On June 24, 2024, the RIAA announced two separate copyright infringement lawsuits targeting what many believe are the most impressive services in the generative AI music market.

Unchartered Labs, the owner of Udio, was sued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. At the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the target was Suno, Inc. the company behind the AI platform of the same name.

Plaintiffs including UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Records and Warner Records, dominate both lawsuits, which contain broadly similar claims against both AI companies. The labels claim that Udio and Suno “copied decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings” and then ingested those copies into AI models to generate outputs that “imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings” for the purpose of generating profit.

The labels claim that both businesses “exploit copyrighted sound recordings without permission” in support of services that threaten to “displace the genuine human artistry that is at the heart of copyright protection.” Any attempt to mount defenses based on fair use, the labels warned , would end in failure.

AI Companies Confidently Answer Respective Complaints

Given the similarities in the labels’ complaints, Udio and Suno have taken the logical step of consolidating their respective defenses at Latham & Watkins LLP, an international law firm with a specialist artificial intelligence team. Filed earlier today, Udio and Suno’s individual answers have much in common, as one would expect given the nature of the complaints.

Details specific to each case see the answers diverge on occasion but where it really matters, Udio and Suno are not only in lockstep but seemingly brimming with confidence.

In opening preliminary statements, the companies explain that their respective platforms are tools for making new music, original music, and that’s how they’re being used; to create “new songs that didn’t and often couldn’t previously exist.”

“Like a human musician, [Suno/Udio] did not develop its capabilities in a vacuum. It is the product of extensive analysis and study of the building blocks of music: what various genres and styles sound like; how songs in those genres and styles are harmonized and structured; the characteristic timbres of the instruments and vocalizations in those genres and styles; and so on,” the answers begin.

“Those genres and styles—the recognizable sounds of opera, or jazz, or rap music—are not something that anyone owns. Our intellectual property laws have always been carefully calibrated to avoid allowing anyone to monopolize a form of artistic expression, whether a sonnet or a pop song. IP rights can attach to a particular recorded rendition of a song in one of those genres or styles. But not to the genre or style itself.”

Labels Control Using Copyright, No Libraries of Music Exist

The AI companies are not the first to describe the plaintiff RIAA labels as dominating forces in the music industry. Claims that these copyright lawsuits, like many that preceded them, are ultimately about control rather than infringement, are in no way unique either. Yet, in these lawsuits, unlike any others before them, potential loss of control meets non-typical copyright infringement claims, as both answers explain.

“[The labels] frame their concern as one about ‘copies’ of their recordings made in the process of developing the technology — that is, copies never heard or seen by anyone, made solely to analyze the sonic and stylistic patterns of the universe of pre-existing musical expression. But what the major record labels really don’t want is competition.”

The labels’ position is that any competition must be legal, and the AI companies state quite clearly that the law permits the use of copyrighted works in these circumstances. Suno and Udio also make it clear that snippets of copyrighted music aren’t stored as a library of pre-existing content in the neural networks of their AI models, “outputting a collage of ‘samples’ stitched together from existing recordings” when prompted by users.

No Storage of Music, Only Information About Musical Styles

“[The neural networks were] constructed by showing the program tens of millions of instances of different kinds of recordings,” Suno explains.

“From analyzing their constitutive elements, the model derived a staggeringly complex collection of statistical insights about the auditory characteristics of those recordings — what types of sounds tend to appear in which kinds of music; what the shape of a pop song tends to look like; how the drum beat typically varies from country to rock to hip-hop; what the guitar tone tends to sound like in those different genres; and so on.”

These models are vast stores, not of copyrighted music, the defendants say, but information about what musical styles consist of, and it’s from that information new music is made.

Input to AI Was Fair Use, AI Output is Non-Infringing

Most copyright lawsuits in the music industry are about reproduction and public distribution of identified copyright works, but that’s certainly not the case here.

“The Complaint explicitly disavows any contention that any output ever generated by Udio has infringed their rights. While it includes a variety of examples of outputs that allegedly resemble certain pre-existing songs, the Complaint goes out of its way to say that it is not alleging that those outputs constitute actionable copyright infringement.”

With Udio declaring that, as a matter of law, “that key point makes all the difference,” Suno’s conclusion is served raw.

“That concession will ultimately prove fatal to Plaintiffs’ claims. It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

Noting that Congress enacted the first copyright law in 1791, Suno says that in the 233 years since, not a single case has ever reached a contrary conclusion.

In Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. , copying all the books in numerous university libraries, to create a commercial, full-text searchable index, was found to be fair use. The same conclusion was reached in Kelly v. Arriba SoftCorp , where copying vast amounts of online images to create thumbnails was deemed transformative fair use. Likewise, A.V. ex rel. Vanderhye v. iParadigms , where copying students’ papers into a plagiarism tool was also deemed fair use.

Labels Own Copyrighted Music, Nobody Owns Musical Styles

In addition to addressing allegations unique to their individual cases, the AI companies accuse the labels of various types of anti-competitive behavior. Imposing conditions to prevent streaming services obtaining licensed music from smaller labels at lower rates, seeking to impose a “no AI” policy on licensees, to claims that they “may have responded to outreach from potential commercial counterparties by engaging in one or more concerted refusals to deal.”

The defendants say this type of behavior is fueled by the labels’ dominant control of copyrighted works and by extension, the overall market. Here, however, ownership of copyrighted music is trumped by the existence and knowledge of musical styles, over which nobody can claim ownership or seek to control.

“No one owns musical styles. Developing a tool to empower many more people to create music, by scrupulously analyzing what the building blocks of different styles consist of, is a quintessential fair use under longstanding and unbroken copyright doctrine.

“Plaintiffs’ contrary vision is fundamentally inconsistent with the law and its underlying values.”

Suno and Udio’s answers to the RIAA’s lawsuits are available here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

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

Three years after the raids that dismantled his Megaupload empire, it was clear that Kim Dotcom was digging in for the long haul.

Whether even he anticipated just how long that haul would be is unclear. Having taken every imaginable step to make his prosecution and likely extradition as difficult as possible, it certainly can’t be ruled out.

For Dotcom, information has proven to be a valuable and flexible commodity; in 2015 he made dozens of requests to numerous government departments to gain what he described as ‘urgent’ access to information to assist in his looming extradition defense.

Vexatious Requests Denied

With Dotcom’s case already a political hot potato, decisions were made to transfer these requests, mostly under s39 of the Privacy Act, to then-Solicitor General Chris Finlayson. Due to their broad scope, allegedly including demands for trivial information, Finlayson labeled the requests frivolous and ultimately vexatious.

The Solicitor General noted that the July 2015 information requests were labeled urgent because Dotcom’s extradition eligibility hearing was due to take place in September at the District Court. However, the nature of the requests led him to conclude that their true purpose was to disrupt that hearing and since they weren’t made in good faith, he rejected them all.

Dotcom Takes Legal Action

Dotcom denied he had an ulterior motive and followed up with legal action, claiming that the government was holding back information to which he was legally entitled.

In Dotcom v Crown Law Office [2018] NZHRRT 7 ( pdf ) , the Human Rights Review Tribunal found that the Crown had indeed interfered with Kim Dotcom’s privacy by rejecting what was described as “multiple, near identical, Privacy Act requests made to all Ministers and nearly every government department for all personal information held about him.”

For “loss of dignity or injury to feelings” Dotcom won NZ$60,000 in damages plus another NZ$30,000 to compensate for the lack of disclosure. The Crown appealed that decision and in September 2018 the matter was heard at the High Court in Wellington.

High Court Sides With Solicitor-General

The High Court agreed with the Solicitor-General, noting that the requests were transferred for lawful reasons. The Court described the earlier damages award in favor of Dotcom as “ wholly erroneous .” There was no evidence to show that the information being sought was even relevant to the extradition proceedings, the High Court ruled.

Months earlier, the government had actually started to respond to Dotcom’s requests and by mid-June 2018, “tranches of information” had been handed over to Dotcom, with a few exceptions for legal reasons.

Nevertheless, the High Court’s decision in October 2018 was labeled “a bad day for human rights” by Dotcom, who took his many grievances to the Court of Appeal.

Court of Appeal Sides With Dotcom

The Court of Appeal eventually sided with Dotcom and, by broad extension, the decision in his favor at the Human Rights Review Tribunal earlier. The transfer of the information requests between government departments breached Dotcom’s privacy, the Court of Appeal confirmed. All that remained was to determine the scale of Dotcom’s damages award.

Having previously ruled in favor of Dotcom with an award of NZ$90,000, in February 2022 the Tribunal decided that this time around, Dotcom wouldn’t receive a penny. In response, Dotcom appealed once more to the High Court, but it also declined to award him damages. When Dotcom applied for leave to appeal the High Court’s decision at the Court of Appeal, the High Court rejected that too.

Application for Special Leave to Appeal

Never one to give up, Dotcom filed an application at the Court of Appeal. He requested special leave to appeal the decision of the High Court, which had dismissed his appeal against the decision of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which had awarded him zero damages.

Late last month, Dotcom’s application for special leave to appeal was declined by the Court of Appeal. The reasoning behind that decision is laid out in considerable detail in the court’s decision, which is linked below.

What is clear, however, is that Dotcom’s focus on receiving an award for damages for “loss of benefit” under New Zealand’s Privacy Act, concerned his inability to use the information requested during the extradition proceedings. That failed to move the needle at the Court of Appeal.

“It is clear from the various judgments given in the extradition proceedings that there would have been no benefit to Mr Dotcom if he had received the information requested at the time the extradition proceedings were underway. The Courts consistently held that the peripheral matters raised by Mr Dotcom were irrelevant to the extradition process, given the Court’s limited role in determining a person’s eligibility for surrender,” the Court of Appeal’s decision reads.

“Following the Tribunal complaint decision, Mr Dotcom sought to raise before this Court the fact that the Tribunal had found that there had been an interference with his privacy and had awarded him [NZ]$90,000 in damages for breach of the 1993 Act. Mr Dotcom argued that the Tribunal complaint decision was relevant to the extradition hearing, because it confirmed an abuse of process that would undermine public confidence in the judicial system.

“This Court disagreed. It noted that the conduct at issue did not come close to establishing the high threshold required to stay extradition proceedings and that the attempt to rely on it for this purpose was misconceived.”

Tactics Noted But Ultimately Unsuccessful

Other matters were also considered by the Court, none of which went in Dotcom’s favor. In closing, the Court of Appeal made a general assessment of events relating to this application. From a few steps back, attributing it to most side issues raised by the defense, before numerous courts in more recent years, might not be an especially big stretch.

“This Court’s primary function is to clarify the law. It is not every alleged error of law that is of such importance, either generally or to the parties, as to justify the further pursuit of issues which have already been considered on multiple occasions. That is very much the case with the present application,” the decision reads.

In the absence of “any other reason” that would make it appropriate to grant Dotcom special leave to appeal, the application was denied.

The decision is available here ( pdf )

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

The International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) is known to be very protective of its intellectual property rights.

Using an image of the Olympic rings or even just the word ‘Olympic’ can lead to legal trouble, especially when use takes place in a commercial context.

Most valuable, however, are IOC’s broadcasting rights. With literally billions of dollars at stake, the IOC and its licensing partners are doing everything in their power to prevent people from enjoying their events without permission.

From Torrents to Streaming

The IOC doesn’t shy away from using its power and influence to aid this cause. Sixteen years ago, for example, it reached out to the Swedish Government , asking for assistance to remove pirated Olympic broadcasts from The Pirate Bay.

Sweden couldn’t directly help with this problem, as it lacked any control over the notorious torrent site. The Pirate Bay itself didn’t feel threatened by the diplomatic pressure either. On the contrary, it temporarily renamed itself The Beijing Bay.

Today, Olympic piracy remains a problem, but the nature of the threat has evolved. Instead of worrying about torrents, the IOC sees live-streaming portals as the menace du jour . Unlike torrents, which can take a while to download, live streams directly compete with regular broadcasts.

Thousands of Olympic Takedowns

Last week, we already reported that the IOC, alongside others, obtained a site blocking order at the Paris Judicial Court. This order requires the large French ISPs to block access to several pirate streaming sites and IPTV providers.

While the blocking order is currently in effect, it is limited to 25 domain names and only applies to France. The Olympic Committee didn’t stop there though, it also enlisted anti-piracy partner Friend MTS to issue more traditional DMCA takedown requests.

Most of these DMCA efforts take place outside the public eye. With help from Google’s transparency report and the Lumen Database , we can nonetheless get a glimpse of the takedown action.

These public data reveal that IOC has sent numerous takedown notices this month, together targeting thousands of URLs. The notices request Google to remove these links from its search engine, to make it harder for the public to find pirated Olympics streams.

“Please note that the IOC is the owner of all rights in and to the Olympic Games and the Olympic Properties and, in particular, regarding the audio-visual content produced for the Olympic Summer Games Paris 2024,” IOC writes

“Such Olympic content may not be transmitted or communicated via the internet or any other interactive media or electronic medium without the express prior written approval of the IOC, which in accordance with our records, has not been granted to you.”

The Pirate Bay’s No Longer a Serious Threat

Thus far, the IOC has asked Google to remove 5,907 URLs from its search engine. The list is dominated by pirate streaming sites such as Antenasports.ru, Buff-streams.net, Francemag.com, and Watchsportnow.com. Interestingly, we didn’t spot a single torrent site.

Due to the delayed nature of torrents and direct downloads, in combination with widely available pirated live streams, it makes sense that sites such as The Pirate Bay are no longer considered a significant threat.

In fact, aside from the opening ceremony, we haven’t spotted any regularly scheduled ‘torrents’ of Olympic competitions. That’s a far cry from a decade ago when the original EZTV team openly revolted against IOC’s anti-piracy tactics by sharing numerous Olympic torrents.

“[T]he IOC is purely interested in making as much money from broadcasting as possible. We think differently, we believe everyone should be able to see these events freely and inspire future sport heroes!” EZTV told us at the time.

Fast-forward a decade, and the new EZTV team has no Olympic coverage and there is no “Paris Bay” either. IOC is still very much concerned with piracy, of course, but has shifted to a new set of targets.

Times change, but some things will always be the same.

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

After receiving an anonymous tip in 2019, anti-piracy group Nordic Content Protection (NCP), and members including pay-TV company C More (previously Canal+), Warner Bros. Discovery and streaming service Viaplay, launched a pirate IPTV investigation.

NCP received a similar tip in 2020, this time from police in the city of Gävle. They were passing on the details of another anonymous tip detailing the activities of a suspected pirate IPTV network. After a period of surveillance, which included wiretapping an unknown number of suspects, police executed warrants at two addresses, one in Gävle and the other in Sandviken.

Two suspected operators were detained along with evidence that included 47 gold bars, an expensive whiskey collection, around $25,000 in cash, and roughly $41,000 in bitcoin.

At the Stockholm District Court’s Patent and Market Court in October 2023, the men were found guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced to prison. They were also held jointly and severally liable for damages totaling SEK 196,247,000 ($18 million), payable to C More, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Viaplay.

The Inevitable Appeal

In the belief that the sentences were too lenient, the prosecutor asked the Patent and Market Appeal Court to increase the sentences of the defendants, who in court records are identified by the initials S.Ö. and JL.

S.Ö and JL asked the Patent and Market Appeal Court to acquit them, dismiss the copyright holders’ claims for damages and the requirement to pay their legal costs, plus a full dismissal of a confiscation order against seized IPTV boxes.

In common with the trial at the lower court, the men denied claims that they retransmitted the plaintiffs’ TV broadcasts. JL appears to have conceded limited involvement in IPTV sales, handling just a few clients via a guest login to a service he’d previously handed over to someone else, plus sales of unmodified IPTV boxes.

Evidence showed that during the raids on the men’s homes, no ‘outward flow’ was identified from the suspects’ computers. However, one of JL’s computers contained software “that enabled reception and streaming of IPTV.” Evidence showed that S.Ö. paid for server space while JL had purchased server licenses and software subscriptions for receiving and distributing IPTV.

The content of chat messages and their handling of payments confirmed to the satisfaction of the court that the men were indeed involved in IPTV. All that remained was to determine the scale of the offending.

Thousands of Customers, But How Many Thousands?

The prosecutor’s case against the men called on significant evidence that reportedly left little doubt that they were closely involved with all aspects of the alleged IPTV business. To demonstrate that the operation distributed content illegally to many users, the prosecution partly relied on photographs taken during the raids, including those that claimed to show how many users S.Ö and JL serviced on the platform.

“According to the prosecutor, the photographs show that S.Ö. at the time of the crackdown had 4,619 users in the network and that JL had 8,303 users in the network, i.e. their network had a total of 12,992 users,” the court’s decision reads.

Evidence Fell Short

But there was a problem. S.Ö. and JL informed the court that the photographs, which showed IPTV panel software Ministra (formerly known as Stalker portal), did not show the number of users but rather the number of ‘events’ generated by users. That cast doubt on the claim that the service had close to 13,000 users.

Instead, several pieces of evidence backed up the defendants’ assertion that their platform had around 5,000 users, a claim that was first made in the anonymous tip received by NCP back in 2019.

Without making any changes to the substance of the underlying judgment, the Court of Appeal recalculated the damages payable to the rightsholders. From just over SEK 196,000,000 (US$18,210,000) the new damages amount of just under SEK 114,000,000 (US$10,591,000) trimmed the original amount by roughly US$7 million.

The decision may be appealed before August 2, 2024 ( pdf )

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

Internet infrastructure service Cloudflare serves millions of customers around the globe, providing various connectivity and security features.

When it comes to DMCA takedown requests, the company has always drawn a clear line; when it doesn’t store any content for a customer, it will simply forward DMCA takedown requests to the customer’s hosting company.

Ideally, rightsholders would like Cloudflare to take a more active stance . Since popular pirate sites, including The Pirate Bay, use the CDN service, they argue it would be helpful if Cloudflare disabled access to infringing content though its platform.

Cloudflare, however, sees itself as a ‘mere conduit’ service that merely passes on bits. This means that it is not required to take action against third-party infringements directly, unless content is permanently stored on its servers, which is rare.

DMCA Subpoena

Rightsholders are well aware of Cloudflare’s stance. While there have been plenty of complaints in the past, the status quo remains. Groups such as the Alliance of Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) still send DMCA takedown notices, but that’s mostly as a prelude to sending §512(h) DMCA subpoenas.

Grounded in the same law, DMCA subpoenas allow rightsholders to request the personal details of Cloudflare customers who are allegedly engaged in pirating activities. These subpoenas don’t require judicial oversight and Cloudflare generally complies with them, handing over customer data.

Earlier this month, a seemingly obscure DMCA subpoena request was submitted at a California federal court. The request came from J18 Publishing , the owner of Doujin.io. With the subpoena, J18 hopes to uncover the identity of the alleged operator of pirate site Nhentai.net.

Nhentai is by no means a small site. With more than 70 million monthly visits, the free hentai manga and doujinshi reader has a sizable audience. Understandably, rightsholders would like to know who’s running the site.

As is often the case, a court clerk swiftly signed off on the subpoena paperwork, requiring Cloudflare to comply. In this case, however, that’s not going to be straightforward.

Improper

A few days after the DMCA subpoena was issued, lawyers representing Nhentai slammed on the brakes. They don’t want any personal data to be disclosed and argue that the subpoena should have never been granted.

Nhentai asks the court to quash the subpoena for several reasons. For one, it argues that these DMCA subpoenas are not intended for use against companies that operate as mere conduit providers.

In its defense, Nhentai cites several precedents where courts have concluded that DMCA subpoenas don’t apply to mere conduit services. This includes the RIAA vs. Verizon case .

“In analyzing the issue in a very detailed fashion, Courts have quashed §512(h) subpoenas where they were served on a party that was not ‘engaged in storing on its servers material that is infringing or is the subject of infringing activity’,” Nhentai writes, adding another example.

“The D.C. Circuit further held that ‘§512(h) does not authorize the issuance of a subpoena to an ISP acting as a mere conduit for the transmission of information sent by others’.”

Mere Conduit

As highlighted earlier, Cloudflare has clearly positioned itself as a ‘mere conduit’ provider under the DMCA. Nhentai argues the same, and stresses that DMCA subpoenas are not applicable for that reason.

“Cloudflare is a §512(a) ISP that acts only as a conduit with respect to Nhentai.net, and accordingly, it is not properly subject to subpoena under §512(h). Specifically, images from Nhentai.net never pass through or are stored on Cloudflare servers in any form.”

Nhentai further notes that the subpoena is too broad, arguing that the owners of the domain name are not the infringers. In addition, the subpoena would violate the owners’ right to anonymous speech.

Thus far, Cloudflare itself hasn’t objected to DMCA subpoenas, and this case is no exception. Courts have recently quashed DMCA subpoenas directed at mere conduit ISPs, reiterating that they don’t apply to companies that store no content, so it will be interesting to see how Nhentai’s challenge pans out.

Fringe Case, Landmark Decision?

For now, the California federal court has stayed the matter, meaning that Cloudflare doesn’t have to comply with the subpoena. Meanwhile, J18 Publishing has two weeks to argue why it should be granted after all.

While Nhentai operates in a fringe corner of the broader piracy landscape, this case could have far-reaching consequences. If the court quashes the subpoena, similar efforts from other mainstream rightsholder groups, including ACE/MPA, may have to be reevaluated too.

In recent years, DMCA subpoenas have become one of the primary tools in the anti-piracy toolbox , so the outcome of this case may eventually turn out to be a landmark decision.

Given what’s at stake, it’s possible that other rightsholders may want to intervene in the matter, and Cloudflare may want to share its thoughts on the matter too.

—

A copy of Nhentai’s motion to quash the DMCA subpoena is available here (pdf)

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

Depending on personalities and intake of alcohol, a karaoke night can see people demanding to be next on the mic or scurrying away before they’re forced to do something they’ll later regret.

According to reports, karaoke in the West may be set for a resurgence but in Asia, karaoke (’empty orchestra’) never went away. In Japan, it still receives an 80%+ approval rating among high school students with around half of 20 to 24-year-olds regularly taking part.

With a global market reported to be worth around $5 billion, karaoke may make people smile but for investors it’s a serious business.

Hong Kong Customs: Operation Magpie

Cases reported by Hong Kong Customs over the past month include raids on drugs labs, convictions for laundering huge sums of money, two investigations into large-scale tobacco smuggling, and an operation to combat the provision of infringing karaoke songs. While some may feel the latter is in strange company, the karaoke operation appears to have been allocated plenty of resources.

Described as a “territory-wide enforcement operation” it ran for almost a month (July 2 to July 25) and targeted restaurants and so-called party rooms, which are often booked on a private basis by groups of friends. According to the official report, Customs didn’t hold back.

“During the operation, Customs officers raided 31 party rooms and one restaurant in various districts, including Kwun Tong, Causeway Bay, Tsuen Wan and Mong Kok. A total of 39 sets of karaoke devices used for playing suspected infringing songs, four sets of game consoles with suspected pirated electronic games, and a batch of audio and video equipment and network devices were seized.

“The total estimated market value is approximately $1.1 million (US$140,820),” Customs reports.

A raided room (Credit: Hong Kong Customs/screen enhanced by TF)

While music rightsholders were almost certainly involved in the operation, none are mentioned by name. In the major markets most music falls under the control of less than a handful of headline recording labels, so a rough guess might not be too wide of the mark.

18 People Arrested

Hong Kong Customs reports that eleven men and seven women, aged between 23 and 49, were arrested on suspicion of violating copyright law and/or trading law. Seven of those arrested were in charge of running venues, six were company directors, and five are described as “shop proprietors.”

Two of those arrested were charged with copyright offenses, while the remainder were released on bail pending further investigation. Customs reports that the investigation remains ongoing, so further arrests aren’t being ruled out.

Interesting equipment seized

A basic pirate karaoke setup used to consist of a hardware player or PC, fueled by rows of cumbersome VCDs carried around in a big bag or kept in some kind of storage box. After switching to DVDs, there was much less weight to carry or space to find; with the advent of USB drives, much less still.

The nature of every raided venue isn’t provided in the report. However, customs say they uncovered something more advanced than usual.

“[C]ustoms detected the first-ever case of providing infringing karaoke songs by using streaming technology. Through in-depth investigation and with the assistance of copyright owners, Customs officers raided one data center and four party rooms involved in the case, seizing five karaoke devices preloaded with suspected infringing karaoke songs and a batch of network equipment.”

On closer inspection, it’s possible that one or two of the photos supplied by customs show examples of the streaming system in operation.

Streaming Karaoke Piracy?

According to our rough translation, the text in the top left of the image says “Intelligent Song Request System” while the text on the right suggests a connection to WeChat.

The second image comes with no specific explanation either but the text at the top of the screen is not dissimilar to that highlighted above. When translated it says, “Welcome to the HD intelligent song request system” while other parts of the screen appear to have been covered for security reasons.

More Karaoke Streaming Piracy?

Potential punishments for operating a pirate karaoke system of any kind are fairly severe in Hong Kong.

Under local copyright law, “[A]ny person who, without the license of the copyright owner of a copyright work, possesses infringing copies of a copyright work for the purpose of, or in the course of, any trade or business with the view to it being used by any person commits an offense. The maximum penalty upon conviction is a fine of $50,000 (US$6,400) per infringing copy and imprisonment for four years,” Hong Kong Customs notes.

Those who engage in unfair trade practices, “including making false trade descriptions in relation to service, commits an offence. The maximum penalty upon conviction is a fine of $500,000 (US$64,000) and imprisonment for five years.”

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

In recent years, legal video and sports streaming services have flourished around the world.

At the same time, millions of people are streaming from unauthorized sources, often through perfectly legal streaming devices including Amazon’s Firesticks.

Most people know that the subscription services that typically arrive pre-installed on the devices are unauthorized. However, with such significant discounts available, millions can’t resist these offers.

The demand has created an entire new industry with a few big players at the top, making millions. Further down the food chain, there is a wide variety of subscription resellers who take a cut as well, running their own ‘shops’.

Court Sentences IPTV Firestick Seller

The latter description applies to Mr. O’Donnell, a 41-year-old man from the North West of England who was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court today. The defendant, who pleaded guilty, received a two-year suspended prison sentence and was ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.

As often seen in UK cases, the sentence is for “supplying” content under the Fraud Act. In addition, the defendant violated the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 by “providing, promoting and marketing in the course of a business, a service designed to circumvent technological measures.

O’Donnell promoted and sold the ‘fully loaded’ Firesticks though direct contact, Facebook and WhatsApp, delivering some of the purchases in person. After an investigation by local anti-piracy group FACT, he was eventually arrested by Merseyside Police on July 4th last year.

According to FACT, these unauthorized IPTV subscriptions included broadcasts of Sky, TNT Sports, and possibly others.

£130,000

The Liverpool man doesn’t seem to be a key player in the broader pirate IPTV ecosystem, but still generated £130,000 in revenue. How much work that involved isn’t clear, but FACT mentions that the Firesticks were sold ‘over a number of years’.

Not all of the revenue came from selling modified Firesticks. The defendant also sold standalone IPTV subscriptions, priced between £40 and £85 for an annual plan.

How much profit the operation made is unclear. According to information available to us at the time of writing, O’Donnell is not required to pay any costs to the victims due to his personal circumstances.

Sticky Message

All in all, both FACT andMerseyside Police are pleased with the outcome of this case. They hope that it sends a clear message to others operating in the same line of business.

“The message is very clear: if you sell a device that provides access to content that is not licensed to you or owned by you, you could face criminal investigation, prosecution and a conviction,” FACT CEO Kieron Sharp comments.

Detective Inspector Steve Frame at Merseyside Police adds more cautionary words for pirate IPTV peddlers.

“We will use all available powers and continue to work with FACT to identify anyone else who is involved in this form of criminality and put them before the courts,” Frame says, commenting on the news.

This certainly isn’t the first IPTV-related sentencing in the UK; time will tell if the message eventually sticks.

Finally, the FACT press release prominently refers to the activities as an “ illegal Firestick operation “. However, it is worth clarifying that Firesticks themselves are perfectly legal and are still on sale at Amazon.

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

Driven by views, likes, and in some cases, a reasonable level of fame, around 2016 emboldened YouTubers threw caution to the wind with their ‘content acquisition’ tutorials.

Where there had once been a nod-and-a-wink, many ventured into the full-blown piracy tutorial arena. For good measure, they also marketed them as such.

While some claimed protection based on freedom of speech, many underestimated the implications of exercising that right on YouTube, a platform they did not own. The majority failed to appreciate the importance of framing and intent and, as predicted in 2018 , YouTube’s 2021 response was inevitable .

Piracy Tutorials in 2024

On May 31, a popular GitHub repo containing Switch emulation tutorials found itself targeted by Nintendo.

According to a just-published DMCA notice, Nintendo’s main target was the Switch-Emulators-Guide repo and, by extension, over 120 forks.

A note from GitHub confirms that since most or all of the forks were infringing to the same extent as the parent repo, it processed the notice against 127 repos in total.

The Switch Emulators Guide was presented in the context of piracy, something made clear by a note on the main page of the original repo which stated that the tutorial was made, in part, for use on the /r/NewYuzuPiracy subreddit.

Since the actions of Yuzu and its eventual demise are part of the unwritten framework for similar takedowns , that sets the tone (although not the legal basis) in favor of takedown.

Violations of DMCA’s Anti-Circumvention Provision

When asked to provide a description and URL pointing to the copyrighted content allegedly infringed by the repos, Nintendo states that the works are the ‘Nintendo Switch firmware” and various games protected by technological protection measures (TPM) which prevent users from unlawfully copying and playing pirated games. The notice states the repos ‘provide access’ to keys that enable circumvention of its technical measures.

“The reported repositories offer and provide access to unauthorized copies of cryptographic keys that are used to circumvent Nintendo’s Technological Measures and infringe Nintendo’s intellectual property rights. Specifically, the reported repositories provide to users unauthorized copies of cryptographic keys (prod.keys) extracted from the Nintendo Switch firmware,” Nintendo writes.

“The prod.keys allow users to bypass Nintendo’s Technological Measures for digital games; specifically, prod.keys allow users to decrypt and play Nintendo Switch games in unauthorized ways. Distribution of keys without the copyright owner’s authorization is a violation of Section 1201 of the DMCA.”

Nintendo further notes that unauthorized distribution of prod.keys “facilitates copyright infringement by permitting users to play pirated versions of Nintendo’s copyright-protected game software on systems without the Nintendo Technological Measures or systems on which Nintendo’s Technological Measures have been disabled.”

Since the prod.keys are extracted from the Nintendo Switch firmware, which is also protected by copyright, distribution amounts to “infringement of Nintendo Switch firmware itself.”

Repo ‘Encrypts’ Links to Circumvention Tools

Given that the repo’s stated purpose was to provide information on how to circumvent Nintendo’s technical protection measures, it’s fairly ironic that it appears to have used technical measures itself to hinder detection.

“The reported repositories attempt to evade detection of their illegal activities by providing access to prod.keys and unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s firmware and video games via encoded links that direct users to third-party websites to download the infringing content,” Nintendo explains in its notice.

“The repositories provide strings of letters and numbers and then instruct users to ‘use [private] to decode the lines of strings given here to get an actual link.’ The decoded links take users to sites where they can access the prod.keys and unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s copyright-protected material.”

The image below shows the encoded links (partially redacted) that allegedly link to the content in question on third-party sites. To hide their nature, regular URLs are encoded using Base64, a binary-to-text encoding scheme that transforms them into a sequence of characters. Those characters can be decoded to reveal the original URL using online tools .

This type of encoding has increased in popularity in recent years since it’s believed that automated DMCA notice systems are more likely to pass by when no obvious URL exists in a web page. While in some cases that may still be true, it’s beyond clear that Nintendo’s notice here is the work of humans, even if a machine was responsible for finding the repo with the words ‘switch’ and ’emulators” in the title.

Repo Modifications, Original Stays Up

In line with GitHub policy, the repo was allowed to put right its transgressions to stay up. A number of modifications were made, including the removal of all encoded URLs and the references to piracy made on various pages. Most if not all forks were unable to take action in a timely fashion, so these were disabled by GitHub.

Finally, it’s worth noting that this was not a regular DMCA takedown notice ; Nintendo sent a DMCA anti-circumvention notice for which there is no official counternotice process available. While on many other platforms a notice like that can be instantly and permanently terminal, GitHub said that it did not find sufficient information to determine a valid anti-circumvention claim.

It did find other valid claims, however, and that led to the outcome detailed above.

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

With more than a quarter billion site visits between February and April, pirate streaming site Fmovies is seen as a major threat by Hollywood.

The pirate site rivals legal streaming platforms such as Disney+ in web traffic and has become the poster child for rejuvenated site blocking proposals in the U.S. Congress.

Fmovies is no newcomer to the pirate streaming market. The site has been around for quite some time and ACE and the MPA have pinpointed its alleged operators in Vietnam. Efforts to shut the site down have failed thus far, however, while its main user base in the United States continues to grow.

The Indian Threat

There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for Hollywood. In India, the home of Bollywood, courts have recently signed several site blocking orders , amplified with broad injunctions intended to have a global effect.

In addition to requiring Indian ISPs to block access to pirate sites, High Court orders also require domain registrars to suspend their domain names. Some American domain name registrars are receptive to these orders, as they otherwise risk being banned from doing business in India.

Earlier this year, this resulted in suspensions of popular pirate site domains including Zorox, Upmovies , Animeflix, and Vegamovies . Many of these suspensions were the result of action by foreign companies, including US-based domain name registrars Namecheap and Porkbun.

Top Pirate Sites Switch Domains

Domain suspensions can prove punishing, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that pirate sites go down for good. Losmovies.id, which lost its domain last month, continues its operations from Losmoviesz.to. And it’s not the only popular pirate site to relocate.

This weekend, several pirate streaming sites switched to new domain names. Fmovies, for example, traded in its fmoviesz.to domain name for fmovies24.to, without any explanation.

Other popular pirate site domains that appear to be part of the same group, took similar decisions. For example, Bflix.to moved to Bflixhd.to, Soap2dayx.to, became Soap2dayx2.to, and Sflixhd.to switched to Sflixhd.to.

The suggestion that these sites are operated by one group is strengthened by their redirection notices. All appeared at the same time and are identical, as shown above.

Why Move?

None of the sites provided an explanation for their sudden moves. We can only guess what motivated them, but considering the domain crackdowns over the past several months, one explanation stands out.

TorrentFreak learned that the originating domain names of these pirate sites were all registered though Namecheap. This makes them vulnerable to Indian court orders. The new domains have moved away from Namecheap, possibly as a preemptive move to avoid suspensions.

Technically, the original domain names could have been transferred out without moving to a new domain. It’s not clear why that hasn’t happened, but there must be a good reason for it.

All new domain names are still .to, which are overseen by the Tonic registry . The new domains might also be registered there directly but, in any case, the new domains are not linked to Namecheap.

It’s possible that the Tonic registry will be subjected to the same Indian court order, but the company’s compliance standards might be different. Thus far, only .to domains registered though Namecheap have been suspended. Other domains listed in the same court orders, such as huramovies.to and eztvz.to , remain active.

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Update: Watchseries.mx also switched to Watchseriesx.to a few days ago.

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