TVAddons and ZemTV Operators Named in US Lawsuit

Earlier this year, American satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network targeted two well-known players in the third-party Kodi add-on ecosystem.

In a complaint filed in a federal court in Texas, add-on ZemTV and the TVAddons library were accused of copyright infringement. As a result, both are facing up to $150,000 for each offense.

Initially, the true identities of the defendants unknown and listed as John Does, but an amended complaint that was submitted yesterday reveal their alleged names and hometowns.

The Texas court previously granted subpoenas which allowed Dish to request information from the defendants’ accounts on services including Amazon, Github, Google, Twitter, Facebook and PayPal, which likely helped with the identification.

According to Dish ZemTV was developed by Shahjahan Durrani, who’s based in London, UK. He allegedly controlled and maintained the addon which was used to stream infringing broadcasts of Dish content.

“Durrani developed the ZemTV add-on and managed and operated the ZemTV service. Durrani used the aliases ‘Shani’ and ‘Shani_08′ to communicate with users of the ZemTV service,” the complaint reads.

The owner and operator of TVAddons is listed as Adam Lackman, who resides in Montreal, Canada. This doesn’t really come as a surprise, since Lackman is publicly listed as TVAddons’ owner on Linkedin and was previously named in a Canadian lawsuit.

While both defendants are named, the allegations against them haven’t changed substantially. Both face copyright infringement charges and potentially risk millions of dollars in damages.

Durrani directly infringed Dish’s copyrights by making the streams available, the plaintiffs note. Lackman subsequently profited from this and failed to take any action in response.

“Lackman had the legal right and actual ability to supervise and control this infringing activity because Lackman made the ZemTV add-on, which is necessary to access the ZemTV service, available for download on his websites.

“Lackman refused to take any action to stop the infringement of DISH’s exclusive rights in the programs transmitted through the ZemTV service,” the complaint adds.

TorrentFreak spoke to a TVAddons representative who refutes the copyright infringement allegations. The website sees itself as a platform for user-generated content and cites the DMCA’s safe harbor as a defense.

“TV ADDONS is not a piracy site, it’s a platform for developers of open source add-ons for the Kodi media center. As a community platform filled with user-generated content, we have always acted in accordance with the law and swiftly complied whenever we received a DMCA takedown notice.”

The representative states that it will be very difficult for them to defend themselves against a billion dollar company with unlimited resources, but hopes that the site will prevail.

The new TVAddons

After the original TVAddons.ag domain was seized in the Canadian lawsuit the site returned on TVaddons.co. However, hundreds of allegedly infringing add-ons are no longer listed.

The site previously relied on the DMCA to shield it from liability but apparently, that wasn’t enough. As a result, they now check all submitted add-ons carefully.

“Since complying with the law is clearly not enough to prevent frivolous legal action from being taken against you, we have been forced to implement a more drastic code vetting process,” the TVAddons representative says.

If it’s not entirely clear that an add-on is properly licensed, it won’t be submitted for the time being. This hampers innovation, according to TVAddons, and threatens many communities that rely on user-generated content.

“When you visit any given web site, how can you be certain that every piece of media you see is licensed by the website displaying it? You can assume, but it’s very difficult to be certain. That’s why the DMCA is critical to the existence of online communities.”

Now that both defendants have been named the case will move forward. This may eventually lead to an in-depth discovery process where Dish will try to find more proof that both were knowingly engaging in infringing activity.

Durrani and Lackman, on the other hand, will try to prove their innocence.

—

A copy of the amended complaint is available here (pdf).

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Cryptocurrency Miner Targeted by Anti-Virus and Adblock Tools

Earlier this month The Pirate Bay caused some uproar by adding a Javascript-based cryptocurrency miner to its website.

The miner utilizes CPU power from visitors to generate Monero coins for the site, providing an extra revenue source.

While Pirate Bay only tested the option briefly, it inspired many others to follow suit. Streaming related sites such as Alluc, Vidoza, and Rapidvideo jumped on board, and torrent site Demonoid also ran some tests.

During the weekend, Coinhive’s miner code even appeared on the official website of Showtime. The code was quickly removed and it’s still unclear how it got there, as the company refuses to comment. It’s clear, though, that miners are a hot topic thanks to The Pirate Bay.

The revenue potential is also real. TorrentFreak spoke to Vidoza who say that with 30,000 online users throughout the day (2M unique visitors), they can make between $500 and $600. That’s when the miner is throttled at 50%. Although ads can bring in more, it’s not insignificant.

That said, all the uproar about cryptocurrency miners and their possible abuse has also attracted the attention of ad-blockers. Some people have coded new browser add-ons to block miners specifically and the popular uBlock Origin added Coinhive to its default blocklist as well. And that’s just after a few days.

Needless to say, this limits the number of miners, and thus the money that comes in. And there’s another problem with a similar effect.

In addition to ad-blockers, anti-virus tools are also flagging Coinhive. Malwarebytes is one of the companies that lists it as a malicious activity, warning users about the threat.

The anti-virus angle is one of the issues that worries Demonoid’s operator. The site is used to ad-blockers, but getting flagged by anti-virus companies is of a different order.

“The problem I see there and the reason we will likely discontinue [use of the miner] is that some anti-virus programs block it, and that might get the site on their blacklists,” Deimos informs TorrentFreak.

Demonoid’s miner announcement

Vidoza operator Eugene sees all the blocking as an unwelcome development and hopes that Coinhive will tackle it. Coinhive may want to come out in public and start to discuss the issue with ad-blockers and anti-virus companies, he says.

“They should find out under what conditions all these guys will stop blocking the script,” he notes.

The other option would be to circumvent the blocking through proxies and circumvention tools, but that might not be the best choice in the long run.

Coinhive, meanwhile, has chimed in as well. The company says that it wasn’t properly prepared for the massive attention and understands why some ad-blockers have put them on the blacklist.

“Providing a real alternative to ads and users who block them turned out to be a much harder problem. Coinhive, too, is now blocked by many ad-block browser extensions, which – we have to admit – is reasonable at this point.”

Most complaints have been targeted at sites that implemented the miner without the user’s consent. Coinhive doesn’t like this either and will take steps to prevent it in future.

“We’re a bit saddened to see that some of our customers integrate Coinhive into their pages without disclosing to their users what’s going on, let alone asking for their permission,” the Coinhive team notes.

The crypto miner provider is working on a new implementation that requires explicit consent from website visitors in order to run. This should deal with most of the negative responses.

If users start mining voluntarily, then ad-blockers and anti-virus companies should no longer have a reason to block the script. Nor will it be easy for malware peddlers to abuse it.

To be continued.

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Julia Reda MEP Likened to Nazi in Sweeping Anti-Pirate Rant

The debate over copyright and enforcement thereof is often polarized, with staunch supporters on one side, objectors firmly on the other, and never the twain shall meet.

As a result, there have been some heated battles over the years, with pro-copyright bodies accusing pirates of theft and pirates accusing pro-copyright bodies of monopolistic tendencies. While neither claim is particularly pleasant, they have become staples of this prolonged war of words and as such, many have become desensitized to their original impact.

This morning, however, musician and staunch pro-copyright activist David Lowery published an article which pours huge amounts of gas on the fire. The headline goes straight for the jugular, asking: Why is it Every Time We Turn Over a Pirate Rock White Nationalists, Nazi’s and Bigots Scurry Out?

Lowery’s opening gambit in his piece on The Trichordist is that one only has to scratch below the surface of the torrent and piracy world in order to find people aligned with the above-mentioned groups.

“Why is it every time we dig a little deeper into the pro-piracy and torrenting movement we find key figures associated with ‘white nationalists,’ Nazi memorabilia collectors, actual Nazis or other similar bigots? And why on earth do politicians, journalists and academics sing the praises of these people?” Lowery asks.

To prove his point, the Camper Van Beethoven musician digs up the fact that former Pirate Bay financier Carl Lündstrom had some fairly unsavory neo-fascist views. While this is not in doubt, Lowery is about 10 tens years too late if he wants to tar The Pirate Bay with the extremist brush.

“It’s called guilt by association,” Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde explained in 2007.

“One of our previous ISPs [owned by Lündstrom] (with clients like The Red Cross, Save the Children foundation etc) gave us cheap bandwidth since one of the guys in TPB worked there; and one of the owners [has a reputation] for his political opinions. That does NOT make us in any way associated to what political views anyone else might or might not have.”

After dealing with TPB but failing to include the above explanation, Lowery moves on to a more recent target, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Dotcom owns an extremely rare signed copy of Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) and once wore a German World War II helmet. It’s a mistake Prince Harry made in 2005 too.

“I’ve bought memorabilia from Churchill, from Stalin, from Hitler,” Dotcom said in response to the historical allegations. “Let me make absolutely clear, OK. I’m not buying into the Nazi ideology. I’m totally against what the Nazis did.”

With Dotcom dealt with, Lowery then turns his attention to the German Pirate Party’s Julia Reda. As a Member of the European Parliament, Reda has made it her mission to deal with overreaching copyright law, which has made her a bit of a target. That being said, would anyone really try to shoehorn her into the “White Nationalists, Nazi’s and Bigots” bracket?

They would.

In his piece, Lowery highlights comments made by Reda last year, when she complained about the copyright situation developing around the diary written by Anne Frank, which detailed the horrors of living in occupied countries during World War II.

Anne Frank died in 1945 which means that the book was elevated into the public domain in the Netherlands on January 1, 2016, 70 years after her death. A copy was made available at Wikisource, a digital library of free texts maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also operates Wikipedia.

However, in early February that same year, Anne Frank’s diary became unavailable, since U.S. copyright law dictates that works are protected for 95 years from date of publication.

“Today, in an unfortunate example of the overreach of the United States’ current copyright law, the Wikimedia Foundation removed the Dutch-language text of The Diary of a Young Girl,” said Jacob Rogers, Legal Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation

“We took this action to comply with the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as we believe the diary is still under US copyright protection under the law as it is currently written,” he added.

Lowery ignores this background in its entirety. He actually ignores all of it in an effort to paint a picture of Reda engaging in some far-right agenda. Lowery even places emphasis on Reda’s nationality to force his point home.

“I don’t really know what to make of her except to say that this German politician really should find something other than the Anne Frank Diary and the Anne Frank Foundation to use as an example of a work that should be freely available in the public domain,” he writes.

“Think of all the copyrighted works out there for which she might reasonably argue a claim of public domain. She decided to pick the Anne Frank diary. Hmm.”

Lowery then accuses Reda of urging people on Twitter to pirate the book, in order to hurt the fight against anti-Semitism and somehow deprive Jewish people of an income.

“After all sales of the book are used by the Anne Frank Foundation to fight anti-semitism. It’s really quite a bad look for any MP, German or not. (Even if it is just the make-believe LARPing RPG EU Parliament),” Lowery writes.

“Or maybe that is the point? Defund the Anne Frank Foundation. Cause you know I read in the twittersphere that copyright producing media conglomerates are controlled by you-know-who.”

At this point, Lowery moves on to Fight For the Future, stating that their lack of racial diversity caused them to stumble into a racially charged copyright dispute involving the famous Martin Luther King speech.

The whole article can be read here but hopefully, most readers will recognize that America needs less division right now, not more hatred.

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Canadian ISP Bell Calls For Pirate Site Blacklist in NAFTA Hearing

Website blocking has become a common tool for copyright holders to target online piracy.

In most countries, these blockades are ordered by local courts, which compel Internet providers to restrict access to certain websites.

While most ISPs initially object to such restrictions, the largest Canadian telco Bell is actively calling for such measures. In a hearing before the Standing Committee on International Trade on NAFTA, the company is clear on how online piracy should be curbed.

Rob Malcolmson, Bell’s Senior Vice-President Regulatory Affairs, mentioned that the United States has repeatedly complained about Canada’s apparent lack of copyright enforcement. To make NAFTA “work better” for Canadian culture in the digital economy, stronger enforcement is crucial.

“US interests have long complained that widespread online copyright infringement here in Canada is limiting the growth of the digital economy. In fact, many of the most prominent global players in the piracy ecosystem operate out of Canada as a relative safe harbor,” Malcolmson said.

“We recommend that the Government commits to stronger intellectual property enforcement by having an administrative agency dedicated to such enforcement and by prioritizing enforcement against digital pirates.”

In Bell’s view, all Canadian Internet providers should be required to block access to the most egregious pirate sites, without intervention from the courts.

“We would like to see measures put in place whereby all Internet service providers are required to block consumer access to pirated websites. In our view, that is the only way to stop it,” Malcolmson said.

The telco, which is a copyright holder itself, has clearly thought the plan through. It notes that Internet providers shouldn’t be tasked with determining which sites should be blocked. This should be the job of an independent outfit. Alternatively, the Canadian telco regulator CTRC could oversee the blocking scheme.

“In our view, it would be an independent agency that would be charged with that task. You certainly would not want the ISPs acting as censors as to what content is pirate content,” Malcolmson said.

“But, surely, an independent third party agency could be formed, could create a blacklist of pirate sites, and then the ISPs would be required to block it. That is at a high level how we would see it unfolding, perhaps overseen by a regulator like the CRTC.”

In addition to website blocking, Bell also recommends criminalizing commercial copyright infringement, which would support stronger enforcement against online piracy.

Canadian law professor Micheal Geist, who picked up Bell’s controversial comments, is very critical of the recommendations. Geist says that the proposal goes above and beyond what US copyright holders have asked for.

“The Bell proposals […] suggest that the company’s position as a common carrier representing the concerns of ISPs and their subscribers is long over,” Geist writes.

“Instead, Bell’s copyright advocacy goes beyond what even some U.S. rights holders have called for, envisioning new methods of using copyright law to police the Internet with oversight from the CRTC and implementing such provisions through NAFTA.”

If the Canadian Government considers the suggestions, there is bound to be pushback from other ISPs on the blocking elements. Internet providers are generally not eager to block content without a court order.

It is also worth keeping in mind that while Bell’s plans are in part a response to criticism from US interests, American ISPs are still not required to block any pirate sites, voluntarily or not.

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Landmark ‘Pirate’ Kodi Box Trial Canceled After Man Changes Plea to Guilty

Over the past year, there have been a lot of discussions about UK-based Brian ‘Tomo’ Thompson. The Middlesbrough-based shopkeeper was raided by police and Trading Standards in 2016 after selling “fully loaded” Android boxes from his small shop.

The case against Thompson is being prosecuted by his local council but right from the very beginning, he insisted he’d done nothing wrong.

“All I want to know is whether I am doing anything illegal. I know it’s a gray area but I want it in black and white,” he said last September.

‘Tomo’ in his store

In January this year, Thompson appeared before Teeside Crown Court for a plea hearing. He pleaded not guilty to two offenses under section 296ZB of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. This section deals with devices and services designed to circumvent technological measures.

“A person commits an offense if he — in the course of a business — sells or lets for hire, any device, product or component which is primarily designed, produced, or adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of effective technological measures,” the law reads.

This section of the law has never been tested against infringing Kodi/IPTV boxes so a full trial would have been an extremely interesting proposition. However, everyone was denied that opportunity this morning when Thompson appeared before Teesside Crown Court with a change of heart.

Before Judge Peter Armstrong, the 54-year-old businessman changed his previous not guilty plea to guilty on both counts.

According to GazetteLive, defense barrister Paul Fleming told the Court there had been “an exchange of correspondence” in the case.

“There is a proposal in relation to pleas which are acceptable to the prosecution,” Fleming said.

Judge Armstrong told Thompson that the case will now be adjourned until October 20 to allow time for a pre-sentence report to be prepared.

“Your bail is renewed until that date. I have to warn you that the renewal of your bail at this stage mustn’t be taken by you as any indication of the type of sentence that’ll be passed,” the Judge said.

“I don’t know what the sentence will be but all options will be open to the court when you’re dealt with. Free to go on those terms.”

Thompson will be sentenced on the same day as Julian Allen, who was arrested following raids at his Geeky Kit businesses in 2015.

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Peru Authorities Shut Down First ‘Pirate’ Websites, Three Arrested

For a country with a soaring crime rate, where violent car-jackings and other violent crime are reportedly commonplace, Internet piracy isn’t something that’s been high on the agenda in Peru.

Nevertheless, under pressure from rightsholders, local authorities have now taken decisive action against the country’s most popular ‘pirate’ sites.

On the orders of prosecutor Miguel Ángel Puicón, a specialized police unit carried out searches earlier this month looking for the people behind Pelis24 (Movies24) and Series24, sites that are extremely popular across all of South America, not just Peru.

Local media reports that an initial search took place in the Los Olivos district of the Lima Province where two people were arrested in connection with the sites. On the same day, a second search was executed in the town of Rimac where a third person was detained.

The case was launched following a rightsholder complaint to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Customs Crimes and Intellectual Property in Lima. It stated that three domains – pelis24.com, pelis24.tv and series24.tv were offering unlicensed movies and TV shows to the public.

“In view of the abundant evidence, the office requested measures indicative of the right to the criminal judge. A search was carried out in search of the property and the preliminary 48-hour detention of the people investigated was requested,” authorities said in a statement.

The warrant not only covered seizure of physical items but also the domain names associated with the platforms. As shown in the image below, they now display the following seizure banner (translated from Spanish).

Pelis24/Series24 Seizure Banner

Authorities say that a detailed preliminary investigation took place in order to corroborate the information provided by the complainant. Once the measures were approved by a judge, the Prosecutor’s Office acted in coordination with the Investigations Division of the High Technology Crimes unit to carry out the operation.

According to Puicón, this is the first action against the operators of a pirate site in Peru.

“The purpose was to have the detainees close the sites voluntarily after providing us with the login codes,” he said. “We do not have a technology department, so the specialized high-tech police and complainants were present to preserve evidence.”

Local sources indicate that sentences for piracy can be as long as six years in serious cases. However, Peru has been exclusively tackling counterfeiting of physical discs, with online piracy being allowed to run rampant.

“The Office of the Prosecutor has the competency to deal with crimes against intellectual property but has been working exclusively in cases of physical piracy,” Puicón says.

“Online piracy has another connotation, we must use other procedures, another form of investigation and another strategy. Therefore, the authorities that are aware of these crimes must be trained on technological issues.”

It’s believed that at least a million Peruvians download infringing content from the Internet each week, a problem that will need to be tackled moving forward, when the authorities can gather the expertise to do so.

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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 09/25/17

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the most downloaded movie for the third week in a row.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(1)	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	6.9 / trailer
2	(3)	Baby Driver	8.0 / trailer
3	(9)	Despicable Me 3	6.4 / trailer
4	(2)	Transformers: The Last Knight	5.2 / trailer
5	(4)	Wonder Woman	8.2 / trailer
6	(5)	Hitman’s Bodyguard	7.2 / trailer
7	(6)	The Mummy 2017	5.8 / trailer
8	(…)	Revolt	5.4 / trailer
9	(7)	It	8.0 / trailer
10	(…)	Killing Gunther	?.? / trailer

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