Each year the Office of the United States Trade Representative ( USTR ) publishes a new update of its Special 301 Report, highlighting countries that fail to live up to U.S copyright protection standards.

The annual overview is meant to urge foreign governments to improve policy and legislation in favor of U.S. copyright holders.

The process has shown itself to be an effective diplomatic tool and has helped to kick-start copyright reforms around the globe. Not all governments are equally susceptible to critique and Canada once described the process as flawed . Still, no country wants to be included in the list.

2024 Special 301 Report

USTR’s latest Special 301 Report , published yesterday, features considerable overlap with previous editions. The ‘Priority Watch List’ countries remain unchanged; they are Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and Venezuela.

The reported issues range from high levels of online piracy to problems with trademark protection. Inadequate legal protections, enforcement shortcomings, and other trade barriers are frequently mentioned too.

These priority threats are followed by regular Watch List countries, twenty in total. They include United States’ neighbors, Canada and Mexico, as well as Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam.

The inclusion of Vietnam doesn’t come as a surprise since it’s been on the Watch List for a few years now . According to reports from rightsholders, the piracy problem has only worsened since then.

‘Online Piracy Haven’

The USTR’s report is partly based on these rightsholder complaints. They include a detailed submission from IIPA earlier this year , which characterized the Asian country as the leading global exporter of piracy services.

“Vietnam has become a leading global exporter of piracy services and Vietnamese operators have been associated with some of the world’s most pervasive piracy websites, causing significant damage to both the local and international marketplaces,” IIPA wrote.

The country is considered ‘home’ to problematic sites and services such as Fmovies, AniWave, 123movies, 2embed, BestBuyIPTV, and Y2mate, which have many millions of monthly users globally. Rightsholders repeatedly report these problems to local authorities but apparently with little effect.

Earlier this week there appeared to be somewhat of a breakthrough when the operator of “BestBuyIPTV” received a suspended prison sentence from a local court. However, the popular IPTV service remains online and despite rightsholder celebrations, it’s uncertain whether the relatively mild sentence will have any deterrent effect.

‘Leading Source of Online Piracy’

What’s clear, however, is that Vietnam is a high-priority country for anti-piracy efforts. While that didn’t translate into a “Priority Watch List” label, USTR’s Special 301 listing for Vietnam is becoming more concrete.

The Trade Representative starts by acknowledging that Vietnam has taken steps to improve its copyright law. Other positive signs include an increase in raids and seizures of counterfeit goods and increased enforcement. However, piracy remains a problem.

“Vietnam has increasingly become a leading source of online piracy, including through online piracy services that capitalize on the widespread use of illicit streaming devices and applications,” USTR writes.

“Vietnam currently hosts some of the most popular piracy sites and services in the world that target a global audience,” the Special 301 Report adds.

The language in USTR’s report is more robust than last year when there was no mention of Vietnam’s leading role in online piracy. And that’s not the only change either; complaints about the lack of enforcement are sharpened too.

Vietnam’s Failure to Deter Online Piracy

In recent years the major Hollywood studios have made a series of criminal referrals backed up by their own investigations, but responses from the authorities leave a lot to be desired.

“Despite having criminal laws imposing substantial fines and years of incarceration for copyright and trademark infringement, Vietnam has almost no criminal investigations or prosecutions,” USTR writes.

“Stakeholders note there has yet to be a single criminal conviction for a copyright offense in Vietnam, as a criminal investigation against the operators of Phimmoi.net has stalled and Vietnamese authorities have not addressed other criminal complaints submitted by stakeholders.”

USTR’s enforcement comments are somewhat dated as they were written before the recent conviction of a ‘BestBuyIPTV’ operator. That said, one suspended prison sentence after a four-year legal process seems unlikely to change much.

Vietnam mostly relies on administrative enforcement actions, but they have failed to stop the large pirate sites and services from operating. The MPA and ACE had limited success by privately taking action against 2Embed and Zoro.to, but ‘ successors ‘ of both platforms remain active today.

According to the USTR, these private actions are no substitute for full-fledged criminal prosecutions.

“[A] few successful efforts by stakeholders to negotiate directly with operators of piracy sites to shut down the sites are no substitute for enforcement actions and criminal prosecutions by government authorities,” USTR writes.

Reading between the lines, it’s clear that the U.S. would like Vietnam to step up its anti-piracy efforts significantly. While things have been slowly moving in that direction recently, the critique will likely remain, at least until some big fish are caught.

—

A copy of the USTR’s full 2024 Special 301 Report is available here (pdf)

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

In a world where there’s always someone telling people what to do, Garry’s Mod is a breath of fresh air. Launched in 2006, the sandbox game has no goals; just hand over $9.99 to Steam, jump in, and do whatever you like.

With the benefit of hindsight, some fans may have taken that a little too literally. At the time of writing, Garry’s Mod workshop content uploaded by users over many years, is being systematically taken down in response to takedown notices filed by Nintendo.

“This is an ongoing process, as we have 20 years of uploads to go through. If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot,” the Facepunch Studios announcement reads.

The team don’t seem especially upset and are taking everything in their stride. Nintendo has a reputation for taking action against content featuring its characters and artwork so removing it now is the right thing to do.

“Honestly, this is fair enough. This is Nintendo’s content and what they allow and don’t allow is up to them. They don’t want you playing with that stuff in Garry’s Mod – that’s their decision, we have to respect that and take down as much as we can,” the announcement adds.

DMCA Notices Aren’t Real, or Even Sent By Nintendo, Some Claim

Normal service will be restored shortly, but some fans may still need convincing regarding recent events. They believe that some type of scammer, probably not even connected to Nintendo, has been using bogus notices to take content down for quite some time.

Mindful that Garry and the team needed to be aware of that, so that nothing gets taken offline unnecessarily, attracting their attention became a priority this week.

As the image from X shows, a few hours after being alerted, investigations ended with the conclusion that the takedowns were legitimate. Yet for some, that still wasn’t good enough. Over the past few months there have been reports of bogus DMCA notices claiming to have been sent by Nintendo, containing allegedly similar fictitious claims. Many were resurrected this week after more than three years, contributing to the chaos.

In some cases, users simply expressed sadness or sympathy for Garry and the team. In many, many others, passions and frustrations proved too much. Instead of the usual blanket bitterness towards Nintendo, Garry’s X account filled up with demands for evidence, rock-solid proof that Nintendo really was to blame. Some even fired off accusations that no work had been done to get to the bottom of the crisis.

In a post to X, Garry addressed the “ it’s fake ” guys by posing five questions, all of them related to a domain name referenced in one or more of the takedown notices. The skeptics believe that the domain mm-nintendo.com is fake; Nintendo ‘always’ use a different domain, and domain details here are different to those used elsewhere, etc.

We’ve seen more than our fair share of bogus notices in the past but since these notices don’t appear to have been shared in public, determining whether they’re real or fake simply isn’t possible.

Since Garry is on record saying that they’re real, there’s no obvious reason to question that. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that developers can become quite attached to their projects and the communities that support them; removing content for no reason isn’t something they do lightly. So whether real or fake, voluntarily or under duress, a decision has clearly been made to say goodbye to content that, in real terms, amounts to a liability.

That being said, let’s squeeze the domain mm-nintendo.com and see what comes out.

Genuine or a Big Fat Phoney?

Finding takedown notices featuring the domain mm-nintendo.com wasn’t difficult. The pair shown below seem fairly typical; they both use notice@ in their email addresses and were sent to ISPs asking for content to be taken down.

Similar notices dated 2016 , 2017 , and 2018 , fail to raise any obvious red flags and since the first and last were processed by GitHub, people can be confident they received considerable scrutiny.

A similar notice sent to GitHub in 2020 took content down using the DMCA. In other parts of the notice, takedowns were requested under trademark law .

At this point, it’s worth highlighting something that all of these notices have in common: not a single one targets pirated copies of Nintendo games. Instead, they all target audiovisual works, images, and fictional character depictions, to which Nintendo owns the rights. It’s a trend that runs through all similar notices.

A 2019 takedown notice sent to itch.io , also featuring the email address notice@mm-nintendo.com, displays the same features as another sent to Sankakucomplex in 2019 . No games piracy in sight, only alleged infringement in characters, artwork, and audiovisual works.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to raise a theory at this point; is it possible that Nintendo uses the mm-nintendo.com domain when takedown notices target characters, artwork, and audiovisual works, in cases where specific expertise is necessary?

MarkMonitor (MM for short?)

There’s no direct evidence to show that the MM in mm-nintendo.com stands for MarkMonitor. However, there’s plenty of evidence to show MarkMonitor has connections to Nintendo. The domain was registered through MarkMonitor in September 2016 and then updated somewhat coincidentally this Wednesday when the Garry’s Mod controversy began.

The most obvious change is the prominence of the email address brandprotection@mm-nintendo.com before the update. MarkMonitor doesn’t manage all 6,431 domain names currently listed under Nintendo of America, but it has provided brand protection services for some of the biggest names in business.

When Apple worked with MarkMonitor back in 2013, records show the company operated the domain mm-apple.com. While that domain has long since expired, mm-microsoft.com is very much alive and just like mm-nintendo.com, redirects to its owner’s main domain.

Other domains registered through MarkMonitor and used for brand protection over the years, probably behaved in much the same way; mm-velcro.com, mm-walmart.com, mm-loreal.com, and mm-nissan.com, for example.

So Real or Fake?

There seems no doubt that the domain mm-nintendo.com a) actually exists b) is used for brand protection purposes and c) isn’t used often or even at all for regular DMCA takedown work. That leads to the final item, d) the domain is different because it has a specific purpose.

It’s possible that brand protection matters are handled by a dedicated Nintendo department and/or MarkMonitor itself, which also has an office in the UK. Perhaps the image below, uploaded on Thursday, offers a few more clues. Just don’t venture too close to the edge.

Whether the DMCA or similar takedown notices sent to Garry and the team are legitimate is best judged by those who have seen them. Based on the above, however, his claim – that the notices are official – should really be the last word on the matter.

As for the other ‘fake’ notices previously sent that also mention the mm-nintendo.com domain, only a close review of each could determine whether they’re genuine and/or accurate. When everything is said and done, however, perhaps the most important question is whether they target obviously Nintendo-like characters or imagery.

From what we’ve seen, most seem to do just that.

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

It’s long been the case that access to certain services, whether on or offline, will only be granted when customers prove their identity.

Often linked to financial products but in many cases basic money/goods transactions carried out online, handing over a name, address, date of birth and similar details, can increase confidence that a deal will more likely than not go according to plan. In some cases, especially when buying restricted products, proving identity can be a condition of sale.

Yet, for many years, companies operating in the online space have been happy to do business with customers without knowing very much about them at all.

In some cases, where companies understand that a lack of friction is valuable to the customer, an email address has long been considered sufficient. If the credit or pre-payment card eventually used to pay for a product has enough credit and isn’t stolen, there seems very little to be concerned about. For many governments, however, any level of anonymity has the capacity to cause concern, and if that means unmasking everyone to identify a few bad actors, so be it.

Improving Detection and Prevention of Foreign Malicious Cyber Activity

Perceived and actual threats from shadowy overseas actors are something few countries can avoid. Whether in the West or the East, reports of relatively low-key meddling through to seriously malicious hacks, even attacks on key infrastructure, are becoming a fact of modern life.

After being under discussion for years, late January the U.S. Department of Commerce published a notice of proposed rulemaking hoping to reduce threats to the United States. If adopted, the proposal will establish a new set of requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS), often known as cloud infrastructure providers, to deny access to foreign adversaries.

The premise is relatively simple. By having a more rigorous sign-up procedure for platforms such as Amazon’s AWS, for example, the risk of malicious actors using U.S. cloud services to attack U.S. critical infrastructure, or undermine national security in other ways, can be reduced. The Bureau of Industry and Security noted the following in its announcement late January.

The proposed rule introduces potential regulations that require U.S. cloud infrastructure providers and their foreign resellers to implement and maintain Customer Identification Programs (CIPs), which would include the collection of “Know Your Customer” (KYC) information. Similar KYC requirements already exist in other industries and seek to assist service providers in identifying and addressing potential risks posed by providing services to certain customers. Such risks include fraud, theft, facilitation of terrorism, and other activities contrary to U.S. national security interests.

While supposedly aimed at external threats, only positive identification of all customers can eliminate the possibility that an ‘innocent’ domestic user isn’t actually a foreign threat actor. Or, according to the proposal, anyone (or all people) from a specified jurisdiction at the government’s discretion. Upon notification by IaaS providers, that could include foreign persons training large artificial intelligence models “with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyber-enabled activity.”

Scope of IaaS and Customer Identification Programs

Under the proposed rule, Customer Identification Programs (CIPs) operated by IaaS providers must collect information from both existing and prospective customers, i.e. those at the application stage of opening an account. The bare minimum includes the following data: a customer’s name, address, the means and source of payment for each customer’s account, email addresses and telephone numbers, and IP addresses used for access or administration of the account.

What qualifies as an IaaS is surprisingly broad:

Any product or service offered to a consumer, including complimentary or “trial” offerings, that provides processing, storage, networks, or other fundamental computing resources, and with which the consumer is able to deploy and run software that is not predefined, including operating systems and applications.

The consumer typically does not manage or control most of the underlying hardware but has control over the operating systems, storage, and any deployed applications. The term is inclusive of “managed” products or services, in which the provider is responsible for some aspects of system configuration or maintenance, and “unmanaged” products or services, in which the provider is only responsible for ensuring that the product is available to the consumer.

And it doesn’t stop there. The term IaaS includes all ‘virtualized’ products and services where the computing resources of a physical machine are shared, such as Virtual Private Servers (VPS). It even covers ‘baremetal’ servers allocated to a single person. The definition also extends to any service where the consumer does not manage or control the underlying hardware but contracts with a third party for access.

“This definition would capture services such as content delivery networks, proxy services, and domain name resolution services,” the proposal reads.

The proposed rule , National Emergency with Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities , will stop accepting comments from interested parties on April 30, 2024.

Given the implications for regular citizens, many of whom are already hanging on to what remains of their privacy, the prospect of handing over highly sensitive information just to obtain a product trial is a real concern. The potential for leaks grows with each disclosure, as does the possibility of personal information ending up for sale on the dark web.

Which is where the threat actors will obtain other people’s credentials to masquerade as regular users when subjected to a Know Your Customer process. For IaaS services themselves, the largest will have few problems implementing customer identification programs and may even consider them useful. On one hand, they can help to stop threat actors and on the other, take the opportunity to build a database containing the personal details of every single customer.

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

Twenty-five years ago, peer-to-peer file-sharing took the Internet by storm.

The ability to search for and share content with complete strangers was nothing short of a revolution.

In the years that followed, media consumption swiftly moved online. This usually involved content shared without permission, but pirate pioneers ultimately paved the way for new business models.

The original ‘pirate’ ethos has long since gone. There are still plenty of unauthorized sites and services, but few today concern themselves with decentralization and similar technical advances; centralized streaming is the new king with money as the main motivator.

AI Meets BitTorrent

There are areas where innovation and technological progress still lead today, mostly centered around artificial intelligence. Every month, numerous new tools and services appear online, as developers embrace what many see as unlimited potential.

How these developments will shape the future is unknown, but they have many rightsholders spooked. Interestingly, an ‘old’ research group, that was already active during BitTorrent’s heyday, is now using AI to amplify its technology.

Researchers from the Tribler research group at Delft University of Technology have been working on their Tribler torrent client for nearly two decades . They decentralized search , removing the need for torrent sites, and implemented ‘ anonymity ‘ by adding an onion routing layer to file transfers.

Many millions of euros have been spent on the Tribler research project over the years. Its main goal is to advance decentralized technology, not to benefit corporations, but to empower the public at large.

“Our entire research portfolio is driven by idealism. We aim to remove power from companies, governments, and AI in order to shift all this power to self-sovereign citizens,” the Tribler team explains.

Decentralized AI-powered Search

While not every technological advancement has been broadly embraced, yet, Tribler has just released a new paper and a proof of concept which they see as a turning point for decentralized AI implementations; one that has a direct BitTorrent link.

The scientific paper proposes a new framework titled “De-DSI”, which stands for Decentralised Differentiable Search Index . Without going into technical details, this essentially combines decentralized large language models (LLMs), which can be stored by peers, with decentralized search.

This means that people can use decentralized AI-powered search to find content in a pool of information that’s stored across peers. For example, one can ask “find a magnet link for the Pirate Bay documentary,” which should return a magnet link for TPB-AFK, without mentioning it by name.

This entire process relies on information shared by users. There are no central servers involved at all, making it impossible for outsiders to control.

Endless Possibilities, Limited Use

While this sounds exciting, the current demo version is not yet built into the Tribler client. Associate Professor Dr. Johan Pouwelse, leader of the university’s Tribler Lab, explains that it’s just a proof of concept with a very limited dataset and AI capabilities.

“For this demo, we trained an end-to-end generative Transformer on a small dataset that comprises YouTube URLs, magnet links, and Bitcoin wallet addresses. Those identifiers are each annotated with a title and represent links to movie trailers, CC-licensed music, and BTC addresses of independent artists,” Pouwelse says.

We tried some basic searches with mixed results. That makes sense since there’s only limited content, but it can find magnet links and videos without directly naming the title. That said, it’s certainly not yet as powerful as other AI tools.

In essence, De-DSI operates by sharing the workload of training large language models on lists of document identifiers. Every peer in the network specializes in a subset of data, which other peers in the network can retrieve to come up with the best search result.

A Global Human Brain to Fight Torrent Spam and Censors

The proof of concept shows that the technology is sound. However, it will take some time before it’s integrated into the Tribler torrent client. The current goal is to have an experimental decentralized-AI version of Tribler ready at the end of the year.

While the researchers see this as a technological breakthrough, it doesn’t mean that things will improve for users right away. AI-powered search will be slower to start with and, if people know what they’re searching for, it offers little benefit.

Through trial and error, the researchers ultimately hope to improve things though, with a “global brain” for humanity as the ultimate goal.

Most torrent users are not looking for that, at the moment, but Pouwelse says that they could also use decentralized machine learning to fight spam, offer personal recommendations, and to optimize torrent metadata. These are concrete and usable use cases.

The main drive of the researchers is to make technology work for the public at large, without the need for large corporations or a central government to control it.

“The battle royale for Internet control is heating up,” Pouwelse says, in a Pirate Bay-esque fashion.

“Driven by our idealism we will iteratively take away their power and give it back to citizens. We started 18 years ago and will take decades more. We should not give up on fixing The Internet, just because it is hard.”

The very limited De-DSI proof of concept and all related code is available on Huggingface . All technological details are available in the associated paper . The latest Tribler version, which is fully decentralized without AI, can be found on the official project page .

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

The joint press release issued Monday by the Premier League and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was unusual right from the start.

Published early on Monday, even the timing was a break from the norm, but the content was even more surprising. Following criminal referrals by the Premier League and ACE, an operator of BestBuyIPTV – a platform that has appeared on the USTR’s Notorious Markets report for the past five years – had been convicted at the People’s Court of Hanoi.

For a country where criminal referrals have traditionally disappeared into the ether, that could be a very big deal.

Sentencing Details Are Somewhat Puzzling

The press release clearly identifies Le Hai Nam as “the operator” of BestBuyIPTV. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay the equivalent of $4,000. Whether that was a straightforward fine or something else isn’t clear, but more than $24,000 in illegal profits were identified, confiscated, and then seized by the state, while $12,000 in restitution was paid according to the indictment.

Having learned more about the case and its challenges since Monday, the conviction seems to represent a minor miracle in itself. In isolation, however, there’s an irreconcilable gap between the scale of the infringing and the punishment handed down.

For reasons that aren’t addressed, the court suspended the entire sentence, i.e no prison time at all. Assuming the restitution was split 50/50, that’s $6,000 each for the Premier League and ACE, while $24,000 – the bulk of funds – simply evaporated into the public purse. It’s a baffling situation, but clearly the conviction is the main prize here; it could be priceless.

Legal Process Took Four Years

Information made available to TorrentFreak suggests that the Premier League filed a complaint with authorities in June or July 2020, requesting an investigation and criminal prosecution of not one, but two Vietnamese nationals, one of which was Le Hai Nam.

The other, whose name we’ll refrain from revealing here, was considered the operator of BestBuyIPTV while Nam appears to have controlled the restreaming side of the business. Communications with customers show involvement in both reselling and direct sales, however.

Estimates of how much BestBuyIPTV was making overall were not made available to us, but a third party estimate provides some basis to throw some figures into the air to compare with the $14,000 paid in restitution.

In common with similar services who use subscriber numbers as part of their marketing, BestBuyIPTV’s homepage boasted 900,000 subscribers, between 10,000 and 12,000 resellers, and around 2,000 restreaming affiliates. If we assume these figures are highly inflated and then broadly avoid counting revenues twice, a conservative estimate would run to a seven-figure sum, and quite possibly eight.

The other remarkable aspect to this case can be viewed from two different directions. Either there was a complete lack of awareness on the security front, or maybe none of those involved actually cared. Given the technical skills on display concerning the service itself, the former seems to be out of the question. That leaves the latter, and probably one of the easier identifications for the Premier League in recent years.

Of course, that’s just a small part of the puzzle; gathering evidence to support convictions is painstaking work and more may be needed to bring this particular battle to an end.

Official Admits Manga Piracy Problem

As regularly reported over the past few years, Vietnam is home to some of the world’s largest pirate sites. In the United States, with site-blocking legislation back on the political agenda, the spotlight is on FMovies , one of the world’s leading movie and TV show streaming sites.

For some time, however, copyright holders in Japan have been reporting several other Vietnam-based or Vietnam-operated platforms responsible for staggering levels of piracy. They specialize in Japanese comics, known as manga, and local cartoons, better known as anime.

After recently renewing an anti-piracy partnership with Hollywood, publishers and anti-piracy group CODA are independently working flat out to solve what at times has looked like an unsolvable problem. However, unusual comments published in local media may suggest some light on the horizon.

Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

Pham Hoang Hai is the director of the Radio, Television and Electronic Information Testing Center, which operates within the Department of Broadcasting and Electronic Information under the Ministry of Information and Communications.

In comments published recently in local media, Hai said that around 100 websites are known to offer football matches illegally in Vietnam, together responsible for around 1.5 billion views in the 2022/2023 season. He also commented on sites dealing in other content, around 200 generating around 120 million views. And then something else, which as far as we know is the first public comment that acknowledges the scale of manga piracy traceable to Vietnam.

“Recently, we discovered a number of websites with servers located abroad that violate comic book copyrights,” Hai said .

“There have been a number of Japanese organizations working with the Ministry of Information and Communications, reporting comic book violations. Wars in cyberspace have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to copyright owners.”

In isolation, that may not sound like a particularly important comment and with no context, a suspended sentence and measly restitution could easily be dismissed on the same grounds. Only time will tell whether these seeds will grow into something more substantial but in Vietnam, where signs of progress are extremely rare, any achievement in the right direction holds significant value.

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

For online media consumers, things have improved significantly over the years. More content is being made available on-demand than ever before.

Netflix set the tone a decade ago by offering movies and TV series online as a convenient alternative to piracy. This worked well, so well that more than a dozen other streaming services were launched, all with their own exclusive releases.

While this may sound positive, in some ways it made things worse for consumers. As it turns out, it’s quite costly to have more than a handful of subscriptions and fees may rise to the point where people feel justified to pirate some content to keep costs under control.

This revelation isn’t new. It’s been brought up several times over the years, dating back to at least 2017 . And indeed, while most people gladly pay for streaming subscriptions, many use pirate sites and services ‘on the side’ to incidentally watch content from services they’re not already subscribed to.

Academic studies are yet to examine this effect in great detail, but there is survey data to back the theory up. Previously, most UK consumers felt that they were paying too much for legal subscriptions, with half indicating that piracy is a viable alternative.

1 in 3 Americans Pirated Movies or TV recently

New data from U.S. respondents released this week suggests that expensive streaming subscriptions are an issue there too. The online survey , conducted by Cordcutting among a sample of 988 American adults, finds that a third of all respondents pirated TV series or movies in the past year.

Younger people are more likely to have pirated at some point in their lives. For example, 76% of Generation Z says they have pirated content, a figure that falls to 28% for baby boomers.

Piracy habits are relatively stable. Most people who admitted pirating something over the past twelve months indicate that they ‘consume’ about the same as they did earlier. The positive news for rightsholders is that 35% pirate less than before, while just 11% have increased their piracy volume.

Streaming Costs Trigger Piracy

For many people, fragmentation and cost of paid streaming services appear to be key reasons for turning to pirate alternatives. More than a third of the self-proclaimed pirates mentioned the price of legal subscriptions among their reasons.

Of all pirating respondents, 36% said they used unauthorized alternatives because they were only interested in a specific show or movie, which alone was not worth a full subscription. This is close to the 35% who indicated that subscription services are too expensive.

The results of these types of surveys should always be interpreted with caution. The formulation of questions can be leading at times, for example, and paid online polls may have a selection bias.

The results make it clear that the price of legal subscriptions is an issue for a number of people. At the same time, however, the majority of respondents didn’t mention cost as a problem. Other popular reasons to pirate include content being unavailable through legal channels, or to avoid advertising.

How to Solve It?

The current streaming landscape is complicated for a reason. Many players are trying to gain market share hoping to become a dominant force. However, at some point more consolidation would make sense to keep costs under control for distributors and consumers.

When asked about possible solutions, many respondents mentioned that cheaper legal services would help, as would stronger penalties for online pirates.

At the moment, rightsholders are mostly focused on enforcement efforts to tackle the problem. In addition to going after pirate sites and services, they hope to introduce site blocking legislation to the United States. That has the potential to deter some casual pirates.

According to the survey, an emphasis on the potential negative effects of piracy could help. Among the U.S. respondents who indicated that they had never pirated anything, malware threats and potential negative effects on the industry were frequently mentioned as reasons.

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

The non-profit Internet Archive ( IA ) aims to preserve digital history for generations to come.

The organization literally archives key parts of the Internet, copying older versions of websites to preserve them for future generations. This information becomes more and more valuable as time passes by.

IA has plenty of other archive projects too. For example, it operates a library that offers a broad collection of digital media, including books, which patrons can borrow upon request.

Thousands of libraries have digital lending services but IA’s approach is different. The organization doesn’t license authorized digital copies from publishers; instead, its books are scanned and digitized in-house. Each copy can only be loaned to one person at a time, to mimic the lending attributes of physical books.

Lawsuit and Appeal

Internet Archive believes that its approach falls under fair use but publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley, and Penguin Random House disagree. They filed a lawsuit in 2020 equating IA’s controlled digital lending operation to copyright infringement.

Earlier this year a New York federal court concluded that the library is indeed liable for copyright infringement . The court’s decision effectively put an end to IA’s self-scanning library, at least for books from the publishers in suit.

IA is not letting go without a fight and in December the non-profit filed its opening brief at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping to reverse the judgment. Among other things, IA argued that its lending activity causes no financial harm is substantially different from the ebook licensing market.

Fearing a ‘Napster moment’ for books , the publishers rejected the notion that outsiders can run their own digitization programs and operate distribution platforms, without rightsholders being involved. Rightsholders should remain in control of all digital copies to be monetized on their terms.

Both sides were supported by amicus briefs from interested parties, a clear indication of what’s at stake in this dispute. Before the court case moves forward, however, IA replied to the publishers’ Napster comments and other critiques.

IA Points Out ‘Critical Misconceptions’

The Archive maintains that its lending service is fair use. The organization points out that the publishers have several misconceptions about its service.

IA points out that it doesn’t lend out digital copies without limits. For each physical book, it will only lend a single digitized copy at the time. This fixed “owned-to-loaned ratio” sets it apart from many of the copyright-infringing services mentioned by the publishers..

“Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read or copy or to peer-to-peer file-sharing by companies like Napster. Neither practice is based on use of a library’s lawfully acquired physical copy, and neither ensures that only the one person entitled to borrow the book (or recording) can access it at a time.”

IA further notes that it has no profit motive, which differs from companies that resell digital copies without permission. In addition, the enormous work that goes into digitizing the books makes it hard for others to do the same, so fears of a flood of similar services are overblown.

“[B]ecause of the huge investment required to operate a legally compliant controlled lending system and the controls defining the practice, finding fair use here would not trigger any of the doomsday consequences for rightsholders that Publishers and their amici claim to fear,” IA writes.

Libraries Have Broad Missions

The brief goes on to counter the publishers’ “cramped” view of what libraries are for. Libraries are not just outfits that lend physical books to people nearby; their missions are much broader.

IA says that libraries make books available to a broad public, no matter their social status or location. They also preserve books for future generations and ensure that readers can enjoy books without giving up their privacy.

“Libraries provide readers more egalitarian access to a wider range of books, overcoming socioeconomic and geographic barriers by sharing resources with other libraries through interlibrary loans.”

“They also build permanent collections to preserve books, including older editions, for future generations. And they protect reader privacy, preventing disclosure of patron records that could chill access to information,” IA adds.

IA’s lending service advances this mission and was launched, in part, because the current ebook licensing schemes are seen as too restrictive.

A “Copyright” Balancing Act

The parties broadly agree on what the lending program entails and how it operates from a technical perspective. However, it’s the purpose and consequences that mostly determine whether a service is ‘fair use’, and here they have diametrically opposing views.

The publishers have argued that IA offers digital copies of their books without permission, which directly competes with its legal licensing business.

IA, in turn, doesn’t deny that copyrights play a role but stresses that its controlled lending is fair use. The reply highlights several arguments to make this point and concludes that the scale clearly tips in its favor.

The reply brief notes that the lower court didn’t properly balance the interests required by copyright law, largely overlooking the benefits the service has to the public at large, while strongly focusing on the financial aspect of copyright instead.

“[The District Court] decision barely mentions copyright’s ultimate purpose of ‘promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts’. Publishers do not deny that IA’s use serves this purpose; instead, they ask the Court to ignore that service and focus instead on copyright’s financial incentives for creativity.”

IA cites the Warhol Supreme Court case which made clear that fair use is a balancing act between the interests of the public and rightsholders. In this case, it believes that the balance favors its lending service.

“Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The district court’s failure to consider the latter contravenes decades of precedent recognizing that rewards are a secondary consideration, while promoting availability is primary,” IA informs the court.

“Here, the record shows that the balancing act between these purposes is better served by allowing the use than by preventing it,” IA concludes.

—

A copy of the Internet Archive’s reply brief, submitted at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, is available here (pdf)

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

Since its launch early February, Italy’s Piracy Shield system and its operators have been at the center of a series of controversies.

From blocking innocent platforms and bizarre public denials claiming that never actually happened , to the leaking of Piracy Shield source code online and claims that didn’t happen either , a more difficult debut would be hard to imagine.

Yet with legitimate complaints from negatively-affected members of the public being given short shrift, and access to information requests pushed aside, the groundwork is in place for additional controversy further down the line.

AGCOM Issues its First Piracy-Shield Related Fine

Without assistance from Italian ISPs, blocking pirate services would be impossible in Italy. Against the wishes of many, however, their role in the system is enshrined in law.

When the Piracy Shield system churns out domains and IP addresses to be blocked, ISPs must ensure that none of their customers can access them within 30 minutes. Associated costs are the ISPs’ burden too, as are the fines they face for non-compliance. Rightsholders, meanwhile, face no sanctions whatsoever for their own blunders.

ISP association ASSOProvider has protested this imbalance from the beginning; it represents smaller companies likely to be disproportionately affected by the imposition of additional costs. Last year, ASSOProvider mounted a legal challenge and predictably ran into the combined might of telecoms regulator AGCOM and Piracy Shield’s corporate backers, including top-tier football league Serie A.

The challenge failed to stop the launch of Piracy Shield but when predictions of over-blocking became reality, ASSOProvider filed an official information request to obtain data relating to the program thus far. AGCOM’s response was to fine ASSOProvider for obstructing its Piracy Shield supervisory activities; specifically, for not providing a list of the ISPs it represents, despite AGCOM already being well aware of their names.

That the first fine linked to the new anti-piracy regime targeted non-pirates hasn’t gone unnoticed. ASSOProvider seems to have drawn energy and motivation from it, contrary to the intended effect.

New Legal Challenge Filed at the Council of State

Working with the Sarzana Law Firm of Rome, ASSOProvider will now challenge the legality of the regulatory provisions underpinning the AGCOM-supervised Piracy Shield.

“The dozens of reports from users, businesses and associations, whose rights have been unjustly violated, have convinced the Association to continue its battle for legality and the protection of citizens’ rights on the internet,” an announcement from Sarzana & Associati reads.

“In recent months the Association had already requested the list of access inhibition measures implemented through the platform, especially since the inhibitions seem to have also involved subjects completely unrelated to piracy activities,” it continues, referencing the access to information request filed last month.

The Consiglio di Stato (‘Council of State’) is the body that ensures public administration in Italy complies with relevant law. The specifics of ASSOProvider’s challenge will appear in due course but since the Council has jurisdiction over all administrative authorities in Italy, the association will seek a robust review and a positive outcome.

Giovanbattista Frontera, President of the Board of Directors of ASSOProvider, says its aims are clear; greater transparency in order to identify the critical issues that can compromise the battle against internet piracy.

“The association I represent intends first of all to thank the free press and the countless ‘straight-backed’ journalists who covered the Piracy Shield affair with professionalism and independence, in an objectively difficult context. What happened to completely innocent individuals who had nothing to do with piracy is there for all to see,” Frontera says.

“ASSOProvider will continue to invoke the principles of legality and protection of rights before the Judiciary, as it has always done and will not be afraid to report the errors of the system before all possible jurisdictions and institutions, in compliance with the law.”

Predictable Action By Legal Streaming Services

Piracy Shield typically aims to prevent consumer access to pirate IPTV services, especially those that provide access to live sports broadcasts. Subscribers to these services typically mention the expense of legal services as a driving factor; paying a fraction of the cost for a pirate product is clearly more attractive than paying perhaps ten times more.

Depending on opinion, legal services are over-priced because football in general lives beyond its means, they simply like to profiteer, or because of thieving pirates. If these people paid their fair share, companies could reduce their prices to all, some have claimed.

As we’ve heard from AGCOM and Serie A since Piracy Shield launched in February, the system works; pirates are getting blocked left and right, and pirate services are having big problems servicing customers in Italy. If that is indeed true, it would be interesting to know the background to Sky’s decision to increase the price of its sport and football packages in Italy.

DDaY reports that annual subscribers will see the sport component increase from 16 euros to 22 euros, a total of 90 euros per month. The football package will increase from 5 euros to 8 euros per month. Those who subscribe to the Open offer will see the sports pack increased from 20 euros to 26.90 euros per month, with football increasing from 5 to 8 euros per month.

If it’s true that Piracy Shield is definitely working, those who predicted falling prices appear to be wrong. In theory, at least.

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

In recent years, copyright holders have paid close attention to a growing number of large piracy services with connections to Vietnam.

Popular brands including Fmovies, AniWave, 123movies, BestBuyIPTV, 2embed, and Y2mate are all linked to the Asian country, which was recently branded a ‘piracy haven’ .

BestBuyIPTV Conviction

To curb this trend, western rightsholders have been working with local authorities to bring local investigations and enforcement efforts up to par. While this process takes time, there was a breakthrough last week.

The People’s Court of Hanoi handed BestBuyIPTV operator Le Hai Nam a 30-month suspended prison sentence. In addition, the man must pay the equivalent of $4,000 in local currency, after having paid $12,000 in restitution previously.

BestBuyIPTV is known as one of the most popular IPTV services. The subscription platform has been repeatedly called out as a notorious piracy market by the US Trade Representative, as recently as this year.

The defendant reportedly pleaded guilty to his role in the BestBuyIPTV operation. While a copy of the verdict is not immediately available, a release shared by rightsholders attributed the following quote to the Hanoi court Judge.

“The defendant has violated the provisions of the law which protect the copyright and related rights of the Motion Picture Association’s members and the English Premier League,” Judge Le Hai Yen said.

According to the Judge, these types of crimes are a danger to society and should be strictly enforced and prosecuted, to send a deterrent to other operators of pirate sites and services.

First Ever Online Piracy Conviction

The prosecution follows referrals from the Premier League and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment ( ACE ), who note that this is the first-ever online piracy conviction in Vietnam.

The rightsholders see last week’s conviction as an important milestone that will set a precedent in Vietnam. It’s a clear signal that online pirate sites and services won’t be tolerated, they say.

“This result should serve as a stark warning to anyone involved in the illegal supply of Premier League streams in Vietnam. It is the result of a strong partnership between the Vietnamese authorities and local law enforcement, ACE and the Premier League,” says Kevin Plumb, Premier League’s General Counsel.

Karyn Temple, MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, shares this view and hopes that the Vietnamese authorities will move onto other high profile targets next, which could include the popular streaming site Fmovies .

“We eagerly await similar action from Vietnamese law enforcement on other longstanding priority targets engaged in digital piracy on a global scale,” Temple notes, without explicitly naming any.

BestBuyIPTV is Online?

Interestingly, the BestBuyIPTV threat may not be completely dealt with yet. MPA previously called out the ‘Bestbuyiptv.biz’ domain in relation to the popular service, which remains online today.

“BestBuyIPTV is extremely popular in the United States & Europe,” MPA wrote at the time, adding that “the operators are located in Vietnam.”

It’s possible that other operators of the service managed the service online, which would put the conviction’s deterrent effect in doubt. Or was the sentenced operator perhaps linked to another BestBuyIPTV service?

We have asked the MPA for clarification, as its press release makes no mention of this, and will update the article when an official response comes in.

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