England is widely regarded as the ‘home of football’ and the Premier League is its top competition, drawing hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world.

Aside from the sportive stakes, the Premier League also has a vested interest in selling broadcast rights. These rights generate billions of pounds in revenue per year; a staggering amount unmatched by any other football league.

Broadcasters who secure these rights typically recoup their investment through the public, often in the form of subscriptions. However, not all football fans are willing to play this game and some seek out free or cheaper alternatives in the form of pirate streaming platforms.

In recent years, the Premier League has tried several legal avenues to tackle the piracy problem. In addition to obtaining blocking orders in multiple countries, the organization has been a driving force behind several lawsuits, some of which resulted in prison sentences .

Shutting down a pirate operation is always the preferred outcome for rightsholders, but it’s more easily said than done. Operators of streaming sites and services are typically aware of the risks and do their best to remain anonymous.

Premier League Takes Aim at GoDaddy Customers

In an attempt to lift this veil, the football organization went to a California federal court this week, hoping to discover the identities of operators connected to more than two dozen domain names.

The legal request isn’t targeted at the streaming sites directly. Instead, the Premier League requests a DMCA subpoena to compel domain registrar GoDaddy to hand over all information it holds on the operators. This doesn’t have to but might result in useful intel.

Domain names mentioned in the request (full list below) include live-kooora.com, 30.tv, live4.kooora-gooal.com, fctvlive.com, and soccertv4k.com. Some of these have a few hundred domain names, while others have several millions of monthly visits.

In addition, the Premier League requests information on several backend domains connected to the popular pirate streaming services EVPad and SVI Cloud. These two platforms are particularly popular in South East Asia and were previously called out as “notorious markets.”

EVPad, for example, was described as an “ extremely sophisticated ” pirate streaming service.

“A product purchased on behalf of the Premier League was found to provide access to over 1,700 channels, including 75 offering live sports broadcasts. The operators have been very careful to hide their location and identities, Premier League links them to Hong Kong and China.”

Identifying Pirates and More?

Through the requested DMCA subpoena, the Premier League hopes to gather more information on the people behind the sites and services.

Among other things, the football league asks GoDaddy for information that can identify people connected to the domains. This includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses, payment information, and other account details.

Aside from the subpoena request, the Premier League sent a letter directly to GoDaddy, asking the domain registrar to remove or disable access to the infringing content. If not, it is expected that these sites will continue to broadcast similar pirate streams throughout the rest of the season.

At the time of writing, many of the domains and services listed in the application remain online. GoDaddy typically doesn’t take domains offline without a court order, so that doesn’t come as a surprise.

That said, if the DMCA subpoena is granted, GoDaddy will hand over the requested account holder information. These types of subpoenas only require a signature from a court clerk, so this will likely move forward.

Whether any of the information is usable to the Premier League is another question. Many pirate site owners use ‘inaccurate’ domain registration data and, since GoDaddy accepts cryptocurrency payments, the financial trail might run dead as well.

Update: The subpoena was signed by a court clerk.

—

The subpoena request and the associated paperwork, filed at a California federal court, is available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ).

A full list of all the domains mentioned can be found below. The request below includes several subdomains.

Websites

– live-kooora.com
– 5koora.live-kooora.com
– mpm24hd.com
– fctvlive.com
– koora-live.io
– yalla-shoot-as.com (redirects to yyallashoot.live)
– tarjetarojatvenvivo.net
– yalla–live.net
– kooora4lives.io (redirects to koora4live.ai)
– futbollibretv.me (redirects to futbollibretvhd.me)
– doomovie-hd.com (redirects to doomovie-hd.pro)
– streamlive7.com (redirects to match.fctvhd.com)
– live4.kooora-gooal.com
– 30.tv
– koooralive-tv.com (redirects to kooralive-tv.io)
– dooball2you.com
– dooballx.com
– soccertv4k.com
– futebolgratis.net
– baadooball.com
– dooballfree24hr.com
– herodooball.com
– kora-live-new.com
– kora-livee.com
– koora–live.com
– bein–match.com (redirects to tv.bein-match.pro)

SVI Cloud

– broker.6868a.cc
– 6868b.cc
– vpic.6868c.cc
– playback.f666666.xyz

EVPad

– appindex.google10sv.com
– v10js.google144.com
– sx.dl1717.com
– dlt.6868nbtc.com
– findpic.00005555.cc
– tm1.hdtvvip.com
– cdn_pic.0168861.com

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

In a world where users can have their own ChatGPT-like AI instances up and running on their own PCs, in just a handful of minutes, for zero spend and completely legally, the app experience on smart TVs rarely fails to disappoint.

Yet when smart TV users somehow manage to clunk their way through, say, LG’s menus, and then avoid the avalanche of distractions that exist purely to break their will, only disappointment lies ahead for the IPTV-curious.

If, against all odds, they find an app that resembles the thing they actually searched for, the high probability of being presented with the app “Smart IPTV” is something thousands before them will attest to.

More Disappointment

It’s not that Smart IPTV is a poor product, it’s not. The fact that most of the time people have to pay to use it isn’t to blame either. The problem is the expectations of those who bought the software in the belief it contains illegal streams. It doesn’t, and that can be very disappointing.

Most likely due to the number of complaints from misinformed buyers, listings for the app on the LG, Samsung, and Google Play stores are now very clear: Smart IPTV does not provide access to playlists or streams, so don’t even ask.

The reason for the confusion among prospective buyers isn’t immediately clear. Smart IPTV seems like it’s been around forever and at no point has anything stuck out as being especially misleading or offering any suggestion that more might be on offer.

Yet now, even those who purchased Smart IPTV in full knowledge it offered no content, are being disappointed too.

Smart IPTV Website Blocked in Spain

During the past few days, reports have surfaced indicating that the official website of Smart IPTV has been blocked by Spanish ISPs. Visitors to siptv.app are instead redirected to an alternative page displaying the following text:

“Contenido bloqueado por requerimiento de la Autoridad Competente, comunicado a esta Operadora”

When translated to English, the message reads: “Content blocked at the request of the Competent Authority, communicated to this Operator.

In common with many countries around the world, particularly in Europe, Spain has a site-blocking system that restricts access to sites and services deemed to infringe copyright. Some prominent cases receive publicity as they travel through the legal system, most notably when top tier football league LaLiga and its broadcasting partners obtain injunctions to block pirate IPTV services.

While Spain does put together a report every few months to show the extent of blocking in the country, its usefulness is limited to a review of blocking already in place. As a tool to explain what is happening now, much less why a site or service was deemed infringing, the report is effectively useless.

As a result, which company declared the Smart IPTV app as copyright-infringing is unknown. What we can do, if only as a thought exercise, is use existing information to establish the most likely candidate based on motivation and past statements.

LaLiga – Who Else?

When it comes to blocking measures, especially those related to pirate IPTV, no rightsholders anywhere in the world are more aggressive than those behind the most popular football leagues.

The Premier League (England), Serie A (Italy) and LaLiga (Spain) are widely considered to be the leading proponents of blocking measures. Through a basic process of elimination, LaLiga is the only entity from the three likely to have targeted Smart IPTV in Spain, but there are more compelling reasons than simply being an aggressive blocking proponent in a specific geographic area.

In a 2022 submission to a then-upcoming edition of the European Commission’s Counterfeiting and Piracy Watchlist, LaLiga submitted a list of apps that, from a technical perspective, could play illegal streams of LaLiga football matches.

More accurately, the majority simply allowed the users of the apps to play content referenced in .M3U playlists that were not supplied with the apps themselves .

Terrifying Text Files From The 90s

Being able to play an .M3U playlist is a basic functionality offered by media players including VLC. For those sporting gray hair today, the same ‘technology’ was available in Winamp. Those who remember .M3U playlists starting to gain popularity in 1996 will be able to explain this incredible technology in a few words; it’s a text file containing locations where information can be found, on a hard drive (c:\playlists) or a network, mostly using a domain or IP address.

Instead of accusing the apps of infringement directly, LaLiga used broad strokes to paint a picture of infringing capability.

“It is important to note that all of these player applications allow the consumption of an innumerable amount of audiovisual contents such as sports, movies, series TV channels, etc. In other words, this problem affects the entire audiovisual and entertainment industry in general,” LaLiga added, carefully choosing its words.

As we highlighted at the time, LaLiga’s careful words were supported by carefully presented evidence, which in one case took an IPTV developer’s documentation and used it against them, after cropping the screenshot to disappear a line that began: “This app doesn’t contain any built-in channels…”

Again, we must reiterate that Spain’s blocking mechanism fails to offer enough transparency to identify who is behind the blocking of Smart IPTV. This means that we cannot say with any certainty that LaLiga is actually behind the blockade, but we can offer a generalized conclusion.

Any system that allows participants to mark their own homework in relative secrecy, can never be fit for purpose when other people’s basic rights begin to suffer. The fundamental right to conduct a legal business throughout the Union, for example.

Blocking Began Around April 12

To find out more about recent events, TorrentFreak spoke with the owner of Smart IPTV.

“The website domains siptv.app and siptv.eu have been blocked at some of Spain’s ISPs since approx. 04/12. Some ISPs still allow access to the website,” he explains.

“I have not received any correspondence from the officials or ISPs, I only started receiving messages from angry users from Spain that they couldn’t access the website. I conversed with a couple of them and it turned out the blocking is on the domain level, where ISPs are redirecting using 451 HTTP error, which also threw SSL certificate errors for those using HTTPS.”

With the blocking clearly causing access and security issues, Smart IPTV’s owner says that blocking can be avoided using a VPN but for him, it’s “not a very good solution.”

Instead, he’s having to make modifications to his apps to mitigate the problems.

“Since the App is operating on the same domains [as the website], the only way to work around this is to release updates of the appropriate Apps on devices, which I have already submitted and waiting for approval from Apps Stores (this can take a while),” he explains.

“A manual Android install is already operating normally, confirmed by Spanish users. The problem is that older devices that won’t get the app update (I am talking 10-year-old devices) will not be able to benefit from the app any longer.”

Of course, it’s likely that angry users who don’t understand the situation will blame the developer, then expect a new version of the app for free. But, as the MPA highlighted recently as it prepares its own proposals for blocking in the United States, blocking never, ever goes wrong.

As everyone else knows, that’s absolutely true, except for when it does.

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

After almost two decades reporting on the piracy landscape, speaking with hundreds of people involved in all aspects of piracy on the way, those who dodge cinema security to camcord the latest movies are still the most puzzling.

As a deterrent, the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence seems to mean almost nothing. The prospect of sitting quietly for two to three hours, knowing that they’re already being monitored along with the rest of the audience, is just part of the experience, not the nerve-shredding ordeal of those simply imagining it.

Yet, unless ‘cammers’ stop for personal reasons, those operating in the West eventually run up against the law. While they often regret it, some still find it difficult to explain what motivated them in the first place. With cinema workers in the UK being offered cash rewards of around £1,000 for a successful ‘camcorder’ intervention, the odds are stacked against cammers before they even begin. It doesn’t deter them.

FDA Yearbook 2024

The Film Distributors’ Association (FDA) represents the interests of film distributors in the UK and Ireland. The FDA’s website lists 38 members, including “the largest studios and numerous independent players” a sample of which can be seen below.

This week the FDA unveiled the FDA Yearbook 2024 at The Peninsula London, a £1,200 per night 5-star hotel within shouting distance of Buckingham Palace and Kensington Gardens.

With box office sales up again last year – 135,133,635 tickets in 2023 versus 127,794,382 in 2022 – generating over £1.06 billion, there was much to celebrate. Not least 9% of all sales attributable to Barbie, a film made in the UK and as a result, gifted just enough relief by the government to ensure no corporate taxes were payable in the UK.

Piracy – Film Content Protection Agency

After all the glitz and glamour, the FDA’s yearbook soon turns to piracy matters and a report from the Film Content Protection Agency (FCPA). The FDA-affiliated anti-piracy group shoulders the responsibility of preventing movies from being recorded on the UK’s big screens and then shared on the internet.

After an article we published last year , questioning the unlikely industry-wide claim that “90% of films pirated worldwide are sourced from cinemas,” FCPA begins its report with an adjusted claim that’s much more credible.

“Over 90% of pirated versions of newly released films are still sourced in cinemas globally by illegal activity involving the use of compact digital recording devices – mostly smartphones,” FCPA begins.

“Hence the FDA’s Film Content Protection Agency’s over-arching objective is to prevent infringing (pirated) versions of films from being sourced in UK and Irish cinemas, ensuring that the theatrical release lifecycle is protected as far as possible.”

Cammer Arrest in 2022 Results in 2023 Conviction

As previously reported , in the summer of 2022 at least four high-quality cams were traced back to two cinemas in the UK. A 24-year-old man was convicted in 2023 for fraud and copyright offenses yet remarkably only received an 18-month community sentence.

“[T]he sentence was lighter than hoped for, as the defendant had no prior convictions, but the ruling was deemed to have a greater impact on his life than a custodial sentence,” FCPA reports.

FCPA offers no additional detail, but we understand that the extremely high-quality CAM copies of the movies leaked online were directly linked to the defendant’s skills and the career he hoped to pursue somewhere in the film or TV industry. A mere conviction probably ended that dream, regardless of the scale of the punishment.

‘High levels of Anti-Piracy Awareness and Vigilance’

Throughout 2023, it appears that would-be cammers or those who gave that impression at least, kept cinema staff in the UK and Ireland on their toes. FCPA reports that “high levels of anti-piracy awareness and vigilance” resulted in exhibitors reporting 155 security incidents in 2023, a 7% increase on incidents reported in 2022.

“The UK and Ireland’s record for in-cinema vigilance is exemplary with the territory continuing to be recognized as a leading light in the global fight against film piracy,” FCPA says.

“In 2023, successful staff in-cinema efforts to disrupt illegal recordings of films helped to directly protect many FDA member companies’ most high-profile theatrical releases including Avatar: The Way of Water, Barbie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Elemental, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Little Mermaid, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”

As a result, FCPA handed awards to 25 cinema staff last October for their “good disruption work in preventing film piracy incidents.” How much they received is unclear but probably not enough for one night at The Peninsula London.

Given the implications of CAM copies on the multi-multi billion dollar box office revenues of the movies listed above, rewards five times bigger than they are now would still represent ridiculous value for money. As the results below show, the combined effort in 2023 produced the best anti-piracy performance for UK cinemas since 2012.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

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

Without doubt, Reddit is one of the most popular user-generated content sites that exists on the Internet today.

Last month, the community-driven news and discussion platform went public and, with a market cap of more than $6 billion, immediately became one of the larger tech players.

While publicly traded companies operate under a different ruleset than private ones, Reddit remains committed to its transparency efforts. A few hours ago, the company released its latest transparency report detailing the actions it took in the second half of 2023.

779,628 ‘Infringing’ Items Flagged

At TorrentFreak, we are mostly interested in copyright-related actions. In recent years, we have seen an increase in copyright takedown notices on Reddit, partly driven by the platform’s growth. In the first half of 2023, rightsholders requested the removal of nearly a million items, which was an all-time record.

During the second half of the year, this upward trend reversed. Reddit reports that rightsholders flagged 779,628 items between July and December, an 18% decrease compared to the first half of the year.

As shown above, not all of these takedown requests resulted in action. Reddit removed 69% of the reported items, which is the lowest removal percentage of the past two years. This logically means that little over half a million items were removed.

The high rejection rate might suggest that rightsholders’ takedown requests are too broad. However, most takedowns are rejected simply because the content has already been removed. In 29,143 cases, Reddit concluded that there was no infringement; other, less common reasons, include suspected fraud and fair use.

Copyright-Related User Bans

Thus far, there is nothing to show that Reddit’s decision to go public had a major impact on its copyright takedown policies. That said, the company does signal a significant increase in copyright-related user bans.

“From July to December of 2023, Reddit banned 792 users for repeat Copyright Policy violations, an increase of 258% compared to the first half of 2023. This large increase is a result of improvements to our detection methods and increased operational capacity,” Reddit writes.

These user bans are in part the result of legal obligations. Under the DMCA, Reddit is required to implement a reasonable policy to deal with repeat copyright infringers on its platform.

Improved detection methods and increased capacity suggest that Reddit takes repeat infringements seriously. However, if we go further back in time, we see that the number of banned users is far from a record. In the first half of 2022 , Reddit banned 3,859 users over repeat copyright infringements.

Subreddit and Counter-Notices

In addition to removing or banning posts, links, and users, Reddit also took action against entire subreddits. In the last half of 2023, the platform banned 452 subreddits, down 20% compared to the six months prior.

Finally, Reddit points out that users can always object to takedown notices by sending counter-notices. In the final half of last year, the discussion platform received 397 counter-notices, of which 216 were deemed valid.

The number of valid notices increased by 86% since the last report, which Reddit attributed to its increased operational capacity. As a result, 1,331 pieces of content were successfully restored.

While not specifically mentioned in the report, Reddit also continued to object to requests from a group of filmmakers to identify Reddit users. The company does typically respond to U.S. subpoenas, but in this case, it argued that the requests violated users’ constitutional right to anonymous speech.

—

Reddit’s latest transparency report covering the last six months of 2023 is available here

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

During the 6th meeting of the Policy Subcommittee of the Copyright Subcommittee of the Cultural Affairs Council in Japan last month, representatives from Google and ByteDance were invited to give presentations on the topic of appropriate compensation.

As the meeting progressed, the topic sparked discussion on connected matters, sometimes with legal implications. Neither company had lawyers present but, with plenty of scope to challenge the video platforms on piracy issues, including how some manage to benefit more than others, there was no shortage of conversation.

Google/YouTube

Takeya Kito, Head of Music Content Partnership for YouTube in Japan, began with some background. Used in over 100 countries with support for 80 languages, YouTube’s platform grows at a rate of over 500 hours of uploaded content every minute.

More than 71 million people, including two-thirds of the adult population, use YouTube every month in Japan, with the streaming service committed to providing four freedoms to each and every one: Freedom of expression, freedom of access to information, freedom of opportunity, and freedom of participation.

Mr. Kito spoke of YouTube’s commitment to transparency, including via its Copyright Transparency Report. When working with music partners, rights holders and artists, YouTube provides reports detailing how their content is consumed. In some areas, however, YouTube would like to see more transparency from its business partners.

“In order for YouTube to obtain a correct understanding of the royalties received by rights holders, we believe it is important to ensure transparency between the labels and copyright management organizations with whom we do business and license our works, and the individual artists, performers and songwriters who come after them,” Mr. Kito explained.

“This is because, unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how the distribution is actually handled between the individual rights holders, performers, and songwriters, so it is important to ensure transparency in this area as well.”

So, the Music Industry Gets Paid. What About Us>

Given Mr. Kito’s job title, it was perhaps inevitable that YouTube’s work with the music industry would dominate his presentation. Content ID, the content recognition / monetization system that currently handles over 99% of copyright claims and to date has returned $9 billion to rightsholders, mostly in the recording industry, received plenty of coverage.

The first question from those in attendance came from Mr. Ito, a representative of Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), who thanked Mr. Kito for his presentation and then got right down to business.

“I found it very interesting to hear about how the music industry is successfully using Content ID in various ways. By the way, I belong to an organization called ABJ, and I work in anti-piracy measures at a publishing company [TF: Shueisha], and I’ve been using Content ID for about 14 years,” Mr. Ito explained.

“On YouTube, there are cases where publications, mainly still images of manga, are uploaded as videos like picture-story shows, or picture books, which are read aloud by users while turning the pages on their own. A large number of videos like this have been uploaded. Regarding Content ID, Content ID has no effect on illegal videos published by publishers, so publishers have to hire specialized companies or search on YouTube themselves to find infringing videos. I’m working on erasing them.”

Mr. Ito noted how representatives from the music industry spoke of being rewarded through Content ID, citing a “huge amount” of around $1.8 billion. But then, the inevitable; if the music industry has the ability to turn copyright claims into profit, what about everyone else?

“I strongly feel that publishers are not receiving any return from capturing pirated copies regarding Content ID. My first question is, what do you think about the situation where Content ID cannot be used to deal with pirated copies of publications?” Mr. Ito asked.

ABJ’s representative didn’t get the answer he was hoping for.

“Thank you very much,” YouTube’s representative responded. “As to your question, please understand that I am not in a position to answer it, as my role is limited to music partnerships in Japan.”

Mr. Ito accepted the position but still wasn’t quite done.

Time For TikTok

Representing TikTok at the meeting was Mr. Tomiji Kato, Senior Manager of Global Music Business Development & IP Rights at ByteDance Inc.

Mr. Kato’s presentation was very long but at one point he also touched on Content ID. TikTok doesn’t have a comparable system but the question here, it seems, is whether TikTok needs or even wants one. Something like that could be too restrictive for TikTok.

“At TikTok, we have not yet introduced a system like YouTube’s Content ID for original recordings, but what we need to consider is whether a system like Content ID is better, or whether we should have a pre-decided, all-inclusive contract like we are doing now with the labels,” Mr. Kato explained.

“By introducing a system or mechanism, we must not, for example, impair the creativity of music development or competition in music use, and so we must consider how the platforms and users can best use new music. We are considering how we can best contribute to new music use and development on the platform side and on the users’ side, and this is something that both the rights holders and the platforms should consider.”

When the presentation was opened up for questions, Mr. Ito of ABJ (and of publisher Shueisha) initially had considerable praise for TikTok; users of TikTok who introduce publishing content to their followers have a “ripple effect” and as a result, “there are many things to look forward to.”

Unfortunately, there are other things too, none of them good.

YouTube Used to Have Most Pirated Content, Not Any More

“For many years, I have been taking measures including on YouTube, and when it comes to video posting sites, YouTube has by far the most pirated copies, with the largest number of pirated copies being deleted in a month, around 20,000,” Mr. Ito said.

“However, starting around the summer, TikTok has finally overtaken YouTube, and now, depending on the month, TikTok has two to three times as many pirated copies being uploaded. We are also in serious trouble, and although the person in charge and the person at the anti-infringement company are deleting the information every day, the situation is not going away.”

Mr. Kato was then asked four questions: Is TikTok aware of so many pirated copies of publications, including manga? Does the company know that pirated copies often appear in recommendations? Does TikTok know that, when compared to YouTube, malicious accounts are less likely to be suspended? And finally, does TikTok appreciate how little copyright awareness is shown by its users?

“First of all, thank you for your positive comments,” said Mr. Kato. “I’m sorry, but I would like to refrain from answering any questions regarding pirated copies or takedowns, as this is outside of my scope of work.”

For those interested in how the discussion developed, the full minutes of the meeting ‘令和5年度第6回（2024年3月13日’ are available here (pdf). In summary, there might be a little more work to be done.

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

Despite intense pressure from the United States, including criticism as part of the USTR’s reports on notorious pirate sites and foreign trade barriers , actions against online piracy are still relatively rare in Bulgaria.

Whether the Bulgarian government had any hand in the closure of RARBG last year remains unclear but its hoped that August 2023 amendments to Bulgaria’s Criminal Code will at least make pirate site investigations more straightforward. A new operation tackling music piracy may be an opportunity to demonstrate progress.

GDBOP Team Up With Europol

The General Directorate Combating Organized Crime ( GDBOP ) is a specialist unit within Bulgaria’s Ministry of Interior. GDBOP is most closely associated with the disruption of organized crime groups and transnational criminal networks, which often sees the unit take action in coordination with international partners.

In a recent action to disrupt music piracy, GDBOP carried out an operation under the supervision of the Sofia District Prosecutor’s Office, in coordination with the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, more commonly known as Europol.

“Employees of the Cybercrime Directorate (GDBOP) conducted an operation to prevent the illegal use of music as an object of copyright and related rights,” a GDBOP announcement reads.

“In the course of the special operation, the cybercrime police established the identity of the owner of 12 sites that he built and maintained to offer their users access to popular music in different countries, providing the possibility to download them in .mp3 format.”

Sites Targeted Display Seizure Banner

The domains of the dozen music piracy sites targeted “due to numerous violations of intellectual property rights” are reported by GDBOP as follows:

downloadmp3bg.com, baixarmp3gratis.com, www.tekstove.org, mp3pesme.com, mp3piosenki.com, descarca-muzica.com, indirsarki.com, mp3kostenlos.com, mp3hitove.com, mp3greek.gr, xn--3-wtbj.net, mp3aghani.com

The domains now display a seizure banner in Bulgarian (translation alongside)

Considering the words used in the domains, it seems likely that in many cases they targeted an international audience.

Baixar, for example, is a Portuguese term for ‘download’ while descarca-muzica suggests downloading music and may have been directed at a Romanian audience. Most likely targeted at a German audience, mp3kostenlos translates to mp3free, indirsarki.com was intended for Turkish consumption, while mp3greek speaks for itself.

xn--3-wtbj.net is an internationalized domain name (IDN) using Punycode, a system used to encode domains containing non-ASCII characters; in this case the domain мп3.net.

Nine of the targeted domains are registered at Dynadot in the United States.

Action within the EMPACT Framework

In coordination with Europol, the action was carried out within the EMPACT framework (European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats) an initiative to “identify, prioritize and address threats posed by organized and serious international crime.”

Participants in EMPACT include law enforcement authorities, the judiciary, EU agencies, customs and tax offices, and various private partners. According to the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust), around 200 operational actions are carried out each year under EMPACT.

The specific reasons for targeting these particular dozen sites under EMPACT hasn’t been revealed by the authorities. The operator of the sites has reportedly been identified, but no arrests have been reported.

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

If the vision for the creation of the web included a day one feature that could restrict access to content, people working on their own specialist topics, catering to their own niche audiences, would’ve happily pressed the button.

A hundred or a thousand thriving communities, small utopias in their own right, with no connection to each other, would’ve been seen as a feature, not the failure of the internet we otherwise see today. The openness of the early days of today’s web, the ability to see most other sites and communities while being exposed to creativity and information like never before, was the easiest elevator pitch in history.

Come and see, everything you want for free, was the dream made reality and people couldn’t wait to experience it. Some things for free, but you have to pay for everything else, would’ve changed everything.

Regardless, that’s what we have as our internet today, although the definition of ‘free’ has been adjusted over time, mostly to mean no money changes hands. Just watch a few ads, allow the content providers to share your data with the world, and enjoy a lifetime of ‘free’ content.

Unfortunately, a ‘lifetime deal’ on the internet is subject to change too and when ads and other mechanisms stop paying the bills, the doors get locked until payment is made for the key.

Paywalls and News

If the whole piracy debate is put to one side just for a moment, paying for music, movies, and books, doesn’t sound especially ridiculous. Yet when it comes to paying to read news, a majority suddenly get a little offended, annoyed even. They read a handful of articles a day, and they’re not paying for that, period. Certainly, they’re not paying a full subscription to several online newspapers on the basis they might have something worth reading this month.

And to be frank, who can blame people for that sentiment? The days of someone sitting back in an armchair with a single newspaper, from which they consume all news, are largely gone. And good riddance too. Consuming news from multiple sources is the only way to filter out the political biases, balance opinions, and get closer to the truth. Yet increasingly, large swathes of information, crucial to broader insight and analysis, can only be found behind paywalls.

The conundrum is currently unsolvable; a news business requires revenue, just like any other. Ads don’t work and while paywalls are broadly disliked, they pay the bills. People want access to news, information about their world, current events that affect their lives. The only issue is that when asked to pay for it, people mostly don’t want to. If the streaming service market is fragmented, news takes it to a whole new level.

Bypass Paywalls Clean

Bypass Paywalls Clean (BPC) is a browser extension that bypasses many of the paywalls put in place by most of the world’s news publishers. While that’s an accurate description, it’s really an indication of a wider problem.

BPC restores the news landscape to one that people can enjoy again, in keeping with news delivery of the last couple of decades. It removes the irritations of news articles appearing in search engines with excerpts promising everything, only to transform into a ‘subscribe now’ bait-and-switch popup, of which there was no mention earlier.

BPC removes the need for credit card hunts, not to mention the pain of any subsequent data breaches. BPC removes the need for usernames, passwords, logins authorized by 2FA, and eliminates the barrage of follow-up spam news publications suddenly feel permitted to send; pressure to sign up for longer, and for more money, not to mention the price increases of this year and the year after, plus ‘special offers’ that nobody wants.

For these and other closely related reasons, users of BPC are very upset right now. In a post to X yesterday, the software’s developer revealed why his project is no longer available; someone filed a DMCA takedown notice against his repo on GitLab .

BPC has not published a copy of the DMCA takedown notice, GitLab doesn’t appear to have shared it either. In fact, the URL where the repo could be previously found returns only a 404 error; there’s no indication that a DMCA complaint was even received, let alone who sent it and what it said.

DMCA Abuse or Something Else?

The absence of information has led to some speculation that the notice may have been abusive. Only the developer can say for sure but on the assumption that a DMCA notice was indeed responsible for taking BPC down, some point to the BPC code while shouting ‘foul’. They claim that since the BPC code is the unique creation of its developer, a DMCA notice would need to wrongfully claim copyright of his code.

While that could be a worthy topic of discussion, these scenarios can be immediately addressed using a DMCA counter-notice. BPC’s creator can simply file one with GitLab and in less than two weeks’ time, the platform would have to restore it, if whoever sent the original notice didn’t sue the developer in the United States.

Diving into a potential legal quagmire is rarely attractive or sensible. Here, however, there are signs to suggest the option has been rendered unavailable. The repo no longer exists according to GitLab, but that seems like a minor detail when compared to the status of the developer’s account .

There’s no information close to hand on GitLab that attempts to explain why magnolia1234 is ‘blocked’ and no reason supplied on the developer’s account on X either. Responses from BPC users are limited to those who @Magnolia1234B specifically mentions, so discussion is somewhat limited.

More than One Type of DMCA Notice

The developer’s earlier comment, “another day another DMCA takedown notice” tends to suggest receipt of two, three or potentially more DMCA notices. On which platforms they were received isn’t specified but if those all relate to GitLab, it raises the question of whether a ‘repeat infringer’ policy came into play. That could explain the ‘blocked’ account status but since details aren’t being made available, it’s difficult to say for sure.

However, DMCA takedown notices come in more than one flavor and the ‘remove this copy of my content’ type may not even be the best fit here. It’s certainly possible that if a DMCA notice is responsible, it could be an anti-circumvention notice for which there is no counter-notice option available.

Whether BPC amounts to a tool that circumvents a “technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected by copyright” rendering it illegal under 17 U.S. Code § 1201 , cannot be answered without a proper technical analysis.

Websites use all kinds of methods to restrict access to content but whether some, any or all qualify for protection is mostly uncharted territory. There’s also the question of intent, i.e what BPC was designed and marketed for; that has the potential to matter a lot.

Blame the Game, Not the Player

In the physical world, a locked door is a pretty clear sign that whatever lies behind it is currently unavailable for access. Some people might give the handle a couple of tries to be sure but, in ordinary circumstances, people don’t immediately start searching for security weaknesses or pull out a lockpicking set.

In the online environment, where there’s an underlying assumption most things are free, a paywall popup with an article just visible underneath, is a signal that whoever published the article cannot afford to deliver it in any other way. Yet in many cases it has already been delivered, because the text is already right there.

Is it legally acceptable to remove the blocking element in your own browser or is this really about respecting the people who spent time and money creating the content, regardless of how good their security is?

Or could this be more about the online news situation in general, where anyone can setup a website that automatically copies everything a news site publishes in public, the moment it’s published, and then pumps it out as their own content to generate revenue?

Maybe the terrible ad networks that many illegal and indeed legal news platforms foist upon their readers are the real problem? Or perhaps the response to this barrage of unwanted ads causes most damage; exhausted readers simply rejecting ads altogether, blocking the good and bad in one swoop?

With no ad revenue, news sites can either shut down completely or turn to a paywall. So rather than viewing BPC as a parasite that stops creators getting paid for their work, perhaps a broader look at the news ecosystem itself is in order.

Who’s Really Taking Available Revenue?

Considering the volume of news available at any one moment, much of it simply rehashed or otherwise trash copies of reports produced by a limited number of original publishers, the real parasites driving paywall uptake aren’t found in the form of a browser extension.

They’re the publications that pass news off as their own, sometimes completely rewritten by AI, who then spend ten times more money on SEO, because getting low quality junk to the top of search results is clearly more important than journalism. They take news articles already being offered for free yet their only contribution is to make whatever they take worse. The world is awash with them yet search engines seem incapable of doing anything about most.

Removing these sites from the market would return more of the revenue to those that should’ve received it in the first place, hopefully negating the need for more paywalls and any future for tools like BPC.

If news consumers want fewer paywalls, boycott the parasites, plagiarists, and those bombarding your browser and inboxes with spam. Adding them to a hosts file or making a firewall rule is fairly painless but a convenient, open source browser extension might be a fitting solution under the circumstances.

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

For a long time, pirate site blocking was regarded as a topic most U.S. politicians would rather avoid.

This remnant of the SOPA defeat drove copyright holders to focus on blocking efforts in other countries instead.

Those challenging times are now more than a decade old, and momentum is shifting. After more than forty countries around the world instituted site-blocking measures, U.S. lawmakers may be more receptive to revisiting the topic.

This week, MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin announced that the movie industry group is going to work with Members of Congress to enact judicial site-blocking legislation in the United States. The RIAA will likely join this effort, as music industry groups have joined similar blocking efforts in other countries too.

The site-blocking quest is undoubtedly going to fill plenty of headlines in the U.S. media, as it remains a hot topic. That’s quite a contrast to what we see in other countries, including the UK, where similar measures have been in place for many years.

UK Site Blocking Lull

Following requests from movie studios, record labels, publishers, sports leagues and broadcasters, hundreds of websites are blocked in the UK today. This translates to many thousands of domain names, as proxy sites and backup domains are also included. The precise number of websites and associated domains, including their variants and IP addresses, is difficult to report accurately due to a lack of official documentation; certainly, the shifting nature of dynamic blocking doesn’t make reporting any easier.

The UK mainstream press hasn’t shown much interest in the topic in recent years. When the MPA obtained the first-ever blocking order against a cyberlocker two years ago, the BBC didn’t even mention it .

Meanwhile, UK blocking efforts have expanded considerably, not just by numbers, but also in scope. Without any public announcement, search engine Google joined the effort and since 2022, the company has voluntarily removed domain names from UK search results if these are covered by existing ISP blocking orders.

We uncovered these Google delistings by accident and the involved parties subsequently confirmed this blocking expansion. However, Google itself remained quiet for a long time, perhaps due to its previous anti-blocking stance .

17,317 Flagged URLs

Google’s delisting of pirate sites in the UK remains ongoing today. There are no official announcements on this front, but the search engine’s transparency reports published by Lumen provide some insight into this activity.

For example, we can see that music industry group BPI reported 1,470 pirate site URLs to Google this month, asking the company to delist them entirely. The BPI added the relevant court orders to all requests and Google complied by removing most domains from its UK search results.

Looking further back, we can see that BPI has asked Google to delist 17,317 URLs from its search engine over the past two years. These requests are separate from regular takedown notices, as the full domains are completely removed from search results.

Inflated Numbers

The 17,317 figure is significant but requires nuance. It includes various proxy subdomains as well as subdomains of stream-ripping services. The latter are used to actively evade Google removals and site-blocking itself.

In addition, the BPI has a habit of occasionally double-listing domain names in their requests, or submitting identical domain names in multiple requests. This further inflates the totals.

Caveats aside, it’s probably safe to say that thousands of domain names have been delisted by Google in response to site-blocking orders. These domains provide, or at least used to provide, access to hundreds of pirate sites. This includes The Pirate Bay and many of its proxies, which have been completely stripped from Google’s top results in the UK.

Needless to say; if site-blocking legislation eventually makes its way to the United States, we can expect to see similar efforts there. However, we don’t think that will happen so quietly.

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

Way back in 2010, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN embarked on a mission to have The Pirate Bay blocked in the Netherlands.

Ziggo, the country’s largest ISP, had been asked to implement a DNS and IP address blockade but when BREIN’s overtures were declined, legal action ensued.

Ziggo was subsequently joined by XS4ALL, a rival ISP which also opposed site-blocking measures. After The Court of The Hague decided that blocking all customers from accessing The Pirate Bay went too far, BREIN dug in for the long haul and prepared for a full trial.

In January 2012, BREIN emerged victorious . At the time, downloading copyrighted material was still considered legal in the Netherlands, but the uploads associated with BitTorrent were always illegal, tipping the case decisively in BREIN’s favor.

Years of appeals and intense legal action followed, including a trip to the Supreme Court and a referral to the EU Court of Justice. In 2017, after the CJEU effectively found The Pirate Bay itself illegal, the matter continued to be fought tooth and nail, sucking in other ISPs , KPN included.

This particular chapter was almost over, but another one had begun years earlier and was only just getting warmed up.

Pirate IPTV Takes the Netherlands By Storm

Tackling pirate IPTV services has been a BREIN priority for a number of years. Providers, sometimes extremely large ones , have fallen as part of BREIN’s investigations, but the anti-piracy group is just as much at home targeting sellers , resellers , and set-top box vendors. BREIN has tackled hundreds of these entities over the years , picking up landmark judgments on the way.

For ISPs like Ziggo and KPN, the existence of bandwidth-hungry pirate IPTV consumers might’ve once been good for business. Today, however, sales of broadband subscriptions constitute just part of their overall product range. In common with BREIN’s clients active in the movie and TV show production and distribution business, selling access to legal content represents an important revenue source for companies that today are much more than ‘just’ an ISP.

Increasing numbers of pirate IPTV users can be directly linked to fewer sales of legal TV packages, the ISPs argue. In an ideal world the ISPs should be selling these to the majority of their customers, but reports suggest that’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Interests of BREIN and ISPs Align

Reports vary but it’s believed that around 1.5 million Dutch households currently subscribe to a pirate IPTV service. With a total population edging towards 18 million, that’s a sizeable figure. It pushes the Netherlands close to the top of the most prolific pirate IPTV consumers list for the whole of the EU where there is no shortage of competition.

With the interests of BREIN and those of the ISPs suddenly aligned, it appears that all three are now speaking the same language. According to a report published at Ad.nl ( paywall ) , pressure on sales has led the previously warring factions to call on the state to take a stronger line against the runaway growth of illegal IPTV.

The Public Prosecution Service is seen as a potential ally but according to the report, the service has doubts about taking a tough approach. Larger pirate IPTV services are the usual targets when the state considers criminal prosecutions. Beyond that, it’s suggested that action against intermediaries or end users should be tackled by entities like BREIN, under civil, rather than criminal law.

Raising Awareness

Raising awareness among consumers is seen as an area that could yield results but as the figures show, awareness of what makes pirate IPTV services attractive to consumers is already widespread. Typically available for up to 90% cheaper than official services, pirate IPTV services deliver most content offered by dozens of individual legal services, bundled into a single subscription package with all content readily accessible from the same place.

Rightsholders’ definition of awareness focuses on the potential downsides; financing criminal organizations, fueling other types of crime, malware, and set-top boxes capable of stealing banking credentials, among other things. For some consumers this type of messaging may have the desired effect but in ‘underground’ circles, where the grapevine and shared experiences rule, none of these issues carry much weight. At least, not enough weight to tip the scales against savings of up to 150 euros per month.

Future Cooperation

That BREIN, Ziggo, and KPN now appear to agree on the need to tackle IPTV services is logical, if a little unexpected. BREIN’s activities that require the assistance of local ISPs rarely run smoothly. Ziggo, for example, refused to forward piracy warning notices to its customers, leading to yet another face-off in court, from which Ziggo came out on top .

That being said, BREIN will likely appreciate any alignment and, as the site-blocking ‘Covenant’ currently in place shows, cooperation isn’t impossible, or even out of the question. In all likelihood, it’s simply a matter of timing.

Image credits: (1 , 2)

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