Earlier this month, the US Department of Commerce requested input from the public on several piracy-related matters.

Specifically, it wanted to know more about counterfeit and pirated goods that pass through online third-party marketplaces, and how this can be curbed.

Responding to this request, industry groups MPAA, IFTA, CreativeFuture, and SAG-AFTRA bundled their views on the matter in a joint submission. The groups, which represent various parts of the movie industry, make it clear that piracy remains a major issue.

The groups explain that piracy is complex and multi-faceted. One trend they have signaled over the years is that, similar to the legal offering, piracy is more often streaming related nowadays. In some cases, users don’t even know that they are using pirate services.

“The piracy services often have the look and feel of legitimacy, sometimes luring viewers who have no intent to patronize pirate operations and may not even realize they are doing so. And just as legitimate online dissemination of movie and television programming is moving toward streaming, so, too, is piracy,” the groups write.

Pirate streaming services exist in different shapes, ranging from free pirate sites to paid IPTV subscriptions. The latter is seen as an emerging threat. The groups note that it’s often easier to use than other forms of piracy. As such, there has been an increase in demand for pirate IPTV services recently.

“The MPAA has identified more than 1,000 illegal IPTV services operating around the world. They are accessible via dedicated web portals; third-party applications; and piracy devices configured to access the services as well as individual pieces of pirated content on demand. Such devices recently experienced a surge in consumer adoption,” the submission reads.

In addition to IPTV streaming, other forms of copyright infringement remain a problem as well. This includes torrent sites, cyberlockers, linking sites, as well as streaming devices and applications.

The groups hope that with proper support from the Government, it will be easier to counter these threats. In terms of concrete suggestions, they state that the US Department of Commerce can provide assistance on four fronts, starting with the encouragement of voluntary initiatives.

Encourage Best Practices

For several years industry groups have been pushing for voluntary anti-piracy agreements with the third-party intermediaries. Some success has been booked on this front already.

For example, many advertising networks are now banning pirate sites. Similarly, marketplaces such as Alibaba, eBay, and Amazon, are actively working with rightsholders to stop copyright infringements, and payment processors such as PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard are more vigilant as well.

However, not all companies are as cooperative. That’s where the Department of Commerce could lend a hand, by actively encouraging anti-piracy best practices and other forms of cooperation.

Examples of areas where improvement can be made are domain name registrars and reverse proxies, such as Cloudflare. These companies could implement “repeat infringer” policies, the groups state. In addition, some hosting companies could also do more to ban pirate sites and services.

“Given the central role of hosting providers in the online ecosystem, it is disconcerting that many refuse to take action when notified that their hosting services are being used in clear violation of their own terms of service prohibiting intellectual property infringement, and in blatant violation of the law,” the groups write.

Criminal Enforcement

The second area where the US Government could help is more direct. As highlighted a few weeks ago, the MPAA has made several referrals to the Department of Justice (DoJ), calling out pirate streaming operations that could be criminally prosecuted.

The Department of Commerce could spur on law enforcement to take up these cases.

“The creative community has pending a number of criminal referrals to DOJ regarding streaming piracy operations, with the goal of replicating the deterrent effect and protection of legitimate consumption that happened after the Megaupload action,” the groups write.

“Our hope is that the Commerce Department and others in the Administration will encourage the DOJ to take such action,” they add.

Help to Restore WHOIS data

The third area where the copyright industry groups request help is also familiar. It relates to the European privacy regulation GDPR, which requires many online services and tools to tighten their privacy policies. This also affects domain registrars.

Ever since this was implemented, domain registrar oversight body ICANN decided to shield names and other personal information of domain name owners from public view. The MPAA and other outfits don’t like this, as it makes it harder for them to track down site owners.

They, therefore, want to restore access to the full WHOIS details again. While ICANN promised progress on this front, the issue still hasn’t been resolved. To counter this, US Congress may have to step up and pass legislation to reach the desired effect, and the Commerce Department could back this.

“Should ICANN’s efforts drag on without resolution in sight, we ask that the Department of Commerce support such legislation,” the groups write.

In addition, broad WHOIS access requirements could also be made a requirement in trade agreements, the groups add.

“The Administration should also seek robust WHOIS access requirements in future trade agreements, perhaps expanding on language included in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement to apply to more than just a nation’s country-code top-level domain.”

Trade Agreements

Trade agreements are also a separate area of interest. The copyright industry groups point out that the piracy ecosystem is complex. It involves a wide range of players and intermediaries, many of which are located outside the United States.

The groups would like the US government to promote international cooperation in the fight against piracy. In addition, it should update its enforcement model to focus more on the potential liability of third-party intermediaries.

“While much of the model is sound—focusing on core aspects of copyright law and enforcement—the Administration should redouble its efforts around internet enforcement tools, including the critical concept of secondary liability, which creates a threat of liability for internet intermediaries that facilitate or profit from piracy,” the groups note.

In other words, the groups would like to see more trade agreements where companies such as domain registrars, search engines, ISPs, hosting outfits, and other players in the piracy ecosystem, can be held liable under certain circumstances.

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All in all, its a pretty elaborate wishlist the MPAA, IFTA, CreativeFuture, and SAG-AFTRA have submitted to the Department of Commerce. The department will take this, as well as the recommendations from other stakeholders, under review.

These submissions will form the basis for a Presidential memorandum on counterfeit and pirated goods trafficking through online marketplaces and internet intermediaries, which will be released in due course.

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A copy of the full submission from the MPAA, IFTA, CreativeFuture, and SAG-AFTRA is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

This week we have one newcomer in our chart.

Avengers: Endgame is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(2)	Avengers: Endgame	8.7 / trailer
2	(…)	The Red Sea Diving Resort	6.4 / trailer
3	(1)	Godzilla: King of the Monsters	6.5 / trailer
4	(3)	Hellboy	5.3 / trailer
5	(5)	Alita: Battle Angel	7.5 / trailer
6	(7)	Shazam!	7.3 / trailer
7	(6)	Pokémon Detective Pikachu	6.9 / trailer
8	(4)	Tolkien	6.9 / trailer
9	(8)	Men in Black: International (Subbed HDRip)	5.7 / trailer
10	(9)	Long Shot	7.1 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Another day, another senseless mass shooting in the United States, claiming the lives of yet more innocent victims.

While the authorities attempt to sift through this catastrophe and work out what drives people to carry out such terrible acts, attention is being placed on how their messages of evil are spread. Somewhat inevitably, parts of the Internet are set to shoulder at least some of the blame.

Not at all unsurprisingly, service providers are usually reluctant to take any responsibility for the actions of their users or some cases, customers. However, in an announcement early this morning, CDN company Cloudflare said it would cease its work with 8chan, the “cesspool of hate” messaging board where it’s alleged the shooter shared his manifesto.

“8chan is among the more than 19 million Internet properties that use Cloudflare’s service. We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time,” CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a statement.

“The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.”

While other publications will quite rightly focus on the human aspect of this weekend’s awful events, our reporting of issues affecting Cloudflare always center on the company’s involvement in copyright infringement actions. And there are several, almost every month.

Cloudflare is not a copyright infringer and always acts within the law but if 8chan is guilty of violating “the spirit” of the law and ripe for termination, it will be no surprise that copyright-focused groups will now be quietly rubbing their hands in anticipation.

The Pirate Bay, perhaps the most high-profile ‘pirate’ customer of Cloudflare, provides the most obvious example of a site with a stated aim of violating the law – copyright law, to be specific.

Yet to date nothing has been done to prevent the site from being a Cloudflare customer, because from Cloudflare’s side – perhaps counterintuitively – the CDN service itself hasn’t broken any laws. A similar argument can be made for the many hundreds or even thousands of comparable ‘pirate’ platforms which use Cloudflare in the same way.

It would be distasteful to compare the events of this past weekend with the sharing of movies, TV shows, and music, but copyright holders have had no problem using that as leverage in the past.

In a case brought against Cloudflare by ALS Scan, the adult publisher reminded the court that Cloudflare had previously terminated its business dealings with the Daily Stormer but hadn’t terminated its pirate site customers. Cloudflare didn’t want that discussion to take place at trial but its arguments were rejected by the judge.

In the end, Cloudflare and ALS Scan agreed to settle their case, meaning that a claim for contributory copyright infringement – through the prism of the Daily Stormer disconnection – didn’t get placed in front of a jury. But here we are, a little over a year later, with 8chan also having been terminated by Cloudflare under broadly similar circumstances.

In his message this morning, CEO Matthew Prince highlighted the fact that Cloudflare realizes that having policies that are more conservative than those of their customers would undermine customers’ abilities to run their ships as they see fit. This, the CEO says, means that the company sometimes has to bite its tongue – up to a point.

“We reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design. 8chan has crossed that line. It will therefore no longer be allowed to use our services,” Prince added.

Copyright holders regularly argue that pirate sites are “lawless” by their very nature but none have ever caused or inspired the kind of tragic events inflicted upon innocents in recent times.

All that being said, Cloudflare’s decision to terminate a site it states may have only violated “the spirit” of the law will eventually come back to haunt it, even if it was absolutely right to do so. No brand wants to be associated with those reveling in murder, but the clock is already ticking to see which copyright holder brings it up first, to support a case against Cloudflare and its customers.

It’s happened once, it will surely happen again.

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In March several major music companies sued Charter Communications, one of the largest Internet providers in the US with 22 million subscribers.

Helped by the RIAA, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, and others accused Charter of deliberately turning a blind eye to its pirating subscribers.

Among other things, they argued that the ISP failed to terminate or otherwise take meaningful action against the accounts of repeat infringers, even though it was well aware of them.

The labels sued the ISP for two types of secondary liability for copyright infringement; contributory infringement and vicarious liability. While Charter is confident that both claims will ultimately fail, it asked the Court to dismiss the latter claim before trial.

The music companies previously claimed that Charter is vicariously liable. To prove this, the rightsholders must show that allegedly-infringing material serves as a “draw” to subscribe to Charter’s Internet service. In addition, they must show that Charter can control the infringing activity.

According to the labels, this is the case. Among other things, they argued that Charter’s adverts for “high speed” downloads were seen as a draw. In addition, the ISP could control piracy on its network, by terminating repeat infringers.

In a response submitted this week, Charter counters these arguments.

With regard to the supposed “draw,” the ISP states that there has to be a causal connection between the financial benefit and the infringing activity. According to Charter, there is no plausible claim that suggests that subscribers specifically picked the company to carry out their piracy activities.

The fact that Charter advertises high-speed Internet is irrelevant in this case, as that’s what pretty much every ISP does. On top of that, high-speed Internet is also beneficial to all sorts of legal activity.

“It can safely be presumed that most, if not all, ISPs market the speed of their service, and there is of course nothing nefarious about doing so, as it is required for all manner of online activities. Plaintiffs can point to nothing to suggest that Charter’s ads are specifically targeted at would be infringers,” Charter writes.

“Moreover, Plaintiffs do not allege that the advertised speeds are meaningfully faster than Charter’s competitors or that those faster speeds somehow drew subscribers to Charter’s service (over others) to infringe. If Plaintiffs’ allegations were sufficient, every ISP would face exposure for merely advertising the speed of its internet service.”

In addition to refuting the “draw” claims, Charter also stresses that, even if it wanted to, it can’t control the infringing activities of its users.

The labels previously argued that the ISP does have control, as it can terminate the accounts of repeat infringers, but Charter stresses once again that this doesn’t stop piracy.

“The technology that allegedly facilitates the transfer of infringing material is BitTorrent and other P2P file sharing protocols. Charter cannot control BitTorrent or other P2P technology, nor do Plaintiffs allege as much. Terminating a user’s internet service does not preclude that user from continuing to use BitTorrent or other P2P websites.

“Rather than target the allegedly infringing P2P platforms themselves, Plaintiffs instead attempt to support a highly attenuated theory of liability,” Charter adds.

It is clear that both parties have a completely different view on the matter of piracy liability. It is now up to the Colorado District Court to decide which side makes the most sense.

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A copy of Charter’s reply in support of its motion to dismiss plaintiffs claim for vicarious liability is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

When Megaupload was shut down in 2012, chaos ensued in the international file-hosting scene.

While Megaupload undoubtedly stored a lot of copyright-infringing content, it also cooperated with rightsholders and executed takedown demands, not unlike YouTube, for example.

Fearing the same fate, some sites shut down. Others, like fellow file-hosting sites Uploaded and Turbobit, reacted by preventing visitors from the United States from accessing their sites, at least temporarily. While both sites are still around today more than seven years later, the latter is now getting some attention from the RIAA, one of the plaintiffs in the currently-frozen Megaupload civil case.

On July 26, the RIAA filed for and obtained a DMCA subpoena which compels US CDN company Cloudflare to hand over the personal details of Turbobits’ operator, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information, and account histories.

Turbobit stands accused of offering for distribution the album ‘Hurts 2B Human’ by American singer Pink. Another site listed in the subpoena, Hotsahiphop.org, is similarly accused of offering Mike Posner’s ‘Look What I’ve Become ft. Ty Dolla $ign’ without authorization.

However, it’s two fairly anonymous URLs listed in the same subpoena that offer a coincidental loop-around to the earlier Megaupload case of 2012.

321hiphop.is and gotth.is (Got This) are two pretty low-traffic sites that appear to be used as hosting platforms for various tracks and mixtapes. Since there are much bigger targets around today, it isn’t clear why they’re on the RIAA’s radar.

Nevertheless, the RIAA wants Cloudflare to hand over the personal details of their operators for the offense of hosting two copies of the 2010 Jay-Z track ‘Ultra’ which features none other than Swizz Beatz, the man Megaupload claimed was their CEO at the time of the raid in 2012.

It’s unclear why Swizz Beatz was listed as the company’s CEO all of those years ago since the artist was never mentioned by name in any of the legal documentation connected to the raids or subsequent lawsuits. It was later confirmed by Ira Rothken, counsel for Megaupload, that Beatz was in negotiations to become the CEO, but it never came to pass.

However, Beatz did admit to working with Megaupload, possibly in connection with Megabox, the service that planned to give fans free music in return for their advertising clicks while giving most of the money back to the artists.

Megabox never came to light and here we are, seven years later, with the RIAA trying to tackle sites, not unlike Megaupload, with similar strategies, in order to protect his music.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.