Authorities in Brazil have periodically attempted to disrupt piracy in the region, including actions such as ‘Operation Copyright‘ that targeted a large private torrent site in January.

Last Friday, however, it became clear that a much more ambitious operation had begun. Codenamed ‘Operation 404’ after the HTTP error of the same name, the action was announced by Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security.

During an early press conference detailing progress thus far, the Secretariat of Integrated Operations (Seopi) revealed that “136 websites and 100 applications” had already been suspended alongside the execution of 30 search and seizure warrants.

“After four months of investigation, it can be said that the action is a milestone for piracy in the country, which causes various damages to society,” said Alesandro Barreto, coordinator of Seopi’s Cyber ​​Operations Laboratory.

“I don’t know of another operation that has blocked so many apps and websites in one day. This is a very clear message and that the judicial police, through the integrated operation with Seopi, will act against this crime that cannot be tolerated.”

The authorities did not release the names of any websites or applications targeted nor specifically detail what “suspension” means in the context of any specific case. Suspensions can take many forms, from serious ones (raids and equipment confiscations, for example) through to ones that have a more limited long-term impact, such as blocking or domain seizures.

Details are fairly scarce but TF learned that a site known locally as Megacine announced that it had decided to close down following the operation. A notice now displayed on the football-focused site Futemax indicates that it is being blocked but is still online.

The Ministry of Justice states that at least in some instances it had worked with authorities in France, the United States and Canada to suspend domains, arrange “de-indexing from search engines” while suspending profile pages on social networks.

The operation is said to be receiving support from local anti-piracy groups including ANCINE (National Film Agency) and the National Council for the Fight Against Piracy (CNCP). Additionally, the US Embassy in Brazil, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the US Department of Justice have reportedly played roles.

While the early figures presented (136 websites and 100 applications suspended) were already significant, local media reports suggest that the number is increasing fairly rapidly.

Globo reports that 210 sites involved in the unlawful distribution of movies, TV shows and live TV have been targeted, in addition to the initial 100 apps that provide access to “illegal content streaming”.

Raids have been carried out in 12 states in Brazil and in six states, at least eight people have been arrested. Details include:

• Warrant executed against a 33-year-old for the unlicensed distribution of TV signals (no arrest)
• Warrant executed against an individual suspected of “stealing” a TV operator’s signals. Computer seized but no arrest
• A 63-year-old man was arrested in São Paulo under suspicion of operating a website that broadcast TV channels in return for a US$7.50 per month subscription fee

Penalties for operating piracy sites or services in Brazil can reach four years in prison, more if other criminal aspects such as money laundering are involved.

According to the Ministry of Justice, up to 20 million households in Brazil access pirated content via the Internet but many citizens are said to have a poor understanding of which services are legitimate and which ones are not.

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

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This year the RIAA has discovered DMCA subpoenas as a useful enforcement tool against alleged pirate sites.

The music industry group has repeatedly obtained these subpoenas against Cloudflare, ordering the CDN provider to hand over the personal details of its customers.

The latest target is Wi.to, a file-hosting site that specializes in music. In fact, that’s the only content that can be shared on the platform. However, like any user-generated content platform, people abuse it by sharing pirated files as well.

This didn’t sit well with the RIAA which, armed with three URLs of infringing music as evidence, sent a subpoena to Cloudflare. The music group specifically asked for the physical address, IP address, e-mail address, payment information, account updates, and other info of the customer connected to Wi.to.

This is the same boilerplate language we’ve seen in similar requests that were made in the past, which Cloudflare generally complies with. While the RIAA doesn’t specify what it intends to do with the information, it will generally be used to enforce the copyrights of its members.

To hear the other side of the story we reached out to the operator of Wi.to, Sergey, who resides in Estonia. He was informed about the RIAA’s subpoena last week but doesn’t feel directly threatened.

“We are not criminals,” Sergey says.

“Wi.to is a service that makes it easy to publish music files DJs have created themselves. It’s true that the service is sometimes abused. But that’s something the users do. Also, services like Soundcloud or Dropbox are abused as well.”

Sergey says that, as an Estonian, the DMCA doesn’t apply to him, however, the site does process abuse complaints. In response to these notices, infringing files are regularly removed.

This is where things get interesting. The RIAA subpoena identifies three of these infringing music tracks. However, when we checked these URLs we found out that all three files are still online, including this Harleys in Hawaii track by Katy Perry.

According to Sergey, the RIAA never asked for these files to be removed.

“The RIAA hasn’t even contacted me and it looks to me like they’re acting arbitrarily. They deliberately want to get everything out of the way they can’t make money from,” Sergey tells us.

Wi.to’s operator believes that the RIAA is overreacting. If they see any infringing files they should file an abuse complaint instead of going to court to request personal details through a third party company, while keeping the infringing files unaddressed.

To Cloudflare, the RIAA wrote that any disclosed information will only be used to protect the copyrights of its members. However, sending an abuse complaint seems to be a more direct and effective way to do so.

Intriguingly, the RIAA has asked Google to remove these three URLs from its search engine. However, these requests were pointless, for now, as the tracks were not indexed by the search engine.

TorrentFreak reached out to the RIAA to find out what the purpose of the DMCA subpoenas is, but the organization prefers not to comment. Thus far, these efforts have had mixed results, but Wi.to isn’t planning to change its course.

As outsiders, we can’t judge how Wi.to processes its abuse complaints. We did notice, however, that the site has a “pendejo” link in the footer, pointing to the Narcos theme song by Rodrigo Amarante, without permission.

According to Sergey, this was a birthday present for one of his colleagues, which will be removed in due course or sooner, if an abuse notice comes in.

—

A copy of RIAA’s subpoena to Cloudflare 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.

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For many old-school torrent users, Demonoid is a familiar name. The site was founded sixteen years ago, which made it one of the oldest BitTorrent sites around.

However, last year things changed when Deimos, the site’s founder, went missing. After months of uncertainty and downtime, it became clear that the site wasn’t coming back this time. Deimos is believed to have passed away in a tragic accident, marking the end of an era.

As time went on it became obvious that Demonoid would not return in its original state. However, many of the site’s staffers and users were eager to build a new home. Not so much to replace the old Demonoid, but more as a tribute, and to keep the name alive.

This vision came to fruition a few months ago when Dnoid.to, a Demonoid successor, was launched. The new site has the same look and feel as the old site, but started over with a completely new user database.

The new site doesn’t operate a tracker either. Instead, the most important goal of the site was to bring the old community back together.

“Demonoid always had a special spot in people’s hearts. Keeping a memento of it without letting others ruin it by making copycats and phishing sites from it is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to him and keeping his legacy alive,” Demonoid staffer ‘phaze1G’  told us at the time.

In the weeks that followed the site’s new userbase slowly started to grow but it also became apparent that the domain name choice was far from ideal.

The .to domain is also used by another site, Demonoid.to, which is a well-known scam site. Instead of offering torrents, Demonoid.to urges people to download a binary client. The client download URL redirects to an affiliate link for a paid Usenet service.

Because of the dnoid.to / demonoid.to confusion, many users ended up at the wrong site. According to phaze1G, more than 800 emails with complaints about this issue were received in recent weeks.

This volume wasn’t something the staff could ignore. As such, the team registered a new domain name, Demonoid.is, which is the new home from now on. For the time being, visitors to the old domain will be automatically redirected.

“The Tonic registry is not as reliable as it used to be with their redacted whois. They are handing over owner details, even following DMCA complaints, as we were told by some people from other sites,” phaze1G says.

Indeed, as we have covered previously, the Tonic registry does comply with DMCA subpoenas from US Courts, but that’s something it has always done. The change here may be that DMCA subpoenas are more often used as an enforcement tool nowadays.

With the fresh domain name, the ‘new’ Demonoid hopes to avoid any confusion and other domain troubles. Meanwhile, it will continue to keep the site going, something that went relatively well over the past weeks.

“The site itself is doing fine. It’s not oversaturated, which is our goal. Many former users returned and lots of newcomers are stopping by too,” phaze1G notes.

“We are trying to keep a moderated size of visitors, so the infrastructure doesn’t include more cost as the revenue from ads is not enough to cover the costs itself,” he adds.

While Demonoid remains a big name that for many is surrounded by nostalgia, it’s a small player in the larger ecosystem today. With roughly half a million monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb, it pales in comparison to the larger torrent sites.

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In common with many other online services, copyright holders regularly ask Twitter to remove tweets that link to pirated material.

Whether it’s a tweet from the U.S. President or some random pirate site, the social media platform investigates the claims and takes action, if needed.

A few hours ago Twitter published a new update to its transparency report, highlighting the latest takedown trends. This reveals that the number of copyright notices received during the first half of the year skyrocketed compared to the previous six months.

“We received a 101% increase in DMCA takedown notices since our last report,” Twitter reports, noting that this includes a high volume of fraudulent DMCA notices from Turkey and Japan.

From January to June of this year a total of 106,951 DMCA notices were received, compared to 53,094 during the last half of 2018. This is a notable increase. However, it doesn’t directly translate to an equal change in removed tweets or withheld content.

The number of tweets that were removed increased by 46% to 113,015. At the same time, there was a 4% decrease in withheld media in the same period, 266,699 files in total.

This suggests that the average notice today includes fewer tweets and media files.

The percentage of notices for which Twitter took action also dropped significantly. On average, less than half of the notices (45%) resulted in material being removed, down from 62% last period.

The above applies to notices that were sent to Twitter, but the company also owns and operates Periscope. The number of copyright notices received by the streaming platform increased by roughly ten percent to 26,331 over the past six months.

Taken together, more than a third of the Twitter and Periscope copyright notices were sent in by a handful of reporters. Music industry group IFPI is the most prolific sender, followed by Netresult, LeakID, Athletia Sports and LaLiga.

The most spectacular increase we see in the report is the number of counternotices that were submitted by people who disputed a copyright claim. This number jumped 285% to 3,966.

This uptick is in part linked to an increase in fraudulent DMCA notices, which Twitter also highlights in its report. The company says that it will continue to keep a close eye on this trend and has put safeguards in place to help protect people on Twitter and Periscope.

Earlier this year TorrentFreak was also hit by inaccurate DMCA takedown complaints, targeting our news coverage. American entertainment giant Starz removed ours and several other tweets, pointing to an article about leaked TV-shows.

While Twitter accepted these takedowns, the reporting organization lifted the claim after we and many others complained.

Twitter’s complete transparency report, which also addresses trademark notices, information requests, rules enforcement, and other removal requests, is available here.

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In what is becoming an increasingly competitive market, generating revenue by any means is a must for most significant sites, platforms, and services operating in the piracy space.

In Russia, pirate platforms have been experiencing an upward revenue trend for many years but according to a forecast just published by cybersecurity firm Group-IB, 2019 is set to be much less lucrative.

For background, in 2015 revenues were estimated to be $32m but a year later the picture had changed significantly with the market almost doubling in size to $62m. In 2017 there was a further 21% uplift to $85m but in 2018 things began to slow down, with a small 2.3% growth delivering estimated revenues of $87m.

In its latest analysis, the company states that for the first time in half a decade, revenues are set to collapse. Group-IB predicts a figure of around $63.5m for 2019, a drop of 27% compared to estimates for 2018 published last year.

The reasons cited for the dramatic downward shift are numerous. Russia has been tightening its anti-piracy laws almost every year, including site-blocking and in particular, the ability to block repeat-infringer sites and their mirrors/proxies on a permanent basis.

However, the “tectonic shift”, as the company describes it, came as a result of the voluntary anti-piracy memorandum signed in 2018.

Internet platforms including Yandex, Mail.ru, Rambler and Gazprom Media, in conjunction with major content companies, agreed to the creation of an infringing content database which signals which URLs to remove from search results. Around 600,000 links to pirated copies of movies and TV shows are currently included.

The arrangement officially expired early October but an extension was subsequently agreed, with an option to continue until the end of the year if a bill to enshrine its terms in law is submitted to the State Duma by the end of this month. In the meantime, the effects of the agreement haven’t gone unnoticed.

“In the previous years, even if pirated content was removed from a web page, a user still could open the web page, finding it in the search engine, and see the advertisement placed on it, bringing money to online-pirates,” says Andrey Busargin, Director of Brand Protection and Anti-Piracy at Group-IB.

“In 2019, on the contrary, a user was not always able to open a resource with pirated video content, even intentionally.”

Pirate site operators have other advertising issues too. Group-IB estimates that the average earnings for a pirate site via advertising are around $10,000 per month, with online casinos and gaming platforms providing most of the income.

“The active work of the Russian Federal Tax Service against bookmakers and gambling led to the pushing out of advertisers of pirated websites,” Busargin notes.

“For example, Azino777, a highly affiliated provider of advertising services for pirate CDNs, has already lost its leading position.”

Many streaming portals in the region utilize these ‘pirate’ CDNs which bundle video and advertising into a single package. As recently reported, however, several major players were either taken down after legal action by BREIN, the MPA, and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, or shut down as a direct result. At least temporarily, this could be affecting up to 80% of the pirate streaming market.

Nevertheless, there remains a thirst among Russian consumers for pirated content, so solutions are likely to be found. Group-IB says that the volume of search requests seeking pirated movies and TV shows increased by 0.06% in 2019, to 10.4 billion.

But there is also a cultural problem faced by content companies. A survey published in September by security company ESET suggested that just 9% of respondents prefer legal content over pirated, with 75% citing high prices as their motivation.

That being said, their supply will only continue if pirate sites can make money at their end, so it will be interesting to see whether their 2020 revenues continue on a downward trend.

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

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