A decade ago prominent voices issued dire warnings that blocking would “break the internet,” but of course, the internet survived, just as blocking advocates said it would.

That meant tacit permission for more piracy blocks, then faster blocks, and then both – with less involvement of the courts and unnecessary public oversight. And with the groundwork done, other countries could quickly implement the same kinds of systems because the Internet is doing just fine .

Those who issued those warnings a decade ago weren’t supporters of piracy – but they did know what was coming. Dozens of countries now have site-blocking systems in place and ISPs actively help to set them up. The recent moves against DNS providers are alarming but in time, they too will become the latest uncontested standard before implementation of the next incremental step, followed by the next.

Of course, it would be alarmist to even imply that blocking, censoring, or diverting other types of information might suit future governments worldwide. Uruguay certainly doesn’t think so. Freedom of expression is fully guaranteed for citizens, groups and the press, without any kind of censorship, including the internet . With some exceptions, apparently.

Uruguay Implements Site-Blocking

Following legal action by Fox Networks Group Latin America, in 2018 a criminal court in Uruguay instructed local ISPs to block popular sports streaming portal RojaDirecta.

The head of the Fox Networks’ anti-piracy unit described the ruling as “the beginning of judicial awareness on online piracy issues.” It was indeed just the beginning.

The government made its intentions clear in 2020 with Article 712 of Law No. 19,924, which envisioned the Communications Services Regulatory Unit (URSEC) taking the lead to ensure that allegedly infringing content was blocked by local Internet service providers, before it could reach consumers in Uruguay.

Time to Start Blocking

Uruguay’s Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM), issued a decree on October 25, 2022. It states that since it is “the obligation of the State to ensure the protection of intellectual work and copyright,” the introduction of a pirate site blocking regime is the government’s response.

“The issued decree was conceived to eliminate the broadcasting of television signals broadcast through the Internet or similar networks, for unauthorized commercial purposes, which violates laws 9,739, on literary and artistic property, and 17,616, on the protection of intellectual property,” a government statement reads.

Any complaints concerning illegal TV streams must be sent to the Communications Services Regulatory Unit (URSEC). If the regulator is satisfied, instructions will be issued to service providers to implement blocking or similar measures within four days.

What sets this system apart from those available in most other countries is that applications for blocking can be filed by companies that aren’t necessarily the ultimate rightsholders of TV shows or movies.

TV Services and Intermediaries

As Article 1 of Decree No. 345/022 explains, operators of licensed television services in Uruguay can report pirate services to URSEC for evaluation and if the regulator agrees, comprehensive blocking measures will follow.

[T]he holders of television services for subscribers may file a well-founded complaint with the URSEC, as an affidavit, so that the Unit can evaluate it and order, if applicable, the notification to platforms and/or independent intermediaries or the provision of a temporary electronic blockade that is necessary to prevent access from the national territory to IP addresses (Internet Protocol) and/or Internet domains (DNS) and/or URLs (Uniform Resource Locator), corresponding to specific offers of infringing products, services and/or content, as appropriate, that are used to develop such activities, under the sole responsibility of the person filing the complaint.

Notwithstanding the provisions of the preceding paragraph, when the platform and/or the independent intermediary have their own complaint mechanisms for the removal of content and/or sales offers of allegedly illegal products and/or services, the owner or representative of the complainant, may appeal through the means provided by the intermediary, in order to assert their rights through the fastest and most effective means.(Translated from Spanish)

The decree’s Article 3 details the rest of the process, including that assumed pirate services will initially face blocking for up to 30 days in advance of a judicial review.

Blocking vs. Freedom of Expression

The Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry (LACNIC) appreciates the new blocking regime is designed to protect content from piracy. However, it has fears that freedom of expression could be a casualty due to an absence of skills to implement accurate blocking.

“Recently the state published a decree in which the authorities can block sites that violate intellectual property rights, in essence: television signals that are transmitted illegally,” says Oscar Robles Garay, executive director of LACNIC.

“It’s okay to protect the intellectual property of others, but sometimes when you do that without enough technical expertise, other rights can be affected: websites, government sites, schools and more, which is clearly not the focus of these measures.”

A decision on whether live streams should be blocked within 30 minutes of a complaint has been delayed until next year but, given moves in other regions, implementation seems is only a question of time.

After that, requests for complex dynamic injunctions will likely follow and when they aren’t considered effective enough, interference with DNS records seems the next likely blocking candidate. By then, even more aggressive blocking options will become available, most likely across 45 to 50 countries, covering just hundreds of millions of internet users, and countless ISPs and intermediaries.

When none of these measures return the required results, tougher measures will undoubtedly follow. But whatever they are, the internet will never, ever break. Promise.

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

Given the extreme financial power and political leverage held by the world’s largest entertainment companies, most obstacles can be pushed aside or simply rolled over. But exceptions do exist.

In the fight against piracy, not only do the smallest gains require an unusual effort but they’re increasingly dependent on the cooperation of third parties, usually those in the online tech sector. If these companies can’t be convinced to commit business resources to the piracy war voluntarily, lawsuits and mandatory conscription can lie ahead.

The message – that internet companies must tackle piracy or be held responsible for taking part in it – is nothing new. Internet service providers, websites, search engines, hosting providers, domain companies, social media services, and advertising companies are all considered part of the problem.

From terminating allegedly infringing users and implementing copyright filters, to due diligence, website blocking, and running a search engine, tech companies can find themselves being held responsible when third parties upset the business models of other third parties. This new commercial reality isn’t just spreading, it has global aspirations.

Control The Phone Book, Control Communications

A presentation prepared for the recent Fifteenth Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement begins with a brief explainer of the Domain Name System (DNS) and how it works. The fundamental importance of DNS to the internet is glaringly obvious.

So that humans don’t have to remember thousands of IP addresses to access their favorite websites, the DNS system holds all of those numbers in a database and matches them to more easily remembered domain names. When domain names are entered into a browser (Google.com, for example), DNS converts the domain into an IP address and the page appears. If done properly, it’s completely invisible.

At the time of writing, a couple of billion websites rely on the ability of the DNS system to carry out these conversions. The problem for rightsholders is that some of those sites facilitate access to their copyrighted works, and with easy-to-remember names such as thepiratebay.org, they are too easy for people to find.

Following legal action, ISPs in dozens of countries are now required to prevent their customers from accessing sites like thepiratebay.org. Since ISPs carry their own copy of the DNS ‘phone book’, they look up thepiratebay.org, find the IP address allocated to it, and exchange it for a completely useless one.

Rightsholders like this arrangement. Critics say that internet infrastructure shouldn’t tell lies to its users.

So Why Such Drastic Action? FMovies….and a Few Others

If The Pirate Bay’s resistance to shutdown helped to fuel the early days of pirate site blocking, sites like FMovies may end up shouldering the blame for more extreme measures.

With close to 87 million visits per month via desktop alone, FMovies is not only massive but quite possibly the most comprehensive pirate VOD-style streaming site available today. It operates many domains in various jurisdictions under multiple brandings, and isn’t confined to the mainstream movie and TV show ‘niches’ either.

Hollywood companies have forced ISPs in several countries to tamper with the site’s local DNS entries after obtaining injunctions or voluntary cooperation. The site’s traffic continues to grow because it’s still online – DNS tampering cannot change that, not for FMovies or any other site

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the presentation is that it talks about options for action against DNS, yet reveals the countries where FMovies has infrastructure, names the companies allegedly supporting that infrastructure, and puts their locations on a map.

So what action could be taken by DNS service providers to take FMovies offline, render it inaccessible, or even make it marginally less successful than it currently is? The presentation has some ideas but before we come to them, it might be worth looking at the slide again.

Why would meddling with the DNS system, which has zero ability to remove content, be preferred over actually removing content ?

OVH and M247, two companies listed as serving FMovies, are very large hosting operations and couldn’t hide even if they wanted to. The fact that they are in the EU renders them legally ‘accessible’ too, in the event that they are indeed playing host to one of the world’s largest stashes of premium infringing content. They probably have no idea that’s the case, of course, and being cash-rich their lawyers would be very happy to explain that, in court if necessary.

But the real problem here isn’t who has the ability to fight back, it’s that DNS interference has always been portrayed as a tool of last resort, something to be used when everything else fails. The presentation to the WIPO Enforcement Committee even states that DNS resolvers are completely incapable of removing infringing content.

“The legal frameworks and case law lack a clear picture at international and national levels. Case law mainly discusses liability as secondary infringers if DNS providers serve structurally copyright infringing websites. This usually requires intent, which could be established by a notice,” it reads.

Sony Music certainly hopes that will be enough.

Quad9 DNS Resolver Dispute

In Germany, Swiss-based DNS resolver Quad9 is now in direct legal conflict with Sony Music after refusing to cooperate in the label’s campaign to have a music piracy site blocked. Sony took the case to court, arguing that Quad9 has a duty of care to block the site – a site that doesn’t carry infringing content itself but links to content hosted on another site (or sites), somewhere else entirely.

Perhaps with an eye on the type of intent mentioned above, Sony did indeed give Quad9 clear notice of the infringement. Unfortunately for Quad9, Germany sets the bar for involvement very low indeed, which makes it the perfect venue for this kind of lawsuit.

Under the legal concept of Störerhaftung, otherwise known as disturbance or disruptor liability, a disruptor is someone who is involved in any way with the distribution of illicit content. As involvement goes, Quad9’s role is either extremely minimal or absolutely crucial, depending on perspective.

Sony currently appears to have the upper hand ( 1 , 2 ) and although it’s not over yet( 1 ), some liability protection has already been stripped away. According to a German regional court, since Quad9 only triggers IP address queries to DNS servers and transmits no information, it does not qualify for ‘mere conduit’ liability exemptions.

Cloudflare Ordered to Block Pirate Sites

If Quad9 loses, any order compelling it to block will be part of the package waved around in other jurisdictions to achieve the same goals: do providers want to cooperate now, or perhaps they prefer legal conscription? In the EU, this type of approach has a tendency to spread, where one ruling leads to another and then becomes the accepted norm as intermediaries concede defeat.

And momentum is building.

In July, an Italian court ordered Cloudflare to block three torrent sites on its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1. Music industry group FIMI said that since the Cloudflare service helps people to access pirate sites, Cloudflare becomes part of the piracy problem. The court agreed and issued a preliminary injunction against Cloudflare.

While copyright holders have shown their intent in no uncertain terms, Cloudflare is drawing its own lines in the sand. While it has been compelled to block in both Italy and in Germany , Cloudflare recently said it will fight any ‘global’ blocking requests if they target its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver.

Less Aggressive Options

If DNS entities get tired of the lawsuits, it’s possible they could be tempted by so-called non-fault injunctions, the presentation suggests. Popular in the UK and India, the idea is that intermediaries are named as respondents in blocking applications but copyright holders have no intention to sue them.

Everyone involved acknowledges that the intermediaries are in a good position to help out and that everyone’s rights should be respected under the principle of proportionality. This balances copyright holders’ rights, the intermediaries’ rights, and the rights of internet users to access information. The important thing is that there is no conflict and as long as applicants follow procedure, blocking tends to get the court’s seal of approval.

Another favored option doesn’t involve the courts at all because direct agreements between copyright holders and intermediaries do all of the heavy lifting. By designating groups such as the MPA as ‘Trusted Notifiers’, DNS entities could follow the lead of two domain registries and decide what should be blocked in private.

“Proactive measures by DNS providers to discourage online infringement and other illegal activity should be adopted, such as ensuring accuracy of registrant/WHOIS data. Voluntary reactive measures, such as trusted notifier arrangements, should be encouraged,” the presentation concludes ( pdf ).

WIPO says that the views in the presentation on DNS providers and resolvers are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by WIPO members. The authors are leading Germany copyright attorney Jan Bernd Nordemann and Dean S. Marks, former Deputy General Counsel and Chief of Global Content Protection at the MPA.

Image Credit: Jimmy Nilsson Masth ( Unsplash License )

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

As pirate site blocking programs expand around the world, Denmark already has more than 15 years of experience in this branch of copyright protection.

After blocking Russian MP3 site AllofMP3 in 2006, Danish rightsholders haven’t looked back. The big drive now is how to streamline the site-blocking process so that piracy platforms can be hit as quickly and as comprehensively as possible.

Part of the problem is that to have pirate domains blocked, rightsholders need to have authorization from the court. This can be obtained by obtaining an injunction against an ISP but when a single ISP is the target, other ISPs are not legally required to do anything.

In 2014, rightsholders and ISPs solved these problems by signing a Code of Conduct which ensures that when one ISP is ordered to block, others follow voluntarily. But in the world of site-blocking, there’s always more to be done.

Dynamic Blocking….And Beyond

Since blocking pirate sites is a commitment rather than a one-off effort, Denmark’s site-blocking regime also tackles domain switches and proxy sites. This so-called ‘dynamic blocking’ doesn’t require a new court process. Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has the authority to identify any new domains and forward them to ISPs for blocking, a process that will now be accelerated.

The Conduct of Conduct (CoC) that provides the framework for blocking has been revised over the years, to accommodate the changing piracy landscape. Earlier this month it was updated again, hoping to shut down domains more quickly than before.

“[T]he illegal market on the Internet is constantly and rapidly developing, which is why it has been necessary to carry out a slight revision of the CoC agreement,” Rights Alliance explains.

“This implies greater flexibility and automation of the processes in the agreement, which should make it easier for both the Rights Alliance and the members of the Telecom Industry to block illegal websites.”

The plan is for ISPs to block new domains within seven days, using automation to retrieve updated lists before carrying out the usual DNS blocking.

How Will The System Work?

Both Rights Alliance and Teleindustrien (Telecommunications Industry Association in Denmark) have published copies of the new Code of Conduct but neither explain how the new system will work. Indeed, the CoC contains a paragraph that explains that a section detailing the individual steps, procedures and criteria, has been withheld “in order to achieve the purpose of the agreement.”

Given that Denmark’s blocking program is DNS-based, it’s trivial for ISPs to modify local DNS entries to redirect pirate site visitors to Share With Care (SWC), a portal designed to encourage pirates back on to the legal path of authorized content services.

Somewhat intrigued by the apparent need for secrecy, we took a closer look at Teleindustrien and to our surprise, found the complete opposite.

Complete Blocking Transparency

It appears that when ISPs are ordered to block domains for any reason, Teleindustrien goes public with three things: the laws under which the blocking was ordered, who ordered the blocking, and which domains were blocked in response.

For example, the telecoms industry group details recent blocks associated with the Ukraine conflict (including RT.com and sputniknews.com) and publishes the domains to an easily downloadable .csv file – perfect for ISPs looking to implement DNS blocking.

Another .csv file is published for gambling site domains deemed illegal in Denmark, 183 according to the latest batch

The data relating to Denmark’s pirate site blocking program reveals how quickly it has expanded over the years. In 2017, Danish ISPs were blocking around 100 pirate sites , a figure that jumped to 478 in 2020.

The latest .csv file containing the list of blocked piracy domains is dated September 27, 2022. It contains 892 URLs – some of them domains in their own right and others representing sub-domains on various sites dedicated to unblocking.

It’s unclear how the new streamlining provisions in the revised Code of Conduct can beat pulling a plain text file from a website but Teleindustrian also provides the data in PDF format for the Adobe fans out there.

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