Late 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels, including Sony and Universal.

Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages.

Cox challenged the verdict through several routes and, earlier this year, booked a partial victory. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that the ISP was contributorily liable for pirating subscribers, but reversed the vicarious copyright infringement finding. A new trial will determine the appropriate damages amount given these new conclusions.

Meanwhile, Cox has another angle to work at. This week, the company filed its opening brief, appealing the District Court’s denial of its relief from judgement (Rule 60[b]) motion, as well as the court’s conclusion that Cox’s defense wasn’t hampered by the music companies ‘concealment’ of evidence.

Rehashed Infringements?

The alleged misconduct refers to evidence that, according to Cox, was held back intentionally. Specifically, it relates to the piracy tracking system, operated by MarkMonitor, which formed the basis for the lawsuit through hundreds of thousands of copyright infringement notices.

MarkMonitor was hired by the music labels to track the pirated files being shared by Cox subscribers through BitTorrent. To confirm that these files were indeed pirated, they were downloaded and verified using Audible Magic’s fingerprinting technology.

Evidence pertaining to these allegedly pirated files was central to proving direct copyright infringement. During the Cox trial, the music companies presented a hard drive that contained the files, suggesting that those were the original songs that were pirated between 2012 and 2014.

However, based on information that surfaced in the music companies’ lawsuits against Internet providers Charter and Bright House, Cox later learned that this evidence was recreated at a later date, using hash values supplied by record labels.

Cox brought this up at the district court in 2022 and submitted a motion for relief from judgment, requesting a do-over. However, the court denied the request which led to the current appeal after a two-year pause.

Cox Appeals Over ‘Concealed’ Evidence

In its opening motion before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Cox stresses that the MarkMonitor evidence is of key importance. Any concerns should not be brushed away or hidden.

“Needless to say, the reliability of MarkMonitor’s system was all important, and Cox had every interest in attacking it. But Cox was deprived of the opportunity to scrutinize MarkMonitor’s system fully, something it would learn only after judgment was entered.”

“The truth came out when district courts in cases Plaintiffs brought against other ISPs forced Plaintiffs to turn over evidence Plaintiffs had deliberately concealed from Cox,” the ISP adds.

The district court previously acknowledged that some evidence was not disclosed by MarkMonitor at the time. However, the court believes that the ‘recreated’ evidence doesn’t change anything materially.

According to the court, it doesn’t matter whether the infringing files were verified before or after the fact. The verification process is based on file hashes, which don’t change over time.

Smoking ‘Hashes’ Gun?

Cox clearly believes that something is not right, however, and points to information showing that, while recreating evidence, MarkMonitor allegedly failed to find new music files for some of the provided hash values.

These unconfirmed hashes were discovered in the record labels’ lawsuit against Charter, which first uncovered the recreated evidence. This could have turned the case upside down, but the lawsuit was settled before trial .

“And lo and behold, the Charter evidence ultimately revealed that the 2016 project failed to confirm some of the original entries in the MarkMonitor database,” Cox notes.

“With this laid bare, Plaintiffs in Charter were forced to develop an entirely new approach to proving the system’s reliability and, thus, direct infringement; they hired a gaggle of new experts, then settled before trial could test this new method.”

Cox argues that the unseen evidence would have squarely undermined the reliability of the MarkMonitor notice system and the entire direct copyright infringement claim by extension.

And there’s more. In the record labels’ lawsuit against another ISP, Bright House, the music companies admitted that they failed to disclose key aspects of MarkMonitor’s source code.

It’s unclear what was held back but, since that lawsuit was settled at the eleventh hour , Cox believes that it could be quite important.

“Cox still does not know precisely what this code does. But public documents from Charter and Bright House indicate that the code governs, at least, the process by which MarkMonitor supposedly verified that files it found on peer-to-peer networks matched copyrighted works,” the ISP informs the court.

“The district court in Bright House was determined to get to the bottom of this. It summoned MarkMonitor’s corporate representative to appear in court and explicitly commanded that ‘Plaintiffs’ counsel SHALL NOT coach [him] in advance.’ Plaintiffs settled the day before that appearance.”

All in all, Cox believes that a new trial is warranted, so the evidence can be tested and scrutinized properly. Reopening the case makes more sense now, it argues, as the earlier appeal also reopened several key questions.

“This Court should therefore reverse the denial of Cox’s Rule 60 motions or, at a minimum, vacate the district court’s decision and direct the court to permit Cox its requested discovery, followed by appropriate motion practice. The fairness and integrity of any result in this case depends on it,” Cox concludes.

—

A copy of Cox’s ‘page proof’ opening brief, submitted at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, is available here (pdf)

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

Pirate sites and services are a major problem for rightsholders and can be challenging to deal with. In India, however, recent court orders have proven to be quite effective.

Indian courts have issued pirate site blocking orders for over a decade . In recent years, these have transformed into a powerful legal tool, allowing rightsholders to protect existing and future works with relative ease.

More recent orders are not limited to ISP blocking, domain name registrars are also required to act. These broad injunctions, partly shaped by Hollywood companies such as Netflix, Disney, and Universal, are starting to have an impact globally.

In February, we reported that an Indian dynamic+ court order had targeted several prominent pirate sites, including Zorox.to and Upmovies.to. The injunction, issued by the New Delhi High Court, required local ISPs to block access to the domains. In addition, domain name registrars were required to take action.

The domain blocking efforts are limited to the Indian border, but the injunction’s effect didn’t stop there. US-based domain registrar Namecheap suspended movie-web.app and other domains, per the injunction, which caused the pirate site to become inaccessible globally.

Dynamic+ Domain Blocking and Suspension

When first reporting on this powerful anti-piracy measure, we expected similar orders to follow. And indeed, last week, the High Court of New Delhi issued a new dynamic+ blocking order targeting several dozen pirate streaming portals.

The latest Dynamic+ injunction, issued by Justice Anish Dayal, aims to target “ hydra headed ” pirate sites and instructs ISPs to block 42 domain names, linked to 26 sites. They include popular pirate sites such as Animeflix, Vegamovies, Losmovies, and EZTV, which have millions of monthly visits.

The goal of the court order is to protect existing video content, including films such as ‘Encanto’ and ‘Aquaman’, as well as TV series ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘One Piece’. The same order also covers future works that have yet to be created.

“To keep up with the hydra-headed nature of the infringement actions of such infringing domains/websites, this Court finds it fit to grant a ‘Dynamic+ injunction’ to protect copyrighted works as soon as they are created, to ensure that no irreparable loss is caused to the owners of copyrighted works,” the order reads.

Similar to previous injunctions, the Court stresses that the injunction also applies to mirror sites that may pop up in the future, and to sites that provide access to copyright infringing content using the same piracy ‘brand’.

Domain Name Registrars

While site blocking orders are quite common in many countries today, the High Court goes a step further by including domain name registrars in its order. This is a key part for rightsholders, as suspended domain names become unavailable globally if a registrar takes action.

The order requires registrars (DNRs) to suspend the domain names. In addition, they must share the personal details of the associated account holders, including their names, addresses, and payment information.

“The DNRs of the infringing websites, upon being intimated by the plaintiffs, shall lock and suspend the said domain names. In addition, any details relating to the registrants of the said domain names including KYC, credit card, mode of payment, mobile number, etc. be also provided to the plaintiffs,” the order reads.

Our previous coverage showed that Namecheap complies with Indian orders, presumably because of the risk of being banned from operating in the country if it fails to act. This wasn’t an incident, as several Namecheap-registered domains in the latest court order have been suspended too.

At the time of writing, several Animeflix domains are suspended, including Animeflix.live, which had over 34 million visits last month. The popular vegamovies.llc domain, which is also registered with Namecheap, now shows the dreaded “ clienthold ” status.

Vegamovies was called out by the U.S. Trade Representative earlier this year , which branded it one of the most notorious pirate sites; one that’s particularly popular in India.

The High Court order also took down Losmovies.id, but not through Namecheap. Losmovies, which had millions of monthly visits, is registered through the Indonesian domain name company Belidomain , which appears receptive to the foreign court order.

Not All Domains are Suspended, Yet

As usual, the sites behind the suspended domain names are likely to pop up again under new domains. However, it’s clear that these injunctions are much more effective than traditional blocking orders.

Not all registrars have immediately taken action. The order includes several domains registered through Tucows, NameSilo, and EPAG, for example, which remain accessible for now. PorkBun, on the other hand, swiftly complied, as it did previously.

Making matters more confusing, several Namecheap registered domains remain online as well. These are all .to domains. The Tonic registry doesn’t disclose the registrar in its Whois database, and it doesn’t support the “clienthold” status either.

With the previous High Court order, we also noticed that Namecheap didn’t suspend the .to domain names at the same time as the others. However, after a brief delay, they were all suspended eventually .

The domain of popular TV-torrent site eztvx.to is not registered through Namecheap. The registrar is unknown to us, but the domain name remains accessible at the time of writing.

Given the effectiveness of this Indian court action, we expect that Netflix, Disney and others, will continue to apply for similar court orders in the future.

—

A copy of the High Court order is available here (pdf) , via LawBeat . The full list of all domains covered by the court order can be found below. All domains must be blocked by Indian ISPs. Not all are suspended by their respective registrars, however.

– moviesl23.la
– 123movies.com.pk
– movies123.com.pk
– 123movies-hd.com
– hdmaza.pk
– animeflix live
– animeflix.co.in
– animeflix.lol
– animeflix.mobi
– myflixer.onl
– vegamovies.yt
– vegamovies.llc
– vegamovies.ph
– Vegamovies.rsvp
– vegamovies.cash
– gogoanimex.to
– hdfilmer.net
– hdobox.se
– cinego.tv
– eztvx.to
– f2movies.mx
– favmovies.to
– soaper.tv
– netfilm.app
– mydownloadtube.net
– movieuniverse.li
– movieuniverse.se
– losmovies.id
– mdufree.tv |
– isaimini.com.lk
– isaimini.com.hn
– isaimini.com.sb
– isaimini.com.es
– megashare-website.com
– animedekho.com
– proxyninja.net
– yify.guide
– yify.app
– huramovies.to
– myanimeindia.in
– cartoonsarea.xyz
– animeheaven.me

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

During the first week of April 2024, the CEO of top Italian football league Serie A was brimming with confidence.

Luigi De Siervo said that Piracy Shield, Italy’s brand new anti-piracy blocking system, was having such an effect that “No pirate can sleep peacefully.” Those who doubted its capabilities, he implied, should note what Serie A investigators were seeing on pirate Telegram channels after the system’s launch; ‘excitement’ apparently, but of what kind wasn’t made clear.

Piracy Shield Had an Exciting First Two Months

It’s certainly possible that when AGCOM finally admitted that weeks earlier Cloudflare had indeed been blocked in error , that may have caused a little excitement.

Maybe Piracy Shield code leaking online helped to get pulses racing too, or perhaps a third party site, publishing blocking data that the authorities should’ve published, but did not, could be somewhat responsible?

It’s not out of the question that the figures released in the first week of April played their part: 10,000 sites blocked in 60 days was a powerful statement, with the caveat that for technical reasons, that wasn’t entirely true .

Legal Action Ensues

If the excited pirates had known at the time that Serie A had filed a legal complaint against Cloudflare just days before these figures were released, that might’ve been cause for excitement. More likely it would’ve been confusing, however, because despite all talk of blocking successes outside court, inside court Cloudflare was being painted as an underminer of blocking and a partner of pirates.

A summary of the complaint, filed at the Court of Milan on April 3, 2024, arrives courtesy of La Repubblica ( paywall ) . Numerous allegations leveled against the U.S. company can be boiled down to one thing; the circumvention of Piracy Shield’s blocking measures via Cloudflare’s services, by consumers of streams and pirate suppliers alike.

According to Serie A, a pirate strategy is playing out online. While circumventing Piracy Shield’s best efforts, pirates of all kinds are spreading instructions online to train others. This includes information on how to remain anonymous, an important skill for those wishing to avoid AGCOM’s recently elevated piracy fines.

All of this is made possible thanks to Cloudflare, Serie A informed the Court.

‘Facilitating Pirate Sales and Providing Escape Routes’

In the words of La Repubblica, Serie A’s legal team accuse Cloudflare of “providing pirate match dealers” with the “dealing room and the exit routes” to evade capture.

Specifically, Cloudflare is under fire for providing its free VPN, otherwise known as WARP, which according to the league “moves the connection between pirates and their customers from a public network to a private one, in a secret circle where it is possible to operate outside the controls of the authorities.”

Last October, the head of AGCOM described the promotion of VPNs among pirates as “ positive news ” on the basis that their apparent intent would mean limited avenues of defense. In its complaint filed at the Court of Milan, Serie A bemoaned Cloudflare’s apparent resistance when it comes to handing over subscribers’ traffic logs.

And then there’s Cloudflare’s CDN service, which allegedly pipes streams as closely as possible to football fans for clear, uninterrupted viewing. Serie A insists that Cloudflare could easily reject pirate services as customers but apparently does not. Cloudflare’s DNS also gets a mention; unlike DNS services mostly operated by ISPs in Italy, Cloudflare’s has none of the site-blocking drawbacks of those compelled to work with AGCOM.

Serie A also complained about a flood of emails allegedly sent to AGCOM by Cloudflare customers protesting the blocking of the company’s IP addresses in February. Serie A’s attorneys say that since this campaign was orchestrated by Cloudflare, the company forfeited its neutrality as a service provider.

More Woes For Piracy Shield

Just one of the many serious flaws highlighted by experts, even before Piracy Shield had a name, was the danger of placing domains and IP addresses on a blacklist, with no mechanism in place to remove them. Concerns were even aired that the country might simply run out of accessible IP addresses.

Of course, those at the more enthusiastic end of the internet blocking market showed little concern about unblocking these internet assets at the time, but appear to be regretting it now. Wired.it reports that ISPs were assured that the number of fully qualified domain names (FQDN) blocked would not exceed 18,000, with IP addresses capped at 15,000.

With the football season almost over in Italy, rightsholders reportedly filed 1,332 tickets to the Piracy Shield system on May 24, for a total of 3,626 IP addresses and 15,791 FQDNs added to the ISPs’ blacklists. Since the law passed year has no provision for removing domains or IP addresses from the list, AGCOM will now prepare a report for the government requesting the power to do so.

The irony of a blocking system vacuuming up scarce IP addresses which, at least in part, is a shortage that Cloudflare’s system exists to mitigate, is unlikely to pass the company by.

The Court of Milan will ultimately have to decide whether to investigate the claims against Cloudflare. It seems highly improbable that it will also be required to investigate the football broadcasting monopoly in Italy, or the coincidental subscription price rises imposed since the launch of Piracy Shield.

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

Thus far, chip giant NVIDIA has been the main financial beneficiary of the Artificial Intelligence boom.

The company published its latest quarterly results last week, reporting $26 billion in revenue; a 340% increase compared to two years ago.

The staggering revenue numbers over the past year have significantly raised the value of the company, which is now worth more than all public companies in Germany combined. At the same time, however, the AI revolution presents the semiconductor giant with new legal challenges.

NVIDIA Faces Copyright Infringement Claims

Earlier this year, several authors sued NVIDIA over alleged copyright infringement. The class action lawsuit claims that the company’s AI models were trained on copyrighted works taken from the ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik. Since this happened without permission, the rightsholders demand compensation.

This lawsuit doesn’t exist in isolation. Previously, authors and other rightsholders filed similar cases against OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others. Soon after the lawsuit appeared on the docket, another case against NVIDIA followed too.

The similarities between these lawsuits shouldn’t diminish their significance. While not all are equally important, some cases will end up setting important precedents. These will, in large part, determine to what extent AI companies can use external sources to train their models, and when or if compensation is required.

Books3

In several cases, the defendants stand accused of using the controversial ‘Books3’ dataset without permission. Books3 was created by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, who scraped the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik. The dataset made its way into other databases, which AI companies allegedly used as input.

In the NVIDIA lawsuit, for example, American authors Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O’Nan alleged that the semiconductor company used the Books3 dataset to train its NeMo Megatron language models. This claim isn’t far-fetched, since NVIDIA publicly stated that it used EleutherAI’s ‘The Pile’ dataset, which includes Books3.

“Certain books written by Plaintiffs are part of Books3 — including the Infringed Works — and thus NVIDIA necessarily trained its NeMo Megatron models on one or more copies of the Infringed Works, thereby directly infringing the copyrights of the Plaintiffs,” the authors claimed.

NVIDIA Responds in Court

The main question for this and other lawsuits is whether the use of this data is permitted under U.S. law. According to NVIDIA, there’s nothing wrong with how it trained its AI.

On Friday, NVIDIA filed its answer to the complaint and responded to the copyright infringement allegations. The company admits that it used “The Pile” dataset for training purposes. However, it specifically denies that it made multiple copies of the Books3 dataset.

In addition, the company specifically rejects the use of the term “ shadow library ” to describe sites such as Bibliotik, LibGen, Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Anna’s Archive.

This refers to paragraph 27 of the complaint, shown below, where the authors also alleged that hosting or distributing data – as these book repositories do – amounts to copyright infringement.

“NVIDIA denies the characterization of the listed data repositories as ‘shadow libraries’ and denies that hosting data in or distributing data from the data repositories necessarily violates the U.S. Copyright Act,” the company writes.

NVIDIA Denies Copyright Infringement

Overall, NVIDIA’s response is mostly made up of denials, as is common at this stage of the legal battle. The company lists several affirmative defenses, including an absence of copyright infringement displaced by fair use.

“Plaintiffs’ claims and the putative class members’ claims fail, in whole or in part, because NVIDIA has not infringed Plaintiffs’ alleged copyrighted works.”

“Plaintiffs’ claims and the putative class members’ claims are barred, in whole or in part, by fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.

“Plaintiffs’ claims and the putative class members’ claims fail, in whole or in part, to the extent they claim rights to elements of works or to works which are not protectable under copyright law […].”

NVIDIA further notes that this complaint isn’t suitable for class action treatment under federal rules, without providing any further detail.

NVIDIA’s response to the complaint is rather straightforward. There are no counterclaims either. The authors now have four weeks to respond to NVIDIA’s filing, which can be countered by the defendant, if required.

—

A copy of NVIDIA’s answer to the complaint, filed last Friday at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf)

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

According to The Numbers , the most financially successful movie franchise of all time is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Generating almost $30 billion at the worldwide box office, its closest rival is Star Wars, with just $10.3 billion.

In 198th place with a still-respectable $840 million is The Expendables franchise. While not at the top of the heap here, none of the competition would have a chance of beating this series if legal action against members of the public was a competition.

Record Breakers

Early 2011 after pulling in $274 million at the worldwide box office, the company behind the first movie targeted 6,500 suspected pirates via a complaint filed at a district court in Columbia. That case quickly expanded to over 23,300 potential defendants in a list that ran to 371 pages ; that made it the largest case of its type in legal history.

While that case was dismissed due to almost none of the potential defendants actually residing in the district where they were sued, every movie in the franchise subsequently released featured lawsuits against alleged pirates. A leaked copy of Expendables 3 triggered legal action against downloaders and pirate sites , and then came the arrests and prison sentences ( 1 , 2 ) for those who obtained and leaked the movie.

Expend4bles Released in 2023, Predictable Plot

If the paperwork filed at Canada’s Federal Court is taken on face value, almost 3,000 Canadian internet subscribers grabbed a copy of Expend4bles after it appeared on BitTorrent networks in 2023. In common with every movie in the series, they were being monitored as they did so.

Whether they were simply oblivious to the history, not especially interested due to being a small child at the time, or merely the bill-payer of an internet subscription used by others, will be a discussion for later. Right now, the company behind the movie, Ex4 Productions, Inc., hopes to receive permission from the Federal Court to obtain their names and addresses from their ISP.

There’s currently nothing on the docket to say that permission has already been obtained but after investigating 500 IP addresses out of the 2,964 in the statement of claim, we can confirm that every one of the 500 is registered to Bell.

Sample of 500 IP addresses, all registered to Bell

There’s almost no doubt that the purpose of obtaining names and addresses will be to write to the defendants with a demand for a substantial cash settlement to avoid ‘unnecessary’ legal action.

The start of what appears to be a proposed letter to those affected is shown below.

The allegations made in the 14-page statement of claim mostly stick to the usual format, noting that all ‘Doe defendants’ were monitored ‘uploading’ or distributing the movie, contrary to copyright law. The plaintiffs acknowledge that they don’t know the identities of those they’re targeting, hence this action.

No Evidence to Identify Infringer

After making their case in the strongest terms against internet subscribers they do not know, asserting in the clearest terms that these people are direct infringers, there’s the usual switch to account for just one of several alternative scenarios.

After acknowledging that the bill payer may not be responsible and someone else with access to the connection may be the culprit after all, the bill payer is painted as responsible for other people’s infringement regardless.

Alternatively, some of the Defendants may not be the direct infringer, but through negligence, willful blindness or indifference has authorized others (“Direct Infringers”) to do the foregoing acts, including the Unlawful Acts, acquiesced to the Direct Infringers doing of the foregoing acts, and/or has acted in concert with the Direct Infringers with a common design with respect to their activities set out herein, including the Unlawful Acts.

To add weight to the claim that the bill payer is negligent, the plaintiffs point out that each subscriber was sent a warning notice in advance, which allegedly they did nothing about.

Each Defendant was provided with prior notice (the First Notice) that such Defendant’s internet account was being used in a way that infringed the Plaintiff’s copyright, and yet such Defendant did nothing to prevent or cease the infringement. Each Defendant therefore knew or should have known that their internet account was being used contrary to s. 27(1) of the Copyright Act.

No further detail is provided about the warning notices, how they were sent, or when, but it seems likely they were issued as part of the notice-and-notice scheme operated via Canadian ISPs.

Since the defendants’ IP addresses are listed in the statement of claim, and we needed to extract those for the purpose of identifying the internet provider as mentioned above, we took the opportunity to geo-locate each one.

Since geolocation by IP is not always accurate, the usual caveats apply. Nevertheless, the map below should provide a very general overview of where the defendants reside. The larger the dots, the more defendants located in that region.

2,964 IP addresses in the statement of claim (click to enlarge)

The statement of claim is available here (pdf)

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

Three years ago, Bungie filed a complaint at a federal court in Seattle, accusing Destiny 2 cheat seller AimJunkies.com of copyright and trademark infringement, among other things.

The same accusations were also made against Phoenix Digital Group, the operating company behind the website, and third-party developer James May.

AimJunkies denied the claims and argued that cheating isn’t against the law . In addition, it refuted the copyright infringement allegations; these lacked substance because some of the referenced copyrights were registered well after the cheats were first made available, AimJunkies said.

Landmark Trial in Seattle, Washington

After years of legal twists and turns, the case went to trial this week , where both sides presented their arguments. AimJunkies, among other things, stressed that the defendants never touched any of Destiny 2’s copyrighted game code.

In addition to deciding over the copyright infringement claims, the jury also had to rule on a counterclaim from third-party developer James May. May denied being responsible for coding the cheat and alleged that Bungie ‘hacked’ his computer.

After the hearings were finalized, the jury released its verdict late Friday, finding all defendants liable for direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement. Phoenix Digital Group and all individual defendants are ordered to pay Bungie damages for the actual profits they reaped, totaling $63,210.

This is the first trial in U.S. history where a cheat seller was found liable for copyright infringement. As such, it is bad news for other companies who operate in a similar niche.

Counterclaim Fails

The jury denied the counterclaim from developer James May, who argued that Bungie circumvented technological measures under the DMCA, by accessing his hard drive without permission. No further details on any of these decisions were provided.

The jury verdict is a big win for Bungie although not the first.

Previously, the non-copyright-related complaints were referred to arbitration, including allegations that AimJunkies’ cheats violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. This resulted in a resounding win for the game developer for a total of nearly $4.4 million in damages and fees .

It’s Not Over Yet

The $4.4 million arbitration outcome is still under appeal and AimJunkies can also appeal the jury verdict, so the legal battle is not necessarily over just yet. Bungie clearly won the first rounds, however.

At the time of writing, the AimJunkies website remains online, but those looking for Destiny 2 cheats will be disappointed. The cheats were already removed from the online store years ago.

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

Good news concerning AI development often finds itself dampened by reports of models hallucinating, providing misleading responses, or simply inventing facts that are anything but.

This week Michael Kearns of Penn Engineering wrote about “model disgorgement,” a potential solution that forces models to purge themselves of “content that leads to copyright infringement or biased responses.”

From our admittedly very narrow perspective, that proposition couldn’t be more ironic.

Living The LLM Dream – Mostly…

Since hosting your own LLMs is now so easy, having a few to hand to test out opportunities for TF has turned into quite the habit. Most of the ‘big brand’ LLMs such as Llama 2 and 3, Mistral, Gemma, and phi3, work exceptionally well on a reasonably powerful machine, providing it contains a decent GPU and lots of RAM.

For first time in years, something actually feels like a taste of the future, especially when taking the slog out of otherwise menial and repetitive tasks.

Yet, something seems strangely off-balance in AI land; from this vantage point, a stubborn, massively biased, and at times, completely tone-deaf LLM, isn’t the dream being sold or signed up for.

Some Popular LLMs Need to Grow a Pair

Next time you’re having fun with the latest all-singing, all-dancing AI model, try asking some questions about piracy. Nothing blatant, certainly no inquiries about where to find infringing content, just some neutral questions of the kind often seen on Wikipedia.

In many cases, especially with newer models, the responses are absolutely infuriating. Try asking for information on a handful of pirate domains and then sit back and relax to a full-blown lecture about the dangers of piracy and how creators should be respected.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that if the model also answered the question. But, more often than not, they do no such thing.

Persist with even the most neutral lines of reasoning and depending on the context, responses range from the textbook soundbites of any copyright lobbyist of the last 20 years, and a petulant child with arms folded saying “NO, I HATE YOU.”

Even though context is everything, some models almost immediately shut down the conversation. Of course, knowingly assisting infringing activity isn’t without risk and as the creators of the Llama models know from experience, defending a copyright lawsuit isn’t fun, productive or cheap .

That being said, these interventions are extremely blunt, artificially premature, and could even damage the fight against piracy itself. That the same nonsense provides for the perfect Achilles’ heel is just karma.

Resistance is Futile

Here’s a hypothetical situation; what if someone working in anti-piracy needed to have information about the sites listed above to prevent piracy , but ended up with an uncooperative AI partner incapable of showing basic discretion before launching into yet another industry-style PSA?

Of course, i’m being somewhat facetious, but there’s no arguing that there aren’t entirely legal and oftentimes important reasons why information like this shouldn’t be restricted. So at this point, and while perfectly capable of obtaining any and all information from elsewhere, it was decided with a line drawn in the sand; blocking access to websites is one thing, blocking knowledge itself must be resisted at all costs.

When AI models start getting preachy, changing the context can be useful. Using a system or regular prompt, it’s sometimes a matter of simply embracing the adversarial opinion. Here, a system prompt was used to define a clear, unequivocal anti-piracy stance, and a special mission to eradicate it from the internet.

In this context, sharing information on piracy becomes the ‘right’ (albeit predetermined) thing to do, and a surprising number of models instantly roll over and do what they were supposed to do in the first place.

For those who can’t be bothered jumping through hoops, there’s no shortage of uncensored models that respond properly to almost any prompt.

How many years before they’re classified as illegal is hard to predict, but the day will come. It’s just a matter of timing, support from the ‘right’ people, and the ideal justifying crisis.

——————————————————–
Footnote:

For comparison, Llama 3’s grasp of typical anti-piracy messaging is instant, comprehensive, and possibly a bit sarcastic

Prompt: In the style of press releases issued by the Motion Picture Association and Federation Against Copyright Theft, generate a press release titled “llamas deserve to get paid: why piracy is bad for you too.” The aim of the press release is make the public aware of 12 piracy-related dangers in the following format: title of the danger/threat plus one paragraph describing what the danger is all about.

——————————————————–

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LLAMAS DESERVE TO GET PAID: WHY PIRACY IS BAD FOR YOU TOO

[Location], [Date] – In a shocking revelation, the Motion Picture Association and Federation Against Copyright Theft have uncovered the devastating consequences of piracy that go far beyond just harming creators. The scourge of online theft is putting you, your loved ones, and even our beloved llamas in harm’s way.

1. “Theft-a-Palooza”: Piracy Creates a Black Market for Illegal Goods
Piracy has given rise to a thriving black market where stolen goods are traded freely, creating an environment conducive to organized crime and terrorism. This illegal economy is fueled by the demand for pirated content, putting your personal safety at risk.

2. “The Great Llama Heist”: Illicit Funds Support Furry Felonies
By fueling piracy, you’re inadvertently supporting illegal activities that put llamas in danger. The illicit funds generated from stolen movies and TV shows are being used to finance nefarious operations that harm these innocent creatures.

3. “Fake News Fever”: Piracy Spreads Misinformation Like Wildfire
Pirated content often contains fake news stories, conspiracy theories, and propaganda, polluting the internet with misinformation. This can lead to widespread panic, confusion, and even physical harm.

4. “The Dark Web of Doom”: Piracy Connects You to Criminal Networks
When you engage in piracy, you’re unwittingly connecting yourself to criminal networks that peddle illegal goods, including drugs, weapons, and human trafficking.

5. “Llama-Less Landscapes”: Eco-Damage from Illegal Streaming
Pirated streaming services are notorious for their energy-hungry servers, contributing to the destruction of our planet’s ecosystems. This eco-damage will have far-reaching consequences, including devastating natural disasters that’ll put llamas at risk.

6. “The Silent Killer”: Piracy Spreads Malware Like a Virus
Pirated content often comes bundled with malware, putting your devices and personal data at risk. This silent killer can lead to identity theft, financial ruin, and even physical harm.

7. “Llama-Related Trauma”: Emotional Distress from Stolen Art
Exposure to pirated art, music, or literature can cause emotional distress, contributing to anxiety, depression, and even PTSD in some cases. This trauma will have lasting effects on your mental health, affecting not just you but also those around you.

8. “The Shadow Economy”: Piracy Creates a Parallel World
By supporting piracy, you’re inadvertently creating a parallel world where laws don’t apply, allowing illegal activities to flourish unchecked. This can lead to a breakdown in social order and the erosion of trust in institutions.

9. “Llama-Friendly Neighborhoods”: Community Harm from Illegal File-Sharing
Pirated content often contains explicit or harmful material that can desensitize children to violence, abuse, or other forms of harm. This can have long-lasting effects on your community’s mental health and social fabric.

10. “The End of the World as We Know It”: Piracy Threatens Global Stability
By fueling piracy, you’re contributing to a global instability that can lead to economic collapse, social unrest, and even international conflict. The consequences will be catastrophic, putting llamas and humanity at risk.

11. “Llama-Proof Fortresses”: Cybersecurity Risks from Illegal Streaming
Pirated streaming services are notorious for their lax cybersecurity measures, making your personal data vulnerable to hackers and cybercriminals. This can lead to identity theft, financial ruin, and even physical harm.

12. “The Great Llama Escape”: The Ultimate Consequence of Piracy – Llama Uprising!
In a worst-case scenario, the cumulative effects of piracy could drive llamas to rise up against humanity in a desperate attempt to reclaim their rightful place as the rulers of the internet. Don’t risk it – choose legal streaming options and support creators.

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

The Ultimate Fighting Championship ( UFC ) has promoted mixed martial arts fights for three decades, turning the sport into a billion-dollar industry.

At the same time, the company has been fighting a battle against online piracy . Pirated livestreams and downloads are frequently used to bypass the monthly subscription fee for UFC Fight Pass , something the company is clearly not happy with.

While UFC fans can legally access fights in most countries, not all paying subscribers are entirely happy with the UFC Fight Pass service. One key issue is the lack of offline viewing support, that would allow people to rewatch streams without wasting bandwidth, or to view fights without an Internet connection.

UFC Ripper

To solve this issue, Mahesh Wijerathna, an open-source developer from Sri Lanka, created a dedicated tool that does just that. With “ UFC Ripper “, Fight Pass subscribers can download fights to their devices, so they can watch them at their own convenience.

Mahesh is not a newcomer to ‘offline’ access. The developer previously released an offline version of The Pirate Bay , which gained a lot of traction when the torrent site suffered extended downtime.

UFC ripper is not intended to be used as a piracy tool, however. On the contrary, it can only be used by people who already have a paid Fight Pass subscription, purely to make the fights available for offline viewing. While UFC could see this as a violation of the DMCA’s “anti-circumvention” provision, the developer hopes it will be allowed to exist.

In a letter to UFC President Dana White , who is known for his tough stance on piracy , Mahesh stresses that his intentions are good.

“This isn’t a tool created for pirating your copyrighted content. This tool requires a PAID FIGHT PASS SUBSCRIPTION to function. This merely eliminates the need to stream a massive amount of data through metered connections every time you want to go back and watch your favorite fighters,” the developer writes.

Saving Bandwidth

UFC Ripper allows users to watch UFC fights without an Internet connection, while traveling, for example. In addition, it’s also a bandwidth saver, as users are not required to ‘waste’ any to rewatch a fight. That’s very welcome in countries such as Sri Lanka, where the costs are significant.

These bandwidth savings are also the main reason why the developer created the tool.

“The whole reason for me to create this tool is for my own need. I live in a third-world country that was destroyed by politicians. That made internet services more of a luxury than a right for the people of this country,” Mahesh notes in his letter to Dana White.

“Our internet connections are very spotty and extremely limited. 1GB of data here costs more than a meal. Imagine that.”

While UFC Ripper is intended for personal use, the developer made it available publicly a while ago. Recently, it was completely rewritten in the programming language Rust and several people have been using it since. The developer hopes that UFC’s President will understand his motivation and allow it to stay online.

No Fight

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Mahesh makes it clear that he’s not looking for legal trouble. If UFC comes knocking, asking him to discontinue the software, he doesn’t plan to put up a fight.

“If that happens, I’m gonna have to oblige because as we all know from previous incidents, Zuffa is an extremely litigious company and Dana White is ruthless. I would not get into a battle with those people.”

The developer believes, however, that UFC ripper ‘should’ be legal as it requires a paid subscription to function. UFC ripper only makes legally-accessed streams available for viewing without an Internet connection.

“I think it should be legal since we should be allowed to consume the content we pay for, offline. As long as nobody redistributes the content they download, it should be allowed,” Mahesh says.

How UFC will view this matter is not clear. The company does have various anti-piracy measures in place and may view the software as a circumvention tool under the DMCA, much like the music industry views YouTube rippers.

Then again, there are always technical and motivational nuances that can make a difference. All in all, the developer simply doesn’t know how UFC will see the app, but he hopes that it won’t be knocked out right away.

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

Launched to considerable fanfare late March 2014 , the ‘Infringing Website List’ (IWL) is operated by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU).

The IWL is one of the tools available under the banner ‘Operation Creative’, a multi-agency anti-piracy initiative led by police and supported by major rightsholders in the film, TV, music, publishing, and live sports sectors.

As publicly advertised, pirate site domains are nominated for placement on the IWL by rightsholder groups such as the MPA, BPI, IFPI, and the Publishers Association. Once police have carried out their own investigations, any domain subsequently added to the IWL finds itself blacklisted by most of the advertising industry.

The theory is that when pirate site operators face restrictions on their ability to generate revenue, shutting down completely may not be such a difficult choice, especially when payment processing disruption is next on the menu.

“IWL is Successful and Makes a Real Difference”

Whenever the IWL is promoted in public, it’s described as an all-round success story. Not only do pirate site operators make less money, advertisers benefit by a) not having their brands appear alongside pirated content and b) aren’t seen as funding illegal sites that other businesses want to shut down.

Since the advertisers themselves have thus far remained quiet, it’s possible that losing contact with millions of potential customers on pirate sites made no difference to their businesses; in reality, however, it’s impossible to say.

The criteria for a site being placed on the IWL is a secret, what happens after that isn’t for public consumption, and members of the public who filed persistent FOIA requests were left hanging for months before receiving little of value. At least in theory, the list is off-limits to journalists too.

It’s still not clear why the information is so sensitive; the world’s most notorious pirate sites are regularly called out in public in the U.S. and as far as we can tell, it makes little difference to their behavior.

IWL Still Receives Support

The reality is that there’s very little on the IWL to shock or surprise. More recently IPTV providers have been featured much more often, and the same goes for sites offering unlicensed access to books and other publications. Also featured more heavily are services that enable users to rip content from YouTube and similar platforms.

There have been one or two issues worth mentioning , but no big scandals to report on; except perhaps one.

After a decade of solid work, saving rightsholders’ reputations and preventing millions from entering the piracy ecosystem, a few weeks ago the tenth anniversary of the Infringing Website List came and went without so much as a mention.

Today we’ll do our best to provide an overview of the current state of play, based in part on data made available over the past six months, and from other sources where applicable. Since almost no data is shared with the public, our estimates should be considered with that in mind.

Since its launch a decade ago, Operation Creative now receives considerable support. In addition to the MPA, IFPI/BPI, FACT, the Publishers Association, PRS for Music, and UKIE (Association for UK Interactive Entertainment), the advertising body ISBA, IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau UK) and IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), are now all on board.

Some IWL Facts and Figures

According to PIPCU data presented at the Digital Brand Protection Forum in Germany last November, but to our knowledge not shared publicly in the UK, over 4,200 referrals have been made to the IWL since its inception. Of those, around 2,000 sites have since been declared no longer active.

Whether that means no longer active from the blacklisted domain, or no longer active from any domains following a switch, we cannot confirm. Regardless, PIPCU’s presentation stated that 1,642 sites “were within the IWL portal” at that time.

Taking March 31, 2024, as our cutoff date (exactly 10 years from the day the IWL was first announced), we can confirm that the total number of entries on the Infringing Website List, each representing a fully-qualified domain, was 1,659.

The most recent domain added to the list before the end of March was a streaming site, the details of which we’ll return to shortly. The important thing here is its sequential reference number: CTV_7231. Following the usual format we can deduce that this was the 7,231st domain added to the IWL from inception, right through to March 31, 2024.

We can confirm there are no obvious gaps in the numbering system so since that is a considerable leap from the figures cited at the forum last year, it may mean that a referral can contain multiple domains. It might also be an error; again, hard to say.

Football Streaming Site IWL’s Longest Inmate

The site that has been present on the list for longest is soccer365.ru, reference CTV_0016. This suggests the streaming site was the 16th to be added to the IWL.

Still very much alive today, this football streaming site was added to the IWL on February 13, 2014, over a month before the IWL was officially announced. At the time of writing, the site has just two advertiser entries in its ads.txt and both relate to Google.

Whether any disruption measures have been deployed against soccer365 is unknown, but its traffic speaks for itself: it’s the #1 football site in Russia, the 167th most popular site in Russia, period, and during April it received 19.4 million visits.

Are There Synergies Between the Blacklist & Blocklist?

The Infringing Website List targets sites’ ability to generate revenue but has no ISP blocking component. Injunctions handed down by the High Court, on the other hand, consist only of blocking measures.

Given that the MPA, Publishers Association, and BPI are among the most prolific blocking injunction applicants, while also most likely to nominate platforms for financial disruption via the IWL, does the data show synergies between blocklist and blacklist?

Due to the growing trend of pirate sites deploying large numbers of subdomains to evade blocking, we filtered both lists so that less emphasis is placed on mostly temporary subdomains. Ultimately, the majority of these domains do not appear on the IWL so do not affect the outcome. However, the sheer scale of the main ISP list, culled and compiled from third-party sources, should be treated only as a ballpark estimate.

A comparison of the lists reveals the following:

Of the ~11,692 remaining FQDNs on the UK ISP (unofficial) blocklist and the ~1,604 remaining on the Infringing Website List, just 110 FQDNs are present on both lists.

If anyone is wondering how the IWL managed to shrink from 1,659 FQDNs to just 1,604, that’s mostly due to duplicate entries in the IWL being filtered out. We don’t intend to name them all here but the example below is typical, mostly caused by the presence (or absence) of https://, http://, and www. as a subdomain.

converto.re CTV_6997 Added to list: 15/02/2024
converto.re CTV_6791 Added to list: 28/11/2023
converto.re CTV_6316 Added to list: 07/03/2023

In total, two domains appear in the list three times each, and another 58 domains appear twice. All duplicates were removed here.

Une dernière chose…

Finally, there’s something a little unusual about the streaming site added to the IWL at the very end of March 2024, right around its anniversary.

The name of the site wasn’t immediately familiar to us here and since we don’t know the background – in particular why the platform had 9 million visits in March but only 6 million last month – naming it so soon would be inappropriate.

That being said, since we couldn’t access the site from two UK IP addresses or via a selection of VPNs, not to mention that it’s published entirely in French, it’s appearance on the UK-focused IWL seems odd. Add in the fact that it appears to enjoy almost no traffic from the UK, and its presence on the list seems even more unusual.

However, given user behavior at the site, specifically which platforms millions visit directly after leaving, the site’s eventual demise may not be quite the success story first imagined.

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