UK broadcaster Sky has never been particularly fond of people pirating its content.

It’s a battle that’s raged for more than 30 years, and despite there being no apparent end in sight, Sky keeps slugging it out, putting in the rounds, and hoping for a win on points.

From its roots as Sky Television through its teenage years as BSkyB, Sky has battled everything from box and smartcard hacking through to smartcard blocking and smartcard emulation . Not even cardsharing dented Sky’s enthusiasm for a piracy brawl.

Sky’s latest arch-nemesis is the commercial IPTV provider. Utilizing captured satellite and cable streams or even its own streaming service NowTV, today’s Sky faces the most organized pirates the company has ever seen, and in greater numbers too. But as that war rages in the background, Sky is careful to ensure that other aspects of internet-based piracy are taken care of too..

Small Apps, Major Irritation

Over the past decade, Android-based piracy apps have given Sky a migraine along with the rest of the entertainment industries. Popcorn Time , Showbox , Mobdro and Terrarium TV all played their part – at least before every last one succumbed to legal pressure.

The problem for Sky is that it’s easier than ever for today’s competent programmers to come up with an alternative. Despite anti-piracy groups claiming to have taken hundreds down , new apps or resurrections of old ones are never in short supply.

Indeed, despite several attempts by Sky to wipe out the same few apps, they always have a tendency to bounce back in one way or another.

Sky, MPA and ACE vs. TeaTV: Seconds Out, Round 6

Back in 2020, the Motion Picture Association decided to disrupt popular streaming app TeaTV. The app had featured in a widely-read article published by CNBC before disappearing offline , but a grand return was always on the cards.

The MPA tried to have TeaTV’s operator permanently banned from Github and since the MPA is behind anti-piracy group ACE (and Sky is a member of that coalition), the broadcaster would’ve given its full support. But despite four sets of correspondence with Github, the ultimate goal of killing the app remained elusive.

TeaTV turned out to be a pretty strong brew, despite the suspension of its Twitter account. Through strong branding it has managed to stay in the game, but whether today’s variant (of which there are several) is/are the same and/or operated by the original developer is a question for people with an abundance of spare time.

The key thing is that still exists and Sky still isn’t giving up. In a fresh move against TeaTV, an anti-piracy company representing Sky Group’s Sky Italia follows the familiar pattern of demanding the app’s removal from Github.

“We are writing in the name and on behalf of Sky Italia Srl, the exclusive owner of distribution and exploitation rights of the Sky IT channels. This IPTV App (TeaTV) includes illegal and unauthorized Pay Tv Sky IT tv series: Gomorra,” Kopjra S.R.L. writes.

In an effort to help Github understand the problem, Kopjra provides a tutorial detailing where to find the app, how to download and install it, and ultimately how to carry out a search to find the infringing content before watching it.

Whether Github took them up on the offer isn’t clear but Sky’s DMCA takedown notification was a success. The locations referenced in the takedown notice were either deleted or suspended by Github in response.

Sky vs. CucoTV: The Rematch

If TeaTV is an irritant to Sky, movie and TV show streaming app CucoTV certainly won’t be viewed any more positively. Anti-piracy group Kopjra S.R.L. asked Github to take down a TeaTV website and repository in May 2021, but even that required an additional complaint weeks later to hopefully finish off the task .

Somewhat predictably, ten months after that the job still wasn’t done, so yet another complaint was fired off to Github. Featuring a customary piracy tutorial, it prompted Github to respond with the necessary action.

Five months later, after a user called CucoTV switched to CucoTV2 and then to CucoappTV, a CucoTV-branded app appeared once again on Github. This time it was Sky UK’s turn to spoil the piracy party with another tutorial and yet another demand for the persistent piracy app to be taken down.

Spoiler Alert: CucoTV Reappeared

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, a user called ‘cucotv2022’ recently signed up to Github and proceeded to upload a CucoTV-branded streaming app to a similarly named repository.

Whoever it was also created a new website to promote the free software but the fun was short-lived. Another DMCA complaint filed on behalf of Sky UK successfully requested the elimination of both.

CucoTV doesn’t appear to have much of an offical presence on Github right now but its Twitter account suggests that Discord may have become the latest hot location. In the meantime, Sky maintains its search engine delisting campaign against dozens of sites claiming to offer CucoTV for download.

Organized Piracy Meets Disorganized Piracy

Whether Sky will follow up on Discord remains to be seen but the company remains vigilant as it identifies new threats on the back of existing ones.

Two days after the latest successful CucoTV takedown, a follow-up DMCA notice from Sky took down what appears to be the official repo of popular free streaming app CinemaHD, an app that also has links to similar services. In common with CinemaHD, they also have clones and copycats muddying the waters.

Saying that the piracy app ‘marketplace’ has become more complicated over the years is a bit of an understatement. If users put in enough effort and have enough patience, it’s possible to track specific apps over time. But factor in the disruption caused by takedowns, which sometimes results in developers ‘going dark’ and coming back with a similar app under a new name, not much is straightforward for long.

Opportunists deliberately sowing confusion to draw attention to their own tools is also a problem, especially for people who click on the first thing they find. Sky takedown notices sent to Google reveal dozens of sites claiming to offer CucoTV, albeit in a range of suspiciously broad filesizes.

Sky undoubtedly faces additional headaches due to this chaos, but if it’s any consolation at all, it’s not alone when it reaches for the painkillers.

Image Credits: Pixabay / meineresterampe

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

With over 200 million code repositories, shared by more than 80 million users, GitHub is the largest online developer platform of its kind.

The vast majority of all content stored on the site is perfectly legitimate, but some repositories are more questionable, as they contain or indirectly link to copyright-infringing content.

Sky Targets CucoTV Again

A few hours ago, UK broadcasting giant Sky flagged a problematic repository tied to the pirate IPTV app “ CucoTV “. This isn’t the first time that Sky has targeted this app, as the company sent a similar request earlier this year.

At the time, the app was hosted by GitHub user “CucoTV”. After it was removed, the repository redirected to “CucoTV2” and, at the end of May , switched to the “CucoappTV” account. Needless to say, Sky wants this account removed as well.

“Following the removal of the [CucoApp] repository, this app was uploaded to a new repository. The CucoTV app, an app that allows you to watch movies and TV series totally for free,” Sky’s takedown notice reads.

“The developer of the application is not in possession of any type of license for the transmission of the Sky UK Limited contents, therefore this application is considered illegal. So we ask for the repository to be removed.”

How to Pirate “Riviera”

The code itself is not infringing but Sky explains in detail how the app can be used to access pirated content. The company provides a step-by-step guide showing how the TV-show “Riviera” can be streamed for free.

Sky’s request was successful as GitHub swiftly removed the repository. The associated APK, which initially remained online after the previous request, has been taken off the platform as well.

Time will tell whether CucoTV will move away from GitHub now or if the developers will simply try their luck with yet another account. If that’s the case, we can expect yet another Sky takedown request in a few weeks.

GitHub Reports DMCA Takedown Increase

Sky is not the only rightsholder that has issues with “infringing” content on GitHub. Every month, thousands of projects are flagged and removed.

Yesterday, GitHub published its latest transparency report , covering the first half of 2022. This shows that the number of takedown notices and the targeted repositories continue to increase.

Over the past six months, 15,883 projects were taken down, compared to 7,675 a year earlier. A small number of reported projects, 82, were reinstated following counter-notices, reversals, or retractions.

GitHub stresses that these takedowns represent only a tiny fraction (0.02%) of all content available on the platform. In addition, it notes that the increase in takedowns is in part due to the fact that GitHub continues to grow.

“Based on DMCA data we’ve compiled over the last few years, the number of DMCA notices we received and processed has generally correlated with growth in repositories over the same period of time.”

The chart above shows that the number of targeted projects increases by a monthly average of 27. This trend has been fairly consistent with one major outlier in October 2020, when nearly 14,000 projects were flagged in a single month.

The Youtube-dl Effect

That outlier is actually tied to one of the biggest takedown stories in GitHub’s history. At the time, the RIAA asked the platform to remove the youtube-dl repository, which it subsequently did .

That takedown sparked outrage among many fellow developers who, en masse, started to upload copies of the repository. This resulted in thousands of additional takedowns, which explains the spike.

GitHub eventually reinstated the youtube-dl repository after it concluded that the code doesn’t violate the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. In addition, the company placed $1 million into a takedown defense fund to protect the interests of developers.

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