EU Representative: Ukraine Must Tighten Noose on Internet Pirates

Despite its proximity to European countries with strong intellectual property laws, Ukraine tends to fall behind when it comes to online piracy.

As a result, the site has played host to a wide range of prominent sites over the years, not least The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent.

As a result of its lax approach, Ukraine has been criticized on many occasions by the United States, particularly by the USTR who regularly brands the country as a piracy haven. This week it was the European Commission’s time to chime in.

In an interview with Ukrainian news outlet Unian, Nicholas Burge, head of the trade section of the European Commission’s delegation to Ukraine, expressed his opinions on where the country needs to improve.

“There should be a law that would provide a major responsibility for the contents of pirate sites. We will only believe in Ukraine’s serious intentions to fight pirate sites when there are penalties for those involved in supporting them,” he said.

Given moves underway in both the US and EU that could affect safe harbors for Internet service providers and hosting platforms, it’s no surprise that Burge wants Ukraine to take a firmer line with those present in Ukraine, especially those playing host to pirate sites.

“Internet service providers should also bear some legal responsibility for what they do. Otherwise, putting an end to online piracy will be impossible,” he said.

The EU representative said that this would have been possible under recent draft legislation designed to protect the film industry, but the amendments were vetoed by the President and never put into place.

“We urge Parliament to consider and adopt appropriate amendments to the law as soon as possible,” Burge said.

While Ukraine isn’t known for taking a hard line against pirate sites, it would be wrong to suggest it does nothing at all. Only recently, Ukrainian police acted on a complaint from the MPAA to close down FS.to, one of the country’s largest pirate sites. Sixty servers were seized and 19 people arrested. However, Burge believes more needs to be done.

“One site was closed and another appeared. This is a battle that is constantly going on,” he said.

According to comments made to Unian, Burge said that by neglecting intellectual property rights, Ukraine is not fulfilling its obligations under the Association Agreement with the EU and risks damaging relationships with the economic and political union.

“In case of default, the Agreement provides for appropriate mechanisms to deal with such situations within our relationships,” Burge said.

In addition to new criticism from the EU, Ukraine already faces annual complaints from the United States Trade Representative. In its latest Special 301 Report, the USTR kept Ukraine on its Priority List, meaning the country must make significant improvements if it is to meet US standards for IP protection.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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US and KickassTorrents Go Head to Head in Court

This week KickassTorrents’ alleged owner Artem Vaulin asked the Illinois District Court to dismiss the criminal indictment and set him free.

The fundamental flaw of the case, according to defense lawyer Ira Rothken, is that torrent files themselves are not copyrighted content.

In addition, he argued that the secondary copyright infringement claims would fail as these are non-existent under criminal law.

District Court Judge John Lee previously questioned the evidence in the case and according to Rothken, it is certainly not enough to keep his client behind bars. This is also what he told the court during the hearing this week, stressing that torrents themselves are not copyrighted.

“We believe that the indictment against Artem Vaulin in the KAT torrent files case is defective and should be dismissed. Torrent files are not content files. The reproduction and distribution of torrent files are not a crime,” Rothken tells TF.

“If a third party uses torrent files to infringe it is after they leave the KAT site behind and such conduct is too random, inconsistent, and attenuated to impose criminal liability on Mr. Vaulin. The government cannot use the civil judge-made law in Grokster as a theory in a criminal case.”

Furthermore, Rothken argued that the US indictment is flawed because it fails to allege an actual criminal copyright infringement anywhere in the world, the United States included. The defense likened KickassTorrents to general search engines such as Google instead.

On the other side of the aisle stood US Department of Justice prosecutor Devlin Su. He urged the court to wait for the extradition hearing in Poland before ruling on the request, noting that Vaulin should come to the US voluntarily if he wanted to speed things up.

According to the prosecution, KickassTorrents operated as a piracy flea market, with an advertising revenue of about $12.5 million to $22.3 million. Comparing it with Google is nonsense, Su argued.

“Google is not dedicated to uploading and distributing copyrighted works,” Law360 quotes the prosecutor.

It is now up to the Illinois District Court to decide how to move forward. The defense is hoping for an outright dismissal, while the U.S. wants to move forward.

Meanwhile, over in Poland, Vaulin remains in custody after he was denied bail. Facing severe health issues, the Ukrainian was transferred from Polish prison to a local hospital a few weeks ago, where he remains under heavy guard.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Pirate Party’s Pirate Site Was Legal Under EU Law, Court Rules

In July 2011, the Czech division of the Pirate Party reacted angrily when a local anti-piracy outfit targeted a 16-year-old who they accused of posting links to infringing content.

Under the slogan “Linking is not a Crime” the party launched Tipnafilm.cz, its own pirate movie download site, quickly followed by another indexing 5,800 titles.

“We challenge the Anti-Piracy Union to stop bullying the under-aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party,” the pirates said at the time.

In a declaration of “open war,” the Czech Pirates went on to launch TV-focused site Sledujuserialy.cz (I Watch TV Series). That provoked a response from the Anti-Piracy Union, and in January 2016 the party became the subject of a criminal prosecution, which they welcomed with open arms.

Sledujuserialy.cz – I Watch TV Series

“Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. However, until we achieve that, we will fight in courts over interpretation and enforcement of the law,” the party said.

But now, a year later, the action against the party has fizzled out. Despite offering 1,205 videos without permission from copyright holders and standing accused of causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, the Prague District Court has stopped the prosecution in its tracks.

After consulting EU case law, particularly the landmark GS Media ruling in the Netherlands, it was found that since the Pirates ran their site without generating revenue, they weren’t in violation of the law.

“The sledujuserialy.cz website was non-commercial. Therefore the owner of the website does not have the obligation to check the ‘legality of hyperlinks’ on his website, i.e. we did not have to check whether the content was online legally,” party spokesman Mikulas Ferjencik informs TorrentFreak.

“Unfortunately, if our website was commercial we would have to check it. The good thing about the current decision is that it specifies ‘non-commercial’ pretty broadly, i.e. no financial profit for us.”

While the absence of revenue played its part, the problems for the Pirates’ adversaries did not stop there.

Although the Czech Anti-Piracy Union (CPU) complained to the Pirate Party about links to copyrighted content present on their site, it failed to provide evidence that it was authorized to act on behalf of copyright holders whose content was allegedly being infringed.

“The court stated that a random letter from anyone is not good enough to make us obliged to take down the links even if it is from the CPU, which is notorious for enforcing harsher copyright law,” Ferjencik says.

“However, they provided this evidence to the court in the criminal procedure. This means we cannot put the website back online so easily, as we would have to remove hyperlinks to illegal sources first, as we now officially know these are illegal sources.”

Under same GS Media EU ruling, knowingly linking to infringing content, even without commercial interests, is illegal.

Commenting on this week’s ruling, party vice-president Jakub Michálek says that the value of hyperlinks shouldn’t be understated and anti-piracy outfits shouldn’t overreach.

“If we want a working digital economy, where also the artists make money, we cannot turn sharing of a hyperlink on a video a crime. This ruling is important for legal certainty of all Internet users as it states that you do not infringe copyright by linking unless you know that the content was uploaded illegally,” Michálek said.

“The court also confirmed that the Czech Anti-Piracy Union cannot act as the Internet Police and they cannot ask other actors to take down content, without providing evidence that they act on behalf of the copyright owners.”

Party chairman Ivan Bartos says that the criminal prosecution is proof that rightsholders are clinging to their old business models, which appear to be doing rather well, despite piracy.

“We view the whole case as a fight between a modern and backward understanding of the world and digital reality. The criminal prosecution is proof that the old structures do not want to innovate. Instead, they rely on their old business models, which do not have much to do with reality,” Bartos says.

“Last year, 13 million people went to the Cinema in the Czech Republic, it is the highest number in the last five years. If this is the result of piracy – and I believe it is – the filmmakers should thank us instead of suing us.”

The decision of the Prague court (pdf) is not yet final and the public prosecutor could still file an appeal.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Install CouchPotato using Docker – Automatic Movie Downloads

In our previous posts, you learned how to install Sickrage in Docker, a service that allows you to automate your TV show download by creating watch lists and automatically download them when they are available. Couchpotato is a similar service, made specifically for movies. You just add your wanted movies and Couchpotato will automatically search them and download the […]

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Film Industry’s Latest Search Engine Draws Traffic With “Pirate” Keywords’

An often heard excuse from pirates is that they can’t find the content they’re looking for in their home country, at least not for a decent price.

The movie industry has repeatedly attacked what they see as a myth, pointing out that movies and TV-shows are more widely available than ever before.

In addition, they are putting action behind their words. In the US, Hollywood’s MPAA launched the movie and TV search engine WhereToWatch, to help people finding legal content. An interesting service, but also hard to find in search engines, especially when it first launched.

Yesterday, several major players in the Dutch film industry came out with a similar initiative. They’ve apparently learned from the mistakes others made, as the legal Film.nl search engine was built with pirates in mind.

Like other “legal” search engines, the site returns a number of options where people can watch the movies or TV-shows they search for. However, those who scroll down long enough will notice that each page has a targeted message for pirates as well.

The descriptions come in a few variations but all mention prominent keywords such as “torrents” and reference “illegal downloading” and unauthorized streaming.

The original descriptions (in Dutch)

This includes the following (translated) message for torrent users, which appears under the heading “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent”

“Don’t Wrestle With Nasty Torrents. Ignore the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent. Just go for the safe, fast and legal alternative. Film.nl gives you access to all providers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Very easy. And then you can make your own choice.”

Another description targets unauthorized downloading in general.

“Do you feel like watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? Don’t download it illegally then. There really are other ways to watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” it reads.

And finally, those who are interested in streaming the movie, are inaccurately informed that a legal “Rogue One” stream is available.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is also available for streaming, but make sure to use the offerings of real providers. They provide good streams so you Rogue One: A Star Wars Story can enjoy it legally, without any worries,” it reads, adding that nothing in life comes free.

There are of course no legal streams for the movie yet, but that’s the downside of these automated descriptions. The upside is that it will bring in quite a bit of traffic to the site.

While the piracy related messaging is unusual, it’s actually quite clever. Since a lot of people are searching for “torrent,” “streaming” and “download” related terms combined with movie and TV-show titles, it helps to keep search traffic away from pirate sites.

In other words, it’s a smart search engine optimization trick, helping it to directly compete with pirate sites on this front.

The big question is whether people who search for “Movie X torrent” will be satisfied with the results Film.nl offers. That said, from a movie industry perspective, it definitely beats doing nothing at all.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Police Seize Domains of Fifty ‘Pirate’ Newspaper and Magazine Sites

Anti-piracy operations come in all shapes and sizes but it’s movies, music and TV shows that grab the majority of the headlines. Games, software, and eBooks trail closely behind, but it’s rare that other types of digital print see enforcement action.

Italy, one of the most aggressive countries when it comes to sweeping anti-piracy actions, has just changed all that with one of the largest enforcement operations ever seen in the publishing niche.

Following an investigation carried by rightsholders and the Public Prosecutor of Rome, a total of 50 domains involved in the unlawful distribution of news and magazine content have been seized by the country’s Special Unit for Broadcasting and Publishing.

According to an announcement by the authorities, all of the sites have now gone dark after offering “vast quantities” of material originally published by major newspapers and periodicals including Cosmopolitan, Fashion Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

The operation, dubbed “Odyssey 2”, was carried out under the directives of the Special Command Units of the Guardia di Finanza, a militarized police force under the authority of the Minister of Economy and Finance.

Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners who specializes in Internet and copyright disputes, says that the sites were probably under the control of separate entities.

“The variety of sites and the diversity of hosting and domain registrations leads me to think that these are different cases,” Sarzana informs TorrentFreak.

“The methods vary but generally the digital kiosks work this way; someone buys the paper or digital versions of newspapers through a duly registered account and then makes them available on the website.”

Until now, Italy has employed the same “follow-the-money” approach used by authorities in other jurisdictions, whereby site owners are identified via payments made by advertisers and similar business partners. Now, however, it claims to have developed a ‘new’ “follow-the-hosting” approach, which allows it to identify site operators, even when they use Cloudflare to hide the location of their servers.

While details on the techniques used by the authorities are thin, uncloaking server locations in this way is nothing new and can be achieved when Cloudflare is ordered to do so by a competent court.

The sites in question, which were not named by the authorities, are said to have served millions of users with pirated content. This, to a background of national media groups losing a third of their turnover over the past five years.

Big anti-piracy operations to protect publishers are extremely rare but with their market closing in and ad revenues falling, more could certainly follow in the future.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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