In the fall of 2019 , Brazilian law enforcement agencies launched the first wave of anti-piracy campaign ‘Operation 404,’ referring to the well-known HTTP error code.

With help from law enforcement in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Argentina, the authorities took down more than a hundred sites and services, while several suspects were arrested.

Following its initial successes, several new waves ‘Operation 404’ were initiated over the ensuing years. Each wave led to raids and takedowns across the country, with assistance from international law enforcement partners. It was clear that Brazil had its enforcement apparatus in order, but the outcomes of these efforts in terms of follow-up actions were largely unknown.

This week, anti-piracy group ALIANZA booked its first ‘404’ related victory in court. Following a criminal complaint from the group, Judge Marina Figueiredo Coelho of the Fifth Criminal Court of Campinas, Sao Paolo, convicted the operator of a pirate IPTV service that was taken down in 2020.

Prison for Flash IPTV Operator

The operator of Flash IPTV, who is referred to by the initials A.W.A.P., was found guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced to five years and four months in prison.

Flash IPTV was a relatively large IPTV service with 13,547 active users at its peak. According to local news reports , the service generated R$4,542,034 ($912,000) in revenue over twelve months, before it was taken offline in 2020 as part of the second ‘Operation 404’ campaign .

Speaking with TorrentFreak, ALIANZA says that this is a historic verdict, as it’s the first criminal IPTV prosecution linked to ‘Operation 404’ in Brazil.

“We appreciate the commitment of the police and judicial authorities in resolving this important case. The conviction of A.W.A.P. is a milestone that reinforces our commitment to defending the rights of creators and fighting against illegal practices that harm the creative economy,” says Víctor Roldán, ALIANZA’s executive director.

More to Come?

A copy of the verdict wasn’t released to the public, as is common with these types of convictions, so further details are scarce.

While Operation 404 resulted in many arrests over the years, follow-up prosecutions have been rare in Brazil. Previously, ALIANZA did score a similar victory in Ecuador , where the operator of the pirate IPTV service IPTVlisto.com was sentenced to a year in prison.

Last fall, Brazilian authorities conducted the sixth wave of Operation 404 and more are expected to follow in the future. These enforcement initiatives are broadly praised by rightsholders and the recent conviction will only strengthen their support.

There’s always room for improvement, of course. A few weeks ago, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) recommended Brazil to remain on the US ‘ Special 301 ‘ Watch List of countries with IP-related challenges.

IIPA saw various positive developments, especially regarding Operation 404. However, disagreement between rightsholders over enforcement action could still improve.

“Brazil still suffers from a lack of specific norms and regulations regarding the enforcement of copyrighted works over the Internet and a lack of resources and staff to support enforcement actions considering the reach and amount of content piracy in the region,” IIPA wrote.

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

Most anti-piracy tools and mechanisms, whether dedicated online platforms or legislation crafted to achieve a particular goal, have issues that affect their performance.

No matter how tough, legislation could be of date when finally implemented, or reveal itself to be unwieldy in practice, too costly, or simply ineffective. Technical solutions may face compliance and regulatory issues, while pirate adversaries remain light on their feet by ignoring them all.

One key to success for rightsholders is to exploit pirates where they’re most vulnerable, i.e anywhere where they’re reliant on services operated by businesses that already comply with the law and are more likely to take action.

The European Commission’s Recommendation (Toolbox) published on Tuesday, focuses on just that by providing guidance on enforcement, suggesting priority actions, and encouraging use of existing anti-counterfeit/anti-piracy tools.

Cooperation, Coordination and Information Sharing

The Commission says a key aim of the Toolbox is to promote and facilitate effective cooperation between rightsholders, providers of intermediary services, and competent authorities, by promoting good practice and use of appropriate tools and new technologies.

The headline focus is anti-counterfeiting but within the text the EC notes that “most guiding principles, good practices and tools” developed under the recommendation can also be relevant when tackling pirated content online. In particular, voluntary actions taken by online intermediaries, “enhanced cooperation among competent national authorities,” and the sharing of information and data.

Cooperation and increased information sharing are essential and should be further promoted, at all levels, in accordance with Union law, the protection of personal data and the freedom to conduct business under Article 16 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘ the Charter ’). Good practices should be identified, and recommended to all actors, including e-commerce marketplaces, transport and logistic service providers, payment services providers, social media providers, providers of domain name services, etc. Secondly, further cooperation and information sharing should be encouraged. This relates to all competent authorities, including market surveillance authorities that currently may not have competences for IP-infringing activities, and promoting further the use of dedicated tools such as the IP Enforcement Portal (‘IPEP’)…

Payment Services, Social Media Platforms

The EC highlights payment services as an area where more can be done. On one hand, these companies are central to rightsholders’ activities. On the other, they can also be used to support IP-infringing activities. The EC says that to prevent misuse of their services for IP-infringing activities, payment services should be encouraged to implement the following good practices:

(a) to clearly state in their terms and conditions, as a ground for suspension or termination of their contract with sellers, any finding, including by the competent authority, of the use of their payment services for IP-infringing activities;
(b) to set up notification mechanisms allowing rightsholders using their payment services to notify any IP-infringing activity;
(c) where technically and economically feasible, to have an information system in place to enable the identification of operators engaging in IP-infringing activities, across different payment services, when one payment service provider has terminated its services with such operators on the grounds of IP-infringing activities;
(d) to exchange information with other payment service providers on trends regarding IP-infringing activities and to put in place specific measures against repeated misuse of their services, particularly where there has been a finding by a competent authority that their services have been used for IP-infringing activities.

Social media providers should similarly prevent misuse of their services, including by having systems in place to identify and take action against those misusing their services for IP-infringing activities.

Domain Name Registries/Registrars

The Commission’s Recommendation naturally assumes that where the law compels intermediaries or service providers to take action, that should be the standard minimum response. However, when entities are asked to go above and beyond, which appears to underpin almost every proposal in the Toolbox, service providers find themselves “encouraged to implement” various measures.

In respect of domain names, Directive (EU) 2022/2555 obliges “TLD name registries and entities providing domain name registration services” to “collect and guarantee the integrity and availability of domain name registration data.” EU Member States should further require these entities to “respond without undue delay” to requests for the disclosure of registration data following requests from “legitimate access seekers.”

Legitimate access seekers include those considered competent under EU or national law for the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offenses. However, the definition can also encompass anyone with a legitimate reason to access the information, which includes rightsholders and their agents.

When access to domain name registration data that is personal data is sought, TLD-name registries and entities providing domain name registration services established in the EU and/or offering services in the EU are encouraged to recognize as legitimate access seekers any natural or legal persons who make a request for a right to information pursuant to Directive 2004/48/EC .

Member States are further encouraged to share intelligence and data on emerging piracy trends, including lists of websites that have been held by competent authorities to have carried out IP-infringing activities, the tactics and behaviors of alleged infringers, and to explore news ways to share information on those who “repeatedly engage in IP-infringing activities.”

Dynamic Injunctions, Unmasking Petty Infringers

Several EU Member States already have mechanisms in place that allow rightsholders to obtain injunctions against infringers and intermediaries, but the Commission would like to see more.

Specifically, Member States are encouraged to provide for the possibility of dynamic injunctions that can be applied to IP-infringing activities that are similar to those already identified, but are yet to be identified, such as the use of mirror sites.

The Commission also encourages Member States to ensure that petty infringers can’t escape simply because their activities are not commercial in scale or even commercial at all.

“Member States are encouraged to provide for the possibility for the competent judicial authorities to order disclosure of the relevant information to effectively fight IP infringements which are not on a commercial scale, in response to a justified and proportionate request of the claimant in proceedings,” the Commission writes.

“For these purposes, the relevant information could consist of the same information which may be requested in accordance with Article 8(2) of Directive 2004/48/EC , including the email address, telephone number and IP addresses relating to alleged infringers or participants to alleged infringing activities.”

The European Commission’s Recommendation (Toolbox) can be found here (pdf)

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

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Back in 2004, in the pre-Web 2.0 era, research indicated that BitTorrent was responsible for an impressive 35% of all Internet traffic. At the time, file-sharing via peer-to-peer networks was the main traffic driver as no other services consumed large amounts of bandwidth. Fast-forward two decades and these statistics are ancient history. With the growth of video streaming, including services such as YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok, file-sharing traffic is nothing more than a drop in today's data pool. [...] This week, Canadian broadband management company Sandvine released its latest Global Internet Phenomena Report which makes it clear that BitTorrent no longer leads any charts. The latest data show that video and social media are the leading drivers of downstream traffic, accounting for more than half of all fixed access and mobile data worldwide. Needless to say, BitTorrent is nowhere to be found in the list of 'top apps'. Looking at upstream traffic, BitTorrent still has some relevance on fixed access networks where it accounts for 4% of the bandwidth. However, it's been surpassed by cloud storage apps, FaceTime, Google, and YouTube. On mobile connections, BitTorrent no longer makes it into the top ten. The average of 46 MB upstream traffic per subscriber shouldn't impress any file-sharer. However, since only a small percentage of all subscribers use BitTorrent, the upstream traffic per user is of course much higher.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BitTorrent Is No Longer the 'King' of Upstream Internet Traffic

The Oscars is the most prestigious movie awards show of the year, one that’s closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.

This year’s awards ceremony was no exception. In the U.S. alone, close to 20 million people tuned in to the ABC show on Sunday evening; a four-year record.

In today’s connected world, news spreads quickly across other entertainment channels. As always, most interest goes out to the big winners. This weekend, Oppenheimer emerged as the clear victor with five Oscars, including the most prestigious “Best Picture”.

Poor Things and The Zone of Interest followed at a respectable distance with two wins each, followed by the rest of the field of single winners, including Barbie, The Zone of Interest, and Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Oscar-Effect

In the past we have seen that Oscar wins are not just about prestige, they can also increase sales. This was particularly impactful for titles that are sold separately, as opposed to being part of a streaming bundle.

On the flip side, the Oscars can also impact piracy rates. This is something we can measure directly, as we did when the Oscar nominations were announced in January. We saw interest in many contenders rise but with Oppenheimer, there was little impact.

At the time, we theorized that Oppenheimer was already widely promoted and seen by many millions of people. As a result, the extra attention from the Oscar nomination didn’t move the needle, as it did with ‘smaller’ titles.

When we gathered the new piracy data this Monday and Tuesday, we didn’t expect to see a massive boost in piracy activity for Oppenheimer. The fact that high quality pirated copies of the film have been available since November last year only reinforced that assumption. The data show that assumption was incorrect.

Oppenheimer Piracy Spikes Post-Oscars

Looking through the data we see that Oppenheimer saw a massive 135% increase in downloads on Monday and Tuesday, compared to the same days a week earlier. This made it the second most pirated movie on these days, just behind Damsel which came out on pirate sites a few days ago.

This level of interest in a movie that’s been out for months is a rarity. The Oscar win convinced many people who hadn’t seen it yet to finally give it a go. This effect isn’t just limited to pirate sites as Oppenheimer also moved up Apple’s movie rental charts , and probably elsewhere too.

While Oppenheimer saw the largest piracy increase, other Oscar winners recorded download spikes as well. Poor Things, for example, saw a healthy 39% increase. Killers of the Flower Moon (30%) saw a healthy double-figure increases too and The Zone of Interest downloads surged 116%, as shown below.

Barbie?

When Barbie and Oppenheimer premiered in theaters last summer, the term “Barbenheimer” became somewhat of an Internet phenomenon. Today, however, the differences between these box office hits couldn’t be bigger.

Although Barbie managed to secure an Oscar in the ‘Best Song’ category, the number of pirate downloads is lower than all other films mentioned here. The piracy volume did spike somewhat compared to last week, but at 28% this boost is rather modest compared to Oppenheimer.

All in all, it’s safe to say that after 95 years, the Academy Awards ceremony is as relevant today as it ever was. While people now have the freedom to watch what they want, whenever they want, their free choice continues to be directed by external forces.

As with all trends today, the piracy boosts don’t last long. They already started to drop off after a day and will likely be back to normal by the end of the week.

—

^{Note: The data used in this article comes from Iknow , which tracks torrent downloads through DHT and PEX. While it may not be able to track all downloads, it’s a substantial sample, which acts as a good proxy for the overall interest on all pirate sites and services.}

^{It is worth stressing that this sample only looks at torrent downloads. Views on streaming platforms, direct downloads, and other piracy sources can’t be measured directly. That said, we assume that the trend will be similar there.}

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

Piracy was traditionally seen as something that predominantly young males were interested in. This is a largely outdated representation of reality, as girls and women began to catch up a long time ago. In some countries, including Indonesia, more women pirate music, movies, and TV-shows than their male counterparts. TorrentFreak reports: [N]ew findings published by researchers from Northumbria University Newcastle, which include gender, are worth highlighting. The survey data, looking at piracy trends in Thailand and Indonesia, was released by Marketing professor Dr. Xuemei Bian and Ms. Humaira Farid. The results were presented to WIPO's Advisory Committee on Enforcement recently and the associated presentation (PDF) was published online. Through an online survey and in-person interviews, the research aims to map consumer attitudes and behaviors in Indonesia and Thailand, particularly in connection with online copyright infringement. One of the overall conclusions is that piracy remains a common activity in both Asian countries. Pirates are present in all age groups but and music, movies en TV-shows tend to be in highest demand and younger people. Those under 40, are more likely to pirate than their older counterparts. These findings are not out of the ordinary and the same trends are visible in other countries too. Interestingly, however, some notable differences between the two countries appear when gender is added to the mix. The tables below show that women are more likely to pirate than men in Indonesia. This is true for all content categories, except for software, where men are slightly in the lead. In Thailand, however, men are more likely to pirate across all categories. The researchers do not attempt to explain these differences. However, they show once again that 'dated' gender stereotypes don't always match with reality. And when they have little explanatory value, one can question whether gender is even relevant in a piracy context. Looking at other differences between Thai and Indonesian consumers there are some other notable findings. For example, in Indonesia, 64% of the respondents say they're aware of the availability of pirated movies and TV-shows on YouTube, compared to 'just' 32% in Thailand. Indonesian consumers are also more familiar with music piracy sites and pirate much more frequently than Thai consumers, as the table below shows. Finally, the researchers also looked at various attitudes toward piracy. This shows that Thai pirates would be most likely to stop if legal services were more convenient, while Indonesian pirates see cheaper legal services as the largest discouraging factor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Indonesia, Women Pirate More Music and Movies Than Men

At the start of the last decade, The Pirate Bay teamed up with Sweden’s Lund University to conduct the largest online piracy survey in history.

The research elicited responses from 75,000 ‘pirates’ from all parts of the world. Despite this geographical diversity, a rather traditional gender pattern appeared. Of all respondents, only 5% were female.

These findings were rather extreme but they fit the old stereotypical image of ‘the online pirate’ as a young, somewhat nerdy male. While that might have been relatively accurate 25 years ago, piracy audiences are much more diverse today.

Recent studies have shown more diverse age distribution and increasingly gender is seen as a less relevant variable too. One of the largest longitudinal studies on piracy conducted by the European Union , doesn’t even mention gender as a factor anymore.

Research: Who Pirates and Why?

This doesn’t mean that there are no differences, of course, but these rarely add any explanatory value or new insights. That said, new findings published by researchers from Northumbria University Newcastle, which include gender, are worth highlighting.

The survey data, looking at piracy trends in Thailand and Indonesia, was released by Marketing professor Dr. Xuemei Bian and Ms. Humaira Farid. The results were presented to WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement recently and the associated presentation was published online.

Through an online survey and in-person interviews, the research aims to map consumer attitudes and behaviors in Indonesia and Thailand, particularly in connection with online copyright infringement.

One of the overall conclusions is that piracy remains a common activity in both Asian countries. Pirates are present in all age groups but and music, movies en TV-shows tend to be in highest demand and younger people. Those under 40, are more likely to pirate than their older counterparts.

These findings are not out of the ordinary and the same trends are visible in other countries too. Interestingly, however, some notable differences between the two countries appear when gender is added to the mix.

More Women than Men Pirate in Indonesia

The tables below show that women are more likely to pirate than men in Indonesia. This is true for all content categories, except for software, where men are slightly in the lead. In Thailand, however, men are more likely to pirate across all categories.

The researchers do not attempt to explain these differences. However, they show once again that ‘dated’ gender stereotypes don’t always match with reality. And when they have little explanatory value, one can question whether gender is even relevant in a piracy context.

Looking at other differences between Thai and Indonesian consumers there are some other notable findings. For example, in Indonesia, 64% of the respondents say they’re aware of the availability of pirated movies and TV-shows on YouTube, compared to ‘just’ 32% in Thailand.

Indonesian consumers are also more familiar with music piracy sites and pirate much more frequently than Thai consumers, as the table below shows.

Price vs. Convenience

Finally, the researchers also looked at various attitudes toward piracy. This shows that Thai pirates would be most likely to stop if legal services were more convenient, while Indonesian pirates see cheaper legal services as the largest discouraging factor.

All in all, the researchers conclude that these attitudes and the regional differences are important to take into account for policymakers.

“[P]olicies and anti-piracy strategies aimed at eliminating consumer piracy should take into account product category and consumer characteristics, as well as national level differences,” the researchers conclude.

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

Anime is growing globally as an entertainment category and this popularity surge isn’t limited to legal platforms.

Today, several of the world’s largest pirate sites are exclusively dedicated to anime. This includes Aniwatch.to, the streaming portal that operated as Zoro.to earlier last year.

The streaming portal, which is arguably the largest pirate site in the world, is a prime target for anti-piracy groups. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), for example, is actively trying to shut the platform down, which they believe is operated from Vietnam.

Last year, ACE had its sights set on shutting down the rogue operation. And indeed, it managed to take over the domain name Zoro.to, but not before the site had rebranded to Aniwatch.to . Under that new brand, business continued as usual.

ACE and others kept up the pressure and in recent months branded Aniwatch one of the most notorious pirate sites . However, taking it offline is easier said than done.

Zoro -> Aniwatch -> HiAnime

A few hours ago, Aniwatch users were in for a surprise as the anime streaming portal rebranded again. Instead of Aniwatch, the site formerly known as Zoro will now continue under the name HiAnime.

Users who try to access the old Aniwatch.to domain name are redirected to the new domain name automatically.

With the previous rebrand, the operators said that the site was being acquired by a new team . There are no such mentions today. Neither is there an explanation for the move but users are assured that their information remains intact.

“All data and information shall be transferred and shall remain the same as before. User accounts and watchlist records shall thus remain unchanged,” a message in the site’s Discord reads.

Why Now?

Without an official explanation, we can only speculate as to why the operators have decided to adopt another new brand. It’s unlikely that this is a facade to confuse anti-piracy groups, as they’re not easily fooled anymore.

What would make more sense is that the new brand and domain are an attempt to evade blocking efforts, at least temporarily. This includes advertising blacklists and site-blocking efforts, including one issued in India recently.

As reported last week, the High Court in New Delhi, India, issued a dynamic+ blocking injunction that requires local ISPs to block several pirate domains, including Aniwatch.to. Since nearly a quarter of all the site’s visits come from India, this order may have quite an impact on the site.

Whether a ‘rebrand’ will be sufficient to evade this order is unclear though, as these dynamic orders can be updated with new domains, precisely to deal with these types of situations.

H*anime Confusion

Whatever the reason, the site’s users are not as shocked by the new name as they were last time. Changes generally elicit some backlash and that’s also the case here. However, most of the critique we’ve seen stems from the similarity to another anime-themed site.

Several users note that Hianime is only a typo away from Hanime, which is an adult-themed site focusing on Hentai content. In fact, the logo reads “Hanime” as the first “i” is replaced by an exclamation mark.

“Cool rebrand and all but…. You decided to pick Hanime I thought I was on a very different website for a minute..,” one user writes.

The good news is that both sites use different TLDs which makes it less likely that people will end up at the wrong site. And even if any more serious brand clashes emerge, the site can always pick another name and try again. They know how it works by now.

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

Over the years, plenty of TV show episodes have leaked online in advance of their official release.

Game of Thrones had several prominent episodes come out early , sometimes several at once, and successor ‘House of the Dragon’ saw the season finale debut early .

In most cases, these leaks are broadly advertised by the pirate groups who put them online. Being the first to release a prominent leak, is a key accolade in a business where everything revolves around releasing new content faster than others.

‘Masters of the Air’ Leak

As one of the hit shows of the year, the Apple TV+ series “ Masters of the Air ” is a key target of pirate groups. However, the leaked episode that appeared a few hours ago wasn’t advertised as such.

Information received by TorrentFreak confirms that pirated copies of the latest episode of Apple’s series “The New Look” are not what they seem. Instead, these early pirated copies of ‘The New Look S01E05’ include the video track of an unreleased episode of another series.

These erroneous releases include video from the eighth episode of “Masters of the Air,” which is set to be released on March 8. The audio track, however, is from “The New Look”, which likely makes it a confusing watch.

There are rumors that there are also full copies available, including the leaked audio track, but we could not confirm those.

It’s not clear how this ‘mistake’ came about, but it seems likely that Apple or another party accidentally put the wrong video online. This error was fixed as soon as the issue was noticed, but not before pirate groups grabbed their copies.

While some pirate release groups are eager to get leaks out to the public, the content of the release amounts to an unintentional Apple mashup and an unwatchable episode. There are subtitles available on some releases, but they’re from “The New Look.”

Many release groups were swift to fix the unusual error and released “repacks” to fix the earlier mistake. These updated releases include the correct video track, removing the inadvertent “Masters of the Air” leak. Some added comments further corroborate the error.

“Apple fucked up and put up the video for masters of the air episode 8,” we read in one of the notes that comes with a repack release.

Even if the leak was a full copy, one can only wonder how welcome it would be. The seventh episode of “Masters of the Air” is scheduled to be released this Friday and true fans typically like to follow the chronological storyline.

We reached out to Apple for a comment on the accidental leak but the company didn’t immediately reply.

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

The last time over 200 pirate sites went offline at the same time was…..well, probably never. Certainly, so many sites have never gone down and stayed down for four days straight in what still amounts to a relatively tight niche.

Yet that’s exactly what happened this week , when at least 200 .TV domains were suddenly rendered useless. WHOIS records revealed that the domains had a status of ‘serverHold’ which indicates a domain with no presence in the domain name system.

Registry >> Registrar >> Domain Owner

The suspended domains were all registered at Sarek Oy, the Finland-based domain registrar with connections to former Pirate Bay spokesman, Peter Sunde. Those in need of a liberal, privacy-focused domain registrar, with a pedigree supported by thousands of news articles, countless interviews, TV appearances, and a full-blown movie, have fewer reasons than most to shop for domains elsewhere.

Site operators understand Peter and he understands their requirements, as other projects including Njalla demonstrate. Unfortunately, when everything went dark Tuesday/Wednesday with no sign of recovery by Thursday, lack of information from obvious sources seemed to have no solution.

When domains are placed on ‘serverHold’ that’s the work of domain registries, not registrars, but domain owners still need to know where they stand.

Frustrations Build

One of those people is Jomo, the owner of Jomo.tv, which unlike most of the .TV domains currently suspended, isn’t a pirate site.

“I use the affected domain for my tech blog and my email address. I have received zero information about what’s going on, and I don’t know if or when this is going to be resolved,” Jomo told TF early on Friday.

“Njalla does not seem to know anything, the registry did not want to tell me anything and only referred to Sarek without any further info, and Sarek does not respond at all.”

GoDaddy completed its takeover of registry services for .TV domains late 2022, after previous controller Verisign chose not to bid when .TV last came up for grabs. When attempting to contact GoDaddy for comment earlier this week, TorrentFreak’s first email received an automatic response saying “Message blocked” while a second to a different address informed us that “The recipient’s mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now.”

While frustrating for us, domain owners like Jomo had serious issues to contend with.

“It is extremely frustrating to not get any info or updates, in addition to being unable to send or receive any emails, and being unable to log in to several services. By now I’m sure some emails are lost forever as the domain has been unavailable for several days,” Jomo added.

Problem Acknowledged on Friday

When no official updates were provided on Thursday, the situation was looking increasingly grim. Then on Friday, Jomo suddenly had luck reaching GoDaddy via TurnOn.tv.

“They actually replied fairly quickly,” Jomo says, “but only told me to ‘contact your sponsoring registrar, Sarek Oy.'”

After logging into his Njalla account, a new message appeared: “Some .tv domains have been put on serverHold by the registry and we are in contact with them to resolve the issue.” There was no response to his support ticket filed earlier but at least the issue had been acknowledged.

Then a few hours later, a ray of light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

‘Technical Issue’ Resolved With Registry

After three days without any useful information, Jomo received a response from Njalla, sometime Friday evening we believe.

“It is a technical issue. We’ve squared things out with the registry and we’re just waiting for them to lift the serverHold,” a message from Njalla reads.

“That will happen anywhere between in a few minutes till Monday, but we’re hoping sooner than later of course. We apologize for the troubles it had caused.”

At the time of writing, Jomo’s domain still hasn’t returned and when we last checked, the same was true for around 200 others. While there’s optimism that all domains will eventually return to service, the episode leaves big questions unanswered.

The Information Age

Perhaps the most pressing question from a consumer perspective is the decision by the registry to suspend so many domains in one swoop with zero notice. The fact that so many domains are used by pirate sites does muddy the waters somewhat but as Jomo will confirm, non-pirate sites are affected too.

When a particular entity takes action to suspend domains, whose responsibility is it to keep customers informed? In this case the action was taken by the registry but when asked to provide information, the registry refused to supply it, referring questions back to the registrar instead.

Problems Over, or More to Come?

Then there’s the question of the issue that prompted the suspensions; what was it and is it likely to reoccur? Should domain registrants avoid .TV domains? Without information to the contrary, rightly or wrongly some will draw that conclusion.

Of course, by offering domains with toughened privacy, Sarek Oy/Njalla find themselves disproportionately involved in legal proceedings where a plaintiff hopes to identify a domain operator but runs into firewall instead.

A live case in the United States required various domain registrars including GoDaddy, Namecheap and Sarek Oy, to take action against several app stores to prevent apps with ‘Temu’ branding being made available to the public.

As far as we can see, Namecheap, GoDaddy, and Sarek Oy were ordered to disable the platforms’ domains but to date, only domains registered through Sarek remain both intact and online.

At least in part, that’s to be expected and to some extent, the service as promised. Also to be expected are complications arising from an accumulation of these types of cases and similar disputes that come with the territory, the supply of which seems endless.

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