Each year around the end of January, the Office of the United States Trade Representative ( USTR ) publishes its annual review of so-called ‘notorious markets’ known for their connections to intellectual property crime.

In common with previous years, the 2023 edition published Tuesday highlights “prominent and illustrative” examples of mainly online sites and services that either engage directly in piracy, facilitate it, or simply turn a blind eye to infringement while enjoying the benefits. The USTR’s report aims to motivate governments and various players in the private sector to take appropriate action, wherever that’s possible, to disrupt and limit infringement.

2023 Notorious Markets Review

The 2023 Review of Notorious Markets shows that for a persistent few, annual appearances on the list are now considered more likely than sudden absences. The Pirate Bay is present once again, and the same is true for streaming giant Fmovies and academic research repository Sci-Hub. Russia-based trio Rapidgator (file-hosting), RuTracker (torrents) and VK, the largest social media platform in Russia, also maintain their spots.

After an unexplained absence in 2021, YTS.mx reappeared in the report last year. As expected, the most-visited torrent site on the internet also appears in this year’s report.

USTR Highlights Positive Developments, Notable Absentees

Regular readers of the USTR’s reports will have already noted the absence of former torrent giant, RARBG. After being listed as a notorious market for the previous seven years, last May the site suddenly shut down , sending shockwaves through the piracy ecosystem.

Since it proved impossible for us to confirm the specific reasons behind the site’s closure, our best attempt at an explanation last September necessarily relied on circumstantial evidence. The USTR links to that article in its report but the specific reasons for RARBG’s demise remain elusive.

Nevertheless, RARBG’s place in the report has already been occupied by new entry, TorrentGalaxy, a popular torrent site that effortlessly handled additional users and sudden increases in traffic when RARBG unexpectedly disappeared last year. Reportedly hosted in Romania, TorrentGalaxy has cemented its position as one of the most-visited torrent sites in the world.

Other absentees this year include the Premier League-nominated iStreamtoWatch and LalaStreams, which fell following enforcement action by the U.S. government. The USTR also highlights significant enforcement action in 2023 against some of the largest overseas piracy platforms. They come with important caveats, however.

Major Piracy Platforms and the Resurrection Phenomenon

While mitigating the effects of enforcement action is nothing new for pirate sites, today’s ‘hydra response’ can happen at bewildering speed and scale. For some, resilience is already baked in and for those based in problematic jurisdictions, even a more leisurely response can prove effective.

In 2023, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment targeted sites operating under Cuevana3 branding that had featured in earlier notorious markets reports. As the USTR notes, the operation was an immediate success, albeit in much the same way earlier operations targeting Cuevana-branded sites had been too; initially devastating but ultimately temporary .

“Cuevana’s use of multiple domains has allowed variants of the site to remain operational. Despite successful enforcement efforts that enabled right holders to take control of 22 domain name variants in 2023, mirror sites were able to quickly re-emerge under new domains,” the USTR writes. (Officially nominated as Cuevana3.ch, others include go.cuevana3.news, cuevana3.pro, cuevana3.ma, cuevana3.media, and cuevana3.nu)

Mexico-based Pelisplus, a new addition to the 2023 list, is another streaming platform causing problems in Latin America. The USTR says the site services its own visitors but also supplies content to similar sites.

“Pelisplus offers a content management system library service — a database that provides access to pirated movies and television series elsewhere in exchange for payment of a fee or other compensation — and also streams its own catalog of pirated movies and television shows,” the USTR reports. (Nominated as pelisplus.icu. Related sites include pelisplushd.to, pelisplushd.lat, pelisplus.in, and pelisplus.ai)

After receiving a nomination from the MPA last October, the rapid growth of streaming site Vegamovies earns it a prominent newcomer spot in this year’s report. Operating from several domains, it’s claimed that Vegamovies receives almost 185 million visits per month, which could already mean it’s the most-visited site of its type in the world.

Since 96% of its visitors originate from India, Vegamovies has remarkable scope for expansion in international markets.

Vietnam Also Injects Life Into ‘Dead’ Sites

For similar reasons mentioned earlier, regarding Cuevana3, 2embed maintains its notorious status in 2023. The USTR describes 2embed as a “piracy-as-a-service” provider; it crawls pirate sites for infringing content and then supplies it to other platforms.

When 2embed inserts its own ads, content is supplied for free; when customers prefer their own ads, that comes at a price. When the MPA reached an agreement for 2embed to shut down, its response was less predictable.

“Despite successful enforcement action in July 2023 by right holders and anti-piracy trade associations to shut down 2embed.to, which was run from Vietnam, the site is now operating again using different domains,” the USTR notes. (Nominated as 2embed.me. Related sites include 2embed.cc and 2embed.org)

Reanimating Anime

When the world’s largest anime piracy platform pulled an almost identical stunt around the same time last year, notorious market status was all but inevitable.

“Aniwatch, which reportedly became one of the most popular pirate streaming sites in the world this year, also is reportedly a rebrand of a previously popular site, zoro.to,” the USTR notes. “In July 2023, right holders and anti-piracy trade associations shut down zoro.to, which was run from Vietnam, and thereafter the site apparently was rebranded as aniwatch.to.”

The USTR notes that resurrections like these “highlight the importance of pursuing piracy site owners and operators, in addition to shutting down the websites, in order to target the root of infringing content and illegal conduct.”

Pirate IPTV in a State of Flux

After various enforcement measures paid off, IPTV platforms Chaloos, Forever IPTV, iStar Media, and Media Star, are absent from the 2023 report.

After being listed last year, Globe IPTV – historically one of the largest and longest-standing pirate providers – receives no mention in the report published yesterday. In its place is new entrant GenIPTV, one of the services currently being subjected to unconventional blocking measures at the hands of UK subscription broadcaster, Sky TV.

“GenIPTV is one of the largest IPTV providers in the world, reportedly operating through multiple affiliates to sell subscriptions for access to over 10,000 broadcast and streaming channels as well as a video library of over 52,000 copyright-protected titles,” the USTR notes. (Nominated as genip.tv)

Vietnam-based BestBuyIPTV remains on the list this year as does Shabakaty, an unlicensed IPTV service operated by EarthLink Telecommunications, the largest Internet service provider in Iraq. Spider, based in Amman, Jordan, keeps its notorious status due to its persistent sale of pre-loaded set-top boxes and unlicensed IPTV subscriptions.

After the MPA labeled it a priority target last October, IPTV software solution WHMCS Smarters now appears in the USTR’s full report.

“WHMCS Smarters is a company in India that sets customers up in the illegal IPTV business by building for them a customized ‘over the top’ (OTT) IPTV platform from scratch and providing end-to-end support,” the USTR notes.

“While WHMCS Smarters states that they do not sell infringing streams, channels, or other content or subscriptions, it does sell the software, tools, and services an individual would need to establish and operate his or her own ‘off the shelf’ illegal IPTV business.”

Music, Shadow Libraries, File-Hosting

Having previously been considered priority enforcement targets, stream-ripping platforms flvto.biz and 2conv.com, and fellow music piracy platforms MP3Juices and NewAlbumReleases, are absent from this year’s report. Instead, SSYoutube.com has burst onto the scene after being identified as the most popular YouTube-ripping platform in the world, pulling in an estimated 343 million visits per month.

On the file-hosting front, Krakenfiles (incorrectly listed in the report as Kra n kenfiles) and Savefrom are new additions to the notorious markets list. There’s no change for shadow libraries Sci-Hub and Libgen, but the USTR now links both platforms with relative newcomer, Annas-archive.org.

A copy of the USTR’s 2023 Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf). A list of highlighted sites/services, including those listed for counterfeiting, reads as follows:

Torrent Sites

– 1337X
– RuTracker
– The Pirate Bay
– TorrentGalaxy (new)
– YTS.mx

File-Hosting/Cyberlockers

– 1fichier
– Krakenfiles (new)
– Rapidgator
– Savefrom (new)

E-Commerce

– Aliexpress (no longer listed)
– Baidu Wangpan
– Bukalapak
– DHgate
– Indiamart
– Pinduoduo
– Shopee
– Taobao

PaaS

– 2embed
– WHMCS Smarters (new)

Advertising

– Avito

Streaming /IPTV

– Aniwatch (new)
– BestBuyIPTV
– Cuevana3 (new)
– Fmovies
– GenIPTV (new)
– Pelisplus (new)
– Shabakaty
– Spider
– Streamtape (new)
– VegaMovies (new)

Hosting/Infrastructure

– Amaratu
– DDoS-Guard (new)
– FlokiNET
– Squitter (new)

Social Media

– VK
– WeChat

Gaming

– NSW2U (new)

Music

– SSYouTube (new)

Publishing

– Libgen
– Sci-Hub

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

Following a request by the Office of the United States Trade Representative for stakeholders to identify so-called ‘notorious markets’ involved in large-scale infringement, submissions are now publicly available.

After reporting on submissions by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) ( 1 ) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ( 2 ) this week, today we present a roundup of three key submissions, all of which target the pirate IPTV / live sports streaming ecosystem.

Anti-Piracy Coalitions, Members, Overlaps

Submissions by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), Football Association Premier League, plus a joint submission by beIN Media and Miramax, contain considerable detail on the problems faced by sports leagues and their broadcasting partners.

In some cases the nominated pirate services appear in more than one report. That’s not unexpected among companies in the same market but since some rightsholders are represented in more than one submission, for the sake of clarity those are shown in bold below.

AAPA members : Altice France, beIN Media Group , Canal+, Cosmote TV, CryptoGuard, Cyta, DAZN, DFL, Friend MTS, Irdeto, LeakID, LFP, Liberty Global, Nagra Kudelski, NOS, OPSEC, Premier League , Sky, Synamedia, United Media, Verimatrix, Viaccess Orca, Viaplay Group, Vodafone Ziggo, Wiley (S1)
Individual submission: Sole rightsholder Premier League (S2)
Joint submission: Miramax and beIN Media (S3)

Illicit IPTV Services

BestBuyIPTV heads the list of illicit IPTV services in the Premier League’s individual submission (S2).

“BestBuyIPTV is a very popular global IPTV service that carries channels from broadcasters located all around the world, including many that carry Premier League content. Investigations conducted by the Premier League have located the operator of the service in Vietnam.” (Premier League)

Forever TV (affiliates Chaloos and Mediastar ) takes the top spot in both the AAPA’s submission (S1) and the joint beIN/Miramax submission (S3). The IPTV service appears second in the Premier League’s report and is considered a major threat.

“The service operates from a website at https://foreveriptv.net/ where it offers subscriptions to its service as well as a re-streamer and re-seller program, which rewards third parties for further distribution of its pirated content.” (AAPA)

“These services between them are responsible for the unauthorized provision of thousands of premium TV channels and on-demand movies and TV content. Chaloos was named by the United States Trade Representative (‘USTR’) on its 2022 Notorious Markets List.” (Premier League)

Other IPTV services listed by the Premier League include the following (comments summarized):

EVPad: One of the most popular illicit streaming services across South East Asia. The business is extremely sophisticated. 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.

Family Box: Nominated in both Premier League and beIN/Miramax submissions. “Family Box is both a terrestrial pirate organization covering Kurdistan, and an IPTV pirate organization with global coverage. Its offices are in Erbil, Iraq,” beIN reports. Almost identical text appears in the Premier League’s individual submission, most likely since they’re both members of AAPA.

Globe IPTV: One of the most prominent wholesalers of content to pirate services around the world. Has supplied multiple pirate services that have been the subject of historical and ongoing legal action. Rightsholders have identified Globe’s operator in Lebanon.
(TF note: Globe was a supplier to Flawless TV. The roles were later reversed)

SVI Cloud: An illicit streaming device very popular in South East Asia. Operates both online and through an extensive list of resellers with over 70 physical locations listed as selling the device on their official website. (TF note: 17 people were arrested in Singapore early October and 2,500 devices seized. Follows a similar crackdown in Taiwan.)

Pirate Streaming Sites/Cyberlockers/Others

Both AAPA and Premier League have nominated web-based streaming sites to the USTR and in some cases the same platforms appear on both lists.

Livetv.sx , a popular sports stream indexing site, receives nominations from both, with the Premier League noting its availability in 12 different languages and an estimated 129 million global online visits since October 2022. The site is subject to Premier League blocking injunctions in multiple jurisdictions. AAPA believes the site is operated from Cyprus, Kazakhstan and/or Russia.

Freestreams-live1 receives a nomination from the Premier League. Previously the site operated from the domain freestreams-live1.com, but after that was seized by Homeland Security Investigations, freestreams-live1.tv became the site’s new domain.

Totalsportek (Poland), VIPBox (Germany), and Xoilac (Vietnam) were also reported by the Premier League.

LSHunter.net , Streamonsport , Rojadirecta , Soccerstreams.football , Totalsportek.pro , Filmmoviplex.com , RLSBB , Soap2day (variants), 1movieshd.com , Papadustream , Score808 , futemax.to , Pobretv.net , and YTS , were reported by AAPA.

We conclude with the AAPA’s cyberlocker and eBook nominations which include both Sci-Hub and Libgen due to publisher Wiley becoming an AAPA member.

The AAPA’s submission to the USTR is available here ( pdf )

The Premier League’s submission is available here ( pdf )

The beIN / Miramax submission is available here ( pdf )

———-

Other AAPA IPTV nominations not detailed above: GoGo IPTV , Apollo 5 , Yacine TV , Cobra TV , IPTV Smarty , IPTV Main , Bobres IPTV , SyberTV , Apollo Group TV , Xtreme HD , King IPTV , Orca IPTV , Dezor , META IPTV , 4KEVO IPTV , and XCTV IPTV .

(TF note1: AAPA reports that Cobra IPTV is “one of the most significant pirate IPTV services with worldwide popularity. TF note2: Sky obtained permission from the UK High Court in July to block IPTVMain’s servers . Others subject to blocking include BunnyStreams, GenIPTV, and GoTVMix)

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

The InterPlanetary File System, more broadly known as IPFS , has been around for the past eight years.

While the name may sound otherworldly to the public at large, the peer-to-peer file storage network has a growing user base among the tech-savvy.

In short, IPFS is a decentralized network where users make files available to each other. The system makes websites censorship resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages.

These advantages allow archivists, content creators, researchers, and many others to reliably distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. These same features also appeal to pirate sites, and several have actively started to embrace the technology to bypass censors.

Publishers Share IPFS Concerns

This week, IPFS was repeatedly mentioned by the Association of American Publishers ( AAP ) in its overview of the most notorious piracy markets submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative. The list includes the usual suspects, such as Z-Library, Sci-Hub and Libgen.

In addition to these main threats, the publishers say they are “increasingly concerned” with how these shadow libraries exploit IPFS to host and distribute pirated books and articles.

While it’s difficult to the stop distribution of content once it’s on IPFS, many people use gateway sites to access the content. These gateways serve as an intermediary and allow anyone to access IPFS-hosted sites without having to install dedicated software.

These gateways are helpful for those who only access IPFS content occasionally. The publishers see them as a threat, as they make the piracy angle easier too.

“Notorious piracy networks such as Libgen and Z-Library are already exploiting public gateways within the Interplanetary File System to host and distribute copyright protected content in a decentralized manner,” AAP informs the USTR.

IPFS Gateway Takedowns

The publishers recognize that IPFS technology has legal uses and that it’s intended to provide a resilient and more secure infrastructure. However, they hope that gateways are willing to address the piracy problem.

Most gateways accept copyright infringement notices. This includes Cloudflare’s version, which is one of the examples mentioned by the publishers. According to Cloudflare’s most recently published transparency report , it took more than 1,000 IPFS abuse ‘actions’ in six months.

More recent information suggests that IPFS gateways are flooded by DMCA takedown notices , which caused at least one operator to shut down their ‘fun’ project. Other gateways have disappeared recently as well, perhaps in part due to similar copyright troubles.

The publishers don’t blame the gateways directly and recognize that they accept takedown notices. Ideally, they should do more than that by preventing pirated content from being distributed through their platforms, they argue.

“While IPFS gateways are responsive to individual reports of infringement, preventing notorious piracy networks, such as Libgen, from exploiting their services would greatly improve enforcement efforts,” the publishers write.

Slippery Slope

AAP doesn’t offer any concrete suggestions but it would likely want to see these gateways actively blocking pirate sites. That might be an easy way to address the issue, but it’s also a slippery slope, particularly for a network that’s ultimately intended to be censorship-resistant.

TorrentFreak reached out to IPFS for a comment on the publishers’ remarks but the project didn’t immediately respond.

In the grander scheme, the publishers still have bigger problems to worry about for now. Many of the sites AAP flagged as “notorious markets” are still available on the open web, distributed through regular web browsers. Perhaps these will also pose a problem some day.

—

A copy of the Association of American Publishers’ notorious markets recommendation is available here (pdf) . Below, we list an overview of all the sites and services that it mentions.

Notorious Markets

– Afkebooks.com
– Alibaba (Taobao and Goofish)
– Anna’s Archive
– Avaxhome
– Libgen.rs (also libgen.is; libgen.st; library.lol; library.bz; libgen.fun – for IPFS content)
– Nitroflare.com
– Rapidgator.net
– Sci-hub.se
– Shopee
– Uploadgig.com

Other Services

Lunwenxiazai.com
Read Online Sites (e.g. Idoc.pub / full-english-books.net)
Telegram
1337 Services (Njalla)
Rogue Hosting Providers (e.g. Contabo.com / Incognet.io)

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

Every year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative ( USTR ) publishes a list of ‘notorious markets’ that facilitate online piracy and related intellectual property crimes.

Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

For more than a decade we have covered the online part of the report. Traditionally, that includes prominent torrent sites, download portals, cyberlockers, and streaming services that offer copyrighted content without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

In recent years, the scope of the report has broadened. For example, we have seen hosting companies, advertisers, and social media platforms being added. These don’t have piracy as their core business, but they allegedly facilitate infringing activity.

2022 Notorious Markets Review

Yesterday, the USTR published its 2022 Review of Notorious Markets. According to Ambassador Katherine Tai, the annual overview will help companies and countries to take proper action, where needed.

“The Notorious Markets List is an important tool that urges the private sector and our trading partners to take action against these harmful practices,” Tai notes , commenting on the release of the report.

The importance and political clout of the report shouldn’t be understated. However, the fact that some names have been listed for over a decade, shows that there are no guarantees for improvement.

Familiar Names

Looking at the 2022 Review of Notorious Markets, we see the usual suspects, including The Pirate Bay, RARBG, Rapidgator, Fmovies, Sci-Hub and 2Conv. These all come with a short description of the sites and why they are deemed problematic by rightsholders.

Some dedicated IPTV services and related companies such as Globe IPTV are called out as well, while ‘bulletproof’ hosting companies (Amaru / Flokinet) and even social media platforms (VK / WeChat) get mentioned too.

The same is true for popular foreign e-commerce platforms such as Aliexpress, Baidu Wangpan and Shopee.com. These stores are often linked to the sale of counterfeit goods. Meanwhile, there is no mention of anime piracy sites, which are massively popular.

Newcomers

This year’s overview only delivers a few new names, including torrent sites Rutracker and YTS. The latter was noticeably missing last year, despite being the most visited torrent site on the Internet.

Russia-based classified advertisement platform Avato is another newcomer. The same is true for hosting company Amarutu, which hosts many of the largest pirate sites according to rightsholders.

The fifth and final addition is an interesting one. The USTR lists Lalastreams / istream2watch.com as a family of sports streaming sites. And indeed, these were reported by the UK Premier League a few weeks ago.

What the USTR report fails to mention is that the istream2watch.com domain was seized by U.S. law enforcement authorities last December . Other domains from the same group are not called out and remain online.

Dropouts

We expect that istream2watch.com won’t be used as an example next year. And while we’re on the topic, it’s worth mentioning the sites that have been removed from the notorious markets list following appearances last year.

These are:

^{-Blueangelhost (reason unknown)
-Chomikuj.pl ( started filtering )
-Dytt8.net (reason unknown)
-Phimmoi (original site shut down )
-Popcorn Time ( popular fork shut down )
-Private Layer (reason unknown)
-Revenuehits.com (reason unknown)
-Uploaded.net ( shut down voluntarily )}

Finally, it’s worth noting that there are no immediate legal consequences for sites and services that appear on the USTR’s list. That said, over the past year, we have seen several requests in US courts where rightsholders asked intermediaries including ISPs to block domains that appear on the USTR’s annual list.

As far as we know, none of these requests have been granted, but that could change in the future.

—

A copy of the USTR’s 2022 Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf) . The full list of highlighted online sites/services, including those focused on counterfeiting, is as follows:

Torrent Sites
-1337x.to
-Rarbg.to
-Rutracker.org (new)
-Thepiratebay.org
-YTS.mx (new)

Cyberlockers
-1Fichier
-Rapidgator.net

E-commerce
-Aliexpress
-Baidu Wangpan
-Bukalapak.com
-DHgate.com
-Indiamart
-Pinduoduo.com
-Shopee.com
-Taobao.com
-Tokopedia.com

PaaS
-2Embed

Advertising
-Avito (new)

Streaming / IPTV
-Bestbuyiptv.store
-Chaloos
-Cuevana3.io
-Egy.best
-Fmovies / Bmovies / Bflix
-Globe IPTV
-Istar
-Lalastreams / Istream2watch.com (new)
-Pelisplus.icu
-Shabakatv
-Spider

Hosting
-Amaratu (new)
-FlokiNET

Social Media
-VK.com
-WeChat

Gaming
-Mpgh.net

Music
-Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com
-MP3juices.cc
-Newalbumreleases.net

Publishing
-Libgen
-Sci-Hub

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

Even in the wake of dozens of operations aimed at disrupting illegal IPTV services, people looking to buy IPTV packages containing thousands of channels remain spoilt for choice.

At $10/€10/£10 per month, give or take, illegal subscriptions are extremely cheap compared to those offered by legal broadcasters. But for pirates determined never to pay for anything, free alternatives are also available. They tend to be unreliable but can indeed offer a full subscription-like service for zero cost, albeit for limited periods.

Sports leagues and broadcasters such as Premier League and beIN would like to see both disappear for good, a position shared by anti-piracy coalition IBCAP and its partners operating in the same field – ACE, MPA, AAPA, and AVIA, for example.

Lists of services causing specific problems were recently outlined in submissions to the US government. Whether they will be branded ‘notorious markets’ remains to be seen, but it’s interesting to see which platforms could face unexpected pressure in the months and years to come.

Note: Text in italics represents direct quotes from submissions

Premier League: Free Streaming Sites

Premium IPTV providers are all causing problems for Premier League but a number of its recommendations focus on free streaming platforms, most with no barriers to entry.

Lalastreams / istream2watch.com (Germany)

Lalastreams / istream2watch.com is a family of Streaming Websites that have amassed almost 60 million global visits so far in 2022. Approximately 20 domains redirect to istream2watch.com.

As Premier League points out, there’s certainly no shortage of redirecting domains; alastreams.me, stream2watch.club, stream2watch.one, stream2watch.sx, streamgaroo.com are just a few examples.

The Premier League says that it detected over 1,000 infringing live streams on istream2watch.com over the course of the 2021/2022 season. It also claims to have traced “the likely operator” of the platform to Germany.

Livekoora.online

Livekoora is an Arabic language Streaming Website that provides links to live football matches from around the world, including the Premier League. The site provides a list of infringing streams for each match, allowing users to select what they want to watch and play the stream within the website.

Livetv.sx – (Cyprus/Kazakhstan/Russia)

Livetv.sx is a Streaming Website that has historically operated through multiple domains to provide an index of links to live streams of a very broad range of sports events, including live Matches.

According to a Premier League investigation, Livetv.sx has received 125 million visits from its global audience in 2022 alone. The football league also reveals that despite “successful” legal proceedings brought by other rightsholders, the site continues its operations.

Soccerstreams / Weakstreams (Egypt)

Soccerstreams was originally a sub-thread on the Reddit platform which had attracted over 400,000 subscribers. Following pressure by a number of legitimate content owners, including the Premier League, the thread was suspended by Reddit in January 2019.

Shortly afterwards, however, a website with the same brand name appeared, claiming to be ‘by the founders of /r/SoccerStreams’.

SoccerStreams was once the UK’s most popular pirate site with a global reach in excess of 25 million visits per month.

Traffic today appears to be down about three million visits per month but the Premier League believes that Weakstreams.com is potentially linked since it drives traffic to SoccerStreams. Overall, it estimates that the domains have pulled in 230 million visits to date in 2022.

Totalsportek (Poland)

Totalsportek12 is a major pirate sports Streaming Website that provides links to multiple live sporting events. The site does not post links until about an hour before each live football match starts and when it does, it provides an index of up to 40 links.

The site attracted over 150 million global visits in the last year (October 2021 – September 2022). The Premier League believes that this website is operated by an individual in Poland.

Premier League: Premium IPTV Providers

BestBuyIPTV is already listed by the USTR as a ‘notorious market’. The Premier League claims that the service carries channels from all over the globe, including those carrying Premier League content. Following an investigation, the Premier League says it has located the operator of the service in Vietnam.

That doesn’t appear to have affected the service’s availability, however. BestBuyIPTV is happy to sell subscriptions to the public ($70 per year/7300 channels/9600 VOD titles), resellers, and restreamers alike.

Other IPTV providers listed by the Premier League include Chaloos (Iraq), EV Pad (Hong Kong/China), Globe IPTV (Lebanon), and Redline (Turkey).

Free M3U IPTV Playlists

Earlier this year the Premier League complained to the European Commission about so-called “Open Web Piracy”, i.e freely accessible content available on the web without users having to pay anything.

In their joint submission to the USTR, sports broadcaster beIN and Miramax (which the former controls) list a large number of IPTV-related services that have mostly been covered in one form or another. However, the companies also draw attention to what they say is a “serious and rapidly growing problem.”

Players in the IPTV system that provide rather than consume content, often have access to management dashboards. Known simply as ‘panels’, these interfaces allow for the distribution of IPTV channels and chosen access controls. They can also generate ‘playlists’ in the form of small, portable text files, usually in .M3U format.

These files are appearing online more than ever before, and since they often carry login credentials, access to pirate IPTV platforms becomes essentially free. They can be opened in software such as VLC but unlike torrent files, playlists can be remotely disabled at any moment.

Playlists are quick and cheap, but despite being unreliable too, beIN would like those who distribute them to be labeled as ‘notorious’ when the USTR publishes its report.

These temporary playlists have, in recent years, been distributed online by a number of sources.This has become a very popular means to access pirate sports content, in particular, given that the playlists are available shortly before games commence. Some of the fora dedicated to sharing these illegal IPTV playlists, and which are notorious for piracy, include:

• https://iptvlistm3u.com/
• https://m.tousecurity.com/
• https://usa.m3uiptv.com/
• https://artiptv.net/
• https://www.dailyiptvlist.com/
• http://iptvhit.com/freeiptv
• https://best.freeiptv.life/
• https://www.iptvsource.comhttps://m3u.bestfreeiptv.com/
• https://dwdvb.com/all-country-free-iptv-channel-links-m3u-playlis-2022/
• https://talysports.com/free-iptv-channel-links-m3u-playlist/

Finally, it’s interesting to see which sites and services are nominated for action but at the same time, some extremely big platforms are not put forward by rightsholders at all. It seems unlikely that they’re unaware of their existence, so that raises the question of why they’re absent from the list.

Information like that isn’t made public, but since submissions are, perhaps it’s a case of not rocking the boat during sensitive periods or simply waiting until the time is right.

Three IPTV-related submissions to the USTR can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 )

Image credit: Pixabay/ geralt

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

Earlier this month, several prominent copyright holder groups sent their annual “notorious markets” recommendations to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).

The U.S. Government uses these documents as input for its yearly review of notorious piracy markets, which aims to provide an overview of threats to various copyright industries.

The recommendations, including those from the RIAA , MPA , and ESA, traditionally focus on well-known piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay and Fmovies. Increasingly, however, third-party technology providers are also being added to the mix.

Notorious Intermediaries?

For example, domain registrars and hosting services are regularly called out, and the same is true for advertising and payment companies. Cloudflare has been frequently mentioned as well, although it’s not officially listed since the overview focuses on foreign entities.

While some of these intermediaries help to facilitate piracy, not everyone agrees that they are notorious piracy markets. Mentioning them in the same breath as criminal enterprises can indeed cause some confusion.

The above summarizes the viewpoint of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, i2Coalition for short. The industry group represents key Internet companies and counts Amazon, Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Google, OVH, Verisign, and many VPN services among its members.

i2Coalition Calls For Clarity

The i2Coalition’s submission to the USTR notes that its members value copyright protection efforts but cautions against making the “notorious markets” definition too broad. In any case, the USTR should ensure that neutral intermediaries are not included.

Internet infrastructure companies are not marketplaces, they don’t manage content directly, and can’t easily remove infringing content, the coalition says. The USTR should keep this in mind and reflect this distinction in its final report.

“Why Internet intermediaries are not notorious markets is not just a semantic difference. It is crucial to understand the underlying technologies and limitations when discussing the obligations of providers,” i2Coalition writes.

“For instance, DNS and cybersecurity service providers, like some i2Coalition companies, route requests through a globally distributed network. Their technology creates the pathway between a series of numbers and signals and the ‘web’.

“By their nature, these businesses have limited access to the content information they transmit; they lack the capacity to access it or make qualitative analyses or judgments about it,” the coalition adds.

Congress Could Step In

While the USTR’s most recent reports haven’t listed these neutral Internet infrastructure intermediaries as notorious markets, they regularly feature in copyright holder submissions. This undermines the effectiveness of the annual reviews, the coalition warns.

The i2Coalition would like the USTR to work on a narrower definition of the term “notorious market”. An even better solution would see Congress getting involved to rewrite the definition to make sure that neutral Internet infrastructure companies can carry on their business without piracy accusations.

With more clarity, i2Coalition hopes that neutral intermediaries will no longer be added to the “notorious markets” category.

“This lack of clarity in the past few years has tended to result in numerous parties filing comments with USTR as part of this process alleging infringement and proffering submissions to the notorious markets list either erroneously or in a manner intentionally meant to mischaracterize those who are responsible for the alleged violations.”

The letter doesn’t mention specific companies or services the coalition believes were mistakenly called out. However, the coalition makes it clear that it is essential to clear up what a ‘notorious market’ actually is in today’s digital economy.

—

A copy of the letter, signed by the Internet Infrastructure Coalition’s Executive Director Christian Dawson, is available here (pdf)

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

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a buzzword that’s frequently used by startups and established businesses in the tech industry.

In some cases, it refers to little more than advanced algorithms, but complex self-learning computer systems with human-like traits are actively being developed as well.

From a copyright perspective, AI can bring up some interesting questions. For example, can content created by an AI be copyrighted like any other work? Or perhaps AI can infringe copyrights held by others?

AI Piracy

While legal experts scratch their heads over similar questions, the RIAA has already made up its mind about a selection of services claiming to offer AI music extractors and mixers.

Responding to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), the music group highlighted several of these sites in its annual overview of ‘notorious’ piracy markets.

“There are online services that, purportedly using artificial intelligence (AI), extract, or rather, copy, the vocals, instrumentals, or some portion of the instrumentals from a sound recording, and/or generate, master or remix a recording to be very similar to or almost as good as reference tracks by selected, well known sound recording artists,” RIAA writes.

Songmastr

Songmastr is one of the platforms that’s mentioned. The service promises to “master” any song based on the style of well-known music artists such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Coltrane, Bob Dylan, James Brown and many others.

The site’s underlying technology is powered by the open-source Matchering 2.0 code, which is freely available on GitHub. And indeed, its purported AI capabilities are prominently in the site’s tagline.

“This service uses artificial intelligence and is based on the open source library Matchering. The algorithm masters your track with the same RMS, FR, peak amplitude and stereo width as the reference song you choose,” Songmastr explains.

Where Artificial Intelligence comes into play isn’t quite clear to us. The same can be said for the Acapella-Extractor and Remove-Vocals websites, which the RIAA lists in the same category. The names of these services are pretty much self-explanatory; they can separate the vocals from the rest of a track.

The RIAA logically doesn’t want third parties to strip music or vocals from copyrighted tracks, particularly when these derivative works are further shared with others.

Unauthorized Copies and Derivatives

While Songmastr’s service is a bit more advanced, the RIAA sees it as clearly infringing. After all, the original copyrighted tracks are used by the site to create derivative works, without the necessary permission.

“To the extent these services, or their partners, are training their AI models using our members’ music, that use is unauthorized and infringes our members’ rights by making unauthorized copies of our members works.

“In any event, the files these services disseminate are either unauthorized copies or unauthorized derivative works of our members’ music,” the RIAA’s submission adds.

Thus far, Songmastr doesn’t appear to be a major threat in terms of traffic. With less than 200 visits per day over the past 12 months, it hasn’t really caught on. Acapella-Extractor and Remove-Vocals are more popular, with a few hundred thousand monthly visits.

The RIAA is clearly worried about these services. Interestingly, however, the operator of Songmastr and Acapella-Extractor informs us that the music group hasn’t reached out with any complaints. But perhaps they’re still in the pipeline.

Aside from the emerging AI threats, the RIAA lists various torrent sites, download sites, streamrippers, and bulletproof ISPs in its overview. The popular video app likee.video is also included, as it reportedly failed to obtain proper licenses for the tracks it uses.

The RIAA’s full list of “notorious” pirate sites can be found below, and the full report is available here (pdf) .

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Stream-Ripping Sites

– ytmp3.cc
– mp3juices.cc
– flvto.biz and 2conv.com
– y2mate.com (and related sites yt1s.com, yt5s.com, y2meta.com, , and 9convert.com)
– savefrom.net (and related site savef.net)
– ssyoutube.com

Music Download Sites

– newalbumreleases.net
– intmusic.net
– ak47full.com
– songswave.com

BitTorrent Indexing Sites

– thepiratebay.org
– 1337x.to and mirrored at 1337x.is, 1337x.se, 1337x.st, x1337x.ws, x1337x.eu, and x1337x.se)
– rarbg.to

Cyberlockers

– zippyshare.com
– dbree.org
– rapidgator.net
– turbobit.net
– onlyfiles.io

Unauthorized Short Form Video Services

– likee.video

AI Based Extractors/Mixers

– acapella-extractor.com
– remove-vocals.com
– songmastr.com

Additional Issues

– Bulletproof ISPS: PRQ, FlokiNET, Frantech Solutions/BuyVM, DDoS Guard.
– Nigerian-Operated Infringing Sites: thenetnaija.net, trendybeatz.com, justnaija.com, 24naijamuzic.com and bazenation.com.

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

For many image conscious consumer-orientated businesses, a key to commercial success lies in carefully calibrated branding and marketing.

A hand-picked celebrity with the right attributes, for example, can enhance the images of both parties in the eyes of consumers. These associations can be nurtured through memorable online promotions but for the past several years, some websites have been virtually labeled “proceed with caution”.

Rightsholders Warn Brands Not to Support Piracy

Thousands of pirate sites rely on advertising to generate revenue but entertainment companies are keen to highlight the downsides of dealing with them. The general message is that advertising on illegal platforms not only fuels piracy but also supplies a reputation boost due to association with legitimate companies.

As a result, major brands work with companies such as White Bullet to keep their ads away from pirate platforms, while industry groups such as Hollywood’s MPA lobby authorities to take action against supportive advertisers and networks.

While it’s clear that more can be done, there are plenty of obstacles too. Advertising networks can be extremely complex, pirates have a reputation for deploying countermeasures and adapting to threats, and some advertisers are attracted to the millions of people visiting pirate sites. Other issues are even more tricky.

Imagine a scenario where a major sports rightsholder with its own piracy problems is sponsored by a company accused by Hollywood of using piracy as a promotional vehicle. Then, given the importance of branding and association, imagine that company’s logo is instantly recognized by millions of pirates as being piracy-linked, while those same pirates are being criticized for supporting piracy.

Ridiculous, surely?

Serie A Chief Blames Pirate Fans For Revenue Failures

As CEO of top-tier football league Serie A, Luigi De Siervo has responsibility for ensuring that Italian football is a success locally and elsewhere in Europe. But despite Serie A’s standing as one of the best football leagues in the world, De Servio has a problem.

Known locally as ‘pezzotto’, piracy-configured set-top boxes are often linked to unlicensed IPTV services and other illegal streaming sites. Italian fans looking for cheap viewing options are using them in their droves, diverting money away from the league. This means that Serie A struggles to compete with the most powerful league in Europe, its CEO says.

“How can Serie A compete with the Premier League? We must all do our part,” De Siervo said recently.

“When we hear people talking about the pezzotto and illegal ways of watching matches, we need to ask them to stop. Piracy takes away from Italian football over 300 million euros a year, resources that would be reserved for our clubs.

“This sad record of the Italians who think they are always smarter than the others must end. In reality we are a country of freeloaders, something unacceptable from a public point of view,” he added.

According to the Serie A chief, the financial gap between his league and that of his English rivals is about 500 million euros, a figure that could be cut in half if piracy didn’t exist. While that doesn’t take into account any boost in revenues the Premier League might also gain in the absence of piracy, De Siervo’s messaging is clear; piracy is wrong, damaging, and should not be supported in any way. That might be a problem.

Serie A is Sponsored By 1XBET

Back in 2019, Serie A launched an anti-piracy campaign , declaring that “Piracy Kills Football”. It’s a message still being pushed today but for millions of fans with a tendency to pirate, there is an elephant in the room.

Gambling platform 1XBET has been an official partner of Serie A for years, sponsoring the league’s presentations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas. The original deal noted that 1XBet would be featured in all match graphics, idents and virtual goal mat advertising, in all live Serie A broadcasts.

The problem is that the 1XBET brand is almost synonymous with a specific type of piracy. Hundreds if not thousands of movies illegally camcorded in cinemas have been released online with 1XBET branding. Who records them and puts them online is unclear but it’s safe to say they all like to advertise 1XBET, whoever they are.

Pirates have a love/hate relationship with these poor-quality watermarked releases (and their embedded promo codes) but if people want to watch movies that are still in theaters (Top Gun: Maverick, for example) beggars can’t be choosers.

1XBET watermarks like these will have been seen by a countless number of Serie A pirates over the years, and they are obviously on Hollywood’s radar too.

Hollywood Appeals to US and EU to Act Against 1XBET

In a submission to the Office of the United States Trade Representative last October, the Motion Picture Association gave its reasons why 1XBET should appear on the government’s ‘Notorious Markets’ report.

“1XBET is not an ad network but an advertiser. In 2020 it became the third most active online advertiser in Russia. It is an online gambling site that originated in Russia but now operates worldwide,” the MPA wrote.

“1XBET knowingly and routinely pays to place display ads on pirate sites as well as ads with promotion codes watermarked into infringing videos, including in some of the earliest releases of infringing theatrical camcord recordings. After Russian law enforcement agencies initiated an investigation in 2020, its advertising activity declined. However, 1XBET remains active, and its ads continue to appear on infringing websites today.”

Earlier this year, the MPA repeated similar complaints in a submission to the European Commission, adding in a few extra details for good measure.

“Piracy is used as a vehicle to support this online gambling giant. Within 6 months in 2019 alone, more than 1200 advertisements for 1XBET could be found on structurally infringing websites. 1XBET is blocked in Russia; its alleged beneficiaries are under criminal investigation for illegal gambling and declared fugitives at the request of the Russian Investigative Committee,” the Hollywood group wrote .

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a website run by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies reported that companies including 1XBET are still sponsoring Serie A and Spanish club Barcelona. According to the MPA, this has a particular function.

“1XBET still attempts to launder its reputation by sponsoring football events, most recently as an official sponsor of the African Cup of Nations,” the group told the European Commission.

Why European entities Serie A and Barcelona weren’t mentioned directly to the EC isn’t clear but if fans are to be persuaded to abandon their pezzotto devices, an understanding that everyone agrees on the same rules might be a good start.

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