Popular Internet infrastructure service Cloudflare has come under a lot of pressure from copyright holders in recent years.

The company offers its services to millions of customers including multinationals, governments, but also some of the world’s leading pirate sites.

Cloudflare Must Stop Pirate Site

Pirate sites have proven to be quite a headache for Cloudflare and have landed the San Francisco-based tech company in court on several occasions. This includes a case in Germany, where the local branch of Universal Music sued Cloudflare for offering its services to pirate site DDL-Music.

The lawsuit initially didn’t make any headlines, but when Cloudflare displayed an ‘Error 451’ to DDL-Music users in early 2020, it was clear that something was up. The 451 error code is rare and typically reserved for cases where content has been made inaccessible for legal reasons.

In this case, Universal obtained a preliminary injunction against Cloudflare that required the company to stop providing its services to the pirate site. Failure to comply could’ve invoked a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($274,000) or, even worse, Cloudflare’s managing director could’ve been sent to prison for up to six months.

Cloudflare complied with the order but took the case to appeal. The case eventually made its way to the Cologne Higher Regional Court, which handed down a mixed decision earlier this month.

Mixed Decision from Higher Court

In its decision , the Court confirmed that Cloudflare must take action against the blatantly-infringing pirate site, dismissing Cloudflare’s concerns that this could lead to overblocking. According to the ruling, DDL-Music has no other purpose than to share pirated music and Cloudflare plays a central role in making the site available.

The ruling will come as a disappointment to the Internet infrastructure company, but there’s a positive note as well. In addition to stopping its services to DDL-Music as a customer, Universal also wanted Cloudflare to block the site on its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1.

The Cologne court concluded that a DNS blockade would be a step too far, as Cloudflare’s DNS doesn’t play a central role in making the site accessible. There are other DNS providers that do the same.

“[D]efendant’s DNS resolver does not play a ‘central role’ in ensuring that the disputed music album could be freely shared on the Internet. The use of the defendant’s DNS resolver was neither necessary to find the IP address via the domain name, nor does it make access easier,” the court writes.

“The domain name could be resolved into the IP address just as easily using any other DNS resolver. The defendant’s public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 is just one of many freely accessible DNS resolvers, the best known and most used of which is the Google public DNS resolver 8.8.8.8. The defendant’s DNS resolver therefore had no significant relevance to the accessibility of the infringing content of the disputed domain.”

According to the verdict, a DNS provider operates in a purely passive, automatic and neutral manner. This sets it apart from hosting providers or CDN services, which can invoke liability under Germany’s Telemedia Act (TMG) and EU law.

The DNS Blocking Frontier

The Cologne Higher Regional Court’s ruling is significant, and not just for Cloudflare. After many countries established that pirate sites can be blocked by Internet providers, copyright holders are trying to expand similar obligations further up the intermediary chain.

In this case, the Court established that CDN services can be liable but drew the line at DNS resolvers. That could prove to be important for DNS resolver Quad9, which faces a similar legal battle in Germany.

The issue isn’t limited to Germany either. A similar court order in Italy requires Cloudflare to block access to three pirate sites through its public DNS resolver.

These and other court orders will ultimately lead to important precedents going forward. However, the direct effect of the recent German ruling is rather limited. As Tarnkappe rightfully notes , DDL-Music has been offline since 2021, so there’s no need to block it at all.

Heise reports that the German Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI) is nonetheless pleased with the outcome, as it shows that Cloudflare plays a “central role in making illegal content accessible.”

According to the music group’s Managing Director of Legal & Politics, René Houareau, the decision sends “a further signal against the illegal use of music recordings by tightening liability as real perpetrator liability”.

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

Popular Internet infrastructure service Cloudflare serves millions of customers and provides a variety of connectivity and privacy features to the general public.

People can freely use the company’s open DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 , for example, or use its IPFS and Ethereum gateways to access content on these decentralized web services.

One of Cloudflare’s main aims is to make the Internet more secure while respecting the privacy of its users. This laudable goal is broadly respected but in common with other internet services, abuse of Cloudflare’s services can lead to conflicting situations.

The California-based company previously terminated service to controversial sites including the Daily Stormer and Kiwi Farms . These actions were taken voluntarily, with Cloudflare citing an immediate threat to human life as the reason for the Kiwi Farms intervention.

Domain Blocking

In addition to these rare events, the Internet infrastructure company is also subject to court orders from around the globe. In some cases, these orders require the company to block access to piracy-related domain names.

Cloudflare mentions these blocking orders in its latest transparency report which covers the second half of 2022. The report doesn’t mention the number of court orders or blocked domains, but it confirms that Cloudflare complies with legitimate legal rulings.

“If we determine that the order is valid and requires Cloudflare action, we may limit blocking of access to the content to those areas where it violates local law, a practice known as ‘geo-blocking’,” Cloudflare writes.

DNS Blocking

DNS blocking orders apply locally and shouldn’t affect people in other countries. However, things got more complicated recently when an Italian court required Cloudflare to restrict access to three torrent sites through its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1.

Cloudflare fiercely objected to the order but ultimately lost the legal battle. That left the company with no other option than to take action. But, instead of blocking content through its global DNS resolver, it geo-blocked the domains for Italians.

“To the extent that those websites used Cloudflare services, Cloudflare took steps following the issuance of the order to disable access to those websites for users in Italy or from Cloudflare equipment in Italy.

“Cloudflare took action to geoblock all three domains that were addressed by the court’s order and were using our service at the time the orders were issued via Cloudflare’s pass-through CDN and security services,” the company added.

IPFS and Ethereum Restrictions

In its most recent transparency report, Cloudflare further notes that it has implemented access restrictions on its public Ethereum gateway. The company doesn’t store any content on the Ethereum network, nor can it remove any. However, it can block access through its service.

If Cloudflare receives valid abuse reports or copyright infringement complaints, it will take appropriate action. The same applies to the gateway for the decentralized IPFS network.

In its previous transparency report, Cloudflare already mentioned more than 1,000 IPFS actions a figure that increased slightly in the second half of last year. At the same time, Cloudflare also restricted access to 99 ‘items’ on the Ethereum network.

Since these are ‘gateway’ related restrictions there’s no impact on the content hosted on IPFS or Ethereum. Instead, it will only make it impossible to access content through Cloudflare’s service.

It’s not clear how many of these restrictions are abuse or copyright-related, as not much context is provided. The Ethereum actions are, at least in part, a response to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s sanctions against the cryptocurrency tumbler Tornado Cash .

“Those sanctions raise significant legal questions about the extent to which particular computer software, rather than individuals or entities that use that software, can be subject to sanctions,” Cloudflare writes.

“Nonetheless, to comply with legal requirements, Cloudflare has taken steps to disable access through the Cloudflare-operated Ethereum Gateway to the digital currency addresses identified in the designation.”

DMCA Notices and Subpoenas

There are more obvious copyright responses as well. While Cloudflare generally doesn’t block content in response to DMCA notices for customers that use its CDN services, it does remove infringing content permanently hosted on its servers.

These hosting services have expanded over the years and the same is true for the volume of valid DMCA notices received, up from 18 to 972 in the span of a year, as shown below. That’s still a fairly modest number for a company with millions of customers.

Finally, Cloudflare reports that the number of civil subpoenas, including those issued under the DMCA, has decreased. Rightsholders including the Motion Picture Association (MPA) typically use these requests to obtain identifying information about Cloudflare customers.

In the second half of last year, the company received 20 civil subpoenas which targeted 57 domain names. That’s the lowest number since Cloudflare first disclosed this statistic five years ago, signaling a downward trend.

—

A copy of Cloudflare’s latest Transparency Report is available here (pdf)

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

DMCA subpoena applications filed at courts in the United States provide a relatively inexpensive mechanism for compelling intermediaries to hand over the personal details of allegedly-infringing users.

Since Cloudflare offers reverse proxy services to websites as part of its free tier, most subpoena applications filed in the United States target the company. They typically seek disclosure of pirate site operators’ personal details, and it’s not uncommon to see a dozen domains feature in one application or more in a bundle filed at the same time.

As revealed in our report last month , South Korea’s Naver Webtoon filed a single application containing over 350 ‘pirate’ domains, easily the highest number we’ve seen in recent years, possibly the most ever.

After remaining silent for several months, late last week Naver Webtoon issued a press release. It claimed that after obtaining the subpoena and taking unspecified action, the company “halted the activities of 150 overseas illegal sites.”

That’s an eye-catching figure because in many cases Cloudflare has little useful information to pass on. It also represents a level of success currently enjoyed by no other rightsholders using the same process, which is highly unusual. That alone warrants a closer look but first, a brief summary of key statements in the release.

Naver Webtoon’s Key Statements

– After three months of hard work by Naver Webtoon, about 150 overseas illegal sites stopped operating. This is the result of Naver Webtoon’s action to issue a ‘Subpoena’ through a U.S. court, the first in the webtoon industry.

– Illegal site operator information, such as address, email, and payment details, is essential information for tracking and arrest. Subpoenas also have the effect of discouraging the activities of illegal site operators.

– According to the traffic statistics site ‘Similar Web’, the annual user traffic to about 150 illegal sites affected by Naver Webtoon’s action is approximately 2.5 billion.

– Naver Webtoon plans to share the information on illegal site operators obtained this time with investigative agencies and respond strictly with a zero-tolerance policy.

Right off the bat it’s worth highlighting that the subpoena listed 360 domain names, not 360 sites. To illustrate why that’s so important, one of the sites targeted appears to have begun life as ‘Newtoki’ but then registered subsequent domains that also include a number; newtoki1, newtoki2, newtoki3, etc.

A total of 19 of these variants appeared in the subpoena, as low as newtoki17.org and as high as newtoki310.com. There appears to be at least another 100 domains in a similar format, hundreds in total (some apparently owned by an anti-piracy company), but none functioning as a pirate site. Persistence may have paid off here, but there are nearly always more domains than sites and that can significantly distort perceived outcomes.

That being said, a bigger and perhaps more straightforward win may justify the campaign in its own right.

Closure of Just One Site Suggests Campaign Paid Off

Aquamanga.com was one of two sites mentioned specifically by Naver Webtoon following its press release last week.

Traffic to Aquamanga was significant to say the least. SimilarWeb data reveals a site receiving considerable traffic on an upwards trajectory; 61 million visits in September, up from 52.6m in July.

We’ve seen no evidence to show the site has reappeared under a different domain, and information suggests that the deterrent effect mentioned by Naver Webtoon may have done its job in this case. Overall, the closure of Aquamanga seems to be the highlight of the campaign and since it accounts for three quarters of a billion visits, understandably so.

Another Big Closure But Less Satisfactory Outcome

Another site that received a direct mention from Naver was Flamescans.org. The popular scanlation site was also doing well; SimilarWeb data for August and September shows between 18.1m and 18.7m visits per month, progress that was halted when the site suddenly went offline.

“Thank you to all of our community members for their continued support. Unfortunately, this site has discontinued all services related to the function and content hosted as of October 19, 2023. We appreciate your steadfast engagement and commitment to us through the years,” a notice on the homepage reads.

While the quality of the ‘artwork’ accompanying the goodbye message won’t keep Webtoon’s artists up at night, it strongly implies that things might not be over just yet.

The image above shows Flamescans to the left of the goodbye message and Flame-Comics to the right. They appear identical and show that while domains are important, they’re not as important as sites.

Interestingly, a bitcoin address on the Flamescans.org domain marked “Anonymous Donations” has received a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00) thus far. It’s possible that pirate frugality and relatively complicated crypto transactions aren’t the best mix.

Also listed in the subpoena but still online are five ‘Agitoon’ .xyz domains beginning agit571 and ending agit577.xyz. They carry the same epilepsy-inducing gambling advertising previously seen on the now-shuttered Noonoo TV .

Naver Webtoon says that in addition to sending direct warnings to “selected” illegal sites, it also works to undermine their ability to do business. Domain registrars, hosting companies, ISPs, social media platforms and payment services are among the potential targets.

Due to these efforts, 23 unnamed sites witnessed a 30% fall in traffic in October when compared to July, the company reports.

‘Good News’ For the Entire Webtoon Industry

Summing up, Naver Webtoon says that its anti-piracy work isn’t just good for the company, it’s good for everyone involved in webtoons.

“This achievement is helpful not only to Naver Webtoon but also to the entire webtoon industry, which is suffering damage from illegal webtoon sites,” says Kim Gyu-nam, Naver Webtoon’s legal affairs chief and anti-piracy task force leader.

“The platform will do its best to eradicate illegal webtoons. We will continue to actively take all possible measures.”

Given the constantly shifting nature of many pirate sites, especially those that operate multiple domains and/or move to new ones hoping to evade various measures, it’s difficult to determine whether Naver Webtoon really did shut down 150 sites. In its press release it actually notes that “about 150 sites were completely deleted or temporarily suspended operations ” which does change things somewhat.

Still, if putting domains out of action was part of the mission, that seems to have been quite effective. The image below shows a screenshot/preview image of every domain in the subpoena. In the majority of cases, those with no image are out of action.

Whether any have moved to new domains is another question, but none will have welcomed the disruption and won’t welcome the future disruption Naver Webtoon is already promising.

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

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Launched by South Korean tech giant Naver Corporation in 2004, Webtoon gained popularity as a hosting platform for a specific type of short-form digital comic, known locally as ‘webtoons’

Almost two decades later, Webtoon Entertainment has over 85 million active users per month across more than 100 countries. In the United States, where the company now boasts 12.5 million active users, Webtoon seems destined for a public listing, potentially as soon as 2024 according to information shared by Naver during a recent earnings call.

In an August interview with Reuters, Webtoon Entertainment founder and CEO Kim Junkoo was certainly bullish on the company’s future. Rivals moving in on the short-form comic market, which include both Amazon and Apple, will struggle to build a viable business, Kim predicted.

Competitors Face Uphill Struggle

“To build a (webtoon) store, you need knowledge about serial services, user targeting, a fitting business model, educating users,” Kim told Reuters. “This takes time. But even if you put in time, you can’t recreate the creator economy we’ve built.”

Webtoon believes its artists and depth of content libraries will present significant challenges for potential Silicon Valley competitors. “If big tech is serious about this IP-creating business, they’d have to buy us out,” the company’s CEO explained.

Of course, online competition can take many forms. Unconventional market participants that have no interest in acquisition, respond differently to traditional market forces. As such, they present novel challenges that require a specialist approach.

Webtoon fully understands what it’s up against and is already considering a response. The sheer scale of the initial groundwork appears unprecedented.

The Calm Before the Storm

On an unspecified date in August 2023, in its capacity as agent for Webtoon Entertainment Inc., Texas-based anti-piracy company Remove Your Media, LLC, sent a complaint to CDN company Cloudflare.

DMCA notices can be unremarkable but here the undated document stands out as unusual. It begins with a “representative list” of copyrighted works owned by Webtoon, titles such as How To Tame My Beastly Husband, I Raised The Beast Well, Jungle Juice, and I’m Not That Kind Of Talent. However, it’s the overall number of allegedly infringed works that really catches the eye.

According to Remove Your Media, these titles and around 80 others like them were being made available for download by pirate sites, all of them utilizing Cloudflare’s services.

“The works primarily consist of animated motion pictures and digital comics published by WEBTOON,” Cloudflare was advised. “Please act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the infringing material.”

Each block in the image above represents one of the 390+ URLs listed in the Webtoon infringement notice. The blank spaces indicate URLs that no longer exist at the time of writing, wouldn’t load for unspecified reasons, or in some cases link to sites that appear to have shifted to new or alternative domains. The majority of those containing an image remain online; the question is for how long.

A Silent Trip to Texas

Over a decade ago, then-junior attorney Evan Stone made headlines when he used four-letter expletives to slam ISPs and the adult industry, while revealing his personal vendetta against pirates, or “smarmy entitled little brats” to use the attorney’s terminology.

While much has changed since then, the appearance of Stone’s name on a declaration in support of DMCA subpoena application filed at a district court in Texas, shows that his pirate-fighting days are not yet over.

With Stone representing Remove Your Media, and both acting as agents of Webtoon Entertainment, the DMCA subpoena application filed in August but only now being reported, is a strong indication that reducing illicit competition is a priority matter for the webtoon company.

Webtoon Demands Identities of Hundreds of Pirate Site Operators

The primary purpose of a DMCA subpoena is to compel a service provider, in this case Cloudflare, to hand over the personal details of an alleged infringer to allow copyright holders to enforce their rights. Here, the application demands the following:

Identifying information, including name, e-mail address, physical address, billing information and any other relevant contact information for the alleged infringer(s) who control the sites at the domains listed in Exhibit A, or control the domains themselves.

What separates this application from most is the scale of the request and the sheer volume of site operators that face being caught up in the dragnet. It’s inevitable that some domains in the list will share the same owner but over 350 domains in a single subpoena is still unprecedented, and would remain so even if reduced by half.

Strictly there’s no requirement for the clerk of the court to conduct a detailed examination of a DMCA application before issuing the stamp of approval. Given that the application was filed August 22, marked as terminated on August 22, and then issued two days later on August 24, it seems likely that no further examination took place.

The list of domains targeted in the subpoena, for which Cloudflare was required to hand over full operator details, is available below. What happens next is almost entirely down to the quality of information handed over by Cloudflare before the deadline expired on October 5. It’s likely that the information received is already undergoing evaluation.

Webtoon’s overall goal likely entails the removal of illicit competition from the market but the means remain unknown. In practical terms, not even the largest corporate entertainment giants see value in mass litigation. Even if Webtoon decided otherwise, balancing the books to make the exercise worthwhile would be complex and unpredictable at best; messy, unproductive, even counterproductive at worst.

Threats of possible litigation to encourage settlements may be considered a viable option, at least if any of the operators left any usable identifying information in Cloudflare’s hands, which most try to avoid.

______

The individual domains listed in the subpoena are shown below to illustrate scale. Due to the potential for errors following OCR and the extraction of domains from the full-content URLs in the subpoena, the list is not definitive. The DMCA takedown notice sent to Cloudflare, which contains full unedited URLs, is available here ( pdf )

1stkissmanga.me, 1stkissmanga.tv, adultwebtoon.com, agit571.xyz, agit572.xyz, agit573.xyz, agit574.xyz, agit575.xyz, agit576.xyz, agit577.xyz, allmanga.to, anzmangashd.com, aquamanga.com, astrascans.com, asura.gg, bacamanga.id, batotoo.net, beehentai.com, beetoon.net, beetoon.net, bestwebtoon.com, blacktoon250.com, blacktoon251.com, blacktoon252.com, blacktoon253.com, blacktoon254.com, blacktoon255.com, blogmanga.net, blogtruyen.vn, bonmanga.com, boosei.net, chapmanganato.com, cizgiromanarsivi.com, clover-manga.com, cn.baozimh.com, cn.kukuc.co, cn.webmota.com, coffeemanga.io, comedymanga.com, comicsxxx.org, cosmicscans.com, daonovel.com, dinnerku.com, dogemanga.com, doujins.me, elecedmanga.online, eleceed.net, eleceedmanga.com, elitemanga.org, esmangaoof.xyz, ethernalworld.com, fanfox.net, flamescans.org, freecomiconline.me, freenovel.me, freewebtooncoins.com, galaxymanga.org, gekkou.com.br, god-manga.com, goldenmanga.top, gudangkomik.com, h.mangabat.com, harimanga.com, 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manhuastar.com, manhuazone.net, manhwa.info, manhwa18.cc, manhwa18.me, manhwa2read.com, manhwacity.com, manhwaclan.com, manhwafull.com, manhwago.com, manhwakool.com, manhwalist.xyz, manhwanew.com, manhwatop.com, manhwatop.net, manhwatube.com, manhwaworld.com, manhwaz.com, manycomic.com, manytoon.com, manytoon.me, manytoon.net, masterkomik.com, maturewebtoon.com, me-manga.com, mercimanga.com, mitoon.net, mojotoon.com, mundowebtoon.com, murim-manga.com, murimscan.run, mytoon.net, nanomachinemanga.com, nekomik.com, newtoki17.org, newtoki18.org, newtoki19.org, newtoki20.org, newtoki21.org, newtoki22.org, newtoki23.org, newtoki24.org, newtoki25.org, newtoki298.com, newtoki299.com, newtoki300.com, newtoki301.com, newtoki302.com, newtoki303.com, newtoki304.com, newtoki305.com, newtoki306.com, newtoki307.com, newtoki308.com, newtoki309.com, newtoki310.com, niadd.com, noblesse-manga.com, nocturnalscans.com, olympusscans.com, omniscient-readersviewpoint.com, omniscientreaders.online, on.co, 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From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Website blocking has become the go-to anti-piracy measure for the entertainment industries when tackling pirate sites on the internet.

The practice has been around for well over 15 years and has gradually expanded to more than forty countries around the world.

The actual blocking is done by Internet providers, often following a court order. These measures can range from simple DNS blocks to more elaborate schemes involving Server Name Indication (SNI) eavesdropping, or a combination of both.

Thus far, the more thorough blocking efforts have worked relatively well. However, as privacy concerns grew, new interfering technologies have emerged. Encrypted DNS and SNI , for example, made blocking efforts much harder, although not impossible.

Encrypted Client Hello

A few days ago, Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare implemented widespread support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a privacy technology that aims to render web traffic surveillance futile. This means that site blocking implemented by ISPs will be rendered useless in most, if not all cases.

ECH is a newly proposed privacy standard that’s been in the making for a few years. The goal is to increase privacy for Internet users and it has already gained support from Chrome , Firefox , Edge , and other browsers. Users can enable it in the settings, which may still be experimental in some cases.

The main barrier to widespread adoption is that this privacy technology is a two-way street. This means that websites have to support it as well. Cloudflare has made a huge leap forward on that front by enabling it by default on all free plans, which currently serve millions of sites. Other subscribers can apply to have it enabled.

“Cloudflare is a big proponent of privacy for everyone and is excited about the prospects of bringing this technology to life,” Cloudflare writes in its announcement

“Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) is a successor to ESNI and masks the Server Name Indication (SNI) that is used to negotiate a TLS handshake. This means that whenever a user visits a website on Cloudflare that has ECH enabled, no one except for the user, Cloudflare, and the website owner will be able to determine which website was visited.”

ECH Defeats Site Blocking

The push for increased piracy is well-intended but for rightsholders it represents a major drawback too; when correctly configured ECH defeats site-blocking efforts. Tests conducted by TorrentFreak show that ISP blocking measures in the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain were rendered ineffective.

This doesn’t automatically apply to all blocked sites, as the sites must have ECH enabled too. We have seen mixed results for The Pirate Bay, perhaps because it has a paid Cloudflare plan, but other pirate sites are easily unblocked.

This new privacy feature hasn’t gone unnoticed by pirate site operators. The people behind the Spanish torrent site DonTorrent, which had dozens of domains blocked locally, are encouraging users to try ECH.

“Before ECH, your online privacy was like a secret whispered in the wind, easily picked up by prying ears. But now, with ECH by your side, your data is like hidden treasure on a remote island, inaccessible to anyone trying to get there without the right key,” DonTorrent notes.

“This feature encrypts your data so that neither ISPs nor organizations like ACE and MPA [can] censor, persecute and intimidate websites that they consider ‘illegal’, the site adds in a fairly satirical blog post .

Privacy vs. Piracy

Cloudflare and other tech companies are not supporting ECH to make site-blocking efforts obsolete. However, this privacy progress likely won’t be welcomed by rightsholders, who’ve repeatedly criticized Cloudflare for hiding the hosting locations of pirate sites.

TorrentFreak reached out to a major anti-piracy organization for a comment on these new developments, but we have yet to receive an on-the-record response. It wouldn’t be unthinkable, however, that we will see more blocking lawsuits against Cloudflare in the future.

For now, Cloudflare isn’t mentioning blocking at all. Instead, it is simply excited about making the Internet more private and secure for everyone.

“If you’re a website, and you care about users visiting your website in a fashion that doesn’t allow any intermediary to see what users are doing, enable ECH today on Cloudflare,” the company writes.

“Over time, we hope others will follow our footsteps, leading to a more private Internet for everyone. The more providers that offer ECH, the harder it becomes for anyone to listen in on what users are doing on the Internet. Heck, we might even solve privacy for good.”

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^{* Note: We initially had trouble getting ECH to work. As it turns out, some ‘web shield’ functionalities in anti-virus software can cause issues.}

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

Manga comics have always been popular on pirate sites but where other categories have seen stalled growth, manga piracy boomed .

This unauthorized activity has not gone unnoticed by publishers, who’ve made it clear that piracy will not be tolerated, especially in Japan.

Publishers are tackling the problem by ramping up enforcement. This recently led to a major success when a Cloudflare probe helped to shut down 13DL , Japan’s largest pirate site.

Mangamura Shutdown

These enforcement efforts are intensifying but they are not new. Back in 2019, Japanese authorities arrested the operator of Mangamura, the leading manga piracy site at the time.

Mangamura had only been around for roughly two years but according to Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA, it caused well over $2 billion in damages to the local manga industry. The operator of the site, Romi Hoshino, was held responsible and eventually pleaded guilty in a criminal prosecution.

In 2021 the Fukuoka District Court sentenced Hoshino to three years in prison and over $650,000 in fines. That was a major win for the publishers, but they still weren’t done.

Publishers Want Millions

Last year, manga publishers Kodakawa, Shogakukan, and Shueisha filed a civil lawsuit against the former operator of Mangamura. Together, the companies requested 1.9 billion yen in damages. That’s close to US$13 million based on today’s exchange rate, without taking into account the 5% interest rate on top.

According to the complaint, Mangamura had around 100 million monthly visits at its peak. This arguably made it one of the largest pirate sites in history with Hoshino, who is now in his early thirties, as the main defendant.

To back up these claims and formulate a claim for damages, the publishers started to verify the site’s traffic statistics. They also hoped to find more evidence of Hoshino’s personal involvement. This quest eventually brought them to the U.S., as Mangamura used the services of both Google and Cloudflare.

Help from Google and Cloudflare

A few weeks ago the rightsholders made an appearance at a California federal court where they requested a subpoena to obtain detailed information from these two American tech companies. According to the court filing, the requested details are critical.

“[T]he number of visits or accesses to each of the Infringing Websites and the identifying information relating to the Mangamura would be critical in the Lawsuit,” the publishers wrote, adding that Google and Cloudflare are the only parties that can provide access to it.

The request landed on the desk of U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim who, after reviewing all the arguments, recommended the court grant the subpoena. Neither Google nor Cloudflare objected or made an appearance.

In a report and recommendations, Judge Kim concludes that all statutory and discretionary factors weigh in favor of granting the subpoena. The requested information is targeted enough and appears to be vital to the ongoing legal battle in Japan.

“[D]iscovery sought does not appear unduly burdensome or intrusive. Petitioners’ request is narrowly tailored to seek the website analytics necessary to calculate damages in their suit and identifying information solely for the registered account holder and registered billing contact for Mangamura,” Judge Kim wrote.

A few days ago, District Court Judge Vince Chhabria took over this recommendation, granting the subpoena.

Analytics, IP-addresses, and More

The subpoenas seek information about accounts related to “manga-mura.net” and “mangamura.org”. This includes traffic statistics, including the number of visitors these domains received.

In addition, the Manga publishers are also looking for all names, phone numbers, email addresses and billing addresses, payment methods, IP addresses, and access logs that are tied to the accounts.

Deterrent

Whether Google and Cloudflare can deliver the requested information has yet to be seen. In any case, the publishers are determined to hold the operator of the defunct site financially responsible for the damages they suffered.

The Japanese complaint mentions that Hoshino likely had help from co-conspirators but no other names are listed. The Tokyo District Court did previously fine two advertising companies for placing ads on Mangamura. Neither of these companies are listed in the publishers’ civil lawsuit.

Despite the fact that there’s only a single target in the Japanese lawsuit, the publishers hope that their legal action will eventually make other pirate site operators rethink their actions.

“We hope that the lawsuit will be conveyed to operators around the world and will deter them [from pirating],” Shueisha’s head of PR, Atsushi Ito, previously said .

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A copy of U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim’s report and recommendations in available here (pdf) , and the order granting the subpoenas can be found here (pdf)

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

With momentum building in favor of pirate site blocking measures elsewhere in Europe, Austrian ISPs took their opposition all the way to the country’s Supreme Court.

Despite concerns over the implications for net neutrality, rightsholders’ interests prevailed. Like many of their foreign counterparts, Austrian ISPs soon found themselves compelled by court order to block torrent and streaming sites, those offering unlicensed musical works, plus scientific article and textbook repositories.

Domain/DNS Blocking Received Surprise ‘Upgrade’

For years Austrian ISPs had deployed DNS blocking in response to court orders but in the summer of 2022, everything changed. New pirate site blocking orders not only contained domain names to be blocked, but also a list of IP addresses.

When the ISPs discovered that the IP addresses belonged to Cloudflare, arms were thrown up in despair. With no opportunity to contest the court-ordered blockades, ISPs had no other choice than to block the IP addresses, rendering countless innocent sites using Cloudflare inaccessible.

While this disruption was controversial and avoidable, the long term effect should be more positive.

IP Address Blocking Violated Net Neutrality

In a series of reports published this week, local telecoms regulator Telekom Control Commission (TKK) states that the IP address blocks implemented last August amounted to net neutrality violations under EU law.

“In a decision dated August 7, 2023, the Telekom Control Commission decided on the admissibility of blocking networks by [various local ISPs] based on a warning from the rights holder SATEL Film GmbH in accordance with Section 81 (1a) UrhG ,” one of the reports begins.

“The provider mentioned had set up DNS access blocks on the one hand and an IP access block on the other in its network at the end of August 2022. With regard to the DNS access blocks, no current violation of Art 3 Para 3 VO (EU) 2015/2120 was found and the procedure was discontinued in this respect.

“With regard to the blocking of access to the IP address 190.115.18.20, the Telekom Control Commission found a violation of Article 3 Paragraph 3 of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 , because the IP access block poses the risk of ‘overblocking’ any website content.”

In a follow-up announcement, TKK said that, since DNS-based blocking is generally sufficient to protect rightsholders, that will be the only method available to them moving forward.

Protecting Net Neutrality

After declaring IP address-based blocking prohibited in Austria, TKK explained its reasoning to a background of net neutrality and freedom of expression on the Internet.

“Since countless websites can be accessed from a single IP address, the risk of blocking websites or Internet services of uninvolved third parties is particularly high in the event of a block,” a TKK spokesman said.

“In Austria, network blocks have so far mainly been implemented with so-called ‘DNS blocks’. With this type of block, only individual domains are blocked and blocking notices are displayed instead. It is important that this practice is maintained in order to maintain the legally required proportionality in the future.”

TKK’s commitment to transparency includes publishing all blocking decisions and the domains they affect.

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

Last summer, the US Copyright Claims Board (CCB) officially launched. Through this Copyright Office-hosted venue, rightsholders can try to recoup alleged damages outside the federal court system.

The CCB aims to make it cheaper for creators to resolve disputes. There’s no attorney required and the filing fee is limited to $100 per claim. Accused parties also benefit as the potential damages are capped at $30,000. Those who prefer traditional lawsuits can choose to opt-out.

Many of the cases that have been submitted thus far are filed against direct infringers. This includes sites and services that use copyrighted material, such as photos, without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

There are also cases where claimants argue that defendants are liable for the acts of a third party. A claim filed by popular reading app AnyStories against CDN provider Cloudflare last September is one such example.

AnyStories vs. Cloudflare

AnyStories allows independent authors to earn revenue from sharing their writings in public. However, these stories are easily copied and posted on pirate sites, much to the frustration of READ ASAP, AnyStories’ Singapore-based parent company.

The Singapore company had some success with sending DMCA notices but one site in particular, infobagh.com, proved to be unresponsive.

Hoping for a breakthrough, AnyStories sent DMCA notices to Cloudflare, calling out Infobagh.com as a pirate site. While Cloudflare provides CDN services for that site, it’s not the hosting company. This means that Cloudflare generally doesn’t intervene.

Indeed, Cloudflare didn’t take action against its customer. Instead, it shared the contact information of Infobagh.com’s hosting company, urging AnyStories to follow the issue up with them.

AnyStories tried to do so, but since the hosting company’s contact information was reportedly inaccurate, it decided to file a claim against Cloudflare at the CCB instead.

Vague Claim, No Damages

The initial claim was rather vague and didn’t really pinpoint alleged wrongdoing at Cloudflare. AnyStories said it hoped that the pirated content would be removed and that Infobagh.com would apologize.

There were no copyright infringement allegations against Cloudflare and no request for monetary damages either.

The Board reviewed the complaint but decided that it couldn’t do much with it as it doesn’t comply with the CASE Act requirements . This was pointed out to AnyStories, and the company was given the opportunity to amend its claim, but it didn’t help.

“Your amended claim does not provide enough facts about allegedly infringing activity by the respondent, Cloudflare Inc,” the CCB wrote, concluding that the amended claim was still non-compliant.

“By contrast, your allegations about Cloudflare do not show how it committed infringement. Instead, you appear to describe responses that Cloudflare made, which you found unsatisfactory, to your inquiries about the allegedly infringing ‘pirated website’.”

Third Claim Fails as Well

In January, the CCB provided detailed information and pointers on how AnyStories could fix these shortcomings. Most importantly, it stressed that the claim should include a direct, contributory, or vicarious copyright infringement allegation.

Despite these detailed instructions, the third claim was again rather brief. While it included a $15,000 damages demand, a concrete copyright infringement allegation against Cloudflare was still absent.

“We tried to communicate with the service provider called CLOUDFLARE, INC., but the service provider provided us with an incorrect contact, which led us to still be unable to contact the actual operator of the pirated website,” it reads, adding that the infringing content remains online.

This was the third and final try for AnyStories, and the Board again concludes that the allegations are insufficient. The main claim that Cloudflare failed to provide accurate contact information for the pirate site’s host has nothing to do with copyright infringement.

“Providing incorrect contact information is not an infringing act, and the claimant has not explained how Cloudfare contributed to the alleged infringement here,” the Board writes .

“The claimant has not described any actions by Cloudflare that would constitute copyright infringement, nor has it described any service that Cloudflare provides to infobagh.com or identified grounds to hold Cloudflare liable for infringement on that site.”

Refile and Repeat?

This isn’t the decision AnyStories was looking for but the CCB is actually quite helpful and points out, again, how the company can lodge a proper contributory infringement claim against Cloudflare.

If the company wants to refile its claim, it should at least show that Cloudflare knew about the infringing activity and induced or caused it (contributory infringement). Alternatively, it can show that Cloudflare had the ability to control the infringing activity and financially benefited from it (vicarious infringement).

The present case stops here, however, and READ ASAP’s complaint is dismissed. These types of dismissals are actually quite common for CCB cases. As Plagiarism Today points out , many filings turn out to be defective.

Thus far, the Copyright Claims Board hasn’t led to a wave of rulings. On the contrary, of the 415 cases file to date, only one has resulted in a full decision. In that case, the board awarded $1,000 to a photographer who discovered that his work was used on the website of a California-based law practice.

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