Over the past four years, anti-piracy campaign Operation 404 has become a permanent fixture in the enforcement calendar with the results of new phases announced every few months.

The results of the fifth wave of Operation 404 were released in March 2023 ; around 200 illegal streaming and gaming sites, 128 domains and 63 music apps were reported blocked, with raids on locations across Brazil leading to 11 arrests.

While Brazil has been the focus of Operation 404 from the very beginning, the campaign has received considerable support from international rightsholders, government bodies and law enforcement agencies. The latest results relating to the sixth wave (Operation 404.6) released this week reveal progress and continued support from a laundry list of international contributors.

They include: City of London Police, United States Department of Justice, UK Intellectual Property Office, Peruvian anti-piracy group Indecopi, Argentina’s Public Ministry, a dozen Civil Police forces in Brazil, Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, MPA Latin America, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, US Patents and Trademarks Office, Brazilian Pay TV / Telecom Association, Latin American anti-piracy group Alianza, Premier League, Brazil’s National Council for Combating Piracy and Crimes Against Intellectual Property, the Entertainment Software Alliance, and Brazilian anti-piracy body APDIF.

Sixth Wave of Operation 404

A statement from IFPI notes that Operation 404 remains one of the largest campaigns of its type. Thus far the operation has resulted in the suspension of nearly 1,500 domains, the removal of 780 infringing music apps, and delivery of more than 100 search warrants, IFPI says.

Action against 12 major stream ripping and MP3 download apps supported the music industry in wave six, with IFPI reporting that collectively the apps received over 4.3 million downloads in Brazil alone. While the apps go unnamed, the global music industry group says that they were removed from major app stores and other sites offering them for download.

Reports By Authorities in Brazil

Information obtained from government and law enforcement resources reveals the execution of 24 search and seizure warrants; 22 in Brazil, and one each in Argentina and the United States. Reports indicate a total of 606 websites and applications blocked or suspended for illegal content streaming; 238 in Brazil, 328 in Peru and 40 in the United Kingdom. In some cases sites were deindexed from search engines and their accounts removed from social media by court order.

How many of the affected domains are currently redirecting to the latest seizure banner is unclear. We can confirm the banner is hosted on a subdomain of gov.br, the Brazilian government’s website, and we include it below for reference and for being perhaps the most comprehensive notice of its type ever seen online.

Local law enforcement agencies provide additional detail on operations carried out in their regions, some of which are summarized below.

Premier League Piracy, IPTV Operator Raided

Civil Police forces in several states are reported to have targeted the operators of websites and IPTV services offering illegal streams of Premier League matches.

In Mato Grosso, a large state in west-central Brazil, police targeted what appears to be an illicit IPTV provider. Authorities say that the service’s records show it had more than 60,000 customers; its operators face potential prosecution for intellectual property crimes, money laundering, and criminal association.

The Civil Police of Paraná ( PCPR ) report two search and seizure warrants executed against individuals suspected of ‘digital piracy’ offenses in the municipalities of Londrina and Assis Chateaubriand. Electronic equipment including cell phones and computers (image below) were seized as evidence.

Police also carried out a search-and-seize operation at an apartment in Ponta Verde, Maceió. Their targets were a couple from Brazil’s smallest state, Sergipe, said to have been living locally for the past several months. Police believe the pair are guilty of copyright infringement offenses but at the time of the raid, only a 26-year-old woman, her daughters, and their nanny, were at home.

According to his wife, the man was visiting the capital, Aracaju. That’s likely to have come as a disappointment to the Premier League, which had been reportedly working with police to target a pirate IPTV service and its operator at the Ponta Verde address. Nobody was arrested.

Other targets reported locally include the VidMate stream-ripping app said to have been downloaded 870 million times worldwide with over 1.1 million active users in Brazil.

Finally, reports indicate that the Peruvian government body Indecopi took action to block 157 domains dedicated to music piracy and stream ripping. There doesn’t appear to be any recent official reports of that nature but Indecopi has previously published lists of domains subject to blocking ( 1 ) including as part of Operation 404 ( 2 ).

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

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The Entertainment Software Association ( ESA ) has submitted its latest overview of “Notorious Markets” to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

These submissions serve as input for the USTR’s yearly overview of piracy ‘markets’ which helps to shape the Government’s global copyright enforcement agenda going forward.

The ESA, which represents video game companies including Activision Blizzard, EA, Epic Games, Nintendo, Sony, Square Enix, and Ubisoft, hopes that the interests of its members will be taken into account. In the report, the group lists various pirate sites that allow the public to download games for free.

Cyberlockers, Linking and Torrent Sites

Download sites remain a key problem for the video games industry and these exist in various forms. In the cyberlocker category 1fichier.com and megaup.net are mentioned specifically. The former has also been the target of Nintendo legal action in France.

Megaup hasn’t been sued, but ESA views the platform as a growing concern. Over the past year, the number of estimated game downloads rose 135% according to the report. While Megaup processes takedown notices, most are never followed up. Files that are taken down only disappear after a considerable delay, according to ESA.

“Megaup hosts hundreds of unauthorized copies of copyright protected video game titles and only has a 33% response rate to ESA’s takedown notices despite receiving numerous removal notices,” ESA writes.

“Linking websites that index and manage the links to content hosted on Megaup also benefit from the platform’s low compliance rate as these websites derive more traffic, and thus more advertising revenue, due to the durability of the Megaup links.”

These linking sites also remain a threat and the same applies to torrent indexers. ESA lists nsw2u.com, Game3rb.com, Solidtorrents.to, and 1337x.to in its submission. Interestingly, the game companies write that 1337x was launched in 2014, which is seven years after its actual founding date.

Cheats and Marketplaces

The game companies continue by listing various sites that offer cheats and related information. These include mpgh.net and unknowncheats.me. The latter claims to have over four million users and has been in operation for more than two decades.

“[Unknowncheats.me] offers cheats and tutorials for 100+ titles as well as information and links to anti-cheat software and how to circumvent their protocols. It does not charge for cheats, instead relying on advertisements to
generate revenue.

“All cheats are created by the community and the site encourages users to develop and distribute these illegal goods,” ESA adds.

Unauthorized marketplaces make up the final category of sites. ESA specifically mentions playerauctions.com and G2G.com, which sell in-game items such as skins, virtual game currency, and various boosting options. Both sites have millions of monthly visits, according to recent SimilarWeb estimates.

Scene Groups, Crackers and Repackers

ESA has called out many of the above-mentioned sites and services in previous submissions, but the group also points out problems that it hasn’t discussed in detail before. They include Scene release groups, crackers, and repackers.

While the game-cracking scene has been thriving for roughly four decades, the game companies describe the “warez scene” or “Scene release groups” as an “emerging” threat.

“Scene release groups facilitate commercial scale piracy by circumventing technological protection measures and ‘packaging’ illegal downloads to be more easily accessed by the general public,” ESA writes.

Scene releases are indeed a problem but ESA appears to confuse some terms. The Scene doesn’t release any content to the public; it’s actually frowned upon and contrary to their rules. There are, however, non-Scene release groups and repackers that do upload content to the public.

Whether a Scene label is appropriate or not, ESA believes that “highly skilled” crackers and repackers pose a major threat to the gaming industry.

“Especially critical to this illicit supply chain are highly skilled hackers – also known as ‘crackers’ and ‘repackers’,” ESA writes.

Crackers are typically the people who remove DRM restrictions. These can be from the Scene but others operate more openly. Regardless, ESA notes that crackers violate Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Cracked games usually appear on Scene topsites and private or public pirate sites, through which they are distributed to the broader public. In many cases, these pirated games are then picked up by ‘repackers’, who create slimmed-down versions that are easier to distribute.

“These ‘repacked’ files are very popular with individuals with slower internet speeds and/or data limits, as they will download faster and utilize less bandwidth,” ESA writes.

ESA doesn’t mention any crackers or repackers by name but notes that information on their whereabouts and operations is often shared through websites such as cs.rin.ru.

Cryptocurrency and Malware

Finally, the game companies mention malware and use of cryptocurrencies as growing trends. Many illicit marketplaces accept payments in cryptocurrencies, which are often harder to seize or track than regular bank accounts.

“With the growth of this oftentimes nonrestricted payment system, bad actors are using cryptocurrency as a way of purchasing or selling illicit products without using regulated financial institutions,” ESA writes.

Malware can also be used to generate revenue. In some cases, bad actors monetize pirated games by automatically installing cryptocurrency miners while adware also remains a problem.

“Distributors of pirated video games often lace their downloads with these various forms of malware in order to exploit users downloading ostensibly ‘free’ games,” ESA notes.

The gaming association hopes that by pointing out these threats, some will appear on the radars of law enforcement, policymakers, and foreign governments, then dealt with via appropriate action.

—

A copy of ESA’s submission for the 2023 Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf) . An overview of the (online) threats is listed below.

Hyperlinking Websites (“Linking Sites” or “Link Sites”)
– nsw2u.com
– Game3rb.com

Hosting Websites (“Cyberlockers”)
– 1fichier.com
– megaup.ne

Torrent Indexing Websites
– 1337x.to
– Solidtorrents.to

Cheats
– unknowncheats.me
– mpgh.net

Unauthorized Online Marketplaces
– playerauctions.com
– G2G.com

Malware

Cryptocurrency

Scene Release Groups

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