Saturday, June 30, 2018

NYC.com ‘Secretly’ Hosts a Pirate Torrent Site

Pirates are an inventive bunch and they can get quite creative when it comes to hosting.

But, finding a copy of the popular torrent site 1337x on a prominent domain such as NYC.com doesn’t happen very often.

This is exactly what we stumbled upon this week. The site, which helps people to find the latest hotel and entertainment deals in New York, has been operational since 1996. For some reason, however, it recently expanded into the torrent business.

The ‘secret’ torrent site is hosted on the site’s subdomain “cdn.nyc.com.” It’s unlikely that this is intentional, the more logical explanation would be that an old content delivery network (CDN) domain entry has been breached somehow.

The result is that the NYC.com domain now hosts thousands of pages linking to infringing content. This is not something most legitimate companies would like to happen.

NYC.com torrents?

From what we can see the entire cdn.nyc.com subdomain is now being used as a torrent site. The NYC site itself still uses a CDN as well, but this is now served from static.nyc.com.

While the ‘breach’ has escaped the attention of the people who manage the site, it hasn’t gone unnoticed to various copyright holders.

Companies including Netflix, Lionsgate, Columbia Pictures, and Sony Pictures Television have all sent takedown request to Google, asking the search engine to remove NYC.com URLs.

The first takedown notices started coming in early June. Since then, more than 1,000 URLs have been reported. Whether any of these companies reached out to NYC.com directly is unknown.

TorrentFreak alerted the site’s owners to the issue but at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.

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Ukraine Cyberpolice Shut Down Pirate Streaming Site

While torrent sites were once the next big thing, streaming is now at the height of fashion.

A shocking number of platforms now offer instant access to massive movie and TV shows libraries, something the authorities seem powerless to do much about. Over in Ukraine, authorities say they have made a start.

For the past nine years Onlainfilm has been serving up movies to the masses but this week all that came to an end when local cyberpolice shut the operation down.

Government and police investigators report that after detecting “members of a criminal group” behind the site, police carried out five raids in the city of Khmelnytskyi located in the west of Ukraine.

One of the searched locations

“Online movie theater ‘Onlainfilm’ was among the five most-visited sites in several countries,” police said in a statement.

“Every day, the site was visited by half a million Internet users, and the number of video views exceeded two million. The total amount of videos posted on the site exceeded 50 TB.”

While police haven’t yet announced how many people were arrested, the image below reveals that hardware, money, and other items were seized during their searches.

Like many other sites of a similar nature, Onlainfilm took precautions to reduce the chances of detection. Police say that its operators used a reverse proxy server which enabled it to relay visitors’ requests to other servers hidden elsewhere.

In such cases, prosecutors and copyright holders tend to lead up front with claims of millions in lost revenues caused by sites such as Onlainfilm. However, authorities say those figures won’t be released until “the necessary investigative actions” have been carried out.

Ukraine’s reputation for low levels of intellectual property crime protection has placed the country firmly in the crosshairs of the United States Trade Representative.

The country is currently on the Priority Watch List with the USTR recently reporting that Ukraine had failed to “implement an effective means to combat the widespread online infringement of copyright” in the country.

Although Ukraine was featured quite heavily for other reasons, Onlainfilm was not listed in the USTR’s 2017 list of Notorious Markets.

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Friday, June 29, 2018

Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

The entertainment industries have repeatedly accused Google of not doing enough to limit piracy while demanding tougher action.

Ideally, groups including the MPAA and RIAA want search engines to remove clearly infringing websites from their search results entirely, especially if courts have previously found them to be acting illegally.

While Google doesn’t want to remove whole sites, the critique did prompt the company to make changes.

For example, in 2014 it updated its core algorithms aimed at lowering the visibility of “pirate” sites. Using the number of accurate DMCA requests as an indicator, these sites are demoted in search results for certain key phrases.

“Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. This ranking change helps users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily,” Google explained.

While the effects were felt immediately, it’s been unclear how many sites were affected by the algorithmic change. This week, the search engine is filling in some of these blanks.

In a comment to Australian media, Google states that it has demoted 65,000 sites in search results, a list that’s still growing every week. In total, the company received DMCA takedown requests for over 1.8 million domain names, so a little under 4% of these are downranked.

The result of the measures is that people are less likely to see a pirate site when they type “watch movie X” or “download song Y.” This means that these sites see a drop in visitors from Google and a quite significant one too.

“Demotion results in sites losing around 90 percent of their visitors from Google Search,” a Google spokesperson told The Age.

Indeed, soon after the demotion signal was implemented, pirate sites were hit hard. However, pirates wouldn’t be pirates if they didn’t respond with their own countermeasures.

In recent years, many infringing sites have hopped from domain to domain, in part to circumvent the downranking efforts. In addition, Google’s measures also created an opportunity for smaller, less reputable, sites to catch search traffic that would otherwise go to the main players.

Overall, however, it’s probably safe to argue that Google’s demotion efforts lowered the search engine’s referrals to pirate sites.

That said, demands to do more won’t subside. In Australia, Village Roadshow co-chief Graham Burke has been especially vocal. He has accused Google of profiting from piracy-related traffic and wants the search engine to permanently remove infringing sites from search results.

Blaming piracy for declining revenues, Burke noted this week that there are “empty desks everywhere … we can’t compete with stolen goods being sold for free.” And he is not alone.

Google sees things differently of course. The company has repeatedly highlighted that it has taken several measures to address the piracy concerns, while noting that the entertainment industries have a responsibility of their own as well.

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‘Pirate’ Cyberlocker Sites Vulnerable to Takedown, Study Finds

While BitTorrent indexing sites dominated the landscape until just a few years ago, streaming is now the most visible form of online video piracy.

Through networks of hosting platforms and indexing sites, pirate streaming is now available to any Internet user, as long as he or she can operate a web browser. It’s a far cry from the complex file-sharing world of yesterday.

This shift prompted researchers at Queen Mary University of London to examine this relatively new ‘pirate’ ecosystem. Titled ‘Movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Exploring Illegal Streaming Cyberlockers‘, their study finds a “remarkably centralized system with just a few networks, countries and cyberlockers underpinning most provisioning.”

Co-author Dr Gareth Tyson informs TF that after previously looking at technologies like BitTorrent, the team decided to take a closer look at the role cyberlockers are playing in the distribution of copyright media.

“At first, we weren’t really sure about how they were being used. So we decided to dig into things a little bit and found that there were hundreds of them, but lacking the types of search functionality of YouTube,” Dr Tyson explains.

“This piqued our interest and we decided to dig a bit deeper, which led us to the indexing sites. I suppose the short answer is that it seemed a pretty interesting ecosystem that nobody had looked at before, so we got curious.”

While simple on the surface, the cyberlocker ecosystem isn’t entirely straightforward. Most hosting sites don’t allow users to search directly, which means visitors are often redirected from indexing platforms that are more specific about the content that’s available.

“This has created an interesting ecosystem where cyberlockers depend on third party (crowd-sourced) indexing websites that create a searchable directory of direct links (URLs) to the videos. These two types of website operate hand-in-hand with a symbiotic relationship, collectively underpinning a global network of online piracy,” the researchers write.

Given the scale of the ecosystem, examining everything would prove impossible. Instead, the researchers homed in on three indexing sites – Putlocker.is, Watchseries.gs and Vodly.cr – which were found via Google and selected for their regular appearances in search results.

Also under the spotlight where 33 cyberlockers including Movshare, NowVideo, and Openload, whose content was accessed via the indexing sites.

“We started off by scraping the indexing sites because it seemed that they were the main ‘entry point’ to the cyberlockers,” Dr Tyson informs TF.

“This was because many of the cyberlockers had fake front pages (i.e. they didn’t show their real content – presumably to hide all the copyright stuff) and they lacked search features to find it. Hence, it was pretty much impossible to access the copyright infringing content by visiting the cyberlocker alone.”

Between January and September 2017, monthly crawls collected information from the indexers and scraped related data from the cyberlockers, including file availability and where the videos were hosted. This revealed some interesting data indicating a potential weakness for the cyberlockers when defending against enforcement attempts.

“A key finding is the apparent centralization of these portals, with a small
set of dependencies vulnerable to attack from copyright enforcers. For example, we observe that 58% of all videos are located within just two hosting providers [M247 and Cogent/LeaseWeb], despite being spread across 15 cyberlockers,” the researchers reveal.

“M247 is based in Romania, which (as a country) hosts the largest share of streaming servers, containing 42% of the total streaming links witnessed. Similarly Cogent/Leaseweb are based in the Netherlands which hosts 23% of streaming links.”

The team cites previous research which found that a lack of copyright enforcement coupled with high capacity Internet infrastructure may drive sites to use these territories. However, putting all eggs in one basket could be a risky strategy, if the tides begin to turn.

“A sudden increase in copyright regulation within these countries may see a shift in this behavior and, again, we argue that this dependency on individual countries poses a resilience challenge for the cyberlockers,” they note.

Also of interest are the researchers’ findings that the same sets of pirates could be behind multiple websites, with DaClips, GorillaVid and Movpod put forward as candidates.

“These three cyberlockers alone host 15% of observed content. Again, this suggests a distribution model that is far less resilient than its decentralized P2P counterparts,” they add.

Digging deeper, the researchers say at least one-fifth of the cyberlocker domains in the study are actually operated by just two organizations/individuals, something which confirms a “remarkable dependency on just a small number of stakeholders.”

Also under the researchers’ spotlight was the number of takedown notices issued against the domains in the study. Using LumenDatabase, 21.8m allegedly infringing URLs were identified across 49,829 individual complaints sent by 304 organisations.

To see how the cyberlockers react to copyright complaints, six were chosen for their mixture of behaviors. Openload.co, Estream.to and Streamin.to are said to have reacted “positively” to copyright complaints with 75% of videos being deleted within a month of reports being registered on Lumen. Vidzi.tv and TheVideo.me earned a poor report, with less than 30% of videos deleted within the same period.

Finally, the researchers reveal some interesting findings in respect of where infringing content is hosted and how that relates to takedowns.

“We observe that the videos that are not deleted from openload.co, estream.to,
vidzi.tv are all hosted in Romania on M247. That said, it would be unwise to draw conclusions here, as Romania hosts both the cyberlocker that ignores the most complaints and the cyberlocker that acts upon most complaints,” they write.

“Overall, the country hosting content that least frequently respects complaints is
the Netherlands, where only 6% of requests are acted upon. Hence, the diversity seen within individual countries suggests that the decision to act upon a complaint is largely driven by the individual cyberlockers.”

Aware that research of this type can often have links to rightsholders, TF asked the team at Queen Mary University of London if their research had in any way been funded or shared with content industry groups.

“No, the research was performed independently,” Tyson confirmed. “The research was not funded by any movie studios and the university received no external funding for this particular stream of research.”

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Irish Pirate Site Blocklist Expands to Over 250 Domains

Like many other countries throughout Europe, Ireland is no stranger when it comes to pirate site blocking efforts.

The Pirate Bay was first targeted in 2009, as part of a voluntary agreement between copyright holders and local ISP Eircom. A few years later the High Court ordered other major Internet providers to follow suit.

Next, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) set their eyes on other targets.

On behalf of several major Hollywood studios, the group obtained blocking orders against the most used torrent and streaming sites, including 1337x.io, EZTV.ag, Bmovies.is, 123movieshub.to, Putlocker.io, RARBG.to, and YTS.am.

This most recent order, issued earlier this year, triggered the usual response. Many users who have their favorite sites blocked, tried to find alternatives, such as the various proxy and mirror sites that are available.

This works well, but it’s usually not a permanent solution. A few weeks ago Irish ISPs expanded their blocklist covering several of the most used proxy sites for Rarbg, 1337x, and others. Again, users were confronted with a blocking notification, such as the one below from Virgin Media.

It is not uncommon for blocking injunctions to allow copyright holders to update the targeted domains. For example, when new domains or proxies appear. And indeed, this is what’s happening here, according to the MPA.

“In accordance with the orders issued by the Dublin High Court, the blocklist is regularly updated, including for alternative domains and proxies,” an MPA Europe spokesperson informed TorrentFreak.

The latest update was processed quietly earlier this month, which led to frustration among avid torrenters, many of whom had just settled with an alternative. It’s something they have to get used to though.

While the MPA can’t share the full list of blocked sites, it informed us that over 250 domains are on the most recent version of the blocklist. More domains will be added when needed.

This strategy may be effective, to a degree, but determined pirates who look hard enough can usually find a workaround, such as a new proxy, VPN, Tor, or other options.

The MPA knows all too well that site blocking is not a silver bullet. Still, the Hollywood-funded group believes that it’s effective enough to stop a significant number of people. Or perhaps frustrating pirates alone might already be worth it?

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Thursday, June 28, 2018

Team Xecutor ‘Piracy’ Code Has DRM, Can Brick Your Nintendo Switch

Late last year, hacking veterans Team Xecutor (TX) revealed that they’d developed an exciting kernel hack for the Nintendo Switch.

In January, the group announced an unstoppable solution, one that exploits a fundamental flaw in the Switch system.

That led up to the release of ‘SX Pro‘, a device dongle and tool for booting TX’s custom firmware (SX OS) on Nintendo’s latest hardware.

Unlike the pirated games the system is able to run, TX solutions cost money. On Max-Console, SX Pro is listed at £42.40 and SX OS at £18.80. However, it appears that TX has already considered that some pirates might try to…gasp….crack its software.

The discovered was made by UK-based security researcher Mike Heskin who took to Twitter with the news.

The news that TX’s code can brick a Switch was met with concern, especially when Heskin revealed that the anti-cracking countermeasure could potentially affect people who are using SX OS normally.

“The code can indeed trigger with normal usage, but the odds are so low that is very unlikely that anyone will be affected by this (unless you’re messing with voltage or time sensitive stuff). These were direct observations from reverse engineering and testing their code,” he wrote.

While TX haven’t denied the presence of the anti-cracking code, they have issued a denial that it could be triggered under normal usage. In an email response published on the forums of GBATemp, TX said that there hadn’t been a single problem reported by 100,000 users.

Team Xecutor refuting the claims

With TX offering reassurances, Heskin has now confirmed that the ‘bricking’ process is technically possible to undo and was “quite painless” with the right knowledge. But with an additional revelation, the controversy over TX’s solution is set to continue.

In response to Heskin gently questioning why parts of the SX OS code “look so familiar” to him, a response from one observer suggests that not all of it is original.



This latest controversy over Switch modding comes in the wake of news that Nintendo is able to identify consoles that are running pirated games, if users dare to venture online with them.

More info on the SX Pro ‘bricking’ claims from Mike Heskin here

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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

PUBG Drops Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against Fortnite

The legal battle between PUBG and Epic Games, two gaming heavyweights, has come to an end.

Earlier this week PUBG sent a letter of withdrawal to Epic Games’ attorneys, announcing its decision. Not much later the South Korean lawsuit was closed, Bloomberg reports.

The Korean game developer filed the lawsuit in January alleging that Epic copied “Fortnite” elements from “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” (PUBG). This followed earlier complaints where PUBG accused Fortnite of being very similar to its own game.

Whether the companies have agreed on a settlement to resolve this dispute is unknown, but PUBG and its law firm confirmed that the case is over.

Both Fortnite and PUBG have been very successful over the past year, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition to the aforementioned case, this also triggered several other copyright infringement lawsuits.

In the United States, PUBG recently filed a separate copyright infringement lawsuit against the developer of the mobile games “Rules of Survival” and “Knives Out,” accusing these of copying specific elements from PUBG. This case is still ongoing.

For its part, Epic Games has filed a series of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters. The primary goal of these cases is to stop the cheaters, not to recoup any losses.

While the future of Fortnite was never in any immediate danger due to the PUBG lawsuit, avid fans will probably sleep a little bit better knowing that the matter is resolved.

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YouTube’s Head of Music: We’re Not Discussing the Value Gap

Music piracy was traditionally viewed as an easy to identify problem, one that takes place on illegal sites or via largely uncontrollable peer-to-peer networks. In recent years, however, the lines have been blurred.

Sites like YouTube allow anyone to upload potentially infringing content which is then made available to the public. Under the safe harbor provisions of US and EU law, this remains legal – provided YouTube takes content down when told to do so. It complies constantly but there’s always more to do.

This means that in addition to being one of the greatest legal platforms ever created, YouTube is also a goldmine of unlicensed content, something unacceptable to the music industry.

They argue that the existence of this pirate material devalues the licensed content on the platform. As a result, YouTube maintains a favorable bargaining position with the labels and the best licensing deal in the industry.

The difference between YouTube’s rates and those the industry would actually like is now known as the “Value Gap” and it’s become one of the hottest topics in recent years.

In fact, it is so controversial that new copyright legislation, currently weaving its way through the corridors of power in the EU Parliament, is specifically designed to address it.

If passed, Article 13 will require platforms like YouTube to pre-filter uploads to detect potential infringement. Indeed, the legislation may as well have been named the YouTube Act, since it’s the platform that provoked this entire debate and whole Value Gap dispute.

With that in mind, it’s of interest to consider the words of YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen this week.

In an interview with MusicWeek, Cohen pledges that his company’s new music service, YouTube Music, will not only match the rates the industry achieves from Apple Music and Spotify, but the company’s ad-supported free tier viewers will soon be delivering more cash to the labels too.

“Of course [rights holders are] going to get more money,” he told Music Week.

“The problem with the industry is, they’ve always compared advertising to subscription. I’m hoping that there will now be more sophistication in understanding, but in terms of subscription, we’ll be providing the same sort of economics that the other services do.”

If YouTube lives up to its pledge, a level playing field will not only be welcomed by the music industry but also YouTube competitors such as Spotify, who currently offer a free tier on less favorable terms.

While there’s still plenty of room for YouTube to maneuver, peace breaking out with the labels may be coming a little too late for those deeply concerned about the implications of Article 13.

YouTube’s business model and its reluctance to pay full market rate for music is what started the whole Article 13 movement in the first place and with the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliament (JURI) adopting the proposals last week, time is running out to have them overturned.

But while the Internet melts down with Doomsday scenarios of aggressive filtering and irreparable damage caused by censorship, YouTube’s global head of music is as cool as can be. It’s like the whole Value Gap thing never happened.

“I do know, from every single senior executive, that we’re not discussing the value gap,” Cohen told MusicWeek.

“We’re discussing how to maximize our funnel and how to grow the business, how to be better partners with them. It’s nice.”

Behind the scenes, however, the labels and their associates are going flat out to ensure that Article 13 passes, whether YouTube decides to “play fair” or not. Their language suggests that force is the best negotiating tactic with the distribution giant.

Yesterday, UK Music CEO Michael Dugher led a delegation to the EU Parliament in support of Article 13. He was joined by deputy Labour leader Tom Watson and representatives from the BPI, PRS, and Music Publishers Association, who urged MEPs to support the changes.

“The UK music industry is totally united on this issue. The contribution of music to the UK economy is nearly £4.5 billion. Music outperforms in every part of the economy bar one – and that’s average earnings, which are less in our sector than in the rest of the economy,” Dugher said.

“It’s time for Google’s YouTube to stop ripping off the creators and investors behind our world-beating music.”

While they might not be discussing it with YouTube, the aggression and passion over the Value Gap have hardly disappeared into the night.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Kim Dotcom Files Complaint With Human Rights Tribunal Over “Lost Data”

It’s been more than six years since New Zealand and United States authorities collaborated to take down Megaupload. While the site itself is long gone, founder Kim Dotcom is putting up a determined fight.

At every twist and turn of his epic legal battle, Dotcom has challenged the efforts of authorities in multiple jurisdictions. The New Zealand courts, in particular, have seen sustained action.

From the beginning, Dotcom has aimed to extract as much information about his case as possible. From the seized data that was present on Megaupload’s servers to the information held by New Zealand authorities, Dotcom has chased down every bit, byte, letter, and document. At almost every turn, he’s met resistance.

In a series of tweets this morning, Dotcom has revealed a surprising turn of events in response to an order compelling authorities to provide him with data. New Zealand police have informed Dotcom’s lawyers that they haven’t complied with Human Rights Tribunal judgment because the information requested was generated before December 2013 and is no longer in the new IT system.

4.5 years later…..it’s all gone

“According to the new Attorney General David Parker (Labour Govt) he can’t comply with a judgment to provide me with information I’m entitled to because he doesn’t have access to the data of the previous Attorney General. What an utterly embarrassing mockery of New Zealand law,” Dotcom explains.

Information provided by Dotcom shows that the current Attorney-General David Parker has provided information held during his administration. However, the majority of the data requested by Dotcom’s team related to the term covered by his predecessor Chris Finlayson.

Citing several paragraphs of the New Zealand government’s Cabinet Manual relating to ‘Convention on access to Cabinet records of a previous administration’, Parker says he does not have access to information held under Finlayson’s watch. Dotcom’s lawyers immediately complained.

“This is an artificially narrow interpretation of the Tribunal’s order and the relevant rules and defeat the purpose of the order,” they wrote in a submission filed with the Human Rights Tribunal this morning, which also seeks an order for the government to comply with the Tribunal’s earlier judgment by July 31.

With that done, Dotcom turned his attention to a group of people he previously hoped would develop into allies but have yet to do so.

When the 2012 raid on Megaupload and Dotcom took place, it was under a National Party government. When they lost power to Labour in 2017, Dotcom appeared to adopt a more gentle tone, perhaps hoping that the new government would take the opportunity to declare his case a National Party mistake and one best forgotten.

Since it seems clear that isn’t going to happen, Dotcom’s tone is now changing for the worse.

“Let it be known. The new Labour government is continuing the unlawful persecution of my family while breaching every law and judgment in the land to prevent me from getting access to information that the New Zealand Supreme Court ruled I should have,” he warned this morning.

“The gloves are coming off!”

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Monday, June 25, 2018

FIFA Fails to Remove Pirate Streaming Sites From Google Search

With hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world, the FIFA World Cup in Russia is one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year.

During these weeks, fans are most concerned with the performance of their favorite teams. For FIFA and all other stakeholders, however, the World Cup is also a battle against piracy.

While most people watch the matches through licensed broadcasters, there is a large group of people who resort to unauthorized sources. These so-called “pirate” streams are available via hundreds of sites or apps, generating millions of views during popular sporting events.

Other fans are using VPNs and proxies to bypass geo-blockades to tune into legal broadcasts. By changing their virtual location to one where the World Cup is freely accessible, they can watch without paying.

These types of ‘piracy’ are a thorn in the side of rightsholders, who are doing their best to take appropriate countermeasures. Sony Entertainment Network, for example, sent out preemptive takedown notices to streaming sites a few weeks ago.

More recently we spotted a takedown notice which NetResult sent to Google, on behalf of FIFA, targeting various allegedly infringing sites.

The list includes several known offenders, such as zorrostream.net and thefirstrow.eu, and asks Google to remove these sites from search results. In addition, it also targets several URLs which ‘advise’ users how they can access World Cup streams through a VPN, which some use to bypass geo-blockades.

For example, the takedown notice lists URLs from ExpressVPN and BestVPN, which explain how users can access FIFA World Cup matches from various locations.

“The listed URLs are all either linking directly to embedded live streams of unauthorized live football content (2018 FIFA World Cup), or advising users how to access unauthorized live streams not available in their territory,” the notice reads.

From the takedown notice

Interestingly, Google decided not to remove any of the reported URLs. The search engine has given no explanation, but it’s possible that the notice in question is seen as too general. In many cases, it points to the homepages of sites, without identifying a specific copyright infringement.

Whether it’s illegal to advise users how they can use a VPN to access World Cup streams is also up for debate.

Finally, it appears that not all of the URLs identified in FIFA’s takedown notice are actually infringing. The list also includes a page from the Canadian sports service Sportsnet.ca, which is owned by Rogers Media.

FIFA’s notice also targets the American sports streaming service FuboTV, which is partly funded by investors such as AMC Networks, 21st Century Fox, and Sky.

Considering the latter, it might be wise that Google didn’t blindly honor the request.

TorrentFreak reached out to NetResult’s parent company MarkMonitor for more information on FIFA’s takedown efforts, but the company informed us that it couldn’t comment on individual brands or companies.

FIFA and other rightsholders, meanwhile, continue to fight World Cup piracy globally and on several fronts. In addition to VPN tips and traditional streaming sites, they’re also up against alleged pirate TV services such as BeoutQ, and Fly TV from Ghana.

Game on.

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The Pirate Bay’s Downtime Troubles Continue

About a week ago we reported that The Pirate Bay’s upload functionality was broken.

While this problem was eventually solved after a few days, the regular domain became unusable soon after.

Today, more than five days later, the problem persists. For most people, the site currently displays a CloudFlare error message across the entire site, with the CDN provider mentioning that a “bad gateway” is causing the issue.

No further details are available to us and there is no known ETA for the site’s full return. However, judging from past experience, it’s likely some technical issue that needs fixing.

TPB 502 Cloudflare error

The Pirate Bay has had quite a few stints of downtime in recent months, and by now it’s becoming a regular occurrence. While more than five days is a new record, aside from the 2014 ‘raid,’ there’s no news to report.

The moderators in the official forums don’t appear to have any information on the ongoing issues either. They do point out, however, that the site is not down completely.

TPB is still available via its .onion address on the Tor network, accessible using the popular Tor Browser, for example. The site’s Tor traffic goes through a separate server and works just fine.

The Pirate Bay team has a status page in the forums where people can check to see if an outage is affecting everyone or not. This also shows that the Tor version of the site is working fine. At least, at the time of writing.

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