Visiblement insatisfait de son projet intitulé "The Movie Critic", Quentin Tarantino reprend de zéro pour son dixième et ultime long-métrage.

It’s no secret that the Motion Picture Association (MPA) views site-blocking measures in the United States as the logical next step in their perpetual campaign against piracy.

Working with U.S. Congress members, the plan is to propose judicial site-blocking legislation that will see local ISPs compelled by law to prevent consumer access to pirate sites. A similar but broader effort failed in 2012 but twelve years is a very long time; in the tech and internet world, it’s almost forever.

In the years since the rise and fall of SOPA, the MPA has been the driving force behind site-blocking legislation around the world, modeling dozens of partner countries in the shape of its vision for blocking in the U.S.

At this year’s CinemaCon ‘State of the Industry’ event at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said that the United States now has plenty of catching up to do.

“It’s long past time to bring out laws in line with the rest of the world,” Rivkin said, a reference to the MPA’s substantial body of overseas work it now hopes to replicate back home.

Preparation for the Big Site-Blocking Push

After reliving the high points of 2023 – Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and the portmanteau of the moment, Barbenheimer – Rivkin turned to the bottom line. The MPA’s top man reported box office revenues in the U.S. and Canada up 20 percent on the previous year, and up nearly 30 percent abroad. An unquestionably great achievement, especially without protection from site-blocking.

But while tradition allows for generous helpings of creative imagery in support of the magical silver screen, financial positives are dwelled upon only fleetingly; the fairy dust is quickly dispersed, bringing reality into sharp focus.

Commentary explaining why the figures aren’t as good as they sound, or will take great effort to maintain, helps to calibrate expectations. After assuring everyone they’re in this together, and whatever needs to be done will be done, because that’s what Hollywood does, the groundwork to support demands for new legislation are carefully laid.

It’s a tried and tested system that really does work; Rocky Balboa’s unbreakable determination in 2021 mid-COVID, a home/mobile entertainment market up 24 percent in 2022 and a billion at the box office in the first quarter. Avatar: The Way of Water surging past $2.3 billion in global ticket sales, Top Gun: Maverick at $1.5 billion and still plenty of jet fuel left in the tank.

Then a short pause as the tension builds for the annual stark reminder; American creators are under attack, just as they were last year, the year before, and every year before that.

We have no illusions about the scope and the severity of the problem……The challenges are as daunting as they are uncertain….. One of the biggest existential threats to our collective future.

Used during the last three CinemaCons, the warnings above won’t be enough this year. Not at a time when Congress is listening.

Piracy is Visible, Behind The Scenes Lies Worse

Piracy rhetoric usually finds itself delivered in a way that counters notions of stability based on reported business successes. When an urgent drive for new legislation is imminent, there’s no room for complacency and at CinemaCon the nature of the threat left nothing to the imagination.

“Remember, these aren’t teenagers playing an elaborate prank. The perpetrators are real-life mobsters, organized crime syndicates, many of whom engage in child pornography, prostitution, drug trafficking, and other societal ills,” Rivkin informed the audience.

And it’s not just big companies facing immediate threat; the entire country is at risk.

“They operate websites that draw in millions of unsuspecting viewers whose personal data can then fall prey to malware and hackers,” Rivkin said. “In short, piracy is clearly not a victimless crime.”

People shouldn’t go about their work in fear, however. They should listen to a story first.

Telling a Compelling Story

Rivkin told CinemaCon that the MPA focuses on two pillars: Protecting content and the people who produce it, which together pave the way for the industry to reach even bigger audiences worldwide.

“To make that happen, we need to keep doing what we do best: telling a compelling story,” the head of the MPA explained.

“When I head to Capitol Hill in DC or State Capitols throughout the country, for example, I paint a picture of the ways our productions bolster communities: how film and television support 2.74 million American jobs; how production comprises 122,000 businesses; and how our incredible industry boasts a trade surplus with nearly every nation on earth.

Today, our job involves another plotline countering a central threat to the security of workers, audiences, and the economy at large: Widespread, digital piracy.

“This problem isn’t new. But piracy operations have only grown more nimble, more advanced, and more elusive. These enterprises are engaged in insidious forms of theft, breaking laws each time they steal and share protected content. These activities are nefarious by any definition, detrimental to our industry by any standard, and dangerous for the rights of creators and consumers by any measure,” Rivkin warnned.

Mobsters, organized crime syndicates, child pornographers, prostitution, drug trafficking, malware and hackers. Hundreds of thousands of jobs stolen from workers and tens of billions of dollars from the U.S. economy, “including more than one billion in theatrical ticket sales.”

As stories go, it’s as compelling as a synopsis accompanying a good film on Netflix which promises and then delivers, exactly as advertised. Or a bad one, where the exciting stuff appears in the synopsis yet somehow never makes it into the movie.

Regardless, the MPA has a plan, one that will protect content, protect creators, return a potential one billion dollars to theaters, and by extension, keep all Americans safe.

Blocking Piracy Websites

As outlined directly to the audience at CinemaCon: The MPA’s Site-Blocking Plan.

So today, here with you at CinemaCon, I’m announcing the next major phase of this effort: the MPA is going to work with Members of Congress to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States.

For anybody unfamiliar with the term, site-blocking is a targeted, legal tactic to disrupt the connection between digital pirates and their intended audience. It allows all types of creative industries – film and television, music and book publishers, sports leagues and broadcasters – to request, in court, that internet service providers block access to websites dedicated to sharing illegal, stolen content.

Let’s be clear: this approach focuses only on sites featuring stolen materials. There are no gray areas here. Site-blocking does not impact legitimate businesses or ordinary internet users. To the contrary: it protects them, too.

And it does so within the bounds of due process, requiring detailed evidence establishing a target’s illegal activities and allowing alleged perpetrators to appear in a court of law. This is not an untested concept.

Site-blocking is a common tool in almost 60 countries, including leading democracies and many of America’s closest allies.

What key player is missing from that roster? Take a look at the map behind me. It’s us!

There’s no good reason for our glaring absence. No reason beyond a lack of political will, paired with outdated understandings of what site-blocking actually is, how it functions, and who it affects.

Yet experiences worldwide have now answered these concerns and taught us unmistakable lessons: Site-blocking works. It dramatically reduces traffic on piracy sites. It substantially increases visits to legal sites. Simply put, this is a powerful tool to defend what our filmmakers create and what reaches your theaters.

To show what site-blocking could achieve in the United States, Rivkin homed-in on a site that has thus far proved impossible to shut down, one that was highlighted in a House Subcommittee hearing last December .

FMovies Comment Reveals More Than Just Site-Blocking

There’s little doubt that FMovies represents a primary enforcement target for Hollywood, or rather it would be a target if authorities in Vietnam wanted to do something about it, which apparently they do not. While obviously a negative for Hollywood, when advocating for site-blocking legislation, FMovies is a lobbying gift on a golden platter.

“One of the largest illegal streaming sites in the world, FMovies, sees over 160 million visits per month and because other nations already passed site blocking legislation, a third of that traffic still comes from the United States”, Rivkin explained.

The 160 million visits per month estimate seems conservative and may have been measured in February when the site experienced an unexplained dip. In January, FMovies received almost 198 million visits and in March, traffic was returning to normal levels of around 192 million visits per month.

However, Rivkin’s follow-up comment to the theater-focused audience at CinemaCon may be an indication that the MPA has more on its mind than just blocking.

“Imagine if those viewers couldn’t find pirated versions of films through a basic internet search . Imagine if they could only watch the latest great movies when they’re released in their intended destinations: your theaters. If we had site-blocking in place, we wouldn’t have to imagine it. We’d have another tool to make that real,” he said.

Memories of SOPA: “Blocking Didn’t Break The Internet”

Rivkin mentions the SOPA defeat in 2012 by citing one of the key claims by the opposition. They warned that eventually, one way or another, blocking would end up “breaking the internet” but a dozen years later, Rivkin noted that the “internet is doing just fine.”

While that is still likely to be a hot topic for debate in the coming months, Rivkin’s search engine comment deserves more attention.

Search engine removals or deindexing by companies such as Google don’t automatically happen just because a site is blocked by ISPs in a particular territory. What we know from blocking in Europe is that Google will remove sites from its results if a blocking order exists against a site, even if Google isn’t named in the order. In the SOPA era, that would never have happened, and certainly not voluntarily.

Times Change, But By How Much?

In today’s environment, there seems to be no obvious obstacle to prevent Google from doing the same, should site-blocking become available in the United States. If that type of cooperation does become the standard, perhaps Google will cooperate when it comes to blocking sites that use its DNS too.

We don’t know what Google is thinking and it could go either way. What we suspect is that a re-run of 2012, with the entire tech world united in opposition to SOPA and blocking in general, seems much less likely today.

The MPA could tip the scales even further in its favor by telling more detailed stories about the real-life mobsters and organized crime syndicates behind pirate sites it will actually name, in public, with supporting evidence.

If not for the sake of Hollywood, bringing the child abuse, prostitution, and drug trafficking to an end might be the biggest PR coup ever seen. As the basis for a box office record-breaker in which Hollywood itself stars, would be all the more tempting, especially in the absence of piracy.

Image credit: Stockcake

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

Le projet open source Movie-Web, une application permettant de streamer des films via des sources tierces, a perdu son site public. Cette suspension, opérée par le registrar Namecheap, fait suite à une plainte émanant de plusieurs grandes sociétés de production cinématographique, dont Warner Bros, Netflix, Paramount, Universal, et Disney.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Over the past several years and especially over the past several months, major rightsholders’ interest in India appears to have risen.

India’s piracy rates provide the most obvious explanation but seemingly sudden and escalating use of India-based anti-piracy outfits is more difficult to quantify. Maybe they’re simply cheaper than the alternatives, or perhaps the jurisdiction has benefits. Certainly, Indian courts might already be providing access to one of the most powerful anti-piracy tools seen in years.

Cautious Approach Disappears Into History

Last May, the High Court in Delhi issued an injunction that among other things, required ISPs to block domain names that hadn’t even been registered. That was just another example of what can be obtained relatively easily from an Indian court today that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Guided by the experience of courts in other jurisdictions, in April 2019 the High Court of Delhi issued the country’s first dynamic injunction , carefully crafted to deal with pirate site countermeasures such as domain hopping and mirror sites.

The Court acknowledged the “wide ramifications” of permanent site-wide blocking orders, the need to mitigate risk of over-blocking, and the corresponding need for judicial scrutiny. Justice Manmohan’s order also considered the importance of balancing the interests of rightsholders, ISPs, and the public, with a strictly proportionate response to online piracy.

Supercharging Site-Blocking

Having brought India right up to date, courts seemed happy to press ahead. Within months, a court ordered the preemptive blocking of over 1,100 websites , to protect a movie that hadn’t been released yet, while injunctions issued previously were updated to tackle the hydras .

In September 2022, the High Court of Delhi issued a site-blocking injunction that required domain registrars in the United States to immediately suspend a list of site domain names. The stated aim was to prevent an unreleased movie from appearing on those domains, at an unknown date sometime in the future. A month later another court handed down an order to block over 13,400 sites to protect another unreleased movie.

Major U.S. rightsholders could ask a court in the United States for something similar but for obvious reasons, have not. However, Indian courts are much more predictable and, when it comes to site-blocking injunctions, now seem receptive to new mechanisms being included to ensure compliance.

Suspending Domains Under Dynamic+ Injunctions

What we’re able to show today is that at least one domain registrar in the United States has suspended domain names under the instructions of the High Court of Delhi. The suspensions are part of a dynamic+ injunction issued in India last year, to protect the rights of several Hollywood studios and Netflix, ostensibly in India.

There are more than 70 domains in the injunction and orders for domain registrars to suspend them all have already been issued.

The most striking domain in the list is Aniwave.to, a site dedicated to anime that currently receives 317 million visits per month; roughly 40% from the U.S., 9% from the United Kingdom, 8% from Canada, 3.5% Australia, and 2.5% Philippines.

Whatever percentage visit from India, it’s less than 2.5% of the site’s traffic according to SimilarWeb stats. A domain suspension, meanwhile, has global repercussions.

MPA Requests Blocking Injunction

“In a continued effort to curb dissemination of pirated content and its availability on internet, the Plaintiffs who are well established Hollywood Studios have approached this Court seeking blocking and removal of their copyrighted content, from the internet, accessed through rogue websites,” an order handed down by the High Court of Delhi explains.

“The suit is filed against a number of rogue websites who are unlawfully disseminating and communicating a large quantum of copyrighted content of the Plaintiffs,” the order continues, adding that the content “can be accessed and viewed on a variety of devices including Televisions, Personal Computers, Laptops, Tablets, Mobile Phones, etc.”

The order notes that the “rogue websites” offer “illegal viewing almost on a real-time basis” of the studios’ content including Stranger Things, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman, Spider Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and The Jungle Book.

Court Issues Dynamic+ Injnction

In light of the claims, the Court says it’s necessary to restrain the sites from streaming, reproducing, distributing, making available to the public and/or communicating to the public, in any manner, any copyrighted content owned by the Plaintiffs including any content they may own in the future.

The scope of the injunction includes all domains listed above, plus any mirror/redirect websites or alphanumeric websites or any variations thereof. At this point the scope of the injunction starts to become apparent.

“….websites identified in the present suit or any mirror/redirect websites or alphanumeric websites, or any variations thereof including those websites which are associated with the Defendants’ websites either based on the name, branding, identity of its operator, or discovered to provide additional means of accessing the Defendant’s website, and other domains/ domain along with their sub-domains and sub-directories, owners, website operators/ entities or even sources of content.”

Assumed association due to “sources of content” could be significant. The vast majority of movie and TV show piracy sites use the same pool of movie and TV show content by default. Arguing these sources of content are effectively the same wouldn’t be difficult in this type of court procedure, especially when arguing otherwise would require a pirate site operator to explain to the contrary.

Block Domains But Also Suspend Them

The order instructs local ISPs to block the domains listed above and as explained, any and all domains (plus “associated” domains) that subsequently appear to facilitate access to them, in perpetuity. However, it also goes further still by ordering domain name registrars to “lock and suspend” all affected domains while handing over domain owners’ details to the Hollywood studios.

“The Domain Name Registrars (DNRs) of the rogue websites’ domain names, upon being intimated by the Plaintiffs shall lock and suspend the said domain names. In addition, any details relating to the registrants of the said domain names including KYC, credit card, mobile number, etc. be also provided to the Plaintiffs,” the order reads.

Whether all registrars will comply remains to be seen but if they want to continue doing business in India, they appear to have little choice . Non-compliance could mean that registrars themselves will be blocked by ISPs.

TorrentFreak can confirm that at least two domains were suspended recently due to this action; fztvseries.mobi and mobiletvshows.net

“In the month of December, Namecheap suspended our domains based on the order from an Indian court,” the former owner of the domains informed us this week.

“The suspension was done without any warning or any sort of communication from either Namecheap or the plaintiff. It was only after noticing the suspension that we reached out to Namecheap. It took approximately five days for Namecheap to reply with an explanation for the suspension.”

Communication between the domain owner and Namecheap is included below.

“Indian courts have a reputation of issuing broad orders that encompass thousands of websites in a single directive, often without thorough verification. Such practices could potentially cause significant global disruption, especially if domain registrars begin to comply with orders from various countries,” the former domain owner concludes.

The sites in question have moved to new domains (fztvseries.live and mobiletvshows.site) and claim that traffic levels have returned to 80% of the levels seen before the suspensions.

Given the nature of the injunction, those domains are vulnerable to being blocked at bare minimum or even seized again. The bigger question is whether Indian courts are now being viewed as the preferred option for enforcement moving forward.

The order issued by the High Court of Delhi can be found here ( pdf )

The domains affected by the initial order are listed below but according to the Court’s instructions, any domains that can be linked to these sites or their operators in future must also be blocked and suspended

fztvseries.mobi
mobiletvshows.net
www.stagatv.com
vexmovies.uno
coolmoviez.cloud
coolmoviez.com.de
coolmoviez.com.co
fztvseries.mobi
mobiletvshows.net
www.stagatv.com
vexmovies.uno
www.coolmoviez.cloud
www.coolmoviez.com.de
www.coolmoviez.com.co
aniwave.to
aniwave.bz
aniwave.ws
aniwave.tv
www.animehana.in
www.animesenpai4u.com
gogoanime.is
w7.123animes.mobi
anix.to
freemovies2021.com
freemovieswatch.tv
freemovieswatch.net
medeberiyaa.com
medeberiyaa.com
kinogo.biz
ridomovies.pw
lmoviestv.com
moviehax.me
ripcrabbyanime.in
moviehunt.us
mlwbd.rent
mlwbd.digital
mlwbd.love
mlwbd.me
mlwbdofficial.com
mlwbd.photos
www.mov.onl
nyafilmer.gg
02tvseries2.com
projectfreetv.one
raretoons.me
raretoonsindia.in.net
uflix.cc
waatchmoviess.top
waatchmovies.top
watchmoviiess.top
yifymovies.xyz
kickassanime.am
kaas.am
kickass.onl
wwI.kickass.help
hindimoviesonline.to
www.hindimovies.to
freedrivemovie.lol
freeseries.watch
hdmp4mania2.com
hdmp4mania I .net
genvideos.org
hdflixtor.com
www.24-hd.com
123serieshd.ru
anihdplay.com
nocensor.cloud
nocensor.click
www2.showbox-movies.net
moviestowatch.tv
moviestowatch.cc
torrentbay.net

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

Après 118 jours d'une grève sans précédent, la situation se dénoue de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique. Quelques semaines après la fin des piquets de grève, le nouvel accord avec les studios a été ratifié.

La grève des acteurs est officiellement terminée, l’accord a été voté

During the summer the UK government announced a new inquiry to investigate what needs to be done to “maintain and enhance” the UK’s position as a global destination for film and television production.

Conducted by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the inquiry invited submissions from stakeholders on numerous topics, including the identification of barriers to maintaining and increasing overseas investment. The UK currently encourages production in the UK through the provision of a generous tax relief framework which has paid out billions to companies ultimately owned by overseas entities.

The Committee sought input on what more could be done to further incentivize production in the UK. In their submissions, companies and their industry groups appear very keen for these financial incentives to continue, but many other areas are highlighted as either problematic or in need of attention.

For the major Hollywood studios of the MPA, IP protection and piracy remain key issues.

Motion Picture Association

The MPA’s submission notes that the UK’s film and television sector has enjoyed record levels of investment. However, if the country’s position as a “creative and economic powerhouse” in audiovisual content is to be sustained, the government and entertainment industries must work closely together.

The UK receives praise for its intellectual property framework, with the MPA describing it as a “gold standard internationally.” For balance, the MPA notes that the government should avoid steps that might undermine IP protections, in response to the challenges presented by AI, for example .

“The good reputation of the UK’s treatment of copyright exceptions was threatened in 2022, when the Government proposed, as part of its national AI strategy, to introduce the new exception to copyright to include the training of AI models for ‘any purpose’,” the MPA writes.

“Companies and organizations, across the creative sector, joined by Parliamentarians, were united in their concerns about these proposals. Thankfully, the Government listened, and decided in February 2023 not to ‘proceed with the original proposals’.”

Well Done, Please Do More

Submissions by the MPA and member studios Warner and Paramount individually, praise the UK for its work fighting online piracy.

For example, the availability of no-fault injunctions under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act has allowed Paramount to mitigate the threats presented by pirate sites. Once again, the term ‘gold standard’ is used. The studios also appreciate the work undertaken by the Police Intellectual Property Unit (PIPCU) in tackling pirate sites and services.

Warner highlights the Intellectual Property Office’s work in bringing together the creative industries and digital platforms to better understand online infringement, and then take action. For example, the IPO helped broker a Voluntary Code of Practice that saw links to infringing content removed from the first page of search results. It also facilitated roundtables leading to preventative measures, including the removal of piracy tutorials from YouTube.

Inevitably, however, more can always be done.

MPA: Enforcement “Increasingly Difficult” in UK

While the same problems exist all around the world, the MPA’s submission to the Committee could be mistaken for highlighting problems specific to the UK.

“The MPA’s experience (and that of other rightholders) of dealing with online infringement in the UK has shown that the growing complexity of investigating and tracing sources of illegal and infringing activity online is making the enforcement of IP rights increasingly difficult,” the MPA reports.

“While there are a range of industry and law enforcement-led initiatives to tackle digital piracy, one of the greatest challenges remains the absence of reliable information on those commercial-scale pirates who are freely using legitimate business infrastructures – such as online hosting, advertising, payment processing and e-commerce platforms – to deliver illegal film and TV services.”

The problem is highlighted by the MPA, and separately by members Warner and Paramount. The former’s summary appears below:

Despite extensive use of the tools already available in UK law to try to trace the operators of illegal services, experience shows these efforts are being thwarted by the ability of criminals to provide commercial services online under a cloak of anonymity, from anywhere in the world.

Often online intermediaries (who provide the infrastructure that enables the illicit services) cannot supply any information that leads to the verification of the illegal service provider. That, or the information they can provide has clearly been stolen, falsified, is incomplete or otherwise misleading. The ease with which bad actors can remain anonymous in their business transactions facilitates digital piracy and potentially other crimes perpetrated online, including acts of digital fraud.

The submissions are united in identifying the same solution to this problem: the UK must implement a ‘Know Your Business Customer’ regime to compel commercial entities (including online intermediaries) to establish the true identity of their business customers as a precondition for selling, and receiving payment for, digital services.

In-Theater ‘Camming’ is a Threat to UK Exhibition Sector

When people record movies directly from cinema screens and then distribute copies online, the damage that does to the exhibition sector’s period of exclusivity has been reported for decades. As Warner’s submission explains;

“Films continue to be recorded in cinemas, both in the UK and other territories, and those illegal copies are distributed online for free via pirate sites and services during the films’ theatrical window. This illegal competition harms the ability of exhibitors to generate revenues, as well as harming the distributors and producers of those films. It is important that this threat is addressed via robust and effective enforcement actions,” the company notes.

The statement doesn’t break any obviously new ground but seems to skew the UK’s position towards the negative, which given recent performance isn’t entirely fair.

By noting that films are still illegally pirated in cinemas “in the UK and other territories” that discounts the achievements reported just last month by the UK’s Film Content Protection Agency, a group that both Warner and Paramount help to finance.

“90% of films pirated worldwide are sourced from cinemas, yet the UK and Ireland has not had a cammed film (a film illegally recorded in a cinema) traced back to its shores for over a year,” the FCPA reported.

Source submissions: Warner Bros. Discovery ( link ) , MPA ( link ) , Paramount ( link )

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

Ce mercredi 8 novembre, le syndicat des acteurs et les représentants des studios sont parvenus à un accord. Hollywood va pouvoir sortir de sa léthargie.

La grève des acteurs touche à sa fin, un accord a été trouvé

Quelques jours avant les traditionnelles célébrations d'Halloween, la SAG-AFTRA partage des recommandations assez surprenantes à ses syndiqués.

Cette année pour Halloween, les acteurs ne peuvent pas faire ce qu’ils veulent