Ever since Italian authorities announced their intent to introduce an even more aggressive anti-piracy blocking system than the one already in place, controversy has rarely been far behind.

Recent reports of avoidable overblocking, a reluctance to admit that the Piracy Shield system is fallible, and new reports that telecoms regulator AGCOM is now rejecting complaints from wrongfully blocked Cloudflare customers, are just some of the ingredients in a volatile mix that has always threatened to boil over.

Piracy Shield: Source Code Leaked Online

In what could develop into the biggest crisis yet for the Piracy Shield system and those who operate it, nine repositories of source code, internal documentation, and other related data, claiming to be the various components of the Piracy Shield system, appear to have leaked online.

An announcement in Italian and English, posted on GitHub a few hours ago, criticizes AGCOM and SP Tech Legal, the law firm-linked developer behind Piracy Shield, for creating a “tool of censorship disguised as a solution to piracy.”

The main ‘fuckpiracyshield’ repository on GitHub was created by a user of the same name; they appear to have joined the site for the purposes of leaking the code online and, after signing up at 15:55 on Tuesday, by 16:50 they were gone. Aside from the leaked material, a message was left behind.

“This is not the way to stop piracy. This is a gateway to censorship,” the bio message reads.

Content Allegedly Leaked

The apparently leaked collection spans nine repositories; they are named and described as follows:

frontend (The frontend of Piracy Shield), data (Guides for the ISPs and reporters that use Piracy Shield), variations (Some code that was probably used for testing for Piracy Shield?), service (Services and main logic of the Piracy Shield API), data-storage (Storage and filesystem management for the Piracy Shield API), data-model (Data models of objects used by the Piracy Shield code), component (Components needed by other Piracy Shield packages), api (This is the API for Piracy Shield)

For those unfamiliar with Python or no interest in code, period, the ‘data’ repository probably offers the most interesting information. It contains what appears to be up-to-date operations manuals for Piracy Shield, with the ‘ISP TECHNICAL MANUAL – PIRACY SHIELD’ described as v2.4.1, current on February 2nd when Piracy Shield made its full debut.

All documents are named and presented in Italian and the titles suggest that there are two versions of two distinct manuals: ‘Piracy Shield Manual’ and ‘Piracy Shield Error Codes’. One version seems to be directed at those reporting domains and IP addresses for blocking and the other toward the ISPs expected to carry out the blocking.

Unusual Feature of the Leak

When browsing the source code and attempting to work out its purpose, on some repositories something immediately stands out. With no assumptions as to who the name refers, a contributor to the Piracy Shield project appears to be someone called Daniele Maglie. Their name appears time and again throughout the code, which in itself isn’t especially unusual.

However, when looking more closely at the leaker’s bio, which includes an image of AGCOM’s president apparently deep in thought, leaving the mouse pointer in place for a moment produces a piece of popup text, as highlighted in the image below.

What the text means, if indeed it means anything at all, will be just one of the questions being asked in the days to come. In the meantime, AGCOM has yet another blocking target to contend with, although a DMCA notice will be much more effective.

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

After initially denying that Italy’s new Piracy Shield anti-piracy platform had been responsible for any over-blocking, last week telecoms regulator AGCOM conceded that an IP address belonging to Cloudflare had been blocked in error .

While that might be considered progress of sorts, the incident was downplayed as minor on the basis it was rectified a few hours later. No consolation for the many Cloudflare customers affected, of course, but that particular problem isn’t going away. Cloudflare is encouraging its customers to file complaints to draw attention to the perils of widespread blocking measures.

Yet despite calls for more transparency, not to mention an obvious need, AGCOM is still not reporting the IP addresses subjected to blocking, instead preferring to report the volume of IP addresses blocked instead. While the latter is not unimportant information, only the former can shine light on cases where IP addresses are blocked in error. Or when IP addresses are blocked despite the legal provision that prohibits blocking when IPs are not exclusively used for piracy.

New Third-Party Service Imposes Transparency

Official providers of all types of content have understood for some time that if they don’t meet demand, someone else will do it for them. After calls for transparency appeared to fall on deaf ears, transparency has been imposed on the Piracy Shield system thanks to a new, unofficial third-party system: Piracy Shield Search .

The most important feature of the service is the ability to enter an IP address or a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) to find out whether they’re on the Piracy Shield system.

The image below consists of an original blocking order (translated from Italian) issued in response to a blocking application by Sky Italia. To protect Sky’s broadcasting rights for FIM MotoGP World Championship and the Motul FIM Superbike World Championship, the domain http://live.vitocatozzo.eu was added to the Piracy Shield system.

The response from Piracy Shield Search added by us directly underneath the relevant section in the application confirms that the domain was indeed placed on the blocklist. The response also provides the time the rightsholder or its representative added the ticket to the system, which acts as the instruction for ISPs to go ahead and start blocking.

Rightsholder Tickets and Top AS By IP Address

The Piracy Shield Search system shows data relating to currently active blocking, not the total number of requests made or IP addresses/domains blocked to date.

In the image below we can see that 662 rightsholder tickets are currently live, and together they target 2,849 IPv4 IP addresses, zero IPv6 IP addresses, and 6,601 fully qualified domain names. The panel on the right shows the top AS (autonomous systems) ranked by the total number of IP addresses allocated to the AS that are currently subject to blocking.

The ticket panel on the left shows that the system deployed in Italy operates similarly to the blocking system operated in the UK.

Much is made in the media about the requirement to block IP addresses and domains within 30 minutes, possibly to imply that blocking takes place mostly during live matches. However, the two items at the top of the list show that IP addresses and domains are typically added in bulk, long after matches finish or, alternatively, long before they actually start.

Tickets Reveal More Blocking Blunders

The people behind Piracy Shield Search have decided to partially redact IP addresses requested for blocking in rightsholder tickets. Since the search facility on the front page responds to requests for specific IP addresses, there’s no need to expose the IP addresses in full here.

However, since the names of the hosts are displayed in full, it’s possible to determine whether the IP addresses that appear on the left are likely to be operated by CDN companies. More importantly, there may also be enough information to determine whether multiple services potentially share the IP address.

In a post to X, developer and researcher Matteo Contrini confirms what many people had suspected; Cloudflare isn’t the only major CDN provider whose IP addresses have ended up on the Piracy Shield system.

“The platform #PiracyShield is blocking 15 Akamai IP addresses! Not only Cloudflare but also the largest CDN in the world…,” Contrini notes.

The data suggests that transparency is a double-edged sword. Without transparency, there’s no scrutiny, and no specific fuel for criticism. When transparency exists, whether voluntarily or by imposition, scrutiny ensures that criticism can be backed up by data provided by the system itself.

What transparency offers that opacity never does, however, is a powerful incentive to do better. Whether the addition of these IP addresses is due to blunder after uncorrected blunder isn’t clear, but the alternative is unquestionably much worse.

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

Pirate site blocking is one of the entertainment industry’s favorite enforcement tools. In recent years, it’s become a common practice in many countries around the world.

In the Netherlands, it took over a decade for the first order to be approved. After detours through the Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice, the final order was issued in 2020, targeting The Pirate Bay .

With all the legal paperwork in order, the doors were open to more blocking requests, especially after rightsholders and local ISPs signed a covenant to streamline the process. If a court orders one company to block pirate sites, by agreement the other ISPs will follow suit.

After the initial Pirate Bay blockade, a follow-up order targeted YTS, EZTV and other torrent sites in 2022. Last year, Lookmovie and Flixtor were singled out in yet another case, despite a challenge to the ‘dynamic’ nature of these orders, which allows new domains to be added continuously.

Blocking Shadow Libraries

All blocking requests were submitted by local anti-piracy group BREIN , which acts on behalf of rightsholders. These include the major Hollywood studios but BREIN’s purview is much broader. Last week, it obtained the latest blocking order, this time on behalf of the publishing industry.

Issued by the Rotterdam District Court, the order requires a local Internet provider to block two well-known shadow libraries; “Anna’s Archive” and “Library Genesis” (LibGen).

News of this new court order was shared by BREIN which notes that both sites were found to make copyright infringing works available on a large scale. At the time of writing, a published copy is not available but, based on the covenant, all large Internet providers are expected to implement the blockades.

“These types of illegal shadow libraries are very harmful. The only ones who benefit are the anonymous owners of these illegal services. Authors and publishers see no return on their efforts and investments,” BREIN comments.

“Copyright holders deserve an honest living. There are numerous legal ways to obtain ebooks. If desired, this can also be done very cheaply; through the library for example.”

Dynamic Order

The Rotterdam court issued a so-called ‘dynamic’ blocking order, meaning that rightsholders can update the targeted domains and IP addresses if the sites switch to new ones in the future. This also applies to mirrors and increases the blockades’ effectiveness, as there is no need to return to court.

Previously, Internet provider KPN challenged these ‘dynamic’ orders, suggesting that they are too broad. The court rejected this argument, however, noting that the process hasn’t led to any major problems thus far.

BREIN further reports that Google is voluntarily offering a helping hand. As reported in detail previously , the search engine removes blocked domains from its local search results after being notified about an ISP blocking order.

“The effectiveness of the blocking measure is increased because Google cooperates in combating these infringements and, at the request of BREIN, completely removes all references to websites that are blocked by order of the Dutch court from the search results,” BREIN writes.

Elephant in the Room

The blockade of the two shadow libraries is a key victory for BREIN; Anna’s Archive and LibGen are the largest sites of their kind along with a similar platform, Z-Library. Interestingly, however, the latter is not part of this blocking order.

Z-Library is the target of an ongoing criminal investigation by the U.S. Government, an enforcement effort in which BREIN also played a role . It is not clear why the site isn’t part of the blocking request, however.

This ‘omission’ is notable considering the anti-piracy group’s earlier stance. After Z-Library’s initial shutdown, BREIN explicitly warned that it would obtain a court order to block Z-Library if it came back online.

Instead of going after Z-Library, BREIN’s latest blocking request targets two other shadow libraries. BREIN must have its reasons not to include Z-Library in this legal effort but the group didn’t immediately respond to our request for clarification.

Update: After publication BREIN explained that it focused on these two domains as they are seen as more popular than Z-Library. Z-Library is targeted by the U.S. but BREIN is planning to request a blockade in the future if the site stays online.

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

Pirate sites are frustrating rightsholders across all continent and many of them see website blocking as the solution.

In Ecuador, blocking measures are not new. Five years ago, the country’s National Intellectual Property Service was the first to order local Internet providers to block several domains of sports streaming site “Rojadirecta”.

These blockades were issued following a complaint from the local football league LigaPro . How effective the measure was is unknown, but the piracy problem didn’t disappear. On the contrary, pirate streaming services only appeared to gain more traction.

LigaPro Boss Celebrates Site Blocking Win

In recent months, LigaPro’s boss Miguel Angel Loor repeatedly drew attention to the ongoing problems. In common with his counterpart in Spain, Loor is determined to make progress on the anti-piracy front and, a few days ago, he reported a notable victory.

“HISTORICAL. For the first time in the history of Ecuador, LigaPro achieves an URGENT ACT that orders the imminent blocking of websites used for unauthorized broadcasting of [LigaPro] matches,” Loor writes .

The recent order targets 22 sports streaming domains, including sinfutboltv.com, librefutboltv.com, futbollibre.com, intergoles.co and jokerlivestream.co. The associated IP-addresses, many of which are shared Cloudflare addresses, are also listed. Blocking these outright can lead to trouble though, as we’ve seen in Italy .

Site blocking isn’t an entirely new concept in Ecuador, but this is the first time that the football league has obtained a court order of this kind. And it’s not going to be the last either, as LigaPro and its partners are determined to keep up the pressure.

“This fight has just begun and we are going to act with the full weight of the law to protect the most popular sport in Ecuador, from which thousands of families live,” Loor says.

Target: MagisTV

In recent weeks, the football league has taken a stand against various piracy services. In addition to the now-blocked sites, it singled out one major target that has yet to be addressed: pirate IPTV service MagisTV.

MagisTV is a popular IPTV service in Latin America, well-known for providing access to premium content for a small subscription fee. The platform has previously been branded a notorious piracy market by Hollywood’s MPA, who suggests that its operators are in China.

“MagisTV has become not just a distributor of infringing content, but also a brand: resellers can purchase credits from magistv.net for MagisTV-branded IPTV services, which they then resell in the form of monthly, quarterly, or yearly
subscriptions,” MPA wrote last October .

In addition to being featured by resellers, these brands typically rely on word-of-mouth promotion by their users. However, last month, a whole new audience was reached when MagisTV became the poster child of a new anti-piracy campaign.

Anti-Piracy Push Backfires?

Earlier this month, the BARCELONA S.C’s football team posed in front of a banner urging fans to ‘say no to MagisTV’, hoping to make an impact.

The plan on display here is that once fans learned about this illegal operation, they would stop using it. In reality, it also served as indirect promotion, making people aware of a ‘cheap’ piracy service they’d never previously heard of.

It’s hard to say what the net effect of the campaign was, but in response to LigaPro’s latest site-blocking announcement on X, several people replied with screenshots of their MagisTV setup.

“Thank you for the recommendation to use MagisTv, excellent service,” said one.

This example shows that simply telling people to stop using a service isn’t always the best strategy, and may even backfire. Nevertheless, Loor and his colleagues are determined to push on, promising a radical fight against pirate sites and services.

“The fight against piracy by the authorities against those who distribute or buy illegal content is going to be radical. Step by step we are going to go against all these Magis TV and other IPTV or signals that provide our content illegally,” Loor said earlier this month.

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

In a little over a week’s time, Italy’s Piracy Shield system will have been fully operational for two whole months.

Claims that IPTV piracy would be eliminated almost overnight helped to convince lawmakers that without Piracy Shield and the legislation that underpins it, Italian football could die.

In reality, the system was never capable of eliminating piracy and football in Italy was never on life support; the big question now is whether it’s performing close to predictions, or even having any effect at all.

Two Months of Dynamic Blocking

During a hearing Wednesday to review Piracy Shield’s performance after almost eight weeks in the trenches, AGCOM President Giacomo Lasorella provided data to show participation in the Piracy Shield platform, specifically the number of entities that filed applications and received accreditation.

Lasorella revealed that 314 requests have been received to date, including five relating to the main users of the platform; broadcasters DAZN, Sky (Comcast) and RTI (Mediaset Group), Serie A, and Serie B. The remaining 309 applications were received from the ISPs required by law to implement blocking instructions issued by Piracy Shield.

In its first full month of operations, the platform handled blocking instructions related to 11 precautionary measures, all of them issued to protect live sports: football from Serie A and Serie B, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and UEFA Europa Conference League, plus Formula 1, MotoGP, Eurocup Basketball, ATP and WTA tennis.

“In total from February 2 to March 3, 3,127 fully qualified domain names and 2,176 IP addresses were blocked,” Lasorella said, noting that figures are available to show IPs blocked each day.

“Obviously these blocks mainly appear when there are sporting events; they are definitely encouraging results which we say testify to the incisiveness of AGCOM’s action.”

The Measure of Success

Whether the nature of AGCOM’s reporting will change as blocking matures is unknown, but in common with other countries, success in Italy is expressed through the use of blocking data; essentially the number of IP addresses and domains blocked. That’s not entirely unexpected but as a measure of success, it’s almost completely meaningless.

The true measure of success isn’t the number of IP addresses blocked or domains rendered inaccessible, but the rate at which new customers sign up and/or remain loyal to legal broadcasting services.

The broadcasters, DAZN and Sky, for example, will already have the data for February, most likely accurate to a single subscriber. Without sight of that all-important data, AGCOM could block the entire internet and those figures would still mean nothing. The unlikely prospect of actually blocking the entire internet took a step closer in February, however.

AGCOM Addresses Over-Blocking Allegations

Following a blunder mid-February that saw an IP address belonging to Zenlayer CDN blocked in error , someone with accreditation to input IP addresses on behalf of rightsholders added one belonging to Cloudflare, with predictably disastrous results .

Those who expected an explanation or perhaps an apology, received something else entirely. During a TV appearance helpfully facilitated by TG24, a channel operated by key Piracy Shield user Sky, AGCOM’s commissioner stated categorically that there had been no blunders. Reports published by journalists at Wired and DDaY were described as “absolutely false” and the whole debacle found itself dismissed as “fake news”.

During the hearing Wednesday, AGCOM’s president conceded that there had indeed been some “critical operational issues” and even went on to explain what had happened.

“The problems we encountered essentially concern the need to discriminate the legal contents from the illicit ones that exist on the same platform. That is, there are platforms where there are legitimate sites and illicit sites together, and the law prescribes that the sites must be uniquely dedicated to, let’s say, the illicit contents.”

Pirates Using Devious Methods? Impossible, surely

The issue of shared IP addresses and the likelihood of overblocking was repeatedly raised by tech experts in the run-up to the new legislation being passed last year. Assurances that blocking ‘dual use’ IP addresses would be explicitly forbidden in the text, which would be strictly adhered to, eventually led to a prediction that was only 50% accurate.

According to Lasorella, however, this is a trap being laid by pirates.

“Subjects addicted to piracy are increasingly using so-called Content Delivery Networks, CDNs. Content Delivery Networks by their nature may not be uniquely intended for activities therefore licit and illicit appear together,” Lasorella said.

“On the same IP address used for the violation of copyright can exist a perhaps fictitious domain that spreads legitimate content and this evidently prevents this address from being obscured.”

Or in Cloudflare’s case last month, evidently not.

Lasorella confirmed that one of the accredited reporters uploaded a ticket to the Piracy Shield platform which contained a Cloudflare IP address. Since legitimate and illegitimate sites shared the same IP, all found themselves blocked. AGCOM’s president said everything was sorted out “in a couple of hours” but from online reports, a minimum of four hours seems closer to events on the ground.

Potential Showdown With Cloudflare, Google

While describing events of that Saturday a few weeks ago, Lasorella mentioned that a Cloudflare IP address had been blocked and then took the opportunity to state that Cloudflare is “always more involved in these proceedings” due to its provision of DNS and VPN services “that actually facilitate online copyright violations.”

Google also received a mention; the company seems prepared to work with AGCOM to deindex pirate sites that appear in reports uploaded to Piracy Shield, but at the moment has not “considered being accredited” to the platform.

“Google has confirmed its intention not to intervene on its DNS through a local block,” Lasorella said.

It’s a little early to predict how this situation will play out but after blocking Cloudflare last month, following repeated warnings, even from Cloudflare itself , AGCOM has a side order of “we told you so” to contend with. That’s in advance of a starter being prepared right now.

In an email sent out to all customers affected by the erroneous blocking last month, Cloudflare is now encouraging users to file an official complaint with AGCOM. The stated aim is to “expand government awareness” of the collateral damage caused by IP blocking in the hope that will prevent overblocking in the future.

AGCOM already seems fully aware of the risks but, as a completely impartial regulator, must also weigh the interests of football against the interests of everyone else. Its response to these letters may prove informative.

Blocking of [website redacted] via the Piracy Shield Platform

On Saturday, February 24, 2024, a Cloudflare IP address was blocked in Italy through the Italian government’s Piracy Shield system. As a result of this action, Internet users in Italy were unable to access tens of thousands of websites. Although the block was removed within hours because of the number of innocent sites affected, we have identified your website as one that appears to have been temporarily blocked.

The Italian Media Regulator (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, AGCOM) provides interested parties, including the managers of websites and pages, the right to lodge a complaint about blocks implemented through the Piracy Shield Program. Cloudflare believes it is important to document the collateral damage caused by IP blocking in order to expand government awareness of the risks of the practice and hopefully prevent future overblocking. If you would like to submit a complaint, you can submit your own complaint to tavoloantipirateria@agcom.it and agcom@cert.agcom.it, as laid out on the AGCOM website.

To assist you, we have prepared the below template email, in both English and Italian, that may be used to submit your complaint to AGCOM:

Template email to AGCOM:

Re: Blocking of [website] via the Piracy Shield platform

We write to file a complaint regarding the blocking action ordered by the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM) of IP address 188.114.97.7 on Saturday, February 24, which rendered our website [redacted] inaccessible to Internet users in Italy. While we understand that the blocking order under AGCOM’s Piracy Shield was intended to prevent copyright infringement, our website does not infringe copyright and has never been accused of copyright infringement.

We formally complain about this action and request that AGCOM take immediate steps to prevent any future blocking of our website and other innocent websites.

Re: Provvedimenti di blocco Piracy Shield / blocco del sito [website redacted]

Scriviamo per presentare un reclamo in merito al blocco ordinato dall’Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, sabato 24 febbraio 2024, dell’indirizzo IP 188.114.97.7 24, che ha reso il nostro sito web [redacted] inaccessibile agli utenti Internet in Italia. Pur comprendendo che l’ordine di blocco previsto da “Piracy Shield” di AGCOM era finalizzato a prevenire la violazione del diritto d’autore, segnaliamo che il nostro sito web non viola il diritto d’autore e non è mai stato accusato di simili illeciti.

Ci doliamo formalmente di questa iniziativa e chiediamo che AGCOM voglia prendere provvedimenti immediati per prevenire qualsiasi futuro blocco del nostro sito e di altri siti web conformi alla legge.

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

Unless they already have links to existing platforms or can somehow benefit from traffic previously destined for a popular preexisting domain, most new pirate sites aren’t overnight success stories.

In a saturated market where most innovation takes place behind the scenes, if it happens at all, the next big thing may struggle to make any kind of serious impression. When dozens, even hundreds of similar platforms are already offering the same content, presented in a broadly similar way, potentially via the same interface, evidence of success may take months or even years to appear.

Popular in Months, Blocked Many, Many Months Later

In 2024, the most obvious outward indication of success for many sites is being placed on various rightsholder-maintained blocklists; they reward a site’s success or recognize its potential by stymieing further progress through the use of mostly regional ISP blockades. Australia has been methodically dealing with locally-significant sites in this manner since 2015, and via a more robust system since 2018.

Legislation has been developed to permit DNS and/or IP address blocking within a flexible ‘dynamic injunction’ framework, but when reading through an injunction signed off by Justice Nicholas at the Federal Court this week, it’s evident just how quickly things can change.

The original application was filed on November 9, 2023, headed up by local companies Roadshow Films and Village Roadshow Films, plus Disney, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal City Studios, Warner Bros., plus affiliates Netflix Studios and Netflix Worldwide Entertainment. The respondents in the matter, dozens of local ISPs operating under Telstra, Optus, TPG Telecom, Aussie Broadband, iiNet, Vodafone, and other branding, were asked to block over 30 pirate sites operating under dozens of different domains.

The sites include: bayofpirates, proxygalaxy, tvbayoplus, haitu, watch-free, bbmovies, wcoanimedubbedonline, 6movies, animeflv, hdwatch, 9movies, seriesonlinehd, soap2dayhd, 123moviesfree, watchmovies, movieshd, gogoanime, animepahe, losmovies, 4anime, extratorrents, limetorrents, nivod4, aniwatch, kissanime, and watchcartoononline

After years of tuning the process is now well understood, and there’s little to no opposition from anyone since the criteria for blocking speaks for itself. However, after four months of ensuring the paperwork is correct, the list itself is predictably in need of an update.

Since dynamic injunctions are flexible, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed, but even after being identified in some cases by their main domains and several alternatives, targets continue to move. Aniwatch stands out as a site known by millions, yet just a few weeks before the application was made it was called Zoro.to. Today, after yet another change, it operates from HiAnime.to .

Gogoanime, on the other hand, laughs in the face of such consistency. Currently operating from anitaku.to and gogoanime3.co, the last round of switches featured gogoanimehd.io and gogoanime3.net. And since it doesn’t matter how many times a site changes its domain, or if other similar domains are even operated by the same people, gogoanimex.to, gogoanime.video, gogoanime.sk, .tel, news, .bid, .ar, and all the others , can now be blocked in Australia regardless.

The studios have to compensate the ISPs for initial blocking at the rate of AUS$50 per domain (US$33), and then another AUS$50 per domain after that. Pirate sites could try to bleed the studios dry by maintaining a more vigorous domain-switching pace but as strategies go, there have been better ones; blocking carried out as part of this order will continue for three years, minimum.

The Second Blocking Bus Has Apple on Board

The second application worthy of mention today was filed on March 13, 2024, and is unfortunately so new that precise details of the application are yet to be made available.

Until the real documents appear, we’ve put together the details of the request in a document available below. It features all the usual ISPs, the usual local rightsholders, plus members of the MPA including Netflix.

But perhaps the most interesting rightsholder is new arrival Apple Video Programming LLC, which owns the rights to Apple+ shows including Silo and Criminal Record, among many others, mostly exclusives .

The blocking order related to the November 2023 application is available here (pdf)

The application filed on March 13, 2024, featuring Apple hasn’t been made available yet so, in the meantime, the basic details can be found here (pdf)

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

How can we be sure that site-blocking really works? Because if it didn’t work, I was informed recently, rightsholders wouldn’t keep filing new site-blocking requests at a record-breaking pace, and then return for even more soon after.

While it’s true that demand for site-blocking measures has never been greater, the sarcastic response above alludes to something that doesn’t really work, or at least doesn’t remain effective for very long. Rising piracy rates, broad content availability, and easily circumvented blocking measures may even support that theory.

Nevertheless, movie and TV show companies, broadcasters, and sports leagues insist that blocking remains valuable as part of a diverse anti-piracy toolkit.

The anti-piracy arena has certainly come a long way. Among other reported blocking successes, early studies concluded that when pirate site domains are subjected to blocking, fewer visits are made to those specific domains. While a fairly obvious conclusion to arrive at years ago when that type of metric was first rolled out, today it’s pretty much meaningless and the supply of domains is endless.

Germany Prepares to Take on BuffStreams

As a relative newcomer to site-blocking, Germany doesn’t find itself shackled to the past. In the UK, where blocking measures have existed since the start of the last decade, the process is steeped in the traditions of legal scrutiny and judicial oversight. Proponents of site-blocking today prefer something less formal; in Germany, a partnership between copyright holders and ISPs was deemed appropriate.

The Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet ( CUII ) operates an administrative program ; sites suitable for blocking are detailed in reports which are sent for the consideration of an Audit Committee consisting of retired judges familiar with copyright.

For a platform to be blocked by Germany’s ISPs, the committee must conclude that the site is structurally infringing, a standard applied in the UK’s first ever site blocking injunction back in 2011.

The Audit Committee recently considered a proposal to block BuffStreams, one of the more popular live sports streaming portals boasting millions of visitors each month.

BuffStreams Infringed the Exclusive Rights of *****

The Audit Committee’s report notes that the applicant in the blocking matter has legal standing as the “owner of exclusive rights to an ancillary copyright of a broadcasting company.” Since all identifiers have been redacted, including references to the allegedly-infringing TV broadcast, it’s not possible to identify any of the parties involved.

What is clear is that considerable effort was expended to make contact with BuffStreams but ultimately, nothing paid off.

“Based on the user figures determined by the internet service *****, 15.03 million users visited BuffStreams in the period from August 1, 2023 to October 31, including around 500,000 visitors from Germany,” the report adds.

Blocking Approved – One More Stage

In conclusion, BuffStreams easily met the structurally infringing standard. A 14-day survey period last September found a total of 5,321 links to live broadcasts, reduced to 2,429 when accounting for duplicates. At least 96% of those links were considered unlicensed, leading to the conclusion that BuffStreams is indeed infringing and therefore suitable for blocking ( pdf , German ).

The case will now be referred to the German government’s Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) to confirm that blocking BuffStreams will not violate net neutrality; things haven’t always gone smoothly . Once that hurdle has been passed, ISPs will receive the green light to tamper with their DNS records so that customers in Germany can’t reach the site. At least, those who don’t understand how DNS servers work.

DNS Blocking / Backup Domains

The CUII website references the domain buffstreams.sx but the Audit Committee’s report mentions only the headline brand BuffStreams, with other domains redacted. With at least a couple of dozen domains and other options at its disposal, BuffStreams seems likely to take any blocking attempts in its stride.

Being listed in an Indian ISP blocking order ( CS(COMM) 470/2022 ) in July/August 2022 didn’t end in disaster, neither did its addition to Italy’s blocklist last September ( 326/23/DDA ). At least one confirmed domain has been on Indonesia’s blocklist for several years, and we’re informed that Portugal has blocks in place too

–

Sites listed for blocking in Germany since 2021 include: s.to , canna.to, nsw2u.com, newalbumreleases.net, bs.to, streamkiste.tv, kinox.to, cine.to, serienjunkies.org, taodung.com, israbox, jokerlivestream, serienfans.org, filmfans.org

Members of CUII include: 1&1 AG (telecoms), German Book Traders’ Association, Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI), German Football League (DFL), Freenet DLS (telecoms), German Games Industry Association, Motion Picture Association (MPA), Sky Deutschland, STM (publishers), Telefónica Germany, Telekom Germany, German Film Producers Association (VDF), and Vodafone Germany.

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

When attempting to block pirated content online, there is always a significant risk that legitimate content will be blocked too.

Proponents of a tough new law in Italy that granted significant powers to rapidly block sites, waved away such concerns last year. However, after less than a month in full operation, the Piracy Shield system made its biggest blunder thus far last Saturday. Rather than opt for a surgical strike, someone rolled out a blunderbuss.

It Could Never Happen…

IP address 188.114.97.7 belongs to Cloudflare and is used by many sites, including legitimate ones, so shouldn’t have been targeted at all. However, when that IP was blocked by Italy’s ISPs, under orders of telecoms regulator AGCOM, just 15 minutes later the effect was significant.

From people whose innocent sites were rendered inaccessible, to networking experts, ISPs, and regular Italian internet users, all want to know why this happened, why it was allowed to happen, and how something similar will be prevented moving forward.

As far as we’re aware, no official comments from AGCOM, rightsholders, or indeed anyone responsible for the blunder have even mentioned it in public, let alone that they provided an explanation.

ASSOProvider Files Access to Information Request

In a letter dated Monday seen by TorrentFreak, independent ISP association ASSOProvider calls on AGCOM to grant access to information under relevant law.

“According to these resolutions, anyone with a personal and concrete interest in the protection of legally relevant situations may exercise the right of access to documents held by the Authority by sending a written and reasoned request. The person in charge of the procedure shall do so within 30 days and inform the Council,” the letter reads.

To illustrate the association’s legitimate interest, the letter lays out ASSOProvider’s participation in working groups related to the law introduced last year, and the legal appeal it subsequently filed to protest its site-blocking provisions. The association further notes that its own members are impacted by the actions of the Piracy Shield system since they’re required to use it.

“As of February 1, 2024, the Piracy Shield platform for combating piracy is active. Moreover, among ASSOprovider’s Associates, there are providers affected by the activities put in place by the Piracy Shield platform as they are members of the same platform, and also in this way the Association makes this petition,” the letter continues.

Legitimate Request For Data Relating to Two Events

ASSOProvider’s request seeks data connected to two reported overblocking events. The first, against IP addresses belonging to Zenlayer CDN , with the second relating to last weekend’s blocking of the Cloudflare IP address. Since there have been suggestions that ISPs could find themselves targeted with legal claims related to unlawful blocking, having AGCOM hand over relevant records is a reasonable request.

“It is therefore in the interest of the Association, engaged on the judicial front and for its own and its members’ protection, to know the acts and documents that gave rise to these inhibitions,” the letter continues.

Information Requested

ASSOProvider requests access to the following documents:

• The list of FQDN domain names and IP addresses submitted to Piracy Shield from February 1, 2024, to date.
• Specifically, all documents related to IP blocking issued, communicated and implemented, on Feb. 14, 15 and 24.
• The reports and all documents received from rights holders that resulted in blocking tickets on the same dates.
• The notice sent by AGCOM to the owner of the officially targeted site.
• Copies of blocking tickets sent to the Piracy Shield platform on Feb. 14, 15 and 24.
• Copies of blocking revocation tickets sent on the same days.

Given that AGCOM hasn’t yet released domain and IP address information on its website to allow relevant parties to appeal against blocking instructions, it will be interesting to see its response to this official request. The request seeks significantly more information than AGCOM has provided thus far, including that which AGCOM is required to publish.

Official Declarations Fail to Indicate Scale of Blocking

The table below shows the bare details of information released thus far, plus information that should be declared relating to post-order blocking, but to date has not. AGCOM may provide additional details at a later date but since that information is available the moment domains and IP addresses are blocked, providing them quickly shouldn’t be an issue.

The big question is how the above table translates to the actual number of domains and IP addresses blocked.

Information made available to TorrentFreak shows that from February 1 to last week (not including events last weekend), over 1,200 IP addresses have been blocked by Piracy Shield. The volume of domain names, which includes subdomains, is considerably larger, well over 1,600.

We understand that the law does not specify or recognize unblocking of domains or IP addresses and no system is in place to remove blocks that are out of date. Cursory tests show that some IP addresses on the list no longer facilitate access to pirate services, assuming that was initially the case.

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

This weekend, we reported that the open source movie search app movie-web lost control over the domain name of its demo site.

Registrar Namecheap suspended the domain following a complaint from several major Hollywood studios and Netflix. Initially, broader context was missing but new information suggests that an Indian order lies at the basis of this intervention.

Like many other countries around the world, India’s copyright law allows rightsholders to limit access to pirate sites. This measure is widely used by major American movie companies to obtain injunctions that require local Internet providers to block websites to prevent piracy.

Dynamic+ Blocking Orders

Over the years the nature of these court orders has evolved. The initial measures were straightforward, in the sense that they pointed out specifically which domains should be blocked. These later evolved into ‘dynamic’ versions, allowing rightsholders to add new domains and proxies whenever they are launched.

The Indian courts are not stopping at dynamic blocking orders either. In several instances, Internet providers have been instructed to block websites because they might make infringing works available in the future. This includes content yet to be created.

In addition, ISPs are no longer the only parties that are covered by dynamic+ injunctions . The orders also require domain name registrars worldwide to disable the mentioned domain names. Domain registrars that refuse to comply risk losing their ability to operate in India.

Movie-web.app and 44 Other ‘Pirate’ Domains

Namecheap’s decision to suspend the movie-web.app domain follows after Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. and others obtained a new dynamic+ injunction at the High Court of Delhi earlier this month. The complaint in question lists 45 domain names linked to 28 defendants (full list below).

The injunction requires Indian ISPs to block the domains, but also lists ‘domain registrars’ as a broad category, without specifically naming any.

“The respective Domain Name Registrars of Defendants No. 1 to 28, upon being intimated by the Plaintiffs, shall lock and suspend the said domain names. In addition, any details relating to the registrants of the said domain names including KYC, credit card, mobile number, etc. be also provided to the Plaintiffs,” it reads.

According to the order, the operators of these websites are doing all they can to hide their identities. Attempts to compel the operators to stop the allegedly infringing activity presumably failed.

“Plaintiffs’ legal notices to takedown the infringing content from the websites have been futile. Defendants No. 1 to 28 are thus knowingly engaging in the impugned activities, in utter disregard of the Plaintiffs’ rights,” the order notes.

While the above typically applies to rogue pirate sites, we’re not sure how accurate it is for movie-web. The identities of the developers involved in the open source project are easy to find and, in their shutdown message a few days ago, they said that they “would go down without a fight,” if it came to that.

Movie-web kept its word. After Namecheap put the domain on clientHold , it didn’t make any comeback attempts. The software is still available for others to use but the official demo website will remain offline.

Not all Domains are Offline

The movie-web example suggests that Namecheap complied with the Indian court order. This is further confirmed by other Namecheap-registered domains from the same injunction that also went offline, including moviemods.dev, epxmovies.com, sflix.watch and goflixtor.com.

All of these domains now have a clientHold status, rendering them inaccessible. The same applies to domains that were registered through Porkbun , which include cinehub.wtf, filmygallery.baby, and other filmygallery domains.

Domains registered through Namebright and Dynadot are also unreachable, but these don’t have a dedicated status code.

Not all domains covered by the order are offline though. At the time of writing, several Tucows registered domains remain accessible or redirect to new ones, and the same applies to domains that are linked to Dynadot, Sarek, Realtime Register, and Godaddy.

The above are just our initial findings and these shouldn’t be used to draw broader conclusions, especially since some domain registrars are only tied to a single domain name. However, it is worth taking note and comparing these actions to any in the future.

.To Complications

The above suggests that at least some American domain registrars are responsive to an Indian court injunction, obtained by American movie studios. This means that this “Indian route” could be a fruitful anti-piracy measure for rightsholders.

Thus far, however, none of the .to domain names listed in the injunction have gone offline. The .to registry ‘ Tonic ‘ is not covered by the injunction, but it appears that none of the registrars of these domain names has ‘intervened’ either.

The .to domain whois doesn’t list who the registrars are but TorrentFreak has information which shows that upmovies.to, zorox.to, flixwave.to and others were registered through Namecheap. This is interesting because Namecheap suspended non- .to domains.

We asked Namecheap for a comment on our findings but the company didn’t immediately respond.

One explanation for the response discrepancy could be that the Tonic registry doesn’t support the clientHold status code. Namecheap used this to suspend the other domain names, so the lack of action with regard to the .to domains may be of a technical nature.

Whatever the explanation is, these dynamic+ orders are among the most effective we’ve seen so far. With that in mind, we expect Hollywood to use the Indian route more often going forward, if they want U.S. companies to take action.

—

A copy of the dynamic+ injunction issued by Justice Sanjeev Narula at the Delhi High Court is available here (pdf) . A full list of all affected domain names is available below.

1. fzkidd.net
2. ofilmyzilla.ms
3. ofilmyzilla.com.ve
4. ofilmyzilla.it
5. tamilyogi.plus
6. tamilyogi.love
7. tamilyogi.band
8. soap2day.tel
9. myflixer.la
10. flixer.ph
11. myflixer.ph
12. sflix.watch
13. sflixz.to
14. moviesmod.dev
15. moviesmod.wiki
16. moviesmod.one
17. freemovies360.cc
18. streamm4u.com
19. streamm4u.to
20. desicinemas.ink
21. epxmovies.net
22. movi.pk
23. 123moviesfree.mx
24. filmygallery.baby
25. filmygallery.app
26. filmygallery.cab
27. filmygallery.club
28. filmygallery.foo
29. filmygallery.lol
30. filmygallery.pro
31. zorox.to
32. zoro.vc
33. flixwave.to
34. upmovies.to
35. mydownloadtube.net
36. movie-web.app
37. moviekhhd.biz
38. movieshd.watch
39. goflixtor.com
40. cinehub.wtf
41. arc018.to
42. flixerplus.com
43. netmovies.to
44. aniwatch.to
45. toonstream.in

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