With over half a billion active users around the globe, Telegram is one of the most used messaging services.

The application is particularly popular in India, where more than 20% of its user base resides. This includes a small subset of rather persistent pirates.

Telegram doesn’t permit copyright infringement and generally takes swift action in response to complaints. This includes the removal of channels dedicated to piracy but for some copyright holders that’s not enough; they also want to know who the copyright-infringing users are.

Rightsholders Request User Data

In India, this resulted in a legal battle against Telegram that began in 2020. The case in question was filed by Ms. Neetu Singh and KD Campus. The former is the author of various books, courses, and lectures, for which the latter runs coaching centers.

The rightsholders complained about the infringing activity and the messaging service properly addressed it. The court became involved because Telegram refused to hand over information that could identify the alleged pirates and channel operators.

In late August, the Delhi High Court sided with the rightsholders. Judge Prathiba Maninder Singh ruled that Telegram had to share all identifying information it has on file. This includes the phone numbers, IP addresses, and email addresses of uploaders and channel operators.

Telegram Complies

A new court filing reveals that after a period of quiet, Telegram has indeed complied with the order. While Telegram says that some of the requested data is no longer available, it shared everything it could, under seal.

“The said data, which is in the form of a chart, has been perused by the Court. It shows that the names of the admins, the phone numbers, and IP addresses of some of the channels as are available with Telegram have been filed,” Judge Singh writes.

The Judge says that this data may be shared confidentially with the rightsholders and should only be used for the present lawsuit. However, in a somewhat confusing statement, she stresses that the information in question can also be shared with the Government and police.

“[N]either the Plaintiffs nor their counsel shall disclose the said data to any third party, except for the purposes of the present proceedings. To this end, disclosure to the governmental authorities/police is permissible,” the order reads.

Objections Failed, Precedent Set

The original disclosure order was issued despite fierce opposition. One of Telegram’s main defenses was that the user data is stored in Singapore, which prohibits the decryption of personal information under local privacy law.

The Court dismissed this argument on the basis that the ongoing infringing activity is related to Indian works and will likely be tied to Indian users. And even if the data is stored elsewhere, it could be accessed from India.

Telegram also brought up the Indian constitution, which protects people’s privacy, as well as the right to freedom of speech and expression. That defense was unsuccessful too.

The Court’s initial order appears to have set a precedent as it’s now widely cited. Last week, the Delhi High Court ordered Telegram to hand over data in another piracy case, and the precedent was also cited in a defamation case involving YouTube.

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A full copy of the order from the Delhi High Court that confirms the data handover, is available here (pdf) , courtesy of Live Law

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

Ce stealer, un logiciel malveillant destiné à dérober des infos, a rapidement été adopté par des collectifs de pirates. Le malware passe par diverses chaînes d'infections : des faux sites ou des vidéos sur les réseaux sociaux. [Lire la suite]

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Les applications et les réseaux sociaux fournissent des niveaux de sécurité variables pour les messages privés. De base, il y a toujours du chiffrement pour sécuriser les discussions pendant leur transport sur Internet. Mais pour ce qui est du chiffrement de bout en bout, c'est très hétérogène. [Lire la suite]

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The mainstream file-sharing scene is well-known for its public-facing websites and forums but underneath all of that, chat channels have always played a big role.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was a popular option when BitTorrent sites ruled the waves. Many sites had channels serving as community hubs on one hand, and portals to the latest files on the other. IRC’s relatively steep learning curve helped to stunt its own growth but for modern-day equivalents such as Telegram, there are no such problems.

After IRC first appeared in 1988, it took more than 20 years for the most popular networks to peak between 100K to 200K users. After just nine years online, Telegram now has 700 million active users each month. Channels are used for every type of discussion imaginable, with piracy facilitation and distribution some of the fastest-growing trends. As a result, copyright holders have yet another battle on their hands.

Italy’s War on Telegram Piracy

Since at least 2019 , Italian authorities have targeted Telegram channels linked to illicit IPTV services and movie and TV show piracy , but protection of literary works is becoming increasingly common.

In 2020, complaints from the Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEG) over the illegal distribution of newspapers, periodicals, and books, led to an emergency order requiring Telegram to shut down 19 channels or face blocking itself. A year later, FIEG said it had taken down more than 300 Telegram channels offering similar content.

A major anti-piracy operation carried out last week shows that even more work needs to be done.

Journalist Organization Demands Action Against Pirates

In order to work legally in Italy, journalists must obtain registration from Ordine dei Giornalisti (Order of Journalists, ODG), a state-approved body that has been responsible for regulating the profession since 1963.

While registration and regulation of journalists is controversial, ODG is seen as a champion of its members’ rights. In addition to protecting writers in their negotiations with publishers, ODG works to ensure its members are paid fairly. The organization also seeks fair competition in the marketplace where piracy is seen as a disruption.

A memorandum of understanding signed two years ago by ODG and government law enforcement agency Guardia di Finanza was designed to send another message on behalf of its members; journalism plays a key role in democracy and pirates shouldn’t be allowed to undermine either.

In early 2020, ODG filed a complaint at the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Milan. The regulator said that Telegram and WhatsApp groups were mass distributing PDF copies of newspapers and periodicals on a daily basis. Since this piracy harms ODG members, shutting down pirate channels would be a proportionate response. The authorities listened and dozens of channels were blocked.

Latest Response From Specialist IT Unit

Gruppi Sportivi Fiamme Gialle is the sports division of the Italian police force, competing in athletics, rowing, skiing and disciplines including judo and karate. Fiamme Gialle IT specialists werecredited for identifying 6,500 pirate IPTV users and according to the Guardia di Finanza of Rome, they’ve recently been tracking down those pirating ODG members’ works too.

“The investigations carried out by the specialists of the Fiamme Gialle led to the identification of a much wider illegal network than the one envisaged in the complaint,” a statement from GdF reads.

“This allowed the unmasking of a consolidated system of unauthorized sharing and dissemination, not only of newspapers and magazines published by the main Italian editorial groups, but also television schedules, TV series and other paid entertainment content, distributed via the internet by the major streaming platforms.”

Police Obtain Authority to Search and Shutdown

Under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Milan, the Technological Fraud Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome obtained authority to shutdown the pirates’ Telegram channels and carry out searches against suspects.

The seizure order relates to 545 Telegram ‘resources’ suspected of distributing copyrighted content and individuals said to be involved in their operation. In five areas of Italy – Lombardia, Piemonte, Veneto, Emilia Romagna and Campania – searches were conducted against eight people. GdF describes them as the suspected administrators of channels linked to criminal copyright infringement offenses.

Telegram Piracy Channels Were Very Popular

GdF say that the targeted Telegram channels had over 430,000 subscribers who paid nothing to join channels but were monetized by the administrators in other ways.

The first method involved the administrators pasting links into their channels that referred users to e-commerce sites. When these links were followed and products were purchased, a percentage was kicked back to the administrators.

The second method is described as “sponsorship” where advertising banners were placed on the allegedly-infringing channels in return for payment from the advertiser. Information related to these sponsorship deals is still online and shows the interconnected nature of the channels targeted by the police.

Which Channels Were Blocked?

The channels haven’t been officially named by the authorities but information obtained by TorrentFreak allowed us to identify a key channel in the investigation, confirm it had been banned by Telegram, and then find other connected channels that received the same treatment. (Data credit: Telemetr.io )

The Riviste Gratuite (Free Magazines) channel launched in September 2020 and a year later had 30,575 subscribers. The channel reached a peak of 41,046 around October 9, before being blocked by Telegram for copyright infringement.

Other channels in the same niche also banned last week include eBook Free House (55,000), Epub Gold (28,500), and Giornali Gratuti (21,800).

As pointed out by GdF, the system their specialists uncovered offered more than just pirated newspapers and magazines. In the end, offering content other than that reported by ODG failed to keep them online.

Whether they offered movies and TV shows or other content in Italian, House Streaming (29,000 subscribers), Il Cinema Notturno (34,000), and APK Plex (100,500), were all blocked along with many others.

Who Sponsored The Channels?

The banned channels listed above (plus others not documented here) all targeted Italy, with Italian-focused content. Their tendency to keep mentioning each other in their respective channels made them very easy to spot.

The huge amount of data available from Telegram (not to mention basic Google searches) shows they had connections with ‘ Sponsor Cultura ‘, which appears to be acting as some kind of agent for potential advertisers.

One offer lists the channels @RivisteGratuite, @GiornaliGratuiti, @RivisteInternazionali and @AppPlexFree (three of which are now blocked). It states that they reached 115,000 members/20,000 visuals per day, and offered a 15:00 to 20:00 (5 hours) time slot for 40 euros. Other offers are openly visible on Telegram.

This sponsor isn’t banned, and neither are the many other Italy-focused magazine channels that still exist on Telegram. Another round of takedowns should be expected in the not-too-distant future.

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

Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

L'annonce d'une mobilisation militaire partielle par Vladimir Poutine ce 21 septembre a entrainé des recherches paniques chez les Russes pour éviter de finir sur le front en Ukraine. Se fracturer un membre ou fuir le pays figurent parmi les options les plus envisagées. [Lire la suite]

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Legal streaming services offering access to top tier football in Europe have a few unique selling points over piracy platforms.

Perhaps most importantly, people who subscribe to legal services help to keep the game alive. They support the clubs they love, they support the players, and allow broadcasters to get a return on the money they invested in TV rights.

And make no mistake, TV rights are far from cheap.

On the downside, legal sports streaming services are very expensive, some would say disproportionately so. They can easily cost ten times the amount of a pirate service, despite the latter providing at least ten times more channels – x10. But at least legal services are more reliable than pirate offerings – in theory.

You Had One Job…..

Mid-August we reported on remarkable situations in both Spain and Italy. At the start of the new season, after football leagues LaLiga and Serie A had warned fans not to use pirate IPTV services, fans who paid to access legal services found that they couldn’t watch matches due to technical issues.

For multi-billion dollar corporations, not being able to get matches to paying fans wasn’t a particularly good look, especially when pirate services were able to carry on business as usual.

But those two events were a one-off, or a two-off if we’re being picky. Until this week at least, when fans in France were treated to a similar experience.

Canal+ Couldn’t Keep Up With Demand

On Wednesday evening, France’s PSG faced off against Italian giants Juventus in the UEFA Champions League. PSG eventually came away with the spoils having won two goals to one. The match was available on Canal+ – or at least that was the plan.

Users who logged in early apparently had no issues but for those who tried to tune in just before the game started, things didn’t go nearly as smoothly. Just minutes after kickoff, Canal+ u sed Twitter to explain that it was unable to cope with the number of people trying to log in to the myCANAL app.

In keeping with football tradition, it only seems appropriate to criticize from the comfort of the touchlines (or couch), perhaps along the lines of: “So why did you sell that many subscriptions?” But that would, of course, be a little unfair – the unexpected can happen to anyone.

Unfortunately, an hour later Canal+ was back on Twitter again, this time with a red-faced emoji, having failed to sort out the mess, with half the match gone.

“Will it work again at 10:46 p.m.? What a shame! Refund the subscription! And tomorrow night, we do it again?” a frustrated fan responded . “We haven’t seen anything of the game. It’s nice to pay 50 bucks a month not to see the match you pay for,” complained another.

About Those Unreliable Pirate Streams….

People who didn’t pay to watch the match legally (and some that probably did) had no problem finding it through unauthorized channels. It was a conundrum outlined by a Twitter user who tweeted directly at Canal+ while its service was inaccessible. In summary: why am I paying you anything?

A report on Radio France reveals that pirates had plenty of choice.

“At half-time, we found that 50,000 spectators were following PSG’s first Champions League match via a Twitter account. Another live channel has nearly 6,000 views, more than double that for another. These figures were probably boosted by the MyCanal bug, which prevented subscribers from legally following the meeting,” the publication reveals.

According to the publication, Twitter did take some streams down but they reappeared in new tweets just a few minutes later and the reporter was able to watch the entire second half without any interruption. But the problem – or solution for myCANAL users – wasn’t confined to Twitter. Plenty of tweets linked to Telegram channels, where the match was also available.

“By following these links, we then came across a live stream, followed by more than 45,000 spectators. Within minutes, we were able to join nearly a dozen different conversations to watch the game,” Radio France adds.

The bottom line is that if legal services can’t get it right, illegal services are ready to step in and do their job for them. And the last thing legal services need is pirates playing the hero, because that never ends well.

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

Des pirates ukrainiens ont créé des faux profils sur les réseaux sociaux afin de tromper les soldats russes jusqu'à les inciter à envoyer des photos. Les clichés ont ensuite permis de détruire les bases russes dans le sud du pays. [Lire la suite]

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With over half a billion active users, Telegram is one on the most used messaging services.

The application is particularly popular in India, where more than 20% of its user base resides. This includes a small subset of rather persistent pirates.

Telegram doesn’t permit copyright infringement and generally takes swift action in response. This includes the removal of channels that are dedicated to piracy. For some copyright holders that’s not enough, as new ‘pirate’ channels generally surface soon after.

Removing Channels is Not Enough

To effectively protect their content, rightsholders want to know who runs these channels. This allows them to take action against the actual infringers and make sure that they stop pirating. This argument is the basis of an infringement lawsuit filed in 2020.

The case in question was filed by Ms. Neetu Singh and KD Campus. The former is the author of various books, courses, and lectures, for which the latter runs coaching centers.

Both rightsholders have repeatedly complained to Telegram about channels that shared pirated content. In most cases, Telegram took these down, but the service refused to identify the infringers. As such, the rightsholders asked the court to intervene.

Telegram Has to Identify Pirates

The legal battle culminated in the Delhi High Court this week via an order compelling Telegram to identify several copyright-infringing users. This includes handing over phone numbers, IP addresses, and email addresses.

The order was issued despite fierce opposition. One of Telegram’s main defenses was that the user data is stored in Singapore, which prohibits the decryption of personal information under local privacy law.

The Court disagrees with this argument, as the ongoing infringing activity is related to Indian works and will likely be tied to Indian users. And even if the data is stored elsewhere, it could be accessed from India.

“Courts in India would be perfectly justified in directing Telegram, which runs its massive operations in India to adhere to Indian law and adhere to orders passed by Indian Courts for disclosure of relevant information relating to infringers,” the Court writes.

“Infringers cannot be permitted to seek shelter under Telegram’s policies merely on the ground that its physical server is in Singapore.”

Disclosing the personal information would not be a violation of Singapore’s privacy law either, the High Court adds, pointing out that there is an exception if personal details are needed for investigation or proceedings.

Freedom of Expression and Intermediary Protection

Telegram also brought up the Indian constitution, which protects people’s privacy, as well as the right to freedom of speech and expression. However, that defense was unsuccessful too.

“The right to freedom of speech or the right to life including the right to privacy cannot be used by any person or entity, let alone an infringer, in order to escape the consequences of illegal actions,” the Court concludes.

Finally, Telegram argued that it is not required to disclose the details of its users because the service merely acts as an intermediary.

Again, the Court disagrees. Simply taking infringing channels offline isn’t good enough in this situation, since infringers can simply launch new ones, as if nothing had happened.

“Merely disabling or taking down channels upon information being given to Telegram is an insufficient remedy,” the court writes, adding that these channels are “clearly hydra-headed” because pirates can start over with ease.

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A full copy of the order from the Delhi High Court is available here (pdf) , courtesy of Bar and Bench .

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