Pirate IPTV Subscriptions Remain Rampant in North America


Increasingly, people are cancelling their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper or niche-based Internet TV instead.

While there are plenty of legal options available, there’s also a broad offer of easy-to-use set-top boxes which are specifically configured to receive pirated content.

These pirate IPTV boxes are often sold bundled with a monthly or yearly subscription. This created an industry worth more than a billion dollars worldwide, perhaps even more.

Canadian broadband management company Sandvine recently put a spotlight on this activity, revealing how popular these boxes are. The company gathered data in 16 states and provinces in the US and Canada, monitoring traffic across multiple fixed access tier-1 networks.

Following an analysis of the data, the company was able to pinpoint how many households were accessing pirate IPTV networks. It’s a revisit of a similar study last year which found that 6.5% of the households used illegitimate subscription-based services.

The new results are somewhat lower. Sandvine reports that 5.5% of households could be linked to pirate IPTV subscriptions but this doesn’t mean that interest is waning.

The most recent study looked at a broader and more diverse population than before. Last year’s sample was concentrated in urban areas with a population over a million, which skewed the findings.

The recent study shows that 7.3% of the households in high-density urban areas have pirate IPTV subscriptions, compared to 4.3% in lower populated areas. This means that the overall reach may have actually grown.

US/Canada households accessing pirated live television services

The findings clearly show that pirate TV subscriptions are more popular in big cities, which is an interesting fact in itself.

“There is a huge variability in the demographics of those using pirated video services from region to region,” Sandvine’s Veroljub Mihajlovic notes.

The scope of the activity also remains intriguing. As previously revealed, pirate IPTV traffic generated more bandwidth than many other piracy tools and services, such as BitTorrent.

Also, it doesn’t even factor in other types of set-top box piracy, such as pirate boxes that access OTT streaming sites to play movies and TV-series “on demand.” This means that the overall piracy box landscape is even larger.

All in all it is safe to conclude that IPTV piracy makes up a large part of the pirate ecosystem. This hasn’t gone unnoticed to copyright holders of course. Over the past year, we have seen enforcement actions against several providers and if this trend continues, more are likely to follow.

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YouTube’s Copyright Protection System is a Total Mess, Can it Be Fixed?


YouTube’s copyright enforcement is a growing source of frustration, with many creators complaining about overbroad takedown efforts.

The protests have become more vocal in recent months, even though the issues themselves are far from new.

We first signaled problems with YouTube’s Content-ID system more than seven years ago. Since then, many examples have followed.

Most of these are the result of overbroad flagging, where YouTube finds a copyright match where it shouldn’t. The filters have previously flagged randomly generated audio, for example, or bird chatter.

This week we stumbled upon a video with 50 hours of rain sounds which has been flagged by no less than five separate rightsholders. Admittedly, the rain in the video sounds very familiar, as does most rain, but it clearly is unique.

While some mistakes are expected to happen, things only seem to be getting worse. Over the past several days alone, dozens of new examples of YouTube copyright problems have appeared. Many of these were brought to the forefront by creators themselves.

Last week the popular musician TheFatRat found out that ‘someone’ had claimed his own song as theirs, effectively diverting the ad-revenue to someone else. For a song with millions of views, that’s not a trivial issue.

Kidding?

YouTube does allow users to file a “dispute,” which TheFatRat did. However, the claimant rejected it. The musician could appeal the claim but YouTube warned that he would then risk a strike. If that fails, there’s another appeal option at which point it enters DMCA territory.

If a Content-ID claim is appealed the claimant will have to file a regular takedown request. This will result in a strike. The YouTube account holder can then file a counter-notice and if the claimant doesn’t file a lawsuit within two weeks, the video is eventually restored.

That’s quite a hassle, to say the least.

What doesn’t help is that YouTube keeps referring to false claimants as the “copyright owners”. This also happened to Dan Bull, who was hit with a similar false claim last week.

I’m right.

It’s not always clear where the problem lies. In TheFatrat’s case, his song was reportedly infringing a track from Andres Galvis, who apparently doesn’t know Power Records LLC or Ramjets, which YouTube lists as the claimant.

This may sound bizarre, but things can get even worse. In November YouTuber Drew Gooden was hit by a copyright claim from… Drew Gooden.

?

It doesn’t seem unimaginable that some people are abusing YouTube’s copyright policy to generate revenue by claiming videos of others. At the very minimum, these examples show that YouTube’s claiming process is a mess, which can seriously hurt legitimate users.

This frustration was nicely illustrated by YouTuber Gus Johnson, who provides even more examples.

Johnson shows that not all false claims are made through automatic recognition, there are plenty of inaccurate ‘manual’ claims as well. It appears that just mentioning the title of an artist or song can result in a claim, even though the audio itself isn’t used in the video.

Out of control..

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

As Techdirt points out, this mess doesn’t bode well for the EU’s Article 13, which may result in even more filters. That said, at YouTube things are already spiraling out of control.

We can easily continue to point out mistakes and false claims day after day after, but perhaps it’s time for a change?

During a hearing on Canada’s copyright reform plans, Liberal MP David Graham rightfully noted that YouTube currently operates a “guilty until proven innocent” system. YouTube’s representative didn’t dispute this assertion but gave no indication that this could be reversed.

While “innocent until proven guilty” sounds better for creators, copyright holders are not going to like that one bit.

TorrentFreak spoke to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have been critical of YouTube’s system for years. According to EFF’s Legal Director Corynne McSherry, the copyright strikes are particularly problematic.

Through these “strikes”, channel owners risk losing their livelihoods after three complaints. These strikes are only applied after direct copyright takedown requests, not through Content-ID flags, but it’s a major concern.

What might help is if copyright holders who repeatedly abuse the Content-ID system are penalized as well.

“YouTube could improve its handling of copyright complaints by actively identifying and excluding from Content ID rightsholders that abuse it,” McSherry says.

In addition, YouTube could also protect channels which are known to be good actors.

For search takedown requests Google already appears to work with a whitelist of non-infringing domain names. YouTube could do the same with its channels, protecting these from broad takedown requests.

It’s clear that YouTube is in a difficult spot with major rightsholders asking for tougher measures and YouTubers complaining about the same. At the very least, the company could take a good look at its policies and systems to see if clear abuse can be addressed and prevented.

Earlier this month, Team YouTube said that it was looking into the issues, but thus far not much has changed.

For TheFatRat the recent trouble was the final straw. Yesterday he launched a petition urging YouTube to fix the copyright protection system which 22,000 people have signed already,

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Adobe Piracy Tutorial Takedown Upsets Reddit’s Piracy Sub


Anyone wanting to develop new skills can find information to do so on the Internet. While many areas can benefit from one-to-one instruction, tutorials on how to accomplish most things under one’s own steam can be found online.

The majority of online tutorials are completely non-controversial but when it comes to learning skills that have the potential to break the law, things get a little more volatile.

This is particularly evident in the online piracy scene. With just a few clicks of a mouse, people can learn how to obtain content without paying for it, learn how to crack software or bypass anti-piracy mechanisms on pay TV, for example. It’s been this way for at least a couple of decades and doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

That’s perhaps why there was such outcry on Reddit this week when a long-standing tutorial on how to pirate Adobe CC was taken down following a copyright complaint.

The tutorial, titled ‘Pirating Adobe CC for Dummies’, was posted in 2016 and was presumably interesting to the many thousands of people who read it, whether they went on to pirate anything or not. However, a takedown notice received by Reddit saw the tutorial removed.

Taken down after two years

The text that now sits in place of the tutorial doesn’t indicate that the takedown notice was sent by Adobe. However, it seems fairly likely the world-famous software company was behind the effort. In any event, Reddit clearly viewed the tutorial as problematic and removed it.

This ignited a very lively discussion about the legality of the tutorial, with people pointing out that it didn’t link to any unauthorized Adobe content, nor did it directly link to any of the tools required to pirate the company’s software.

Perhaps more surprisingly, however, is that many users turned their anger on Reddit’s admins, who were accused of taking the site in a corporate direction while pleasing shareholders with the takedown of content, this tutorial in particular. In fact, many posts discussed where users of /r/piracy could move to, in order to escape perceived censorship on Reddit.

There are several angles to this issue, none of which are straightforward. TorrentFreak showed the original thread to three lawyers at separate companies while pointing out the lack of links to copyrighted content, to see if this aspect might play a role in the validity of the original claim.

None particularly wanted to commit on whether the tutorial itself was illegal but in off-the-record comments, two independently touched on contributory infringement, “a means by which a person may be held liable for infringement even though he or she did not actually engage in infringing activities.”

TorrentFreak also sought comment from the EFF but at the time of publishing, we were yet to receive a response. Clearly, getting definitive answers on the legality of the tutorial itself wasn’t going to be easy but perhaps that’s the distraction here.

After receiving the complaint, Reddit was compelled by law to take the content down. There is, of course, the possibility to file a counter-notice, which would enable the author to challenge Adobe’s assertions of infringement (if that’s who sent the notice) and allow the content to go back up, at least for a while.

However, it is extremely unlikely the author of the tutorial would be prepared to file a counter-notice because that would mean a) identifying him or herself (with a statement including “name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of federal district court for the judicial district in which the address is located”) and b) exposing themselves to a potential lawsuit if the sender wanted to make a point.

This leads, of course, to the inevitable conclusion. Few people who write this kind of tutorial want to be exposed or find themselves on the end of a lawsuit, whether they believe they have the law on their side or not. For most people, expensive lawsuits are not fun and the fight for freedom of speech and access to information often stop when the bills come flooding in.

So, with no counter-claim forthcoming, the tutorial stays down and Reddit keeps its own safe harbor protections, ready to fight another day.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. Adobe trying to protect its content? Reddit responding to copyright takedown demands? Piracy tutorial creators not wanting to be part of a lawsuit? A heated debate over freedom of speech? It’s just another day at the office in the copyright world.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the /r/piracy sub-Reddit now has another copyright complaint to add to the increasing tally, despite the best efforts of its moderators who, like Reddit’s admins, may soon have tough choices to make about what content can stay and what must go.

Adobe did not respond to TorrentFreak’s request for comment.

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Hollywood Asks Court to Halt ‘Pirate Box’ Whac-a-Mole


Earlier this year, several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, branding it a supplier of pirate streaming devices.

Under the flag of anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Dragon of using the Kodi media player in combination with pirate addons. As such, the company facilitates mass copyright infringement, it was argued.

It didn’t take long for the legal pressure to have an effect. Soon after the lawsuit was filed Dragon Box halted its sales. The company indicated that it would either shut down or run a lawful business instead.

The company eventually opted to continue its business by switching to a new subscription service called BlendTV. Although BlendTV’s website claimed that it has all necessary rights and permissions, the Hollywood studios clearly disagreed.

Two months after this switch, Dragon Box informed its customers about another change. The company said it would stop offering BlendTV late November. That, however, was not the end of the matter.

On December 11th, just hours after an unsuccessful mediation in court, Dragon Box relaunched with yet another service called “My TV Hub.” According to the Hollywood studios, this service is not legitimate either.

Frustrated by these repeated ‘comebacks’ the plaintiffs went to court this week, hoping to halt all infringing activity.

“With the freshly minted new My TV Hub service, Defendants continue to knowingly induce the widespread infringement of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works by encouraging Dragon Box customers to access infringing streams through the latest iteration of the Dragon Box Service,” they inform the court.

Logan streaming on My TV Hub

According to the movie companies, none of the services offered Dragon Box were legitimate. Instead, they accuse the vendor of playing a game of whac-a-mole.

“Defendants’ game is clear: every time they are caught marketing an infringing service to their customers, Defendants pull that service down and substitute another in its place,” the plaintiffs inform the California federal court.

“My TV Hub is not licensed to stream Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works, just as Blend TV was not before it, and just as the addons Defendants originally utilized was not,” they add.

The plaintiffs ask the court to issue a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the company from selling “My TV Hub” subscriptions. In addition, they don’t want Dragon Box to sell any service that offers copyrighted content provided by a third party.

“Absent injunctive relief, Defendants will continue this game of Whac-a-Mole. Nothing short of a Temporary Restraining Order (‘TRO’) to enjoin this latest service offering, and all similar offerings, will cause Defendants to cease their flagrantly infringing conduct,” the movie companies state.

It’s now up to the court to decide whether a restraining order is justified. At the time of writing, Dragon Box isn’t selling any boxes on its website. Remote controls and keyboards are still available, as well as CBD oil, which was added to the assortment recently.

—-

A copy of the application for a temporary restraining order is available here (pdf).

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Vodafone Blocks Two Pirate Streaming Sites Without a Court Order


The fact that ISPs around the world are blocking pirate sites to prevent copyright infringement is nothing new. The practice has been going for more than decade.

Aside from voluntary arrangements, such as the one currently playing out in Portugal, ISPs tend to wait for courts to hand down an injunction before blocking a site. In Germany, however, a new situation has raised its head.

On Tuesday, subscribers to Vodafone discovered that they could no longer access streaming portals Burning Series (BS.to) and Serial Stream (S.to). Rather than accessing the thousands of TV shows usually on offer, they were instead met by a blocking message presented by their ISP.

Both sites currently have messages on their main pages, explaining that Vodafone has chosen to block their platforms. In the meantime, local news outlet Tarnkappe has obtained a statement from Vodafone which confirmed that the ISP is blocking the sites.

“Due to the provisions of German and European copyright and telemedia law, access providers such as Vodafone are under certain conditions required by law to block access to websites with illegal content – eg to illegal streaming offers of films and TV series,” spokesperson Volker Petendorf told the publication.

While it’s no surprise to hear of yet another block, further information provided by Vodafone reveals that the block was put in place following a complaint from a rightsholder but without a court ordering a blockade.

Referencing a copyright case which was handled by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) during the summer, Vodafone now says it believes the decision has a knock-on effect that requires them to block sites in certain circumstances.

As previously reported, in that case the BGH ruled that WiFi providers cannot be held liable for piracy carried out by their users. However, they can be told to prevent access to file-sharing services and even block entire websites, once infringement has been confirmed.

Vodafone believes this applies to them too, since a copyright holder has informed them of an unsuccessful attempt to prevent infringements via the above-mentioned sites.

“Currently, the rights holder of the TV series ‘Das Boot’ has asked Vodafone to block domains that provide access to the ‘s.to’ and ‘bs.to’ websites. The copyright holder has made credible claims to Vodafone that this TV series can be accessed illegally via the Internet portals s.to and bs.to without the necessary consent of the copyright holder and thus illegally,” Vodafone told Tarnkappe.

“The copyright holder has assured us that it is not possible for him to enforce his rights other than by blocking access to these sites. Vodafone, after thorough legal examination, believes that we are currently obliged to block access to these websites in accordance with mandatory legal provisions.”

Currently, both BS.to and S.to have notices up on their main pages detailing ways that Vodafone’s DNS-based block can be circumvented.

“Some internet service providers, such as Vodafone, block access to Burning Series and censor your Internet access. Therefore, we recommend that you change your DNS name servers to the IP addresses of Google 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 or Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1,” BS.to notes.

Vodafone suggests that should the legal situation change in the future, the blocks against both sites will be lifted.

This is the third time this year that Vodafone has blocked pirate sites.

In August the ISP blocked access to Libgen after publishing giants Elsevier, Springer, and Macmillan obtained an injunction from the Munich Regional Court. In February, following a complaint from a movie distribution company, Vodafone blocked streaming portal Kinox.to.

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2018 – Looking Back…


So, the sun starts to set on 2018, and another year draws to a close. At the same time, we stand ready to launch Kodi 18 “Leia” in the very near future, which opens a new chapter in how Kodi is structured, how it functions, how it’s used. It seems like an appropriate time to stop and draw breath, then, and take a look backwards: what’s been good, what’s been bad, the what-went-wells, the where-do-we-still-have-challenges.

First up, then, the positive stuff. 

Internally, there have been very many changes and improvements to Kodi’s core code that, while not immediately obvious on the outside, make life a lot easier to both maintain and expand the application. Architectural changes, such as the move towards Python 3; support for Python scrapers and binary addons; movement of functionality out of a global/core approach and into a more local/modular system; improvements to the Videoplayer such as shader support and overall speed/quality improvements. And it’s not all about the code itself: documentation has been revamped, with some superb work and good ideas on how we can better keep track of how Kodi is built.

The Kodi Team continues to grow, with new members joining us in every capacity. That allows us to be more structured with our internal processes, as well as (e.g.) bringing in more Google “Summer of Code” students to work on specific elements of the code. Indeed, a shout goes out to those GSoC students this year: good work, done professionally, seen through to the end, rolled into the application. As some of them joined us this year at DevCon, we’ve put effort into making that meeting more structured, constructive, focused, and more accessible to the new Team members so they feel more welcome, more quickly. We have an active team of round-the-clock moderators who work to keep our forum in shape – violations, spam, noise. Add a sprinkle of automation here and there and, hopefully, users can find what they need and get the community help they want without getting buried.

One of the eternal challenges in any large, dispersed organisation – perhaps made more so when everyone is a volunteer – is internal team communication. We’ve made active steps this year to improve this: new internal tools, more collaboration, more organisation, greater transparency and openness. We all know how the open source community can have some famous and pretty public disagreements; while we still have our fair share of these within the team, we’ve generally put a lid on the worst of these, diverting energy into the application instead of internal arguments. This also extends to external communication and interaction sometimes: having spent some time on self-reflection, we’re a lot more aware of how we come across to new developers and contributors, and how attitude can impact directly on people’s willingness and ability to contribute. We’re continuing to work on how we use GitHub and the pull request process, for example, to hopefully get more contributions, more quickly – submitted, reviewed and committed.

Extending the idea of external communication, we’ve made some major updates to the wiki, many of which reflect the significant functionality changes we’ve seen. We have the new forum, and new paste site, and generally a much more usable and polished public face. Linked to the submission/merge process as well, we’ve actively sought to get more external testing of changes through mirrors and nightly/test builds, all of which combines to give more stable code and a better user expereince all round.

Now, for a lot of users, much of that might be all well and good – “what about the application features, though?”, I hear you cry. Fear not, kind reader, for there has been much work there as well. From platform support, such as H.265/HEVC on Pi and collaboration with Android SoC vendors, to DRM support and possibilities that opens up for official content add-ons; a return to our roots with Xbox One support; the release of the long-awaited retroplayer gaming support as part of the official Kodi build; a significant re-work of our music and related library capabilities. Some of these are admittedly more revolutionary than others, but all of them build a more solid, stable, expandable platform for future releases.

 

Is everything perfect, though? No, of course not. Any retrospective has to really look at where we still need to improve.

We’ve made great steps forwards on communication: we can still do much more. We need to streamline our internal tools so people get to know about what they need and not drown ourselves in noise (forum, Slack, GitHub, email…). We’ve been working on internal policies to resolve issues between team members – we’re not a company, we don’t have an HR department, so we need to simply agree “the rules of the road” that govern attitude and acceptable behaviour (hey, we’ve all been on the Internet long enough, you know what it’s like sometimes!). That in turn touches on the external communication and attitudes towards people: we still need to complete the pivot from “this sucks…” to “thanks for the contribution, might I suggest…”. Streamlining the code, documenting it better, modularising it, making it easier to offer up changes without spending five years familiarising yourself with all aspects of the code base – all of these will hopefully help on this aspect.

GSoC has been a success for us, as covered above. But we always need more developers and new ideas. We need to become a more attractive project to work on and work with. We need to be more accepting of change, more welcoming of criticism or suggestions, more open and transparent about how, why and where things happen in what is increasingly an enormous, “black box” project from the outside. While all projects of this type are revolving doors of contributors, we lost some core talent this last year; similarly, though, some people have rejoined the Team, resurrecting some of their passion for Kodi and what it could become. The hippy in all of us would like less drama, more love, and for everyone to just get along, all of the time. 

And, finally, we need to work more on the vision for Kodi. It’s true that we’ve been painted with the piracy brush for too long. As we introduce new features, as the DRM functionality beds in, we have to hope that this changes, and we can get back to the primary reason most of us work on this application: because we genuinely believe it is, and will remain, the best one-stop home entertainment and multimedia platform in the world.

 

Those were our thoughts. Maybe you have your own – in the spirit of openness and communication, then, perhaps you can share those ideas with us through all of the normal channels.

In the meantime, as you ponder Life, the Universe, and Everything, we wish you a peaceful end to 2018. Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, whether you celebrate anything at all, we wish you well for now and the future. 

Thank you for sharing the journey with us.

Team Kodi.

 





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Judge Recommends Dropping ISP Grande’s DMCA Safe Harbor Defense


Last year several major record labels, represented by the RIAA, filed a lawsuit against ISP Grande Communications accusing it of turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers.

According to the RIAA, the Internet provider knew that some of its subscribers were frequently distributing copyrighted material, but failed to take any meaningful action in response.

Grande refuted the accusations and filed a motion to dismiss the case. The ISP partially succeeded as the claims against its management company Patriot were dropped. The same was true for the vicarious infringement allegations.

The labels were not willing to let go so easily. They pushed on with several new filings, including a motion for summary judgment, arguing that Grande has no safe harbor defense.

In order to enjoy safe harbor protection, the DMCA requires ISPs to adopt and reasonably implement a policy for terminating the accounts of repeat copyright infringers. According to the labels, it is clear that Grande failed to do so. As such, the company should be held directly liable.

Yesterday, US Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin issued his “report and recommendation” on the matter, which delivers a significant setback for the Internet provider.

According to the Judge, the undisputed evidence shows Grande had a policy that allowed it to terminate repeat infringers, but that the ISP failed to act on this for years. As such, the policy was not adopted and reasonably implemented.

“Grande affirmatively decided in 2010 that it would not enforce the policy at all, and that it would not terminate any customer’s account regardless of how many notices of infringement that customer accumulated, regardless of the source of the notices, and regardless of the content of a notice,” Judge Austin writes.

The evidence shows that Grande did not terminate a single repeat infringer between October 2010 and June 2017. This was effectively confirmed by the ISP’s own corporate representative.

“A ‘reasonably implemented’ termination policy requires that the policy be enforced, and not just adopted. Because the evidence is undisputed that Grande never enforced its policy during the relevant time period, it is precluded from raising the DMCA safe harbor defense in this case.

“It is hard to imagine a case in which it is more clear that the DMCA safe harbor is not available,” the recommendation reads.

In its defense, Grande argued that it did enforce a repeat infringer policy after the lawsuit was filed but, according to the Judge, this was “too little too late.”

The Internet provider also argued that terminating customers wasn’t appropriate because the copyright infringement notices sent by Rightscorp were flawed. However, Judge Austin concludes that this is no defense, as there is no evidence that Grande ever considered terminating a user.

On top of that, the concerns regarding Rightscorp’s notices don’t explain why similar complaints from other sources were also disregarded.

“Yet another failure with Grande’s argument about the Rightscorp notices is that it does not address the several hundred thousand copyright infringement notices it received from companies other than Rightscorp,” Judge Austin writes.

In weighing the arguments the Judge looked closely at the BMG v. Cox case, which was very similar. In that matter, the court concluded that Cox didn’t have a safe harbor defense and Judge Austin argues that that same should apply to Grande.

If the U.S. District Court Judge adopts this recommendation, it will be a major win for the labels of the RIAA. Without a safe harbor defense, ISPs are not shielded from contributory liability for the actions of pirating subscribers.

And there is more bad news for the ISP as well.

Grande requested summary judgment in its favor on a variety of liability issues, including direct infringement, willfulness, damages, and ownership of copyright. These are all under recommendation to be denied, except for two limited issues regarding the alleged violation of reproduction or public performance rights.

The RIAA labels also submitted a cross-motion on these liability issues, requesting a ruling in their favor, but that was denied as well. This means that the matters will be decided at trial.

While Judge Austin’s recommendations have yet to be adopted, both reports and recommendations have definitely not improved the outlook for Grande.

—

A copy of the safe harbor recommendations is available here (pdf), and the recommendations on Grande’s motions for summary judgment and the labels’ cross motions can be found here (pdf).

Update: we clarified that without a safe harbor ISPs aren’t shielded from contributory liability for the actions of pirating subscribers.

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Netflix Quick to File Complaint With New Thai Anti-Piracy Agency


Compared to many other companies in the video industry, Netflix traditionally had a fairly pragmatic approach to the piracy phenomenon.

Now, however, with billions of dollars being spent creating its own content, the company is a major player in the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global anti-piracy coalition with considerable influence.

According to a March 2018 report, by 2020 the company will have more than 546,000 customers in the Thailand. However, piracy is rampant in the country, something that has led to its placement on the USTR’s Priority and regular Watch Lists in recent years.

To help alleviate this situation and help companies including Netflix, this week the government launched a brand new anti-piracy agency located within the Office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).

“The Royal Thai Police (RTP) and the Office of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) have been charged with a cooperative mission to suppress and prevent the proliferation of counterfeit products and online piracy,” an NBTC statement reads.

“This follows a number of expressions of serious concern from international allies such as the US, Japan, and others whose domestic companies’ IP rights are being infringed in the form of counterfeit handbags, clothes, makeup, electronic devices, and digital piracy.”

During a press conference marking the launch of the Center of Operational Policing for Thailand Against Intellectual Property Violations and Crimes on the Internet Suppression (COPTICS), it was noted that the current procedure (which can sometimes take more than six months from initial complaint through to a court issuing a blocking order) is considered inadequate.

The mission now is to massively speed up the process, with the lofty aim of having sites blocked within a few days of receiving a complaint. Netflix, it appears, will be one of the first companies to test the new system.

Immediately following the launch of the new initiative, three companies – Netflix, Mono Technology Plc, and Major Cineplex Group, plus the Thai Motion Picture Industry Association – filed complaints with the new agency, Bangkok Post reports.

It is not yet clear which platforms have been reported to authorities but according to the government, the content companies must first complain to TACTICS, Thailand’s Action Taskforce for Information Technology Crime Suppression.

Once the copyright complaint has been received and accepted by the police, it will be progressed to the NBTC which will order local Internet service providers to block offending websites and URLs. Once blocks are put in place, police and the NBTC will “monitor and implement proceedings against offenders.”

According to NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith, 2,000 allegedly infringing sites and/or URLs were reported to the authorities between August and December this year, but only 20% were blocked. Just last week, police filed complaints against 744 sites with the NBTC, but just 47 were blocked in that instance.

Curiously, the reason given by Takorn for the low number of blocks is that the remainder “are encrypted from abroad” meaning that they cannot be blocked locally by ISPs, something which is hard to believe. Provoking even more interest is that the majority of the sites are claimed to be run “by Google, YouTube, and Facebook.”

According to Bangkok Post, NBTC has asked representatives of the US embassy to invite management teams from these companies to conduct talks with Thai authorities to address the problems.

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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Canada Prohibits Piracy Settlement Demands in ISP Copyright Notices


In several countries around the world, notably the United States, Canada, and the UK, rightsholders and their agents send copyright notices to alleged infringers.

In most cases, recipients are accused of downloading and sharing copyright-infringing content using BitTorrent. The notices contain details of the alleged offense along with instructions to cease-and-desist.

These notices, sent to Internet users’ ISPs, are regularly passed on to the subscriber. However, some companies targeting US and Canadian citizens augment their notices with text indicating that a cash settlement is required, ranging from just a few dollars to several hundred.

Many users who see these demands pay up but these notices are unusual in that the original sender has no idea who the subscriber is. This means that some recipients ignore them, with no further consequences.

While the practice operates largely unhindered in the US, over in Canada (where there is a so-called notice-and-notice regime) there has been considerable opposition since its inception in 2015.

ISPs, who have to bear the brunt of the administrative burden, have also cried foul, with TekSavvy recently describing the content of some notices as akin to “scams and spam“, with Bell noting that it would like to see an end to the copyright-notice settlement model.

Back in October, it became clear that the ISPs and other opponents had strong government backing with the publication of a new bill that would prevent the activity from continuing.

Bill C-86, the Budget Implementation Act, has now received royal assent, so there will be some big changes in the Great White North. Section 41.‍25 of the Copyright Act is now amended with the addition of the following;

(3) A notice of claimed infringement shall not contain:

(a) an offer to settle the claimed infringement;
(b) a request or demand, made in relation to the claimed infringement, for payment or for personal information;
(c) a reference, including by way of hyperlink, to such an offer, request or demand; and
(d) any other information that may be prescribed by regulation.

The text is pretty straightforward, in that it prohibits demands for settlement in the notices themselves or on a third-party site where such a demand may also be available. This is important since some notices contain hyperlinks that not only lead to demands for cash but also undermine subscriber privacy with the use of tracking code.

The news was welcomed by Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who notes that notices that do not meet the new standards can be withheld by local ISPs without them facing penalties.

However, Geist also cautions that the new amendments contain no punishments for anti-piracy companies that fail to follow the rules.

“The key remaining question is whether ISPs will crackdown on non-compliant notices. Since there is no penalty associated with sending non-compliant notices, subscribers are dependent upon ISPs carefully reviewing notices to ensure that they only forward those that fully comply with the law,” Geist notes.

Considering their earlier opposition, however, it seems unlikely that TekSavvy, Shaw, Rogers, and Bell will have many problems with withholding non-compliant notices.

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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