The idea that scientific papers and studies should be locked up behind a paywall is a tightly held belief among the world’s largest, richest publishers. To the founder of the infamous Sci-Hub – often known as The Pirate Bay of Science – that is objectionable to the point of being offensive to humanity.

Granting free access to scientific knowledge for the benefit of all mankind is a growing movement. As reported here last December, people such as an archivist known as ‘shrine’ are now adding significant momentum to the cause, one that a few weeks ago received a specific calling.

Having made almost continuous headlines all around the planet this year, the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak needs little introduction. At the time of writing, it has infected at least 31,500 people in 28 countries, killing more than 630. Preventing its spread is now a global matter and while doctors and scientists do their work, people like ‘shrine’ are doing their part to assist.

A few days ago, a thread appeared on Reddit announcing the creation of an unofficial database of coronavirus-related papers and studies.

Organized by ‘shrine’ with support from friends and hosting provided by ‘Archivist’ at archiving site The-Eye.eu, the database was compiled after scanning Sci-Hub’s 80 million documents for anything related to coronaviruses and placing them in one place for easy access. The archive currently holds 5,532 studies and papers dating from 2020 right back to 1968.

A tiny sample of the coronavirus archive

“Our project is illegal, but it’s the right thing to do in this crisis. We refuse to put copyright before human lives. Sharing everything we know about the virus is essential, which is why international scientists are openly sharing their coronavirus findings in an unprecedented way,” ‘shrine’ writes.

“Developing-world scientists often work without article access due to complex and expensive contract agreements between publishers, universities, and hospitals, relying on overseas colleagues to help them hunt down PDF files. The virus is not going to wait for this, so we need to act with conviction, now.”

This week, Vice reported that scientific publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer Nature, had removed their paywalls to allow free access to some research studies on multiple strains of the coronavirus. But for ‘shrine’, it was too little, too late.

“Publishers kept their Coronavirus paywalls active for nearly three weeks before waking up and providing a severely limited open access release,” he informs TorrentFreak.

“In our view this obstruction and delay to open research access during the crisis constitutes a crime against humanity, and should be seen as a direct attack against our life and health as a species.”

Even though the project is just a few days old, visitors to the archive have been arriving from all over the world.

Traffic data shared with TF shows that users from North America are responsible for just over 42% of the database’s hits, with Europe a close second accounting for almost 39%. Oceania and Asia follow in third and fourth place with 4.57% and 2.13% respectively, with South America and Africa sitting at the bottom.

At the time of writing, the unofficial archive has received more than half a billion requests which in turn have consumed around half a terabyte of bandwidth (see visual logfile sample render below). According to ‘shrine’ the project has been well received but if just a small amount of information from the archive proves useful to anyone in this health crisis, it will be mission accomplished.

“The Coronavirus Papers release has been met with appreciation and support from anonymous virologists, and we consider the project a success if we have assisted even one scientist with access to one of these critical studies.

“We hope that the archive continues to hold value as research continues, long after the publishers forget about the threat of pandemics and put their paywalls back up,” he adds.

While the archive at The-Eye is conveniently and instantly available, the entire collection of coronavirus papers – along with the earlier Libgen-archiving material – is also available via torrents. This method of sharing scientific studies is seen as crucial to maintaining access long term since it augments centralized storage with robust decentralization.

“The human right to education is enshrined in the torrents. The immutable 100-terabyte torrent collection stands as a promise of knowledge for future generations, for as long as we keep seeding humanity’s library keeps standing,” ‘shrine’ says.

“We are coming to realize that de-centralized web protocols like BitTorrent, IPFS, DAT, and others are central to the democratization of knowledge. The de-centralized protocols make it so that we’re not fighting alone, people all over the world can stand up with us for humanity’s knowledge.”

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The online piracy ecosystem is constantly evolving.

Ten years ago the entertainment industries were mostly concerned with torrent sites. Today, online streaming sites and services are the main challenges.

To tackle this threat, some of the largest companies in the world bundled their powers. In 2017 they formed the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which lists prominent members including major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and other entertainment giants.

The coalition has been very active both in- and outside of court. It has shut down various streaming tools, including unofficial Kodi add-ons and builds, and secured million-dollar judgments against pirate streaming box vendors.

This week we spotted a new tactic. On behalf of ACE, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) obtained a DMCA subpoena at a California District Court. The subpoena is directed at CDN provider Cloudflare and targets the video hosting services Fembed.com and Clipwatching.com.

Both sites allow users to upload videos that can be streamed from external sites. This makes them attractive to many pirate sites, which use these platforms to host their videos.

The MPA sees these hosting sites as pirate operations. In its submission to the US Trade Representative, the industry group highlighted Clipwatching.com as one of the most notorious copyright infringers online.

“As a video host, Clipwatching.com has a generous affiliation program, offering payments of $60 for every 10,000 views in tier 1 countries. Users can pay $30 per year to access the uploaded content without advertisements,” MPA wrote.

With the recently obtained subpoena, the MPA hopes to find out more about the people running these sites. Late last week it sent a copy of the legal paperwork to Cloudflare, asking it to hand over any personal information it has on the associated account holders.

“[Y]ou are required to disclose to the Motion Picture Association, Inc. (on behalf of the ACE Members) information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history,” the MPA informed Cloudflare.

According to the MPA, both sites have exploited the exclusive rights of ACE members. This includes hosting pirated copies of the movies “The Lion King” and “Daddy’s Home,” which remain online today.

The obtained personal information will be used to “protect” the movie companies’ copyrights, the MPA notes. Exactly how that will take place is unknown, but if the information is usable, the operators can expect some legal pressure.

These DMCA subpoenas are not new. The RIAA has been using the same tactic for a few months already, with mixed success. However, as far as we know, this is the first DMCA subpoena ACE has obtained against Cloudflare.

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A copy of the subpoena the MPA obtained on behalf of ACE is available here (pdf). A copy of the letter to Cloudflare can be found here (pdf).

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In August 2019, a jury found that the writers of the Katy Perry hit ‘Dark Horse’ had infringed on the rights of Christian rapper ‘Flame’ over his 2008 track ‘Joyful Noise”. The $2.78 million judgment sent shockwaves through the industry, with Perry’s side describing the decision a “travesty of justice.”

“The writers of Dark Horse view the verdicts as a travesty of justice. There is no infringement,” the statement read. “There was no access of substantial similarity. The only thing in common is unprotectable expression — evenly spaced ‘C’ and ‘B’ notes — repeated. People including musicologists from all over are expressing their dismay over this.”

One of those who found the lawsuit ridiculous was musician and YouTuber Adam Neely, who posted a video on YouTube explaining why it made absolutely no sense. The video, in which he unequivocally supported Perry’s side, pulled in millions of views and as a result the musician was asked to comment by numerous news publications covering the case.

Unfortunately, Neely himself now finds himself at the center of a copyright dispute as a result of his original video. In a new video posted to YouTube today, Neely recounts his journey following the case, noting that he strongly defended both Katy Perry and her publisher, Warner Chappell, in the belief that the lawsuit was bad for musicians, bad for creativity, and bad for the artform of music-making.

Warner Chappell, however, appear to see things differently. Instead of quietly thanking their avid supporter, they have hit his video with a copyright complaint instead.

“Katy Perry’s publisher, Warner Chappell, just claimed one of my videos. Warner Chappell did not hire me to make this video defending their platform in public and yet they have now claimed the advertising revenue for the video,” he explains.

“That is, of course, an incredibly crappy thing for Warner Chappell to do. But it gets a lot weirder. Katy Perry lost that suit so where does that leave the copyright for Warner Chappell? Dark Horse was found to be infringing on Joyful Noise so why is Warner Chappell still able to claim my video and take my advertising revenue?”

But Neely’s frustrations only increase after digging into the claim itself. It claims that Neely “used the melody” for Dark Horse in his video. However, the defendants in the Perry case previously stated that particular musical component of Dark Horse wasn’t a melody at all, but rather a background element to their track. The melody of Dark Horse never even appeared in Neely’s video – but the drama doesn’t stop there.

The allegedly-infringing content according to Warner Chappell was found between 35 seconds and 44 seconds into Neely’s video. However, as the exasperated musician points out, that part of the track was actually a demonstration of a section of Joyful Noise, not Dark Horse.

“[Warner Chappell] are claiming my video for a melody that they just lost a lawsuit defending. My video was all about how they should HAVE NOT lost the lawsuit because that melody was so minor as to not be copyrightable,” Neely says.

Only adding insult to injury is that this wasn’t a claim actioned automatically by YouTube’s systems, but was actually filed manually by a human being. This, Neely suggests, means that whoever filed the claim couldn’t tell the difference between the melodies in the two tracks and ended up filing a complaint against the wrong one.

This trainwreck is going to be hard to explain away…

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Last summer, a U.S. District Court in Minnesota sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release.

Hansmeier was a key player in the Prenda Law firm, which pursued cases against people who were suspected of downloading pirated porn videos via BitTorrent.

Hansmeier and fellow attorney John Steele went a step further though. Among other things they lied to the courts, committed identity theft, and concocted a scheme to upload their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

Both attorneys pleaded guilty but Hansmeier reserved the right to appeal, which he did at the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

In his brief, submitted last fall, Hansmeier admits that he abused legal discovery processes. However, he maintains that many of the accused subscribers were pirates. As such, the settlements with these people were legitimate and not fraudulent.

There’s no dispute that there was foul play involved, but these matters should be addressed by civil and regulatory systems of justice and not by criminal law, Hansmeier’s lawyer argued.

This week, U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick responded to these arguments. According to the US, Hansmeier built a career suing thousands of people across the country, accusing them of pirating content he and his co-conspirators uploaded as bait.

That some victims may have indeed shared infringing material is beside the point. According to the federal prosecutors, Hansmeier’s appeal is premised on a misunderstanding of the indictment’s claims.

“Contrary to his claims, the indictment does not charge that the only lies in this case were made to courts. Far from it. Instead, Hansmeier’s lawsuits were fraudulent from the start,” the prosecution writes.

“His scheme entailed lying to courts and using the courts to execute his scheme to defraud victims and making explicit misrepresentations and material omissions to those victims in order to exact quick settlement payments.”

Thus, even though some victims may have broken the law, they were caught by someone who broke the law to catch them, and committed crimes in the process. Or as the prosecution puts it;

“Even if theoretically those victims could be sued for copyright infringement, Hansmeier still misrepresented the nature of his lawsuits in order to exact payments. It was part of his scheme to use litigation to create the illusion of a legitimate civil action environment when, in reality, the entirety of the litigation was a scam and was intended to facilitate his shakedown.”

In addition to the attempt to undo the conviction by framing his offenses as a civil matter, Hansmeier also disputed the court’s order to award roughly $1.5 million in restitution to the victims. This is in part based on the same logic. Since some victims did break the law, Hansmeier argues that the settlements were legitimate.

The prosecution doesn’t agree with this either. While some may have broken the law, they are victims because Hansmeier’s lied and defrauded the court in order to get these settlements.

On top of that, the former Prenda attorney signed a plea agreement where he specifically admitted to receiving more than $3 million in fraudulent proceeds from the lawsuits he was involved in.

“Thus, he agreed that the people who paid him as a result of his copyright infringement lawsuits were fraud victims by acknowledging that the amounts they paid him were ‘fraudulent proceeds.’ He cannot now say that they were not,” the federal prosecutors write.

Based on the above and various other arguments, the US Government asks the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to affirm the district court’s judgment.

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A copy of the full response from U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick is available here (pdf).

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There are many hundreds of entities and individuals involved in the provision, distribution and sale of unlicensed IPTV services worldwide, with the majority managing to avoid serious consequences – at least for now.

But while most remain somewhat in the shadows, others make themselves more visible, sometimes following the decision to incorporate as an official entity. That may have been the case with One Box TV, LLC, a three-year-old Florida-registered company that made a business out of the sale of piracy-configured IPTV devices and subscriptions from its websites and a booth at a flea market.

Following an investigation carried out by DISH Networks and NagraStar, in August 2019 the companies filed a lawsuit against One Box TV and sole manager Donna Fogle in a Florida court. According to the complaint, the company sold $19 per month IPTV subscriptions (described as ‘device codes’) offering unlicensed DISH programming alongside pre-configured Android-style boxes for around $275.

The content offered by One Box TV was illegally obtained from DISH’s satellite communications and rebroadcast to the public for commercial advantage and personal financial gain, DISH alleged. This activity breached the Federal Communications Act (FCA) causing the broadcaster considerable financial damage, the complaint added.

The case has been ‘progressing’ for months without input from the defendants so it’s no surprise that DISH and NagraStar moved for a default judgment. DISH informed the court that it should be entitled to significant statutory damages under various sections of the FCA ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 for each violation, with Section 605(e)(4) allowing the plaintiffs to seek damages for each piracy device distributed.

Following One Box TV’s default, DISH and NagraStar obtained permission to conduct discovery among financial institutions associated with the IPTV seller to ascertain how many devices/device codes it had sold. According to DISH, the amount totaled at least 3,805 units, which could have put One Box TV on the hook for $38 million, even if the minimum statutory damages were awarded by the court.

Instead, DISH requested a much lower amount of $1,000 per violation for a total of $3,805,000 in statutory damages. On top, the company sought a permanent injunction. The court was happy to oblige.

“Having reviewed the record evidence, the Court concludes OneBox is liable for violating the Federal Communications Act,” District Judge James S. Moody writes in his order.

“Dish has shown OneBox violated the Act at least 3,805 times, entitling Dish to the $3,805,000 it seeks in statutory damages. And Dish proved entitlement to a permanent injunction against OneBox by demonstrating irreparable harm and that there is no adequate remedy at law.”

The injunction is comprehensive and forbids One Box TV, Donna Fogle, and/or anyone acting in concert with them from rebroadcasting DISH programming and/or offering subscriptions/device codes providing access to DISH’s content and communications.

Whether the plaintiffs will ever see any of the $3.8m in damages remains an open question.

The order and final default judgment obtained by TF can be viewed here and here (pdf)

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