growth into perspective, today’s 640,000 households can be placed alongside 616,700 individuals in the six-year-old EU report. In 2018, revenue generated by pirate providers from Swedish sales was an estimated 490,000 euros.

The 1.4 billion figure above is in Swedish Krona; at today’s exchange rate that’s €137.6 million (US$154.8 million)

“1.4 billion SEK directly from Swedish households into the criminal economy is unacceptable. Organized crime is fueled, and the damages to rights holders are much bigger than this,” Rights Alliance says.

An investigation launched in Sweden a year ago is still ongoing. Alongside an assessment of financial damage to the film and TV industries, advice on whether action against IPTV subscribers is required (including a ‘ban’ on IPTV itself) is expected in the final report. Rights Alliance believes that more can be done immediately.

“There is a need for increased resources and enhanced expertise among police and prosecutors,” says Rights Alliance lawyer and former police IP crime investigator, Alma Shawwaf.

“Several actors can also do more to make it harder for criminals, not least payment providers and search engines such as Google.”

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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In 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of dozens of record labels, including Sony and Universal.

Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages.

This case is one of many. Other ISPs have been accused of being similarly lax in their stance against alleged piracy. Rightsholders believe that ISPs are motivated by profit, while ISPs typically argue that they shouldn’t be held liable for the alleged wrongdoing of subscribers.

Landmark Piracy Battle

Cox challenged the verdict through several routes and last August filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to hear the case. The Internet provider stressed that the current verdict ‘jeopardizes’ internet access for all Americans.

Around the same time, the music companies filed their own petition, hoping to strengthen the verdict at the Supreme Court. Specifically, the record labels argued that the ISP should also be held liable for vicarious copyright infringement.

Both petitions essentially boil down to questions on liability. Are ISPs liable for copyright infringement if they don’t disconnect subscribers accused of copyright infringement? And can ISPs be held liable for infringing subscribers, even if they don’t directly profit from their activities?

Last November, the Supreme Court suggested that it is indeed interested in the questions. Before deciding, however, the U.S. Solicitor General was invited to share the Government’s view on the matter.

The Solicitor General is a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice who serves as the federal government’s primary lawyer before the Supreme Court. Needless to say, their input weighs strongly for the Supreme Court’s decision whether to accept these petitions or not.

U.S. Backs Cox’s Petition

Yesterday, the Solicitor General submitted its amicus brief in this matter, clearly siding with the Internet provider.

The Solicitor General argues that the Fourth Circuit’s decision, which held Cox liable for contributory infringement, “departs from this Court’s contributory-infringement precedents” and is in “substantial tension” with the Supreme Court’s recent analysis of secondary liability in Twitter v. Taamneh.

“The Taamneh Court’s reasoning reinforces the conclusion that imposing liability on Cox for copyright infringement committed by its users, based on Cox’s failure to terminate service to IP addresses associated with infringement, is incompatible with traditional common-law limitations on secondary liability,” the brief reads.

The U.S. also cites the Sony and Grokster cases, which make clear that contributory liability for copyright infringement requires more than knowing about pirating activity. Instead, it requires “culpable intent” to cause copyright infringement.

“If Cox had explicitly or implicitly marketed its service as being particularly useful for infringers, or if it had encouraged subscribers to use Cox’s internet service to infringe, liability might be appropriate,” the Solicitor General writes.

According to the view of the U.S. Government, an ISP is not automatically liable for copyright infringement if it fails to terminate subscribers after receiving copyright infringement notices. This is a strong statement that targets the central issue in many similar lawsuits in U.S. courts.

Not Liable

Innocent Subscribers at Risk

The amicus brief goes on to state that the current verdict of the Court of Appeals can have broad implications for ISPs and their subscribers.

Cox previously argued that, based on this precedent, ISPs find themselves ‘forced’ to terminate subscribers who may have done little wrong. The U.S. Solicitor General acknowledges this potential threat.

If copyright infringement notices from third parties can trigger liability, Internet providers may take more drastic action to avoid legal trouble.

“Given the breadth of that liability, the decision below might encourage providers to avoid substantial monetary liability by terminating subscribers after receiving a single notice of alleged infringement,” the Solicitor General writes.

“Losing internet access is a serious consequence, as the internet has become an essential feature of modern life. And because a single internet connection might be used by an entire family—or, in the case of coffee shops, hospitals, universities, and the like, by hundreds of downstream users— the decision below could cause numerous non-infringing users to lose their internet access.”

No Willful Infringement

Aside from the liability question, the brief also criticizes the Fourth Circuit’s finding of “willfulness” against Cox, which led to the enhanced statutory damages.

The Solicitor General argues that the jury instruction was “erroneous” because it allowed a finding of willfulness based on the notion that Cox knew its subscribers’ actions were unlawful, even though Cox believed its own response was lawful.

The Solicitor General notes that “willfulness” generally requires knowledge or reckless disregard that the defendant’s own conduct was unlawful. Simply knowing about third-party infringements should not be sufficient.

This broad interpretation would essentially undermine the Copyright Act’s two-tiered damages scheme, which reserves higher damages for willful copyright infringement than for non-willful infringement.

Music Companies’ Writ Should be Denied

While the U.S. supports Cox’s petition, it has asked the Supreme Court to deny a related writ from the opposing music labels, who argue that Cox should also be held liable for vicarious copyright infringement.

Defendants can be held vicariously liable if they had the right and ability to control the infringing activities and a direct financial interest in those activities. According to the Solicitor General, the lower court correctly concluded that is not the case here.

“There was no evidence that Cox would be forced to collect a lower fee if the users of its internet service ceased to infringe; that subscribers were drawn to Cox’s internet service because of the ability to engage in copyright infringement using that service; or that Cox had used the opportunity for customers to infringe to lend credibility to the service it offered,” the brief notes.

All in all, it’s clear that the U.S. Solicitor General, and thus the U.S. Department of Justice, supports Cox’s attempt to overturn the piracy liability verdict. While the Supreme Court has yet to formally decide whether it will take on the case, the brief suggests the chance is now significantly higher.

Conclusion

While Cox will be pleased to see the supportive brief, there are no guarantees that the Supreme Court will agree with the U.S. Solicitor General, should it ultimately decide to take on the case.

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A copy of the U.S. Solicitor General’s Amicus Curiae brief for the United States is available here (pdf).

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When rightsholders, broadcasters, and ISPs have a shared interest in the success of a multi-billion euro broadcasting rights deal, there’s no dispute over the need for a blocking order.

With formalities out of the way, who argues against asking the court for anything less than the full measures the judge is prepared to authorize?

When Telefonica spent billions acquiring broadcasting rights from LaLiga, the companies received full backing from ISPs/TV providers to protect their collective revenues. According to LaLiga’s reading of the piracy blocking order subsequently obtained from the court, it authorizes the applicants to take whatever blocking actions are necessary to prevent access in Spain to around 130 pirate sites.

That many of the sites used Cloudflare IP addresses, each shared among hundreds or thousands of sites with no connection to piracy, came as no surprise to the applicants. Unlike blocking orders obtained outside Spain where similar issues are dealt with differently, LaLiga began instructing ISPs to block Cloudflare IP addresses used by pirate sites listed in the order.

Outlawed By Some Courts, Unprecedented Blocking Ensued

Some estimates claim that over two million innocent sites were affected by blocking but whatever the true number, the decision to block Cloudflare at scale was unprecedented.

LaLiga’s claim, that the injunction authorizes blocking of Cloudflare IP addresses, seems to be confirmed by the text of the order. It’s only when attempting to reconcile LaLiga’s intellectual property rights with the general and indeed fundamental rights of third parties does the situation become unfathomable. So we asked LaLiga about something else instead.

Since everyone seems to be on the same page concerning the blocking of shared IP addresses, we put it to LaLiga that when compared to site-blocking measures that aim to avoid collateral damage (most blocking worldwide), knowingly ‘overblocking’ must introduce new risks. Did LaLiga conduct a risk assessment before it started to block Cloudflare in February?

“At LALIGA we are fully aware that any blocking measure —even when legally justified— requires a cautious and proportional approach,” the league responded.

“That is precisely why we do not act indiscriminately, and why all our blocking actions are backed by judicial resolutions that assess the proportionality and potential impact before being authorized. It’s relevant to highlight that these blockings are requested and implemented once there are clear proofs of piracy signals and content.”

The Importance of Definitions

LaLiga’s position as stated here appears to stand on its definition of proportional, indiscriminate, and its grounds for blocking. It seems safe to assume that the IP addresses it reports are indeed being used by pirate sites offering its content illegally. Grounds for blocking don’t get any better than that.

If we place a tight definition on the word indiscriminate, it’s reasonable to assume that the IP addresses identified by LaLiga are obtained scientifically rather than randomly pulled out of hat. So with indiscriminate set the side for a moment, we have ourselves a question.

When a rights holder with legal standing demonstrates a genuine need to block, has obtained authorization from a court, and has no other immediate options available:

Does a proportional approach to infringement include blocking an IP address when there’s a risk that dozens, hundreds, or thousands of innocent third parties are using it too?

Herein lies an even bigger problem, directly linked to the biggest question of all.

Does TV Subscription Data Reveal Any Positive Effects of Blocking?

Establishing whether blocking has a positive effect on sales often prompts charts showing fewer people visiting blocked sites. Data cited by CEO Javier Tebas indicates that blocking suppressed piracy on a grand scale.

“Weekend piracy has decreased by 40%. That doesn’t mean everyone has already switched to paid channels, but… how do we know this? Barcelona-Inter semifinal in Spain: 1,200,000 viewers and a certain amount of data usage. El Clásico, four days later, had a much larger audience—two million—and resulted in 60% less piracy in consumption. In other words, it made a difference: more viewers were seen, much less illegal consumption as a result of the blocks we’re implementing,” he explains.

If this is an accurate picture, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that such large percentages are likely to have some impact on Spanish football’s bottom line. The immediate problem concerns the type of blocking used to achieve these results and whether similar authority would be granted again.

That leads to another complication.

No Evidence to Show Overblocking

Back in March when Cloudflare and RootedCON separately attended court hoping to end LaLiga’s ability to block, neither was successful, in part due to evidential failures. In short, information presented to the court was deemed insufficient since it failed to show “specific, quantifiable damage to third parties.” It’s a theme that still interests LaLiga.

“LALIGA has implemented a dedicated mailbox for complaints related to the blocking measures. This mechanism allows any third party who believes they’ve been unintentionally affected by a blocking action to contact us directly, provide technical evidence, and request a review,” Laliga says.

“To date, we have not received any formal complaints through this channel nor received any formal complaint through other legal channels, which reinforces our position that the system is working as intended: focused, precise, and without collateral impact on legitimate services.”

At Soccerex Amsterdam last weekend, Javier Tebas said that while LaLiga’s critics describe the court order as “useless” and “make a lot of noise,” it’s an example of what can be done.

[The order is] dynamic and should be implemented country by country. It’s very important that rights holders, UEFA, and national leagues become more united and more convinced that this is the way forward.”

The controversial order is available here (pdf, Spanish)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Last September, Apple removed the popular music streaming app Musi from its App Store, affecting millions of users.

Apple’s action wasn’t completely unexpected. Music industry groups had been trying to take Musi down for a long time, branding it a ‘parasitic’ app that skirts the rules.

Musi Sues Apple

Delisting from the App Store put the future of Musi directly at risk. The company initially hoped to resolve the matter with Apple behind closed doors, but since the tech giant was unwilling to reverse its decision, Musi took the matter to court.

Musi claimed that the App Store removal was the result of “backroom conversations” between Apple and key music industry players. The app developer alleged this was an “unfair” and “tainted” removal process designed to put it out of business.

Musi requested a preliminary injunction to reinstate the app, but that attempt failed. In January, a California federal court denied the injunction, ruling that Apple did not act unreasonably or in bad faith when it removed the app following complaints from music industry players and YouTube.

Apple Calls for Sanctions

With the underlying lawsuit yet to be resolved, a few weeks ago Apple fired back with a motion for sanctions. According to Apple, the court should sanction Musi for false or misleading allegations, which include the remarks concerning the alleged “backchannel scheme”.

According to Apple, discovery in this case clearly revealed that there were no backroom deals but Musi nonetheless included these claims in its amended complaint.

“[D]iscovery thoroughly disproved Musi’s baseless conspiracy theory that Apple schemed to eliminate the Musi app from the App Store to benefit ‘friends’ in the music industry,” Apple notes.

Apple further alleged that to get its app reinstated after an earlier removal years ago, Musi allegedly faked an UMG email. These alleged misrepresentations are sanctionable, Apple argues, while reiterating that it had received numerous complaints about Musi from various parties over the years.

Musi Fires Back, Requests Sanctions

Last week, Musi responded in court by opposing Apple’s motion and, in turn, requesting sanctions against Apple. The app creator notes that sanctions motions are often used as a tactic of intimidation and harassment and describes Apple’s motion as “a member of that shameful lineage.”

From Musi’s motion

A motion for sanctions is warranted if there are no facts to support the allegations but Musi contends that its claims are supported by credible evidence obtained during discovery.

“None of Musi’s challenged allegations are factually baseless, and all are based on a reasonable and competent inquiry by Musi’s counsel. Apple’s motion should thus be denied, and Apple should itself be sanctioned and required to pay Musi’s attorneys’ fees for opposing its baseless motion.”

‘Not a Simple App Removal’

Apple previously argued that there was no need for backroom discussions as Apple could simply remove Musi under its own terms, with or without previous complaints from rightsholders. Musi doesn’t deny that, but it notes that evidence indicates this isn’t what happened.

Based on evidence gathered through discovery, Musi suggests that there were ongoing discussions behind the scenes to discuss the potential removal of the app. The timeline below reflects Musi’s perspective and interpretation of these events.

– April 11, 2024: A Sony Music Entertainment executive, Jeff Walker, emails senior Apple legal personnel (Elizabeth Miles and Robert Windom) requesting Apple’s assistance in removing the Musi app from the App Store. Specifically, Sony asked for help to “identify a path forward” to “have the Musi app removed from the Apple app store”.

A Path Forward

– May 20, 2024: Apple’s Elizabeth Miles holds a call with Sony’s Jeff Walker about the Musi app, at Sony’s request.

– May 24, 2024: Following internal Apple discussions, Apple’s Chief Counsel of Content and Services, Robert Windom, instructs Apple in-house counsel Sean Cameron to “please try to get that meeting set up”. Musi implies that this was a meeting with YouTube.

– Around May 29, 2024: At Cameron’s direction, Apple’s YouTube liaison, Arun Singh, contacts YouTube’s Kelvin Paulino by phone. Musi argues Singh inquired about a March 2023 YouTube complaint that Apple had previously considered “resolved”; Singh testified Paulino initially seemed unaware of Musi or the complaint.

– July 15, 2024: The Call: Apple and YouTube legal teams meet. According to Musi (citing Apple’s own witnesses), Apple counsel Sean Cameron stated Apple considered YouTube’s 2023 complaint “resolved” and, after mentioning other “music industry” complaints, asked YouTube if it wanted to “continue with the [2023] complaint”. YouTube allegedly confirmed ongoing API violations by Musi and expressed intent to pursue the complaint, requesting Apple send an email to formalize this.

– The “Re-Open” Email: Post-call, Apple’s ‘AppStoreNotices’ emailed YouTube Legal: “Per request from the YouTube Legal team… If you would like to re-open your claim against this app, please specify the rights you believe are being infringed…”.

Re-Open

– August 20, 2024: Apple’s Elizabeth Miles has a call with National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) representatives regarding Musi, at the NMPA’s request.

– September 11, 2024: The NMPA sends Apple a letter supporting YouTube’s complaint against Musi.

Turning the Tables

Musi believes this is sufficient to back up its claim that the app’s removal was the result of “backroom conversations” between Apple and key music industry players. In any case, it argues that a motion for sanctions is not warranted, as this wasn’t a simple removal process.

To strengthen its claim, Musi cites an email from Apple’s Elizabeth Miles who, after Musi was removed, noted that it was a “complex process”.

Complex process

According to Musi, Apple’s motion for sanctions is baseless and should therefore be denied. Turning the tables, the app devloper asked the court to sanction Apple for improper use of a sanctions motion.

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A copy of Musi’s opposition to Apple’s motion for sanctions, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Portugal now has a decade of experience with pirate site blocking measures, which were made possible through a voluntary agreement

In 2015, the country’s blocking scheme was formalized through a deal between several parties, including the Government, rightsholders, and Internet providers.

Under the blocking regime, many thousands of domain names have been blocked over the years. To strengthen the impact, advertisers joined in on the action by preventing ad placements on these sites.

Portugal: A Leading Site Blocking Example

The relative ease of this rollout, which received little pushback overall, was swiftly embraced by Hollywood. In 2016, Portugal served as a leading example of how other countries, including Spain and France, could implement their blocking plans.

A year later, a Hollywood-commissioned study confirmed that traffic to blocked sites had decreased significantly. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, as these domains are blocked after all, but it was seen as a great accomplishment nonetheless.

While site blocking is effective at blocking specific domains, it typically boosts traffic to unblocked sites. The effect wasn’t considered in the initial study, but the problem was previously documented in related research. And it’s visible today too, as Portugal’s piracy woes are far from over.

Blocking Pioneer and Piracy Hotspot?

Earlier this year, Apritel, the association for Portuguese Internet providers and telcos, flagged pirate streaming and IPTV services as a major problem. The group didn’t mention blocking as a solution, but suggested that the authorities should enable financial penalties for users of these services.

These piracy concerns are shared by many rightsholders and were also a topic at the Colloquium on Digital Piracy of Audiovisual Content, which took place in Lisbon last week. Here, many stakeholders discussed the ongoing piracy challenges.

With more than 3,000 blocked domain names, Portugal has strict anti-piracy measures in place. However, data from piracy tracking firm MUSO, prepared for last week’s meeting, shows that piracy remains popular in Portugal, even by European standards.

“Portugal’s piracy rate per user is 33% higher than the European average, marking it as one of the most active territories for unauthorised content consumption,” MUSO explains.

The higher piracy rates are also reflected in the number of visits to pirate sites by Internet users. These visit numbers are higher than in any other country in the region, despite the existing blocking measures.

“This pattern of high engagement has remained consistent across several years, indicating a need for ongoing and more refined enforcement strategies,” MUSO writes, aligning with the call for stronger enforcement.

Since MUSO only reports data on website visits, the growth in the use of pirate IPTV services is not reflected in these numbers. Instead, it appears that Portugal’s piracy numbers are in large part due to a seemingly overlooked content category.

Manga / Anime Blindspot?

After years of site blocking, many pirate sites are known to temporarily evade measures by switching to new domain names, which are eventually blocked again, resulting in an ongoing cat and mouse game. Tugaflix, for example, has been blocked for a decade, but new domains continue to show up.

MUSO data shows that a ‘Tugaflix’ domain has appeared in the list of ten most visited pirate sites in Portugal over the past 12 months. The domain has since been blocked and has already moved to a new location.

Pirate sites with most visits (MUSO: April 24 / March 25)

The list also reveals another interesting insight. The list of most visited piracy sites includes many Manga and Anime sites, including the hugely popular Asuracomic.net, as well as Hianime and 3xyaoi. According to our blocklist data, these remain accessible in Portugal.

In fact, we don’t see any Manga or Anime related website in the list of 3,000 blocked domain names we have access to, which was updated a few months ago. Apparently, this is somewhat of an enforcement blindspot.

This means that the relatively high piracy rates are not necessarily the result of lacking anti-piracy measures. Online piracy doesn’t magically disappear merely because anti-piracy tools exist; these tools must be actively and properly utilized by rightsholders.

Whether this was also a topic of discussion at last week’s anti-piracy colloquium is unknown.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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LaLiga’s 2024/2025 season is officially over. FC Barcelona were actually crowned champions on Thursday after it became mathematically impossible for Real Madrid to conjure up seven points or more from the six points available.

The final matches of the season were played on Sunday but with the championship settled, would LaLiga show restraint and taper down its blocking activity? Or perhaps it would continue under the authority of judge, despite the widespread collateral damage inflicted on innocent internet users since February, a scandal now known as #laligagate.

In For a Penny?

The early signs did little to inspire confidence. Protest website LaLigaGate.com was hit by a total blockade but whether the site was targeted deliberately or succumbed to collateral damage is unknown.

Intentional and Unintentional Blocking Look Identical

As the latest data suggests that mass blocking of Cloudflare in pursuit of 150 piracy platforms has negatively affected millions of innocent websites, use of the term ‘collateral damage’ may be running out of scope.

Unintentional overblocking became inevitable overblocking some time ago, a point certainly not lost on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.

Posting to X last week, Prince asked if anyone wanted any general feedback, declaring that he felt “in an especially truthful mood.” The first response contained direct questions about the LaLiga controversy, the blame for which LaLiga places squarely on the shoulders of Cloudflare.

For the first time since Cloudflare legal action failed to end LaLiga’s blocking campaign, Prince weighed in with his assessment of the current situation and where he believes it’s inevitably heading.

“Bonkers” Blocking Strategy

“A huge percentage of the Internet sits behind us, including small businesses and emergency resources in Spain,” Prince explained.

“The strategy of blocking broadly through ISPs based on IPs is bonkers because so much content, including emergency services content, can be behind any IP. The collateral damage is vast and is hurting Spanish citizens from accessing critical resources,” he added.

Earlier this year, various comments and statements by LaLiga suggested that its relationship with Cloudflare had reached rock bottom. It transpired that LaLiga had obtained an injunction which allowed it to tackle Cloudflare and Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), but had done so without Cloudflare’s knowledge, effectively denying the company a right to respond.

Alongside other attacks delivered via the media, LaLiga slammed Cloudflare for refusing to cooperate. What action LaLiga had demanded still isn’t clear, but the league said that if there was any overblocking as a result, Cloudflare would have to shoulder the blame.

The Potential for Deadly Consequences

The scale of overblocking reported in Spain is unprecedented but since LaLiga has a court order that effectively gives Cloudflare blocking a green light, it has been doing so in bulk, every single week since February.

Depending on who addresses the overblocking issue, with whom and when, the league claims that collateral damage a) doesn’t exist or is minimal and/or b) is Cloudflare’s responsibility. Prince appears to have grave concerns over the scale and type of blocking taking place, warning that a worst-case scenario is inevitable.

Football Piracy Blocks Will Claim Lives

Despite LaLiga’s unshakable claims to the contrary, Prince believes that it’s not a case of ‘if’ disaster strikes, it’s ‘when’.

“It’s only a matter of time before a Spanish citizen can’t access a life-saving emergency resource because the rights holder in a football match refuses to send a limited request to block one resource versus a broad request to block a whole swath of the Internet,” Prince warned.

“When that unfortunately and inevitably happens and harms lives, I’m confident policy makers and courts in Spain and elsewhere will make the right policy decision. Until then, it’ll be up to users to make politicians clear on the risk. I pray no one dies.”

The suggestion that LaLiga’s demands were too broad, doesn’t mean that Cloudflare is refusing to help, Prince suggested. On the contrary, there’s a process available, LaLiga just needs to use it.

“We’ve always been happy and willing to work with rights holders in conjunction with judicial bodies to protect their content. We have a clear process that works around the world to do that, Prince explained.

LaLiga Targeted Cloudflare and Others During the Weekend

Live blocking data provided by hayahora.futbol has proven invaluable to those documenting #laligagate in recent months and this past weekend was no different.

As the small sample of Cloudflare IP addresses blocked on Sunday seems to show, concerns that every IP address blocked would inevitably result in collateral damage, seem to have been trumped by the authority of the now-famous court order.

The importance of strict adherence to the law was underlined by LaLiga’s Global Content Protection Manager in a recent interview.

José Ignacio Carrillo de Albornoz told El Confidencial that without the collaboration of intermediaries, piracy will be impossible to beat. Carrillo de Albornoz concluded with a “statement of responsibility” which notes that real progress will require all parties to work together and go beyond compliance with the law.

“It is necessary that all links in the digital chain act legally and ethically,” he said.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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If it was possible to strip away the roles and behaviors that inevitably lead to head-on clashes, in some cases pirates and piracy fighters might find ways to get along. In some cases they may love the same things.

Yet back in the real world, the insatiable appetite for pirated content owned or protected by the latter, means the war never ends, only the shape changes. Whether South Korean publishing company Kakao Entertainment had always intended to do something different isn’t clear, but when it comes to presentation, no equivalent approach to fighting piracy exists at scale anywhere else.

The Krew

Launched in 2021 to proactively protect Kakao Entertainment’s ‘webtoon’ comic library, the new ‘P.CoK’ anti-piracy unit’s name was inspired by the ‘eyes’ on a peacock’s feathers.

“We’re always on the lookout for illegal use of Kakao Entertainment’s exclusive content worldwide,” the Kakao ‘Krew’ explained in 2023.

P.CoK conceded that it couldn’t yet put a figure on the scale of the piracy it was addressing or the monetary value of any losses attributable to it. Of course, even the wider industry has to settle for best estimates, so a fairly blunt but honest admission was fundamentally credible, yet also quite rare.

At the time, forming a complete database of pirate sites responsible for sharing Kakao content remained a work in progress. On the prevention side, P.CoK reported working with watermarking, image recognition, and usage pattern analysis, which helped the team “keep an eye on things and nip illegal activity in the bud.”

Complete the Quest, Level Up

Like much of the corporate world, anti-piracy work and how it’s presented to the outside world may at times undergo a little cosmetic filtering, to send the right message or benefit from being seen in a particular light.

Due to the nature of the work there may be an element of misdirection, especially when the target audience are those the company and often the police are determined to catch.

In P.CoK’s case, some things that are so neat and perfect, you really, really want them to be true. Maybe they are.

Piracy Culture, Videogame Culture? No Problem

As presented, there are three people in the team, all quite young with great names – Xeno, Hani, and Jeno. These people undoubtedly understand Kakao’s audience, especially those who prefer not to pay—on sites where they’re also active members.

P.CoK also enjoys webtoons and without getting too personal, one spent a number of years as a webtoon artist. Then the icing on the cake – at least two are gamers. One likens shutting down a site to “clearing a stage” in a game and the other focuses on anti-piracy strategic planning and then “leveling up after completing a quest.”

Documenting Progress

The publication of an anti-piracy white paper every six months (Sixth Edition here) provides an overview of progress and challenges in Kakao’s fight against piracy.

As reported in February’s edition, a total of 240 million illegal content removals worldwide in the second half of 2024 contributed to a grand total of 740 million removals overall. This was made possible by Kakao’s Trusted Copyright Removal Program (TCRP) status at Google, and the small matter of filing 30,000 takedown requests every day.

Some rightsholders use their takedown notice volumes as a proxy for progress in the fight against piracy; at least in the beginning, the removal of a million links to pirated content tends to speak for itself. Yet when Kakao mentions a 10.9% decrease in takedown notices in its sixth White Paper, compared to the number cited in the fifth, the reduction represents progress instead.

The decline was largely attributed to P.CoK’s long-term monitoring and the subsequent shutdown of a “major domestic” pirate site. Kakao identifies the platform as site “A”, almost certainly a reference to Agitoon and the linked Agitoon Novel sites shut down in a law enforcement operation last August.

“The case underscores the critical role of site shutdowns in reducing overall piracy activity,” Kakao noted in February. “Kakao Entertainment has consistently emphasized that shutting down a site by identifying its operator is at the core of its response to illegal distribution.”

Rare outlier examples aside, when a site operator’s anonymity is compromised, that can forever change the game. Anti-piracy outfits tend to keep unmasking details secret for operational reasons. P.CoK likes to tell those stories on social media.

Raising Awareness, Recruiting Informants

The theory that raising awareness of piracy discourages illegal consumption, is being tested in several ongoing campaigns. Spreading the message that piracy hurts everyone involved in creating webtoons, is one of P.CoK’s responsibilities.

The day-to-day platform of choice for raising awareness is Twitter. At what point spreading the gospel of Kindness to Creators began its transformation isn’t clear, but today the P.CoK account on X is much more than that.

Acting as a notice board for P.CoK’s anti-piracy activities and the availability of legal content, the channel also encourages webtoon fans to report links to illegal content, wherever they exist online.

For fans and supporters prepared to go further, P.CoK’s channel on X acts as a recruitment office for informants. After obtaining useful information from piracy circles, they head back to base where the information is relayed to P.CoK for enforcement purposes.

Having gathered a number of willing informants over the last couple of years, P.CoK claims to have built an underground network that actively supports its One Point Response System.

Shutting Sites Down Using Any Legal Means

Traditional wisdom suggests that revealing details of an anti-piracy enforcement plan up front may introduce unnecessary risk. Yet having shared the details of its One Point Response System with TorrentFreak recently, at face value P.CoK probably thinks otherwise.

P.CoK’s response to infringement begins with TTT: Targeting, Tracing, and Takedown. It’s at this early stage that the technical aspects, operations, revenue streams, and community details of pirate sites are gathered together, and cross-referenced with P.CoK’s databases of illegal site operators and the networks they operate in.

After combining and analyzing all available information, a shortlist of suspected site operators is compared with a list of actual operators. After final verification, the next stage can begin.

P.CoK says that it reaches out to the operators of pirate sites and services via “legally effective communications” such as email or physical documents. From the information available to us, the strategy seems to rely on operators believing there’s a credible threat of escalation, but they hold none of the cards.

Anonymity Gone – Choose a Poison

With the clear emphasis being placed on removing all anonymity, proving that to be the case will likely support efforts to convince operators that anything other than total capitulation is already a lost cause. Those who push back could face civil or criminal action.

Those who decide to comply and throw in the towel are expected to post a public announcement, shut down their site, and pledge never to infringe again. These final ‘goodbye’ statements are also posted on X, where the consequences of non-compliance are on display, presumably for the benefit of others in a similar position. It’s the modern-day equivalent of a severed head on a pike, with a comfortable chair and maybe a beer as a tempting potential off-ramp.

Of course, there are no restrictions on who can read these types of notices, which range from members of the public curious about content being made available for free, to lower tier pirate site staff and uploaders nervous about maintaining anonymity.

Even those daydreaming about launching a site of their own one day might stumble upon one of the statements below and take a different course.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Anti-piracy outfits aren’t typically known for seeking this type of attention. That being said, we assume P.CoK only has to take Kakao’s interests into account and having agreed the parameters, it simply gets on with the job. We’re informed that the total number of sites shut down has risen to 28 following the sudden closure of Reaper Scans announced this week.

A ‘goodbye’ message posted by the operators of Reaper Scans revealed that the demise of the 10 million visits per month site was triggered by a cease-and-desist notice received via email. It transpires that P.CoK had identified three Reaper Scans operators in as many countries (United States, India and Croatia) and for good measure, addressed them personally using their real names.

Why Reveal the Plan and Who Benefits?

While the plan is quite detailed, specific, and at times, fairly elaborate, it contains no information useful to pirate site operators. Equally, there’s no sign of anything that undermines P.CoK or Kakao or the strategy itself. That naturally leads to the obvious question: who benefits from the details being made public?

Assuming that this is a true representation of P.CoK’s plan, it’s fundamentally solid; identify the suspects, leave no space for maneuver, provide an exit strategy, and work hard in advance to ensure that despite the presence of choice, site operators have only one viable option.

Indeed, by being unambiguous about how things are likely to play out, at all times there’s a tacit understanding over where this will inevitably end up for the freshly deanonymized. The joker in the pack concerns the informants; how many actually exist, or do any exist at all? Are they effective? Who are they?

To the extent that answers to any of those questions are in any way helpful, pirate site communities have been known to self corrode from excessive suspicion alone.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Praised by major rightsholders as progress in the fight against piracy, Italy’s Piracy Shield system made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Authorized under new legislation and promoted as a killer blow to piracy of live sports, Piracy Shield’s launch soon descended into a series of overblocking blunders and international news headlines. Realization that Piracy Shield was incapable of living up to the hype, led to legal amendments that contained direct threats against the tech sector.

CCIA Intervenes On Behalf of the Tech Sector

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) represents global tech giants including Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Google, and Meta, among others. In a January 2025 letter to the EU Commission, CCIA acknowledged that Piracy Shield exists to protect rightsholders but warned that the blocking mechanism is a “blunt instrument” that threatens businesses and the public alike.

When telecoms regulator AGCOM launched a public consultation on proposed amendments to copyright regulations and Piracy Shield’s operations, CCIA took the opportunity to restate its concerns. Highlighting the risk of overblocking, CCIA turned to the blocking requests made by rightsholders and a requirement under Italian law to execute them within 30 minutes.

“[W]e believe that the Piracy Shield poses significant risks to the principles of freedom of enterprise expression, as established by European and Italian law,” CCIA wrote.

CCIA Urges European Commission to Intervene

After months of engagement, including its letter to the European Commission back in January, CCIA’s latest submission calls on the Commission to seize the opportunity to publish a detailed opinion to address Piracy Shield’s apparent incompatibility with EU law.

CCIA’s submission to AGCOM begins by highlighting the proposed amendments.

“The Piracy Shield allows copyright holders to request site-blocking orders to be executed within 30 minutes, with limited transparency or recourse for affected parties.

“These amendments, most notably changes to Article 10 and Article 8 (3-bis) of the Regulation, further consolidate the Shield’s role, including extraterritorial content-removal capabilities without clear coordination with EU law, particularly the Digital Services Act (DSA),” CCIA’s submission reads.

“Given the serious implications of these proposals for the EU internal market, the freedom to provide cross-border services, and fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and due process, CCIA Europe urges the Commission to issue a detailed opinion under the TRIS procedure.”

TRIS – Prevention of Technical Barriers to Trade

One of the basic principles of the European Union is an internal market that embraces the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. Mechanisms that restrict or have the effect of restricting such movement, may create prohibited ‘internal frontiers’.

The aim of the TRIS procedure (Directive 2015/1535) is to identify and prevent the appearance of internal barriers before they can have a negative effect on the market. Under TRIS, notifications sent to the European Commission may lead to a legal analysis in light of EU law.

CCIA’s submission draws attention to key issues that it believes should be assessed by the Commission, summarized as follows:

Lack of procedural safeguards and transparency in the Piracy Shield platform

• Blocking requests processed automatically, does not seem AGCOM checks for accuracy. • No meaningful opportunity to contest blocking orders before enforcement. • No independent review or appeal mechanism that operates in a timely manner. • Piracy Shield technical specs and operational protocols have never been made public. • Development and governance lacked stakeholder inclusivity. • Platform incompatible with principles of proportionality and due process

Risk of overblocking and collateral damage covers known incidents of overblocking, including the event that caused a widespread outage of Google Drive and the blocking of shared IP addresses at Cloudflare.

In general, blocking of shared IP addresses “poses a high risk of unjustified interference with lawful online content and services” while domain name blocking “heightens the potential for overreach and content censorship, particularly when a single domain may host a mix [of] infringing and non-infringing content.”

Questionable legal basis for cross-border removal

AGCOM’s new proposal introduces a provision empowering itself to issue orders for the removal of content hosted in other EU Member States, vaguely referring to the Digital Services Act (DSA) as a legal basis. This raises several concerns:

• The DSA provides for structured cross-border cooperation mechanisms and does not grant national authorities carte blanche to take direct enforcement action against hosting services in other Member States.

• The proposal lacks clarity on which provisions of the DSA are being invoked and how these powers align with Articles 8 and 9 of the DSA, which govern the issuance and enforcement of orders to act against illegal content.

• This extraterritorial enforcement risks undermining the DSA’s country-of-origin principle and creates legal uncertainty for service providers operating across the EU.

The final section in the submission titled Ineffectiveness of network-level blocking notes that blocking is easily circumvented and does not remove any infringing content from the internet. Blocking can also “serve to obscure” rather than address the root causes of piracy. Overall, better options exist.

That leads CCIA to its conclusions and a brief summary of its key points and concerns.

No timeline is mentioned in respect of a decision for or against an assessment, or how long a subsequent opinion could take to arrive.

The full CCIA submission is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Over the past two decades, online piracy has proven to be a massive headache for the entertainment industries.

Governments around the world have recognized this challenge and, where possible, lend a helping hand to identify and address the threats.

The European Commission, for example, compiles a biennial ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’, following the example set by the United States. Like its U.S. equivalent, the EU watchlist relies on input from copyright holders, which nominate problematic sites and services for inclusion.

New Threats

This week the Commission released its latest version of the Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. The report provides a detailed overview of the piracy landscape including statistics from many studies that were previously published. In addition, it highlights what are seen as the most serious threats today.

Compared to the previous edition, there appears to be a stronger focus on game piracy. Several new additions are gaming-related, including the elusive repacker FitGirl and several NSW2U domain names. Both have been blocked by ISPs in several EU countries.

FitGirl

Other newcomers are the streaming repository Doodstream, sports streaming site Pirlo TV, hosting provider Virtual Systems, IPTV service GenIPTV and the pirate video library Vidsrc.

Njalla: Off-the-Shelf Piracy Service?

Another new target is Njalla, the privacy-focused domain registration intermediary founded by Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde. The service is operated by Saint Kitts and Nevis-based 1337 Services.

According to the EU report, Njalla appears to do more than simply registering domains for its customers. Allegedly, it allows people to launch a complete pirate site using the service.

“This off-the-shelf piracy facilitation service makes it easy for would-be pirates to create and monetise a fully functioning pirate service,” the EU report reads.

From EU’s Watch List

This description does not fit Njalla as we know it. However, it can be explained. Apparently, the the EU Commission appears to apply the general description of “Piracy as a Service” (PaaS) providers to Njalla. While MPA previously reported Njalla as a PaaS service (to the USTR), applying the full description seems out of place here.

From MPA’s 2024 recommendation to the USTR

In its submission, MPA argued that PaaS services, taken together, make it easy for aspiring pirates to launch their own services. However, Njalla itself does not allow “pirates to create and monetise a fully functioning pirate service” as the EU Commission suggests. That’s a concerning error, to say the least.

The PaaS term was originally coined years ago. We first noticed it in a MPA report in 2021, where the same “off the shelf” terminology was used.

IPFS

The final newcomer to stand out is the InterPlanetary File System, more broadly known as IPFS. This is a decentralized network where users make files available to each other. The system makes websites censorship resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages.

These advantages allow archivists, content creators, researchers, and many others to reliably distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. Wikipedia has used it’s for example, and Lockheed Martin helped to launch an IPFS node into space.

However, the same censorship-resistant features also appeal to pirate sites, which is why the EU has now included it on its watch list. The same applies to the Interplanetary Distributed Literature Catalog (IPDL), which maintains links to torrent and IPFS archives.

“Super Pirate and the major pirate networks, including Library Genesis (LibGen), Z-Library, Anna’s Archive are reported to use public gateways to host and distribute copyrighted materials on IPFS,” the report reads.

Usual Suspects

In addition to roughly a dozen fresh entries, the EU watchlist includes many familiar websites. Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and Rutracker make an appearance, similar to previous years.

Fmovies is still mentioned too, despite its shutdown last year. Instead of the original site, the EU Watch list now includes two copycat Fmovies sites; fmoviesto.site and f-moviesz.to.

The music category, meanwhile, is dominated by stream-ripping services, while publishing companies highlighted Sci-Hub and LibGen as persistent threats. The full list is completed by various hosting companies, IPTV services, and pirate apps and tools.

While all currently listed sites and services would likely prefer to remain unmentioned, there are no immediate consequences, at least as far as the EU is concerned.

The EU Commission notes that the Piracy Watch List mainly serves to encourage operators and owners, as well as local governments and enforcement authorities, to take appropriate action to reduce online piracy.

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A copy of the European Commission’s fourth Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List is available here (pdf). A list of all the online piracy targets and intermediaries can be found below.

Cyberlockers

– Mega.nz/.io – Uptobox.com / Uptostream.com – Rapidgator.net – Uploaded.net (ul.to, uploaded.to) – Dbree.org – Doodstream (new) – Z-Library (new)

Stream-Rippers

– YTMP3.CC, Ytmp3.nu (new) – X2mate.com (new) – Y2mate.com and related sites – Savefrom.net /ssyoutube.com/sfrom.ne – Flvto.biz and 2conv.com – Snappea.com

Linking or referring websites

– Fmovies (clones, fmoviesto.site, f-moviesz.to) – Seasonvar.ru – Rlsbb.ru – Rezka.ag – Dytt8[.]net, Dytt89.com, Dy2018.net, Dy2018[.]com, Dydytt[.]net, and Ygdy8[.]com (new) – Hianime (formerly Aniwatch[.]to and zoro[.]to) (new) – Cuevana[.]biz and Cuevana3[.]eu, Cuevana3[.]ch, Cuevana.is (new) – nsw2u.xyz/nsw2u.com/nsw2u.net (new) – fitgirl-repacks.site (new) – Pirlo TV (new)

Peer-to-peer and BitTorrent indexing websites

– ThePirateBay.org (and related domains) – Rarbg.to – Rutracker.org – 1337x.to – Interplanetary Distributed Literature Catalog (IPDL) (new) – InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) (new)

Unlicensed download sites

– Music-Bazaar.com and Music-Bazaar.mobi – Sci-hub.io (Sci-hub.tw; sci-hub.cc; sci-hub.ac; sci-hub.bz and others) – Libgen.onl and mirror sites

Piracy Apps

– IPTV Smarters – Ievpad.com – MagisTV – Shabakaty

Hosting providers

– DDoS-Guard.net – Private Layer – Virtual Systems, V-Sys (new) – Squitter, ABC Consultancy, Peenq, ESTOXY, BestDC, SERDECHS (new) – “Amarutu”, also known as Koddos – AS-Istqservers / Istqserverses (“Istq”) – HostPalace Web Solution PVT LTD (“Host Palace”)

Unlicensed IPTV services

– BIPTV.best and BestBuyIPTV.store – King365tv.com / Theking365tv.pro, Theking365tv.site – VolkaIPTV.com /.ru – GenIPTV (new) – Dark IPTV (new)

Piracy Supporting Services

– 2embed.ru; 2embed, or 2embed[.]cc / 2embed[.]skin – Fembed.com – Vidsrc[.]to (new) – Njal[.]la – 1337 Services (new) – GDrivePlayer (new)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

To protect copyright holders, YouTube regularly removes, disables, or demonetizes videos that contain allegedly infringing content.

For years, little was known about the scope of these copyright claims. That changed three years ago when the streaming platform published its first-ever transparency report.

The report showed that roughly 99% of all copyright claims on YouTube are handled through the Content ID system. Since many claims are automated, without human intervention, access is restricted to a few thousand vetted rightsholders.

4,564 Users, 2.2 Billion Claims

Published this week, YouTube’s latest Transparency Report shows that the number of automated claims continues to rise. In 2024, the streaming platform processed over 2.2 billion claims, up from nearly 2 billion a year earlier.

YouTube reports that of the 7,703 rightsholders who currently have access to the system, 4,564 actively use it. That’s a relatively small number when compared to the 308,556 users who filed just over 3 million claims through the online takedown form.

YouTube’s 2024 copyright claims

The report reveals that 99.43% of all copyright actions taken on the platform throughout the year are processed by the Content ID system. These are mostly automated claims, but Content ID users also flagged content manually in 0.31% of cases.

This tiny percentage might not sound like much but, at this scale, it translates to approximately 6.9 million manual claims.

Disputed Claims

Despite the immense volume of claims, the number of disputed claims remains relatively low. Fewer than 1% of the over 2.2 billion Content ID claims were disputed by recipients in 2024. That’s relatively low, although one percent still equates to 22 million disputes.

Interestingly, manually generated claims were more than twice as likely to be disputed (1.13%) compared to those made via automated detection (0.54%). This suggests that human intervention triggers more complaints.

Challenges against Copyright claims are often filed for good reason. According to the report, over 65% of Content ID claim disputes in 2024 were resolved in favor of the uploader. This typically happens because claimants voluntarily released their claim or did not respond in time.

A “$12 Billion” Money Machine

While Content ID can be a major source of frustration for YouTubers, it has become a goldmine for rightsholders. Instead of removing infringing videos, most rightsholders prefer to monetize them through YouTube instead.

Rightsholders chose to monetize over 90% of all Content ID claims in 2024. As a result, the advertising revenue from these videos is shared with the claiming parties instead of the uploaders.

This monetization strategy has proven to generate substantial revenues for claimants. Since inception, YouTube has paid out $12 billion in revenue for copyright claims originating from the Content ID system.

Access Restricted

The numbers reported above only apply to the Content ID system. While it’s responsible for nearly all copyright actions on YouTube, those who are not part of the system must use other options, such as the webform or the Copyright Match Tool.

Many other rightsholders would like access to Content ID, but YouTube intentionally limits participation to a few thousand vetted users.

One of the reasons YouTube limits use of Content ID to a relatively small group, is the potential for damage. An inaccurate or abusive reference file can result in thousands of false claims.

“In Content ID the impact is multiplied due to its automated nature; one bad reference file can impact hundreds or even thousands of videos across the site,” YouTube writes.

“In one highly publicized instance, a news channel uploaded public domain footage from NASA of a Mars rover and ended up making inappropriate claims against all other news channels and creators using the same footage, even against the NASA channel itself.”

This doesn’t mean that Content ID is perfect, of course. While there have been plenty of mistakes and even outright criminal abuse in the past, YouTube hopes that with the current setup, it has found a balance most rightsholders and content creators can live with. Whether that’s indeed the case, depends on who you ask.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Around 15 years ago, the French government launched an expansive monitoring and enforcement system to fight online piracy.

With fines and internet terminations for recidivists, the so-called Hadopi system was arguably ahead of its time. Users of the peer-to-peer BitTorrent-like networks that Hadopi had been designed to prowl, almost universally hated it.

Yet, for the many pirates that had already migrated to file-hosting, indexing, and streaming platforms, and the millions more in the process of doing so, the Hadopi deterrent had arrived late to a party already underway at a new location. Since streaming services were immune to the P2P eavesdropping skills of Hadopi, blocking access to pirate sites was one of the few options left.

The Arcom Era

Mapping, understanding, and restricting the French piracy landscape now falls to regulator Arcom. At a time when sports leagues and their broadcasting partners speak of multi-billion euro annual losses, Arcom has much to do. With the provisions available under the French Sports Code, it also has the authority to do so.

Rightsholders able to show “serious and repeated infringements” of their IP rights can ask a court to demand “all appropriate measures” to prevent or limit the infringement, from any person/entity in a position to do so. As seen in recent cases involving Cloudflare and Google, third party DNS resolvers fall within that scope. A ruling earlier this month means that VPN providers will also have to comply.

Under the orders of a judge at the Court of Paris, Cloudflare and Google must restrict access to named pirate sites by blocking resolution of their domain names. A new report published by Arcom provides an overview of blocking measures in France during 2024 and the first few months of 2025. Given the scale, if Cloudflare, Google, and the VPN providers are included in future blocking applications as standard, all will become instantly busy.

The report also casts more light on Arcom’s role after blocking orders are handed down, and provides data which reveals the scale of blocking carried out to date. Whether results at the consumer end amount to victory, acceptable progress, treading water, or something much less, depends on information rarely seen in a blocking report. Unfortunately, sales data makes no appearance here either.

Headline Piracy Consumption Data

Rather than a catch-all category of ‘illegal streaming’, the report differentiates between watching streams via a traditional streaming website, and consuming streams via a pirate IPTV service more likely to cost money.

Arcom reports that 2,028 live streaming domains were blocked in 2024, compared to 1,769 IPTV domains. For context, just 77 IPTV domains were blocked in 2023.

Arcom says that 16% of French people admit to using live streaming sites, compared to just 12% for IPTV. Of immediate concern is the apparent influx of new users to the latter.

In 2023 around 26% of IPTV users had been consuming content this way for less than a year. In 2024, four in ten (41%) said they’d been using pirate IPTV services for less than 12 months. That may raise questions of whether greater awareness of piracy issues is having the intended effect.

Overall, 18% admitted to consuming live sports broadcasts from illegal sources in 2024, a small reduction on the 19% from the previous year. Whether ‘containing’ piracy year-on-year will be seen as acceptable seems unlikely. However, for governments hoping to move the needle by cracking down on end users, a finding in the report should give pause for thought.

“[T]he propensity of viewers [using illicit sources] to also subscribe to legal paid offers remains high: 60% of them pay for sports offers, twice as much as the average French person (32%, a slight decrease compared to 2023),” Arcom notes.

Headline Blocking Data

With site blocking firmly established as the anti-piracy weapon of choice, rightsholders hope that visiting blocked domains will cause inconvenience and disappointment to combine so often that paying for content becomes more attractive.

“Nearly a third of Internet users using illegal streaming sites have encountered blocking measures implemented by Arcom, an increase of five points, and 71% of them end up abandoning their attempts at illegal viewing,” Arcom reports.

Reaction to blocking notice

A blocking message exposure rate in excess of 30% doesn’t seem unreasonable; between Arcom and the Court of Paris, pirate domains are being blocked in their thousands.

Domains vs Sites

When rightsholders file blocking applications at the Court of Paris, the paperwork sets out a case in favor of blocking along with a list of infringing domains. In some cases recent applications have contained anywhere between 100 and 150 domains, which can lead to media reports conflating domains with the number of sites targeted. The data suggests that the difference is important.

When the Court of Paris approves blocking measures, the domains in the application are blocked by local ISPs. At some point, pirate site operators usually deploy countermeasures to limit the effect of the blocking.

Depending on the targets, that could mean the deployment of a new domain, ten new domains, or 10,000 unique and impossible to read subdomains, followed by a complete rebrand. Whatever the response, rightsholders and Arcom are kept busy.

Dynamic Blocking Now a Minimum Requirement

Today’s blocking orders anticipate countermeasures by providing flexibility. All rightsholders have to do is keep track of any new domains facilitating access to the sites behind the domains listed in the initial order, then provide Arcom with a new list of pirate domains. Much easier said than done.

Once Arcom’s agents have carried out relevant checks, Arcom issues notifications for those domains to be blocked along with the domains in the order. In 2024, a total of 3,797 domains were blocked following an Arcom notification, versus just 415 domains in orders issued by the Court of Paris.

When added together, domains authorized for blocking by the Court are just a fraction of domains blocked following Arcom’s notifications.

These figures are broadly similar to those seen elsewhere; when a Court orders domains to be blocked, more likely than not the number of domains that ultimately affects is several times greater than the initial order suggests.

Finally, the French have another powerful tool at their disposal. Sites subjected to blocking measures can be reported to search engines, typically Google and Bing, from where their domains are deindexed, never to be seen again. The downside is a visibility boost for malicious pirate sites and various scams, which typically target less savvy users before parting them from their money.

Arcom’s report is currently available in French and is linked below. All translations and presentation of Arcom data here should be considered unofficial.

Arcom’s Illicit Consumption of Live Sports in 2024 report is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Torrent site uploaders come in various shapes and sizes. Only a few become so popular that their ‘brand’ is widely recognized by online pirates.

COLLECTiVE falls into the latter category. The uploader operating under this tag, Will1869, shared many high-profile titles, mostly films. He purportedly operated as a one-man team.

These releases appeared on major torrent sites including 1337x and the recently defunct TorrentGalaxy. COLLECTiVE reportedly ran a small torrent portal, Laidbackmanor, where these releases often appeared first.

Unlike regular release groups, which are often the origin of leaks, Will1869 (as COLLECTiVE) typically sourced his releases from elsewhere. This included cams with embedded ads that were carefully stripped before they were shared further.

UK Police Arrest Will1869, Shut Down Laidbackmanor

For a long time, COLLECTiVE uploads appeared at a steady pace, but that changed at the end of last month, when they suddenly stopped. At the same time, the Laidbackmanor site was taken offline and redirected to a GoDaddy landing page.

In the immediate wake of these events, rumors started to spread that Will1869, a.k.a. COLLECTiVE, had been arrested. This was reported by several unconfirmed sources and corroborated by a message sent through his website hours before it disappeared.

PM sent to Laidbackmanor users

After reaching out to a trusted source, who asked to remain anonymous, we can now report that UK police arrested Will1869 at the end of April. He has since been released on bail but remains under investigation.

At this point, no further information on the case is available, but we are informed that additional details are expected to be released in due course. What is clear, however, is that the arrest effectively means the end for COLLECTiVE and the associated website.

Prominent Releases

It’s unknown how the authorities eventually pinpointed Will1869, but his operation under the COLLECTiVE tag has been a high-profile target for a while, as its releases have been downloaded through pirate sites many millions of times.

In January, COLLECTiVE made headlines when two Oscar-nominated screeners started to leak across various torrent sites. The most popular releases were tagged by COLLECTiVE but Will1869 wasn’t the original source. Instead, the leaks were obtained elsewhere on the open web.

COLLECTiVE’s Nickel Boys release

These pass-through releases were typical of how COLLECTiVE operated. Instead of ripping content directly, Will1869 picked up other releases which, after some ‘improvements’, were uploaded to the public.

The arrest of Will1869 by UK police effectively puts an end to this stream of uploads.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

After a decade of focusing on efforts overseas, the push for website blocking has landed back on American shores.

Domestic site blocking initiatives were shelved for over a decade in the U.S. following the SOPA backlash, but that hesitation appears to have evaporated.

With Representative Zoe Lofgren’s introduction of the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) in February, the controversial mechanism of court-ordered blocking against foreign ‘pirate’ sites is no longer just a foreign issue. On the contrary, with more than one bill in the making, lawmakers and stakeholders are actively fleshing out the details.

MPA Spotlights Site Blocking at Senate Hearing

Thus far, most of the work on these site blocking agreements has taken place behind closed doors. We know that ISPs are involved but none have commented on the matter in public. The same is true for rightsholders who, after the massive SOPA revolt, prefer private negotiations over demands in the public spotlight.

As a pioneer of site blocking efforts around the globe, it’s no secret that the Motion Picture Association (MPA) is in favor. And indeed, at a recent hearing at the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, the MPA’s Karyn Temple reiterated the need for a U.S. site-blocking system.

The MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President explained that pirate sites generate billions of visits a year by ‘stealing’ American films and TV series. These sites are not simple hobby projects, but commercial operations run by criminal groups from foreign countries.

“They are run not by individual teens in someone’s basement, but by sophisticated foreign criminal organizations who are involved in the most heinous criminal behavior you can imagine,” Temple said.

“And they are specifically designed to target American citizens, your constituents, for their personal and financial data and to expose them to malware and identity theft,”

American consumers are specifically targeted by these sites because they are lucrative victims, Temple said. Additionally, it is of course convenient that sites are not blocked in the U.S., unlike in 55 other countries, where blocking remedies are available.

ISPs Seek Retroactive Immunity

The MPA’s testimony offers little fresh news. The group has shared similar views for several years now but this time around, it appears that progress is actually being made, albeit behind the scenes.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons, the recent recipient of an MPA Industry Champion Award, shared some new information during the hearing. He noted that “real progress” appears to have been made, while also identifying a previously undisclosed roadblock.

Discussions on potential site blocking legislation are taking place alongside a request from ISPs for both prospective and retrospective immunity. That basically boils down to a demand for an exemption on piracy liability, regardless of when any infringement took place.

“It finally feels like we’re making some real progress here on site blocking after years. One of the key roadblocks to getting a final deal is whether ISPs should benefit from immunity, both prospectively and retrospectively,” Senator Coons said.

Senator Coons

When asked to comment on the ISPs’ request, the MPA replied that this shouldn’t be much of a problem, as the immunity issue never led to any legal claims in other countries.

“ISPs have not routinely been sued for enforcing site blocking regimes. So, you know, I think in our experience, we don’t think that this is a provision that is necessary at all,” Temple replied.

U.S. Liability Lawsuits Against ISPs

Temple is right that site blocking schemes haven’t triggered a wave of lawsuits abroad, but the ISPs may have another interest in retrospective immunity when it comes to piracy liability.

While details of their exact demands are unknown, it seems plausible that ISPs are seeking to limit the existing piracy liability lawsuits, where providers are sued for not taking appropriate action against repeat infringers.

These lawsuits involve many prominent ISPs, including Verizon and Cox. The latter was previously held liable for a billion dollars in damages and the ISP recently appealed to the Supreme Court to take on the matter.

With these cases in mind, it’s understandable that ISPs would like to make sure that, if new legislation passes, they wouldn’t find themselves worse off from a liability perspective.

Finish Line in Sight?

Unfortunately, none of these site blocking ‘deal’ discussions between stakeholders are taking place in public. So, for now, we have to make do with the snippets that come out through hearings and other commentary.

That said, it’s starting to look like a U.S. site blocking scheme is closer to reality than ever before. At the hearing, Temple sounded confident that it could pass this session, which means a matter of months, not years.

“The MPA stands ready to work with you and all stakeholders to enact judicial site blocking this session. It’s time, finally, to get this legislation over the finish line,” Temple said.

—

The full video of the hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s subcommittee on Intellectual Property that took place last week is available here.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Rampant piracy of live sporting events has been a hot topic in Europe for several years. Anti-piracy measures against relatively static targets have their place but preventing access to pirated live streams is much more difficult.

After calling for assistance from the European Commission, many rightsholders are hoping for new legislation to hold intermediaries more accountable. Until then, most sport-linked rightsholders continue to rely on site blocking measures.

After years of fine-tuning, courts all over Europe understand the process well and most appreciate the difficulties faced by rightsholders. Cases are commonly assessed to ensure that injunctive relief is warranted, measures requested are proportionate, and any negative effects on non-infringing third parties will be as low as practically possible.

LaLiga / Telefonica Order: Massive Overblocking

Sysadmin @jaumepons has been crunching data concerning a blocking order previously obtained by LaLiga and Telefonica to block 119 streaming sites. It was granted on the basis there would be no negative effects on internet users, but in February it became clear that hundreds, potentially thousands of innocent sites and users, were being blocked at the same time.

Appeals by Cloudflare and cybersecurity group RootedCON were dismissed by the issuing court; @jaumepons’ latest estimates published on Friday suggests those decisions came at a price.

LaLiga insists that its blocking is not indiscriminate and any overblocking is minimal. Unfortunately, even if the 2.7 million estimate was slashed to just 270, blocking two legal domains for every pirate domain isn’t proportionate and the harm inflicted is likely to be significant.

RootedCON Appeals to Constitutional Court

RootedCON previously stated it wouldn’t just stand by if nothing was done to protect internet users. With a complaint filed at Spain’s Constitutional Court, it is now making good on its word.

“At RootedCON, after 15 years promoting freedom, innovation, and critical thinking in the field of cybersecurity, we cannot stand idly by in the face of this outrage,” their statement reads.

“The measures adopted, lacking transparency, proportionality, and adequate safeguards, represent an extremely dangerous precedent for citizens’ digital rights and the Spanish technological ecosystem. We urge La Liga, the operators involved, and the judiciary to reflect on the serious impact of these types of decisions, which are more similar to the practices of authoritarian regimes of the last century than those of a modern, forward-looking democracy.”

Despite the serious nature of the ongoing controversy, until now it has generally lacked a political dimension.

The Spanish government’s only comment thus far (“We respect judicial decisions”) meets the standard every democratically elected government should strive for. The fly in the ointment is that the injunction was granted on the basis it would do no harm to third parties. As RootedCON suggests, momentum is building regardless.

“[I]n our appeal to the Constitutional Court, we request precautionary measures to curb the constant harassment suffered by both companies and users in our country, and we demand a public and technical debate in the Congress of Deputies on the limits of online control, following the initiative recently proposed by Representative Néstor Rego,” the statement concludes.

Politics Enters the Equation

Néstor Rego is a politician and a member of the Congress of Deputies of Spain. He’s the leader of the Galician Nationalist Bloc and in a statement posted to the party’s website, he calls on the government to “put a stop to the abusive and uncontrolled practices.”

“The State Government must take action on the matter given the repeated blocking of thousands of web pages because, if it does not do so, it implies an abandonment of its functions, leaving them in private hands that act for their own benefit and without control,” Rego says.

“[I]t is incomprehensible that private companies can block websites. The judicial authorization is absurd at this point, but it is not even respected, because that authorization establishes that no harm can be caused to third parties, and yes it is happening. The indiscriminate blocking by LaLiga and Movistar implies a violation of the rights of users and that is why the Government must act.”

LaLiga Responds to Complaints

During the last couple of weeks, momentum has noticeably increased among those who oppose blocking for the collateral damage it causes. Among them is José Luis Porquicho Prada, a journalist working at local news outlet Cádiz Directo.

On May 18, Prada published an article titled LaLiga blocks Cádiz Directo without evidence in its uncontrolled anti-piracy crusade, which revealed that LaLiga had started blocking cadizdirecto.com for no apparent reason. Prada reported that LaLiga was initially unresponsive so he was unable to explain that a mistake had been made.

“[C]ompletely innocent media outlets are being held accountable, without due process, without the right to defense, and without a shred of evidence. Fundamental rights enshrined in Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution, which guarantees effective judicial protection and the right to defense, are being violated,” Prada wrote as part of a polite but withering diatribe on recent events.

Response Perceived as Threatening – Then Bewildering

Late last week Prada revealed that he’d received a response via burofax, a type of secure postal service. He claims that the correspondence was presented in a “markedly threatening tone and lacking any willingness to resolve the conflict.”

Prada says it was signed by none other than LaLiga president Javier Tebas, who advised that cadizdirecto.com had been blocked because it is “hosted on an IP addresses from which intellectual property rights are repeatedly violated.”

Prada clarified that the site uses a CDN and then revealed what LaLiga expected from him. Translated from Spanish (original here), Prada explained as follows:

It transpires that Prada wasn’t the only journalist to receive similar correspondence. Political analysis outlet El Orden Mundial was also provided with legal advice.

Posting on X, El Orden Mundial director Fernando Arancón spoke of “the barbarity that is being carried out by @LaLiga with the support of the judiciary,” before suddenly adopting a “something’s coming” tone.

“[LaLiga] have lost their way and are going to eat a Streisand textbook,” Arancón predicted.

Update: Statement from LaLiga

At LALIGA, as always, we respect and comply with the legal system. And, as it could not be otherwise, we respect the decision to file an appeal for constitutional protection before the Constitutional Court. An appeal that was already announced several weeks ago and still needs to pass the admissibility phase.

It is worth recalling that, already last March, the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona fully dismissed the requests for annulment filed by Cloudflare and RootedCON, among others, against the final ruling issued on 18 December 2024, finding no violation of any fundamental rights. That decision reaffirmed that the legal action taken was in accordance with the law and is supported by the current legislation on intellectual property and information society services.

Furthermore, the court order validated the procedural legality of the case, explicitly declaring that there was no “lack of guarantees” and stating that “none of the arguments put forward by the various petitioners demonstrate any actual harm, nor is any such harm identified, quantified, or supported by any proposed evidence intended to directly or indirectly establish damage as a constituent element of the claim for annulment.”

The judicial ruling is fully reasoned and lawful, and also makes it clear that the petitioners lacked standing to invoke the rights they claimed to hold.

LALIGA remains steadfast in its commitment to combating audiovisual fraud in order to protect the audiovisual rights of the competition, its sustainability and that of the football clubs, as well as the broader sports and entertainment industry.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

The US Copyright Claims Board launched in 2022. Through this Copyright Office-hosted venue, rightsholders can claim damages outside the federal court system.

The board, instituted through the CASE Act, aims to make it cheaper for creators to resolve disputes. There’s no attorney required and the filing fee is limited to $100 per claim. The potential damages are capped at $30,000 and those who prefer traditional lawsuits can choose to opt-out.

Many rightsholders and related groups backed the creation of a small claims board, noting that this would help resolve copyright disputes without having to file expensive federal lawsuits. Opponents, however, feared that it could be abused by trolls and other frivolous claimants.

Now that nearly three years have passed, the Copyright Office is working on a formal review of the board’s accomplishments. In a request for comments, it asked members of the public to chime in on CCB’s effectiveness and future.

Watchdog Groups Flag CCB Problems

In response to this request, a coalition of groups including Re:Create, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, R Street, and Engine, filed a critical response. The same groups also objected to the CASE Act and warned about potential abuse by trolls.

While there hasn’t been any sign of systematic abuse of the board, the group flagged various other shortcomings. In a detailed submission, they note that the CCB costs taxpayers millions, while relatively few cases reach a final decision.

According to the groups’ analysis, the CCB has spent approximately $5.4 million in its first years of operation, while only about $75,000 has been awarded to claiming copyright holders through its decisions.

With well over 1,200 complaints, there has been no shortage of claims. However, most of these end up being dismissed and thus far the board has only reached final determinations in 35 cases, awarding little over $2,000 in damages on average.

“American taxpayers have spent around $5,500 per case to reject hundreds of frivolous claims, adjudicate the remaining 3.5%, and issue opinions awarding damages that on average amount to less than half the cost of processing the claim,” the submission states.

Claims filed

High Dismissal Rate

Aside from the money, the high dismissal rate also stands out. The board’s own statistics show that, of the 964 cases that were dismissed, 470 were deemed to be noncompliant. That includes many cases where filers failed to amend their claims upon the CCB’s request.

Another 187 claims were dismissed because no valid proof of service was filed. In 114 instances the respondent chose to opt out, while 99 claims were settled without the board’s involvement.

How claims are resolved

The groups describe the CCB as “mostly churning through non-compliant claims,” and suggest the $40 initial filing fee is too low to screen out potentially frivolous claims.

“The $40 filing fee is not high enough to deter frivolous claims. Hundreds of non-compliant claims are filed each year by claimants who disappear after a CCB Staff Attorney spends substantial time evaluating the claim and preparing a detailed Order to Amend,” the submission reads.

Concerning Number of Defaults

The groups also expressed alarm over the high proportion of default judgments. Their filing indicates that 60% of the CCB’s final determinations were default judgments, where the respondent did not participate.

This rate is dramatically higher than the typical 7% default rate for copyright cases in federal court. This could signal that the public is not familiar with the opt-out procedure yet and that they don’t understand the consequences.

In one of these cases, respondent Angel Jameson shared her “disbelief that the Board is a government tribunal” after missing the opt-out deadline. Despite her objections, the CCB awarded the claimant $4,500 in damages, rejecting a request to vacate the default judgment.

“The Jameson case suggests that it is possible for respondents to fail to opt out due to mistrust and misunderstanding of the CCB process,” the groups write.

Repeal?

Given these significant operational concerns, the coalition argues strongly against expanding the CCB’s jurisdiction or powers at this time. This would include the suggestion to enable the board to grant subpoenas.

“There is no reason to consider adding to the CCB’s docket or to its powers until it can be established that the CCB is capable of accomplishing its initial mandate,” they note.

“At present, the CCB appears to be drowning in frivolous claims, handing out a handful of default judgments to facially valid claims with only one party present, and slowly grinding away at a handful of disputed claims.”

If these concerns remain, or get worse, it may be best that Congress abolish the small claims board in its entirety, the coalition concludes.

“If these trends continue, Congress should consider repealing the CASE Act.”

—

A copy of the submission submitted by Re:Create, the Association of Research Libraries, Engine, R Street Institute, and the American Library Association is available here (pdf). Other submissions, including ones who view the CCB as more favorable, can be found here.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Strike 3 Holdings is a familiar name in U.S. federal courts. As the most prolific copyright litigant, the adult entertainment company has filed over 15,000 lawsuits in federal courts.

These lawsuits typically target people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent.

Many of these cases result in private settlements and are never heard from again. Occasionally, however, a defendant decides to push back, arguing their innocence before the court. This includes defendant John R., who was sued in a Florida court last year.

‘Thousands of Pirate Downloads’

The case started as a ‘John Doe’ lawsuit, but after an IP address was linked to a Comcast account, the defendant was named. In an amended complaint, Strike 3 accused the man of sharing 25 of its copyrighted works via BitTorrent.

The complaint alleged that Strike 3’s “VXN Scan” detection software was able to download pieces of these pirated files from the IP address. In addition, the same IP address was linked to thousands of other infringements.

“Plaintiff’s Additional Evidence indicates that IP address 73.107.181.65 was used to download and distribute at least 5,595 files relating to other adult movies and mainstream media using the BitTorrent protocol during the period of infringement,” the complaint reads.

The ‘additional’ pirated files include many Star Wars related titles, a Minion movie, a Grey’s Anatomy episode, as well as albums with Halloween hits. Strike 3 doesn’t hold the rights to any of this media, but it uses the alleged downloads as circumstantial evidence to argue that the right person was identified.

Social Media Likes

Strike 3 notes that these frequent and prolonged downloads suggest that the defendant was unlikely a houseguest or passer-by. Instead, the company points out that defendant’s public social media activity “indicates strong matches” between his interests and the observed downloads.

“Defendant’s publicly available social media indicates that Defendant is a fan of Star Wars,” Strike 3 writes, adding that he is also a ‘fan’ of Minions, Grey’s Anatomy, and Halloween.

From the amended complaint

Based on these findings, Strike 3 is convinced that it identified the right defendant. However, John R. disagrees and asked the court to dismiss the case, noting that the allegations are mere speculation.

Defendant Wants Case Dismissed

The defense attorney characterized Strike 3’s evidence as an “imaginary bridge from one thought to another.” While the defendant’s social media likes may be accurate, they represent only 0.45% of the 5,595 downloads that were flagged in total.

The defense notes that this circumstantial evidence is weak, adding that there is no evidence that John R.’s devices were used to download any of the tracked files. Also, there are more people who like Halloween or the Minions.

“Therefore, all of the circumstantial evidence provided merely demonstrates a sheer possibility while there are other equally weak possibilities- like the Defendant’s wife or neighbors may like Minions, Star Wars, and Halloween,” the motion to dismiss reads.

Court: Likes Are Evidence, Case Continues

After reviewing the positions of both sides, District Court Judge Sheri Polster Chappell eventually sided with Strike 3, suggesting that the social media likes have some value at this stage of the case.

“Sure enough, Defendant’s social media shows he is a fan of Star Wars, Minions, Grey’s Anatomy, and Halloween,” the order reads, noting that this is more than mere speculation.

The order heavily cites existing jurisprudence, noting that social media interests can be used as evidence to match a defendant’s identity to BitTorrent activity. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the defendant can’t be innocent, but it’s sufficient for the case to survive a motion to dismiss.

Motion Denied

As shown above, this means the case will move forward. The defendant is instructed to file a formal answer to the complaint by the end of the month. After that, the discovery phase will start, or alternatively, potential settlement discussions.

—

A copy of Judge Sheri Polster Chappell’s order and opinion is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Article L. 333-10 of the French Sport Code enables rightsholders to request blocking measures against named pirate sites if they can demonstrate “serious and repeated infringement” of their exploitation rights.

To prevent pirate sites from being accessed on French soil, rightsholders may request that “all proportionate measures” are implemented by any online entity in a position to help. The scope of Article L. 333-10 was always meant to be broad.

The first logical targets were local ISPs which easily fell within scope. Then, when inevitable circumvention raised its head, utilizing infrastructure beyond the reach of regular ISPs, Article L. 333-10 already had that covered.

Following a Canal+ complaint, use of third party DNS resolvers at Cloudflare and Google headed to court in 2024. Both were labeled intermediaries by the Court, and under the still unstressed scope of Article L. 333-10, both were considered capable of contributing to the suppression of piracy.

Canal+ / LFP Target Major VPN Providers

Having effectively added public DNS resolvers to the French blocking machine, attention turned to the next targets. In February 2025, it emerged that Groupe Canal + and Société d’édition de Canal Plus (SECP) had filed a case in November 2024 against NordVPN, CyberGhost, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark.

The Canal companies alleged that “numerous” websites, accessible from within France, illegally streamed matches from various sporting competitions to which they hold the rights.

Since the VPNs’ subscribers were among those viewing the infringing streams, the Canal companies asked the court to compel the providers to implement “all measures likely to prevent access [to the illegal streams] from French territory,” including in all French overseas territories, “by any effective means”.

The VPN providers objected to the application on various grounds. Nord and Surfshark requested a declaration that the Canal companies lacked standing to act; as such, their application should be declared inadmissible. Proton sought a similar declaration while noting that the company lacked the ability to defend the requested blocking measures. The same assertion was made by CyberGhost and Express; all argued that Article L. 333-10 does not apply to VPN providers.

Other objections concerned jurisdiction and whether French law is compatible with EU legislation. CyberGhost and Express suggested a stay of proceedings pending a response from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Dutch case, AFS et al.

Court Rejects VPN Providers’ Objections

In its decision published Thursday, the Court found that matters concerning the CJEU would have no impact on the current case. Calls for the Canal companies’ application to be declared inadmissible due to a lack of standing, were also dismissed, while a review of the allocation of rights pertaining to the various sports competitions raised no concerns.

Arguments that the VPN providers had no standing to defend themselves, due to Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code being inapplicable to VPN providers, fared no better.

The court notes that Article L.333-10 does not impose any restrictions on the targeted entity, adding that VPN providers are expressly covered under the Digital Services Act.

“Blocking such a service for certain domain names means that the provider of this service prevents its users from accessing the disputed domain names when using their VPN tool. Internet users using these virtual private networks would therefore no longer be able to access the disputed sites through this intermediary,” the decision reads.

“Consequently, the defendant companies, in their capacity as providers of virtual private network services, are technical intermediaries capable of contributing to remedying the harm that Groupe Canal+, SECP and Canal+ Rights claim to have suffered.”

Blocking Order Issued

The Court’s instructions and the full list of domains can be found below.

[The Court] orders the companies Cyberghost LLC, Cyberghost Srl, Expressco services, Express technologies, Nordvpn (Netherlands), Nordvpn (Republic of Panama), Surfshark Bv, Surfshark Ltd and Proton to implement, at the latest within three days following notification of this decision, all measures necessary to prevent, until the date of the last match of the championship of the Premier League for the 2024/2025 season, currently set for May 25, 2025, access to the websites and IPTV services identified [below] as well as to the IPTV sites and services not yet identified on the date of this decision, from French territory, including in the overseas communities, departments and regions, and/or by their users based on a contract taken out in this territory, by any effective means, and in particular by blocking the following domain names and associated subdomains…..

The cost of blocking will be shared between the parties, with the details to be agreed at a later date. A request by the plaintiffs to compel the VPN providers to publish details of the case on their homepages for publicity purposes, was described as “inappropriate” and rejected by the Court.

The decision reveals that many of the domain names submitted by Canal for blocking, are already subject to blocking measures by French ISPs following notification by telecoms regulator ARCOM. Familiar brands include Footy Bite, Cric HD, Buffstreams, Futbollibre, Rojadirecta, and Crackstreams, among dozens of others. In these cases widespread piracy has already been established, but it appears that in-depth proof of infringement may not be a hard requirement.

“Since the burden of proof should not be unnecessarily complex and costly, the court cannot require the claimants to demonstrate access to the disputed IPTV sites and services by using each of the defendants’ virtual private networks, just as it does not request findings by using each of the internet service providers’ networks when a blocking is requested of them on the basis of Article L. 333-10 of the Sports Code,” the court notes.

Had comprehensive checks been carried out, questions may have been raised over the need to block pirate domains previously seized by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment.

Other domains from the Canal+ list below were seized by ACE during the last few days, so blocking those domains will be unnecessary too.

The decision of the Court of Paris is available here (pdf, French)

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From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

A few months ago, Italy paved the way to issue fines against subscribers of pirate IPTV services.

A memorandum of understanding between the Prosecutor’s Office, Guardia di Finanza, and AGCOM, established a “collaboration protocol” where information on IPTV users would be shared between agencies.

The source of this information wasn’t made immediately clear, but it’s likely that it applies to subscriber details obtained in IPTV raids that regularly take place in the country. These databases likely hold emails and other potentially identifiable information on (former) subscribers.

With these details in hand, authorities can now approach suspected offenders. Backed by a new anti-piracy law introduced in 2023, which enables fines of up to €5,000 for repeat offenders, no time was wasted warning IPTV pirates that their time had run out. This warning was more than a veiled threat, it now appears.

2,282 Subscribers Fined

At a press conference this week, the Guardia di Finanza announced the first concrete results of intensified anti-piracy actions targeting end-users. According to the police, 2,282 pirate IPTV users were targeted with fines across Italy.

Initial fines typically start at €154, but the authorities emphasize that these will increase to €5,000 if the same offenders are caught again.

These actions mark the first effective application of Law 93/2023 against end-users, not just operators. According to local press, the subscriber details are linked to an enforcement action in Lecce, where a large IPTV operation was dismantled last October.

The authorities have made it clear that this is not a one-off event. Activities are underway to identify other pirate IPTV subscribers and three other Prosecutors’ Offices have launched investigations to identify more targets.

Piracy & Politics

In addition to these fines, Law 93/2023 also established Italy’s Piracy Shield, a system that enables swift ISP blocking of unauthorized IPTV streams.

After its launch last year, Piracy Shield was heavily criticized by opponents, particularly for several overblocking errors. However, it remains in place today and is gradually being expanded and streamlined.

The legislation is in large part tailored towards stopping pirated live-streams of football broadcasts, which is a big deal in the country. What helps in this regard is that Senator Claudio Lotito, the author and rapporteur of the anti-piracy law, is also the owner of one of the largest Italian clubs; Lazio.

Commenting on the thousands of fines, Lotito notes that there is “no more joking around”, adding that those who cross the line will face personal and financial repercussions.

Italian Football Praises Fines

The Lazio owner is not the only football boss to welcome the news. Sky reports that Luigi De Siervo, CEO of the top league Serie A, warned that “no one who commits a crime of piracy in Italy can rest easy”.

Paolo Scaroni, president of AC Milan, stressed that the country already has some of the best anti-piracy laws; it is key to put these to use.

“We have an excellent law, but it needs to be enforced. Enforcing it means punishing those who provide piracy but also those who use and buy it,” Scaroni commented.

Finally, Inter president Beppe Marotta noted that it’s time to say ‘enough’ to piracy. Instead of asking the public to stop pirating, they should feel the consequences right away.

“This law, which was passed two years ago, is now prepared to address the priorities. Using a football metaphor: if before there was a yellow card, now there is a red card. The law will help rebalance revenues and give a boost to the movement.”

Whether these fines will indeed motivate people to start paying remains to be seen. Depending on the scale of the fines, recipients may have to save up before they can start paying for legal subscriptions.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

In May last year, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to several pirate websites by effectively poisoning their DNS.

The order, requested by Canal+, compelled the tech giants to modify their resolvers or take measures that had that effect, to prevent users from accessing unauthorized sports streams.

In the months that followed, additional rightsholders such as DAZN and beIN joined in on the action with similar requests, while more DNS providers were added as targets, including Quad9 and Vercel. Transparency is limited, however, so it can be difficult to figure out who blocks what and why.

BeIN Seeks New DNS Blocking Order

This week, a new court order appeared on our radar which stands out for numerous reasons. The order was requested by a French sister company of Qatari multinational beIN and targets public DNS resolvers provided by Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9.

BeIN’s complaint alleges that the DNS services allow the public to resolve domain names linked to sports piracy. This includes unauthorized broadcasts of the Bundesliga and the WTA Tennis tournament, for which beIN claims to be the licensed rightsholder.

Domains listed: sporttvls.com, lshunter.net, premiertv.watch, line.super-signal.com, line.protv.cc, mrc10.in, streamendous.online, techydeals.online, braveo.tv, evdtv.app, and mypanel.be.

The legal paperwork is in many regards similar to that seen in previous applications; grounded in Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, rightsholders are empowered to seek court orders against any entity that can help to stop ‘serious and repeated’ sports piracy.

Court Rejects Domain Blocks Citing Insufficient Proof

Previously, the Paris Judicial Court had few reservations regarding the infringing status of targeted domain names. In this case, however, several blocking requests were denied.

According to the court, beIN failed to provide sufficient proof to warrant a blocking order under Article L. 333-10 for alleged infringing activity on sporttvls.com, lshunter.net, premiertv.watch, streamendous.online, and techydeals.online.

Insufficient evidence

To grant the requested blocking measures, the court needed to see evidence of “grave and repeated” infringements of beIN’s neighboring rights by these specific domains. In this case, the provided evidence fell short.

No Logo, No Blocking

This doesn’t mean that the websites can’t be labeled pirate sites. In fact, two of the domains were previously blocked in France for grave and repeated copyright infringement. In this case, beIN appears to have shown the wrong streams in court.

BeIN is not the exclusive rightsholder for these sporting events. For the WTA, for example, DAZN obtained broadcasting rights from the tennis tournament, which sublicensed it to beIN for the French territory. Similarly, beIN also holds derived rights to broadcast the Bundesliga in France.

This means that beIN has neighboring rights and, according to the Paris court, needs to show that streams infringing its neighboring rights are shown by the alleged pirate sites. For example, by displaying a beIN logo.

That was not the case for all domains. For example, the infringement evidence for streamendous.online and techydeals.online included broadcasts with the DAZN logo, while some WTA streams did not include a logo at all. Therefore, the court deemed this proof to be insufficient.

Cloudflare and Google Pushed Back

The court’s decision to reject these blockades came after Google and Cloudflare objected. While many of their counterarguments were rejected by the court, both companies challenged beIN’s claim that it holds exclusive broadcast rights for these streams.

The court agreed with this objection. It found that beIN’s evidence was insufficient to definitively prove its exclusive exploitation rights for the WTA Tour and Bundesliga competitions.

BeIn was allowed to continue the case based on the neighboring rights it holds. Google subsequently argued that these were not sufficiently backed up by the evidence, as the logos (or lack thereof) revealed, which is ultimately why several blocking requests were denied.

Opposition

While neither Google nor Cloudflare will be pleased with the outcome, this case shows the importance of challenging blocking requests in court, although that’s not always feasible.

Quad9: DNS Blocks are Fundamentally Wrong

Quad9 was noticeably absent and General Manager Simon Forster informs us that his company didn’t make an appearance, simply because it lacks the resources to put up a fight.

Forster highlights the challenges faced by his small Swiss non-profit organization. With a tight budget, confronting billion-euro corporations in court presents a significant hurdle for Quad9.

Despite these financial constraints, Forster notes that Quad9 will continue to resist blocking actions to the best of its ability. He clarifies that the company’s decision not to defend itself in this particular case is due to a lack of resources, rather than an unwillingness to protect its rights and those of its users.

‘Fundamentally we believe that these blocking orders are wrong,’ Forster states, emphasizing that rightsholders have alternative methods to protect their content instead of pursuing legal action against content-neutral DNS providers.

More Blocking Action Ahead?

For now, there are no signs that rightsholders are backing down from their DNS blocking requests. On the contrary, these are rapidly expanding to other countries in Europe, and in the United States they are also part of a proposed site blocking bill.

Given the opposition to recent court orders, Google and Cloudflare are expected to oppose these efforts fiercely, until all their options are exhausted.

Whether beIN plans to partially refile its blocking request with the correct logos is unknown. If they do, a move by pirate stream operators to step up logo blurring could amount to a novel type of blocking circumvention, complicating matters further.

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A copy of the latest blocking order, issued by the Paris Judicial Court on May 2 and published by Cloudflare in the Lumen Database is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

On February 11, 2025, a coalition of forty media outlets took legal action in France hoping to slam the brakes on mass piracy of thousands of articles published each day.

Under the umbrella groups La Dépêche du Midi, La Montagne, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme, Publihebdos, and La Nouvelle République du Centre, and together the “Alliance”, the publishers hoped to derail “parasitic” news platform, news.dayfr.com.

In operation since 2021, the apparently automated platform allegedly harvests the media companies’ articles. With assistance from AI, it then republishes plagiarized or obvious copies of the articles on its own portal. A regurgitation rate of between 5 and 15 articles every minute, means up to 6,000 articles are republished every day.

Investigation Reveals the Rest of the Iceberg

Days before the application was filed at the Court of Paris (Tribunal de Paris), articles appeared in French publications denouncing news.dayfr.com and its negative effects.

In an article published by Next, Jean-Marc Manach recalled holding a training session on fact-checking for a group of professional journalists. During that session, one participant apologized for taking a few moments to quickly complete and publish an article of their own.

“To illustrate why and how it was important to learn how to identify news articles and sites generated by AI (GenAI), I took the homepage of news.dayfr.com as an example,” Manach explained. “I had already identified it as the main GenAI plagiarist in French. But I didn’t expect the journalist to discover, stunned, that this site had just published a copy-paste of his article, posted online only half an hour earlier.”

A joint investigation by Libération and Next revealed that at least 1,000 similar sites churn out infringing content in much the same way. In some cases, AI ‘hallucinations’ aren’t noticed by site operators or the public, resulting in bogus automated news being taken as fact, then cited as source material for articles published on Wikipedia.

Articles reporting on the pirate news sites were reproduced by those very same sites, some with only minor cosmetic changes, as the example above shows. Other published articles were little more than elaborate fiction, yet still ended up on Google News due to the use of domains previously used by reputable resources.

Court of Paris Considers Request for Blocking

In a process that began on February 11, the plaintiffs summoned the leading ISPs in France – Bouygues Télécom, Free, Sfr, Sfr Fibre and Orange – to appear at a hearing on March 2025 before the Court of Paris. The aim was to obtain an order compelling the ISPs to block news.dayfr.com, to prevent customers from accessing plagiarized content.

The decision handed down by the Paris Court dated May 7 reveals that the ISPs – which currently block sites under a voluntary arrangement with the audiovisual industries – stopped short of offering their full cooperation.

ISP ‘Free’ sought assurances from the court that the requested measures respect the principle of proportionality and that blocking measures “would only be taken with respect to the domain name/address https://news.dayfr.xn--com-9o0a/ and would only be in force for a maximum of 12 months.

Orange said it did not oppose the measures but asked the Court to confirm that the publishers had the right to act and that blocking measures would only target the sole domain identified in the application. Sfr and Sfr Fibre questioned whether the requested measures were proportionate and “strictly necessary”.

Site Previously Assessed by Judicial Commissioner

Blocking orders of this type can only be authorized by the judicial authority, after infringement of copyright or related rights has been established. The decision refers to reports drawn up by a judicial commissioner in December 2024, which found that many articles owned by various publishers had appeared on news.dayfr.com. Any changes made to the original works were swiftly dismissed as irrelevant.

“It is clear from all of these findings that the Alliance and the publishing companies have established with sufficient proof that the disputed site allows Internet users to access protected works without the authorization of the rights holders, notwithstanding the slight modifications made to the articles reproduced on the disputed site. The infringement of copyright and related rights has been established,” the decision reads.

The decision notes that the publishing companies are entitled to request measures to protect their rights, especially when considering obstacles that prevent the site’s operator being identified, such as hosting at Cloudflare.

“These elements demonstrate the knowledge of the entirely or almost entirely illicit nature of the links present on the disputed site by the people who contribute to this dissemination and the difficulty for the authors and producers to prosecute those responsible for this site,” the Court continues.

Blocking Order Granted

Having weighed the need for blocking measures against the risk of blocking legal content, the rights of the ISPs to conduct their business, and the infringing nature of the content in question, the Court ruled in favor of the publishers.

[The Court] orders the companies Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues télécom to implement or have implemented, at the latest within 15 days following the service of this judgment and for a period of 18 months from the implementation of the measures ordered, all measures likely to prevent access to the site , from French territory, including in the overseas departments or regions and single collectivities as well as in the Wallis and Futuna Islands, in New Caledonia and in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories, by their subscribers based on a contract taken out in this territory, by any effective means, and in particular by blocking the domain name

Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues telecom are responsible for any costs incurred when implementing the blocking and in the event that the measures face circumvention, the Court will consider submissions.

The question now is whether news.dayfr.com will attempt to circumvent blocking. Two changes are clear already; all articles listed in the publisher’s application have been taken down, and a new subdomain (euro.dayfr.com) is available. Unfortunately, a more significant issue may need to be addressed.

Dayfr.com may be considered a key threat to French publishers, but there’s nothing particularly unique about the site.

Look closely enough and the site’s ‘secret sauce’ becomes evident; it uses a content management system (Mubashier) ostensibly run from the Middle East, that’s also in use on many other sites. That raises the real possibility that successfully blocking dayfr.com would give rise to replacements using the same system.

Finally, in common with similar preconfigured platforms, Mubashier-powered sites may be expected to ‘just work’ right out of the box, without customers having to put in too much effort.

That seems to be a pretty good fit when considering the intended purpose of dayfr.com; automatically grab content and then publish it with minor tweaks, if any. Masquerading as a genuine news site only serves as a distraction for other things going on in the background, including dubious SEO schemes.

Among many pages hidden from search engines are URLs that reveal a bit more about how the sites obtain content, and a few other things which may be a little more exposed than intended.

Efforts by some to offload malware seemed particularly rude, especially after spending considerable energy claiming to be ethical news sites. Of course, Cloudflare may offer some protection, but clusters of sites hosted in Germany, and right under the publishers’ noses in France, may not always have the type of cover they expected.

The Tribunal de Paris blocking order is available here (pdf, French)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages.

The copyright infringement verdict was confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated was overturned. A new trial will determine the appropriate amount but in the meantime, Grande continues to protest the liability ruling.

Grande Petitions Supreme Court

Earlier this year, Grande asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Internet provider argued that current law lacks clear standards for handling copyright infringement notices or terminating subscriber accounts.

The petition asked the Supreme Court to answer two key questions, which Grande phrased as follows:

“Whether an ISP is liable for contributory copyright infringement by (i) providing content-neutral internet access to the general public and (ii) failing to terminate that access after receiving two third-party notices alleging someone at a customer’s IP address has infringed.”

Assuming that third-party notices are valid, other questions also remain unanswered. For example, is it fair to disconnect subscribers from vital services? How many notices should trigger a disconnection when ISPs receive millions of them? And should subscribers be protected in any way?

Grande essentially argues that the DMCA, as it’s written, is too ambiguous to handle the present repeat infringer conundrum. Ideally, the law should be clarified but for now it hopes that the court can provide additional clarity.

Music Companies: Rampant Infringement

Last week, the music companies responded to Grande’s argument. In an opposition brief, they note that the questions posed by the ISP are “utterly divorced from reality” and not worth the Court’s attention.

The brief counters the ISP’s focus on subscribers for which it received two copyright infringement notices, noting that the ISP had no intention of disconnecting any subscribers, no matter how many notices they received.

The music companies contend that Grande’s situation is not a symptom of confusing laws, but a consequence of its own “egregious” policies.

“In truth, Grande had a policy to never terminate service to a customer for engaging in copyright infringement,” the music companies write.

“The trial record demonstrated that Grande knew that dozens of its users infringed more than 1,000 times—and one infringed nearly 14,000 times— annually, yet Grande did nothing in response.”

The music companies stress that Grande had no problem terminating subscribers who didn’t pay their bills. However, when rightsholders repeatedly complained about pirating subscribers, it took no action.

The DMCA clearly states that ISPs must adopt and implement a repeat infringer policy to benefit from safe harbor protection. However, according to the music companies, Grande’s policy was to keep servicing these subscribers instead.

Supreme Court or Congress?

All in all, the plaintiffs see no reason for the Supreme Court to take on this case. If Grande believes that the DMCA safe harbor definitions should be changed, it should petition lawmakers, the music companies add.

“If Grande thinks the safe harbor should be radically expanded to allow the kind of shocking disregard for copyrights it displayed, it should take that up with Congress, not this Court.”

After hearing the positions of both sides, it is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether it will take on this case or not.

Interestingly, this is not the only repeat infringer case currently under review. Last year, Cox Communications filed a similar petition, warning that the current situation could have devastating consequences for the ISP industry and the public.

The Supreme Court previously signaled interest in the issue. While it’s yet to accept the petition, the Court requested the U.S. Solicitor General’s views, to hear what the Government thinks about the matter.

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A copy of the music companies’ opposition brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

For those who had fun playing #laligagate ‘collateral damage bingo’ over the weekend, a full house meant identifying the top internet intermediaries and services, blocked by LaLiga on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Most services utilize shared IP addresses, so typically the number of non-pirate sites blocked at the same time can run to hundreds of sites, potentially more. According to hayahora.futbol data, the following were targeted more than most:

24x Cloudflare IP addresses, 3x Meteverse IP addresses, 3x Twitch, 2x QUICCloud, 2x Netify, and 1x InfinityFree.

GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, and Vercel are among those targeted previously but for whom blocking at one or more ISPs inexplicably remains in place. For those tracking recent events, seeing Vercel on the list again was an unwelcome surprise.

Vercel Blocked Again

Back in April, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch described LaLiga’s blocking as “indiscriminate” and tantamount to an “unaccountable form of internet censorship.”

Yet, while Vercel didn’t hold back its critique, the company also pledged to contact LaLiga to see if surprise no-notice IP address blocking could be replaced by something a little more organized and substantially less blunt. Specifically, a blocking method that wouldn’t result in innocent sites being blocked at the same time.

In a post published Sunday on X, Rauch had some good news, and some bad news.

“We’ve been working with [the team at LaLiga] to ensure uninterrupted access in Spain to the @vercel global CDN,” Rauch revealed.

To help LaLiga mitigate the risk of overblocking, Gauch says the company set up an inbox which gave LaLiga direct access to its Site Reliability Engineering incident management system. This effectively meant that high priority requests could be processed swiftly, in line with LaLiga’s demands while avoiding collateral damage.

And the Bad News

“Vercel has set up a dedicated inbox for LaLiga to file reports. Sadly, they just blocked another Vercel CDN IP without using this mechanism,” Gauch wrote on Sunday.

Why LaLiga apparently chose to disregard Vercel’s overtures isn’t clear. Having the ability to avoid collateral damage and then going in the opposite direction makes little sense.

“A soccer organization should *not* have the ability to broadly block internet infrastructure access to millions of Spanish customers across major internet service providers,” Gauch continued.

“CDN providers like Vercel front millions of mission-critical websites and applications behind the IPs being blocked. Even in the situation a block is required, it can be done on a hostname basis via TLS SNI, rather than IP.

“We’re closely monitoring the situation and continue to offer our assistance to LaLiga to minimize the blast radius of these blocks and help preserve free access to the internet in Spain.”

Targeting X and Vimeo

Documenting every site affected by LaLiga blocking would be a monumental task but a few stood out over the weekend as potentially significant. Given his stance on free speech, there’s a non-zero risk of Elon Musk taking issue with X IP addresses being blocked to prevent piracy.

That being said, at least one demand from the Indian government to suspend 8,000 X accounts may have demanded Musk’s undivided attention. Threats to arrest local staff aren’t to be taken lightly.

Unfortunately, the X account that revealed the existence of the threats was itself blocked in India on Friday.

Pressure builds on ISPs

When pirate site blocking begins in most countries, it falls to local ISPs to carry out the blocks. Since ISPs are the de facto point of complaint when customers’ internet connections develop a sudden ‘fault’, they tend to shoulder a bigger reputational risk than rightsholders.

The difference in Spain, in respect of the court order behind the mayhem of the last 90 days, has two parts. Most importantly, regardless of the existence of a court order, every time a CDN IP address is added to the list by an ISP, they are well aware of the collateral damage that’s likely to cause.

After initially denying anything was wrong, ISPs’ now mention the court order more quickly, with phrasing that implies that their hands are tied.

As mentioned earlier, when an X user told Movistar that Vimeo was inaccessible due to blocking, Movistar responded by shifting the blame to the court order.

Casually reporting the blocking of a NASDAQ-listed company is in itself unusual. Arguably, however,the bigger issue concerns the crucial role played by ISPs when LaLiga and Telefonica filed the original application.

Through deals with exclusive rights holder Telefonica, the ISPs sell LaLiga TV packages so had a vested interest in the order being passed. None of the ISPs challenged the application and the fact that they were all in agreement was one of the factors that led to the judge rubber-stamping the application.

In Movistar’s case, the content is indeed currently blocked on the platform due to a court order, but it’s a court order that it a) agreed to comply with, b) stands to benefit from, and c) was requested by owner Telefonica.

Meanwhile, LaLiga president Javier Tebas appears bullish on the role played by intermediaries in the war on piracy. In a recent interview with Argentinian news outlet Clarins, he put three tech companies on notice.

“Google, Cloudflare and to a lesser extent X (the former Twitter), are necessary participants for the crime to be consumed. LaLiga is not going to stop until they go to jail and I am very stubborn,” he warned.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

The frontline of online piracy liability keeps moving, and core internet infrastructure providers are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs.

For rightsholders, site blocking remains the go-to response in many cases. Until recently, the majority of blockades were implemented by consumer ISPs, but expanded legal efforts are now targeting standalone DNS resolvers.

Over the past year, courts in France, Italy, and Belgium have ordered OpenDNS, Cloudflare, and Google to alter their responses to certain DNS queries. Instead of leading visitors to the domains of pirate sites, the companies are required to intercept queries and redirect them elsewhere.

The main rationale for targeting public DNS resolvers is their growing use for bypassing blocking measures rolled out by Internet providers. However, the American tech companies now being targeted are not happy with the role of ‘Internet police’ and appeals of these orders are still pending.

OpenDNS Says Farewell

While these legal battles play out in court, the DNS resolvers still have to comply one way or another. This has resulted in different responses, with Cisco’s OpenDNS taking by far the most drastic action.

When OpenDNS was first ordered to block pirate sites in France, the company made a simple but drastic decision to leave the country entirely, effectively affecting all French users. Last week, it repeated this response in Belgium following a similar court order.

Instead of blocking access to more than 100 sports piracy sites, as the Belgian order requires, OpenDNS announced its departure; at least temporarily.

“Due to a court order in Belgium requiring the implementation of blocking measures to prevent access within Belgium to certain domains, the OpenDNS service is not currently available to users in Belgium,” the company said.

Cloudflare Complies Using ‘Alternate Mechanisms’

Not all DNS resolvers take such drastic measures. Cloudflare chooses to comply with court orders in its own way. Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) users who try to access the targeted domains in countries where blocking orders are issued, see the following notice instead.

Error HTTP 451

Interestingly, Cloudflare maintains in its transparency report that it is not blocking content through its public DNS resolver. Instead, it points out that it uses “alternate mechanisms”.

“Given the extraterritorial effect as well as the different global approaches to DNS-based blocking, Cloudflare […] identified alternate mechanisms to comply with relevant court orders. To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver,” the company writes.

Not Blocked

The result for Cloudflare DNS users appears to be the same, however. Those who try to access the blocked domains in the applicable countries will be redirected to the HTTP 451 error.

The good news is that affected users are informed about the reason for this technical blockade via the Lumen Database. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Google.

Google’s DNS Blackout

After running tests in both Belgium and France, using various blocked domains, it’s clear that the targeted websites are no longer accessible through Google’s public DNS resolver (8.8.8.8). However, unlike Cloudflare, there is no notification whatsoever.

Instead, Google appears to simply refuse the DNS query, which means that the domain lookup is not linked to any IP address.

Query refused

While this is effective in the sense that the pirate sites are no longer available, it’s not very transparent. Users who try to access the domains will simply see a browser error, which could be caused by various DNS issues.

Not resolved

Google’s basic response is not limited to the recent Belgian court order. We observed the same query refusal for domain names that were included in French blocking orders over the past several months.

Transparency is Paramount

While the different responses from DNS resolvers are interesting, Google’s approach doesn’t make blocking efforts more transparent. These orders are still relatively new, so it’s possible that the company is working on offering more transparency in the future, but currently it only adds to the confusion.

Google’s response also appears to go against the advice of the Belgian court, which required the DNS providers to redirect users to a dedicated page, presumably to provide further detail.

Redirect

If these blocking orders are upheld by various courts, a more streamlined approach will be welcome. Interfering with DNS is a big step that can’t be taken lightly, so transparency is paramount. That’s relevant for the United States too, where a new site-blocking bill also proposes public DNS resolver blockades.

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For context, a copy of the recent Belgian court order shared by Cloudflare is availablebhere (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

If making content available to the public to consume legally is the most effective anti-piracy measure, pre-release piracy should be the most damaging form of piracy, or at least the theory goes.

The logic seems solid. When movies leak online before their intended release date, pirate copies meet consumer demand in a market that officially shouldn’t exist. A unique product unavailable to buy being distributed illegally changes everything.

From the day of the leak until theatrical windows close and streaming services open their doors, pirates offer a product that technically does not exist, in an environment where legal competition doesn’t exist either. Whether a theatrical release or straight to streaming, pre-release piracy does not discriminate.

21,000 Liters of Blood Leak Online

Arguments that legal content should be made available sooner are par for the course, but when an official release is just around the corner, disrupting a launch with last-minute upheaval would make very little sense.

This was the nightmare scenario faced by horror movie The Substance in 2024 when the movie leaked just days after its US release and ahead of its debut in several European markets. Making matters worse, the quality of the copy leaked online was excellent, providing the type of ‘direct replacement’ the industry fears most.

This new setback arrived in the wake of concerns over the movie itself, which had already affected distribution plans.

According to a Kinotico interview with director Coralie Fargeat (paywall), industry giant Universal had been expected to distribute The Substance, but that ran into trouble when the company developed a sudden bout of hemophobia. Reportedly triggered by the movie’s grand finale, which is unlikely to meet its match anytime soon, Universal’s sudden aversion to astonishing quantities of blood led to requests for Fargeat to come up with an alternative ending.

Fargeat’s refusal to compromise led to Universal walking away from distribution. Fortunately, the distribution of 21,000 liters of fake blood would still go ahead thanks to a deal with new distributor Mubi.

Then The Substance leaked online, in all its gory glory.

Coralie Fargeat: I didn’t expect it at all

“What’s happened on social media has been crazy. I didn’t expect it at all,” Fargeat admitted to Kinotico.

Word that The Substance had leaked online spread quickly, and in an explosion of memes the movie soon became a viral sensation.

“Of course, a director doesn’t like seeing her film on the internet while it’s in theaters. You want people to see it in theaters. It’s very difficult to escape that these days, no matter how hard someone tries to prevent it,” the director explained.

Yet in this case, the usual predictions of piracy leading to financial ruin were not only incorrect, they were turned comprehensively upside down. From a production budget of $18m, The Substance soon became Mubi’s highest-grossing film, generating an estimated $82 million at the box office.

“Those images they saw on social media made people even more eager to go to the theater and discover the film. They didn’t want to miss the experience of seeing it with people,” Fargeat revealed.

“Once you’ve finished your film and it’s released, the reality is that it belongs to the audience. They’re going to choose what they want to do with it. It has touched people’s hearts. There are things you can’t control, but the response online was incredible.”

The Substance undoubtedly has that je ne sais quoi in abundance, but which of its many qualities combined to transform a potentially catastrophic leak into a shot in the arm for cinema remains elusive. The director didn’t expect it, Universal obviously failed to spot it, and the millions who watched the movie may still have difficulty describing it.

But they certainly felt it, there’s little doubt about that.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

On Tuesday, 52-year-old Grenier traveled from Aruba, an island off the coast of Venezuela, to Canada’s Montreal airport.

Law enforcement officers of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ – Quebec Provincial Police) escorted Grenier to the SQ police station in Shawinigan. Police had carried out an operation in February 2024 which targeted Grenier and several individuals linked to the current prosecution. Grenier, who was outside Canada at the time, avoided arrest and remained at large for more than a year.

Court Hears Allegations Concerning Signal Theft and Pirate IPTV

The warrant for Grenier’s arrest was issued as part of an investigation into the illegal acquisition and sale of TV channels distributed by Canada’s leading telecoms companies. Bell, Rogers, and Quebecor claimed their losses ran to several million Canadian dollars.

Grenier appeared at the Trois-Rivières courthouse on Wednesday. The prosecution alleges that devices supplied by Grenier provided customers with access to thousands of television channels, most if not all pirated, for a low subscription price of ~CAD$25.00 per month (US$18.00).

The authorities accuse Grenier of operating a company which in turn owned pirate IPTV service Arubox TV. As per our 2023 report, Grenier made no secret of his involvement in the IPTV market.

Grenier Advertising IPTV Boxes

Police say that Arubox TV and a linked service called Stocker IPTV provided thousands of customers, 7,000 in Quebec alone, with illegal access to more than 3,500 pirated TV channels.

Grenier faces ten charges linked to the theft of telecommunications services, including conspiracy, fraud, theft, and money laundering. The alleged offenses took place between June 2020 and February 2024, generating annual profits of at least CAD$2 million (US$14m) according to Sûreté du Québec estimates.

• Conspiracy to defraud Bell, Rogers and Quebecor • Theft of telecommunications services • Production of devices linked to illegal signal access • Trafficking in devices linked to illegal signal access • Sale of devices linked to illegal signal access • Trafficking in property obtained by crime • Theft of more than CAD$5,000 • Laundering proceeds of crime • Transfer of money linked to crime in Canada with intent to conceal/convert • Computer data ‘mischief’

Other charges concern alleged trafficking in the prescription drugs Sildenfil and Tadalafil.

Seven Co-Defendants

Grenier will remain in custody until his next court appearance. The prosecution argued against Grenier’s release and insisted that he should face trial by jury, rather than by judge alone. Grenier’s co-defendants, several of whom previously appeared in court following their arrests in 2024, have already opted for a trial by jury.

A total of seven people stand accused of various crimes in the same case.

Le Nouvelliste identifies the co-defendants as follows:

• Danick Rouleau, 39, of Saint-Eustache (alleged Stocker IPTV operator) • Sarah-Maude Grenier, 25, of Brownsburg-Chatham • Marie-Ève ​​Poliquin Karaguioules, 26, of Saint-Eustache • Éric Laforge, 44, of Gatineau • Daniel Perreault-Marcotte, 38, of Saint-Henri • Patrick Cyr, 49, of Longueuil • Christian Sabourin, 60, of Princeville

Are Customers at Risk of Prosecution?

While police have offered assurances that customers are not targets in the current criminal investigation, possession of a pirate device could be a criminal offense in its own right. Police are therefore advising affected customers to dispose of their pirate devices at recycling centers.

Pirate subscriptions make legal devices illegal

The IPTV services in question are known to have been installed on relative expensive Formuler set-top boxes. When fresh out of their packaging, these Android-based devices are perfectly legal; only the subsequent configuration for piracy purposes changes that.

A full and properly executed factory reset will remove the offending configuration, help the environment, and via legal apps installed from Google Play, provide access to legal streaming services.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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