DMCA Doesn’t Shield Cloudflare From Anti-Piracy Injunctions, Court Rules

Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull in 2015.

With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time. This frustrated many music industry insiders who claimed millions in losses.

Last year a Florida federal court sided with the RIAA, awarding the labels more than $22 million in damages. In addition, it issued a permanent injunction which allowed the RIAA to take over the site’s domain names.

Despite the million dollar verdict, MP3Skull continued to operate for several months using a variety of new domain names, which were subsequently targeted by the RIAA’s legal team.

As the site refused to shut down, the RIAA moved up the chain targeting CDN provider Cloudflare with the permanent injunction. According to the RIAA, Cloudflare should stop offering its services to all MP3Skull websites, arguing that the CDN provider was “in active concert or participation” with the pirates.

Cloudflare disagreed and countered that the DMCA protects it from liability for the copyright infringements of its customers, limiting the scope of anti-piracy injunctions. In an effort to resolve this difference of opinion, the RIAA has asked the Florida federal court for a “clarification” of the existing injunction.

After hearing the arguments from both sides, the court has now ruled against Cloudflare’s DMCA defense, opening the door for an injunction against the CDN provider itself.

In her order, District Court Judge Marcia Cooke notes that Section 512 of the DMCA protects service providers from copyright infringement liability for the actions of others of which they are not aware.

However, this is different from the current case where Cloudflare is not being held liable by the RIAA but is well aware of the copyright infringements, the Judge clarifies.

“Here, Plaintiffs do not allege Cloudflare is directly liable for copyright infringement. Further, CloudFlare has been aware of Defendants’ infringing behavior since at least May 2015 when it first assisted Plaintiffs in identifying relevant online information involving Defendants.

“Simply put, Section 512’s limits to online service provider liability are inapplicable here,” Judge Cooke adds (pdf).

In the present case, the scope of the permanent injunction is guided by Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which may apply to any third-party that’s “in active concert or participation” with the offender.

With the ruling, the court has opened the door to broad injunctions which could force Cloudflare to implement a variety of anti-piracy measures. These aren’t limited to terminating existing accounts, as the RIAA also wanted Cloudflare to monitor new clients that use the keyword “MP3Skull” in their domain name.

However, before issuing an injunction against Cloudflare, it still has to be determined whether the CDN provider is “in active concert or participation” with the pirate site.

“Though I have determined Section 512 does not effect the scope of Rule 65 and the Permanent Injunction here, I do not believe I can make a formal ruling on whether Cloudflare was in ‘in active concert or participation’ with Defendants until CloudFlare has had a reasonable opportunity to be heard,” Judge Cooke notes.

The order is a victory for the RIAA and other rightsholders who have repeatedly called out Cloudflare for the services it provides to pirate sites. As such, it is likely to be referenced in similar cases in the future.

While the legal precedent may be important, the case itself will have very little effect. MP3Skull appears to have given up a few months ago. It was last active on the MP3Skull.vg domain but disappeared last October, forwarding the leftover traffic to an unrelated site.

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

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5 Best Kodi Alternatives for Media Enthusiasts – Kodi Like Apps

Kodi media center is a great product but believe it or not there are other media center solutions out there. It tends to be the enthusiasts who opt for other software solutions or people with specific needs. Whether there is feature that you are missing in Kodi, the look and feel is not for you […]

5 Best Kodi Alternatives for Media Enthusiasts – Kodi Like Apps is a post from htpcBeginner.

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BitTorrent Inc. to Refocus on What Made it Rich – uTorrent

While torrent clients such as qBitTorrent and Deluge have a passionate following among enthusiasts, there can only be one winner when it comes the true king of BitTorrent transfers.

Owned by San-Francisco based BitTorrent Inc., uTorrent is the leading torrent client in the West. It has more than 150 million active users a month, a staggering achievement for a piece of software that started out as a one-man project in Sweden back in 2004.

Now on version 3.4.9, uTorrent has undergone more than 12 years of development, 11 years under the guidance of BitTorrent Inc., who took control of the client (and its creator Ludvig Strigeus) back in 2006. The client’s massive success since has had a significant effect on BitTorrent Inc., generating tens of millions of dollars in advertising and affiliate revenue.

Indeed, this revenue has been the major contributor to BitTorrent Inc.’s very existence, financing a basket of other products the company has brought to the table in recent years, such as the popular Dropbox competitor BitTorrent Sync.

But despite the huge contribution uTorrent has made to the company and its various forays into other areas, in recent years the software has descended into something of an unsung hero.

Caught between the bad publicity generated by millions of pirates using the software for less than legal activities, a reliance on its huge revenue, plus its role in distributing content from signed-up artists, BitTorrent Inc. has at times been required to delicately maneuver around the client’s very existence.

Now, however, that might be about to change. According to a report from Variety, changes are underway at BitTorrent Inc that could see uTorrent and its Mainline sister client come back into the limelight.

First up, the company has yet another new CEO. Rogelio Choy joins the company after spending two years at parking service Luxe Valet. However, Choy is also a former BitTorrent employee, serving as its Chief Operating Officer between 2012 and 2015.

The hiring of Choy reportedly coincides with a shake-up of BitTorrent Inc.’s product line. BitTorrent Live, the patented live video streaming project developed by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen, will be set loose as a separate, venture-funded company, Variety reports.

That company will be headed up by Cohen himself, who will reportedly step back from his day-to-day involvement with BitTorrent Inc. but remain on the company’s board. He also has a little something up his sleeve.

Cohen, a serial inventor and self-confessed puzzle enthusiast, is said to be focusing on a new crypto-currency project. Given how active Cohen has been in related and often heated discussion online in recent years, that doesn’t come as a surprise.

But with all these changes underway, perhaps the most important news for torrent fans is that BitTorrent Inc. will refocus on its flagship products, the uTorrent and Mainline clients. Quite how this will manifest itself is open to debate, however.

Most of the really important additions such as magnet links, PEX, and the network-friendly uTP protocol enhancement happened before 2010, some seven years ago. There have been a few minor additions in recent times, such as altruistic mode in 2016, but other than that development has been flat.

Pulling something exciting out of the hat at this late stage in a product’s life could be a big ask but considering BitTorrent’s success and longevity (nothing else has come along to beat it from a technical perspective in 15 years), the company could yet deliver a surprise.

It’s certainly possible, however, that BitTorrent Inc. will choose to continue its policy of focusing on what positive things the software can do, rather than the software itself. For years the company has been trying to attract artists to its distribution platform, even going as far as offering to finance them through its discovery fund.

But with that now scrapped, it will need to rely on artists who understand the benefits of BitTorrent Bundles. They will join the likes of Bribery Corporation, who recently struck a deal with BitTorrent to provide the exclusive platform for all their releases.

Whatever happens, uTorrent remains an exciting part of the P2P landscape and doesn’t look like it will disappear anytime soon. Whether it can receive an unexpected technological boost will remain to be seen, but in the meantime it will remain the client of choice for tens of millions of fans, many of whom are happy with it, just the way it is.

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

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Megaupload Wants to Recover Failing Hard Drives, But Won’t Sign Away Its Rights

Megaupload was shutdown nearly half a decade ago, but it remains undecided whether Kim Dotcom and several of his former colleagues will stand trial in the US.

With the extradition process still ongoing, the criminal prosecution and the civil lawsuits filed by the MPAA and RIAA have been put on hold.

Aside from the many legal challenges in the pending cases, there are also technical concerns. Since the defunct file-hosting service conducted its business online, a lot of the evidence is digital and has to be carefully preserved, which doesn’t get easier over time.

Last year, hosting provider Cogent first warned that sixteen of Megaupload’s evidence hard drives had become unreadable. While the data could potentially be restored, this would require swift action from the parties involved.

The data are vital for Megaupload as well as the MPAA and the RIAA as they contain crucial evidence. After discussions failed earlier, Megaupload and the rightsholders have now reached an agreement.

Earlier this month the MPAA and RIAA presented a joint preservation plan to the Virginia Federal Court. The rightsholder groups informed the court that they had reached an agreement with Megaupload on “nearly all” terms of the data preservation process to be carried out by the independent forensics company DriveSavers.

A few days ago Megaupload responded to the copyright holder’s request. While it indeed agrees to the practical terms of recovering and preserving the sixteen failing hard drives, Megaupload disagrees on the part where it’s prohibited from accessing the data.

“Megaupload agrees that there is a ‘significant risk that relevant evidence will be lost or destroyed,’ and that ample grounds for a preservation order exist; however, Megaupload disputes certain terms of the preservation order proposed by Plaintiff,” the company’s counsel writes (pdf).

The order proposed by the MPAA and RIAA would prevent Megaupload from accessing its own data without the court’s permission. This violates the company’s constitutional rights, Megaupload argues.

Instead, Megaupload has submitted a revised version of the preservation order specifying that it can access the data, but for litigation purposes only. If the MPAA or RIAA disagree, they can then share their concerns with the court on a case by case basis.

“Only with these edits will Megaupload be able to access this critical data, as needed, in the defense of these cases. Otherwise, Megaupload is enjoined from obtaining access to the data without the Court’s permission, which is contrary to law,” Megaupload writes.

The Government is less concerned with preserving the data, it seems. The authorities have already made copies of the data they intend to use and have stated that they have no interest in the remaining hard drives.

However, the US Department of Justice previously objected to Megaupload’s efforts to free the Megaupload data, arguing that it contains “contraband,” so it’s not going to be pleased with the proposed preservation order.

Considering the recent history, it seems unlikely that all parties will fully agree on how to solve the current standoff. This means that the Court may have to make the final decision, before it’s too late.

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

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‘Pirate’ Movie Streaming Sites Declared Legal By Italian Court

When it comes to passing judgment on so-called ‘pirate’ sites, Italy has more experience than most around Europe. Courts have passed down many decisions against unlicensed sites which have seen hundreds blocked by ISPs.

Today, however, news coming out of the country suggests that the parameters of what defines a pirate site may not be so loosely interpreted in future.

It began in 2015 when the operator of four sites that linked to pirated movies was found guilty of copyright infringement by a local court and ordered to pay more almost 600,000 in fines and costs. As a result, filmakers.biz, filmaker.me, filmakerz.org, and cineteka.org all shutdown but in the background, an appeal was filed.

The appeal was heard by the Rome Court of Appeal in February and now, through lawyer Fulvio Sarzana who defended the sites’ operator, we hear of a particularly interesting ruling.

“The Court ruled that the indication of links does not qualify as making direct disposal of files protected by copyright law,” Sarzana told TF in an email.

Often in these kinds of cases, the presence of a financial motivation by a site operator can play a crucial role. In this matter, however, even revenue generation via advertising failed to tip the scales in the prosecution’s favor.

“The Judge has recognized as lawful the portals’ activities, and this despite the presence of advertising banners,” Sarzana says.

According to the lawyer, it is not enough to simply show that the ‘pirate’ site generates income. The prosecution must also show that profit activity is connected to an individual. If it does not, the sharing aspect could be considered as merely avoiding an expense rather than a for-profit activity designed to generate “significant gain”. In the event, that’s exactly what happened.

“In fact, the Judge ruled that file sharing, i.e the sharing of files protected by copyright, is a saving of expense and not a for-profit business. Therefore, in these cases you cannot apply the penal provisions of copyright law and the resulting administrative sanctions,” Sarzana notes.

The decision to clear the sites of all charges and overturn the financial penalties against their operator is bound to prove a controversial one, not just locally but across the EU as a whole. Only time will tell how the decision will affect the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, the complexities of the case have not been lost on Federico Bagnoli Rossi, Secretary General of the Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Content (FAPAV). He believes that traditional legal avenues are not the only way to tackle the piracy problem.

“We are aware of the difficulties encountered in investigative activities and for this reason we are convinced that intermediaries should assume their responsibilities and work more closely with all parties involved in protecting culture,” Rossi says.

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

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Third of EU Citizens OK With Piracy When There Are No Legal Options

The European Union Intellectual Property Office has published the findings of a new study commissioned from Deloitte which aims to better understand how EU citizens perceive intellectual property issues.

The report is the product of 26,500 interviews with citizens aged 15 and over and paints a fairly positive picture for rightsholders and other businesses that rely on the exploitation of intellectual property.

The striking headline figure is that 97% of respondents believe that content creators should be able to protect their rights in order to get paid for their work. Alongside almost total support for IP rights, an impressive 83% indicate they would prefer to access digital content through legal services when there is an affordable option available.

Across the EU, just 10% of respondents said they’d deliberately obtained content from illegal sources during the past 12 months, a figure that jumps to 27% among 15 to 24-year-olds. A similar survey carried out in 2013 produced close to the same results.

But while 10% is the average percentage of pirates across all EU countries, several major EU members buck the trends in interesting ways.

France, for example, has many years’ experience of the state-sponsored Hadopi “three strikes” anti-piracy program. With millions of notices sent to ISP subscribers, the program was supposed to educate citizens away from piracy. However, 15% of French citizens admit to downloading or streaming from illegal sources, five percentage points higher than the EU average.

In Germany, where copyright trolls have been running rampant for many years and claiming a deterrent effect, just 7% say they download or stream from illegal sources. While this figure lower than the EU average might seem the logical conclusion, the same percentage is shared with Italy where there is no trolling or state-sponsored anti-piracy scheme.

In Spain, a country that is trying to shake off a reputation of being a piracy haven, 16% of citizens admit to online piracy. That’s double the 8% of UK citizens who admit to consuming unauthorized content online.

As usual, however, there are significant gray areas when it comes to content consumption and whether or not people can be labeled as hardcore pirates.

Just under a third (32%) of the those surveyed said they access content online, whether that’s from a legal or illegal source. Under a quarter (22%) say they use only authorized services. Just 5% use illegal sources alone and 5% said they use a mix of paid lawful and illegal sources.

“This suggests that respondents are willing to switch between legal and illegal sources in order to gain access to content,” the study found.

Also of interest are the significant numbers of citizens who feel that piracy is acceptable under particular sets of circumstances.

A not insignificant 35% of respondents said that it’s acceptable to obtain content illegally as long as it’s only for personal use. Since millions of citizens are already taxed via a private copying levy, the notion that copying for yourself is acceptable shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, although the charge itself applies to blank media, not illegal downloads.

Interestingly, close to a third (31%) believe that it’s acceptable to obtain content illegally if there are no immediately available legal alternatives. So, if a distributor chooses to bring content late to a region or makes content otherwise difficult to obtain, millions believe it’s ok for citizens to help themselves. While that’s probably a concern for rightsholders, it’s a problem that can be fixed.

Overall, an encouraging 71% of pirate respondents said they would stop obtaining content from illegal sources if there was an accessible and affordable legal alternative. Around 20% said they would not necessarily go legal, even if there was an available and affordable option.

“The availability of affordable content from legal offers as the top reason for stopping the behavior is most strongly cited by respondents in the following categories: respondents aged 25 to 39 (74 %), employed (76 %), living in large urbanized cities (75 %), and the most educated (72 %), which is in line with the profile of a typical online user,” the survey notes.

Close to 30% believe that being better informed could help them back away from illegal sources while just 5% said they could never be stopped, no matter what.

But while many consumers want to “do the right thing”, there appears to be confusion when it comes to assessing whether an online service is legal or not. Almost a quarter (24%) of Europeans surveyed said they’d questioned whether an online source was legal, a five-point increase over the earlier 2013 study.

That being said, there’s a perception that legal services can provide a better product. When comparing the quality of content offered on legal and illegal platforms, 69% said that licensed services come out on top, an opinion shared by illegal downloaders and legal consumers alike.

However, when it comes to diversity of content, just over half of respondents (56%) said that legal services do a better job, a figure that drops to 45% among those who illegally download some content. Making a broader range of content available online could address this particularly lukewarm response.

António Campinos, Executive Director of EUIPO, said that the results of the survey show that EU citizens generally have respect for intellectual property but there is still room for improvement.

“Overall, we see that support for IP rights is high among EU citizens,” he said.

“But we also see that more needs to be done to help young people in particular understand the importance of IP to our economy and society, especially now, when encouraging innovation and creativity is increasingly the focus of economic policy across our European Union.”

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf)

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

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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 03/27/17

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Rogue One is the most downloaded movie for the second 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)	Rogue One	8.0 / trailer
2	(5)	The Great Wall (Subbed HDRip)	6.2 / trailer
3	(8)	Logan (HDCam)	8.6 / trailer
4	(3)	Assassin’s Creed	6.3 / trailer
5	(…)	Split (Subbed HDRip)	7.4 / trailer
6	(2)	xXx: Return of Xander Cage (Subbed HDRip)	5.5 / trailer
7	(6)	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them	7.6 / trailer
8	(7)	Passengers	7.1 / trailer
9	(…)	Resident Evil: The Final Chapter	5.7 / trailer
10	(4)	Patriots Day	6.2 / trailer

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

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