Major Hollywood studios Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner, plus relative newcomer Netflix, are all members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). They have something else in common too.

Every single minute of every single day, rain or shine, people can be found pirating their movies and TV shows online. In Netflix’s case, that means every single piece of content the company has ever produced.

For studios with longer histories and huge catalogs of movies and TV shows, piracy doesn’t win the Oscar for Total Content Coverage , but still gets top marks for effort on top of its annual lifetime achievement award. Hollywood’s corporate sheen and projections of wealth have a tendency to suffocate public empathy, but on any level, that must be pretty intolerable.

Lawsuit Against PrimeWire

When Hollywood sued PrimeWire in late 2021, the only surprise was the timing. For more than a decade, PrimeWire had played a key role in illegally streaming many thousands of movies and TV shows, perhaps hundreds of millions of times.

The studios received annual licensing payments of absolutely nothing but were spending money on lawyers in site-blocking actions in multiple countries. PrimeWire’s operator/s never appeared in any of them, most likely too busy running the site and circumventing site-blocking orders.

The same applied in the U.S. lawsuit. In the site’s absence, the studios’ attorneys methodically obtained an injunction to shut PrimeWire down, but faced with overseas entities reluctant to take action, PrimeWire never went completely offline.

Can’t Kill What You Can’t See

Links to movies and TV shows did disappear from PrimeWire for a while but the studios weren’t taking the bait. They were already engaged in a compelling investigation to identify PrimeWire’s operator/s.

In most shutdown operations, unmasking the target is a priority. Taking a domain or shutting down hosting is the equivalent of shooting a zombie in the body; somewhat irritating but easy to recover from. Unmasking, on the other hand, opens up the possibility of a clean headshot and the elimination of potential resurrections.

Studios Win Lawsuit

In December 2022, the studios’ hard work and patience paid off when they were awarded $20.7m in statutory copyright infringement damages. PrimeWire’s conduct was slammed by the judge as “willful” and “particularly egregious,” with a particular focus on the fact that the site’s operators had avoided his courtroom.

Whether those barbed comments were ever heard at PrimeWire HQ, wherever that might be, is unknown. More importantly, the operator/s of PrimeWire were never found and still remain anonymous. The likelihood of the studios receiving $20.7m seems vanishingly small. Likewise, more than $417,000 racked up on attorneys fees.

And the Overall Winner is….

At the time of writing, PrimeWire is still operating from primewire.tf, a domain that should’ve been seized, but clearly has not. On pages where movies are listed, links to third-party hosting sites, including 2embed, OnionShare, CrocoVid, and HDOnline, supply the same content the studios spent a fortune trying to take down.

On this basis, it would be easy to conclude that the lawsuit was a waste of time and an even bigger waste of money. After all, what’s the use of a $20.7m judgment when nobody knows who’s supposed to pay it? Perhaps the bigger question is whether it would’ve been paid even under different circumstances.

The key question, then, is whether the MPA’s lawsuit achieved its main objective.

When the MPA sued PrimeWire in 2021, the site had been enjoying “approximately 20 million monthly visits.” Infringement levels were reported as “breathtaking” along with the following statement:

“In less than three years, [PrimeWire’s] U.S. user base has grown from less than 1 million monthly visits to approximately 20 million monthly visits,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Three or four months after the lawsuit was filed, traffic levels began to fall.

Blatantly repurposing the MPA’s original traffic statement provides a fairly accurate representation of the position today.

Three years after the MPA filed its lawsuit, PrimeWire’s entire user base has shrunk from 20 million monthly visits to less than a million monthly visits.

Who knows what PrimeWire’s operators have going on elsewhere, but PrimeWire.tf is obviously alive. Or perhaps it’s just not dead. Hard to say for sure.

Image Credit: InspiredImages/Pixabay

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

When several major studios filed a copyright lawsuit against PrimeWire last year, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. It did nonetheless – it was a long time coming.

More than a decade ago, a successful pirate streaming site called LetMeWatchThis reportedly ran into domain issues, and after a swift rebranding exercise, returned as 1Channel. What prompted the site to change its name yet again isn’t clear but, after adopting the name PrimeWire , traffic poured in from all over the world.

Due to Hollywood legal action, PrimeWire was among the first 30 sites to be blocked in the UK back in 2013 , but that was just the beginning. Similar blocking injunctions followed in Australia , Ireland , Norway , Denmark , Portugal and beyond.

Despite being given the opportunity to protest at least some of these blocking measures, PrimeWire never appeared in court to mount a defense, even by email. When the MPAA reported the site to the USTR in 2013 , it was hoped PrimeWire would fold but, despite additional reports over subsequent years, it carried on regardless.

Becoming a permanent fixture on the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s ‘Infringing Website List’ was meant to increase the pressure. However, as far as we’re aware, Hollywood never filed a lawsuit. Roughly nine years ago the MPA believed PrimeWire’s servers were in Estonia but, while access to hardware can be useful, hard drives can’t be sued.

Movie and TV Giants Sue PrimeWire

Then, out of the blue in December 2021, Paramount, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Disney, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against PrimeWire in the U.S. They demanded millions in damages and an all-important injunction, the first of which was granted early 2022 .

Maintaining its long-held traditions, PrimeWire immediately moved to neutralize potential domain seizures while carrying on as normal , in defiance of the injunction.

Just weeks after that, PrimeWire suddenly ‘went legal’ by removing all links to pirated movies and TV shows, and then pledged to install upload filters to prevent any more piracy. There was even some email correspondence with the plaintiffs which, if anything, was even more surprising.

Traffic Tanks, Hollywood Piles on the Pressure

After removing pirated content, PrimeWire’s traffic immediately collapsed by more than 60%, but the studios weren’t impressed. Based on past behavior patterns, they believed that PrimeWire could make a comeback, so they pressed for a default judgment and permanent injunction.

The court agreed and awarded a partial default judgment with damages to be decided at a later date. PrimeWire was ordered to shut down – whether or not any pirated content was still available via the site. Some registrars still hadn’t complied with the terms of the preliminary injunction, meaning that PrimeWire still had domains and a web presence.

PrimeWire didn’t officially appear in the lawsuit so was never likely to win. Importantly, it didn’t shut down either and in July attempted a comeback but that was soon thwarted by the MPA’s investigators.

Filings in the case during October revealed that the MPA had gone to extraordinary lengths to track down PrimeWire’s operator but had ultimately run into shell companies, various obfuscation measures, and eventually a dead end. Specifically, a small but notorious property in the UK linked to international crime, money laundering, and fried chicken.

MPA Could Not Prove PrimeWire’s Actual Profits

Despite the studios’ best efforts to quantify PrimeWire’s profits, the odds were always stacked against them. Instead, they requested a judgment of $20.7m, which in the scheme of things was pretty reasonable. Earlier this year PrimeWire was allegedly offering 10,000 titles owned by the plaintiff studios and in October 2021, received 20 million visitors from the United States alone.

The studios aimed low by listing just 138 infringed works, but with maximum statutory damages of $150,000 available for each work, that can soon add up. In his judgment dated December 9, Judge Mark C. Scarsi agrees that the anonymous PrimeWire defendants were well aware that their conduct was unlawful.

Particularly Egregious Infringment, Maximum Damages

“The Court finds that Defendants committed willful infringement, meriting an award of enhanced damages. Defendants’ conduct is particularly egregious. Despite Plaintiffs’ repeated attempts to hale Defendants into court, Defendants have either ignored Plaintiffs’ emails or anonymously denied any wrongdoing,” Judge Scarsi’s judgment reads.

“Further, Defendants have evaded the Court’s injunctions by transferring operations to different domain names, citing ‘recent legal action’ on their now-defunct webpage. Additionally, the substantial web traffic Defendants gained from illegally streaming Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works has likely created a heavy windfall in advertising revenue at Plaintiffs’ expense.”

Noting that the defendants’ conduct “leaves little doubt” that maximum statutory damages are warranted, Judge Scarsi highlights the value of the studios’ copyrights, the revenue lost through PrimeWire’s actions, and in particular the negative effect on the legitimate streaming market.

“Defendants’ unauthorized and uncompensated use of the copyrighted works causes significant revenue loss because illegitimate streaming sources, like Defendants’, divert potentially millions of dollars of paid viewership away from licensed sources contributing to Plaintiffs’ revenue streams,” the judgment continues.

“The high value of Plaintiffs’ copyrights also supports a finding that Defendants’ infringement causes significant revenue losses. And finally, maximum statutory damages would serve the purpose of deterring Defendants and others from infringing Plaintiffs’ valuable works.”

In line with the studios’ request, the court awarded maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $20,700,000 for the 138 works in suit. The court also awarded $417,600 in attorneys’ fees, an amount described as “reasonable and appropriate.”

The proposed judgment, final judgment, and minutes can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , pdf)

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

For almost a year we’ve documented Hollywood’s legal battle to permanently shut down movie and TV show streaming site, PrimeWire.

Paramount, Universal, Warner, Columbia, Disney, and Netflix teamed up to file the complaint in 2021, hoping to shut down a site that had endured blocking injunctions since 2014 while serving millions of users worldwide.

All members of the MPA, the studios won a default judgment and injunction in April 2022. PrimeWire’s efforts to stay alive were numerous, but the MPA met them at every step of the way . The determination of MPA investigators at the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has been apparent throughout but new information rarely shared in public takes things to a whole new level.

The MPA’s Mission to Quantify Damages

When PrimeWire failed to respond to the MPA’s lawsuit, losing the case and being found liable for damages was inevitable. The MPA has been conducting discovery against entities doing business with PrimeWire to establish the identity of its operator and any profits attributable to copyright infringement. To say that proved less than straightforward is a massive understatement.

After obtaining permission from the court in late April, MPA investigators began serving third-party subpoenas on advertising brokers including Amobee, Exponential Interactive, Oracle Corporation, Yahoo Ad Tech, AdSupply, Aragon Advertising, Insticator, and Outbrain, plus Amazon and Google.

Jan van Voorn, head of Global Content Protection and Enforcement Operations at the MPA, informed the court this week that the results from that investigation told only a small part of the overall story. The process also confirmed that measures had been put in place to ensure that PrimeWire’s operator was always one step ahead, and potentially several steps away.

Arm’s Length Advertising

The MPA says that PrimeWire follows a long-established practice of switching between ad brokers, in the United States and elsewhere. The number of ad brokers involved not only hindered efforts to identify a single significant source of income, but also presented new problems.

Most of those served with MPA subpoenas turned out to be intermediaries between supply-side advertising platforms (serving advertisers) and demand-side advertising platforms (serving website owners), meaning they had no direct relationship with PrimeWire at all.

“As intermediaries, they did not make any payments to individual website operators like [PrimeWire], instead serving to connect larger groups of advertisers to websites, with the payments flowing through different channels and not directly traceable to PrimeWire,” van Voorn informed the court.

The MPA did find signs of “minimal contact” with ad brokers, but that was frustrated by PrimeWire using multiple aliases including ‘Tyler’ and ‘Andy Andy’. Ultimately, none of the ad brokers could provide a comprehensive assessment of revenues associated with PrimeWire, but one did produce a document of interest.

Down The Rabbit Hole – And Beyond

The document revealed that ad broker Insticator had paid $10,376.61 to an entity called Oksara LP in August 2015. The money was transferred into a bank account operated by Versobank AS in Tallinn, Estonia.

“After receiving this document, [MPA] investigators attempted to identify who might be behind Oksara LP. Oksara LP appears to be a shell entity that is no longer in operation,” van Voorn added.

Oksara LP’s registration documents, available on the UK’s Companies House portal, list B2B Consultants Ltd and BTD Enterprises Ltd as Oksara LP partners. As the MPA would’ve realized only too quickly, if something straightforward is connected to these entities, it’s probably a freak accident.

The document obtained by the MPA claims that Oksara LP’s address is 1, Straits Parade, Bristol, BS16 2LA, an unassuming property but ideally located for lovers of fried chicken. It’s also one of many UK addresses that have been publicly linked to industrial-scale money laundering operations.

The MPA says that a Latvian national named Alise Ilsley completed the paperwork for the Oksara LP partnership. Subsequent reports have linked her and B2B Solutions entities to money laundering schemes linked to the same Bristol address, including one that drained $1 billion from three of Moldova’s banks in 2014.

There is no suggestion that PrimeWire is connected to any of these crimes in any way. That being said, shell companies and partnerships like these are designed to frustrate investigations, including this one carried out by the MPA. And another from 2016 that featured a piracy ‘brand’ with an even bigger profile.

KickassTorrents

Following the surprise shutdown of KickassTorrents in 2016, details of the FBI investigation revealed some of the inner workings of the site and its business dealings.

The MPA’s filing doesn’t mention the company by name but notes that a business sharing the same Bristol address as the others was previously linked to KickassTorrents by the FBI. For the curious, the company was called Glomeratus Ltd , it used an Estonian bank, and was reportedly involved with KickassTorrents’ advertising revenue.

Beyond circumstantial connections, the MPA does not attempt to link PrimeWire with KickassTorrents or any other enterprise but notes that by using shell corporations, PrimeWire showed intent to hide profits attributable to infringement.

“All of this is consistent with Defendants using sophisticated measures to hide their identities and information regarding the extent to which they have profited from their infringing conduct. Combined with the wire transfer, the evidence appears to confirm that Defendants have utilized the services of a business known to facilitate money laundering through which to funnel their revenues from PrimeWire’s operations,” the filing adds.

And Finally – The Damages

The MPA lawsuit seeks damages relating to infringement of 138 movies and TV shows offered via PrimeWire. To put that into perspective, earlier this year the site offered access to more than 10,000 titles owned by the plaintiff studios and in October 2021, enjoyed 20 million visitors from the United States alone.

The MPA proposes a judgment consisting of $20.7 million in damages plus $417,600 to cover attorneys fees. The group admits that showing PrimeWire’s actual profits is close to impossible but after considering the above, the judge seems unlikely to suggest no one tried.

The MPA’s proposed judgment and supporting declaration can be found here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

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

In April 2022, several Hollywood studios and Netflix won an injunction to shut down PrimeWire, a long-standing illegal streaming site and continuous thorn in the side of the MPA.

The injunction was granted after the studios filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against PrimeWire in 2021. It aimed to close the platform down for a good after close to a decade of disruption activity against the site produced somewhat limited results. This time around the studios have the upper hand but not without some complications.

PrimeWire Inactive But Domains Mostly Intact

After the injunction was handed down the US, PrimeWire initially took no action but eventually modified its operations and pledged to offer a legitimate service .

The studios didn’t believe a single word and moved to seize new domain PrimeWire.tf, hoping to add it to a list of other PrimeWire domains already subject to disabling and seizure. On that front, PrimeWire.ag and .vc are non-operational but PrimeWire.li and PrimeWireStatus.org remain in use.

At the time of writing the same is true for PrimeWire.tf but last month a new domain entered the mix.

The Rapid Rise and Fall of HydraWire

At the end of May, the MPA’s anti-piracy team became of a new site called HydraWire. Its .tv domain had been registered a day after the MPA won its preliminary injunction in April and as far as the studios were concerned, this was just PrimeWire by another name.

Evidence presented in court made that assertion difficult to challenge but with the site gaining traffic, it needed to be stopped as soon as possible. The studios decided that HydraWire.tv should be added to the now permanent injunction but perhaps didn’t anticipate what came next.

On July 19 and on behalf of the studios, an attorney at law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP submitted a message via the contact form at HydraWire giving notice of their upcoming motion.

In common with the people behind PrimeWire, who haven’t appeared in court but have communicated anonymously with the plaintiffs, the alleged owner of HydraWire also responded anonymously two days later. The message was that the intentions of HydraWire’s operator had been misunderstood by the plaintiffs.

“The sender of this email claims to have launched HydraWire. They say they did so because they ‘saw an opportunity to have a website with lot[s] of visitors’ and ‘wanted to continue [PrimeWire’s] legacy’,” the studios informed the court this week.

“The emailer then said they had ‘shut down hydrawire for good’ and offered to ‘transfer the domain’ to Plaintiffs.”

HydraWire Throws in the Towel

Swift resolutions haven’t featured prominently in the case thus far so the MPA’s anti-piracy team wasted no time in seizing the opportunity.

“In an effort to put a temporary stop to this latest infringement of their rights, Plaintiffs accepted the transfer of the domain and took control of the domain, which is now offline,” the studios reveal.

Jan Van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection, reveals the process began quickly and was over in a week.

“On or about July 23, 2022, GCP investigators used the authorization code provided in correspondence from [email address] to initiate a transfer of the hydrawire.tv domain to the MPA’s control. On or about August 1, 2022, GCP investigators confirmed that hydrawire.tv has been transferred to the MPA,” his declaration reads.

MPA Still Wants HydraWire.tv Added to Injunction

While this domain takeover was comparatively easy, the studios are still taking time to keep the court informed of every new detail. They’re also building a pretty solid picture of the plaintiffs doing everything by the book and the defendants falling short in every possible way.

Aside from PrimeWire’s general failure to appear, the studios strongly suspect that by following the PrimeWire ‘playbook’ of apparent capitulation in the face of an injunction, those behind HydraWire betrayed their connections. The MPA’s anti-piracy team appear unable to prove they’ve been talking to the same people but for now at least, that doesn’t matter.

The plaintiffs say that HydraWire was inspired by PrimeWire and was designed to continue its legacy. Text from PrimeWire was duplicated on HydraWire and there was a feature for PrimeWire users to migrate their libraries across. The very appearance of HydraWire showed disrespect for the court injunction and at any minute it could reappear under a new domain to rinse and repeat, they add.

“For these reasons, as well as those stated in Plaintiffs’ motion, Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court grant their motion to modify the permanent injunction and extend the time for Defendants to take discovery in support of their damages claims,” the motion concludes.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this and earlier motions is the determination of the MPA to punish any move designed to breathe new life into PrimeWire. It’s certainly possible that other ventures under different branding are already making headway but, given the pressure, the original PrimeWire seems unlikely to have a future in any obviously recognizable form.

The motion and supporting documents can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , pdf)

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

In the content protection arena, the term ‘whac-a-mole’ is known all too well. When pirates or their links appear in one place, they can quickly reappear in another.

Another term referencing a similar problem relates to piracy platforms. When a lawsuit directly attacks a site’s ability to operate using specific domains or branding, for example, the ‘hydra effect’ comes into play. Mimicking the creature of the same name in Greek mythology, when one head is chopped off, two more grow back to take its place.

In April 2022, several Hollywood studios and Netflix won an injunction to shut down PrimeWire, a long-standing illegal streaming site that had evaded ISP blocking injunctions all over the world.

The MPA should’ve been given control of all PrimeWire domains within days but the response from registrars ranged from slow to none, meaning that some PrimeWire domains are still operational. Further hindering MPA enforcement measures is the reported growth of a new head on the PrimeWire hydra.

HydraWire.tv is The New PrimeWire, MPA Says

While the MPA has a clear legal win over PrimeWire and its operator, the case thus far shows that when a defendant cannot be physically identified, nothing is straightforward, especially when there’s a determination to continue business as usual.

According to the MPA, a new streaming site called HydraWire.tv claims to be PrimeWire’s successor. The MPA’s anti-piracy team became aware of the site around May 31, 2022, and they’re convinced that PrimeWire’s operators are involved.

The site’s domain was registered on April 21, 2022, one day after the PrimeWire injunction was handed down, and the site’s visual aspects are strikingly similar to those seen on PrimeWire.

Of course, websites are easily copied so the MPA’s investigation went beyond graphics and text.

Too Many Coincidences

Like PrimeWire’s domains, HydraWire’s has hidden registration details and sits behind Cloudflare. Both platforms have the same domain registrar ( Sarek Oy ) and the same host ( FlokiNet ) For those out of the loop, these two companies have a reputation for not rolling over easily in response to information requests.

The MPA says that HydraWire mostly uses the same cyberlocker services as PrimeWire to source its video content. HydraWire also has a feature that allows former PrimeWire users to ‘restore’ their PrimeWire libraries on the new platform using CSV files.

The MPA’s investigators have also been monitoring the /r/primewireli sub-Reddit where posts advertising HydraWire as the PrimeWire alternative were left up and those referring to competing services were taken down.

In summary, the MPA believes that HydraWire is strongly connected to PrimeWire and therefore covered by the existing injunction. As a result, the HydraWire.tv domain should be added to the growing list of enjoined PrimeWire domains.

“Defendants’ choice to name this site ‘HydraWire’ mocks the Injunction and Plaintiffs’ diligent efforts to enforce it. Plaintiffs request that the Court modify the Injunction to add www.hydrawire.tv to the list of enjoined domains,” the MPA informs the court.

The Studios Are Still Entitled to Damages

While the injunction is a valuable tool for enforcement, the MPA also wants damages from the operator of PrimeWire.

The Hollywood group has been conducting damages discovery for some months with the goal of filing a motion for default judgment. It has served subpoenas on third parties to hand over information about PrimeWire’s business dealings, but more time is needed.

“Plaintiffs’ meet-and-confer efforts with subpoena recipients remain ongoing,” the MPA informed the court this week.

“Subpoena recipients have requested extensions in order to provide notice to third parties and to deal with the complexity of searching for advertising revenue associated with particular URLs, as online advertising often involves multiple levels of intermediaries or brokers.”

Efforts thus far haven’t been futile, however. The MPA says that information received suggests that PrimeWire may have been generating “at least five-figures in monthly advertising revenue”, a not insignificant amount – especially to those looking forward to reappropriation.

Finally, the MPA says that HydraWire.tv has at times gone down, only to come back up again. This shouldn’t fool the court into thinking it’s not operational. At the time of writing, the domain is indeed down.

Documents including the proposed amended injunction can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , pdf)

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