Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare provides a range of connectivity and security services to customers around the globe.

This includes millions of organizations, including 30% of Fortune 500 companies, as well as various government agencies. These customers are generally pleased with the service they receive but Cloudflare has also faced criticism over the years.

Copyright holders, for example, have pointed out that the San Francisco-based company is offering its services to pirates. Many of the world’s largest pirate platforms use Cloudflare as a shield against attacks and to save bandwidth in the process. According to the complaints, this complicates piracy enforcement.

EU Piracy Watch List

A few weeks ago, various rightsholders shared their Cloudflare concerns with the European Commission. The EU requested input for its biannual ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’, allowing stakeholders to nominate piracy-affiliated sites and services for inclusion.

In addition to traditional pirate sites, many rightsholders mentioned Cloudflare as a key problem. They accuse the company of indirectly facilitating piracy and shielding the identities of pirate site operators.

For example, music group IFPI complained that while Cloudflare discloses the hosting locations of pirate sites in response to abuse reports, it doesn’t voluntarily share the identity of these pirate customers with rightsholders.

“Where IFPI needs to obtain the customer’s contact information, Cloudflare will only disclose these details following a subpoena or court order – i.e. these disclosures are mandated by law and are not an example of the service’s goodwill or a policy or measures intended to assist IP rights holders,” IFPI wrote.

Video Games Europe offered similar criticism, informing the EU that Cloudflare continues to act as an important intermediary in the delivery of pirated content, without voluntarily sharing private customer details.

“Cloudflare does provide injured parties/trusted partners with the IP-address and name of the host ISP of an infringing website, but does not provide the contact details of the website operators nor cease to render services to these customers,” the group noted.

Cloudflare Responds to EU Commission

Cloudflare is aware of the critique. However, the company doesn’t believe that it should assume the role of anti-piracy arbiter or judge whether rightsholders complaints are valid. Aside from the legal complications, it believes that privacy rights deserve some level of protection.

Rightsholders have increasingly used the EU and US piracy watch list consultations to argue for greater cooperation from online intermediaries. That applies to sharing of customer details, as well as more advanced “know your customer” policies.

The MPA also made a point of this in its submission to the EU Commission, where it listed several key piracy enforcement points.

Cloudflare, however, believes that the EU’s Piracy Watch list should solely focus on bad actors; pirate sites and services. It should not be used as a platform to demand policy change.

“The Commission should not issue a report – even an informal one – that is simply a mechanism for particular stakeholders to air their grievances that entities are not taking particular voluntary action to meet their concerns or to advocate for new policies.”

“Our view is that the Commission’s staff document and Watch List should be limited to Commission-verified allegations of illegal behavior, based on principled and fair legal standards,” Cloudflare adds.

Cloudflare is worried that if concerns about intermediaries are mentioned in the Watch List, even when the Commission doesn’t support them, it will be seen it as an endorsement. This could be used by rightsholders to influence policy discussions elsewhere.

Piracy vs. privacy

Cloudflare warns the EU against copyright holders’ broad generalizations that only focus on the downsides of technology. Those fail to recognize the value of innovative technologies that aim to increase privacy and security for the broader public.

The video game industry, for example, complained that enabling privacy feature Encrypted Client Hello (‘ECH’) makes it hard to block pirate sites . The same technology, on the other hand, greatly benefits user privacy.

“Restricting progress and adoption of new technology tools that help protect the privacy and security of citizens operating online in order to continue the use of outdated means to combat piracy is short-sighted, and bad for Europe’s long term economic development,” Cloudflare notes.

The EU should be exceedingly wary of proposals that limit user privacy and security, to combat piracy. There’s an important trade-off to make either way, one that should not be taken lightly.

Problems still exist without Cloudflare

Concerns aside, Cloudflare stresses that it is open to collaboration with rightsholders and law enforcement. The company has a trusted reporter program, for example, which currently counts roughly 200 organizations.

When these trusted parties report copyright infringements that take place though its reverse proxy and CDN service, Cloudflare shares additional information on the targets, including the origin IP-address of sites in question.

The company doesn’t terminate customer accounts for which it receives multiple complaints. It is not legally obliged to do so and disconnecting customers wouldn’t make much of a difference, the company argues.

Ultimately, pirate sites and services are hosted by third party providers. Taking away the Cloudflare service doesn’t change that.

All in all, Cloudflare believes that sharing hosting provider details in response to piracy complaints is sufficient. It puts rightsholders in the same position they are with any other site or service that doesn’t use its service.

“We believe it is time for rightsholders to shift their comments away from policy advocacy to focus instead on the physical and online markets and websites that are the intended subject of the Watch List report,” Cloudflare concludes.

—

A copy of Cloudflare’s letter to the European Commission, responding to the critique from rightsholders, is available here (pdf)

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

During 2010/2011, opportunity arose for Hollywood to convince the High Court in London that site-blocking would be a proportionate response to tackle a single Usenet indexing site called Newzbin.

As rightsholders offered assurances that the action would be carefully targeted and strictly limited in scope, the requested injunction was granted in October 2011. Within 14 days, ISP BT would implement blocking to prevent six million customers from accessing the site in the UK. That was a landmark win for the studios; it also laid the foundations for something bigger.

Whether the High Court would’ve acted any differently is unclear, but it certainly wasn’t informed in advance that its decision would effectively seed site-blocking on a global scale, while acting as an official seal of approval.

Not only did the injunction eventually lead to the blocking of tens of thousands of domains locally, the High Court’s decision was used to convince courts all around the world to do the same. Even in countries where blocking already assists mass censorship, governments are routinely encouraged to block more than they do already.

Of course, it’s never enough. Blocking is easily circumvented, which prompts calls for even more blocking. When faster blocking fails to produce results, preemptive and in some cases perpetual blocking is now accepted as normal. News that testing is underway, to block pirate IPTV devices by meddling with the internet’s core routers, is certainly depressing. What it definitely is not, however, is any kind of surprise.

Brazil Embraces Blocking

When Elon Musk and a Brazilian judge became embroiled in a bitter dispute over what can (and cannot) be said online, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered local ISPs to take action. Using tools developed in recent years to block pirate sites and piracy-configured set-top boxes, the entire X platform was rendered inaccessible in Brazil. When a blocking mechanism is so readily available, the likelihood of it being used to stifle dissent is just a button press away.

Urged on by movie studios in the United States and the global recording industry, Brazil has now fully embraced site-blocking as a convenient anti-piracy solution. Courts have been issuing orders with such frequency it’s now almost impossible to keep up. Details of the entities subjected to blocking aren’t for public consumption, a common trait of site-blocking systems which prevents accountability.

Yet, those who somehow gain access to the blocklist will discover it currently contains around 11,800 domains. The majority are related to piracy and at some others concern outlawed gambling platforms that don’t appear on Brazil’s official whitelist .

The whitelist approach also applies to Android-style set-top boxes. All such devices are now illegal by default, pending state certification authorizing their use.

Building/Blocking Communications Infrastructure

Ensuring that only authorized platforms and devices are accessible in Brazil falls to telecoms regulator Anatel.

In an interview with Tele.Sintese , outgoing Anatel board member Artur Coimbra recalls the lack of internet infrastructure in Brazil as recently as 2010. As head of the National Broadband Plan under the Ministry of Communications, that’s something he personally addressed. For Anatel today, blocking access to pirate websites and preventing unauthorized devices from communicating online is all in a day’s work.

“The topic of combating piracy has evolved significantly. We can already see the impact of this work on customer satisfaction indicators for IPTV boxes. Pirate box brands are receiving worse reviews as time goes by,” Coimbra says.

“This means that the service is getting worse, users are becoming more dissatisfied, and as a result, one day they will no longer use that pirated service. This is a great indicator of the work that Anatel has been doing.”

Automated Site-Blocking Incoming

While blocking a few sites, services, or devices can be managed manually, Coimbra says that automation is the preferred option.

“Today, orders to block pirate boxes are issued manually. We work on call and send the orders to the operators. The operators receive this and implement the IP blocking,” he explains.

“What we are going to do at this point is that these orders will no longer be manual, they will have a common system in which everyone [operators and providers] will have access to the system at the same time.”

While it can be argued that manual systems are prone to errors, automated systems are designed to need much less oversight. Whether that means fewer checks and balances remains to be seen. In general, however, limited oversight is considered a plus in the world of site-blocking.

Oversight Makes Blocking Less Efficient

After many years of putting Brazil under enormous pressure to block pirate sites, the current system involving the courts now blocks thousands of them. Yet in a typical display of incremental demands for improvement, rightsholders now want more.

In a January report to the USTR ( pdf ) , major rightsholders urged ANATEL to “implement an effective system to tackle online piracy within Internet applications and sites based on Bill of Law #3696/2023, which was signed by the President on January 15, 2024, and sets forth an administrative site-blocking provision.”

When a country’s ISPs receive their first request to block a single pirate site, using carefully targeted, strictly limited measures under the supervision of the courts , administrative blocking of tens of thousands of sites is the long-term goal.

This often means blocking measures discussed behind closed doors between mostly commercial entities, with limited or even no oversight from local courts. This is the system preferred by major rightsholders but having inspired Brazil to do more, why should it stop there?

Targeting the Internet’s Backbone

In broad terms, the ‘internet backbone’ is the core infrastructure that combines to form the foundations of the global internet. It is comprised of the fastest, most capable networks, and data travels via high capacity fiber-optics and advanced ‘core’ routers. Operated by commercial companies, government, military and educational institutions, effective backbone networks are critical to the functioning of the wider internet.

Considering the ongoing crisis in Italy where the Piracy Shield system has already caused considerable damage with nothing like the same level of access, the idea of messing with the backbone of the internet seems like a bad dream; now it’s wake-up time.

“The second step, which we still need to evaluate because some companies want it, and others are more hesitant, is to allow Anatel to have access to the core routers to place a direct order on the router,” Coimbra reveals, referencing IPTV blocking.

“In these cases, these companies do not need to have someone on call to receive the [blocking] order and then implement it.”

Already Targeting the Internet’s Backbone

Thanks to the interviewer at Tele.Sintese pressing Coimbra after his initial response, what initially sounds like a plan for the future is suddenly revealed as already underway. Will Anatel really access core routers to block IP addresses used for piracy?

“Companies that deem it convenient can give us limited access, not full access, so that we can perform these blocks directly for non-certified and non-approved equipment. Limited access so that we can only perform these blocks remotely. It would be a kind of virtual seal,” Coimbra adds.

Recall, all devices (mostly Android devices) are illegal without certification, regardless of whether they’re configured for piracy or not. So how long before something like this is actually implemented?

“Participation is voluntary. We are still testing with some companies. So, it will take some time until it actually happens,” Coimbra says. “I can’t say [how long]. Our inspection team is carrying out tests with some operators, I can’t say which ones.”

Limited to Brazil? Or Not…

Most likely quite surprised at the revelation, the interviewer inquires whether this is also happening in other countries.

“I don’t know. Maybe in Spain and Portugal, which are more advanced countries in this fight. But I don’t have that information,” Coimbra responds, randomly naming two countries with which Brazil has consulted extensively on blocking matters.

“It’s critical infrastructure, so it has to be done with great care, with a limited scope. That’s why it has to have the support of the company that feels comfortable,” he concludes.

Blocking with great care and with limited scope are the same arguments presented in London during 2010/11. Due to a lack of transparency, how many domains and IP addresses are currently blocked around the world is impossible to say. That means that it’s impossible to say whether it’s carried out with great care or not.

As for limited scope, Brazil doesn’t appear to be targeting all core routers at the moment. Spain and Portugal, of which nothing is known, may or may not have tested anything at all. By definition, then, the scope is indeed limited and arguing otherwise risks being portrayed as an alarmist who lacks respect for the creative industries.

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

Last year, Braflix was added to the ever-growing list of flix-inspired pirate streaming sites.

Reportedly operating from Brazil, the site offered a clean interface, relying on third-party sources to provide a gateway to pirated movies and TV shows.

The site had no obvious connections to other large streaming cabals, such as the massive Fmovies operation. This worked to its advantage initially, as most anti-piracy resources typically go into shutting down the largest threats.

Target: Braflix

When Fmovies was shut down this summer, these priorities changed. In June Braflix was targeted in a DMCA subpoena obtained by the MPA and ACE and in August, the MPA flagged Braflix as a severe piracy threat in an EU consultation.

“Braflix.video is a popular streaming site operated from Brazil that offers a large library of titles, including movies, TV shows, live channels, anime, and K-dramas subtitled in several different languages,” MPA informed the EU .

These and other enforcement efforts didn’t go unnoticed. The site, which had amassed over a million monthly visits by then, moved from its braflix.video domain to several new domain names in recent months.

In addition, Braflix was taken offline by its hosting provider following a series of DMCA complaints. The operator was able to host the site elsewhere, but the pressure didn’t fade. Switching to more new domains including braflix.ru and most recently braflix.is, didn’t help either.

Braflix Shuts Down

Early this morning, Braflix announced that it will throw in the towel. In its Discord channel, the site mentions that it received cease and desist notices from City of London Police and the MPA. No further details were mentioned.

“Braflix is ​​officially closed. Thank you to everyone who participated in this incredible story, who helped us build a strong community,” the site writes.

At the time of writing the site remains online but, according to the Discord message, it is expected to shut down in a matter of hours. The operators say the domain transfer keys have been sent to the complaining parties, and they expect that it will soon redirect to ACE’s “ watch legally ” page. (update: it’s now redirecting to ACE)

“We are sorry that we can no longer continue fighting for our cause of free entertainment for everyone, but we have too much to lose, so the best option is to stop,” Braflix adds.

Braflix notes, under pressure, that producers and the broader movie industry should be supported. It remains to be seen whether the site’s users agree with this sentiment, as many are currently actively discussing alternative options.

Whack-a-Flix?

This is not the first time that a pirate streaming site has shut down voluntarily in the face of legal pressure. While this team is not likely to use the same brand in the future, others might still hijack it to lure former users.

While Braflix’s demise is a victory for rightsholders, it’s also exemplary of the seemingly unending pirate site whack-a-mole. There always appears to be new ‘teams’ eager to fill the void.

At the same time, not everything is always what it seems. While Braflix has promised to shut down, there are other sites that look near identical, using similar code, that remain online. We don’t want to draw any conclusions based on these observations, but the ‘Whack-a-Flix’ isn’t over yet.

Users of these sites are familiar with ‘the drill’ too. Where shutdowns of pirate sites used to be a big deal, they are a common occurrence today. Most pirates simply shrug their shoulders and movee on to the next streaming portal.

“Braflix has been my go to for months now! Damn, RIP – on to the next one,” one Redditor illustratively writes.

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

The potential consequences of being associated with any aspect of a pirate IPTV operation are well known. Criminal action rarely ends well for defendants, with similar outcomes seen in private prosecutions and most civil copyright lawsuits.

However, since the odds of being investigated and subsequently prosecuted are still relatively low, there’s no shortage of people willing to roll the dice in the hope of hitting the jackpot – and keeping it.

But while some embark on a journey of meticulous anonymity, supported by knowledge of geographical complications that make others vastly easier to pursue, some prefer different approaches. These can also work quite well, at least until they don’t.

New Piracy Lawsuit filed in the U.S.

Filed at a federal court in Illinois, the complaint sees DISH Network and Sling TV target Richard Moy, the alleged owner of CLVPN LLC, which ordinarily does business as City Lights Entertainment .

According to the plaintiffs’ investigation, Illinois-based Moy claimed that his IPTV reselling business was ‘USA based’ and he personally controlled the content it allegedly made available. Advertised as a “top notch” service, in which Moy had invested considerable sums of money obtaining servers and streams, subscriptions were sold both in bulk to a network of resellers or on a singular basis direct to consumers.

The Plaintiffs cite Moy’s claim of having “over 500 sellers” in the market, but the number of subscribers isn’t a rough estimate. How DISH and Sling obtained direct access to Moy’s IPTV management panel isn’t revealed in the complaint, but it’s alleged that after seeing data for themselves, they concluded that the service had over 450,000 users.

A one-month subscription purchased direct cost customers $20. Resellers were charged just a quarter of that, ensuring that they were able to return a profit after accounting for costs. The complaint claims that Moy, at least according to his own recollection, also acted as a channel supplier to other IPTV providers.

Operations Exposed

The complaint alleges that payments for the City Lights Entertainment (CLE) service were processed through Moy’s company, CLVPN LLC. Payments were accepted through Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal, some under Moy’s real name and others under aliases including “PapitoPatron” and “PapitoChacon.” A Venmo account linked to CLE recorded over 1,700 transactions, the plaintiffs note.

“Moy instructed purchasers to disguise the purpose of their payments by claiming the payments were being sent to ‘Friends NOT [for] Services’,” the complaint reads. On various Telegram groups used in connection with the IPTV service, Moy operated under the alias ‘Holmes’ and the username ‘@PapitoPatron.’ Another ‘disguise’ allegedly deployed by Moy was much more unorthodox.

“Moy held himself out as a Chicago-area law enforcement officer when selling the Service,” the lawsuit adds, referencing the images below.

“Moy’s resellers were informed that he was a law enforcement officer and that message was spread in the Telegram groups, including by group moderators working for Moy. On information and belief, Moy used his alleged association with law enforcement to market the Service to users and resellers and mitigate potential concerns over the unlawfulness of the Service,” the plaintiffs note

Other measures to avoid legal repercussions included a ban on resellers displaying “videos or pictures of channel lineups” of Moy’s service on social media, and the avoidance of “red flag keywords” such as “Tv Service… IPTV, Streams, Cable etc.”

Moy allegedly alerted resellers to legal actions against other streaming services and offered advice on how best to acquire their customers. The plaintiffs claim that Moy referred to himself and his resellers as “silent assassins.”

Claims for Relief Under the DMCA

Count I alleges violations of the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2) , which concerns circumvention of technical measures. The approach has proven successful for DISH and Sling and now appears in most reseller lawsuits.

Count II alleges violations of the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(1), which prohibits the manufacture, sale, and distribution of devices that have no commercially significant purpose or use other than circumventing technical measures.

Claim for Relief Under ECPA

Count III alleges violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which prohibits interception and disclosure of wire, oral, or electronic communications. The plaintiffs allege violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2511(1)(c)-(d) which occur when a person –

• (c) intentionally discloses, or endeavors to disclose, to any other person the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, oral, or electronic communication…

• (d) intentionally uses, or endeavors to use, the contents of any wire, oral, or electronic communication, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, oral, or electronic communication…

While not usually seen alongside alleged violations of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, inclusion here suggests that the plaintiffs believe there is sufficient evidence to show that a live stream was intercepted. The interpretation of “live stream” under ECPA concerns interception of a real-time transmission, rather than a stream of a live event.

At least to our knowledge, this may be a new approach by the plaintiffs. However, the civil recovery available under 2520(a) does seem to align with existing strategy.

Claims for Damages

For Counts I and II, the plaintiffs request statutory damages of up to $2,500 for each violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2) and § 1201(b)(1). Should their claim of 450,000 subscribers pass muster, in theory statutory damages could reach $1,125,000,000. An award of that scale seems highly unlikely under the circumstances but could still be significant.

Statutory damages for ECPA violations are almost negligible in comparison; $100 per day of violation or $10,000, whichever is greater.

The complaint makes no mention of how long the alleged offending lasted, while references to the business are made in the past tense, which may suggest it no longer exists. If the alleged offending went on for a year, statutory damages could in theory reach a relatively modest $36,500.

Insufficient Facts to Determine Actual Damages

The plaintiffs may prefer actual damages and the defendant’s profits instead, added to the punitive damages they’re claiming under 18 U.S.C. § 2520(b)(2) for the ECPA violations, of course. Without access to specific details, such as the length of the alleged offending and how much profit was made, it’s not possible to estimate the scale of any damages.

These details aren’t provided in the complaint, nor does the complaint mention any prior communication with the defendant, such and cease-and-desist notices, that type of thing. Yet in a sentence that stands out primarily for not explaining how the plaintiffs gained access to the IPTV service’s main panel, the exact number of subscribers is revealed as 450,000.

Whether further details will emerge as part of a case contested on the merits remains to be seen, but a smooth conclusion here with damages for ECPA violations intact, may come in useful at a later date.

The complaint is available here (pdf)

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

While search engines are extremely helpful for the average Internet user, copyright holders have also seen a massive downside.

In addition to trillions of legitimate pages, there’s a steady supply of pirate sites. These can be hard to ignore for some entertainment-hungry users.

This problem is not new. When piracy-discovery became web-based with the surge of BitTorrent in the early 2000s, search engines were unwittingly used as pirate gateways. Luckily for rightsholders, however, U.S. law provided a solution; DMCA notices.

In the hope of steering prospective pirates away from pirate sites, copyright holders began sending DMCA takedown requests to Google. These notices flag pirate links, which Google then removes from its search index.

From Hundreds to 10 Billion

These requests have increased dramatically over the years and have just hit a new milestone. According to the official transparency report, Google search has now processed takedown requests for more than 10 billion URLs.

The path to 10 billion was turbulent. When Google first made DMCA details public it was processing a few million DMCA takedown requests in a year. That number swiftly increased to hundreds of millions and eventually reached a billion DMCA requests in 2016.

The exponential growth curve eventually flattened out and around 2017, the takedown volume started to decline . The decrease was in part due to various anti-piracy algorithms making pirated content less visible in search results.

By downranking pirate sites , infringing content became harder to find. As a result, Google processed fewer takedown notices, a welcome change for both rightsholders and the search engine.

The Takedown Resurgence

Today, Google continues to make pirate sites less visible in search, but the reduction in takedown notices didn’t last. On the contrary, over the past several months, Google search processed a record number of DMCA notices.

Last summer, the search giant recorded the 7 billionth takedown request and after that the numbers shot up, adding billions more in the year that followed.

The company is now handling removal requests at a rate of roughly 2.5 billion per year; a new record. This represents more than 50 million takedown requests per week and roughly 5,000 every minute.

The graph above illustrates how these numbers have grown over time, with the most recent uptick on the right.

The Content Shift

Aside from volume, there are significant changes in the targeted sites as well. Initially, torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay were frequently listed, but file-hosting services and streaming portals took over later, as these have many more indexed pages.

Studies published around 2013 showed that music companies were the most frequent senders. The labels and their representatives accounted for more than 40% of all takedown notices, followed by adult entertainment, and movie/TV rightsholders at a respectful distance.

At the time, the publishing industry accounted for less than 5% of all DMCA requests. The position is quite different today, as publishers are responsible for more than half of the URLs reported this year.

Faced with defiant pirate sites such as Z-Library and Anna’s Archive, publishers are clearly taking piracy more seriously than ever before. And in anti-piracy outfit Link-Busters, they have found a prolific takedown partner that meets their needs. That brings us to the outliers.

The Outliers

While the 10 billionth reported URL is undoubtedly a milestone, this number is largely driven by a few rightsholders, reporting outfits, and domain names. The aforementioned takedown outfit Link-Busters, for example, accounts for roughly 15% of all reported links, nearly 1.5 billion.

Similarly, the ten most prolific rightsholders, including the BPI, HarperCollins, and VIZ Media, are responsible for 40% of all reported links. These ten companies are only a tiny fraction of the 600,000 rightsholders that reported pirated links, however.

A small group of domains also receives a disproportionate amount of attention. In total, 5,400,061 domains have been reported, with the top domains having dozens of millions of flagged URLs each. However, most domains have only a few flagged links, some of which are erroneous.

The WhiteHouse.gov domain name, for example, was reported 27 times. Google didn’t see any infringing material on the site, however, so none of these takedown requests were honored.

The overall number of URLs actually removed from Google search isn’t clear from Google’s transparency data . The 10 billion number includes links that were not removed by Google, as well as duplicate URLs, and those that were not indexed by Google at the time the takedown notice was received.

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

For years, Fmovies presented a major threat to Hollywood, one that seemed near impossible to defeat.

The site’s operators were linked to dozens of popular pirate sites, generating billions of visits annually.

While MPA’s anti-piracy flagship ACE tied the operation to Vietnam early on, effectively shutting it down took years. In addition to gathering intelligence, Hollywood’s diplomatic powers were required to force a breakthrough.

This summer, these efforts paid off handsomely. After the main Fmovies site fell apart in July , related streaming portals including Bflix, Aniwave, and Zorox fell like dominoes in the weeks after.

Taking Down The Mothership

The combined traffic of these platforms arguably makes the takedown operation the largest of its kind, ever. So, understandably, MPA and ACE took credit for helping the Vietnamese authorities achieve this feat.

MPA CEO Charles Rivkin, for example, noted that anti-piracy efforts are bigger and bolder than before, equating Fmovies to the piracy “mothership”.

“We took down the mothership here,” Rivkin told Variety last month. “There was a time when piracy was Whac-a-Mole… Today, we go after piracy at its root,” he said at the time.

Rivkin didn’t exaggerate the size or impact of the takedown. The Fmovies wreckage included dozens of high-profile streaming portals including Vidsrc.to, a popular video hosting platform used by many third-party sites.

“Vidsrc.to, a notorious video hosting provider operated by the same suspects was also taken down, impacting hundreds of additional dedicated piracy sites,” ACE reported last month.

Pirate Empire Strikes Back?

MPA and ACE were rightfully proud of their accomplishments but when dealing with pirates, new threats can emerge out of the blue. That’s precisely what’s happening this week, as Vidsrc.to has made a surprise comeback.

While the video hosting site looks the same as before, there are no obvious signs that the Fmovies team is behind it. Instead, the videos appear to be sourced from an unrelated competitor, Vidsrc.me.

Apparently, these new people managed to get their hands on this valuable domain name, using it to further the interests of another fleet of pirate streaming sites. And more domains may follow the same path.

Vidsrc.to Auctioned Off

Traditionally, when the MPA and ACE shut down sites, associated domain names are redirected to its “ Watch Legally ” page. In some cases domains expire and are not necessarily renewed.

According to domain records, Vidsrc.to expired in July. Information received by TorrentFreak suggests that it was picked up by an unknown party, and sold through Namecheap for several hundred dollars a few days ago.

From there the domain’s new owner brought the site back to its full glory. We can’t confirm who’s behind the comeback, but Vidsrc.to uses a video player from its former competitor, Vidstc.me.

More Loose Ends

TorrentFreak reached out to the MPA, seeking a comment on this comeback and the lack of a more permanent domain seizure, but we didn’t immediately hear back. The organization still has control over some older ‘pirate’ domains, including Hotfile and IsoHunt , but it appears the same doesn’t apply to these recent actions.

Vidsrc.to is not the only pirate site domain that’s available for purchase, however. Looking through Namecheap’s listings we also see that Tinyzone.tv can be purchased for $3,911 . This site reportedly had ties to Vietnam too, and was taken down by ACE last November.

The same applies to ev01.net. That movie streaming site domain briefly redirected to the ACE website. It eventually expired and can be purchased through Namecheap for those who can afford $13,911.

These loose ends can cause trouble in the future, but whether anyone will pick that domain up seems doubtful. The ev01.net domain previously redirected to ev01.to, which remains online today, and still uses the ev01.net branding.

All in all, it is clear that these domain-related loose ends can be a source of trouble. MPA and ACE may have taken down the mothership, but the piracy galaxy doesn’t appear to rely on a single Star Destroyer.

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

Last December when the MPA and other rightsholders renewed calls for site-blocking measures to be implemented in the United States, much of the focus was placed on Fmovies.

Before its recent sudden demise , Fmovies was considered the world’s largest illegal movie and TV show streaming site, yet some lawmakers in attendance at last year’s hearing had never heard of it before.

Fewer still would’ve heard of pirate IPTV service Magis TV, but for the MPA and enforcement coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, Magis TV is the source of a persistent headache for which there’s currently no cure.

China and Latin America

According to the MPA, Magis TV is believed to operate out of China. Its focus is on the Latin American market where millions consume content mostly via the platform’s ubiquitous, subscription-based Android app.

Cybersecurity firm ESET has linked the popular app to malware and botnets, but that doesn’t appear to have had any negative effect on Magis TV’s continued popularity.

Indeed, despite being under significant pressure from anti-piracy measures across the entire region, limiting Magis TV’s ability to operate has proven quite the challenge.

An order published in Argentina dated September 13, 2024, reveals that the country’s Internet Service Providers are now required to block dozens of Magis TV-linked domains for violating intellectual property law.

Telecoms body ENACOM is responsible for arranging the blocks

The original order in Spanish (translation above) runs to four pages, most of which list Magis TV-linked domains. As screenshots of those domains shows, there’s no obvious design consistency, which suggests that whoever operates them have received no specific instructions from the owners of the IPTV service.

Chaotic, perhaps usefully so

Some domains on the list claim to offer services to those considering becoming a reseller, so at least in theory they may have closer links to the service itself. In other cases, site operators may not have any direct connections beyond buying subscription credits at one price and then selling them on at another. That’s not to downplay their importance, but it does highlight the difficulties when it comes to enforcement.

In total, 69 domains (full list below) must be blocked to ensure they’re inaccessible from Argentinian territory but how effective that will be at limiting access to the service remains to be seen.

ACE Has Already Seized or Shut Down as Many Domains

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has been working on the Magis TV problem for at least a couple of years. In the summer of 2022, a series of DMCA subpoenas targeting dozens of illegal streaming sites aimed to unmask their operators, including whoever is behind Magis TV.

In November that same year, another subpoena sought information from Zenlayer. Whether any, all, or none of these efforts bore fruit is unknown, but ACE soon started to take possession or exercise some type of control over dozens of domains with links to Magis TV. As is usually the case, many began diverting to the ACE anti-piracy portal.

Quietly commandeered, no official announcement from ACE

The lack of an official announcement to celebrate such a big haul was somewhat unusual. However, it seems likely that having assessed the situation, ACE may have concluded that the seizures wouldn’t provide the clean kill the coalition is known for.

The true scale of the problem hasn’t been revealed in public but an ACE report seen by TorrentFreak suggests a continent-wide problem.

Focused on piracy in Latin America, the report reveals that by the end of 2023, the anti-piracy coalition had taken down around 50 Magis TV websites in the region. Starting in Chile and heading north, up through Peru, into Ecuador, then Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, and finally back on home turf in the United States, sites were systematically taken down.

The only issue, albeit quite a significant one, is that ACE concluded that Magis TV and/or its affiliates, including an unknown number of resellers, were together operating over 370 websites.

Inevitable Site-Blocking

Ecuador has been blocking pirate sites since 2019 and earlier this year it began blocking Magis TV .

In August, ISPs in Ecuador added a further 183 Magis TV-linked IP addresses to the existing blocklist, followed by a dynamic blocking order last week, which allows a rightsholder to add new blocking targets without a court intervention.

As the image below shows (right), Ecuador has also managed to place warnings directly on the screens of pirates watching illegal streams, while Bolivia (left) issued direct warnings as far back as July 2022.

Limited blocking also takes place in Peru (magis-tv.app, magstv.com, tvmagis.com, magistv.news, magistv-app.net) and other countries in the region. But with domains both cheap and easy to replace, pirates at the consumer end of what is effectively a pyramid sales operation, will always be one step ahead.

ACE has been keeping up the pressure by obtaining new DMCA subpoenas in March and June 2024 , so presumably intends to tackle this problem by taking out those at the top.

If they are indeed based in China, that’s unlikely to be straightforward; yet, with enough patience and the right leverage , nothing is impossible.

The domains listed for blocking in the Argentinian order read as follows:

magistv-la.com, magistv.net, tvmagis.pro, magistv-app.net, magistv.video, magistvplus.com, magistv.app, tvmagis.com, magistvonline.com, magis123.com, magistv.film, magistvoficial.net, magistviptv.com, magistv.live, magistvlatin.com, magistvlatino.es, fullmagistv.com, magistvv.com – redirects to > tvsnipers.com, magistv-ecuador.com, magistv.agency, soportemagistv.com, panelmagistv.com, magistvstream.net, magistvmas.com, magistv-venezuela.com, comprarmagistv.app, magistv.ai, descarga-magistv.com, magispro.com, magistvgo.com, magislatamtv.net, magistvecuador.app, magistvinternational.com, magiscr.org, magistv.mx, magistvmexico.net, oficialmagistv.com, magistv.so – redirects to > magistv.film, magistvapk.app – redirects to> magis-tv.vip, comprarmagistv.com, magistvmex.com, magisapp.app, magistvperu.org, magistvusa.net, magistvoficial.com, magistv-app.net, renovarmagistv.net, panelmagistv.net, magistvgratis.com, magistvpty.com, getmagistv.com, magistve.com, magistvoficial.org, magistvpc.com, magistv.la, magistv.club, tvmagis.pro, magistv.stream, magis.com.ec, magistvtv.com, planesmagistv.com, magistvpremium.com, magistv-latino.net, magistvhn.com, magistvplus.com.co, magisapk.com, magis-cr.com, magistvoficialchile.com, magistvapp.app

To our knowledge, ACE has shut down at minimum the following domains:

magistvgroup.com, magistv.global, magistv.org.pe, magistvnicaragua.com, magistvperu.com, magistvusa.com, magistvapk.com, magistvecuador.com, magistvlatino.app, magistvdemo.com, magistvargentina.com, magistvrepublicadominicana.com, magistvchile.com, magistvpanama.com, magistvfacil.com, magistvbrasil.com, magisglobal.net, magistvcostarica.com, magistvpuertorico.com, magistvmexico.com, magistvuruguay.com, magistvglobal.com, magistvoficial.vip, magistvparaguay.com, magistvbolivia.com, magistvcolombia.com, bolivia.magistvgroup.com, cuba.magistvgroup.com, colombia.magistvgroup.com, argentina.magistvgroup.com, magistvfull.com, magistv.biz, magistv.services, magistv.solutions, magistv.fyi, magistv.us, magistvoficial.online, magistv.group, magistv.social, magistvoficial.digital, magist.vg, magistvvenezuela.com, magistv.es, magistvglobal.co, magistv.place, magistvrepublishedadomenica.com, magistv.store, magistv.asia, magistvoficial.services, magistv.life, magistvoficial.info

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

In 2021, Germany joined a growing list of countries that have institutionalized pirate site blocking schemes in place.

Several large ISPs teamed up with copyright holders and launched the “Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet” ( CUII ), which is responsible for handing down blocking ‘orders’.

While CUII doesn’t rely on court judgments, there is some form of oversight. When copyright holders report a pirate site for consideration, a review committee first checks whether the domain is indeed linked to a website that structurally infringes copyrights.

What Sites are Blocked?

If a website overwhelmingly hosts or links to pirated material, the site can be nominated for a blocklist entry. This can apply to torrent sites, streaming portals, and direct download hubs, as long as piracy is front and center.

Germany does not publish an official overview of the domain names subject to blocking. While decisions are made public and often mention the target ‘site’ by name, domain names, URLs, and even the requesting rightsholders’ names, are all redacted.

Redacted versions of the blocking recommendations are published on the CUII portal and a few days ago, a new one was added to the growing list. While it doesn’t mention any specific domains the name of the site, TotalSportek, is repeatedly referenced.

TotalSportek Blocked

This new addition matches with fresh data from the third-party blocking transparency portal CUIIliste , which reports that totalsportek.pro and www.totalsportek.pro were blocked a few days ago. The same also applies to soccerstreams.football.

TotalSportek is a well-known pirate sports streaming service. The website has been blocked previously in France and Kenya , for example, and was reported to the US Trade Representative as a ‘ notorious ‘ piracy portal.

CUII concludes that the site is indeed “structurally infringing” so the blocking measures, requested by an unnamed sports rightsholder, are granted.

“The request for a recommendation to block the website TOTALSPORTEK is justified. The website is a structurally copyright infringing website (SUW). There is a clear violation of copyright. The blocking is reasonable and proportionate,” CUII writes.

The recommendation mentions that TotalSportek is not specifically targeted at a German audience. However, it does offer content that’s predominantly of interest to Germans, including German language streams.

Ticking the Boxes

Before a site can be blocked, rightsholders have to pursue other options to take the site offline. Here, the rightsholder hired a private investigator to contact the site directly and track down various intermediaries including the domain registrars and the hosting party, but without the desired result.

“The host provider was contacted via an email address in the period from ***** to ***** notified and on ***** from ***** received a legal warning. The notifications and the legal warning did not lead to an end to the violations by the SUW or the identification of its operators.

“Any further action against the host provider has no prospect of success. The company ***** identified as the host provider does not respond to warnings,” CUII adds.

Similar attempts to get information from TLS certificate providers, domain registrars, and a CDN service didn’t yield any results either.

Blocked Domains

According to the third-party CUIIListe site, whose reports are unverified, totalsportek.pro and soccerstreams.football are included in the new blocking round. That said, the recommendation may include more domain names, which have yet to be picked up by the monitoring site.

For example, CUII’s recommendation mention a ‘mirror’ and a ‘redirect’ domain. The redirect could be soccerstreams.football, which currently links to streameast.best. However, this StreamEast copy is not listed among the blocked domains itself.

If the blocking targets are clarified we will update this article accordingly. Overall, however, it’s clear that Germany intends to steadily expand its pirate site blocking efforts.

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A copy of CUII’s latest blocking recommendation is available here (pdf) . Since 2021, the authority has issued 22 blocking orders, targeting hundreds of (sub)domains.

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