Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Following a piracy crackdown in Denmark and the closure of the largest torrent sites as part of a joint Rights Alliance and police operation, content-hungry pirates dispersed to find new homes.

With DanishBits and NordicBits consigned to history, many ended up at Asgaard, a relatively young private members site happy to take on new members.

Opening up under these circumstances was a bold but risky move. Within weeks the site’s operators belatedly arrived at the same conclusion and decided to shut down before things got out of hand. They were already too late; multiple arrests, a string of prosecutions, and several convictions followed.

Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance is now reporting the details of yet another Asgaard-related conviction.

Sharing Pirated eBooks & Paywalled Articles

Asgaard announced its closure in mid-December 2020 but that didn’t stop at least one of the site’s staff spending Christmas in prison .

The announcement also failed to prevent Rights Alliance and Danish police from investigating offenses that took place months before Asgaard offered to take in new members. Or indeed, offenses that took place even after Asgaard shut down.

According to Rights Alliance, a member of Asgaard was also part of a piracy release group known as ‘Xoro6’. Between July and December 2020, the now 41-year-old man from Funen illegally copied and shared over 1,000 eBooks, audiobooks, newspaper articles and magazines with other Asgaard users.

Around 85 of the articles were obtained from a paywalled service operated by Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet. The anti-piracy group says that the man gained access to the platform using credentials belonging to legitimate subscribers to the service.

Six-Month Suspended Prison Sentence

On June 22, 2023, at the Court of Odense, the former Asgaard member was handed a six-month suspended sentence for sharing the eBooks and the paywalled articles obtained using the credentials of unsuspecting Ekstra Bladet+ subscribers. But that wasn’t all.

“The 41-year-old was also convicted of eight counts of fraud in online shopping,” a statement from Denmark’s National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) adds.

“Here, he had falsely claimed to the sellers that he had either not received the goods or had returned them. Therefore, he unjustifiably got his money back.”

Rights Alliance says the man defrauded online stores to the tune of DKK 17,229 ($2,524) but his offending didn’t stop there.

Plex Server Subscriptions

The man was reported to the authorities in January 2021 for the eBook and article-sharing offenses but despite the shutdown of Asgaard, infringement of other types of media continued.

“He then became involved in running a Plex server where at least 3,468 movies and series were made available to paying customers. A relationship for which he was also convicted in court,” Rights Alliance notes.

“Here he was responsible for advertising the Plex server on platforms such as Discord and also for registration, payment and guidance of the service’s customers, who could buy access to the server for DKK 100 [US$15] per month.”

The Slippery Slope

“It is not the first time that we see cases like this, where illegal sharing of creative content easily becomes a criminal slippery slope to more serious offenses,” says Rights Alliance director, Maria Fredenslund.

“It is therefore important to intervene early, so that we avoid rights holders as well as general consumers and companies being exposed to a wide range of criminal acts.”

On top of his suspended sentence, the man was also ordered to pay DKK 41,715 (US$6,111) compensation to Rights Alliance. Given the level of offending and the aggravating factors, that’s not much compared to similar cases elsewhere. Nevertheless, NSK deputy prosecutor Brian Borgstrøm says the outcome is acceptable.

“I am satisfied with the verdict, which emphasizes that organized and systematic infringement of copyright is a form of crime which the authorities take seriously,” Borgstrøm concludes.

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

Read 28 remaining paragraphs | Comments

There’s something special about professionally produced textbooks. From the information inside to the tactile feel of the paper, textbooks can be items of beauty.

Unfortunately, reality rains on the parade more than just a little. Textbooks are bulky, woefully underpowered for mass research purposes, and then suddenly out date for any number of reasons. After factoring in the extraordinary expense, it’s no surprise that some turn to sites like the recently resurrected Z-Library .

Check Out The Bargains, Beware of the Scams

A student posting on Reddit’s /r/college earlier this year posed questions about digital textbooks. As a distance learner, digital copies made sense since they don’t have to be physically returned.

After spotting a website offering every textbook the student needed for ‘just’ $20 each, a question needed to be answered: Is Fenlita.com really ‘legit’?

As suggested by some of the responses, sites selling new textbooks for $20 should always be viewed with caution. Several people claiming to have used Fenlita say they pretty much got what they expected – a pirated copy of a textbook in PDF format, in some cases delivered via a Dropbox link.

Other reviews and reports suggest more serious problems for potential buyers.

One reported purchase consisted of a file that “took about an hour” to download and then turned out to be 400 pages of screenshots. Given the low price, that might’ve been tolerable; if the textbook in its original form hadn’t run to 650 pages.

Reports of multiple charges to credit cards and items appearing in baskets multiple times weren’t supported by proof but are still a concern. A report from a buyer, who complained that a download link went to an apparently ‘seized’ website, hardly inspires confidence.

Publishers Target Fenlita.com

Given the above, it’s interesting to note that major educational publishers Cengage, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson were in court earlier this month on a mission to unmask the operator of Fenlita.com via DMCA subpoena.

Court documents reveal that the publishers filed a complaint with domain registrar Namecheap on February 21, 2023. When the website remained operational, counsel for the publishers filed a second complaint on March 2, requesting an urgent response.

The application was accompanied by four-and-a-half pages of microscopic text listing hundreds of URLs where infringing textbooks were being offered.

The publishers asked Namecheap to take action, including by disabling the fenlita.com domain. When that didn’t happen, Cengage, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson asked a Washington court to compel Namecheap to hand over the domain owner’s personal details.

Namecheap Ordered to Unmask Domain Owner

The court granted the request a few days ago, and after being served with the DMCA subpoena, Namecheap must now produce the following:

Identifying information for the person(s) responsible for the alleged infringing content listed in the attached Exhibit A, including but not limited to billing or administrative records that provide the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), account number(s), or any other contact information for such persons.

These requests for information aren’t always successful. Domain buyers are often aware of the trail they leave behind, so it’s possible that Namecheap has only false information to hand over. That being said, the publishers’ are likely to be aware of the bigger picture.

Commerical Pirates and Deception

Most pirate sites have no interest in passing themselves off as legal suppliers. For commercial operations like Fenlita, the impression of being a legitimate vendor offering discounts is helpful when offering pirate copies available for free elsewhere.

A physical address for the ‘company’ behind Fenlita.com features prominently on the website. It leads to a residential property in Sedalia, Missouri, and is unlikely to be genuine. The same address is linked to ads promoting an ethical and environmentally aware seller of returned Amazon books.

Fenlita endeavor to redirect books from landfills, keep books reasonable, offer assistance support library maintainability and through their accomplices, give important arrangements to the worldwide issue of lack of education. That books are a ageless expression of disclosure, creative ability, and accomplishment. Fenlita let stories live on by guaranteeing books are perused once more, given to somebody in require, or reused as another valuable buyer great with a modern story to tell.

This entire pitch was ripped off from genuine booksellers, Discover Books , before being transformed into a mangled mess. That adds to the weight of evidence pointing to an operation people should really avoid.

Unfortunately, people seeking advice from the ‘People also ask’ section of Google search are likely to get the opposite impression. In fairness to Google, the structure of the linked article doesn’t help.

Google’s Transparency Report reveals that since January 2023, the publishers sent takedown notices requesting 12,113 fenlita.com URLs to be removed from search results. Unfortunately, 99.4% of those requests failed to remove anything because the URLs didn’t exist when Google processed the request.

It’s not hard to see why that might be annoying for the publishers but buyers might be a little annoyed too.

WHOIS records show that fenlita.com was registered with Namecheap in October 2021 and currently uses Cloudflare which hides its server IP address. In Fenlita’s case, it was possible to obtain an IP address of a server it had used in the past when Cloudflare wasn’t providing cover.

Payments Diverted, Spam Calls Accepted

When people buy books from Fenlita today, without their knowledge their payment is processed on a subdomain of another ‘book’ store located at getelfinbook.com, which uses the same IP address used by Fenlita in the past.

Whether people supply or have their phone numbers obtained by the platform in other ways is unclear, but in the tiniest of print, buyers agree to receive recurring automated text messages from an automatic dialing system which charges for the privilege.

The same IP address mentioned earlier shows hundreds of similar sites, all products of an instant online shopping website creation platform. We haven’t viewed them all but we did check a few dozen, and many show hallmarks of some type of scam; fake addresses and fake contact details, images culled from other sites, and the same bogus DMCA complaint page.

The publishers’ DMCA subpoena application can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , pdf)

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

Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

As an employee of Simon & Schuster, London-based Filippo Bernardini would’ve been expected to act in the interests of the publishing sector. According to a federal indictment unsealed early 2022, that was certainly not the case.

Between August 2016 and July 2021, Bernardini used his insider knowledge as a rights coordinator to execute an audacious plan that would see him obtain more than a thousand pre-release manuscripts of novels and other unreleased books.

Following his arrest by the FBI, after touching down at John F. Kennedy International Airport last January, the Department of Justice revealed an extraordinarily complex operation that relied on deception and Bernardini’s knowledge of the publishing world.

Unpicking Pre-Release Content Security

In all entertainment industry sectors, content being prepared for general release is closely guarded. Unfinished works leaking out to the public can wreak havoc on everyone involved, from authors and publishers to interested parties in film and other secondary markets. Bernardini understood that and went ahead anyway.

U.S. authorities said that Bernardini registered more than 160 domain names that masqueraded as real entities and individuals in the publishing sector. Talent agencies, publishing houses, and literary scouts had their names carefully mimicked in domains with subtle typographical errors, not unlike those deployed in phishing operations.

Supported by those domains, Bernardini created email addresses in the names of real people who worked at the entities he mimicked, and used them to contact authors, managers, agents, publishers, and editors. When he solicited copies of unpublished books, novels and other content, targets believed they were speaking to someone in a position of trust.

Impersonated Hundreds of People

Emails recovered by the authorities revealed that Bernardini had impersonated hundreds of people across hundreds of attempts to obtain electronic copies of unreleased content. Some unsuspecting targets were lured to fake websites where they entered their usernames and passwords, only to have them phished and subsequently used by Bernardini in furtherance of his scheme.

In the wake of his arrest, the Italian citizen pleaded not guilty to several charges, including obtaining property under false and fraudulent pretenses and aggravated identity theft. Another charge – causing valuable and unpublished literary manuscripts to be sent and received by wire – carried the prospect of a 20-year prison sentence.

Bernadini Pleads Guilty

On January 6, 2023, a flurry of court filings, including superseding information from the prosecution ( pdf ) , a waiver of indictment ( pdf ) , and Bernardini’s consent to proceed before a magistrate judge ( pdf ) , signaled a change of direction for the Italian.

Filippo Bernardini pled guilty to one count of wire fraud in connection with his multi-year scheme, through which it’s now claimed he obtained more manuscripts than the hundreds announced earlier.

“Filippo Bernardini used his insider knowledge of the publishing industry to create a scheme that stole precious works from authors and menaced the publishing industry,” says U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

“Through impersonation and phishing schemes, Bernardini was able to obtain more than a thousand manuscripts fraudulently. I commend the career prosecutors of this Office as well as our law enforcement partners for writing the final chapter to Bernardini’s manuscript theft scheme.”

The now 30-year-old has agreed to pay restitution of $88,000 and is scheduled to be sentenced before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on April 5, 2023.

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

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments